RuneQuest and BRP custom rule set

[zzabal]

hello,

ive played and own Mythras and just got a hold of Magic World and the new BRP pdf. my other rpg experience is all d20.

after skimming through BRP i now have the itch to put together a custom BRP ruleset and would like to see which version of RuneQuest you would recommend to compliment the 3 books i have listed above. im not interested in bestiaries at this time (although if you know of a good one for MW besides the big damn book of monsters, please let me know) as running a campaign with any rules i come up with is not in the near future (if ever) so ill get those books later.

ive read that RQ3 has separate melee and parry stats that sound interesting. would you recommend i start with that or another version of RQ? do the new Glorantha rules add any new mechanics the older versions or RQ, Mythras and BRP universal do not? whats considered the "crunchiest" version?

 

Thanks!

-z

Edited May 10, 2023 by zzabal

[g33k]

"Parry" used to be a separate skill from attacking with a weapon.
The idea was that some people are more-aggressive, more-dangerous on attack; others have a careful & hard-to-penetrate defense, but aren't as strong on the attack.
The current thinking for RQG is that a separate "Parry" skill (per weapon) is just too fiddly a detail, not worth tracking as separate line-items or an extra weapon-stat.

RQG introduces new rules for Rune-Magic, and rune-affinities are now %'s on character-sheets that work much like %skills.  They are your %-chance-to-cast Rune Magic.  Runes can affect characters in other ways, too... Earth-rune people tend towards sensuality, Fire/Sky rune tends toward ascetism, etc.

Also new are "Augments" where one thing can enhance another -- maybe you've got an Acting skill, and want to feign that a minor wound is major, make a foe think you have a weakness, which is actually a strength.  A success on your Acting roll will give you a bonus on your attack and defense (just for a round... but that may be enough!).  (Runes are one of the things that can Augment other rolls).

"Passions" are stuff like Love(Family) & Loyalty(Chieftain) & Fear(Harrek) & just "Honor."  These can be used to Augment a roll (use Love(Family) in a fight to defend your stead)... but also the GM can force a roll:  "You think you're overmatched, but you need to roll & FAIL your Loyalty(Chieftain) or you cannot run away" (there is a cutoff at 80% Passion -- above 80% is "forcing" but the player can override the dice (at the cost of reducing the passion below the 80% threshold).  Conflicting Passions are very-possible, and can lead to some great roleplay... or can be quickly resolved with a roll or two.  If you're used to Passions from Mythras, it's a different mechanic but largely-similar intent & effect.

 

Edited May 10, 2023 by g33k

[Barak Shathur]

I use a combination of RQ3 and BRP (the previous version) and it works like a charm. RQ3 I find to be a very well structured game, and all I have to do is add some modernisations from BRP such as multiple parries/dodges, the weapon specials, and fate points which I feel is necessary to balance the BRP systems' extreme deadliness (unless your PCs are constantly souped up with magic as per RQG). If you want you can use the same skill for parrying as well as attacking as per BRP, I wound up doing that after a while. The new BRP has Passions as well as Allegiances from the old version, so you don't really need that from RQG, which although terrific in itself I find much too keyed into Glorantha to be great for a generic system. Overall, I can't recommend RQ3 highly enough for what you are describing you want to do.

Edited May 12, 2023 by Barak Shathur
Typo

[DreadDomain]

On 5/11/2023 at 8:23 AM, zzabal said:

hello,

ive played and own Mythras and just got a hold of Magic World and the new BRP pdf. my other rpg experience is all d20.

after skimming through BRP i now have the itch to put together a custom BRP ruleset and would like to see which version of RuneQuest you would recommend to compliment the 3 books i have listed above.

ive read that RQ3 has separate melee and parry stats that sound interesting. would you recommend i start with that or another version of RQ?

Of the lot, I would go with RQ3, not because RQG is not good (it is good) but because most of the important addition from RQG over RQ3, are in BRP:UGE anyway (passions, augments, reputation, etc..).

Compared to BRP, RuneQuest (1, 2, 3 and G) has a different approach to combat in a few subtle ways (strike ranks instead of initiative, parrying is not all or nothing, it depends on the parrying weapon AP/HP). RQ3 combat is more fluid than the others with movement more intertwined with the other combat actions. It feels like there is more positional fighting and tactical options. Also, the relationship between attack vs parry/dodge is a lot simpler in RQ3 (no matrix involved). RQ3 has a different hit location table for melee and missile attack (with missile, you have more chance to hit center mass) and ss you said, RQ3 has different skills for attacks and parries. All of the above can be seen as features or bugs (I see then as features) but the point is they are options absent from BRP.

There is no doubt the better RQ for Glorantha is RQG but RQ3 is more usable for anything other fantasy milieu. Both RQG and RQ3 have various cultures to choose from but RQG are specific to Glorantha (Sartarite, Praxian) and RQ3 are generic (barbarian, civilized) which are more applicable to anything else. Occupations are also applied differently at character creation. You do not have a pool to send on your occupational skills (like BRP or Mythras) - although it is an option, and you do not have assigned % per occupational skills (like RQG). Instead, each skill in your occupation will increase by 1% to 5% for each year above 15.   

RQ3 has 4 magic systems (spirit, divine, sorcery, rituals), with good guidance on spells per cults/pantheon and a good gamemastering section which covers, various city sizes, economics and prices lists, encounters and ships.

While Mythras has evolved significantly from it, it still finds its roots in RQ3. As discussed in another thread, special effects from Mythras are chosen in retrospect of the roll at a meta level. The player rolls, see how many special effects they got and chooses which they want to apply. In BRP/RQ, the player chooses which tactics they want to try, roll and see if they achieved it. That being said, most of the "special effects" of Mythras are presents 

On 5/11/2023 at 8:23 AM, zzabal said:

do the new Glorantha rules add any new mechanics the older versions or RQ, Mythras and BRP universal do not?

RQG adds Runes which is a fantastic mechanic to drive rune magic and personality. It is obviously quite Glorantha specific but could be adapted. It also has a different way to figure hit points (based on CON with a small contribution from SIZ and POW) and a different way to calculate skill category modifiers (with the benefit of higher impact from the characteristics but the drawback of having breakpoints at 13 and 17). It has phalanx fighting rules.

RQG is more flavorful than BRP, RQ3 or Mythras by the very nature that it is tied to a setting.

On 5/11/2023 at 8:23 AM, zzabal said:

whats considered the "crunchiest" version?

It depends what you mean by that. I'd say they all have about the same level of options with Mythras being the most streamlined (around the opposed rolls mechanic) of the three. Having said that, people may trip up or slowdown in Mythras because of action points economy, the choosing of special effects after the fact, and comparing rolls to resolve effects.

People may trip up or slowdown in RQ3 because of the strike ranks economy and resolving some maneuvers with the resistance table.

In RQG, people may trip up or slowdown because of the strike ranks economy, the resistance table but above all the attack vs parry/dodge matrices and the rune points vs magic point economy.  The last two points makes RQG more complex to play at the table with RQ3 and Mythras being on similar footing.

On 5/12/2023 at 6:26 AM, Barak Shathur said:

I use a combination of RQ3 and BRP (the previous version) and it works like a charm. RQ3 I find to be a very well structured game, and all I have to do is add some modernisations from BRP such as multiple parries/dodges, the weapon specials, and fate points which I feel is necessary to balance the BRP systems' extreme deadliness (unless your PCs are constantly souped up with magic as per RQG). If you want you can use the same skill for parrying as well as attacking as per BRP, I wound up doing that after a while. The new BRP has Passions as well as Allegiances from the old version, so you don't really need that from RQG, which although terrific in itself I find much to keyed into Glorantha to be great for a generic system. Overall, I can't recommend RQ3 highly enough for what you are describing you want to do.

I like it!

I think I'd go RQ3 with the following from BRP:UGE

• CHA instead of APP
• Passions, Personality (6 to 8 pairs, not all of them), Reputation.
• Personal skill pool allocation
• Fate points or Luck points based on POWx5 (used more like CoC 7)
• Opposed rolls (instead of Skill vs Skill)
• Augments
• Bleeding, crushing special damage
• Multiple parries and dodges

Edited May 13, 2023 by DreadDomain

[Mugen]

RuneQuest 3 is the one which is more closely related to "standard" BRP among the 4 Chaosium RuneQuest games.

The reason for this is that when Chaosium worked on RQG, they started from RQ2 rather than RQ3, even though they incorporated some rules from the 3rd edition. For instance, general HP total in RQG is not equal to the average of CON and SIZ, contrarily to most BRP games. It's still based on CON and SIZ, but CON is much more important.

Concerning parry in older BRP games, a typical weapon entry looked like that : Broadsword, Attack : 67%, Damage : 1d8+1+1d4, Parry : 53%. Attack and Parry were distinct skills that evolved separately. That's actually a good incentive to make people parry with their shield instead of their main weapon. If you have Attack/Parry 75/25 with your sword and Attack/Parry 15/65 with your shield, you won't use your sword to parry as long as you have a shield.

If you want crunchy rules for Magic, you could try to find Sandy Petersen's rules for RuneQuest 3. It's a series of 3 doc files that contain new versions for Sorcery, Shamanism, ritual magic and others. Sorcery is the crunchiest and most important. It adds a new variable, Presence, which is the limit on the total number of "Arts" (Shaping in Mythras) one can hold at a given time. It also adds new ways of shaping spells, to speed up casting, make them cost less MP (a big issue in RQ3, where you paid 1 MP per Art level) and so on...

Edited May 12, 2023 by Mugen

[Barak Shathur]

2 hours ago, Mugen said:

Concerning parry in older BRP games, a typical weapon entry looked like that : Broadsword, Attack : 67%, Damage : 1d8+1+1d4, Parry : 53%. Attack and Parry were distinct skills that evolved separately. That's actually a good incentive to make people parry with their shield instead of their main weapon. If you have Attack/Parry 75/25 with your sword and Attack/Parry 15/65 with your shield, you won't use your sword to parry as long as you have a shield.

Another reason is that in RQ3, you can only use a one handed weapon to either parry or attack with in the same round, not both as in RQG and BRP. Two handed weapons can do both though (which makes sense since you two hands to switch the weapon’s direction with).

[Mugen]

1 hour ago, Barak Shathur said:

Another reason is that in RQ3, you can only use a one handed weapon to either parry or attack with in the same round, not both as in RQG and BRP. Two handed weapons can do both though (which makes sense since you two hands to switch the weapon’s direction with).

An errata changed things a bit. If you had one one-handed weapon and an empty hand, you could attack and parry with that weapon in the same turn.

[Barak Shathur]

19 minutes ago, Mugen said:

An errata changed things a bit. If you had one one-handed weapon and an empty hand, you could attack and parry with that weapon in the same turn.

Hm. Was there more than one set of errata? I can find nothing on that. Though in the one I have it says under “Two weapon use” that he can use the same weapon to attack and parry as long as he doesn’t do it on the same strike rank. Which is a bit weird, since you can’t do it with a single one handed weapon.  Not all of the errata are great in my opinion. For example, I ignore the one about the inner layer of overlapping armour doubling its ENC instead of tripling it, since that makes for some absurd exploits. 

[Barak Shathur]

The way I handled skills during chargen was I gave PCs 7 years in their background occupation, and then 1d3+3 years of freelancing on top of that, where they could allocate 30% freely each year but with the hard limit of 75% as per BRP. 

[Mugen]

4 hours ago, Barak Shathur said:

Hm. Was there more than one set of errata? I can find nothing on that. Though in the one I have it says under “Two weapon use” that he can use the same weapon to attack and parry as long as he doesn’t do it on the same strike rank. Which is a bit weird, since you can’t do it with a single one handed weapon. 

It seems that's the part of the errata I had in mind.

Keep in mind that this sentence is supposed to be added at the end of a paragraph, and is not supposed to make sense out of context. You need the whole section to understand it completely.

Although the title is "Two weapon use", the section surely also covers the case where one of the weapons is a fist....

Edit : note that i'm not a huge fan of this specific errata...

Edited May 12, 2023 by Mugen

[Barak Shathur]

59 minutes ago, Mugen said:

It seems that's the part of the errata I had in mind.

Keep in mind that this sentence is supposed to be added at the end of a paragraph, and is not supposed to make sense out of context. You need the whole section to understand it completely.

Although the title is "Two weapon use", the section surely also covers the case where one of the weapons is a fist....

Edit : note that i'm not a huge fan of this specific errata...

Reading it in the context of the whole paragraph does not indicate it applies to single weapon use. However, now I saw there’s an errata for parrying in general, that changes the general parrying rule to you can’t “attack and parry with the same weapon on a single strike rank”. 
 

I have to agree on your assessment of this set of errata. The one thing I really like is that it makes blunt weapons halve the protection of flexible armour. 

[DreadDomain]

23 hours ago, Barak Shathur said:

Another reason is that in RQ3, you can only use a one handed weapon to either parry or attack with in the same round, not both as in RQG and BRP. Two handed weapons can do both though (which makes sense since you two hands to switch the weapon’s direction with).

 

21 hours ago, Mugen said:

An errata changed things a bit. If you had one one-handed weapon and an empty hand, you could attack and parry with that weapon in the same turn.

The errata modify the "How to Parry" entry like this:

HOW TO PARRY

If a weapon can be used to parry (see weapon lists), it can parry one attack. If the adventurer has two parrying weapons and is being attack more than once in the melee round, he can parry one attack with each weapon. [two sentences removed] In either case, no character may attack and parry with the same weapon on a single strike rank. 

The errata for "Two-Weapon Use" adds the same clarification regarding attacks and parries in a single strike rank.

The errata seemingly clarify that:

- Attack and parry with the same weapon on a single strike rank is not allowed.

- 1H weapons can attack and parry in the same melee round

Edited May 13, 2023 by DreadDomain

[DreadDomain]

12 hours ago, Barak Shathur said:

The way I handled skills during chargen was I gave PCs 7 years in their background occupation, and then 1d3+3 years of freelancing on top of that, where they could allocate 30% freely each year but with the hard limit of 75% as per BRP. 

Good one! I need to add to my list above "Personal skill pool allocation". I like the way you do it