Chaosium + Glorantha + RuneQuest

[Hannu Kokko]

Some thoughts about spirits

regarding spirit shield – you only force the spirit to have willpower test to enter. So the spirit is not completely shut off unless the willpowers are very unequal. spirit shield is also one of the spells that change for Glorantha with AiG.

Spirit resistance is powerful – blocks the spirit but it requires success with sorcery and leaks magic power. If you want to nerf that you could say that spirit resistance is not compatible with damage resistance. Players usually prefer damage resistance but in this case having spirit resistance really protects you so you can fight against the other monsters around but without the damage resistance. If they pick the other way round they are defenceless against the physical magic. Really nasty ghosts might have neutralise magic or dismiss magic spells though. Having multiple targets of spirit resistance can take quite some time and manna… So for having 4 targets with magnitude 3 to protect the spell you would actually need medium high shaping skill and bit of time plus medium high invocation skill. It also burns at least 3 magic points. Spirits depending on their abilities might fade away and come back once they detect that magic goes away – multiple futile attacks and then successful. You might also want to limit the kind of shaping that is available to sorcery school – one of them might be not to have multiple targets…

Of course you can always have really large spirits if you have high power campaign.

Spirit Block is powerful but there again you start to need higher skills from the acolyte to protect from medium size spirits (3 intensity). You might also want to nerf the spirit block by making it incompatible with Shield and absorption/backlash

[Hannu Kokko]

..Just noticed that you mentioned awesome power ghosts in there. 6 points is definitely huge and a number of them is frightening. Most likely that caliber ghosts will roll over any spirit shield as they will likely have really high willpower vs casters folk magic. That would require very high skills to protect against with Spirit Resistance and Spirit Block. For spirit resistance to block you would need to have intensity 11… You would likely want to have some magnitude to protect the spell

[Hannu Kokko]

Most likely one might get more (definite) answers in the design mechanism forums about rules but there are many of us here as well…

[Pentallion]

Okay, to answer your questions. Bleed starts reducing their combat skills quickly. That turns a battle around fast. Bleed as many as you can and their skills start declining and the battle is won.

I didn’t mean intensity 6 spirits, those are pretty powerful I meant power 6, as in the stat for Power is 6. That would be intensity 0 spirit. The weakest. the way spirit combat works in RQ6, by throwing a few of even the weakest spirits at the party can be devastating. The products available to play, however, tend to throw a bunch of intensity 2 or 3 spirits at the party. I hope the changes they made to AiG will fix that. It’s encouraging that they made changes.

[Hannu Kokko]

I guess spirits are meant to be devastating – a different kind of opposition. If you have not prepared for them by having the right spells available or having a shaman with you – you should be at disadvantage…

[Pentallion]

My problem as a game master is that it’s either or with spirits in the RAW. They are either devastating or they’re totally negated. And no GM wants to arbitrarily devastate the party. No good GM anyhow. Not unless there’s a compelling storytelling reason to do so. And if you need that reason, you can make the ghost too powerful. In the RAW, all spirits are simply too powerful.

I’ve made the following changes. Further playtesting will determine if they’re viable changes that add more fun to the game and don’t imbalance it. Spirit Resistance works just like Damage Resistance used to work in RQ3. It matches the intensity vs the damage in spirit combat and either resists all of it, or none get through. Spirit Block works just like armor. It blocks X amount of damage for X points of spirit block. Spirit Shield maintains some of it’s flavor but feels more interactive simply by making it work just like a shield. The PC must roll their spectral combat skill to “parry” an amount of damage equal to the value of the spirit shield (it being a Gloranthan variable Folk Magic spell).

Hopefully, these will address the issues and make spirits something competitive and scary, but survivable. Leaving the necessity of a shaman in the party only to deal with the very large spirits and excorcisms.

[Lawrence]

MAKE IT WORK AT THAT LEVEL – or don’t bother with RQ at all. It’s almost like you think players should be ashamed to have a Hero level character. When instead, that should be the GOAL. You promised the Hero Wars. Not the farmer wars. Not the Tula Wars. Not the Low Level characters Wars. The HERO WARS.
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Deliver. I think after 30 plus years, a faithful customer shouldn’t have to see a version of D&D do what RQ cannot. It’s not an unreasonable demand.

I think you’re overlooking the many tools RQ includes as defaults to give characters that heroic edge. Luck Points, both individual and group, are the most obvious examples, but then there are generous skill augments from Passions and other skills, plus the Combat Special effects which, when used creatively, can be spectacularly satisfying (Bleed I’ve dealt with on the other thread). So no, I don’t think your demand is reasonable, because I think you’re overlooking a lot things that are already there to create the kind of play experience you’re after. However, RQ has always been a very different play experience to D&D. HeroQuest and 13th Age are deliberate attempts to take that kind of experience even further. RQ has always been about the grittier side of things, but I think that, with RQ6, we’ve offered more tools than ever before to make your characters more heroic than they’ve ever been. But then you have said, Pentallion, over on the Design Mechanism forum, that you really prefer RQ3 anyway and only use RQ6 (or bits of it) because there are Roll20 Character Sheets available. So, I’m actually not really sure what the problem is.

[Pentallion]

I’ve got a mixed group of young players in their 20’s and older guys in their 40’s and 50’s. Not a single one of them likes Luck Points and threw them out. The combat effects ARE satisfying. Bleed not withstanding. The old fumble table was spectacularly satisfying as well. Why is that gone? Skill augments are irrelevant. Those types of bonuses were different yet existed in RQ3. You got situational modifiers.
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Here’s the real issue: Hero Wars are coming. Can RQ6 Glorantha handle it? I ask because I’ve been told on podcasts by Jeff Richards and MOB that the reason they dumped RQ and went to HQ in the first place (a huge mistake of epic proportions btw, HQ is fine, but don’t dump RQ), is because after Strangers In Prax they thought that the system couldn’t handle high level adventuring. That it broke down at that point. I disagree. SiP was what we’d been waiting for. 20 years later those guys aren’t even all that big a deal.
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You get into the Hero Wars, and the way the mystical magic of Glorantha works, great heroes attract great heroes. The PCs will go beyond what we see in SiP.
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And yet now it is universally accepted that RQ6 has nerfed the power levels and the game works best for low to middle level characters.
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Well who needs that? who needs a new system, after waiting all this time, that isn’t even capable of simulating things the original game could?
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I obviously love RQ. I’ve wanted to see RQ reunited with Glorantha forever. I love your work Loz. I want to see TDM succeed. So take this as constructive criticism from a fan (or as Jonny Depp puts it, a delighted employer), and realize that there seems to be a culture, from Jeff Richards and Greg Stafford on down, that seems to think there is something wrong with actually having high end, powerful characters. The game worked fine. They stopped believing in it. The “answer” isn’t to nerf the game, the answer is to embrace it.
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RQ6 is a great edition. I like a lot of what you’ve done. What I don’t like and no one in my group seems to like and what I’ve heard others say they don’t like, is that it’s power levels are nerfed. That it seems to be deliberately designed to avoid “Stranger in Prax Creep” for lack of a better word. Or in short, high level adventuring.
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That’s the impression I get, I may be totally off base. But I feel like, by now, we should be having high level adventures printed. With epic foes on epic quests of mythological proportions. Gathering Thunder was good. Colymar campaign was a taste. Neither were RQ.
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All I’m saying is, if RQ Glorantha is finally coming back, don’t nerf it. Don’t shy away from high end adventures. They’re long overdue.

And yes, it annoys the F out of me to see a version of D&D move on to the Hero Wars setting while we’re just FINALLY getting RQ back in Glorantha. I’d rather watch Russell Wilson throw on the goal line in the Super Bowl with Lynch standing there than think about D&D players having the Hero Wars in Glorantha while I watch RQ crank out mid to low level adventures for what remains of my life because Jeff and Greg don’t think RQ can handle anything tougher.

[Hannu Kokko]

It seems gaming groups can vary. I have old timers from our first games in the 70s and also newcomers to RQ who are in their twenties in the same group.

All of them seem to love and hoard the luck points. They seem to like special effects. They are looking for every augment they can get – passion, situational, anything goes. Nobody seems to miss the old fumble table – special effects do just fine.

I do not think it is universally accepted that RQ6 has nerfed the power levels and game works best for low/mid -> we used to play Rq3 at 130-150% range after the longest campaign and the fights at that level start to be very broken and most often non cinematic slugfests – allnighters some time or actually often of the time. This seems to be mostly gone with Rq6 even though we do not have yet people over 100% in skills without augments – with augments yes. RQ6 almost every fight can turn to be cinematic and IMHO much more heroic with game mechanics than 95% of the fights – we had heroic fights in Rq3 but heroism game from mostly roleplaying (where it should come as well but good mechanics help). There is no such thing as a safe and sure fight. I feel that the fights are most satisfying and memorable with RQ6 rules than with the old ones.

I do not miss the old editions of rules at all. This is the best generation of rules so far and it is plenty of good rock’n roll. I expect that when the players get regularly above 100% in skills and to high rune levels the game will still stay enjoyable. There is plenty of danger and options…

The game mechanics are there – this is RQ6 – I am rolling with it and it works just fine – best generation of the rules In case I need a tweak – I may do so, so far only one tiny tweak to the rules and I am getting regularly returning group of players…

If a scenario or encounter is not heroic enough – it is relatively easy to crank up the opposition…

I expect to get also high level adventures in the Gloranthan future (I loved most if not all of the old ones) but I would say there are some encounters for example in Monster Island that can be epic – and I run that in Glorantha.

Our Gloranthas and RQs Will Vary…

[Hannu Kokko]

…and overall it is just a set of rules mechanics… It has not got so far into the way of enjoyable even epic game moments and has helped with many.

[Pentallion]

Yes, it is a great set of rules mechanics and I hope I’m not coming across as too negative, because I still love Runequest warts and all better than any other gaming system. I just feel that a few things here and there could be improved. One should always seek to improve and evolve.

[Bruce Turner]

I’ve been really pleased with the quality and construction of the latest set of RuneQuest rules, and I say that with a keen understanding of both the virtues and flaws of RQ3 (I have vivid memories of the sorcerer-swordsman with Damage Boosting who no longer cared if normal foes parried him). I have long felt that there is no inherent correlation between fantastic skill levels and magical gimcrackery and epic heroism. One of the core mythological stories is that of coming of age, and there’s no question but that the folks going through that process don’t start out with incredibly high stats.

[Runeblogger]

I also think that the new Chaosium RuneQuest would be great if it included ways to make a RQ6 campaign in Glorantha be able to reach hero status and beyond.

The Harrek campaign would be great with RQ6 stats!!!

[Styopa]

Hannu, if you’re regularly running RQ6 today, I’d really love to hear what house rules (if any) or interpretations you’re using.

I’m really looking forward to the AiG book to crystallize some things that are presented in RQ6 systemically but without the setting-structure that would then give it balance on the tabletop.

[Hannu Kokko]

Heh, define “regularly”. We try to make 2 games a month outside summer period. Well – summer period is over and the game starts – first session tomorrow.

My house rules so far
– choose location only on critical. Why: I got bored of trying to teach/show/coach my players to use something else.
– only used skills can get experience check

Used to use progressive folk magic – from tomorrow on will use the AiG official folk magic which is progressive

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