There were no prebuilt frameworks on which to hang stuff. I gives the general idea of what the god is supposed to affect, but just in the most general terms. But it doesn't help to much when you get to the nitty gritty of actually running the game.
For example, in the rules it has a character deciding to use her magical preception skill. So the GM is supposed to improvise "Dallia, following the magical methods of her ancestors, digs a trench and sits in it until the spirits come and whisper in her ear...."
As there is NOTHING to allow the GM to gain any idea how to do this I guess they are just going to have to make it up as they go along. I can see the average gamer being able to do this for every action that the players want to take. And maintain consistancy too. Right....
Maybe its just that the designers and playtesters are too close to the forest to see the trees, but I don't think this is going to work. I think most people who pick this up are going to run screaming for the exits when they realize how much they need to make up/research and keep consistant without any help from the game itself.
Hell, I couldn't do it easily and I've been playing RQ for 19 years.
I suspect your going to get a lot of:
"Mark, what do you do?"
"I use my combat magic, 5 points, and score a standard success."
"Ok, he fails. You get 5, he takes 10 points. OK, Steve, what do you
do?"
I still don't think that is better than "I hit him with a lightning bolt." "You blow his arm off and he falls down." RQ magic laid out a logical structure of what the spell did and what it looked like and how long it took to do it. More flexability would be nice, but a totally unstructured approach does not seem to be the solution that will take the world by storm.
Kevin
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