Do you really like MRQ?

[Lord High Munchkin]

I should point out that archery has always been underpowered in RPGs (right from the very start of hobby's history)—being a conscious design decision.

The reason being that it's simply no game-fun for PCs to be cut down from afar by some mook before they can do anything about the situation.

Longbows (which in RPGs are really "livery bows"), are strangely over regarded as compared to other bows. I guess that may be a result of the popularity of various TV shows and books during the designers' childhood (as well as lack of comparative information). But who knows.

There is always the Medieval phrase "to draw a longbow"... which means to lie and exaggerate. As does "he has a famous bow up at the castle".

I'm waffling.

 

[Simulacrum]

Apologies for slow reply - wife just had a baby, so limited online time...

Anyway, thanks for those extra notes, all very interesting - do you know how the fast-shooting feats were achieved? I presume it has something to do with an ability to hold four reloads in the drawing hand and some way to flick them into position as the arm just works the bow - I'm just guessing.

The Sassanian device for rapid and successive firing of five arrows was called a Panjagan - there's a rather unconvincing attempt to imagine what it was in Osprey Elite 110 (Sassanian Elite Cavalry).

The launcher you refer to - is it essentially the same as a Byzantine solenarion?

 

[Simulacrum]

I should point out that archery has always been underpowered in RPGs (right from the very start of hobby's history)—being a conscious design decision.

The reason being that it's simply no game-fun for PCs to be cut down from afar by some mook before they can do anything about the situation.

I wonder if this is to do with an equivalent failure to represent how shields are used properly - I'm spending some time thinking about that at the moment; but I also think archery is overpowered in melee due to an assumption that acquiring and hitting a moving (less than 10m, I grant you) man-sized target within 5 seconds and at range (note in the RQ rules 60m is range for short bow, up to 175m for longbow) is a routine task - the problem is greater with weapons such as javelins. Now most RPG fights happen at significantly shorter ranges than that; but I do remember in RQ2 glory days, taking out a troll war party with a single elf using multimissile before they could close the distance. Felt good - but felt wrong too. Guilty pleasure.

Longbows (which in RPGs are really "livery bows"), are strangely over regarded as compared to other bows. I guess that may be a result of the popularity of various TV shows and books during the designers' childhood (as well as lack of comparative information). But who knows.

I can't comment on that - but clearly variable draws and weight are too complicated to try and represent, so we end up with a "big bow vs small bow" way of categorising effective range and damage.

 

[Ssendam]

I should point out that archery has always been underpowered in RPGs (right from the very start of hobby's history)—being a conscious design decision.

The reason being that it's simply no game-fun for PCs to be cut down from afar by some mook before they can do anything about the situation.

I'm not sure how you mean here, and when looking at it in an RQ context an arrow can kill. If you compare a PC shot with an Arrow or being hit by a Barbarian with an Axe then I can't imagine the danger to life is much different.

 

[djd]

I suppose the aspect that RPG's consistently fail to tackel is the difficulty of removing an arrow using medieval techniques of surgery. Even comparatively 'minor' wounds could turn into major ones through infection or surgery disasters resulting in long and lingering death.

 

[Tabularasa]

Very good question. The first thing I would like to say is that regardless of our opinion of MRQ, we should be grateful to Mongoose for keeping the brand alive.

That said, I must confess that I am not a big fan of the MRQ system. I personally think it is in a big need of a re-write. The obvious sticking points are :

1) The combat system which is slow and clunky

2) the decision to leave MRQ as as non-setting specific system.


On that topic, I do not think that BRP is the solution either. How long have the chaosium system been in existence... 30 years. Though I've had much fun with it, I think it is a bit dated.

I think Mongoose should ask itself what kind of gaming experience do I wish to provide to my players and build a system that reflects this.

 

[RosenMcStern]

1) The combat system which is slow and clunky

The point here is that in MRQ, unlike all other d100 incarnations, one attack represents a single sword slash. It may seem clunky and is certainly slow in online games, but it has a rationale behind it. I still prefer the "one attack = many blows" version, but this combat system is enjoyable, too.

2) the decision to leave MRQ as as non-setting specific system.

What is wrong with it? With several settings already published, it would be impossible to tie it to a specific setting again.

On that topic, I do not think that BRP is the solution either. How long have the chaosium system been in existence... 30 years. Though I've had much fun with it, I think it is a bit dated.

What would the dated parts be? I agree that some elements should be taken by more modern games and added to it, but what is wrong with d100 in general? It is still a good system.

 

[ozchandler]

compared to a lot of systems, MRQ combat is slow, but not painfully so. It allows the visualization of the combat senario w/o dragging it down. It also brings the armor (type and area covered) and shield to a more thoughtful process, not just a "one size fits all" mentality. Armor type/placement and shield matters in this game, unlike so many other systems. It's a deadly system, but not unjustly so, and we like it that way.

for my campaign world, magic is not an ability all have. rune magic is for cult templars who strive to become a runelord under their cult's requirements. priests have sole use of divine magic in cults and work toward the title of runepriest. as both groups achieve their aforementioned status, they are eligible for legendary skills.

witchdoctors and shaman have their own cults to abide by and use chaos runes and divine magic prescribed by their god.

these are just a few of the manipulations i've done to the system to build my game world around it. It doesn't matter to me about glorantha or past versions of rq and i think people may put too much attention to that. i've been running rpg's since '77 and have run many a campaign that was later thwarted by published works. it's bound to happen and i just keep what i like and disregard what doesn't fit my campaign. at least mongoose has the game in print allowing you to make those choices. there are a lot of favored games long gone where we no longer have that option or they've gone to a completely different (space 1889) mechanic that i don't like...at all :wink:

 

[GianniVacca]

On that topic, I do not think that BRP is the solution either. How long have the chaosium system been in existence... 30 years. Though I've had much fun with it, I think it is a bit dated.

I reckon you do not play chess, draughts, bridge, or any other 'dated' game, then.

 

[Rex]

Never really understood the "dated" commentary. A lot of things are Dated. Classical Music is dated (though still very popular if not immortal), certainly no need to replace it, just look at the resurgence of Opera.

To me a GOOD game system is like that. Especially a Good Realistic system like RQ. RQ (and Traveller and HERO and the FGU family) is what I turned to back in the day as a kid, Just to get away from the DnD family....

I really like the "real" feeling of RQ. Also, you can play a Duck. Doesn't get much better then that.

As for it being "unattached", I kind of like that as well. A lot of people aren't interested in a system that's tied specifically to one setting. RQ is very good at handling NON Glorantha settings as well. Elric for example does very well for us at conventions, and honestly, I dig the Pirates and Samurai stuff as well and have run some INSANE Pirates vs Samurai games with that.....

So, I don't thing of RQ as dated at all. It was to me very ahead of it's time, especially as a percentage of skill mechanic, and most certainly as a "realistic" system, where arms and legs get lopped off, and skill means as much as treachery and brawn.

As for slow combat. It's become apparent to us at the conventions since we have been doing this gig, that a simple cheat sheet takes care of the slow issue, to the point, where even 10 and 12 year old kids pick it up fast and easy on the first combat.

~Rex, the Black Hand, Mongoose Infantry

 

[ozchandler]

that's a really cool avatar rex 8)

and maybe slow was a poor choice of words. i was trying to convey that combat has a cinematic feel to it. i don't mean cinematic as pulp style, but that you can readily visualize what the characters are doing as they choose to block, parry, dodge etc each attack. dnd style games have a stale combat system IMHO. sure it works and works well for some, but i prefer systems that allow for choices of action during combat without being cumbersome. gurps and hero also do this well, but percentiles are more appealing to us as a mechanic than d6's. YMMV :wink:

 

[duncan_disorderly]

2) the decision to leave MRQ as as non-setting specific system.

What is wrong with it? With several settings already published, it would be impossible to tie it to a specific setting again.

Some parts of the core rules that were intended as a toolkit are instead treated subsequently as being "complete" rules - eg Rune Magic

A level of confusion over what is generic and what is setting specific, allowing Mongoose to claim that the default setting for RQ is Glorantha, then reject any criticism with the claim that the rules are generic. Is "Metal" a Gloranthan Rune? The Gloranthan books haven't dealt properly with Runes, because they were in the core book, but the core book was not dealing with Gloranthan Runes

Silly books like RQ monsters 2. A book of mainly, but not exclusively Gloranthan creatures, so that people who are only interested in Glorantha have to buy "generic" creatures, and those with no interest in Glorantha may subsequently find references to the generic creatures therein...

 

[RosenMcStern]

I would call these "poor editorial choices in some specific products" * rather than blaming the decision to keep the setting generic.

* Sorry Mongeese, I do not want to throw mud at your hard work, but not everything you did was perfect. But we all trust you will find enough motivation to fix these issues :wink:

 

[Nickbergquist]

One major complaint I have about the Runes rules is that you have to kill someone to be able to use his runes.

This is not as bad a concept as it sounds. I had a great stint with a villain who the PCs managed to liberate his runes from, then realized he had somehow survived the conflict because they couldn't bond to the runes. The player who carried the runes would bring them out every session and try to use them, then eventually worked to convince the party members to hunt the guy down so he could finally gain access to the runes. It was actually very entertaining and led to some fun side quests on their part....

Anyway, I never had an issue with the runes as physical objects since it is actually a bit closer to the application of magic in myth and lore; the idea of just wiggling your fingers and pouring some mana in to it is pretty modern literary/video game convention...."real world magic" requires a lot more work and lots and lots of objects are usually involved.

I have to say that the main issue I ended up having with MRQ was the lack of a central hit point total, as some of the combats I ran got rather unwieldly over time, and some players' characters who should have died after the second or third major wound had figured out how to game the system to guarantee a sort of near-immortality. These same players missed MRQ after the campaign ended and we moved over to the eerily balanced D&D 4E rules, where conversions of the same MRQ characters looked gimpy by comparison. So yeah, the combat options in BRP are preferred by myself, anyway.

That said, I like that Mongoose does something remarkable that Chaosium has a hard time with: loads of useful support. And I don't think the books are as badly edited as some would suggest....I'm not saying there aren't issues involving errata or editing, just that their works aren't any worse than industry average, and that with MRQ especially they are presenting books to a crowd with a higher degree of expectation than some other gaming groups (cough >D20< cough)....which isn't really a bad thing, actually. Keeps Mongoose's editors on their toes, hopefully!

Anyway, I'm waiting with baited breathe for any announcement of MRQ2 and will ikely grab it and start a new campaign when it appears. I will be using BRP, as always, for genres other than fantasy....MRQ has that covered fine.

 

[Simulacrum]

I have to say that the main issue I ended up having with MRQ was the lack of a central hit point total, as some of the combats I ran got rather unwieldly over time, and some players' characters who should have died after the second or third major wound had figured out how to game the system to guarantee a sort of near-immortality.

The problem seems to be the resilience "saving throw" The recognition of the problem in the GMH is quite explicit - uses the example of the raptor with resilience of 140% (who gave it that anyway?) and proposes a kack-handed solution.

Simpler - and more in keeping with the essence and differentiator of RQ from the beginning, which is that the most high and mighty can be killed by a lucky strike rather than laugh at a 1st level thief's critical backstab from behind their 20 hit dice - is to make resilience and persistence fixed values deived from stats that can only be modified by magic/pacts/amulets/potions etc. And to make sure, if you are double HP damaged in a vital location, the only thing the roll gives you is a round of heroic last words/deed before collapsing, or a period of CON rounds (head) or CON minutes (chest) to lie there dying in case someone has good enough magic to save you. Always perferred it gritty...

 

[Deleriad]

I should say that if the player's update is used *any* major wound incapacitates the victim. The only use for resilience is to determine whether they die soon or in a few minutes.

I personally rule that any serious wound disables the location. Resilience is used to determine whether the character is knocked-out or dazed (i.e. loses their next few combat actions.) The one thing I've never really settled on is the results of disabling a body or head location but passing the resilience test. A disabled limb becomes unusable, that's easy. At the moment I'm figuring that a disabled chest/abdomen halves movement and subtracts 20% from all physical activities. Disabled head is simply -20% to everything and impossible to concentrate.

The other thing I play with is that a serious wound to the chest/abdomen makes the victim "vulnerable" until its received medical attention. If you are "vulnerable" then opponents get +20% to attack you and any attack that hits does +2 damage.

But yes, even with the player's update, you can end up with someone who has more than one serious wound still hanging in to a fight. When that someone is a PC though, it feels pretty dramatic. NPCs in my world generally try to run away once they've had a serious wound and not passed out.

 

[Nostrildamus]

There haven't been many games in my gaming history (mid 80s onward) that didn't have some manner of house-ruling involved, including D&D. I give big props to D&D4 for its balance and general design. That said, WotC is a subsidiary of Hasbro and there's a lot more funding available than most RPG companies can hope to possess. I came to MRQ never having played any other version of RQ, so my experience there is limited. What drew me to it, though, was a desire to get away from D&D (3rd edition was still the present one, or 3.5 at any rate) because I found the game had finally tipped too far into the power-gamer structure and was a nightmare to DM. My prior excursions into other systems was Rolemaster/Middle Earth. I ran Rolemaster for a few years but found myself drawn back to D&D for simplicity's sake. To me, the discovery of MRQ was a breath of fresh air. It had its faults, some of which were tackled by the time Deluxe came out, but it was not the first time in my gaming experience that some house-ruling was necessary and it really didn't bother me. The most important things were the grittiness compared to what I'd seen before (I'm aware that previous versions of RQ were grittier still, but I didn't play those) and the fact that there were no "classes." My wife's first MRQ character was a barmaid with a lust for adventure. What a change! I went through the pinchy pages period and got a replacement copy (softcover) of Deluxe with ease. So there I give props to Mongoose for their excellent support in the face of a lot of woes at the time. Do I like MRQ really? Absolutely. Is it perfect? No. Do I prefer it over other fantasy systems and BRP? Yes. Lastly, because I never played the other versions of RQ, I'd never heard of Glorantha. Moreover, I've always generated my own worlds rather than using boxed ones. So, MRQ fit the bill for me right out of the gate and I think that there are probably other gamers like me who would have been put off by a game that inherently forced a world upon me. So I give props to Mongoose for doing the unthinkable with their version of RQ and making it generic. I guess old school RQ players may grit their teeth at it, but new players coming from old systems will appreciate it and I think that's the point. The system works for Glorantha, from what I understand, without being exclusively tied to it. To me, that's a plus.

 

[Blackyinkin]

Hi,

RQ3 by Avalon Hill (a subsiduary of Hasbro) was written as a Generic system, apart from a small supplement included in the box it was very open ended and in fact the default setting was Alternate Earth, the mechanics had already been used in their manifestation of BRP for Call of Cthulhu, Elric, Hawkmoon, Future World, Super World and half a dozen more. Mongoose did not make the system generic by any means, in fact by the use of Runes they made it actually harder to integrate into generic settings.

Only the RQ1+2 were specifically written for Glorantha, in that they contained gloranthan examples in the text, but as said above was rapidly devloped into BRP which powers many games. The current manifestation of BRP is too huge for me to use, I am a big fan of OpenQuest, which I use to power my Gloranthan Game.

Simon

 

[Icebrand]

I have had some Monty Python combats where somebody lost use of both arms and legs, but refused to pass out due to good resilience rolls. At those times I miss general HP.

I should say that if the player's update is used *any* major wound incapacitates the victim. The only use for resilience is to determine whether they die soon or in a few minutes.

At the moment im toying with this:

Serious wounds drop one fatigue level.
Major wounds drop two fatigue levels.
The fatigue drop applies to the resilence test of course.

Im considering adding +1 Fatigue level for vital locations, so a head with a major wound is an instant exhausted result and a -40% resilience to avoid dying! (im actually worring this is TOO deadly )

 

[Deleriad]

At the moment im toying with this:

Serious wounds drop one fatigue level.
Major wounds drop two fatigue levels.
The fatigue drop applies to the resilence test of course.

Im considering adding +1 Fatigue level for vital locations, so a head with a major wound is an instant exhausted result and a -40% resilience to avoid dying! (im actually worring this is TOO deadly )

I've tried doing this but the only problem is that I keep on forgetting to use it. When I remember to use it, it is quite effective but then again none of the PCs or NPCs tend to have Resilience over 70% (I don't use the player's update).

Again, according to RQ any major wound incapacitates the victim and starts them dying, the only question is how long it takes.