[RQ-Rules] Determining success in RuneQuest

[Stephen Posey]

ASHLEY MUNDAY wrote:
> "Yeah Rolemaster was alot like RQ."
> 
> Rolemaster was more like an accountant's DnD - it had
> levels, classes, huge FO spell lists, critical hit
> charts that made the Arduin Grimoire's look sane and a
> lovely paragraph format and writing style stolen from
> SPI.
> 
> Add to that the avalanche of charts (you'd have to be
> eidetic to play it just off the character sheet) and
> you had a game that was almost totally unlike RQ.
> 
> AND it was 5 times the price of Runequest in 1982...

RM had a few cool ideas here and there, but overall it's pretty ponderous.

My brain hurts just thinking about the times we actually tried to play 
it. It helps if you have a GM who really knows and likes the system (go 
figure) and actually WANTS that level of complex, somewhat arbitrarily 
structured detail.

Even so I found it excruciating when we ran combats or determined 
advancements. Give me BRP with its more elegant and consistently 
structured systems any day.

I really like Shadow World (the RM "house" setting) though. And many of 
the modules for Middle Earth Roleplaying (which was sort of RM-Lite) 
were brilliant.

Stephen Posey
slposey at concentric.net