Dare I ask?

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Rurik

Which is all why I find MRQ Sorcery refreshing. I had no problem playing with RQ3 sorcery, and the counter to a good mage is always a better mage, so you could always keep things challenging.

The problem is that it wasn't just a better mage; it was specifically a better sorcerer. It meant opposition that didn't have sorcerers (as was the case with any barbarian or lower culture) weren't in the running. I don't think that's good game design. The effect would have been less severe (though I still think unbenign; I don't see the primary function of a mage is to augment the hell out of the rest of the players) if sorcery was the only magic system.

[SDLeary]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

It wasn't that they thought it'd never occur at all; its that they thought it would, in practice, need your old greybearded tower mage who wasn't going to upset balance much and just be a plot device. In part, I think they simply didn't see the implications of Intelligence Spirits and/or enchantments on the process.

Actually, I'm pretty sure someone knew the implications. Other than buffing up a magic user, of what real use are INT and POW spirits (or other stat spirits for that matter) anyway? They seemed really really out of place in the RQ/Glorantha cosmology, and a simple crutch in game terms to help create powerful magicians.

SDLeary

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by SDLeary

Actually, I'm pretty sure someone knew the implications. Other than buffing up a magic user, of what real use are INT and POW spirits (or other stat spirits for that matter) anyway? They seemed really really out of place in the RQ/Glorantha cosmology, and a simple crutch in game terms to help create powerful magicians.

SDLeary

However, I'd put money they were designed to buff _spirit mages_ the same way that bound spirits used to. Remember, Spirit Magic required Intelligence points for storage too. It just didn't have the godawful consequences this did, since all it did was give you access to more (albiet possibly bigger spells). Honestly, I hit a few too many of the people involved at the time who were somewhat startled to see sorcerers with spirits other than elementals not to believe they really didn't think it through.

[Rurik]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

The problem is that it wasn't just a better mage; it was specifically a better sorcerer. It meant opposition that didn't have sorcerers (as was the case with any barbarian or lower culture) weren't in the running. I don't think that's good game design. The effect would have been less severe (though I still think unbenign; I don't see the primary function of a mage is to augment the hell out of the rest of the players) if sorcery was the only magic system.

I think we are pretty much arguing the same point here, but hey, what is that to stop me.

Sorcerers in RQ3 did become dominant, but not totally though - dispel magic works just as well on 20 year duration spells as shorter ones, and Divine casters could easily access 5 or 6 point Dispel Magic spells (I may have the precise spell name wrong - but you get the idea).

But in the end high level sorcerery is not that much fun. All the augmenting and so on a chore - and as a GM you need to specifically go after the sorcerer(s), and design your combats around them (making sure you have enough counter magic cababilities and then peeling away the magical defenses). I rarely had sorcerers in the 90% + range in a bunch of their skills, but even at that level they become the focal point of the game in many ways. Not unsurmountable, but the dominant factor.

[Rurik]

Originally Posted by SDLeary

Actually, I'm pretty sure someone knew the implications. Other than buffing up a magic user, of what real use are INT and POW spirits (or other stat spirits for that matter) anyway? They seemed really really out of place in the RQ/Glorantha cosmology, and a simple crutch in game terms to help create powerful magicians.

SDLeary

Well, I felt the same way - how could they NOT anticipate this. The first time I read the rules to RQ3 and looked at the Sorcery duration table I knew this was coming, and it didn't take long to figure out how (ahh, Free Int limits it, ah-ha, you can store spells in spirits). I'd always just figured that was the way it was supposed to be.

But someone over at RPG net who is actually credited on some early RQ3 stuff swears that it was unforseen. I looked for the link earlier but the search at RPG net is not working and the sheer volume of threads over there made me give up my manual pouring over pages of old threads. I have to take his word for it, as I haven't met the people who designed and tested RQ3 and he has.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Rurik

I think we are pretty much arguing the same point here, but hey, what is that to stop me.

Sorcerers in RQ3 did become dominant, but not totally though - dispel magic works just as well on 20 year duration spells as shorter ones, and Divine casters could easily access 5 or 6 point Dispel Magic spells (I may have the precise spell name wrong - but you get the idea).

That only helped so much, though, because you can still only dispel one spell at a time, and after the Power/Int spirit thing got rolling, it was entirely possible for every member of an opposing party to have five or six long duration buffs (as I recall, Damage Boosting, Resist Magic and two or three attribute boosts were the common ones; the sorcery Protection equivelent wasn't that popular because it was a resistance value so it had to be fairly high Intensity before it was at all reliable). Now do this on five or six party members, and which target and which spell are worth taking the time out to dispel while they're chopping through you?

But in the end high level sorcerery is not that much fun. All the augmenting and so on a chore - and as a GM you need to specifically go after the sorcerer(s), and design your combats around them (making sure you have enough counter magic cababilities and then peeling away the magical defenses). I rarely had sorcerers in the 90% + range in a bunch of their skills, but even at that level they become the focal point of the game in many ways. Not unsurmountable, but the dominant factor.

And as you say, I think it distorted the hell out of the game.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Rurik

Well, I felt the same way - how could they NOT anticipate this. The first time I read the rules to RQ3 and looked at the Sorcery duration table I knew this was coming, and it didn't take long to figure out how (ahh, Free Int limits it, ah-ha, you can store spells in spirits). I'd always just figured that was the way it was supposed to be.

But someone over at RPG net who is actually credited on some early RQ3 stuff swears that it was unforseen. I looked for the link earlier but the search at RPG net is not working and the sheer volume of threads over there made me give up my manual pouring over pages of old threads. I have to take his word for it, as I haven't met the people who designed and tested RQ3 and he has.

For what its worth, the indications I got from Steve Perrin (who I game with regularly) was that sorcery didn't get playtested that heavily _and_ in the playtest no one pushed on it much. Note that his SPQR still has the same problem, which he didn't realize until I pointed out to him while playing in a campaign of it--while I was playing a sorcerer. And there it was less severe because of the lack of easy spirit availability. But even without that, I was rapidly becoming, in practice, a pretty nasty force multiplier for our best fighter just by buffing him up every couple days (yeah, I was low on magic points afterwards, but I still wasn't dipping into my own personal supply, and it wasn't like I couldn't use a sword and a crossbow myself).

So I think people are really understimating how this could fly under the radar, given the vagueries of game style and playtesting events.

[deleriad]

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.

[RMS]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

The problem is that it wasn't just a better mage; it was specifically a better sorcerer. It meant opposition that didn't have sorcerers (as was the case with any barbarian or lower culture) weren't in the running. I don't think that's good game design. The effect would have been less severe (though I still think unbenign; I don't see the primary function of a mage is to augment the hell out of the rest of the players) if sorcery was the only magic system.

While I accept that Sorcery definitely had it's issues (mostly to do with being too much accounting IMO), I disagree about this point. Divine Magic still trumps it on the top end, at least for overall power at "the point of attack". Sorcery has the advantage of being up long term, but it's upper end is nowhere near what a loaded up Divine user can get with unlimited Shields, Spirit Blocks, Dispel Magics, Extensions (negating the longterm advantages), and especially infinitely stackable damage boosting spells, like Slash and Crush. Of course, none of it balances out completely, but RQ is that way across the board, which is one of its charms IMO.

That doesn't mean that I don't think that MRQ's sorcery isn't better too, or Sandy Peterson's, or several others.

[Rurik]

I beleive now that Sorcery was released with unforseen consequences, namely because people who know the designers keep telling me so. But back in 1983 or whenever (I bought RQ3 probably within the first week of its' release) I'd just assumed it was working as designed. Long term boosts were a feature, not a bug, so to speak. That was, after all, long before internets and game forums were commonplace, back in the dark ages when character sheets could be sold in packs rather than downloaded freely.

And honestly I've held that belief until a few weeks ago, when due to this interweb thingy people started telling me it was all borked up. But the fact is I played with it, and used it, and calculated costs and strike ranks and durations, and even liked it. I schemed to abuse it as a player, and worked hard as a GM to challenge players who got good at it, but I'd accepted that was how it was. I know people griped about it (too complex, too weak then powerful), but always dealt with it, and it never broke any games - though in the end it did make them a bit of a chore (but hey, that is roleplaying a sorcerer for you - numbers and logic and study and preperation, all work and no play...).