From: owner-runequest-rules@lists.imagiconline.com (RuneQuest Rules Digest) To: runequest-rules-digest@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: RuneQuest Rules Digest V2 #172 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, December 14 1999 Volume 02 : Number 172 RuneQuest is a trademark of Hasbro/Avalon Hill Games. All Rights Reserved. TABLE OF CONTENTS Re: [RQ-RULES] Open seas [RQ-RULES] Hero Wars Re: [RQ-RULES] Wanted: Sage Advice Re: [RQ-RULES] Hero Wars [RQ-RULES] Re: RuneQuest Rules Digest V2 #171 [RQ-RULES] MISC: MonCon GMs! Re: [RQ-RULES] Open seas [RQ-RULES] Chariots' rules. Re: [RQ-RULES] Re: Perrin's Rules [RQ-RULES] Re: Christianity in RQ 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: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 09:34:59 -0500 From: "Bob Stancliff" Subject: Re: [RQ-RULES] Open seas > No-one knows because everyone always uses the Open Seas > ritual. You could always do a test by sailing out without doing the > ritual, but then who would be mad enough to give it a go? Would > you? I am personally interested in what happens when the Closing spell ends and no one notices... for a couple of years or more. *************************************************************************** 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: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 19:10:49 +0100 From: "German Cantabrana Gonzalez" Subject: [RQ-RULES] Hero Wars Is Hero Wars on sale? German *************************************************************************** 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: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 10:34:55 -0800 From: "Jarold Davis" Subject: Re: [RQ-RULES] Wanted: Sage Advice Matthew wrote: >A) Keeping the party alive - A big-brother NPC is one of the better ways to save a party's skin. When things get dicey he can pull a few extra tricks out of his bag to even up the odds when weak/inexperienced players are outclassed. What can really give your players confidence is when they get the chance to actually save the guru NPC from certain death - say, when the guru dispatches the strongest of the orcs but also goes down from an incapacitating blow. The players can then rescue the guru from the (hopefully only) 2 or 3 opponents left standing. __________________________________________ NetZero - Defenders of the Free World Get your FREE Internet Access and Email at http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html *************************************************************************** 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: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 10:25:34 -0800 From: "DCFitch1" Subject: Re: [RQ-RULES] Hero Wars I recenlt received an e-mail from Issaries stating that the Glorantha Sourcebook will not be pushed back to late January....and Hero Wars is still scheduled for Feb...although I wouldn't hold my breath on either one. They keep changing the release dates. Dan Fitch - -----Original Message----- From: German Cantabrana Gonzalez To: Mailing List RQ Date: Wednesday, December 08, 1999 10:21 AM Subject: [RQ-RULES] Hero Wars >Is Hero Wars on sale? > > >German > > >*************************************************************************** >To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com >with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. *************************************************************************** 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: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 15:44:27 -0500 From: Frederic Moulin Subject: [RQ-RULES] Re: RuneQuest Rules Digest V2 #171 Ha haaa... sound very familiar. >>A) Keeping the party alive - I know a lot of GM's happily kill characters >>who are stupid and in days gone by I've been one of them. But I can't >>punish players for not knowing the rules or for just not thinking like >>professional adventurers. Also, since I'm the only one who knows all the >>rules the whole game has to stop to generate a new character. As other have stated RQ is probably one of the easiest game for player-killing. So here are a few suggestions to slow down the butchery. - Adventures with complex plots, yet not very combat-proficient NPCs: An NPC that needs to do some evil deed but lack the combat abilities will rely on complex machinations, devious plots and double-crossing. It is usually possible to find reasonably inventive plots in games like MERP or Warhammer, and off course some of the RQ scenarios, as opposed to AD&D. In the line of machiavellian plots, I think that Sandy's "The land of Fronrit" most certainly stands out. I would not recommand it for actual game play through... just for inspiration - - Beginner Characters need small adventures: guarding the sheeps against a wolf/tiger < see Night predator from Peter Maranci>, skill-oriented initiations/competitions , small bodyguard/messenger duties , law/cult enforcement investigations where a force of really powerful NPCs can be summoned to deal with the threat once the PC have identified it . - -Capture rather than kill - There are indeed many reasons for taking someone prisoner: Ransom first, but slavery remains an option. Sorcerers need victims to tap and chaos priest victims for sacrifice... even broos need prisoners for fun and reproduction. Off course, you'll need to generate an escape scenario... and in some way makes the whole process an unpleasant experience, if not a deadly one. Frequently the loss of all major possessions is a serious hassle to players, but taping a few characteristics, various mutilations (ears, nose, fingers), branding and a hot date with a broo shaman usually convey well the idea that this is not to be repeated too often. - - Use NPCs... as a principle, my NPCs are usually inepts, prejudiced and plain dumb and do not provide any major solution to the adventure... but in RQ, there is great safety in numbers, and having NPCs around will allow you to modulate your combat by either distributing the blows if the PCs are doing poorly, or in the opposite forcing them to take more risk to resclue/protect the NPCs if they are being overtly cautious. If one of your player dies, you can pass him/her the control of the NPC until a time when it is conveniant to reroll a new character or allow the player to keep the NPC as his new character. - -When all else fail... fudging the dice can balance a really lucky roll by a NPC. I try to limite this to the bare minimum in a sens of fairness to players who do not get to change their dice, and solely do it to favor unlucky PCs. >B) Tailoring the challenge to the party - in a recent adventure the party >got wasted by a sorceror with no attack spells and a handful of orc >guards. Neither the orcs nor the mage had any skills above 75% Well according to the rules, 75% is about as high as one can go with regular training... so it's a very decent number representing likely the combat abilities of highly-trained yet combat-untested professional soldiers... usually I consider the average bandit at around 50%, the average professional soldier at 60-70%, highly-trained and seasoned veterants will do 70-80% and weapon masters 90%. The issue of numbers once again is important... 3 broos at 60% have a very good chance of killing one master warrior. >C) Encouraging the party to do the professional things - get better armour >and some training with their damn weapons. And using their damn magic. I >mean should I remind them about Bladesharp (yes things are THAT >desperate!!!) or should I kill a few just to get the message across? A few years ago I ran into a problem where a large discrepancy between weapon training developped in the group: some PC were definitively combat-oriented, while other directed their training toward crafts and trading. That was all fine with me, but it turned out that the whole party combat ability shifted to the shoulders of just two of the 8 PC... and one day that just was'nt enough... one bad fumble and a lucky blow and I had suddenly a handful of captured and dead players. I took the opportunity to rectify the situation by making the surviving players into gladiators and imposing the training and the style of fighting. It was certainly a bit heavy-handed, but they eventually managed to escape in a Spartacus-like manner when the prospect of having to fight one-another to the death in the arena became too clear. You could have them also be drafted or enrole into some sort of fighting unit after a night of drunkness, and force them to learn cooperative combat tactics under the hand of a sadistic NCO (once again, the trainer in Spartacus comes to mind)... *************************************************************************** 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: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 16:25:33 -0500 From: Tal Meta Subject: [RQ-RULES] MISC: MonCon GMs! If you've already registered to run games at MonCon 2000, please contact me immediately. I suffered a system crash over the weekend and lost a good number of GM registrations, many of which the Con Email Coordinator doesn't seem to have original copies of. - -- 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: Thu, 9 Dec 1999 12:10:25 GMT From: "Nikk Effingham" Subject: Re: [RQ-RULES] Open seas > > No-one knows because everyone always uses the Open Seas > > ritual. You could always do a test by sailing out without doing the > > ritual, but then who would be mad enough to give it a go? Would > > you? > I am personally interested in what happens when the Closing spell ends > and no one notices... for a couple of years or more. I think it's quite possible for the Closing to have already ended. Perhaps by quite some time. No-one would notice before Dormal did his HeroQuest to Open The Seas as no-one would have dared enter the oceans after seeing the first effects of the Closing, after a while they would've just given up and stopped risking lives to see if it had vanished yet. After Dormal's Quest no-one would have dared gone to sea without the ritual as no-one would want to risk it just to find out. I think you could have a series of interesting Gloranthan adventures where Scholars hire the players to do their tests to see whether the Closing is in effect or not, you'd need more expansive details on exactly what the Closing did etc... but I think it'd be kinda fun. Like a Paranoia R&D adventure... ("Just climb in the boat, and if a sea beast appears kill it and tell us whether you feel it was powerful enough to have been summoned by the Closing..."). But I think such things would best be left to the Glorantha digest. 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. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 10 Dec 1999 18:21:51 +0100 From: "Alexandre Lanciani" Subject: [RQ-RULES] Chariots' rules. Hi all! This is my first time on the ML, so let me introduce myself first. I'm Alexandre, an Italian RuneQuester since '92. I play now mainly in Glorantha although my most successful campaign ever has been in the Viking setting. Now, I'd like to know how do you treat chariots in your games. I don't want to bother with accelerate/decelerate rates and turn modes, so I need something simple. These are my rules so far: the chariot's Move is equal to its team minus 2. Colliding at full speed with something (or someone) who does not dodge or jumps away it inflicts damage equal to its move/2, +1d6 if scythed. To make it so collide requires a Drive roll. The chariot's sides protect the driver's legs and abdomen. It has 16 AP, and every point of damage taken reduces the driver's skill by 5%. These are taken from Pendragon's rules. Every suggestion is warmly welcomed. Thanks. Cheers, A driving Alex. *************************************************************************** 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: Fri, 10 Dec 1999 22:14:46 -0800 From: "Bob and Christine Eldred" Subject: Re: [RQ-RULES] Re: Perrin's Rules I, too, would like a copy. Word97 will work just fine, thanks. Bob - -----Original Message----- From: SPerrin@aol.com To: runequest-rules@lists.imagiconline.com Date: Saturday, December 04, 1999 2:22 PM Subject: [RQ-RULES] Re: Perrin's Rules >I am currently checking the copies on my home machine against some I have on >disk that I worked on at work to see which are the most recent before sending >them. Should be later today, but events (or the master of Orion game I'm >playing) may conspire to delay the sending further. > >Steve Perrin, who will send the copies, and probably put them on Peter >Maranci's website, honest. > >*************************************************************************** >To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com >with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. *************************************************************************** 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, 14 Dec 1999 10:22:29 -0500 (EST) From: simon_hibbs@lycosmail.com Subject: [RQ-RULES] Re: Christianity in RQ Sergio : >Simon: >>I don't see why, any more than any one religion in Glorantha is considered >>more true than any others. I prefer a more postmodern approach. > >Well, Michael is the one that wants to make rules for a Christian (or >Christian-like) religion. What we prefer is out of context. We can only >provide him with inputs he can explore, and respect his options. So how come you presenting your own arbitrary judgements about what should be right and what should be wrong in the game is ok, but my preferences are 'out of context'? >Michael wants a monotheitic faith. Monotheism excludes by definition the >possibility of postmodern relativism. In fact, it excludes the possibility >of any form of relativism, be it postmodern, modern, or what else. (As a >side note, religious relativism is a modern creation, not a postmodern >creation.) Taken to that extreme, any dogmatic faith excludes by definition the possibility of postmodern relativism. I'm aware of the history of the study of comparative religion. >Simon: >>I don't think making simplistic, broad-brush decrees like this helps. > >Neither does help making criticisms like *simplistic, broad-brush decrees*. >What helps is to provide Michael with different lines for exploration. And I'm disagreeing with the way you're doing that and offering an alternative opinion. To my mind, choosing a single thread of religious theology and declaring it to be absolute exclusive truth is closing off other 'lines of exploration', not providing any. If you pre-decide what is true and what is not, this limits the scope for making genuinely meaningfull discoveries and presenting novell revelations in the game. I see no reason why a game can't have just as much freedom of interpretation and moral complexity as the real world. >>I'd consider treating faith as more like a skill though. You raise it by >>using it to help you overcome temptations, convert pagans, galvanise >>the resolve of other faithful, etc. You can also train it up through >>performing pilgrimages, going on retreats and such. > >You see, this is why researching a little the history of religious ideas is >helpful. What you describe is just a restatment of Pascal's bet. IMO (it's I don't see the connection. pascal's bet was that thepotential benefits if you believe in god, and god does exist, are infinite. Whereas the potential risks of not believeing in god are infinitely bad, if god does exist. therefore any rational being should believe in god. What I am suggestign is that whatever the _reason_ for having faith, that faith is not usualy absolute, and can be improved by appropriate religious behaviour. >better to put it in full, so that you don't think that I'm trying to >enunciate an objective and abstract truth, and attack me on it), in my >opinion, faith is a mind state, not a skill. The activities you describe >are only meaningful for the faithful. No mather how much one acts like the >faithful, if one lacks faith, doing those things remains meaningless. IMO >this was true in the time of Pascal, and it remains true. You seem to be suggesting that there are no degrees of faith, that it is like an on-off switch, you are either 100% faithfull, or completely faithless. That seems at odds with christian tradition. If there is no benefit from performing pilgrimages and pennances, then why perform them at all? As far as I can tell, religiously devout people do these things because they believe that they strengthen their faith and bring them closer to god. it seems to me that the skills game mechanics can be used for this. The character's Faith ability could be used as a chance of resisting pagan magic, etc. Steve Perrin : >I ran a sort of miniseries game of my current version of RQ for Tim Byrd and >Wayne Shaw's playing group a couple of years ago (and Tim's character is now >in my current RQ campaign) and I based it on concepts in The Lions of Tigana. >Essentially a one God situation, but three groups who worshipped the one God >in different ways, as God the Father/Lord, God the Warrior/Inspiration, and >God the Judge, essentially taking elements of Christian, Moslem and Jewish >beliefs and setting it in a land similar to Spain in the time of El Cid. I remember reading about it on the list here a few years back. It sounded like a very interesting setting for a game. Sometiems it seems that there are often greater differences in religious perspective within a religion than between some sects in different religions. You seemed to capture that richness of spiritual expression within a religion quite well. 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. ------------------------------ End of RuneQuest Rules Digest V2 #172 ************************************* *************************************************************************** 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. With the exception of previously copyrighted material, unless specified otherwise all text in this digest is copyright by the author or authors, with rights granted to copy for personal use, to excerpt in reviews and replies, and to archive unchanged for electronic retrieval.