RuneQuest II

A Review by Hywel T. Phillips

Martin Levesque asked for a review of RuneQuest, and since I've just started an RQ "nostaglia" campaign, I thought I'd oblige.

This review covers the second edition, which I've been using because most of the Gloranthan material I have is second edition. Third edition has better rules with some nice tweaks to the system, but the supplements are the merest shadow of the RQ II originals.

SYSTEM:

RQ revolves around skills, which are given as percentages, and any character can learn any skill so long as he can find someone to train him. (There are no character classes). The usual statistics (rolled on 3d6) are present, and are used to generate bonuses or penalties on skills in various categories and are used to calculate hit points, etc. For example, a high intelligence gives you a bonus on knowledge skills and a high charisma gives you a bonus on oratory skills.

The basic mechanisms of the game are: 1) The skill roll: roll your skill or less on percentile dice to succeed. If you roll well (1/5 of what you needed), you may get a special success or "impale", if you roll exceptionally well (1/20 of what you needed), you "critical". Roll very high and you fumble. For skills, the effects of these special successes are left to the GM's discretion. For combat, impales do extra damage, criticals ignore a foe's armour and fumbles make you roll on the fumble table which is about the only table you'll need during play.

2) The attribute roll: roll your stat times some modifier or less on percentile dice to succeed. For example, walking across a log to cross a river might be a DEX x 5 roll. If the log is covered in slimy algae and it is raining, it might be a DEX x 3 roll, and if its covered in ice it might be a DEX x 1 roll.

3) The opposed stats roll. For every 1 point of stat difference, adjust your chance of success by 5%, starting at 50%. So a STR 14 character trying to arm wrestle a STR 18 character has a 50-((14-18)*5) = 30% chance of success where his opponent has a 50+((14-18)*5) = 70% chance of succeeding. Both roll- if both succeed or both fail the battle continues, otherwise the one who succeeds wins. Some prolonged contests can progressively reduce the stats of losers: fighting a ghost in a spirit combat for example.

COMBAT:

Probably the best part of the whole system is combat. The authors of the system are SCA buffs, and it shows. I can't speak for what real combat feels like, but RQ combat recreates the feelings of an SCA fight extremely well.

Action is divided into combat rounds, which are further divided into Strike Ranks, which determine who goes first. A high-DEX, tall character with a 10 foot spear will go before a low-DEX dwarf with a dagger, for example. Most of the numbers can be worked out before combat starts and is simple enough that a simple addition is enough to cope with any usual actions. The rate of fire of missile weapons is well reflected, with a fast human being able to shoot a bow twice per round (an a superhumanly-fast elf can just about squeeze off three, which is pretty lethal to unarmoured characters). The heavier crossbows can be fired every other round.

Characters strike each other by a weapon skill roll, modified by the opponents' defence rating (calculated from DEX but improvable by experience). The opponent has a chance to parry with a shield or weapon by making a parry skill roll. If the blow hits, damage is rolled and applied to one of the foe's hit locations (r leg, l leg, abdomen, chest, r arm, l arm, head), with armour subtracting a fixed amount. If the foe parries with a weapon, it takes the damage and will eventually break. A special success on the attack roll delivers more damage, especially with impaling weapons like a spear where you roll your damage and add the weapon's maximum damage- do that to an opponent's chest and he's probably dead. Damage a limb enough and it becomes useless or is even severed; damage the chest, head or abdomen enough and the foe is down or dead. Total hits are also accumulated and characters can therefore die from overall system shock or blood loss. Combat is damned dangerous in RQ, especially for lightly-armoured inexperienced characters, so it a good job that magical healing is very effective… every party should make sure that someone in the group can cast healing 2 before they head out of the Tin Inn to sort out those baboons raiding Gringle's Pawnshop or it'll be a really short saga.

Enough armour protects you from small weapons and light bows, although a critical hit ignores armour (it's found the joint or whatever) so you're never totally safe.

Combat isn't as fast as AD&D but has much more detail and flavour, and feels bloody and dangerous!

RQIII added a few nice refinements- workable fatigue rules which didn't slow combat down and added a dodge skill which is a bit of an omission since there doesn't seem to be anything in the RQII rules to allow a defence bonus to characters doing nothing other than defend all-out. These can easily be added to RQII if desired.

MAGIC:

There are two sorts of magic- battle magic is powered by the character's own spirit whereas rune magic is powered by a god on the character's behalf. Characters use temporary points of POW (the magic stat, power) to energise battle magic and must sacrifice permanent points of POW to their god to get access to rune magic. POW can be increased by overcoming another creature's in battle- for example by successfully casting a battle magic spell on a resisting opponent. The battle magic spells are quite limited and mostly combat-orientated. The rune magic spells are a lot more powerful and a lot more interesting, being tailored to the god you worship.

That brings us to:

BACKGROUND:

The other big selling point for RQ is the Gloranthan background. Glorantha is a bronze-age world created by Greg Stafford with a rich history and a very highly developed set of religious. No-one should run Gloranthan RQ without a copy of Cults of Prax which describes in great detail the major religions of the Prax area. It is the richness of this background (see http://www.glorantha.com) allied with a game system tailored heavily to describe it, that raises RQ above the run-of-the-mill fantasy games. Severing this link was RQIII's greatest mistake.

Characters can join cults as lay members (turn up for services and occasionally tithe a bit to the cult), rise to initiate (steadfast worshippers of the god who are the backbone of the religion and are bound by certain rules of conduct and often have to serve the temple in times of need) thence to Rune Priest or Rune Lord, powerful leaders who have the direct favour of their god. RuneQuest is so named because most characters will eventually aim to attain the rank of Rune Lord or Rune Priest in one of the many religions of Glorantha. Religious themes run throughout the lives of most of Glorantha's residents and while characters can decide to go it alone, they'll find their lives much more of a struggle without the help and support of a temple.

Character generation ties characters to the background in a way many games still fail to do- most beginning characters will need to purchase some training in skills, and to do that they'll have to borrow money from someone, and that places even the independent adventurers inside the web of social interactions of Glorantha before the first dice is rolled. It also integrates wandering adventurers into the social fabric in a way which few other games have even attempted- the Lunar guards at the entrance to the Big Rubble will make sure you have a permit before you enter and pay the taxes as you leave!

The game also allows and encourages you to play some of the more interesting non-human sentient races, of which trolls are by far the most developed and the most fun. (The massive Trollpack supplement is one of the high points of RQII).

THE PROBLEMS:

RQII is not perfect.

There are some glitches in the system- most skill rolls depend on the ability of the character only: the GM must add a modifier by hand each time to adjust the difficulty of the action if he feels it needed, and it is never quite clear what happens to the impale and critical chances (recalculating them each time is too tedious!).

Attribute rolls are sometimes used where a skill roll might be more appropriate, and it's not clear how a low-DEX character with a high climbing skill would fare against a high-DEX character who's never climbed anything in his life.

Critical hits can often do a lot less damage than an impale would have against lightly-armoured opponents, but you can fix that by allowing the attacker to choose which he does (before rolling dice of course).

The rulebook is badly organised, with important facts scattered throughout its pages. The index is too brief and the appendices should have been integrated with the text.

The GM's job is complicated- generating NPC stats takes a long time because so many numbers are needed and the simple recordkeeping for an average campaign takes an hour a week unless you're using a published module.

But the biggest problem is… RQII is out of print, and has been for a really long time now.

This isn't such a big problem for the rules, as RQII and RQIII can be used almost interchangeably (the detailed differences in things like strike ranks can be ignored for most purposes).

No, the problem is that the RQII supplements hit heights that have rarely been revisited since, and the RQIII replacements always replace quality with quantity- the religious supplement describes 60 cults rather than the dozen or so of Cults of Prax and in the process leaves out ALL the colour and detail that made playing a Storm Bull berserker so different from playing a human devotee of the troll war god Zorak Zoran. The extensive campaign packs of Griffin Mountain, Borderlands, Pavis and the Big Rubble were hacked about and cut down in an inexplicable manner, seemingly adding very little whilst removing an awful lot.

I applaud the republishing of Pavis and the Big Rubble in almost their original form (and I have number 12 of print run 1000 sitting on my bookshelf) and hope that the other classics will follow.

CONCLUSIONS: RQII is in my opinion far and away the best of the "first generation" games. Its imperfections are irksome, but mostly fixable. The lack of integrated difficulty ratings in skill rolls is more primitive than modern systems, but workable in most circumstances.

Combat is excellent, although a little slow by modern standards, you do get a return on your time investment- the detail has rarely be rivalled and the feel has never been bettered. Magic is not as exciting as in freeform systems like Ars Magica, but has the saving grace of being totally integrated into the way the world works and as much a part of the natural order as breathing.

I would advise anyone who likes rip-roaring swords and sorcery with the added dimension of a detailed and unique campaign setting to try a session or two of RuneQuest. The RQIII rules are probably more generally available and can be substituted quite easily, although they do lose some of the flavour of the original. You can now buy Pavis & the Big Rubble, which gives you a good grounding in the background. What's really going to cause you grief is not being able to get hold of Cults of Prax, and you're not having my copy!

Style: 2 (Needs Work)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

RuneQuest II
Author: Greg Stafford et al. Category: game Company/Publisher: Chaosium Line: RuneQuest Playtest Review by Hywel Phillips on 10/27/99. Genre tags: Fantasy	RuneQuest II A Review by Hywel T. Phillips Martin Levesque asked for a review of RuneQuest, and since I've just started an RQ "nostaglia" campaign, I thought I'd oblige. This review covers the second edition, which I've been using because most of the Gloranthan material I have is second edition. Third edition has better rules with some nice tweaks to the system, but the supplements are the merest shadow of the RQ II originals. SYSTEM: RQ revolves around skills, which are given as percentages, and any character can learn any skill so long as he can find someone to train him. (There are no character classes). The usual statistics (rolled on 3d6) are present, and are used to generate bonuses or penalties on skills in various categories and are used to calculate hit points, etc. For example, a high intelligence gives you a bonus on knowledge skills and a high charisma gives you a bonus on oratory skills. The basic mechanisms of the game are: 1) The skill roll: roll your skill or less on percentile dice to succeed. If you roll well (1/5 of what you needed), you may get a special success or "impale", if you roll exceptionally well (1/20 of what you needed), you "critical". Roll very high and you fumble. For skills, the effects of these special successes are left to the GM's discretion. For combat, impales do extra damage, criticals ignore a foe's armour and fumbles make you roll on the fumble table which is about the only table you'll need during play. 2) The attribute roll: roll your stat times some modifier or less on percentile dice to succeed. For example, walking across a log to cross a river might be a DEX x 5 roll. If the log is covered in slimy algae and it is raining, it might be a DEX x 3 roll, and if its covered in ice it might be a DEX x 1 roll. 3) The opposed stats roll. For every 1 point of stat difference, adjust your chance of success by 5%, starting at 50%. So a STR 14 character trying to arm wrestle a STR 18 character has a 50-((14-18)5) = 30% chance of success where his opponent has a 50+((14-18)5) = 70% chance of succeeding. Both roll- if both succeed or both fail the battle continues, otherwise the one who succeeds wins. Some prolonged contests can progressively reduce the stats of losers: fighting a ghost in a spirit combat for example. COMBAT: Probably the best part of the whole system is combat. The authors of the system are SCA buffs, and it shows. I can't speak for what real combat feels like, but RQ combat recreates the feelings of an SCA fight extremely well. Action is divided into combat rounds, which are further divided into Strike Ranks, which determine who goes first. A high-DEX, tall character with a 10 foot spear will go before a low-DEX dwarf with a dagger, for example. Most of the numbers can be worked out before combat starts and is simple enough that a simple addition is enough to cope with any usual actions. The rate of fire of missile weapons is well reflected, with a fast human being able to shoot a bow twice per round (an a superhumanly-fast elf can just about squeeze off three, which is pretty lethal to unarmoured characters). The heavier crossbows can be fired every other round. Characters strike each other by a weapon skill roll, modified by the opponents' defence rating (calculated from DEX but improvable by experience). The opponent has a chance to parry with a shield or weapon by making a parry skill roll. If the blow hits, damage is rolled and applied to one of the foe's hit locations (r leg, l leg, abdomen, chest, r arm, l arm, head), with armour subtracting a fixed amount. If the foe parries with a weapon, it takes the damage and will eventually break. A special success on the attack roll delivers more damage, especially with impaling weapons like a spear where you roll your damage and add the weapon's maximum damage- do that to an opponent's chest and he's probably dead. Damage a limb enough and it becomes useless or is even severed; damage the chest, head or abdomen enough and the foe is down or dead. Total hits are also accumulated and characters can therefore die from overall system shock or blood loss. Combat is damned dangerous in RQ, especially for lightly-armoured inexperienced characters, so it a good job that magical healing is very effective… every party should make sure that someone in the group can cast healing 2 before they head out of the Tin Inn to sort out those baboons raiding Gringle's Pawnshop or it'll be a really short saga. Enough armour protects you from small weapons and light bows, although a critical hit ignores armour (it's found the joint or whatever) so you're never totally safe. Combat isn't as fast as AD&D but has much more detail and flavour, and feels bloody and dangerous! RQIII added a few nice refinements- workable fatigue rules which didn't slow combat down and added a dodge skill which is a bit of an omission since there doesn't seem to be anything in the RQII rules to allow a defence bonus to characters doing nothing other than defend all-out. These can easily be added to RQII if desired. MAGIC: There are two sorts of magic- battle magic is powered by the character's own spirit whereas rune magic is powered by a god on the character's behalf. Characters use temporary points of POW (the magic stat, power) to energise battle magic and must sacrifice permanent points of POW to their god to get access to rune magic. POW can be increased by overcoming another creature's in battle- for example by successfully casting a battle magic spell on a resisting opponent. The battle magic spells are quite limited and mostly combat-orientated. The rune magic spells are a lot more powerful and a lot more interesting, being tailored to the god you worship. That brings us to: BACKGROUND: The other big selling point for RQ is the Gloranthan background. Glorantha is a bronze-age world created by Greg Stafford with a rich history and a very highly developed set of religious. No-one should run Gloranthan RQ without a copy of Cults of Prax which describes in great detail the major religions of the Prax area. It is the richness of this background (see http://www.glorantha.com) allied with a game system tailored heavily to describe it, that raises RQ above the run-of-the-mill fantasy games. Severing this link was RQIII's greatest mistake. Characters can join cults as lay members (turn up for services and occasionally tithe a bit to the cult), rise to initiate (steadfast worshippers of the god who are the backbone of the religion and are bound by certain rules of conduct and often have to serve the temple in times of need) thence to Rune Priest or Rune Lord, powerful leaders who have the direct favour of their god. RuneQuest is so named because most characters will eventually aim to attain the rank of Rune Lord or Rune Priest in one of the many religions of Glorantha. Religious themes run throughout the lives of most of Glorantha's residents and while characters can decide to go it alone, they'll find their lives much more of a struggle without the help and support of a temple. Character generation ties characters to the background in a way many games still fail to do- most beginning characters will need to purchase some training in skills, and to do that they'll have to borrow money from someone, and that places even the independent adventurers inside the web of social interactions of Glorantha before the first dice is rolled. It also integrates wandering adventurers into the social fabric in a way which few other games have even attempted- the Lunar guards at the entrance to the Big Rubble will make sure you have a permit before you enter and pay the taxes as you leave! The game also allows and encourages you to play some of the more interesting non-human sentient races, of which trolls are by far the most developed and the most fun. (The massive Trollpack supplement is one of the high points of RQII). THE PROBLEMS: RQII is not perfect. There are some glitches in the system- most skill rolls depend on the ability of the character only: the GM must add a modifier by hand each time to adjust the difficulty of the action if he feels it needed, and it is never quite clear what happens to the impale and critical chances (recalculating them each time is too tedious!). Attribute rolls are sometimes used where a skill roll might be more appropriate, and it's not clear how a low-DEX character with a high climbing skill would fare against a high-DEX character who's never climbed anything in his life. Critical hits can often do a lot less damage than an impale would have against lightly-armoured opponents, but you can fix that by allowing the attacker to choose which he does (before rolling dice of course). The rulebook is badly organised, with important facts scattered throughout its pages. The index is too brief and the appendices should have been integrated with the text. The GM's job is complicated- generating NPC stats takes a long time because so many numbers are needed and the simple recordkeeping for an average campaign takes an hour a week unless you're using a published module. But the biggest problem is… RQII is out of print, and has been for a really long time now. This isn't such a big problem for the rules, as RQII and RQIII can be used almost interchangeably (the detailed differences in things like strike ranks can be ignored for most purposes). No, the problem is that the RQII supplements hit heights that have rarely been revisited since, and the RQIII replacements always replace quality with quantity- the religious supplement describes 60 cults rather than the dozen or so of Cults of Prax and in the process leaves out ALL the colour and detail that made playing a Storm Bull berserker so different from playing a human devotee of the troll war god Zorak Zoran. The extensive campaign packs of Griffin Mountain, Borderlands, Pavis and the Big Rubble were hacked about and cut down in an inexplicable manner, seemingly adding very little whilst removing an awful lot. I applaud the republishing of Pavis and the Big Rubble in almost their original form (and I have number 12 of print run 1000 sitting on my bookshelf) and hope that the other classics will follow. CONCLUSIONS: RQII is in my opinion far and away the best of the "first generation" games. Its imperfections are irksome, but mostly fixable. The lack of integrated difficulty ratings in skill rolls is more primitive than modern systems, but workable in most circumstances. Combat is excellent, although a little slow by modern standards, you do get a return on your time investment- the detail has rarely be rivalled and the feel has never been bettered. Magic is not as exciting as in freeform systems like Ars Magica, but has the saving grace of being totally integrated into the way the world works and as much a part of the natural order as breathing. I would advise anyone who likes rip-roaring swords and sorcery with the added dimension of a detailed and unique campaign setting to try a session or two of RuneQuest. The RQIII rules are probably more generally available and can be substituted quite easily, although they do lose some of the flavour of the original. You can now buy Pavis & the Big Rubble, which gives you a good grounding in the background. What's really going to cause you grief is not being able to get hold of Cults of Prax, and you're not having my copy! Style: 2 (Needs Work) Substance: 5 (Excellent!)