From: Loren J. Miller (MILLERL@wharton.upenn.edu)
Date: Wed 25 Aug 1993 - 02:15:21 EEST
David Dunham <ddunham@radiomail.net> (via RadioMail) writes:
> So far (in my limited time on this mailing list), almost everything's been
> devoted to what to add or change from RuneQuest. I haven't seen anyone
> talking about making the game simpler or faster to GM, which is what some
> of us would like.
Sounds like you're in favor of the RQ Lite movement. Me too. Tastes
great. Less rules dirt.
> So for purposes of discussion, what could be dropped from RQ? (Note, I
> + Hit location rolls. PenDragon and Elric use the Major Wound to get a
> similar effect (where only the most serious wounds need an additional
> roll).
Hit Locations are one of the two reasons I like the RQ system per se.
They help me visualize combat, and that helps me roleplay it that much
better. But that's the player's argument for hit locations.
I can also see the GM side since I mostly GM RQ. When running hordes of
> + Strike Ranks. RQ4 already virtually gets rid of them with the "2
things hit locations do take extra time for the GM. But, since hordes of
things are generally humanoid in shape and I've internalized the
humanoid hit location table by now (14 years of using it will do that to
you) there's no extra time taken to look it up, just some extra time to
note which limb was hurt by the last shot. Note this extra time is no
problem when I'm awake and aware, but when the hour passes 10pm in the
middle of a session after 8 hours at work and too little sleep the night
before because of working on the scenario for tonight, "awake and aware"
are not the words I would choose to describe myself. <gasp> So, the hit
location rules do end up taking a lot of time to GM. For this reason I'd
be in favor of a tweak that let us poor overworked GMs ignore hit
locations, as long as this tweak didn't wreck game balance. I've played
one game (Pirates and Plunder) in which hit locations applied to PCs but
NPCs didn't have them and it was a major flaw, since PCs were weaker in
combat than run of the mill NPCs as a direct result of their being
subject to the rather brutal hit location rules.
> actions/round" rule, and it's debatable whether someone can really kill an
> enemy and prevent a blow from landing 1 SR later.
I'd go back to RQ2 strike ranks if I had my druthers. I don't care
> + All rules for bleeding and additional damage (e.g. from impaled weapons).
that 12 isn't divisible by 10, so what? I think that both RQ3 and RQ4
made combat *way* too complex, with the worst additions of each being
respectively fatigue and maneuver. I also think that there are too
many combat related skills. The proliferation of unique weapon skills
forces you to have a huge section of the character sheet devoted to
weapons and damage and weapon skills, and that encourages hack and
slashing instead of roleplaying.
I agree. Boring. However, if we add a maiming/long-term injury rule it
would be a good replacement.
> + Fatigue rules (adopt the Elric strategy that most combats aren't long
> enough for them to matter -- Elric does need some sort of ENC rules,
> however).
Only problem is how to adjudicate battles against the elements, such as
crossing a desert without enough water and needing to find oases along
the way. Long-term fatigue does a good job of that. So maybe we only
need long-term fatigue?
> + Fumble %s. Elric doesn't use a table, you fumble on 99 or 00.
I don't mind fumbles so much. Also, they're pretty easy to compute.
> + Separate criticals and specials. For most practical purposes, Elric
> merges these.
I'd like to go to a special option kind of rule, so that specials and
> + RQ4's Maneuver skill. Elric uses Dodge in much the same way.
Maneuver is silly. You're telling me someone who is 150% with greatsword
crits gave respectively one and two choices on a special options
table, but you'd have to choose which special effect you were shooting
for before you rolled the dice.
attack and parry won't have maneuver at the same level when fighting
with a greatsword, and that he'll be equally as maneuverable when using
a scimitar and a chair? Just use weapon skill for maneuver, and get rid
of separate parry and dodge skills while you're at it. Just have one
skill for every attack/defend combination. Sword and shield 76%, dagger
and cape 28%, gladius and dodge 49%, and so on. If you don't have one of
the two parts of the combination you're at half skill, if you don't have
either you're at base. Thus someone with sword and shield 76% who loses
his sword and has to use a spear would be at 38% with spear and shield.
Someone has greatsword attack and parry 68% would be easier to disarm
and render defenseless than someone who has two things to hit you with.
How's that for a RQ Lite suggestion?
> + Skill modifiers. They tend to be small anyway, and it's a royal pain to
> recompute them when your POW changes. (Since stats would matter much less
> then, maybe they should go away too...)
I'd compute them differently, more like Harnmaster's base skills, by
computing a weighted average of the relevant stats, and then
multiplying by some value to get basic skills. Then it's clear that
changes in skill bases do not affect current skills.
> + Spell foci (and preparing of spells). Assume mnemonic runes are carved
> into swords, armor, or whatever, and any spirit magic you know you can cast
> as one of your two actions in a round.
Agreed. The spell foci rules are aimed disproportionately at spirit
magic users and they are as complex and unworkable as AD&D spell
ingredients, which nobody ever uses anyway. Might as well get rid of the
foci and just allow for special effects of spells.
> + Runes. (Oops, those are already gone with RQ3.)
Heh. :) Not that runes ever had an effect on the game in RQ2. (HERESY!)
Here are some more heretical ideas...
+ Normal vs Dramatic Scenes (a Torgism)
Maybe one way to speed things up for the GM would be to differentiate
between two kinds of scene in the game? This is a Torgism, so bear
with me. There could be two different kinds of encounter/scene in the
game, normal ones and dramatic ones. Normal scenes are those
encounters where you run into flunkies and nobodies, and where you
shouldn't be surprised by the dice. Dramatic scenes are the climactic
scenes where the good guys have to fight their main enemy, or where
their lives depend on split-second timing and cooperation. During
normal scenes you gloss over all the detailed stuff like hit
locations, criticals and fumbles and specials, strike ranks, and so
on. I.e. you run Basic Roleplaying during those scenes. During
dramatic scenes you throw in the detailed rules for hit location,
crits and fumbles and specials, strike ranks, fatigue, etc.
+ Many-on-one rules (another Torgism)
Add rules so that the attack of 12 trollkin on a single character could
be decided with only one attack roll, one damage roll, etc. The GM would
only have to roll once for every unit, no matter how big it is, and this
would make the GM's task much easier. Of course we want to cover the
same range of results as actually playing it out would offer, or do we?
Maybe this would be an option for normal scenes only, and thus easier on
outnumbered heroes allowing us to skew the table a little. This is a
statistical mess to figure out, but if it could be done it would be
great.
whoah,
+++++++++++++++++++++++23
Loren Miller internet: MILLERL@wharton.upenn.edu
"Science" does not remove the terror of the gods.
0,,
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