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RQG: how much RQ3 still in it?


BWP

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42 minutes ago, BWP said:

If only people didn't respond to serious comments with fatuous generalisations.  Oh well. :(

"Many games"?  Well, there's been a couple I suppose.  There have been many more published in the last 30 years that generally only required one book; of course all publishers want you to buy more than one, but only a handful have ever made it a pre-requisite

It has become fairly standard practise to have one book containing the necessary player knowledge in one volume. Monster starts aren't really player knowledge. Too much meta-knowledge goes already into knowing hit points, damage points and usability thresholds.

RQG offers the stats for the most common and second most dangerous of everyday opponents - humans. (Ducks aren't in it, agreed.)

Providing an introduction to a setting as massive as Glorantha (even limited to Dragon Pass) and a gritty rules system in one book is a huge order.

For gaming purposes, an abridged reference edition of the rules might be useful, but what exactly to leave out? The character creation stuff? Character creation is the activity that causes the most wear and tear on a rpg. Narratives and rules examples? Illustrations?

Putting scenarios into a rules book means that you have pages that get used at best once, and then rarely consulted again by players, GMs might steal opponent stats every now and then.

42 minutes ago, BWP said:

And someone new (or relatively new) might not even know about those prior works.  The question is what does the cover of RQG tell you about needing to buy more books.  If the answer is "nothing" then it's a potential source of customer complaint. 

Easily solvable by providing some content for download providing the minimum amount of info. That bestiary preview comes close.

 

 

 

42 minutes ago, BWP said:

"Clearly communicated" where?  I'm not talking about a potential buyer scouring these forums, I'm talking about a potential buyer who sees the printed book for the first time in a shop and who is thinking about buying it.  If he/she does, takes it home, cracks it open and starts going through it, only to discover that there are other books that must be purchased also to make the game complete -- well, that person may be a trifle peeved.  How does that help Chaosium?

Of course, if the covers of the book adequately inform the potential purchaser about the expected commitments -- then they have no-one to blame but themselves if they don't like it but go ahead and buy it anyway.

I'm certainly not advocating or recommending a sticker that says "WARNING you must read our online forums before deciding to buy this book"!

Adding a frame or sticker "You will find sample scenarios and sample monsters on our website" is fully acceptable. The Quickstart scenario fulfills a first step for "scenarios", but there should be one or two more. A blog series "encounter of the month" (or possibly even week) with some narrative or myth and the stats, possibly a mini-scenario, would of course be a good way to add freeby stuff and to keep people returning to your website. And content for this could  be created by customers.

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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15 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Adding a frame or sticker "You will find sample scenarios and sample monsters on our website" is fully acceptable. The Quickstart scenario fulfills a first step for "scenarios", but there should be one or two more. A blog series "encounter of the month" (or possibly even week) with some narrative or myth and the stats, possibly a mini-scenario, would of course be a good way to add freeby stuff and to keep people returning to your website. And content for this could  be created by customers.

Chaosium is only a handful of people and RQ is not their primary game. The Cult of Chaos here has a ton of stuff, scenarios, advice for Keepers etc all for CoC and contributed by the fans but gets no love from RQ fans - so if you all want lots of free stuff start putting up there yourselves. 

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2 hours ago, BWP said:

I guess no-one can stop you from thinking so, but you're wrong.

You disagree, fine, you have that right. You have no right to dictate the truth on a subject that is clearly a matter of opinion.

2 hours ago, BWP said:

"Clearly communicated" where

On the page where you buy the product.

https://www.chaosium.com/runequest-roleplaying-in-glorantha-pdf/

"These core rules are designed to be used in conjunction with the upcoming Glorantha Bestiary and the RuneQuest Gamemaster Pack and Screen."

Edited by PhilHibbs
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1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

On the page where you buy the product.

https://www.chaosium.com/runequest-roleplaying-in-glorantha-pdf/

"These core rules are designed to be used in conjunction with the upcoming Glorantha Bestiary and the RuneQuest Gamemaster Pack and Screen."

I think he's considering the case where somebody is browsing/buying in a FLGS.

And the back cover of the book does explicitly say, "All the rules you need to play."

 

C'es ne pas un .sig

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21 minutes ago, g33k said:

I think he's considering the case where somebody is browsing/buying in a FLGS.

And the back cover of the book does explicitly say, "All the rules you need to play."

 

Is it really not playable with just the core book?

I'm sorry but the suggestion that this is not a playable game is patently absurd.

Edited by simonh
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Check out the Runequest Glorantha Wiki for RQ links and resources. Any updates or contributions welcome!

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28 minutes ago, simonh said:

Is it really not playable with just the core book?

I'm sorry but the suggestion that this is not a playable game is patently absurd.

Not really.

To have a playable game, you have to have 2 things: mechanics, and material.

Mechanics we have.

Material is wildly inconsistent:

- creatures are largely omitted.  I get why (there's going to be a bestiary, so why produce the same material twice?) but that it's omitted is irrefutable.

- otoh we have ample cult info (which will be provided again in the cults book) and we have ample campaign info (which probably should have gone more appropriately into a settting-book for dragon pass)

If you discount the massive background knowledge most of us (here) come to RQG with, as well as the bookshelves and hard-drives full of RQ2, RQ3, MRQ, MRQ2, RQ6 stuff...then no, I would agree that *just with the RQG book alone* without creatures to populate the world, monsters to fight, etc this isn't a playable game in a single book...unless you want to populate your campaign exclusively with ducks*, trolls, trollkin, broo**, runners, elementals, and horses - that would be an odd campaign.

*the bestiary oddly names each creature in plural: the entry isn't for "duck" but duckS (which would be normal if the category were a broad genus, then there were subvarieties, ie Trolls or Elementals), but where the categories are for a single type it's syntactically odd?

**the bestiary says "broos".  I thought the singular and plural of broo was ... broo?

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1 hour ago, g33k said:

...the back cover of the book does explicitly say, "All the rules you need to play."

I suspect this is "play" as in "create and run a player character", and it's correct if so. The remaining books are ones you probably need if you're going to GM, but players don't need them.

— 
Self-discipline isnt everything; look at Pol Pot.”
—Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason

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You don't have to have creature stats to play the game, you can create as many human NPCs as you like and in fact fighting Lunars, Lunar sympathisers and collaborators, or bandits or Praxian raiders and such is a staple of Runequest. If you do pick up a scenario pack, or one of the many RQ scenarios available free online (Google Runequest Scenario, you'll get loads) on various sites, you can run them fine since NPC and monster stat blocks are usable with what you have in the core book. You might be missing some spell descriptions, but that's about it.

If you're a GM and not just a player, yes you'll probably want more material just as with many RPGs. If you want a set of rules, characters and a scenario in one book, cool. Pick up the Quickstart - it's just what you need.

Edited by simonh

Check out the Runequest Glorantha Wiki for RQ links and resources. Any updates or contributions welcome!

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6 hours ago, BWP said:

I guess no-one can stop you from thinking so, but you're wrong.

Yes it is (the monster descriptions part that is).  Unless your FRPG design very specifically and explicitly tells you that all of your characters are (and will forever) be human, and that no such thing as a non-human exists, and that you will never, ever be expected to enter into combat with anything that isn't another human -- then your design is not complete.  I guess I could be mistaken, but I've always operated under the assumption that Glorantha contains several sentient species, many of which are not very human-like at all; furthermore, adventuring in Glorantha might even require that you encounter and engage in combat with all manner of beasties (in addition to other humans and other non-humans).  Am I wrong in that assumption?

A core rulebook that is operating as a single complete volume does not need to include everything about everything.  It should, however, give you at least a sample of everything.  Sample lands, sample critters, sample local political situation, sample cults, whatever.  Other books will expand according to whatever their particular focus is.

I'm not saying that it's wrong for RQG to require other volumes; but per what I've written above, I think it would be very unwise for the game to not make that clear to the potential purchaser.

 

 

I hate moderating threads because I like to assume everyone can disagree like respectful members of the same community. Please consider this a warning.

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On 6/8/2018 at 9:32 AM, PhilHibbs said:

RQ3 Bigclub vs Bigclub would take around four normal average hits to the same arm to

The sensible mature person would say play the rules as written for a bit first

 

But that's not me

And I'm guessing that most of the people reading this particular thread on this particular forum have played various versions of RQ down the years and houseruled the bits they didn't like

 

In SBIII physical damage modifiers were capped at +3d6 (it was just that the damage modifier from bound demon weapons that could go stratospheric), I wonder if that would help with BigClub vs BigClub? (Whilst retaining the design aim of making Rurik vs BigClub a possibility)

 

I think that the (CON + modified by SIZ) HP is a reasonable design choice. But just the wrong way round. I'm ALMOST certain that the last time I played RQ2 we did it SIZ plus a modifier for CON (it may well have been exactly the same line on a chart as used for the RAW but just reading CON not SIZ)

One thing RQ3 in RQG is the negative POW modifier for Stealth. And I think that's still ripe for my all time favourite-house-rule-someone-else-made-up: Initiates or better in Thief and Hunter Cults add their POW as a positive modifier.

Completely and wildly off topic (I can defend the others at least halfheartedly): the standard deviation on 3d6 is 3, so why are characteristic modifiers in blocks of 4? I've never understood that.

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6 minutes ago, Al. said:

The sensible mature person would say play the rules as written for a bit first

 

But that's not me

And I'm guessing that most of the people reading this particular thread on this particular forum have played various versions of RQ down the years and houseruled the bits they didn't

like

Yup. Part of the difficulty here is that there are so many "official" versions and variants, plus all the unofficial ones that it's hard to get a consensus on particular rules. Probably everybody, even the authors (although I can't  speak for them), has some other version of something that they would prefer. 

6 minutes ago, Al. said:

In SBIII physical damage modifiers were capped at +3d6 (it was just that the damage modifier from bound demon weapons that could go stratospheric), I wonder if that would help with BigClub vs BigClub? (Whilst retaining the design aim of making Rurik vs BigClub a possibility)

I think it might help in that particular case but cause problems elsewhere, as every thing with STR+SIZ over 55 is going to end up doing the same damage. Bear, elephant, T-Rex, Giant, Dream Dragon,  real Dragon, the Crismon Bat, all capped at +3D6.

 

6 minutes ago, Al. said:

I think that the (CON + modified by SIZ) HP is a reasonable design choice. But just the wrong way round. I'm ALMOST certain that the last time I played RQ2 we did it SIZ plus a modifier for CON (it may well have been exactly the same line on a chart as used for the RAW but just reading CON not SIZ)

It is CON modified by SIZ in RQ2. If you did it the other way it was either a houserule or an oops. IMO SIZ modified by CON makes a lot more sense. 

6 minutes ago, Al. said:

One thing RQ3 in RQG is the negative POW modifier for Stealth. And I think that's still ripe for my all time favourite-house-rule-someone-else-made-up: Initiates or better in Thief and Hunter Cults add their POW as a positive modifier.

Completely and wildly off topic (I can defend the others at least halfheartedly): the standard deviation on 3d6 is 3, so why are characteristic modifiers in blocks of 4? I've never understood that.

Probably because the average on 3D6 is 10.5 as opposed to 10 or 11. With 3 point blocks someone 1 point off (9 or 12) gets bumped into a different category. Plus there is the fact that if you went 9-12 +0, 13-15 +5%, 16-18 +10%, 19-21 +15% it would bump up the human max for a stat from +10% to +15%.Or, it could be because the 4 point break in the table were something done 40 years ago, so they might not have done the standard deviation.

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59 minutes ago, Al. said:

Completely and wildly off topic (I can defend the others at least halfheartedly): the standard deviation on 3d6 is 3, so why are characteristic modifiers in blocks of 4? I've never understood that.

Close, it's 2.96, so maybe we should have tables with ranges to two decimal places. More seriously... what does the standard deviation have to do with the granularity of a table?

I think the most compelling reason is that increasing the resolution and keeping the multiples of ±5 would have loads of characters with +15 bonus, stacking up to 40 or 50 for some extreme characters. Game balance is more important that lining up with mathematical trivia.

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1 minute ago, PhilHibbs said:

Close, it's 2.96, so maybe we should have tables with ranges to two decimal places. More seriously... what does the standard deviation have to do with the granularity of a table?

Because it ties the stat bonuses to the distribution of the characteristic across the population. 

1 minute ago, PhilHibbs said:

I think the most compelling reason is that increasing the resolution and keeping the multiples of ±5 would have loads of characters with +15 bonus, stacking up to 40 or 50 for some extreme characters. Game balance is more important that lining up with mathematical trivia.

It's not trivia it's to do with game mechanics. so it is related. A smaller spread means more characters with a bonus and vice versa. Another factor might have been the stats for non-humans. Going from 4 point increments to 3 would bump a STR 32 bear from something like a +20% STR mod to attack up to a +30%.

Chaos stalks my world, but she's a big girl and can take of herself.

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55 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

It is CON modified by SIZ in RQ2. If you did it the other way it was either a houserule or an oops. IMO SIZ modified by CON makes a lot more sense.

Thanks for the reply

Most of it doesn't need a further response from me beyond 'I agree, that sounds about right'

 

On this particular point: either is a reasonable explanation, I'm pretty sure that it was a conscious decision

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Just now, Al. said:

On this particular point: either is a reasonable explanation, I'm pretty sure that it was a conscious decision

Or it could have been "D&D uses 3 point increments are we want to be different than D&D, so let's use 4 point increments!" If Ray Tourney still haunts this site he might know why, 'cause he was there. 

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Just now, simonh said:

It does anyway, just not a distribution tied to the standard deviation.

Yeah, but from a design standpoint it can help. Mind you it it depends a lot on how you design you RPG, and what you plan to do with the stats you end up with. For instance I use the Superworld/RQ3 approach to SIZ with SIZ on a doubling scale, and then use that to work out things like the STR score for engines based on the SIZ of the same STR as the thrust of the engine and so on. Someone using SIZ in a more abstract manner wouldn't do that or need that sort of approach. 

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17 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

A smaller spread means more characters with a bonus and vice versa.

Exactly my point. A smaller spread would lead to people with +50 category modifiers. Sure, I'm assuming that when you change one thing, you can't also change something else to bring it back in the other direction, but it works as it is and I don't see why a number that is close to the standard deviation helps at all. 4 works really well because, as an even number, it can be centred around the mean value (10.5), and 4 specifically leads to a very natural 1-4, 5-8, 9-12 chart which just naturally spans the centre point perfectly. Lining up with the mean is more important than almost lining up with the standard deviation, and you can't have both.

Edited by PhilHibbs
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Yeah, but they could just as easily gone with 3-5, 6-8, 9-12, 13-15, 16-18. And considering how  early that probably came in the design process the upper stat limits for humans, and the non-human stat averages probably weren't worked out yet. But is is interesting to think about why a game designer chose one thing instead of another. It can help with GMing too. A lot of the time if I can figure out what the author intended, it can help me deal with a problem that crops up in game. 

 

Anyway the guy who brought it up was just wondering, not complaining about it. 

Edited by Atgxtg
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1 minute ago, Atgxtg said:

Yeah, but they could just as easily gone with 3-5, 6-8, 9-12, 13-15, 16-18. And considering how  early that probably came in the design process the upper stat limits for humans, and the non-human stat averages probably weren't worked out yet. But is is interesting to think about why a game designer chose one thing instead of another. It can help with GMing too. A lot of the time if I can figure out what the author intended, it can help me deal with a problem that crops up in game. 

I suppose that does avoid the +20% modifier for a stat of 21, but 50 is still achievable with high INT and DEX, and low SIZ and POW, but I really don't see what the ranges of three give us. SIZ and INT or any 2D6 system stats have a standard deviation of 2.4, so what number range does that give us for stat bonuses?

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1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

I suppose that does avoid the +20% modifier for a stat of 21, but 50 is still achievable with high INT and DEX, and low SIZ and POW, but I really don't see what the ranges of three give us. SIZ and INT or any 2D6 system stats have a standard deviation of 2.4, so what number range does that give us for stat bonuses?

Depends on how big a range you want the 2D6 to cover. Are you trying to work out weight and IQ for humans? Or something else. Design wise, you kinda want to cover a decent range for the stat rated, but maybe not cover the extremes. But again the guy was just curious as to why they did it that way. .  I'm curious why the didn't shift the db formula a couple of points when they upped the average SIZ to 13 in RQ3. I'm not losing any sleep over it, but wonder why. I think it was because of 8 point/12 point plate instead of 6 point/9 point plate but it's just one of those things.  

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