Ran My First Game

[Piperdog]

As a newcomer to d100, I have went through Chaosium's variations but really liked what I read in RQII. Usually my adult gaming group plays Gurps in every genre, some Battletech or D20 on occasion. No one there seems too interested in trying something new, so my family and I went camping for vacation, and I threw a game down for my kids. I really dig this system.
My only problem was learning how to juggle CAs between the players and the monsters. I kept track on paper, but being new, I was also unsure of when CA's could be used. For example, when a player attacked, I was unsure at first whether we had to cycle through everyone first and get to the monsters turn for it to use a CA to parry or evade. Of course, I thought that would be sort of silly, and let the monsters react instantly with a parry, burning a CA before their turn came around.......then I reread the combat section and saw this was the right thing to do anyway!
So all in all, it was a learning experience. I found that hit point location is really cool, but for multiple bad guys was really tough to keep track of. I am thinking of doing some npc/monster index cards with a CA track and hit point location boxes to keep better track of them during the fight. I tend to get confused with my scribbles on notebook paper!
I also found that making a Brawn check to pull a weapon free was brutal to the characters; with low Brawn it is next to impossible to pull that sucker free. I am thinking of letting various weapons have bonuses to Brawn checks. For example, a two handed sword would be as is, but a longsword with a blood groove might give a +10 and a short sword +15, and a dagger +20% to retrieve. Special weapons designed to impale may offer even greater bonuses, like a fencing rapier may give a +25 to pull back out. On the other hand, barbed weapons and arrows may give a penalty to pull out, and do extra damage (maybe a Bleed CM).

I saw the optional rule of using generalized hit points for most baddies, saving hit locations for "bosses" and such, but if you do that, don't you lose the ability to do some of the CM's? Choose Location comes to mind.

Anyway, I am really liking the tactical side of this game, and the overall feel is really, really cool. I am looking forward to the change over to Legend. I like digest sized books, but I wish they would do a limited edition leatherette gold foil book or three, as the RQII series looks incredible to me.

 

[master of reality]

As a newcomer to d100, I have went through Chaosium's variations but really liked what I read in RQII. Usually my adult gaming group plays Gurps in every genre, some Battletech or D20 on occasion. No one there seems too interested in trying something new, so my family and I went camping for vacation, and I threw a game down for my kids. I really dig this system.

Fantastic! Another convert. I discovered Chaosium's RuneQuest during my high school years and played my first game of Call of Cthulhu with Sandy Peterson at a SciFi convention while still a teenager. I own Chaosium's Ringworld and Stormbringer. Despite the many years I spent using the BRP system, Mongoose's RuneQuest 2 remains my favorite fantasy role-playing system. In fact, I like it so much that I bought two of my friends copies of the core book and the Elric core book. This turned out to be a good investment. One of these friends, a former D&D player and a huge Elric fan, has taken on the responsibility of GM, and the three of us have had several entertaining gaming sessions in the world of Elric using the MRQ2 system.

My only problem was learning how to juggle CAs between the players and the monsters. I kept track on paper, but being new, I was also unsure of when CA's could be used. For example, when a player attacked, I was unsure at first whether we had to cycle through everyone first and get to the monsters turn for it to use a CA to parry or evade. Of course, I thought that would be sort of silly, and let the monsters react instantly with a parry, burning a CA before their turn came around.......then I reread the combat section and saw this was the right thing to do anyway!

Yes, CA's for defense (parry or evade) are used immediately upon being attacked regardless of initiative. That's why it's usually a good idea to use only one CA for attack, reserving any others for defense or other actions such as move or pick up dropped weapon.
Keeping track of CAs for large battles can be laborious, but using poker chips might make this easier. Each combatant receives poker chips equal to their CAs per round and spends a poker chip when a CA is used.

So all in all, it was a learning experience. I found that hit point location is really cool, but for multiple bad guys was really tough to keep track of. I am thinking of doing some npc/monster index cards with a CA track and hit point location boxes to keep better track of them during the fight. I tend to get confused with my scribbles on notebook paper!

Yes! Hit locations are cool, particularly the way it's done in the MRQ2 system. It's been awhile, but I think that the original BRP RuneQuest system did not make a distinction between the effects of a blow to the head versus a blow to the leg (although another poster might correct me on this). The MRQ2 system does a decent job of making these distinctions without getting too bogged down in detail. Some might see the MRQ2 system as not detailed enough, and there are other games, such as Aces & Eights, that go further by taking into account broken bones, internal bleeding, infection, etc., but more details usually means more bookkeeping. When I read the MRQ2 book, I get a real sense that the authors tried very hard to strike a good balance between "realism" and playability.

I also found that making a Brawn check to pull a weapon free was brutal to the characters; with low Brawn it is next to impossible to pull that sucker free. I am thinking of letting various weapons have bonuses to Brawn checks. For example, a two handed sword would be as is, but a longsword with a blood groove might give a +10 and a short sword +15, and a dagger +20% to retrieve. Special weapons designed to impale may offer even greater bonuses, like a fencing rapier may give a +25 to pull back out. On the other hand, barbed weapons and arrows may give a penalty to pull out, and do extra damage (maybe a Bleed CM).

Good point! I imagine this was left intentionally simplistic in the interest of playability, but that's the beauty of this system. You can add details like this without fundamentally changing the system. As they say, your RuneQuest may vary.

I saw the optional rule of using generalized hit points for most baddies, saving hit locations for "bosses" and such, but if you do that, don't you lose the ability to do some of the CM's? Choose Location comes to mind.

Again, playability versus realism. it's easier to keep track of general hit points, but then you lose details such as hit location.

Anyway, I am really liking the tactical side of this game, and the overall feel is really, really cool. I am looking forward to the change over to Legend. I like digest sized books, but I wish they would do a limited edition leatherette gold foil book or three, as the RQII series looks incredible to me.

I prefer the current full-sized hardback books and have been on a buying spree to grab up these beauties before they are discontinued and destroyed. Of course, content is more important than format, and if changing formats helps Mongoose stay economically viable, then I'm in favor of it. I will still buy a digest sized Legend book if it has desirable information. I imagine, though, that if Legend does really well, then Mongoose might eventually offer full-sized, leather bound versions of some of their more popular books.

 

[Jujitsudave]

Welcome to the best RPG system of all time.

 

[DamonJynx]

Welcome to the best RPG system of all time.

I'll second that.

With regards to CM's and general HP's for minions, the only CM that is superfluous is "Choose Location", there are still plenty of viable options to make the combat fun.

 

[daddystabz]

I am a huge BRP system fan (ie the big gold book) BUT I like MRQII even better! It is my fave fantasy system, period.

I just wish in the near future Mongoose would take the new Legend systema nd make a generic all-in-one book like the BRP big gold book to play any genre out of. MRQII does things I simply like better than the way BRP handles it.....such as 10% crits, no special successes, combat in general, combat maneuvers, etc.

 

[DamonJynx]

I am a huge BRP system fan (ie the big gold book) BUT I like MRQII even better! It is my fave fantasy system, period.

I just wish in the near future Mongoose would take the new Legend systema nd make a generic all-in-one book like the BRP big gold book to play any genre out of. MRQII does things I simply like better than the way BRP handles it.....such as 10% crits, no special successes, combat in general, combat maneuvers, etc.

I agree. I was going to use BRP for my games (there is a crapload of Stormbringer stuff available - not anywhere near as goods as Mongooses current offering however) but I realised I was going to have to manage a lot of optional rules to get the kind of game I wanted. MRQII/Legend had 95% of that done out of the box and the other 5% well, it wasn't really that important. One thing I do like about BRP vs. MRQ11 is the resistance table for opposed rolls that aren't 'actively' opposed by an NPC or creature, such as a resilience roll vs. a poison, that type of thing. It's not that big a deal, but I think the Resistance Table is an elegant solution. Currently if the poison rolls over it's POT the PC's just have to roll under their skill and the POT, because essentially the poison can't fail, so why have another die roll? Why not just say that your resilience is 40, the poison's POT is 60, therefore you have a 30% chance of not being affected (not necessarily exact figures, but you get the drift). It would still require a little tweaking as its meant to be stat vs XXX, ie CON vs. POT.

 

[daddystabz]

I agree. I like the resistance table in BRP as well.

 

[Piperdog]

Thanks for your input, guys. I am looking forward to getting my group to try it out....they already like skill based systems, and Gurps (the current system used by our group) is a "roll under skill" type game, so it won't be all that hard to transition. I have been making pregens for everyone to pick from so we can have a one shot adventure to let everyone get a feel for the system.

On a totally different note, does anyone know of any games being run at GenCon?

 

[Cuediin]

Hi Piper, I too recently ran a couple of scenarios and found it hard to track CAs and HPs.
I have recently devised some NPC tracking cards, to be used in conjunction with poker chips.

I also have some "house" rules when dealing with generalised NPCs.
If they hit a vital location (head or chest) and do crit wound dmg in one go, I roll on the NPC crit wound table AND also do a resistance check to see if they dont die from the experience. Otherwise you end up with someone getting -12 hitpoints to the head, when they only started out with 14 hitpoints in total, and still alive
I dont keep track of the total hitpoints per location though, just on a roll per roll basis....