Jump to content

MRQII is now "wayfarer"


Bleddyn

Recommended Posts

I don't really have anything against Mongoose (maybe because I was cautious about buying their stuff to begin with, so I never got burned). But like others I feel the main value added by MRQ was options and refinements that could be brought back to BRP. For example, the "culture-based character generation" and magic systems in MRQ seem like improvements on RQ3 and, at the same time, nicely applicable to a variety of bronze age/iron age/S&S settings.

This. One thing I miss a lot in the BRP golden book, is culture-based character generation as in AHRQIII or Stormbringer 4th. The character generation in BRP reminds me a lot of the one in Elric/Stormbringer 5th, which in my opinion is very bland.

Grając zaś w grę komputerową, być może zdarzyło się wam zapragnąć zejść z wyznaczonej przez autorów ścieżki i, miast zabić smoka i ożenić się z księżniczką, zabić księżniczkę i ożenić się ze smokiem.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 321
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

For example, let's say you have a 37% skill, OK? In MRQII, your critical is 4 (3.7, you round up), easy. So, in AHRQIII, you'd get 2 for a critical, and 8 for a special, wouldn't you? NO. The critical is 2 ( 1.85, you round up), true, but the special is 7 (7.4, you round down). It's more intuitive in MRQII.

Not sure, but I think you make it too complicated: in BRP 37% is rounded to 40, 20%=8 and 5%=2 - easy. Are the AHRQ3rules really that fiddly?!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Some people don't even think that others are playing RQ. For instance, what about those folks playing HarnMaster? I foor one, consider it to be closer to RQ/BRP than I consider MRQ, but HarnMaster never claimed to be a BRP relative.

It's true Hârnmaster is not perceived as a BRP relative, but it clearly is.

But I have to disagree with you, MRQII is closer to AHRQIII than Hârnmaster is.

Grając zaś w grę komputerową, być może zdarzyło się wam zapragnąć zejść z wyznaczonej przez autorów ścieżki i, miast zabić smoka i ożenić się z księżniczką, zabić księżniczkę i ożenić się ze smokiem.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not sure, but I think you make it too complicated: in BRP 37% is rounded to 40, 20%=8 and 5%=2 - easy. Are the AHRQ3rules really that fiddly?!

Yes, it was that fiddly in AHRQ3. And I must confess I didn't know they had simplified it in BRP, a great idea.

Grając zaś w grę komputerową, być może zdarzyło się wam zapragnąć zejść z wyznaczonej przez autorów ścieżki i, miast zabić smoka i ożenić się z księżniczką, zabić księżniczkę i ożenić się ze smokiem.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rounding up and rounding down is easy enough to do in your head.

What I did was to produce an Excel spreadsheet with skill up to 200% showing the scores needed for critical, special, failure, fumble, so you just need to do a lookup. We've never used it, though. It would be handy if you are checking ballpark figures - 80% skill, roll a 60 clearly a normal success, roll a 01 celarly a critical, roll a 17 work it out or look at the table.

Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You, of all people, are playing RQ3? =|

I thought for sure you would be running some version of MRQ. You have been one of the most adrent supports of MRQ. At least one of the most ardent among the rational crowd. I'm surprised to find you running RQ3. .

Yep, been playing RQ3 since about 1987, although I bought it in 1985. I haven't found anything that is better overall, although BRP almost came close until Jason introduced loads of funny rules.

I wrote Merrie England: Age of Eleanor for MRQI as it was OGL and a nice system to use. If Mongoose hadn't pulled Third Party Support for RQ straight afterwards, I'd still be using MRQ, or a close OGL variant, for writing stuff.

Having looked closely at the rules, I can see a lot of good things about MRQI and MRQII, things that would introduce into RQ3 to make it even better. There are also a lot of things I wouldn't use (Movement as a Combat Option, for example) but that also applies to RQ3.

But, unless someone makes a retro-clone version of RQ3 and adds the best bits from MRQI/II, OpenQuest, Wayfarer and BRP, I'll continue to use RQ3+.

P.S. Just to clarify before someone takes offense. I used the word rational because each game, and game company has it's share of rabbit supporters and fanboys who rave about everything, including which printing has the best typos. I don7t consider you (or anybody else here) to be n that fanboy category.

You are so, so wrong about that :7

Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rounding up and rounding down is easy enough to do in your head.

No it isn't. It might be easy to do in your head, but not in everybody else's head. Most of my group can't - or don't want to - do it. In all the years that I played RQ3, no-one I ever played with worked it out in their head, we always used tables, most people wrote their special and critical chances for combat skills on their character sheets. MRQ2 is the first incarnation of RuneQuest or BRP for which we have all done crit chance calculations in our heads (although I can't remember the COC rule, maybe that was simple enough, I never played it often enough to remember).

Edited by PhilHibbs
Link to comment
Share on other sites

... although I can't remember the COC rule ...

There are two such rules in CoC, the standard 1/5 for a critical hit and the optio-

nal 01-05 critical success / 96-00 fumble, if both rules are used and they collide

during the same action, only the critical success takes place.

"Mind like parachute, function only when open."

(Charlie Chan)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's funny Claudius, because my introduction to Harnmaster rules was via a Call of Cthulhu game where the GM had grafted some of HM's combat and resolution mechanics. The graft was seamless.

Many of the earlier roleplaying games used the Runequest system or a very close

relative that was obviously inspired by Runequest, some with official permission

like the first version of The Morrow Project, some without such a direct connec-

tion like The Expendables. In fact, there are some roleplaying "sages" who claim

that Runequest, all in all, was the most influential system ever published.

Edit.:

To give an example, this is what Ron Edwards, the author who came up with the

GNS Model of roleplaying, wrote about BRP/Runequest in his essay on simulatio-

nism:

Pound for pound, Basic Role-Playing from The Chaosium is perhaps the most important

system, publishing tradition, and intellectual engine in the hobby - yes, even more than

D&D. It represents the first and arguably the most lasting, influential form of uncompro-

mising Simulationist design.

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/15/

Edited by rust

"Mind like parachute, function only when open."

(Charlie Chan)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No it isn't. It might be easy to do in your head, but not in everybody else's head. Most of my group can't - or don't want to - do it.
What's all this nonsense I hear about RPGs teaching kids math then? Percentages and rounding is pretty damn basic, and easy.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

What's all this nonsense I hear about RPGs teaching kids math then? Percentages and rounding is pretty damn basic, and easy.

For most of us, but there are surprisingly many people who have serious problems

with numbers, at least as many as those who have problems with spelling. I had

some of them as players, and I soon realized that I was really torturing them by

asking them to do calculations, even simple ones. Since games should be fun, not

difficult (for them) work, we others also switched to tables.

"Mind like parachute, function only when open."

(Charlie Chan)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, I could see making charts for someone who had an issue with it... I'm just surprised if it's all that common.

I'm certainly no math wiz...

So, you're happy calculating the special success chances for 33%, 77% and 123%? No cheating. Let me know how many seconds it took you to calculate them.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

?!

5%= 10% halved

20%= 10% doubled

never thought it is challenging ...

Try it late Friday night, after a long week of work and several beers...the game comes to a screeching halt =O

Actually, it's not a big deal, but just having one threshold is working smoothly for us, and the combat maneuvres (CM) are really working well for my players. Talk about coming to a screeching halt -- we typically have to wait a couple of minutes while the player drools over his CM options before deciding which one to apply!

Steve

Edited by sdavies2720

Bathalians, the newest UberVillians!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Actually, I just had a look into the BGB. It's still the AHRQ3 rule - looks I used a house rule for the last 15+ years, without knowing ;)
LOL! I can't tell you how often this happens to me. I read something, I read it again, I think I know what it says. Then someone asks a question about what's written and I realize I've still misread it!

Steve

Bathalians, the newest UberVillians!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For most of us, but there are surprisingly many people who have serious problems

with numbers, at least as many as those who have problems with spelling. I had

some of them as players, and I soon realized that I was really torturing them by

asking them to do calculations, even simple ones. Since games should be fun, not

difficult (for them) work, we others also switched to tables.

I have one player whose refrain is, "I was told there would be no math," said in his best whiny-student-before-a-test voice.

Steve

Bathalians, the newest UberVillians!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, you're happy calculating the special success chances for 33%, 77% and 123%? No cheating. Let me know how many seconds it took you to calculate them.

Took me little over a second for each one. Divide each one by ten, double the result, then round up or down as appropriate. Not a problem, for me at least...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Took me little over a second for each one. Divide each one by ten, double the result, then round up or down as appropriate. Not a problem, for me at least...

I stumbled a little doubling 7.7 quickly, I came up with 15.5 which I then rounded up, and the answer 16 even made sense to me since 77 is closer to 80 than 70. Even so, compare your impressive result to MRQ2's (or, should I say, your) divide-by-ten-and-round-up, and the time becomes too short to measure. I see that as an advantage.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Try it late Friday night, after a long week of work and several beers...the game comes to a screeching halt =O

Steve

That I think is the crucial point. It's when you're busy doing a load of other stuff in your head, you're chatting, maybe tired, trying to imagine how what's going on in the world in play when you have to spend some time figuring out figures then someone says, hang on a second isn't that X or oh, I forgot to include the bonus/penalty. It's time that takes you out of what's going on. I had started using 1/10th criticals in CoC and then progressed to doubles as "specials" in the mid 90s before I drifted out of gaming. Nowadays I prefer it for its simplicity and speed of use.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So, you're happy calculating the special success chances for 33%, 77% and 123%? No cheating. Let me know how many seconds it took you to calculate them.

Exactly my point.

In AHRQ3:

33%: 7

77%: 15

123%: 25

I can do it in my head, but it takes me some effort. During a game, a few seconds is too much time.

In MRQ2 it takes no effort at all. But as I said before, I hadn't realized they had changed the rule in BRP. It's more intuitive now.

Grając zaś w grę komputerową, być może zdarzyło się wam zapragnąć zejść z wyznaczonej przez autorów ścieżki i, miast zabić smoka i ożenić się z księżniczką, zabić księżniczkę i ożenić się ze smokiem.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


×
×
  • Create New...