From: David Cake (davidc@cs.uwa.oz.au)
Date: Thu 13 Jan 1994 - 05:55:20 EET
>
> >2) Support. The Gloranthan material for the game was late in coming,
> >and much of the non-Gloranthan material (which was, remember, what I
> >was really interested in) was not very good in quality.
>
Well, I am definately with you on the gloranthan support issue - RQ4 needs
to make a real effort to not cause the same problems. As for the non-Gloranthan
material - I found none of the Gateway stuff satisfying, and some of it awful,
but I really rather liked the RQ Earth stuff - Vikings and Land of Ninja. Both
were rather good, though I must admit the highly specific nature of such
campaigns and the lack of support has meant that they have seen little direct
use.
To avoid RQ4 causing more support problems I have one important
suggestion - that RQ4 include a section at the back that includes the revisions
made to various supplements (like updates of the Elder Secrets character
creation sections, for example) so that not all supplements need to be
reissued. I'd even do it myself! Shadowrun 2nd edition did this, to cover the
major rules changes between editions, and it worked well. Chaosium and AH do
not have the resources to do as TSR, and update all the supplements
individually.
This is also a reason why I dislike the change to the weapon damage
and armour amounts that are a part of the current draft - because it makes
compatibility between statistivs for the various editions much more of a
problem, and doesn't help the game that much. But it is possible I guess.
> True, however the later stuff has become much better.
>
At least equal to the RQ2 stuff in writing, and often much better in
presentation.
> >None of this, however, detracts from the fact that there were many good
> >features in RQ3.
>
Too right! Just some bad ones as well.
> Errr .... OK, I'll beleive you on this :-). There were a number of local
> modifications to the rules that we had made in our local games group
> that to us made sense, some of which did appear in RQIII.
>
> >I think the over-fixation RQ fans have on RQ2 is just another version
> >of the gaming conservatives disease; they were used to it, and didn't
> >want it changed, period.
>
> Oh! Oh! Unfair! Unfair! I may be a couch potatoe but I currently play in
> 10 different games with widely differing rule sets (CyberPunk to D&D,
> Runequest to Amber) and run 4 different systems myself. I do not
> consider myself unable to change to a different system. I may need an
> incentive (like it looks fun or I can see a good benefit in te change)
> but I am still willing to try new systems.
>
Well, I know several gamers experienced with multiple systems, etc, whose
reaction to RQ2 is best characterised as conservatism, and so I find it
easy to believe that you fit into that category too. They were very put off
by changes to game balance, major changes to the way the magic system worked
(such as the requirments for becoming priests), and some changes to the magic
system that effectively changed the cosmology of Glorantha, such as the
existence of spell spirits. They rejected these changes because they were
changes, not because they were bad rules, many of them play extensively in
games wih much worse rules. They expected a game that they could just fit
existing campaigns into seamlessly - and they didn't get it. Not only did
some rules changes make a big difference to play, but they world didn't work
quite the same. And when the glowing new Gloranthan supplements didn't
appear, they had nothing to inspire their enthusiasm about RQ3 as things
like Borderlands and Pavis did about RQ2.
> Conservative indeed! Bah humbug!
>
> :-)
>
> Tim
>
Cheers
Dave
0,,
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