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RQ Classic Edition: will you play it or it's just for reading?


smiorgan

Will you play RQ classic edition?  

61 members have voted

  1. 1. Will you play the RQ2 reprint (aka RQ classic edition)?

    • No, it's just for historical research/ nostalgia/ social prestige/ reading in the bathroom
      32
    • Yes, I'm already planning a campaign/ I've never stopped playing RQ2
      29


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This is the only ed of RQ I play. My teenage daughter wants to play a newtling, duck or anthropoid platypus next. Her idea, but if there are sentient waterfowl, then I thought "why not?" So once our group winds down our current Tekumel game, I envision a 'Wind in the Willows' set on the banks of the River of Cradles. With jack o'bears guarding the trolls' cabbage patch? We'll have to see...

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I definitely plan to play it. Introduce it in game days to other players (along with Skaerune; of course) and generally be as subversively d100 as I can be. I will see what I can cook up on Fronela as I suspect everyone will be bouncing around in Prax. Just for something different.

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Its 2300hrs, do you know where your super dreadnoughts are?

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I probably won't play  it, as I am a firm fan of RQ3, but will read the new articles and see what they have changed, mainly for ideas.

 

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

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I'm going to use it on a new gaming group. Once they get used to it, I plan on migrating them towards RQ6, which I believe in time will also be considered a "classic" version, albeit a bit crunchier.

Given the news about RQ6 becoming the new Chaosium version next year and the version for new releases, I suspect there will be a conversion guide from RQ2 to RQ6/7 coming soon to help people get up to date.

Edited by Jae
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Not only will I use it, it’s the only RQ I will ever need, at least as far as I can foresee. First of all, I’m not a huge rules junkie, so, lighter is generally better, and new editions with their rules changes and additions don’t excite me but if anything turn me off. Secondly, I’m incentivized to run RQ2 because of all the great adventuring material available: Rainbow Mounds, Snakepipe Hollow, Duck Tower, Griffin Mountain, Big Rubble, and on and on. The ability to run them seamlessly is huge, for me.

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33 minutes ago, Jae said:

I'm going to use it on a new gaming group. Once they get used to it, I plan on migrating them towards RQ6, which I believe in time will also be considered a "classic" version, albeit a bit crunchier.

I do hope that the publication of the new Chaosium RuneQuest will be the occasion to slim and trim a bit the RQ6 engine. I know this is not what they said. They said it will be ***exactly*** RQ6. But they also said it will be a somewhat shorter book.

A few days ago I was running a RQ6 combat and I realized that resolving one particular combat action required no less than 7 (!) dice rolls.

1 - Roll attack, 2- Roll parry (differential roll vs attack), 3-Roll hit location, 4-Roll damage, 5-Opposed roll required by the special effect, 6-Opposed roll required by the major wound, 7-Roll the number of actions that the wounded target cannot attack  

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20 minutes ago, smiorgan said:

I do hope that the publication of the new Chaosium RuneQuest will be the occasion to slim and trim a bit the RQ6 engine. I know this is not what they said. They said it will be ***exactly*** RQ6. But they also said it will be a somewhat shorter book.

Moon Design books have a noticeably smaller font than RQ6, so that might contribute to the smaller font. Of course, I expect a lot of the toolkit options that are one the biggest appeals of the edition for me will be gone too. 

20 minutes ago, smiorgan said:

A few days ago I was running a RQ6 combat and I realized that resolving one particular combat action required no less than 7 (!) dice rolls.

1 - Roll attack, 2- Roll parry (differential roll vs attack), 3-Roll hit location, 4-Roll damage, 5-Opposed roll required by the special effect, 6-Opposed roll required by the major wound, 7-Roll the number of actions that the wounded target cannot attack  

To be pedantic, that is two actions, as someone is spending an AP to parry as well. :)

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1 minute ago, Baulderstone said:

To be pedantic, that is two actions, as someone is spending an AP to parry as well. :)

True! If the Clakar did not try to parry it would have been only 6 rolls! :D

7 minutes ago, Baulderstone said:

Moon Design books have a noticeably smaller font than RQ6, so that might contribute to the smaller font. Of course, I expect a lot of the toolkit options that are one the biggest appeals of the edition for me will be gone too. 

That would be a pity.

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57 minutes ago, smiorgan said:

A few days ago I was running a RQ6 combat and I realized that resolving one particular combat action required no less than 7 (!) dice rolls.

1 - Roll attack, 2- Roll parry (differential roll vs attack), 3-Roll hit location, 4-Roll damage, 5-Opposed roll required by the special effect, 6-Opposed roll required by the major wound, 7-Roll the number of actions that the wounded target cannot attack  

That is an edge case. Most normal RQ6 attacks take fewer dice rolls than any other edition of RQ.

RQ6. Roll attack. Roll parry. If parry successful no need to roll for damage or hit location because damage blocked.

RQ2 Roll attack. Roll parry. Roll damage. Apply damage to parrying weapon (in some cases). Check if weapon breaks and any damage goes through. If so, roll hit location then check damage versus armour points. If any go through, apply damage to locational hit points and general hit points.

RQ3. Roll attack. Roll parry. Roll damage. Check if damage exceeds parrying weapon armour points. If so reduce damage by weapon armour points and reduce weapon armour points by 1 (in some cases.) Roll hit location then check damage versus location armour points (remember to choose between melee and missile hit locations). If any go through, apply damage to locational hit points and general hit points. 

And to answer the OP's original question. I'm buying it to look nice on my shelf. Nostalgia is a powerful force when you're a 50 year old gamer whose first game was the GW box set of RQ2. (I'm hoping that as an add-on they can get a version of the GW bikini armour cover as an alternative.) 

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3 hours ago, deleriad said:

That is an edge case. Most normal RQ6 attacks take fewer dice rolls than any other edition of RQ.

RQ6. Roll attack. Roll parry. If parry successful no need to roll for damage or hit location because damage blocked.

True. I've picked an extreme (yet genuine) case. But, you also took a one particular case: a succesful blow succesfully parried by a non-critical parry with a big enough parrying weapon. The perfect tie, so-to-say. If the attack goes through we have most of the times one or more special effects and many special effects require rolls (typically opposed rolls against original attack) and of course rolling the hit location and the damage.

I'd say RQ6 makes makes combat more fun and interesting, but also adds a little bit of complexity on average. I wonder whether it can be streamlined further by making most (if not all) combat effect deterministic, i.e once gain an effect you choose the effect and apply it without further rolls.

The RQ6 parry rules that you mention are indeed very elegant. 

You are right in pointing out the fiddly things you have to keep track of in RQ2 and RQ3. If I really have to nitpick, I'd say keeping track of points is not dice rolling. But I get your point.

3 hours ago, deleriad said:

Nostalgia is a powerful force when you're a 50 year old gamer whose first game was the GW box set of RQ2. 

 Nostalgia runs strong also in this 45 years old. I remember vividly the day I bought RQ2 at the Strategiochi shop in Milan. RQ3 box was already out but it costed a fortune. So, the shop owners pointed to the slender RQ2 booklet with the Louise Perenne cover in glorious color. I was immediately hooked.  I remember the sense of wonder of reading about Glorantha, the Aldryami, the Trolls, the Tusk Riders (for some reason I liked a lot the tusk riders), bronze and iron weapons.. 

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Most likely just for reading.  I've never played RQ2, don't think I've ever even looked inside the covers when it was current, so it doesn't hold any nostalgia value for me, just historical curiosity.  I suppose it's possible that I might set down RQ6 for long enough to give it a try, but I have no interest in or affinity for Glorantha, so I don't think there's likely to be any reason for me to do that.

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RQ6 wins out for me at the gaming table, I feel that the combat effects make the combat scenes much more interesting. There's a few more dice rolls, but the actual combats tend to be fewer rounds due to the options available which can progress the melee much quicker.

Compared to this, RQ2 can fall in the same pattern as with most older games where combat is a focus purely on a numbers attrition mechanic. 

I do like how in RQ2 your Characteristics play a role in your base skill chance, I think it makes them more important. I never understood why RQ3, CoC, Elric etc didn't do it this way. Despite being a big RQ3 and CoC player, it wasn't until MRQ and now RQ6 that I thought there had been an improvement in this part of character creation.

One of the things I've always liked about RQ2 is that it covers so much ground for a slim rule book by today's standards. Very concise, with heaps of flavour immersed through it. I think I will love reading the RQ2 Classic Edition for the sheer nostalgia value, and I can port most of the Gloranthan Classics campaigns on the fly to RQ6, its pretty simple.

I really love the old RQ2 cover, it's a limbic system thing I think :-)

Edited by Mankcam
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" Sure it's fun, but it is also well known that a D20 roll and an AC is no match against a hefty swing of a D100% and a D20 Hit Location Table!"

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3 hours ago, MOB said:

Update on progress in the KS here - whether you're going to play it or read, some classic supplements have already been unlocked as Stretch Goals and there are more to come: http://basicroleplaying.org/topic/4166-rq-classic-kickstarter-update/?do=findComment&comment=64464

I'm looking forward to the 80,000 threshold to get the RQ Companion!

 

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2 hours ago, Mankcam said:

I do like how in RQ2 your Characteristics play a role in your base skill chance, I think it makes them more important. I never understood why RQ3, CoC, Elric etc didn't do it this way. Despite being a big RQ3 and CoC player, it wasn't until MRQ and now RQ6 that I thought there had been an improvement in this part of character creation.

Actually, RQ3 is like RQ2 in this respect. It's CoC and Elric which drop skill category bonuses derived from characteristics.

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I would like to play RQ2 with the reprints, but competition from other BRP-based Rpgs (CoC and CoC-variants, like Dark Streets) will probably monopolize my gaming time. I haven't run anything-fantasy for a few years now, and generally don't run fantasy Rpgs often. 

If/when I get around to running fantasy again it would be a tossup between Elric! and RQ2. Elric! would fit the bill for anything Dark Fantasy / Sword & Sorcery themed. And if I ran RQ2, it would be set in Glorantha... but much more of a scaled-down, interpreted MyGlorantha than using the loads upon loads upon loads of details that exist for the setting.

I have no desire to run RuneQuest with any other edition. I've admired RQ3 for years; played quite a bit of MRQ2 years ago; and tip my cap to RQ6. But I wouldn't run any of them now. My interests, and my game-mechanics-needs are elsewhere.

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4 hours ago, smiorgan said:

Actually, RQ3 is like RQ2 in this respect. It's CoC and Elric which drop skill category bonuses derived from characteristics.

Yes, my mistake, I did mean to mention that I did like the RQ3 Skill Category modifiers, except I thought that they should have been much greater value, around double to triple what they were.

Edited by Mankcam
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" Sure it's fun, but it is also well known that a D20 roll and an AC is no match against a hefty swing of a D100% and a D20 Hit Location Table!"

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I have to say I think WotC did a great thing by reprinting old editions of D&D before peddling the new edition. They won a lot of good will from fans, and it also displayed confidence in the 5e because they were just selling it on its merits rather than just repressing old editions. So in that sense, I don’t see the reprint of RQ2 as harming the new RQ.

I also think it was always a mistake to strip flavor from games in order to make them more general. So go ahead and load up Runequest with iconic Gloranthan cults and monsters. It’s easy enough to swap them out, but I just don’t see any benefit in a bland base.

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