alex_greene said:
hanszurcher said:
Ah yes, ...If you don't play my way then you're just playing D&D
Ah, yes ... if you've got all these wild and wonderful other skills, but all your players are intent on doing is being "the team fighter," "the team cleric with her healing spells," "the team artillery guy with fireball," "the team thief with sneak attacks, spotting traps and picking locks," and using nothing but their Combat Styles to fight kobolds and orcs down in dungeons and taking the stuff off their corpses, then you're just playing D&D.
We don't all want to run non-combat games.
That doesn't mean the whole point is the D&D style of "kill it to take better and better stuff".
In my game the intro was a sort of PI mission. They managed to talk their way out of combat, and manipulated the people who hired them into paying them outrageous amounts of money. They got 15,000 silver in trade goods (or half that in cash). They're all getting the best upgrades theyre likely to get in the campaign, right at the beginning. One player is getting gold plated armor, just to show off and have a bonus to influence. They're buying a carriage. They're sending huge amounts of wealth to their families. Funny thing was that the only injury that happened was after they refused to drop the case and a peasant in a crowd pushed one of the players down a flight of stairs. (broken arm, twisted ankle, bump on the head). It was pretty funny.
However, after the intro mission, the game will likely involve more combat. The game is going to be about war, and they're an independent strike force (who will be loose cannons that will likely side with one army or another). The Combat rules are not irrelevant. But Unlike D&D they're not always going to be on a quest for better loot. Gear will break. etc. Most of the characters have a wide variety of abilities, including combat.
That doesn't make it D&D. It's more Song of Ice and Fire, with some Conan thrown in; to be honest. It's sword and sorcery, as opposed to D&D Fantasy. I thought that was
EXACTLY the point.
I got interested in this system for the more realistic advancement style, the stunts in combat, and the Empire & Guild rules (RQII Empires, in Particular). I also like the non-exponentially scaling weapons to collect.
The other rules are good too so far; but that doesn't mean I have lots of questions to ask about them.
As for the system youre talking about in arms of legend? Its not in the core book. I haven't even had a chance to read it yet. Arms of Legend, so far I've only flipped through the equipment tables. So that explains why I haven't asked any questions about it. Can't be sure about other people. But I will say you can't assume everyone will own the equipment book. Some people may be making due with whats in the core rules. Others may be using an older Runequest Equipment book. And others (like myself) may not have had time to sit down and read that book cover to cover yet
In fact, I'm running Legend specifically because I was sick of D&D (Pathfinder). My options I was considering were Song of Ice and Fire RPG, Some Manner of RuneQuest (Legend or Elric! (1993)), or Ghosts of Albion, using a different assumed setting (and HARP/RM was my choice after that). SIFRPG had better intrigue rules. GoA had a magic system I liked better. Legend had better rules for combat, character progression, and factions/faction conflict. HARP/RM has all sorts of nice encounter tables, random weather tables, miscellaneous item tables, etc. which I'd like to figure out how to use.
So I picked up Legend knowing full well that I liked the magic system better in GoA and the Intrigue/Social Combat system better in SIFRPG, because for a sword and sorcery game, Legend was the better pick.
Legend is alot like D&D; without the superheroes and with cool rules for organizations. Can Legend do Intrigue? Sure, but not as well as SIFRPG, which is focused on it. GoA is largely about studying the supernatural and researching magic in an alt. history 19th century england. It handles things related to that better than legend does. Legend's strong suits (at least the ones I've noticed) are how it deals with "regular powered people" in a pre-industrial world, how it handles combat and injuries, and how it handles organizations (though I've noticed there isn't an Empires equivalent book for Legend yet, and the cults rules in the core book aren't detailed enough for my purposes, so we're using the one for RQII).
This is where a game gets awesome.
