Flawed Crystal

[Squaredeal Sten]

About flawed crystals in RQiG:

Looking at Weapons & Equipment p.119, or the earlier "Rune Metal & Magic Crystals":GM sourcebook preview PDF, and at the even older RQ2 crystal table p.108, and Plunder, CHA 4011, you can find  flawed crystals.

If an adventurer ties to attune this flawed crystal the crystal will have an undesirable effect.  Somewhere out there there is even a table of suggested flawed crystal effects, but I can't find it today. 

But anyway, one of these might give someone who tried to attune it, a chaotic feature - maybe an unobtrusive one.  if so,

In your view, would such a feature give the Adventurer a detectable chaos taint? 

Would it necessarily give a percentage  in the Chaos rune?

[Dragon]

In my view they might give an obvious or unobtrusive Chaos Feature. They could just drain 1d4 POW and then give the attuned one of the other powers (e.g. +1 magical defense). Not all of them give a Chaos Feature. The effects are so random.

And therefore, they would not necessarily give a percentage in the Chaos Rune. But IMHO any that give a Chaos Feature (obvious or obscure) are almost definitely going to give a percentage in Chaos Rune. As always, YGMV. So if you want a character to get +1d6 STR as a Chaos Feature, only appear more 'ripped', and no points in Chaos Rune, go for it. If you want the character to never be able to attune another crystal because they remain attuned to this useless one forever, and also want to give the character 60 Chaos Rune, go for that too. Whatever allows Maximum Game Fun.

[SDLeary]

40 minutes ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

About flawed crystals in RQiG:

Looking at Weapons & Equipment p.119, or the earlier "Rune Metal & Magic Crystals":GM sourcebook preview PDF, and at the even older RQ2 crystal table p.108, and Plunder, CHA 4011, you can find  flawed crystals.

If an adventurer ties to attune this flawed crystal the crystal will have an undesirable effect.  Somewhere out there there is even a table of suggested flawed crystal effects, but I can't find it today. 

But anyway, one of these might give someone who tried to attune it, a chaotic feature - maybe an unobtrusive one.  if so,

In your view, would such a feature give the Adventurer a detectable chaos taint? 

Would it necessarily give a percentage  in the Chaos rune?

A Chaotic feature or taint... only if it's the blood of a Chaos god I would think. 

I would use other undesirable effects. Imagine that it creates a link that is constant. Once "attuned" not only does it accept MP stored in it... but it siphons one more point each period of time (hour, day, week) depending upon the severity of the flaw; regardless of its overall "capacity". This continues to build to, say, 2x or 3x capacity; then when the player tries to use it, it pops! Releasing all its MP at once, causing some additional issues.  😈

Mind you, the character never suspects any of this. They only notice that they are a bit "tired" more often, and for some reason never have enough MP to finish that spell they want to in that critical moment!

SDLeary

[Dragon]

3 minutes ago, SDLeary said:

Imagine that it creates a link that is constant. Once "attuned" not only does it accept MP stored in it... but it siphons one more point each period of time (hour, day, week) depending upon the severity of the flaw; regardless of its overall "capacity". This continues to build to, say, 2x or 3x capacity; then when the player tries to use it, it pops! Releasing all its MP at once, causing some additional issues.  😈

Creative flawed crystals! Anything the GM can imagine.

[Godlearner]

2 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

In your view, would such a feature give the Adventurer a detectable chaos taint? 

If its a Chaos Feature (which also gives the character a chance of becoming a Broo) then YES!!! even if its not visible.

If its not a Chaos Feature, but attunes the character to the Chaos Rune (similar to becoming an initiate of a Chaos cult), then YES!!!  

If its neither, then how is the charater tainted?

[Squaredeal Sten]

That,s the issue: can you have a Chaotic rume affinity involuntarily imposed on you at all?

IF so. Then at what %?  

I would be inclined to keep that affinity  low.

But I ask to know what other people expect.

[Qizilbashwoman]

4 minutes ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

That,s the issue: can you have a Chaotic rume affinity involuntarily imposed on you at all?

IF so. Then at what %?  

I would be inclined to keep that affinity  low.

But I ask to know what other people expect.

this is subject to the issue about player expectations. if it's going to ruin their character, any action potentially taken should be discussed. i think each table has its own expectations about the level of player power over their own character (and of course it absolutely varies from game to game... there are many systems out there where you choose to fail because there is a payoff for failure).

basically, if the table expects that traumatic and disfiguring things can happen to characters, then sure. if you aren't sure, then figure out how to discuss these topics.

personally i always erred on the side of honesty, but then again i like my games to be explicitly separating player and character knowledge so that you might well send your idiot son to make bad decisions because that's how he rolls? i know for a fact that this is definitely not the case for many tables.

[DrGoth]

13 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

this is subject to the issue about player expectations.

I agree. Unless it was something clearly laid out in advance I would never give a player a chaos feature (and everything that flows from that) from a random role about a crystal. There would have to be warning signs the player deliberately ignored.

[Qizilbashwoman]

2 hours ago, DrGoth said:

I agree. Unless it was something clearly laid out in advance I would never give a player a chaos feature (and everything that flows from that) from a random role about a crystal. There would have to be warning signs the player deliberately ignored.

i mean, i might if that was the table standard. some people like to play a little more... idk, 1978 D&D table? I don't know if there is a term for these kinds of styles of play. I don't think Runequest has a very strong play profile, in contrast to many newer game systems. In Mörk Borg, your characters are like tissues ("soft, strong, and disposable" - Ms White), in other games you explicitly discuss out-of-character things more like ... writing a novel? So it might be fine to be "hostile" at your Runequest player table.

[soltakss]

Not all flawed crystals have a Chaos Taint, in fact I'd say that very few do.

Flawed Crystals allow the GM to be imaginative, sometimes giving a special ability, or enhancement, sometimes making the crystal worse than normal.

 

[hipsterinspace]

4 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

i mean, i might if that was the table standard. some people like to play a little more... idk, 1978 D&D table? I don't know if there is a term for these kinds of styles of play. I don't think Runequest has a very strong play profile, in contrast to many newer game systems. In Mörk Borg, your characters are like tissues ("soft, strong, and disposable" - Ms White), in other games you explicitly discuss out-of-character things more like ... writing a novel? So it might be fine to be "hostile" at your Runequest player table.

I usually hear this style referred to as OSR, Old School Roleplaying. It’s generally used for people who want to run everything like a hex/dungeon crawl, for which there are much better systems than RQ.

I’m of the same mind as many here, I’d never give a player character a chaos taint based on the capriciousness of the dice. I wouldn’t want to rob my players of their agency like that.

[D]

On 4/15/2023 at 6:30 PM, Squaredeal Sten said:

somewhere out there there is even a table of suggested flawed crystal effects, but I can't find it today.

i think it's in Shadows on the borderland, but I'm not near my books to check.

[SDLeary]

2 hours ago, D said:

i think it's in Shadows on the borderland, but I'm not near my books to check.

There is a table (p.49) that talks about different types of crystals. Three of the identified crystals are Flawed:

• Ink Stars – "The body of a character attuned to this crystal cannot die, though their spirit is divorced from their body at death as usual. The body behaves in many ways like a zombie, though it instinctively performs actions the body performed habitually in life, like walking, talking, or eating, though the actions are clumsy parodies of normal activities."
• Tien's Beard – "Resists being unattained; drains 2d6 MP during process." The description of this crystal states that it has cracks.
• Black Blood – "...Crystal that defies all attempts to attune it. This crystal is powerfully aligned to the rune of Chaos, and automatically detects as such to any Storm Bull. ..." Description states that they are used in enchantments of Vivamort sepulchers and Teen alter in Noway Canyon.

SDLeary

[DrGoth]

22 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

i mean, i might if that was the table standard. some people like to play a little more... idk, 1978 D&D table? I don't know if there is a term for these kinds of styles of play. I don't think Runequest has a very strong play profile, in contrast to many newer game systems. In Mörk Borg, your characters are like tissues ("soft, strong, and disposable" - Ms White), in other games you explicitly discuss out-of-character things more like ... writing a novel? So it might be fine to be "hostile" at your Runequest player table.

That's why I said "I would never give" rather than "You should never give". YGWV

 

[PhilHibbs]

On 4/16/2023 at 11:31 AM, DrGoth said:

I agree. Unless it was something clearly laid out in advance I would never give a player a chaos feature (and everything that flows from that) from a random role about a crystal. There would have to be warning signs the player deliberately ignored.

Same. Some groups might be okay with this, and I might choose differently depending on the group. Maybe at a convention game.

[French Desperate WindChild]

On 4/15/2023 at 9:25 PM, Squaredeal Sten said:

That,s the issue: can you have a Chaotic rume affinity involuntarily imposed on you at all?

IF so. Then at what %?  

I would be inclined to keep that affinity  low.

But I ask to know what other people expect.

yes you can have (as character)

I totally agree with @Qizilbashwoman about the way

so if you know your players and consider they will accept with this  (surprise the player or not, depends on you, the player, the table, etc...)

for the rune %, if I had to play will depends on three factors :

1) is it a big advantage (for example +x POW) then big % of rune. If it is a little advantage or a disadvantage, as you want

2) is it a big transformation (third arm, ....) then big % of rune, if not as you want

3) there is no rule, it is chaos, so forget 1) and 2) but put the rune

 

now..in some way , if you (as a gm) have not yet prepared the next steps of your campaign on "and what we do with...... that.. ? " I would recommand to forget it. Same with too visible effects. If your players are not able to "hide" them, how will they play ? try to discuss with 80% of the people = escape a horde of warriors..

So why not, but with a lot of caution (of course that's my opinion, I don't know you, your players, your style, etc...)

but as @soltakss said, a lot of flawed crystal are not tainted (= no rune impact)