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  2. All right, to the shaman gods are just very powerful spirits with a known agenda. But the shamanic way is to dominate weak spirits and bargain with strong spirits. A god must have near infinite power from the shamans perspective. The shaman has no hope of dominating, and on the bargaining path - what does the god want that the shaman has? His soul and perhaps some spirits. To bargain his soul is to join the god's cult (which some gods will accept). Otherwise maybe the shaman had control of a cult spirit, which would be a bargaining chip. Or maybe the vastly more powerful god doesn't feel like bargaining today, and will dominate the shaman. It is risky approaching gods in the spirit world.
  3. Today
  4. I wonder whether we need the qualifier “greater”. Cannot an “insignificant spider spirit” and “the greatest of the great gods” be the same entity? Power and range of magic available to practitioners may be a function more of the size of cult, its R&D department, and its knack of parting worshippers from their POW than the nature and power of the god/spirit. If a shamanic one-person band cannot access sunspear that may be less about some supposed inability to contact Yelm and more about their status as sole trader (and not grand mucky-muck of the solar religion). Maybe … but this is not meant as a heresy.
  5. The Syndics Ban has expanded again forcing all Moon Boats to travel the long way around it.
  6. LC getting ready to spend time with the Nysaloreans on Mount Baldy?
  7. So the Red Goddess' flight is delayed? Haha
  8. It has now been a few weeks since we announced the Basic Roleplaying Design Challenge. We have been overjoyed to see discussion both online and at conventions about the competition. We’ve been especially enthused to hear the budding ideas and inspiration that independent creators are bursting with for their submission. The conversations have led us to create an extensive FAQ which you can read on our website. One question we keep hearing is: ‘what are you looking for?’ Of course, there is no single answer! We thought we’d share some thoughts from the judging panel on the kinds of projects they’re excited to see. A Marriage of Mechanics & Theme The Call of Cthulhu Sanity mechanic reminds players that the human mind can only comprehend so much. The Traits and Passion mechanics in Pendragon reinforce that we are playing knights with personalities, and that our vices, virtues, and loyalties shift in response to our experiences. We want to see how you’ve taken the mechanics of BRP and applied them in a way that reinforces the theme, mood, or setting of your game—remember, there are BRP versions of unique mechanics like Sanity and Passions! Interesting Takes On Classic Genres We’re all nerds, and we all love Fantasy and Sci-Fi. There are so many other genres to explore in tabletop roleplaying games (especially with a flexible system like BRP!), but if your heart is pulling you toward one of the tried and true classic genres, we want to see how your version is unique! When we say ‘unique’, we mean more than just “in my fantasy world, elves don’t have pointy ears.” Show us a setting that will remind us what we love about the classic Sci-Fi or Fantasy genre. Reveal to us a setting with stakes, drama, magic systems, or science fiction concepts that make us say “wow! I want to explore this world!” Something Completely Different This contest is to foster new and creative voices, and that can mean genres we haven’t explored in existing BRP games, themes more universal than horror or adventure, and even attempts at the profound. While it would be amazing if each and every entry—and potential winner—had clear and widespread market appeal, this is also an opportunity to take a chance and make something for a broader audience than easier, more formulaic material. Freshness One thing we aren’t looking for is how to adapt an existing game to BRP, such as adding levels, feats, classes, etc. BRP has flourished due to its open-endedness, and a rigid focus on reinventing the wheel, or going down well-trod paths, is not particularly interesting when it comes to getting noticed and finding an audience. A Surprise! Beyond a type of setting or unique take on a mechanic, we’re excited to be surprised! Show us something we’ve not seen before, take the core BRP rules and apply them in a way that we haven’t thought of. A sure-fire way to catch our attention is for us to read your pitch and say “Oh, wow. I’ve never seen that before.” A Game With Room To Grow The BRP Design Challenge is not only for games that have a fully complete manuscript, spec art, cartography, and a draft cover—quite the opposite! We do not expect to see full manuscripts at all. What we are excited to see is potential, room to grow, and an understanding of how the money from the BRP Design Challenge might help your series of dot points turn into a fully fledged TTRPG! Submissions for the BRP Design Challenge are open now, and close on May 31st at 11:59pm Pacific time. Be sure to also look at our primer on designing games with BRP—We cannot wait to see your entry!
  9. Ships & Shores V16 has now been uploaded to DriveThruRPG. This is the final format of the panorama of the Holy Country and Choralinthor Bay. The book is 'complete' barring typo corrections. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/452062/Ships--Shores-of-Southern-Genertela
  10. Not speaking with my lore master hat on, though. Vivamort and Malia are special foes, personal foes of CA, IMG, embodying the antithesis of herself.
  11. See the gods as emperors or great kings. Forget that they are different in nature, just keep in mind that they have more powers and a court (their priests) So, now imagine that an unknown (a shaman) wants to talk to this emperor. I would say it is difficult. In some case, due to the culture (the pantheon), the emperor himself (the god), and the period (the cult) the access may be more or less difficult. For example it is very easy to speak with the actual french temporary king (yes we use the nickname "president" but it is the same) And I m pretty sure it was impossible to speak with the previous emperor of China. But in all cases, once our "noone" meet the emperor.. What could think the emperor ? Who is this guy who disturbs me ? Why should I hear him ? Now remember that our emperor is in fact a god. With all the dimensions, will all the divine powers. What will happen ? So impossible is not french shamanic but imo, it would be hard and in all cases the god reactions will probably be between neutral and hostile
  12. What are gods but greater spirits trapped by time?
  13. oh I was convinced that CA try to heal everyone even chaos. But you're one of the lore master, I will not challenge you 😛
  14. Nothing Nysalorean going on here. Chalana Arroy is a mortal enemy of Malia, and eliminating her children is what she does. If these happen to become tangible, then they can be eliminated - possibly by fire rather than weaponry, but removed from Life. I don't think so. Not any more than they try to heal Vivamort and his minions.
  15. it depends on what did @Joerg mean by "beat". Of course if Joerg have in mind to "kill" these physical entities, we can conclude that he is an illuminate agent of Nysalor, Sedenya or Chaos trying to convince "pure" white ladies to lose their faith for something more ambiguous. But if the CA "fighters" do what they can to heal these physical entities the fight is a non violent fight, just huge efforts. After all CA try to heal Malia, I think ? how does their disease nature appear in the dead place ? - If it is physical, they can offer first aid, surgery or alchemy heal. - If it is more some kind of behavior, we may see disease spirits as spirit experiencings mental illness (after all if they propagate voluntary suffering, that's a kind of mental pathology) , then they may use fast talk, orate, sing etc.. to "confort" them and maybe "transform" them to "just spirit", no more disease spirits (if one day they live the dead place)
  16. cut the limb ! quickly ! Another option would be that the dust itself may clean the wound. In the same way that the dust causes damage to your body, the dust may damage the slime. something like cauterization.
  17. If it works for you, just do it.
  18. “There is a crack, a crack, in everything: That’s how the light gets in.” — Leonard Cohen
  19. Of course, wootz steel requires the crucible be cracked to extract the smelted metal. There is a well-understood way in which a good solid shattering is essential to further creation. Even if we have foundries now. They don't have many broos Oop North, where we find the Steel Sword Legion and the Third Eye Blue, who stole the secret of iron, now do they? Dorastor*, sure, but north of Old Wolf Fort? The witch hat may be passed off to other figures elsewhere, the flayed woman Thed haunting Prax, the Waste(s) Land(s), and maybe the people around Heort's country. But elsewhere, perhaps, there's a woman with a goat's skin for a mantle, or maybe a hat, vaping on the balcony at all the best psychic flashes of divine parties. *Of course, when I went there, Ralzakark was a Hellwood or possibly Poisonwood elf with a unicorn horn tied on with a headband.
  20. Yesterday
  21. There's an awful lot in there to unpack and I recommend people digest it very carefully. I think you are right - between 1981 and 1982, the broo went from evil philistines to embodiments of trauma who must continually recreate that trauma in order for the species to survive. They were warped by the cosmic rape that resulted in Wakboth, and became microcosms of it. They are sentient endoparasites - quite aware of what they do to survive. They became true nightmares - like Vivamort's vampires and Thanatar's heads.
  22. Before we go deep into how to use the dead place, back to my original question. Given that any broo met in the dead place would have been there a while, then any disease spirits connected to them would have long since been left behind. So are broo in the dead place devoid of disease? I think so. The only angle I was thinking was that maybe when this first happens to the broo, the disease spirit turns into some form of chaos slime, the broo could then dip their weapons into it. The effect of this might be that those wounded at first notice no ill effects necessarily. But when they leave the dead place the slime turns back into a disease spirit and initiates an attack via the wound. Remember in the dead place no wound can be magically healed. So first aid is your only hope to heal a wound and stop bleeding. Maybe a crit or special cleans the slime out as part of the healing. In my game the players have an NPC shaman they work for, they had brought some blessed mud with them, and the shaman had made it into a non magical salve that could cure a few hp and seal a wound. Otherwise sending in a PC to the dead place who meets an armed foe could be death from a single wound that a first aid fails on and they bleed to death. Maybe this mud cleanses the wound, maybe it seals the slime in? Only time will tell….the point is any wound in the dead place is potentially fatal if serious enough.
  23. Rolling back all the way to that particular opening crawl reveals something: "broo reproduction" doesn't appear in print until Borderlands decides to reveal or invent that narrative. Before that, broos are, like Iggy Pop says about the "philistines" in the movie Dead Man, mostly just real dirty people . . . "given to atrocities and foul practices" but mostly spreading diseases. This becomes their "Mallia" aspect that supports their role as mercenary muscle in Nomad Gods, RQ1-2 and so on. Or another way to say it is that Mallia is the entity who shamans can summon within the rules of the Jaldon Games. Thed comes later and I encourage people to read the COT version closely. If you find anything sexualized in this era, shout it out. To me, these broos come off more like S. Clay Wilson bikers than anything else, maybe with a Kenneth Anger scorpio rising vibe. There's no parasitic pregnancy motif, which tells us that while Alien has come and gone theatrically and home video exists, it doesn't seem to make much of an impression on Greg or Sandy until 1982. They wouldn't hold a revelation like that back, especially when the Thed layout ends with significant page space to fill and they were already throwing everything Sandy could think of to stretch as far as they could. After Borderlands, the "broo as sexual violence" and "Thed as rape goddess" narratives get rolling with Noyeep in the Big Rubble (1983) and forty years later here we are. But Borderlands functions as the literal crossroads at which we meet the devil, as it were. You still have the "Mallia" broos, who are basically all the females (closing a loophole in COT) as well as the males who "dislike all-male associations." That's a strange thread. Does it mean all Thedists are gay? Or is each of them the only male that matters in their perspective, so that everything else is potentially a "wife" and a "mother" to your children? The one unspoken rule here seems to be that they can't or won't or don't like to impregnate each other, or else only the strongest broo would survive beyond two seasons +1d8 weeks and we know that they can coexist in relatively stable gangs for a lot longer than that. Another thing that's interesting is the reference to "varied maternity." I know we've talked about Wire Mother and Soft Mother before but every male broo has a choice of which mommy to follow in terms of how they relate to the larval host. RQ3 Thed obliterates any surrogates. Her broo might not identify with her or emulate her so much as she (as a ghost and not a conventional goddess) yearns to emulate them. She gets them to do things to recapitulate her trauma. In the RQ3 accounts, that trauma is all she has left. In that ecology, there are no other women, just an appetite for new victims. I feel like many of the more deliberately occult NPCs in LOT and DOLAD reflect these complicated and polymorphous family and gender identities, where a son can be a daughter and a brother and also a wife. But Mallia is simpler. By definition she's the other woman and that's really it. When you emulate her, you are not the cruel absent mother. You're your own woman. The boys become carriers of your complex, spreading her sign. And this is the broo mother you can contact in the Jaldon Games. The stepmother can be approachable in ways the mother never is. Where is this going? First, IMG Thed is a perversion of the Covenant because her cult deliberately blurs the taboo relationship between herd and harem. Her broos don't have wives and their children don't have mothers. They have plenty of meat but they don't get milk as a baby. She's one of the things that happen when something goes very wrong with the meat. Nobody who observes the Peaceful Cut will countenance any of this. Prax can't afford to tolerate chaos. Life is already too rough in their broken world to intentionally make things worse. Second, Thed's association with the Crack spell is poignant in light of both Dorasta's ruined cleft and the "breaking of the vessels" that seeds creation in the zohar or wherever. She knows how to break everything. Maybe in a demiurgic context she has wisdom to provide but it's hard to say . . . sooner or later, people who have delved her mysteries end up functionally equivalent to broos. On the way from here to there you find the mysterious Cacodemon character in the courts of chaos, son of the devil (looking at you Argin Terror, we've barely touched on the West) and grandson of Thed. He's fond of ogres, who start to look a lot like broos when you breed out the obvious goat strains.
  24. Thanks for the update! It's great to hear news, even if that news itself is disappointing. I hope everything goes smoothly after getting out of the port!
  25. Once upon a time, Greg described his views on how the approaches differed. You can see an overview of this in Arcane Lore p.15, but did appear in a number of other earlier sources that he drafted. The distinctions/approaches he provided in that work were: Liturgism; Venerative worship and sorcery magic Veneration is the method of worship. It is submission of the individual to the All, usually through the agency of social institutions whose leaders (sorcerers) can direct a portion of this veneration energy to perform magic. Animism; Ecstatic worship and shamanic magic Worship includes any ecstatic behavior that merges the person and world, such as trance inducing dances, deprivations, possessions, or other methods of merging with spirits or nature. Ecstasy is the personal experience of the Life Force inducing a transcendent event. Integration and rejection are the methodologies. Integration of the individual into the large world is experienced in the ecstatic moment, and subsequent training and experiences allow integration for longer periods of time and with larger entities. This results in magical actions performed by the person without effort. Integration of entities into the collective "us" is mutually rewarding, and internal adoption of disembodied entities is necessary to progress towards higher religious power and purpose, which is merger with Nature or one of the Great Spirits. In dealing with outsiders, whether "Them" people, spiritual, or demonic; interaction may be in the form of begging, bargaining, tricking, conquering, requesting, or surrendering. If successful, the natural entity or spirit merges with the shaman, granting its powers or its service. Theism; Sacrificial worship and divine magic Theism is the practice of making sacrifice of time, attention, and material goods to cooperate with deities. Deities (gods and goddesses) are entities that underlie the whole world. Worship of a god consists of sacrifices to it to strengthen it, and to guarantee (as much as possible) that it will deliver its magic when promised. Sacrifices include time, by participating in regular ceremonies; material goods, both as sacrifices and to support priesthood; and includes following customary behavior and evaluations of right and wrong. Cooperation with the Greater Powers is the primary method of Sacrifice. Following the actions established in Creation, people engage in a non-equal but reciprocal relationship with the immortal powers of the world.
  26. You're right, it shouldn't be. But it may well be. Australian warehouses *just* got Alone Against the Static, which was released in December 2023. It could be months yet before the Lunar book arrives there. The big difference is that AAtS, and the Arkham book, were both purchasable from jump, long before the physical books arrived in all warehouses. It's not a Chaosium policy to wait, it's specifically a RQ policy... which baffles and annoys me.
  27. My take is that the biggest difference between the "Gods" vs. the "Greater Spirits" is that the "Gods" mostly either (this list off the top of my head): have distinct interests in mortals / the mundane world prefer to deal with mortals in a theistic way simply find it most efficient/effective to deal theistically (or all of these, of course). It's not that they cannot interact via the Shamanic methods; but it isn't the way they usually do it, and they usually have their own very-good reasons for the way they do it. So if you try to Shamanically-approach a "Greater Spirit" who prefers to be approached theistically (i.e. a "God") it's kind of like going up to a major political/business/religious figure saying "hey, you asshole, gimme some of your time." This isn't likely to be your best approach; take a -50% on all rolls interacting with this "Greater Spirit." As always, YGWV
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