Re: The Glorantha Digest V5 #191

From: Bruce Mason <MasonB_at_cardiff.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1997 10:27:22 GMT0BST


Some interesting comments about scalability in roleplaying. The most convincing system I've ever seen to achieve this is DC Heroes which manages to get Superman and Jimmy Olsen on the same table. It does this through a strictly logarithmic system in which the whole world is measured in APs (attribute points). Basically each 10 APs is 1000 times more than the rest. For example 0APs is 50lbs in weight, 10APs is 50,000 lbs.

I've long messed with the idea of applying this to Glorantha-based adventures although with a slightly less coarse scale (eg each 10APs is a 100* multiple) inspired by Greg Stafford's comments at RQ CON1 in Leicester where he indicated that he wanted to see a system that measured everything in the world.

The other crucial aspect of the system which I think is really good was that dice rolls were all 2d10. The higher the better, double 1 is auto failure, any other double you roll again and add. This is IMHO the best random number generation system I've ever played with.

As per stats and runes I like Nick Brooke's correspondences. A while ago I was playing the possibility of an Ars Magica style sorcery system using runic corrspondences and a linguistic metaphoe. E.g. Form runes would be nouns, others would be verbs. So if you wanted to cast a spell "control fire elemental" you would use the runes mastery+fire. This lead naturally to looking at runic correspondences to characteristics. As an interesting sidebar the number 7 is one of the key numbers in folklore and mythological texts so it's quite handy that there happen to be 7 characteristics.

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