In answer to the original question posted in the subject line, there is a mod that enables Infinity Engine-style auto-pause features for combat.

https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn2/other/combat-auto-pause-lb

What? Whatever. Point was, those games would never have become popular if they hadn't been based on that rulesystem and Forgotten Realms.

Whether or not that was a good rulesystem or not, or whether FR is a good campaign setting, is neither here nor there. It was the selling point and the foundation to the popularity of those games.

The AD&D system was never for rule-lawyers anyway. If you played it that way, you wouldn't get much out of it. If there are rules you don't like, you just change them. Problem solved, neckbeard cut and what is a Jack Vance and how does he control how I play my AD&D game?

It's a roleplaying game, not an emulator.

Many thanks +1

This is the standard take on 'D&D vs. (almost) all other RPGs (especially RQ)'.

The intention of this type of summation is to paint those of us advocating for good game design as being heavy into metrics, number crunching and "realism" when in fact this is not the case.

I do not want "realism" in ANY RPG and RQ is no more "realistic" (in the sense you are using the term) than D&D. It is not a game about medieval conflict with people usually dying of infection, disease etc.

The debate is about logical consistency and elegance in GAME DESIGN. D&D simply does not emulate heroic fantasy well. That is the reason why it is damned near impossible to accurately represent characters from fantasy fiction in (A)D&D , be it Elric, Conan, Fafhard and the Gray Mouser, Robin Hood, etc. etc.

RuneQuest was easily the very best at emulating heroic fantasy and there was NO character from the genre that could not be accurately represented in that system. This was no accident as the designers of RQ had vast knowledge and understanding of the genre as well as world folklore and mythology which they took into account when designing the game.

Gygax was (for whatever reason) heavy into Jack Vance and that was the primary source he had for 'Heroic fantasy'.

An analogy I would use would be this:

There are two films about World War II, both purporting to show us what WWII was really like and appeal to veterans of said war as well as people who are just very interested in the subject.

One is called "Haze of Glory" and, while not necessarily realistic (has absurd dramatic over-acting and soldiers regularly making almost impossible shots with their guns. But it does nothing logically inconsistent. Physics are not mocked and no one is taking 8 point blank shots to the head and getting up to kill a Nazi or whatever.

The second film is called "Eagle Eyes" and, while also full of overacting and such also has scenes wherein soldiers are skipping bullets off of bodies of water (like stones across a lake) to score perfect head shots on Nazis and medics using homeopathy to save the lives of wounded soldiers.

"Eagle Eyes" is the worse film here, not just because it is "unrealistic" but because it does not represent the subject/genre it seeks to represent. It is logically nonsensical in that even if we assumed an alternate earth wherein 'alternative medicine' is a real thing, homeopathy cannot possibly work for reasons of logic (diluting a mixture to the point that it literally becomes just water cannot = stronger curative properties unless you are creating a world with entirely alien physics/chemistry/nature to the point that no one could possibly explain how it works).

D&D is like "Eagle Eyes". I know what you are ready to say here:

"But heroic fantasy/D&D IS assuming a world with entirely alien natural laws!"

My response to this is that ALL heroic fantasy games/books/movies assume worlds of a somewhat alien nature. But they still have logical consistency in their fantasy (if they are any good) and assume physics and nature work the same as we know them to...only with 'magic'. Which is absolutely fine! I have zero problem accepting the premise of magic/fantasy (obviously as a staunch fan of the genre) but I do not want D&D's absurdly over-complicated and drastic inability to represent the genre it seeks to emulate. Conan and Robin Hood should not need rings of protection, magic armor etc. just so they won't be killed by kobolds. Elric should not need to be a 'Cleric-Illusionist' because they are unable to depict him within their system (as well as D&D using a magic system that is as different from anything depicted in the fiction of the genre as anything ever offered).

RQ was simply a lot more fun, less complicated AND logically consistent.

Actually, I think my biggest issue with AD&D (which I have encountered in many CRPGs, including some not based on AD&D (like some Ultimas, for example) is the fact that combat is too RNG dependent, and sometimes in the most frustrating way.

Attack accuracy is one example. In 2e, for a 1st level fighter with no specialization or strength bonus to hit a target with AC 10 (the AC of someone with no armor or dexterity bonus), a 10 must be rolled on a d20, which yields a rather poor accuracy of 55%. (In practice, the fighter might get some bonus from specialization and/or strength, but the target is likely to have better AC as well.) The result is that low level combat consists of a lot of misses (on both sides, actually), which can sometimes lead to entire combat rounds in which the battle does not progress because every attack misses. It is also frustrating when you keep missing, only for an enemy to hit and kill (because low HP at such low levels) you because of this; it is frustrating and doesn't feel fair when this happens.

(Incidentally, the math in the above paragraph holds true in 3e; I note that strength and dexterity bonuses are more common; in 2e you need 16 strength to get a bonus to hit, while 3e gives you a bonus at only 12.)

It would be much better if the system were balanced around such attacks being accurate 90% or more of the time; make misses more the exception rather than the norm. There's also issues with scaling: In pretty much any version of D&D (extended to high levels), a mere +20 bonus (only 40 levels under the 3e epic level rules) can mean the difference between minimum and maximum accuracy, even when the relevant stats are in the thousands or higher (this is one reason the system doesn't scale well to extremely high levels).

Other issues I have with AD&D, some of which have spread to some CRPGs, include:
* The lack of stat growth. This makes the random starting stats too much of a factor in the long run.
* The segregation of spells per day by spell level. (This issue also affects Wizardry 1-5 and Final Fantasy 1 and 3, for example). This can be frustrating when a higher spell level lacks any useful spells when a lower spell level has them. (My character can still cast Meteor Swarm, so why can't she use Delayed Blast Fireball?)
* Preparing spells in advance tends to discourage the use of some of the more interesting but situational spells. It's much more fun when you can just cast spells spontaneously (like the 3e sorcerer).
* Healing (excluding (Mass) Heal) is way too weak for my tastes. I like healing spells to actually be useful in combat. Also, weak healing makes out of combat healing tedious, especially when resting doesn't fully restore HP. (CRPGs with this issue include Wizardry 1-3 and 5-7, Ultima 3 (bad enough that it's worth going into a dungeon *just* to restore a high level character's HP with a fountain), and Pool of Radiance (particularly bad here; there's a reason later Gold Box games added the "Fix" option to the menu to try to fix this issue).

Out of curiosity, how does RuneQuest fair in respect to these issues?

I was not contesting the popularity of D&D. What relevance does this have to what I said? Backstreet Boys were more successful at one point than the Beatles. Does that make them as good musically? The argumentum ad populum is a fallacy. Again, what is your point here? McDonalds outsells all other restaurants in existence. 'Reality TV' (as scripted and unreal as it is) dominates television. If I had made a claim that D&D was not popular or some such then I could see your making these assertions here but I did no such thing.

Popularity does NOT = quality. We who criticize the system are not generally "rule lawyers" and you are offering a straw man here as well as an irrelevant conclusion fallacy. I never played ANY game that way and this is not relevant to any of my points or arguments. AGAIN...this is not relevant to anything I said. You are acting as if we are discussing whether, when playing Monopoly to use the 'Land on Free Parking and get a pile of money' optional rule or not. My problem is with the whole system. Not any specific rule that you could simply omit or replace with a house rule. 1) Jack Vance was a science fiction author responsible for the Dying Earth series from which Gary Gygax tried to emulate it's spell casting methods which were unusual and complicated (which is not bad in itself). He does not control (even when he was alive) how you play any game and I am perplexed as to why you would even ask such?

2) ALL roleplaying games are squad based tactical simulators. The squad in any particular game might be anywhere from a single PC to a party of 12 PCs and ALL roleplaying games are "emulators". A game like D&D sought to emulate the genre of 'heroic fantasy'. Other RPGs emulate different things. Gamma World emulated the 'atomic aftermath post-apocalypse full of mutants' sci-fi subgenre. Flashing Blades emulated swashbuckling Three Musketeers type fiction.

"Realism" does NOT = quality either.

Quality is best achieving goals.

Realism is not a goal for games, FUN is!

No. We are playing Heroic Fantasy.
You seem prefer Heroic Simulation.

They are different things. There is an audience for hardcore simulations of all sorts, but it is smaller audience than people who just want fun games.

Though I would like to know what is so realistic about magic in RuneQuest? If you want realism, you wouldn't have magic at all.

Your concerns are different than my own but I will try to answer your question about RQ as best I can.

1) RQ uses an experience system far different than AD&D. When creating a character you have to determine his/her age and from that, and the occupational training you have received. i.e. someone may have started apprenticeship as a blacksmith at 15 and be 18 years old when he begins adventuring as a PC (quitting his career as a blacksmith usually) and therefore have three years of training in skills relevant to that occupation as well as probably lesser training in some weapon skills etc. Or he may have 7 years prior experience as an assistant to a shaman (if he came from a barbarian or primitive or nomadic culture) etc. It was the first percentile based system so you have skills like "(weapon) attack: 62%", "Shield (or some weapon) Parry: 73%", "Sneak: 55%", etc.
Skills improve through usage. So if you attack a troll with your battleaxe and score a critical hit then you could get a skill increase of 1-6 % to your axe skill at the end of the play session.

Starting PCs will still probably miss their targets half the time which is to be expected given their inexperience but you CAN (depending on the GM and his campaign) start with an older, more experienced character and choose occupational background that gives greater experience/skill to combat related stuff.

2) Stats are generated randomly (but of course there are optional rules to allow for other means) and based on the chosen species (elf, dwarf, troll, human etc.) your PC is. So one species might roll 3d6+6 for 'Strength' but only 2d6 for 'intelligence' for example. Like any fantasy RPG it is possible to increase stats through magic (rare potions, blessings from gods etc.) but (and this is a good thing IMO) in general you won't be increasing your physical attributes much through experience so it is more important to put effort into character creation as it is not like typical console styled CRPGs wherein everyone ends up with hundreds of points in all physical/mental attributes.

3) Spell casting works like this: There are three types of magic.

Spirit magic - Used by primitive, barbaric and nomadic cultures mostly (Shamans and Witch doctors). With spirit magic you learn spells (usually from a shaman or a captured spirit) and you know those spells. You can cast any spell you know and doing so drains 'Magic points' which are based primarily on your "Power" attribute/stat (which represents something akin to 'Presence', animal magnetism, favor of the gods, etc.). The more powerful the spell in general the more magic points it costs to case. Typically a starting PC will be able to cast between 5 and a dozen of the spells they will know.

Divine magic - This is powers granted by gods and is generally very powerful. It does not drain 'magic points' but actually you must sacrifice "Power" (the attribute) permanently to cast the spell. This is not as horrific as it probably sounds because dealing directly with gods as priests do results in a good number of opportunities to increase one's "Power" stat.
It is not the typical 'Clerics are just wizards spamming healing spells' crap. See below for information about 'Hit Points' and such for further clarification. Divine 'healers' tend to be more akin to the 'Faith healer' mythologies of our real world (powerful but infrequent). Shamans using spirit magic are probably better suited to the typical healing spell-casting you see in typical RPGs.

Sorcery - The typical wizardry type magic. Spells cost Magic points (and magic points regenerate with rest) and can be very powerful but also entailing things like regents/components of varying rarity as well as sometimes involving rituals which can take a LONG time to complete. An Adept sorcerer (as opposed to an apprentice) will typically be older than say an equally accomplished warrior type because of the time and difficulty in learning the intricacies of the trade.

There is a lot more to the magic system than I have detailed here but that is the gist.

4) Hit points are initially based upon one's 'Size' and 'Constitution' attributes and do not generally increase unless you increase those attributes. They represent the amount of physical damage a creature can sustain before dying. General HP are further divided by location. Arms have slightly less HP than legs (on humans) and the chest has more HP than the head, etc. So if someone aims and fires an arrow hitting a guy in the arm he will probably survive (possibly with a crippled arm) but if the same arrow critically hits him in the head (which may piece an eye) it can kill outright. I know this sounds like it would be frustrating and result in beginning characters dying left and right but this is not the case (unless the GM is incompetent) for many reasons. Too many to detail here.

In short RQ is much more sensible but still full of the 'Heroic fantasy' stuff that allows for beginning PCs to grow to become legendary heroes. The default world of Glorantha has specific characteristics such as almost everyone knowing some magic (usually spirit magic spells) but the system itself can literally be used for ANY setting, genre (the same system was used for [i]Call of Cthulhu, Ringworld, Elfquest, Superworld (Chaosium's superhero RPG), Stormbringer/Elric, and several other RPGs).

You seem to have misplaced one of YOUR assertions within a quote of something I said (I never said "Quality is best achieving goals" whatever that is supposed to mean). Your bald assertion that "Realism is not a goal for games, FUN is!" is another fallacy. For starters you seem to still be stuck on this "realism" straw man which I spent some effort refuting and explaining to you above. Secondly, no one here (especially me) advocated that "realism" was important and/or more important than fun. AGAIN, either pay attention to and respond to what I HAVE SAID or ask me to clarify whatever it is you do not understand about what I have said. "Simulation" does NOT = "No fantasy". Yes and NOT opposite of one another. What you are doing here is akin to saying "Do you want cake to taste good or be sweet?". Yes. What relevance does this have to what I said?! Nothing...as I said in the very post you are responding to here. You should improve your reading comprehension kiddo. As I said I do not want "realism". Why are you still jabbering about this?!

Not even close to what I was seeking. I know it is the best they could do with a hack/workaround in NVN2 but it does not really achieve what I was after.

Whether you are calling it realism, or instead calling it more accurate, or more sensible, or better tactical simulation, it all amounts to the same thing.

You view RPG some kind of reality simulator, more than a game.

As I said before, there is a hardcore sim crowd, which you seem part of, the rest of aren't so married to having perfect mechanics and just want a fun game.

If RuneQuest is really the best RPG as you claim and more fun, what has been the impediment to implementing a RuneQuest CRPG?

McDonalds analogies are flawed. McDonalds outsells because of cost/convenience.

RuneQuest and D&D were similar priced and available.


Runequest may be the best RPG for you.

But, you need to recognize that not everyone wants the same things from an RPG that you do.

I would be perfectly happy to try a decent CRPG using Runequest. You think having the Very Best Heroic fantasy emulation system (according to you) would have tempted someone to use it, somewhere?

Could it be that maybe having the very best system isn't all that important, or perhaps you are more than tad biased and not everyone thinks it is the very best.

This is almost like Linux fanatics arguing the technical reasons why their OS that 99% of people don't use on the desktop is the very best.

Not even close? I don't know what you're seeking then. But no, it's not the best they could do in NWN2. A script could pause combat automatically on combat starting, and every round thereafter until combat ends. I must admit that I don't know what else IE-style auto-pausing entails.

False. You yourself went off on a tangent wherein you yourself contradicted this by attacking a straw man along the lines of 'Realism? This is a fantasy game with spells, etc.' (not going to go back and grab the exact quote right now unless you try denying you did this). AGAIN, this is almost completely irrelevant to my point. YOU asserted (baldly) that RPGs are NOT "simulators" when in fact they ARE as I have demonstrated repeatedly. Now you are trying to sneakily revise your position to offer still unqualified assertions about how much simulation you feel is appropriate.
Whether an RPG does a good job or not in how it simulates heroic fantasy (or any other genre) is what is being debated here, not some subjective appreciation of how much simulation you feel i is going on. All of these games are "fun games" and all of them are simulators. What is being criticized is D&D's poor game mechanics/methods of simulating. Ignoring your dubious assertions about what I might be claiming here, the direct answer to your question is popularity which I AGAIN remind you has NOTHING AT ALL to do with quality. Do you have any idea how many superior musicians have had minuscule or no commercial success compared to the numerous vacuous pop stars churning out crap? Has it ever dawned on you how much more money The Fast and the Furious movies make compared to movies like The Remains of the Day or how successful the Star Wars movies are compared to much better written, directed and produced science fiction movies ranging from Pitch Black to Serenity?

AGAIN the argumentum ad populum (the argument from or appeal to popularity) is an error in reasoning (aka a logical fallacy). Cost/convenience is part of the reason for their popularity but that is largely irrelevant and does not invalidate the analogy because the point is still that they are far more popular than restaurants with superior food and service, just as D&D is more popular than all other RPGs despite being woefully poorer game design (vastly and unnecessarily more complicated, logically inconsistent and inelegant, etc.). This is an irrelevant conclusion fallacy because even if it is/were true it is irrelevant to the point that D&D was the first out of the gate (like McDonalds as far as restaurant chains/franchises) and thus most popular regardless of quality or lack thereof. This is true to such extent that most outside of the hobby refer to the hobby itself (role playing gaming) as "D&D" . Irrelevant again. My arguments are not about whether or not my subjective appreciation of any game systems hold any sway over you or anyone else. It is about more objective facets of game design itself. Irrelevant. The debate is not about what you are trying to make it about because you want to dodge my points about game design. Can you make any argument for D&D being better designed than RQ or T and T (which is the exact converse of RQ in terms of what you are calling "realism" vs. "fun") or dozens of other RPGs? Of course you cannot and neither has anyone else bothered to try to my knowledge and for the same reasons no movie critic has attempted to put forth a review that says The Fast and the Furious is a better movie than Citizen Kane or In the Bedroom. RQ has been widely considered by most (almost all?) game designers (including those who worked for TSR and WotC) to be far superior to D&D for years. It was second place in terms of popularity/sales as a system for most of it's existence so yeah...you are gravely mistaken here if you think no one else felt this way. This of course does not make the case that it IS superior to D&D (I am not making the appeal to popularity here). AGAIN, I do not care about popularity and assertions by you or anyone else as to how popular any game is are irrelevant. Yes...and your point?

I was seeking auto-pause features similar to the IE games' features. This hack/workaround does not come close to that, especially taking into account the complications/work in even getting the massively watered down effects which the developer(s) themselves lay out in the description of their hack.

Right, well, I'm sure if you tell them that as politely and tactfully as you did here, they'll be happy to work on it more until it meets your standards.

You seem to be reading into what I say as well. I never said that "massively watered down" is a criticism, or that it is in any way impolite. Who would think that? I was simply offering a helpful protocol for dealing with mod-makers.