Quote from: BrokenCounsel;1086131I downloaded the free start adventure thingy on the Chaosium website. Don't think Glorantha's for me. Gonna give it a miss.

I love Glorantha, but I suspect I'd find it a bit tougher to get into now than it was for those of us who grew up with it.  If you ever get a chance, it might be worth playing in a game to experience it rather than trying to read up on it.

RQ6/Mythras is a great system that already has support for several fantasy worlds if you want to try something out of the general lineage.

Quote from: BrokenCounsel;1086239I like the D100 mechanics. Work great for some games, other things work great for others.

Never come across Dragonquest before. Bit of google-fu reveals its an old SPI game. I'd be interested in hearing more about it in a separate thread. Old systems interest me. Is it possible to still get Dragonquest in a print form anywhere?

DQ is a really weird game to compare against RQ, other than being from roughly the same era.  It has some really interesting ideas in it, but at the same time is most definitely a product of a chit-n-hex wargaming company and it shows throughout, both in presentation and how the game operates.  I have no idea if it's available anywhere now.  I think TSR published a second edition sometime in the early 80s.  I still have my original SPI edition.  

The recent release of the TFT makes for a more direct competitor to DQ conceptually, as both are built onto a hex-based skirmish system.

Quote from: RMS;1086245DQ is a really weird game to compare against RQ, other than being from roughly the same era.  It has some really interesting ideas in it, but at the same time is most definitely a product of a chit-n-hex wargaming company and it shows throughout, both in presentation and how the game operates.  I have no idea if it's available anywhere now.  I think TSR published a second edition sometime in the early 80s.  I still have my original SPI edition.

You can get copies of DQ (1st & 2nd edition were by SPI, 3rd by TSR) on eBay, Amazon, etc. Search on-line and you'll probably find a fan-made SRD, too, with occasional attempts to rewrite it for OSR (in the broadest sense) uses. It's similar to RQ in that it's gritty and simulationist, not really epic. You start out fairly frail and have to spend XP to increase everything (skills, spells, weapons, careers, talents, etc.). The differences between the editions aren't too numerous and a summary can be found here.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;1086107Not a fan of D100 mechanics. People that have bought the game, also buy and play all the D&D 5E stuff still. Any edition of RuneQuest is more of a collector's thing. I would argue that SPI's DragonQuest is better than RuneQuest.

I never found DragonQuest even playable (interesting read, though). Glorantha is also a neat world, and I concede I might just do it as a collector's thing.

It isn't the d100 mechanics that were the issue in RQ, it's the nice-but-unworkable EP system.

Quote from: BrokenCounsel;1085965New edition out. Three books each the size of fucking Alberta. Looks very pretty.

I have them as PDFs, as my wife won't let me buy more books unless I throw away some of the books I already have.

Quote from: BrokenCounsel;1085965Is it any good?

Yes, it is very Gloranthan in flavour, adds to the RQ2/RQ3ness of the rules and adds some nice touches. It is also very pretty, with very good artwork.

Quote from: BrokenCounsel;1085965I know there's been lots of editions, so does this one justify dropping a fat wad of cash?

Probably, I would say yes.

The rules are a mixture of RQ2 and RQ3, with some stuff added on. Unfortunately, where something differs in RQ2/3 it sometimes uses both versions in the rules, which is very annoying.

It adds a lot of stuff and is the most complete version of RQ out there. It also uses the Mythology of Glorantha and assumes that it is a magical world, which is a nice way of doing it.

If you have RQ2 and RQ3, then you already have a lot of the rules, but I think it is still worth buying. Get it as a PDF first, to see if you like it.

Quote from: Doom;1086270It isn't the d100 mechanics that were the issue in RQ, it's the nice-but-unworkable EP system.

What do you mean by "EP system" here?  I can't parse that into anything that I've seen complained about in RQ, so am curious.

Quote from: soltakss;1086275If you have RQ2 and RQ3, then you already have a lot of the rules, but I think it is still worth buying. Get it as a PDF first, to see if you like it.

I have my copy, to go along with copies of everything else RQ ever published by Chaosium/AH, but honestly haven't read completely through it.  I just finished running a long RQ2 campaign, inspired by the Kickstarter a couple of years back.  As much fun as I've had with RQ over the years, and Glorantha over the years, I'm currently pretty fried on both.

Everything does look nice on my shelves, just to rub it in!

You don't have experience points. You use skills, skills you use have a chance of improving, but it's a weird chance--the better you are, the better you get. And it's never really well defined when you get better, exactly. I always found it to be too much "Simon Says." I grant D&D EP is subject to DM whim on some level, too, but there is at least theoretically a predictable progression.

Quote from: Doom;1086367You don't have experience points. You use skills, skills you use have a chance of improving, but it's a weird chance--the better you are, the better you get.

The "the better you are, the better you get" part makes me suspect you misread/misremember how the skill improvement rolls work.  In order to improve your skills, your advancement roll has to fail, so the better you are, the harder it is to improve further.  e.g., If your skill is at 75%, you roll percentile and the skill improves on a roll of 76+.  On 01-75, it does not improve.

Mythras changes this up a bit by abandoning the "checkmarks for potential to improve" part and instead giving you a fixed number of experience rolls per session or adventure.  In this version, since experience rolls are a scarce resource, you would still gain 1 point in the skill on 01-75 so that it's never completely "wasted", but that's still less than you would get on a 76+ (1d4+1 skill points, IIRC).  Your INT also factors into the target for the advancement roll, but that varies by BRP flavor, so I'm ignoring it here for the sake of simplicity.

Quote from: Doom;1086367And it's never really well defined when you get better, exactly.

Yeah, the system could stand to have clearer standards on how often to make advancement rolls, since the rate of character improvement is so heavily dependent on how frequent these rolls are.  I wouldn't be so interested in a hard "do it this way", but a brief (say, half-, or maybe even quarter-page) discussion of "here are some options to choose from, and the way that each one would affect your campaign" would be excellent to include.  A game with advancement rolls at the end of every game session regardless of events or passage of in-game time would have a very different feel than one with a Pendragon-style Winter Phase where you only make advancement rolls once per in-game year.

Quote from: Doom;1086367You don't have experience points. You use skills, skills you use have a chance of improving, but it's a weird chance--the better you are, the better you get. And it's never really well defined when you get better, exactly. I always found it to be too much "Simon Says." I grant D&D EP is subject to DM whim on some level, too, but there is at least theoretically a predictable progression.

As already noted, it sounds like you misremember something here.  The chances of improving get lower as you advance.  It's very easy to get to competent in skills, but very difficult to become a master in something. The experience system is one of the things that tends to get lauded about BRP systems.

I've generally simplified the training part of skill improvement.  (It should be noted that training is very much integral to improvement in RQ.)  It works, but I just let people pay to spend so many hours working on a skill and then get another improvement roll.

Yep, I misremembered exactly what you needed to roll to improve, but it's still a bit wonky in that a couple of unlucky "experience point" rolls can stunt your character's growth dramatically, you can literally be several "levels" behind the rest of the party just by rolling poorly here, and if you've half a dozen players, the odds are decent that someone will indeed roll that poorly. Improving skills which start in the 20% or less range can be brutally subject to luck (gotta have a success, after all...). The fact still remains the "advancement rolls" were such a huge deal and never clearly defined as well.

Increasing skills in Runequest works differently than does increasing levels in D&D. But the way increases work is no more "wonky" than it is in several versions of D&D. Depending on how experience works in D&D one could miss one single session and essentially end up 2 full levels behind everyone else - they could be level 3 or 4 and you could still be level 1 or 2. And yes I've seen that happen in D&D.

Miss one session in Runequest and at most you miss one check for any given skill so you might still be at 35% in skill A and 70% in skill B while your friend is now at 40% in skill A and at 75% in skill B. I've seen that happen too, but until now I've never seen anyone complain about it for being too confusing or too unfair.

Quote from: Bren;1086411Increasing skills in Runequest works differently than does increasing levels in D&D. But the way increases work is no more "wonky" than it is in several versions of D&D. Depending on how experience works in D&D one could miss one single session and essentially end up 2 full levels behind everyone else - they could be level 3 or 4 and you could still be level 1 or 2. And yes I've seen that happen in D&D.

Miss one session in Runequest and at most you miss one check for any given skill so you might still be at 35% in skill A and 70% in skill B while your friend is now at 40% in skill A and at 75% in skill B. I've seen that happen too, but until now I've never seen anyone complain about it for being too confusing or too unfair.

Yes, a D&D player could just not play and be just as bad off as a player who played half a dozen sessions of RQ. I'm not sure that's much of an argument for equivalent wonkiness--there are several other RPGS where if you don't play at all your character generally won't improve.

And I'm not complaining about it being confusing or unfair, either...just weird. That said, not having complaintants means little for a system played by very few. I've never heard anyone complain about the dice mechanics of Nin-Gnost, either...doesn't mean the mechanics are great.

Quote from: Doom;1086408Yep, I misremembered exactly what you needed to roll to improve, but it's still a bit wonky in that a couple of unlucky "experience point" rolls can stunt your character's growth dramatically, you can literally be several "levels" behind the rest of the party just by rolling poorly here, and if you've half a dozen players, the odds are decent that someone will indeed roll that poorly. Improving skills which start in the 20% or less range can be brutally subject to luck (gotta have a success, after all...). The fact still remains the "advancement rolls" were such a huge deal and never clearly defined as well.

At least in my games, training is as important as experience, and there's no randomness to that (well, I did run one campaign using RQIII style random improvement instead of fixed 5%).

As to bad luck, well, your character who never advances is better off that the other guy who kept rolling those 99s for attacks and eventually killed himself...

I went through a phase of getting all bent out of shape about randomness in character generation leaving some players with worse of characters than others. I've been working on getting over that... So to me, randomness in the character improvement system is no worse, and considering that you are making improvement rolls every adventure (or even every game session depending on exactly how you play it), the odds are far better of you keeping pace compared to rolling poorly for initial attributes which sticks with you.

And what do you mean by never clearly defined? It's always been clear to me that you get one roll for each skill you succeeded with during an adventure. Considering the era of the game, it was pretty clear what an adventure was. And if the PCs were traveling through the wilderness, going from point A to point B, then I would usually consider that an adventure.

I have also used the system of giving out a GM assigned number of improvement rolls rather than one roll for each skill which succeeded which works fine also. With that system, I also allowed spending improvement rolls on things like riding or languages where there was not an explicit skill roll made, but if you had spent time riding or speaking a non-native language, you could take an improvement roll in one of those skills.

Quote from: ffilz;1086420At least in my games, training is as important as experience, and there's no randomness to that (well, I did run one campaign using RQIII style random improvement instead of fixed 5%).

Well, yes, if you house-rule something that works for you and your group, that's something. I'm not convinced that changes the rules as written, though.

QuoteAs to bad luck, well, your character who never advances is better off that the other guy who kept rolling those 99s for attacks and eventually killed himself...

Most people can distinguish a difference in important between half a dozen unlucky rolls in combat and a couple of ridiculously critical rolls in leveling up your character. Some cannot. Obviously.

QuoteAnd what do you mean by never clearly defined? It's always been clear to me that you get one roll for each skill you succeeded with during an adventure. Considering the era of the game, it was pretty clear what an adventure was. And if the PCs were traveling through the wilderness, going from point A to point B, then I would usually consider that an adventure.

Heh, you say it's clear to you, and "usually consider." Contradict yourself much?

QuoteI have also used the system of giving out a GM assigned number of improvement rolls...

And a different set of houserules...chances are, if you've modified the RAW multiple different ways trying to find something satisfying, then, yes, there's something unsatisfying about RAW that isn't so easy to fix. Just sayin'

Quote from: Doom;1086430Well, yes, if you house-rule something that works for you and your group, that's something. I'm not convinced that changes the rules as written, though.

FYI, those are the training rules as written.  You pay the money and take the time and get an automatic skill increase.  They work perfectly fine.

Houserulling BRP is common, but it's almost never due to the rules being unclear or broken, but just to shift aesthetics or a tweak things a bit.  I use a number of houserules*, but not one of them would I consider there because the written rules are poorly written and poorly thought out.  They're all there just because I like what I did more than the written rules.  One of the strengths of the system is that it's extremely transparent, so extremely easy to houserule without surprises popping up.

* Also, I have yet to play any RPG that I don't houserule to some extent.  Tweaking rules is part of the fun of gaming, so of course I tweak away to make them conform to my ideas.

Quote from: Doom;1086430Well, yes, if you house-rule something that works for you and your group, that's something. I'm not convinced that changes the rules as written, though.

No house ruling, I ran training using RAW, the only "house ruling" was porting RQ3 random improvement (1d6+1 percent) amount into RQ1/2 in place of fixed 5%.

QuoteMost people can distinguish a difference in important between half a dozen unlucky rolls in combat and a couple of ridiculously critical rolls in leveling up your character. Some cannot. Obviously.

I don't see the improvement rolls as "ridiculously critical". No matter what the rolls are, if you have a long enough string of bad rolls to actually start making a difference against other characters, it really doesn't matter if they were combat or improvement rolls. And if they were improvement rolls, at least your character lives to get another chance...

QuoteHeh, you say it's clear to you, and "usually consider." Contradict yourself much?

No contradiction. It's always been clear to me that an adventure could either be a trip to a dungeon and back, or an extended trip between two points. Now maybe some would read the rules in a way to exclude an extended trip between two points from being an adventure. Fine. Advancement in that GMs game may be a bit slower than in my game.

QuoteAnd a different set of houserules...chances are, if you've modified the RAW multiple different ways trying to find something satisfying, then, yes, there's something unsatisfying about RAW that isn't so easy to fix. Just sayin'

Sometimes house rules are because of something being unsatisfying. Sometimes not. Also, what I found unsatisfying as a teenager (when I first played RQ1) and what I find unsatisfying now is different.

Yea, I run RQ1 with some house rules. But I'd also be fine running it totally as written.

My house rules for RQ1 are primarily:

Use the battle magic changes from RQ2
Import any weapons relevant to cults that aren't present in RQ1 from RQ2
INT for races usable as PCs (and many others) is 2d6+6
When rolling an attribute for a PC, instead of rolling XdY+Z, roll (X+1)dY, pick X of them, and add Y (note that there MAY be reasons not to pick the highest, sometimes it makes sense at least for SIZ to pick the lowest).
I have some house rules to the previous experience system from the back of the book (but it's MOSTLY run RAW, most of the house rules there are extra options)
I still grant characters that go through the previous experience system cult credit, and cult credit may be used for skills the cult teaches as well as battle magic
Hit Points are (SIZ + CON) / 2 (round up) and then use the HP adjustments for SIZ and POW
Attribute maximum is the lower of racial max or 1.5 * the original roll (round up)
I rename the Oratory bonus Communication and use it for spoken language skills as well as a few others
I have added some additional Communication skills (some are from Cults of Prax)
For skills, your skill is how much training/experience you have, then you add ability bonus on top to gauge success, for improvement rolls, you just need to beat the raw skill (so if I have Axe 25% and Attack +25%, I have a net Axe of 50%, but I only look at the 25% for training cost and only need to roll 26+ to learn from experience).

There's probably a few procedural things that are so ingrained in how I run RQ that I'm not thinking about them.

Yes, in the past, I have used more significant house ruling. I have used RQ3 style previous experience of my own concocting. In one campaign, players assigned attributes by point buy, and then distributed (+5, +10, +10, +15, +15, +20, +20, +25) among the ability bonuses (Attack, Parry, Defense, Manipulation, Stealth, Perception, Knowledge, Communication). I've also run with various other weapons charts (John T. Sapienza, designer of the RQ2 character sheets, had a "unified" set of weapons that I used for a while). I used to have players keep track of how many successes they had with a skill beyond the first, and use that as an addition to the improvement roll. In my long running campaign, I settled on giving the players a fixed number of improvement rolls after each "adventure". These are all tweaks to the game and don't invalidate the original rules in any way. These days I've chosen to not use many of them to have more of the original experience.

Frank