PhilHibbs

I've got a folder of all my characters somewhere going way back, if I can find it I should go through them and draw a graph of the stat distribution across every character from a 3D6 system.

1 hour ago, CJ said:

Logical Clarity spell p.396 is given as Dispel Truth when I'm pretty sure it should be Dispel Illusion. The example of Damastol using it on p.386 gives it as Dispel Truth again but the rest of the example refers to Illusion currently making no sense. And Dispelling Truth is hardly conducive to logical clarity so I think a minor error has appeared in these two entries. 

Someone who has studied and mastered the power of Truth would be better at casting Logical Clarity than someone who has studied the power of Illusion.

5 hours ago, simonh said:

So you're seriously suggesting the new game should cut some of it's current content and replace it with lists of all the differences between it an every previous edition of RuneQuest?

To be fair, up until last Friday, RuneQuest 2 was the only currently in-print version of RuneQuest, and technically RQ2 and RQ:G are now both in print simultaneously! 😜 A comprehensive list of differences would be nice, probably as a fan project, but I would not like to see any more space in the RQ:G rule book taken up with it. I don't know of any new role playing game edition that has gone to the lengths of comprehensively listing all the changes, to the level of detail of "this mechanic is no longer limited to X points". Often previous editions are never even mentioned.

20 hours ago, ThornPlutonius said:

Unfortunately, those points do NOT make RQG distinct among other RPGs. They did when Runequest first came out, but not now. Folks can play in Glorantha using Hero Quest. The other three are also properties of Mythras, Open Quest, Legend, Revolution D100, etc.

I understand that you are promoting your wares. RQG is worth promoting. The features that you mention are worth having attention called to them. Please be a more honest in your marketing. Please don't make claims that are not true.

Sure, other games have copied these features of RuneQuest - they are RuneQuest in every sense other than the trademark (caveat, I don't really know RevD100). But RuneQuest did them first, and IMO RQ:G does them more than any other game, and he does say "that help make RuneQuest distinct", he does not say "each of which is unique to RuneQuest".

Well my archive of Sandy's documents is here: http://hibbs.me.uk/snarks/docs/

I will check in any of the other sets posted here are more up to date. Seems identical to Mugen's (www.chez.com) so far.

On 6/5/2018 at 11:15 AM, simonh said:

You can always use them for your own game, if you like.

Simon Hibbs

I can even do a custom version of the spreadsheet with the old formulae in if anyone wants, I had it all working before, so it's almost a simple cut and paste.

6 hours ago, TrippyHippy said:

As an amendment, you could have 21 dice rolled and then allow two of the results to be automatically changed to 6s. This would be the equivalent to the two 2D6+6 scores, but you get a bit more flexibility in the way you allocate (although you'd still have to keep the 8 minimum for SIZ and INT) while also picking off a couple of bad rolls (the 1s for the most part). 

Ah, yes, that rings a bell. I came across a variant where where you rolled 3d6 for all stats, and when you assigned a roll to INT or SIZ you swap one of the dice for a 6, so you are getting rid of 2 crappy dice rolls out of 7 stats. You could easily extend this to "roll 4 dice, discard the lowest, and replace one with a 6 if assigning to INT or SIZ". We also allowed discarding of higher dice if someone wanted a low SIZ.

A variant that I used at one time was when you rolled a stat, you had to pick which one to assign it to right away before rolling the next one, so it became a bit of a gamble whether you should wait for a better roll.

I think variable spell limits were only in RQ2, RQ3 got rid of them.

Rolling Ann allocating - with or without extra dice - is ok for D&D or RQ2 which had all stats being 3D6 but when you have two stats rolled differently, you have very limited flexibility on INT and SIZ.

What I used to do was roll 21 to 25 dice all at once and pick out dice in groups of 2 and 3 and allocate them to stats.

The best stat rolling system I ever came across was a friend who programmed his Amstrad computer to run overnight printing out sets of random stats on a dot matrix printer, and pored over the list the next morning to find the best ones. He turned up to a new game with a character that had 16+ in every stat, and said it was randomly generated legitimately. We got the story out of him eventually.

I think GURPS 3rd Edition in 1988 was the first time I came across the idea of designing a character without any dice rolls. If I had heard the suggestion for RQ, I would probably not have been interested. Later, though, we used a ponts-based RQ3 character creation system almost exclusively for several years. I have it mirrored on my web space but I can't remember who created it! Does it look familiar to anyone? http://www.hibbs.me.uk/snarks/chargen.htm *Edit* it is Nick Effingham's system.

2 hours ago, ThornPlutonius said:

It is a very good review, but I do wish the author had not chosen to denigrate the work done on the game system by The Design Mechanism and Mongoose...

Absoutely, MRQ2 is a rock solid, high quality, great fun game system. Although RQG is great, I would have had no issues whatsoever with Chaosium just adding character backgrounds and runes and calling it RQ7. I'm not sure which I would prefer... probably RQG, but its a close call and also I haven't actually used RQG yet.

33 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Although Probability Theory is fine, I find that this is the best way of working out exactly what the chances are. I did the same thing in Progress 4GL/OpenEdge to work out success chances for RQ6. 

I agree, for the basic reason that probability and statistics are hard to get right. Crunching a million sets of numbers is easier, at least for my particular skill set.

Yes, the HP per location charts in RQ3 were approximations of the multiples presented in the rules (0.33, 0.25, 0.4 if i recall correctly), or vice versa. Despite my mathematical brain, I always just used the charts on the basis that that's what all the published stats would probably use.

1 minute ago, soltakss said:

What might cause problems is inconsistency, so ine player rolling and another uising a Points Buy. I don't think even that will break things, but some players will get their calculators out and say "Your Characteristics before Rune Modification add up to 93 but I only had 90 points to spend, Waaaaaahaaahaaa!".

That's why the GM Pack will come with a rolled up newspaper.

There's always been a difference between a skill that has a zero base (like read/write) and a skill that has a base that is wiped out by a category modifier. The latter is just like any other skill number, you always still a 01-05 chance of success.

8 hours ago, Scott A said:

Great tool! A couple of things I noted:

• The temporary spirit combat damage calculation is currently looking at CON instead of CHA.
• You're missing the Evaluate skill.
• There doesn't seem to be a designated place to keep track of skill advances during play

Thanks for making this

Thanks a lot, fixed: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/179pEllnjDoBjLC0e42e_C9ZtGsK31nWrzg6ddqn2HAc/edit?usp=sharing

I added an extra skill column "Extra" on the first sheet. Add in anything here, including experience, training, HeroQuest bonuses, etc. You can, of course, use  any of the columns AO-AS for whatever you want once character creation is completed and you no longer need to keep track of where the chunks of skill came from, you can consolidate the original numbers into a single column and use the rest if you want, for example, to keep experience and training separate. I may, for example, want to do my experience rolls by adding the new gains into a blank column, and then summing them up into another column when I'm done. Hmm, I think Google Docs does macros, so I might make that a feature... 

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

 Or you can opt for the nerd wizard with pitiful STR and CON - the very D&D stereotype that RQ made obsolete.

RQ made it non-compulsory, but you absolutely can do it, and I have done so. In fact that was the primary answer to the problem of crap stats - if you can assign them, assign them to STR, CON, SIZ, CHA and play a sorcerer or shaman (although low CHA is no longer a shaman option).

And as a general principle of game design, it's better for the GM to give than to take away, so the rules should not give too much by default, and the GM should be encouraged to supply the generosity. This would tend to start the GM-player relationship off on the right footing.

22 hours ago, David Scott said:

Except the pointless exercise of printing another table out. My game is internally consistent, why do I need to make more work for myself?

Bully for you! But it isn't consistent with the rules as written, so I think raising an alternative suggestion is an entirely legitimate thing to do at this stage.

45 minutes ago, Joerg said:

RQ3 offered a ridiculously low number of characteristic points (IIRC 80) to distribute among the stats, obeying species maximum restrictions. The combined method aimed at 93 points (IIRC) as the cap sum to which rolled stats could be raised with up to ten characteristic points allocated by player choice, obeying species maximum restrictions.

80 is 1.5 points above average for a full set of straight dice rolls, so not really ridiculously low.

4 minutes ago, HorusArisen said:

Sorry to keep bouncing my own post but it’s something that’ll determine where I get my stuff going forward.

@Jeff can you help?

The thread is for posting errata. Please bounce it elsewhere.

8 minutes ago, Zit said:

...his final modified chances of success will never go beyond 100%

Or did I miss a point ?

You only reduce skills over 100 if both characters have over 100. So if Mr 150% is facing 90%, he has a 30% special chance.

I'm not a fan of the rule about reducing skills, as most people will have several different skills and you will end up doing loads of subtraction all the time. "No, I'm dodging, I have 142 in that, I parried last round and I have 135 in shield".

A tie should be broken by the highest die roll winning,. This gives the edge in both cases to the higher skill.

2 hours ago, hanataka said:

Ability  Critical  Special  Success  Failure  Fumble
-------  --------  -------  -------  -------  ------
60-74     01-03     04-12   Ability  Avility  99-00
65-79     01-03     04-13   Ability  Avility  99-00
 

Typos in the left column.

4 hours ago, jenh said:

There seems to be a problem with the category modifier calculation. For agility skills, SIZ is rated too negatively; it should be listed as NEG SEC, not NEG PRI. I haven't checked the others.

Good spot - just need to move the "SIZ" in AC2 to AD2. Also I noticed that the secondary bonus calculation has "+5" instead of "+4" so secondary category mods for stats higher than 21 were kicking in at 22, 27, etc. Oh, and low stats had the wrong sign on their modifier, so they behave just like high stats! Ooops!

Fixed: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1UNfkIklJrrFH8WiS2efka0wu_2V3tcMSnNWRwbBHz4Y/edit?usp=sharing

If you've started using a sheet and want to fix it, just copy in the contents of the Lookups sheet from the new version, or fix the formula yourself in cells U6:U12.