Runequest 3, house rules, Borderlands and questions

[styopa]

3 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

. HQ is a much more narrative game, yet many RQ fans prefer RQ to HQ, to the point where MRQ and RQG are things desites years of being told that RQ wasn't a good fit for Glorantha. Frankly, had they gone narrative   it probabyl would have crashed and burned.

Well that's the conundrum, isn't it?  Just going by what (I think it was Jeff) said, HQ's narrative-mechanics were commercially unappealing and RQ was more successful. 

Yet ... here we have RQG (and TBH, Glorantha) in which the round peg of narrativism is being shoved incredibly hard through the square hole of a simulationist set of rules.  Some might say painfully.

3 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

 He did reject Arduin for it.

Thank the flippin' Lord.  Knowing the game and (the) personality involved, yeah, there were some quite good ideas there but that would have been a marriage made directly in hell.

 

 

[Atgxtg]

8 minutes ago, styopa said:

Well that's the conundrum, isn't it?  Just going by what (I think it was Jeff) said, HQ's narrative-mechanics were commercially unappealing and RQ was more successful. 

Yet ... here we have RQG (and TBH, Glorantha) in which the round peg of narrativism is being shoved incredibly hard through the square hole of a simulationist set of rules.  Some might say painfully.

Yes. It's also the fact that once something has an established fan base, any new version or alternate take has to compete with the existing version. For Glorathan fans who wanted to play RuneQuest, HQ doesn't cut it.  

 

8 minutes ago, styopa said:

Thank the flippin' Lord.  Knowing the game and (the) personality involved, yeah, there were some quite good ideas there but that would have been a marriage made directly in hell.

Oh, it might not had been a ll that bad. Arduin's biggest pitfall, and the one that apparently led to it's rejection was that is was more of an addition to D&D and not a stand alone game, so some deal would have to have been made with TSR. I figured that had  it happened, we would have gotten something more like D&D.  Just flip through one of the All the World Monsters books. It probably would have helped in capturing the high powered feel of Glorantha in a way RQ didn't, but we would probably had had to wait a bit longer for skill based FRPGs to be a thing. I know DragonQuest followed RQ, but was it already skill based by the time  RQ came out or not?

[Lordabdul]

44 minutes ago, styopa said:

Yet ... here we have RQG (and TBH, Glorantha) in which the round peg of narrativism is being shoved incredibly hard through the square hole of a simulationist set of rules.  Some might say painfully.

I disagree completely -- Glorantha is a solid setting, you can tell many different types of stories, and you can play in it with many different types of RPG systems. You, specifically, might have a preference/a problem with one or the other, but as whole, the gamer community can (and does) enjoy Glorantha with a wide range of systems. In fact, several people (including the authors) seem to enjoy gaming in Glorantha with different systems themselves.

What was surprising to me wasn't that Glorantha was using the RQ system per se... what was surprising was specifically Greg's choice, as a person, which went from "let's play with one of the most simulationist systems available on the market at the moment" to "let's create one of the most narrative systems on the market". And I mean, it could be that he loved playing and designing both equally, which is possibly part of why he was such a great gamer and designer.

Edited November 20, 2019 by lordabdul

[Akhôrahil]

10 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

What was surprising to me wasn't that Glorantha was using the RQ system per se... what was surprising was specifically Greg's choice, as a person, which went from "let's play with one of the most simulationist systems available on the market at the moment" to "let's create one of the most narrative systems on the market". And I mean, it could be that he loved playing and designing both equally, which is possibly part of why he was such a great gamer and designer.

Also, one of the things about HW/HQ is that it's an incredibly dry system. As a system, it has virtually no character or flavor. This can be a good thing - it's a system that's super easy to convert other settings into, for one thing - but for people who expect the system to deliver an experience of its own, it can seem bland.

Edited November 20, 2019 by Akhôrahil

[Shawn Carpenter]

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

Yes. It's also the fact that once something has an established fan base, any new version or alternate take has to compete with the existing version. For Glorathan fans who wanted to play RuneQuest, HQ doesn't cut it.

That generalization glitters a bit. I've been playing games in Glorantha since the 70s and HQ is my preferred game engine for it. Same goes for some of my grognard friends who started playing about the same time.

Throwing shade on games other folks like isn't an effective way to highlight your darlings. I have my reasons for preferring HQ to RQ, but I'm not going to enumerate 'em here. Why should I? If other folks enjoy that system, why rain on their parade? Why tarnish someone else's joy?

[Atgxtg]

Just now, Shawn Carpenter said:

That generalization glitters a bit.

All generalizations do.

Just now, Shawn Carpenter said:

I've been playing games in Glorantha since the 70s and HQ is my preferred game engine for it. Same goes for some of my grognard friends who started playing about the same time.

Okay, and your point?  Look, if all the old RQ players preferred HQ for Gloantha, then there wouldn't probably be a RQG. RQG and MRQ before it came out because there were still people who wanted to play in Gorantha with RQ despite HQ being available. That's not a slight on HQ, just an acknowledgement of the situation. Reversing it, are you and you player giving up HQ now that RQG is out? I suspect not. 

Just now, Shawn Carpenter said:

Throwing shade on games other folks like isn't an effective way to highlight your darlings. I have my reasons for preferring HQ to RQ, but I'm not going to enumerate 'em here. Why should I? If other folks enjoy that system, why rain on their parade? Why tarnish someone else's joy?

Yes, everyone has their own  favorites, and I'm not raining on your parade. I'm not saying here that RQ was superior to HQ or some such, only that a sizable segment of RQ fans didn't make the switch to HQ or preferred RQ to HQ. Just like how some didn't  switch from RQ2 to RQ3, or now from RQ3 to RQG. Some gamers prefer D&D to RQ, or 13th Age Glorantha to RQG. Such things do make a difference is sales, and support, as they represent a  potential customer base.   Any company would take a look at revving an old line of they thought there was a strong market for it. Ford would at consider bringing back the Model T if they thought it would sell and be profitable. Don't intepret that an as attack on your preferenbces or anyon elses, just good business. 

As far as what happened in the past and what could have happened, well some of it is history and much of it speculation, but the reality is that probably the biggest thing that hurt RQ and lead to it's demise was the Avalon Hill deal and the  decisions made under AH's watch. Could things have  gone down differently, sure. Would it have meant thing would have been better or worse, no one can say. We can only speculate based upon what we know from those times. And that benefits from hindsight. Greg never would have made the AH deal if he had known how it was going to work out. At the time, it seemed like a good idea, and that it would allow RQ to challenge D&D. It just didn't work out that way.

 

 

 

[soltakss]

On 11/18/2019 at 2:45 AM, BWP said:

That's your list of "awful lot" of similarities? 

RQ3 had an awful lot of RQ2 stuff in it as well.

I'd be interested in which RQ3 Rules you think have been dropped from RQG.

[jajagappa]

4 hours ago, soltakss said:

I'd be interested in which RQ3 Rules you think have been dropped from RQG.

Fatigue! (thankfully)

[Ian Absentia]

3 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Fatigue! (thankfully)

Which is (kind of) a shame.  Because I was just watching Treasure of the Sierra Madre and thinking "Man!  Without the RQ3 fatigue rules, this movie would be a non-starter."

To be fair, they were difficult to employ and track.  They work great in Skyrim, though.

!i!

[HreshtIronBorne]

3 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Fatigue! (thankfully)

This is one of the changes I constantly waffle on. Because most of the time we never bothered to track fatigue but, there were several moments in our campaigns where we brought them out due to much longer than average combats and arduous struggles. 

 

One of my earliest Epic Gaming Memories involves our heroes, including my Humakti, fighting for many many rounds going down into a temple to Malia to find and fight the Malia priestess bothering the locals. We fought our way down amd she happened to be out and about, little did we know she was descending. The Epic Battle on the stairs was really made dramatic by having to fall back periodically to keep from being completely exhausted and overwhelmed. We cpuld rotate in a new frontline but, it was risky. Eventually the Malia priestess threw some incredibly nasty spell at my humakti, he got Soul Waste, badly. I proceeded to fail every single roll and my hunakti had his soul drained away.  The birth of an epic RuneQuest moment. My DM then informed me it was some ridiculously tiny percentage chance that I failed every single CON roll and died irrevocably... or maybe not? That's what epic HeroQuesting is for anyway, right?

[jajagappa]

8 hours ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

Because most of the time we never bothered to track fatigue but, there were several moments in our campaigns where we brought them out due to much longer than average combats and arduous struggles. 

Conceptually they made sense, and I did try back in the day, but was just too much bookkeeping.

If there was a way to abstract quickly, particularly in a battle setting, that could be interesting. (And maybe Battle skill effectively incorporates that.)

[Bill the barbarian]

1 hour ago, jajagappa said:

Conceptually they made sense, and I did try back in the day, but was just too much bookkeeping.

If there was a way to abstract quickly, particularly in a battle setting, that could be interesting. (And maybe Battle skill effectively incorporates that.)

Nice way to put it, (conceptually made sense, but)...

You nailed it.

Now, the idea of a solution to the fatigue question sounds good to me, I love the idea of saying to the honourable and noble (and rich, don’t forget rich) SIZ 5 druluz warrior with the formidable STR of 11, that while he might wish to have a keyboarded/stringed instrument with a large sounding cavity (a gloranthan well-tempered clavier perhaps.... in other words—a friggin’ piano) play him into combat (okay grognards, down! I realize we have a slight inconsistency with time, an anachronism, bear with me.), he may not be the one to carry it to said battle, due to the carrying capacity of a rucksack, and... well, er, perhaps the number of, well let’s say—things perhaps, he is able to carry before peeing him or herself.

As you say for it  to work and have people actually use it requires something simple with minimum paperwork There is enough chatter in the forums on the topic to indicates that folk are interested, at the least, in a good easy system Hell, me, I'm salivating to see one in action

Elegance, simplicity and grace wrapped into one beautiful rule has long been the essence of Chaosium's systems, To give an example, I adore how the chance of gaining in a skill is intrinsically linked to the ability to use that skill, ( the easier the skill to use, the harder to gain experience from its use and vice versa, luv it!) . You can see the framework of this concept in RQ 2’s and RQ G’s use of “things” as a measurement of ENC. I wonder what it is that prevents this system from seeing more use. It is simple and the bookkeeping does’t seem onerous. As simple a concept as it is, I must say it does lack grace. Is that it, the lack of grace dooms this wallflower to never dance in the show...I guess it is just not evocative. 

Yes, this is one thing I have long wished to see happen in “our" game: an elegant fatigue system to go with "our elegant game™". Optional, of course!

Cheers

Edited November 23, 2019 by Bill the barbarian

[Kloster]

On 11/22/2019 at 10:41 PM, soltakss said:

RQ3 had an awful lot of RQ2 stuff in it as well.

I'd be interested in which RQ3 Rules you think have been dropped from RQG.

The 10 SR Round with moves and actions (attacks, parries, magic) interwoven.

The combat options (partially brought back with Runefixes) that allowed to think tactically (and avoided to wait for the crit in high level combat).

[BWP]

On 11/23/2019 at 8:41 AM, soltakss said:

RQ3 had an awful lot of RQ2 stuff in it as well.

I'd be interested in which RQ3 Rules you think have been dropped from RQG.

Well, APP back to CHA obviously.  I've heard the arguments and I don't know that I disagree, except that now we have the obvious cases of ugly critters now having limits on their magic etc., which I think is yet another clear example of "let's write a new rule and not really think about the consequences".

Sensible hit point calculation and location distribution.

Sensible skill bonus calculations.

A better way of determining species characteristic maximums.

Missile target locations.

A more integrated combat system that incorporates movement and other tactical options.  (I'm not really including the change back to 12 SR, since the number of SR in a round is an arbitrary value to begin with, and any particular arbitrary number is as good as any other, assuming that everything else related to SR calculations is adjusted accordingly.)

Combat and damage rules that actually make sense as written.  I'm not claiming that RQ3 was perfect in this respect, but it was better than the hot mess that's RQG.

Is knockback in RQG?  If not, then that's something that was dropped.

I don't miss the "Fatigue" rules, as such, because they were not a strength of RQ3.  The concept of Fatigue is not a terrible one, just a real bear to actually administrate.  I can't really remember the ENC rules from RQ2, but I don't recall having any real problems with it, but I liked the RQ3 rules better (when Fatigue was removed from consideration).  I don't know what the equivalent RQG rules are, if there are any.  (I don't think I've ever been involved in any game where encumbrance and carrying capacity was not kind of hand-waved most of the time, but I think that it's important for any game to address the issue in some way -- better to have a system you don't like than no system at all, IMO.)

While I like a lot about the RQG character generation (i.e., background info, etc.), I'm not thrilled about the narrowness of its focus.  For me, one of the fun things about creating a character in RQ3 is the diversity.  RQG, as currently presented, has really squashed that hard.  Now I'm sure that future supplements will open that up a lot, but it's just so much hot air right now.  (To be fair, RQ3 had to wait for the Genertela box set for many of its options -- but out of the box RQ3 gave you more than RQ2 ever did.  RQG is clearly superior to RQ2 in this regard, certainly, and in many ways superior to RQ3 too, but the new stuff we gain doesn't necessarily completely compensate for the stuff we lost.)

Related to the above, the complete absence of non-humans from the RQG book is ridiculous.  Not only does it mean you can't play anything other than a human, you can't even meet anything that isn't a human.  The bare minimum that should have been included is a short list of common animals, so your players could at least fight a rock lizard or something.  Nowhere in the RQG advertising does it tell the prospective new customer that "this is not a complete game, there's more stuff you need to buy before you can play anything interesting."  The treatment of non-human PCs is obviously worse in RQG (the basic rulebook), and similarly obviously worse than in RQ2, because that at least gave you stats for many non-humans, even if there was almost nothing related to character generation for them.  Add in the RQG Bestiary and we're at least back to the same as RQ3 -- no better, no worse; but RQ3 didn't force you to buy an extra book to get to that point.

Finally, I've not looked at the RQG magic rules in detail, so can't really comment extensively, other than I am not yet convinced that switching spell limits to CHA is a good idea (as touched on above).  I need to study and compare the rules sets more before I can come to any firm conclusions.  I don't really have any problems with the other changes to the magic systems that I've heard about, except maybe sorcery -- I really like the idea of the RQ3 manipulation skills but the overall execution was horribly flawed.  I think I miss the idea of familiars and how they're created, too (again, though, the actual rules were bad).  I suspect a lot more work may be required to develop the RQG sorcery rules further.

 

[Lordabdul]

7 hours ago, Kloster said:

The 10 SR Round with moves and actions (attacks, parries, magic) interwoven.

Doesn't RQG have interwoven attacks/parries/magic too? (and yes, I realize that RQG has 12 SRs instead of 10, and has different SR modifiers for DEX/SIZ and weapons and such, but AFAIK all actions take part in the SR system)

7 hours ago, Kloster said:

The combat options (partially brought back with Runefixes) that allowed to think tactically (and avoided to wait for the crit in high level combat).

Yeah I was a bit disappointed by the lack of maneuver options in RQG -- there's a lot of text about dealing various kinds of damage, but not a lot about other things to do in combat (that, plus the weird editorial decision of having weapon/armor stats in the middle of the Combat rules, which I'm not a big fan of... I do however like the rules for chariot and phalanx combat, that gives a bit of nice flavour to the book). I would assume that high-level combat involves a lot of split attacks and aimed blows. Thankfully, it's also easy to bring simple concepts from GURPS that open up a bunch of other tactical options, like Feint, Deceptive Attack, or All-Out/Telegraphic Attack.

Thanks for pointing out Runefixes though, I didn't know they had completely new sections in there, I thought it was mostly an errata.

2 hours ago, BWP said:

Well, APP back to CHA obviously.  I've heard the arguments and I don't know that I disagree, except that now we have the obvious cases of ugly critters now having limits on their magic etc., which I think is yet another clear example of "let's write a new rule and not really think about the consequences".

Having CHA instead of APP makes a lot more sense to me, but I think what's potentially missing from RQG (unless I'm the one who missed it) are rules for inter-species communication, and how a charismatic Dragonewt might just look like any other Dragonewt to you (and you would also look like any other human to it). I could see a rationale for charisma being universal in a world like Glorantha where magic and bizarres races have all been living together, but it feels a bit wrong to me -- a Broo is always going to be an ugly bastard to any non-Broos.

2 hours ago, BWP said:

Is knockback in RQG?

It is, yes.

2 hours ago, BWP said:

While I like a lot about the RQG character generation (i.e., background info, etc.), I'm not thrilled about the narrowness of its focus.

There was a thread earlier about people's opinions regarding RQG/RQG-Bestiary being narrower+deeper vs. broader+shallower. I strongly prefer narrower+deeper books but of course that's purely subjective.

2 hours ago, BWP said:

Sensible hit point calculation and location distribution.

Sensible skill bonus calculations.

A better way of determining species characteristic maximums.

Missile target locations.

Good points. In most cases I see the differences but can't really make up my mind yet about which rules are more sensible than the others (and in some cases, like skill category bonuses, I actually don't like that it's a thing to begin with, I would have just removed it or vastly simplified it).

I'm curious about "missile target locations"? I don't see anything relevant in RQ3's combat rules. AFAIK you can just aim your arrows, like any other attack, in RQG.

2 hours ago, BWP said:

Add in the RQG Bestiary and we're at least back to the same as RQ3 -- no better, no worse; but RQ3 didn't force you to buy an extra book to get to that point.

RQ3 was heavily criticized for its expensive price tag. I can't find any solid information about how much it cost exactly back then in the US or UK (feel free to give the exact amount) but I found the price for the Australian market, which was $85 AUD back in 1985 for the complete RQ3 box. When you account for inflation, that's about $255 AUD today (assuming that inflation calculator website I used is correct). The RQG slipcase (which includes the Bestiary) is sold at $172 AUD on Chaosium's website.... no wonder people complained about the price tag.

Edited November 25, 2019 by lordabdul

[SDLeary]

2 hours ago, lordabdul said:

I'm curious about "missile target locations"? I don't see anything relevant in RQ3's combat rules. AFAIK you can just aim your arrows, like any other attack, in RQG.

 

I believe that BWP is talking about  the separate hit location tables for Melee and Missile combat.

SDLeary

[Lordabdul]

18 minutes ago, SDLeary said:

I believe that BWP is talking about  the separate hit location tables for Melee and Missile combat.

Oh interesting, I had missed that. Huh. Thanks!

Edited November 25, 2019 by lordabdul

[Bill the barbarian]

4 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Doesn't RQG have interwoven attacks/parries/magic too? (and yes, I realize that RQG has 12 SRs instead of 10, and has different SR modifiers for DEX/SIZ and weapons and such, but AFAIK all actions take part in the SR system)

 

Well, technically melee and ranged are separate uses of SR that coexist and on occasion interact in RQ G and do not mesh together as well as RQ 3’s melee and ranged combat which are pretty much the same and use the SR system seamlessly together. I know this is not a very good explanation and I have to blame the poor way that RQ G currently handles ranged and melee combat as two separate things in some way and one thing in other ways. I believer this is what BWP is referring to. 

Currently this is a very strong point in preferring RQ 3 to RQ G. In many ways the combat is superior and in the current state of SRs, I would think far superior.

 I believe that RQ G will catch up myself, but BWP has entered a negative vote on that score.

[Jeff]

3 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

 

Well, technically melee and ranged are separate uses of SR that coexist and on occasion interact in RQ G and do not mesh together as well as RQ 3’s melee and ranged combat which are pretty much the same and use the SR system seamlessly together. I know this is not a very good explanation and I have to blame the poor way that RQ G currently handles ranged and melee combat as two separate things in some way and one thing in other ways. I believer this is what BWP is referring to. 

Currently this is a very strong point in preferring RQ 3 to RQ G. In many ways the combat is superior and in the current state of SRs, I would think far superior.

 I believe that RQ G will catch up myself, but BWP has entered a negative vote on that score.

I disagree (as did Greg). RQ3's attempt to combine RQ2's SR system with what became Ringworld's pulse system, with movement per SR, etc., was cumbersome and overly complicated. It also didn't do what it was supposed to do. 

A little confession - I've played far more RQ3 than RQ2. I played RQ2 until the day RQ3 showed up, and then put it away for a good 20 years. RQ3 was my default game engine, but it had unavoidable problems. Its SR system was more complicated and cumbersome than RQ2's as it tried to be all things for all purposes. Its ritual magic rules were a disaster. Its hit point calculation system went contrary to the literary genre that it was supposed to model. Having two separate hit location tables for melee and missile was just OCD. And lets not even mention Fatigue.

When Greg and I first talked about reviving RQ for Chaosium (this would have been in 2015), he was emphatic that RQ2 was a much better base to build off than RQ3. There were components of RQ3 that were originally designed as fixes to problems or limitations in RQ2 which he advised using and which we did. But Greg strongly believed RQ2 provided the best base platform to build RQG from - and I wholeheartedly agree with him. 

Jeff

[Prinz Slasar]

11 hours ago, BWP said:

Nowhere in the RQG advertising does it tell the prospective new customer that "this is not a complete game, there's more stuff you need to buy before you can play anything interesting." 

If you read the RQG Core rules, you will find many crossreferences to the Bestiary and the Adventure Book - even to supplements which aren't out yet: e.g. Game Master's Book/Guide.

So right from reading the Core Rules it's obvious that there's more thant the Core.

And on the last pages and the back cover there are the other books named ["Want more Runequest and Glorantha? We have more!"] --> Guide To Glorantha, The Glorantha Sourcebook, the Bestiary and the GM's Pack.

Beside its flaws, the Quickstart has all needed informations for rules, pregens and critters to play the scenario without any other material.

RQG is like DnD in this particular manner: the Core Rules are threesome: Core Rules, Bestiary and GM's Pack. [Core, Monster Manual, DM's Guide]. That's an open secret since the first day of RQG.

[Bill the barbarian]

5 hours ago, Jeff said:

A little confession - I've played far more RQ3 than RQ2. I played RQ2 until the day RQ3 showed up, and then put it away for a good 20 years. RQ3 was my default game engine, but it had unavoidable problems. Its SR system was more complicated and cumbersome than RQ2's as it tried to be all things for all purposes. Its ritual magic rules were a disaster. Its hit point calculation system went contrary to the literary genre that it was supposed to model. Having two separate hit location tables for melee and missile was just OCD. And lets not even mention Fatigue.

 

Thanks for the reply... alas, this is the only thing that I do not like, the SR system. Oh well...

Edited November 25, 2019 by Bill the barbarian

[Jeff]

1 hour ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Thanks for the reply... alas, this is the only thing that I do not like, the SR system. Oh well...

Different folk are going to enjoy and dislike different things. That's perfectly alright - and if you really don't like a particular mechanic, one nice thing about BRP systems is you can swap them out. People do it all the time, even to game systems they designed.  

[Lordabdul]

7 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Well, technically melee and ranged are separate uses of SR that coexist and on occasion interact in RQ G and do not mesh together as well as RQ 3’s melee and ranged combat which are pretty much the same and use the SR system seamlessly together. I know this is not a very good explanation and I have to blame the poor way that RQ G currently handles ranged and melee combat as two separate things in some way and one thing in other ways. I believer this is what BWP is referring to.

That.... was indeed not a very good explanation 😅😅🤣

I'm sorry maybe I'm missing something obvious, but there have been threads here in the recent past where people made a write-up of a sample RQG combat to figure out how things work. I remember one in particular where there was a mix of melee and ranged fighters, and they were co-existing fine, acting at various points along the SR track. Every action including moving and defending was having important consequences on combat tactics and it didn't look like ranged fighters were in any way "left outside" of the combat or whatever. Can you actually give a concrete example of what you mean?

One interesting thing that I noticed in RQ3 is that a house rule I was considering to use in RQG to solve the "initiative ranking vs time allowance" issues of SR seems to be a RAW there: when you split attacks, subsequent attacks are made every 3 SRs, instead of every SR of the weapon.... only RQ3 gets it super wrong IMHO: as per RAW, you can't split attacks against the same enemy! My house rule was going to be "every 3 SRs against the same enemy, but every full weapon SR against different enemies".

[Bill the barbarian]

28 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

That.... was indeed not a very good explanation 😅😅🤣

 

Did I lie, <grin> Just got off work, so after I wake up I will try again... Unless someone with a better grip on it has beat me to it (hint, hint).

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

Different folk are going to enjoy and dislike different things. That's perfectly alright - and if you really don't like a particular mechanic, one nice thing about BRP systems is you can swap them out. People do it all the time, even to game systems they designed.  

True.

[styopa]

11 hours ago, SDLeary said:

 

I believe that BWP is talking about  the separate hit location tables for Melee and Missile combat.

SDLeary

To be clear, it was 2 separate hit location tables for each creature-type in the game, one for melee attacks (which we also used for falling damage) and the other for missile AND THRUSTING weapons.  The latter point might seem nitpicky, but it provides players with an interesting tactical choice when choosing a weapon.  A thrusting weapon might do less damage (I never really understood / accepted why longer spears INTRINSICALLY did more damage...nonsensical) BUT got to use the latter table where 11-15 was chest...5x the chance to hit a 'one shot kill' location could be an attractive choice.