From: David Cake (davidc@cs.uwa.oz.au)
Date: Tue 01 Mar 1994 - 06:12:01 EET
I would say that Guy has a definite mix of problems here. Some are
solvable by more knowledge or a different attitude to Gloranthan sorcery (it
really helps to have a good amount of background on anything Gloranthan), some
are perhaps problems with RQ:AiG sorcery, and some show that RQ:AiG has failed
to solve all the problems with RQ3 sorcery.
I note that Guy used a a group of Arkati (I think), and his conception
of Arkati (as opposed to Stygians) was pretty different to mine. I have always
thought of the real Arkati as being something like the write up in Troll Gods,
even among humans - more of a fairly closed cult within a society than any
sort of major social group.
>
> We discovered the following flaws that has killed this seperate
> thread off.
>
> * Magic is focused too intensely in the hands of Nobles and
> Sorcerers. The magic of proffesions is trivial and therefore
> they are not suitable as PCs in my books.
>
Well, I personally think tha a very high proprotion of Arkati are Sorcerers -
but the point remains true for the Rokari, for example. And the unfortunate
truth is that everything seems to indivate that it is supposed to be that
way.
> * Sorcerers are not well supported via character generation.
> They have to burn a lot of background choices to get a
> reasonable blend of magic.
>
I too think that sorcerers get a raw deal in character creation. Spells really
need to be cheaper or more flexible (I have made my own attempts to remedy
this, as some of you are aware, but my personal optional rules do not help the
RQ:AiG draft).
> * Sorcerers do not develop via social means therefore breaking
> a key RuneQuest concept where you become more powerfull by
> social integration and cooperation rather than by isolation
> and greed.
>
I would disagree with this one. Most of the sorcerers in Glorantha are part of
Churches, of which the schools of magic are part of the intellectual tradition.
While their magic may not be directly linked to their social status ( a la
Guy's beloved Runic mastery concept) I think that sorcerers that have nothing
to do with their school (in most cases the Church) are definately limited.
This is not to say that isolated power mad sorcerers cannot exist - but the
lack of an easy source of new spells, mundane support, a ready source of
capable warriors, and short term sorcerous assistance is a pretty big
disadvantage.
> * Sorcerers are not powerfull unless POW is burnt. Either the
> PC will have to be very philosophical about his place or
> bank his hopes on some of the weaker spell descriptions.
>
I would be interested to know wether many of your players actually bothered
to burn POW, or did they just ignore it?
>
> * Sorcery and Sorcerers are very weakly woven into the Runic
> / Gloranthan setting. How do they HeroQuest to develop
> magic beyond what their Manipulation skills can afford them?
>
I think we can see part of Guys problem here - the word Runic. Sorcerers are
pretty weakly woven into the RQ2 Runic correspondances, but they are pretty
firmly woven into Glorantha.
They HeroQuest relatively similarly to how other people HeroQuest -
they strive to repeat the deeds of Saints and famous sorcerers of times past,
they learn their enemies mythic weaknesses and act on them. There are
differences of course - quite possibly the God Learners attitude to myth
lingers in many sorcerers - but mostly they are in much the same position as
anybody else. As Greg is stressing recently, personality and faith are more
important than cult status or magic on many heroquests, anyway. A Malkioni
sorcerer that strives to emulate a Saint in thought and deed probably
heroquests in a similar manner to a devout Divine worshipper.
Of course, certain sorcery schools probably heroquest rather
differently - like the Arkati, but after all they invented exploratory
heroquesting, and still know secrets that nobody else knows.
> * Despite some cracking good spell descriptions some spells
> descriptions are very weak, notably Fly. I am always wary
> about granting Flight in a role playing without due regard
> to game balance. It is all to easy to Fly out of range or
> abuse the advantage of rapid 3D movement otherwise.
>
This is a problem with some spells, but you can always not choose to allow
a particular spell if you think that it will cause problems with your campaign.
It is more the concept rather than the spell description that is the problem.
I would not like to remove Fly from the game because some people find it
troublesome, nor weaken it.
> * Pure spell casters with 6 STR and CON get a pretty raw deal
> if they are designed with the pure design method of
> assigning attributes mainly from fatigue. I think this is fair
> enough but people should be warned that is pretty daft thing
> to do.
>
Well, I think that it is fine too.
> Summary
>
> RQ:AiG Sorcery could work in a pure sorcery environment but
> I would recommned that all PC be from proffessions that use
> High Magic to allow characters to be balanced.
>
Almost all the other roleplaying games on the market have little or no
magic available to the majority of characters (and I am not just talking about
AD&D, almost all of them work this way). RQ is unusual in this respect. I can
live with sorcery having some imbalance in this respect in most sorcerous
cultures. I am certainly not convinced that the game balance is such that
a sorcerer character in intrinsically much tougher than a dedicated warrior,
for example (I would bet on the warrior unless the sorcerer had some martial
ability).
It is probably a good idea to ease up the availability of some High
Magic spells (particularly defensive magic), while restricting most
Manipulations. This means that many warriors will eventually become
relatively competent purely defensive sorcerers, which sounds good to me.
> I do not recommend mixing RQ:AiG characters with a Sorcery
> Magical background with those of other Magical Backgrounds.
>
If you mean in character creation, yes, very few people know both sorcery and
non-sorcerous magic (and they are generally people to watch out for, like
Lunar College of Magic graduates, or experienced troll Arkati). If you mean
in a party, I have not really found a problem.
>
> Regards
>
> -- Guy Robinson --
>
Cheers
Dave Cake
0,,
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