Variant Glorantha Rules

From: turney_at_nas.nasa.gov
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1998 17:21:32 -0700 (PDT)

      For those who are not familiar with me, my name is Ray Turney, one of the coauthors of RQII. In the period between the demise of RQ IV and Chaosium's announcement of the new rules system, I started writing a new rules set, basically a modernized Pendragon Pass. This is not now, and never has been, intended to be a commercial effort. Andy Weill, on my behalf, has communicated with Issaries Inc., and they have authorized its placement on the web. As always, Glorantha is copyright Issaries Inc., and nothing here or on the website should be construed as official.

      The site is by no means finished, though over a hundred pages of material have been written in the course of about a year. The URL:

http://www.blarg.net/~orion/runequest/

      A brief introduction to the concepts behind the rules:

                          FIRE AND SWORD
                             12/15/97
                           
             INTRODUCTION FOR EXPERIENCED ROLEPLAYERS
 
        This is a set of rules, intended as what I would have written then,
had I known then what I know now, for Gloranthan FRP rules. As always, Glorantha is copyright Greg Stafford and references to it herein are neither official nor intended to challenge his copyright.  

        Character creation has been changed by introduction of archetypes, intended to force the player to clarify his character, and give him some guidelines, without going to the extreme of forcing him to pick a classical D&D style character class.  

        A broader assortment of skills has been provided, with some mystical skills like meditation being added. The overly broad Human Lore, etc skills have been eliminated, and replaced by more specific lore skills. In general, relative to RuneQuest, the skill list has been broadened and fine tuned, to make it easier to play characters who are not exclusively focused on combat.  

        Basic skill rolls are made using D20, rather than D100, because the RQ II system of 5% increments was mathematically equivalent to rolling D20, and the finer granularity offered by the RQ III system ended up not being worth the extra overhead of rolling two dice per skill roll. A Pendragon style Higher Successful skill roll wins approach was chosen for opposing skills, including combat, because it is simple and logical, relative to the various hacks adopted in RQ over the years. The system for increasing skills remains D100 based, because fewer experience checks need to be rolled per session, and the granularity offered by a D100 based system allows differences in natural ability to learn skills among characters to be easily reflected in the system, without being grossly exaggerated.   

        These rules feature much simpler and faster combat, resembling the proven Pendragon system. The chief variations from Pendragon are a simpler damage, armor and hit point system, and criticals requiring a second roll of skill or less. The simplification of damage, armor and hit points is an attempt to reduce computational and record keeping overhead as much as possible. The reroll of skill or less to critical is intended to eliminate Pendragon's odd bug that up to a very high skill level, all characters have an equal chance to critical. If this aspect of Pendragon strikes you as a feature and not a bug, there is no need to use second roll to critical. If you prefer the feel of RuneQuest combat, simply use a rule that all parries block attacks, instead of only higher die roll parries doing so.  

        Magic has been changed, largely in the direction of eliminating the ubiquity of spirit magic and reducing the reliability of divine magic. These features of RQ made many people complain that RQ magic is just not magical. On reflection, I agreed with the complainers. Fire and Sword divine magic works only if the player rolls POW or less on D20, and takes effect at the end of the round, not instantly. It also costs one action, in combat. Spirit Magic has become a matter of bargaining with spirits, and is rare and powerful, not common and weak. Relative to RQ III, sorcery has been limited {Steve Maurer style} by the character's skill in casting the spell. The various sorcery skills have also been factored into spellcasting skill, so Intensity, Range and Duration no longer exist as separate skills, but are components of spellcasting skill. This was done to avoid having to check several different skills in figuring out what a character can do in casting one spell.

        By the way, I like Feng Shui, and have been tempted to use it for heroquesting ... so if Robin and Greg can work together Chaosium's new rules should be interesting.

                                Ray,

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End of The Glorantha Digest V6 #166


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