ZedAlpha

We all know about the Crimson Bat and the Mother of Monsters--what other gigantic god-beasts stomp around Glorantha, looking for grudge matches? The Guide to Glorantha mentions Monster Island, with such inhabitants as a giant butterfly and a giant, flying, saber-toothed turtle. The art definitely shows Totally-Not-Gamera-Don't-Sue-Us and Legally-Distinct-From-Kong yelling defiance to the world. I wonder who else there is? If anyone has any information about these awesome creatures, or any ideas for new ones that they wouldn't mind people stealing for their own games, have at.

Originally it was just asking for ideas on what people think the world might look like if Harrek the Berserk died at least semi permanently shortly after sacking the City of Wonders (and I’d love to get your opinion), but that has come up time and time again, yeah.

No offense intended by me or taken by me, I was just establishing my own credentials for what they’re worth.

Got it! thanks. I have considered all of that. So far, the plan is that if the PCs succeed, they'll be hailed as heroes of Esrolia/dire, hateful enemies of the Wolf Pirates, and up-and-coming Heroes.

once again, we're not using Runequest rules, but HeroQuest/Questworlds.

my first experience with Glorantha was watching my mom play King of Dragon Pass and seeing that cartoon ducks could be your neighbors, then immediately after that, they got to hatch baby triceratopses, then go on a mystical quest to get a herd of cows from a god. I like my fantasy to be brightly colored, simultaneously grim and hopeless and bright and cheerful, bloody, wholesome, sexy, and just plain weird. It's why this setting has stuck with me so much.

seriously, @Darius West, you have valid concerns, and the strict-canon, strictly simulationist style of play has its adherents for a reason: it's gritty. It requires careful thought and planning from the players. It makes victories seem that much harder earned. The bulk of worldbuilding has been done for you, leaving you free to just come up with a neat story using the building blocks given to you. In the words of Kurt Cobain, it's fun to lose and to pretend. This ain't that kind of campaign. Your kind of campaign isn't bad. Your Glorantha isn't bad. It's just not ours.

I've been playing various RPGs since I was six years old. I might not have as much linear-time experience as some of y'all, but I've got as much subjective experience, maybe more than some of you.

First off, we're playing HeroQuest, not RuneQuest. Second of all, we don't have a decade, because this campaign was designed to be a short-ish break from our regular Mage: The Ascension campaign. Third, if all of us are having fun, what does it matter? Not like we're going to be playing in your regular game, no doubt wrecking you and your players' senses of immersion with how comic book-y we like things to be at our game.

Alright, thanks for your opinion. Any other ideas about where the story could go that isn't immediately "Good guys lose, bad guys win, the end, you fucked up?"

My job as a good GM, and I hope I'm a good GM is to: Present a fun world for the players to create interesting characters with interesting stories in, and get the players excited in the setting. Come up with a neat plot for the players to explore their characters' stories in. Give the players a chance, however small, to succeed at their chosen goals. This doesn't mean 'get everything they want,' or 'let them succeed automatically.' My players decided almost immediately in our character creation/setting explanation Session 0 that what they wanted to do was avenge Esrolia after it and the Holy Country have been ravaged by the Wolf Pirates. To that end, they decided that Harrek the Berserk must die. They did a heroquest (a very difficult heroquest that left them fugitives and one of them hopelessly insane) last session that gave them a slim chance of surviving a murder attempt against Harrek. That's all. I'm going to let them have this chance.

I've had munchkins and powergamers in the games I run before. My players aren't that, we all just like yes-anding each other into ridiculous superheroic shenanigans when it comes to our fantasy games. With that in mind, we figured out a way that seems fair to all of us to give the party a chance--not a certainty, mind you, a chance--to survive going up against Harrek and win. We all had fun figuring that out. This thread isn't "can we" but "what happens next." The "can we" part has already been decided. Do you have any ideas about what fun new directions I could steer the campaign afterwards? Other folks are coming up with some cool ideas that I'm stealing wholeheartedly (thank you all by the way).

what.

a lot of myths have sacred/holy/unholy/lucky/otherwise magical twins as part of them. oh wow, that could work, though. The Bearkillers, after rescuing the White Bear God (and securing the Three Step Isled for Esrolia), are sent to Monster Island to return a magical treasure (the monster eggs) to its home--it's said that whoever does so will gain the blessing of the gods who live there. When they get to the islands, they find. I don't know, a tribe of merfolk battling a group of treasure hunters seeking to plunder the island, who have already kidnapped the twin priestesses of the Giant Non-Copyright-Infringing Butterfly Goddess. The locals will guide them to their goddess's temple should they rescue the priestesses: cue a trek through the jungle, dodging dinosaurs, giant insects, and other god-monsters. Should they survive, the Butterfly Queen of Monster Island can help them hitch a ride to Gernetela just in time for the Lunar counterattack to come down on Sartar like a hammer. Harrek won't around to kill Jar-Eel, but maybe the massed might of Monster Island's kaiju can turn the tide at the Battle of Heroes. Or maybe the Battle won't happen because the ice gods of Valind's Glacier will be making war on the Empire from the Northwest? I'm not even sure if I want to have the Battle of Heroes in the past relative to the events of the campaign or not.

They hook their feet into an elaborate, webbed set of belts. Saddles aren't hydrodynamic, anyway, and the giant anhingas are more used for amphibious stealth assaults: these bird-riders' mounts dive and swim underwater, then emerge ready to stab at surprirsed defenders with their wicked beaks.

clearly, wouldn't the Durulz ride large, nonsentient anhingas?

only one of us knows all teh story, but none of us like playing in settings where Big IMportant NPCs do all the major stuff and PCs are just in the background here and there. Maybe.

full disclosure: I'm autistic, Kaiju films are a Special Interest (I always capitalize it for emphasis) of mine, and I can and will go on for hours. At length. Whether anyone wants me to or not. About how much I love giant monster movies, even the crappy ones. The realization that I can turn this into a King of the Monsters campaign has made me ecstatic.

also, there is something innately mythical about how Mothra is summoned by a pair of fairy twins to safeguard an isolated island tribe, and how she reincarnates.

that tears it, that's totally the direction I'll take this campaign if I have enough time.

oh god, if this timeline turns the Hero Wars into the Monster Wars...

thank you!

gonna have to look up who those monsters are

ooh. I like it. To go with @Eff's idea from yesterday: the heroes are given stewardship of the Three Step Isles. During the journey there or while they're there, they're approached by a Rathori who was sent there by their reawakened Bear God: their groggy god seeks to reunite his skin (now a seperate, very angry entity) with himself through a Heroquest. Before Harrek gets woken up by his valkyrie friend and decides to kill his way through half the God Time to get "his" god back. Then meanwhile, Argrath of Sartar, missing one of his key allies, asks for the Bear-Killers for help against the Lunars. Our Heroes can definitely use the Rathori bear-god's assistance against the Lunar Empire, and then....OH. OH OKAY. I'm typing like this because (while typing) I finally decided to read the Guide to Glorantha I purchased last night and happened on the Monster island page. Our Heroes could return the stolen Kaiju eggs to Monster Island, gain the loyalty of one of the Non-Copyright-Infringing God-Monsters that are there, claim the lost treasure for good measure, and return to Gernetela at the head of a swarm of mountain-sized beasts that can and will stomp their way through the Lunar Empire.

OH. Okay. That isn't clear AT ALL in the rulebooks, at least as far as I understood through reading through it. Thank you! How do Breakout Traits work with that? Like, with the example of the Duck in my game: he's got 1M2 "Death-Sworn Duck Thane" with the additional trait of "Unexpectedly Terrifying" at +6. From what I understood the rules to mean in HQ:G, the breakout trait adds +6 to their target number? So in this example, his margin for success while he's being unexpectedly terrifying is 1-8 instead of 1-2?