I do recall hearing back in the day that, for all intents and purposes, sorcery was not play-tested. Pretty much everything that was new in RQ3 was written and theory-tested (i.e. they read it and thought about it a bit) and some bits were used in house campaigns but that was it. People tend to forget that playtesting in the late 70s and early 80s meant the designers and friends playing some games together.
Personally I would say that MRQ sorcery is a far-better scaled system than RQ3 sorcery. I played a lot of RQ3 sorcery and prefer MRQ as it is more immediately useful and scales nicely.
I don't like MRQ rune magic because I don't like rune integration and because it falls between two schools - it is neither commonplace nor is it exciting and exotic. You could ignore the need to integrate runes but keep the runecasting skill but I prefer RQ3.
I don't like MRQ Divine Magic but the way it has been used in Elric with Dedicated POW and pacts is superb. Sadly RQ3 Divine Magic was pretty badly borked for initiates as well. Oddly, MRQ Divine Magic works better for initiates than RQ3 divine magic did and, as I understand it, is closer to how Greg Stafford envisions divine magic working in Glorantha.
Similarly, although MRQ spirit magic/shamanism got borked by an editor once you figure out how it is meant to work, it is massively better than RQ3.
It's hard to compare MRQ magic with magic in BRP because they do quite different things. BRP magic is, as I see it essentially, D&D-style magic-user character class based (oh the irony) while the nearest analogy, MRQ sorcery can be cast by anyone. The adaptation of MRQ sorcery to Gloranthan sorcery through the use of Grimoires is really rather neat.
My personal intention is to use the best of BRP and MRQ to do my own thing.
The one problem with MRQ which runs through everything is that they outsource everything. The authors are talented but end up working with partial information so their manuscripts need fitting into the system. Unfortunately the editor doesn't have the knowledge to do this and, basically, just edits to make the pages fit. Everything is done in a blinding rush and, surprise, surprise you get big flaws. My favourite is the use of the Wisdom characteristic in Legendary Heroes. That's why I don't buy physical books from Mongoose. Too many problems with the editing cycle.
|