Frustrations with RQ1 chargen

This is me sort of spilling my guts... Not necessarily looking for a solution, just trying to work out my feelings.

So I've been starting up a play by post RQ1 game and I also have a Roll20 game I've been running for a few months.

Since I've been doing "going back to the original" for D&D (playing OD&D) and Traveller (using 1977 Books 1-3), and I've always been partial to RQ1 over even RQ2 let alone any of the newer ways to play in Glorantha, I thought I'd do much more by the book than the last few times I've run RQ.

For the Roll20 game, I did straight 3d6 rolls for attributes (well, 2d6+6 for INT as suggested in I think TrollPak). With that, an ability bonus is rare, especially more than +5%.

For the play by post game, I decided to do 4d6k3 (or 4d6k2+6 for INT, similar adjustments for non-humans). That has resulted in better ability bonuses, though the 4d6 INT of elves really shows through (since INT is SO important, affecting almost every ability bonus). The 3d6+3 DEX shows through pretty strong also (since attack, manipulation, parry, stealth, and defense all use DEX).

We've also been using the previous experience from the back of the book. This has caused tremendous delay in getting the play by post game started and lots of frustration on the part of the players.

This has seriously got me tempted to return to what I did for the game I ran in 2006. For that game, I had settled on doing a point buy for attributes, distributing 103 points (the first couple characters, I actually told the players to just pick attributes - I think they averaged 103 points with both of them pretty close). But I didn't compute the ability bonuses. Instead, they got to distribute +25, +20, +20, +15 +15, +10, +10, and +5 among the abilities (attack, manipulation, parry, defense, stealth, knowledge, perception, and communication [oratory]). I just asked the players to consider their attributes and not apply a bonus that was way out of whack (no +25 knowledge for a character with INT 5 - not that anyone took that low an INT).

One of the cool things about this was that if you take computation of the ability bonuses from the attributes, the value of the attributes becomes much more even so a point buy works.

On top of that, I used a previous experience system I had developed in the 90s inspired by RQ3. This set lower skills than characters often come out of the previous experience system from the back of the book, but also more uniform (we have some characters who didn't make mercenary or get into an apprenticeship).

But that feels so new school even though I think it would make the rest of the game (which is plenty old school) much more accessible.

What are your thoughts? What do other folks who still play RQ1 or RQ2 do?

BTW, a definite non-answer is RuneQuest Glorantha. It's more money than I'm willing to spend, and from tidbits I've seen I think it makes changes in areas I really like the originals. For example, post RQ2, it seems that the idea of cults having very different skill and spell offerings, from free, to half-price, to normal price, has changed to be more uniform. I haven't actually seen an RQG cult writeup, but I know for sure I really don't like the RQ3 cults.

Some Selected Comments

One thing I really want to do is put together a streamlined document for character generation, walking the player through each step (I have a good start on this here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UaDB0IJo96DzDRSQLL9j4-vQuBiSLs6U3SySHgUUuG8/edit?usp=sharing ). The previous experience really isn't THAT complicated, I think it's just that things are spread out.

I do allow players to try several apprenticeships if they fail their first choice, adding a few more options might make it so really you would end up with some kind of apprenticeship.

Actually, just tweaking the background roll to remove peasant would eliminate the possibility of not getting an apprenticeship and would not really detract from the game.

Hmm, I could also take the code for the Classic Traveller Character Generator and write a Classic RuneQuest Character Generator...

A cheat sheet on cults would help, perhaps just giving the Lay and Initiate details for some good selections, plus the names of other cults that are possibilities.

Hmm, looking back, my old rules from the 90s I didn't allow Elf PCs... Maybe allowing an Elf was a bit much. Or maybe not, we'll see how that actually plays out.