RQG: how much RQ3 still in it?

[PhilHibbs]

There's also more detail, for instance Speak Other Language has three whole pages.

[Madrona]

39 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

LOL! It's funny how the rule books get bigger but we somehow end up with fewer rules in the books. But they did use smaller fonts back in the old days (like 4 point in the RQ2 appendix).

Absolutely true. I decided to do a quick scan of my RQ3 box (I don't have RQ2 outside of a pdf)

And discounting the duplicate adventurer sheets and duplicate ship sheets, including each map panel as 1 page... Its 301 pages, which includes its rather short bestiary and GM guide. However, RQ3 has small font, basically no illustrations, and a minimum of fluff, mostly in Cormac's Saga, which are short inline paragraphs.

However as far as amount of rules go, RQG has a lot of absolutely new rules.. If we calculate things that RQ3 didn't have. (I'm counting Shamanism as this because TBH RQ3's shaman stuff was basically not a thing) family genning/homeland, runic affinity, everything to do with passions and runes, that adds in 68 pages of content completely unfound in RQ3.

Though RQG also, as the above poster stated has significant expansion of certain things, like language. It honestly has a pretty surprising amount of content considering just how much art is in the book and how comfy it is to read.

[g33k]

6 hours ago, Jeff said:

We will have plenty of additional rules in the GMs book.

That is appropriate and expected.  In fact, it rather veers into "goes without saying" territory. 

But as a response to noting that THIS book has a weapon with a "disarm" feature that doesn't exist in this book, it seems... less than satisfactory.

ummm... ygmv?   dunno.   still not working for me.

Edited June 8, 2018 by g33k

[g33k]

7 hours ago, trystero said:

In RQ:G, you can make an intentional knockback "attack" which does no damage, but you can't knock a foe back by hitting them for a lot of damage with a regular attack.

Honestly, I don't think lots of damage SHOULD equate to automatic knockback.  An arrow, for example, only offers a relatively small amount of F=ma (because the "m" is so slight); sticking in the armor and doing NO damage, it still delivers all the knockback-force, physically, that it would do on a damaging hit; it's not all that much force.

Slashing damage tends to strike obliquely, so I would again expect little or no "knockback" in the classic sense; spun-round, staggered, unbalanced, etc... but not "back."

 

If I were wanting to implement knockback-on-damage, I'd probably (off the top of my head) link it to SIZ+STR vs SIZ+Damage, mod by weapon-size, with Blunt weapons being considered 1 size larger... or something like that.

 

 

7 hours ago, trystero said:

The Sickle-Sword description on p. 210 says, "this sword has a curved single-edge blade used for slashing and for disarming an opponent" (emphasis added), but I don't see any rules for disarming opponents.

This is a good catch.  I'd consider it an erratum; per Jeff it looks like there WILL BE rules, but until then it looks like a reference to rules that don't exist...

[21st Century Moose]

Splitting off the "Agility" category; separating Magic Points from POW; 2d6+6 for INT and SIZ. It's definitely not a case of "RQ3 bad". 

[BWP]

1 hour ago, 21stCenturyMoose said:

It's definitely not a case of "RQ3 bad". 

OK, there's a handful of stuff that was included.  Out of all the possible stuff that was included, "a handful" is not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Some of the omissions are just silly, veering into the outright stupid (YMMV, obviously).  Deliberately making big monsters more easy to kill doesn't enhance the heroism, it reduces it.  "I killed Bigclub!" is not so big a boast if any fool can do it.

The RQG rules were designed to make RQ2 supplements fit in more easily?  No-one gave us those concessions when RQ3 was published (and a lot of the RQ2 supplements were still readily available in stores)! -- it was convert-it-yourself-or-too-bad.  And what about making the RQ3 supplements fit in more easily?  (Granted, not quite so many of them ... I'd take Griffin Mountain over Griffin Island any day of the week, but where's the RQ2 Strangers in Prax?  etc. etc.)

I don't honestly care about the "convertability" of stuff, and I've been adapting RQ2 NPCs into RQ3 rules on a regular basis for a very long time, and only very rarely found it too inconvenient to cope with.  It's a very weak argument for retrograding hit points etc.

Obviously, tastes vary and opinions differ.  I'm cool with that.  I'm glad that advancing RQG mechanics (and yes, I mean that in the sense that I think some of the RQG mechanics decisions are retrogrades-in-a-negative-sense) so that they look more like RQ3 than RQ2 will be a relatively low-effort exercise, because there's no question that it's an exercise that I'll be undertaking.

 

[DreadDomain]

22 hours ago, trystero said:

Things I miss from RQ3:

Things I don't miss from RQ3:

Things I expected to miss but so far don't: 

That's a good way to look at it!

Things I miss from RQ3: 

Skill category modifiers - if only because introducing breakpoints in charateristics is not a great design. Not has much as an issue when you randomly roll the characteristics but players will certainly train to get to 13 or 17.

The formula for location HP) - RQ3 made a lot more sense as a % of HP

Disarm attempts - This is such a basic maneuver, it deserved to be in the Core book more than say Phalanx formation. However, I am glad to say the GM book will give us more combat options (combat is my main/only disapointement in RQG)

Melee rounds of 10 SR - if only it is easier to figure out when something taking 47 SR will occur (4 whole MR plus 7 SR). It also has the benefit of disconnecting SR and seconds (a 12 second MR divided into 12 SR) 

Things I don't miss from RQ3:

Fatigue Points

ENC penalties to spell-casting chances

Sorcery skills as casting-chance limitations

POW sacrifices for specific castings of divine/Rune spells

One-use divine/Rune spells for initiates

Things I might miss later but so far don't: 

knockback for attacks doing damage > SIZ in melee - mainly because I haven't paid attention yet to which one works/plays better

The formula for Hit Points - mainly because I haven't paid attention yet to which one works/plays better

The missile hit-location table - neat but not a real deal breaker

Separate Attack and Parry skills for weapons - neat but not a real deal breaker

Weapons having AP instead of HP - mainly because I haven't paid attention yet to which one works/plays better

[Jeff]

1 hour ago, DreadDomain said:

That's a good way to look at it!

Things I miss from RQ3: 

Skill category modifiers - if only because introducing breakpoints in charateristics is not a great design. Not has much as an issue when you randomly roll the characteristics but players will certainly train to get to 13 or 17.

The formula for location HP) - RQ3 made a lot more sense as a % of HP

Disarm attempts - This is such a basic maneuver, it deserved to be in the Core book more than say Phalanx formation. However, I am glad to say the GM book will give us more combat options (combat is my main/only disapointement in RQG)

In 35 years of playing RuneQuest, I've seen only one disarm attempt (back in the early days of RQ3). I've seen scores of attempts to line up into a shield wall or phalanx (everywhere from battles to trying to form a line in Snake Pipe Hollow). Jason and I cut out Disarm because both of us consider it to be something that rarely gets used and isn't particularly key to the genre. We'll have notes on it in the GM Book, but given that just about every adult in Dragon Pass knows how to form up into a phalanx (at least because of militia training), I do think that it is at least significant for the genre to have some idea how to do that in the core book. 

[DreadDomain]

34 minutes ago, Jeff said:

In 35 years of playing RuneQuest, I've seen only one disarm attempt (back in the early days of RQ3). I've seen scores of attempts to line up into a shield wall or phalanx (everywhere from battles to trying to form a line in Snake Pipe Hollow). Jason and I cut out Disarm because both of us consider it to be something that rarely gets used and isn't particularly key to the genre. We'll have notes on it in the GM Book, but given that just about every adult in Dragon Pass knows how to form up into a phalanx (at least because of militia training), I do think that it is at least significant for the genre to have some idea how to do that in the core book. 

Clearly the design team had different play experiences than mine. My experience is the exact opposite and in our games, we have seen countless disarm attemps, specifically in duels or when the desired outcome of a combat was to capture or humiliate the opponent. So disarms, aimed blow, knockback, knock-out/stunning attacks are all important, and frankly fairly standard, maneuvers for my play experience. As it is currently, I find the combat options in RQG lacking. Hopefully the GM book will provide more meat.

Not saying Chariot Combat and Phalanx Combat are not cool though.

By the way, I appreciate the insight of your point of view on the matter.

Edited June 9, 2018 by DreadDomain

[Atgxtg]

6 hours ago, 21stCenturyMoose said:

Splitting off the "Agility" category; separating Magic Points from POW; 2d6+6 for INT and SIZ. It's definitely not a case of "RQ3 bad". 

The Agility category is a wash. We lost the Parry category. Like BWP said, it's a handful of RQ3 things.

 

42 minutes ago, Jeff said:

In 35 years of playing RuneQuest, I've seen only one disarm attempt (back in the early days of RQ3). I've seen scores of attempts to line up into a shield wall or phalanx (everywhere from battles to trying to form a line in Snake Pipe Hollow). 

I've never seen players attempt to line up in a Phalanx. I have seen players go for a disarm.

 

BTW, wouldn't a phalanx be fairly useless with the size of most RPG groups? It was a useful battlefield tactic, but pretty worthless in a skirmish situation. The enemy would just outflank it. 

[Jeff]

Crazy! Seriously, in 35 years I can count the number of times I have seen those tactics used on the fingers of one hand. I've seen aimed shots used more with the new edition (large because adventurers tend to start with better combat skills than in previous editions) than ever before, but disarms, knockback, stunning attacks have in my experience (and my experience is broad and varied) been about as rare as the proverbial hen's teeth. The new RuneQuest is the size of the Keeper's Book (which was as big as we were going to let it get), and so what rules 

But that's why there is a Gamemasters Book coming out - an opportunity to give more options and tools. 

[Richard S.]

Eh. Different groups, different perspectives. Luckily I never had to worry about those things because we never fully learned the rules and were to preoccupied laughing at the hilariously comical deaths of friend and foe alike to even care if we had neat rules like disarming and knockback, which we didn't because RQ2 was simple like that. I am a tad disappointed at some of the design choices but I can houserule it anyways and it's still a good game nonetheless.

Edited June 9, 2018 by Richard S.

[Atgxtg]

Yeah seriously. I think this is where the RQ2/RQ3 schism starts. Just how how Jason considered Worlds of Wonder to be his core BRP rules. I think we are having very different gaming experiences and expectations. In my view, I'm amazed that the RQG rulebook is so big, yet lacks basic fundamental stuff that RQ3 covered in an 84 page Players Book. 

You folk at Chaosium had to pick priorities and made some choices, and I respect that. I don't necessarily agree with those priorities or choices, but that's life. 

[Joerg]

I guess the disarming etc. tactics come into play when the "I offer ransom" move isn't trusted or won't be accepted. But then, "disarming" always has had also another meaning in RQ combat, so called shots to that limb are sufficient in this regard.

Knockback - especially with a shield or a kick - has been problematic in normal RQ3 combats involving normal sized but decently strong combatants. The resistance rolls made this often desirable outcome of a combat round hard to achieve.

 

Much of this makes me think of potential "Furry Wisdom" comics, e.g. with the exchange "You need to learn to listen better, Conan - we asked you to decapacitate him, not decapitate." "Well, he stopped moving, didn't he?" 

 

 

[soltakss]

On 6/8/2018 at 1:32 AM, BWP said:

I don't  expect RQG mechanics to change in any significant way now, of course, but as the game goes on I do hope we can get away from the apparent "RQ3 bad, RQ2 good" philosophy.

Although the design philosophy is that RQ3 introduced some changes that didn't work well, it is not a case of RQ3 bad, RQ2 good.

 

As it is, I expect that any games of RQG that I run in the future will come with a whole new swag of house rules, many of which will be there simply to reintroduce aspects of RQ3 that I never had any complaints about.

Sure, as would I.

 

So my question boils down to: how much of RQ3 has actually made its way into RQG -- i.e., tweaks or additions to the RQ2 rules that clearly were sourced from RQ3?

A surprising amount.

• INT/SIZ use 2D6+6
• Acolytes have been renamed God talkers, but are substantially the same
• Spirit Magic is used instead of Battle Magic and has no limits on Variable spells
• Rune Magic has no limits to Stackable spells
• Enchantments are more similar to RQ3 than RQ2
• Temples are pretty much as RQ3
• Towns and Cities are pretty much as RQ3
• Game System uses incremental percentile skills, rather than multiples of 5
• Experience/Training/Research is mostly as RQ3
• Non-Combat modifiers are generally as RQ3, even with the Dropped Lantern Table.

In fact, I am very tempted to use RQG as the base to future RQ campaigns, instead of RQ3, as it is better in many ways, and I am speaking as a huge fan of RQ3.

* I say "apparent" because I'm only picking up on the comments from those that have got the PDF and are quoting here and there.

If you liked the changes brought in for RQ3 then you will probably like the rules in RQG.

 

Some things are different. 

• The Resistance Table goes up to 95, as in RQ2, instead of 99, as in RQ3. 
• Divine Magic is Rune magic, as in RQ2.
• Sorcery is enough like RQ3 to be easy to convert, but different enough to fit into RQG better

[soltakss]

13 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

LOL! It's funny how the rule books get bigger but we somehow end up with fewer rules in the books. But they did use smaller fonts back in the old days (like 4 point in the RQ2 appendix).

Oh, we have a lot more rules, they are just different rules. 

[soltakss]

12 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

There's also more detail, for instance Speak Other Language has three whole pages.

Not necessarily a good thing, that could have been condensed very easily.

[styopa]

16 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

There's also more detail, for instance Speak Other Language has three whole pages.

/facepalm.

It falls between two stools: RQ2 had a charming, simplistic set of rules.  No, not everything was covered specifically, but it left great swathes of open space for individual GM's to rule/be creative.  RQ3 took a much more (too much, to some) wargamey approach as a more sterile yet comprehensive rule set.  RQG sections, depending on the author, seem to vacillate between the two poles a little bit inconsistently.

[Atgxtg]

6 hours ago, soltakss said:

Not necessarily a good thing, that could have been condensed very easily.

Yeah, that's my take on it. Three pages to explain languages that nobody, except perhaps Greg Stafford, knows the words to or will ever actually speak.  I think I'm slipping off the fence.

[Jeff]

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

Yeah, that's my take on it. Three pages to explain languages that nobody, except perhaps Greg Stafford, knows the words to or will ever actually speak.  I think I'm slipping off the fence.

Given that most of that material was in Appendix G of RQ2 (or was from RQ3's Genertela boxed set), I am surprised by this reaction. 

[Atgxtg]

31 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Given that most of that material was in Appendix G of RQ2 (or was from RQ3's Genertela boxed set), I am surprised by this reaction. 

Let me try to explain my reaction. In RQ2 cramming lots of additional stuff in the appendix in 4 point font for what was already a fairly complete (cults being the one big omission) 144 page book is something I consider as a perk or freebie. Spending 3 pages of that in a 446 page rulebook that lacks even a token bestiary or the complete rules for combat I consider to be a waste. Basically something more important should have taken up that space. 

It looks to me like Chaoiusm is taking an RPG that it's already sold to us several times, breaking it up into multiple books, and adding a bunch of fluff to get people to pay ten times what they paid when they bought it the first time around. 

What's in RQG that's not in other Chosium products to make us want to buy it? Incorporating Passions from Pendragon doesn't wow me-Pendragon Pass came out decades ago. Reworking the old Trait system from Pendragon/Thieves World into the Rune % doesn't wow me either. Greg could have drawn on Pendragon for Glorantha back in the 80s. What's in that 446 page book that hasn't been in a Chaosium product before that will make people want to play RQG? 

I'm not saying that there isn't something there, but nothing posted here in the past on in any of the reviews has won me over yet. In fact, quite the opposite. It looks like I either have to wait and shell out for at least two more books to play this game-or I could just use the RQ2 books I already have, which should be close enough. But, if my RQ2 books are close enough, why should I buy the new books? Now again, I'm not saying that people shouldn't buy the new game, but I am wondering why? Three pages on Gloranthan languages don't win me over. Especially if they are 3 pages that I already bought 30+ years ago when I bought RQ2. 

Sorry to rant, and I don't mean to knock the game, I don't know enough about it yet to really judge if fairly, but why should someone who already has RQ2, RQ3 and the supplements buy RQG? Not for three pages on languages. Nor for 100 pages of art (We don't game art).

 

Edited June 9, 2018 by Atgxtg

[PhilHibbs]

27 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

It looks to me like Chaoiusm is taking an RPG that it's already sold to us several times, breaking it up into multiple books, and adding a bunch of fluff to get people to pay ten times what they paid when they bought it the first time around. 

 

That is grossly unfair. RQ2 was what, £8 in 1978? In earning power that translates to about £75 today. RQ3 boxed set was £40 when it came out, which is well over £150 in today's money.

[7Tigers]

It seems to me the main goal of RQ:G is to attract new players to Glorantha, not necessarily please 40 years of previous players.
"Ancient" players will still be able to beneficit from the future new content anyway...

[Atgxtg]

2 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

That is grossly unfair. RQ2 was what, £8 in 1978?

Maybe in the UK. It was something like $8 in the US. I think the boxed set went for $12, and I don't recall what the hardcover went for, although the new RQ2 hardcover sells for $19.95. Now ten times $8 is $80 and if the GM's book and bestiary sell for $27.95 each that's $83.85 which is in the ten time ball park for the core rules. And that's assuming the RQG hardcopy  costs the same as the PDF. Will it?

2 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

In earning power that translates to about £75 today. RQ3 boxed set was £40 when it came out, which is well over £150 in today's money.

Again UK pricing is different. People over there spent a lot more on some RPGs than we did in the US. But even in the early 80s RQ3 was noted for being overpriced, with the blame place sqaurely on Avalon Hill, who still priced things for the wargamming market. But considering page count and content, RQ3 had a lot in in that RQG lacks. 

 

Oh, and if it's about times and inflation and buying power, how come they can sell a hardcopy of RQ2 for under $20 today? And if RQG is basically RQ2 with some new bits added, why couldn't they have just resold RQ2 stuff and put the new bits into new supplements?

[Atgxtg]

23 minutes ago, 7Tigers said:

It seems to me the main goal of RQ:G is to attract new players to Glorantha, not necessarily please 40 years of previous players.
"Ancient" players will still be able to beneficit from the future new content anyway...

I doubt that it will. While RQ2 was novel and trend setting in 1978, the rules as passe today and lack a lot of thing people take for granted today such as disarm rules, non lethal combat). New players won't be impressed with a 40 year old game system. New players will want something that can play out of the box without having to buy a Gms book and bestiary. Yeah,  WotC can get away with that in D&D, but they are reselling a current game, relying on the old players to make the switch and bring the new players along. You don't have that sort of situation or fanbase with RQ. 

Edited June 9, 2018 by Atgxtg