[Rq-rules] RQ for D&D playe

[Paul Cardwell]

This is what we use as a handout to potential
Mythworld players who come from a D&D background. 
They either flee screaming or say "so?" and start
playing.  For historical reasons, there are great
similarities between RQ and MW and most of these apply
equally well to RQ.

Mythworld for D&D Players
by Paul Cardwell, Mythworld creator

For those who have only played D&D or its derivatives
(Tunnels & Trolls, Hackmaster, etc.), Mythworld will
be a whole new experience.  Whether it is one you want
or not it up to you.  This is to help you decide.

Mythworld subtitles itself as "realistic fantasy". 
This is not the paradox it might seem.  After a
character is generated, about the only chart a player
will consult is in the unhappy event of a fumble. 
Charts are for the players to make characters, and for
the scenarist to determine the weather and other
natural phenomena which may affect the story. 
Otherwise, charts are not used in playing the game. 
The laws of physics are relatively intact.  If you
don't know the rule, you can usually figure it out. 
Therefore, Mythworld is easy to learn.

Fantasy assumes three factors which are not proven in
the real world: 1) there are many, frequently
departmental, gods; 2) magic exists; and 3) there are
many species of equal intelligence to humans (and some
with more) interacting with one another.  Simply take
the "real world", add these factors, and you have
Mythworld.

Avoid thinking in terms of the following features from
D&D - they don't apply to Mythworld.

1) There are no levels. Your PC has different
abilities in each of many skills.  Roll that number or
less on D100 and you have done it.  Five game days
later, you can roll to see if anything was learned 
from successfully using that skill and may increase
the PC's ability - in that skill only.  What happens
if the PC jumps off a thousand meter cliff depends on
terminal velocity, not level.

2) There are no saving throws.  A PC's avoid is
subtracted from the attacker's hit before rolling and
one roll covers it all.  Magic is a mana versus mana
roll on a 5% per point difference to determine if it
is resisted.

3) Characters can get injured.   They don't carry on
as though nothing happened until the last hit point is
gone and then drop dead.  They can lose abilities and
even consciousness and still survive.  As a result,
there are hit points to various locations as well as
the whole character.

4) There are almost no restrictions on a PC.  Anything
the PC has the time, money, and intelligence to learn,
can be learned.  The exceptions are such as trade
secrets cannot be learned by one not of that trade, or
magic spells by one not of that religion.  However,
all characters can cast magic; all characters can use
weapons.  Limits are based on primary (rolled)
characteristics, not species or sex.

5) There is no alignment.  Real people don't have it,
but rather are a mess of sometimes-conflicting
loyalties to self, family, nation, religion, political
party, job, hobbies, and other groups.  Game
characters should be just as complex.

6) All characters have a trade.  This is not just a
way to make money between adventures, but often
determines the success or failure of the job
undertaken.  Trade skills and/or tools suddenly become
useful at odd moments in a game.

7) All characters have a religion.  While many gods
exist in this fictional world, most characters are
henotheistic - they primarily worship only one, but
will sacrifice to another.  The character pays the
primary religion a tithe (10% of income) and gets
magical training and advancement to more powerful
status levels.  The religions also operate as banks,
so the PC needs to follow their requirements.

8) There are no experience points for the nasty old
referee to hand out or withhold as the mood strikes. 
Or more precisely, EPs are intrinsic in the game. 
There is learning by experience, mentioned in point 1;
there is lawful loot obtained in an adventure which
may be used directly or has monetary value; and there
is income from one's trade.  This can be used to buy
training, equipment, and supplies.

9) Mythworld is very anti-hack'n'slash.  The
adventurer operates under rules a lot more restrictive
than the modern bounty hunter.  Even with wanted
criminals, a live prisoner is worth ten times as much
as a dead one. In one recent scenario, the band had to
arrest some counterfeiters - with no payment for any
killed.  Aside from the ringleader with a sore back
where one PC landed a handspring (his unarmed
technique was capoeira and he had to clear some
caltrops the villain scattered) as the leader tried to
run away, none were even injured - on either side. 
Game sessions may string together with no combat at
all.

10) Character generation takes time.  However, you end
up with a well-rounded character at the first play. 
Maybe a little weak in some essential skills, but they
will develop.  The character sheet is four pages,
including a page for mounts and such.  There are over
a hundred skills any character has at some level, and
soon the levels are different for each character.

11) Cooperation between PCs and often NPCs is
essential.  There is a well-established procedure for
dividing loot, with the weaker (in those areas)
getting the choicest items.  There is a lot of
teaching of skills within the group since that keeps
the money in the group and thus increases the power of
the group as a whole.  Indeed, the most unrealistic
aspect of Mythworld is that one can often make more
money teaching than from the loot on an adventure -
the adventure is just a way of keeping the skills
honed so that students will want to learn from that
character.

12) Resurrection exists in Mythworld, but it is not
the cheap grace of D&D. The group must find a shaman
capable and willing to perform this (it takes four
days without food, drink, or sleep; or a battle with
many powerful spirits). It is not given away.

13) Not essential in Mythworld, but in our group, the
traditional requirement to stay "in character" is
ignored.  We are testplaying and this requires
occasionally leaving the game to discuss some point of
rules.  At conventions, we will stop to explain
something.  And it is our nature to "metagame" just to
crack an irrelevant joke or discuss something the game
reminded us of.  If you insist on always being "in
character", you may still like Mythworld, but not our
particular group.
	
14) When we finish testplaying this revision of
Mythworld, all changes from the original version will
be published in an Update book so loyal players will
only need it, plus their old boxed set, rather than
tooling up all over again, to play the new version.

If you try it and don't like it, move on.  No hard
feelings.  However, if the idea sounds appealing, then
let's get to work making characters.  Ideally, we need
to get together to develop PCs and run through an
introductory scenario before joining the existing
group.  We use two characters so if anything happens
to one, you are not out of the game.  With four pages
of character sheet, this takes time, so we need to
develop your characters before you join the group. 
Once we were at a convention and no handout characters
in sight, so three veterans generated ten characters
in an hour.  It will be awhile before you can do this!
 So take care of your characters and they will give
you much enjoyment.

[Details here of our particular testplaying group.]


There are obviously some of this that doesn't apply to
RQ.  We also have a similar paper for RQ players.

MYTHWORLD  FOR  RUNEQUEST  PLAYERS
by Paul Cardwell

	Anyone who has played any edition of RuneQuest will
have no trouble playing Mythworld.  This is because it
started out as a suggestion for RuneQuest 3.  However,
after considerable discussion, Greg Stafford decided
he wanted something a bit less detailed.  By then, we
had lost track of who suggested what, and so I got
legal permission to use the Gloranthan critters, even
though Mythworld does not use the Gloranthan setting. 
It was a friendly separation; I refereed the first
public demonstration of RQ 3 at Origins '83, the day
before doing the same for Mythworld.

	There are enough similarities to make the RQ fan feel
at home, even though there are major differences as
well.  Even some of the familiar items will have
different names.  Strike Rank becomes Action Rank
because it applies to far more than weapon attack. 
POW is Mana (MNA) a more anthropologically precise
term.  In addition to the usual RQ primary (rolled)
characteristics, there is also Trustworthiness, which
also serves as a morale factor, and Sanity because it
seemed the adventurer's life would not be one of calm
repose.

	Gender is a secondary characteristic.  High STR and
SIZ is male, CON and DEX is female.

	MW is like RQ in the lack of levels (or each skill
has a separate level), avoid is the same, as is
casting and resisting spells.  But Disruption is
called Zap.  Religion is similar to RQ.  Conflict of
loyalties is more realistic than alignment.

	Although not as bad as D&D's no effect from injury
until the last HP is used, RQ still lacks a few of the
in-between stages.  Therefore, MW has a Pain
Resistance Factor, the total of CON, INT, and MNA.  If
successfully rolled, the character can continue to
function until healed sufficiently or is unconscious
or dead.  If the roll is missed but the character is
still conscious, all they can to is hurt until they
try again on the next round.

	Rules provide for a lot more situations (one of the
main reasons it is separate rather than having been RQ
3).  Weather is elaborately constructed, but primarily
of use only to the scenarist, and includes not only
temperature, percipitation, wind speed, and cloud
cover, but also provisions for wind-chill,
temperature-humidity index, hypothermia, heat stroke
and exhaustion, and in the revision currently in
testplaying, altitude sickness.  There are even three
types of volcanoes (ash, lava, and pyroclastic flow,
with lahar provided for) and earthquakes are on the
old Mercalli scale (by visible damage) rather than
Richter (movement).

	Movement is in actual meters per second speed and the
Bestiary was once used by the Dallas Museum of Natural
History for an Olympics tie-in exhibit (because it was
the only place data on run, swim, fly speed and
jumping distance could be found in one volume).  There
are also stats for the whole life-cycle chronology,
population densities, natural armor and weapons, etc.
in addition to the usual dice for generating the
character, hit locations, and such.  The square-cube
law is intact, as is the second law of thermodynamics
- characters can simply get exhausted.  One can
extrapolate stats for species not included in the over
200 species from beetle to grey whale.

	Magic is low-key as in RQ, but outside of species,
trade, and religion specialties, anyone can
theoretically learn any spell - there is no divine,
sorcery, rune, etc. divisions restricting the
repertoire.  And like RQ, there is no restrictions of
activity and equipment by warrior, rogue, priest,
mage, etc.

	All characters have a trade, and there is a complete
list of the tools of the applicable trades in the
Outfitter book.

	There are over a hundred general skills which most
characters will have to some degree or another, plus
those restricted to specific trades.  As a result, the
character sheet is four pages long, although the
fourth is for familiars and mounts, and most of the
third is equipment inventory.  Advancement is similar
to RQ with experience or training (including
self-training from documents) possible.

	It is rather anti-hack'n'slash.  The variety of
skills provide options to combat.  There is always
some NPC in the scenarios who is essential to the
successful completion of the mission.  And the referee
is encouraged to bring in a substantial constabulary
if the band slips into brigandage.  We are currently
working to find some way to reflect that in combat,
most will not shoot - a factor in no way related to
courage, as the same ones will not hesitate to rescue
under fire or take messages through enemy lines.

	The old edition is in a readable dot-matrix, no
illustrations except covers, and stapled together - a
format typical of the early 1980s desktop publication.
 The next edition will be better.  The boxed set
consists of Rules, Bestiary, Outfitter, Spells,
Skills, an introductory scenario, an errata sheet, and
three Gamescience dice (D6, 8 & 20, the bare minimum
needed to play).  The cost is $35.00 US plus $5.00
shipping outside the US.  International Postal Money
Order preferred for overseas, as we have no online or
plastic capability.  There are currently three
supporting scenarios (one solo) in the old format, but
they are likewise being redone for the revised
version.

	Anyone willing to playtest the revision is invited to
get a game and let us know.  We will send the work so
far on the Update Book, and probably a few specific
questions for response.  Let me know.

Paul Cardwell




 
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