Subsequent parries RQG

[soltakss]

On 9/9/2018 at 6:33 PM, Joerg said:

Leaving realism aside, if you check the exploits of Paris as a heroic archer in the Iliad, he does a veritable Legolas in that Trojan assault. Distance would have been under 20 meters, but in a melee situation where he dodged between heavily armored melee fighters.

When I first read the Iliad as a kid, yes I was that kind of kid, I was impressed with the descriptions of combat as they made sense to me. When I first played RuneQuest, I thought "hey, it's just like the combats in the Iliad".

[soltakss]

On 9/13/2018 at 9:44 AM, RosenMcStern said:

Same here. The only difference is that I went on and published it

And jolly good it is, too.

[DreadDomain]

On 9/12/2018 at 8:01 PM, RosenMcStern said:

It all boils down to this. It is not a matter of realism or game balance (no game is truly realistic or balanced), but whether you "feel" being your character or not (suspension of disbelief) or you feel engaged in something artificial. And the rules used do influence suspension of disbelief, although there is a lot of personal taste involved.

Yes, this is exactly it. It is less about detail or reslism and more about making sense within the parameters of the game. Pendragon makes sense in a Pendragon context. There is so many details in RQ that a one attack per 12 seconds do not make sense to me. We had alot of experience with RQ3 so we could make the changes that would give us the desirable flavour. I have no experience with RQG so discussing a theoritical solution is fun but only playing it can confirm it. In the end it could be as simple as ignoring the fact that the MR is 12 seconds and consider it elastic or just allowing multipke attacks but it could be much involved, building from the ground up as you say or even forget about RQG altogether and use another game. You mention Mythras and let's be honest Mythras is a fantastic game. It is in many ways superior to RQG and maybe an easier solution would be to simply port the Rune system in Mythras and run with it. The fact is RQG has alot of positive things going for it so I'd rather try to make it work for me.

If I wanted to play in the Hyborian Age, would I use RQG? No, I would use Mythras. But in a Gloranthan context, I'd rather give RQG a chance. It's just that I'd like melee combat to stand on its own. But I agree maybe it can't. Magic in RQG has much more profound impact than it had in RQ3 and maybe combat cannot be looked at without that lens.

[DreadDomain]

On 9/12/2018 at 8:01 PM, RosenMcStern said:

A ruleset which correctly reproduces Conan should enable fighters who would not touch anything magic with a 10 foot pole to make mincemeat of sorcerers and their supernatural minions, as Conan never fails to do, no matter how nasty the monster turn out to be. However, this is NOT what you are supposed to do in Glorantha, where your closeness to your chosen runes should be as important as your abilities to wield steel. This means that de-incentivizing tactical thinking and disallowing defeat of strong opponents by means of martial prowess alone is actually a plus in a Gloranthan game. It makes you less Conan, but more Price Snodal.

To make it clear, I do not try to reproduce Conan but my Glorantha that was heavily influenced by RQ3. And maybe that's it. Maybe the inability to defeat an opponent by martial prowess is a feature. Maybe the mechanistic nature of melee combat is a feature. Maybe Glorantha, and by extension RQG, is just not for me anymore. I am just not willing to accept it yet.

[DreadDomain]

On 9/13/2018 at 4:47 AM, Atgxtg said:

I wouldn't say it was redoing everything from the ground up. I do think DD's version has some far reaching consequences. 

The "building from the ground up" is a totally irrelevant argument so I would not worry too much about it. It doesn't really matter how many times the argument is repeated, the fact is in this conversation, I am the only one who went through the trials and playtests to make RQ3 work for us. We tried massive changes and it wasn't worth the effort so in the end we settled on minor changes and gave us what we wanted.

In RQ3, the changes implemented did not have reaching consequences but I agree with you and I suspect it might be the case in RQG if only bacause of the more prevalent magic. I haven't played RQG so I would play it RAW to start with and if I suspected I would find it lacking, my first temptation would be to ignore rules rather than adding rules. Potential candidates to ignore would be:

- Activities within melee (use as per activities outside of melee)

- Dual wielding special rules (dual wielding already has benefits on its own)

- Splitting attacks

- Penalties to multiple defenses

Although, I might feel like ignoring these rules could make the game simpler and more to my liking, I have no clue if it really would as I did not try them (nor RAW). I do not quite appreciate the impact magic would have on the play experience.

[DreadDomain]

On 9/13/2018 at 12:43 AM, RosenMcStern said:

What about "you can make as many extra attacks as your weapon SR, separated by your DEX SR (minimum 1) and with a cumulative  -20 to each" ?

Nice. Definitely something to try. I like it (theoritically of course).

[DreadDomain]

On 9/13/2018 at 1:48 AM, RosenMcStern said:

See? In the end, it is damn complicate to tinker with this aspect of the rules without redoing everything from the ground up. It can be done, but not with "a couple of simple houserules".

Not it's not complicated. You simply have to focus on what you (a generic "you" here) are trying to achieve. It is always tempting to throw the baby with the bath water ( why use MR? Why use statement of intents? Why...?) but it does not have to be so. You said it yourself, if you only want to attack multiple times in a round, just allow multiple attacks. There is nothing wrong with rebuilding from the ground up but sometimes a couple of simple houserules is enough for the job.

[DreadDomain]

On 9/13/2018 at 1:51 AM, RosenMcStern said:

"Inverted weapon SR". This is what DreadDomani does for closing, and it is an elegant solution. Not a simple one, though. And it does not resolve the "spears are long but not clumsy" problem. My solution is better at this point, as it gives an advantage for high DEX and a disadvantage for long weapon.

At the time it was not a problem tthat we tried to solved because we didn't that as a problem. Remember, we were still using weapon SR as a reach mechanism so at long range a spear could me nimble and fast (low SR) but if closed within its optimal reach, it would become more difficult to maneuver. For us the abstraction was good enough.

Your solution is a tad more abstract as it folds in reach (low melee SR tends to act first in  MR) and nimbleness (high melee SR tends to attack more often in a MR). This might be more adequate for RQG since RQG does not have any closing mechanism.

[Atgxtg]

3 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

In RQ3, the changes implemented did not have reaching consequences but I agree with you and I suspect it might be the case in RQG if only bacause of the more prevalent magic.

I'm more concerned about the extra 2 Strike Ranks. I think that would end up adding another attack for quite a few weapons. You might reach a point where the bigger, heavier weapons become obsolete. 

 

[RosenMcStern]

Not when you are fighting big creatures. Striking more often is great with hordes of trollkin, but when he Great Troll comes you need something that can punch through its armour and skin.