New RQ - Designer Notes Part One

[MOB]

We'll be launching the new Chaosium edition of RuneQuest at Gen Con this year. As that eagerly anticipated date approaches, Jeff Richard, creative director at Chaosium and lead designer of the RuneQuest project, is penning a series of designer notes to discuss the creative process... over to you Jeff!

http://www.chaosium.com/blog/designing-the-new-runequest-part-1

[Chaot]

Love it.

[Sean_RDP]

A few thoughts:

-So instead of one Grail Quest theme ala Pendragon, there are a multitude of such thematic quests based on the culture of your birth or the culture of your heart?

-Again, referencing Pendragon but also the style of play I have seen myself and others engage in, are seasonal questing and a long term legacy theme going to be integral to the game now? The creation of families, the establishment tribes, perhaps even the creation of characters' own mythological quests for others to follow in their footsteps? i.e. my character Leto's quest to retrieve the Newtling god's eye from Snake Pipe Hollow is so epic or hits certain benchmark's it becomes "Leto's Quest For The Eye" and is something other characters can go a hero questing for?

-How will exposure to chaos or illumination affect the runes and the relationships?

[Mankcam]

wow, i love that sheet, its looking like HQ meets RQ

Runes are finally immersive

(also skills are stat+stat, and strike ranks have returned)

I think its gonna be pretty cool

Edited February 8, 2016 by Mankcam

[Baulderstone]

Okay, seeing the sheet is making me think that the game might end up justifying making this yet another entirely new edition. If all those Rune numbers do some cool things, you might solidly win me over. 

[styopa]

Mike & Jeff, Delighted to see this is moving forward.

All I can say is that PLEASE use beta testers that try to break/game/exploit the system.

Having game-testers that idolize the system and play it the way you 'intend' it to be played is good for what it's worth.  But to really build a durable rules-set that works, you need people that don't hold it sacred.

 

[Jeff]

Believe me, my group of play-testers don't idolize the system (only one had even played any iteration of RuneQuest prior to this - and that was RQ3) . And they are wonderful at bringing basic things to a screaming halt. I'm know the other leads currently testing stuff out have the same experience.

[smiorgan]

The elemental runes up there remind me of Nephilim's character sheet.

The ones under the Man rune are Pendragonesque, obviously.

Strike rank is back. I like it.

Skills are characteristic + characteristic. Like.

Passions. Like.

AND THERE ARE BOXES TO TICK!! Love it.

That looks pretty close to my ideal Gloranthan RQ. Very promising.

(And, by the way, if you get Mythic Iceland 2 right, there will be also a great Viking-RQ)

[Noita]

I hope you use combat styles, as it is a house rule i use in my RQII games. All the different attacks and parries lost their attraction over the years.

[Jeff]

You attack and parry at the same weapon skill. And where you would learn two weapons together (say, 1h Spear and Shield) you use your 1H Spear and Shield skill for attack (1H Spear) and for parry (Shield). It is kind of silly to have those separated out into different skills given that they are learned and used together.

[SDLeary]

7 hours ago, Jeff said:

You attack and parry at the same weapon skill. And where you would learn two weapons together (say, 1h Spear and Shield) you use your 1H Spear and Shield skill for attack (1H Spear) and for parry (Shield). It is kind of silly to have those separated out into different skills given that they are learned and used together.

Thank you for that! Its actually the perfect balance (IMHO). RQ6 Combat styles are somewhat broad, though configurable to this, and individual skills seems a bit clunky these days. One thing to consider in a combined skill like this though is what happens if you loose one part of the pair.

SDLeary

Edited February 9, 2016 by SDLeary
typo

[Baulderstone]

1 hour ago, SDLeary said:

Thank you for that! Its actually the perfect balance (IMHO). RQ7 Combat styles are somewhat broad, though configurable to this, and individual skills seems a bit clunky these days. One thing to consider in a combined skill like this though is what happens if you loose one part of the pair.

SDLeary

I'd imagine that the penalty occurs without any effort. If you have Spear/Shield, and you lose either the spear or the shield, you are going to be more limited. It seems a bit cruel to put an extra layer of penalty on there. 

[styopa]

1 hour ago, SDLeary said:

Thank you for that! Its actually the perfect balance (IMHO). RQ7 Combat styles are somewhat broad, though configurable to this, and individual skills seems a bit clunky these days. One thing to consider in a combined skill like this though is what happens if you loose one part of the pair.

SDLeary

Using a RQ6 (is it "a" RQ or "an" RQ?  Does it depend whether you're speaking King's English or Vulgate American?) approach, I'd suggest that losing a 'part' of your style like that would just knock your skill down by a difficulty step or 2, depending on how drastic you want to be.  (I wouldn't be too drastic, as I'd submit that part of learning a 2-weapon style would be at least a basic instruction in use of only one of them.)

Then again, my RQ6 housemod had a lot more steps to provide just this granularity:

x2

x1.75

x1.67

x1.5

x1.3

x1.25

1.0 (standard)

x0.75

x0.67

x0.5

x0.33

x0.25

x0.1

[SDLeary]

2 hours ago, Baulderstone said:

I'd imagine that the penalty occurs without any effort. If you have Spear/Shield, and you lose either the spear or the shield, you are going to be more limited. It seems a bit cruel to put an extra layer of penalty on there. 

That is the way I would handle it, though it would be a minor penalty. Probably something on the line of -20% max. You do learn how to use both weapons in an offensive and defensive manner. 

In addition of course you have either a reduced ability to block damage (reduced "AP"), or reduced chance to do damage.

SDLeary

[MOB]

And now Part 2 is up, answering the question "what are the key features of RQ?": http://www.chaosium.com/blog/designing-the-new-runequest-part-2

[styopa]

Good overview from Jeff covering the 'guiding principles' of the rewrite.  While he focused primarily on the filtering process as it applies to RQ3 (taking what was good, abandoning what was bad), I hope that principle is in play drawing from other subsequent rules sets as well; AiG (the first one, unpublished) had some very good ideas in there that were essentially doing the same thing - keeping the good from RQ3 and rejiggering the bad.  Off the top of my head some of the Shaman mechanics worked neatly.

What I missed from his explanation, and maybe it's implied in a way I simply didn't get, was where RQ6 meets the road here?  As we all know, RQ:G or whatever we're calling it, was born of RQ6, yet the discussion centers primarily around RQ2 and the 90/10 principle focused there?  So is RQ:G going to be fundamentally Glorantha-fied RQ6 with a flavoring of RQ2, or will it be RQ2, modernized and updated with learnings from RQ3, (4), MRQ, MRQ2, and RQ6?

I'm a little sad to see Jeff's scourging of RQ3 Sorcery again.  I know dislike of it was widespread, but I actually liked it and felt it really worked as a credible anathematic alternative to the Spirit and Divine magic systems, and it seemed relatively true to the Western metaphysics of everything resulting from manipulation/combination of vanilla 'core' techniques.  Not to say it was perfect; Sandy's rewrite made it much better, and I ended up using much of the (excellent) RQ Tekumel material as my campaign's "western" credo.  Nevertheless, It's probably not a coincidence that the person that played our long-running sorcerer was a math major in college...

[skoll]

It seems Chaosium is making a point of not mentioning anything Pete/Loz have done with MRQII/RQ6. Reading Jeff's posts it's easy to get the impression, that those versions never existed.

In my books RQ6 is superior to RQ2/3 in practically every aspect. I for one am very disappointed in the design principle of "not causing too much discomfort to RQ2 veterans".

Luckily RQ is easily houseruled. I plan to continue using Action points and Special Effects even if they aren't included in RQ:G.

[jongjom]

I'm also a bit surprised that RQ6 is not mentioned. However he did not say "not causing too much discomfort to RQ2 veterans" but rather that RQ2 is the base. To which is added things that RQ3 did better, as well as rules from Arcane Lords, Epic and Glorantha the Game.  He also said "And so on." where I hoped he might of given a nod to RQ6, if true.

But I am more interested in a game works well internally not a Frankenstein's Monster of games cobbled together.

And at the end of the day I agree that RQ is easily house ruled (which I guess happens a lot) so bit that you like can be added on / substituted in.

[smiorgan]

2 hours ago, MOB said:

And now Part 2 is up, answering the question "what are the key features of RQ?": http://www.chaosium.com/blog/designing-the-new-runequest-part-2

Very interesting read. It seems clear that except for "combat styles" you don't want to go in the direction of RQ6's very detailed and complex combat. Personally, I am fine with a simpler combat engine, but I know special effects have their fans.

But, since you go for simpler combat may I suggest to Jeff to have a look at the 1993 Elric! combat rules. The attack-parry matrix has its fans, multiple dodges and parries make the combat slightly more heroic in feel without taking away the deadliness, weapon hit points and shield hit points work, the spot rules are nice guidelines for improvisation.

Much of these combat rules were later incorporated in the Big Gold Book and Magic World. But, don't look at Magic World! You might be distracted by the dubious art and layout. Just look at the sleek and slim 1993 Elric! book. One of Chaosium's later gems.

Just my two cents. But I feel that combat engine is not that far from the simpler combat you are looking for. Maybe there is one or two things you can steal from it.

  

Edited February 10, 2016 by smiorgan

[Jeff]

18 minutes ago, smiorgan said:

Very interesting read. It seems clear that except for "combat styles" you don't want to go in the direction of RQ6's very detailed and complex combat. Personally, I am fine with a simpler combat engine, but I know special effects have their fans.

But, since you go for simpler combat may I suggest to Jeff to have a look at the 1993 Elric! combat rules. The attack-parry matrix has its fans, multiple dodges and parries make the combat slightly more heroic in feel without taking away the deadliness, weapon hit points and shield hit points work, the spot rules are nice guidelines for improvisation.

Much of these combat rules were later incorporated in the Big Gold Book and Magic World. But, don't look at Magic World! You might be distracted by the dubious art and layout. Just look at the sleek and slim 1993 Elric! book. One of Chaosium's later gems.

Just my two cents. But I feel that combat engine is not that far from the simpler combat you are looking for. Maybe there is one or two things you can steal from it.

  

For what it is worth, I have a copy of the 1993 Elric! book right on my desk. I've been looking quite a bit at Stormbringer, Elric!, Hawkmoon, even Ringworld. And since Jason Durall will be coming into the process at some point pretty soon, I'm pretty sure that elements of those rules will have been considered carefully.

[Jeff]

But I do hope people at least find these notes interesting. The goal is to let you all know what we are thinking and how we are coming at it.

[Noita]

16 minutes ago, Jeff said:

But I do hope people at least find these notes interesting. The goal is to let you all know what we are thinking and how we are coming at it.

I'm loving the notes, my house ruled RQII has runes galore and the change over will be easy as.

[smiorgan]

20 minutes ago, Jeff said:

But I do hope people at least find these notes interesting. The goal is to let you all know what we are thinking and how we are coming at it.

Sure, they are! You can see very clearly that there is a direction and a lot of thought going into it. 

 

[Steve]

2 hours ago, styopa said:

What I missed from his explanation, and maybe it's implied in a way I simply didn't get, was where RQ6 meets the road here?  As we all know, RQ:G or whatever we're calling it, was born of RQ6, yet the discussion centers primarily around RQ2 and the 90/10 principle focused there?  So is RQ:G going to be fundamentally Glorantha-fied RQ6 with a flavoring of RQ2, or will it be RQ2, modernized and updated with learnings from RQ3, (4), MRQ, MRQ2, and RQ6?

Jeff said " Since post the RuneQuest Classic Kickstarter, RQ2 IS the comfortable and familiar content, so that needs to be the base", so it's pretty clear that we're looking at an improved, modernised RQ2 here.

[jongjom]

57 minutes ago, Jeff said:

But I do hope people at least find these notes interesting. The goal is to let you all know what we are thinking and how we are coming at it.

Yes. Really appreciate it. Please keep us in the loop with developments!