[Rq-rules] Various houserules and running for kids

[Tom Cantine]

On 28-Oct-05, at 9:57 AM, Stephen Posey wrote:

> Tom Cantine wrote:
>> I'm currently running a campaign in Harn, with RQ3 and some homebrew 
>> houserules (some of which are influenced a bit by Harnmaster).
>
> The Harn system bears no small resemblance to BRP so I can see that 
> working.
>
> Do you have any write-ups of your houserules? I'd like to have a look.

Well, I believe I posted some of them to this list some time ago. They 
dealt primarily with knockback. What I was trying to do was integrate 
knockback, movement and falling damage into a single coherent 
mechanism. I'll dig them out and repost them later.

Along similar lines, I have been trying also to come up with a way to 
integrate fatigue, nutrition, exposure and so forth, and some of the 
ideas in Harnmaster sort of helped me work that out. I LIKE fatigue 
points, mind you, but I've never really been able to make the basic RQ3 
stuff feel quite right. So I've borrowed the HM system of fatigue 
levels, albeit modified to fit in closer with RQ3's stats and flavour.

In HM, a character is assigned a fatigue level more or less at the GM's 
  discretion. I'm working on a list of guidelines for when it's 
appropriate to impose one, affected by such things as ENC and the like, 
but for the time being GM discretion is what I use.

The effect of a fatigue level, at least in my house rules, is similar 
to being at -5 fatigue points in RQ3, in that it reduces all skill 
rolls by five percentiles. But I also treat it as reducing each 
characteristic (except SIZ) by 1. (This has the same effect on the 
resistance table as reducing skill rolls by five percentiles, but I 
think it makes it easier to visualize, making explicit that one's STR 
and INT, for example, are actually reduced by fatigue.) You don't need 
to go recalculating skill modifiers and hit points, but attribute 
checks are affected. And a Fatigue Level also increases DEX SRM by one. 
Now, in HM, there's no buffer for fatigue; when the GM imposes a 
fatigue level, the penalties take effect. I've modified that in my RQ 
house rules to say that you have positive fatigue levels equal to 
CON/6, rounded down. So, someone with an 18 CON could actually carry 
three fatigue levels before suffering penalties.

Okay. Here's where food, water, rest and exposure enter into it. Your 
character's maximum fatigue level (CON/6) is a theoretical maximum; the 
real practical limit is your Daily Fatigue Maximum (DFM). Your actual 
Fatigue Level will fluctuate throughout the day, with activity and 
rest, but it can't go over your DFM. (What follows is cut and paste 
from a post I made to a Harn forum, hence the font change...)

  The DFM is recalculated every 24 hours, preferably when the character 
wakes up. The calculation is actually pretty simple. It's yesterday's 
DFM, possibly increased or decreased by one, depending on what happened 
in the previous 24 hours.

  1. If ALL of the following is true, add one. (Remember that DFM will 
never exceed CON/6, rounded down.
  Character is waking from a sleep of at least 8 uninterrupted hours.
  Character ate more than subsistence level of food in the previous 24 
hours.
  Character had enough water (or equivalent) to drink the previous day.
  Character spent at least 12 hours of previous 24 in COOL or WARM 
conditions (based on Harn weather equivalents).
  Character had no conditions (injury, poison, disease, etc.) to heal in 
previous 24 hours.

  2. If MORE THAN ONE of the following is true, subtract one.
  Character is waking from less than 4 hours sleep.
  Character ate less than the subsistence level of food in previous 24 
hours.
  Character ate less than half the subsistence level of food in previous 
24 hours
  Character drank less than needed water (or equivalent) in previous 24 
hours.
  Character drank less than half needed water in previous 24 hours.
  Character spent at least two temporary fatigue levels by any means in 
previous 24 hours.
  Character was injured, poisoned, healing or ill in previous 24 hours.
  Character slept while cold or freezing.

  The DFM can go below zero by these rules. What that means, of course, 
is that the character is essentially fatigued all day.

That's the gist of it, anyway. You'll notice how prolonged lack of 
food, sleep or shelter will have the effect of lowering one's DFM, and 
that in turn will eventually lower your attributes. The basic RQ3 rules 
on aging can apply here, in that if a characteristic hits zero, you're 
dead. The difference, of course, is that DFM-reduced characteristics 
recover when you get adequate food, shelter and rest.

>> The weird thing about it is that two of the players are eight years 
>> old...
>
> How's that going?

Quite well, so far. We've only had about three sessions, since it's an 
alternate game I run when the rest of our Sunday afternoon group can't 
make it, but they've gone over well. The other game we play is a 
tabletop version of my LARP system, with a very different feel, so it's 
interesting seeing how the two kids react to the grittier game system 
and world.

-Tom
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