Date: Tue, 23 Feb 93 21:23:09 +0100
From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Digest Subscriptions)
To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest)
Subject: The RuneQuest Daily, Tue, 23 Feb 1993
This is an semi-automated digest, sent out once per day (if any
messages are pending). Replies will be included in the next issue
automatically.
Selected articles may also appear in a regular Digest. If you
want to submit articles to the Digest only, contact the editor at
RuneQuest-Digest-Editor@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM.
--
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The RuneQuest Daily is a spin-off of the RuneQuest Digest and deals
with the subjects of Avalon Hill's RPG and Greg Stafford's world of
Glorantha. Maintainer: Henk.Langeveld@Sun.COM
---------------------
From: rog@insignia.UUCP (Roger_Nolan)
Subject: Worship away matches
Message-ID: <1982.9302192209@vic20.insignia.co.uk>
Date: 19 Feb 93 22:09:36 GMT
I have always assumed that part of being initiated is that you are
taught how to perform a simplified worship
Date: 19 Feb 93 22:09:00 GMT
It is difficult but not impossible to run mixed ability groups. You
have to provide mixed ability opposition which tends to pair off at
equal level.
Heroes fight Heroes, wimps face wimps. This seems not unreasonable for
real life, so it works wuite well in a game. If you have a problem
swap the baddie character sheets!
Weak unarmoured characters have to learn to stand back and use missile
fire, get Heroes to cast magic on them, and generally pick fights they
can win. Co-operation makes sense all the way around.
Remember the opposition will do much the same. Thus a central crunch
where the RuneLords wreak havoc and skirmishing initiates around the
edges, not quite touching until they have to.
Karse: I realise that Karse isn't on the Creek Stream. OOPS, Version
1.1 will correct that. Also comments very welcome. I have written up a
version of Third Eye Blue, does anyone know anything about it?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
tzunder@cix.compulink.com.uk
"May the Red Moon Illuminate You All!
--------------------------------------------------------------------
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From: T.S.Baguley@open.ac.uk (Thom Baguley)
Subject: Armour vs. No armour
Message-ID: <9302200049.AA17985@Sun.COM>
Date: 19 Feb 93 08:45:46 GMT
Two ideas I just came up with. They're not playtested, but they are very
simple.
1) Two handed weapons.
A minus 10% parry (except for other 2H weapons and All Shields except
the buckler).
A plus 10% dodge
2) Wearing no armour.
Give characters with no more than one point armour an extra action in
combat (provided thay are not carrying too much e.g. half strength in
ENC?). This would allow two dodges, dodge and parry or two parries in
addition to an attack. The usual restrictions apply. I would allow a
character to dodge and parry the same attack. (For the record, I'm a
fencer and three attacks in ten seconds is not excessive, though if
you apply the +3 SR rule it is not be possible unless your base SR is
4!).
This rule should not apply to all non-sentients (though many animals
already get 2 attacks and a dodge).
(If you are feeling ver nasty heavily armoured characters could be
reduced to one action. I think this would lead to player mutiny,
though!).
Thom
_/ _/ _/_/_/_/ _/_/_/_/ _/ Human Cognition Research Lab
_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ The Open University
_/_/_/_/ _/ _/_/_/_/ _/ Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, U.K.
_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ Tel: +44 908 65-4518 Fax: -3169
_/ _/ _/_/_/_/ _/ _/ _/_/_/_/ Internet:T.S.Baguley@open.ac.uk
---------------------
From: gbailey@aol.com
Subject: Re: The RuneQuest Daily, Wed,...
Message-ID: <9302191929.tn01001@aol.com>
Date: 20 Feb 93 00:29:30 GMT
*sigh* most of the messages are cut off since AOL only accepts up to
25000 bytes per message. Could you cut out some of the "standard"
claims/disclaimers that you have at the front? Or reduce the wording?
Or, can I be put on a list to receive each message individually?
I miss my Internet access.
Glen
---------------------
From: rowe@soda.berkeley.edu (Eric Rowe)
Subject: Dave Dobyski
Message-ID: <9302201349.AA25809@soda.berkeley.edu>
Date: 19 Feb 93 21:49:30 GMT
As one of the many who spent long nights cursing the name of Dave
Dobyski for his artistic work on some of the RQ3 Avalon Hill products
I feel the need to publicly mention my recent acquisition of
knowledge. It seems Dave is primarily a Graphic Designer who was
working for AH at the time. Since they were too cheap to contract out
for art they forced (and I mean forced) him to do the crummy art that
came out since he was already on payroll. Now that he is back to
doing layout and maps and that type of work his skill is quite
evident. I really like the latest maps in Sun County and River of
Cradles and I take back all the nasty things I said about him.
eric
---------------------
From: tzunder@cix.compulink.co.uk (Tom Zunder)
Subject: Mixed abilities
Message-ID:
Date: 21 Feb 93 11:45:00 GMT
It is difficult but not impossible to run mixed ability groups. You
have to provide mixed ability opposition which tends to pair off at
equal level.
Heroes fight Heroes, wimps face wimps. This seems not unreasonable for
real life, so it works wuite well in a game. If you have a problem
swap the baddie character sheets!
Weak unarmoured characters have to learn to stand back and use missile
fire, get Heroes to cast magic on them, and generally pick fights they
can win. Co-operation makes sense all the way around.
Remember the opposition will do much the same. Thus a central crunch
where the RuneLords wreak havoc and skirmishing initiates around the
edges, not quite touching until they have to.
Karse: I realise that Karse isn't on the Creek Stream. OOPS, Version
1.1 will correct that. Also comments very welcome. I have written up a
version of Third Eye Blue, does anyone know anything about it?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
tzunder@cix.compulink.com.uk
"May the Red Moon Illuminate You All!
--------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------
From: james@sol1.east-london.ac.uk (James Andrews, User Support)
Subject: shields
Message-ID: <24767.9302221015@uk.ac.uel.sol1>
Date: 22 Feb 93 10:14:58 GMT
>From: jacobus@sonata.cc.purdue.edu
>Subject: Use of Shields, Parries, etc.
>Message-ID: <9302181746.AA27076@sonata.cc.purdue.edu>
>Date: 18 Feb 93 07:46:04 GMT
>
>
>An Idea which is worth lifting from other games is that shields have hit
>points.
Dont the standard rules allow for shield disintegration anyway? If
the shield takes damage that exceeds its points then the shield itself
takes one point of damage- I think this is a normal rule. I also use
a house rule that critical hits to shields (critical hit, normal
shield parry) do half the critical hiut damage to the shields points.
---------------------
From: pvanheus@frodo.cs.uct.ac.za (P A van Heusden)
Subject: My new magic system
Message-ID:
Date: 22 Feb 93 14:00:46 GMT
Graeme Lindsell writes:
> Well, you can tell it's based on Earth rather than Glorantha due to the
> absence of Darkness as one of the elements. Do you have any plans to adapt
> this system to Glorantha?
Sorry, Gloranthan fans - I'm not going to adapt it since I don't play
Glorantha (by virtue of being on this list, I am rather a Gloranthan
spectator :) )
> I could not understand the description of formulaic spells: are the
> forms and techniques used in the casting of formulaic spells or just
> in spontaneous spells? As far as I could tell, the casting system for
> formulaic spells is the same as the current system. Does this mean that
> the same range and duration rules (and skills) are in effect?
Sorry if I was not clear. Yes, essentially Formula spells are just
like the current system (of course, without the Free INT). Basically,
you create an effect (like 'Illusionary Chair') with a spontaneous
spell, and then replicate it with less chance of success using a
formula.
> I certainly liked the use of the various "Law of Magic", but could you
> give an example of how they are used in play?
Merely a role-playing aid. The DM gives bonuses related to the Laws.
> The "Glorantha vs. Generic" (three falls, eye-gouging and kicks to the
> groin allowed) Battle:
>
> > 2) I PLAY RUNEQUEST BECAUSE RUNEQUEST IS THE BEST FANTASY RULE SYSTEM THERE
> > IS, BETTER THAN GURPS, BETTER THAN AD&D (ICK!), BETTER THAN ROLEMASTER,
> > BETTER THAN ANYTHING ELSE. Get it? NOT BECAUSE OF YOUR SILLY WORLD SHAPED
> > LIKE A LOZENGE. (Ok, I DON'T hate Glorantha, just Gloranthan purist twits)
>
> This sounds like an "obvious subjective value judgement" to me :-)
Indeed it was. Backed up by a couple of arguments on the modularity of
RQ3. I was rather angry when writing it.
> There is a lot going for RQ, especially, IMHO, spirit magic and the
> concept of POW (isn't it amazing how so few other games seem to have
> realized the importance of defining the strength of a characters soul
> in a fantasy setting?), but many of the rules structures seem to be
> dated compared with more recent systems: no standard set of skill
> difficulties, few default skills for people skilled in a related area,
> etc. This is what RQIV should solve, I hope. (All of this is IMO, of
> course).
Yes, a problem. Solution: My players can make up skills (we have
Rolemaster, and use RMCII, with the something like the RMCII similar
skills system). Then, of course, we still need a good char. creation
process. For my demo game last week (went of VERY smoothly BTW, quick
rolls, fast combat, damn good for people who have never played RQ
before) I sucked the chars out of my thumb and layed 'em on ready
made.
Despite all this: What system is better? I find RQ to be an amazing system,
much better than the rest here (I've seen Rolemaster, Vampire, Ars Magica
and RuneQuest (oh, and of course AD&D)). My rating goes RQ, RM, AM, Vampire.
BTW. I briefly playtested the new magic system in my demo game. It
worked well, no obvious bugs. I shall continue to report on
playtesting the new system. Unfortunately the party got betrayed and
killed. Off to Valhalla for them. (The one player killed Bedwyr though
- the setting was Rosemary Sutcliffe's Britain, a good proof that RQ
is not Gloranthan - oh, and BTW, what is Basic Role-Playing System
anyway? Never seen it.)
And finally, I speak on low vs. high power. Everybody seems to talk as
if POW was cheap, MPs came in droves, etc etc. My players seldom get
better than Bezainted armour, have ok skills (around 60%-80%) and I
have to trouble myself trying to keep 'em alive. Where is that high
power you people refer to?
(How did I live before the daily digest? :) )
Peter
*******************************************************************************
Peter van Heusden "The extreme always makes an impression"
CS2, UCT, Cape Town, RSA J.D. - Lethal Attraction
pvanheus@frodo.cs.uct.ac.za
---------------------
From: tzunder@cix.compulink.co.uk (Tom Zunder)
Subject: Magic/Ritual
Message-ID:
Date: 22 Feb 93 19:56:00 GMT
Did anyone have an answer to my silly question about ritual sorcery
magic and whether you have to learn the spell fully or just spend 50
hrs?
I think you learn it like a normal sorcery spell and your skill is
your Ceremony/Enchant/Summon % or your spell skill %, whichever is
lower. Is this how evryone else plays it?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
tzunder@cix.compulink.com.uk
"May the Red Moon Illuminate You All!
--------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------
From: STEVEG@ARC.UG.EDS.COM (Entropy needs no maintenance)
Subject: More on the combat disty
Message-ID: <01GV1HIBG6HE000U4A@UG.EDS.COM>
Date: 22 Feb 93 16:01:25 GMT
> There appears to be a bit of a RQII hangover persisting here.
Indeed, the hard-to-crack RuneLord example I cited was rough-quoted
from an A&E discussion about 1980 concerning the inability of
RuneLords to hurt one another except by deadly criticals.
> everyone has 10 or so points of Bladesharp, the
> Humakti Sword has 14 I think. Of course this makes
> the problem *even worse*. Boo hoo hoo.
Well, it's always nice to have the magic points to power that sort of
spell w/o leaving oneself vulnerable to attack, and to have the INT to
hold them in.
The "total points of spells <= INT" limit at RQ3 should be enough to
keep the size of spell known small, except in games in which the GM
gives away too many POW storage crystals and INT spirits - magic items
corrupt, powerful magic items corrupt absolutely.
> Just get Mr. Friendly Shaman to bind you up a nice big spell spirit
To the average Sartarite, the typical shaman is at best one of those
Choas-tainted Telmori (Wolf Hsunchen), or possibly an elf or troll.
Not the sort of person one goes up to and cadges spells from.
> ignore the severed limbs need regrow clause and let them be healed as per
> maimed limbs.
the good old Healing 6 aka Glue strikes again...
> "But the point of this is that the low level characters get creamed,"
The point is actually that the reasonable fighting type, with skills
~60% has maybe six points of worn armour and then a 60% change of
twice as much again - you have to calibrate damage against that - and
as the skill %s get higher, the chances of critical match those of a
failed parry.
---------------------
From: cnh%windom@stortek.com (Clark Hobbie-x7513)
Subject: Digest submission: Godtime
Message-ID: <9302191617.AA06042@windom.stortek.com>
Date: 19 Feb 93 16:17:10 GMT
One of the more intriguing aspects of RuneQuest's Glorantha is the
concept of "Godtime" --- that absence of time that existed before time
was imposed after the Great Darkness. As stated in Cults of Prax:
"...but Time did not exist in the Godtime or Great Darkness. The
lineal relations imposed upon the myths and stories of those ages
originate from our own temporal state of mind, since we mortals
assuredly are a natural part of the Time flow of the New Age. Mythical
events did not always occur in the exact order we perceive them, and
it sometimes is difficult to reconcile conflicting versions of certain
occurrences in Dreamtime."
This is all well and good, and if just background material were the
only consequences of this idea then we could just say "Thanks Greg,
now pass the dice..." However, that is NOT the end of it. According
to RuneQuest, when characters go on HeroQuests they actually enter
Godtime. This means that players, both characters and GMs, actually
have to deal with events that do not occur in time.
I would claim that TRUE timelessness is not a concept that players can
actually model in any practical way. In fact, I would say that we
cannot ever deal with some of the major consequences of having no
time. To illustrate, what are the consequences of not having time?
They are: inability to order events in such a way that all observers
agree on the order, no causality between events, and time travel.
Inability to order events is central to the concept of time. The only
reason why we are interested in keeping time is because we can
distinguish between events. If no events occur, that is nothing
happens, then even if we COULD keep track of time (god knows how) why
bother? If all events occur simultaneously, then the situation is
just as bad: how useful is time if you are born and you die
simultaneously?
The major consequence of this is a lack of causality: in a timeless
universe it is impossible to establish if one event "causes" another.
Imagine that you are sitting at a board of lights and buttons. In a
causal universe an easy way to determine which button causes which
light to go on is to press each button and see which light goes on.
In a universe where we cannot order events, however, the lights could
go on BEFORE you press the proper button, or any button at all!
Imagine the confusion of trying to figure out the causality when all
the lights are randomly going on and off.
Note that the above example assumes that there is still some form of
time: i.e. you press a button and a light goes on or visa versa, but
you can still determine which happens first. In a truly timeless
universe, each light would have to be both off and on SIMULTANEOUSLY,
a concept which I have a hard time dealing with.
A final problem is that of time travel; or rather time paradoxes. If
you can "revisit" and change "past" events, then there is the
potential for paradoxes. For example, let's say I can travel back in
time, and due to my meddling, my father is killed. If my father was
killed, then I could not have been born, and therefore I could not
travel back in time. But if I could not travel back in time, then my
father would still be alive, so I would be born and I could travel
back in time. Trying to figure out how to resolve this with one time
stream makes my head swim!
Now imagine trying to ROLEPLAY in such an environment: events cannot
be ordered (the broo dies, you hit the broo with your sword, or is it
the other way around?), there is no causality (the broo dies, but you
are not sure why), and you have the possibility of paradoxes (well,
you WOULD have escaped from the Hero Plane with the True Sword IF a
chaos demon had not gone back in time and killed you just as you
arrived to avenge the death of his brother, but wait, if he kills you
when you arrive then you don't kill his brother, so he doesn't travel
back in time...). I don't think that lots of gamers, if any, are up
to dealing with these kinds of problems.
So how do you role play on the Hero Plane? I recall someone likening
HeroQuesting to Roger Zelazny's "shadows" from the books of his Amber
series: there are an infinite number of alternate Earths, that you can
visit and mess around in. If you die that's the end. If you change
things, then things change...for you and anyone else who is with you,
but not for anyone else. Furthermore, you could revisit another
shadow of the same situation where you had not changed things, and
events would proceed as they did "before" your changes.
This sounds like a good idea, except that I would add the following:
Once again from Roger Z's books, I would add the concept of "The Road"
from the book "Roadmarks." The idea here is that there is a
more-or-less predefined sequence of events as time goes on. This is
the "main road." There are also "branches" from the main road that
represent different sequences of events. The trick is that the more
people who travel a branch, the more real it becomes, until, if
traveled enough, it becomes the main road, and the former main road
becomes a branch. If even more people travel the new main road and
ignore the old one, the old one eventually disappears.
What this means to RuneQuest is that yes, you can travel back to the
Hill of Gold and beat up Zorak Zorran...IF you are up to it, but this
will not restore Yelmalio's fire powers...completely. Instead, he
regains some of his powers, but to such a small degree that it may or
may not be noticeable. If enough HeroQuests are successfully
completed, then Yelmalio will completely regain most of his fire
powers. If even more HeroQuests are completed on top of that, then
Yelmalio regains all his powers AND old ZZ might end up losing some of
HIS powers!
The degree to which you could affect things could be measured by how
much POW you have: the more you have the more "weight" is added to
your actions. Events could have a POW associated with them, and the
more times the HeroQuest is successfully accomplished, the more POW is
added towards the change.
The consequences of a HeroQuest affect the mundane world, but only
AFTER the point at which the Hero went on the HeroQuest, and everyone
can agree that things were different before and after the quest. So
if your character blows aways Gabaji on the Hero Plane and thereby
stops the Trollkin curse, then when you return, you will be heralded
as the hero who lifted the curse; trolls will NOT act as if there
never was a curse in the first place.
What happens if you die on a HeroQuest? If no one does anything, then
you stay dead. If your pals go on another HeroQuest and somehow
prevent the action that leads to your death, then you are alive...sort
of. You can enter the mundane world, but you are not quite as good as
you used to be. Maybe your POW is reduce by one half. Maybe all your
attributes are reduced by 1...the more times your friends complete
your "rescue" HeroQuest, the less the event affects you in the Mundane
world.
What happens if you meet yourself? You can't. If you try to
"revisit" events that you participated in, then you take your own
place. This would prevent characters from creating an "army" of
clones and trouncing anything they meet.
So what does everyone think? Should we ask for "Roads" and "Shadows"
or start a "Campaign for Real Time(tm)?"
Clark