steven@qubix.UUCP (Steven Maurer) (11/01/84)
This is the third letter of corrispondance between Steve
Perrin (author of RuneQuest) and myself. This is my response
to his rebuttal of my article. Any comments and/or suggestions,
are welcome.
Steven Maurer
{sun,decwrl,ihnp4,ucscc}!qubix!steven
Dear Steve,
Thank you for your response to my preliminary analysis of
RuneQuest 3. It was illuminating, and I have taken the liberty
of entering it into the computer, and showing it to my friends.
I lament the brevity of your reply, even while I understand
the reason; you are a very busy man. However, I could not help
but notice in your reply, (since it was pointed out to me several
times), a misunderstanding of what my major objections to RuneQuest
3 really are. So to clarify matters, I am sending back your letter
with individual responses associated with them -- in true hacker
style.
>> Dear Steve,
>> Thanks for the copy of the writeup on RuneQuest. For the
>> most part you make a lot of unwarranted assumptions as to our
>> motives for doing things, but since we didn't express our
>> movtives in the rules, you have to make whatever assumptions you
>> can, assuming that motives have any bearing on the quality of the
>> game. Motives obviously mean a lot to you.
Motives, to me, are a secondary pleasure to that of seeing
a good product out on the market. I am more interested in how
much a game reduces my effort as a referee (and player), than
the reason for designing it that way. If I am forced to
constantly intervene in the game rules for the sake of reality,
then this is more effort than I want to make.
>> To clarify some things...
>> High damage weapons were not given low starting chances because
>> they are high damage, but because they are complex to use. Using
>> a greatsword or halberd or naginata properly is an art that takes
>> practice.
Almost a whole WEEK of practice to be exact -- which was the
crux of the issue, not your motive for wanting such weapons to be
more difficult to learn. A weapon at 5% takes 45 hours to train
up to 15%, and thereafter there is no difference whatsoever between
a "complex to use" weapon, and an "easy to use" one. Thus, players
who want their character's to survive longer, will always take the
largest weapons (greatsword being the favorite). Please re-read
that section again, if my point is still unclear.
>> Lamentably, the Cormac example of the chase and the Climb
>> roll is erroneous. Oh well. I didn't write it and it was put in
>> because someone wanted an example of fatigue loss and
>> misunderstood the rules.
Hmmmmm..... well then, just what exactly ARE the rules?
I understand that going into melee rounds means that fatigue is
counted, but when do you do that? Swimming is listed as costing
Fatigue every melee round, but surely you do not mean to imply that
this is only Swimming in combat? It seems to me, that if you can't
even get it straight among the Chaosium staff, that I am never going
to be able to figure out the "correct" interpretation by simply
reading the book. (And since it is the RQ 3 book that I am
reviewing, after all, this is what I have to base my opinions on).
>> For your information, every game played
>> with fatigue has worked just fine. It is an excellent game
>> mechanic.
Which is exactly the problem with the current Chaosium style
of play testing: "every game played with fatigue" means every
game played by the designers, who do not listen to outside reports,
and who did not try to test anything more daring than a SIZ 16
human. I would give you 10 for 1 odds, that nobody tried running
any troll ZZ 'bash the Chaos' runs, or the problems with Fatigue
would have become blatantly apparent.
As I stated in the review, Fatigue/Enc is only an "excellent
game mechanic", when you consider the normal. Since 'normal' is
not what Fantasy Roleplaying is about, it hardly serves as a viable
rule. Not only that, but I also showed why Fatigue/Enc CANNOT be
a GOOD system, as currently written up (i.e. not needing melee
rounds, and a SIZ equivalency chart as a crutch).
>> Think of fatigue as the penalty to your skills for wearing
>> lots of Encumbering armor.
Does Encumbering armor also reduce Luck then? I would have
preferred a straight DEX reduction instead. "Plate reduces your
effective DEX by 10...."
>> Have you ever fought in closed-in areas with no ventilation?
>> I guarantee your fatigue goes down a lot faster.
I looked for a while, before I understood what this was in
reference to. "Narrow Passageways" does not map to "stuffy air",
since it could easily have a draft; a large, but stuffy, room is
also possible. (If you mean "no ventilation", please say it.)
>> Actually, I didn't like the subtraction of ENC on magic use
>> either, but I didn't write the magic section. It's a minor rule,
>> and can be ignored easily. However, the fatigue penalty to magic
>> use stays.
-- The easiest way to ignore a Reality Flaw: ignore it. The
only problem with this, is that it takes away one of the biggest
selling points of RQ 2: the game was portable. I could take a
character from one campaign to another, with at least the assurance
that the game system would only differ on minor points. This last
variant is NOT a minor point, so I have to check every time before
I take in any of my large characters.
>> Defense went away to huzzahs from Steve Henderson (Sir
>> Steven MacEanruig, one-time king of the West) one of the original
>> co-authors who fought its original inclusions tooth-and-nail as
>> not realistic.
Sir Steven has apparently never fought blind, against a blind
opponent (blindness reduces your chance to hit, but also gives
your opponent a negative Defense). Sir Steven may have not fought
against people using Orential sword arts, who teach avoidance as
a proper method of "parry" for some types of blows which come in.
And he probably does not have much experience in non-chivalrous
fighting at all (Knights seldom do).
The current idea around the SCA here is, that "defense" is actually
a generic "parry" modification (usually addition), which allows you
to differentiate between a blows which hits full on a weapon, and
those made harmless or which out and out right miss. Thus, a
seasoned fighter (with a good Defense) is going to be inherently
better parrying with a chair or similar object, than you or I would.
(Negative Defense adds to the opponents chance to hit.)
Dodge is laughed at.
>> Dodge was added to give the fantasy-reality of
>> Errol Flynn-style swashbucklers. It works. I doubt you were truly
>> dodging when you tried using the Greatswords and dodging. As I
>> mentioned before, Greatsword is an art form.
All right, please tell me what "Dodge" and Attack (with
Greatsword) does look like? I would prefer to believe that Errol
Flynn was fighting opponents who were 20%, rather than believe
that you can make a seasoned fighter miss a solid blow 4/5ths
of the time, and still be putting in an effective attack. I'm
sure that good old Mr Flynn did not grab that Candelabra out of
sheer show, I figure he thought it might be something to parry
with, just in case any of those schmucks actually came close to
connecting. (Of course his high Defense might also have had a
hand in it).
>> Oh yes, you can't carry a horse and not get fatigued
>> because, after all, you don't have the STR to pick up the SIZ of
>> the horse.
I was assuming a light horse (SIZ 22), and a strong man (STR 16).
Now I realize that this gives him only a 20% chance of lifting it
in the first place, but if he does so, he can carry it just about
forever (sans melee rounds) -- which was the point of the example
in the first place.
>> Glad you liked the fire rules. They were written by Greg and
>> Lynn, neither of whom has ever read the Champions rules. Another
>> conclusion jumped at by the master. Sometimes great minds just
>> work in the same gutter.
"The master"? Me? You? The arch enemy of Dr Who?
>> You have some good points on species maximum, though I am
>> not totally offended by a STR 24 halfling. Assume a half-again
>> limit or STR-CON-SIZ limit, whichever is lower. This may even get
>> into the errata.
I would much prefer no STR-CON-SIZ limit at all, since I cannot
imagine any technique which makes only large people more healthy, or
only healthy people more strong. Perhaps a STR-SIZ limit might be
reasonable, and just let CON go its merry way.
I feel somewhat embarrassed to admit it, but this half-again
DEX (and now potentially STR & CON) rule in RQ 3, has been proven
by a friend of mine to be a reality flaw. I am embarrassed to admit
it, because it was my suggestion and only contribution to RQ 3 (though
I at least, included a species maximum). So the grade of DEX training
in RQ 3 (which was a rating of Poor), is actually a grade of my own
rule.
>> Mostly we are trying to mirror fantasy reality, but
>> sometimes we stray too far into real reality and sometimes we get
>> too fantastical. In the final analysis, the game works, to an
>> almost universal chorus of huzzahs from old-time players. You are
>> far and away the exception according to all the feedback we have
>> received.
Actually, according to the people that I have talked to, it is
more the fact that the people of the Chaosium tend to ignore almost all
(even potentially constructive) criticism. The inevitable response
to submission of new rules ideas, or an explanation of why the current
ones don't work is: "well, you can play it that way if you want to,
we don't interfere in other peoples' campaigns" -- entirely ignoring
the reason for playtesting in the first place.
You are excepted from the above company, Steve. I have always
found you to at least listen with an open mind, even if the course
you are planning to take is radically different. (The reason that I
have respect for games you are the main designer of). However, I
have also been recently trading old war stories with other (mostly
former) play testers, who have showed me that my frustrations with
Chaosium in this area are hardly unique. It also shows in the game
designs, since even with an additional year of play, the rules for
RQ 3 show serious lack of robustness.
>> I don't think there is too much difference between writing
>> game rules and software after all, if the testimony of all my
>> computer hacker friends who talk about some professional software
>> being a pile of crap is taken into account.
No they aren't, which is why I find it so hard to forgive an
obvious flaw in a game system. If the Chaosium had any reasonable
QA (Quality Assurance), such blatant crocks like the Wind rules
would never leave in-house. And, if some people did not have such
an NIH fever with regards to rules they made up, (regardless of
any blatantly obvious holes in them), the rules that they work on
would not end up all screwed up.
>> This is only a superficial response, but your survey was
>> fairly superficial in itself, since you started from the
>> supposition that the new game was bad, and looked only for what
>> you could damn properly.
Who is making unwarranted assumptions about motives now?
Actually, I did not start out from the supposition that
the new game was bad at all. I was simply persuaded that it
would be so by sneak previews, and was (sadly enough) correct.
Most of the problems and examples in the review, are not created
of my own brain. I only wrote down what I heard, from general
comments from my standard playing group. For your information,
I was accused of being too nice to the Chaosium in my review,
since I didn't even mention things like RQ 3's "Martial Arts",
except in passing.
As for what I looked for, I started from the beginning of
the book, and went through to the end, writing up 17 pages in
the mean time. More than a grade of Very Poor was given out,
as you well know. Unfortunately what I could "damn properly"
turned out to be: Publication Speed, No Backwards Compatibility,
Fatigue, Encumbrance, Skill vs Skill, Characteristic Increase
and Decrease, Experience Gain Rolls, Research, Basic Weapon
Percentages, and Dodge --- not the entire system, just a very
large part of it. (I am not even including the magic section,
which has its own large brace of Design Errors.)
>> I suggest you go over your review and
>> look for silly exaggerations like the carrying the horse number
>> and excise them before you publish it though the net. Otherwise,
>> publish away. Aside from your jumping to conclusions as to our
>> motives, we have no problems with your problems. They are, after
>> all, your problems.
I published it in it's entire uncensored form. I will also
be publishing a copy of your response, with your permission.
Sincerely,
Steven Maurer