SimpleQuest Zero Edition

[deleriad]

Here's a sorcery simplification for your perusal.

As you say, do away with the manipulation skills. Your skill in the spell determines your ability to manipulate it.

Once you reach 90% with a spell you have mastered it and can do two extra things.

You can add targets. Each target past the first costs 1 additional MP and counts towards the limit you can manipulate it.

E.g. Mikolos wants to palsy 3 charging goblins. He has 92% in Palsy which means that he can use up to 9 levels of manipulation. He decides to cast Palsy at 6 Magnitude on all three goblins at the same time for a total of 6+3 levels of Manipulation. That would cost him the normal 1 MP for the spell plus an extra 2 MPs for the two extra goblins.

You can combine spells together. If you have mastered two different spells then you can combine them together and treat them as one spell. This is "difficult" (-25%) and costs 1 MP in addition to the normal costs. If you have mastered 3 spells at 90% you can combine them all together. This is very difficult (-50%) and costs 2 extra MPs.

[AikiGhost]

The problem with that would be that if you trained your Unarmed skill up to 100 then you would start at that percentage with any weapon you're unskilled in.

You say that like its a bad thing? I like the idea of having melee training apply to every hand weapon, 90% of the time you'll only ever use your own melee weapon anyway, also having a single melee skill stops the "golf bag of weapons" tick hunting phenomenon you sometimes see in runequest games.

[Al.]

You say that like its a bad thing? I like the idea of having melee training apply to every hand weapon, 90% of the time you'll only ever use your own melee weapon anyway, also having a single melee skill stops the "golf bag of weapons" tick hunting phenomenon you sometimes see in runequest games.

Put me in for an absolute agree there. Combat (for all hand-to-hand with weapons or without) and Missile (for throwing and shooting) are enough for me.

I really liked the way BRP was going with skill specialisations as a halfway house between that and the RQIII approach.

As mentioned on the Splitting Attacks thread I guess that one could have lots of different Martial Arts (each of which gives a Special/Critical result if used successfully) alongside the single Combat skill.

Al

[Al.]

Feedback on SQ

1. Well done for getting off your arse and produccing a professional open source d100 ruleset. THat puts you two ahead of most of us here and one ahead of almost all.

2. Love the artwork. Given the stated aim I think that its almost perfect.

In the nature of queries rather than criticisms

Why drop the more granular MRQ damage bonus chart? I've not played with anyone who preferred the 'everyone has +d4 so why not call that 0 and just bump the base damage up a bit' approach to Mong's version.

Why keep the difference in skill bases? Some have a base of nominally 10 and some nominally 20. Why not make them all nominally 20. Adding 10 to the former is not hard to do and in play it would be Simpler as GM to know that unlisted skills will be 20% unless there is a particular reason for them not to be.

(If I though that this was a re-write rather than simplifying and funnifying MRQ I'd mention other bits here like looking at Ringworld for a better idea of stat combinations for skill base chances but I suspect they would not be useful)

Why is Battle Magic base chance Pow x3 rather than Pow x5?

Would you consider further rationalising the skill list? (I'm thinking of the thread above here mainly)

Keep up the good work

Al

[Newt]

If you like the art I've shown so far, you'll like the rest of the work that Simon Bray has done, about 14 pieces in all.

Onto your various queries.

1. Damage table is like it is because it makes it easier to remember, especially when I'm churning out the monsters/npcs.

2. Differences in skill bases, not sure what you are getting at here?

3.Battle Magic base is POW x3 rather than the traditional POW x 5, because I like the idea of characters growing into their skills.

4. Open to ideas on rationalizing the skill list.

[Newt]

Simplifying the Weapon skills list to Unarmed, Ranged and Close combat - does fit in with the philosophy of SQ, but the die hard RQer in me wants to keep hold of the Golf bag of weapons.

To see which approach wins out you have to read SQ 1st Edition

[AikiGhost]

4. Open to ideas on rationalizing the skill list.

Can you post the current list and I'll have a good close look.

[Newt]

List as stands is in the SQ Zero Edition PDF,I've not made any changes or updates yet.

I'd much rather people go there since they will be able to see it context.

[PK Games]

You could divide weapon skills by style instead of teh broad category of combat and range.

You would have 1 handed slashing, 1 handed thrusting, 1 handed bludgeoning, 2 handed, spear and pole weapons. But that may get complicated as some weapons can slash and thrust.

[Chaot]

I did a very basic for of this for a nostalgic D&D/BRP game. The categories were 1-Handed, 2-Handed, 1-Handed & Shield, Missile. It worked great for the style of game I wanted.

As for dividing skills by weapon styles, couldn't you just combine the slashing and thrusting weapons and keep bludgeoning on it's own? Or would that make the slashing/thrusting weapons too appealing?

[PK Games]

The principle difference between slashing and thrusting is that slashing gives you a wider arc of hitting, it would be faster and probably recieve a +5 or 10 to hit modifier where thrusting is slower generally (meaing its easier to avoid a thrust as you see the motion easier and its only targeted as one place) put the penetrating nature of the attack has a greater chance for a critical.

Most slashes end in flesh wounds while thrusting is more damaging to organs and what not.

Bludgeon functions differently as part of the purpose is to just hit the foe, not necessarily penetrate its armour. It causes more push back and knock down effects.

Again, going into the different effects of attack methods is probably something more for Role Master, not BRP, but Id take a gander it RM or MERPs weapon categories for ideas.

[Chaot]

Or HarnMaster. I guess my point is, if it's going to be simple why make a distinction between thrusting and sharp. Pointy and blunt seem to be enough in my opinion. I get the differences between slashing, impaling and bashing. I just wonder if introducing those differences is necessary for a striped down system.

I will add one skill that I forgot. Brawl. When I use a stripped down system, Brawl includes Grapple and using impromptu weapons; broken chair, broken glass bottle, sand in the eyes, wrestling moves, etc.

I think the point is to give the PCs a wide range of available weapons without worrying about increasing too many skills. It's what makes it simple.

[Al.]

If you like the art I've shown so far, you'll like the rest of the work that Simon Bray has done, about 14 pieces in all.

Cool. Look forward to it

2. Differences in skill bases, not sure what you are getting at here?

Fair enough; I was spouting fluent Huttese first time around, hopefully this makes more sense

Persistence 10+Pow (or nominally 20% for Joann Average)

Performance Cha (or nominally 10% for Joseph Average)

This has the effect of making some skill chances even worse for starting characters (whilst not having much effect on higher powereds who have chucked points at them) and means that I cannot so easily decide that Norman Normal's skills which I haven't bothered to list will be 20%

3.Battle Magic base is POW x3 rather than the traditional POW x 5, because I like the idea of characters growing into their skills.

So like if I were to read the section properly I'd realise that its now a raisable skill in its own right rather than a characteristic roll?

4. Open to ideas on rationalizing the skill list.

I will try to get a coherent idea typed up

Al

[Al.]

OPENQUEST ERROR CATCHING

It don't not match up

Page 22 Rurik the restless characteristic totals and points spent do not add up.

Adding 8 to Con would give 16 not 12 as listed

The dreaded 'Page XX' gremlin

Page 16 Look at the list of Basic Magic spells in the Basic Magic chapter

Page 24 How SimpleQuest manages these very high skills is explained in Chapter XX Mastery.

Page 43 Spend Hero Points. These are your ultimate insurance policy against death, accidental or otherwise. (see Chapter 2 Character Generation

Page 54 per magnitude point to learn a Battle Magic Spell. Improvement points are covered

OPENQUEST SUGGESTIONS

Could we have a Character Creation 2 page spread as per the more recent Chaosium games?

Could we have details for Fighter and Magician Veterans and Masters (at the mo' a Veteran Magician has as exactly as many points of magic as a Veteran Fighter)

Also, should Veterans and Masters have more Hero Points (say 4 and 6 respectively? Although I'm plucking numbers from the air here)

Variable number of starting spells.

I.e. (Int/3) rather than a blanket 3 points

Limiting a character's weapons skills according to another relevant skill

I.e. if fighting from horseback it has been a long tradition in d100 games that the character's sword skill is capped at their Ride skill if this is lower.

Could we extend this to:

Sailing skill if fighting at sea

Driving skill if in a Chariot or erm driving

Flying skill for Dragons and such like

SKILL LIST

I have uploaded a doc to this ere board (since I cannot be bothered to format a big list for display in this thread.

list of skills

Formatting and lay out

I really like 3 column layouts. Reading them makes me feel like a grown up. Also since many (most?) people will access SQ as a download and print it themselves 3 columns per page should lead to lower page count and hence lower printing costs.

Al

Edited: to add query re staring hero points

Edited August 22, 2008 by Al.

[Newt]

A quick update

Thank you all for the suggestions so far.

A lot of great ideas have come out of this thread and I'm flattered by the obvious care that has gone into them.

I'm currently working on a change document, which outlines all the changes I'll be making to SQ Zero from suggestions here and via email that I've received.

I should be in the position to post this by the end of the week, so you can see what the final game will look like.

A short summary of the changes;

Basic and Advanced skills are going, just one shorter streamlined skill list where every skill starts at its base.

No more Golf Bags of Weapons skills - just Ranged, Close and Unarmed combat.

Battle magic - get rid of all those pesky pointless traits. Also Bladesharp/Blugeon etc all become one spell (Weapon enhancement or something similar)

Combat - Piercing attacks to be removed, since they duplicate in a fiddly way what Criticals achive. Talking of which, only one type of critical the classic maximum damage. I'm going to remove Impale and Crushing criticals, since although they look nice on paper (in RQ2) in play I've found they confuse players. Also Knockbacks are going to be removed, too fiddly alongside the rest of the simplified rules and if you actually score one you've probably inflicted a Major Wound so they are kinda redundant in the scheme of things.

Sorcery - One Sorcery Casting Skill - which absorbs all the manipulation skills, and provides the limit for Manipulation as deleriad suggested in post 5. Also Sorcery spells do not have percentile casting chances attached to them, use the Sorcery Casting to determine success.

Illusion spells - For both Sorcery and Divine versions of Illusion, combine all the spells together and make allot more straight forward.

I want to make these changes because it really streamlines and simplifies the game, but both Character Generation and Skills chapters are going to need rewriting, the former in quite a major way.

Anyway thank you all for all your feedback

Edited August 18, 2008 by Newt

[NeilFord]

Formatting and lay out

I really like 3 column layouts. Reading them makes me feel like a grown up. Also since many (most?) people will access SQ as a download and print it themselves 3 columns per page should lead to lower page count and hence lower printing costs.

Al

The biggest problem with this is that it makes them really hard to read on a small screen (like this here 13" MacBook or my 10" Advent), when single column is so much nicer.

Maybe we can persuade Newt to output a couple of versions.

- Neil.

[Newt]

Well the wonderful thing about the entire deal is if some one wants to do an alternative version, with it being released under the OGL you can do this I've already had someone contact me about doing a French translation

That be said Dom Mooney showed me the two version of Sufficiently Advanced that are available when I saw him at Continuum; the usual Hardcover which is 187 pages, 8.25" x 10.75", casewrap-hardcover binding, full-color interior ink and the 'Pocket edition' paperback version. Both are available via Lulu.com.

Its been suggested that I go down a similar route, which I'm quite keen to do since I quite fancy having a portable paperback SQ version that I can take around me on my travels. I quite like the Burning Wheel books because of this portability and of course it brings back fond memories of the Fighting Fantasy Roleplaying game which was my first intro to RPGs back in the 80s.

Edited August 18, 2008 by Newt

[NeilFord]

Well my layout skills aren't that hot, but I'd give it a go.

Now, where did I put my page layout programs?

- Neil.

[deleriad]

Basic and Advanced skills are going, just one shorter streamlined skill list where every skill starts at its base.

I was going to disagree with this but having had a thought, I think you are right, pretty much everything in the advanced skills list could go onto one list. However, part of the fun of BRP systems has been making up your own skills so I think you need to leave an option in there to expand into new skills.

If it's useful to you, I long since converted the base chance of every MRQ skill into two stats added together rather than the somewhat random and obscure set of base chances in the SRD. It's just simpler. That might also be the way to go with SQ. You can also tweak it to represent the fact that some skills are more widely practised. So for example, Culture (Own) & language (Own) could start at INT+INT+30 while Culture & language (Other) starts at INT+INT. Conversely, Stealth skills could be DEX+DEX-SIZ.

On cha gen, a simple method I use for fast PC creation in MRQ (and to judge the strength of an NPC) is to give them 9 skill adds which have to go onto 9 different skills: +50, 40, 40, 30, 30, 30, 20, 20, 10. On the whole it makes for structured choices and highlights the player's concept as that tends to be defined by their 50/40/40 choices. It usually gets the character starting out with their best skill around 70-80 and there's usually not enough to give the player everything they want.

Finally, I do find +/-25% to be an annoying modifier. 63-25 is one of those examples where you have to spend time figuring it out. I woud be in favour (as someone else mentioned) having the simple modifiers as 20/40/60. Something like "easy, very easy, what could possibly go wrong" & "hard, very hard, got a bad feeling about this."

Cheers

[PK Games]

Im fond of at least 2 columns and 3 columns for mass descriptions, such as spells, skills, weapons and so forth. Most rules and what not should be in the 2 column variety for ease of reading and skimming.

However, I am also a big fan of artwork in these projects, even in free PDFs. Even the stock art available at drivethrurpg.com is good for this use. Check out Goblinoid Games' Lanyrinth Lord for an example. I find it a more appealing work then OSRIC from Knights and Knaves or even Goblinoid Games' GORE event though I prefer the other systems over old school D&D (Im an old school AD&D fan, especially 2E).

On another note, is there a mailing list we can sign up for to be notified when SQ is ready for release?

[rleduc]

Conversely, Stealth skills could be DEX+DEX-SIZ.

In past games I have done almost exactly the same thing you describe in your post, except for stealth I do DEX+10-SIZ. The “plus 10” (ten being the handier form of 10.5 which is the average roll on 3D6) normalizes the effect of SIZ – an average size person gets no bonus to stealth derived from Size while a size 15 gets -5% rather then -15% and a size 3 gets +7%.

[Al.]

Warning: Bloody stupid person stating something very obvious ahead

Last night I ran a Dr Who game with SimpleQuest. The only rules change I made was using a much shorter skill list (similar to the one I posted here). If you are going to do similar then halve the number of skill points available during creation! (i.e. SQ0 gives a total of 225 points (100 basic, 50 advanced, 50 weapons, 25 for personalisation) and across a much shorter this was too much)

We managed to generate two characters per player and get through an episode in one evening so I reckon that the rules qualify as a success!

Al

Edited August 22, 2008 by Al.

[Al.]

On cha gen, a simple method I use for fast PC creation in MRQ (and to judge the strength of an NPC) is to give them 9 skill adds which have to go onto 9 different skills: +50, 40, 40, 30, 30, 30, 20, 20, 10.

I did this in Shadowrun to 'encourage' (read 'force') players to have a skill at a level other than 6. Years later I find that there's a similar idea buried away in 5.6 Call of Cthulhu along with a suggestion of allowing 1000 skill points in character creation. Both of which annoyed me. Why? I hear you ask. Well because I have in the past been right peeved at the comical incompetence of the teams of investigators I was playing in and there are two solutions sat there in the damn rulebook.

Finally, I do find +/-25% to be an annoying modifier. 63-25 is one of those examples where you have to spend time figuring it out.

Hmmm I'd not though of that! I disagree with the +25 but I do know many fine, fine roleplayers who struggle with -25. And if you're going to make the change then a symmetrical one would actually be easier.

Speaking personally (and its just me) I'd struggle with 3 levels of difficultness and easiness and would only use 2 of each.

Al

[Newt]

Wow!

Great stuff AL

I'm currently rewriting the SQ Character chapter, with a much simpler and shortened list. so perhaps your warning is timely. I am reducing points totals as it is, but this makes me want to take some extra care with it.

Grand to hear you ran a successful game.:thumb:

[Newt]

Having +- 20/50 has been pointed out to me by others who are feeding back via email, so I am giving it serious consideration.

For the record I struggle with fiddly maths, which is why I'm reducing it in SQ.