What was your favourite version of RuneQuest to date

[styopa]

On 12/19/2017 at 6:15 PM, Richard S. said:

Well I actually ran RQ2 RAW for like two or three years. My players weren't that adventurous and a lot of the time we just hand waved something or other because we didn't want to find/create rules for it.

IMO "house ruling" is just when the hand-waving happens enough that you write it down so you make sure you're consistent in application later.

 

[DSC1978]

No game is perfect. But if there is a real need to House Rule, then I believe the game is flawed. The background and the rest of the system should be enough to prevent the GM and players from houseruling. In my humble opinion as usual. When I purchase a  product I don’t want to have to change it to make it usable. But just my two cents...

Edited December 22, 2017 by DSC1978

[tedopon]

I have played several dozen different rpg systems over the years and honestly cannot think of a single one where we didn't have at least a couple houserules.

I think that may just be the attitude of the players, though. I tend to play with like minded people for the most part. Most players I really connect with are people who don't take rules too seriously or can't be bothered to know how all nuts and bolts of a system interact. Making something up on the fly and sticking to it is just how I've always played. If it works fine, who cares if it's balanced or "by the book".

[DreadDomain]

On ‎22‎/‎12‎/‎2017 at 7:31 AM, styopa said:

In the classical programming universe, "alpha" means some stuff works, some stuff doesn't, and we're still adding features.  "Beta" means features are complete, but not wholly functional.  An "alpha" version can certainly be playable as long as you stay away from the bits under-construction or not-yet-added.  I'd still say the January Draft was likely an alpha- with features still being added. 

I think my point wasn't that it was unplayable, but the (pretty lengthy) threads in which there were substantial clarifications to the RQG rules as presented showed that it was definitely still "under construction".  And parts weren't even present: Sorcery, for example, wasn't even kludged into the quickstart.

I'll say it: I'm not sure why they shot their bolt like that? 

I would put it on the count of over optimism or over enthusiasm. Since the beginning announcements have been made and then reversed and dates and plans have shifted.

"Pete Nash and Lawrence Whittaker are on the design team! Wait, no they're not, welcome Jason Durall. And the game will not be based of RQ6 but on RQ2/RQ3 like we have been saying all along. But the game will still be released for Christmas 2016. Actually no, Gen Con 2017. Well hang on, end of 2017 would be more realistic so let's release a quickstart mid 2017. Darn, finally our big release will be Gen Con 2018."

I believe making the decision to use RQ2/3 as a base instead of RQ6 and the already written Adventure in Glorantha simply inflicted a lot more work on them and since then, they have been doing their best to produce and release as quickly as possible. Please note I do not say this decision was good or bad, I simply observe what I believe was the impact of that decision. The quickstart was released at a time when they still believed they could release the books (at least electronically) by the end of 2017 so in that context, it made sense.

In my opinion they have made some strange decisions along the way and Jeff has made a few statements that rubbed me the wrong way (but again, I will put that on over enthusiasm on his part) but I applaud Chaosium's commitment to communicate through the process.

[DreadDomain]

On ‎20‎/‎12‎/‎2017 at 7:23 AM, Mechashef said:

 Does anyone play any version of RQ without their own House Rules?

I wonder how many people are already planning on House Ruling RQG even before it is released.

Strangely enough, RuneQuest is probably the game that I have house ruled the most but also, in the 90's, the game I was basing on my house rules to other games. Aside from that, I played many games by the book (Pendragon, Rolemaster, Talislanta, TDE, etc.) and have played both HERO and GURPS as is for decades.

Of course it depends what house ruling means. I personally do not consider house ruling:

1) hand waving (making an executive decision during a game instead of chasing the exact rule in the book)

2) choosing an option in the game instead of another ('the velocity damage rule is made to be easy in play but can be unrealistic at high speed, if you want more realism, use this table instead...")

3) not enforcing a specific rule in a game ("guys don't bother about status/endurance/psionics/whatever, it won't be very important in this game")

Examples of house ruling that I have done:

1) rewriting how the SR pacing works in RQ 3 to make it more tactical and blow-by-blow

2) changing modifiers for combat maneuvers in RQ3 to make them fit into the above

3) adding cultural characteristics modifiers in my Glorantha game (inspired by RQ Viking)

4) adding 3 attributes in MHR and also using d5, d7, d9 and d11 

[Jeff]

9 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

I would put it on the count of over optimism or over enthusiasm. Since the beginning announcements have been made and then reversed and dates and plans have shifted.

"Pete Nash and Lawrence Whittaker are on the design team! Wait, no they're not, welcome Jason Durall. And the game will not be based of RQ6 but on RQ2/RQ3 like we have been saying all along. But the game will still be released for Christmas 2016. Actually no, Gen Con 2017. Well hang on, end of 2017 would be more realistic so let's release a quickstart mid 2017. Darn, finally our big release will be Gen Con 2018."

I believe making the decision to use RQ2/3 as a base instead of RQ6 and the already written Adventure in Glorantha simply inflicted a lot more work on them and since then, they have been doing their best to produce and release as quickly as possible. Please note I do not say this decision was good or bad, I simply observe what I believe was the impact of that decision. The quickstart was released at a time when they still believed they could release the books (at least electronically) by the end of 2017 so in that context, it made sense.

In my opinion they have made some strange decisions along the way and Jeff has made a few statements that rubbed me the wrong way (but again, I will put that on over enthusiasm on his part) but I applaud Chaosium's commitment to communicate through the process.

Let me weigh in here. Had we used MRQ2/RQ6 as the base of the new RQ it likely would have created far more work than using RQ2/3 as the base. The draft RQ:AiG was a long way from where I wanted RQ to be - and its mechanics were harder to align with Greg's material (which was written on a RQ2/3 platform). Now that's not saying RQ:AiG was a bad book, but it did not do what we wanted it to. Too many of our changes affected core mechanics of the system - and it quickly became clear this was something we could paper over.

Doing the RQ Quickstart was a crazy idea thrown into the mix - sure it sidelined Jason and I for a couple of months, but it also gave us huge amounts of real playtesting feedback from a pool of several thousand people. Which then got fed back into the core rules.

Something else that dramatically increased the amount of work involved was the decision to include a complete bestiary and a gamemaster's pack, complete with new scenarios, sandbox setting, statted up leaders, maps, etc. Plus the art involved. The amount of new art in these books is comparable to the Guide to Glorantha. Andrey Fetisov, Roman Kisiev, Michelle Lockamy, Simon Roy, Olivier Sanfilippo, Vandel, Bernard Bittler, Kalin Kadiev, and more produced something that I hope is a visual treat beyond any RPG Chaosium has done to date. But that means that when there is a conflict between meeting an arbitrary guess-timate date or meeting our production and content quality goals, well that's an easy decision.

Jeff 

 

[Oracle]

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

...

But that means that when there is a conflict between meeting an arbitrary guess-timate date or meeting our production and content quality goals, well that's an easy decision.

Jeff 

 

I'm a big fan of better quality over holding a timeline (I'm working as a Quality Engineer in an IT company, so I know about the conflicts, that this may produce ...). Therefore I'm supporting this approach wholeheartedly.

Edited December 23, 2017 by Oracle

[D]

I'd rather have a delayed high quality product than an on time one thats poor quality.

[styopa]

20 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

4) adding 3 attributes in MHR and also using d5, d7, d9 and d11 

Sorry, but I found that surprisingly hilarious.

10 hours ago, Jeff said:

Too many of our changes affected core mechanics of the system -

That's always the sense I got from the Chaosium team; afaik they've never disparaged what RQ6 accomplished, and in fact were fairly complimentary of it as a mechanical system, just that in their view it didn't fit where they wanted to go.

10 hours ago, Jeff said:

Doing the RQ Quickstart was a crazy idea thrown into the mix... (it}... gave us huge amounts of real playtesting feedback from a pool of several thousand people. Which then got fed back into the core rules.

Honestly that had never occurred to me but was a really good idea.

10 hours ago, Jeff said:

that's an easy decision.

I doubt it was that easy?  Certainly I'd agree it was the right decision, but it can't have been easy pushing out production on a flagship product that people are anticipating, missing GenCon, missing that Christmas, etc.

I think it's a strong idea to include a lot of art, even though that adds costs and delay; you're putting out something that is the antithesis of the bog-standard, classic quasi-medieval-European setting; that's one of its charms.  Concomitant with that is a rather greater necessity to provide whatever visualization assistance you can.

In parallel with that, I've always wondered if we could take the utility of the AA Atlas and have glorantha.com host image links people find real-world images that illustrate particular places in Glorantha, for example this could be looking NE along shore of the Sweet Sea (Ssar On Gror), NE of Varkarunan.

[Paid a bod yn dwp]

12 hours ago, Jeff said:

The amount of new art in these books is comparable to the Guide to Glorantha. Andrey Fetisov, Roman Kisiev, Michelle Lockamy, Simon Roy, Olivier Sanfilippo, Vandel, Bernard Bittler, Kalin Kadiev, and more produced something that I hope is a visual treat beyond any RPG Chaosium has done to date.

 

Can’t wait to see the results.  Chuffed Chaosium are taking the time to get this right.

[DreadDomain]

19 hours ago, Jeff said:

Let me weigh in here. Had we used MRQ2/RQ6 as the base of the new RQ it likely would have created far more work than using RQ2/3 as the base. The draft RQ:AiG was a long way from where I wanted RQ to be - and its mechanics were harder to align with Greg's material (which was written on a RQ2/3 platform). Now that's not saying RQ:AiG was a bad book, but it did not do what we wanted it to. Too many of our changes affected core mechanics of the system - and it quickly became clear this was something we could paper over.

Thanks for the insight Jeff. It pretty much aligns with my suspicions. My thinking was that RQ6 and AiG could have been used as the base for the new RQ but it would have meant sacrificing part of the vision Chaosium had for the new game. The decision was made to maintain the integrity of the vision.

What is the Greg's material you are refering to?

When you mention @too many of our changes", is it a reference to how character creation will be integrated with the background and how the runes will be integrated with characters? I expect these two features to be the highlight of the game (from a mechanic perspective, see below).  

19 hours ago, Jeff said:

Doing the RQ Quickstart was a crazy idea thrown into the mix - sure it sidelined Jason and I for a couple of months, but it also gave us huge amounts of real playtesting feedback from a pool of several thousand people. Which then got fed back into the core rules.

I was quite happy to see an "advanced preview" of RQG and I hope the feedback you got guided you to make the game even better. My personal reaction to it was fairly positive with some "darn they kept that rules for RQ2/3 as is.." here and there.

19 hours ago, Jeff said:

Something else that dramatically increased the amount of work involved was the decision to include a complete bestiary and a gamemaster's pack, complete with new scenarios, sandbox setting, statted up leaders, maps, etc. Plus the art involved. The amount of new art in these books is comparable to the Guide to Glorantha. Andrey Fetisov, Roman Kisiev, Michelle Lockamy, Simon Roy, Olivier Sanfilippo, Vandel, Bernard Bittler, Kalin Kadiev, and more produced something that I hope is a visual treat beyond any RPG Chaosium has done to date. But that means that when there is a conflict between meeting an arbitrary guess-timate date or meeting our production and content quality goals, well that's an easy decision.

I am a bit surprised that you qualify the announced release dates as "arbitrary guess-timate". Although release dates are probably approximate at best, I would have believed publishers would announced said dates base on "informed planning" and "best available information".  That being said, based on what was previewed so far, I expect production value, specifically art, to be the other highlight of the games and I certainly prefer the quality and content to be top notch over "being on time". It certainly is refreshing to know that Chaosium now has the financial resilience to delay a product in order to make it the best it can.

[David Scott]

I've done a companion poll here: