RE: Greg's Magic Guidelines

From: Trent Smith <tfsmith_at_POMONA.EDU>
Date: Sun, 04 May 1997 00:53:23 -0700 (PDT)

     Thanks to Stephen Martin for posting this info. I'd heard about this a couple years back, but since I'm by no means an "insider" this is the first time I'd actually seen it in print.

     Putting aside the questionable decision to put such exact restrictions on what (from my understanding) was to be creative work by a number of authors, these "rules" raise some interesting points:

     Reading these, it's no wonder that the RQ/Glorantha split has come about, since what Greg is describing is a fully game-able magic system, it just isn't RuneQuest. From the way I read it, "battle magic" spells would be skill-based, improving with use. Magic points would be replaced by some sort of "fatigue" from spellcasting. Offensive spells (Befuddle, Disrupt, etc) aren't mentioned, and probably no longer exist. Rather than actual "spells," these seem much more like "blessings."

     Rune magic has been switched over to a Runepower-like system that includes the functions of DI. Apparently "one-use" Divine Magic and DI for initiates no longer exists.

     As a stalwart defender of the RQ mechanics (I've been gaming for a pretty long time with a lot of different systems, and I maintain that RQ has the best all-around rules of any rpg I've played) I must point out that Greg's anti-RQ comments mostly seem to be based upon RQ2 or simplified readings of RQ3: the rules mention foci for spells and environmental requirements for Sunspear etc, the combat system has lots of contingencies to avoid people hitting each other w/o effect until someone runs out of hp ("pain"="fatigue"), etc. Even so, it seems only a matter of common sense to realize that different assumptions work in games and in fiction, and that the former will obviously have a higher level of abstraction and uniformity to make it fun and playable.

     Anyway, I'm not going to rush out and re-work all of the magic in my campaign to match this (since, while certainly Different, I don't see that this new system is necessarily Better), but it's still interesting to me to see a hint of Greg's vision (and how far it's veered in 15-20 years) and to possibly get an idea of what magic might look like in the new Glorantha rpg, if and when we see such a thing.

Trent Smith


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