[RuneQuest: Slayers] Skulls, blood, other body fluids

[ADGBoss]

Ron

Wanted to pop in here and comment and ask a few questions if I could. First I myself got hooked into African studies and culture during college because my Advisor / Mentor was himself from Africa and had a profound effect on my education.

RQ: Slayers seems like it has a very nice ragged edge to it and unfortunately it does not strike a chord with any locals.  I will say though that it's predacessor, old style RQ, really brought non-cartoonish violence (as you put it) to the front for us the way HW did for you.  The sexual liberation came from 2nd Edition Vampire TM.

Anyway, I was curious as to what kind of emotional or visual queues, with regards to the Characters, that created chemistry between the various characters both pc and npc.  African women can be as beautiful as Euroopean women (duh I know stating the obvious for some) but all the cultural clicks are different.  I am just curious if the attraction was purely charisma between the pc/npc or were there physical aspects as well that you or Jake reacted to.

Like maybe one character likes tatoos or skulls or sandals made out of cat gut, that sort of thing.

Second question concerns violence in general.  Is any violence shocking for you as a Player any more (in game or out of...) and does it have to do with the game being played (RQ: Slayers vs Trollbabe say).  I know personally I find that during some games, relatively minor violence seems somewhat out of place in the context of that system as opposed to others where hacked off limbs are common place.

It's good that this game continues to please people because although it's not Original RQ, it's still a pretty darn good game.


Sean

[Ron Edwards]

Hiya,

Two guys to talk to!

Callan, you asked,

I don't get 'exactly the kind of fighter/warrior you want'. The glyph is random and the reward system is pegged to behaving that way. It's a strong reward mechanism for behaving as the random glyph determines. I mean, I don't have to kill monsters in D&D, but really I am for the definate XP reward while if I don't I lag behind or drag everyone down. Same thing if I don't follow the glyph, right?

I think you might consider not "a glyph," but rather the combination of glyphs for a particular warclan, over the long term of several, even many adventures. A character might not act in accordance with a given glyph because its application in this particular adventure is simply not what the player wants to do with the character. You see, the glyph will come up again, eventually.

Granted, this is somewhat more sophisticated than merely accepting the glyph that shows up, playing it to the hilt, and therefore racking up acqired glyphs and runes as quickly as the system permits. That's fun too, and full of interesting things for a character. As I say, though, the choice is the player's, which means Author Stance.

Also, I really don't want to embrace any of the impressions that I listed in my first post as concrete conclusions. This game should probably be played extensively before going that far.

Sean (ADGboss), let's see, you said:

I was curious as to what kind of emotional or visual queues, with regards to the Characters, that created chemistry between the various characters both pc and npc. African women can be as beautiful as Euroopean women (duh I know stating the obvious for some) but all the cultural clicks are different. I am just curious if the attraction was purely charisma between the pc/npc or were there physical aspects as well that you or Jake reacted to.

I did mention the illustration that inspired us both, right? I responded to it upon my first reading, and entirely independently, Jake said "I'm playing her" upon his first reading.

I use a lot of tonal shifts and phrasing in my role-playing of characters' dialogue. This is different from using an accented or altered voice; it's my own voice, but with character-specific timing, word choice, and volume modulation. I did that a lot, as well as minimally miming body language and often OOC-describing body language and character gestures.

Jake did the same. At one point, he went so far as to crouch over and move his arms to demonstrate the rather lizard-like scuttle his character did through some tall grass, as she snuck up on someone's wagon in the night.

Most of these gestures or references on our part, for this game, made extensive use of "African imagery" as we understood it (or as was relevant to us as Americans). As I mentioned before, the posture, head movements, and soft hand movements of Kenyans I've known or met, for instance, played a big part of that for me.

We didn't go overboard on physical description, such as headdresses or similar. I made sure to describe the village as not being wattle huts, but rather buildings, and then I'm sure our individual images of those probably differed.

H'm. Maybe GenCon is interfering with my memory, because it seems to me as if we used tons of the kind of descriptive cues you're talking about, and also that they all carried a dramatic African message that both of us picked up and used as fuel for further input of this sort. Damned if I can remember any really good examples, though.

Best,
Ron

[Callan S.]

Yo! :)

I think you might consider not "a glyph," but rather the combination of glyphs for a particular warclan, over the long term of several, even many adventures. A character might not act in accordance with a given glyph because its application in this particular adventure is simply not what the player wants to do with the character. You see, the glyph will come up again, eventually.

Granted, this is somewhat more sophisticated than merely accepting the glyph that shows up, playing it to the hilt, and therefore racking up acqired glyphs and runes as quickly as the system permits. That's fun too, and full of interesting things for a character. As I say, though, the choice is the player's, which means Author Stance.

Also, I really don't want to embrace any of the impressions that I listed in my first post as concrete conclusions. This game should probably be played extensively before going that far.

Are you sort of saying that your glyph will come up eventually that suits you and then you can play it to the hilt? And since everyone else will pretty much do the same (and likewise not get much reward). Mmmm, it sounds like a method of judging whether your missing out on a reward by seeing if everyone else is missing out too (because their doing the same thing as you). If their getting about the same amount of reward as you, it feels like your not missing out on anything. I'd suggest you should play with someone who doesn't judge their rewards this way (judging if they are getting enough of a reward by seeing how much others are getting) and see what happens.

And I understand your last paragraph...your actual play report is not an article, no worries! :)