From: Loren J. Miller (MILLERL@wharton.upenn.edu)
Date: Thu 10 Jun 1993 - 20:06:40 EEST
Here are various comments on comments by other people.
PAUL'S SORCERY SYSTEM
I also like this a lot. It allows for the longterm enchantments that
exist in stories, has a very nice parallel to the shaman's fetch, and
gets rid of that awful "INT vampire" familiar rule. It also gives adept
sorcerors (who should actually be called "magus," and those who are now
"magus" should be called "adept," but I quibble) an advantage over
apprentices. It's much better. The ordeal portion is missing though.
I may offer more comments on the system later, first for comments on
comments. They're shorter and easier to respond to.
Nick said that we don't need another name for the sorceror's extra POW
that is used for holding spells. I agree.
Nick asked what the sorceror's other half should be called, and
suggested guardian angel, daimon, genius, etc. Daimon is probably out,
given the religious right. Genius is confused with smart people. I like
guardian angel, it is what Crowley and the Golden Dawn folks called the
personal spirit that a wizard should cultivate. You could also call it
the shadow, or the twin. You could combine them into shadow twin, but I
think that should be reserved for evil wizards. Actually, now that I
think of it, I vote for twin. It has the right generic feel.
Now as to the twin being fortified by self-repression and damaged by
On to the astral plane, it is the plane on which the stars vibrate and
licentious behavior, I don't know if that's a good idea. I can't see it
in a Galvosti "evil" wizard. I can't see it in Zzabur if he had a child
of a nymph. I would rather see something where the more POW the twin
accumulated, the wizard would appear to be more strange and frightening.
Pick an effect for each 5 POW in the twin: dogs howl; cats bristle;
horses shy away; horrible countenance that only infants can see,
spreading to children, to idiots, to teens, to adults, to elders, etc.;
glowing eyes; gauntness; body odor; smell of brimstone; etc etc etc. You
get the idea. I think I even have a list of these somewhere. I'll try to
dredge it up. This would have the desired effect for wizards to hide
away in their libraries. Wizards in cultures where they are required to
lead congregations would have a different set of effects that didn't
isolate them so completely.
live. It permeates the world. You didn't think the western wizards
believed in all that sky captains malarky, did you? The stars are living
beings in a plane that is contiguous with our own, and their reflections
are what we see in the sky. That aside, it could easily be called
phlogiston or ether, or alternate reality which is the culturalist's
generic word for it.
SPIRIT MAGIC COMMENTS
I don't agree with those who want to make it any more chancy. It's
Note that the RQ3 rule change, to cast chance=POWx5, was one of the
already the least powerful magic on Glorantha. I'd rather return to RQ2
where you had a 100% chance of getting spirit magic off. Why play
balance it to death? Are you the same people who cut sorcery to
uselessness and fragmented shaman powers into a zillion pieces for the
RQ4 draft? No thanks.
rules that changed POW into the most important characteristic.
RQ4 SORCERY DRAFT
The duration wasn't changed to another table per se, each point of
duration manipulation merely added a x1 multiplier to the duration. Thus
a 6 duration spell lasts 6 times as long as a 1 duration spell. This
makes it completely impossible to cast long duration spells. IMHO, the
fix is worse than the original problem.
THE CASE FOR CHARISMA
Carl makes the point that Charisma is an anti-roleplaying stat. While I
understand his concern, RQ4 has already proposed an enormous
proliferation of communication skills which have exactly the same effect
as CHA rolls. There are more of them than CHA. Adding more mechanisms
for something in a roleplaying game increases emphasis on it. Thus the
communication skills emphasize rollplaying of interactions much more
than CHA does. CHA would increase roleplaying, not decrease it, because
less time would be spent on mechanically driven interactions with NPCs.
While we're on this topic it's a darn good reason to cut down on the
number of combat skills. We don't want RQ to be a combat simulation
game. We want to roleplay the cultural and religious interactions.
That's what made RQ great in the first place. Reverse the trends that
are de-emphasizing RQ's strengths and turning it into a Rolemaster
clone. But this is a tangent. Back to CHA.
Let's ground the debate about CHA in examples. (1) BARGAIN: Why not get
rid of the Bargain skill and return to the RQ2 method of getting a
discount based on CHA? It's much easier. If you don't roleplay out
purchases, and nobody in their right mind is going to roleplay every
little purchase that travelers in a market for a day will make, then
it's faster than determining the bargain skill of the merchant and
making opposed bargain rolls, then computing the adjusted price. Just
compute CHA adjustments to price directly. No dice rolls needed. (2)
ETIQUETTE: Same for other skills, like those horrible etiquette skills.
I could see etiquette skills as lore skills, but they're silly as
communication skills. Just use CHAx5 (or 4 or 3) with the appropriate
lore skill as a helping skill and roll against it. (3) INTIMIDATE: Get
rid of the intimidate skill and roll STRx5 or some similar skill. Maybe
STR+SIZ+CHA would be another way to do it. There shouldn't be a skill
for intimidate. Nobody takes "intimidate" classes.
Nick is right. The RQ4 draft rules are obsessed with training. Oops. I'm
You see where I'm headed. Make all the communication skills (except
on another tangent...
languages, which will split into their own group anyway) special
instances of CHA rolls.
Even if you use the standard excuse for not doing something reasonable
APP is a useless and sexist stat.
to the RQ rules, that Greg says "no", I think that CHA ought to replace
APP. Why?
1. Sexist? Yes. For male characters APP tends to be unimportant. For
female characters it is all-important. It objectifies women (!). If you
wonder why more women don't play RQ, look no further. Just look in the
adventures that people write. Adventures don't pay attention to male
APPs, because they are unimportant, but they do pay attention to female
APPs. When my players meet a female character, they ask how good looking
she is because they know there's an APP stat. Do they ask the same about
male characters? Are the RQ4 rules going to give fem PCs a bonus on the
APP roll?
2. Useless? There are no official uses for APP in the rules. The only
reason to increase APP is to get a pitiful bonus on communication
skills. You all agree, and people routinely buy down their APPs because
of this tacit agreement. The point system even counts APP at half value,
and even at that value players are reluctant to spend points on it.
whoah,
+++++++++++++++++++++++23
Loren Miller internet: MILLERL@wharton.upenn.edu
S sign lists littles what wetland received in phire bonuse --1M Monkeys
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