From: David Cake (davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au)
Date: Thu 10 Jun 1993 - 07:57:59 EEST
This is a reply to a few things that other people have said, all rolled
into one to cut down number of posts. My comments on the draft will be posted
shortly.
Nick Brooke makes a few good points, but I strongly disagree about
his insistence on removing stuff like fixed skill increases and the random
culture tables. I don't use either myself, but I can see the possibility of
using both in some situations, and most importantly think that they shouldn't
be removed because some of us don't like it, if someone does. The same goes
for removing exotic weapons - except this one is even more obviously campaign
dependent. And even naginatas are found in Dragon Pass, albeit called sword
sticks (used by Wind Children). The same goes for removing references to using
the taining point mechanic after character creation - I have run campaigns
were I would hve used it - short campaigns were seasons, or even years, might
pass between adventures.
I kind of like the classification of weapons by culture, though.
I kind of agree with renaming bezainted armour - in my case because a
friend of mine, Paul Kidd, an Australian professional game designer, always
makes fun of RQ3 by pointing out that bezainted armour was very rare
historically, but incredibly common in RQ3 :-) RQ4d2.0 has stopped that mostly,
but even so I'd like to shut him up.
I think that the Battle skill is a reasonable idea, but I dislike the
fact that weapon skill has no bearing on sucess. Either use some sort of
composite roll, or a more complex system. I kind of like the Pendragon system,
where you fight 'token' opponents. I have used this in my games, and it worked
quite well (the only real problem is that whereas the Pendragon system is
'timeless', each turn of battle being an arbitrary amount from a seconds (in
an initial charge) to hours (in battles in silly terrain, with lots of
skirmishing), time is very important in RQ battles because of the duration of
spirit magic. Still, someone might at least want to look at it (the most
recent edition is the relevent one). I thought Battle was a silly skill in the
skill only version - but not in the Pendragon system, where mighty fighters
with low battle skills fight a lot, but usually survive, and skilled soldiers
fight fairly little, and also survive, but those not to good at either get
themselves into bad situations (surrounded by enemy) and can't fight their way
out.
My comments on the draft will come soon. I have yet to read the Paul
Reilly system of sorcery, but I like what I've heard. It needs to maintain a
measure a backwards compatibility, but not slavishly. I also have intersting
ideas on sorcery, and I will post them as soon as my exam is over - or send
them to Oliver for comment, then post them.
Cheers
Dave Cake
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