[Rq-rules] Re: Heroism

[Nikk Effingham]

> I agree RQ tends to gritty, realistic, grubby, special ops.
> Stormbringer, which is only a few rules tweaks away, is
> HEROIC (actually anti-HEROIC) so both genres can be done
> with BRP.

Certainly my RQ campaign was like that for a long time. But once they get access
to reusable divine magic and enough magic points, things do get much less
realistic, what with the heads rolling off and getting stuck back on again, and
the access to ressurections if you do die.

You could prevent these things - make ressurection harder to get access too,
change the rules so gluing lost body parts on with Heal is trickier, ensure
that every magic point matrix the enemy has has an appropriate condition so the
PCs can't use it for themselves (thus preventing the inevitable build-up of
magic points that leads to this less realistic style of play). But, as written,
I find RQ leads to 'heroic' games. Is it a good thing? I don't know. My players
certainly enjoy being able to survive combats, and fighting the epic battles,
but we all agree that combats were better at lower level than at the less
realistic higher level (where quite the reverse is true in D&D, 1st and 2nd
level combat is naff, at higher levels it gets to be rather fun). Certainly
combat is nowdays a terrible experience for the players, as buckets of dice get
chucked around, death is relatively rare, and it takes forever with the number
crunching. I've promised to ensure as little combat as possible in future in my
campaign, and I think a lot of people miss the deadly days when a trollkin with
a spear was a dangerous thing to meddle with.

Nikk