Dare I ask?

[frogspawner]

I thought Lord Twig gave a pretty good, quick summary in the first reply:

Originally Posted by Lord Twig

Some other obvious ones:

MRQ uses Hit locations only, no general HPs. BRP uses general HPs and Hit locations are optional.

MRQ uses assigned experience checks. In BRP if you successfully use a skill (in a stress situation) you get a check.

MRQ combat rules are broken without house rules to fix. BRP doesn't need fixing.

Much more...

And if you needed for more rules detail, you could hardly do better than the thread our gracious host Mr Trifletraxor linked to in the 3rd reply. Trying to be helpful, here's a couple of choice, rulesy Quotes from that thread:

Originally Posted by Rurik

Of course we don't have BRP yet, but here goes based on past experience with BRP based games and the info on this board:

Well since the RQ Magic systems are not in BRP we can leave those out of the discussion - but MRQ magic is a big area of difference from earlier versions.

No total HP is a big difference. MRQ only has HP per location, BRP has total HP.

There is no resistence table in MRQ. As a whole everything in MRQ is supposed to be skill based. A STR vs. STR roll on the resistence table in BRP becomes an Athletics vs. Atheletics opposed roll in MRQ.

Also, POWx5, CONx5 rolls etc are replaced by skills.

Combat in MRQ uses opposed rolls and a table.

MRQ uses Initiative rolls - they are called Strike Ranks just like in RQ2/3 but RQ strike ranks are fixed and based on SIZ(reach), DEX, and weapon reach, while MRQ uses a d10 roll plus (DEX+INT)/2. BRP from what I've read here uses DEX order with RQ2/3 Strike Ranks as an optional rule.

Overall, as a result of slightly lower damage, less lethal criticals, and the lack of total HP MRQ is not as deadly as BRP (though still deadly compared to most other games).

MRQ experience uses Improvement Rolls assigned by the GM for experience rather than the use based experience checks in BRP.

MRQ uses Hero Points (optional in BRP). Hero Points can be used to save your skin OR can be hoarded to buy the next big difference...

Legendary Abilities - MRQ has feat like abilities that can be purchased. Though they are very different than feats in some ways - they are very hard to get, usually requiring a very high skill and or characteristic as a pre-requisite and cost a lot of Hero Points - which as mentioned above are also used to save your character or for re-rolls or whatever.

MRQ Character Creation is very streamlined, not sure what the new BRP is like exactly.

MRQ Skills are ver consolidated. Swim, Jump, Climb all fall under Athletics for example. Again, not sure how much moreso than the new BRP.

The systems are similiar enough it is easy to use bits and pieces from one in the other.

And...

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

As far as differences go....

One of the big things about the differences is that many things in BRP/RQ works are universal to all BRP products, but were dropped from MRQ. In some cases this alters the style of play greatly from how every other BRP game runs. So much so that many believe MRQ to be a differernt RPG rather than a rleative to BRP/RQ.

Some examples:

1) All BRP products use something called the Resistance Table to handle opposed tests. This is usually stuff like STR vs. SIZ to move a rock, or poison Intensity vs. CON. THe chart is simple. If the intensities are the same then it is a 50-50 chance, and the odds shift 5% per point of difference between the stats. MRQ dropped that and replaced if with an entirely new opposed resolution system, that is entirely skill based. In BRP skill rolls are unopposed. One effect of this is that stats are less important in MRQ. Raw STR and CON don't mean as much as skill in Athletics or Reisilience.

2) BRP has certain inherient checks and balances that hep to keep the game in check for experience characters. MRQ doesn't have that. Most of the problems with MRQ seem to have come about because Mongoose changed something without taking into account how those changes would affect the rest of the game. It really appears that this was becuase the author7s lack of familirily with RQ meant that he didn't understand what the cause and effect of changing things. For instance, there is a alternative damage chart for weapons that will make the game "more lethal". Probably as an attempt to win back the RQ crowd. But the author failed to take into account that increasing the damage weapons do without increasing parry APs made parrying obsolete.

3) In BRP, parrying an AP values mean something. Depending on what version/update of MRQ you run with, weapon APs are either insignificant, or so low as to be nearly insignificant. The later (the original update) changed combat from a attack& parry dynamic (RQ) to a trade blows and see who runs out of Hit points dynamic (D&D).

4) The magic system (well, magic systems) in RQ was a semi-successful attempt at providing a playable magic system for Glorantha, a setting where practically everybody can work a little magic. Practically every PC started the game knowing some magic , with Heal being almost universal. With MRQ, magic has become something that is much rarer and more the province of dedicated spellcasters (D&D again). The problem isd that Mongoose seems to have changed Glorantha to make it fit in with the D&D approach to the rules.

5) In BRP/RQ practically anybody can be killed by a lucky hit, even from a dagger. Criticials are fairly devastating. There are also some pretty nasty spells than can take someone right out of a fight. Combat in RQ is and not something entered into lightly.
MRQ really "nerfed" all of that. One hit kills are just about impossible, and the spells have been dropped or watered down. Firearrow and Fireblade are not the kick ass spells (3d6 damage!) they used to be. Disruption is fairly usuelss with the MRQ hit pont system. Several seppls have been taken out of the game for "play balance" reasons. In other words, combat was made "fun" so that people can do lots and lots of fighting (like in D&D).

Basically, MRQ is RQ rewritten by a D&D author, and is targeted at D&D players. Virtually every change in the game makes MRQ more like D&D and less like RQ/BRP. Probably a good business move (something like 90% of the RPG market plays D&D, while probably less than 10% have ever even heard of RQ), but not something that endeared Mongoose to the RQ community.

And feelings run high about this stuff. You knew it was daring to ask...

[soltakss]

Thanks, Ray, for your answer.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Enpeze

I agree. I also like % for evaluation purposes more than d20. Using a d20 you have to re-calculate all the probabiltity chances back into %. Eg a climb 17 means a 85% to sucessfully climb a tree. Why not using a 85 from the begin of the situation? % is so much more intutive. Humans are good in evalutating situtations in % and we are often used to it in our dally life. Why we should use in roleplaying artifical ranges of 1-20? (not to mention those awful dice pool systems - spit)

Mathematically a d20 is not much difference to %, but from the viewpoint of usabiilty and practice, % is easier to use, IMO

I can't entirely agree, if for no other reason because I don't really think once you split it down past 5% increments that it means anything to most people; the distinctions are too fine to have any psychologial weight.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by RMS

Sure Slash, Crush, True Sword, etc. weren't available to everyone, but that isn't the point. The point is that they completely trump anything available to a sorcery user, straight up. Yes, the sorcerer has some flexibility but the fact is that they can't stand up in a straight fight against such characters. Also, the fact that anyone with a fair amount of those

Actually, he can, because in practice even most such characters don't have enough of those spells to trump him. Yeah, if someone happens to have Shield 10 up, nobody much is getting past him short of a crit, damage boosting or not, but most people don't have Shield 10, even most rune priests. As such, it doesn't matter what its theoretical capability is if you never see it, and even if you do see it, it doesn't matter that one character can do it as much as it is that six or eight characters all have Damage Boost 10 in addition to whatever else they have on them. And by the time you're seeing equivelents to anyone who is even vaguely likely to have Shield 10, that's what you're probably talking about.

divine spells has an automatic divine intervention that the sorcerer completely lacks can't be underestimated. Also, while those spells aren't available to

Except there's nothing stopping one of his teammates having that in _addition_ to whatever the Sorcerer put up on him.

everyone, they're available to a disproportionate number of PC types. Heck, I don't even think those are the most powerful spell users in the game. The

Don't think I can agree unless you're only talking Glorantha, and I'm not talking Glorantha at all.

divine followers who also get to become a shaman, getting all the advantages of both can get truly gross pretty easily, but they're still fun. Even a basic shaman can wander around picking up some pretty power divine spells from various spirit cults, not to mention unparalleled access to very powerful otherworld creatures.

Again, generally a non-starter outside of Glorantha.

In addition, it's not like every sect has every single boosting spell (or similar deal) available. Those are as restricted to certain sects as spirit and divine magic is to certain cults. It's a GM/world problem, not a game problem, if sorcerers are allowed to pick up any and every spell listed without restrictions.

And again, I'm not talking Glorantha; Gloranthan RQ3 is magically a seperate beast from vanilla RQ3; there are all kinds of magical oddities that don't have a thing to do with the basic RQ3 rules, and don't even exist until you get a seperate product.

more powerful. A sorcerer is inherently limited by their INT (max 18 for a human) in manipulations of a spell. A divine magic user has no limits to spell power outside of POW gain. In general, the sorcerer can trade off about 8/10 into intensity and duration to get the best longterm to level tradeoff. It's very easy to get divine magic that trumps that.

You're forgetting enchantments. Since he doesn't have to spend anything on power expenditure other than bindings and enchantments, its far from prohibitive to have Duration or Intensity boosted items for his common buff type spells.

I can think of a dozen or so cults off the top of my head that can easily generate the list of divine magic to do this. That's just combat oriented cults. On a practical level, for the average person in the game world, there

And I'll bet none of them are in the core rules, but in the Gloranthan cults book, yes?

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by TRose

One thing as pointed out above was what spell limit did the game put on the sorcerer? Take both summon and control spells. Its pretty much up to each GM to decide what summon spells and control spells that player Sorcerers have access to. For example I would not allow anyone

This is tantamount to saying "Oh, by the way, if you nerf access to the things that make a sorcerer overpowered, they won't be overpowered." Well, duh. Though I have to note this doesn't make the problem go away; it just makes it harder. Duration and/or Intensity boosting enchantments and magic point storage still make it doable, they just don't let it build up quite as fast.

in Glorantha to just summon a Dryad even if its one of the examples in the

One more time: I'm not talking Glorantha. Gloranthan sorcerers have all sorts of other baggage associated with them in the first place I'm not qualified to talk about. I'm talking out of the book, fantasy Earth style RQ3 sorcerers and the magics present in those books.

[RMS]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

Actually, he can, because in practice even most such characters don't have enough of those spells to trump him. Yeah, if someone happens to have Shield 10 up, nobody much is getting past him short of a crit, damage boosting or not, but most people don't have Shield 10, even most rune priests. As such, it doesn't matter what its theoretical capability is if you never see it, and even if you do see it, it doesn't matter that one character can do it as much as it is that six or eight characters all have Damage Boost 10 in addition to whatever else they have on them. And by the time you're seeing equivelents to anyone who is even vaguely likely to have Shield 10, that's what you're probably talking about.

In a couple of these campaigns, Shield 10 is common and several characters have significantly more than that, so we may just have completely different experiences with power level in RQ. In my experience, Shield 4/5/6 is very common for Rune Lords (or combat oriented priests), and Shield 10 is common enough.

Except there's nothing stopping one of his teammates having that in _addition_ to whatever the Sorcerer put up on him.

Actually there's plenty to stop exactly this from happening. I can't imagine a situation (short of illumination) in which it would be appropriate to mix divine and sorcerous magic, and in such cases I would most certainly take away the divine magic and send spirits of retribution. However, even if this did happen, the DI still doesn't help the sorcerer.

Don't think I can agree unless you're only talking Glorantha, and I'm not talking Glorantha at all.

Again, generally a non-starter outside of Glorantha.

And again, I'm not talking Glorantha; Gloranthan RQ3 is magically a seperate beast from vanilla RQ3; there are all kinds of magical oddities that don't have a thing to do with the basic RQ3 rules, and don't even exist until you get a seperate product.

Nice attempt to change the situation after the fact! I always find it amusing when people go for that tact on the internet... Since Glorantha is the default world and the only one with any details, you pretty much have to stick with it when discussing RQ rules. If you want to go off on a tangent for your own home brew, then you really do have to let the rest of us know enough details for the discussion to make sense. I can't very well read your mind and ascertain exactly what bits'n'pieces you put together to make the system unbalance in the way you describe.

You're forgetting enchantments. Since he doesn't have to spend anything on power expenditure other than bindings and enchantments, its far from prohibitive to have Duration or Intensity boosted items for his common buff type spells.

Yeah, but if you're talking enchantments, spirit and divine users both have those too. They cost the same and generate essentially the same sort of results. That's pretty much a wash. (A separate issue is that some enchantments are extremely cheap, for what they gain, in RQ3. This needed houseruling in my experience. I'm a little surprised not to see people complaining about this, actually.)

And I'll bet none of them are in the core rules, but in the Gloranthan cults book, yes?

Well, there are no cults in the core books, so the entire discussion without their inclusion is pretty much pointless. I honestly don't know what you're trying to discuss here if you're going to pick and choose, without informing the rest of us, which rules/subsystems you're going to use and not use. You make plenty of references to Glorantha material specific ideas that it seems logical that you've been using those. The core books have no rune lords, no allied spirits, no rune metals, no (or little) mixing of spirit and divine magic, very limited spell lists, and skill restrictions on many powerful (including sorcerers) magic users. You seem to be familiar with a good many of those (all in GoG) and seem to want to pick and choose which you incorporate and which you don't. That's no problem at all, but like I said above, you really do need to let us know which you're using and which you aren't up front rather than waiting until multiple pages in and start dismissing arguments because they do or don't fit your agenda. Anyhow, this seems beaten to death, so maybe we should let it lie along side the road.

[NickMiddleton]

Originally Posted by RMS

Since Glorantha is the default world and the only one with any details, you pretty much have to stick with it when discussing RQ rules.

Sorry, but that's utter nonsense - I've been running and playing RQIII for twenty years and, until a couple of years ago, none of those games had been set in Glorantha (and precious few of the RQII games I played or ran prior to that were Gloranthan either). The rules as described in the RQIII deluxe Boxed set or soft back book (or now in the BRP monographs) assume the default setting of mythic earth and I mostly used them for homebrew settings - but I've played and run a fair bit of Sorcery "by the book"...

Mind, having said that, I've never had any significant problems with RQIII Sorcery as written, ever since I wrapped my head round how it differs from most RPG magic systems, and I really don't think there are any serious flaws with it. A few things I personally adjust (mostly to simplify running it as GM and to make it slightly more "adventuring party" friendly), but there aren't any game breakers in there.

Cheers,

Nick Middleton

[Enpeze]

Originally Posted by RMS

Since Glorantha is the default world and the only one with any details, you pretty much have to stick with it when discussing RQ rules. If you want to go off on a tangent for your own home brew, then you really do have to let the rest of us know enough details for the discussion to make sense.

And of course you are right that Glorantha is the default setting for RQ2. For RQ3 its not so clear because there are 2. And for RQ4 (aka MRQ ) there are several settings. In fact I guess that the most RQ fans use it for their homebrewn settings, because Glorantha in all its glory is not everyones cup of tea.

[Lord Twig]

I think it is pretty safe to say that RQ3 was not designed with "balance" as a high priority. Certainly there was some attempt to make sure things were not totally over-powered, but I think there was a big assumption that the GM would keep a handle on things as needed or balance it with limitations in their setting. This was the general belief in almost all games until D&D3.0 came along and Wizards started applying their Magic: The Gathering experience to RPGs.

Of course on this board it is possible for authors to come along and correct people like me on things like this, but until they do I'll stick with my theory.

[Enpeze]

Originally Posted by Lord Twig

I think it is pretty safe to say that RQ3 was not designed with "balance" as a high priority. Certainly there was some attempt to make sure things were not totally over-powered, but I think there was a big assumption that the GM would keep a handle on things as needed or balance it with limitations in their setting. This was the general belief in almost all games until D&D3.0 came along and Wizards started applying their Magic: The Gathering experience to RPGs.

Of course on this board it is possible for authors to come along and correct people like me on things like this, but until they do I'll stick with my theory.

Interesting theory. And I think I can agree to some extent. At least for rule systems which are not gurps. This point-buy game, 1st ed. 1986, try to balance everything (but is not very successful in it of course).

Maybe I am more "old school" and I prefer non-balanced games. This is my simulation type style of play. Life is not fair, balance is unrealistic and artificial, and I prefer to play games which are realistic (at least till a certain degree). With "realism" I dont mean creating endless tables with accurate gun data or such. With realism I mean plausible events, connections and outcomes. Such an approach helps the most of my players to immerse themselves in the world, their character and the adventure we are playing.