From: owner-runequest-rules@lists.imagiconline.com (RuneQuest Rules Digest) To: runequest-rules-digest@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: RuneQuest Rules Digest V2 #165 Reply-To: runequest-rules@lists.imagiconline.com Sender: owner-runequest-rules@lists.imagiconline.com Errors-To: owner-runequest-rules@lists.imagiconline.com Precedence: bulk RuneQuest Rules Digest Tuesday, November 30 1999 Volume 02 : Number 165 RuneQuest is a trademark of Hasbro/Avalon Hill Games. All Rights Reserved. TABLE OF CONTENTS Re: [RQ-RULES] Sandy's Mystic Rules [RQ-RULES] Sorcery Spells? [RQ-RULES] Re: Play by Email Re: [RQ-RULES] Sandy's Mystic Rules Re: [RQ-RULES] Sandy's Mystic Rules Re: [RQ-RULES] NPC Sorcerers Re: [RQ-RULES] Sorcery Spells? Re: [RQ-RULES] Sorcery Spells? RE: [RQ-RULES] Sandy's Mystic Rules Re: [RQ-RULES] Sandy's Mystic Rules [RQ-RULES] Christianity in RQ [RQ-RULES] Fine Combing Sandy's Mysticism Rules 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: Sun, 28 Nov 1999 15:48:21 -0600 From: Jim Gould Subject: Re: [RQ-RULES] Sandy's Mystic Rules > My question is; is anyone else using these Mystic rules and have you had any > issues with them? Do you feel the mystic is too over-powered? > I've got a player using them. They definitely need tuning down. I disallow Centipede, and don't allow more than one critical per skill per session to count for gaining mysticism. "Dammit" Jim Gould jgould@io.com http://www.io.com/~jgould http://www.britanniamanor.org "The only thing that helps me maintain my slender grip on reality is the friendship I share with my collection of singing potatoes." *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 Nov 1999 13:02:47 -0800 From: "DCFitch1" Subject: [RQ-RULES] Sorcery Spells? I am new to this list so please bear with me if this question has been done to death! I am looking for additional sorcery and divine spells other than the ones provided in RQ3. Anyone know where I might find some? Dan Fitch *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 12:44:17 -0500 (EST) From: simon_hibbs@lycosmail.com Subject: [RQ-RULES] Re: Play by Email Ireland, John : >Well, it looks like I must have confused some of you. I was really after >advise on how to run a campaign, not gain a number of players. I would like >to thank all of you who would like to be tortured oops no that should be in >a game run by me. I've thought about this a bit. I have run one RPG by email and it was a real learning experience. Here are my tips : 1. Run with a fairly small group, probably 4-5 players maximum. Be ruthless about this. 2. Select the players for the game carefully. Choose people who are likely to contribute something to the game. Writing ability is important, because email games are necesserily more 'literary' than verbal games. Try to choose people you (and the other players) will enjoy reading stuff from. Be ruthless about this too. 3. I'd advise against running detailed combats, unless you want to spend the next 6 months of your life running as many combat rounds. Think narative, and get the players to describe character actions in dramatic terms. 4. Practice with a simple paint package and make sure you use a format everyone in the game can read. I never want to have to draw another ASCII map again. Simple maps and diagrams can help enormously. 5. Don't be too ambitious. Over committing yourself is a sure fire way to demoralise yourself and spoil your enjoyment of the game. However, the first time you're almost certain to do it anyway. Remember that you will be doing vastly more work than all the other players put together. Therefore you owe it to yourself not to make a hard job harder. 6. Once the game starts, try to keep the pace going. If players are slow to send in responses, move the action on. This is particularly true if you have responses from one or two players but not others. Tough. The people who did respond deserve to have their character's actions move the story forward. Don't punish people for slow responses though, just don't hang around more than a day or two waiting for them. 7. When player actions get out of synch, make a clear cut executive decission as to what happened and move on. Be firm but fair and don't get drawn into a discussion. 8. Be moderately generous to the players. Tend to give them the benefit of the doubt if you're not sure what their character would do under XYZ circumstance, especialy if their response seems incomplete. Maybe they didn't understand the situation you described, or what another player meant. remenmber they're suffering from severe sensory deprivation in terms of awareness about what is going on. 9. When writing your emails, seperate out in-character dialogue, narative descriptions, etc from gamespeak sections, e.g. using a line of --- like this : - ---------------- Narative ----------------------- - ---------------- Gamespeak ----------------------- Encourage the players to do this too, and maybe even supply them with a template for their emails. Consider preceeding the email with a very brief summary of the location, date/time, characters present, etc. The way I ran my game, I asked everyone to post to everyone else, saving time and effort for me. The problem is, some players just posted to me anyway, even after repeated pleas not to. Unless it is _vital_ that a player communicate only with you, insist that even things other players wouldn't see themselves are still posted publicly to everyone. After all this is only a game. Asuume that the other characters get to hear about things that happened away from them afterwards during off-stage conversations. If any of your players are likely to abuse this, then you realy shouldn't be playing with them anyway. If you'd rather have players mail you and then put together a summary to mail out to everyone yourself, fine. That may well work better for you. Simon Hibbs *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 17:54:53 GMT From: "Nikk Effingham" Subject: Re: [RQ-RULES] Sandy's Mystic Rules > I am using Sandy's Mystic rules in a non-Glorantha setting. The Mystic of > the group will stay back and call up his Martial Arts styles then dive into > the fray. The issue I have is once the styles are up and running, he is at > peak fighting ability as long as he is concentrating on his styles. Thus if > the fights are spaced out and he does not have to perform other actions all > the styles are still up full. I'm not sure if I quite understand you here, but if a mystic calls up his martial arts styles, has a fight, and then wanders on to another location where he has another fight, in the second fight he must still bring up his styles again. From what I understand since he has stopped fighting then his martial arts styles will drop. I s'pose it is possible for a Mystic guard to be on watch constantly with their art styles up, but it is impossible, I feel, to just wander around with High Mystical styles in effect. > My question is; is anyone else using these Mystic rules and have you had any > issues with them? Do you feel the mystic is too over-powered? The mysticism rules certainly need a lot of fleshing out, and a bit of down powering in places. A playtest I did of them showed me a flaw in character generation more than anything else - the amount of Mysticism someone begins with greatly effects their power level. No starting character should start with more than 6-7 Mysticism IMO. Mystcisim is one of the magical arts that takes a long time to develop and then suddenly becomes really, really powerful, but only after everybody else has long since reached that Rune Lord level of power. The Mystical arts I certainly have a problem with are the Speak [own] ones that allow you to cast sorcery spells at will and most of the Summon styles, which seem overly powered. I will try and give a more detailed criticism later. Nikk *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 Nov 99 10:23:11 PST From: Eric Yin Subject: Re: [RQ-RULES] Sandy's Mystic Rules Are these mysticism rules available on the net anywhere? * . * * * . * . . * . * . * . * . * . * * . * Eric Yin* . * * . . * . * . * . Dept. of Pathology, USC * Pau hana! Now I go moi-moi . . eyin@hsc.usc.edu . * * . . * . . http://www-hsc.usc.edu/~eyin * . . * * * . * . ICQ: 12597587 * * * * * . * * * * . . . * * * . * * * . * . . * *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 23:09:49 -0500 From: Tal Meta Subject: Re: [RQ-RULES] NPC Sorcerers Jim Bickmeyer wrote: > > Does anyone have a quick and easy way to come up with NPC Sorcerers from > Sandy's Rules? The best I do is to roughly fudge them. I am using the RQIV > previous Experience charts to quickly assign skill percents to NPC's, but > the sorcerer skills are the original RQ3 rules. I can always go though the > conversion process each time, but I wouldn't enjoy it much. I usually just assign whatever skill percentages reflect the kinds of effects I want the NPC in question to be capable of. Sometimes i do this in reverse order (i.e. - i introduce the sorcerer as an npc, have hom do things, then after the session actually sit down and detail his full range of powers). - -- talmeta@cybercomm.net - Heretic, Dilettante, & God-Machine ICQ - 12594453 AIM - talmeta Homepage - *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 Nov 1999 23:47:06 -0500 From: Tal Meta Subject: Re: [RQ-RULES] Sorcery Spells? DCFitch1 wrote: > > I am new to this list so please bear with me if this question has been done > to death! I am looking for additional sorcery and divine spells other than > the ones provided in RQ3. Anyone know where I might find some? I have a few on my website, below, and plenty of other folks have no doubt added similar sentiments. :) - -- talmeta@cybercomm.net - Heretic, Dilettante, & God-Machine ICQ - 12594453 AIM - talmeta Homepage - *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:31:14 -0600 From: Jim Gould Subject: Re: [RQ-RULES] Sorcery Spells? > I am new to this list so please bear with me if this question has been done > to death! I am looking for additional sorcery and divine spells other than > the ones provided in RQ3. Anyone know where I might find some? > Here's a couple I've come up with. They're not terribly well tested, so comments would be appreciated. Mark Passive, Ranged, Temporal Places a temporary, invisible magical sigil on any physical object or being. The sigil may be of any design, and is about 1 cm across. The mark is invisible to shamanistic Second Sight, but shows up clearly to Soul Sight. The mark is visible to Mystic Vision if the Intensity of the Mystic Vision exceeds the Intensity of the Mark spell. Only the caster knows the design of the sigil unless this knowledge is shared by Telepathy or Mindlink, or viewed by magic as above. The base duration of the Mark spell is 1 hour, and doubles with each level of Duration expended. Trace Mark Passive, Ranged, Temporal Gives the caster knowledge of the location of any one of his known Mark spells within range. 1 Intensity Caster knows range and direction to mark, +- 5% 3 Intensity Caster gains knowledge of speed and direction mark is moving, as well as exact range and direction 5 Intensity Caster can cast Projected Sense spells within 10m of Mark, as long as the caster has enough Range. Base range of Trace Mark is 2 km, and doubles with each level of Range expended. JG *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1999 08:38:15 -0000 From: "Hibbs, Philip" Subject: RE: [RQ-RULES] Sandy's Mystic Rules >Are these mysticism rules available on the net anywhere? Yeah, have a root around on my web page. They're there somewhere. Philip Hibbs http://www.snark.freeserve.co.uk/ Opinions expressed may not even be my own, let alone those of any organisations, nations, species, or schools of thought to which I may be affiliated. *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1999 17:44:56 +0200 From: Olli Kantola Subject: Re: [RQ-RULES] Sandy's Mystic Rules > > My question is; is anyone else using these Mystic rules and have you had any > > issues with them? Do you feel the mystic is too over-powered? > > The mysticism rules certainly need a lot of fleshing out, and a bit of > down powering in places. A playtest I did of them showed me a > flaw in character generation more than anything else - the amount > of Mysticism someone begins with greatly effects their power level. > No starting character should start with more than 6-7 Mysticism > IMO. Mystcisim is one of the magical arts that takes a long time to > develop and then suddenly becomes really, really powerful, but > only after everybody else has long since reached that Rune Lord > level of power. The mysticism also rely on detachment and don't generally encourage the Player to use them, since each and every time you use them you lose skill percenticles. So if you keep relying on them your going to have a burn out, well eventually. Let's imagine a martial arts dude that gets into six fight in an adventure. With two or three styles in each fight it takes him 10 points down in martial arts/kick whatever. If he keeps doing this hell have to rely even more on his styles, 'cos he's not that good anymore. The Experience gained might help this a little bit, but eventually he's going down :( > The Mystical arts I certainly have a problem with are the Speak > [own] ones that allow you to cast sorcery spells at will and most of > the Summon styles, which seem overly powered. Speak Kralori is indeed dreadful, and that one point of skill-loss doesn't help much. Witout severe intensity limits or such. This skill is a catastrophe waiting to happen. With some extra MPs you have a guy with monsterous STR/SIZ/DEX... Or some powder which used to be an Hero!!! *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1999 15:15:03 +0000 From: Michael Cule Subject: [RQ-RULES] Christianity in RQ Just something I've been jiggling around in my mind for a while: how do we depict a monotheistic faith like Christianity with a basically polytheistic gamesystem like RQ? I've been thinking about how you might use RQ to run a semi-historical game in medieval Europe where the dominant religious view was that of 'there's only one God and we've got him'. It doesn't seem right to me to give Christian priests a bundle of spell effects and spirits they can summon so what I came up with was the following. 1) Christians are innately resistant to magic (which is after all, the Devil's work). They have a base chance of POW x 5% that any spell cast at them will simply fail to work. This applies to *good* Christians only. Those with unconfessed guilts on their soul will loose the protection. 2) No magic will work on Holy Ground. None. Particularly saintly Christians will carry around a personal No Magic Zone that drives back the Devil's workings. 3) Christians get POW gain rolls for resisting magic as well as for overcoming other people in magic or spirit combat. Since about the only chance a Christian has of offensively using magic or spirit combat is priests doing Excorcism this isn't as big a bonus as you might think. 4) Christians can call on God or the Saints for Divine Intervention. If they fail they loose a point of POW. If they succeed they loose no POW at all unless they roll their POW exactly and are carried off to join the Heavenly Choir. God (because He prefers his followers to have Faith) will tend to answer calls for help in ways that could be perfectly natural. - -- Michael Cule *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1999 17:43:28 GMT From: "Nikk Effingham" Subject: [RQ-RULES] Fine Combing Sandy's Mysticism Rules > The mysticism also rely on detachment and don't generally encourage the > Player to use them, since each and every time you use them you lose skill > percenticles. So if you keep relying on them your going to have a burn > out, well eventually. Let's imagine a martial arts dude that gets into six > fight in an adventure. With two or three styles in each fight it takes him > 10 points down in martial arts/kick whatever. If he keeps doing this hell > have to rely even more on his styles, 'cos he's not that good anymore. The > Experience gained might help this a little bit, but eventually he's going > down :( Remember, this is only when Focusing the High Mysticism, martial art styles are dreadful and game destroying just as easily without them. Here's a more detailed look a what I think the problems are with the system, I'd send them to Sandy personally but I don't presently have his address. (This is also a cue for anyone who doesn't care to hit the "Delete" button on your toolbar...) INCREASING MYSTICISM I liked the idea that increasing Mysticism could only be done once every session, it slows down advancement to a reasonable pace and stops PCs using Mystical abilities at any and all opportunities to get more Mysticism. MEDITATION The first power, regaining lost INT, is a bit dodgy, but then if you lose INT trying to get Mysticism I s'pose it's neccessary. Certainly the last two powers, which give you mroe mps and hps, as well as letting you give them to other people, are equally dodgy. It gives everyone with Mysticism a Heal spell. Albeit a Heal that won't work very often and takes an hour to use, but nevertheless, I don't think it adds anything to the Mystic. LOW MAGIC I think that it should not be possible to increase this above double your base skill with low magic. I'm not sure whether Sandy meant to include this or not, but it makes sense. It means that a good Mystic, say with Mysticism 25, who has spent 50 hours learning a skill, say Speak Pentan or Bow Attack, and got a mere 5%, can boost it with low magic to get 130%, which doesn't seem fair to me, it seems too powerful that a Mystic can boost all of his skills so high so easily. CHARMS I think that rather than spending MPs 1 POW for every 10 MPs should be used, to stop Charms flowing like confetti. I know that it could be easily abused, get a group of Mystics together, they'll spend all day making charms for one another until they all have each others powers, and those odd percentile losses won't really matter when you all have access to six or seven martial art styles for one fight. The powers themselves sometimes seem a bit dodgy in places. To me, Mysticism is an internal thing, a power within, a magical power nonetheless, but it comes from within and affects the mystic and only the mystic - so certain High Mystic Art powers like Boat or Ride just seem dumb, as well as Shiphandling. In the case of Boat and Shiphandling, i could see a Mystic making the boat go faster, but not altering it's capacity. DODGE The basic Dodge power is too powerful, dodging that many multiple attacks that easily is too overbalancing. It'd be better if Dodge had no basic pwoers and only styles, and this basic Dodge power was turned into a 3 Mysticism style. As for Arrow Dance and Magic Harmony, they work great apart from the fact that they must each be activated once per use, which in the case of Magic Harmony is not worth 25 Mysticism! Not by a long shot. I'd change it so that they need not be activated once per use, increase Arrow Dance to costing 6 Mysticism, and leave the cost of Magic Harmony unaffected. FAST TALK The focus powers, of seeing through eyes, casting spells and using MP's seem very.. odd for Fast Talk powers, even if you are a Mystic, I do like the controlling power however. ORATE This is very powerful, it allows you to emulate Morale, Mindblast, and Dominate, three supremely useful and powerful spells that just land in the Mystics lap for little or not effort. I don't know what it could be changed to. POETRY, SING, SPEAK KRALORI, PLAY All of these emulate magical sorcery spells, either instant, temporal, or both. This is amazingly powerful. Even if you just limit the list of spells you can choose from to, say, the common spells from the sorcery list (so no Power Sinks, or Decrepitudes) you still have a spell for every occassion. Want to break into the house? Boost Stealth will see to that. Stuck in an inaccessible location? You now have Fly and Teleport to choose from. Imprisoned? Boost Damage on your fists. The range of spells that suddenly become available makes you too powerful, even the limitation of having styles for the arts does little to stop this, there has to be some limitation on selection of spells. Perhaps one mysticism must be spent to learn each spell. This would start to be more sensible, but then makes the Mystic little different from a sorceror with no Presence. CALLIGRAPHY This allows you to mimc any spirit magic spell, which is not as unbalancing as mimicing any socery spell, which has a spell for almost any occassion. I'd limit this art to being used only with "common" spirit magic spells i.e. those listed in the main rulebook. [Elemental] LORE Does anyone know more about what Sandy thinks about Elemental Lores himself? They sound interesting... CENTIPEDE STYLE The more powerful variant is too powerful, especially when combined with weapon styles - imagine someone coming at you with damage boosted nunchuka every SR! It becomes more reasonable if you don't allow the character to parry or dodge at the same time. You can always limit the learning of this art as well to ascetic monks who live on a hill somewhere. The Focus should be made less powerful as well, it should only reduce your foe's Dodge or Parry by a cumulative 5% I feel. FALCON This style needs to be mroe expensive in costs of Mysticism. Currently it costs only 4, I think it is nearly as good as centipede style. It allows you to choose the location you hit, so unarmoured or lethal locations now become a death tag for foes, and more importantly you can consistently hit them in one lcoation to take them down. Combined with Centipede style it is frightening, the martial artist gets about 5 blows in on one location, say the head, and if they have their hands and feet damage boosted or have Ironhand cast, then their foe stands NO chance. GOAT Slightly too powerful, I recommend doubling the cost for increasing the power. MONKEY Same problems as Centipede. We won't go into the horrors of combining the two... RHINO Does anyone have an updated version which can give me the costs of Mysticism and MP cost, they just say variable. Unless I'm reading the text wrongly, I don't see why. Help? MINERAL LORE Another one fo these powers that doesn't gel well with the "power from within" feeling I think Mysticism should have. INNER FORCE Quick and cheap access to powerful rune magic. This is WAY too powerful. They do cost quite a bit, but 16 Mysticism is still not too much, Inner Balance should cost about what it does, what with it including Sever Spirit as one of it's powers and all. VOID WAY too powerful, under any circumstances. All you need to do it get it, sacrifice for some Rune Spells, head out into town, drain some POW, do it again, and again, and again. But then it is an Evil power, so it is really not for PCs and only for GMs to abuse so I'll let Sandy off on this one : ))) DEVISE Another unbalancing power. It gives access to all high mystical powers, In turn giving you access to all sorcery and rune magic! I'd ban this power without a second thought. WEAPON SKILLS Does anyone know how much Mysticism it costs to adopt a weapon style, my version of the rules doesn't have it listed. Oh, and again does anyone know what the King of Swords and Queen of Swords are? All in all I do like the rules set, but a lot of parts of it are very over powered, I think this comes from Sandy's gaming style, he doesn't care much for power gaming players so abuse of the rules doesn't really crop up that much. Me, I like a slick rules system. I think that the powers that I have most problem with are one or two martial arts powers and all the powers that let you replicate spell effects, either sorcery or rune magic. It doesn't seem as if these could be kept under control - what it needs is a list of effects linked to the elements which these things can replicate instead of just "any rune spell" or "any sorcery spell". Also, I think keeping people's Mysticism level down is the way forward. When i update my character generation system again the cost for Mysticism will be vastly greater than the small ballpark figure I came up with when I read the rules, for normal RQ character generation I'd recommend one point of Mysticism for every year of past experience past 6 (to aminimum of one). All IMO Nikk *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ End of RuneQuest Rules Digest V2 #165 ************************************* *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. RuneQuest is a Trademark of Hasbro/Avalon Hill Games. 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