Simulated earthquake loading was applied to four cruciform specimens, that represented part of a multistorey frame, including the half-beams and half-columns framing into a typical interior joint. This was made by welding plates on to the ends of the beams and bolting these plates to the column flanges using high strength proof loaded bolts. The joints were designed so that recommendations, previously developed elsewhere for monotonic loading, together with the rules given by New Zealand Standard 3404:1977, could be studied. When the existing rules were followed ductile specimens were obtained; however, when some of the joints were deliberately designed to be understrength, failure modes were obtained that were not predicted by the existing simple design methods.