BRP vs Mongoose

[Arlaten]

I've still been looking through the Mongoose edition rules, and haven't yet actually run a game. I have formerly run the Basic Roleplaying system in different forms (Runequest, Stormbringer, Elric, and Call of Cthulu).

I am wondering if someone who has run or played both systems can highlight what they feel are advantages and disadvantages to the Mongoose system with relation to RuneQuest 2 or Runequest 3?

Does anyone feel that Mongoose fixed some of the problems that were present in the RuneQuest system?

Also, I have taken a hard look at the strike rank system for Mongoose, and I have even tried a few test battles to see how combat play works out. It seems like the old strike rank system is easier to use. Is this because I am just familiar with old SR system, or does anyone think the Mongoose strike rank system is awkward and less effiecient than the old system?

I was planning on running a game in the Corum setting (Morecock's Million Spheres setting) and was originally planning on using the RuneQuest 3 rules. However, so many people seem to be impressed with the Mongoose system, that I thought I might incorporate some of the Mongoose mechanics in my game, if some gamers think they are improvements over the old system.

What is your opinion?

 

[weasel_fierce]

I think, compared to runequest 3, they cleaned up character creation and skills very nicely. Combat is different, but I like it better.

Its not stormbringer5/elric, but MRQ is still a damn good game

 

[Loz]

If you have Darcsyde's 'Corum' supplement, you'll find it almost completely compatible with MRQ, even though it was designed for Elric!/SB5. There'll be a little conversion work, but not much. You could even work rune magic into it given the celtic flavour of the setting.

 

[atgxtg]

It's a hard topic to touch upon without touching off a flame war. Let's see if I can pull it off.

MRQ has it's fans, and a fair percentage of those fans are players who prefer it to RQ2, RQ3, and other RQ derivatives such as BRP, or Stormbringer/Elric!.

There is also a fairly large group of RQ2 and RQ3 players who prefer those systems to MRQ.

I'm in the latter group, just to reveal whatever bias I might have on my outlook.

MRQ'S strengths compared to other RQ game systems, in my opinion, are as follows:

-It's in print and available.
-It is currently being supported with adventures and supplments
-It has some third party support
-Its OGL, a plus for anone who want to publish stuff.
-Many of the rules, such as character generation, skill use, and criticals have been streamlined to be simpler and faster.
-There are multiple settings for it, making the game more generic that RQ ever really was.
-The damage bonuses have been scaled down and damage effects reduced a bit so that a single hit from a foe such as a Troll or a lance charge are no longer the instantly disabling wounds they were in RQ.

MRQ'S drawbacks, compare to tother RQ systems, again just my opinion, are:

-Poorly written and edited, at least as far as the game mechanics are concerned. Basically, if you want to play the game "correctly" don't read the examples of play- download the PDF clarifications are errata.

-Some of the streamlining doesn't work, or causes other problems. FOr example, the streamlined rules for armor and it'S effect on skills is more complicated than what was used in any RQ derivative, including RQ3. Skill having and the new opposed skill rolls are dubious advantages as best, and the new hit point system makes resislience skill the deciding factor in the ability to take damage. Since Total HP have been eliminated, characters can soak up two or three times the damage that RQ characters could take.

-The new combat system means that in effect, if the attacker makes his skill roll, the defender will take damage (weapon APs have been greatly reduced with most weapons stopping 2 or 4 points of damage). This makes defensive skills much less useful than armor.

-Many of the revised magic lacks the teeth it once had. For instance spells like disrupt have gone from bing a highly useful spell to being a minor annoyance. On the other hand, the new combat system and armor skill penality makes some spells far more decisive than they were in RQ. A moderate strength bladesharp or protect spell now give an much greater advantage (the bladesharp spell is going to be getting past the parry/dodge every time, and a protect spell doesn't have the skill penalty that armor does).

-Many of the changes radically change the way the game works. Tactics and spell combinations that worked in RQ probably won't work in MRQ. In addition, many of the checks and balances from RQ are gone. An experienced RQ player who learns some spells is going to be very, very dangerous.

-It doesn't have a lot of third party support. Mostly a handful of fanzine quality stuff, with a handful of professional grade supplements.

-While there are several settings and the game is more generic, it is somewhat too generic. Supplements feel more like they are adapting the setting to fit with MRQ rules than adapating the MRQ rules to fit the setting.

 

[Rurik]

It's a hard topic to touch upon without touching off a flame war. Let's see if I can pull it off.

Flame war, no. But I call upon the storm gods to bring down mighty storms upon you. :wink:

 

[Sinisalo]

I like persistence and resilience, the dropping of the pow vs pow table and all the glorantha books (very much)

Sorry, thats about it.

I will be running it but highly house-ruled. The fact that the combat section is largely incorrect is a disgrace (sorry but it is).

 

[atgxtg]

It's a hard topic to touch upon without touching off a flame war. Let's see if I can pull it off.

Flame war, no. But I call upon the storm gods to bring down mighty storms upon you. :wink:

Wow! I just so happens I'm stuck at the library, trapped by a farily impressive Thurnderstorm. Rurik must have associate membership in a Storm Cult.

 

[kustenjaeger]

Greetings

I like persistence and resilience, the dropping of the pow vs pow table and all the glorantha books (very much)

Sorry, thats about it.

I will be running it but highly house-ruled. The fact that the combat section is largely incorrect is a disgrace (sorry but it is).

That's broadly what I do. With some not too demanding tweaks it works well for beginning players - not sure how it will scale up but we only play occasionally and my players haven't got that far

Regards

 

[Sinisalo]

I always start my players high powered. It would have been nice if this game was scalable (without asking my players to divide 138 by 2 frex). I've been thinking about:

a) making all rolls opposed rolls and adding anything over 100 to the number rolled in the case of ties

b) using heroquest and adding hit points and dam rolls ;-P

 

[Dr_Snugglebunny]

Depending on your fondness for making house rules, I'd either wait for a 2nd edition to come out, or just go for it and do a major house rule revision, largely following comments above.

Or avoid the rulebooks, Monsters book, magic books (debatable; I've avoided them but am slightly intrigued), etc; converting to BRP would be quite easy if you just want to use the game world material. 2nd age book, Ralios pdf, etc rock the casbah.

As a longtime RQ3er, I too dislike a lot of MRQ rules (nothing more specific to add to above posts) and have found thru personal experience that the rules as written are almost unplayable without extensive house-ruling; very unbalanced. But the supplements are still useful.

And the fact that it is being actively published is reason enough to join in at least eventually, as the new Glorantha stuff is great material overall, with even more exciting stuff in the pipeline...

 

[Arlaten]

Thanks for your input.

Those of you who are houseruling, could you give me your houserules for combat? Or are they already posted on another thread? It seems to me if GMs are going to go to the trouble of making house rules for Mongoose RuneQuest, that they feel more comfortable with the Mongoose system.

By the way, nobody really answered my first question. Does anyone prefer the Mongoose strike rank system to the RuneQuest 3 strike rank system?

I guess I didn't look closely enough at the spell-system. I didn't look it over very carefully, but it seems most (sorcery) damage spells are directed at one target at a time. Spell systems that allow targeting more than one creature with damage dealing spells are usually more powerful than those that don't. In addition I don't see any spells as powerful as the Palsy spell (right off the bat, anyway). So, I was wondering if you could give me an example as to how to imbalance a game by taking advantage of the magic system rules?

Siphon life seems like a very powerful spell in that it effectively combines a damage dealing spell with a healing spell. I also noticed that the two ring limitation for Teleport is not observed...but you have line of sight teleportation. I could see some nice advantages to that spell, and it could be more fun to use than the spell in RuneQuest 3. I don't really think it would imbalance game play. If you could manage to teleport a body part , such as the skin or a heart without teleporting the rest of the body, the spell could be overly powerful. I think from the spell description that the whole body goes, but the fact that you can include equipment or not, if you wish, opens up the question of whether you can transport only part of a body. You have to think more cleverly to employ the two ring telepathy spell of RuneQuest 3, but it seems to be actually more powerful in that you can transport non-living things of almost any size (if you have enough sorcerers) very quickly from one site to another.

 

[Mugen]

To me, MRQ is my favorite published version of BRP.

What I like the most :

*Preliminary experience rule.
*Runic magic principles (especially the runic skills)
*Skill opposition (though the rules for skills over 100% is somewhat flawed...)
*Skills minima based on characteristics and not fixed.
*The Action/Reaction principle.

However, it is obvious that it is not as good as a 4th edition of a game should be. I personally use the following rules :

*In a skill vs skill opposition, crits beat normal success.

*The Combat Action attribute is the MAXIMUM number of actions in a round. 1 action and 1 reaction in a turn should be the norm.
You can declare more than 1 action at the beginning of the round, but you suffer a cumulative -20% per action over the 1st on all your actions of the round.
The same goes for reactions, except this modifier is applied only at the time when you actually perform the reaction.

*I prefer the SB/Elric 5 rules for major wounds over localised hp.

*I also don't use the attack matrices.
Normal attacks deal normal damage, crits maximizes it.
Normal parries block (AP) damage, crits block (AP*2)
Normal dodges avoid only normal attacks, crits also avoid critical attacks.

Another rule worth considering for Parries and dodges would be to use the skill vs skill system.

If you beat the attacker's roll, you dodge the attack or parry (AP*2) dmg.

If you succeed at your roll but get beaten by the attacker, you parry AP dmg or reduce the attack quality by 1 step (max dmg => random dmg => minimum dmg).

I'm also considering the following :

An attack roll under 95% (+/- situational modifiers) but over skill% only deals minimum dmg.

 

[Enpeze]

The above comments about the advantages/problems (hi atgxtg ) of MRQ are mostly correct IMO. Let me add some more of these:

positive:
-I like the rules about runic abilities after incorporation, giving the player small but not very powerful advantages. Could lead to good scenes I guess
-table for fixed situational modifiers - most BRP games lack such a table

negative:
-dropping of resistance table and attribute rolls as a true and tested BRP element
-combat rules are more complex with 2-4 attacks per turn, defends, constantly subtracting mini amounts of HP and free actions the whole time. not my thing.
-combat is not as deadly as in earlier versions of RQ, if you are a little bit lucky you can be hit alot of times without going down (the same goes for enemies of course) This feels VERY unrunequesty

 

[GoingDown]

By the way, nobody really answered my first question. Does anyone prefer the Mongoose strike rank system to the RuneQuest 3 strike rank system?

We are using MRQ strike rank system, and our group likes it much better than in RQ3 (in fact, we had houserule in RQ3 to ditch strike ranks, we were using fixed DEX order)

So, here is list what I like better on MRQ:

* strike ranks
* skill vs. skill. I really disliked RQ3 skill vs. skill system, we were using houserule
* character creation
* rune magic. Now we have meaning for word rune
* sorcery
* poisons and diseases are handled easier
* mass combat rules
* stuff enchantments and quality
* hero level stuff
* legendary abilities
* fatigue system

Here is something I don't like on MRQ:

* armour skill penalty seems to be too high
* character are not dying so easy anymore
* some other small problems

 

[Rurik]

Those of you who are houseruling, could you give me your houserules for combat? Or are they already posted on another thread? It seems to me if GMs are going to go to the trouble of making house rules for Mongoose RuneQuest, that they feel more comfortable with the Mongoose system.

There is a sticky thread for the MRQ Wiki, also known affectionately as Mr. Qwiki (which facilitates all kinds of bad jokes like saying "Mr. Qwiki's sticky").

But immature jokes aside, there is a lot of good information and houserules at the wiki. Link is here.

Personally, I use the following system for combat:

If the attacker hits and the defender dodges or parries compare the defenders roll to the attackers.

If the defender succeeds but his roll is worse than the attackers roll use the Attacker Succeeds row of the combat table.

If the defender succeeds and his roll is better than the attackers roll use the Attacker Fails row of the combat table.

This system makes all results from the combat table possible. It essentially mimics the two roll system with one roll.

It also works equally well if you prefer the defender to declare defense before the attack is rolled or if you play like the rules as written (where you only have to decide to parry/dodge after the attack is rolled).

 

[Arlaten]

Thanks, everyone, for your comments. This has been a really helpful thread for me. It looks like I will be using MRQ and houseruling it from your suggestions and keeping some of the things I like from RQ3 system such as the Resistance Table, the Sorcery system, and the old spirit magic system (they seem to be very closely linked together). However, I think I will add the Runic skills idea. I'm not quite sure how I will work the two together, but it does add more to the flavor of the game. I think it would fit in well with the Celtic mythology of Corum, as well.

I like the ideas of combining elements of the Stormbringer combat with RuneQuest combat. I have never actually run Stormbringer with the Elric rules, but I have heard a lot of good comments about the system.

By the way, the link for the wiki thread (which I didn't know about...thanks Rurik) is
http://www.justanotherwebsite.net/mrqwiki/index.php/Main_Page

If anyone is browsing this thread and wants a quick link.