I finally had an opportunity to try out Riddle of Steel last night. My brother and I each generated a character and we duked it out.

Fantastic. We're both hooked. His strength 7 quarterstaff weilding guy took my sword & shield warrior down in the first bout, but I was able to rally and get him on our second and third tries.

Don't get hit, indeed!

I do have some questions, of course:

1) Spiritual attributes & refreshing. I'm confused. I know these can go up and down with role-playing. But in a few places it sounds like when you use dice from one of these, those dice are *gone*, and they refresh either at the next session, or at the Seneschal's whim. Is that right? If you have passion: love of husband: 3 and you are defending him, does that 3 dice pool go down to zero dice, which will refresh back to 3 later? Or does it stay at 3? Or does it vary?

2) Igniting a candle. How do you do this with magic? Motion? What level?

Anyway, thanks in advance, for the answers, and thanks for a fantastic game, Jake!

AnyaTheBlue wrote:
1) Spiritual attributes & refreshing. I'm confused. I know these can go up and down with role-playing. But in a few places it sounds like when you use dice from one of these, those dice are *gone*, and they refresh either at the next session, or at the Seneschal's whim. Is that right? If you have passion: love of husband: 3 and you are defending him, does that 3 dice pool go down to zero dice, which will refresh back to 3 later? Or does it stay at 3? Or does it vary?

2) Igniting a candle. How do you do this with magic? Motion? What level?

Note that in his answer to the first question Jake dodges the question of refreshing. A strict interperetation of not needing to refresh could be that you add the dice to every roll, so they could get added to all rolls in an exchange. This makes them very powerful, and encourage maneuvers that use more rolls.

Another common interperetation is that they add to your CP at the beginning of an Exchange, and then again to that pool whenever it refreshes. This is less dramatic, but still powerful.

Mike

Would it really be just motion 2 Jake? Or would it also require vision 3 to be able to see the air you are trying to use to create the friction?

Indeed Luck is spent: 1 blown permanently for automatic success, or 1 which will return at the end of the session to add another die to your roll.

All other Spiritual attributes just add dice to the roll or combat pool when it matters to the PC.

tralese wrote: Would it really be just motion 2 Jake? Or would it also require vision 3 to be able to see the air you are trying to use to create the friction?

Thanks for all the answers, everybody!

And thank you, Tony, for the links to those older discussions on science vs. magic. I think you're probably right, adding too much science kind of ruins the 'flavor'.

How about this? You have to use Motion to draw the fire out of flammable things, like it was phlogiston inside the matter? That makes a sort of primitive conceptual sense, doesn't change the mechanics (you still use motion, don't have to use vision), and keeps some flavor.

Likewise, maybe you could use Motion to draw Lightning from the clouds in a similar manner.

I wonder if it's a good thing that this is reminding me of Glorantha and the whole "Is Nysalor or Arkat really Gbaji?" sorts of arguments it spawns... :)

the only problem with tossing out scientific explanations is the example spell Fold from the text, which sounds like you are reading the specs of a Star Trek transporter! :)

In my game, I tossed all the scientific stuff out the window... "Fold" went with it.
It feels better that way.

Morfedel wrote: the only problem with tossing out scientific explanations is the example spell Fold from the text, which sounds like you are reading the specs of a Star Trek transporter! :)

Anthony I wrote:

Morfedel wrote: the only problem with tossing out scientific explanations is the example spell Fold from the text, which sounds like you are reading the specs of a Star Trek transporter! :)

I would say that the weakest part of the TROS magic system was the inclusion of science/quasi-science to try to explain magic effects. This addition seems to cause most of the arguments. Also, why would you want to limit magic with science?

Tony

Draigh wrote: In my game, I tossed all the scientific stuff out the window... "Fold" went with it.
It feels better that way.

I capped Movement: Speed: 3) at the speed of sound. Around 375 yds/ second. That's still hellaciously fast. But that's just part of my propensity to tweak everything I buy.

i can agree.... speed of light is way to fast... hell... just a spell of one on an enemy cvould fry him..

speed of sound, sounds about right... thugh can still be detrimental to the human body..

id called Fold... "Seven League Stride"....

theres always a spell around called that