Bell Digest v930821

Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Path: sunnl!news
From: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RQ Daily Discussion List)
Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Sat, 21 Aug 1993, part 1
Message-ID: <1993Aug21.051542.12188@holland.sun.com>
Followup-To: poster
Sender: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (a.k.a Henk Langeveld)
Organisation: Lankhor Mhy and Associates
Organization: Sun Microsystems NL B.V.
Distribution: local
Date: Sat, 21 Aug 1993 05:15:42 GMT

    [Gatewayed from the Daily RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM]


Enquiries to:		  
RuneQuest is Avalon Hill's Role-Playing game published under
license from Chaosium.  Glorantha is the creation and property
of Greg Stafford.  Complaints to Henk.Langeveld@Sun.COM.

---------------------

From: f6ri@midway.uchicago.edu (charles gregory fried)
Subject: *sigh*
Message-ID: 
Date: 20 Aug 93 06:31:37 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1426

Greg Fried here.

My last message for Lewis was hopelessed snafu-ed.  I was trying to say that
hellions, lamiae and succubi differ from undead (dispite the predation upon
the living) in never having been living in the first place.  As the unliving,
they are a mirror image of the undead who also prey upon Life/Pow; but
whereas undead cling to  life they have lost, the unliving lust for a life
they have never had.
---
Does anyone know anything about cult worship of Arachne Solara?  Who worships
her, and what powers does she grant?  I have some intuitions about this, but
they are thoroughly untutored.  I seem to remember reading somewhere that AS
does receive worsship and that she manifests in two aspects, one benign and
one horrific. -- am I imagining things?  Insight, anyone?

GF out.

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From: gal502@huxley.anu.edu.au (Graeme Lindsell)
Subject: A Short Review of "Dorastor: Land of Doom"
Message-ID: <9308200633.AA25805@cscgpo.anu.edu.au>
Date: 20 Aug 93 10:38:54 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1427

 
 128 Page softbound book, plus a colour map and 16 page player
handout.

 The primary design credits go to Ken Rolston, Greg Stafford and 
Sandy Petersen, with development and editing by K Rolston, and
contributing design by Troy Bankert and  Ken Kaufer. I can see why 
Ken was so busy.


 First Impressions: I saw the cover and said "Have they got Dobyski 
back?": at first sight it looked poorly done. I looked at the back
and saw the price was $22.50, which in Australian dollars was nearly
half the price I expected (and would have paid anyway), so I bought 
it.

 Looking inside I found that I hadn't looked very carefully at the
cover: it is meant to be of a stained glass window, and is really 
very good. I still don't know why it was so cheap (maybe the shop 
put the wrong price on it).

 The book starts with a short history of Dorastor and neighbouring 
Talastar, then describes the important cultures and locations of
Dorastor, and then goes on to give encounters, more encounters,
even more encounters and the special encounters, including your
friend and mine (really!) , Ralzakark, King of the Broos. Then
the "low to mid level" Risklands campaign is begun, and the book 
ends with a description of three cults: Telmor, Dorasta and Nysalor.

 The histories and player handouts are all good Gloranthan information,
and to me that makes the book almost worth it already. The locations
are just very short descriptions: no maps or other details are given.

 The encounters make up a large section of the book. The ordinary 
encounters are very tough, and most would test even a large party
of Rune levels. The special encounters are almost all overwhelming,
and I think are given more out of interest's sake than the necessity
to have the stats; most are very interesting and/or peculiar, and 
are better used as non-combat encounters IMHO.

 The Risklands campaign deals with an area on the border of Dorastor,
which the Red Emporer has allocated as a region of exile for Orlanthi
rebels/criminals, in order to form a buffer state between Dorastor and
the more loyal citizens of the Empire. Banned religions, such as
Orlanthi and Urox can be freely practiced in the Risklands; certain
political or civil criminals are allowed to go into exile there. This
is a no-lose scenario for the Empire, since the Orlanthi won't ally
with chaos: they will either die (good), stop the chaos hoards (better),
or both (best) :-).

 The campaign is meant to deal with a year in the life of new settlers
in the Risklands. It is defined as "low-to-mid level" which is one of my 
complaints with the pack: though a "low-to-mid level" party can succeed
in the encounters given in the campaign itself, all the rest of the
encounters in the earlier sections would wipe them out instantly ie
the earlier encounters can't easily be used with the campaign. There
is something of a "Call of Cthulhu" feel to the Risklands campaign 
(ordinary people matched against overwhelming horror), which may be
Sandy Petersen's influence. There is a promised "Risklands" pack to 
expand upon the campaign.

 The final three cults are interesting but do not cover all of Dorastor's
cults. The "Cults of Dorastor" will need most of the cults from "Cults
of Terror" plus a few new ones (I'm already looking forward to Krjalk!).
This leads to my other quibbles about the pack: on the back it says you
need the Runequest Deluxe Edition to play. I would add "King of Sartar",
which is given as the source for most of the Risklands' Orlanthi culture,
and either "Cults of Terror", "Cults of Dorastor" or "Gods of Glorantha"
at the minimum to deal with the encounters. The section on Nysalor
Illumination is expanded (I think) from the section in CoT, and explains
the down side of illumination better. Most unprepared Illuminates tend
to go insane from the shock of the change!

 Summary: a must for the serious Glorantha based RQ GM. For the non-
Gloranthan settings, the large encounters sections may still be useful,
and the Risklands setting could be adapted to the borders of many other
empires.

 Graeme Lindsell

 PS the history section has a small change to the CoT history of Arkat:
it is not known where Arkat got God Cleaver from, but he is said to have
acquired it on a Heroquest. I think the case for Humakt=Arkat (which was
discussed a few months ago on this list) is now a bit stronger. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Graeme Lindsell                      Email: gal502@huxley.anu.edu.au
---------------------------------------------------------------------


---------------------

From: PERGSFH%IBM-B.RUTHERFORD.AC.UK@ib.rl.ac.uk (Sammye Haigh)
Subject: SHIELD-DAMAGING RULE
Message-ID: <9308200910.AA22408@Sun.COM>
Date: 20 Aug 93 09:09:06 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1428


SHIELD-DAMAGING RULE

This is a rule of my own invention, for those of you who are bored of
watching skilled and well-armoured warriors bouncing off each other for
hours on end.  Basically:

***************************************************************************
If a Special hit is successfully Parried, the parrying shield loses armour
points equivalent to the extra "Special" damage.
***************************************************************************

Example: a Special hit with a broad sword is parried with a medium shield.
The attacker rolls his normal D8+1 (say for 7); he also rolls his Special
D8+1 (say for 9).  The total being 16, 12 are stopped by the shield and 4 go
past to wherever, as usual.  But in addition, the Special 9 reduce the
shield to only 3 points.

*For Impale or Crush damage, which would normally inflict the maximum the
dice are capable of, it is the relevant rolled dice which count for shield
damage.  Eg: if the above example had been a 1HSspear, the Special damage
would automatically have been a max 9; but using the rolled D8+1 instead,
the shield takes 7 damage.

*In the case of a Special or Critical Parry, the shield suffers no damage.

I personally feel it adds to the drama of a fight to see PCs parrying with
splintered fragments, and is also dead easy to calculate and administer.

As of next month my email address is c.pringle@elsevier.co.uk

Chris Pringle

---------------------

From: glidedw@sfsuvax1.sfsu.edu (Donald Wilton)
Subject: Re: RuneQuest Daily, Fri, 20 Aug 1993, part 1
Message-ID: 
Date: 19 Aug 93 19:44:07 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1429

This reply is to Burton.

I use a similar rule to the one for regular healing, for sorcery.  A
sorcerer can heal all of the points, if cast at the time the spell is
cast. If they fail to heal you of all damage, then they can't do so again.
i usally permit a combination, in that you can get 2 points over time from
1st Aid, 3 points from spirit, and 4 from sorcery. If the total
combination would heal you up, then when the time had passed for normal
healing, you'd be fine.




---------------------

From: MILLERL@wharton.upenn.edu (Loren J. Miller)
Subject: RQ 4 mailing list
Message-ID: <01H1YODTDTTE94DOG1@wharton.upenn.edu>
Date: 20 Aug 93 04:09:50 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1430

In response to the Yak, who asks:
> Could someone please post the adress for the RQIV mailing list,
> when I first tried it I got no reply and since then I have lost
> the adress. 

Send email to:

   listserv@marketing.wharton.upenn.edu

With a meaningful subject line, and in the first line of your mail
message type:

   subscribe rq-playtest

Follow this with a blank line or two, and then your signature as
usual, and you will be added to the mailing list. Please recall that
this is a playtest discussion list, and it helps to already have a
copy of the playtest draft(s) to understand discussion on it, but you
can get the hang of it after a while.

whoah,
+++++++++++++++++++++++23
Loren Miller            internet: MILLERL@wharton.upenn.edu
"Science" does not remove the terror of the gods.

---------------------

From: mstrong@cix.compulink.co.uk (Mike Strong)
Subject: Comments
Message-ID: 
Date: 20 Aug 93 17:53:25 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1431


In-Reply-To: <9308200515.AA04692@glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM>
Burton Choinski
>Huh? Don't you mean the other way around?

depends on your point of view. I was talking about how to calculate 
your chance of a special or critical based on your skill, whilst you 
are talking about checking whether an actual roll is special, critical 
or simply a success...

Mike

---------------------

From: MCKAY_MICHAEL@tandem.com
Subject: Non-violent FRP games
Message-ID: <199308201349.AA5945@comm.Tandem.COM>
Date: 20 Aug 93 06:36:00 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1432

    There are several good ways to have low violence games.  The most
important thing to remember is "goals".  There are two levels of goals, those
that you and your players have (real life), and the goals of the characters.
You can analize your game in the same way that you would a book or movie.
Conflict, in some way, is pretty much required to make things interesting
(can you think of a good book or movie that did not have conflict).  This
conflict does not require "fighting" to resolve (Asimov's "Violence is the last
resort of the incompetent).
    FRP games usually have a large amount of violent conflict (because they
grew from wargames, because a lot of sources had violence, towit. Lord of the
Rings).  There are practical reasons too.  Fighting forms a bond (in both real
life and in games).  It is also dramatic, and can be climatic.  But there are a
lot of games where fighting is the primary activity in the game.
   The rules systems also have a strong influnce.  This is one of the reasons I
took to Rune Quest when it came out.  I feel that there is a strong
correspondence to the rules and how the games are played.  In other words, lets
say more than 1/2 of D&D (original) was geared toward fighting rules (including
monster descriptions), while another good chunk dealt with treasure and magic.
And that is the way most D&D games worked.  You fought lots of monsters, and
got some treasure and magic.  Rune Quest had a lot of rules devoted to skills,
and another big chunk devoted toward religion.  Rune Quest games tended to
have interesting things to do inbetween encounters, and religion was handled
much better (ask early D&D players who their cleric's god is).  I'm not saying
that the above is the way it always happens, but if you look at a wide variety
of games (especially beginners games), this is a pretty acurate picture.  Look
at FRP as "Lets pretend with rules" (Mike Pondsmith's favorite quote).
    OK, so much for the background.  It is important to keep that in mind
though.  As a referee, you have 2 primary thrusts (over simplified of course).
Call them plot and action.  The "plot" includes the world background, large
details, as well as a conventional "plot".  The "action" is the moment to
moment playing of the game, and is strongly influnced by the players actions.
To achieve low violence games, you need to work on both ends.  The plot should
help project goals to the players, but the players should actually chose there
goals, at least in theroy.  You need to make sure that the plot allows
non-violent conflict resolutions.  Thus, you give your players a choice (if you
don't take this step, none of the rest of my comments will help).  This comes
directly back to the player's goals.  If these goals are "kick monster butt
and get treasure", you are not going to have a low violence game.  Action is
important too, but you need to set-up the plot first.  Action requires a good
mix.  Lets take a classic example of pacing (a primary part of "Action") from
the movie world.  "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is a movie with incredible pacing.
A casual rememberence would be a movie with lots of action, but there is much
more to it.  The movie gave you time to catch your breath inbetween adventures
(teaching a class, recovery in the boat).  For an example of bad pacing, look
at the sequel, "India Jones and the Temple of Doom".  The movies are similar,
the stunts and action are just as good, yet the movie overall is much worse.
Virtually the whole problem with 'Temple of Doom' was pacing.
    So as the referee, you need to "direct" the players in moment to moment
action of the game.  It is very easy, and something of a cop-out, to spice up
a slow game by throwing a monster encounter in.  Providing good action in a
game is an art, and no single method will work all the time, or for everybody.
But there are several things you can do to help out.  The most important is to
become aware of the ebb and flow of the game.  If you run for a big group,
make sure to watch all players (you may be busy, and some of your more active
players are busy, but the rest of the group may be dropping off from boredom).
Once you become aware that the action needs adjusting (too slow, too much
fighting, whatever), try to pre-plan some things you can do to change the
action.  What is best varies by group and situation.  Some suggestions are
(in addition to the usual "throw in a fighting encounter"): encounter an
interesting NPC (new or regular, something like Sherlock visiting his brother
Mycroft in the middle of a story), have unusual, challenging weather, describe
something or someplace interesting in more than usual detail, etc.  Work from
your (the refree's) area of strength, or where your players interest lie.  All
of these techniques work better when they are tied into the plot, but it is not
required (and there should be some that are not connected at all, just to keep
them guessing).
    For campaign games though, it is the overall plot that has the best chance
at controlling the level of violence.  As a referee, there are several trates
that help make a game exceptional.  The players should be able to move around
and experience the world.  They should be able to make perament changes in the
world (one of the reasons I have trouble with Glorantha, the "big" things done
in the world overlap against other games), hopefully as an "improvement".
There should be internal consistency (running into the same people in different
adventures for example).  When you start planning a game on this scale, it
becomes easier to plot without the need for lots of violent conflicts.  I have
been getting into "political" games for a while (politics in the sense of
interaction between people).  They are not really practical for short games,
and take a little more work, but can be very worthwhile.  Violence (at least
fighting) is not required, but there is plenty of conflict.  You also need to
adjust to your players and game system, if you are playing D&D and somebody is
a fighter with no other skills, the player will be inclined to use his
fighting skills somehow (the tendency to use rules that apply to your character
is much stronger than the general tendency to slant games along the lines of
the rules).
    I know I have not answered the question completely (if there even is a
short complete answer), but I hope that this could inspire consideration at
a different level.

Michael McKay  (MCKAY_MICHAEL@tandem.com)  (408) 335-3340

---------------------

From: henkl@glorantha (Henk Langeveld - Sun Nederland)
Subject: Received: The Collected Griselda
Message-ID: <9308202114.AA09215@glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM>
Date: 21 Aug 93 01:14:29 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1433


Thursday I received The Collected Griselda, by Oliver Dickinson.

Three cheers for Reaching Moon Megacorp!

The A5 perfect bound booklet has a beautiful color portrait
of Wolfhead and Griselda on the cover.  (Done by Dan Barker.)

It was very enjoying to read the foreword by Greg Stafford,
and the introduction by Oliver is actually a very good intro
to Glorantha in general.  This will be very useful when
getting new players involved with a Gloranthan campaign.

Most of the stories I already knew.  But it is enlightening
to be able to flip back a number of pages to find a reference,
as every story builds on previous history.

Most stories have appeared elsewhere, except for Happy Anniversary,
which is very appropriate for a collection like this.

Typesetting was done by Steve Thomas. (Hi Steve, how's your disk?)
This was done just right.  I only wonder how the masters were
printed, as the letters look a bit fuzzy...  

Still, it is a very fine book, no matter what.

--
Henk	|	Henk.Langeveld@Sun.COM - Disclaimer: I don't speak for Sun.
oK[]	|	RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM