sigh: I LOVE "zero to hero", does that mean RQG isn't for me?

[thom]

I started playing RuneQuest in 1979 and through the 80s, so that probably explains why I feel this way. I remember reading one of the authors saying he hated the whole concept of "zero to hero", which is why they developed RQG the way they did. Which is why I''m wondering if it's worth it for me to try and run the new system, vs. modifying RQ classic with some of the new ideas. Has anyone else had this dilemma? If so, how did you work through it?

thom

[g33k]

It's actually pretty easy to make the character-generation produce zero-ish PC's more like RQ2/RQClassic ones.

You will also want to look at Rune Magic... Rune Pool of 1 at the start?  Or even ... NO beginning points?

[Gannd]

I'm new to RuneQuest but the combat in RQG is deadly that even as newer characters it isn't like they are very vulnerable and I have a feeling that as characters gain experience combat will remain deadly. To me the zero to hero means that players don't start out as too invincible and they don't in RQG. I'm not sure if I answered your question.

[jeffjerwin]

Start the characters younger with less occupational experience and less rune points and they will be on the level of starting RQ2 characters. They will also die more often. The premise of RQG appears to be well-trained and outfitted PCs that are on detail/on call from local clans, temples and or tribes for serious adventuring. The RQ2 would be more along the lines of accidental heroes.

PS. If my game gets together (I am very busy with gaming writing, which means, sigh... less time for gaming) I'll probably start characters as kids. Then jump forward in time...

[Bill the barbarian]

1 hour ago, thom said:

I started playing RuneQuest in 1979 and through the 80s, so that probably explains why I feel this way. I remember reading one of the authors saying he hated the whole concept of "zero to hero", which is why they developed RQG the way they did. Which is why I''m wondering if it's worth it for me to try and run the new system, vs. modifying RQ classic with some of the new ideas. Has anyone else had this dilemma? If so, how did you work through it?

 thom

Yeah, you described my problem exactly, I have a solution that might be unique to my current situation. I am have a problem getting a large game and all my players fro decads ago have moved, moved on or...  but that has always been the problem here in the north. People do play the more common BRP games but not a lot. D&D is king here with the niches filled with many many many different game  (anyone remember Paranoia, Shadowrun... Bunny and Burrows?). 

I am running two people playing 5 characters (one NPC played by me and two characters per player). Really not enough but running RQ 3 games allows me  to place the party at a qualitative advantage if not numeric. The players are aware of the deadliness of combat even with qualitative advantages so they tend to role play anyway. They have half made t through GreenBrass in two sessions without combat and lots of roleplaying. 

I am running in  1611 ST so there is less given as bonuses in chargen  at this point and the gravity of the situation is less heroic and more zero (ic).... Overall, if I am not being overly generous it seems to play well enough and I bet I have close to a dozen sandboxes ready to play. I use the stats as written and hand wave passions and runes...

Cheers

Edited June 16, 2019 by Bill the barbarian

[Bill the barbarian]

21 hours ago, g33k said:

It's actually pretty easy to make the character-generation produce zero-ish PC's more like RQ2/RQClassic ones.

 

Very true, have them roll on the old occupation chart and have a majority be from the cottar and carl classes. There is no reason to give the 600 or so skill percentages that RQ G gives in chargen, use the skills as given and half with rounding for about 300 skill percentages much close to the usual 240 points that RQ 3 gave on average), 

Abandon all those d&d like stat rolling techniques and go back to the tried and true RQ 3, 3D6 and 2D6+6, keep stats as rolled style. Almost all characteristics can be elevated to creature max anyway for all intents and purposes in between adventure upkeep. Keep the plus 3 add to chaacteristics if total stats add up to less than 92 and the 3 point adds for rune affinities. It is kind of like RQ 3

And for the truly brave, roll 3D6 seven times place stats where they fall and add no skills pf background, except passions and runes. Voila RQ 1 and 2 (kinda) minus optional previous experience. Good luck!

Cheers

Edited June 16, 2019 by Bill the barbarian

[Shiningbrow]

RQG is basically RQIII characters with an age roll of not bad. 

RQG characters are getting +20-30 in major focus skills, and 10-15 or so on less focussed skills.

RQIII is age roll x X% (between 1-5%). 

So, younger PCs, less experience... More zero. 

If you want the hero a lot faster, increase the rate of experience rolls. 1/week or 1/month rather than 1/season. 

[The God Learner]

You could also try "From Hero to Harrek".

 

[PhilHibbs]

3 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

RQG is basically RQIII characters with an age roll of not bad. 

The big difference is the elective choices, with the +15 cult and +25 free choices you can get to 100% or even occasionally higher. No way can you do that with RQ3.

My answer to the OP would be just to remove those options, give just the cult and (maybe reduced) occupation skills. Maybe give some additional points that cannot go on to already improved skills just for some level of personal choice. And no or only 1 free RP, plus from spent POW.

[soltakss]

16 hours ago, thom said:

I started playing RuneQuest in 1979 and through the 80s, so that probably explains why I feel this way. I remember reading one of the authors saying he hated the whole concept of "zero to hero", which is why they developed RQG the way they did. Which is why I''m wondering if it's worth it for me to try and run the new system, vs. modifying RQ classic with some of the new ideas. Has anyone else had this dilemma? If so, how did you work through it?

In RQ2 days, we always started off with a Zero to hero approach, as previous experience wasn't great. I haven't looked into the options for RQG, but presume the same can be done,l you just don't go through a lot of your previous experience.

15 hours ago, Gannd said:

I'm new to RuneQuest but the combat in RQG is deadly that even as newer characters it isn't like they are very vulnerable and I have a feeling that as characters gain experience combat will remain deadly. To me the zero to hero means that players don't start out as too invincible and they don't in RQG. I'm not sure if I answered your question.

Yes and no. If you face similar-strength and similarly skilled opponents, it isn't that much of a problem. Sure, you could get a lucky critical or special, but at lower skill levels it doesn't happen that often. You get a lot of misses in combat, though, which might not be that satisfying, but we didn't mind.

If you provide the party with healing potions and so on, then combat becomes less deadly.

I remember playing a First Level Magic User in D&D back when it was AD&D, he had 2 Hit Points and if you sneezed on him he went down. RQG is nowhere near that bad.

Edited June 16, 2019 by soltakss

[Lordabdul]

I haven't tried RQG yet but I know that in other games, it's never really been about "from zero to hero" in terms of stats. You might describe it better as "from nobody to hero". My players would start with significantly better stats than the NPCs they face. For instance, in GURPS, they would start at 150 points while most NPCs are 100 points or less (and, on top of that, I'm quite bad at optimizing points anyway so my NPCs often suck). The differences are:

• There are a lot more NPCs out there than there are PCs. They won't feel like heroes if the numbers are not in their favour. I generally tune it so that they still have more chances to win than not, and they generally do, but funnily enough from behind the screen I think I often end up making it too easy for them when, really, they often tell me it's too often a close call. I guess I'm doing it right?
• When you're a nobody, you don't have allies, followers, etc. The path to "hero" isn't about getting past some threshold score in stats, it's about where you end up in the story -- are you leading armies or freeing countries or destroying ancient evil threats or fulfilling prophecies? Or at least, is anybody (not another PC!) writing/singing about you? If so, you're a hero. If not, you're just some random adventurer/mercenary/murder hobo that's gotten very strong.

AFAIK, RQG tries to start you off not completely as a "nobody", by giving you a couple accomplished feats that people might know you from. If the players prefer to really start as nobodies, the GM could cut off the last bit of the character background creation. Maybe, remove a few skill points but that's probably not necessary, like I said, from past experience.

But my point is that it's all about the narrative, and how the GM frames it and presents it. Sure, you were born as a Colymar tribe farmer but you decided to leave your homelands and ended up participating in the liberation of Pavis. Big deal. You didn't play that as an adventure, so you don't start as a complete "zero", but that's maybe you starting as a, what, "5% hero"? That's still a long way to go. Right now you're just this kid who left, leaving other, now jaleous/pissed off kids to do the labour you were supposed to do on your parents' lands, and has to deal with that when they they come back, or maybe they don't come back and they still need a way to get food and lodging while on the road. If anything, starting after this "liberation of Pavis adventure" is more of a narrative shortcut that prevents having to play through the whole "call to adventure" stuff. It's like playing a super-hero game where everybody has already been a super-hero for a little while, so that you don't need to play everybody's "origin" adventure, because that would be tedious. But, if that's how the GM chooses to spin it, everybody is still definitely a newbie super-hero and there's a long way to the Defenders Of The Galaxy membership.

Edited June 16, 2019 by lordabdul

[Ian Absentia]

This...

17 hours ago, jeffjerwin said:

Start the characters younger with less occupational experience and less rune points...

...and this...

4 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

My answer to the OP would be just to remove those options [+15 cult and +25 elective choices], give just the cult and (maybe reduced) occupation skills...
[snip]
...And no or only 1 free RP, plus from spent POW.

Scale up or down to your group's tastes.  That part's actually pretty easy.  The heart of the question in the OP, I think, is:  Do I like the shift toward superheroics implicit in the mechanics and setting of the new edition?  And that's open to debate, but is still the subject of personal tastes.  Me?  I trend toward Zero-to-Hero, too, but I have to admit that it's refreshing to be able to jump into a battle (I'm sorry, Leap, per the now-readily available Rune spell) with my 1H Spear augmented to 145% in the second session of play.

17 hours ago, jeffjerwin said:

If my game gets together ... I'll probably start characters as kids.

I often start campaigns with rag-tag assemblies of farmhands, cowherds, trade apprentices, and squires, then ramp up on an accelerated schedule.  Which reminds me, I really need to write up my Doom Comes to Vinland scenario.

!i!

[thom]

Whew! Thanks everyone; I feel much better after reading all your replies! It's nice to know I'm not the only one dealing with this.

G33K, yep I would start my PCs as lay members with no rune spells-let 'em earn their way to initiate! 😈 What we did in the past was to make it very clear to players that they were beginners, and give them missions/challenges according to their abilities. Ian Absentia, the verdict is still out for me on whether I fully like the new mechanics. Someone previously mentioned he wouldn't follow the 1 adventure/season mechanic, and would use the 1 week to ponder/experience rolls; and that's what got me thinking about running RQG with an "old school" style. And the "ragtag etc" campaign sounds perfect to me!😉

[Shiningbrow]

5 hours ago, thom said:

Someone previously mentioned he wouldn't follow the 1 adventure/season mechanic, and would use the 1 week to ponder/experience rolls; 

I was suggesting allowing experience (and POW gain) rolls more often... But I suggest only for skills that actually work that way... Combat skills work like that... Herd doesn't. 

Some skills are just easier to train up than others.

I do like the idea of starting as a Lay Member

The most obvious scenario is to be on the receiving end of a raid (Or 2)... Perhaps with a kidnapping of a close relative. Or getting drawn into a blood feud. Then, Chaos (Or Lunars) come knocking. Thus giving a reason for your farmer/herder to step out of their comfort zone and on the way to herodom. (I'm sure you've already figured that out... Hopefully the players RP the *need* to become an adventurer... It's not something their characters should just do)