Marty Jopson

Thanks for looking it over @Cgeist7. Glad you approve 😉. It was super easy to do the cult. With the over abundance of passions, I suspect (but have no concrete proof) that some just don't get used. I mean, if Argrath is not going feature in your game (YGMV) then having Loyalty (White Bull) is going to be irrelevant. There also seems a lot of overlap with passions related to family, clan, temple, tribe and so on. Which is is why it is great that Cradle of Heroes allows you to post-production edit and trim any fat away as needed. For the notes, the issue was that I wanted to add the background I had created but was flummoxed by the year / season / week drop down boxes. For example, for the character's grandparents history - I chose the earliest date mentioned in my write up, which kinda makes sense and puts a chronology on it (I just checked and the notes appear to sort by date). But what season / week should I use? I went for end of the end of the year as the only sensible option. But better would be to have a blank option for those Anyhow - awesome work and a great boon to the community. RQ is not the easiest sell for new players. The world details are notoriously intimidating and the character creation with all its steps and exceptions equally so. The app makes one of these hurdles easy to overcome.

Just looking at this again after a while away and WOW! You have put in some real work there. This is awesome. I have been having a play and while creating a character realised you had no Vinga - so added this as a new cult. I think I've done it correctly - but please let me know if it looks wrong. I gather a subcult automatically gets all the skills and spells etc of the main cult (Orlanth). The character I made is Alanda Sharp-point - which auto-correct insists on changing to Amanda. Not sure Amanda spear-woman of Vinga sounds as good though. This character ended up with some crazy high passions and also a huge range of passions, so much so I ran out of space own the background section of char gen. In the end I culled a few for simplicity sake. I put her, her parents and grandparents history in as notes. Question - what do the tags do in the notes section? I can't see a way to search for a note tag Suggestion - in notes could we have the ability to select a blank for season and week (and maybe even year)? Once again - fantastic work. Thank you. This makes life soooo much easier

I think that's how everything gets into the UK these days...

I have a player already putting a marker down for the duck... 🦆 🗡

This ... looks ... amazing!! I'm excited about this as much as I am about the new One Ring. Which is to say very excited.

I’ll second a keen interest in this....

I have a bunch of the HeroQuest stuff - but for some reason not the Primer you mention. It looks pretty good. I shall take a look. But in the end it may just be quicker to write it myself. It would be great if there was something like this for RQG - cough - cough - looking at you @Jason Durall, @Jeff, @MOB I'm hoping there would be something like this in the Starter Set. Talking of which how's that going?

Yes please!!! Anything to smooth over the crunch...

Hi folks - before I go ahead and write this, I thought I should just check has anyone produced a one page summary of the history of Dragon Pass covering the events pertinent to character creation? I have hunted about in the tomes that I possess. The main rulebook has bits scattered around in the sections on Gloranthan history, the Family History rules and the Homelands chapter. The GM Pack has some more Colymar specific info and the Glorantha Sourcebook has many, many pages of information. But I can't find a handy summary to plop on the table so that when players (with no previous Gloranthan experience) are rolling up character history they can see it in context. Have I missed something lurking in an appendix? For that matter - a pick list of cults would be handy too. Again, it's on my list of things to write, but happy to snaffle someone else's work... Cheers

My current plan is to put it on the back burner and await the forthcoming Lawsian Pavis book before I try for a second time.

So, returning to my original post, the group met up and discussed our options. Bottom line - no one wanted to make the investment of time to involve themselves in the Gloranthan setting. The rule set was also seen as overly complex and simulationist for our play style. Runequest was rejected. Instead we are first having a gonzo break and I will run a spot of 5e DnD partly for my son who wants to have a go at the system. Then back to the very excellent One Ring for a more extended campaign. I’m a little disappointed I will be honest as I was willing to give it a go and I tried selling it. In retrospect I should have Gone about this differently. I tried to get across my own enthusiasm for the setting - but that was a mistake as it just made it seem daunting. I also should not have given out my spare rulebook as if my enthusiasm was daunting that book is doubly so. Maybe just running them through the quick start adventure with no other background would have worked but that was specifically not what they like doing (they like making characters in a setting they relate to). I’ll try again when we are done with the One Ring and by then hopefully there will be a few more campaign settings / adventure books out I can tempt them with. So what have I learnt from this? Maybe, just maybe, Glorantha is not the best sales pitch for Runequest.

Yes - now we are back on topic! That is very useful to hear. We shall see how things go in a few weeks time when I have a chance to pitch a few different games at them.

We may have drifted a little off topic... 😉

All good stuff - thank you folks. The bottom line is really that I am a lazy GM and can't be bothered (or maybe generously I'm too busy) to work up plots and story lines. Hence, I appreciate ready made scenarios linked into a bigger campaign. And having an idea of a campaign in advance really helps the players who perversely don't like one shots - the idea of running a taster session with pre-gens followed by a longer campaign was rejected. The thing is, like many groups I suspect, we meet irregularly, maybe a total of 4 weekends a year and get two days of play (maybe 7 hours a day) each time. So, face to face time is limited and precious. The consensus is that what we enjoy is games with some immersion and a chance for character development. Based in these provisos, I do like the idea of the HeroQuest campaign Coming Storm etc. I will check it and the conversion thread out.

It’s all good stuff but... Honestly? We are now very far off topic from my perspective. While undeniably interesting to fans, a discussion of the relative merits of this or that historical culture and if RQ is Bronze or Iron Age is not going to help my players. I have one story teller player (to use Robin Laws nomenclature) and she is the one I need buy in from. Once she is on board the rest will follow her lead. The issue is that the depth of background is getting in the way of explaining what the characters will be doing - which is after-all what they want to know in order to make an informed decision. Hmmm. On reflection maybe the issue is that I don’t know what the characters will be doing. Sure I have a handful of scenarios but I don’t have a one line, elevator pitch of the campaign arc. I don’t have a campaign arc. Chaosium has not given us a big meta plot yet. Sure - it’s the Hero Wars and this Argrath chap is on the rise, but so what? What will the characters be doing? I had figured that once I knew what the characters were I could build something suitably epic tailored to them. It’s a bit of a dilemma. I have decided to just use the material in the RQG Rulebook coupled with petty maps and the What the Priest / King says stuff. Keeping it simple (stupid) Latest suggestion from a couple of players was for me to run Dragon Heist (DnD5) set in Ravnica world. Has the benefit that three people know the word a bit already.

I suspected it was a "meme" that had been going around @Crel but there is no way I can keep up with a 14 year old on memes! Well OK - there is no way I can be bothered to keep up. Clearly I could spend as much time as he does looking at them but I have no desire to do so. As for the Heler cloud sheep @jajagappa - that is pure genius and also pure Glorantha. Making it mythic and a stolen ability for Eurmal gives it a real spin and takes it beyond just another woo power from the big book of spells. I will need to get myself into this sort of mind set when / if I ever get this RQG game off the ground. What do we reckon? A one point stackable spell that creates five sheep per point? Thanks all for ideas

I hear what you say @EpicureanDM and @lordabdul about the laundry list of names and places. I think one of the issues I have, and suspect it would be an issue for any new-comer to the game is the tendency of Gloranthan material to be written in character. Consequently the text makes the assumption that the reader is also in character and thus has a pile of background knowledge on the setting - hence the laundry list. It's great for Glorantha-philes who can then see all the subtle nuances being brought out. It is also a good way to highlight the way there is no absolute morality in Glorantha and "alignment" is relative. But for a newb it is confusing. To be honest, I find it a bit bamboozling despite playing the game in RQ1, 2 and 3 iterations - I was never into reading up on the background at the time. I think this is a real problem for RuneQuest and its potential in the future. Was a beginners set / box / book being planned? I hope so and I hope that the powers that be( @Ellie, @Jason Durall, @Jeff ) make sure to do blind testing on complete Glorantha newbies - i.e. hand them the game and see how they cope with no other input. Thanks all for the recommendations. I will pick up Kingdom of Heroes and the Voices pdf. I will let you know how I get on...

My son (14) announced that he wanted to play a duck character with the Ultimate Power of Shaggy and the ability to make a herd of sheep appear to confuse his foes. On further questioning the power of Shaggy (from Scooby Doo) would appear to be luck based. Possibly I can convince him to play an aged duck grandmother worshipping Asrelia (and assuming I can work up a cult description for Asrelia), but it is neither very adventurer worthy nor does it sort out the sheep issue. Instead I am leaning towards Eurmal and allow him to describe any magic he does as fortunate happenstance. The sheep can then be illusory. But is it me, or are Illusion rune spells a bit rubbish? To create a single illusory sheep that moves and sounds like a sheep would set you back 5 rune points A really small sheep weighs about 50kg which makes it SIZ 7 or 8 - which is 3 points of Illusory Sight, +1 point for Illusory Motion and +1 for Illusory Sound. Am I reading this wrong? Or is creating illusory sheep just a rubbish use of the spells? You could, for the same cost, create three (SIZ 3) fighting shadow cats.

Which reminds me I need to post about the Illusion spell(s)

Be afraid - be very afraid. The cows have a bovine agenda that does not include you...

And personally I find cows distinctly problematic . Always chewing. Chewing chewing and more chewing. And then there is the standing and the looking and the evil glint of the eye as they plot and scheme. If a game system works in such a way as to have the possibility of character death by cow - well I call that a fine system that shows a true reflection of the cow. Sheep are much better. Thick as two short planks and cuddly.

As I suspected. I’m over thinking it and making work for myself. Any advice on adding a bigger story / campaign arc to the scenarios? I know we are at the start of Hero Wars and there are many ways to go, but it would be fun to foreshadow a smidgeon.

Cool. Thanks for all your help. I think I'm worrying too much. I was planning on starting out with Broken Tower as that seems to have a good mix of community / clan intrigue and weird Gloranthan fights and cows. We just ran the Rohan campaign for One Ring and everyone is thoroughly sick of horses. Cows will make a nice change. @Sumath I considered a one shot first as you suggested but we meet so infrequently that people decided they wouldn't rather get into a game properly. I'm inclined to agree that character creation looks like it will generate an appreciation of the setting. I will give King of Dragon Pass a try and can then lure my teenage kids (two of the players) with that. I can just see it now "Dad says we have to play this game on our iPads". another question - possibly a separate thread - how would you link Broken Tower with all the fun and games up at Apple Lane. I'll probably use the second cattle herding GM pack scenario after Broken Tower as that seems a better fit. But is it worth shifting the Tower north and swapping out the tribes somehow for Malini ones?

My regular gaming group recently finished our fourth One Ring campaign and I have two choices - more Tolkien goodness (Laughter of Dragons) or RuneQuest. I need some help convincing the players to make the right decision 😁 The reason we started playing One Ring was simple. Everyone knew the setting and this felt they could engage with it without lots of homework. The rule system was unknown to us at first but that was not an issue, they are not afraid of crunch. Glorantha is a tricky proposition. Several of the players like to get their teeth into the setting material and I don't know what to give them to read in advance. Should I even give them anything up front? Due to the largesse of Chaosium I found myself with two copies of the main rulebook - I passed a copy along to the most geeky player and this is what came back: "At the moment, I’m trying to get into the world of Glorantha along with how the system works – it’s kind of overwhelming! The system seems very crunchy and an awful lot to remember, let alone trying to keep in character" My inclination is to get the players to not read up any rule system stuff - we have played a lot of Call of Cthulhu, so it is not that unfamiliar after all. What is the best source of background fluff for the players to convince them? The Glorantha chapter in the rulebook? First chunk of The Glorantha Sourcebook? Both of which are very dry. Is there any fiction to throw at them? What is in King of Sartar? The old Griselda tales are all set in Prax, is there any point in digging them out - and how do they read 30 years after the fact? Is there any good fiction set in Dragon Pass? I'm working on a simplified character sheet on A5 (so it fits YSDC Eternal Journals) but need something fluffy. Thanks in advance...

Ah - so that is what the DPD delivery is. If not the "partially shipped" order status is just taunting me...