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Date: Sat, 15 May 93 17:15:15 +0200
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From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RQ Digest Maintainer)
To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest)
Reply-To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RuneQuest Daily)
Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Sat, 15 May 1993, part 1
Precedence: junk
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This is the automated Daily RuneQuest Digest.
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---------------------
From: awr0@aberystwyth.ac.uk
Subject: Enquiry
Message-ID: <9305141417.AA19442@deca.aber.ac.uk>
Date: 14 May 93 16:17:16 GMT
I'm leaving Aber this summer and will be moving into the real world, but I
would like to have my weekly/daily/hourly fix of RQ. As far as I can tell,
I'll be heading down to Basingstoke, Hampshire. (Somebody has to!) Anybody
within a 30mile radius available?
Adam
---------------------
From: burt@ptltd.com (Burton Choinski)
Subject: RQ IV comments
Message-ID: <9305141550.AA07351@vino>
Date: 14 May 93 15:50:02 GMT
%r rq
Oliver Jovanovic notes:
>>If you are interested in having your comments regarding RQIV taken
>>into account for the next version of the draft, posting them to the
>>Digest is not as useful as sending comments to me. I'm currently
>>collecting, summarizing and eventually passing RQIV comments on
>>to Avalon Hill and the other people working on RQIV. Sending comments
>>directly to me makes my life considerably easier than having to search
>>through digest after digest for specific comments.
Sorry 'bout that. I was unaware that I was supposed to send them direct
to you. I hope you caught them...I deleted my file here. :p
>>However, Loren Miller set up a automated mailing list for RQIV playtest
>>discussion a while ago. It hasn't been active recently, but if there is
>>an interest, this might be a viable alternative.
I'm interested in being on this, if possible.
Regarding the RQ Font
>>If this doesn't work for you, I could email the font in
>>a binhexed or uuencoded format - in case you're not familiar
>>with these, they are formats that let you turn a binary file
>>(Mac .sit or IBM .zip in this case) into a string of ASCII
>>characters for transmission by email. You'd need a utility,
>>such as Stuffit on a Mac to turn it back into a binary file.
>>You'd have to let me know what sort of format you'd need.
I downloaded it, but the characters produce odd results on our printers
here, with strike lines reversing color when they cross (like an XOR or
something).
I'll put up my Font sometime soon, with the same character assignments as
his, once I get the Air rune finished.
============================================================
Joerg Baumgartner notes:
>>Burton Chodinski on RQ4
>>What draft do you refer to? My ersion is draft 2.0 (thanks again, Argant),
>>yours seems to be different. Else I haven't noticed the reusability of
>>1-point Runespells for high initiates...
We must have the same version. That comment was not in mine, I just echoed
wa suggestion that someone else here suggested.
-- Burton
---------------------
From: paul@phyast.pitt.edu
Subject: Re: This and that.
Message-ID: <9305141731.AA01946@bondi.phyast.pitt.edu>
Date: 14 May 93 17:31:25 GMT
Paul Reilly here.
I like John Medway's comments on flavored magic, especially appealing to
the spirit of Jaguar in order to cast Ironhand 4. This captures the
psychology well. Note Identification is often quoted as a law of magic;
certainly the Hsunchen use this one alot! Also look at Heroquest etc.
I'd say the most appropriate focus for Ironhand in a Jungle society might
be a set of scars from Jaguar claws.
> is a sword considered a hunky-dorey place for a Coordination matrix?
Maybe - if it's the guy's favorite sword and he just feels clumsy without
it. In general I say foci should be appropriate to the spell, but if the
player or GM can come up with a justification for something odd it's OK.
In an old RQ variant we played that there was a skill for Spirit magic:
Focussing. We used the old RQ II definitions of 'unfocussed on self,
focussed on others' and characters needed the Focussing skill to use a
focus. There was a clear delineation here - Fanaticism on self was
essentially spending your willpower to go slightly berserk, etc. and
regarding more as a talent than a spell. Everybody did this to some
extent. Magicians could cast spells on others and nifty things like
Fireblade. We lumped in Bladesharp, Speedart etc. as unfocussed if it
was on your favorite weapons that were practically part of your body.
(Basically, extending your _chi_ into the weapon, Zen archery, etc.)
Thus you could represent the Viking swordsman who scoffed at all magic
but nonetheless could spend his willpower (MP's) and psych himself up
for a few minutes of extra effort (i.e. Bladesharp). This worked pretty
well for atmosphere. This was on Alternate Earth rather than in the
magic-rich world of Glorantha, so I wanted to have magicians few and
far between but liked to have the magic system available as a means of
spending 'extra effort' in order to do things that seemed extraordinary.
We actually kept Healing in this low-magic campaign but it worked like this:
if the _player_ decided to use Healing on that sucking chest wound and
he succeeded in the roll then the _character_ would put his hand to the
wound and discover that it was only a flesh wound after all and some of
his luck (=MP's) for that day had been used up. Thus the magic system
was hidden from the _characters_ but not the players.
Tom Zunder writes:
>New Players: Sexy new rules, lovely art and WE MUST PLAY AT CONS AND
>INTRODUCE NEW PLAYERS AT HOME!
Agreement here. I am working on my thesis now but will start some new
players later on in the summer when it is done. One way to find players
is through gaming clubs etc. You can look around in the local D&D crowd
if you can stand it and find people who are looking for something more
(although I am told that their newer stuff is actually interesting.)
Also go to a Vampire or other game, play for awhile and see if anyone
there wants to try something different.
Also, perhaps the people who sent the lovely product reviews here could
post a copy to rec.games.frp.whatever-is-apropriate? (.misc I should think)
Also good work Tom on reffing Uz! This is an area in which I think RQ
shines, representing nonhumans as alien rather than just people with
pointy ears etc.
-------------
Joerg mentions some books I haven't seen that resonated with my concept
of Milo the painter-sorceror: "Jonathan Wylie's "Dream Weaver", or Diana
Paxson's Thieves World painter Lalo". Perhaps other magician concepts can
be represented in the RQ system as we know it without a major rules change.
I do think sorcery needs a bit of fixing and will try to give my ideas
on that sometime. Locally we were working a few years ago on the idea
that sorcerors have a sort of 'magic pool' that can be riding out in spells
or can be pulled in to make a very powerful sorceror with no running
spells. This sort of tradeoff system would be more interesting strategically
- do you put your magic out enhancing the warrior's stat's etc. or hold
it in reserve for attack spells and the like? More on this someday when
there is less on the fire.
I think the RQ errata gave a good Multispell. Certainly the old one
needed to be fixed desperately - look at Phantom magics for an example.
________________________
Adam:
Invisible God clearly goes back At Least until the beginnings of Time -
even if the Brithini are lying to us (and as we are not 'real humans' by
their reckoning I think that the Talars just say whatever they think will
get the reaction they want, like pushing buttons on a machine or training
a dog to fetch) the Seshnelan records go back this far. Hrestol's ministry
started in 2 ST, I believe.
I'll comment on the (nifty) wheel of elements another time - mine is a bit
different but my notes are at home. I see each element as having
two 'enemies' and two 'friends', more or less. Water and Earth are
enemies -see Invasion of the Land for examples. Darkness and Water are
'friends' and can permeate each other readily.
Your wheel is nice and I see the opposites on it as potential MATES.
___________________________
Stephen Hunt:
I like your system for Sorcery and even cultic magic but I think that
the primitives would resist such systemization. I think that the primitives
believe that the primal powers came first and manifested themselves in the
world as Fire, etc. If they know about runes at all I would guess that
they think this is a 'crippled' approach to magic as it tries to break
strong whole things down into weak component parts.
We were working on a system where each Sorcery spell had three basic runes
to empower it. I'll send in a writeup of some examples another time, don't
want to overload Henk's machine.
_________________________
Richard Staats:
I like your magic ideas. I will send more comments on this later, as I want
to get some stuff out of my home computer that I think is apropos.
I like designed spells, and 'one-shots', more on this later (medicine
bundles for shamans!). One comment on this passage though:
"By the Invisible
God! The green fire completely consumed Paragsmitta! Lucky for us the
Tien designed the spell to work on that particular Wyrm!
^^^^
Despite his inarguable erudition, I would NEVER use a spell designed by
TIEN! (Chaotic Knowledge God severed by Hrothmir the Horned Hero, later
reconstituted as Thanatar)
______________
Thanks to Oliver Jovanavic for his comments and his work in processing
our stuff on RQ IV. Oliver's comments on Humakt seem to settle the retreat
question as now we have a good example of the god himself retreating. Humakt
wants to live to kill another day.
_______________________________
charles gregory fried:
Lodril is a good male deity for a matriarchal culture: lazy, shiftless,
easily bossed around.
On spirits, you write:
>If two magor spirits differ by the 9 or 10 points that allow one of
>these to obliterate the other according to the present system...
>Proportionately, a POW 30 entity
>fighting one of POW 40 is similar, say to a POW 12 cultist fighting a POW 16
I am not at all sure that this is really meant to be the case. I believe
that most of the stats may be LOGARITHMIC and thus POW 40 vs. POW 30
may be proportionally similar to POW 20 vs POW 10.
Consider STR and SIZ. We KNOW that this is a sliding scale.
Consider APP. Is a maximum appearance human (21 = Ingrid Bergman etc.)
ONLY twice as attractive as an average guy off the street?
CON - Fits in with SIZ in HP calculations, probably same kind of scale.
Note that while strictly speaking POW is treated linearly in how much
magic you can do in practice the higher POW people will have more 'batteries'
such as crystals, spirits, etc. More on this another time.
If we could agree that stats work more or less the same way (quasi-log)
for various stats than stat difference would work the same way as
decibels: a difference of 5 in stats would always mean some ratio in what
is being measured, possibly around a factor of 2. I should look at the
STR/SIZ table and see what the ratio is there. If we go by this system
than Gods will have POWs in the hundreds but perhaps with millions of
magic points.
We used to think the same way you do about using ratios at high levels
but lately have come around to the logarithmic way of thinking. Thus
spirit combat of a POW 50 spirit against a POW 40 is like a tug of war
between an elephant and a couple of draft horses, no contest really.
Of course the stats given for things like the Mother of Monsters in
Elder Secrets seem to bespeak a more linear POW rule. I really don't
think that this has been well thought out. As you point out the
current spirit combat and spell resistance rules just do not fit
with the linear scale for such things as MP's. On the whole it
comes down to what you want to change as the current system is
inconsistent. A few rules need to be changed anyway: for example the
"It takes a
combined strength of 60 to lift the gate" would fall by the wayside.
This is a bad rule anyway - does anyone think that 6 ordinary men can
outpull an elephant?
__________________________
_______________________
In reply to my own (Paul's) posting:
Whoops! I see that I sent the wrong version of Finula's stuff and
had not done all the edits that I wanted. Please disregard typos,
etc. and the personal stuff. The Storm Bull message has been
checked over but the earlier part still needs some work. In
any case what do people think of these? Finula wants comments
as she'd like to do these up as an article for TotRM if possible.
_______________________
Jeff:
>Humquack
Usually known as Hueymakt, last survivor of the Godtime triplets. He
and his brother Deweymakt and Louiemakt were described here a while back...
_________________________
Nick's comments are as usual insightful. I picked up on the Loskalmi
bias in the Fronela write-up without being able to point out why. In our
Loskalm campaign we played in a small Barony which had remained loyal to
the idea of Loskalm but had retained their peasant religion of Orlanth
and Ernalda with a Malkioni upper class of about 10% of the people: the
baronial family, knights, churchmen, clerks, craft guilds in the little
towns and so on were largely Malkioni. The system worked fine and
everyone was well treated. The upper and middle classes were at first
overjoyed and then horrified when contact with Loskalm was reestablished.
They were branded as heretics for NOT persecuting their pagan population.
The PC's included a knight, and a sorceror, who were appalled at the idea
that their caste status might be torn from them because they did not
meet the Loskalmi requirements developed during the Ban.
>the POW gain is my most hated RQ mechanic after strike ranks
We tried to use Pendragon-style glory for POW gain in this campaign
but it was a bit tricky. Perhaps someone can come up with a better system
altogether? I can think of patches but nothing comprehensive.
What do you hate about POW gains? Some of the problems I see could be
addressed without major changes.
I agree about reusable by the year Rune magic for Initiates and we have
been using this for some years. I tried putting in a rule about "You need
a successful Cermony to regain your Rune Magic" but the players disliked
this for some reason.
I'd add one reason to your list: Without this type of Rune Magic for
initiates, the divine magic cultures will get toasted in battles by
sorcerors (with Enhanced Armies) and primitives with big spirits. Sure,
you can put in a kludge that the cultists have Hero powers, but I'd
rather see more people participating. And it makes battle descriptions
much more interesting - we had a big battle of Darkness and Cold forces
vs. Kallikos and Yelm cultists which was quite fun.
Plus, it is more fun for the players. Once a year is quite enough so
that they don't usually use it, but if a PC has nine points of one-use
magic and uses six to save the party, he will feel quite cranky about
having to wait another few years to become a priest. Also, people will
feel less of a need to jump from four points to ten all at once - the
idea here is that under the current system a potential Priest with 5
points of Rune magic might as well sacrifice 5 POW and make the jump to
Priest or Acolyte if possible.
I like the idea of acolytes regaining magic once a season, around
seasonal holy day perhaps. We didn't try this but it seems obvious now.
What about spells like Bless Crops that you only want to use once a
year anyway? Does this one require a Ceremony roll? If so there is
still some benefit in getting your priestess to do it.
This should definitely get sent in as an idea for RQ IV. The only
drawback is they may view it as making it too easy to become a priest.
The best solution I can see here is to make Priest an occupation that
requires a bit more and reduce the power of Acolytes as specified above.
More on magic systems later.
- Paul
---------------------
From: 100270.337@CompuServe.COM (Nick Brooke)
Subject: Pentagrams and Elemental Opposition
Message-ID: <930514190730_100270.337_BHB62-1@CompuServe.COM>
Date: 14 May 93 19:07:30 GMT
This is one for the art class, and any would-be God Learner sorcerers out
there. Normal folk are probably best off avoiding it. Like anything to do
with role-playing games, it may cause you to become a Demon Worshipper.
The standard Gloranthan pentagram (from notes I've seen which came from one
of Sandy's games) looks something like this:
Draw a normal pentagram within a circle (touching at the points). Start at
any point and go round clockwise, drawing Runes at the points in the order:
Darkness, Water, Earth, Fire, and Storm. Then draw in arrows along thosee
arcs of the circle, so you are led around it in the evolutionary order (as
just described); Storm leads back to Darkness (just as Orlanth slew Yelm
and inaugurated the Darkness of Godtime).
Then, draw arrows along the connecting lines of the star which link point
to point. So that Fire points to Darkness, points to Earth, points to
Storm, points to Water, points to Fire. Those are the lines of
superiority. What you get out of that is as follows:
DARKNESS overshadows the Earth;
EARTH pacifies the unruly Storm;
STORM beats down the Seas;
WATER quenches Fires;
FIRE penetrates the Darkness.
Check Gloranthan mythology for examples of each of these.
As originally drawn, the Power Runes were also associated with the Elements
at the points. Opposing pairs were connected along the inner, straight
lines. The sequence went something like:
DARKNESS + Death --> Life + EARTH
EARTH + Stasis --> Motion + STORM
STORM + Disorder --> Harmony + WATER
WATER + Luck --> Fate + FIRE
FIRE + Truth --> Illusion + DARKNESS
Nick says: I'm not sure I believe all those associations, and Stephen
Martin has some really weird suggestions for how to improve them. In your
own time, Steve -- if anyone on the Net ever sees him, could you tell
him I'm really contrite about not answering the last post he sent me...
It's up to you what Rune you put in the centre: I've seen it done with
Moon, Man, Magic, Law: basically whatever you think controls or coordinates
the Universe. (CHAOS would be scary...).
Anyway, that's from a fairly solid Gloranthan source. Your Fate Rune
version is nice, too. Must go: there's proof-reading to be done!
====
Nick
====
He who laughs last, shuts up eventually.