From: owner-runequest-rules@ (RuneQuest Rules Digest) To: runequest-rules-digest@lists.MPGN.COM Subject: RuneQuest Rules Digest V2 #57 Reply-To: runequest-rules@mpgn.com Sender: owner-runequest-rules@ Errors-To: owner-runequest-rules@ Precedence: bulk RuneQuest Rules Digest Thursday, April 1 1999 Volume 02 : Number 057 RuneQuest is a trademark of Hasbro/Avalon Hill Games. All Rights Reserved. TABLE OF CONTENTS Re: Re : [RQ-RULES] Hero Points Re : [RQ-RULES] Hero Points [RQ-RULES] HeroQuests and huge skill levels... RE: [RQ-RULES] Hero Points [RQ-RULES] Gifts and Geases Re: [RQ-RULES] HeroQuests and huge skill levels... RULES OF THE ROAD 1. Do not include large sections of a message in your reply. Especially not to add "Yeah, I agree" or "No, I disagree." Or be excoriated. If someone writes something good and you want to say "good show" please do. But don't include the whole message you praise. 2. Use an appropriate Subject line. 3. Learn the art of paraphrasing: Don't just quote and comment on a point-by-point basis. 4. No anonymous posting, please. Don't say something unless you're ready to stand by it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 19:58:00 EST From: IssariesGT@aol.com Subject: Re: Re : [RQ-RULES] Hero Points In a message dated 3/31/99 6:08:22 PM Eastern Standard Time, nikk@MailAndNews.com writes: << Part of the reason I came up with this idea was today when I was writing a Shadow Knight of Arkat up for a Lodrili Quest >> I wouldn't mind seeing the Lodrili quest. kes *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 20:30:22 EST From: JTDLord@aol.com Subject: Re : [RQ-RULES] Hero Points >>But I sympathise. >>HQ is a bit difficult to do with RQ ... >I'm tempted top disagree and say "HQ is a bit difficult" True! You would agree, though, that the focus of RQ on liddle details (which is much of the game system's charm) tends to hinder it's use as a template for epic gaming? This is BTW a stimulating challenge, rather than as an insurmountable problem! 8-) >>What's so special about special success when >>everyone has 350% skills?? >Well, base it on the critical success : )))) Yeah, but I also have a "normal" (whatever that is) RQ campaign going, and I have no desire to have two rules sets. (And my players would kill me if I tried ... ) >Part of the reason I came up with this idea was today when I was writing a >Shadow Knight of Arkat up for a Lodrili Quest. Describing this character as >having been on various HQs where they had gained high levels of skill >experience, I awarded her about 270% in attack, parry and aover 150% in a >variety of other skills. After all, she was supposedly an accomplished HQer >of about ten or eleven HQs. This, in itself, isn't a problem. But I believe >the RQ system to be able to define the Heroes and Superheros of the game, ME TOO !! >and here was a bog standard HeroQuester, barely noticeable, and she kicked >arse. Fine, but this would mean the Heroes were walking around with 500% >attack and parry, 2000%, even 3000%! OK, I was thinking about it in purely >combat terms, but then this is where RQ breaks down. Yes. My own solution to this is to focus on Mass Combat. I haven't found ludicrously high non-combat skills to be much of a problem. Have you had any trouble with these? (Beyond the ridicule factor, that is ...) >Passions are what I introduced. **SNIP** > This is the basic mechanism on >my webpage house rules (please check them out at your leisure). That's more or less what I do with the personality traits. (I dumped Passions, instead.) I did give your rules a cursory glance, but I already had my own set of similar-but-different ones, and went no further. One suggestion, though: Rather than having PC skills divided and recalculated for every HQ, instead I multiply (or rarely, divide) _NPC_ skills for each encounter. This rather simplifies book-keeping, keeps the players guessing, and is more versatile than the old Chaosium system, because it's much easier to have varying levels of difficulty during a Quest. Also saves aspirin. In one HQ I ran, the two heroes set off from different places in the mundane plane, and had varying levels of magical support; one had a Major temple behind him, while the other had his clan's Sacred Hill. Each character had his normal RQ stats, (roughly the same) but the difference in their power levels during the Quest (at least until they reached the Meeting Place, and combined their Support) was VERY noticeable. >Some of the things I haven't mentioned about Hero Points and their useage. >It makes Cult Support really easy. If you get Cult Support you get hero >points to use on the HeroQuest. Far simpler than any idea I've seen >elsewhere, except YAHQS which is basically the same as this anyhow. (I >learnt a lot about HQing from YAHQS and advise it to anyone designing a >HeroQuest system). Yes, that does sound interesting. I do something similar, but much more complicated. I'll probably incorporate some version of this idea. Should "Hero Points" be called, simply, Support? >I've also seen Sandy P.'s HQ system, and liked some of that. In Tales #7 he >mentions WILL. I use WILL in two ways: During character generation PCs get Will Points which they can use to modify the character as rolled ("My dad has a cabbage farm?!?? OK, but my mum is in the Vinga cult!!" costs 1 WP, for example), and they also get a WILL*1% "saving throw" against critical success in a personality check. I should explain that when a character HQs, the more Support he has from his Temple, the more he's inhabited by the divine spirit of his god, the higher his cult personality traits will be during the Quest. The WILL roll represents his humanity (or simply, his Heroism) versus the Will of his god and of the Initiates of the cult. Most NPCs, and ALL non-Hero types lack WILL. >Plus it makes you better at HeroQuesting. Without making you gross or >really, really silly. I've now seen a PC go on two HeroQuests and gained >5d6% in skills upon his return in addition to the normal HQ benefits. He is >gross. A few more Quests and he will be very, very silly. So what? It's just a game!! ;-) > Hero points (does anybody have a better name) solve this, so I see. >Certainly it will arm me with a HeroQuest specific stat that I can "toy" >with to allow for future changes in Greg's vision of HeroQuesting - which >was always what I intended to do when I decided to write my own HeroQuest >system - to fit in with what Greg thought. Yeah, me too; but I also want to stick with RuneQuest !! *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 20:02:53 -0600 From: "Rich Allen" Subject: [RQ-RULES] HeroQuests and huge skill levels... The list is slow, so I think I'll ask a question I hope others are wondering about too. Can someone post a short, simple explaination of HeroQuesting, without sending me all over the web to read various incarnations and rule sets? In particular, I'm wondering how any RuneQuest3 character can acheive such large skill levels. I'm assuming this is a special boon rewarded to the character upon successful completion of a HeroQuest... In our games we use a modified skill check system, so that the first successful use of an unchecked skill gets a checkmark, and after that any special or critical success in that skill also gets a checkmark. At the end of an adventure skills like Search, Scan, Climb, and weapon skills usually have three of four checkmarks, but these usually only result in one or two increases per skill. Even with this increased chance to increase our skill levels we still, after several gaming years, have very few characters with skills in the high 90% to 100% range. Characters with 150% are unheard of, let alone 200%! I'm very interested in the HeroQuest aspect, though, so a brief explaination would be great! Is HeroQuesting something that should even be attempted in most RuneQuest games? Rich Allen *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1999 11:39:43 +0100 From: Ashley Munday Subject: RE: [RQ-RULES] Hero Points Many moons ago, when the world was young, Dinosaurs stalked the Earth and RQ 3 had just come out, I knew a bloke that used a system similar to the one Nikk is suggesting for HQs. He ran a fun Super-RQ2 campaign with them and it seemed to work okay. The idea was that doing certain things or behaving in certain ways were worth Hero Points. (He had some other term, can't remember what). These Hero Points could be cashed in for an extra attributes, skills or special hero powers from going on HQs as well as fudging (not in the English Public School sense, we played in a public place) the d100 when you fell in deep shit without your water wings. The good thing about this system was it's simplicity - the only non-standard characteristic were the Hero Points. Ash *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1999 11:39:43 +0100 From: Ashley Munday Subject: [RQ-RULES] Gifts and Geases Recently, I've been playtesting a slight variant on Gifts and Geases which seems to work. In the rules as written your God says unto you: "Well Squire, as part of your introductory package I shall make you master of the 2H spear. In return you shall not wash, be nice to birds and never wear that armoured cod piece again, for I am Yelmalio, the smelly God that likes birds." In short, your God gives you an ability and then tells you can't do certain things. Instead, what I've been doing having the God say "I am Yelmalio, the unwashed God that likes poking Trolls with spears. As you have emulated me for the last year by never bathing and only using your spear and shield in battles I shall reward you by making you a master of the 1H spear." You do something your God likes, and he rewards you. [Another way of looking at it is that as your Adventurer emulates his God he becomes more like that God. Yes folks, it's a minor HQ - you're trading freedom of action (free will) for a Hero Power.] The mechanics bit: If an initiate has been following a geas, without exception, for the previous year, they can attempt to roll less than their POW. If they succeed their God rewards them for following the geas by giving them a gift. Once a geas has gained the initiate a gift, he or she must continue to follow the geas or the gift disapears and the initiate may get a visit from the cult spirit of reprisal into the bargain. A couple of other things: 1. No one can become a Rune Lord of their cult unless they have at least one Divine gift. The idea is that the God has noticed the Adventurer and approves of him by gifting him. 2. Rune Lords may roll against POW x 5 rather than POW when checking to see if their piety (by following geases) is noticed. 3. I prefer gifts being dished out by the referee rather than by random die rolls: "Well, you haven't eaten any birds this year, so you can speak to them." "You haven't used a sword for ages, have +10% 2H spear attack." "You haven't told a lie for ages, so you can communicate better and learn languages faster." You could even let the player choose if they come up with a good reason for it. Random rolls could represent "God moves in mysterious ways" if that fits your conception of what the world is like. 4. Only allow the Adventurer to roll for those geases he had an opportunity to break. An Aventurer that's never seen an Elf shouldn't get a gift for not allowing them to suffer needlessly. Cheers, Ash *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 1 Apr 1999 05:50:20 -0500 (EST) From: Nikk Effingham Subject: Re: [RQ-RULES] HeroQuests and huge skill levels... I'll start form the bottom up on Rich's message: > I'm very interested in the HeroQuest aspect, though, so a brief >explaination would be great! Simon Phipps webpage has the best description, but as you asked not to be sent to a link I'll give my own description here. >Is HeroQuesting something that should even be >attempted in most RuneQuest games? Seemingly Greg (and others) took a rather defeatist attitude (IMVHO) that RuneQuest couldn't. But I just don't see why. Unless we all need to be on certain drugs to play HeroQuests I think any game system can handle running them. Certainly, playing a Pendragon HQ would be of a different "style" of gameplay than an RuneQuest HQ, or a HeroQuest run using Storyteller, or the Star Wars D6 system. Every system has a different "style" of play, and this would reflect in the HeroQuest. but then I like the RuneQuest style, otherwise I wouldn't play it, and I think - actually, I know - that HeroQuests can easily and successfully be run using RuneQuest. > The list is slow, so I think I'll ask a question I hope others are >wondering about too. Can someone post a short, simple explaination of >HeroQuesting, without sending me all over the web to read various >incarnations and rule sets? HeroQuesting for Beginners: HeroQuesting is the Gloranthan activity of using magics to allow a character to enter into a relationship with the Macrocosmic, the Otherworld, the Godplane, call it what you will. In other words, it allows the character to interact with the divine realm, the mystical realms, and leave the confines of the restrictive physical world. While upon a HeroQuest a HeroQuester represents his community, i.e. his cult, his god, his family or nation - whatever is most appropriate to that character. This doesn't mean the character magically teleports to another realm of existence, like a different plane of existence from AD&D. the character is merely now in connection with the divine realm. If he goes on a HeroQuest to go from his village and beat up the Demon of the Creek that lives just over the brow, he is still on the mundane plane, but he now represents the Gods, the Community, he stands for the whole village. The village head off to the temple and sing prayers, and burn fires, and generally pray and support the HeroQuester, while he heads off and fights the Demon. The HeroQuester is somehow empowered by this and beats the demon up, and the community is free. If he fails, and loses, the community is defeated, for their representative - - the HeroQuester - is dead, and the community died with them. Usually a HeroQuest involves mythically re-enacting what your god did. So you might go on a HeroQuest to Hell to get the Sword of death, if you were a Humakti, and you'd meet Eurmal, who'd help you steal Death from Vivamort, then you'd escape from the guardians of Hell and slay Grandfather Mortal etc... Or the Hill of Gold Quest for Yelmalions, you'd head off and get beaten up by Orlanth, then Zorak Zoran, then Inora and then Chaos, only to be saved at the end. Even if something really bad happens to you, most HeroQuesters choose to let it happen rather than fight against it, because if they change the path, if they don't do exactly what their god did, then the HeroQuest heads off into an unknown tangent - if the Yelmalion slays Orlanth and Zorak Zoran he won't gain the powers that Yelmalio earned by surviving his defeats (the power if Immortality) but gets a new power. Mythical re-enactment is basically the vast portion of HeroQuests. HeroQuests not involving mythical re-enactment do exist, such as passing over to the HeroPlane and meeting the creatures that live there, such as in Altinela, or Vithela, or Luathela. I've had characters travel to a citadel in Hell, and travel to the outskirts of the real world by ocean to meet Magasta and have a curse removed. These weren't mythical re-enactments, but they were HeroQuests. There, HeroQuesting in four paragraphs : ) Beat that Greg : ))))) : )))) The problem is how we go about representing all of this in game terms. Some people simply ignore that you need extra rules - which is fair enough, but you can't describe how you can have Hero Cults, the Infinity Rune, stats for a god etc..., which in my opinion are important (perhaps not vital, but important) to a HeroQuest system. What game term benefit does cult support give to a Quester? Some people may say it is purely emotional benefits, but myself, I think it gives you _something_. Something that the Player, if not the character, can understand. I think the best way to understand heroQuesting is to look at example HeroQuests more than heroQuest rules systems. >In particular, I'm wondering how any RuneQuest3 >character can acheive such large skill levels. I'm assuming this is a >special boon rewarded to the character upon successful completion of a >HeroQuest... In our games we use a modified skill check system, so that the >first successful use of an unchecked skill gets a checkmark, and after that >any special or critical success in that skill also gets a checkmark. At the >end of an adventure skills like Search, Scan, Climb, and weapon skills >usually have three of four checkmarks, but these usually only result in one >or two increases per skill. Even with this increased chance to increase our >skill levels we still, after several gaming years, have very few characters >with skills in the high 90% to 100% range. Characters with 150% are unheard >of, let alone 200%! This is a major point about RuneQuest and Heroism in general, one mans Harrek the Beserk has 3000% percent attack, another may have 500% attack, while Harrek the Beserk in your game, where the characters do not jhave such skill scores, may have only 200%. Fair enough. If you run heroQuests where you divide your characters skills by five when he gets to the HeroPlane, and multiply the experience gained by five when they return, then you will have characters with high experience. Personally, my HeroQuests will most likely not have this feature in future, I didn't like it. But you will still be able to do HeroQuests to increase skills, such as travelling to Kargan Tors court to get training in such and such a skill, or doing Valare Addi's Quest from the Entekosiad to gain more Lores. Depending upon how you run your game, depends upon what the defintion of "high" skill level is for RuneQuest. I wanted "high" to be a few hundred, with the Superheros having maybe several hundred percent, but the way in which I have been running my game, a Superhero would have literally have accrued thousands of percent by HeroQuesting - so I decided to change my system. All IMO, Nikk *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ End of RuneQuest Rules Digest V2 #57 ************************************ *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@mpgn.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. RuneQuest is a Trademark of Hasbro/Avalon Hill Games. With the exception of previously copyrighted material, unless specified otherwise all text in this digest is copyright by the author or authors, with rights granted to copy for personal use, to excerpt in reviews and replies, and to archive unchanged for electronic retrieval.