From: Nick Brooke (100270.337@CompuServe.COM)
Date: Tue 08 Jun 1993 - 00:41:55 EEST
Skills
You have gone too far away from the "generic" RQ3 "Devise", "Craft", et al.
As your introduction states, there are always going to be cases where "the
I detect envy of Warhammer Roleplay in some of your new skills. Don't get
GM has to decide what the character's chances are, which will often depend
on the situation, what the character does, how the player roleplays the
situation, the character's background, and so on." This being so, why the
proliferation of one-off skills like Intimidate, Beg, Pick Lock, Set Trap
and the like?
carried away. Lip-reading and the like may look like nice ideas, but unless
you get a VERY high level they are no use at all (especially if they're
Hard to increase); normal folk like me would learn Mindspeech instead, or
any other handy battle magic that duplicated the effect I wanted more
effectively than practice and effort could. As for Intimidate/Interrogate/
Beg, these are mechanics used to regulate situations where the gamemaster
ought to retain control of the game and of his NPCs' reaction to player
character activities. We're better off without them.
I don't want to have "Feel 5%, Smell 5%, Taste 5%" on my character sheet.
It will leave me feeling like a sensory cripple, and/or wanting to increase
them to unnatural levels. Better to note somewhere that humans have these
These rules are obsessed with "Training". Stop and think for a moment: does
the Lunar Army have Scan classes? Jump classes? Search classes? Intimidate
day at such an event? Do you know how these skills would be taught? If not,
DON'T make "Training" into such a fundamental part of every character's
Dance [Culture]
skills at a base 5% (but almost never develop them), and to include rules
showing how herd animals, fishes, and the like use them every day.
classes, even? Would you be prepared to role-play your characters through a
life.
Why do you think this skill defaults at half value across almost all
cultures? Is there something wrong with your imagination?
Bargain
"The person selling the item will ALMOST never take a loss"? Why this
Courtesan
Better termed "Seduction", unless this is a females-only skill: if you told
the Red Emperor he was a master Courtesan he'd look askance at you - if you
were lucky!
Sing
Can you write a description for this skill which makes sense to normal
change to a good and sensible rule?
human beings, and not just computers, Martians, and rules boffins?
Battle
Rewrite the sentence which begins, "The appalling truth...". The Fumble
rule here is vicious, but so were the skewed casualty figures in ancient
battles: refer any doubters in this regard to me for facts to back it up
(makes Desert Storm look like a fair fight!).
Craft
Alchemy by the back passage. Out on it! We do not want Blade Venom,
Scorpion Antidote, Grampus Gas Balls and the like back in RQ. Get this
rubbish out of my favorite rules system.
Hawking
An art, not a craft. But more importantly, who in Dara Happa apart from the
nobles do you think has the leisure to participate in this sport? The
slaves? The women?? The skill should be listed as "uncommon, rather than
rare, among nobles in Dara Happa", or common if you prefer, but not this
ludicrous broad-brush approach.
Custom [Culture]
As for Dance [Culture], only more so. You betray the callous contempt of
the cultural anthropologist in your comment that this vital social skill
can "default within very similar cultures". Do you imagine for so much as
an instant that a Praxian could survive one minute in a Pentan camp without
mortally offending his hosts, or that his rigorous adherence to Praxian
mores would make him somehow more acceptable to them? The swell-headed
belief that "all primitive cultures are the same" has NO PLACE in
RuneQuest, and should go out of the window at once. If we make this mistake
in a game-world rich in contrasting cultures, what hope is there for the
rest of the world?
Also, you need to define the difference between Neighboring and Alien
cultures more carefully: there are some which fall into a gap in between
the two. For example, if I am a Sartarite, the people of Tarsh are my
Neighbours, but the non-Neighboring people of Aggar are not Alien to me
(sharing the same pantheon). Give it another try.
Lore [Various]
See my discussion of the benefits of an INTx1% base chance in all Lore
skills, next to the Knowledge Modifier rules above. Also, can you write out
a good definition of what you mean by Gloranthan, Magic, and Cult Lore. And
get rid of Lock Lore: people who want it will add it to the game anyway
without needing your encouragement.
Martial Arts
You need to emphasise how rare this skill is, remove it from the character
sheet, and have a boxed article next to it in the far-removed Exotic Skills
section where it ends up, explaining what schools of Martial Arts exist in
far Kralorela. Nobody else gets it, of course. Greg now denies that
Morocanth teach it (his M.A. Morocanth character was a one-off), and Sandy
says Pelorian Martial Arts were a mistake.
Terrain Types
Define these: explain the difference between Broken and Rough terrain, then
work out which one is Hilly and call it that. Where in Glorantha do you
find Arctic terrain? (answer: in the Hero Plane/Outer World, where normal
RuneQuest rules don't apply). Also, can you tell me how skill at surviving
in Plains will help you in the Desert? Split up Woods and Jungle so people
who don't know what a Jungle is won't have to keep on reading about one on
their character sheet; I'm prepared to believe that the skills required to
survive in each are different. And a good gamemaster will pro-rate for
similar terrain types well enough.
Treat Disease
"Victims of mild diseases only need attention one hour per day" (NOT one
day per week).
Drive [Vehicle]
Second paragraph should begin, "Three basic Drive <Vehicle> skills
exist..." The third paragraph ought to require a roll against Drive skill
for every day on the road, just as Ride skill, March skill, and the like
demand: failure can cause problems (slow travel, damaged wheels, knackered
beasts of burden, and the like).
Play [Instrument]
I can provide you with the text for a box on elemental associations with
musical instruments, if you want a Gloranthan context for this skill.
Lip Read
Urgh. Do we need this?
Smell
Mention herd beasts rather than timinits (we don't know what they are:
exotica).
New Attack Skills
Remove these to the Martial Arts ghetto in an Exotic Skills and Weapons
supplement to tear out and throw away. Emphasise how rare and exotic they
are, then never use them or allow them to be used in sensible gaming.
Convincing Asylius
I hate this kind of list, which makes a single skill roll into the apparent
crux of the adventure. Of course the players will get what they deserve;
don't mislead new gamemasters into thinking that this kind of clap-trap is
desirable in a scenario write-up. You don't do it; I don't do it; nobody
normal does it. Why encourage it?
Complementary Skills
A nice little mechanic for making people think how they do what they do. I
like it.
Availability of Skill Training
No, not the Thieves Guild! Get rid of this twaddle at once: it does your
intelligence no credit. I don't believe there is anything useful in this
list except the warning about unusual skills, which would be better
delivered by removing them from the main body of the game system to an
isolated peninsula. ((Kick Parry??)) The rest is entirely obvious and
pathetically simple-minded. In a game which includes a good system for
character generation within profession, why do you think this kind of list
is necessary? If you want to know who uses a skill, you can go to the front
of the book and find out.
Languages
Long overdue increase in base skill. Don't forget the separate area for
Language skills on the character sheet. Also, consider the fact difference
between alphabetic and ideographic scripts when deciding how Read/Write
should work. There are far fewer scripts than languages in the world; some
of them cannot be read unless you can also speak the language somewhat,
while others have no correlation between written characters and spoken
words. Other languages have no native written form. A boxed article on this
would be a great leap forward in Gloranthan studies: mention Yelmic
hieroglyphs, Esrolite cuneiform, the cursive New Pelorian hand, and the
archetypal Orlanthi runic alphabet and you're in my good books.
New Skills
Presumably the first paragraph of this was written by a new developer, and
not by whoever it was who added all the new and useless skills to RQ4.
Skill Decay
If a character isn't in use, I don't want to waste time crippling him still
further. Neglect is the worst fate I can imagine for him. This rule is
useless and should be abandoned.
0,,
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