Personally, I like both systems, but prefer RQ a little more.

The 100 word chargen is fairly easy, you just write down your character, then underline whatever seems to be an ability or important thing. Then you rewrite it to strip down the fluff and bring out other abilities, giving you a more streamlined character.

As Jeff said, the best thing to do is to focus on keywords and ignore individual abilities, unless they are important to the character. That way, you get a short, meaningful and powerful character description that could be written on an index card, if that's what you prefer. I'd use an A4 sheet, folded in half, as they are cheaper and allow you to write other things on.

Quote from: richaje;769477Well not really.

Yep. Really.

Quote from: richaje;769477In RuneQuest, combat is the heart of the rules engine. Its where all the whirly bits, the machine that goes ping, and all the other good bits of the rules system come out. It is clearly what the rules system is intended to focus on - providing exciting, SCA-style skirmish combat (by that I just mean single duels and aim missile attacks among relatively small groups of combatants) and a magic system carefully thought out to provide significant supernatural efforts for potentially every combat.

In HeroQuest 2, the rules engine for combat is exactly the same as using any other ability to overcome an obstacle. What you gain is that other abilities can end up being what generates the excitement, and you can get the whirly bits and the machine that goes ping out when a player says she wants her character to overcome a bunch of heavy cavalrymen with her "I am an Earth priestess" ability. Or gain the support of a bunch of dragonewts by successfully performing a "Graceful Dance" with them.

Of course RuneQuest doesn't have any kind of skill system or anything to govern those non-combat situations...oh wait...

Quote from: richaje;769477What you lose, of course, is the detailed SCA-style skirmish combats, since HQ2 simply doesn't try to model that. Additionally RQ is has an attritional mechanism to add excitement, while HQ2 focuses on pacing.

So RuneQuest focuses on what actually exists in the world, and HeroQuest focuses on the pacing of the Story we're all agreeing we are as players, telling.

Quote from: richaje;769477Both are substantially different game engines with a substantially different set of strengths and weaknesses. But hey, different strokes for different folk.

Different strokes for different folks is one thing...

Quote from: Robin LawsRQ is about robbing newtlings in the desert for their left thigh greaves. HQ is about playing the mythic historical events of Greg Stafford's fiction.

Is quite another, as is pretending that HeroQuest is unique in getting away from the D&Disms of going toe-to-toe with giants, as RuneQuest does that quite well.

If all you think RuneQuest can do is SCA-style combats or you think that if you're doing RuneQuest sessions without having SCA-style combats, you're missing the point of the RQ system, then got news for ya, it's you, not the system.

I guess all the people who play RuneQuest and like Glorantha should not shell out the hundreds of dollars for your Atlas, since all they want from the game system is a combat simulator?

Quote from: CRKrueger;769481Of course RuneQuest doesn't have any kind of skill system or anything to govern those non-combat situations...oh wait...

RuneQuest does have a skill system. But the skill system is a truncated engine compared to the combat system. So frex, in RuneQuest if I want to have a courtroom battle I use my Orate skill. I roll against that skill. If I succeed - hurrah, I win! If I fail - sadness ensues, because I lose!

RQ3 introduced the idea of opposed skills (although bits and pieces of that had been introduced in various RQ2 supplements if I recall), which sort of worked like a truncated combat, but without the whirly bits and machine that goes ping. One dice roll for the "defender" then one dice roll for the "attacker".

Now HeroQuest built on that and expanded it. So you have a Simple Contest which is just an opposed contest with two dice rolls, and an Extended Contest which occupies the same place as the old style combat, with lots of dice rolls and chances to use funky abilities and tactics to maximize your chances. But RQ really is combat-centric (not that there is anything wrong with it) and HQ really isn't.

As for whether either game focuses on what actually exists in the "game world", I don't subscribe to the GNS theories at all. RQ approaches the "game world" with a set of war game sensibilities, HQ approaches it with a set of story logic sensibilities. Neither is wrong or right, they are just different styles of having fun.

And yes, you can do mythic journeys with RuneQuest and you can do skirmish combat with HeroQuest. But that's not really playing to the strengths of the rule system, IMO.

As an aside, Robin Laws is also an old time RuneQuest player, as was Jonathan Tweet and Mark Rein-Hagen. For all of us, RuneQuest really was our formative game system, probably far more than AD&D. I'm hopefully not dissing RQ (I got my copy of RQ2 out on my desk right now) but like all good game systems, it does some things well, and it does some other things not so well.

Quote from: richaje;769483RuneQuest does have a skill system. But the skill system is a truncated engine compared to the combat system. So frex, in RuneQuest if I want to have a courtroom battle I use my Orate skill. I roll against that skill. If I succeed - hurrah, I win! If I fail - sadness ensues, because I lose!

RQ3 introduced the idea of opposed skills (although bits and pieces of that had been introduced in various RQ2 supplements if I recall), which sort of worked like a truncated combat, but without the whirly bits and machine that goes ping. One dice roll for the "defender" then one dice roll for the "attacker".

Now HeroQuest built on that and expanded it. So you have a Simple Contest which is just an opposed contest with two dice rolls, and an Extended Contest which occupies the same place as the old style combat, with lots of dice rolls and chances to use funky abilities and tactics to maximize your chances. But RQ really is combat-centric (not that there is anything wrong with it) and HQ really isn't.

As for whether either game focuses on what actually exists in the "game world", I don't subscribe to the GNS theories at all. RQ approaches the "game world" with a set of war game sensibilities, HQ approaches it with a set of story logic sensibilities. Neither is wrong or right, they are just different styles of having fun.

And yes, you can do mythic journeys with RuneQuest and you can do skirmish combat with HeroQuest. But that's not really playing to the strengths of the rule system, IMO.

As an aside, Robin Laws is also an old time RuneQuest player, as was Jonathan Tweet and Mark Rein-Hagen. For all of us, RuneQuest really was our formative game system, probably far more than AD&D. I'm hopefully not dissing RQ (I got my copy of RQ2 out on my desk right now) but like all good game systems, it does some things well, and it does some other things not so well.

You might want to update your "RuneQuest" assumptions a bit from your formative RQ2 to RQ6.  You might find the RuneQuest people play is not the RuneQuest in your head.

As an example...
HeroQuest is written for Story-logic sensibilities - yep.
RuneQuest is written for War-game sensibilities - nope.  One of those "It is known." assumptions frequently tossed around by story-logic gaming people that doesn't pass actual muster.

Quote from: CRKrueger;769484You might want to update your "RuneQuest" assumptions a bit from your formative RQ2 to RQ6.  You might find the RuneQuest people play is not the RuneQuest in your head.

RQ6 came out after HeroQuest 2. Given that Loz and Pete were both involved with making HQ2, it is not surprising that it influenced their writing of MRQ2 and then RQ6. But I doubt Pete (a member of the SCA btw, just as Steve Perrin is) would disagree that combat is at the heart of the RQ6 rules, that's why it gets its own chapter with combat styles and tactical mechanisms, and other skills do not (frex, you could theoretically do the same with Orate if we wanted to have a speech-making centric game).

Loz and Pete did a great job with RQ6 and I think that is the best version of the rules to date (so much so that I find RQ3 just really clunky now). But RuneQuest and HeroQuest co-exist in different ecological niches. And that's a fine thing.

Quote from: richaje;769486But RuneQuest and HeroQuest co-exist in different ecological niches. And that's a fine thing.

It is, as long as you simply admit the niche is the difference between focusing on story-logic vs. not focusing on story-logic.  Because smoke, mirrors, and Lawsian ideology aside, that's the fundamental difference.

BTW, you do realize how ridiculously patronizing the term "formative" is right?

Hopefully Gamezone will not try any more end runs around Moon Design.

I have to agree with Krueger on this.

This sounds suspiciously like the oft trotted out "fact" that D&D is all about combat because there are lots of rules covering combat and thus there could not possibly be anything more. Despite the 30 odd years of people doing exactly that and running some massive courtly intrigue campaigns.

I have one of the early RQ boxed sets and there is nothing in it that suggests that combat is the be-all and end-all. Its just where the rules are heaviest because combat tends to be where things need it. Interaction does not need pages and pages of rules.

Im not trying to be mean here. I'll let Krueger do that aheh... But this sounds  alot like parroting what others have said or just overfocusing on one thing and blind to anything that says otherwise.

They got the crowdfunding done on some Spanish or Italian site and are going through with it from what I can tell.

Quote from: CRKrueger;769501They got the crowdfunding done on some Spanish or Italian site and are going through with it from what I can tell.

That we are painfully aware of. Its the fact that GZ has tried to bypass MD twice now that is the twist. That and the fact Gamezone has not shown the rules yet or even WHAT the rules will be and will not for a month or three yet.

Its been a total circus since the start.

Quote from: Omega;769500This sounds suspiciously like the oft trotted out "fact" that D&D is all about combat because there are lots of rules covering combat and thus there could not possibly be anything more. Despite the 30 odd years of people doing exactly that and running some massive courtly intrigue campaigns.

...and despite the fact (which is an actual fact) that the non-combat rules and mechanics far outweigh the combat rules and mechanics, both in D&D, and RQ2-6.

Quote from: Omega;769500I have one of the early RQ boxed sets and there is nothing in it that suggests that combat is the be-all and end-all. Its just where the rules are heaviest because combat tends to be where things need it. Interaction does not need pages and pages of rules.

Interaction does need pages and pages of rules as well as player-facing "funky abilities and tactics" if what the "game" is about is determining who gets to narrate this scene of the story by having the tests be Conflict Resolution.

Quote from: Omega;769500I'm not trying to be mean here. I'll let Krueger do that aheh... But this sounds  alot like parroting what others have said or just overfocusing on one thing and blind to anything that says otherwise.

It is known...

Seriously though, I didn't say a damn thing until after the rules question was answered, and then the river of stereotypical arrogant bullshit started flowing...

Quote from: Omega;769500Im not trying to be mean here. I'll let Krueger do that aheh... But this sounds  alot like parroting what others have said or just overfocusing on one thing and blind to anything that says otherwise.

You certainly may disagree with me, but from within the small echo chambers of the designers and writers of RuneQuest and its later progeny, this has been an issue. Pendragon, Epic, and HeroQuest were all created or commissioned to get around "perceived weaknesses" in the RuneQuest rules when applied to certain specific genres such as Gloranthan heroquesting. That is not saying RuneQuest is anything but an excellent rules system. But Pendragon handles the style of Arthurian Romance Greg wanted to play better than RuneQuest did (although you can clearly see the origins of Pendragon in some of the later RQ2 material). Same thing with Epic and HeroQuest - those were efforts to deal with perceived weaknesses the rules had in modeling certain themes in the Glorantha setting.

These "perceived weaknesses" of RuneQuest can also be big strengths - they are a big part of the reason that Sandy still runs a regular RuneQuest 3 game (which has got to be over 20 years old by now). Sandy, for example, loves the emphasis on gritty, detailed combat and armor rules that have the characters looking like misfits from a Mad Max movie. That's great stuff.

But hey, that's all subjective aesthetic taste. I am pretty sure Steve Perrin would completely disagree with me, and maybe Ken will as well. But that being said, I don't know anyone I have worked with who would not cheerfully say RuneQuest is more oriented towards combat than HeroQuest. Or Prince Valiant for that matter. Call of Cthulhu is equally combat oriented (at least in the older editions), but that's fine because regardless of how you confront Cthulhu, you are going to die or go insane.

And I should have made it clear that by RuneQuest I was referring to RQ2 and 3. I think Loz and Pete have done a great job with RQ6 and I look forward to being able to show off how Pete has resolved these "perceived weaknesses" in a completely different way from HQ2 with Adventures in Glorantha.

Quote from: Omega;769504That we are painfully aware of. Its the fact that GZ has tried to bypass MD twice now that is the twist. That and the fact Gamezone has not shown the rules yet or even WHAT the rules will be and will not for a month or three yet.

Its been a total circus since the start.

Yeah, even BBG though is kinda split it seems, the "Cult of IP" has poisoned the well against legitimate claims.  It has it's own section now separate from the original.

Personally I think MD was logical, there's no way we're gonna license the name to you unless you prove you cleared it with Hasbro, because there's no way we're letting you drag our heads onto the chopping block with you.

There may be absolutely no way to prevent them from selling it in Spain however.  Distributing it internationally, no clue.

This article about writing HQ character descriptions from the old Glorantha.com website might help.

https://web.archive.org/web/20071023203619/http://www.glorantha.com/support/na_descriptions.html