[net.games.frp] RuneQuest 3 review, Chapter 1

steven@qubix.UUCP (Steven Maurer) (10/16/84)

[+++]


    REVIEW OF FLAWS IN RUNEQUEST 3  (Chapter 1)


    FOREWORD

    A few weeks ago, in response to an article praising Runequest 3,
    I replied to that message by saying that the new Runequest "sucked".
    Now, while I hold it to be my prerogative to hold any opinion I want
    on a game, I should have qualified my opinion with what I found
    objectionable to it.   My only excuse for not doing so is that when
    I made my initial comment, I didn't have time to even begin listing
    the varied and numerous problems with RQ 3.

    Now I do.

    As a final note, before going into this review, let me state that
    I am both an experienced player, referee, play tester, and game
    designer, who has had much experience with Chaosium games.  If my
    review of Runequest 3 seems biased, it is because I am looking at
    it from the perspective of a Runequest 2 player who expected old
    bugs to be fixed, not new ones introduced.  Even under the new rules,
    Runequest 3 is not all that much worse than AD&D.  It can still be
    fun, if (as in AD&D) you try to ignore rules problems, or invent
    variant rules which fix them.  The attitude that rules don't need to
    be good because people will naturally fix them, seems common in the
    gaming industry, but would hardly be sanctioned in our own profession
    ("This software works, just as long as you fix all the bugs in it").
    Of course, I'm not much of a fan of AD&D either.

    In all the following review areas, a five grade listing is given.  These
    are: Very Good, Good, Ok, Poor, and Very Poor.  Following this, is usually
    a note explaining why the grade was given.   The areas are grouped together
    under area titles, which usually correspond to one of the books in the box.
    Also, at this time, I would like to give thanks to all the people who helped
    me write this review, and pointed out bugs to me.  Particularly helpful
    were, Steven Barnes, Ricky Taylor, Jeremy Higdon, Robert Mace (and other
    SCA fighters), and innumerable numbers of convention goers and RQ 3 play
    testers.


    RUNEQUEST 3

    GENERAL COMMENTS

    Game Considered Overall --  Poor to Very Poor
	Particulars follow.

    Speed of Publication    -- Poor
	The Chaosium has a reputation for being late in everything.
	However, in Runequest 3 they were especially late.   More than
	a year went by without any support for Runequest in any
	form, because of the slowness of the change over.

    Backwards Compatibility -- Very Poor
	1]  Played by the book, Runequest 3 is entirely incompatible with
	Runequest 2.   This means that an investment of up to 100 dollars in
	Scenario packs, play aids, and cult descriptions, are now worthless.
	The last time I talked to Greg Stafford about this, he indicated that
	the Chaosium's plan was to re-release the old SP's in the new system
	(making you pay all over again, for the old materiel).  Aside from
	the basic obnoxiousness of this plan, it has another fatal flaw:
	the Chaosium's lateness.   By the original schedule, Glorontha Pack
	should have been out 1/3 year ago, and new materiel would start
	appearing in 1986.  As you may or may not know, Glorontha Pack will
	(as best) hit the store shelves by the end of the year.   This implies
	that the new materiel will actually come out by the earliest, in 1987
	-- that is, if the schedule is kept.

	2]  There is nothing on the front cover of Runequest 3 which says that
	it is a new game system, and separate from its other releases.  Thus a
	customer who is ignorant of the actual state of affairs of the game,
	may pick up a new Runequest 3 and buy any number of old incompatible
	Runequest 2 scenario packs, still unsold in stores.   I almost saw
	this happen once, but the game store owner was too moral a fellow to
	let it slip by.

	3]  Both as a player, and as a referee, I am forced to perform many
	hours worth of labor converting my characters into the new system.
	Even if the method of conversion was a piece of flawless elegance,
	(which it is not by any means), I still do not like having to perform
	such a laborious task, for essentially no reason.  Runequest characters
	are not like AD&D characters, who can be summerized in 6
	characteristics, class, level, HP, race, and magic items; each
	skill, and its accordant percentage, is individually listed and
	must be rewritten on a new character sheet.

    Cover Art               -- Very Good
	Aside from minor technical and esthetic flaws in the drawing --
	the woman wearing gems, not a helm; the mans kneepads drawn as part
	of his boots; the picture of the man disjoint from the rest of the
	drawing (look closely, his feet look as if both of them are slipping
	off the stairs); -- aside from that, a very pretty picture.   Someone
	has finally found out that a pretty cover helps along a bad rules
	system, better than any amount of advertizing does (an old trick
	learned by TSR a long time ago).

    Price                   -- Very Poor
	At 38 bucks a shot, the new Runequest is no small investment.  It
	would not be so bad if the new rules actually made a playable game,
	or if the customers were assured that it was a one shot deal.  This
	is not to be.  The SP's for the new Runequest will be similarly priced.
	(25$ for the Referee's rules, is a particularly bad deal, since the
	only really usable book in it is the creatures descriptions).

    Paper Quality           -- Poor
	The books themselves are more tender than a soft bound book; the
	cover is made of the same paper as the internal pages.   Already, the
	RQ 3 that I borrowed, is beginning to show signs of wear.  It is not
	yet 1 month old, and hasn't been treated any worse than any standard
	book.   Perhaps I may be surprised, but I doubt that these books will
	have half the lifetime of the RQ 2 books (or 1/10th the lifetime of
	a hard bound AD&D Players Handbook).

	I also do not like Avalon Hill's decision to make Runequest into a
	"Bookshelf Game" (i.e. to put it in a box).  As the people at Avalon
	Hill, may or may not know, FRP games are not usually played off the
	bookshelf.   Rather, students and other adherents to FRP, carry the
	games around with them for quick reference -- most often in a backpack
	or some such.   In this environment, a box disintegrates within a
	period of 3 months.  It cracks at the bindings, and becomes completely
	unusable.   Large boxes are particularly susceptible to this, so most
	RQ 3's should begin falling apart by the next convention.

    Layout                  -- Good
	Avalon Hill, or Chaosium, or both, did a good job on this one.  The
	pictures are clear, the type is readable, the colors draw attention
	but do not interfere with reading.   The one thing that I didn't like
	about the Layout, is the way that the previous experience charts are
	spread out all through the beginning of the book.   This makes the
	tables hard to find, in addition to interrupting the continuity of
	the initial rules.

    (Other general comments can be found at the end of this review,
    listed under the title "Summary Comments")


    OVERALL GAME

    Clarity                 -- Good
	As in all Chaosium games, the writing style is clear and simple.
	Sometimes too simple.  There are a number of ambiguities in the
	text, which should be resolved.   For instance, "Jump" says that
	a character must make the jump roll to jump "twice his height
	horizontally, or up to his height vertically with a running start".
	But it does not say what roll to make (if any) for distances less
	than that.  (Remember: running is is series of small jumps).

    World View              -- Poor
	A World View of a game system, is the world which the game writers
	imply.   For example, the world view of AD&D is monster infested
	wilderness interspersed with "dungeons" containing fabulous treasure
	and magic; Chivalry and Sorcery's world view is medieval Europe in
	all its gory detail; Tunnels and Trolls has a world view in which
	whimsical gods toy with the adventurers, giving fabulous power,
	and then taking it away.

	Some games are tied only to a genre (a set of world views).  D&D,
	Champions, Arms Law, Justice Inc., all fall into this wide spread
	category.  Some games are not only tied to a specific world view,
	but are tied to a specific world.  Call of Cthuluhu, Paranoia,
	Elfquest, EPT, Stormbringer, fall into this one.  Each approach
	has its own strengths: a general system can be adapted to any number
	of different campaigns, a specific system has more time to explore
	its own particular world.  Runequest has always been a specific
	system.  Its world is Glorontha.  The designers of Runequest,
	attempted to write a more generalized version of Runequest.   This
	attempt failed badly.

	Instead of generalizing Runequest, the new world view attempts to
	Glorontha-ize fantasy.  We find no Cyclopses and Medusa in Fantasy
	Europe, but Broos and Gloronthan Trolls instead.  The religions are
	barely disguised Glorontha cults -- not even general enough to handle
	the Stormbringer pantheon (another Chaosium FRP game).  Though many
	references are made to Tolkien (and presumably his creations), we
	find that elves "are tied to their forests in ways not understandable
	by men" -- a reference straight out of Glorontha.

	Through out the rest of the review, I will be pointing out these
	Glorontha-isms.  They are subtly pervasive throughout the game,
	concentrating mainly in the magic book.

	This alone is not enough to give the World View of RQ 3 a Poor
	rating.  Glorontha is, when viewed with a forgiving eye, an
	interesting world with a fascinating cosmology.  It's easy to
	settle a campaign there, provided you only pay attention to its
	gods, continents, and empires.  The problem with RQ 3, is that
	it allows no support for world views other than Glorontha --
	though a "Viking Pack" is supposed to come out, the societies,
	gods, money, and motivations will all still be Gloronthan.
	"Fantasy Europe" already resembles Glorontha much more than any
	authentic earth mythology; it will no doubt only end up like the
	defunct Questworld: A place to put all the scenarios that "aren't
	good enough" for Glorontha.


    Game System             -- Very Poor

	"A roleplaying game's system is the invisible support from which
	the game world must hang".  True enough.  However it is also true
	that a game system must derive itself somehow from reality.  This
	was always the concept which set Runequest 2 apart from other game
	systems.  While a high level fighter in AD&D had more hit points
	than his shield, a RQ 2 character was always realistic.

	This is no longer necessarily true, since the Chaosium has decided
	the TSR approach to game design, which is to "play balance" all
	approaches to combat regardless of realism.   What's worse, is that
	many of these game flaws are not simply bugs which have an easy fix.
	The flaws are built so deeply into the system that removing them is
	equivalent to redesigning it; if you want your average healthy
	Cimmerian to have a much greater stamina than an under exercized game
	designer, you have to rebuild the Fatigue system from scratch.  In
	the following text, such errors will be pointed out as "Design Errors".

	This is not to say that Runequest 3 is unplayable under all
	circumstances.   Far from it, if you only run average humans, and
	kill them off before they become too skilled, you will find that
	the system mimics reality to a tolerable degree.  But this is also
	true of almost every other system on the market, including some real
	loosers like Tunnels and Trolls.   The acid test of a GOOD system,
	is how it handles powerful characters, non-humans, and exotics.

	Again, Runequest 3 fails miserably.  The rules repeatedly encourage
	characters to do things which are unrealistic in a fantasy setting.
	To a certain extent, such flaws can exist in the system without
	destroying the world.  Players are supposed to be more interested
	in "character conception" then that.  But after a while, this will
	break down if the holes are too blatant, and run across too often.
	Players quickly learn that a dead character makes a very uninteresting
	concept.  In the following text, rules which are unrealistic, or
	promote unrealistic behavior, will be pointed out as "Reality Flaws".


    Game Examples           -- Ok

	"Cormac the Pict" is a good idea to give examples with.   But it was
	a better idea with Rurik the Restless.   Why, do you ask?  Well
	because such examples also serve as the indication of the style of
	the campaign.  Rurik in RQ 2, started out a beginning adventurer,
	suffered a major setback, but eventually made it to rune lord.  Cormac
	in RQ 3, is beaten up, suffers serious disease, is thrown in jail on
	the whim of a nobleman, is knocked over by wind, and turned down
	by a Shaman.  His only success is to repeatedly avoid being killed,
	by managing to hide.  He also learns a few basic battle magic spells.

	If the designers of RQ 3 seriously want a referee to run their games
	in such a ritual sacrifice fashion, (which they do: "These
	personalities ... reveal how some more or less ordinary adventurers
	progress (or don't progress) in actual situations") then I don't want
	anything to do with it as a player.  Suffering repeated "Roll your
	52% Hide, or die when the enemy tribe finds you", is not what I call
	fun; this should NOT be "Call of Runequest", despite what Sandy
	Peterson might believe.


    PLAYERS RULES

    Characteristics -- Good
	I always liked RQ 2 characteristics, and am glad that they didn't
	delete or seriously mung with any of them.   They still give silly
	numbers, (Size has nothing to do with Strength, and vice versa),
	but this is true of all 3d6 systems.

    Characteristic Increases -- Very Poor
	RQ 2 had a concept called "Species Maximum".  The idea was that there
	was a limit to how high you could train your characteristics, which
	depended upon your race.  The Reality Flaw with this system, was that
	at the highest levels, everybody began to look the same.  POW 18, DEX
	21, CHA 21, STR/SIZ/CON equal, and INT usually 17 or 18 (if you wanted
	a character who progressed quickly).  There was also a Reality Flaw
	with STR/CON/SIZ, which hasn't been fixed.

	RQ 3 does away with "Species Maximum", without substituting any good
	alternate, and thus makes everything worse.

	To the old STR/CON/SIZ Reality Flaw, RQ 3 adds a Design Error.  The
	old Reality Flaw has not been fixed:  Large and/or strong creatures
	can become incredibly more healthy (resistant to disease, etc), and
	naturally healthy creatures can become incredibly strong.  But all
	this cross training WAS limited by Species Maximum, and so things did
	not get out of hand (except for Dragonnewts).   Now, since there IS
	no species maximum, we find that an average Halfling can train his
	STR up to 17.  Particularly healthy ones can eventually become much
	stronger than trolls.  An intelligent Manticore, being naturally
	strong, can train both his health (and therefore his venom) up to
	amazing levels.

	For the old DEX/APP Reality Flaw, RQ 3 substitutes a new one.
	Both DEX and APP are now limited by half again the original roll.
	What this means is that one of every 72 people, will be able
	to attain a Dexterity like unto the gods (26), whereas the low
	1 of 72, will never be better than a klutz (6).   Such variation
	will inevitably lead to DEX inflation (starting out with the
	highest DEX possible), since any high DEX character has a much
	better chance of survival.

	POW now has a wonderful Design Error, where it had none before.
	The Species Maximum characteristic used to be one sixth again the
	maximum rollable.  This meant that an Elf (2d6+6 POW) would have an
	18 + 1/6 x 18 = 21 Species Maximum.  Humans likewise.   Now, RQ 3
	makes you add the minimum rollable plus the maximum, so an Elf
	now has a 8 + 18 = 26 Species Max.   A Dryad (2d6+16) near Species
	Max, handily defeats the Bad Man in spirit combat, and I don't even
	want to THINK about Hags.  The repercussions in the areas of Magic
	are considerable, since higher Species Max means easier POW gain
	rolls.  This in turn gives more POW for spells, magic items, and
	binding spirits.  Non-human Shamans are amazingly gross.

    Hit Points      -- Good
	Much of the old Reality Flaw from RQ 2 has been removed.  Good.
	This is somewhat offset by the botching of training up STR and CON,
	however.

    Damage Modifier -- Ok
	The same old Damage Modifier is being used, with its enormous
	breakpoint effect.  For a normal human, 1 additional point in STR
	or SIZ can suddenly add about half again to the damage of all
	weapons he uses.  Some sort of increasing die roll (1d1, 1d2,
	1d3, etc) would have been better.  (Could have even been
	substituted on the old RQ 2 character sheets).

    Number of Strike Ranks     -- Ok
	For no obvious reason, RQ 3 now has 10 Strike Ranks instead of
	12.  All the tables have been adjusted accordingly, but there didn't
	seem to be an overwhelming need for a change.  Perhaps the game
	designers wanted to make clear than SR's, had nothing to do with
	seconds of time, by removing the (apparent) one-to-one correspondence.
	Actually, Strike Ranks are themselves kludges. They have little to
	do with the progress of blows in an authentic mele.  Since there is
	no easy alternate, it can do.


    Previous Experience -- Very Good

	Previous Experience is an exceedingly well done piece of work.
	It allows players to build reasonable backgrounds for their
	characters, and allows a reasonable amount of previous experience,
	without getting gross.   The only real problem with it, is that it
	contains a large number of Glorontha-isms ("Healer, Civilized:
	01-75 Your adventurer's parents worship the earth goddess....").

    Quick Experience System -- Very Good
	For its limited scope, this works very well.

    Simple Skills  -- Ok
	The old skills are unchanged.  The 05 success, 95 failure is still
	kept.  This still has its old Reality Flaw wrong with it.  Get 20
	people to try something, and almost always one of them can.  It
	isn't noticeable usually, unless you ask a giant to jump. (Because
	of his size, the giant will fall over most of the time, but take
	off to the moon on a 01-05).

    Skill vs Skill -- Poor
	It does not explicitly state if a skill which has been modified to
	negative ADDS to the opponents chance of making the skill roll.
	Also, the Skill vs Skill algorithm is not transitive -- i.e. it
	matters greatly which skill is designated the "attacking" skill,
	and which one the "defending" skill.   Consider two characters
	who are 90% in Tracking: one who is looking for a trail, and one
	trying not to leave one.   Both characters have a 85% total chance
	of success, if theirs is the roll considered "passive".  The "active"
	wielder can only hope the "passive" user blows his roll.   For 5
	to 45 percent range, the percentages are reversed...  the "active"
	wielder gets the better deal, since the Skill vs Skill roll assumes
	automatic success if your opponent blows his roll.

    Skills Categories -- Poor
	Improvements in this one: no more break points.  Alas, it is
	offset by the ill definition of most categories.   We find that good
	Boating and Throwing depend heavily upon being very small.  A Miss
	America contestant can speak foreign languages much better than
	a plain girl.   Great Trolls make wonderful pick pockets.
	
	This could possibly be fixed by rules alterations.   Negative skills
	should be secondarily negative (1 for 2, not 1 for 1).  Throw and Boat
	should be Manipulation based skills, and Manipulation should not have
	STR in the calculation at all.  Sing & Speak Foreign Language
	should have no APP modifier, and Sleight should have a Negative SIZ
	modifier.


    Experience Gain Rolls -- Very Poor
	The old Reality Flaw "you learn only during a stressful situation"
	is still around, as expected.  ("Gosh, I learned to play the piano
	twice as quickly as my friend, because I only play when the trolls
	are attacking!").  This can be explained away in the interest of
	getting players to go out in the field, and is perfectly fine.

	Experience Gain Rolls suffer from being tied to skill modifier bonuses,
	because all the silliness of the Skills Categories becomes magnified.
	Not only do people who are very lucky (high POW) rather noticeable, but
	they are made incapable of learning how to be less so.  Manticores can
	learn to Play Instruments much more quickly, because they are so strong.
	Giants can learn how to Track much more easily, because they are very
	healthy.

	More to the point, we find out that high skill modifiers aid characters
	in learning in an astounding way.   A human and a giant, with an equal
	INT and DEX, at 100% Sleight, will find that the giant learns his skill
	10% more quickly than the human can; getting 100 checks, a character
	over 100%, with a 20% skills modifier will go up an average of 70%,
	while a character with a 5% skills bonus will go up 14%; under 100%,
	the ratio is even more extreme, since skill level affects the chance
	to even get the check in the first place.

	This all is just begging for characteristic inflation.  It encourages
	the 17 DEX character to train his DEX up to 26, since this will mean
	an automatic +9% chance to learn how to use half the skills in the book.
	In addition, any character who has a +1 Skills Modifier can train all
	those skills above 100%, but characters with a 0 bonus cannot.  In
	short, RQ 3 took the old RQ 2 Reality Flaw, and magnified it.

	While RQ 2 encouraged INT inflation (rolling intelligent characters),
	this was more palletable for several reasons.  One, most of the enormous
	fighting machines {Minotaur, Manticore, Great Troll} were rather dumb.
	So, a player had to choose between being powerful to start out with, or
	having a better future ahead.  Two, strength and smallness have little
	to do with learning, only intelligence does.  (In fact, the DEFINITION
	of intelligence, is the ability to learn.  Look it up, if you don't
	believe me.)  Finally, since you want to encourage people to play
	intelligently anyway, it did not hurt to encourage them to play
	intelligent characters.


    Fatigue        -- Very Poor

	The first point to ask about Fatigue, is why is it necessary?
	Certainly people get tired, but Conan never seems to (even when
	he is wearing plate).   Many SCA fighters have told me that when
	in top shape, they can fight for almost half an hour before getting
	really pooped.  Real fighting includes pacing, and looking for
	openings, which allow characters to rest even when "attacking"
	an opponent.  Especially under the adrenaline of combat, people
	"die" long before they are seriously hampered from fatigue.

	RQ 2 seems to work just fine without it, so would have RQ 3.   Alas,
	things are not that easy.  You cannot even do away with the whole
	system, since the game designers offer no other, and Fatigue is
	enmeshed so thoroughly with Encumbrance, that they are almost
	inseparable.  In short, it is one big Design Error, interspaced
	with Reality Flaws.   To wit:

	    "Cormac is still being pursued by enemy tribesmen.  Though
	     he is a strong runner, he still hears their calls and jeers
	     behind him.  He is now -3 fatigue points -- all the fatigue
	     points (including zero) on his fatigue tally have been
	     checked off, and he has lost three more besides.  In this
	     melee round, his player must therefore subtract 3 from any
	     skill, resistance, or characteristic roll he makes for Cormac.

	What the author failed to mention, is that Cormac, an unencumbered
	healthy primative hunter, has been jogging for at most 4 minutes.
	In another 3, according to the RQ 3 system of Fatigue, he will faint.   
	But this is not all!  Assuming Cormac was the healthiest and the
	strongest a human can be, and he was jogging entirely naked, he would
	skill keel over from exhaustion in less than 15 minutes.   Whatever
	inhuman levels of Constitution a modern day jogger must have in RQ 3
	is left up to the readers imagination.

	The problem of Fatigue actually goes much deeper than this.  It really
	has to do with the designers attempt to simulate multiple types of
	exhaustion with one simplified system.   For instance, we find that
	prolonged hiking or riding over several hours, reduces a characters
	Fatigue (as it should), but this Fatigue loss is measured in the same
	units that sprinting around the block is.   Thus, to rest from a
	entire days exertion, one need only to recover the Fatigue points
	through a 1 minute rest.   Doing so at the end of each hour of hiking,
	insures that a character is never down more than 1 to 2 points
	of Fatigue.

	The game designers make loss of sleep (sleeping in armor) cost Fatigue
	points as well.  They use a bad example, since sleeping in most armor
	(without a helm on) is actually quite comfortable.   Aside from that,
	of the type of Fatigue being lost is again, obviously, the wrong one.
	It leads to the humorous Reality Flaw of a character who is sleeping
	in armor, asking to be woken up every hour or so, so that he can rest
	to recover his lost Fatigue.

	In fact, the only "_p_e_r_m_a_n_e_n_t" Fatigue loss springs from ENC;
	this turns out to be exactly the wrong application of permanent Fatigue,
	since it leads to a linear relationship between the weight that the
	character is carrying, and the strenuousness of the exertion.  For
	example, a character can jog with a full pack, about 1/2 as long as he
	can jog totally unencumbered.  This makes characters able to run with
	inhumanly large amounts of ENC for a relatively long time, but fall over
	when totally unencumbered after a relatively short time (relative,
	that is, to reality).

	Because the Fatigue system all works off of one attribute in a very
	simplistic fashion, it can only be tuned to be realistic on one setting.
	This setting seems to be a an unencumbered human, with average STR and
	CON, and who is very very out of shape.   Nikkelos the Sorcerer looks
	perfect under the Fatigue system, as does, incidentally, Steve Perrin
	(or even myself).   It does not work for the average adventurer.  To
	try to patch up the system for other races and sizes, a completely
	separate Fatigue table is given, which occasionally leads to the correct
	results. (The table seems to have been designed for horses).

	I talked to Steve Perrin about this, and he mentioned in response that
	Fatigue was in "melee rounds only", i.e. don't count fatigue unless
	the referee is asking for statements of intent.   The first problem with
	this is that it is a obvious and stupid Reality Flaw; some people claim
	they are already researching a spell to put others in "melee rounds" to
	make them tire out.  It may even be more simple than that: in the
	example, Cormac hears "calls and jeers behind him", which forces
	him into melee rounds -- so much for "...and names will never hurt me".
	Secondly, only counting Fatigue in battle allows characters to perform
	inhuman feats of endurance outside of it.  ("Run for an hour carrying
	my horse?  Sure, no problem, just make sure I don't go into combat").
	Swimming also uses Fatigue, tell me does the Chaosium really only mean
	Swimming while in combat?

	Another incidental Reality Flaw is that the designers went overboard
	on reducing percentiles for being Fatigued.  Athletes, we find, are
	particularly vulnerable to disease because they are fatigued so often.
	In addition, when tired, not only is your strength effectively reduced
	by a large amount, but you also are less Lucky.  A Storm Bull after
	having slaughtered 100 Broos, finds the god unwilling to respond to
	a tired worshiper (Divine Intervention -- POW x 1 characteristic
	roll).  If he does make the roll (by some miracle), then he has lost
	a huge amount of additional permanent POW, because of the Fatigue loss.


    Encumbrance      -- Very Poor

	Encumbrance is inexorably intertwined with Fatigue, but it has
	other problems as well.

	Since the ENC of armor increases as a multiple of Size, but Fatigue
	increases as an average, we find that a large strong people (who
	have high STR relative to CON) have fewer rounds to fight than
	small weak people when wearing equivalent sets of armor.
	This means that Pixies and Halflings can all wear Plate without
	a worry about fatigue loss, but Trolls cannot.

	Particularly large trolls are even in worse condition.  A Size 21
	two legged creature uses the size equivalency chart. This means
	he has 28 Fatigue points to start out with, regardless of his
	STR or CON.   Dress the troll in Plate, give him small clothes, a
	Troll Maul, and nothing else, he will start out at -16 Fatigue.
	It is quite possible for an average well equipped large Dark Troll
	to faint if he accidentally goes into melee rounds.

	If the troll feels bad, he should talk to the newlywed husband.
	The strong and healthy guy (13 STR/13 CON) tries to lift his
	lithe (SIZ 9) wife through the doorway, when someone "called and
	jeered" at him, and he went into melee rounds.  Figuring out his
	current Fatigue (since this is what you do when you start into
	melee rounds), we find he has 26 total.  A respectable number, until
	you realize that his wife weighs (9 SIZ x 6 ENC/SIZ =) 54 ENC, which
	makes him faint dead away.   How embarrassing.

	The Design Error lying behind all this is not all that difficult
	to spot:  Fatigue and Encumbrance are calculated in exactly the same
	way:  you compute the number of melee rounds you can exert yourself
	in exactly the same say as you compute what you can carry.  So
	it is impossible in RQ 3 to have a character who can carry a great
	deal, but tires quickly (high STR/low CON), and impossible to have a
	character who cannot carry much, but can do so for a very long
	time (low STR/high CON).   No one, for instance, expects a high STR
	Sumo wrestler to be able to jog twice as far as the normal man, but
	this is what RQ 3 implies.  Can a Halfling carry more ENC than a
	human?   Due to the Halfling's high Con, the RQ 3 system says yes.

	This is reminiscent of the D&D concept of mixing high Dexterity
	(ability to avoid a blow), and Armor Class (ability to absorb
	damage); the RQ 3 Fatigue/ENC system takes two related, but entirely
	separate world elements, and tries to mix them together.  The resulting
	system is so unnatural, it has to depend upon such artificialities
	as "melee rounds", and being tuned to work correctly for one specific
	archetype.  This type is (not surprisingly) for average size armor
	worn by out of shape humans.   

	Because it is a system which is unrealistic, fixing the Fatigue
	or Encumbrance numbers so that characters could carry one another
	in combat, as in the movie Uncommon Valor, helps not a bit.  It
	only would make the formula silly elsewhere (perhaps allowing people
	to jog carrying their horses for half a minute).   If you want an
	effective ENC system in RQ 3, you have to design it yourself.

	ENC also is supposed to subtract directly from both ability to cast
	magic, and Dodge ability.   I am not too concerned about the latter,
	since Dodge is such an asinine idea anyway, that it doesn't make
	any difference if ENC affects it or not.    About the former, I can
	only wonder what the designers were thinking about when they made
	this rule up....   to add insult to injury, we now find that the
	Size 21 troll in Plate now has a -55 percent chance to cast his
	spells, while the STR 2 Halfling in Plate is discomfited by no more
	than -15.   A Giant can't cast spells, not because no one taught him,
	but rather because his belt buckle weighs too much.  (After all,
	he only has a 125 STR to lift it).  These Reality Flaws are really
	humorous, until you realize you paid 38 dollars for them.


    Training     --  Ok

	Some parts of Training have been improved, although I do find it
	strange that "Experience" is more useful than having someone teach
	you correct technique.   Is this why the Chaosium felt the need to
	invent "Martial Arts", to explain away the fact that people who are
	taught ancient, well thought out combat methods, are better than
	street fighters?   Well, other than that, and the artificial 75%
	limit (which was always there), I like this section.   Particularly
	good are the paragraphs explaining just where all that money goes
	to, and the time involved in learning.

	Incidentally, the 1d6-2 roll, is just like saying you get
	2 plus an optional 1d6-4.  From this perspective, only a fool would
	take the roll.  Strange how, in a later Cormac's saga, it shows
	Cormac rolling average (20 & 21 total on 6 dice) and the text
	calls this luck "uninspiring".  It is his player's intelligence
	that is uninspiring.


    Research     --  Poor

	Having problems with all those skills at 0 percent?   Have no fear!
	Research is here!   From the formulas given, we find that you take
	no time at all to learn a skill from the base 0 percent.   Throw
	a man in a French library, and before you know it, he'll be writing
	his first faltering words ("Parlez vous ....").   Everybody should
	learn his first 1d6-2 Martial Arts easy.... just make like Bruce Lee.

	Its not that Research is not a good idea, you just have to add
	a few more ideas like experience bonuses for knowing what you're
	looking for, previous experience in the field being researched,
	and innate predilection toward the skill in question.  The system
	presented is much too simplistic, and assumes that all skills
	become predictably more difficult to learn, after you easily got
	the knack of them in the first place.  The rules are better than
	nothing, but not much.


    Characteristic Increase  -- Poor

	Having the cost and time of characteristic training depending upon
	an arbitrary game value is silly.   Why should a Halfling doubling
	his strength take half the time doing it that a Troll doing the
	same thing does?   The real cost associated with raising strength
	should have to do with how much you have raised it already, or how
	much is normal for your species, not based on arbitrary values.

	Since we have already discussed the lack of species maximum for
	characteristics, I will not rehash those Reality Flaws.


    Characteristic Decrease  -- Very Poor

	RQ 3 promotes the idea that characteristics are not an abstraction,
	indicating a wide range of personal aspects, such as DEX being
	a combination of hand-eye coordination, musculature, and flexibility.
	No.  Characteristics are treated as some form of elixir, which every
	character has, but some have more than others; which can, in turn,
	be squeezed out of a person like blood from a turnip.

	For example, Appearance (not at all in the eye of the beholder), has
	a particular Magic Point value for each character, which a sufficiently
	skilled sorcerer can Tap.   Rock Hudson is a veritable storehouse
	of magical power, (no doubt found somewhere in his classic jaw line),
	while you or I have almost nothing.  An athlete who dies, can be
	resurrected twice as long after you or I, because he has so much
	more STR in him than we do.   A juggler who gets the Shakes, will
	survive much longer than anybody else, because he has more DEX in
	him to begin with.

	While Runequest 2 had some of the same ideas, at least they did not
	pursue them with the same fervor that RQ 3 has.   The idea was holed
	up in the back of the book, listed under optional "Disease" rules.
	This is no longer the case, as Characteristic Drain is now the method
	of aging, inaction, disease, death, and Tapping.


    Strike Ranks  -- Ok

	There are two changes in this from RQ 2.  The good one, is that it
	is now possible to alter your statement of intent, without having
	to waste 11 seconds to do so.   The bad one, is that it now seems
	that a character moving up on another, strikes last because the
	moving character unconditionally looses strike ranks.   The worst
	case, is where a character moves up and cannot hit his foe, since
	he hasn't enough strike ranks.  His foe, who was waiting for him,
	gets a free attack.

	Also, any old numb skull with a high DEX gets the first strike even
	against a seasoned fighter.  (While Runequest says that an attack is
	actually a combination of blows, almost none of the rules really
	treat it as such.)


    Aimed Blows   -- Ok

	I am not overwhelmed by this method, holdover though it is from
	RQ 2.  It does not simulate well what an aimed blow really is.


    Basic Attack Percentages -- Poor

	Someone at the Chaosium still has the idea that the better damage
	a weapon does, the lower percentage it should start out with.
	For example, a Naginata starts at 5%, while a Spear starts at 15%.   
	Now while I will not pass judgement on the basic idea of making
	high-damage weapons more difficult to use (it is an issue of
	reality vs play balance), I do find it somewhat silly that they
	expect this technique to actually prevent players from just using
	the highest damage weapons.

	A lower starting percentage does not hinder a character's use
	of a weapon at all, since lowered starting percentages can be
	trained up easily.  What is more needed is an innate difficulty
	factor, which would be a subtraction from a weapon's Skill Bonus
	(and experience bonus) because the weapon is innately more difficult
	to use.  An addition to the Skill Bonus for shield parrying would
	also have been better than the high starting percentage.  As
	currently written, the starting weapon/shield percentages really
	have no meaning.


    Parry         -- Good

	The new rules for allowing hafted weapons to occasionally damage
	during a parry are good.   It would have been better if all weapons
	only did damage on an impale, since such notching is not very common.

	Later we find in the book, Parry can now be used against hand thrown
	missile weapons.   The rules and an example seems contradictory:
	"Thrown weapons can be parried if the parrier is aware of the attack..",
	and "A spear thrown from the darkness impales Churchak.   The roll
	is 16 points of damage, but he gets his own spear in the way for
	a parry".  (I am assuming in this example, that Churchak has not
	researched up his Darksense.)  Also, in real life, any missile weapon
	used at long range can be parried, if seen.

    Weapon Armor   -- Ok

	RQ 2 weapons needed armor badly.   RQ 3 gave it to them, but in a
	funky fashion.   From the rules, we find that the reason that swords
	don't break is not because they are made out of steel, its because
	they are "interposed" between the attacker and his target.  Does
	this mean that if I "interpose" a trollkin (or a candle), in front
	of a descending troll maul, that the interposed object only takes 1
	point of damage?  Not likely.  Chalk up another Reality Flaw.

	Parrying an opponents attack to break his weapon becomes a credible
	option, since a parry does full weapon damage when the attacker
	misses (unlike attacks).  I would prefer half damage for interposed
	objects, and let weapon armor take care of it.   Also, it is never
	explicitly stated what happens to a weapon which reaches 0 armor
	points.   I assume that it becomes effectively unusable, but does
	it snap?  Can it be rebent into shape?


    Dodge          -- Very Poor

	The first major problem with this rule, has nothing to do with Dodge.
	It has to do with what it replaces: Defense.   Defense is simply
	the idea that fast, small, lucky, intelligent, or experienced
	creatures are generally harder to hit than slow, large, unlucky,
	dumb and/or inexperienced ones.   Talking to members of SCA, I have
	found this to be a generally approved of idea -- it's how combat
	really works.

	Now the RQ 2 implementation of Defense had a few holes in it -- which
	could be lived with.  The first was that two creatures of equal size,
	had a hard time hitting each other in hand to hand combat if they
	were small, and an easier chance if they were large.  (RQ 3's "Attack
	Modifiers" table maintains this flaw.)  The second problem with Defense
	was the way that you got experience in it...  unless you had a positive
	Defense bonus, you could not get any more, and the more Defense you 
	had, the better you got at it.

	So change the special experience system for Defense, right?
	Wrong.   What the brilliant folks over at the Chaosium decided to
	do was get rid of the idea of Defense entirely, and substitute in
	"Dodge" instead.

	A character can now Attack, Parry, or Dodge in a melee round, choosing
	two of the above actions.  Thus, to instinctively avoid a blow, I
	have to either forego my attack, or put my shield behind my back.
	If I choose to attack and parry, it matters not at all if I am Size
	4 or Size 19, if my DEX is 3 or 58, if I am the most experienced
	fighter or if I a raw amateur -- my opponent has the same chance of
	hitting me.

	If you try to Dodge and Attack, the Reality Flaw becomes more hilarious.
	Lord Alfred Winddragon had us simulate two fighters Dodging and
	attacking with Great Swords -- the resultant combat looked like a
	pogo-stick competition.   Swords and shields were even more silly,
	since the attacker had to place his shield behind his back, so as
	not to accidentally parry a blow.

	The flaws become worse again, when you consider non-human types.
	How do you hit a with a composite bow Pixie at 120 yards?  Simple,
	just catch it "attacking" and "parrying" another Pixie while fighting
	over a berry (or catch it slinging a missile).  What do they mean "He's
	so bad, he can't hit the side of a barn?"  They mean he's not an
	expert -- since even a Size 80 side-of-barn adds only a total of
	+30% to your chance to hit -- lacking rules for positive defense, a
	character who has missed his dodge is as easy to hit as a stationary
	object.


    Weapon Knockback      -- Ok

	Well at least there are rules for doing knockback from a blow,
	even if they are somewhat silly.   What does a pointy or sharp
	weapon have to do with knockback?  Does a Bladesharp 4 really
	add almost a meter to knockback?   Does a small mount charging
	down on a braced pike really get pushed back an additional 2
	meters because of his own damage bonus?


    Intentional Knockback  -- Poor

	Well now we know what the most effective form of attack is in
	Runequest 3.  Intentional Knockback.   All you have to do is
	Dodge and Parry and then Intentionally Knockback your opponent
	onto the ground.  Then you get +20% chance to hit him, and he
	gets -20% chance to hit you.   Simple, no?


    Stunning and Subduing   -- Poor

	It appears that to aim a blow at the head, all you have to do
	is attack to Stun or Subdue.  Then, regardless of the actual
	damage of the blow, you have a reasonable chance to knock your
	opponent out.   Trollkin will love this attack, since it gives
	each one a 20% chance to knock out a typical great troll, with
	even 1 hit point penetrating.

	It also does not say if the damage done by a subduing blow is
	actually applied as hit points damage to it.  One presumes not.


    Special Hit Locations  -- Good

	These are re-writings of the RQ 2 Special Hit location system.
	They are good, but are not extensive enough.  Some downward modifier
	should have also been included for swinging at extremely large
	creatures (such as giants).


    Mounted Weapons Limitations -- Very Good

	A reasonable set of special rules.   Set Spear vs Charge should
	be based on velocity and size, not on strength of the mount.  This
	is a very small detail though.


    Unfavorable Environments  -- Good

	1] Darkness has a reality flaw, since pitch blackness not only
	subtracts from an attackers chance to hit, but it also subtracts
	from the defenders innate Defense ability.   The SCA has tried out
	fighting blind, and people are hit quite a bit more often than
	RQ 3 rules suggest.

	2] Underwater is reasonable set of rules, if you ignore the Fatigue
	loss except for land based creatures (or ignore the Fatigue entirely).

	3] High ground is very good.

	4] Narrow passageways should include any thrusting weapon, not just
	spear and pike.  Otherwise good.  The Fatigue is silly.

	5] The rules for Covered Targets have not improved since RQ 2.  You
	still have a 50/50 chance of missing a giant who is covered by a
	hillside, even though the exposed portion of his size is greater than
	the size of a man.  There is still also no way to aim for hit locations
	with missile weapons, which is bad.


    Criticals       -- Good

	A critical now cannot do less damage than a special hit.  This is
	very good.  However every critical almost always does exactly the
	same damage.  This is not so good.


    Specials        -- Ok

	"Impales" look fine from a game balance point of view, though the
	extra damage done is still not all that realistic.   I do find
	complaint with the effect of a special from a smashing or slashing
	weapon though.

	From the way the rules are written, a character who does at least
	5 points of damage to any foe on a Special, knocks the target back
	at least one meter.   This means that a duck with a club can knock
	over a giant, assuming the latter fails a DEX x 5 roll.


    Fumble           -- Good

	Same old RQ 2 fumble table.


    Close Combat     -- Ok

	It is always good to have a game at least approximate what goes on
	in close combat, even if it does not quite match up to reality.
	The closing rules are fine, but what happens when you pull up to
	too short a range is not.   In reality, no one can attack at full
	damage when choked up too close -- whether you forego your parry
	or not.  Also parry, as the game so correctly points out, is an 
	instinctive response -- foregoing parry at all is almost a
	contradiction in terms.


    Disarm           -- Poor

	Disarming an opponent remains too easy in RQ 3.   If I attack an
	opponents weapon, he has no chance to effectively block my attack
	against breaking the weapon.   Thus, regardless of the skill of
	my opponent, I can disarm him with a few blows.


    Multiple Targets  -- Very Good

	There are now reasonable rules for all of these things.   The example
	of Bigclub has a strange +1d3 at the end, which is not explained
	anywhere.


    Firing Into A Mele    -- Very Poor

	How to make yourself invulnerable to missile weapons attacks:   1] Get
	a bunch of dogs.   2] Involve yourself and them in "mele" (pay the END
	cost for now).   3] Watch perfectly good missile wielders practically
	fumble their chance to hit a particular target.   With 9 dogs, the
	attack percentage is 1/10 normal, etc.   Sure, you're going to loose
	dogs, but so what?


    Engines         -- Good

	Since adventurers rarely fight in long sieges (not heroic or profitable
	enough), I do not really see the need for these rules.


    SKILLS         -- Good

	In general, the skills were explained as to what they were.  Though
	there were some ambiguities left, it is not enough to make an issue
	out of.   Also, some skills are too general, and really cover
	separate areas of expertise; these should have been subdivided.


    THE WORLD

    Falling         -- Good

    Asphyxiation    -- Good

    Fire and Heat   -- Very Good

	My my how this reminds us of the Hero Sys treatment of the
	same subject....

    Poison          -- Very Good
	
	I am particularly impressed by the fact that the words "usually" and
	"Unless otherwise specified by the gamemaster" are included in this
	description.

    Disease         -- Poor

	The same tired old Glorontha-ism of Disease is hanging around RQ 3.
	In it, we find that a disease does nothing more (or less) than
	permanently destroying characteristics.   No Fatigue loss (even in
	RQ 3's botched up system), no skill subtractions, no temporary
	characteristic loss.  Just total destruction.

	At least now, with the lack of species maximum, you can regain your
	characteristics back.    We find that one way to save your life, if
	you are afflicted by mild Wasting Disease, is to lift weights (all
	modern hospitals should have them).   This leads back to my comments
	about RQ 3 Characteristic Decrease in general.

	Also, notice the Glorontha-isms in the passage: "Broos", "The disease
	Goddess", "disease spirits".


    Aging and Inaction  -- Very Poor

	"See that cleft chin?  Notice how good he looks?   That is the sign
	of a character who will never 'ugly away'.   But over there.... see
	how he picks his nose, and has warts?  He is going to die before he
	reaches 50.    How about the Pixie?  She's always been weak (Pixie's
	usually are), which means that she will life a short life.   Look at
	that guy over there....   the one who looks like Woody Allen, he's
	got such a low DEX you can just about kiss him good bye.   But the
	Halfling (who trained up his STR to 24) is going to live to be 500."

	The only characteristic which has any bearing on health is (or should
	be) Constitution.    This should be obvious from the above example.
	Though it is true that STR, DEX, and APP can be lowered beyond 40,
	it has no bearing on the health of the character.   Even so, CON
	reduction is an abstraction, since reasonably healthy people quite
	often just keel over and die.

	In addition, reading the rules as they stand, it appears that anybody
	can live forever.   Alls you got to do is retrain the characteristic
	up, once it has been reduced.   Yes, I'm sure that APP training is
	hard to come by, but by RQ 3 it all could be done.

	(Doctor: "Sponge"  Nurse: "Sponge"  Doctor: "Pad"  Nurse: "Pad"
	Doctor: "Eye Liner"  Nurse: "Eye Liner"  Doctor: "Lipstick"....)


    Weather        -- Very Poor

	By the wind rules, we find that a hawk cannot fly.  Its STR is not
	enough to keep it from being bowled over by a STR 2 (calm air
	movement) wind.   Children are knocked over by breeze which blows
	out a candle, and a normal woman will be knocked down occasionally
	by light wind.   A moderate wind will most certainly knock down
	any average man, and most above average ones as well.   Only at
	the very upper end of the chart does Wind effects table begin to
	look reasonable.


    (End of Chapter 1)

robison@eosp1.UUCP (Tobias D. Robison) (10/25/84)

Thanks for a review that seems to prove something else altogether:
If you make a really intricate, detailed, complex, fantasy game in
order to attempt to imitiate reality, you will probably develop a
hopeless muddle full of unrealistic bugs.  So why bother???

In Lewis Carroll's late book, "Syvlie and Bruno", one of the characters
has a really detailed map of the local area.  It is made on a scale of
(are you ready?): ONE TO ONE.  There is some nice humor regarding
the difficulty of using the map.  BUT,

In a complex FRP system, it's easy to start taking hours to play
minutes of "reality";  then we catch up by taking seconds to play
days of reality;  then we...
at some point I actuality prefer reality itself.


	- Toby Robison (not Robinson!)
	allegra!eosp1!robison
	or: decvax!ittvax!eosp1!robison
	or (emergency): princeton!eosp1!robison

steven@qubix.UUCP (Steven Maurer) (11/12/84)

A bug killer.
Another bug killer.
A third bug killer.


	I've been getting a number of requests for the original
    posting of my RQ 3 review.  Though my followup corrispondence
    was well distributed, some sites didn't get the original
    review.   So here it is again.....

					-- Steven Maurer

====================================


REVIEW OF FLAWS IN RUNEQUEST 3  (Chapter 1)


A few weeks ago, in response to an article praising Runequest 3,
I replied to that message by saying that the new Runequest "sucked".
Now, while I hold it to be my prerogative to hold any opinion I want
on a game, I should have qualified my opinion with what I found
objectionable to it.   My only excuse for not doing so is that when
I made my initial comment, I didn't have time to even begin listing
the varied and numerous problems with RQ 3.

Now I do.

As a final note, before going into this review, let me state that
I am both an experienced player, referee, play tester, and game
designer, who has had much experience with Chaosium games.  If my
review of Runequest 3 seems biased, it is because I am looking at
it from the perspective of a Runequest 2 player who expected old
bugs to be fixed, not new ones introduced.  Even under the new rules,
Runequest 3 is not all that much worse than AD&D.  It can still be
fun, if (as in AD&D) you try to ignore rules problems, or invent
variant rules which fix them.  The attitude that rules don't need to
be good because people will naturally fix them, seems common in the
gaming industry, but would hardly be sanctioned in our own profession
("This software works, just as long as you fix all the bugs in it").
Of course, I'm not much of a fan of AD&D either.

In all the following review areas, a five grade listing is given.  These
are: Very Good, Good, Ok, Poor, and Very Poor.  Following this, is usually
a note explaining why the grade was given.   The areas are grouped together
under area titles, which usually correspond to one of the books in the box.
Also, at this time, I would like to give thanks to all the people who helped
me write this review, and pointed out bugs to me.  Particularly helpful
were, Steven Barnes, Ricky Taylor, Jeremy Higdon, Robert Mace (and other
SCA fighters), and innumerable numbers of convention goers and RQ 3 play
testers.


RUNEQUEST 3

GENERAL COMMENTS

Game Considered Overall --  Poor to Very Poor
    Particulars follow.

Speed of Publication    -- Poor
    The Chaosium has a reputation for being late in everything.
    However, in Runequest 3 they were especially late.   More than
    a year went by without any support for Runequest in any
    form, because of the slowness of the change over.




Backwards Compatibility -- Very Poor
    1]  Played by the book, Runequest 3 is entirely incompatible with
    Runequest 2.   This means that an investment of up to 100 dollars in
    Scenario packs, play aids, and cult descriptions, are now worthless.
    The last time I talked to Greg Stafford about this, he indicated that
    the Chaosium's plan was to re-release the old SP's in the new system
    (making you pay all over again, for the old materiel).  Aside from
    the basic obnoxiousness of this plan, it has another fatal flaw:
    the Chaosium's lateness.   By the original schedule, Glorontha Pack
    should have been out 1/3 year ago, and new materiel would start
    appearing in 1986.  As you may or may not know, Glorontha Pack will
    (as best) hit the store shelves by the end of the year.   This implies
    that the new materiel will actually come out by the earliest, in 1987
    -- that is, if the schedule is kept.

    2]  There is nothing on the front cover of Runequest 3 which says that
    it is a new game system, and separate from its other releases.  Thus a
    customer who is ignorant of the actual state of affairs of the game,
    may pick up a new Runequest 3 and buy any number of old incompatible
    Runequest 2 scenario packs, still unsold in stores.   I almost saw
    this happen once, but the game store owner was too moral a fellow to
    let it slip by.

    3]  Both as a player, and as a referee, I am forced to perform many
    hours worth of labor converting my characters into the new system.
    Even if the method of conversion was a piece of flawless elegance,
    (which it is not by any means), I still do not like having to perform
    such a laborious task, for essentially no reason.  Runequest characters
    are not like AD&D characters, who can be summerized in 6
    characteristics, class, level, HP, race, and magic items; each
    skill, and its accordant percentage, is individually listed and
    must be rewritten on a new character sheet.

Cover Art               -- Very Good
    Aside from minor technical and esthetic flaws in the drawing --
    the woman wearing gems, not a helm; the mans kneepads drawn as part
    of his boots; the picture of the man disjoint from the rest of the
    drawing (look closely, his feet look as if both of them are slipping
    off the stairs); -- aside from that, a very pretty picture.   Someone
    has finally found out that a pretty cover helps along a bad rules
    system, better than any amount of advertizing does (an old trick
    learned by TSR a long time ago).

Price                   -- Very Poor
    At 38 bucks a shot, the new Runequest is no small investment.  It
    would not be so bad if the new rules actually made a playable game,
    or if the customers were assured that it was a one shot deal.  This
    is not to be.  The SP's for the new Runequest will be similarly priced.
    (25$ for the Referee's rules, is a particularly bad deal, since the
    only really usable book in it is the creatures descriptions).

Paper Quality           -- Poor
    The books themselves are more tender than a soft bound book; the
    cover is made of the same paper as the internal pages.   Already, the
    RQ 3 that I borrowed, is beginning to show signs of wear.  It is not
    yet 1 month old, and hasn't been treated any worse than any standard
    book.   Perhaps I may be surprised, but I doubt that these books will
    have half the lifetime of the RQ 2 books (or 1/10th the lifetime of
    a hard bound AD&D Players Handbook).




    I also do not like Avalon Hill's decision to make Runequest into a
    "Bookshelf Game" (i.e. to put it in a box).  As the people at Avalon
    Hill, may or may not know, FRP games are not usually played off the
    bookshelf.   Rather, students and other adherents to FRP, carry the
    games around with them for quick reference -- most often in a backpack
    or some such.   In this environment, a box disintegrates within a
    period of 3 months.  It cracks at the bindings, and becomes completely
    unusable.   Large boxes are particularly susceptible to this, so most
    RQ 3's should begin falling apart by the next convention.

Layout                  -- Good
    Avalon Hill, or Chaosium, or both, did a good job on this one.  The
    pictures are clear, the type is readable, the colors draw attention
    but do not interfere with reading.   The one thing that I didn't like
    about the Layout, is the way that the previous experience charts are
    spread out all through the beginning of the book.   This makes the
    tables hard to find, in addition to interrupting the continuity of
    the initial rules.

(Other general comments can be found at the end of this review,
listed under the title "Summary Comments")


OVERALL GAME

Clarity                 -- Good
    As in all Chaosium games, the writing style is clear and simple.
    Sometimes too simple.  There are a number of ambiguities in the
    text, which should be resolved.   For instance, "Jump" says that
    a character must make the jump roll to jump "twice his height
    horizontally, or up to his height vertically with a running start".
    But it does not say what roll to make (if any) for distances less
    than that.  (Remember: running is is series of small jumps).

World View              -- Poor
    A World View of a game system, is the world which the game writers
    imply.   For example, the world view of AD&D is monster infested
    wilderness interspersed with "dungeons" containing fabulous treasure
    and magic; Chivalry and Sorcery's world view is medieval Europe in
    all its gory detail; Tunnels and Trolls has a world view in which
    whimsical gods toy with the adventurers, giving fabulous power,
    and then taking it away.

    Some games are tied only to a genre (a set of world views).  D&D,
    Champions, Arms Law, Justice Inc., all fall into this wide spread
    category.  Some games are not only tied to a specific world view,
    but are tied to a specific world.  Call of Cthuluhu, Paranoia,
    Elfquest, EPT, Stormbringer, fall into this one.  Each approach
    has its own strengths: a general system can be adapted to any number
    of different campaigns, a specific system has more time to explore
    its own particular world.  Runequest has always been a specific
    system.  Its world is Glorontha.  The designers of Runequest,
    attempted to write a more generalized version of Runequest.   This
    attempt failed badly.




    Instead of generalizing Runequest, the new world view attempts to
    Glorontha-ize fantasy.  We find no Cyclopses and Medusa in Fantasy
    Europe, but Broos and Gloronthan Trolls instead.  The religions are
    barely disguised Glorontha cults -- not even general enough to handle
    the Stormbringer pantheon (another Chaosium FRP game).  Though many
    references are made to Tolkien (and presumably his creations), we
    find that elves "are tied to their forests in ways not understandable
    by men" -- a reference straight out of Glorontha.

    Through out the rest of the review, I will be pointing out these
    Glorontha-isms.  They are subtly pervasive throughout the game,
    concentrating mainly in the magic book.

    This alone is not enough to give the World View of RQ 3 a Poor
    rating.  Glorontha is, when viewed with a forgiving eye, an
    interesting world with a fascinating cosmology.  It's easy to
    settle a campaign there, provided you only pay attention to its
    gods, continents, and empires.  The problem with RQ 3, is that
    it allows no support for world views other than Glorontha --
    though a "Viking Pack" is supposed to come out, the societies,
    gods, money, and motivations will all still be Gloronthan.
    "Fantasy Europe" already resembles Glorontha much more than any
    authentic earth mythology; it will no doubt only end up like the
    defunct Questworld: A place to put all the scenarios that "aren't
    good enough" for Glorontha.


Game System             -- Very Poor

    "A roleplaying game's system is the invisible support from which
    the game world must hang".  True enough.  However it is also true
    that a game system must derive itself somehow from reality.  This
    was always the concept which set Runequest 2 apart from other game
    systems.  While a high level fighter in AD&D had more hit points
    than his shield, a RQ 2 character was always realistic.

    This is no longer necessarily true, since the Chaosium has decided
    the TSR approach to game design, which is to "play balance" all
    approaches to combat regardless of realism.   What's worse, is that
    many of these game flaws are not simply bugs which have an easy fix.
    The flaws are built so deeply into the system that removing them is
    equivalent to redesigning it; if you want your average healthy
    Cimmerian to have a much greater stamina than an under exercized game
    designer, you have to rebuild the Fatigue system from scratch.  In
    the following text, such errors will be pointed out as "Design Errors".

    This is not to say that Runequest 3 is unplayable under all
    circumstances.   Far from it, if you only run average humans, and
    kill them off before they become too skilled, you will find that
    the system mimics reality to a tolerable degree.  But this is also
    true of almost every other system on the market, including some real
    loosers like Tunnels and Trolls.   The acid test of a GOOD system,
    is how it handles powerful characters, non-humans, and exotics.




    Again, Runequest 3 fails miserably.  The rules repeatedly encourage
    characters to do things which are unrealistic in a fantasy setting.
    To a certain extent, such flaws can exist in the system without
    destroying the world.  Players are supposed to be more interested
    in "character conception" then that.  But after a while, this will
    break down if the holes are too blatant, and run across too often.
    Players quickly learn that a dead character makes a very uninteresting
    concept.  In the following text, rules which are unrealistic, or
    promote unrealistic behavior, will be pointed out as "Reality Flaws".


Game Examples           -- Ok

    "Cormac the Pict" is a good idea to give examples with.   But it was
    a better idea with Rurik the Restless.   Why, do you ask?  Well
    because such examples also serve as the indication of the style of
    the campaign.  Rurik in RQ 2, started out a beginning adventurer,
    suffered a major setback, but eventually made it to rune lord.  Cormac
    in RQ 3, is beaten up, suffers serious disease, is thrown in jail on
    the whim of a nobleman, is knocked over by wind, and turned down
    by a Shaman.  His only success is to repeatedly avoid being killed,
    by managing to hide.  He also learns a few basic battle magic spells.

    If the designers of RQ 3 seriously want a referee to run their games
    in such a ritual sacrifice fashion, (which they do: "These
    personalities ... reveal how some more or less ordinary adventurers
    progress (or don't progress) in actual situations") then I don't want
    anything to do with it as a player.  Suffering repeated "Roll your
    52% Hide, or die when the enemy tribe finds you", is not what I call
    fun; this should NOT be "Call of Runequest", despite what Sandy
    Peterson might believe.


PLAYERS RULES

Characteristics -- Good
    I always liked RQ 2 characteristics, and am glad that they didn't
    delete or seriously mung with any of them.   They still give silly
    numbers, (Size has nothing to do with Strength, and vice versa),
    but this is true of all 3d6 systems.

Characteristic Increases -- Very Poor
    RQ 2 had a concept called "Species Maximum".  The idea was that there
    was a limit to how high you could train your characteristics, which
    depended upon your race.  The Reality Flaw with this system, was that
    at the highest levels, everybody began to look the same.  POW 18, DEX
    21, CHA 21, STR/SIZ/CON equal, and INT usually 17 or 18 (if you wanted
    a character who progressed quickly).  There was also a Reality Flaw
    with STR/CON/SIZ, which hasn't been fixed.

    RQ 3 does away with "Species Maximum", without substituting any good
    alternate, and thus makes everything worse.




    To the old STR/CON/SIZ Reality Flaw, RQ 3 adds a Design Error.  The
    old Reality Flaw has not been fixed:  Large and/or strong creatures
    can become incredibly more healthy (resistant to disease, etc), and
    naturally healthy creatures can become incredibly strong.  But all
    this cross training WAS limited by Species Maximum, and so things did
    not get out of hand (except for Dragonnewts).   Now, since there IS
    no species maximum, we find that an average Halfling can train his
    STR up to 17.  Particularly healthy ones can eventually become much
    stronger than trolls.  An intelligent Manticore, being naturally
    strong, can train both his health (and therefore his venom) up to
    amazing levels.

    For the old DEX/APP Reality Flaw, RQ 3 substitutes a new one.
    Both DEX and APP are now limited by half again the original roll.
    What this means is that one of every 72 people, will be able
    to attain a Dexterity like unto the gods (26), whereas the low
    1 of 72, will never be better than a klutz (6).   Such variation
    will inevitably lead to DEX inflation (starting out with the
    highest DEX possible), since any high DEX character has a much
    better chance of survival.

    POW now has a wonderful Design Error, where it had none before.
    The Species Maximum characteristic used to be one sixth again the
    maximum rollable.  This meant that an Elf (2d6+6 POW) would have an
    18 + 1/6 x 18 = 21 Species Maximum.  Humans likewise.   Now, RQ 3
    makes you add the minimum rollable plus the maximum, so an Elf
    now has a 8 + 18 = 26 Species Max.   A Dryad (2d6+16) near Species
    Max, handily defeats the Bad Man in spirit combat, and I don't even
    want to THINK about Hags.  The repercussions in the areas of Magic
    are considerable, since higher Species Max means easier POW gain
    rolls.  This in turn gives more POW for spells, magic items, and
    binding spirits.  Non-human Shamans are amazingly gross.

Hit Points      -- Good
    Much of the old Reality Flaw from RQ 2 has been removed.  Good.
    This is somewhat offset by the botching of training up STR and CON,
    however.

Damage Modifier -- Ok
    The same old Damage Modifier is being used, with its enormous
    breakpoint effect.  For a normal human, 1 additional point in STR
    or SIZ can suddenly add about half again to the damage of all
    weapons he uses.  Some sort of increasing die roll (1d1, 1d2,
    1d3, etc) would have been better.  (Could have even been
    substituted on the old RQ 2 character sheets).

Number of Strike Ranks     -- Ok
    For no obvious reason, RQ 3 now has 10 Strike Ranks instead of
    12.  All the tables have been adjusted accordingly, but there didn't
    seem to be an overwhelming need for a change.  Perhaps the game
    designers wanted to make clear than SR's, had nothing to do with
    seconds of time, by removing the (apparent) one-to-one correspondence.
    Actually, Strike Ranks are themselves kludges. They have little to
    do with the progress of blows in an authentic mele.  Since there is
    no easy alternate, it can do.




Previous Experience -- Very Good

    Previous Experience is an exceedingly well done piece of work.
    It allows players to build reasonable backgrounds for their
    characters, and allows a reasonable amount of previous experience,
    without getting gross.   The only real problem with it, is that it
    contains a large number of Glorontha-isms ("Healer, Civilized:
    01-75 Your adventurer's parents worship the earth goddess....").

Quick Experience System -- Very Good
    For its limited scope, this works very well.

Simple Skills  -- Ok
    The old skills are unchanged.  The 05 success, 95 failure is still
    kept.  This still has its old Reality Flaw wrong with it.  Get 20
    people to try something, and almost always one of them can.  It
    isn't noticeable usually, unless you ask a giant to jump. (Because
    of his size, the giant will fall over most of the time, but take
    off to the moon on a 01-05).

Skill vs Skill -- Poor
    It does not explicitly state if a skill which has been modified to
    negative ADDS to the opponents chance of making the skill roll.
    Also, the Skill vs Skill algorithm is not transitive -- i.e. it
    matters greatly which skill is designated the "attacking" skill,
    and which one the "defending" skill.   Consider two characters
    who are 90% in Tracking: one who is looking for a trail, and one
    trying not to leave one.   Both characters have a 85% total chance
    of success, if theirs is the roll considered "passive".  The "active"
    wielder can only hope the "passive" user blows his roll.   For 5
    to 45 percent range, the percentages are reversed...  the "active"
    wielder gets the better deal, since the Skill vs Skill roll assumes
    automatic success if your opponent blows his roll.

Skills Categories -- Poor
    Improvements in this one: no more break points.  Alas, it is
    offset by the ill definition of most categories.   We find that good
    Boating and Throwing depend heavily upon being very small.  A Miss
    America contestant can speak foreign languages much better than
    a plain girl.   Great Trolls make wonderful pick pockets.
    
    This could possibly be fixed by rules alterations.   Negative skills
    should be secondarily negative (1 for 2, not 1 for 1).  Throw and Boat
    should be Manipulation based skills, and Manipulation should not have
    STR in the calculation at all.  Sing & Speak Foreign Language
    should have no APP modifier, and Sleight should have a Negative SIZ
    modifier.


Experience Gain Rolls -- Very Poor
    The old Reality Flaw "you learn only during a stressful situation"
    is still around, as expected.  ("Gosh, I learned to play the piano
    twice as quickly as my friend, because I only play when the trolls
    are attacking!").  This can be explained away in the interest of
    getting players to go out in the field, and is perfectly fine.




    Experience Gain Rolls suffer from being tied to skill modifier bonuses,
    because all the silliness of the Skills Categories becomes magnified.
    Not only do people who are very lucky (high POW) rather noticeable, but
    they are made incapable of learning how to be less so.  Manticores can
    learn to Play Instruments much more quickly, because they are so strong.
    Giants can learn how to Track much more easily, because they are very
    healthy.

    More to the point, we find out that high skill modifiers aid characters
    in learning in an astounding way.   A human and a giant, with an equal
    INT and DEX, at 100% Sleight, will find that the giant learns his skill
    10% more quickly than the human can; getting 100 checks, a character
    over 100%, with a 20% skills modifier will go up an average of 70%,
    while a character with a 5% skills bonus will go up 14%; under 100%,
    the ratio is even more extreme, since skill level affects the chance
    to even get the check in the first place.

    This all is just begging for characteristic inflation.  It encourages
    the 17 DEX character to train his DEX up to 26, since this will mean
    an automatic +9% chance to learn how to use half the skills in the book.
    In addition, any character who has a +1 Skills Modifier can train all
    those skills above 100%, but characters with a 0 bonus cannot.  In short,
    RQ 3 took the old RQ 2 Reality Flaw, and magnified it.

    While RQ 2 encouraged INT inflation (rolling intelligent characters),
    this was more palletable for several reasons.  One, most of the enormous
    fighting machines {Minotaur, Manticore, Great Troll} were rather dumb.
    So, a player had to choose between being powerful to start out with, or
    having a better future ahead.  Two, strength and smallness have little
    to do with learning, only intelligence does.  (In fact, the DEFINITION
    of intelligence, is the ability to learn.  Look it up, if you don't
    believe me.)  Finally, since you want to encourage people to play
    intelligently anyway, it did not hurt to encourage them to play
    intelligent characters.


Fatigue        -- Very Poor

    The first point to ask about Fatigue, is why is it necessary?
    Certainly people get tired, but Conan never seems to (even when
    he is wearing plate).   Many SCA fighters have told me that when
    in top shape, they can fight for almost half an hour before getting
    really pooped.  Real fighting includes pacing, and looking for
    openings, which allow characters to rest even when "attacking"
    an opponent.  Especially under the adrenaline of combat, people
    "die" long before they are seriously hampered from fatigue.

    RQ 2 seems to work just fine without it, so would have RQ 3.   Alas,
    things are not that easy.  You cannot even do away with the whole
    system, since the game designers offer no other, and Fatigue is
    enmeshed so thoroughly with Encumbrance, that they are almost
    inseparable.  In short, it is one big Design Error, interspaced
    with Reality Flaws.   To wit:




	"Cormac is still being pursued by enemy tribesmen.  Though
	 he is a strong runner, he still hears their calls and jeers
	 behind him.  He is now -3 fatigue points -- all the fatigue
	 points (including zero) on his fatigue tally have been
	 checked off, and he has lost three more besides.  In this
	 melee round, his player must therefore subtract 3 from any
	 skill, resistance, or characteristic roll he makes for Cormac.

    What the author failed to mention, is that Cormac, an unencumbered
    healthy primative hunter, has been jogging for at most 4 minutes.
    In another 3, according to the RQ 3 system of Fatigue, he will faint.   
    But this is not all!  Assuming Cormac was the healthiest and the
    strongest a human can be, and he was jogging entirely naked, he would
    skill keel over from exhaustion in less than 15 minutes.   Whatever
    inhuman levels of Constitution a modern day jogger must have in RQ 3
    is left up to the readers imagination.

    The problem of Fatigue actually goes much deeper than this.  It really
    has to do with the designers attempt to simulate multiple types of
    exhaustion with one simplified system.   For instance, we find that
    prolonged hiking or riding over several hours, reduces a characters
    Fatigue (as it should), but this Fatigue loss is measured in the same
    units that sprinting around the block is.   Thus, to rest from a
    entire days exertion, one need only to recover the Fatigue points
    through a 1 minute rest.   Doing so at the end of each hour of hiking,
    insures that a character is never down more than 1 to 2 points of Fatigue.

    The game designers make loss of sleep (sleeping in armor) cost Fatigue
    points as well.  They use a bad example, since sleeping in most armor
    (without a helm on) is actually quite comfortable.   Aside from that,
    of the type of Fatigue being lost is again, obviously, the wrong one.
    It leads to the humorous Reality Flaw of a character who is sleeping
    in armor, asking to be woken up every hour or so, so that he can rest
    to recover his lost Fatigue.

    In fact, the only "_p_e_r_m_a_n_e_n_t" Fatigue loss springs from ENC;
    this turns out to be exactly the wrong application of permanent Fatigue,
    since it leads to a linear relationship between the weight that the
    character is carrying, and the strenuousness of the exertion.  For
    example, a character can jog with a full pack, about 1/2 as long as he
    can jog totally unencumbered.  This makes characters able to run with
    inhumanly large amounts of ENC for a relatively long time, but fall over
    when totally unencumbered after a relatively short time (relative,
    that is, to reality).

    Because the Fatigue system all works off of one attribute in a very
    simplistic fashion, it can only be tuned to be realistic on one setting.
    This setting seems to be a human, with average STR and CON, unencumbered,
    and who is very very out of shape.   Nikkelos the Sorcerer looks
    perfect under the Fatigue system, as does, incidentally, Steve Perrin
    (or even myself).   It does not work for the average adventurer.  To
    try to patch up the system for other races and sizes, a completely
    separate Fatigue table is given, which occasionally leads to the correct
    results. (The table seems to have been designed for horses).




    I talked to Steve Perrin about this, and he mentioned in response that
    Fatigue was in "melee rounds only", i.e. don't count fatigue unless
    the referee is asking for statements of intent.   The first problem with
    this is that it is a obvious and stupid Reality Flaw; some people claim
    they are already researching a spell to put others in "melee rounds" to
    make them tire out.  It may even be more simple than that: in the
    example, Cormac hears "calls and jeers behind him", which forces
    him into melee rounds -- so much for "...and names will never hurt me".
    Secondly, only counting Fatigue in battle allows characters to perform
    inhuman feats of endurance outside of it.  ("Run for an hour carrying
    my horse?  Sure, no problem, just make sure I don't go into combat").
    Swimming also uses Fatigue, tell me does the Chaosium really only mean
    Swimming while in combat?

    Another incidental Reality Flaw is that the designers went overboard
    on reducing percentiles for being Fatigued.  Athletes, we find, are
    particularly vulnerable to disease because they are fatigued so often.
    In addition, when tired, not only is your strength effectively reduced
    by a large amount, but you also are less Lucky.  A Storm Bull after
    having slaughtered 100 Broos, finds the god unwilling to respond to
    a tired worshiper (Divine Intervention -- POW x 1 characteristic
    roll).  If he does make the roll (by some miracle), then he has lost
    a huge amount of additional permanent POW, because of the Fatigue loss.


Encumbrance      -- Very Poor

    Encumbrance is inexorably intertwined with Fatigue, but it has
    other problems as well.

    Since the ENC of armor increases as a multiple of Size, but Fatigue
    increases as an average, we find that a large strong people (who
    have high STR relative to CON) have fewer rounds to fight than
    small weak people when wearing equivalent sets of armor.
    This means that Pixies and Halflings can all wear Plate without
    a worry about fatigue loss, but Trolls cannot.

    Particularly large trolls are even in worse condition.  A Size 21
    two legged creature uses the size equivalency chart. This means
    he has 28 Fatigue points to start out with, regardless of his
    STR or CON.   Dress the troll in Plate, give him small clothes, a
    Troll Maul, and nothing else, he will start out at -16 Fatigue.
    It is quite possible for an average well equipped large Dark Troll
    to faint if he accidentally goes into melee rounds.

    If the troll feels bad, he should talk to the newlywed husband.
    The strong and healthy guy (13 STR/13 CON) tries to lift his
    lithe (SIZ 9) wife through the doorway, when someone "called and
    jeered" at him, and he went into melee rounds.  Figuring out his
    current Fatigue (since this is what you do when you start into
    melee rounds), we find he has 26 total.  A respectable number, until
    you realize that his wife weighs (9 SIZ x 6 ENC/SIZ =) 54 ENC, which
    makes him faint dead away.   How embarrassing.




    The Design Error lying behind all this is not all that difficult
    to spot:  Fatigue and Encumbrance are calculated in exactly the same
    way:  you compute the number of melee rounds you can exert yourself
    in exactly the same say as you compute what you can carry.  So
    it is impossible in RQ 3 to have a character who can carry a great
    deal, but tires quickly (high STR/low CON), and impossible to have a
    character who cannot carry much, but can do so for a very long
    time (low STR/high CON).   No one, for instance, expects a high STR
    Sumo wrestler to be able to jog twice as far as the normal man, but
    this is what RQ 3 implies.  Can a Halfling carry more ENC than a
    human?   Due to the Halfling's high Con, the RQ 3 system says yes.

    This is reminiscent of the D&D concept of mixing high Dexterity
    (ability to avoid a blow), and Armor Class (ability to absorb
    damage); the RQ 3 Fatigue/ENC system takes two related, but entirely
    separate world elements, and tries to mix them together.  The resulting
    system is so unnatural, it has to depend upon such artificialities
    as "melee rounds", and being tuned to work correctly for one specific
    archetype.  This type is (not surprisingly) for average size armor
    worn by out of shape humans.   

    Because it is a system which is unrealistic, fixing the Fatigue
    or Encumbrance numbers so that characters could carry one another
    in combat, as in the movie Uncommon Valor, helps not a bit.  It
    only would make the formula silly elsewhere (perhaps allowing people
    to jog carrying their horses for half a minute).   If you want an
    effective ENC system in RQ 3, you have to design it yourself.

    ENC also is supposed to subtract directly from both ability to cast
    magic, and Dodge ability.   I am not too concerned about the latter,
    since Dodge is such an asinine idea anyway, that it doesn't make
    any difference if ENC affects it or not.    About the former, I can
    only wonder what the designers were thinking about when they made
    this rule up....   to add insult to injury, we now find that the
    Size 21 troll in Plate now has a -55 percent chance to cast his
    spells, while the STR 2 Halfling in Plate is discomfited by no more
    than -15.   A Giant can't cast spells, not because no one taught him,
    but rather because his belt buckle weighs too much.  (After all,
    he only has a 125 STR to lift it).  These Reality Flaws are really
    humorous, until you realize you paid 38 dollars for them.


Training     --  Ok

    Some parts of Training have been improved, although I do find it
    strange that "Experience" is more useful than having someone teach
    you correct technique.   Is this why the Chaosium felt the need to
    invent "Martial Arts", to explain away the fact that people who are
    taught ancient, well thought out combat methods, are better than
    street fighters?   Well, other than that, and the artificial 75%
    limit (which was always there), I like this section.   Particularly
    good are the paragraphs explaining just where all that money goes
    to, and the time involved in learning.

    Incidentally, the 1d6-2 roll, is just like saying you get
    2 plus an optional 1d6-4.  From this perspective, only a fool would
    take the roll.  Strange how, in a later Cormac's saga, it shows
    Cormac rolling average (20 & 21 total on 6 dice) and the text
    calls this luck "uninspiring".  It is his player's intelligence
    that is uninspiring.




Research     --  Poor

    Having problems with all those skills at 0 percent?   Have no fear!
    Research is here!   From the formulas given, we find that you take
    no time at all to learn a skill from the base 0 percent.   Throw
    a man in a French library, and before you know it, he'll be writing
    his first faltering words ("Parlez vous ....").   Everybody should
    learn his first 1d6-2 Martial Arts easy.... just make like Bruce Lee.

    Its not that Research is not a good idea, you just have to add
    a few more ideas like experience bonuses for knowing what you're
    looking for, previous experience in the field being researched,
    and innate predilection toward the skill in question.  The system
    presented is much too simplistic, and assumes that all skills
    become predictably more difficult to learn, after you easily got
    the knack of them in the first place.  The rules are better than
    nothing, but not much.


Characteristic Increase  -- Poor

    Having the cost and time of characteristic training depending upon
    an arbitrary game value is silly.   Why should a Halfling doubling
    his strength take half the time doing it that a Troll doing the
    same thing does?   The real cost associated with raising strength
    should have to do with how much you have raised it already, or how
    much is normal for your species, not based on arbitrary values.

    Since we have already discussed the lack of species maximum for
    characteristics, I will not rehash those Reality Flaws.


Characteristic Decrease  -- Very Poor

    RQ 3 promotes the idea that characteristics are not an abstraction,
    indicating a wide range of personal aspects, such as DEX being
    a combination of hand-eye coordination, musculature, and flexibility.
    No.  Characteristics are treated as some form of elixir, which every
    character has, but some have more than others; which can, in turn,
    be squeezed out of a person like blood from a turnip.

    For example, Appearance (not at all in the eye of the beholder), has
    a particular Magic Point value for each character, which a sufficiently
    skilled sorcerer can Tap.   Rock Hudson is a veritable storehouse
    of magical power, (no doubt found somewhere in his classic jaw line),
    while you or I have almost nothing.  An athlete who dies, can be
    resurrected twice as long after you or I, because he has so much
    more STR in him than we do.   A juggler who gets the Shakes, will
    survive much longer than anybody else, because he has more DEX in
    him to begin with.

    While Runequest 2 had some of the same ideas, at least they did not
    pursue them with the same fervor that RQ 3 has.   The idea was holed
    up in the back of the book, listed under optional "Disease" rules.
    This is no longer the case, as Characteristic Drain is now the method
    of aging, inaction, disease, death, and Tapping.




Strike Ranks  -- Ok

    There are two changes in this from RQ 2.  The good one, is that it
    is now possible to alter your statement of intent, without having
    to waste 11 seconds to do so.   The bad one, is that it now seems
    that a character moving up on another, strikes last because the
    moving character unconditionally looses strike ranks.   The worst
    case, is where a character moves up and cannot hit his foe, since
    he hasn't enough strike ranks.  His foe, who was waiting for him,
    gets a free attack.

    Also, any old numb skull with a high DEX gets the first strike even
    against a seasoned fighter.  (While Runequest says that an attack is
    actually a combination of blows, almost none of the rules really
    treat it as such.)


Aimed Blows   -- Ok

    I am not overwhelmed by this method, holdover though it is from
    RQ 2.  It does not simulate well what an aimed blow really is.


Basic Attack Percentages -- Poor

    Someone at the Chaosium still has the idea that the better damage
    a weapon does, the lower percentage it should start out with.
    For example, a Naginata starts at 5%, while a Spear starts at 15%.   
    Now while I will not pass judgement on the basic idea of making
    high-damage weapons more difficult to use (it is an issue of
    reality vs play balance), I do find it somewhat silly that they
    expect this technique to actually prevent players from just using
    the highest damage weapons.

    A lower starting percentage does not hinder a character's use
    of a weapon at all, since lowered starting percentages can be
    trained up easily.  What is more needed is an innate difficulty
    factor, which would be a subtraction from a weapon's Skill Bonus
    (and experience bonus) because the weapon is innately more difficult
    to use.  An addition to the Skill Bonus for shield parrying would
    also have been better than the high starting percentage.  As
    currently written, the starting weapon/shield percentages really
    have no meaning.


Parry         -- Good

    The new rules for allowing hafted weapons to occasionally damage
    during a parry are good.   It would have been better if all weapons
    only did damage on an impale, since such notching is not very common.

    Later we find in the book, Parry can now be used against hand thrown
    missile weapons.   The rules and an example seems contradictory:
    "Thrown weapons can be parried if the parrier is aware of the attack...",
    and "A spear thrown from the darkness impales Churchak.   The roll
    is 16 points of damage, but he gets his own spear in the way for
    a parry".  (I am assuming in this example, that Churchak has not
    researched up his Darksense.)  Also, in real life, any missile weapon
    used at long range can be parried, if seen.




Weapon Armor   -- Ok

    RQ 2 weapons needed armor badly.   RQ 3 gave it to them, but in a
    funky fashion.   From the rules, we find that the reason that swords
    don't break is not because they are made out of steel, its because
    they are "interposed" between the attacker and his target.  Does
    this mean that if I "interpose" a trollkin (or a candle), in front
    of a descending troll maul, that the interposed object only takes 1
    point of damage?  Not likely.  Chalk up another Reality Flaw.

    Parrying an opponents attack to break his weapon becomes a credible
    option, since a parry does full weapon damage when the attacker
    misses (unlike attacks).  I would prefer half damage for interposed
    objects, and let weapon armor take care of it.   Also, it is never
    explicitly stated what happens to a weapon which reaches 0 armor
    points.   I assume that it becomes effectively unusable, but does
    it snap?  Can it be rebent into shape?


Dodge          -- Very Poor

    The first major problem with this rule, has nothing to do with Dodge.
    It has to do with what it replaces: Defense.   Defense is simply
    the idea that fast, small, lucky, intelligent, or experienced
    creatures are generally harder to hit than slow, large, unlucky,
    dumb and/or inexperienced ones.   Talking to members of SCA, I have
    found this to be a generally approved of idea -- it's how combat
    really works.

    Now the RQ 2 implementation of Defense had a few holes in it -- which
    could be lived with.  The first was that two creatures of equal size,
    had a hard time hitting each other in hand to hand combat if they
    were small, and an easier chance if they were large.  (RQ 3's "Attack
    Modifiers" table maintains this flaw.)  The second problem with Defense
    was the way that you got experience in it...  unless you had a positive
    Defense bonus, you could not get any more, and the more Defense you 
    had, the better you got at it.

    So change the special experience system for Defense, right?
    Wrong.   What the brilliant folks over at the Chaosium decided to
    do was get rid of the idea of Defense entirely, and substitute in
    "Dodge" instead.

    A character can now Attack, Parry, or Dodge in a melee round, choosing
    two of the above actions.  Thus, to instinctively avoid a blow, I
    have to either forego my attack, or put my shield behind my back.
    If I choose to attack and parry, it matters not at all if I am Size
    4 or Size 19, if my DEX is 3 or 58, if I am the most experienced
    fighter or if I a raw amateur -- my opponent has the same chance of
    hitting me.

    If you try to Dodge and Attack, the Reality Flaw becomes more hilarious.
    Lord Alfred Winddragon had us simulate two fighters Dodging and
    attacking with Great Swords -- the resultant combat looked like a
    pogo-stick competition.   Swords and shields were even more silly,
    since the attacker had to place his shield behind his back, so as
    not to accidentally parry a blow.




    The flaws become worse again, when you consider non-human types.
    How do you hit a with a composite bow Pixie at 120 yards?  Simple,
    just catch it "attacking" and "parrying" another Pixie while fighting
    over a berry (or catch it slinging a missile).  What do they mean "He's
    so bad, he can't hit the side of a barn?"  They mean he's not an
    expert -- since even a Size 80 side-of-barn adds only a total of
    +30% to your chance to hit -- lacking rules for positive defense, a
    character who has missed his dodge is as easy to hit as a stationary
    object.


Weapon Knockback      -- Ok

    Well at least there are rules for doing knockback from a blow,
    even if they are somewhat silly.   What does a pointy or sharp
    weapon have to do with knockback?  Does a Bladesharp 4 really
    add almost a meter to knockback?   Does a small mount charging
    down on a braced pike really get pushed back an additional 2
    meters because of his own damage bonus?


Intentional Knockback  -- Poor

    Well now we know what the most effective form of attack is in
    Runequest 3.  Intentional Knockback.   All you have to do is
    Dodge and Parry and then Intentionally Knockback your opponent
    onto the ground.  Then you get +20% chance to hit him, and he
    gets -20% chance to hit you.   Simple, no?


Stunning and Subduing   -- Poor

    It appears that to aim a blow at the head, all you have to do
    is attack to Stun or Subdue.  Then, regardless of the actual
    damage of the blow, you have a reasonable chance to knock your
    opponent out.   Trollkin will love this attack, since it gives
    each one a 20% chance to knock out a typical great troll, with
    even 1 hit point penetrating.

    It also does not say if the damage done by a subduing blow is
    actually applied as hit points damage to it.  One presumes not.


Special Hit Locations  -- Good

    These are re-writings of the RQ 2 Special Hit location system.
    They are good, but are not extensive enough.  Some downward modifier
    should have also been included for swinging at extremely large
    creatures (such as giants).


Mounted Weapons Limitations -- Very Good

    A reasonable set of special rules.   Set Spear vs Charge should
    be based on velocity and size, not on strength of the mount.  This
    is a very small detail though.




Unfavorable Environments  -- Good

    1] Darkness has a reality flaw, since pitch blackness not only
    subtracts from an attackers chance to hit, but it also subtracts
    from the defenders innate Defense ability.   The SCA has tried out
    fighting blind, and people are hit quite a bit more often than
    RQ 3 rules suggest.

    2] Underwater is reasonable set of rules, if you ignore the Fatigue
    loss except for land based creatures (or ignore the Fatigue entirely).

    3] High ground is very good.

    4] Narrow passageways should include any thrusting weapon, not just
    spear and pike.  Otherwise good.  The Fatigue is silly.

    5] The rules for Covered Targets have not improved since RQ 2.  You
    still have a 50/50 chance of missing a giant who is covered by a
    hillside, even though the exposed portion of his size is greater than
    the size of a man.  There is still also no way to aim for hit locations
    with missile weapons, which is bad.


Criticals       -- Good

    A critical now cannot do less damage than a special hit.  This is
    very good.  However every critical almost always does exactly the
    same damage.  This is not so good.


Specials        -- Ok

    "Impales" look fine from a game balance point of view, though the
    extra damage done is still not all that realistic.   I do find
    complaint with the effect of a special from a smashing or slashing
    weapon though.

    From the way the rules are written, a character who does at least
    5 points of damage to any foe on a Special, knocks the target back
    at least one meter.   This means that a duck with a club can knock
    over a giant, assuming the latter fails a DEX x 5 roll.


Fumble           -- Good

    Same old RQ 2 fumble table.


Close Combat     -- Ok

    It is always good to have a game at least approximate what goes on
    in close combat, even if it does not quite match up to reality.
    The closing rules are fine, but what happens when you pull up to
    too short a range is not.   In reality, no one can attack at full
    damage when choked up too close -- whether you forego your parry
    or not.  Also parry, as the game so correctly points out, is an 
    instinctive response -- foregoing parry at all is almost a
    contradiction in terms.



Disarm           -- Poor

    Disarming an opponent remains too easy in RQ 3.   If I attack an
    opponents weapon, he has no chance to effectively block my attack
    against breaking the weapon.   Thus, regardless of the skill of
    my opponent, I can disarm him with a few blows.


Multiple Targets  -- Very Good

    There are now reasonable rules for all of these things.   The example
    of Bigclub has a strange +1d3 at the end, which is not explained
    anywhere.


Firing Into A Mele    -- Very Poor

    How to make yourself invulnerable to missile weapons attacks:   1] Get
    a bunch of dogs.   2] Involve yourself and them in "mele" (pay the END
    cost for now).   3] Watch perfectly good missile wielders practically
    fumble their chance to hit a particular target.   With 9 dogs, the
    attack percentage is 1/10 normal, etc.   Sure, you're going to loose
    dogs, but so what?


Engines         -- Good

    Since adventurers rarely fight in long sieges (not heroic or profitable
    enough), I do not really see the need for these rules.


SKILLS         -- Good

    In general, the skills were explained as to what they were.  Though
    there were some ambiguities left, it is not enough to make an issue
    out of.   Also, some skills are too general, and really cover
    separate areas of expertise; these should have been subdivided.


THE WORLD

Falling         -- Good

Asphyxiation    -- Good

Fire and Heat   -- Very Good

    My my how this reminds us of the Hero Sys treatment of the
    same subject....

Poison          -- Very Good
    
    I am particularly impressed by the fact that the words "usually" and
    "Unless otherwise specified by the gamemaster" are included in this
    description.



Disease         -- Poor

    The same tired old Glorontha-ism of Disease is hanging around RQ 3.
    In it, we find that a disease does nothing more (or less) than
    permanently destroying characteristics.   No Fatigue loss (even in
    RQ 3's botched up system), no skill subtractions, no temporary
    characteristic loss.  Just total destruction.

    At least now, with the lack of species maximum, you can regain your
    characteristics back.    We find that one way to save your life, if
    you are afflicted by mild Wasting Disease, is to lift weights (all
    modern hospitals should have them).   This leads back to my comments
    about RQ 3 Characteristic Decrease in general.

    Also, notice the Glorontha-isms in the passage: "Broos", "The disease
    Goddess", "disease spirits".


Aging and Inaction  -- Very Poor

    "See that cleft chin?  Notice how good he looks?   That is the sign
    of a character who will never 'ugly away'.   But over there.... see
    how he picks his nose, and has warts?  He is going to die before he
    reaches 50.    How about the Pixie?  She's always been weak (Pixie's
    usually are), which means that she will life a short life.   Look at
    that guy over there....   the one who looks like Woody Allen, he's
    got such a low DEX you can just about kiss him good bye.   But the
    Halfling (who trained up his STR to 24) is going to live to be 500."

    The only characteristic which has any bearing on health is (or should
    be) Constitution.    This should be obvious from the above example.
    Though it is true that STR, DEX, and APP can be lowered beyond 40,
    it has no bearing on the health of the character.   Even so, CON
    reduction is an abstraction, since reasonably healthy people quite
    often just keel over and die.

    In addition, reading the rules as they stand, it appears that anybody
    can live forever.   Alls you got to do is retrain the characteristic
    up, once it has been reduced.   Yes, I'm sure that APP training is
    hard to come by, but by RQ 3 it all could be done.

    (Doctor: "Sponge"  Nurse: "Sponge"  Doctor: "Pad"  Nurse: "Pad"
    Doctor: "Eye Liner"  Nurse: "Eye Liner"  Doctor: "Lipstick"....)


Weather        -- Very Poor

    By the wind rules, we find that a hawk cannot fly.  Its STR is not
    enough to keep it from being bowled over by a STR 2 (calm air
    movement) wind.   Children are knocked over by breeze which blows
    out a candle, and a normal woman will be knocked down occasionally
    by light wind.   A moderate wind will most certainly knock down
    any average man, and most above average ones as well.   Only at
    the very upper end of the chart does Wind effects table begin to
    look reasonable.


(End of Chapter 1)