From: Paul Reilly (paul@minerva.phyast.pitt.edu)
Date: Tue 09 Jul 1991 - 09:56:33 EEST
I very much liked the "Byzantine RQ" by Patrick Waterson & Michael
O'Brien;
they really seem to have a handle on Byzantine culture. I think that the
best way to get people into the culture being simulated is for the game-
system to be driven by things valuable to that culture; the "Byz. Pack"
rules
for religion seem to do this. Other examples of this are the games
Pendragon
(perhaps the best example) and to some extent RQ II's cults system.
Runic Sorcery: I also composed a Runic Sorcery system for my game; it
was not as extensive and also not as powerful. But in any case more use
of the Runes tends to give a more Gloranthan feel to the magic system,
all to the good.
User/Target Conditions (question by Andrew Bell): This is a toughie,
and
I tend to wish that either this had not been included or had been more
spelled
out. In my campaign I tend to make people "spell out" the condition using
Gloranthan Runes and a reasonable explanation of how they are to be
interpreted. User conditions are less of a problem and can be pretty
explicit. Also one can make good use of the laws of Similarity and
Contagion. We haven't used Target Conditions much (even for NPC-created
items) and thus haven't explored this area enough.
Using the Runic system though, one could build up a device that
triggered
occasionally quite wrongly; for example one to Glow when "anyone who would
like
the Red Moon Goddess and the Lunar armies defeated" might be built of
Moon,
Illusion, Death, and Disorder and wind up triggering when a drunken Lunar
soldier ready for brawling comes by.
Basically the Targets that I would allow for clear use would be things
like
"Initiates of a Death cult" or "People of the bloodline of the person
whose
hair is contained in the hilt of this sword", etc. Things like the
target's
state of mind should be impossible to detect unless the state of mind has
a terribly strong Runic affinity, e.g., "People who are Berserking".
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