arnold@umcp-cs.UUCP (01/29/84)
I have just recieved the lastest copy of Different Worlds Magazine
(vol 32). There are some instresting articles and notices inside.
1) The board games "Elric" and "Dragon Pass" are being produced
by Avalon Hill not Chaosium. ( Ad on Page 13.)
2) Preview of 3rd edition of "Runequest"
RQ3 should be out in March '84
three type of changes from RQ2: refinements to old rules,
clarifications of previous concepts, and addition of new
materials.
Refinement - Damage to Parrying Weapons.
loss 1 armor point for damage blocked
special roll no loss of point
critial roll stops all damage even if attack was crital
Clarifcation - Temple size
0 - 125 initiates temple is a site
75 - 225 " " " " Shrine
200 - 425 Small/minor temple
400 - 800 medium temple
750 - 1600 Large temple
1601+ great temple
Addition - Apprentice
A sorcer in training they quailification are similar
to various cults.
student for one year
magic bonus 10%+
know World lore 25%+
make Pow x3 roll ....
This person gives up the study of other subject to
devote himself to be a sorcer.
-- New monsters like Orc (Orcanthropus Piltdowni)
This is just a few of the items covered in the RQ3 preview. (Pg 20-22)
They seem to be taking runequest out of the Glorantha World
and into a general roleplaying world, where the system is the bases
for all worlds to be played in.
Will tell more when I find out more
From the Belly of the beached PhD wale
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Arnold Miller, U of Maryland, College Park Md.
UUCP: {seismo,allegra,brl-bmd}!umcp-cs!arnold
CSNet: arnold@umcp-cs ARPA: arnold@marylandgranvold@tymix.UUCP (Tom Granvold) (02/01/84)
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I have heard a bit more concerning RuneQuest III, as the Avalon Hill
is being called. But first a bit about the relationship between Chaosium
and Avalon Hill. Avalon Hill will do the manufacturing and distrubution for
RuneQuest III, Stormbringer, Dragon Pass and possibly other Chaosium games.
Chaosium will continue to do the development work on these games. According
to a local rumor, Chaosium will make more per game sold with Avalon Hill than
they did by themselves. It is good to see a company that has made such fine
games get a good break. Now maybe RuneQuest will begin to seriously challenge
D&D.
It sounds like RuneQuest will be going in two directions at once. On one
hand it will be usable in any world setting. On the other hand, there will
still be Glorantha material being produced. Long live Glorantha! Later this
year there are plans to have Avalon Hill produce a Prax pack which will
present much of the current Glorantha material converted for RQ III.
By the way, the best part of the RQ III rules is in how magic is handled.
The shaman rules are suppost to be much better and there will be magic users
allowed independent of cults. The table gived for the size of a temple in
Different Worlds will be revised by the time the rules are out. As they are
given in the magizine, it takes far too many people to make a decent size
temple.
Chaosium is using Osbornes on which to write their rules.
All of the above is rumors, which may or may not have any relationship
to reality. Most of this I learned from a friend who has recently visited
Chaosium. She is in the process of selling them a RQ scenerio that she
has written.
Now with Avalon Hill do a lot of the busy work for them, Chaosium may
find time to do more development. If you are listening Chaosium, how about
finally doing RQ HeroQuest rules?
Tom Granvold
Tymshare
Cupertino, Calif.
decvax!ucbvax!oliveb!tymix!granvold
RuneQuest is a trademark of Chaosium, D&D is a trademark of TSR.wombat@uicsl.UUCP (02/04/84)
#R:umcp-cs:-490700:uicsl:4900004:000:497 uicsl!wombat Feb 3 15:06:00 1984 Chaosium is letting AH market/sell RuneQuest, &c, but Stafford retains all rights to Glorantha, and Chaosium, I think, will still be in creative control of the games. AH was getting desparate for any role- playing game, so Chaosium was able to make this kind of deal with them. RQ and Glorantha will be separated, so RQIII will give information on setting up a world/cult system but no cults will be defined. Maybe Glorantha will come out later as a pre-built RQ world; I don't know. Wombat
steven@qubix.UUCP (Steven Maurer) (02/09/84)
Unfortunately, RQ III is going down the drain.
I speak from experience, because I added a few suggestions to the changes
that might be made, and have a copy of the "new" rules.
Among the rather silly new additions to the rules:
Defense is now turned into a skill called "Dodge"; Whenever your
character wants to parry, he must stand still (he gets no defense
even if he is a pixie) -- whenever your character wants to dodge,
he cannot seem to put his shield in the way of the blow.
Dodge is now rolled. If your character makes his dodge percentage,
then the attacker missed (even if he hit).
There has been no fix of the "training up non-human characteristics"
bug. Specifically, the new race "halflings" have a CON which allows
even the most sickly of them to train their STR up to species Max.
There has been an intense over-reaction to the ENC rules of RQ II.
Most player characters, now cannot wield both their weapons, and
wear any significant armor without running out of fatigue. (There
is a notible exception to this rule for small creatures, such as
hobbits (excuse me, "halflings"), who can wear platemail and use
a greatsword - no problem.
Battle Magic, now called "Spirit Magic", can only be sucessful in
casting, if you roll your POW x 5 - ENC (NOT OVER ENC, JUST YOUR
ENC). This gives a guy with a POW of 9, in Plate Mail, with a
Broad Sword (he could be STR 34 for all it matters), a 10% chance
to even CAST the Battlemagic (a second roll is required for POW vs
POW effects). Imagine the poor Giant, carrying a treetrunk with
a -40% chance to cast his spells.
If you fire an arrow into melee, you divide your chance to hit by
the number of combattants in mele. Rolling between your normal
chance to hit, and your adjusted chance to hit, means that to roll
randomly to see who was affected. This means that you should
make sure to keep a bunch of dogs around you at all times, and
whenever someone starts shooting at you, let a couple of rabbits
loose among them.... chances are that the 120% elf in the woods
will only be able to hit your dogs.
Sorcery is designed to allow students to be almost as powerful as
Magi. Furthermore, a mere student (equivalent of Lay Member), can
cast spells of such intensity as to make a Rune Priestess whimper.
For example, a well practiced student can cast a "Regeneration"
sorcery spell, at intensity 10, which is exactly the same as
a Heal Body & 4 Regenerate Limbs.
Throw out your old RQ II Shamans, they are no longer legal.
You no longer persuade a spirit to become your fetch. Instead
the POW you normally store on the spirit plane is called your
fetch. Luckily, the new shaman player characters, can become
incredibly rich, because they are the people who teach the new
"Spirit Magic". They do this by -- get this -- binding a "Spirit
of Spirit Spell" (in other words, there are "Spirits of Bladesharp",
"Spirits of Multimissile", etc.) If you defeat the spirit in
Spirit Combat, you get its spell.
On converions between RQ II, and RQ III:
Do you have more Battle Magic spells than your INT? You can
forget them -- literally. Bound spirits do not allow you to
remember more spells than your INT anymore. The spells disappear.
Your Defense becomes dodge. Since most beginning RQ III characters
can start out with a Dodge of 20% (if they have good bonuses), this
means that your highest Defense character, has been demoted to a
Lay Member status, in avoiding blows.
Do you have seprate skills for Trap Set/Disarm, Pick Locks, Shield
Making, Weapon Making, Armor Making? They are now all one skill:
Devise. This means your Rune Lord Dwarf could be reduced to one
90% skill, instead of 5.
-- I could go on, but I'm too disgusted
Steven Maurer
p.s. Apologies to non RQ players, who don't know what the hell I was
talking about.wombat@uicsl.UUCP (02/12/84)
#R:umcp-cs:-490700:uicsl:4900005:000:772 uicsl!wombat Feb 10 12:11:00 1984 As for HeroQuest, Steve Marsh has done more work on the rules than anyone else I know of. But, if you've ever tried to read any of his writeups in *The Wild Hunt*, you may get an idea of why HeroQuest is so slow -- he just plain doesn't write clearly. I think he only writes about half of what you need to understand what he's talking about, and if that's how he explains things to Chaosium they probably don't have any good ideas for getting it all out of him. Not to mention the fact that they have a long list of things they're already working on. My husband was trying to set up a deal to write a game for them but they said it would be a couple of years before they could do their part (editing, production, etc.) on it. Wombat ihnp4!uiucdcs!uicsl!wombat
cca@pur-phy.UUCP (Charles C. Allen) (02/13/84)
It certainly seems that RQ3 will be quite a change in some ways. Some of the
points that Stever brought up (such as Defense -> Dodge) I haven't had a
chance to try out yet, so I will reserve my opinion. I wish he had amplified
on the following:
There has been an intense over-reaction to the ENC rules of RQ II.
Most player characters, now cannot wield both their weapons, and
wear any significant armor without running out of fatigue.
Without giving any sort of numbers (most NEW player characters? what's
fatigue? does significant armor mean you can't wear plate all the time as
the old rules let just about anybody do?) this statement is pretty useless.
Battle Magic definitely needed to be changed. For every other activity,
characters basically had to roll a % to succeed. Not so the old Battle
Magic. Just spend your power and *presto* you've got your Protection up. It
didn't matter if you were a Rune Priest of a beginning char, the result was
the same. The campaigns I run in have been using the Magic World idea of
having a percentage with each spell just as you have a percentage for each
ability (spot hidden, hide in cover, etc.).
The POWx5 - ENC rule is apparently there to widen the gap between
"magic-users" and "fighters". In my opinion the idea is basically good. As
it is, characters tend to look the same after awhile. Everybody wears plate
(except thieves when they're thieving). Everybody gets to learn any spell
they want to (basically). Ho hum. I'm not saying the actual rule you
mention is any good, but the idea certainly is. By the way, is the rule
really POWx5 - ENC as you state, or (POW - ENC)x5 as your example indicates?
The missiles into melee problem is another area that definitely needed work.
A simple change to what you mention is to split the % according to SIZ, not
just numbers of things. In addition, only creatures which are actually
adjacent to you get counted (basically limits dogs to a max of maybe 3 or 4).
There's certainly nothing wrong with the idea of using other creatures as a
living shield. It happens all the time in my campaigns: the tanks in plate
will form a phalanx around a lightly armored companion when attacked by a
flak battery. Using common sense will produce sensible results. I hope you
brought something for the dogs to eat, and don't mind blowing all your
camouflage and hide in cover shots while you've got them with you.
Mixing "sorcery" with cults is a problem. I'll wait until I see RQ3 before
mentioning "fixes" I've seen and used.
Charlie Allenwbpesch@ihuxp.UUCP (Walt Pesch) (02/16/84)
Since Runequest has come up, I suppose that I will comment. My
personal feelings are that I do NOT like this game at all. As a frp
player that was weaned on D&D (that is not AD&D) about five years ago,
spent a significant amount of his life in the dorms at college playing
wargames and role-playing, I find Runequest boring in comparision to
other role-playing.
Let me explain. In my opinion, RQ is fantasy. It is not Heroic
Fantacy. It is the day-to-day living for a while and then dying of an
average character. The magic system, until you get Rune level magic
is just sooooo dull. Gods have to help the thief, for a starting
one might have some of his rolls up to a 50-50 chance of succeeding.
But for a thief, who is trying to disarm a trap, and who will have it
spring on him with the poison needle, etc., these are lousy chances of
survival. A true thief is unplayable. A mage is unplayable of any
sort because it is not worth it in terms of the magic attainable. The
magic items themselves are so rare and so normal that they fit in with
the rest of this boring game.
I'll give the rebuttal now before I get hit with the editorial. The
pro-RQ will say: "But that's the beauty of the game in being an
undeclard multi-class". To that I say horse-pucky. Every character
in the game is a fighter, with a few embellishments. (Why do they
call it battle magic...because all it is is an aid to a fighter.)
For me, give me the spell-caster or the thief...you can keep the
fighter.
Walt Pesch
AT&T Technologies
ihnp4!ihuxp!wbpeschsteven@qubix.UUCP (Steven Maurer) (02/18/84)
>> Let me explain. In my opinion, RQ is fantasy. It is not Heroic >> Fantacy. It is the day-to-day living for a while and then dying of an >> average character. The magic system, until you get Rune level magic >> is just sooooo dull. Gods have to help the thief, for a starting >> one might have some of his rolls up to a 50-50 chance of succeeding. Actually, a 1st level D&D thief has about the same chance of disarming a trap in D&D, as a beginning RQ II character has. (Of course, if you play the RQ II previous experience rules, you can start out at about 60% { perhaps 6th level D&D equavalent }). >> But for a thief, who is trying to disarm a trap, and who will have it >> spring on him with the poison needle, etc., these are lousy chances of >> survival. A true thief is unplayable. No doubt this is because you believe in flawless traps, which always spring, and always have death-inducing poison on them. In D&D, we used to HOPE for these kind of traps, so we could coat our arrows with this mythical stuff. >> A mage is unplayable of any >> sort because it is not worth it in terms of the magic attainable. The >> magic items themselves are so rare and so normal that they fit in with >> the rest of this boring game. What you actually mean is that it takes a long time to get really excellent magic; you are not able to become 18'th level in as many adventures (like I have seen in D&D). Runequest II magic is just as powerful as D&D, although it is admittadly more play-balanced. For example, a 1st level D&D MU can take out up to 16 other MU's his level with a single spell -- sleep. In Runequest, even the most powerful characters can magically kill at most 4 other characters at a time (Multispell 3 with 4 Sever Spirits). It sounds to me that the game you should be playing is Champions (or SuperWorld). In those games, you can play a Super-Hero, and have all the fun you like beating up on Agents and normals, without the least difficulty, or the smallest chance of failure. What fun. Whammm!!! He is knocked out. Oh here comes another one?? Whammm!!! He's knocked out too. Whamm!!! Whammm!!! Whammm!!!!! (What a boring excersize in dice rolling). >> I'll give the rebuttal now before I get hit with the editorial. The >> pro-RQ will say: "But that's the beauty of the game in being an >> undeclard multi-class". To that I say horse-pucky. Every character >> in the game is a fighter, with a few embellishments. (Why do they >> call it battle magic...because all it is is an aid to a fighter.) Tell it to my Lunar Shaman. He is 55% in his best weapon, but I suggest that you do not try to attack him, or you'll get your Mind blown away so fast (curtesy of Mind Blast), you won't even be able to get an arrow off. Of course, every character in the game fights. But that is completely diffrent from saying all the chartacters are "fighters" (in the D&D sense of the term). Would you accept your thief being unable to use weapons?? What about your clerics?? >> For me, give me the spell-caster or the thief...you can keep the >> fighter. Thats good. You can keep them all, since in RQ II (at least), there are no "fighters"; (what a stupid concept 'fighters' -- what do you call Magi? magicers? "Magic User" is even worse... what to you call Men at Arms? "Mele Weapon Users"?). Steven Maurer