Hey, I just saw a bestiary for Basic Roleplaying that has a lot of generic monsters, including some that are also in D&D.

Available from http://basicroleplaying.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=398 (but you might need to register with the board to download)

A preview is available at http://www.scribd.com/doc/20443029/BaSIC-Bestiary

With a little tinkering you should be able to use the entries with MRQ.

Ultor, your slams against D&D miss because you are talking not about the game but about certain players of your acquaintance. Then you turn around and equate your own personal short-sidedness with an incapability in the RQ game.

Neither side of your argument is accurate. It also misses a whole lot of common sense.

My D&D character may hate Orcs, and my RQ character may hate not only Chaos things but also Lunars, but (like most adventurers who survive a while) they tend not to be either fanatical or suicidal.

I don't know what D&D scenarios you have in mind as depending on some "enemy race" rule. The Giants modules are set up partly as a deadly mission of retribution, but the acts for which they are retribution are the warrant.

The players have both the "carrot" of keeping any plunder and the "stick" of the headsman's ax for failure to teach the enemy enough of a lesson.

I don't even need to go back to ancient times or the Old World for historical examples of punitive expeditions, having plenty right here in America as recently as the 19th century.

Of course the giants are people. People kill other people, or otherwise become more convenient dead, with some frequency. Many a disease has killed more people than any army, but try to rouse the public to war against illness and see how much harder it is.

Orcs in D&D were originally either Chaotic or Neutral (both alignments being possible). Adding Lawful Orcs would go against the source material, but it would not radically change the game. Humans are of all alignments!

Quote from: UltorAnother example would be that treasure is culturally important - so lists of generic magic items and so on are right out, and the average orc hoard can't simply be converted either.

Yeah, after all, what Gloranthan RQ adventurer would want 1000 Lunars to pay for training, or a potion or spell matrix, or a spirit trapping or power storing crystal, or an iron weapon or piece of armor?

All that must be "right out" -- except for all us adventurers who have not been turning up our noses at it for the past 30+ years!

It's great if you won't settle for anything less than a scroll of literature or art or something. That makes the division of loot so much simpler! If you can fight even plain old humans when they are out to take our stuff with no qualms about killing us if need be, then you are welcome to come along into the Rubble.

Some Generally Unwelcome Gloranthan Critters:
Basilisks
Broos
Chonchons
Cockatrices
Disease Spirits
Dragon Snails
Dragonewts *
Ducks *
Ghouls
Giants (the few ancients such as Gonn Orta being exceptional)
Gobblers
Gorps
Headhangers
Huan To
Hydra
Jack O'bears
Krarshtkids
Minotaurs (except among fellow beast-men and some elves)
Morokanth *
Ogres
Passion Ghosts
Rubble Runners
Scorpion Men
Skeletons
Snakes (Chaos types)
Snatching Demons
Stoorworms
Trollkin *
Trolls **
Tusk Riders
Vampires
Walktapi
Were-creatures *
Zombies

* distrusted or despised more than feared or hated, but YMMV

** Trolls are at perpetual war with Dwarves and Elves, and the latter two are racial enemies to each other as well.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;461070Hey, I just saw a bestiary for Basic Roleplaying that has a lot of generic monsters, including some that are also in D&D.

Available from http://basicroleplaying.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=398 (but you might need to register with the board to download)

A preview is available at http://www.scribd.com/doc/20443029/BaSIC-Bestiary

With a little tinkering you should be able to use the entries with MRQ.

Oh wow, that's really, really good for a free download, and yeah, it's easy to convert. Thanks mate!

Quote from: Phillip;461095Ultor, your slams against D&D miss because you are talking not about the game but about certain players of your acquaintance. Then you turn around and equate your own personal short-sidedness with an incapability in the RQ game.

Two points:

1. I'm not slamming anything - that is wholly of your own imagination. I still treasure my LBBs and play the original game occasionally.

2. You haven't the *faintest* idea about my gaming experience or the people I play with. *You* are simply making things up, and this is the second time you have done it.

I see no point in discussing this further with someone who argues like this.

For the record, I stand by the points I made.

Quote from: UltorYou haven't the *faintest* idea about my gaming experience or the people I play with.

What I have is a pretty firm grasp of the actual games in question. Either you're getting your notions from people with whom you play, or you're just pulling them out of your ass. I chose the seemingly more likely and more charitable assumption.

You offer no evidence whatsoever for your claim of the necessity of "enemy races". Never mind that the RuneQuest rulesbook itself directly contradicts your claim of absence -- the significance in the first place has not been established!

Nothing in the representations of Arneson and Gygax and their friends has ever suggested to me such a necessity. The structure of the game as designed simply does not entail it. At hypothetical worst, hundreds of thousands of us were simply playing the game "wrong".

That appears to me most unlikely on the weight of evidence.

On the other hand, there is ample evidence of how not just some players but Wizards of the Coast have changed the presentation of the game. I still do not see the dependence you claim, but at least the games published by WotC have structures closer to what I can infer of the kind of thing that you imagine D&D to be.

Put most simply, "players attack on sight" is a recipe for quickly dead PCs in the D&D with which I am acquainted. It is the same if there are no Scorpion Men or Ogres, no Ghouls or Giants or Tusk Riders, but only Saxons vs. Britons or Lunars vs. Bison and Impala tribes.

Your notion is so far from being "necessary" to the game as to be a positive hindrance to sound strategy.

"Monsters are people too" in D&D! If you refuse to play them properly, then you have only yourself to blame for your poor DMing. Your willful departure from the standards of the game does not make them nonexistent!

Personally, I prefer RuneQuest, mainly because I've been playing it for a long, long time.

However, I played D&D (back when it was called AD&D) in a couple of campaigns which I enjoyed.

D&D is, in some ways, an easier game to play because things tend to be Black and White. Alignments mean you play what you are and you are what you play. You have an immediate set of possible friends and a set of enemies. Many NPC races are generally going to be hostile. Also, advancement is generally by killing things and gaining treasure, both of which are fairly easy. The D&D that I played (Second Edition AD&D) had a limited character progression which, again, is fairly easy, all you had to worry about was which spells or weapons to take and how much advancing to the next level cost. However, it is restrictive in many ways. If you belong to one character class you cannot do certain things. If you belong to an alignment you cannot behave in certain ways. Combat is very stylised and non-combat tasks are downgraded to the point where they often become meaningless.

RuneQuest is more complicated. The combat system means that you have to think about what you are doing as making a wrong decision can easily be fatal. There are a lot more options in character generation regarding which race to use, which profession and which cult to worship. Once you start playing, the options are much more open, you can start off as a warrior and end up being a healer, for example. Character advancement is grainer, with decisions on which skills to try to increase and which new spells to buy. Almost everyone can use magic of some kind, which affects the game a lot. There are moral choices that can be made in RQ which simply would not work in D&D, in my opinion. The basic rules set for RQ is easier to use, in my opinion, than D&D, there are fewer tables to look up, and combat is more intuitive.

So, if you want a very open but possibly more difficult game, then I'd go for RQ. If you want a game that is easier to play but is possibly more closed then I'd go for D&D.

Having said that, the group that I played RQ with for years had an earlier freeform D&D campaign in which they bent and twisted it to doing pretty much everything they wanted, so I can see how D&D can work well in a campaign.