From: Peter Wake (peterw@computer-science.manchester.ac.uk)
Date: Fri 01 May 1992 - 09:56:33 EEST
Comments on RQ Discussion 31
I have been bored by the number of variant rules being posted. Why don't we
see more discussion of worlds and cults and so on? Poor Eric has ended up
as the straw man in this tirade against so called rules improvements. I've
yet to see anything that has been really well thought out and easy to use.
The Ceremony Skill
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I feel inclined to defend the original rules here...
The reason it takes so long to learn to be a priest or a cleric of some
other denomination is not because it takes a long time to learn
ceremonies. It takes a long time to learn the philosophy of a
particular faith, there are not so many rituals and they *could* be
learned (if determined) in two or three years. The ceremony skill is
about learning how to learn a ritual. (When I talk about priest from
now on I mean a RQ priest). A priest may not perform a ritual very
often and they are easy to forget, so just like in the real world all
he has to do is read up on how to do it. This is why literacy is
important to civilized priests.
In more primitive religions (as found amongst the Praxian nomads) there
is a mythological and mnemonic tradition. Tribesmen learn the simple
ceremonies from infancy (or manhood at least). These 'rituals' would
be simple and much more free form, easy for a priest skilled in
ceremony to remember. Ceremony is much more a meta skill than a simple
"I know ritual X" skill. A high ceremony allows a character to *learn*
the complex rituals required to enchant items and summon other world
entities. Religious ceremonies would generally be easier. I would
penalize a character from one culture moving to another, but not a
character who remained within his culture (such as a Waha initiate
deciding to become a Storm Bull).
Of course many religious ceremonies are summonings or enchantments, if
not some other complex spell and as such they have to be done
properly. No one can remember *all* of these for a particular
religion. When a character learns the spell he also learns the ritual
to cast it. Ceremony is the meta-knowledge required to interpret and
use such knowledge. It should also cover physical dexterity and such
(especially for sorcerors). The knowledge may be given by the god when
the spell is learned, or it may be taught by the keeper of the holy
place where it is learned. Spell teaching should not be instant, but
why add more skills to an already overflowing character sheet.
Equally Trainable Skills: An argument against more and more skills.
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There is a good game mechanic reason for having all skills increase at
the same rate: simplicity. It is quite tedious enough performing
research rolls as it is without adding more work. Not all of us carry
a calculator with us to play RQ. Some players have quite enough
trouble remembering their dice - as for a calculator... It is also
necessary to produce a list of arbitrary scaling factors for training
time. What makes *your* list better than mine. Of course my list is
composed entirely of 'times one' entries :-)
As for adding more skills, sub-skills and then sub-skills of
sub-skills, I can speak from experience here. With the demise of RQII
I wrote my own RQ style role playing system (with a completely
different magic system, a better fatigue/encumbrance system than we
finally got and a combat system with more SRs not less - but I
digress). Having played this for a year or so with satisfactory
results I had a 'new and wonderful idea'. Why not have a gigantic
elaborate 'skill tree' with sub-skills, sub-sub-skills, lots of
different skill categories, multiple inheritance and so on. Yes I had
the object oriented class hierarchy with multiple inheritance bug. Of
course the results of this was five and six page character sheets,
Hero-System style highly specialized 'combat monsters' and all manner
of irritating rubbish getting in the way of the role playing. Most
characters were specialized all right, so specialized it was a joke.
Many were skilled in only one weapon, and most had no other skills of
note. The skills that made Runequest interesting and more playable
than a class based system (such as Climb, Ride and all those things
that TSR bolted onto AD&D via their half baked proficiency system -
which was nothing more than a skill based system spoiled) vanished in a
rush of combat specialization. Of course you can stop all that with
more rules...
It would be easy for me to write some defense of the equally trainable
skills. Someone could knock it apart and then I could build it up
again. Rule systems will always have problems. Sometimes it's a good
idea to compromise realism for playability. Be serious; if we define
skills in terms of their training time then the whole problem vanishes.
The idea that any skill is *trivial* is patently ridiculous, you can
spend your life on any skill and never have learned it all.
e.g. A swordsman with 1000 hours of sword experience is as skilled at
fighting as a Conceal expert with a 1000 hours of hiding/camouflage
experience is skilled a Concealing. (When I mean experience I mean
training/research/experience).
*** What I'm trying to say here is that you just can't compare these skills ***
Skill Check Frenzy
------------------
Skill check frenzy is a pest. Powergamers who are seduced by it are
simply bad players: deny them the skill checks - the problem will soon
go away. It's just a guess but the suggested system looks unworkable:
it's tedious to administrate and open to widescale abuse unless the
referee is cautious. A wise referee doesn't have the problem in the
first place so what's the point.
As the original poster already made this point why does he propose a
further system? If you keep training time tight the players can only
train the skills that they really need. If his plan is intended to
allow players to increase often used skills faster it won't work in my
campaign. Why? A 75% character has to make 75 successful skill rolls
before he gets his research increase which means around 150 rolls to
increase equivalent to 1d6 (experience check increase). That's one
monster combat, and as for spending 150 hours climbing!!! The proposed
system simply encourages players to drag things out so as to clock up a
few hours. Generally normal research is safer and more sensible. For
skills where that is not possible, such as combat skills, it is
practically impossible to increase. Get real: 75 combat successes and
then you fail the increase roll and don't even get your crappy little
increase (1% if you're lucky :-)
Shamans
-------
Player character shamans? They're big trouble... If you look carefully
a Shaman has a chance of something from the random spirit encounter
table (outer region I think) 'attacking' him equal to his power. I
forget how often this is but it is pretty frequent (once every 24 hours
or something like that). This can be tricky if it occurs at some
critical moment, such as during a ritual. Anyone who allows PC Shamans
is asking for trouble, because of these attacks they get a POW increase
roll once a week just for living. Of course the shaman *could* lose to
one of the spirits, and once the shaman is strong even hostile spirits
should simply 'avoid' him. The rules just don't work properly for
characters like that and were never intended to. (Or perhaps they're
just badly written - I liked the old rules much better).
-- Peter Wake ======================================================================
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