From: Burton Choinski (burt@ptltd.com)
Date: Mon 26 Jul 1993 - 16:22:41 EEST
First off, I get the G.L. treatment for a moment of weakness...:)
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Roderick Robertson:
%% >Yes, it's a thowback to RQ2, but really, since every modifier is a factor
%% >of 5%, niggling little 1% items seem to be just overhead, and do they
%% >REALLY add that much to play?
%%
%% A bit of History, its a throwback to RQI (sortof), not II. RQI skill
%% modifiers went up in 5% intervals as did skills (if I remember, its been
%% a while). RQII changed it to the percentiles we know and love.
Okay. my mistake. I first got into RQ at RQIII.
%% >Really, this just struck me. EVERYTHING is so based around factor of 5
%% >that it seems the easiest way to streamline is to smooth the lines.
%% > -- Burton
%%
%% No, everything is *not* based around 5, it just looks that way. I
%% often use 1,2 or 3 as a number for Pow, Str, etc. rolls. (for some
%% reason I *rarely* use 4...). I also subtract or divide for difficult
%% endeavours.
True.
%% In my opinion, its a step backwards, not forwards (You know, we
%% could try to roll high instead of low, and hey, why not have classes,
%% like Priest and Warrior and Thief, and all spells could be one use per
%% day... Soon the slide down to role-playing hell begins).
*smirk* What I meant was that nowdays there are about as many percentile
systems as there are numeric systems, and neither is necessarily better
then the other.
%% Besides the backward-compatibility issue (a big one), the
%% Percentile-based system makes the most sense (to me). What *looks*
%% easier to understand: chance to hit 43% or chance to hit 8?
Well, I thought that RQ2 was d20 based, not d100, so I figured it wasn't
much of a roll-back. And I think either of the above are easy to understand,
be it 40% chance to hit or 'roll 8-'.
%% This idea truely deserves to be burned at the stake, as the
%% percentile system IS THE HEART of the RuneQuest system (more than
%% Battle/Spirit Magic, Rune/Divine Magic, Weapon Damage, or Armor by
%% Location).
Actually, I think the heart of the system is it's core ideas, not the dice
In theory, you could just as well run RQ on a d30, if you converted all the
it uses. A while back (before the draft, about a year ago) I tried to get
my group interested in RQ, but they were not all that happy with the RQIII
rules...so we tried using GURPS. Granted, there were some very different
things, but some parts of the attempt felt right, namely the skills (which
the 2.0 draft kinda-sorta feels like) and the combat system.
numbers in the rules.
Wayne Shaw continues:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
%% > Just musing, but do we REALLY gain much in using % skills over d20 skills?
%% > Granted, d20 is more granular, but keep in mind that not every new system
%% > nowdays used percentile.
%%
%% If we're going to follow current trends, RQ4 will not even be
%% recognizeable. Most modern games have gone the "simplicity at any cost"
%% route, which usually means masses of totalled D6s, or at most the "roll
%% multiple D6/D10 and compare to target number" approach present in SR and
%% the WW systems.
I didn't propose the basic be changed, just that less divisions be used.
%% >
%% > Now, since you don't want skills to vary so much, one can keep in mind
%% > experience marks for each skill. every 5 marks get you one skill
%% > increase, keep track of the remainders.
%%
%% That's linear increase. A remarkably bad idea. One of the strengths of
%% the RQ skill progression has always been the way it tends to flatten out.
%% Eliminating that does NOT strike me as an improvement.
You misunderstand...I definitlly did not explain that very well. What I meant
was that since the skills when using a d20 is divided by five, you take the
.2, .4 etc fractions as marks. An easy skill would increase (if you made
your roll) by 2d6 marks. Every 5 marks counts as +1 to your actual skill.
So a guy with a skill of 17 and 3 marks gets 1d6 marks added. He now
has, say 7 marks. Well, 5 marks pays for the skill up to 18, leaving 2
left.
I didn't propose the chucking of the normal skill progression...I like that
Overall, I take it the suggestion is not accepted. :)
part of the skill system. I was just trying to demonstrate a way to keep
it with a d20 system.
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Other comments on things.
Curtis Shenton asks:
%% I have a quick question for everyone here. Why wouldn't I use the new
%% Elric rules from Chaosium and just graft on the magic systems from RQIV
%% to play Glorantha? What is it about RQIV that is going to make this a
%% better game for Glorantha than Elric?
Interesting question. Other than knowing that Elric is a variant of the
But what is AH working with here? I doubt AH is going to try and lock-step
Wayne Shaw on mechanics:
The rules in RQ4 are already fairly simple. Mechanic-wise, RQ4 is simpler
I'm pretty good at fudging things and making guestimates. But I hate having
It's not the mechanics that stuff a book, it's the world laws. Stuff that
%% > I'd like to see a simple and elegant system rather than a system bigger
If you thing RQ4 is complex, you should have tried Powers & Perils. It DID
basic Chaosium rules, I know nothing of it.
with Chaosium to have the same system, unless the license they have says
they must.
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%% > I mean, at the rate things are going the basic RQIV book is going
%% > to be bigger than the entire line of AD&D garbage! Many people I know
%% > refuse to play RQ because they feel that it's an unlearnable and overly-
%% > massive system.
%%
%% Frankly, I don't think we should be hunting for the people who can't
%% handle something more sophisticated mechanically than StarWars. Nothing
%% I've seen in the playtest drafts to date compares in overall complexity
%% to Hero, GURPS or Rolemaster, just to name a few. If we're trying to
%% compete by keeping the complexity down where the Palladium people can
%% handle it, I think we've lost before we started.
than many other systems.
to reinvent the wheel every time I play. How much light does a candle put
out? How far is good human vision with it? How much does a mount eat?
How much meat can you get out of an animal, like your mount for instance.
I COULD make a quick judgement call on, based on my own personal ideas of
physics, biology, and how much I could eat, run or do.
But would rather have a set of consistant info on this stuff.
%% > than RQIII. I'm all in favor of RQ Lite myself. And from what I've ehard
%% > from people who've spoken to Greg he's in favor of a simpler game than
%% > RQIII too.
%%
%% I'm frankly bemused. In a world that contains GURPS, the Hero System,
%% Rolemaster and others, do people really think of RQIII as a "big" system?
%% Compared to what? Does everything have to be stripped down to the
%% mechanical level of Talislanta?
try to have info on lots of stuff, down to the supposed magical properties
of natural materials (which, BTW, should be looked at for possible use by
RQ since P&P is kaput...it was good stuff).
-- Burton
0,,
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