Sanity in Runequest (who wants THAT?)

[mthomason]

(Which brings me to the realization that maybe are should start telling my kids about the Elder Mythos and preparing them for the day Cthulhu awakens - just in case).

It ought to be in every school curriculum! What are they spending all our tax money on??? Probably useless stuff like what the capital of Uzbekistan is - like knowing that is ever going to save you from a terrifying death (granted - you'll still die, but at least you won't be terrified while it happens)

 

[mthomason]

You and I are raised in a world where we are told ghosts and goblins and whatnot don't exist, and never see any evidence to the contrary. Much of the reason for san rolls is that this whole life conditioning is shattered. If we had been raised being told we would see this things someday the shock would be much less.

Actually... not knowing much about Glorantha until recently, I'd be far more terrified of Broo showing up knowing what I know about them now, than if I were blissfully ignorant. :lol:

 

[Rurik]

Actually... not knowing much about Glorantha until recently, I'd be far more terrified of Broo showing up knowing what I know about them now, than if I were blissfully ignorant. :lol:

But you are blissfully ignorant! :lol:

(Sorry, couldn't resist, no offense meant - and you did kinda leave yourself 'overextended')

BTW How is NovaQuest coming - any new previews in the works?

 

[mthomason]

But you are blissfully ignorant! :lol:

BTW How is NovaQuest coming - any new previews in the works?

We're going to be doing some early playtesting of the weapons and spacecraft rules in the online SG-1 game (convenient how so much stuff can be reused in there...) so there will be a look at an early draft version soon There'll also be some background stuff on the game universe going onto the site in a few weeks time!

 

[soltakss]

Although, why anyone would want SAN in RQ, I don't know.

SAN in RQ, especially an RQ game set in Glorantha - probably not.
SAN in a horror game derived from the OGLed RQ rules, very much so.

Fine, I just don't get SAN at all. Never liked Cthulhu, never had nightmares about films (except for Eraserhead, but let's not go there ...), was never scared by horror stories, never thought about the vastness of the universe, so I can't really relate to it.

I'm not too keen on spiders, though ...

 

[Utgardloki]

A character can have a Sanity skill, which defaults at INT + POW + CHA.

Two characters, a military combat veteran and a gypsy burglar, encounter a barbarian who has just hacked a guy in half.

The combat veteran is probably not happy, but he's also desensitized to the sight of a dead person, so he has no game mechanics effect. The gypsy burglar, however, has not been hardened for this kind of thing, so she has to make a Sanity roll to avoid losing a Combat Action.

(Purists could use Persistence instead...)

This might be better than what did happen when a gypsy burglar left a bar to find a barbarian with a sword standing over a guy who'd just been hacked apart. Realizing that if she pulled her gun out, the barbarian would get an Attack of Opportunity (yes, we were playing D&D), she decided to use her Improved Unarmed Attack feat to hit the barbarian.

(That might not have been the best idea.)

A die roll may drive home the point that, okay, you have just seen a guy cut in half with a greatsword. This affects you.

I could also have had the barbarian roll a sanity check when the military veteran comes out with an automatic "broomhandle" Mauser and shoots everybody in the street. The players running the archaic characters were like "guns, automatic weapons, a normal Wednesday night."

 

[yojimbo]

Note, I was not talking about sanity in RuneQuest. I was talking about making RuneQuest -- in conjunction with the sanity rules out of D&D's Unearthed Arcana -- into an OGLed version of Call of Cthulhu.

Personally, I'd like to see an OGL CoC. It would allow third-parties to produce CoC compatible material.

I see that Penguin and the other big UK book publishers are producing collections of Lovecraft's stories now so I'm pretty sure that Lovecraft's stories are out of copyright in the UK (and that Arkham House's claims of owning the rights to the stories are frankly suspect).

As for the contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos from other authors, such as Brian Lumley, Ramsey Campbell, Robert E. Howard, I have no idea. Certainly Derleth's work is off-limits (Arkham House was his company).

I guess you'd have to call this hypothetical game OGL Lovecraftian Horror rather than OGL Cthulhu Mythos.

Jim.

 

[Utgardloki]

It occurs to me that in order to avoid "wheel re-invention", the path of least resistance seems to lead to giving the freaky/disturbing/horrifying occurence something equivalent to "Potency", just like a poison or disease. (even though i'm on the fence about Opposed tests...)

One alternative to the Opposed Roll mechanic could be to simply define sanity rolls as Very Easy, Easy, "Normal" :shock: , Hard, and Very Hard.

It's a lot easier to rate something 1-5 than to assign a % potency, and there are already mechanics for such skills. Another advantage of this approach is that in my houserules, skilled characters do not have to make Very Easy or Easy rolls, which gives jaded characters an edge without having to make a "Jaded" advantage.