[Madness]

Super-mega-popular, sunday, sunday, sunday edition of the Second Apocalypse. Come one, come all to the greatest show of devastation the World has ever seen. See the Father of Dragons lay waste to the ancient fortress Dagliash as the Great Ordeal cowers within. Skulk with Achamian and Mimara in the ruins of Dunyainic Ishual. Watch as Kellhus' family life falls apart and he betrays his own Holy War for the Tekne and unlimited power. Has the White-Luck Warrior inevitably coupled with Esmenet? Will Meppa the Stonebreaker be the First Cishaurim to preach to the Inrithi idolaters? And how much meat can one little Dunyain cannibal really eat?

Find out next time, on The Holy Consult!

(That started off with Japanese adverts in mind and ended up... circus-esque?)

[Wilshire]

I actually was seeing circus at first but that it ended rather anime "next-episode" preview lol.

[Madness]

Lol.

[Somnambulist]

I’ve been reading the RQ6 ruleset a lot recently, and it just occurred to me that what we need, rather than adapting a whole ruleset, is to create a ‘World Guide’ for modifying the existing ruleset.  While this may have been obvious to some (or all) interested in this project, it only dawned on me tonight that this would be the way to go.  So, to use the 'World Guide,' the GM/players would need to have a copy of the RQ6 ruleset.

RQ6 seems to me to be based on some pretty common sense and logical approaches to conflict resolution.  It’s both relatively realistic and (can be) harsh in its treatment of characters and how they interact with the world, and flexible enough for common sense interpretations to allow for some leeway.  It can be brutal if you're unlucky with the dice, but also has mechanics built in to help alleviate the consequences.  I think it's a really good fit to the overall feel of Bakker's books.

So, with that in mind, here are my setting-specific suggestions for inclusion in the RSB Eärwa World Guide for RuneQuest 6 (working title only!):

1) A gazetteer of sorts introducing the physical world, maps, nations, timeline, languages, naming conventions, etc.

2) Adaptation of Chapter 2: Culture and Community to include the 5 Tribes (or 4, since we don’t know much about the Xiuhianni yet?).

3) Adaptation of Chapter 3: Careers and Development to include Eärwa-specific careers and to exclude those which may not fit.

4) Adaptation of Chapter 4: Skills to include jnan and other setting-specific skills (jnan could easily be added to the descriptors for Customs and/or Courtesy skills).

5) Adaptation of Chapter 5: Economics and Equipment, again to setting-specific items/currency.

6) Adaptation of Chapter 7: Combat to include combat styles inherent in the setting (Blade-dancer, Nansur Columnary, etc.)

7) Adaptation of Chapters 8-13 which deal with the different approaches to magic.

8 ) Adaptation of Chapter 14: Cults and Brotherhoods to include all the known organizations of Eärwa.

9) Adaptation of Chapter 15: Creatures for the same reasons, obviously.

That’s it!    Some of the points above will be relatively easy, and others a huge pain in the ass.  I’m sure there are other suggestions I haven’t thought of, so please chime in if you're so inclined.

[Madness]

Yeah - I'm going to waste some time on a couple of those .

[Wilshire]

Development continues!

I know nothing about p&p rpgs, and have never played one, but if there is something I could do, or learn to do, to help out, let me know.

I haven't been following extremely closely so forgive me if this have been throughly covered,  but have you found a workaround for the magic system? It seems to me that a schoolman would either be game-breakingly powerful, or entirely useless, depending on the situation.

...Then again, after some brief though, we've only ever seen upper lever schoolmen, so I guess development could be scaled without too much difficulty.

The only thing that is an issue, in my mind, if the fact that 'magic resistance' is either 100% or 0%.

Offensive cants and defensive wards could be adapted to party use (buffing, projectile protection, increased evasion% etc), such that even an encounter with fully choraed opponents could leave a schooman with some capabilities.

Entertaining ideas like stone/earthen armor that offers some physical protection to wielder/party-member come to mind.

[Somnambulist]

Awesome, guys!  So, I see the Gazetteer section to be a collection of data to 'show' the setting to prospective players.  Will probably require a lot of creative writing to establish a tone and introduce the world.  The other sections will require a little mechanics knowledge to help fit the details into the existing parameters (i.e., new weapons, skills, combat styles, etc.)  The sections that will require the most rules manipulations, I imagine, will be the magic system.  That will probably require some play-testing, as well.  However, any and all pertinent information to any of the afore-mentioned sections will be helpful (i.e., names of cants and wards, equipment used by various factions, national dress and ornamentation, etc. etc.)

Wilshire: your ideas on the magic system seem to be consistent with the story.  While the majority tend to dole out massive damage, we've also seen some protective and utility cants.  There is definitely a progression system inherent in the rules, so you'll definitely see low-power initiates growing into War Cant Masters over time.  The modification of cants also seems to be implied, so that's definitely worth exploring.  TBH, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the magic rules, so more thoughts on this later.

[Wilshire]

So, as an individual without any experience, where would be a place to start helping?

Looks like $25 to purchase the PDF, which seems kind of steep for me right now. I don't know that I want to start with that until you're absolutely sure thats the rule set you're going to use. You mentioned some free ones out there that are close, would you mind  explaining what disadvantages there may be using those to figure out wtf is going on as opposed to the $$ one? (I'd rather start with time investment and see where it takes us).

Aside from acquiring some base knowledge about P&P rpgs, what would be useful to this Project? I recently started a series re-read so I'm in a position to collect information along the way. We've got the Almanc to help with some stuff, but thats mostly plot based analysis, so what else might be valuable?

[Kellais]

Very cool, Somna. I guess we can go that way and work step by step after the book's ToC.

@ Madness & Wilshire - Well any help in collecting the setting details would be appreciated tremendously! As for the rpg side of things...as i told Somna somewhere (i think in the first rpg thread), if you do not want to buy into an rpg pdf just yet, try to search for Runequest srd, or Openquest srd. It should turn up system reference documents (hence srd) for the game-systems of Openquest and Runequest. Those are similar game systems to the RQ6 game. Not exactly the same but they can give you an idea of what the game engine looks like.
As to the question of what is helpful...well collecting information for the world is surely very helpful (races, cultures, cities, regions, history etc etc). We do have the TTT appendix, but there is so much more information hidden in the text, it would be great to have as much of it as possible. So if you are interested, help in that. If you still have the mind and the motivation to dig into rpg mechanics, by all means read up on it and join in the discussion about the adaption of the RQ6 rules as well. All opinions are welcome.

[Wilshire]

Well I printed the 150 pages of Openquest PDF, so I'll be perusing that.

collecting information for the world is surely very helpful (races, cultures, cities, regions, history etc etc).

I think the Esmenet POVs have a lot about culture hidden in them so I'll pay careful attention and try to take some notes

[Madness]

Those are my thoughts, Kellais. I'm kind of like Theliopa/Hitchhiker's Guide to Earwa, I have little creative value . Though, I might bend my mind to learning some rule-sets a la Wilshire.

[Wilshire]

Thoughts on Magic. I've only read the first 3 chapters of Openquest (is OQ an acceptable acronym for that?)   , which just goes up through character creation and the basics of magic, so these are just preliminary thoughts.

Characteristics:
Obviously Intelligence (INT) and Power (POW) will effect the skill of the caster, but in Earwa I think Charisma (CHA) should/could play a role (major or minor, also depending on which school).

Skills:
Should probably collect all references to spell names and properties, as well as any Rank names that are referred to inside the schools.

In OQ Magic Skills are listed as Battle magic, Sorcery, Religion, and Religion (other).
Battle magic is supposed to be some kind of inherent magic available to all characters. That will need to be changed since not everyone in Earwa can use magic.

Types of magic users defined by OQ
Cults, Schools, Lone

Other skills:
Lore
Lore(other)
Natural Lore
Language (own)
Language (other)

-------
This is how I see it breakdown so far:
Divine:
Cishaurim. They are the only major school that fits within this category. Its been debated whether or not they use some kind of thaumaturgy, which is more or less Magic derived by gods.
Depending on how strict to current Lore you'd like to be, potentially minor wizards from obscure cults could have some limited magic capabilities.
Witches. Potentially could put Witches as Divine, if they are to be included at all.
Sorcery:
Broken into two catagories, maybe three: Anagogic (Scarlet Spires, Imperial Saik, Mysunsai, and The Circle of Nibel [who are they?]) Gnostic (Sawyal and Mandate) and potentially Quya might exist as a separate branch.
Anagogic schools and Gnositc schools should have some different requirements and skill progression. Gnostic would have higher requirements on Language and would naturally have higher Lore(other) progression than most schools (naturally drawn to ruins, old structures, etc.)
I don't know how much of a nerf it would be, but perhaps force the Anagogic schools to only Battle Magic and lower level Sorcery, and let the Cish/Quya/Gnostic wield no low level Battle Magic, but be able to get stronger Sorcery?...

[Wilshire]

I was also thinking that there may be a limited number of 'encounterable' things:
Basically you've got sranc out in the wilds and thats about it. You could run into some of the other weapon races, such as skin-spies, bashrag, and wracu, but not in huge numbers.
You might also have a rough band of highway men, or maybe some hired assassins (could be from any of the cults or the Thousand Temples, even one of the schools depending on character backgrounds).
If you're lucky there might be some Scylvendi attacks/raids, or perhaps a random war-like natives in the woods somewhere.
Some high level encounters might include a Nonman Erratic, Wracu, or maybe a surviving Inchoroi or a synthase.

Thats 4 weapon-races, 1-3 different groups of humans, and 2 high level boss creatures.

Although that makes it easy-ish to map out their stats, skills, attributes, etc., it doesn't provide much variety.
Low level encounters would be limited to small groups of inexperienced sranc or a band of thieves, mid levels would be bands of sranc with the occasional  bashrag and higher level humans, higher levels might get bigger sranc clans with several bashrag, or maybe being hunted by skin-spies, and like I said above there aren't too many bosses.

Just thought I'd point it out. Will that be a problem? Openquest has something like 40+ monsters listed.

[Madness]

Lol - community . Too cool. Good work, Wilshire.

[Kellais]

Wow, Wilshire...

Thanks a lot. And as for the magic system comments...i typed something pretty similar so it seems we are of one mind. I also think that the different schools need different prerequisites and maybe even different costs. The bonus is that the more expensive schools also have more...punch.

As for "Monsters" ... i agree. We will not make a monster manual of classical rpg critters...or at least that is my preference. I want it to be a TSA RPG not just a cheap copy. So we will have some "Monsters" but a lot of the bad guys you'll encounter will just be "evil" humans and their schemes. Sure, the skin-spies will be there and the consult works behind the scenes...but they will not be there to face the players all the time...and surely not openly.

Anyway...cool stuff, Wilshire. I hope you'll keep it up. Oh and look to your inbox