While I have no intention of turning this blog into a marketplace, I am a bit wary of entering the big swirl at eBay. Should any of the items below catch your fancy, email me with an offer (address is on the left side on the blog front page). Everything is in Sweden, and you will have to pay actual shipping costs.
I already have more copies of these items, and some (like the Genertela box) I consider to be the definitive source on the matter.
If none of it finds a buyer I guess I'll have to go to eBay. I do have some more stuff, for DragonQuest, that I also have excess copies of. Those might show up later.
Gods of Glorantha - Scotch tape on box. Cults book have tears by the staples. Otherewise just fine.
Tales of the Reaching Moon #13 - spine have scruff marks.
HeroWars:Roleplaying in Glorantha - Excellent condition.
HeroWars:Narrator's Book Game Mastering in the Hero wars - near mint.
Snake Pipe Hollow RQ3 - Excellent condition. NPC stat booklet photocopy.
Apple Lane RQ3 - In shrink wrap. Some tears in shrink wrap, though.
Ye Book of Tentacles vol.2 - near mint. Minimum shelf wear.
Glorantha:Genertela, crucible of the hero wars - One box corner crushed and taped. Map have tears along creases, lover box have split corner, player's book have torn and creased corner. Otherwise excellent condition.
Showing posts with label RuneQuest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RuneQuest. Show all posts
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
[The Shadow of Pavis] Solar System - what makes it cool?
When I posted about me playing a Gloranthan game, I said I would post something more on the game system. Instead of just telling you how it works, I'm going to try to say why it makes me think it a good match for this game.
One of the features of the so called "Solar System", is that you have something called keys. I guess you could say they are late cousins of the Spiritual Attributes in The Riddle of Steel. For those of you who became none the wiser from that, I'll say they are triggers for things which gain you XP.
So, the fine things with these keys are that you pick them yourself during character generation. This means you get to decide what you want to do to gain XP! Isn't that kind of sweet, eh?
If you have a key like, Key of Hatred of Uz, then every time your character can show some hatred against trolls, you gain XP. Simple.
The second thing I wanted to mention is Pools. In the basic and generic Solar System, you have three pools of points which you can spend on rolls. All abilities are tied to a pool, and chuck in some of those points and you get to roll more dice and have a far better chance of success.
Like you have figured out by now, that means you can decide when something in the game is important for you and make it pretty likely your character get to shine. Also, it is a pretty cool resource management level in the game.
Thirdly, the best name of a game sub-system ever, is Bringing Down The Pain. I love it. Bringing it down is something you can do in a resisted conflict when you are going to fail, and just wont let it pass that easily. Regularly, you can't kill anybody unless you bring the pain. The vanilla conflict, if it's a fight, is a one roll affair to decide who wins.
When the pain is brought down, you go blow by blow in whatever conflict there is. For all those you you who had played a game which glosses over the nitty gritty when you wanted to dive in, this is where it shines. Having a mechanic like this makes it possible to customize when you want to have an involved game system and you just want to move on.
So why would all this make it a good fit for Glorantha? Well, I think that in a world where the mythic and the mundane are juxtaposed like they are in Glorantha, it's crucial to be able to decide when to "zoom in". RQ always had the same scale on things. I means, in a percentile system everything goes from 1 - 100 since that's the maths, right? It always makes it a bit wonky when you try to mix in godlike abilities and the fact that the power scale between a dirt farmer and some of the movers and shakers are so huge. HeroQuest/Wars tried to remedy that with "masteries" for every 20 steps of an ability, and they could then cancel each other out to reduce the system to a manageable level. While that is kind of neat, I think the Solar System manages something similar in a way more too my liking.
Another thing I like with the Solar System is the idea of gift dice. It is a neat way to make communal support a part of the system. In Glorantha you usually can't make much happen without the backing of someone else.
Most important though, I have always wanted to test the system! Now I had, and it was fun.
One of the features of the so called "Solar System", is that you have something called keys. I guess you could say they are late cousins of the Spiritual Attributes in The Riddle of Steel. For those of you who became none the wiser from that, I'll say they are triggers for things which gain you XP.
So, the fine things with these keys are that you pick them yourself during character generation. This means you get to decide what you want to do to gain XP! Isn't that kind of sweet, eh?
If you have a key like, Key of Hatred of Uz, then every time your character can show some hatred against trolls, you gain XP. Simple.
The second thing I wanted to mention is Pools. In the basic and generic Solar System, you have three pools of points which you can spend on rolls. All abilities are tied to a pool, and chuck in some of those points and you get to roll more dice and have a far better chance of success.
Like you have figured out by now, that means you can decide when something in the game is important for you and make it pretty likely your character get to shine. Also, it is a pretty cool resource management level in the game.
Thirdly, the best name of a game sub-system ever, is Bringing Down The Pain. I love it. Bringing it down is something you can do in a resisted conflict when you are going to fail, and just wont let it pass that easily. Regularly, you can't kill anybody unless you bring the pain. The vanilla conflict, if it's a fight, is a one roll affair to decide who wins.
When the pain is brought down, you go blow by blow in whatever conflict there is. For all those you you who had played a game which glosses over the nitty gritty when you wanted to dive in, this is where it shines. Having a mechanic like this makes it possible to customize when you want to have an involved game system and you just want to move on.
So why would all this make it a good fit for Glorantha? Well, I think that in a world where the mythic and the mundane are juxtaposed like they are in Glorantha, it's crucial to be able to decide when to "zoom in". RQ always had the same scale on things. I means, in a percentile system everything goes from 1 - 100 since that's the maths, right? It always makes it a bit wonky when you try to mix in godlike abilities and the fact that the power scale between a dirt farmer and some of the movers and shakers are so huge. HeroQuest/Wars tried to remedy that with "masteries" for every 20 steps of an ability, and they could then cancel each other out to reduce the system to a manageable level. While that is kind of neat, I think the Solar System manages something similar in a way more too my liking.
Another thing I like with the Solar System is the idea of gift dice. It is a neat way to make communal support a part of the system. In Glorantha you usually can't make much happen without the backing of someone else.
Most important though, I have always wanted to test the system! Now I had, and it was fun.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
The question about RuneQuest magic
I came late to the show. RQ had already passed on, and while there was this new game being worked on it took ages and everyone still spoke in RQ terms. Finally I got the new game, HeroWars, and while it was an eye opener it was also one of the worst produced games I've ever seen. But, it did give me some vocabulary to speak about Gloranthan things. Then there was these RQ terms.
One bone of contention is the vocabulary of magic. In HW the different magic paradigms are very different. In RQ3, there are spirit magic, divine magic and then there's sorcery. Even though the latter is supposed to be more powerful and take more study, it's quite similar in game effect to divine magic, which comes from the gods. Then there's the spirit magic, which even though coming from spirits look just like the spells of divine magic. I always wondered why there wasn't just one game mechanic and the metaphysics just background facts.
Now, in RQ2 things were named differently. There was something called battle magic, which I think was not at all that related to battle. I seem to remember something called Rune magic as well. Whatever that was.
When HeroWars spawned its successor, HeroQuest, we suddenly had something called "common magic", which once again mixed up the cosmologies, or at least made me mix it all up. Unless I misremember (I've never owned HQ), it also did change the name of one of the other schools of magic.
So, how on earth do all these related? Why are they all looking so similar when they depict three very different views on the world? With the great Yellow Tome, the new BRP rules, I've been thinking of a Gloranthan game but have hit upon the problem of relating to all those old RQ based books that I have.
Now we go into the territory of Gloranthan high weirdness.
The heroforming of HeroWars seemed a perfect fit for superpowers. The use of theistic feats for skill augmentation would be a simple +20% to a skill if your Devotion skill was higher than the skill rolling for. Animism then would just use the summoning skill, and the sorcery system using the regular spell system.
Do this in any shape or form look or feel like either RQ2/3 or HeroWars/Quest? I have no idea.
Frankly, when I a few weeks ago got hold of the British edition of RQ3 all these questions came back to me again. Anyone know enough of all these schools of magic to tell me how battle, spirit, common and sorcery magic all related? Oh, there were divine and rune magic, and a few others as well. Arrgh!
One bone of contention is the vocabulary of magic. In HW the different magic paradigms are very different. In RQ3, there are spirit magic, divine magic and then there's sorcery. Even though the latter is supposed to be more powerful and take more study, it's quite similar in game effect to divine magic, which comes from the gods. Then there's the spirit magic, which even though coming from spirits look just like the spells of divine magic. I always wondered why there wasn't just one game mechanic and the metaphysics just background facts.
Now, in RQ2 things were named differently. There was something called battle magic, which I think was not at all that related to battle. I seem to remember something called Rune magic as well. Whatever that was.
When HeroWars spawned its successor, HeroQuest, we suddenly had something called "common magic", which once again mixed up the cosmologies, or at least made me mix it all up. Unless I misremember (I've never owned HQ), it also did change the name of one of the other schools of magic.
So, how on earth do all these related? Why are they all looking so similar when they depict three very different views on the world? With the great Yellow Tome, the new BRP rules, I've been thinking of a Gloranthan game but have hit upon the problem of relating to all those old RQ based books that I have.
Now we go into the territory of Gloranthan high weirdness.
The heroforming of HeroWars seemed a perfect fit for superpowers. The use of theistic feats for skill augmentation would be a simple +20% to a skill if your Devotion skill was higher than the skill rolling for. Animism then would just use the summoning skill, and the sorcery system using the regular spell system.
Do this in any shape or form look or feel like either RQ2/3 or HeroWars/Quest? I have no idea.
Frankly, when I a few weeks ago got hold of the British edition of RQ3 all these questions came back to me again. Anyone know enough of all these schools of magic to tell me how battle, spirit, common and sorcery magic all related? Oh, there were divine and rune magic, and a few others as well. Arrgh!
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