From: owner-runequest-rules@lists.imagiconline.com (RuneQuest Rules Digest) To: runequest-rules-digest@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: RuneQuest Rules Digest V2 #180 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 Friday, December 31 1999 Volume 02 : Number 180 RuneQuest is a trademark of Hasbro/Avalon Hill Games. All Rights Reserved. TABLE OF CONTENTS Re: [RQ-RULES] Re: Christianity in RQ RE: [RQ-RULES] Re: Christianity in RQ [RQ-RULES] Steve's Rules [RQ-RULES] Re: Christianity in RQ Re: [RQ-RULES] Re: Christianity in RQ Re: [RQ-RULES] Re: Christianity in RQ Re: [RQ-RULES] Re: Getting back to useful stuff. 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: Thu, 30 Dec 1999 18:16:23 +0000 From: Michael Cule Subject: Re: [RQ-RULES] Re: Christianity in RQ In message <000401bf5264$1ea06aa0$6eb78ad1@p233>, Rich Allen writes >I thought we were talking about a RQ game in which the GM wanted to >explore a monotheistic setting that was similar to Christianity. Why does >this have to mean that religion must be a central theme?? Because Christianity *was* central to the lives of everyone in Europe in the Middle Ages. Even people who didn't believe much had large parts of their lives controlled directly or indirectly by the Church. You know, I didn't expect this amount of controversy when I put the topic forward. I should know better.... - -- Michael Cule *************************************************************************** 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, 30 Dec 1999 16:53:38 -0700 From: "Rich Allen" Subject: RE: [RQ-RULES] Re: Christianity in RQ > Because Christianity *was* central to the lives of everyone in Europe in > the Middle Ages. Even people who didn't believe much had large parts of > their lives controlled directly or indirectly by the Church. If you really are looking to emulate actual historical Christianity, then I misunderstood your original post. My apologies. I took the position that a monotheistic religion in RQ did not necessarily have to look anything like Christianity, thinking that it was the monotheism side you were interested in, rather than the actual Christian aspects. You'll get no more controversy from me! Rich *************************************************************************** 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, 31 Dec 1999 09:56:26 +0800 From: "Matthew Barron" Subject: [RQ-RULES] Steve's Rules I really quite like S Perrin's rules as well and am in the process of converting my campaign. To that end - some ideas I'm working on for combat. Skills, Styles & Techniques First - no attk & pry as separate skills. When someone picks up a weapon - say a broadsword - they use that skill and develop as per normal skill rules. However they begin with only one effect possible for additional successes - the classic impale/slash/crush effect. Any other special effects, like those listed in Steve's rules or others, must be studied as Techniques. Learning a technique takes between 100 and 500 hours of study and is learnt to a specific skill - eg. you learn aimed blow(head) with 1H sword and you can only use it with one handed sword. You want aimed blow(head) for spear then you learn it separately. Groups of Techniques are often taught as Styles. A style adopts a skill or number of skills and then teaches appropriate techniques to each weapon skill. A character then learns the techniques which the style teaches and can use them in combination according to the limits of the style. There's a discount in the learning time per technique when learning a whole style but the character has to study the style in the order it is taught - usually the 1 success techniques first, then the 2 success's and so on. If a character learns independant techniques separately from each other then they must declare which technique will be applicable before they make their dice rolls in combat. A stylist may use any technique which is appropriate to the weapon without declaration. Styles frequently incorporate additional skills and give them combat related effects - for example - White Rose Style allows practitioners to use Jump or Acrobatics in place of Maneuvre in combat. This is the bare bones of my ideas - I got to send this now 'cause my servers about to shut down for Y2K. There'll be more when we return, after these important messages from our sponsors. Matt B. *************************************************************************** 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, 17 Dec 1999 17:15:56 -0000 From: Sergio Subject: [RQ-RULES] Re: Christianity in RQ Simon: >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 have nothing against this. I only think that there's a misunderstanding here. Let me try to explain better what I mean: There are two levels of discurse here (maybe more, but I'll restrict my analysis to two levels): In game discurse about religion; Meta-game discourse, or in other words, the designer discourse. What you write above is writen at the meta-level. You, as a game world designer, favor a multi-thread approach to religion. But, what happens when the In-game discourse contradicts the meta-game discourse (or vice-versa)? Let me provide two examples: Religions like the Roman, Greek, Hindu, etc. are "open". They are polytheistic, and accept that there are other religions or divine entities outside of their native pantheons. If we design a game tehology that's similar to these, and assume an open meta-game stance on religion, the two discourses are coherent. Now, monotheistic religions are based on the belief that there's only one God. There's only one center of "divine activity", and everything else relating to religion comes (directely or not) from that center. This means that this in-game discourse is closed. Now, if the game world designer thinks that in his game world there should be multiple sources of divinity, and that there's no A religion, the discourses don't match. The conclusion is that the in-game discourse of that religion is wrong. Let's go back to Christianism. This religion is based on the notion that there's only one God. (With three manifestations, Father, Son, and Holy Gost, which may raise the question whether it's a single god or three, but I think this is not the place to discuss this issue.) More than that, there's only one way to have faith in that God: the Christian way. Other beliefs are not acceptable. A game designer that wants to create a game based on Christianism must decide: either the meta-game discourse is consistent with the in-game discourse, or not. Either there's only a God - the Christian God - or not. What I ask is: what's the point in designing a game based on Christianism, if an essencial aspect of that game is that this religion is utterly wrong? (Remember that Michael didn't say that he wanted a game about RW faiths. He didn't say that his game was about Christianism, Islamism, Budism, Judaism, etc.) Next we can go deeper: there's not one Christianism. We have Catholicism, Anglicanism, Luteranism, etc. And within each of those variations, we have basically two sub-sets: the common people faith, and the scholars faith. If we think about Catholicism, we have the Theologists, and the faith of the common people, and even those have diverse expressions. Who's right: the Theologist (which, for instance, has many doubts on the sainthood of an holy person or miracle like the countless manifestations of the Virgin Mary that the Church didn't turn into canonical manifestations of the divine), or the layman (with its popular saints)? Once more, we have two different in-game discourses. The game designer must chose which is true. >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. Well, after stating the bet the way you resumed, Pascal also presents some suggestions for the person that doubts the existance of God. These revolve around adopting a behavior in accordance to the religious percepts. He suggests that, when in doubt, it's better to conform to the commandements issued by God. The un-believer should do this, both because he ensures that, in the case that God exists he would not sin, and would protect himself from the wrath of God; and because maybe the practice of the religious commandments could lead the unfaithful to open his senses and get faith. In other words, one can behave in accordance to the percepts of the religion even if one doesn't have faith. But that behavior only gains true meaning if one has faith. On the other hand, there's a lot of people that do have faith (which means that do believe in God), and don't act according to the appropriate religious behavior. In fact, they may even try to act against the religious commandments, like in the case of the Satanistic sects. We cannot say that these sects don't believe in God. On the contrary, their only raison d'etre is that their members are faithful. (On the other hand, we may consider that the true Satanist must know extensively the religious behavior, if only to do just the oposite.) My conclusion is that faith can exist even if one has only a superficial knowledge of what the religion considers a proper behavior, and that a proper behavior does not result necessarily in faith. >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. AFAIK it is not at odds with the Christian tradition. In this tradition we have: The (true) faithful: those that believe in (the Christian) God, and act according to his percepts; The sinners: those that believe in God but don't act according to his percepts; The infidels: those that believe in gods that try to displace the Christian God; The pahens: those that believe in gods that don't try to displace the Christian God (since the Christian God is allien to their beliefs); The agnostic: those that don't kow whether God exists or not; The atheists: those that say that God does not exist. These are qualitative distinctions, not matters of degree. >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. This is a different issue. The problem is that according to Christianism man is tainted by the original sin. Religious behavior is not directed at acquiring or enlarging faith. It is directed to Salvation by overcoming the taint of the original sin. Salvation requires faith (a mind state), and strict obeservation of the religious commandments (a behavior). >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. I would use skills to represent the knowledge of the percepts of the religion, and how to attempt to achieve Sainthood and Salvation. But not only this. I would also use peersonality traits (like in Pendragon). These play a major part in Christian religious matters. On what concerns faith, I would probably drop the notion of doubt (agnosticism and atheism). And I would decide whether the in-game Christian discourse (that there's only one God) conforms with my meta-discourse. If I decided that those two discourses were consistent (Christianism is true), the other religions would be manifestations of the Devil. Sergio *************************************************************************** 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, 31 Dec 1999 12:32:49 +0000 From: Michael Cule Subject: Re: [RQ-RULES] Re: Christianity in RQ In message <000201bf5321$1868a2c0$98b4cdcf@p233>, Rich Allen writes > > If you really are looking to emulate actual historical Christianity, >then I >misunderstood your original post. My apologies. I took the position that a >monotheistic religion in RQ did not necessarily have to look anything like >Christianity, thinking that it was the monotheism side you were interested >in, rather than the actual Christian aspects. You'll get no more >controversy from me! Look, what I was after (having forced myself to think it through following the wave of posts on the topic and the pointless heat generated) was an alternate set of game mechanics that would both work in the game system and give the players absolutely no clue whatsoever on What Was Really Going On. In my own campaigns I try to be sure that the Hidden Truth of the universe is clear in my own mind but is kept some distance from the player-characters. (I have violated this rule when it seemed convienient: my last big campaign featured the Archangel Michael personally briefing the player-characters on the nature of the creature sleeping at Ryleh.) I find that one of the frustrating things about Glorantha is that I don't actually know what the Big Secrets are and so I can't actually run the universe in a consistent way. What I wanted was a way to run a universe where it is clear to everyone that the Christians (or Christian analogues) have some power backing them up but people could still follow other ways (represented by the traditional 3-way RQ magic mechanics) and not come to the automatic conclusion that they were damned. And no, as far as I'm concerned, the Malkioni model doesn't work quite right for this. Happy new year all. - -- Michael Cule *************************************************************************** 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, 31 Dec 1999 14:05:28 EST From: SPerrin@aol.com Subject: Re: [RQ-RULES] Re: Christianity in RQ In a message dated 12/31/1999 5:13:40 AM Pacific Standard Time, mikec@room3b.demon.co.uk writes: << ,,,what I was after ... was an alternate set of game mechanics that would both work in the game system and give the players absolutely no clue whatsoever on What Was Really Going On. What I wanted was a way to run a universe where it is clear to everyone that the Christians (or Christian analogues) have some power backing them up but people could still follow other ways (represented by the traditional 3-way RQ magic mechanics) and not come to the automatic conclusion that they were damned. >> The way I am handling this in my current campaign is to essentially give the "Christians," followers of God the Lord, Divine Intervention powers. You pray, you get the attention of the God, he does something that is useful. This has more or less evolved over the course of the game, as I tend to rush into campaigns with an overlaying idea and then I see what develops. In this way the Players are playing their characters and I'm playing the world. I'm sure my players (some of whom are reading this) often feel they are standing on shifting sands, but I do try for consistency and encourage a communal world-building where appropriate. The Lord Followers in my game consists of one PC from another world and several local converts impressed by the miracles he has performed. The world itself (or at least this region of it) had been without a formal religion for centuries and now, following a cataclysmic reawakening, the void is starting to be filled again, mostly thanks to a transposed AD&D druid whose spell reactivation ritual was entirely too successful. World-and-god-building on the fly. What fun. Steve Perrin, who gets entirely too much fun out of improv game mastering. *************************************************************************** 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, 31 Dec 1999 17:05:07 -0500 From: "Bob Stancliff" Subject: Re: [RQ-RULES] Re: Getting back to useful stuff. > How eeeeasy :) ....I've used that pesky ratio-bugaboo when I tried > figuring the SIZ of Talos from Jason & The Argonauts. I think I settled on > him being a 64m-high Giant. I would think that 30m would be excessive enough for anyone. Off the top of my head... Jolanti were animated statues made by Mostali. Some were later given intelligence by elves... don't ask me how. They participated in the Too Tall Battle, didn't they? I picture a small giant, about 4m to 8m. Magic is listed (in Pavis or Big Rubble?) for Dwarves to make animated statues. These are basically man-height, but the reference ties them to the Throne and Pavis's Faceless Statue (a really big Jolanti?). Someone published a minor Pavis Hero quest where 'spirits of the Earth', in the shape of small Jolanti (3 to 4 feet), offer to befriend/serve the questors... no spells are needed. This really doesn't answer anything, but shows some diverse possibilities. Stancliff *************************************************************************** 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 #180 ************************************* *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. 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