RuneQuest's Unwritten Rules - Akhelas

[French Desperate WindChild]

There are in my opinion / in my game two reasons to accept a rune / a passion to augment a skill roll

1) because it is RAW. Ok you can use water rune to climb

2) because player « proves » that’s fine. Ok you can use air rune to climb this sacred mountain of Orlanth (you may even use devotion Orlanth but I will not tell you that, that’s your character not mine)

 

Now.. don’t try to invoke air if you try to Climb some merfolk palace wall in any abyss or to climb the cave that has just collapsed, letting you just enough air to breathe with difficulty

Edited January 2 by French Desperate WindChild

[Austin]

6 hours ago, Joerg said:

Climb withteh water rune is myhthically correct (beyond agility as a watery property) as for most of Godtime rivers ran uphill, as did Lorion into the sky.

Ooh, that's good.

[Rodney Dangerduck]

8 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Rulebooks can't defend you against pettifogging rules-lawyers: only GMs can do that. It's their job.

Ultimately, you are correct.  However, clear rules can help.

In this example (Climb), the rules are actually very clear, and support a strict application for elemental runes.

"An Elemental Rune may be used to augment the adventurer’s chance with a single non-combat skill within its skills category..."

[Nick Brooke]

29 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

"An Elemental Rune may be used to augment the adventurer’s chance with a single non-combat skill within its skills category..."

Sure: and nobody has said it can't. But the competent, experienced GMs here are saying that an Elemental Rune can't ONLY augment skills within its skills category: if a player can make a reasonable (non-minimaxing, non-pettifogging) case, see above for examples, then a GM can be reasonable too.

The thing is, RQ has a load of situation-specific skills, and can kinda break down if an adventurer is missing one, so we patch this with reasonable workarounds (characteristic rolls, augments, substitutes, etc.). No sensible GM would say "under no circumstances would I allow an Elemental Rune to augment a skill that isn't within its skills category." You can see the difference, I hope? We are trying to be helpful, here. This isn't a game of "gotcha."

[Nick Brooke]

[Rodney Dangerduck]

43 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

No sensible GM would say "under no circumstances would I allow an Elemental Rune to augment a skill that isn't within its skills category."

Agree.

However,  I (and some others) think that such an exception should be, well, an exception.  Not the norm.

[Nick Brooke]

This is why they call us exceptional GMs, Rodney.

[Akhôrahil]

On 1/2/2024 at 11:44 AM, smiorgan said:

BRP in general, and RQG in particular, is not a tightly designed system. It's a system with a super simple core and layers of detail that hang loosely to it and are there to add color and granularity. If you strip the layers you will lose color but the system will not break down. In other words, BRP degrades nicely. That's in my opinion the single most important unwritten rule at the mechanical level.

Completely agree - the ability of BRP rules to fade into the background or be used loosely is very strong. For instance, full battles take so much time, I’ve taken to just making single Battle rolls when an encounter doesn’t seem worth all the bells and whistles, and it’s easy to adapt more modern rules design (for instance, I use ”Let it Roll” from Burning Wheel for tracking, sneaking and other ongoing activity, rather than rolling per time period).

RQG is big but loose.

Edited January 3 by Akhôrahil

[DreadDomain]

On 1/2/2024 at 8:44 PM, smiorgan said:

As I said, I'm not having issues with RQG full on, but my plan B was to start taking away parts and reduce complexity in case my players were overwhelmed. And it's very easy. You can go pretty extreme without destroying the system. Obviously, the game becomes less fun, at least for people who like detail. 

I am the same. I like RQ's crunchiness and believe most of RQG's add-ons (passions, runes, augments, sacred times, multiple defenses) are great. If anything, I like to add a bit more granularity (damage bonus) and combat options (reach and closing) here and there. I would like a cleanup of some inconsistencies and clunky rules (or pieces of inconsistent writing), but they can mostly be ignored or house ruled.  I have absolutely no issues with the resistance table, but I am also happy to use opposed rolls (where on a tie, higher roll wins) instead.

One important piece of the rules that I dislike are the Attack vs Parry an Attack vs Dodge tables. There are just too inconsistent and riddled with unnecessary exceptions. To your point, both tables can easily be ignored and replaced with a "level of success of the defense downgrades the level of the attack by 1" approach (which is almost what the tables are doing) and it works fine. Other could use the BRP matrix or the RQ3 resolution, and it would work fine.

Edited January 4 by DreadDomain

[Akhôrahil]

I think the number one low-cost high-simplification rules change you can make is to allow just one combat action (cast a spell or attack) per round, and use SR purely as an initiative tracker and not also as an action economy. Say what you will about D&D, but the Standard/Move/Minor action economy there worked really well.

I also ruled "one skill/rune/passion augment per scene, and only the fumbles differ" because of what people have already mentioned here, how the rules are almost but not quite the same and you constantly have to look up the small differences. 

Edited January 4 by Akhôrahil

[smiorgan]

@DreadDomain I think it's mostly writing cleanup where RQG could be improved. Personally, I'm VERY happy with the game. Still, the corebook could benefit from integrating errata.

 

[Rodney Dangerduck]

8 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

Say what you will about D&D, but the Standard/Move/Minor action economy there worked really well.

Our group, and the late Steve Perrin's, use a slightly modified version of this.  It isn't perfect, but it's much quicker & simpler than Strike Ranks.

[KungFuFenris]

2 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Our group, and the late Steve Perrin's, use a slightly modified version of this.  It isn't perfect, but it's much quicker & simpler than Strike Ranks.

Is there somewhere this is written down?

[DreadDomain]

11 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

I think the number one low-cost high-simplification rules change you can make is to allow just one combat action (cast a spell or attack) per round, and use SR purely as an initiative tracker and not also as an action economy. Say what you will about D&D, but the Standard/Move/Minor action economy there worked really well.

Does it work more or less like BRP except that you use DEX SR, SIZ SR, Melee SR instead of DEX rank and INT Rank? Having just written that, I realise it might not quite be like BRP if you keep movement as a separate phase only for the unengaged.

11 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

I also ruled "one skill/rune/passion augment per scene, and only the fumbles differ" because of what people have already mentioned here, how the rules are almost but not quite the same and you constantly have to look up the small differences. 

Which fail condition are you using, -10% or -20%? For all actions in the scene?

8 hours ago, smiorgan said:

@DreadDomain I think it's mostly writing cleanup where RQG could be improved. Personally, I'm VERY happy with the game. Still, the corebook could benefit from integrating errata.

I suspect tighter writing would resolve 80% of RQG issues. The rest is just clunkiness here and there. I am only talking about the technical aspect (rules) of RQG. The setting aspect (fluff) is currently very good.

[Rodney Dangerduck]

32 minutes ago, DreadDomain said:

I suspect tighter writing would resolve 80% of RQG issues. The rest is just clunkiness here and there. I am only talking about the technical aspect (rules) of RQG. The setting aspect (fluff) is currently very good.

Well said!

[Akhôrahil]

1 hour ago, DreadDomain said:

Which fail condition are you using, -10% or -20%? For all actions in the scene?

-20% penalty to whatever they attempted to Augment.

[PhilHibbs]

On 1/4/2024 at 4:46 PM, smiorgan said:

@DreadDomain I think it's mostly writing cleanup where RQG could be improved. Personally, I'm VERY happy with the game. Still, the corebook could benefit from integrating errata.

I think mostly they need to bring key rules to greater prominence. It's too easy to miss important rules because they're buried in paragraphs of text.

[SDLeary]

6 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

I think mostly they need to bring key rules to greater prominence. It's too easy to miss important rules because they're buried in paragraphs of text.

I think it should be a bit more involved than this, but not to the degree of a full rewrite. 

Chaosium needs an outside (not familiar with BRP, perhaps a non-gamer) technical writer to go over things with a fined toothed comb. I imagine an editing run like this will turn up many more inconsistencies (artifacts, cut-and-paste issues, etc.) than even we are seeing. 

This would probably pull all the "rules" back together, and improve the understandable structure of the game. Of course, there will always be things that are (and should be) one-offs (eg. actions of a major NPC which doesn't quite fit the rules), that would have to stay with their respective stories.

SDLeary

 

[DreadDomain]

9 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

I think mostly they need to bring key rules to greater prominence. It's too easy to miss important rules because they're buried in paragraphs of text.

It is probably part of it. I am curious to know if you have an example or two to illustrate your point?

[Austin]

I did another one of these on bonus stacking.

[Shiningbrow]

On 3/23/2024 at 6:40 AM, Crel said:

I did another one of these on bonus stacking.

I just tried to comment on your Trickster animism post, and contrary to "Log in or provide your name and email to leave a comment", it didn't let me leave a comment without logging in  😞

 

BTW - your post on bonus stacking doesn't take into consideration Rune magic over-riding spirit magic bonuses...  What if the spells were Glamour and Charisma?  (Is there a relevantly significant difference involved?) Personally, I think the distinction between Category and Experience is artificial, and purely a game construct.

[Austin]

26 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

I just tried to comment on your Trickster animism post, and contrary to "Log in or provide your name and email to leave a comment", it didn't let me leave a comment without logging in  😞

… Huh. I have no solution, but I'm sorry to hear that. Something something Wordpress gone wrong, probably?

27 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

What if the spells were Glamour and Charisma?

The "order of operations" remains the same. Using two spells affecting characteristics doesn't seem to alter the bonus stacking rules. Charisma doubles Final, and then Glamour is added atop. So for Illostan we have

Base 18 × 2 (Charisma) = Final(1) 36
Final(1) 36 + 8 (Glamour) = Final(2) 44

This is one I actually do all the time in our campaign. 😅 Nothing quite like walking into a king's hall with CHA 44 to grab everyone's attention!

30 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

the distinction between Category and Experience is artificial, and purely a game construct.

I mean, isn't it all a game construct? 😄

I get what you're saying, though. Right now I'm not aiming at some type of simulation or realism in how Total is calculated. Whether or not "work experience" and "basic talent" are related in a meaningful way doesn't seem relevant to how bonuses are stacked. The rules say Total includes both, so for this discussion I'm taking that position.

That said, it did take me a bit of digging to find a passage which explicitly included Category as part of Total. I believe that was only explicitly stated in the "Adventurer Creation" chapter passage I cited. In the "Game System" and "Skills" chapter it was clear that Category improved your chance to roll, but wasn't clear whether you did A or B:

A) Base + Experience = Total; Total + Category = Final
B) Base + Experience + Category = Total

Using A instead changes the results of bonus stacking because Category then is not multiplied by spells like Clever Tongue or Arrow Trance. Option A is basically how I learned to play RQ3 in college, and a campaign I'm in with those folks still uses that order. Ex. when my spy sorcerer casts Higher Mastery to double my dagger skill, I double my Final(A) and then add my Category modifier for attack skills atop it.

If someone really feels strongly about A or B, I don't think the game is "right" or "wrong" if you use one or the other. It changes the math, but that's not a big deal. The most important thing is to be consistent in application of however a table chooses to use these types of rules. I find consistency is doubly important in a game like RuneQuest due to how dangerous combat is. Fairness in the sense of "both players & NPCs have access to the same abilities & follow the same rules" improves player satisfaction because they understand how a combat might play out. (Note, however, that doesn't mean that all NPCs should fight fairly—and neither should the players.)

[Mugen]

May I suggest writing an article about the number of attacks and parries one can make, and how it works with dual wielding rules ?

[Austin]

16 hours ago, Mugen said:

May I suggest writing an article about the number of attacks and parries one can make, and how it works with dual wielding rules ?

I'm not sure if that's an "unwritten rule" but I can definitely add it to my "article ideas" list! 😄 Some of those more unusual combat situations definitely become complicated.