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Old 03-03-2007, 04:49 AM
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Lev Lafayette Lev Lafayette is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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Re: [RPG]: RuneQuest (3rd Edition), reviewed by Lev Lafayette (4/5)

Quote:
My comment here was about your review as a whole. You seem to be blind to those elements of RQ which did not work and yet are more than willing to point to those and 1e AD&D and cry foul. I played both games for a long time. Both have aged and both have their obvious flaws when viewed 20 or 30 years after they were produced. Pretending RQ doesnt have these flaws rather undermines your review.
Your assertion is contrary to the facts.

- Some scaling issues, especially wrt special successes (which I did mention)
- The clumsy implementation of the skill bonuses for characteristics (which I also mentioned).
- The emphasis on military skills and separate skills for attack and parry (also mentioned)
- Also I'll acknowledge that some parts of sorcery are seriously creaky as well, but not nearly as broken as you imply.

Also I'll take this opportunity to include:

- The flat rate of advancement for occupational experience (33 percentiles per annum) compared to increasing difficulty through experience. Not a huge problem really.


Quote:
/boggle. Why exactly. What part of the game setting told people to only go adventuring two or three times a year. The ease of access to healing magic makes this a nonsense unless you lose a limb (which was distressingly easy).
As I said, it is implied by the examples and certainly how I've found the scenario packs to describe affairs. The Riskland mini-campaign at least takes a few years and is conducted over a half-dozen sessions at best. The Vikings campaign pack states the time-frame very explicitly: Allow approximately one game-year to pass between every major scenario. (p5 Scenarios Book).

From the rules themselves:
p29 Cormac starts at 23 years old. Cormac is thrown into a gladiators arena with his friend Signy (p52-53) from which they escape with Nikolos (p54), This time in gladiator school was several years at least; his DEX was trained up from 8 to 12 and his battleaxe ability up to 102%. His javelin, incidentially, is now at 67% (p65). After that he spends a two years when the shaman saves his life (p98), and then another five years as his apprentice (pp99-100).

So that's pretty clear in my mind. There are probably a dozen adventures in that sequence of events which cover over fifteen years of game time.

That, to me, is how RQ3 works. You roleplay over fifty or so game sessions, a lifetime of experience for a character.
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Last edited by Lev Lafayette; 03-03-2007 at 05:14 AM..
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