TheRPGSite

My DM wants to try to cook up a homebrew system for us to use in our game once the current campaign wraps up. I'll admit I'm not particularly keen on the idea; I've wanted to get away from the moar bigger numbers style of Pathfinder for a while now, but I just wanted to sub it out for Earthdawn, not put in all the time and effort of hammering out a whole new ruleset. Which I understand is a conversation I need to have with her and not something you lot can help me with, but in the meantime studying up on some games what handle the genre differently and mining them for ideas hopefully will help a bit, whether in finding a system we like better that we can just tweak to suit our needs or making the homebrew process easier by removing some of the mental heavy lifting.

I know most high fantasy RPGs (or what seems like most) are generally built around D&D's class-and-level paradigm, often for no better reason than Because Tradition. Earthdawn gets away from this to an extent by using sort of a weird class-and-skill hybrid, which I feel works remarkably well for what it is but still carries the baggage of AD&D. Are there any conventional high fantasy games or setting-agnostic systems what take a more or less purely skill-based approach?

The Omni/Omega system found in Talislanta, Atlanta and Hellas is similar to d20 but is effectively a skill based fantasy RPG.

The settings aren't D&D-like. Instead, they are exotic fantasy, sword & sorcery and space opera respectively. But Atlantis in particular can be easily broadened for fantasy generally.

The granddaddy of them all is Runequest and its children (Magic World, OpenQuest, Legend and other d100/BRP games), which are almost entirely skill-based--professions in such games are used simply to determine starting skill access at most.

GURPS. No classes, but templates. Very much a skill-based system, great for fantasy, and has a skill-based magic system. I love it, but it's very not D&D. Weapons can kill and maim characters, and you won't be able to just resurrect your friends each turn, as I hear happens in D&D v5. Tactical combat system, if you want to use it. It is a toolkit system, so you can either embrace it or just mine it for ideas.

Or it's much simpler ancient ancestor TFT (The Fantasy Trip), and its current clone system from Dark City Games, which is approximately the same game. They are classless, very simple to learn (though quite different from D&D) but very interesting to play (if you like tactical games with fairly high risk of death). They each have different but similar systems for skills.

Or Runequest, which came out about the same time as TFT.

Or Ars Magica, which isn't classless but is very interesting.

Burning Wheel is skill-based and classless. Characters are built out of 'life paths', which are real world-ish careers (e.g. City Born, Apprentice, City Guard, Soldier) which give you access to skills.

Rolemaster is class & level and skill based.

GURPS, Burning Wheel and Runemaster (and Runemaster-derived games like Stormbringer/Elric!/Magic World) are way purer examples though.

I'd recommend GURPS.

Quote from: The Ent;828694Rolemaster is class & level and skill based.

Never understood why Rolemaster didn't ditch classes. When RMC II came out with that monster class/skill cost matrix, it seemed like an obvious simplification.

+1 on Runequest, it doesn't have levels and the classes are just skill groups really.

There's lots of versions, depending on your tastes in complexity.
Early Runequest like BRP in today's incarnation.

For more complexity and realism, Legend or RQ6.

but they're all essentially Runequest.

Quote from: fuseboy;828695Never understood why Rolemaster didn't ditch classes. When RMC II came out with that monster class/skill cost matrix, it seemed like an obvious simplification.

The whole skill cost thing hung around classes and spell lists as well.
It'd take big changes to remove classes from RM.

Suggestion Withdrawn.

Quote from: danskmacabre;828698+1 on Runequest, it doesn't have levels and the classes are just skill groups really.

There's lots of versions, depending on your testes in complexity.

Well, I mean, I don't know that mine are particularly complex. There was that surgery when I was a teenager to fix a torsion issue, but other than that... :p

Thanks for the suggestions, folks, and keep 'em coming if you think of any more. It would seem I've a lot of homework to do.

Quote from: fuseboy;828695Never understood why Rolemaster didn't ditch classes. When RMC II came out with that monster class/skill cost matrix, it seemed like an obvious simplification.

It's a bit Odd, yeah. OTOH, it's one of the 1st gen not-D&D fantasy RPGs and got started as add-ons to D&D basically, and was built around a D&D-like framework, wich could explain that.

OTOH I like the RM classes, Even if some (...semi-spellcasters...) are less good than others, etc.

Another recommendation for Runequest in one of its forms (BRP, RQ6, Legend, OpenQuest, RQII, RQIII, et cetera) or variations (Stormbringer, Magic World, et cetera).

Quote from: woodsmoke;828701Well, I mean, I don't know that mine are particularly complex. There was that surgery when I was a teenager to fix a torsion issue, but other than that... :p

Thanks for the suggestions, folks, and keep 'em coming if you think of any more. It would seem I've a lot of homework to do.

Lol, at the unfortunate Typo!  :D

Quote from: The Ent;828702OTOH I like the RM classes, Even if some (...semi-spellcasters...) are less good than others, etc.

I agree, many of the semi-spell casters in various editions were really OP/Broken and many got banned when I ran RM many years ago.

Lots of good suggestions here. I've also had fun with Feng Shui, which is entirely skill based (but has "splat" packages that only affect your starting character).

The middle ground of Earthdawn gets my vote, where the "classes" are in-world secret societies, but advancement is skill/talent based. The 4th edition simplifies the resolution system (gets rid of the success level charts), so might be worth checking out again.

Quote from: woodsmoke;828685Are there any conventional high fantasy games or setting-agnostic systems what take a more or less purely skill-based approach?

Among the most popular skill-based systems:
- RuneQuest and other BRP variants
- GURPS (GURPS Fantasy is a popular line)
- HERO System (Fantasy HERO)
- Savage Worlds
- FATE
- Burning Wheel

I'm playing in a GURPS Fantasy campaign now.

One common issue I have a problem with is disconnected (or "cherry-picked") skills.  Players are encouraged to take skills that are most useful, so everyone picks up some stealth, a single weapon skill, and so forth. Then again, this is also true of many class-based systems.

Iron Gauntlets by Precis Intermedia is skill based.

For fantasy, I'd go with Runequest or Stormbringer (depending on what tone/genre I wanted).

Another non-level based game you might look at would be Barbarians of Lemuria. It is on the lighter side rules-wise and is career based not skill based, but the careers effectively act like a bundle of skills. Honor+Intrigue is based on BoL, but with a greatly expanded dueling system suitable for swashbuckling action. But H+I doesn't have a high fantasy magic system. PCs aren't really expected to use much real magic - though they may use charlatanry or alchemy. BoL would probably work better for a game with PC-MUs.

I'd go for Openquest, or Stormbringer (either 1st, 2nd or 5th edition).
Otherwise Barbarians of Lemuria if you want to go for Rules-Lite.

I have rarely seen a game that is more skill based than Rolemaster, but I think Runequest might be closer to what the OP is looking for, somehow. I like Runequest 3 personally.

Regarding which version of Runequest I'd use.

Well actually, I didn't play or run Runequest in it's pure form that much.
I ran Stormbringer/Elric from 1st edition, right through to 5th Edition with Chaosium.
Later I picked up the Elric RPG with Mongoose, which used MRQ1 and MRQ2 and the cleaned up rules of Legend with Mongoose.  

I probably had the most fun running Stormbringer 1st to 3rd Edition.
It had the crazy summoning demons into weapons and armor and stuff.
It was way fun, but very OP and very dangerous to the summoner as well.

4th/5th Edition with Chaoisium and the MRQ2 editions were probably truer to Moorcock's Elric stories though.

If I were to run it again, I'd try to get an old 3rd edition Stormbringer (which came with the companion). As it moves really fast and is just good fun.

Failing that, then 5th Edition Stormbringer, which I still own and also runs very well, meaning fast and realistic enough for what I need in an RPG.

I'm a bit bummed out with Legend and RQ6. They are more realistic and so on, but just too much of a hassle and fiddly bits to manage when running the game.

Quote from: woodsmoke;828685My DM wants to try to cook up a homebrew system for us to use in our game once the current campaign wraps up. I'll admit I'm not particularly keen on the idea; I've wanted to get away from the moar bigger numbers style of Pathfinder for a while now, but I just wanted to sub it out for Earthdawn, not put in all the time and effort of hammering out a whole new ruleset. Which I understand is a conversation I need to have with her and not something you lot can help me with, but in the meantime studying up on some games what handle the genre differently and mining them for ideas hopefully will help a bit, whether in finding a system we like better that we can just tweak to suit our needs or making the homebrew process easier by removing some of the mental heavy lifting.

I know most high fantasy RPGs (or what seems like most) are generally built around D&D's class-and-level paradigm, often for no better reason than Because Tradition. Earthdawn gets away from this to an extent by using sort of a weird class-and-skill hybrid, which I feel works remarkably well for what it is but still carries the baggage of AD&D. Are there any conventional high fantasy games or setting-agnostic systems what take a more or less purely skill-based approach?

Well.  I can say I've done what he's talking about.  After houseruling D&D, back in the day,to the nth degree, i created a homebrew skill base to match the game I wanted to play, and the setting I wanted to work with.

That was 1983.  It is still  99% of my games I run.  And for a longer term game, I recommend it.  I have groups that play 150-200 sessions that get better and more competent constantly who still are scared of being one-shotted if they are silly.

So, your buddy may be trying to match the same way, setting and a play style he wants to try with system.

Quote from: Telarus;828707The middle ground of Earthdawn get my vote tho, where the "classes" are in-world secret societies, but advancement is skill/talent based. The 4th edition simplifies the resolution system (gets rid of the success level charts), so might be worth checking out again.

I don't know 4e Earthdawn but my experience with ED was a mixed bag... I loved the setting and the way the rules tied into it... but in implementation it was really kludgy. It didn't 'feel' like a skill-based game either... there are classes and levels cleverly disguised as aspects of the setting but it did feel like something solidly in the D&D camp... with extra added complexity.

I'd opt for something fast and smooth and truly skill-based, like Magic World... which is Stormbringer minus the Moorcock IP.

Quote from: Simlasa;828736I'd opt for something fast and smooth and truly skill-based, like Magic World... which is Stormbringer minus the Moorcock IP.

I've been really tempted to get Magic World, but many of the reviews talk of typos and formatting issues, so I dunno...

There's a free one in my sig.

As to Rolemaster, semi-users never have quite enough development points to really rock their specialized status.  But that's RMSS where people often complain that the development points awarded are none to generous.  Still, if you can get through the lower levels to the point where pure professions are plateauing semi-users can get scary.

I read a draft of the MW rules and helped the author with some typos, but unless they introduced a bunch of new problems in the final edition, I don't think there are any significant issues.

Aside from the (mostly excellent) suggestions that have already been given, I'll mention Talislanta. All the editions are in free PDFs (http://talislanta.com/?page_id=5) these days. Up to 3e, it used a hybrid level/skill system (no "classes", but beginning characters are archetypes, which give a core cluster of skills and characteristics that can then be tweaked). In 4e and later, it went completely skill-based, but I think I prefer the earlier approach.

It's based on a pretty atypical fantasy world, but I think it could be tweaked, or elements reskinned, to make something more elf/dwarf/orc if that's your taste.

Quote from: David Johansen;828747As to Rolemaster, semi-users never have quite enough development points to really rock their specialized status.  But that's RMSS where people often complain that the development points awarded are none to generous.  Still, if you can get through the lower levels to the point where pure professions are plateauing semi-users can get scary.

I was referring to the New semi-spell users in RM2 that came in the many companions.
I banned so many of them. The Noble Warrior was crazy OP. Was that even tested at all?
I also banned the Nightblade and various other semi spell users.
In general , I though they were just too powerful, not weak.

In RMSS, I wasn't keen on the Magent. It was a skill monster and had really powerful spells as well to make it even tougher.

Quote from: danskmacabre;828742I've been really tempted to get Magic World, but many of the reviews talk of typos and formatting issues, so I dunno...

I can't say I've noticed any major issues in my readings of the book... the errata sheet that came out for it is pretty short. The biggest thing was that a description of an occupation got left out and in a few places the book refers to 'fatigue' but MW doesn't have rules for fatigue.

EDIT: It occurs to me that you might be getting that impression from the anonymous ax-grinding post on Tenkar's... which seemed like a questionabe move on that blog host's part. Plenty of folks chimed in to say they'd read the book and not seen any issues and it seemed to get outed as more a matter of someone not liking the graphical appearance of the book than any legitimate problem in how the rules are written.

Quote from: Simlasa;828756I can't say I've noticed any major issues in my readings of the book... the errata sheet that came out for it is pretty short. The biggest thing was that a description of an occupation got left out and in a few places the book refers to 'fatigue' but MW doesn't have rules for fatigue.

I'd love to review it before I buy I think in this case.
I love the idea of this RPG, but whatever, it might come out on a Humble Bundle one day and I'll just grab it then.

Quote from: jhkim;828709One common issue I have a problem with is disconnected (or "cherry-picked") skills.  Players are encouraged to take skills that are most useful, so everyone picks up some stealth, a single weapon skill, and so forth. Then again, this is also true of many class-based systems.

I'm obviously a partisan of GURPS.

But that being said, what you describe is -- I think -- very much a matter of the culture of individual gaming groups.  My own players overwhelmingly want their key skills to be at solid levels, as opposed to Everyone Can Do A Bunch of Disconnected Things, However Mediocre.

But that being said ... look.  If I was a full-time adventurer, I'd want to have a little talent for stealth.  I'd want to be good enough with a weapon or some manner of martial art, so as to be able to defend myself even if I was the party REMF.  I'd want to be able to handle myself without being too clueless in a city, and I'd want to know some basics of camping and living off the land.

This was my approach in fantasy boffer LARPing, where even as the game's most powerful wizard I knew a bunch of these already, and got good at the ones I didn't.  If I was with a party, they expected me to keep up and hold up my end of things.

One of the problems with the D&D paradigm, I feel, is that it's traditionally promoted INcompetence outside your class abilities.  You're a magic-user, so you're not supposed to be able to fight.  You're a warrior, so you're not supposed to be stealthy.  Etc.

Quote from: danskmacabre;828759I'd love to review it before I buy I think in this case.

There's a free quickstart on Chaosium's site: http://www.chaosium.com/magic-world-quick-start-pdf/

Quote from: jhkim;828709One common issue I have a problem with is disconnected (or "cherry-picked") skills.  Players are encouraged to take skills that are most useful, so everyone picks up some stealth, a single weapon skill, and so forth.

I guess it depends on the group. I like randomly rolled PCs in class/level games but in skill-based I generally encourage starting with a character concept that fits the genre/setting... and work from that... vs. a shopping cart of skills that don't paint a plausible character.

Regarding cherry-picking skills in GURPS - one very rarely wants to tell players they can pick whatever they want. (You'll have a bad time if you give no guidelines or limits to what people can play in D&D too.) What experienced GM's tend to do, is offer a set of choices of appropriate character backgrounds, about what skills and abilities (or even what disadvantages) are appropriate, and then work with the player to make the character appropriate for the game, if the first version has issues. (3rd and 4th Edition GURPS formalize this by listing Templates, which list what certain character types will tend to have.)

I find this is a great opportunity to make a campaign world unique and interesting, by limiting what skills (and especially spells) are available and in common use where in the world, and by whom. GURPS has so much stuff (especially 4th edition, which includes almost every character option from all the worldbooks in its basic books), that it would be silly to have even just all the mundane tech level 3 stuff available to and used by everyone everywhere. And when the world-designer specifies who and where uses what, it gives the places and organizations in the world character. Players can then make their background and their adventures include finding and studying with these groups to gain particular skills, and so on.

Quote from: Ravenswing;828760I'm obviously a partisan of GURPS.

But that being said, what you describe is -- I think -- very much a matter of the culture of individual gaming groups.  My own players overwhelmingly want their key skills to be at solid levels, as opposed to Everyone Can Do A Bunch of Disconnected Things, However Mediocre.

But that being said ... look.  If I was a full-time adventurer, I'd want to have a little talent for stealth.  I'd want to be good enough with a weapon or some manner of martial art, so as to be able to defend myself even if I was the party REMF.  I'd want to be able to handle myself without being too clueless in a city, and I'd want to know some basics of camping and living off the land.

This was my approach in fantasy boffer LARPing, where even as the game's most powerful wizard I knew a bunch of these already, and got good at the ones I didn't.  If I was with a party, they expected me to keep up and hold up my end of things.

One of the problems with the D&D paradigm, I feel, is that it's traditionally promoted INcompetence outside your class abilities.  You're a magic-user, so you're not supposed to be able to fight.  You're a warrior, so you're not supposed to be stealthy.  Etc.

A concept I always like are skill trees, that allow a character to take 'basic' stealth levels, which gives small competence incrementally in all the stealth skills, while allowing true practitioners to specialize in Hiding in shadows, moving silently,  disguise, mixing with crowds, quiet combat, etc.
And mages might take 'basic dagger', to give a little incremental growth in the usage, while the deeper skills of multi, dam bon, att vs, init bonus, singleweap special, parry, then deeper still with disarm, frenzy, stunning attack, critical hit bonus, etc can be learned as one gets deeper in the skill.

It is not an on/off switch, but a continuum of capability I aim for.

Quote from: Telarus;828707The middle ground of Earthdawn gets my vote, where the "classes" are in-world secret societies, but advancement is skill/talent based. The 4th edition simplifies the resolution system (gets rid of the success level charts), so might be worth checking out again.

I would dearly love to just play Earthdawn again, but I'm fairly sure I rolled a critical fail on my persuasion check when I tried to sell it to my DM. She just doesn't seem at all interested in it. Which is unfortunate, but not something I can change, so I'm doing my best to swallow my pride and work to find a middle ground we can all compromise on.

Looks longingly at ED4 book and stack of character ideas Someday...

Quote from: LordVreeg;828730Well.  I can say I've done what he's talking about.  After houseruling D&D, back in the day,to the nth degree, i created a homebrew skill base to match the game I wanted to play, and the setting I wanted to work with.

That was 1983.  It is still  99% of my games I run.  And for a longer term game, I recommend it.  I have groups that play 150-200 sessions that get better and more competent constantly who still are scared of being one-shotted if they are silly.

So, your buddy may be trying to match the same way, setting and a play style he wants to try with system.

I'm fairly sure that's the idea at work. Which I completely understand may well be the best approach in the long run, but I'm lazy and really don't like fiddling with mechanics. I also have a bit of an aversion to system crafting thanks to several years of going from game to house rules to home brew to new game in my older brother's games as he chased The Perfect System™. I don't think my current DM will run afoul of that, but it's still not an appealing prospect.

Quote from: Ravenswing;828760One of the problems with the D&D paradigm, I feel, is that it's traditionally promoted INcompetence outside your class abilities.  You're a magic-user, so you're not supposed to be able to fight.  You're a warrior, so you're not supposed to be stealthy.  Etc.

This is precisely why I've wanted to get away from Pathfinder (and classes in general). Inasmuch as I can be said to have a philosophy regarding RPGs it would probably be the Heinlein quote what ends with "specialization is for insects." Which isn't to say I want my characters to be universally competent, but the D&D paradigm of "X class does X really well and is generally pants at Y and Z*" drives me absolutely batty in games that aren't primarily about dungeon delving.

*Rogues being the exception, of course.

The thought (finally) occurs I should probably write something up to give a better idea of what we're trying to do and hopefully narrow down the breadth of info a bit. Hopefully I can find some time to sit down and hammer that out later.

It's 'grim and gritty' but Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying (any edition) is a skill based game worth considering.

It avoids the 'cherry picking' problem through careers, which are different from classes. A career governs what advances you can buy, so for example your career might only allow you to increase your weapon score once. Eventually you advance to a different career, and that might allow you to advance a skill further.

Quote from: woodsmoke;828876I would dearly love to just play Earthdawn again, but I'm fairly sure I rolled a critical fail on my persuasion check when I tried to sell it to my DM.

Just give her the corebook and a nightlight, it will sell itself. If that doesn't work, there is no hope.
Yes, I also have a soft spot for Earthdawn, warts and all.

RuneQuest Essentials is a cheap way of getting a skill-based game up and running. Call of Cthulhu has to be an option? Ye olde Warhammer is not so much skill-based as its own thing, but is a damn cool alternative to D&D.

I would also like to suggest Sertorius and Servants of Gaius by this forum's Bedrockbrendan. They are entirely skill based, using d10s - roll 1 to 3 and take the highest.

Quote from: Jame Rowe;828889I would also like to suggest Sertorius and Servants of Gaius by this forum's Bedrockbrendan. They are entirely skill based, using d10s - roll 1 to 3 and take the highest.

I reaqd through these and also thought they were very playable without being formulaic.

Agreed! Both are excellent games, and well worth a look!

-clash

Thanks. Just want to clarify that both those games were co-designed by Bill Butler and Dan Orcutt as well.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;828896Thanks. Just want to clarify that both those games were co-designed by Bill Butler and Dan Orcutt as well.

And extensively play tested too.

Quote from: baragei;828888RuneQuest Essentials is a cheap way of getting a skill-based game up and running.

Oh, yeah, in the same vein there's Legend (Mongoose) which is basically a first-draft of RQ6, in PDF for $1. It's probably a little more complete than RQ essentials, if less refined.

Quote from: baragei;828888Ye olde Warhammer is not so much skill-based as its own thing, but is a damn cool alternative to D&D.

My thinking was that having a profession in its own right doesn't give you much of anything beyond the ability to buy skills or stats (which are kind of skills when you are thinking of Weapon Skill and Ballistic Skill).

Quote from: Ravenswing;828760I'm obviously a partisan of GURPS.But that being said ... look.  If I was a full-time adventurer, I'd want to have a little talent for stealth.  I'd want to be good enough with a weapon or some manner of martial art, so as to be able to defend myself even if I was the party REMF.  I'd want to be able to handle myself without being too clueless in a city, and I'd want to know some basics of camping and living off the land.

Totally off topic, this tells me that the character you (the generic you) want to be is a 'Thief/Rogue'.  Which frankly, is more of an 'everyman' than a 'Fighter' ever was.  Most of what you described, Ravenswing, are easily gained with a bit of training or more likely personal experience.  Sneaking around we learn as kids, weapons training is a little harder, but knives and clubs are relatively easy to pick up, comparatively, and if you adventure and survive you learn tricks that could be adapted to the short sword.  As for survival, both city and wilderness, all you need to is listen to others who have lived there and keep an open eye and mind.

This is nothing for nor against any skill or non-skill based game system, admittedly, but it's neat to me, just how much of this is 'I would like to play a semi-experienced rogue type.'  :)

To quote Robert A. Heinlein:
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

In the real world, an adventurer would be a generalist to survive what ever the environment throws at them. But D&D wasn't set up to model that; it was set up to model a team action, with a group of specialists in protected niches.

Quote from: woodsmoke;828876I'm fairly sure that's the idea at work. Which I completely understand may well be the best approach in the long run, but I'm lazy and really don't like fiddling with mechanics. I also have a bit of an aversion to system crafting thanks to several years of going from game to house rules to home brew to new game in my older brother's games as he chased The Perfect System™. I don't think my current DM will run afoul of that, but it's still not an appealing prospect.


...

The thought (finally) occurs I should probably write something up to give a better idea of what we're trying to do and hopefully narrow down the breadth of info a bit. Hopefully I can find some time to sit down and hammer that out later.

People don't seem to get there is no perfect game.  There are favorable system to setting and system to playstyle matches, in broad strokes.  

Similarly, taken to the next, painful, time-consuming level, only a system written specifically for a setting can properly represent it for a long-term, deep immersive game.  

Now, obviously house-ruling can make up for a lot of this, as can having the system/setting match in mind and system/style matches in mind when creating the setting.

I had continually houseruled and changed and houseruled my main campaigns in the late 70s and early 80s, but when I started on the blocks for Celtricia, I realized after some of the creative work had really gone in that no ones skill system and no ones magic system actually buttressed the foundational setting.  I mean, I could have forced it, but it would have been, as almost all matches really are, incongruent.

Quote from: dbm;828964To quote Robert A. Heinlein:
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

In the real world, an adventurer would be a generalist to survive what ever the environment throws at them. But D&D wasn't set up to model that; it was set up to model a team action, with a group of specialists in protected niches.

Whereas a good skill based games often have a bunch of generalists, with similar survival skills, with some areas or competence and expertise.

Quote from: Ravenswing;828760One of the problems with the D&D paradigm, I feel, is that it's traditionally promoted INcompetence outside your class abilities.  You're a magic-user, so you're not supposed to be able to fight.  You're a warrior, so you're not supposed to be stealthy.  Etc.

This one I agree with, it's especially annoying in the "no stealth for tin cans" form.  In most systems Assassins are a type of Thief.  When you want someone killed, you don't hire a cat burglar, you hire a soldier.  He get's better at it, and then makes it his life work.  Assassin's are not thieves with special killing skills, they are killers who learned to do it quietly.  That's just a pet peeve, but that's why in general I'm souring on class systems unless they are very, very broad.

Quote from: CRKrueger;828978This one I agree with, it's especially annoying in the "no stealth for tin cans" form.  In most systems Assassins are a type of Thief.  When you want someone killed, you don't hire a cat burglar, you hire a soldier.  He get's better at it, and then makes it his life work.  Assassin's are not thieves with special killing skills, they are killers who learned to do it quietly.  That's just a pet peeve, but that's why in general I'm souring on class systems unless they are very, very broad.

Or even the idea that there is only one way to learn or come by a skill set like that.

Quote from: CRKrueger;828978This one I agree with, it's especially annoying in the "no stealth for tin cans" form.  In most systems Assassins are a type of Thief.  When you want someone killed, you don't hire a cat burglar, you hire a soldier.  He get's better at it, and then makes it his life work.  Assassin's are not thieves with special killing skills, they are killers who learned to do it quietly.  That's just a pet peeve, but that's why in general I'm souring on class systems unless they are very, very broad.

When I want someone killed I hire an assassin. Or a duelist if dueling is a thing. When I want a hill, fort, or town taken or held, I hire a bunch of soldiers.

Quote from: Arminius;828909Oh, yeah, in the same vein there's Legend (Mongoose) which is basically a first-draft of RQ6, in PDF for $1. It's probably a little more complete than RQ essentials, if less refined.

Legend v RQE:

(http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h15/Bilharzia/rqvleg.png)

On the professions/careers - RQE has fewer but more descriptive careers, Legend has more, in a chart form, but no description of the professions. In magic systems, RQE doesn't have sorcery, Folk is a re-write (and re-think) of Common Magic, Theism is equivalent to Divine from Legend.

I joim the choir or raccomandation od runequest/brp/stormbringer. It tends do be gritty and letal.

For light free form fantasy, Barbarian Of Lemuria excell at eclectic and competent characters.



I also love (at least in paper, I haven't tryed it yet) greg stolze's reign, based on a adapted version of the one roll engine (enchiridion version is cheaper and does not include the weird setting). It's skill based, it's well suited for very competent character but remains quite letal. If you turn on all the options combat can become quite cruchy, but there's a free supplement with a "fluid combat system" quite similar to the wonderful manouver system of runequest 6. The base game contains also pretty rules for handling organisations or reigns.

Warhammer can be another interesting choice. It's career path system is more an on game life-path than a class system. But magic users tend to need extreme focalization.



But I don't think it's strictly necessary to go out of the d&d paradigm to get what you want.

For exemple, Background skills in D&D 5th give characters chance to be good at skills not normally linked to the class, and most of the melee classes have sub paths that dabbles in magic. Pick the rogue arcane trickster as an exemple: You've got an exemple of character that excell at many skills, can do a lot of a harm in a fight and have some magical power.

Another exemple is Spears of the dawn. Although inspired on OD&D, the game (as every Sine Nomine game) has a pretty open class, a simple and elegant skill system. In spears there's just a non magic user class, who can be heavly personalized with skills and talents (talents are quite like feat, but much more defining). Magic user classes are not inerently inept at everything else either.  (plus kevin crawford's games are always a gold mine of DM material and suggestions, regardless of the system used).

It's perfectly possible to obtain your goal of having eclectic characters without ditching completly all the d&d trappings (which have many virtues) .

Quote from: Bilharzia;829005Legend v RQE:

(http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h15/Bilharzia/rqvleg.png)

On the professions/careers - RQE has fewer but more descriptive careers, Legend has more, in a chart form, but no description of the professions. In magic systems, RQE doesn't have sorcery, Folk is a re-write (and re-think) of Common Magic, Theism is equivalent to Divine from Legend.

So what you're saying is...  Get both!  Sold!

Quote from: Christopher Brady;829031So what you're saying is...  Get both!  Sold!

No, I'm saying 'get RQ6' :p

maybe I need to amend my chart...

Quote from: Bilharzia;829032No, I'm saying 'get RQ6' :p

maybe I need to amend my chart...

For the price of ONE WHOPPING DOLLAR!  You can get more magic, professions/careers that will likely mesh with RQ6.  Why wouldn't get both and get the best of both worlds if you can afford it?

I'm on disability and I can afford that.

I'm surprised at the breadth of RQE; obviously I didn't know that. One thing to know, some of the material from the full version of RQ6 also has a first-draft in the free Signs and Portents PDF magazine (number 86?). Basically a couple other magic systems.

EDIT: Sorry, 89&90. I think there's a free doc on rpgnow with the same info.

Either way, I feel RQ got a little too elaborate for me in the Mongoose and later iterations, but those have some excellent ideas that I would like to use selectively with other BRP-based games. E.g. both the additional/revised magic systems and the idea of combat moves that let you choose some special tactical effect on a good roll, instead of just causing extra damage.

Quote from: Arminius;829040Either way, I feel RQ got a little too elaborate for me in the Mongoose and later iterations, but those have some excellent ideas that I would like to use selectively with other BRP-based games. E.g. both the additional/revised magic systems and the idea of combat moves that let you choose some special tactical effect on a good roll, instead of just causing extra damage.

I'm kinda in the same boat... I've always liked the lighter versions of BRP... Call of Cthulhu and Stormbringer... but Runequest 6 has so many good bits I keep annexing into my Magic World games that it seems inevitable that at some point I'll be running RQ6.

Quote from: Arminius;829040I'm surprised at the breadth of RQE; obviously I didn't know that. One thing to know, some of the material from the full version of RQ6 also has a first-draft in the free Signs and Portents PDF magazine (number 86?). Basically a couple other magic systems.

EDIT: Sorry, 89&90. I think there's a free doc on rpgnow with the same info.

Either way, I feel RQ got a little too elaborate for me in the Mongoose and later iterations, but those have some excellent ideas that I would like to use selectively with other BRP-based games. E.g. both the additional/revised magic systems and the idea of combat moves that let you choose some special tactical effect on a good roll, instead of just causing extra damage.

Bigger chart:
(http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h15/Bilharzia/legvrqevrq6.png)

Yes, no great harm in getting Legend if you're on a budget and as Arminius says lots in Signs & Portents which is free. My chart is pretty crude, for one thing, 'more is better' is not necessarily true, but I think in this case it is. It also misses out lots of things RQ6 expands on and adds - much fuller character generation and background, passions, cults & brotherhoods, gamemastery advice etc.

It's possible to piece together lots of bits from various sources to 'bulk up' Legend, to get something like a Fraken-Quest, what you're buying with RQ6 (if it's within your budget) is a system which has been re-written and sometimes re-designed to work consistently as a whole.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;829033For the price of ONE WHOPPING DOLLAR!  You can get more magic, professions/careers that will likely mesh with RQ6.  Why wouldn't get both and get the best of both worlds if you can afford it?

I'm on disability and I can afford that.

It's true that you might get more out of both, but look at the difference in what you actually get:
(http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h15/Bilharzia/thieves.png)

Quote from: Simlasa;829051I'm kinda in the same boat... I've always liked the lighter versions of BRP... Call of Cthulhu and Stormbringer... but Runequest 6 has so many good bits I keep annexing into my Magic World games that it seems inevitable that at some point I'll be running RQ6.

Count me in as another BRP-"lite" fan. Call of Cthulhu and Elric!/Stormbringer are big favorites of mine.

I still have a lot of fondness for RuneQuest in its many editions. RQ2, MRQ2, RQ6. And I played a hell of a lot of MRQ2 a few years ago. But, in recent years I've shied away from the greater complexity for options that don't require as much book-keeping/management.

OpenQuest/Renaissance seems to occupy a middle ground, and there are features of both that I like to incorporate into my "BRP-lite".

Quote from: Bilharzia;829005Legend v RQ6

But Legend has one thing that Runequest 6 doesn't and it may be more important given the original poster mentioned building your own system, it's all open gaming content.

For what it's worth I have MRQ2, Legend, Runequest 6, OpenQuest 2, Magic World, Elric!, CoC, and the BRP Gold Book all sitting on my shelf so it's not like I'm against buying them all. :-)

Quote from: ptingler;829080But Legend has one thing that Runequest 6 doesn't and it may be more important given the original poster mentioned building your own system, it's all open gaming content.

Does that make a difference for a homebrew system though? Does OGL mean more supporting material? RQ6 supplements have been original, substantial and a lot of them, Legend material has been mostly conversions of questionable quality and the volume is a trickle. It's ironic that if you've stuck with Legend you are more likely to be picking up RQ6 supplements than Legend ones as the material is pretty useable as-is, the only Legend publication I've bought was Spider God's Bride which was awful, not saying they all are, but that thing was poison.

With RQE out now I can't see why anyone would stick with Legend and if you want to hack RQ6 around a bit for your game, there's nothing to stop you, it's explicitly encouraged.

Quote from: Bilharzia;829086Does that make a difference for a homebrew system though?

It may or may not matter to the poster and his group, but it's worth pointing out in case it does.

Quote from: Bilharzia;829086With RQE out now I can't see why anyone would stick with Legend and if you want to hack RQ6 around a bit for your game, there's nothing to stop you, it's explicitly encouraged.

Who said you have to stick with just one of them? I already said I own both of them, plus a bunch more d100 variants.

Since the thread is focusing so much on BRP-related stuff, I'll mention that Chaosium is having a 30% off sale on PDFs through 5/9.

Quote from: ptingler;829090Who said you have to stick with just one of them? I already said I own both of them, plus a bunch more d100 variants.

You can of course mix & match, I'd point out though that RQE/RQ6 is really the first major revision of Runequest since RQ3 which 'gets it right'. In this sense it is not just-another-d100-brp variant like all the others, it's created with a view to consistency for the first time in 30 years that nothing else matches.

Quote from: Bilharzia;829094You can of course mix & match, I'd point out though that RQE/RQ6 is really the first major revision of Runequest since RQ3 which 'gets it right'. In this sense it is not just-another-d100-brp variant like all the others, it's created with a view to consistency for the first time in 30 years that nothing else matches.

What do you mean, specifically, I never got to play the original RQ except for MRQ, so I have no idea how it worked.  I'm genuinely curious.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;828954Totally off topic, this tells me that the character you (the generic you) want to be is a 'Thief/Rogue'.  Which frankly, is more of an 'everyman' than a 'Fighter' ever was.  Most of what you described, Ravenswing, are easily gained with a bit of training or more likely personal experience.  Sneaking around we learn as kids, weapons training is a little harder, but knives and clubs are relatively easy to pick up, comparatively, and if you adventure and survive you learn tricks that could be adapted to the short sword.  As for survival, both city and wilderness, all you need to is listen to others who have lived there and keep an open eye and mind.

Nope, I don't agree -- it seems you're still thinking in the lockstep character class paradigm of D&D.

Follow down to the next paragraph in my post, where I tie all of that into being a powerful wizard.  My point is that there's nothing -- and shouldn't be -- mutually exclusive by definition about wizardry and stealth / weapon skill / streetwise / survival, except in so far that the time I'm improving one skill is time not spent improving another.

Come to that, I've an anecdote.  The last time I played any form of D&D was about 25 years back when I played a rogue in an AD&D game.  The problem was that I had a lot of unwanted skills -- and was compelled to improve those unwanted skills.  See, I wanted to be a certain type of thief.  I wanted to be stealthy.  I wanted to know how to climb.  I wanted to be able to pull cons, and have good sleight of hand and bluffing skills.  Pickpocketing, sure, that was useful too.

What I didn't want was knowledge of disarming traps.  I had no use for lockpicking skill.  I wasn't interested in backstabbing.

In most skill systems, that's easy to do.  In D&D, it wasn't.

Quote from: Bilharzia;829052It also misses out lots of things RQ6 expands on and adds - much fuller character generation and background, passions, cults & brotherhoods, gamemastery advice etc.

I'm kind of new to the whole BRP family, having recently picked up RQ6 and the BGB (which also has a free Quickstart Edition (http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/82093/Basic-Roleplaying-Quickstart-Edition)), then discovered that I had a copy of Legend sitting around from some DriveThru bundle deal or other.  After reading through all of them, the passions and cult/brotherhood system are the two primary things that I really like which are only found in the full version of RQ6.  (Legend does have a "Guilds, Factions and Cults" chapter, but the RQ6 "Cults and Brotherhoods" material is more extensive (32 pages vs. 10) and feels more coherent to me, as well as more complete.)

Quote from: Bilharzia;829086the only Legend publication I've bought was Spider God's Bride which was awful, not saying they all are, but that thing was poison.

Being "poison" does seem appropriate for a spider god...  :D

Quote from: Ravenswing;829135What I didn't want was knowledge of disarming traps.  I had no use for lockpicking skill.  I wasn't interested in backstabbing.

In most skill systems, that's easy to do.  In D&D, it wasn't.

Well you could have ignored those abilities or I guess just crossed them out on your sheet. Of course you wouldn't be any better at the things you wanted to do just because you chose not to be better at the things you didn't want to do. So probably not a very satisfying solution for anyone who is used to games like Runequest/CoC/BRP, GURPS, or HERO games where you can choose what you focus on as well as what you don't focus on.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;829103What do you mean, specifically, I never got to play the original RQ except for MRQ, so I have no idea how it worked.  I'm genuinely curious.

Well, ok, RQ2 from Chaosium is the one probably most fondly remembered, and I think the most successful to date, you could see RQ6 as a hark back to that in terms of spirit and objectives ("a complete game in a book"). RQ2 was firmly set in Glorantha and lots of things about the design followed from that - strong and easy to use magic, Cult affiliation was very important, and a sense of place in a specific world. RQ3 was supposed to be the 'setting-free' version of RuneQuest without Glorantha as a setting, it introduced cultural backgrounds, fatigue, sorcery, and erm, ships into the rules, it wasn't very successful under Avalon Hill management.

So RQ2 and RQ3 were still married to Glorantha for the most part, character backgrounds and cultures were there in RQ3 but not very developed, this got expanded in supplements, Battle Magic (common magic) was strong, I think in RQ3 even stronger than RQ2, Sorcery as a system was virtually impossible to use for PCs - very slow to learn, convoluted to use, combat styles did not exist - every weapon a character used was tracked separately as a skill, no traits, a separate 'critical' (5%) and 'special' chance (20%) were calculated (for each skill...) the 'impale' was the only special effect in RQ2, combat maneuvers/special effects are completely new to MRQ2 and RQ6. Fatigue was handled differently in RQ3 and effectively unusable from memory, same goes for sorcery magic. Cults & Brotherhoods is a revision of the use of cults in RQ, it's now much broader - only religious cults existed in RQ2/3, and in general were very much focused on Glorantha without much attempt to make the structure work outside of the setting.

One of the big changes in RQ6 is the switch to Folk Magic from Common Magic, the rationale being Common Magic (if it really is supposed to be common) overshadows the other types for being powerful, cheap and easy to use. You could run around in RQ3 with Bladesharp 10 on your sword, and heal yourself with Heal 6, presumably dragging around power crystals to power your spells with, this super-magic-power-munchkin style of RQ I don't think fit with the sword & sorcery vision for RQ6. I think that's one of the reasons I think it's worth using RQ6 as a whole and resisting the temptation to graft on bits from earlier incarnations or from odd BRP sources - the re-write is an attempt to make the pieces compatible and work together in a unified whole.

Quote from: nDervish;829154Being "poison" does seem appropriate for a spider god...  :D

touché :p

Quote from: Bilharzia;829177One of the big changes in RQ6 is the switch to Folk Magic from Common Magic, the rationale being Common Magic (if it really is supposed to be common) overshadows the other types for being powerful, cheap and easy to use. You could run around in RQ3 with Bladesharp 10 on your sword, and heal yourself with Heal 6, presumably dragging around power crystals to power your spells with, this super-magic-power-munchkin style of RQ I don't think fit with the sword & sorcery vision for RQ6.

While RQ3, did remove that caps on Bladesharp-4 and Protection-4, so that in theory someone could cast Bladesharp-10, in practice I never saw anyone get close to that powerful of a Bladesharp spell even for Runelord/Runepriest PCs with years of adventuring. Personally I like the limits from RQ2, but more from a theoretical concern with Bladesharp-10 than any concern that it is in practice possible for anyone to cast other than a munchkin NPC. That sort of highly stacked spell casting was more of a problem for sorcery as I recall.

Fatigue was perfectly workable, it just was a pain to track in the same way that many people find tracking arrows and torches a logistical pain.

Quote from: Bren;829191While RQ3, did remove that caps on Bladesharp-4 and Protection-4, so that in theory someone could cast Bladesharp-10, in practice I never saw anyone get close to that powerful of a Bladesharp spell even for Runelord/Runepriest PCs with years of adventuring. Personally I like the limits from RQ2, but more from a theoretical concern with Bladesharp-10 than any concern that it is in practice possible for anyone to cast other than a munchkin NPC. That sort of highly stacked spell casting was more of a problem for sorcery as I recall.

Fatigue was perfectly workable, it just was a pain to track in the same way that many people find tracking arrows and torches a logistical pain.

Pretty sure I'm exaggerating with the bladesharp-10, fairly sure though that published NPCs had 6 to 8 levels of heal, bludgeon and bladesharp, which is +30% to +40%, +6 to +8 damage, matched against similar levels of Protection was just....uhhhhhnnn. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that if you want a highly magical battle, and maybe it fits Glorantha, I just think it's an awkward fit outside of that. The major 'problem' with battle magic is there didn't seem much use for the other magic types beyond some Rune magic "I win" spells which admittedly is what it's for. The Folk magic change makes sense to me but I know a lot of old grogs who didn't like it.

The issue of fatigue with me was having an armour set and equipment which made you start out 'fresh' ...already suffering fatigue, don't think we ever used it.

Quote from: Bilharzia;829193Pretty sure I'm exaggerating with the bladesharp-10, fairly sure though that published NPCs had 6 to 8 levels of heal, bludgeon and bladesharp, ...

I don't recall those levels for NPCs outside of Dorastor, but I may have just blocked it out of my mind. Outside of the stats for the Poor, Average, Good, and Excellent warriors in the Vikings pack, none of whom had spells anywhere near that powerful, I didn't use NPCs from RQ3 so it is possible I am misremembering.

QuoteThe major 'problem' with battle magic is there didn't seem much use for the other magic types beyond some Rune magic "I win" spells which admittedly is what it's for. The Folk magic change makes sense to me but I know a lot of old grogs who didn't like it.

I don't understand what you are saying here. Could you give me an example of what Folk magic does that you like better?

QuoteThe issue of fatigue with me was having an armour set and equipment which made you start out 'fresh' ...already suffering fatigue, don't think we ever used it.

Yeah, that was counter intuitive. Not necessarily bad or wrong, but definitely counter intuitive. Fatigue did provide a solution for a high level vs. high level fight where neither party can hit the other without an impale or even a critical hit.

It also simulated a fight where the lighter armored or higher stamina fighter could wear down his opponent to the point that he could score a telling blow after his foe was exhausted. The fact that the fatigue cost for a round of combat was the same for a 30% attack/parry poor militia levy fighter as it was for a highly experienced excellent 80% attack/parry warrior was not very realistic though. And as I said, tracking the -1 Fatigue per round was a logistical PITA. A simpler house rule would be to only refigure Fatigue every 5 rounds rather than every round. Less arithmetic that way. Simple counting slashes would make it easy to track when to adjust Fatigue by 5 points.

Quote from: Bren;829197I don't understand what you are saying here. Could you give me an example of what Folk magic does that you like better?

It's less powerful, simple as that.

Quote from: Bilharzia;829086the only Legend publication I've bought was Spider God's Bride which was awful, not saying they all are, but that thing was poison.

Just as an aside, are you referencing the original (bad) Legend conversion or the subsequent (by all accounts much better) revised version?

I've only ever had the original D&D version but would obviously like one with Legend stats if the Mongoose didn't botch fixing their previous botch.

Quote from: Bilharzia;829200It's less powerful, simple as that.

How much less powerful? Is it like being limited to Bladesharp-4? Like being limited to Bladesharp-1? Or is it just mechanically useless?

Quote from: Simlasa;829202Just as an aside, are you referencing the original (bad) Legend conversion or the subsequent (by all accounts much better) revised version?

I've only ever had the original D&D version but would obviously like one with Legend stats if the Mongoose didn't botch fixing their previous botch.

Both, although the revised is definitely better. I bought the first Legend conversion when it first came out and like you already had the d20 from Xoth.net. The first attempt was so bad it put me off Mongoose for life. The fixes were ok but the Legend version also cut material from the original which in some cases made the conversion actually worse to use because someone who *only* had the Legend version was missing sections from the d20... I had already started my RQ6 conversion so was interested what a "professional" publisher would do. Holy cow, I was not prepared. A shame because there was potential there.

Edit: if you wanted to run it from the d20, I would just use the RQ6 Encounter generator, generate whatever you think is suitable and go with that. I think you would probably get a better result than even the revised Legend edition, and do your own work to fill in the rest. The thing is .... it's $5 MORE expensive even now than Monster Island which is entirely original, the Legend version is JUST a conversion and at that, half-hearted.

Quote from: Bren;829203How much less powerful? Is it like being limited to Bladesharp-4? Like being limited to Bladesharp-1? Or is it just mechanically useless?

Not at all useless but definitely and deliberately lower powered, for example, Folk Magic version of Bladesharp increases the damage step by one die, eg. Great Axe is 2d6+2, with Bladesharp becomes 2d8+2, no stacking, 1mp. The rationale for the change is that Folk magic isn't as powerful but is truly 'folk' - ie. low-ish powered generally used magic which is trumped by more powerful sorcery, divine, spirit, if any of those are used in your campaign setting.

RE: high level battle magic NPCs - yep, I'm talking about RQ3.

Quote from: Bilharzia;829205I had already started my RQ6 conversion so was interested what a "professional" publisher would do. Holy cow, I was not prepared. A shame because there was potential there.

*sigh* fucking Mongoose...

Quote from: Bren;829191That sort of highly stacked spell casting was more of a problem for sorcery as I recall.

There was a mistake in the Games Workshop reprinting for the Multispell skill, which meant that firing off simultaneous two Venom Intensity 4 spells cost 5 magic points (4+1 per extra spell) rather than 8 (4 per spell).

Since many spells had an effect even if you resisted the spell,  you can see where this is going - sorcerers found it far more effective to "machine-gun" a lot of low-Intensity spells at a single target than to cast a single high-Intensity spell.

Pre-internet of course, so we never saw any errata...

Also, Folk Magic.  I like that it's low-powered and has a single effect.  A lot of the spells now have descriptions of mundane uses - Bladesharp for sharpening a tool for example, or Bludgeon to help with threshing.  It feels like everyday minor charms.  

Previously, and I'm thinking RQ3 here, there was a bit of a metagame going on with spells like Heal, where everyone really wanted Heal 6 to reattached severed limbs.  Now it will cure minor wounds but only stabilise something major.  And give pain relief for bellyache too :)

Quote from: Bilharzia;829205Not at all useless but definitely and deliberately lower powered, for example, Folk Magic version of Bladesharp increases the damage step by one die, eg. Great Axe is 2d6+2, with Bladesharp becomes 2d8+2, no stacking, 1mp. The rationale for the change is that Folk magic isn't as powerful but is truly 'folk' - ie. low-ish powered generally used magic which is trumped by more powerful sorcery, divine, spirit, if any of those are used in your campaign setting.

How long does it last?

Unless it is even shorter in duration that the 10 melee rounds for Battlemagic/Spirit Magic in RQ1-3, that Folk Magic spell is Magic Point for Magic Point actually more powerful than Bladesharp. For 1 Magic Point of Folk Magic you get an increase in average damage of 2 points and an increase in maximum damage of 4 points. In RQ1-3 you would get an increase of 1 point average and maximum damage for a 1MP spell and even with a rare magic item focusing crystal that doubles the effect you would still only increase the maximum damage by 2 points not 4 points.

Quote from: Momotaro;829209Previously, and I'm thinking RQ3 here, there was a bit of a metagame going on with spells like Heal, where everyone really wanted Heal 6 to reattached severed limbs.  Now it will cure minor wounds but only stabilise something major.  And give pain relief for bellyache too :)

That wasn't just an RQ3 thing.  In Runequest 2 (and likely RQ1 as well) people tended to acquire either Healing-2 (since it was required to automatically stop bleeding) or Healing-6 (since it repaired/reattached limbs). I always assumed the effect of Healing-2 and Healing-6 was known in Glorantha not just in the rules. So I wouldn't call that a metagame effect. I assumed all trained healers as well as anyone who did or received a lot of healing (like warriors, soldiers, PCs, or wise old folks in your village or tribe) knew what Healing-2 and Healing-6 did.

Quote from: Momotaro;829209Also, Folk Magic.  I like that it's low-powered and has a single effect.  A lot of the spells now have descriptions of mundane uses - Bladesharp for sharpening a tool for example, or Bludgeon to help with threshing.  It feels like everyday minor charms.  

Previously, and I'm thinking RQ3 here, there was a bit of a metagame going on with spells like Heal, where everyone really wanted Heal 6 to reattached severed limbs.  Now it will cure minor wounds but only stabilise something major.  And give pain relief for bellyache too :)

Yes I get the same sense with Folk magic, I think Luck Points have gone a long way in taking away the desire for the must-have Heal 6 spell, and there's less of a zero sum game there used to be with protection, bladesharp, bludgeon, pinging around.

Quote from: Bren;829211How long does it last?

Unless it is even shorter in duration that the 10 melee rounds for Battlemagic/Spirit Magic in RQ1-3, that Folk Magic spell is Magic Point for Magic Point actually more powerful than Bladesharp. For 1 Magic Point of Folk Magic you get an increase in average damage of 2 points and an increase in maximum damage of 4 points.

Yep, in this case it's not too bad. It would be better to say "less prone to abuse" since the Folk version doesn't get any better than that, whereas the old Battle magic does, as long as you have the MP. The Folk version also doesn't boost the hit %, where Bladesharp 4 is giving you +20% to hit as well as +4 damage. Its a good example of how the system has been re-thought.

Edit: duration is "per scene" which could be an encounter. To give another example, Protection is now -1d3 damage, lasting until the first hit.

Quote from: Bilharzia;829215Yep, in this case it's not too bad. It would be better to say "less prone to abuse" since the Folk version doesn't get any better than that, whereas the old Battle magic does, as long as you have the MP. The Folk version also doesn't boost the hit %, where Bladesharp 4 is giving you +20% to hit as well as +4 damage. Its a good example of how the system has been re-thought.

Edit: duration is "per scene" which could be an encounter. To give another example, Protection is now -1d3 damage, lasting until the first hit.

So for bladesharp it has the same or longer* duration, damage is higher, but no bonus to attack chance. Sounds like it is as powerful and in a few cases (long scenes) a bit more powerful. But limited to only 1 point so less powerful in potential and for tough characters.

For protection it has the same or longer* duration, higher power for one hit, but gone after the hit (which is how countermagic worked in RQ1-3).


* I recall battlemagic spells like bladesharp and protection wearing off in a few of our combats, especially combats that started at range or involved mounts, caves, or fortifications.

Quote from: Bren;829219So for bladesharp it has the same or longer* duration, damage is higher, but no bonus to attack chance. Sounds like it is as powerful and in a few cases (long scenes) a bit more powerful. But limited to only 1 point so less powerful in potential and for tough characters.

For protection it has the same or longer* duration, higher power for one hit, but gone after the hit (which is how countermagic worked in RQ1-3).


* I recall battlemagic spells like bladesharp and protection wearing off in a few of our combats, especially combats that started at range or involved mounts, caves, or fortifications.

In this case, Protection is quite a bit weaker in Folk, since the Battle magic version is going to stay there across a whole fight, so even at one point, its stronger than the Folk version after 2 hits. In RQ6, if you want the same kind of power, this is exactly why you might want to use Sorcery instead.

Duration is mostly the same across spells. RQ Essentials is there for download if you want to take a look.

Quote from: Bilharzia;829205Edit: if you wanted to run it from the d20, I would just use the RQ6 Encounter generator, generate whatever you think is suitable and go with that. I think you would probably get a better result than even the revised Legend edition, and do your own work to fill in the rest.

Since you brought up running the d20 version of a module in RQ/BRP...  Any tips for that sort of thing in general, more on the design side than the nitty-gritty of converting stats, etc.?  There are a lot of good (or at least decent) D&D/d20/OSR modules out there which I've considered adapting to RQ6, but there's a major difference in design philosophy regarding combat.  As in D&D-family games tend to assume multiple major fights, while RQ6 seems much less forgiving about repeated combats, especially if you're severely outnumbered, which also seems to happen a lot in D&D-style modules.

Quote from: Bren;829211For 1 Magic Point of Folk Magic you get an increase in average damage of 2 points and an increase in maximum damage of 4 points.

Note that the increase isn't always that large, it's just an artifact of the chosen example having been a greataxe.  If it had been, say, a shortsword, the increase would be from 1d6 to 1d8 (+1 average/+2 max damage).  So, in RQ6, Bladesharp the weapons doing 2 dice of damage first, I guess.  (Or those doing 1d10 damage, which steps up to 2d6.)

Quote from: nDervish;829277Note that the increase isn't always that large, it's just an artifact of the chosen example having been a greataxe.

Good point. That does weaken the effect for lower damage weapons.

I'm not sure that I prefer the effect scaling with the size of the weapon instead of being a flat +1 add though.

I had been thinking of picking up Spider God's Bride as well. It's really that bad then? What a shame. It looked really promising.

Quote from: nDervish;829277Since you brought up running the d20 version of a module in RQ/BRP...  Any tips for that sort of thing in general, more on the design side than the nitty-gritty of converting stats, etc.?  There are a lot of good (or at least decent) D&D/d20/OSR modules out there which I've considered adapting to RQ6, but there's a major difference in design philosophy regarding combat.  As in D&D-family games tend to assume multiple major fights, while RQ6 seems much less forgiving about repeated combats, especially if you're severely outnumbered, which also seems to happen a lot in D&D-style modules.

I think SGB is an exception because Morten gave it a sword & sorcery setting which moved it quite far away from typical d&d  - magic mysterious rare and weird, monsters are monstrous (and few), combat is deadly, healing magic very scarce. All of which ironically makes it better suited for a RQ/BRP game in the first place. So I dont think I picked up much useful converting this, beyond the npcs and dealing with magic, which modules are you thinking would make good conversions for RQ6?

So is the d20 version actually a better buy, even if you want to run it with RuneQuest?

Quote from: Bilharzia;829294I think SGB is an exception because Morten gave it a sword & sorcery setting which moved it quite far away from typical d&d  - magic mysterious rare and weird, monsters are monstrous (and few), combat is deadly, healing magic very scarce. All of which ironically makes it better suited for a RQ/BRP game in the first place. So I dont think I picked up much useful converting this, beyond the npcs and dealing with magic,

Fair enough.

Quote from: Bilharzia;829294which modules are you thinking would make good conversions for RQ6?

I'm trying to put together an RQ6 campaign based on the Hyperborea setting from Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea[1].  If I can get players together for it, I'm thinking about trying to bring over the published AS&SH modules[2], but I haven't actually bought any of them to look at yet.  They could already be monster-light, like you described SGB, but I'm assuming that they're combat-fests simply because it's a D&D-derived system.


[1] AS&SH is a 1e AD&D clone, minus the Tolkein, plus REHoward/CASmith/HPLovecraft - "There are no dragons here either. This game is Dungeons & Elder Things."

[2] Rats in the Walls, Charnel Crypt of the Sightless Serpent...



ETA:  After posting this, I noticed that DTRPG said I'd already bought Charnel Crypt of the Sightless Serpent.  So I found it and, a quick scan of the map key shows:

Spoiler

Room 2: 500 bats
Room 5: 2 rust monsters
Room 9: The Sightless Serpent (unique basilisk)
Room 11: 30 skeletons
Room 14: 2 ghouls, 7 skeletons
Room 18: 9 zombies, 1 necromancer

...out of 18 rooms total.

Offhand, I'd say it doesn't seem particularly bad in terms of the frequency of where monsters are present, but the numbers of monsters encountered at a time would most likely need to be toned down considerably, although I suppose assigning them low combat style scores and/or using the Rabble/Underling rules might make it survivable.

Quote from: markfitz;829301So is the d20 version actually a better buy, even if you want to run it with RuneQuest?

I would recommend the original XP1 from Xoth.net since it's $10 and probably good value just for the setting, characters, locations, ideas and plots. I don't want to over-praise it as a lot of it is very directly derived from CAS Zothique setting, Howard's Hyboria, and a bit of Lovecraft so it might not strike you as that original, it's all quite familiar without being exactly the same. What annoyed me about the Legend conversion, beyond the disastrous first published version, is that it's a missed opportunity - there's no development to make the most of the new ruleset and the thing is just so ugly, the design and layout in the original is better. The other thing to say about it is that it would have been much better suited to RQ6 but that's a by-the-by. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I think now with the the RQ6 encounter tool, I don't think $20 is going to get you much, the re-write has taken it from execrable to workmanlike.

Quote from: nDervish;829302I'm trying to put together an RQ6 campaign based on the Hyperborea setting from Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea.

Offhand, I'd say it doesn't seem particularly bad in terms of the frequency of where monsters are present, but the numbers of monsters encountered at a time would most likely need to be toned down considerably, although I suppose assigning them low combat style scores and/or using the Rabble/Underling rules might make it survivable.

I think part of the issue is that RQ style S&S tends to be about a few major antagonists and their motivations and plotting & scheming, with very little of the 'trash mobs' that D&D features more of. SGB has more of a Clark Ashton Smith flavour than anything else, and as such generally features corrupt, devious humans (or who appear to be humans....) than lots of monsters, when the monsters are present they are one-offs, wierd and dangerous. I don't know how the ASSH adventures are set up. Have you got Monster Island? that might give a few pointers.

D6 fantasy, WEG Hercules & Xena...also both super easy to learn and adapt to the setting you like best.

Quote from: Ravenswing;829135Nope, I don't agree -- it seems you're still thinking in the lockstep character class paradigm of D&D.

No, I'm not.  There are three major 'archetypes' in most fantasy literature that you can map most characters to.  The Fighting Man, the Expert and the Magic User.  Even characters that do multiple archetypes does one of those three as their main.  Wizard who are Warriors, or magic assassins or wandering dueling thieves, all three archetypes are pretty much the central focus of most Fantasy settings.  A few of them focus on a single archetype, but even if they don't, they are there and if you look, you can see it.

Quote from: Ravenswing;829135Follow down to the next paragraph in my post, where I tie all of that into being a powerful wizard.  My point is that there's nothing -- and shouldn't be -- mutually exclusive by definition about wizardry and stealth / weapon skill / streetwise / survival, except in so far that the time I'm improving one skill is time not spent improving another.

Here's the funny thing, if I was mapping the 'character' to D&D, then I would point out that most Wizards, once you get high enough, can do all that without chance of failure, because all the utility magic in D&D does it all and it never fails.

However, the thing is, whether or not use magic as a wizard, you still want to be a 'rogue' archetype, you want to sneak around (whether by skill or by magic), you want to unlock and disable traps and locks, you want to have a bit of street knowledge, some survival skill, because of experience, and the ability to have a skill with a weapon in case your magic doesn't work.

That sounds like the skilled expert that uses magic.  Rogue archetype.  It's not a bad thing to be able to map a character to an archetype.  It's easy to play, you get a focus to work with.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;829389However, the thing is, whether or not use magic as a wizard, you still want to be a 'rogue' archetype, you want to sneak around (whether by skill or by magic), you want to unlock and disable traps and locks, you want to have a bit of street knowledge, some survival skill, because of experience, and the ability to have a skill with a weapon in case your magic doesn't work.

That sounds like the skilled expert that uses magic.  Rogue archetype.  It's not a bad thing to be able to map a character to an archetype.  It's easy to play, you get a focus to work with.

I think he specifically said dhe idn't want to do locks and traps. Let's see...

Quote from: Ravenswing;829135See, I wanted to be a certain type of thief.  I wanted to be stealthy.  I wanted to know how to climb.  I wanted to be able to pull cons, and have good sleight of hand and bluffing skills.  Pickpocketing, sure, that was useful too.

What I didn't want was knowledge of disarming traps.  I had no use for lockpicking skill.  I wasn't interested in backstabbing.

In most skill systems, that's easy to do.  In D&D, it wasn't.

Yep, the ole memory still works now and then. He doesn't want locks or traps.  

Therefore he doesn't want a D&D Thief/Rogue. What archetype, Jungian or otherwise, someone else wants to classify his character as is pretty irrelevant to the fact that D&D classes, by design, don't do want he wants for his character. You do really seem locked into a D&D-style divide characters into classes mindset.

You can do that in second AD&D and third edition D&D as you distribute points to your skills in those.

(runs like hell)

Quote from: David Johansen;829448You can do that in second AD&D and third edition D&D as you distribute points to your skills in those.

(runs like hell)

That was one thing I really liked in 2nd Ed: customize your thief skills to emphasize what you want to be good at.  That and the options for different types of wizards were pretty cool.  But I suppose I can just modify 1st Ed and do the same stuff since I only have Basic and Expert and 1st Ed AD&D now...gave away 2nd at some point and have never even seen the later versions.

But fantasy archetypes in general: blah.

Quote from: Bren;829172Well you could have ignored those abilities or I guess just crossed them out on your sheet. Of course you wouldn't be any better at the things you wanted to do just because you chose not to be better at the things you didn't want to do. So probably not a very satisfying solution for anyone who is used to games like Runequest/CoC/BRP, GURPS, or HERO games where you can choose what you focus on as well as what you don't focus on.

No, not at all a satisfying solution: it was the moral equivalent in a skill-based system of "So, I know you don't want those skills, but I'm compelling you to put X points in them anyway.  Too bad for you."

Quote from: Bren;829430Yep, the ole memory still works now and then. He doesn't want locks or traps. Therefore he doesn't want a D&D Thief/Rogue. What archetype, Jungian or otherwise, someone else wants to classify his character as is pretty irrelevant to the fact that D&D classes, by design, don't do want he wants for his character. You do really seem locked into a D&D-style divide characters into classes mindset.

Yep ... and any time I see someone talking about "fantasy archetypes" as a defense of character classes, I'm struck by how often the list of archetypes falls into lockstep with the classes in the favored system.  It's self-justifying, and completely subjective.  (It's also bizarre, given the number of seminal RPG authors, such as Tolkien and Leiber, whose characters break the archetypes.)

Ultimately, the reason I won't play in a class-based system is as you allude: I refuse to play to anyone else's notion of what my character ought to look like.

Quote from: nDervish;829277Since you brought up running the d20 version of a module in RQ/BRP...  Any tips for that sort of thing in general, more on the design side than the nitty-gritty of converting stats, etc.?  There are a lot of good (or at least decent) D&D/d20/OSR modules out there which I've considered adapting to RQ6, but there's a major difference in design philosophy regarding combat.  As in D&D-family games tend to assume multiple major fights, while RQ6 seems much less forgiving about repeated combats, especially if you're severely outnumbered, which also seems to happen a lot in D&D-style modules.

It's surprisingly easy, once you rid yourself of the notion that there's a conversion chart which will accurately translate STR from one system into another, or archery skill from one system into another.

Even if I don't know a system worth beans, it isn't hard to tell -- by way of comparison -- how good a character is.  If a NPC is described as being very strong, and his Might score of 14 is the highest I can see in the scenario, I presume that high is good, low is bad, and that 14 must be some impressive.  If crunchies are 2nd level, skilled warriors are 4th level, the Queen's Blademistress is 7th level and the Grand Undefeated Champion Gladiator of the Imperial Arena is 10th level, I've got a notion of what they're likely to be able to do.  I can translate that into my system of choice, because after nearly thirty years of playing it, I know full well what a Grand Undefeated Imperial Champion ought to look like vs a mook street thug.

And who cares if I hit the numbers exactly?  Except in so far as my players' lives are made easier by weaker NPCs, they don't care -- and they won't notice -- whether I translate the Magistra of the Seven Truths as having IQ 13 vs 14 vs 15, or if I give the Big Bad's chief lieutenant Rapier-16 vs Rapier-17.

Quote from: Ravenswing;829811It's surprisingly easy ...

Yes, but he is saying "stats to one side, how do you convert d20/d&d to RQ ?"
So the question is more about how scenario or encounter design is different between d20/d&d and RQ. Even if you get stat conversion 'right' theres a difference in style which doesn't translate easily.

Quote from: Bilharzia;829881Yes, but he is saying "stats to one side, how do you convert d20/d&d to RQ ?"
So the question is more about how scenario or encounter design is different between d20/d&d and RQ. Even if you get stat conversion 'right' theres a difference in style which doesn't translate easily.

Well, if the question really boiled down to "How can I make RQ combat work just like D&D's?" that's a different one altogether.

And I disagree -- that's even easier to change.  Double PC hit points.  Treble PC hit points.  Halve NPC armor protection.  Disallow critical hits on PCs.  Whatever.  There's no system in creation that fixes like those can't be implemented in no more time than it takes to articulate them to the players.

Quote from: Bilharzia;829881Yes, but he is saying "stats to one side, how do you convert d20/d&d to RQ ?"
So the question is more about how scenario or encounter design is different between d20/d&d and RQ. Even if you get stat conversion 'right' theres a difference in style which doesn't translate easily.

Yes, exactly.

Quote from: Ravenswing;829895Well, if the question really boiled down to "How can I make RQ combat work just like D&D's?" that's a different one altogether.

And I disagree -- that's even easier to change.  Double PC hit points.  Treble PC hit points.  Halve NPC armor protection.  Disallow critical hits on PCs.  Whatever.  There's no system in creation that fixes like those can't be implemented in no more time than it takes to articulate them to the players.

No, I was asking about scenario design, not stats.  I mean, it's right there in the initial question that you quoted:

Quote from: nDervish;829277Any tips for that sort of thing in general, more on the design side than the nitty-gritty of converting stats, etc.?  There are a lot of good (or at least decent) D&D/d20/OSR modules out there which I've considered adapting to RQ6, but there's a major difference in design philosophy regarding combat.  As in D&D-family games tend to assume multiple major fights, while RQ6 seems much less forgiving about repeated combats, especially if you're severely outnumbered, which also seems to happen a lot in D&D-style modules.

I don't give a fuck about mapping D&D STR to RQ STR or how many HP something has.  LIke you said, that's easy.

I'm wondering "D&D focuses on dungeon crawling with a zillion monsters in every room.  When combat appears in RQ, it seems to focus on smaller, less frequent, more individually-meaningful fights.  Are there any useful techniques for converting from one design philosophy to the other?" (i.e., revising the adventure to keep the concept, flavor, and basic structure, but with fewer and more individually-meaningful fights) not "How can I tweak RQ so that the characters can survive a dungeon crawl with a zillion monsters in every room?"  I want to adjust the D&D adventure to fit the RQ system, not to play RQ as if it were D&D.

Quote from: nDervish;829919I'm wondering "D&D focuses on dungeon crawling with a zillion monsters in every room.  When combat appears in RQ, it seems to focus on smaller, less frequent, more individually-meaningful fights.  Are there any useful techniques for converting from one design philosophy to the other?" (i.e., revising the adventure to keep the concept, flavor, and basic structure, but with fewer and more individually-meaningful fights) not "How can I tweak RQ so that the characters can survive a dungeon crawl with a zillion monsters in every room?"  I want to adjust the D&D adventure to fit the RQ system, not to play RQ as if it were D&D.

• Focus on the individually meaningful fights.
• Get rid of any crappy, boring monsters. The resources the PCs have available tend to be less in RQ so you don't need or want the waves of resource exhausting encounters that some D&D adventures use.
• Empty many of the rooms because the dungeon doesn't have a zillion monsters and RQ tends towards a more naturalistic ecology for its dungeons and ruins than does D&D.  
• Limit the total number of monsters available so that even a wandering monster table will end up with blanks on the table as monsters are eliminated.
• Some (possibly many) of the encounters on the table should be pre-defined, pre-statted groups that no longer appear once eliminated and that have a lair in or around the dungeon. So if table entry #7 is party of six goblins and the PCs eliminate those goblins, then six goblings are gone from Level II, Room #5(the goblins' lair).
• RQ monsters have motivations of their own and may want to avoid or negotiate with a well armed group of PCs. The goblins might be willing to ally with the PCs to get rid of the ogre who demands a tribute of one goblin a month on the ogre feast day.

Scenario design is more about scenario than game. If we use the old Shadows on the Borderlands for RQ as an example, it contains enough monsters and evil priests to make your average D&D-module hang its head in shame.
Which can make it very nasty for inexperienced, foolhardy and bloodthirsty characters. But inexperienced characters were probably not meant to enter the bowels of the Dyskund Caverns.

Quote from: Bren;829955

• Focus on the individually meaningful fights.
• Get rid of any crappy, boring monsters. The resources the PCs have available tend to be less in RQ so you don't need or want the waves of resource exhausting encounters that some D&D adventures use.
• Empty many of the rooms because the dungeon doesn't have a zillion monsters and RQ tends towards a more naturalistic ecology for its dungeons and ruins than does D&D.  
• Limit the total number of monsters available so that even a wandering monster table will end up with blanks on the table as monsters are eliminated.
• Some (possibly many) of the encounters on the table should be pre-defined, pre-statted groups that no longer appear once eliminated and that have a lair in or around the dungeon. So if table entry #7 is party of six goblins and the PCs eliminate those goblins, then six goblings are gone from Level II, Room #5(the goblins' lair).
• RQ monsters have motivations of their own and may want to avoid or negotiate with a well armed group of PCs. The goblins might be willing to ally with the PCs to get rid of the ogre who demands a tribute of one goblin a month on the ogre feast day.

This is a very good start. Although D&D can also of course be played like this, I'd pay a lot of attention to the more naturalistic ecology and motivations and interrelations between the monsters. RuneQuest is much more likely to favour negotiation and playing one faction off against another. Check out Snakepipe Hollow for an example of what a great and deadly old-school RuneQuest dungeon crawl can look like.

There is the Classic Fantasy supplement for BRP which is about running BRP fantasy in a D&D mode... AND, IIRC, the new edition of Classic Fantasy is going to be for RQ6.
The first one was pretty useful when I was looking to run ToEE using BRP.

Here's a description (http://basicroleplaying.org/topic/1328-classic-fantasy-a-return-to-the-dawn-of-roleplaying/) of the original on BRP Central

Quote from: baragei;829968Scenario design is more about scenario than game. If we use the old Shadows on the Borderlands for RQ as an example, it contains enough monsters and evil priests to make your average D&D-module hang its head in shame.
Which can make it very nasty for inexperienced, foolhardy and bloodthirsty characters. But inexperienced characters were probably not meant to enter the bowels of the Dyskund Caverns.

Having played MRQ and various editions of D&D, and hearing this, I have to ask, what IS the difference?  I mean, I've seen all sorts of adventures go both the apparently, 'D&D' way as well as the 'RQ' way for just about any gaming system, D&D and RQ and any other you may think of.

There doesn't seem to be a set pattern.  Some RQ adventures have a lot of mini mobs you have to fight through, like a D&D game, whereas some D&D adventures, every single fight is meaningful and potentially life threatening, like in RQ.  There doesn't seem to be a differentiating factor, outside of game system.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;830137what IS the difference

Personal preference and cultural (such as it is) inertia?
I've latched on to BRP as a go-to system, I don't particularly care for D&D. So when it comes to games, I tend to think in d100-terms.
The monster- and trapfilled dungeon crawl is the archetypical D&D-playstyle, while the heavily cultured and religioned up setting is the archetypical RQ-playstyle. Even if there are plenty of examples that break those molds.

D&D does dungeoncrawling well with its attritional mechanics and resource management. RQ can do as too, but as it lacks the battle attrition and goes straight to the crippling/killing blows, it makes fighting and hidden traps much more potentially devastating. So wise RQ-players learn that the hard way seldom is the best way.

Quote from: Bren;829955

• Focus on the individually meaningful fights.
• Get rid of any crappy, boring monsters. The resources the PCs have available tend to be less in RQ so you don't need or want the waves of resource exhausting encounters that some D&D adventures use.
• Empty many of the rooms because the dungeon doesn't have a zillion monsters and RQ tends towards a more naturalistic ecology for its dungeons and ruins than does D&D.  
• Limit the total number of monsters available so that even a wandering monster table will end up with blanks on the table as monsters are eliminated.
• Some (possibly many) of the encounters on the table should be pre-defined, pre-statted groups that no longer appear once eliminated and that have a lair in or around the dungeon. So if table entry #7 is party of six goblins and the PCs eliminate those goblins, then six goblings are gone from Level II, Room #5(the goblins' lair).
• RQ monsters have motivations of their own and may want to avoid or negotiate with a well armed group of PCs. The goblins might be willing to ally with the PCs to get rid of the ogre who demands a tribute of one goblin a month on the ogre feast day.

Quote from: markfitz;830043This is a very good start. Although D&D can also of course be played like this, I'd pay a lot of attention to the more naturalistic ecology and motivations and interrelations between the monsters. RuneQuest is much more likely to favour negotiation and playing one faction off against another. Check out Snakepipe Hollow for an example of what a great and deadly old-school RuneQuest dungeon crawl can look like.

Thanks!

Quote from: Christopher Brady;830137Having played MRQ and various editions of D&D, and hearing this, I have to ask, what IS the difference?  I mean, I've seen all sorts of adventures go both the apparently, 'D&D' way as well as the 'RQ' way for just about any gaming system, D&D and RQ and any other you may think of.

There doesn't seem to be a set pattern.  Some RQ adventures have a lot of mini mobs you have to fight through, like a D&D game, whereas some D&D adventures, every single fight is meaningful and potentially life threatening, like in RQ.  There doesn't seem to be a differentiating factor, outside of game system.

It's not a hard-and-fast requirement for D&D to be one way and RQ to be another, but in general D&D tends to favor a more combat/trick/trap-centric design and RQ tends to be more naturalistic (to steal others' descriptor for it).  I'm not at all surprised that each game has published scenarios which fit the other's stereotype, but those seem to be the general trends for each.

Part of it is about what's baked into the characters at creation. In D&D you have character classes which often tell you something about the role a character will play in a dungeon exploration style game. Thieves for scouting ahead and dealing with traps and locks, fighters for the muscle in battle, clerics for healing and combat back up, magic users for big damage area effects and utility spell puzzle solving ... In RuneQuest you don't have these easily defined roles and each character to differing degrees may be able to do a little of them. However, you do have characters being far more defined by their cultures, religions, cults and brotherhoods. Even if you don't play in Glorantha where it's practically a given, RuneQuest adventures still often turn on the characters' place in society, ranks within cults and guilds, and they often quest for magical and religious purposes. Clash of civilisations and faction politics is very important, and you find that even in a dungeon crawl like Snakepipe Hollow, the religious aspect of the Broos' enclave, the characters' attitude to Chaos, the remnants of a previous civilisation and its religious and cultural history all come into play.

This is OF COURSE not to say that there aren't many D&D games that also revolve around these things, but in RuneQuest it's baked in at character creation. What culture your character is from is one of the first questions you ask, followed by what magic does the character have. Each different magic system, and within that each source of magic, says something about your character's world view and cosmology. And all of these details are sources of conflict and adventure hooks. Even NOT using magic can be a statement about your character's attitude to the world, if you're playing in a magic rich campaign. Even then, you're likely to have some relationship, if not be a member, of some cult or brotherhood, which is a great source of adventure ideas.

Finally, in terms of combat, you can certainly play heroes wading through hordes of monsters in RQ especially using sixth edition's Rabble rules, but you're never actually safe from that one spear-carrier who gets a critical impale on you. In D&D you're pretty safe from a single stab in the dark from a low level opponent. Just this fact tends to totally change the dynamic around combat, or rather conflict, as actual knives out may be a last resort rather than the general charge approach of a lot of D&D.

Admittedly, D&D 5E has backgrounds bonds and flaws for those who want their character tied into the game world more closely, and you can adjust the hit point economy and availability of healing for a much grittier, combat-wary feel, and you could always, as Ravenswing suggests, double hit points in each location for RuneQuest characters for a more epic, cutting swathes through the hordes experience, but the default in each game tends towards one extreme or the other.

To see the difference between RQ and D&D, it's often as simple as asking how a character would be described. In one you would tend to mention class and subclass, level, perhaps a signature magic weapon or other item, while in the other you would tend to define the character by their home culture, cult or brotherhood rank, and signature magic or combat style.

Another aspect to making adventures more RQ is making treasure more culturally specific than the bog standard pile of gp - ancient foreign currency, ivory figurines, fragments of a tapestry etc

Quote from: Sean !;830220Another aspect to making adventures more RQ is making treasure more culturally specific than the bog standard pile of gp - ancient foreign currency, ivory figurines, fragments of a tapestry etc

There's an awesome table in Monster Island for doing just that. It generates treasure that comes from a mixture of savage tribes and ancient snake-people empires, and even older forgotten cataclysmed human empires and embellishes the items by material, decoration, etc. There's also wicked stuff for generating narcotics, poisons and so on. Hell, if you're running a jungle/lost world/tropical island setting, no matter what the system, that book really is a must. I defy anyone to read it and not have swords and sorcery adventures bleeding out their eyes ....

For all the love Runequest gets, I think The Fantasy Trip is a better skills-based system.

Quote from: Brad;830294For all the love Runequest gets, I think The Fantasy Trip is a better skills-based system.

TFT gets less love because it is too hex gamey, it doesn't have enough stats, it was replaced by GURPS, and it never had the support RQ got.

Quote from: Brad;830294For all the love Runequest gets, I think The Fantasy Trip is a better skills-based system.

I do too.  I thought long and hard before converting my campaign from TFT to GURPS, and nearly went back to TFT when I restarted in 2003.  I still think it's the system I'd most recommend to newbies.

I started with d100 games based on the old BRP system back in the day so I never got the D&D experience that many have. I prefer skill based systems probably due to it going back to my starting rpg (Drakar och Demoner), which set the tone and standard for me (a measuring stick if you will). Levels and so on was never something I got into until later and the horrendous AD&D experience my group and I had definitively shaped our perceptions on D&D and level based games in general.

The main difference between skill based systems and D&D IMO was that as you gained levels in D&D you gained HP and a plethora of abilities whilst in skill-based systems you more or less stayed the same wrt HP and abilities (sans heroic powers that some games have) and skills became more important as you grew in experience. The end goals were often different as well with skill based systems became more and more about handling situations outside combat and so on compared to D&D where combat gave you experience (again coloured by perception of above mentioned experience).

Combat itself was more colourful and detailed in skill-based systems than D&D mostly due to HP being distributed over the body of the character instead of being a total value (in Drakar & Demoner anyway). This was something my players really enjoyed. It did slow down the fighting though and we seldom used mooks or even knew that this existed. I guess every opponent was important whether an orc or a BBG.

We ran less of dungeon crawling games than in D&D but that was probably more of a preference of the GM (me when it came to skill-based systems) than due to the system itself.

I think that skill based systems gives you more diversity and ability to create the character you want, something that a class / level based system might not always be able to do. So for me skill-based games (especially d100 and its cousins) feels more natural to play.

Quote from: Brad;830294For all the love Runequest gets, I think The Fantasy Trip is a better skills-based system.

Ditto. At least, if you are thinking about generic high fantasy, TFT gets the nod from me. If you think it's too hex gamey, you need to give it a whirl with someone who already knows how to play - it is actually really fast and fun. I played years and years of GURPs, but actually prefer TFT; its grouping of skills into talent 'packets' is simple and effective, and I like the limited number of stats. If you are interested, Heroes and Other Worlds is an in-print revival game of TFT. It modifies a couple of things in ways I wouldn't have done (strength scale; adding a fourth stat; weapon properties). But it's pretty cool and really, really well supported.

Quote from: Larsdangly;830473Ditto. At least, if you are thinking about generic high fantasy, TFT gets the nod from me. If you think it's too hex gamey, you need to give it a whirl with someone who already knows how to play - it is actually really fast and fun.

Own it. Played it when it first came out.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0Ao2R0hLbRymSdEpfVjlnbDVFQ20wbzh6Y2pCcW1oY3c

Shows the varieties of TFT and clones. At least one is free and will give you a taste of the system. As others have said, it's like GURPS but much simpler, basically because it doesn't have the advantages/disads, and the talent success rolls are all directly based off stats instead being tracked via separate skill levels. I.e. you either have a talent or not, and if you do, you succeed on 3d6 under the associated stat. Sometimes there are modifiers, the most common of which is having to roll 4d6 under Dex, instead of 3d6, if you're trying to hit someone who is dodging.

IIRC Brett Slocum has a lot of notes on the web for tweaking the system, if you feel it is necessary to do so. I think this includes making the talent system work a little bit more like the typical skill systems of other games, without going too complex.

Quote from: Brad;830294For all the love Runequest gets, I think The Fantasy Trip is a better skills-based system.

I wouldn't call it a 'skills-based system', it's an attribute-based system, if it is 'skills-based' it's not a good example of one. It may be of course a great game, I remember playing it as a simple but limited game, great for what it is and quite clearly a proto-Gurps system.

I'd throw in Talislanta as a skill-based system that's worth looking at. You can use the system setting neutral pretty easily if you pick up the OMNI-System book.

I'd just stick with Talislanta 4e. (And it's FREEEEEEEEEEEE (http://talislanta.com)).

Quote from: tenbones;830529I'd throw in Talislanta as a skill-based system that's worth looking at. You can use the system setting neutral pretty easily if you pick up the OMNI-System book.

I'd just stick with Talislanta 4e. (And it's FREEEEEEEEEEEE (http://talislanta.com)).

I have 2nd, 3rd and 4th...do you know if 5th is worth playing?

EDIT: Nevermind, reply in your Talislanta thread because that makes more sense.

Quote from: Bilharzia;830512I wouldn't call it a 'skills-based system', it's an attribute-based system, if it is 'skills-based' it's not a good example of one. It may be of course a great game, I remember playing it as a simple but limited game, great for what it is and quite clearly a proto-Gurps system.

If you never touch In The Labyrinth, then TFT is attributes-based. With ITL, it becomes skills-based, or closer to skills-based. Experience is still spent directly on raising attributes (but with a pretty strong diminishing returns). However your IQ governed how many points of talents you could have. Talents had varying costs and sometimes prereqs. If you had a talent, you could use it successfully on a roll under the appropriate attribute--usually Dex or IQ.

The interaction of selecting spells for non-wizards, or talents for wizards, is straightforward--basically it could be done but would cost more IQ.