Casting Time for spells

[Deleriad]

One of the things I've found running RQ for about a year now is that I have given up with casting times. I've mostly been running Gloranthan games and most named NPCs have at least a little bit of magic which means that because there is no formula to casting times I have to write down the casting for every spell. That's just plain boring and even worse when you have to keep track of it, especially if you have NPCs with variable number of combat actions.

Personally I have replaced it with: Rune/Spirit magic costs 1 CA for Mag 1-3 and 2CAS for Mag 4 or more.
Divine Magic 1 CA.
Sorcery: 1 CA for a base spell, 1 CA if the spell is manipulated. Given that I use a fixed number of CAs (2 per round) this means that I don't have to track multi-round magic casting.

So, I am wondering what everyone else is doing. As polls are good...

 

[zozotroll]

1 CA per spell regardless of type.

 

[Denalor]

Your choices quicken spell casting, especially sorcery.
Well, in Glorantha I suppose you're dealing with God Learners anyway, who have lesser casting times than other sorcerers, so the effect is less severe than otherwise.
Still, you thus make spellcasting more efficient.
Anyway, you go for an added "ease of play" which sure makes combat faster (real time wise).
I go for the rules as written in this case... but I sure agree that it's really very annoying to check those casting times !

 

[Inspector Zero]

The RAW work pretty well I think. Divine Magic and Sorcery which rely on the successful exercise of a skill; (Lore (Specific Theology) or Spell + Manipulation I assume to be of the flash, bang! variety and generally only take 1 combat action to cast - altho' there are some sorcerous exceptions.

Rune Magic, with its emphasis on drawing on power seems much better imagined as a sort of gathering and then a release of energy.

There is a need to keep a track of CAs from round to round, not just for spellcasting but for other things as well - if the players are in spot X and the Zorak Zorani and charging towards them from the other side of the cavern you need to track combat action by combat action how far they advance each time and whether the trolls are in spell/missile range and when etc etc.

This has never seemed to me to be a huge problem. A piece of paper, a pencil and a simple table work fine.

 

[Deleriad]

It seems like most people play as written though there haven't been many responses. I wonder if this is because magic hasn't been used much in actual play?

Come to that, I wonder how many readers and posters here play MRQ at all.

 

[Inspector Zero]

Come to that, I wonder how many readers and posters here play MRQ at all.

Not as often as I would like

 

[Mongoose Pete]

It seems like most people play as written though there haven't been many responses. I wonder if this is because magic hasn't been used much in actual play?

Magic in games I participate in doesn't seem to get used that much once combat starts. This is mainly because PC's magic skills are usually far worse than their combat skills (since you need to learn more of them to be competent). Atop that, Sorcery is more limited than Rune magic due to the fact that many of the spells are 2+ CAs to cast, a dangerous liability in the midst of melee.

Come to that, I wonder how many readers and posters here play MRQ at all.

Once a week, hopefully soon to be twice a week with a second group.

 

[zozotroll]

Once a week.

Most magic seems to be thrown before combat starts. But then I also had that happen in the older RQs as well.

And in CHargen, most people have dumped more points into combat skills than magic ones, so they dont trust magic to work in combat. So they dont spend anymore improvements on them either.

 

[Denalor]

Come to that, I wonder how many readers and posters here play MRQ at all.

Funny - and yet disturbing - thing to say. I had assumed that I can leach on the experience of others here. Now you make me wonder in regard to evaluating the posts here. Guess I have to look out for comments like “I’ve been running this system for x years now”

So, do I actually play MRQ ? No, not really.

A lifetime of Role-Playing
The 80ies were dedicated first to DnD, then AD&D, then Midgard (with me as GM) and a bit of Palladium and MERP. None but me of this original group remained true to the hobby, the others dropped out around 1990.
Finding a new group wasn’t that difficult. These guys (there are really very, very few female roleplayers around here) were playing Midgard and AD&D. No campaigns though, just your typical Crawl (not necessarily only dungeons though). No story-telling at all. That’s the second group, only one player remains.
I was GMing RQIII for a single adventure only (~5 sessions) with that second group. Must have been around mid-90ies.. To be blunt: the system appeared too deadly for my players’ taste. That’s about the time when I also played Ars Magica (not GMing, again another group, which dissolved though around 1999 after some 2 years of regular play). Lots of story-telling there, which I enjoyed a lot. Oh, there was also some sniffing out of ShadowRun around that time, but I’m essentially a straight Fantasy guy, not cyberpunk or something like that.
Which is why we changed to Rolemaster (RMSS). We’re still talking of that second group. RMSS was too complicated for the players, too (OB/DB distribution, loads of tables, especially criticals, too much book-keeping effort on their part,...) so that system was dropped after some 20ish sessions. Talk about a frustrated GM (=me)!
In 2000 I moved away, so any thoughts about a major campaign were buried. Thus I looked for a system, where you could just easily drop some chars in a minor adventure just to have some fun. Well, that was DnD 3E. I’m talking about 2000-2004. I’m no longer GMing that since 2004 that. The players just couldn’t grasp it that intelligent opponents in a fortified castle were actually able to react in a co-ordinated way. Dropping a fireball to kill some minor sentries and not expecting the commander of the castle to call in reinforcements and laying an ambush combined with the absolute unwillingness to surrender or withdraw resulted in repeated wipe-outs. Which naturally frustrated all of us, so I lay down the books and quit for 2 years (lots of work all around the world, so it fitted in).
Since 2006 I rejoined a group (the GM being the only survivor of that second group plus 5 other new players, most are ~10 years younger than I). I must admit that the GM learned a lot story-telling-wise in the last 10 years, so it’s actually more to my taste.
Unfortunately, we currently meet only twice per month, 3-4hrs each session, and currently my friends prefer DnD 3.5.
I was also GMing WFRP around 2006/07, but due to people moving away and such we haven't played for 2 years. Now, the players would be the same as that DnD group and it’s been more difficult to introduce them into the campaign than anticipated (most are forgetting the storyline al the time, which is rather annoying for me).
I tried to interest the group in Traveller (MGT) last year, but that was a failure.

I intend to sort of introduce MRQ (well, actually one guy may remember that RQIII foray in the 90ies), mainly because I don't really like DnD but it's all I've got (around here you do not find many 30+ers still role-playing… and please believe me: I’m no geek ). We played a couple of sessions (well, honestly only a couple of encounters) just to get a grasp on the rules. I'm not sure whether I will be able to really hook them (they do like DnD). The main qualms I have myself are still the deadliness of the system. The group has a rather overwhelming “Let’s charge them”-mentality.