Bren

On 12/2/2021 at 12:16 AM, Joerg said:

The Ergeshi - enslaved Kitori - in Sun Dome County / Vanntar from Wyrm's Footnotes 15 have been retconned, it seems.

It has? When/where did that happen?

I just read about the Ergeshi. Now I may need to consider a different explanation for the Sun Dome PC who got the following result on the Random Boons table:

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 You gain a follower. Perhaps it is a free person who carries your shield and other weapons into battle. Perhaps it is a servant or slave who carries your stuff, makes your meals, or performs other manual labor.

And I liked the helot-like nature of the Ergeshi. A subject people seems to fit well with the militaristic Sun Domers.

On 11/27/2021 at 2:02 AM, French Desperate WindChild said:

in addition, I would say bring what show your status, not what could be seen as an intent

 

if it is weapon, weapon

if it is armor, armor

if it is a pet, a pet

 

for example, in my perception

a free sartarite will come with his weapon as every sartarite is a warrior. but if your weapon is a poor stick, don't come with it.

a noble or rich warrior, will show how wonderful is his armor (so much gold, silver, crystals, etc...) when a mercernary will not show his too used armor

a poor citizen will not  come with a ugly street dog when a champion will come with this so powerful lion he succeed to tame

[/quote]This reminded me of a passage in The Lord of the Rings. The guards to Theoden's Hall tell Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and Gandalf that they aren't allowed to carry weapons inside to see the king. Each in turn (and I think in the order I listed) declares the provenance of his weapons.

The guards still don't allow them to enter with their weapons, but the guards are clearly impressed by Anduril etc. When they get to Gandalf he says something like, Surely you won't deny an old man his staff to lean on. He is allowed to enter with his staff.

Thanks! 😃 Those comments were Very helpful and the link was a bonus. I was in two minds about whether sidearms e.g. swords or no sidearms/swords would be allowed. I think the Humakti's greatsword will not automatically be allowed.

I'm hoping to summon the collective wisdom of the group.

Tomorrow night, the players characters are to attend a feast in Clearwine hosted by Queen Leika Black Spear. I know the player of the Humakti will want a sword, but is that culturally acceptable or is it unacceptable?

1. What would be expected as far as carrying weapons ?
2. Does this vary based on the rank of the guest or attendee?
3. Is it different for a guest vs. a fellow clan/tribe member?
4. Would the protocol be the same for something hosted by a clan chieftain?
5. What if the host is someone less exalted, e.g., a a thane, steadholder, or simple farmer?

9 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

I was just going to look through the system to see if it's possible to start off with passions all at 60% but I see that Aranda is in that situation.

Devotion (Babeester Gor) 60%
Honor 60%
Love (family) 60%
Loyalty (Hulta Clan) 60%
Loyalty (Nochet) 60%
Loyalty (Queen Samastina) 60%

What could be interesting would be to have situations arise in play where there are dramatic conflicts between two or more of these modest passions. Then the player either chooses a behavior that aligns with one and conflicts with another or they choose to roll one passion vs. another. Then based on their choice or dice result, one passion increases and the other decreases and is removed. Perhaps that was the intent in generating multiple, modest passions in the first place?

I think I'll ask my players to suggest example conflicts in their passions that they would find interesting (or alternately tell me one's they would like to avoid seeing in play).

On 11/16/2021 at 3:50 PM, Alex said:

That entirely depends how frequently, and whether directed decreases and being balanced out by frequent experience ticks, or indeed by (semi-)directed or "agreed" increases, as the rules do provide some (admittedly indirect) support for doing.

I agree.

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To be clear, I was talking about something else there: the idea of "mandatory" Passion increases, over the player's protests they don't want them.  Players will not infrequently be somewhat unhappy with "you took away my stuff!" types of development, but that's par for the course in RQ-style games.  What some may be a good deal less happy still with is having something added to their character, especially if it's a "telling me how I'm allowed to play my character" one.

I probably overlooked the narrower context you were using. To me, adding or increasing a passion that a player doesn't want or decreasing or taking away a passion they do want are just two sides of the same coin. In an ongoing campaign, I want the player and the GM to be in relative agreement with any additive or subtractive changes to the passions of a PC.

One thing I really liked about the Pendragon traits was that they were paired. This allowed a character to have a trait checked if the character's behavior in a significant situation reflected that trait e.g., they acted Greedy or they acted Generous. In this case the change wasn't automatic, it required a successful increase check. And it was possible for both traits to have checks which tended to mitigate extremes. (And that makes sense to me for a character whose behavior vacillates.) Passions usually aren't in opposition. (One could, in theory have both Love X and Hate X, but I haven't seen that occur yet.) So changes tend to be automatic (increase 10%) rather than conditional, (roll to see if you increase). Rolling to increase slows the rate of change and the introduction of the random die roll makes the change feel less personal since the dice decided. Both of which are likely to decrease the disagreement between player and GM.

11 minutes ago, buzz said:

Is this maybe an issue of something being possible on paper but improbable in actual play?

In the current campaign, as far as the player characters go it's probably going to remain a theoretical rather than a practical concern. Personally I don't like treating the rules as only applying to the PCs, so I think about and am concerned with the effects on NPCs.

In past campaigns it would have been a very practical concern. There were characters who had more Rune Points than their CHA (or APP in RQ3 😉). One heavily played character, for example, had 28 Rune Points. A decades worth of weekly play sessions of 6-12 hours duration makes for a lot of play time and POW gain rolls occurred after each adventure, not limited to once per season.

That is way cool! 😀 I'd love to see someone pull that out in play. (Also I'm stealing that image to show my players when I run that adventure.)

On 11/13/2021 at 4:35 PM, Pentallion said:

I specifically started my thread by saying "I've noticed plenty of examples in the adventures released where if someone fails a passion roll, they lose 1D6 (or some appropriate amount based on the situation). " I'm not trying to call out specific adventures so I'm not giving examples, plenty can be found. I'm only saying it's probably not a good precedent to set to have passions reduced on failed rolls based upon the mathematics I explained above.

Something like this happening in a one-shot, convention adventure wouldn't bother me (either as a player or as a GM). In fact, it seems pretty appropriate as a way of denoting significant things that occurred during play.

In an ongoing campaign, I'd be extremely leery of doing this for two reasons. First, as you pointed out, doing it routinely (or even frequently) is mathematically broken. Second, as Alex pointed out, doing it even infrequently is going to get strong push back from some (maybe most) players.

I like my interpretation* better.

From a practical standpoint, for PCs it will be probably be some time before the issue arises, but from system design and world building standpoints I don't see a good reason to penalize characters who are initiates (or higher) of only one religion while highly rewarding those who join multiple cults. Joining multiple cults already provides a reward by increasing the number of special Rune Spells that a character can select. Doubling the total Rune Points that can be accumulated seems over-the-top.

One world building consequence of restricting Rune Points to CHA per cult is that the most magically powerful theists are not necessarily priests and rune lord. Instead the most powerful will be those who join multiple cults so that they gain multiple Rune Point pools. That's a change from earlier versions of Runequest and its not a change for which I've seen a good explanation or rationale.

This runs counter to some of the oldest published Gloranthan examples of powerful characters. While Argrath seems like he is a good example of gaining power by joining multiple cults, Harrek seems to have adopted the opposite strategy. And Harrek is the Superhero counter in the White Bear, Red Moon / Dragonpass board game while Argrath is "only" a Hero.

* My interpretation (or my house rule if you prefer) is to restrict the number of cult Rune Spells one can learn based on CHA rather than restrict the number of Rune Points by cult.

Also, I haven't found the post that I remembered reading. Rereading the RQG rules, it seems clear that my view is not that of the designers which implies I must be misremembering some post I read.

On 11/9/2021 at 4:03 AM, Kloster said:

IIRC, when your RP reach your CHA, you can still sacrifice POW to learn spell, but your RP total does not increase anymore. I can't find the thread but I'm sure it was one of Scotty's clarification.

My recollection was the opposite of yours. I thought that the clarification was that the number of rune spells in a single cult that one could learn was limited by CHA, but the number of rune points one could have in a cult had no limit. I'll see if I can find the post.

16 hours ago, Alex said:

You're combining and apparently conflating three entirely different things there.  Common-or-garden killings, secret murder, and kinslaying.  Two of those are chaos-festering capital crimes;  the other ain't.  (Start a feud, continue a feud, pay wergeld, deduct it from your local or personal mental tally of what those people had coming to them, etc.)

What was done is worse than killing in combat. It's killing captives. Here's what the adventure says:

Thanks David. That is helpful.

I haven't run that adventure, but the notes I made on page 51 of my PDF copy say,

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The floor plans here do not match the description on the following page.
REVISE THESE MAPS!

 

I haven't done that yet, though. So I too would be interested in what anyone who ran this already did to get the text description and the map to match.

20 hours ago, Darius West said:

The palanquin presents as a sort of gaudy frontier ostenation one might expect from such flesh peddlers.

I like this! 😀

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Actually another pet peeve that I have with the present Glorantha canon is this whole idea that Morokanths aren't able to eat meat, i.e. are not carnivorous/omnivorous like humans.

Yeah, I don't use vegetarian Morocanth either. And my Humakti is still wearing that Morocanth claw necklace he got in Prax.

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Let's ignore the other logical problems with Waha's Covenant (such as what exactly was the competition, and why did Humans have to compete against so many different beasts when the beasts apparently didn't compete against each other, etc.) 

I reckon that the major tribes each individually competed against their specific herd beasts. The Bison, Impalas, Sables, and HIgh Llamas all lost and the human tribes with those names all won. The Morocanth beat whatever tribe the Herd men were before they became beasts just like the herd beasts of the four major tribes.

Thanks Nick, the GM Screen Pack pages 9-10 are useful, but what I need, I think, is something more elementary that walks them through the steps e.g., Statement of Intent, Movement, Attack, Parry. I'm envisioning something like the Turn Order section of board game rules.

One of my players is really struggling with combat. Before I create one myself, I thought I'd poll the collective mind.

Has anyone created a one page (single or double sided) cheat sheet for RQ in Glorantha?

Kangharl overthrows Leika. Kangharl is the son of Kallai Rockbuster.

I think what jajagappa was saying was that on the Taraling Lineage Chart on p. 21. The Box labeled "Kohlmy" the one with 2 wives, 2 sons, and 1 daughter (none named) should really be Kangharl.

Should Kolmhy be spelled Korlmhy?

3 hours ago, Kloster said:

Here are the full calculation I've found for every value of skill and augmenting skill below 490% (above that, Special% should be capped to 95%).
It is easy to see that to get a good benefit of the augment, the skill should not be above 65%, and if it is above 75%, the gain will be even lower because the max probability of success is 95%.

Critical: ((Skill+50Crit%*AugmentCrit%)+(Skill+30Crit%*(AugmentSpecial%-AugmentCrit%))+(Skill+20Crit%*((Min(95;Augment%)-AugmentSpecial%))+(Skill-20Crit%*(100-Augment%-(101-AugmentFumble%)))+(Skill-50Crit%*(101-AugmentFumble%)))/100

Special: (((Skill+50Special%-Skill+50Crit%)*AugmentCrit%)+((Skill+30Special%-Skill+30Crit%)*(AugmentSpecial%-AugmentCrit%))+((Skill+20Special%-Skill+20Crit%)*((Min(95;Augment%)%-AugmentSpecial%))+((Skill-20Special%-Skill-20Crit%)*(100-Augment%-(101-AugmentFumble%)))+((Skill-50Special%-Skill-50Crit%)*(101-AugmentFumble%)))/100

Success: (((Min(95;Skill+50%)-Skill+50Special%)*AugmentCrit%)+((Min(95;Skill+30%)-Skill+30Special%)*(AugmentSpecial%-AugmentCrit%))+((Min(95;Skill+20%)-Skill+20Special%)*(Min(95;Augment%)-AugmentSpecial%))+((Min(95;Skill-20%)-Skill-20Special%)*(100-Min(95;Augment%)-(101-AugmentFumble%)))+((Min(95;Skill-50%)-Skill-50Special%)*(101-AugmentFumble%)))/100

Failure: (((100-Min(95;Skill+50%)-(101-Skill+50Fumble%))*AugmentCrit%)+((100-Min(95;Skill+30%)-(101-Skill+30Fumble%))*(AugmentSpecial%-AugmentCrit%))+((100-Min(95;Skill+20%)-(101-Skill+20Fumble%))*(Min(95;Augment%)-AugmentSpecial%))+((100-Min(95;Skill-20%)-(101-Skill-20Fumble%))*(100-Min(95;Augment%)-(101-AugmentFumble%)))+((100-Min(95;Skill-50%)-(101-Skill-50Fumble%))*(101-AugmentFumble%)))/100

Fumble: ((Skill+50Fumble%*AugmentCrit%)+(Skill+30Fumble%*(AugmentSpecial%-AugmentCrit%))+(Skill+20Fumble%*(Min(95;Augment%)-AugmentSpecial%))+(Skill-20Fumble%*(100-Min(95;Augment%)-(101-AugmentFumble%)))+(Skill-50Fumble%**(101-AugmentFumble%)))/100

 

😀 Thanks again!

7 hours ago, Kloster said:

Ok, after taking in account Windchild's remarks, here are the calculations for a 90% skill, possibly augmented by a 55%, 65% and 75% skill:

Thanks Kloster for posting this and for partially showing your work. While I don't need the exact numbers in play, having some sense of where the numbers are for a rational optimization choice vs. a do-you-feel-lucky choice.

Coincidentally, in tonight's session, all three PCs failed their Runic Augmentation in the same short scene. But, as has been mentioned, that didn't impact the skill they were trying to improve, though it did cause some complications for one PC when later that day he wanted to cast some Rune Magic. This thread helped me decide to (rightly) decide to roll my second best Runic affinity, so that I could save my best affinity for casting Rune Magic in climactic combat that came later.

The 2014 movie Hercules with Dwayne Johnson is a good example of a hero's warband. In the film, Hercules gets the lion's share of the credit for actions that the whole band is involved in. It's a nice example of how those Dragon Pass counters are named for the hero or superhero, but the counter isn't really a single human.

Gently lift them up and set them down out of the way?

The Kaphtu Trilogy by Richard L. Purtill. It's set in the Bronze Age Aegean with actual deities. I used the cover of the Stolen Goddess for my first RQ player character.

Walking into melee it seems like the CA should, in addition to wearing distinctive garb, also make some noise (like ring a bell, chant, or sing song) so their location is audibly clear in case they are visibly obscured by fog, smoke, darkness, intervening fighters etc. Their protective status is because they are healers and so they can heal. It's not supposed to be a way for a healer to play gotcha with the fighters in a conflict.