Fantasy race (culture) ages for point-building character skills

[Brent Chumley]

I'm trying to figure out how Dwarves or Elves, etc...determine skill points based on age as per the new BRP rule book. There is no information in the Creatures section on typical fantasy races' ages nor how to figure out skill points that are derived from character ages. Any ideas?

[Atgxtg]

That depends a bit on how long they live. But if you go with a typical FRPG setting where dwarves live about 4-5 times as long as humans, and elves live ten times as long or longer.

How about you roll them up as humans and apply a multiplier to get their actual age? 

That way Dwarves and Elves won't dominate the other races with centuries of accumulated skills. If you want more higher powered character write them up at a higer power level.  

Note the following assumes young members of the species just staring their adventuring career, as with humans.

Dwarves: Human Age x4  (1D6x4+68)

Elves: Human Age x10 (1D6x10+175).

[g33k]

On 12/31/2024 at 12:54 PM, Brent Chumley said:

I'm trying to figure out how Dwarves or Elves, etc...determine skill points based on age as per the new BRP rule book. There is no information in the Creatures section on typical fantasy races' ages nor how to figure out skill points that are derived from character ages. Any ideas?

By "typical fantasy races" do you mean the races from other RPG's?
D&D's E/D/O/etc?
Warhammer Eonir/Dawi/Skaven/etc?
Looking back at BRP -- it's derived from the Runequest game (first published 1978).  RuneQuest took a decidedly-alternative & non-Tolkien-esque approach to the nonhuman species:  Elves are literally sentinent&mobile plants; Dwarves are built to specifications; Trolls are exiles from the underworld, infused with elemental Darkness; etc.

In each of these, the Elves & Dwarves are more or less specific to their respective settings.

BRP comes without any inherent setting... it's as close to being a StarTrek game as it is to being a ForgottenRealms game:  Vulcans, Orions, Ferengi, & even Horta are as relevant as the races of the Realms.  BRP is intended to include a bit of DIY / roll-your-own when it comes to implementing these sorts of things... obviously, Chaosium cannot print named-species from those other IP's without facing C&D letters, with lawsuits in short order if they didn't comply.

So let me turn your question around:  what are the Dwarves/Elves/etc of your world like?

That said...

There's the "Classic Fantasy" line; it used to be pure BRP (Monograph #0383) but is now runs on Mythras (itself a BRP-derived (and still highly-compatible) engine) from The Design Mechanism.  CF is intended to let people play older D&D/AD&D content & characters using the BRP and/or Mythras ruleset, so (if you want specifically D&Desque races) that could be something to pursue.

There also used to be a fan-conversion of the old AD&D "Monster Manual" book(s) titled "Big Damn Book of Monsters."  It was IP-infringing as all get out, so the author had to take it down.

Edited January 4 by g33k

[Mugen]

18 hours ago, g33k said:

By "typical fantasy races" do you mean the races from other RPG's?
D&D's E/D/O/etc?
Warhammer Eonir/Dawi/Skaven/etc?
Looking back at BRP -- it's derived from the Runequest game (first published 1978).  RuneQuest took a decidedly-alternative & non-Tolkien-esque approach to the nonhuman species:  Elves are literally sentinent&mobile plants; Dwarves are built to specifications; Trolls are exiles from the underworld, infused with elemental Darkness; etc.
 

That was not the case in RuneQuest 3, as Glorantha was not the default setting, but rather a Fantasy Europe. You could even find stats for non-gloranthan sentient species such as Orcs and Halflings in a supplement.

@Brent Chumley to be honest, it's very difficult to realistically model intelligent beings with a life expectancy measured in centuries. If an adolescent elf is 300 years old, that means he lived longer than any human. Even if he's a slow learner, that means he should be more experienced in many fields than any human alive. And if they're so slow that at 300 they're just as good as a 15 years old human, how did that species survived ? How can they learn anything from experience at all ?

 

[g33k]

On 1/5/2025 at 5:15 AM, Mugen said:

That was not the case in RuneQuest 3, as Glorantha was not the default setting ...

 

 

True dat.
I should have specified "Glorantha" rather than RQ.

The entire point of my quibble was that the OP query is very setting-dependent, and whether their "typical fantasy races" are fundamentally those of D&D's PHB, or what...

 

On 1/5/2025 at 5:15 AM, Mugen said:

...

@Brent Chumley to be honest, it's very difficult to realistically model intelligent beings with a life expectancy measured in centuries. If an adolescent elf is 300 years old, that means he lived longer than any human. Even if he's a slow learner, that means he should be more experienced in many fields than any human alive. And if they're so slow that at 300 they're just as good as a 15 years old human, how did that species survived ? How can they learn anything from experience at all ?

...

Yeah, that was just one of my WTF's with D&D.
I had been HouseRuling its deficiencies for at least a couple of years before I met RQ.

[Rourou]

Just scale by a constant factor to represent the relative longevity of a species, as already suggested: 

On 12/31/2024 at 11:29 PM, Atgxtg said:

Dwarves: Human Age x4  (1D6x4+68)

Elves: Human Age x10 (1D6x10+175).

And this (or variations) is probably the best strategy.

On 1/5/2025 at 2:15 PM, Mugen said:

@Brent Chumley to be honest, it's very difficult to realistically model intelligent beings with a life expectancy measured in centuries. If an adolescent elf is 300 years old, that means he lived longer than any human. Even if he's a slow learner, that means he should be more experienced in many fields than any human alive. And if they're so slow that at 300 they're just as good as a 15 years old human, how did that species survived ? How can they learn anything from experience at all ?

And this is a topic that is rarely explored in fantasy. It is however somewhat develop in the Dungeon Meshi manga, where the longer-living races are continuously bossing around the shorter-living ones.

However, in what regards to skill levels, in real life we usually plateau early on, and after that rarely improve, at least in a significant manner. And the level of this plateau might vary greatly from one person to another. For example, top chess players become top very early on their careers, while regular players see very little improvement with experience. This is true for many other skills and will also be likely true in fantasy worlds, where if chess is part of these worlds we would for sure encounter the situation of a halfling child chess prodigy beating without any problems a thousand year old elf that have been meeting the other elf players in the groove a pair of times a week for the last few centuries.

From all these psychological studies about expertise, it seems that was is required is deliberate practice (which rarely is how we use a skill from a day to day basis). It probably also helps having a growth mindset and grit. And this would make it realistic to assume similar skill levels for the long- and short-live races, at least for the average human, dwarf or elf. Heck, it might even explain differences in races: dwarves might only feel the obsession towards crafting and become exceedingly good at them, while elves might just feel like this towards the arts.

[Atgxtg]

On 1/5/2025 at 8:15 AM, Mugen said:

That was not the case in RuneQuest 3, as Glorantha was not the default setting, but rather a Fantasy Europe. You could even find stats for non-gloranthan sentient species such as Orcs and Halflings in a supplement.

Not really. They paid lip service to Europe, but the game stats were the same as the Gloranthan ones. Hence Elves were diminutive plant people, and not based on Celtic Sidhe or Norse Alfar. 

Now had Fantasy Europe gotten more than one setting supplment (RQ3 Vikings) we might have seeen more. But basically they just cut & pasted races from Gloranthan RQ.

 

On 1/5/2025 at 8:15 AM, Mugen said:

@Brent Chumley to be honest, it's very difficult to realistically model intelligent beings with a life expectancy measured in centuries.

Yes, but it's also very difficult to realistically tell what said differences would be. The same holds true for realistically portraying members of fictional species, yet RPGs do that all the time. But without several such beings showing up and point out what we got wrong, we have no way of knowing.

On 1/5/2025 at 8:15 AM, Mugen said:

If an adolescent elf is 300 years old, that means he lived longer than any human. Even if he's a slow learner, that means he should be more experienced in many fields than any human alive. And if they're so slow that at 300 they're just as good as a 15 years old human, how did that species survived ? How can they learn anything from experience at all ?

Yeah, that is one of the problems with long lived beings. You would think that someone who has been around for centuries or millennia should have learned a lot during that time. If if you allow for different maturation times, you still left wondering if such beings are slow learners, lazy, or just procrastinate because they have all the time in the world. But...in real life people tend to stop formally learning once they go into the workforce. They just tend to learn enough to do their job and then operate at about that level. That's why 60 year old cabbies are't all master drivers, or why professional athletes have to retire. 

It's just that fantasy races and immortal beings take this to extremes. But..the only reason why these characters aren't super skilled is due to artificial game balance considerations. Most RPGs won't run well if the starting elf has bow at 350%, while the starting human is lucky to get 60%. If you look at these fantasy races outside of FRPGs you don't get any idea that they aren't hihgly skilled. Look at Lord of the Rings. We vcan be pretty confident that Legolas is a great archer and is highly skilled in a bunch of outdoor/survival skills. All the other long lived elves in LOTR are also highly skilled, and in multiple skills. 

So it's really just RPG game balance that is forcing us into nerfing the fantasy races.

 

 

 

Edited January 16 by Atgxtg

[Mugen]

14 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Not really. They paid lip service to Europe, but the game stats were the same as the Gloranthan ones. Hence Elves were diminutive plant people, and not based on Celtic Sidhe or Norse Alfar. 

RQ3 describe them as "human-like folk dwelling in forests", "tied to their forests in ways not understable by humankind", and not "plant people". They're not Tolkien elves, but neither were AD&D elves, which were shorter than men.

To my suprise, I realized Orcs and Halflings exist in the english version of RQ3 core rules. They were not present in French version, which included a short description of Glorantha instead of Fantasy Europe.

Edit : of course, creatures like Trolls and Ducks are very Gloranthan.

Edited January 17 by Mugen

[Mugen]

5 hours ago, Rourou said:

And this is a topic that is rarely explored in fantasy. It is however somewhat develop in the Dungeon Meshi manga, where the longer-living races are continuously bossing around the shorter-living ones.

Same in Sousou no Frieren (another manga), where the main protagonist is a 1500 years old elf woman. One of the themes of that manga is the passint of time, and the countless humans she met.

[Atgxtg]

17 hours ago, Mugen said:

RQ3 describe them as "human-like folk dwelling in forests", "tied to their forests in ways not understable by humankind", and not "plant people". They're not Tolkien elves, but neither were AD&D elves, which were shorter than men.

The statts were the same as in RQ2 for Gloranthan elves, save on;y that thier INT was raised to fit the new 8-18 Scale. They even worship a plant goddess and have the elf bow of the Aldryami cult.

None of that fits European elves, but it fits in perfectly with Glorantha elves.

They were copy and pasted Aldryami.

17 hours ago, Mugen said:

To my suprise, I realized Orcs and Halflings exist in the english version of RQ3 core rules. They were not present in French version, which included a short description of Glorantha instead of Fantasy Europe.

Yup. Back in the early 80s, one of the obstacles for growing RQ's fanbase was that RQ was set in Glorantha while most other FRPGs were set in some sort of Tolkien inspired medieval fantasy world. A lot of D&D players were thrown off with everyone having magic, the lower tech level, and the cults. So they came up with Fantasy Europe (most like fantasy Earth considering Land of the Ninja) to have setting more in line with other FRPGs. 

Frantasy Earth didn't get muvh support though. What support it did get made it more like a historical RPG with fantasy elements (like Pendragon) than like a typical FRPG with adventuring parties comprised of various races.

 

17 hours ago, Mugen said:

Edit : of course, creatures like Trolls and Ducks are very Gloranthan.

Yes, as were most of the RQ3 product line. You don't don't really see much that isn't Gloranthan outside of the actual non-Glorantha supplements. 

[Atgxtg]

17 hours ago, Mugen said:

Same in Sousou no Frieren (another manga), where the main protagonist is a 1500 years old elf woman. One of the themes of that manga is the passint of time, and the countless humans she met.

It might make an interesting RPG for the PCs to start off as incredibly skilled members of some long lived race. There are some high powered RPGs to draw inspiration from. Amber,just about any super hero RPG, even Elric! to some extent. 

[Mugen]

17 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

None of that fits European elves, but it fits in perfectly with Glorantha elves.

I've never met an European elf in person, but in French folklore "elves" are rather shorter than humans. Just like many other folklore elements, there are many version of what "an elf" is, depending on country and traditions. Trolls are another one, but this time we can all agree they do not look like the ones in RQ3...

In fact, I was rather surprised to discover Tolkien elves were taller than humans when I read MERP at age 13. Based on my own cultural background and my reading of The Hobbit and D&D (in which elves were 5.5 feet tall), I figured that they were smaller. I had read LotR, but surely didn't pay enough attention to descriptions...

[Atgxtg]

5 hours ago, Mugen said:

I've never met an European elf in person, but in French folklore "elves" are rather shorter than humans.

Probably not originally. Most of the elves in legend start off tall and powerful, and only got reduce in size in more modern times when people mostly stopped believing in them. 

5 hours ago, Mugen said:

Just like many other folklore elements, there are many version of what "an elf" is, depending on country and traditions.

Yes, but most FRPGs draw on Tolkien based version, which are mostly Scandinavian Alfar (Light Elves), and thus as big and strong as men.

5 hours ago, Mugen said:

 

Trolls are another one, but this time we can all agree they do not look like the ones in RQ3...

So are Dwarves. In Norse, Dwarves are known as Myrkálfar (Dark Elves) or Svartálfar (Black Elves). But most faery creature names are rather vague and not a well defined as in RPGs.

5 hours ago, Mugen said:

In fact, I was rather surprised to discover Tolkien elves were taller than humans when I read MERP at age 13. Based on my own cultural background and my reading of The Hobbit and D&D (in which elves were 5.5 feet tall), I figured that they were smaller. I had read LotR, but surely didn't pay enough attention to descriptions...

Yes, like I noted above, originally most "elves" were mansized. In some countries it's believed that these legend refer to the previous inhabitants of the land who got conquered and driven out into remote areas by the current inhabitants.  That's considered one of the origins for the vulnerability to iron.  The idea being that the invaders had more advanced technology (iron). 

But the elf stats in RQ3 are Glorantha elves, and would work for the D&D type of elves seem in most FRPGs. Maybe Chaosium would have published other elf stats if they had done more with Fantasy Europe. The elves in Pendragon certianly aren't Gloranthan or the typical woodsy tree-huggers you see in most FRPGs. 

 

 

[Rourou]

On 1/16/2025 at 11:31 PM, Mugen said:

To my suprise, I realized Orcs and Halflings exist in the english version of RQ3 core rules. They were not present in French version, which included a short description of Glorantha instead of Fantasy Europe.

In the spanish version you had orcs and hobbits. The description of the elves was clearly Gloranthan, though they were not referred to as Aldryami. We just used them as ersatz D&D elves, because they fit the bill perfectly: a bit smaller than humans and a bit better with magic.

There were maps of Glorantha and Fantasy Europe, but most people would simply play in a generic swords & sorcery setting. The drawback of the Glorantha setting was the number of supplements required to play (I would say "Gods of Glorantha" was a must if one wanted to play the usual way, with religions playing a central role, though maybe with "Glorantha: the world and its inhabitants" (well, not sure if this was the original title) would have been enough if one just wanted to have a background setting). Later on, the Vikings supplement became relatively popular among certain groups of players. 

We basically opted for a D&D-style of lack of concrete setting: easy and familiar. The difference is that RQ3 felt like beginning at level 3 in D&D (but never progressing beyond level 6): it was just the sweet spot where the characters would not die like flies but were not nearly indestructible either. Besides, the experience ticks removed the necessity of a munchkin-style monster genocide in every campaign: no need to kill dozens of monsters to grow your character. Yet, incredibly, it allowed for more combats than D&D thanks to almost everyone having healing magic and the first aid skill. And contrary to all the caveats nowadays, combat was not so lethal (though it would easily result in the temporary incapacitation of some of the characters).

Edited January 18 by Rourou

[Atgxtg]

The generic stuff was really to get RQ out of Gloranta in the hopes of it having greater appeal as a typical FRPG.

One hangup a lot of D&D players seemed to have with RQ2 at the time was that everybody knew magic, and in play D&Ders would tend to ignore the battle magic if they were not some sort of spellcaster (in RQ2 that mean't Rune Priest). I once ran a RQ2 tournament adventure where the PCs were all banged up and started to complain bout the lack of healing poisons and such typical of a D&D adventure. The players were getting somewhat upset As GM all I could tell them was to look at their character sheets to see if they had anything. One guy knew Healing 6 (which could attach limbs in RQ2) and another character had a spell matrix with Healing 6. Suddenly the group found things much, much easier. They even started to like the idea of warriors casting spells once they saw spells like Bladesharp, Fireblade and Multimissile on their sheets. Multimissile 3 was the party's favorite once they used it to snipe the scorpion men guarding the entrance.

 

[Mugen]

@Rourou 

1 hour ago, Rourou said:

In the spanish version you had orcs and hobbits. The description of the elves was clearly Gloranthan, though they were not referred to as Aldryami. We just used them as ersatz D&D elves, because they fit the bill perfectly: a bit smaller than humans and a bit better with magic.

French version put Orcs and Halflings in the first supplement, which was one of the very few non-gloranthan material in the line. 

It seems to me the vast majority used it to play in Glorantha, but RQ3 was definitely not a good starting point to start playing in this world, and I quickly gave up and created my own homebrew world instead.

[Atgxtg]

30 minutes ago, Mugen said:

@Rourou 

French version put Orcs and Halflings in the first supplement, which was one of the very few non-gloranthan material in the line. 

It seems to me the vast majority used it to play in Glorantha, but RQ3 was definitely not a good starting point to start playing in this world,

It worked for most RQers because they already had RQ2 stuff to fill in the blanks. What RQ3 lacked, and really needed, was Cults of Prax. That is where most of the cults were detailed. RQ3 didn't get that many long form cult writeups. Gods of Glorantha covered tons of gods, but it was all short form stats, without  much in the way of description or explanation. 

 

[Mugen]

16 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

It worked for most RQers because they already had RQ2 stuff to fill in the blanks. What RQ3 lacked, and really needed, was Cults of Prax. That is where most of the cults were detailed. RQ3 didn't get that many long form cult writeups. Gods of Glorantha covered tons of gods, but it was all short form stats, without  much in the way of description or explanation. 

I think what RQ3 missed compared to RQ2 was a more focused setting than the Glorantha/Genertela boxed set. I discovered Glorantha through this, and I had no idea how to run a campaign.

Exactly what Sun County and River of Craddles were, but too late for me.

That's why I praise the MRQ2 Glorantha core book so much, as it also gave smaller settings, ready to play.

The most valuable resource in French was Tatou, a magazinze from RQ3 publisher Oriflam, written by people who knew older RQ2 material, and it gave glimpses of what a campaign could look like. But it was not enough.

[Rourou]

18 hours ago, Mugen said:

It seems to me the vast majority used it to play in Glorantha, but RQ3 was definitely not a good starting point to start playing in this world, and I quickly gave up and created my own homebrew world instead.

Just from the timeline of RPG translations in the 80/90s (85 - Basic D&D set, with only "keep of the borderland", "palace of the silver princes" and "the lost city" translated, 88 - Call of Cthulu & Runequest, 89 - MERP), it was clear that in our early D&D days you had to write your own adventures and houserule the higher levels. Well, actually a few people had bought the original english versions and we either photocopied them or just wrote down the new rules/spells and that was it. Therefore, RQ being a complete set of rules (even the basic version), was more than we had in D&D and more than enough to run a game. Every one homebrewed back then.

Honestly, the idea of suggesting fantasy earth as a possible setting was really good: most people would not play fantasy earth, but more a "Conan the barbarian" generic ancient style setting that felt so runequesty to us, with a few extra elements like dwarves and elves (because, honestly, they are cool).

 

18 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

It worked for most RQers because they already had RQ2 stuff to fill in the blanks.

This worked in the US and UK, but not in the rest of Europe. There the strength of RQ3 was that it was generic (also because of how lore-heavy Glorantha is, which is why I only directed games set in Glorantha in the late 90s in the uni, where one could find the kind of people who might be more interested in a more complex setting). Back to the present day, when one can finally buy RQ2, the thing I appreciate most from there is that Glorantha was presented in a much more succinct manner, leaving a lot more to the imagination of the reader. It felt like being in the sweet middle point between mythology and what we now call classic fantasy. 

 

On 1/16/2025 at 11:37 PM, Mugen said:

Same in Sousou no Frieren (another manga), where the main protagonist is a 1500 years old elf woman. One of the themes of that manga is the passint of time, and the countless humans she met.

And now I am binge-watching the anime... So far the theme seems to be centered on nostalgia and honestly, it is giving me goosebumps. Thanks for the recommendation.

A more lighthearted chinese animation series about the relation among species of different life spans is 狐妖小红娘 (literally, "little red fox spirit girl", though the official english translation seems to be "fox spirit matchmaker"): there the main theme is the love stories between humans and the much more long-lived fox spirits. The tension there is not the nostagia,  but the reincarnation of the different characters (not only the humans, also the foxes that though very long lived are not immortal) and how they find themselves after being reborn. A lot of humor, and also excellent to see conceptions of magic loosely based on daoism and chinese mythology).

On the subject of the different life spans and in game experience, I found a very interesting reddit thread:

though centered in D&D, much of it is obviously relatable to BRP. 

[Mugen]

7 minutes ago, Rourou said:

Just from the timeline of RPG translations in the 80/90s (85 - Basic D&D set, with only "keep of the borderland", "palace of the silver princes" and "the lost city" translated, 88 - Call of Cthulu & Runequest, 89 - MERP), it was clear that in our early D&D days you had to write your own adventures and houserule the higher levels.

I remember my frustration when, after very few sessions of D&D, my players had reached level 3 (or level 4 for the Thief), and the Expert set was sold out everywhere.

Thanksfully, the AD&D PHB had just been released, and the DMG hit the shelves a month later.

7 minutes ago, Rourou said:

This worked in the US and UK, but not in the rest of Europe. There the strength of RQ3 was that it was generic (also because of how lore-heavy Glorantha is, which is why I only directed games set in Glorantha in the late 90s in the uni, where one could find the kind of people who might be more interested in a more complex setting).

I don't think RuneQuest was widely used as a generic game in France. I did, but I feel like I was an exception.

But RQ was nit exactly a success. The rules were seen as too complex, and the setting was intimidating. And I think people thought they could run generic heroic fantasy with D&D, so why bother get another game (not my opinion, of course) ?

But generic RPG were never popular here, until Casus Belli released his version of BRP, called BaSIC, with a few settings.

BaSIC and Call of Cthulhu are now so popular that "take Cthulhu and adapt" has become a meme...

[Atgxtg]

3 hours ago, Mugen said:

I think what RQ3 missed compared to RQ2 was a more focused setting than the Glorantha/Genertela boxed set. I discovered Glorantha through this, and I had no idea how to run a campaign.

Yes. What I think happened was that by splitting releases between Glorantha and Fantasy Europe, combined with the need to update the RQ2 stuff to RQ3, it took too long for them to get to making more of the sort of supplements that made RQ2 really stand out. There was some new Gloranthan stuff, but even that was odd. For instance we got some extensive supplements on the  Elder Races (Trolls, Dwarves and Elves) will extensive culture notes and long form cult write ups, but we got that before we got an updated Cults of Prax, which we kinda needed to use the campaign packs. 

3 hours ago, Mugen said:

Exactly what Sun County and River of Craddles were, but too late for me.

And much of that was reprinted from RQ2 Borderlands. 

3 hours ago, Mugen said:

That's why I praise the MRQ2 Glorantha core book so much, as it also gave smaller settings, ready to play.

Which was precisely the sort of thing that (Chaosium's) RQ2 excelled at.

3 hours ago, Mugen said:

The most valuable resource in French was Tatou, a magazinze from RQ3 publisher Oriflam, written by people who knew older RQ2 material, and it gave glimpses of what a campaign could look like. But it was not enough.

I hear the UK had similar issues. The hardcover books were expensive and there were trimmed down editions that contained even less. I hoped they held together better than their Stormbringer stuff. 

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, Rourou said:

Just from the timeline of RPG translations in the 80/90s (85 - Basic D&D set, with only "keep of the borderland", "palace of the silver princes" and "the lost city" translated, 88 - Call of Cthulu & Runequest, 89 - MERP), it was clear that in our early D&D days you had to write your own adventures and houserule the higher levels. Well, actually a few people had bought the original english versions and we either photocopied them or just wrote down the new rules/spells and that was it. Therefore, RQ being a complete set of rules (even the basic version), was more than we had in D&D and more than enough to run a game. Every one homebrewed back then.

Yeah, One of the nice selling points to RQ is the was that you got a rulebook, two scenarios, a copy of BRP, and Fangs for less than one of the three books you needed to run D&D. Yeah you probably needed Cults of PRax, but it was still a lot cheaper. Just get the stand alone rules and it was cheaper still.

Stormbringer was an even better deal since it had everything you needed in one book. 

1 hour ago, Rourou said:

Honestly, the idea of suggesting fantasy earth as a possible setting was really good: most people would not play fantasy earth, but more a "Conan the barbarian" generic ancient style setting that felt so runequesty to us, with a few extra elements like dwarves and elves (because, honestly, they are cool).

Fantasy Europe would have worked fine if it had gotten more support. If they could have done up a half dozen cultures the way they did RQ VIkings they would have had something.

I just think they were just spread too thin. They were updating and releasing all the RQ2 Glorantha stuff for RQ3, making new Glorantha stuff for RQ3, pursing the Fantasy Europe line for RQ3, and supporting their in house games of CoC, Strombringer and Pendragon, writing articles for HEROES magazine and Different Worlds, and coming up with new stuff.

 

1 hour ago, Rourou said:

This worked in the US and UK, but not in the rest of Europe. There the strength of RQ3 was that it was generic (also because of how lore-heavy Glorantha is, which is why I only directed games set in Glorantha in the late 90s in the uni, where one could find the kind of people who might be more interested in a more complex setting). Back to the present day, when one can finally buy RQ2, the thing I appreciate most from there is that Glorantha was presented in a much more succinct manner, leaving a lot more to the imagination of the reader. It felt like being in the sweet middle point between mythology and what we now call classic fantasy. 

It didn't work all that well in the US. Most of us wanted RQ3 to "catch up" with RQ2 so we didn't need our RQ2 stuff to play. And quite a few people just switched back to RQ2 since we weren't getting all that much new stuff.

 

[Rourou]

To summarize, we have to philosophies:

1) A bit like in real life, there will be a skill ceiling: for most people this ceiling will be sort of "meh" (competent in their job, or in game terms about 50-60% of their most outstanding skill), while for a few exceptional individuals it will be stratospheric (+90%, the true masters of their craft).

If we consider how we with our short lives reach those levels, it is somehow clear that time is a secondary consideration here: some people get at the "real world" equivalent of 90% fairly quickly (usually mid twenties), some take a longer time, most will never reach such a level. In fact as we age in "real life", we usually don't get better at the skills of the "game", but rather we improve our "meta".

The decision here is whether to create an in game mechanic for this or not: one option is logarithmic experience (that is, for gaining X percentiles we first need 1 unit of time, then 2, then 4, then 8, etc.). A simpler option is to max out previous experience at a cap of one's own choice. One might even include rules for decreasing skills during inactivity, etc.

Personally, for NPCs I would simply assign the percentiles as required for the adventure. For the PCs just give them more or less the same number of percentiles, independently of species.

2) Extrapolation up to stratospheric skill levels: this is the philosophy of "I have been hitting the gym for 1 months and my squat has increased by 50 pounds, so after 1 year I should expect 600 extra pounds", but applied to skills instead of strength training. I don't think is realistic for most skills, even the knowledge-based ones, simply because there is a point of equilibrium in which what we learn and what we forgot cancel each other out.

However, it could be a really interesting premise for a different type of game session.

Now, going back to nostalgia alley:

On 1/19/2025 at 2:58 PM, Mugen said:

But RQ was nit exactly a success. The rules were seen as too complex, and the setting was intimidating. And I think people thought they could run generic heroic fantasy with D&D, so why bother get another game (not my opinion, of course) ?

IMHO, back then a lot of the gaming culture was very local, and every group would play differently. I played with people that just wanted a bit of lighthearted adventure and fun, but there were other groups that played the almost-everyone-should-die version of D&D, which I personally don't find fun to play (but nowadays there is this idea of the "funnel" during session zero of a few OSR type of games).

RQ might have been complex in comparison with basic D&D, but the system was very logical: you could keep all the rules in your head. But I also remember how people become crazy about MERP when it came out and were playing it, despite the insane level of crunchiness. And if this were not enough, encouraged by the success of MERP, the role edgelords of that forgotten age migrated to Rolemaster (because why would you spare yourself of yet another table with dozens of different results).

I even remember hearing a podcast a couple of years ago where some RQ players maybe in Madrid were recalling their high gaming days and how the rules of RQ were not enough for them, so they made them more crunchy. For me, directing MERP a pair of times already was a pair of times too much. But people have different philosophies about detail.

On 1/19/2025 at 4:35 PM, Atgxtg said:

Fantasy Europe would have worked fine if it had gotten more support. If they could have done up a half dozen cultures the way they did RQ VIkings they would have had something.

On 1/19/2025 at 2:58 PM, Mugen said:

But generic RPG were never popular here, until Casus Belli released his version of BRP, called BaSIC, with a few settings.

My subjective impression has been that games with a defined tone and atmosphere are popular in France. Nephilim, the first one I encountered, it's a bit like that, very thematic. Then a few of the BaSIC ambientations that I saw in the late naughts (Imperial China and Uruk come to mind) gave me that feeling too. But it is always hard to extrapolate.

On 1/19/2025 at 4:35 PM, Atgxtg said:

Stormbringer was an even better deal since it had everything you needed in one book. 

And it was really popular: even if Moorcock was not widely read among RPG players, the atmosphere did tell you everything one needed to prepare adventures there. Great game.

 

On 1/19/2025 at 4:35 PM, Atgxtg said:

Fantasy Europe would have worked fine if it had gotten more support. If they could have done up a half dozen cultures the way they did RQ VIkings they would have had something.

Indeed, Vikings was one of the favorite supplements back then. And Land of Ninja too (not to mention that it contained new mechanics such as the ki rules). 

[Atgxtg]

5 minutes ago, Rourou said:

RQ might have been complex in comparison with basic D&D, but the system was very logical: you could keep all the rules in your head. But I also remember how people become crazy about MERP when it came out and were playing it, despite the insane level of crunchiness. And if this were not enough, encouraged by the success of MERP, the role edgelords of that forgotten age migrated to Rolemaster (because why would you spare yourself of yet another table with dozens of different results).

It wasn't. D&D, especially AD&D which was the dominant game at the time was far more complex. RQ just seemed more complex due to it most players already being familiar with D&D, having their own D&D books, and with RQ being so different. 

I used to have players complain about how slow character creation was in RQ compared to D&D but in RQ we only had one set of books, one set of reference sheets to calculate bonuses, and only the GM was familiar with the game system, while with AD&D everyone at the table owned a set of books, and most of the players had run a campaign, and were familiar with each other's the  house rules. So they could roll up a new D&D character in 15 minutes. Once they got familar with RQ, and we got a second player with a set of books, it got a lot faster and easier.  

 

5 minutes ago, Rourou said:

My subjective impression has been that games with a defined tone and atmosphere are popular in France. Nephilim, the first one I encountered, it's a bit like that, very thematic. Then a few of the BaSIC ambientations that I saw in the late naughts (Imperial China and Uruk come to mind) gave me that feeling too. But it is always hard to extrapolate.

Traditionally, Chaosium has been more successful with producing stand alone RPGs based on the BRP ruleset than with producing setting supplements for BRP. So they mostly try to focus on the former, and only released the UGE due to WotC's  missteps breaking D&D stranglehold on the market.

There are several possible reasons for the stand alone games being more successful. IMO a lot of has to do with the source material. With all due respect to the various BRP setting supplements, most of the stand alone RPGs were licensed settings based on the works of very popular authors. RQ was something on a exception, except Greg Stafford had done a lot of work to flesh out Glorantha making far richer than most RPG settings. 

5 minutes ago, Rourou said:

And it was really popular: even if Moorcock was not widely read among RPG players, the atmosphere did tell you everything one needed to prepare adventures there. Great game.

Moorcock was widely read though. I got into BRP through him. I was helping the owner of my friendly local gaming store move and spotted an Elric paperback, Stormbringer, read it, and then bought the Stormbringer RPG, preferred it over AD&D, and later picked up RQ.

D&D alignment system was based off on Moorcock's Law vs. Chaos. So Moorcock was very influential to early RPGs, probably second only to Tolkien. 

5 minutes ago, Rourou said:

Indeed, Vikings was one of the favorite supplements back then. And Land of Ninja too (not to mention that it contained new mechanics such as the ki rules). 

Yeah. Fantasy Eurpe had potential. I think it's just that it ended up competing with Glorantha. So it was like Coca-Cola going after Pepsi drinkers and losing some of their own customers in the process.