From: Nikolas.Lloyd (Nikolas.Lloyd@newcastle.ac.uk)
Date: Mon 03 Aug 1998 - 19:32:19 EEST
> > and I can recall many, many instances where the action was hot &
> > heavy, adrenaline pumping, and - if only for a moment - RL
> > disappeared and the game world was all consuming. Call me an
> > escapist, but those moments are what I play for.
I played the whole of the Warhammer FRP campaign "The Enemy Within" with a
very good group of role players. At the end, the ref. said that his
favourite moment was when we ordered breakfast at an inn. It was a good
moment, but one can't have an entire fantasy role play campaign consisting
of ordering meals. We did save the Empire a few times too.
> it makes no sense to have the grand oration to sway the clan in
> council be reduced to one "orate" roll. HW fixes this.
Does it fix it for the player who has poor oratory, who is playing a
character with excellent oratory?
> How many people use the term "fumble" in its RuneQuest sense? (More people
> probably use it as a sports metaphor, at least in the USA.)
I like the term "fumble", but "cock-up" can do just as well.
> RQ2 gave us this breadth of rules and made things consistently played. RQ3
> failed in that it invented loads of new and unneccessary rule detail for
> some things then dropped some of the more broadly useful rules to make room
> for the detail.
The RQII rulebook was excellent. I hope that Herowars is similar.
The RQII book used very unpretentious language (in contrast with anything
Gary Gygax wrote), and a simple and fairly large serif fount (yes "fount"
- - we British dip babies in a "font" in a church). It had everything I
needed to start playing: monsters, a couple of cults, maps, all the rules,
all the spells. If it had had a short scenario too, it would have been
near perfect. This is the sort of book I would buy. The sort I would
not buy is the one which does not allow me to start playing right away.
I hope that Herowars does not require me to buy a supplement before I
can set things in the world. I know Glorantha, but a new potential
player may not, and might be put off if the rulebook requires a
Gloranthan setting, while giving no help with creating one.
The only big criticism I have of the RQII book is the encounter tables,
which are rubbish, and ruined a few early games when I was an
inexperienced GM (stay any length of time in a town and you'd meet a
vampire). The rules left the GM free to get on with the game. The
climbing skill was defined as how good a character was at climbing. In
RQIII, the climbing rules told me how many metres (metres in Glorantha?
No one has to suffer the ghastliness of metric there, surely? In Sartar,
beer is sold in PINTS as it should be) my character could climb over a
given surface, per melee round. Such detail is silly: it slows the game
down, restricts the freedom of GMs, and will never cover all circumstances
anyway.
TTrotsky wrote:
> << Do people in Glorantha believe in luck?>>
>
> Presumably they do, or else gambling would be rather pointless - it
> would just depend on who had the best god.
I don't think that this works. Gambling depends on the unpredictability
Proving that the word exists, but not defining the concept. I remember
> And quite a few of those spells are generalized luck spells. I
of the future. The gods of Glorantha do not know the future. If they
did, they would know how/whether they would defeat their divine enemies.
A genuinely random die roll or shuffle of cards could be regarded as just
that: random. I do not believe in the Christian (or any other) god, and
yet I believe in the ability of a die to generate random numbers, and I
have some idea of the odds of certain numbers coming up, so I can gamble
in a world without luck. "Luck" here is a word describing a mystical
force which influences what numbers I might roll. "Luck" could of course
refer to any unpredictable result, but that's not how I'm using the word.
Gods act through their worshippers, and seldom directly, I would say.
Orlanthi do not win all their fights with Orlanth turning up in person to
help them. An Orlanth worshipper might get killed by the worshipper of a
small god. So too might an Orlanth gambler lose in a game of chance.
> >Do people in Glorantha believe in luck?
>
Peter Metcalfe replied
> Yes. In Jolar, there is even a plant called 'Damn-my-luck'.
meeting someone who kept saying that "There is no such thing as luck". We
had a conversation about golf. He said that if a man hits the ball in a
certain way, then it will, under the prevailing conditions, certainly go
into the hole, and that there was therefore no involvement of luck. I put
it to him that the degree of luck refers to the predictability. A
brilliant golfer who has holed the last 27 shots first time, might predict
that he will hole the next one, a bad golfer hitting a hole in one would
be amazed and perhaps call this "luck". In my life I notice that I
sometimes have to make a choice based on little information, and sometimes
I pick badly, and suffer the consequences. I may say "damn-my-luck", but
this doesn't mean that a rune determined the outcome.
Name a generalised luck spell. Are you suggesting that Speedart makes an
I prefer a Glorantha without luck, because it means that people will judge
> >If fate is unalterable destiny, then what is a heroquest?
archer luckier? Surely it is a mental focussing technique which makes him
more skilful, or a way of manifesting energy which noticeably aids the
arrow in flight, or a summoning of a spirit which is able to help the
arrow find its mark. A Gloranthan using Speedart would predict that he is
more likely to hit the target, and, according to the RQ rules, indeed he
will. He is not merely hoping to hit the target, he is actually
influencing his chances in a predictable way.
the man, the character, as worthy or otherwise, not put it down to
mystical influence. An RPG is all about character.
>
> An attempt to alter alterable destiny.
Fair enough, but this still introduces the concept of unalterable destiny.
Major future events are likely to have vast consequences for the present.
I prefer there to be no such unalterable destiny (though a cult with a
Hindu-like belief in pre-destiny might be fun). For a start, it makes the
actions of the PCs of greater significance, and the contests between the
religions important rather than petty and trifling.
- ----------
On the subject of troll pornography: presumbly it is 3D and tactile.
While I'm on about senses, can anyone tell me where I can recover the
stuff I lost (I think Sandy P wrote it) on dwarf senses?
I bought "Dragon Pass" at a show on Saturday for twenty-five quid. Good
price? I wonder how much of the Gloranthan information in it has since
been Gregged.
On tables: the RQII system was nicely table-free (my players joked
endlessly about the "dropped lamp table"). I hope HW is too.
Lloyd
Dept. Psychology
Newcastle University
Nikolas.Lloyd@NCL.AC.UK
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