Quote from: Hermes Serpent;975656I ran it on FreeRPG day at a local game store. Went well enough but the players managed to mostly circumvent the plot and I had to wing it for about 2/3rds of the session but the end result was that the players liked the system (two had played RQ before, one had played d100 games before and the otehr only D&D or generic fantasy stuff previously.

Obviously still early doors and sans edition Wars how would you rate against Mythras?

Thinking about grabbing for Glorantha content and gaming but starting to lean away of spending money to just collect something if Mythras hits all the same highlights.

Designed to be less crunchy in the combat area than Mythras by skipping the Special Effects is will based on teh QS and teh ongoing discussions about the full rules end up moving the complexity towards cults and the various magic options.

Personally, having started with RQ2, I am happy enough with Mythras and the direction that TDM are taking that. Glorantha, although I am happy to play in games set there, I do find that there is a degree of fanaticism involved in pushing that setting. I'm much more a fan of S&S settings and I think Mythras does a decent job of supporting that. I've run plenty of straight S&S games, some Mythic Britain games and a couple of Mythic Rome games so right across the spectrum and while I don't think Mythras is great for one-off con style games without cropping it to fit, I do think it shines with longer games where the players are prepared to put some effort in to learning the rules.

Do any versions of Runequest have rules for using a map with counters/figures to resolve combat, or is it always theater o' the mind?

Quote from: Hermes Serpent;975677Designed to be less crunchy in the combat area than Mythras by skipping the Special Effects is will based on teh QS and teh ongoing discussions about the full rules end up moving the complexity towards cults and the various magic options.

Personally, having started with RQ2, I am happy enough with Mythras and the direction that TDM are taking that. Glorantha, although I am happy to play in games set there, I do find that there is a degree of fanaticism involved in pushing that setting. I'm much more a fan of S&S settings and I think Mythras does a decent job of supporting that. I've run plenty of straight S&S games, some Mythic Britain games and a couple of Mythic Rome games so right across the spectrum and while I don't think Mythras is great for one-off con style games without cropping it to fit, I do think it shines with longer games where the players are prepared to put some effort in to learning the rules.

Thanks

Mythras is too crunchy for me, fatigue states and so on are great ideas but tend to add too many doodads to combat.

Quote from: Skarg;975687Do any versions of Runequest have rules for using a map with counters/figures to resolve combat, or is it always theater o' the mind?

We played RQ2 and RQ3 with miniatures and fully enjoyed it. Although they don;t have hexes, the RQ2 and RQ3 rules work well with miniatures.

The rules for the abandoned RQ4 had a lot of quarter-turns and part-phases, which I absolutely hated.

Quote from: Skarg;975687Do any versions of Runequest have rules for using a map with counters/figures to resolve combat, or is it always theater o' the mind?

Runequest 6 (pre-cursor to Mythras) had rules for miniatures/grid combat in an appendix. Mythras cut them, but the Classic Fantasy supplement has rules for it.

Thanks guys.

Quote from: Baulderstone;975602The career system in WFRP is a lot wonkier over long-term play than RQ. For character generation and the early stage of a campaign, it works great. You get to pick a general class, and get a random career in it. It's often not the exact career you want, so you work towards a career that suits you. That part is fun, but then you start to get issues.

For one thing, most careers don't take very long to max out. People frequently find a career that suits their role in the party and are soon done with it. After that, you tend to see a lot of random shuffling between careers that have little to with what it occurring in the campaign. This is aggravated by the way you need very specific bonuses. If you have already done one career that offers +10 to WS, you need to find a career with another number for a bonus, such as +5.

It does work, but it isn't pretty. I often get the impression that people that rave about the career system have never actually played a long-term campaign. It's clever on paper, but I really wonder how much long-term playtesting got done on it at GW before release.

Traveller neatly dodges a lot of these issues by having the career system used entirely in character generation.

RQ's system is so much cleaner than WFRP.

Well, I played in the Enemy within campaign with those rules, and it wasn't really an issue for our group as far as anybody expressed anything. Not sure about saying how RQ's system is cleaner insofar as they didn't really have a system as such - more a bunch of notes at the back about how to build background experience into older characters, if you didn't just want to start with a bunch of 5-10% level skills and/or a mortgage repayment to a cult!

Anyway, the reason why WFRP's career system is celebrated is not because of how it allowed character to develop, but rather the whole spread and diversity of character types gave a real sense of how the society of the warhammer world held together. Compared to D&D's classes, which were all technically outsiders to the NPC culture anyway, it was a lot more illustrative.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;975864Anyway, the reason why WFRP's career system is celebrated is not because of how it allowed character to develop, but rather the whole spread and diversity of character types gave a real sense of how the society of the warhammer world held together. Compared to D&D's classes, which were all technically outsiders to the NPC culture anyway, it was a lot more illustrative.

I agree that WFRPs career system is great for character backgrounds. It just gets messy as an advancement system.

One of the problems with WFRP's Career System is that it gives little guidance on how to run a quasi-historical European campaign to novice American GMs.  Also, as it includes a very wide range of Basic and Advanced Careers, some of which are terribly suited to someone who also serves as an "adventurer" from time to time, it's very easy for a group of PCs to get drawn into the coolness of the Career System each following their own interests (and chasing their own advancement bonuses) leaving the GM with a terrible mess when it comes to justifying everything in the setting while still having these PCs frequently coming together to do things not covered by their careers.

Quote from: CRKrueger;976044One of the problems with WFRP's Career System is that it gives little guidance on how to run a quasi-historical European campaign to novice American GMs.  Also, as it includes a very wide range of Basic and Advanced Careers, some of which are terribly suited to someone who also serves as an "adventurer" from time to time, it's very easy for a group of PCs to get drawn into the coolness of the Career System each following their own interests (and chasing their own advancement bonuses) leaving the GM with a terrible mess when it comes to justifying everything in the setting while still having these PCs frequently coming together to do things not covered by their careers.

That's under "setting" or "GM advice", not "advancement system".

Quote from: CRKrueger;976044One of the problems with WFRP's Career System is that it gives little guidance on how to run a quasi-historical European campaign to novice American GMs.  Also, as it includes a very wide range of Basic and Advanced Careers, some of which are terribly suited to someone who also serves as an "adventurer" from time to time, it's very easy for a group of PCs to get drawn into the coolness of the Career System each following their own interests (and chasing their own advancement bonuses) leaving the GM with a terrible mess when it comes to justifying everything in the setting while still having these PCs frequently coming together to do things not covered by their careers.

The adventures for WFRP, excellent though many of them are, have almost no awareness of the career system either. They assume you have a typical party of wandering vagabonds.

The world of Glorantha seems to be a big selling point for RuneQuest, yet despite owning at least 4 versions of the "core rulebook" over the years I still know next to nothing about it. I wonder if this version will actually give some details and world related mechanics.

Quote from: AsenRG;976047That's under "setting" or "GM advice", not "advancement system".

They do mention it in the section on advancement, albeit with very little detail.  They hint at the concepts of downtime or what we might call these days "career phases" where PCs are supposed to be off making a living inside the "normal" economic, political, religious, caste society of the Empire in between adventures.  They also tell you the GM is supposed to call the ball on choices for careers, determining when careers become available, etc.  The problem is, it's all written assuming you're a Brit or European and class and history is in your blood.  For a lot of people, it could get messy, but I've seen lots of GMs completely at a loss at how to reconcile Career "What you supposedly are in the setting" with "What PCs do.", which frequently can be completely different than their careers.

With a career system based on societal roles and professions, you can't really deal with advancement without integrating it unless you just handwave the whole thing and move on.