New RQ - Designer Notes Part Three

[jux]

2 hours ago, K Peterson said:

When I ran MRQ2 a few years back (mixing in rules from an early version of RQ6), there seemed to be little agony of choice taking place. Players would use the same, favorite Special Effects over and over again, because they found them the most effective - damn cinematic variety. It was always a mix of Choose Location (head), Bypass Armour, and Maximize Damage. It became rather tiresome, but it was always an effective strategy that lead to their success in many combats.

Yeah,  I fully agree. I was talking from the new player perspective. Once you have "mastered" the chart, you just keep taking mostly the same option. I do agree it is a bit boring.

I want my battles to be chaotic and full of surprises. I like some degree of meaningful choice of tactics, but not full control.

[g33k]

3 hours ago, K Peterson said:

When I ran MRQ2 a few years back (mixing in rules from an early version of RQ6), there seemed to be little agony of choice taking place. Players would use the same, favorite Special Effects over and over again, because they found them the most effective - damn cinematic variety. It was always a mix of Choose Location (head), Bypass Armour, and Maximize Damage. It became rather tiresome, but it was always an effective strategy that lead to their success in many combats.

You might blame unimaginative players, who didn't leverage the cinematic creativity and choices that Special Effect offers. But I guess they had the creativity to find the most effective tactical strategy open to them. Choice was focused, and it lead to rather boring and redundant combat, and soured me on Special Effects.

IIRC (I am away from my rulebook at the moment) RQ6 even has a sidebar on this topic, titled "The Head Again?  Really?" noting that it's an effective strategy and (based on archeological evidence) matched well with battlefield practice:  analysis of ancient-through-medieval battlefield burial mounds suggests that head-wounds were a leading cause of death...

[RosenMcStern]

2 hours ago, Harshax said:

EDIT - If instead of POW there was a similar mystical currency called Hero Points or some such, which was awarded by the Referee after appropriate adventures and hero quests or other milestones, I would be less adverse to seeing rules for investing these points in Divine Magic, Bindings, Enchantments, or Heroic Improvements to a character's base Attributes. I would expect such rules for creating these items to also carry with it the dangers of leaving them lying around because of magical sympathy or connection between the character and the item he created.

Actually, my long-gone Gloranthan fan page from 1996 explained how we replaced POW with exactly what you describe here: runes as a game currency. It works fine, and we went on for 14+ years playing it this way.

[SDLeary]

4 hours ago, Harshax said:

It's been a long time since I've had to explain the POW economy but for those unfamiliar with this RQ2/3 phenomena:

POW was mystic currency that was spent permanently for a variety of reasons:

• Establish your cult status as an initiate
• Buy Divine Magic
• Bind Spirits and Elementals
• Enchant items

You earned POW by defeating an entity in POW vs. POW tests. Such as casting a spell on someone. You only earned a chance to improve POW if your opponent had a chance to resist your spell. This lead to a bunch of gamist activities from the players:

• Don't let your POW Score get to the point where you couldn't acquire POW improvement checks
  • This stalled your progress toward acquiring enough Rune Magic to qualify for Rune Lord or Rune Priest status.
• Spend it often, but don't spend so much at one time that you become easily susceptible to enemy attacks
• Do non-optimal actions in combat to earn the chance to improve POW, like successfully cast Disruption against your enemy, before trying to defeat them.

These were the most obvious offenses of the POW economy. It helped explain why the world was flush with petty magical trinkets, but didn't explain why the world would eventually have guarded landfills full of useless level I spirit magic matrixes or why people bothered to worship divine beings constrained by Time.

I can live with or without it game wise, but I actually liked the POW economy. It made it seem that when you were pledging yourself to a god that you were giving more of "yourself" than simple magic points that would regenerate after a few hours, an actual piece of the characters soul if you will. The same is true for praying for divine magic, bindings, and enchantments. These are all very powerful miracles and magics that should cost more. Either that or perhaps Magic Points should only regenerate at the rate of one per day rather than all every 24 hrs.

For me, treating with gods, binding otherworld beings, and imbuing an item with a long term magical effect just feels like it should cost more. Are there down sides? Yup, and there should be. 

4 hours ago, Harshax said:

All in all, the rules worked counter to the idea that POW was a measurement of a character's connection to the universe, his religious beliefs, and exposure to the deeper mysteries of hero questing. It debased the core concept behind measuring POW and rule-as-written allowed someone to acquire Rune Priest hoards of divine magic via trivial activities.

I disagree here. I think the value of POW actually reinforces it. You don't spend it lightly, you don't diminish your soul lightly. 

4 hours ago, Harshax said:

More advanced abuses involved forming your own cult and initiating all your party members so each of you had your own holy day. You would then engage in ritualistic combat, which gave you an opportunity to earn 1d3-1 POW. You would sacrifice POW to each other on a regular basis and then use the accumulated POW to make epic artifacts that rivaled Stormbringer and then go have a picnic in Dorastor.

... and that's not even scratching the surface of some of the abuses dreamt up on the old Gloranthan listserv.

You have played with much different crowds than I have. I would not have, nor would any of the GMs I've played with, allowed any such behavior. Certainly not within Glorantha where it would seem to me to be a violation of the Compromise. Now after the death of a character could a Hero Cult start up? That I'd be ok with.

I remember the listserv. I also remember that much of what was on there was conceptual in nature. What-if scenarios. I'd never heard that any of it was done in actual scenarios.

4 hours ago, Harshax said:

EDIT - If instead of POW there was a similar mystical currency called Hero Points or some such, which was awarded by the Referee after appropriate adventures and hero quests or other milestones, I would be less adverse to seeing rules for investing these points in Divine Magic, Bindings, Enchantments, or Heroic Improvements to a character's base Attributes. I would expect such rules for creating these items to also carry with it the dangers of leaving them lying around because of magical sympathy or connection between the character and the item he created.

You mean an abstract currency that is really not part of the character or their connection to the world or the gods they worship? Hero Points already exist as a game mechanic in many BRP games, to allow for re-rolls of dice, and to mitigate death of characters when it doesn't serve the story line. Entrenching it deeper into the game for in-scenario character benefits as you describe certainly doesn't seem to be in keeping with RQ. But as you have said, YRQWV.

SDLeary

[Charles VA]

13 minutes ago, SDLeary said:

You mean an abstract currency that is really not part of the character or their connection to the world or the gods they worship? Hero Points already exist as a game mechanic in many BRP games, to allow for re-rolls of dice, and to mitigate death of characters when it doesn't serve the story line. Entrenching it deeper into the game for in-scenario character benefits as you describe certainly doesn't seem to be in keeping with RQ. But as you have said, YRQWV.

SDLeary

I used the Fate Pt. concept where Temp. POW (Magic Points or however you'd care to term them) could be expended for a variety of quick effects. Essentially an integral rudimentary magic all living beings can tap. With the inclusion of Runic pairs to the character design, this will allow for an interesting variety of effects, based on character runes, that will more than make up for the lack of "Feats" or whatever other special effects are needed by the more modernist crowd.

We always managed a good cooperative narrative without special rules to force it. YRQWV 

[Harshax]

@SDLeary

I pointed out a legitimate use of the rules that shows how they have been exploited among many, many gaming circles as can be attested by conversations I've had at cons and on the old RuneQuest/Glorantha List Servers. It doesn't take a genius to recognize that a 1pt use of a Spirit Magic Spell had a 66% chance to net at least 1 pt of POW and a 33% chance of netting 2 pts when used against an opponent who at least had a chance to resist your magic.

This POW was often used to buy Divine Magic no-one was willing to use until they attained Adept or Rune Priest level, when such magic became reusable. The exploit was discovered out of a genuine dissatisfaction with how long it took to achieve rank in cults, because all cults had an X-number of Rune Spells as a prerequisite for achieving a rank higher than Initiate.

If you want to argue that running about kiting trollkin with Disruption then impaling them with spears makes you closer to Orlanth, I believe you'll find yourself in the minority on that point. 

If you want to state that you wouldn't allow that at your table because of reasons, that is also fine, but then you have to accept that you're not talking about playing RQ3. You're playing magic tea party loosely based on RuneQuest. The POW economy was a legitimate problem with RQ2/3 because of how the rules were written, not because refs chose not to penalize clever players for exploiting a mechanic that failed to emulate mythic reality.

A Hero Point currency, aka experience points specifically earned by achieving skill competencies important to your cult, performing quests for your temple, participating in rituals and hero quests, or other mythically immersive activities is just an example of what POW was suppose to emulate. Such points could be used to improve Physical characteristics, such as POW or other attributes favored by your cult (Strength for Storm Bull, no?). This could be a valuable benchmark for measuring the power and experience of a character that transcends the mundane. Having 10, 20 or more Hero Points or whatever you want to call them could be a readily identifying measurement of a character's spiritual power. It allows RQ-New to have a mechanism that emulates the mythical economy without the pitfalls of exploiting characteristic POW. This also helps keeps old RQ2 stuff compatible with RQ-new.

EDIT: I believe Dorastor and Griffin Island both explain in detail how some of the major NPCs exploited the rules as written to achieve the levels of power details in their write-ups. If that's true then that means some official authors acknowledged the problem as well as exploited it equally.

Edited February 18, 2016 by Harshax
heartburn

[Charles VA]

1 hour ago, Harshax said:

@SDLeary

I pointed out a legitimate use of the rules that shows how they have been exploited among many, many gaming circles as can be attested by conversations I've had at cons and on the old RuneQuest/Glorantha List Servers. It doesn't take a genius to recognize that a 1pt use of a Spirit Magic Spell had a 66% chance to net at least 1 pt of POW and a 33% chance of netting 2 pts when used against an opponent who at least had a chance to resist your magic.

 

Ok. In the rules system I read in 1982 and forward, it's required that the POW efforted must have netted a successful attack and not just an exercise. Then, with an average POW, for a PC of roughly 13, that equates to a 40% chance of a gain AFTER the scenario, which could take numerous sessions, has been completed and then, then, you get an increase. Following this, you have to be in good standing with your priest or with A priest to be allowed to sacrifice for the magic. Which, by the way, could fail anyway due to your god being less than pleased with you. Funny, this all sounds like roleplaying without the rules structure to force it, but this is how it's presented. To avoid an argument, I'll defer to your rather non-sensical claims. Besides, I'd love to see a full presentation of that power-gaming you've described. In more than 30 years, I've never seen this happen outside of D&D.

Edited February 18, 2016 by charlesvajr

[Harshax]

You are certainly correct that I have misrepresented the actual chance of gaining a roll. A character with a POW of 13 who gains a POW characteristic roll has, from memory, a 21 (or characteristic max for your species) -13 (current POW) * 5 percentile chance to gain 1d3-1 POW. This equates to a 1 in 4 to gain 1 pt of POW or a bit less than 1 in 6 to gain 2 pts of POW for the character in your example.

Also note that good standing in your cult has almost nothing to do with how you gained that POW. You could argue that a initiate of Chalana Arroy would be in poor standing for casting Disruption on an enemy, but not Befuddle. The crux of my argument is that the currency you use to improve your standing in the cult and build toward higher ranking (the acquisition and expenditure of POW) has nothing to do with cult activities in the rules-as-written. That's bad game design and at cross-purposes to immersive game play.

Do you really need to be physically present to see how broken the game mechanic is? The math is yours to see and is clearly illustrated in multiple examples. I can attest that I have used the rule as written and been a referee of games where players used it in order to quickly rise in cult rank. I've talked to people at conventions that complained about it and it was a regular topic on listserv where it was examined in depth and purposely stretched to the logical limits of the RAW.

If you're not using the rules to emulate the game you wish to play, why bother writing them in the first place?

Edited February 18, 2016 by Harshax

[TRose]

My two bolgs.

    I been a fan of Glorantha  since since I I first played  a Folio game called white bear/Redmoon.

 And there been something about every version of Runequest I like and would like to see in future version..

  My favorite version is RQ3 but I like the damage modifiers in RQ6 so a Great troll did not auto kill everyone it hit. I also like mysticism and I hope it is in the next version of Rq.. But I did not like the fact it was almost impossible to raise statistics.

[skoll]

3 hours ago, SDLeary said:

I can live with or without it game wise, but I actually liked the POW economy. It made it seem that when you were pledging yourself to a god that you were giving more of "yourself" than simple magic points that would regenerate after a few hours, an actual piece of the characters soul if you will. The same is true for praying for divine magic, bindings, and enchantments. These are all very powerful miracles and magics that should cost more.

Frankly, I also liked that fact, that certain magical benefits costed more than just mana - that you had to sacrifice a piece of yourself. Unfortunately many of the issues listed by Harshax were true in our games. Especially the Disruption spamming.

[TRose]

 I also like the power economy as it was easy to use and for players to understand. But I do understand Harshax point and having the players EARN the right to get divine spell would be good too. Perhaps having some sort of allegiance system similar to that in Stormbringer/Magic World where a player could spend one point of power to learn a point of divine magic for every 10 allegiance points he had to his God. Or what ever number people think is good.

[SDLeary]

5 hours ago, Harshax said:

This POW was often used to buy Divine Magic no-one was willing to use until they attained Adept or Rune Priest level, when such magic became reusable. The exploit was discovered out of a genuine dissatisfaction with how long it took to achieve rank in cults, because all cults had an X-number of Rune Spells as a prerequisite for achieving a rank higher than Initiate.

This is not something that was done in our games. If we needed to use the Divine Magic, and we were initiates, we would. Especially if it wa going to save our bacon. In fact, I think we only had one higher level cultist in our group, a Sword IIRC. 

5 hours ago, Harshax said:

If you want to argue that running about kiting trollkin with Disruption then impaling them with spears makes you closer to Orlanth, I believe you'll find yourself in the minority on that point. 

??

5 hours ago, Harshax said:

EDIT: I believe Dorastor and Griffin Island both explain in detail how some of the major NPCs exploited the rules as written to achieve the levels of power details in their write-ups. If that's true then that means some official authors acknowledged the problem as well as exploited it equally.

I don't have a copy of Griffin Island any more, but I do have a copy of Griffin Mountain, and a copy of Dorastor. WRT Dorastor, I would assume that it would have more to do with Chaos or Illumination, but I could be wrong. Do you recall which NPCs (in either)so I can look it up?

Now on to something else. Based on the tone that this last post had, it appears that I have made you mad. Please understand that this is not my intent, and I'm sorry if that is what has happened. 

YRQWV

SDLeary

[SDLeary]

3 hours ago, skoll said:

Frankly, I also liked that fact, that certain magical benefits costed more than just mana - that you had to sacrifice a piece of yourself. Unfortunately many of the issues listed by Harshax were true in our games. Especially the Disruption spamming.

Interesting. Makes me wonder why this kind of thing didn't creep into our games. 

SDLeary

[SDLeary]

1 hour ago, TRose said:

 I also like the power economy as it was easy to use and for players to understand. But I do understand Harshax point and having the players EARN the right to get divine spell would be good too. Perhaps having some sort of allegiance system similar to that in Stormbringer/Magic World where a player could spend one point of power to learn a point of divine magic for every 10 allegiance points he had to his God. Or what ever number people think is good.

IIRC, something like this was done in Mythic Iceland. I'll have to take a look tomorrow.

SDLeary

[Atgxtg]

5 hours ago, Harshax said:

Do you really need to be physically present to see how broken the game mechanic is? 

The mechanic isn't "broken". It works. It might not match up well with the setting or with the cult based advancment that was supposed to be Glorantha, but it is a functional game mechanic. 

 

5 hours ago, Harshax said:

If you're not using the rules to emulate the game you wish to play, why bother writing them in the first place?

I take it that you mean to emulate the game setting.  That is a very good point and one which puts the whole new RQ project into a bad light. For the last two decades or so we've been told how the RQ rules didn't really fit Glorantha, and how HeroQuest was much closer to the way Glorantha was supposed to be. Okay. In that case why are they doing a retread of RQ Glorantha? If the rules aren't a good fit for the setting then they should either use different rules or a different setting. But doing an updated RQ Glantha seems to contradict what Greg and the rest having been saying about how bad a fit RQ is for Glorantha. 

[Jeff]

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

I take it that you mean to emulate the game setting.  That is a very good point and one which puts the whole new RQ project into a bad light. For the last two decades or so we've been told how the RQ rules didn't really fit Glorantha, and how HeroQuest was much closer to the way Glorantha was supposed to be. Okay. In that case why are they doing a retread of RQ Glorantha? If the rules aren't a good fit for the setting then they should either use different rules or a different setting. But doing an updated RQ Glantha seems to contradict what Greg and the rest having been saying about how bad a fit RQ is for Glorantha. 

The biggest problems that RQ2+ had with Glorantha were: 1. the Runes had no game relevance; 2. the front-loaded nature of Rune magic (a character couldn't simple call upon the god to use the god's magic, but needed to determine prior to adventuring what spells - usually one-use - the character could use); and 3. the absence of mechanics to handle a character's drives and relationships - which made writing gameable heroquests extraordinarily difficult. None of those were a good fit with the setting, and HeroQuest did this far better. We've now fixed all of these for RuneQuest, and the playtesting results are that this is now a good fit if you want to run games where the characters do things like described in Gloranthan stories and history.

[Charles VA]

7 hours ago, Harshax said:

You are certainly correct that I have misrepresented the actual chance of gaining a roll. A character with a POW of 13 who gains a POW characteristic roll has, from memory, a 21 (or characteristic max for your species) -13 (current POW) * 5 percentile chance to gain 1d3-1 POW. This equates to a 1 in 4 to gain 1 pt of POW or a bit less than 1 in 6 to gain 2 pts of POW for the character in your example.

 

Your memory is all of RQ3 (Avalon Hill) not Classic RQ (Chaosium RQ2). While I have culled information from the Avalon Hill publications, it's been the Chaosium version I've used since picking up RuneQuest and what you describe is seriously not possible under that rules system. Yes POW gain is Species Max minus Current times 5 with a second roll, if successful, of a d100 with 01-10 +3 pts., 11-40 +2 pts. and 41-00 +1 pt.

 

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

The mechanic isn't "broken". It works. It might not match up well with the setting or with the cult based advancment that was supposed to be Glorantha, but it is a functional game mechanic. 

 

I take it that you mean to emulate the game setting.  That is a very good point and one which puts the whole new RQ project into a bad light. For the last two decades or so we've been told how the RQ rules didn't really fit Glorantha, and how HeroQuest was much closer to the way Glorantha was supposed to be. Okay. In that case why are they doing a retread of RQ Glorantha? If the rules aren't a good fit for the setting then they should either use different rules or a different setting. But doing an updated RQ Glantha seems to contradict what Greg and the rest having been saying about how bad a fit RQ is for Glorantha. 

And personally Classic RuneQuest fits the version of Glorantha that I've come to love. Where a constant stream of HeroQuests seems like it could be fun, it's not bread and butter living in the least. I guess you can say that I'm enamored with the Zero-to-Hero type of gaming. If I wanted a storyteller system, I'd use White Wolf's or the Masterbook system for my gaming.

[Joerg]

I have to admit that I liked the POW economy on the spending side, but I loathed the POW gain side.

Somehow none of my players ever got their hands on Disruption - I think the only offensive spirit magic spell they used was Befuddle. Other than that, everone's favorite was Bladesharp or Heal, with side orders for Protection and Countermagic.

I am fine with the "divine IOU" nature of spend n points of POW to learn rune spell X. There are good setting reasons to demand this as a prerequisite for access to that spell, and for defining the maximum effect you can pull off.

I was part of the people who suggested that already initiates should get a chance to regain their divine magic through mechanics other than sacrificing another point of POW.

When your character regains the use of one point of divine magic, another can of worms is opened. Do you have to assign that point to a specific spell ro mark it as active? That's what the Runepower concept tried to address. But then, if you have just sacrificed say 2 points for Shield, can you cast a Heal Wound instead that you used up earlier?

POW economy has issues. I probably would live with specifically assigned activation of spells, and "permanent" POW sacrificed for spells (or initiations) regainable through participation in religious activities, but POW exceeding your previous personal highest level of POW requiring the much rarer POW check via POW vs POW contests. Possibly including resistance against hostile spells, too.

[goldenwheeldancer]

The power economy is brilliant.

It is exciting having to make big sacrifices to progress magically. The fact that this slowed cult progression is great.

Spamming spells to get Pow gain rolls seems ridiculous. In every session I ever played there are always multiple natural situations in which a Pow gain roll will be achieved.

A good GM will put a stop to silly gamist activities that break immersion.

 

The new RQ is looking awesome to me. Love that some elements from Pendragon are seeping in, and that Runes are centre stage.

[Guest Vile Traveller]

I'll add another voice to the fans of the POW economy, although we never thought of it in those terms. We just felt it was a neat mechanical way to tie the characters into the greater universe. The whole thing happening around the Star Wars era probably helped ... 

"SIZ matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my SIZ, do you? Hmm? Hmm? And well you should not! For my ally is POW, and a Power-full ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the POW around you; here, between you, me, the tree, the rock lizard, everywhere, yes."

[jux]

I am unfamiliar with the POW as currency rules, but it seems like something I would not like at all.

This just seems so meta. It should reflect story, right? Why do we have to have rules for everything, tracking them numbers! Why not have something simple and elegant instead. You want a risk, trade-off right? Why not add corruption or back-slashes or something? Something that is real, not abstract number.

[Mugen]

22 hours ago, Harshax said:

EDIT - If instead of POW there was a similar mystical currency called Hero Points or some such, which was awarded by the Referee after appropriate adventures and hero quests or other milestones, I would be less adverse to seeing rules for investing these points in Divine Magic, Bindings, Enchantments, or Heroic Improvements to a character's base Attributes. I would expect such rules for creating these items to also carry with it the dangers of leaving them lying around because of magical sympathy or connection between the character and the item he created.

This is more or less how OpenQuest handles it.
Instead of spending POW to make permenent enchants, you spend Improvement Rolls.
Improvement Rolls which are usually used to make experience rolls with skills.

Edited February 18, 2016 by Mugen

[Atgxtg]

7 hours ago, Jeff said:

The biggest problems that RQ2+ had with Glorantha were: 1. the Runes had no game relevance; 2. the front-loaded nature of Rune magic (a character couldn't simple call upon the god to use the god's magic, but needed to determine prior to adventuring what spells - usually one-use - the character could use); and 3. the absence of mechanics to handle a character's drives and relationships - which made writing gameable heroquests extraordinarily difficult. None of those were a good fit with the setting, and HeroQuest did this far better. We've now fixed all of these for RuneQuest, and the playtesting results are that this is now a good fit if you want to run games where the characters do things like described in Gloranthan stories and history.

No offense Jeff, but is that your opinion or Greg's? 

What I have thought was that the gritty game mechanics of RQ didn't mesh with the epic and heroic nature of Glorantha/ 

If HQ did it all far better, why revamp RQ2? If it was such a simple fix then they could have done that back in the 90s and not needed a who new game system for HeroQuesting. 

Also, there were a lot of things in RQ3 that did improve on RQ2, such as not breaking everything up into 5% increments, that I hope don't get tossed own in the drive to go back to basics.  

 

Frankly, I'm getting very skeptical about this. It looks more and more like the MRQ fiasco all over again. Relying on the RQ brand name and bring back some of the orginal designers so as to tap the fan base for another quick buck. I hope I'm wrong and that the new RQ will be a good RPG that actually improves upon RQ2 (rather than just changing stuff for change shake), but I really doubt it.

 

 

[Jeff]

18 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

No offense Jeff, but is that your opinion or Greg's? 

That's been both of our opinion for a very long time. And Greg has worked on solving it since about 1980, but never got there. Incorporating the Runes directly into HQ2 was a last minute design decision, that eventually showed the way to do it for RuneQuest.

If you think this is six months of work, guess again. Greg (I only joined into the process a mere 20 years ago) has been working on this for well over thirty years. My file of Greg's drafts and notes is a good 18 inches thick. This work was weaved through Pendragon, Epic, Nephilim, Pendragon Pass, and had a huge impact on Pendragon Pass, King of Dragon Pass, HeroQuest 2, and HWG. Annoyingly, working out how the Runes could fit into this and thus solve the last mechanical hurdle only revealed itself to us last year. 

[jongjom]

3 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Frankly, I'm getting very skeptical about this. It looks more and more like the MRQ fiasco all over again. Relying on the RQ brand name and bring back some of the orginal designers so as to tap the fan base for another quick buck. I hope I'm wrong and that the new RQ will be a good RPG that actually improves upon RQ2 (rather than just changing stuff for change shake), but I really doubt it.

Maybe a bit harsh to say that decades of work and game play from Greg Stafford, Sandy Petersen, Ken Rolston, Jeff Richard, Steve Perrin and others is the same as the rush job by Matt Sprang? Maybe just a tad harsh? Possibly?