Lanhkmar's back (Runequest)

[TGryph]

I placed my pre-order last night

TGryph

 

[bolen]

If you are basing your idea of what Lankhmar is on the AD&D books, you might be right. But they did a piss-poor job of getting the feel of the actual stories. I'm playing the RuneQuest demo at GenCon, and will be looking for the Lankhmar stuff from Mongoose. Until then, I reserve further judgement.

I hope that you have a beter experence with the "Mongoose Infintry" then I did. I played in a conan game last year and I knew the rules beter then the GM.

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Sure, Mongoose could try to fix it, but Chaosium has tried for 20 years with Elric/Stormbringer, and IMHO, never did. All they did was give out more and more demon armor (which asorbs a lot of damage) and make sure all their published NPCs were huge or had high cons (and thus high hit points).

Here's the difference. I don't think Chaosium has really tried. BRP is sort of the non-munchkin version of Palladium. It hasn't really changed or developed to incorporate innovations in game design, it's just added subsystems for various properties and called it genre emulation.

Incorporate a really good stunting and drama point system to d%, BRP-based gameplay (say, a Mutants & Masterminds inspired one) and you've gone a long way toward putting PC death in the hands of players as well as encouraging a swashbuckling playstyle. Scaling hp are essentially a form of mook rules (which is why D&D/d20 has no need for a separate set of them), and while scaling hp would pretty much slaughter a BRP sacred cow, mook rules for certain genres wouldn't.

Chaosium seemed unwilling to make those kinds of changes, but Mongoose very well might.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

Do we know what the actual differences are yet?

Will stats be 3-18 range?

Will hit points be broken up by body part?

Armor absorb damage?

Skills be % based?

I mean it's not like either of those systems were complicated in and of themselves. Now magic and those abilities like demon summoning... different story.

So far as I know the answer to these questions is:

Yes, 3-18, put on a points buy, rather than a dice rolling system

Yes, but all body parts will have about 1/3 total HP

Of course armour absorbs damage, it’s logical, and it's the system that all of the best games use.

Yes skills are percentage based, but are calculated differently to RQ3, possibly closer to RQ2. Skills are not divided into sets like RQ3. There are fewer skills, and beginning players aren’t as good as they were in RQ3. Armour is much simplified.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

Could someone give a quick synopsis of RQ.? All I remember is that it was an avilon Hill game with strange monsters

From what I recall (not looked at the rules for 10 years):
-- 6 ability scores of 3 to 18. Str; Dex; Con; Int; Pow; Cha.
-- 10 to 20 HP, a number that don't augment with experience. Hit location: you also have those hp distributed over body parts. When those are wounded, some effects on the character's ability to act, as appropriate.
-- Many skills, with % scores of 0 to 100%, but that can excced that in some case.
-- Magic points = Pow score, to cast a few spells. Three kind of magic: shamanism, wizardry, and priestly magic.
-- No special abilites such as feats of what not.
-- No levels, at the end of an adventure, you can inrease your skill scores with those skills you successfully used during adventure. Easy to augment a low score, dificult to augment a high score. Augmentation is in the +1d6% range.

All in all, it resembles BRP Call of Cthulhu, with body location of hp added.

It was a Chaosium game (RQ1 & 2) before it was an Avalon Hill game (RQ3). (On a side note, you play DnD and you think RQ monsters are strange? Amazing.)

-- 7 Ability scores (you forgot Siz)
-- HP are average of Str + Siz. So average is likely to be 11-16
-- Now apparently a few less skills, all of which can increase above 100% to create ‘heroic’ characters.
-- Gloratha fans prefer to use the terms ‘Battle Magic, Sorcery and Rune Magic, but I suspect that the generic terms will remain. Shamanism casting % is 5 x Pow. Wizardry is an improvable skill. Divine Magic always works (gods don’t fail)
-- Apparently now some skills are ‘advanced’ skills, not open to everyone.
-- You need to roll d% and get higher than your existing skill to increase it after a game session, the increase is 1d6%. Apparently now any roll over 90% will allow an increase (in RQ3 there was a dice add and any roll over 100% would increase a skill.

I’d point out that RuneQuest predates BRP and CoC. I prefer to think of CoC as a stripped down version of RQ with hit locations removed. IIRC Chaosium produced Worlds of Wonder before BRP, this was a simple Fantasy/SF/Superhero system which looked a lot like BRP.

RuneQuest is my second favourite system. There’s still nothing wrong with third edition IMO.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

I
...Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser were not combat machines like Conan, but they were pretty good at fighting (remind me more of the 3 Mustketeers sort of fighting). If they were made using the BRP system, they would have died very early on....

I'd simply assume that as heroes Faf' 'n' the mouse would start with combat stats well above 100%, probably well above 200%. They would be unlikely to die, but a mass combat could still be dangerous. Heck, someone might even lose an arm.

The new system seems, I think, to be a bit like Pendragon, opposed rolls and no separate parry skill. And, I think that there will be Hero Points, to allow a couple of dice manipulatins during an evenings play.

 

[SWBaxter]

-- Gloratha fans prefer to use the terms ‘Battle Magic, Sorcery and Rune Magic, but I suspect that the generic terms will remain. Shamanism casting % is 5 x Pow. Wizardry is an improvable skill. Divine Magic always works (gods don’t fail)

HeroQuest, which is set in Glorantha, calls 'em Animism, Wizardry, and Theism respectively. I kinda figured Mongoose would use the same terminology, since Issaries (Greg Stafford's publishing imprint) has a vested interest in making sure that the fluff for the two lines is cross-compatible.

 

[GrumpyOldMan]

HeroQuest, which is set in Glorantha, calls 'em Animism, Wizardry, and Theism respectively. I kinda figured Mongoose would use the same terminology, since Issaries (Greg Stafford's publishing imprint) has a vested interest in making sure that the fluff for the two lines is cross-compatible.

Hmm...............

We're talking about a man who retro-fitted a goddess into his game world, and whose every word is poured over and analysed to the nth degree. I suspect he doesn't care. Greg seems to have always been more interested in Glorantha and its legends than any particular rules system. Just my opinion of course.

 

[francisca]

I hope that you have a beter experence with the "Mongoose Infintry" then I did. I played in a conan game last year and I knew the rules beter then the GM.

<crosses fingers>

 

[Glyfair]

H I suspect he doesn't care. Greg seems to have always been more interested in Glorantha and its legends than any particular rules system.

I agree he's more interested in the game world than the rules set. However, he definitely seems to care about the rules system. I know that Heroquest took quite a long time because Sandy Petersen & Greg Stafford didn't see eye-to-eye on the game system (Sandy's being a "super Runequest system," I heard some interesting things about some of the Heroquests in that system).