svensson

OK first off, YGMV and MGF. If Bow-Humakti make you happy, have at it. At my table, I would give that a great big 'nope'. Here's why: - Humakt's very symbol is the sword Death... not only the Rune, not only the life condition, but the actual physical item - Humakt's cult weapons [those taught to initiates and required for Sword of Humakt] are swords... not axes, maces, left-handed pandy bats, nothing else. - One of Humakt's geases [geasa] is 'Use no non-cult weapons' - Archers already have patron deities in both Aldrya and Yelm - Lastly, Humakt's 'spirit of reprisal' in previous editions was the Sword Curse: break faith with Humakt and no sword will ever serve you again. You lose your grip on them and they fall to the ground or even shatter in your hand... yes, even sword with bound intelligent spirits in them. I think this is one of the best religious oath-breaker penalties in any game ever and have chosen to keep it in my game. Now, again, YOUR Glorantha is absolutely gonna be different from mine. Nothing wrong with that at all. But this is how it works in mine.

My wife chimes in... "STOP STABBING THE CEILING!" 🤣😂😘

Those of you who own yard long pieces of wall decor, please post them here!

I turned 58 last month. The Cute Brunette Who Says She Loves Me surprised me with a sword I need for my Civil War reenacting. It's not absolutely necessary to have. It's a uniform item but I have my enlisted cavalryman's saber from my time in the Army that does the same job just fine. But, she loves me so... And I have to confess to you all... every time I pick up a sword [and I own 5 of them now] I feel like an 8 year old who's playing with toy he knows he really shouldn't have... 🤣😂

I agree with your reply to me, @Darius West. As I see it, initiations and Sacred Time ceremonies offer a glimpse into the God or Hero Planes but only along well-known mythic paths. The average 'Bob' initiate doesn't have nearly the harrowing experience that Argrath had in Prince of Sartar. Entry into the Hero Plane ought to take a lot more effort than a Godsday Sanctify spell or some other triviality. HeroQuests,especially personal ones, take courage, preparation, and support. They also take more than just one person's personal POW to invoke. Unless special circumstances exist [and those are all over the place in Glorantha] it ought to take the prayers of a whole clan in the presence of their wyter to translate questers into the Hero Plane. And quick note about those 'special circumstances'... those are THE most dangerous of Hero Quests. By definition, if you don't know what myth you're interacting with, you cannot prepare for the path set before you. At that point one path becomes many and you can find yourself lost on the Hero Plane with no way home. Or you could be defeated by Chaos and return to Mundane Plane tainted by the Chaos Rune and a tentacle growing out of your ear. The average everyday clan carl is exposed to the Gods Plane in little tiny sips... enough to reaffirm his faith but not enough for him to get into trouble. If there was ONE lesson that Gbaji, the God Learners, and Sedenya's failed quest show it is that HeroQuesting is not for the average person, nor is it something to be done cavalierly.

That was my sense of it @Jeff, that the real secrets and powers of a HeroQuest are those to go off the by-rote script and seek out the meanings and effects underneath the dogma. And yes, I realize I'm tap-dancing on the edge of God Learner heresy here 😁 I had forgotten that initiates enter the Gods World during their initiation... that it isn't all just your elders in funny masks. The Prince of Sartar webcomic illustrated that right at the beginning.

In the published 'official' RQG supplements [by Chaosium, not Jonstown Compendium] it seems as if every other adventure includes someone on a HeroQuest, someone who's been on a HeroQuest, or someone who claims to have been on one. Now, I understand that the Sacred Time rites count as HeroQuests of a sort... they reenact important events in pantheon's history and reaffirm the clan's magic. But this seems more like 'HeroQuesting as religious observation' rather than serious exploration in search of challenges and powers. In modern Earth terms the Sacred Time rites might equate to a devout Christian carefully observing all the Christian rites around Easter. So is there a 'tier system' to HeroQuesting? The King of Dragon Pass game implies that HeroQuesting is never something taken lightly and usually requires clan support, if not the support of fellow cultists in near clans as well. But other NPC descriptions in RQG imply that some NPCs HeroQuested on their own volition with almost no support at all. So I guess my question is just as the title of the thread says... How common is HeroQuesting really?

I'm not a huge Who fan, but isn't Sylvester McCoy replacing Jodie Whitaker as the Doctor? Or is that David Tennant? And yes, the player did cross over into Donald quite a bit... especially in the temper tantrums.

Well, there is the 'Skip Family History' part on pg. 29 of the RQG.

Good point on the Ducks and Baboons, especially since Baboons seem to have more of a presence in RQG than in previous editions. Now, I have a personal repugnance for artificial cuteness. A litter of puppies or a child's laughter are wonderful, soul-redeeming things that no adult should be without. But Hello Kitty or a grown adult who insists on wearing cat ears or fairy wings is about as authentic as Strawberry Quik. I'm the guy who happily advertises himself as the unapologetic Tolkien honk and I think of hobbits as 'ratlings', and DON'T get me started on the portrayal of Radagast in the movies. But actual, authentic innocence is something that I love. I love watching a child meet a horse for the first time, or the wonder on the face of someone who's never been in the woods and hears a wolf's howl, for example. All that said, I've had to get used to Ducks in a game... mostly because my first exposure to them left a bad first impression [power-gamer player doing Daffy Duck imitations]. But I can definitely see the addition of a Duck to a party.

How do some of you folks handle non-human Player Characters? Several threads have focused on one aspect or another, but I'm interested in a more general treatment. RQ is very different than most standard fantasy milieux because non humans are not familiar presences in most societies. There isn't a nice dwarvish family down Waterdeep Way or a friendly half-elf who lives on Greyhawk's Promenade. ALL non-human societies in Glorantha keep to themselves and are the subject of more myths and outright lies than any kind of facts. So, what do you guys do when you've got a player bound and determined to run an Aldryami, Mostali, or Uz character? Or for that matter how do you handle Beast Men? My own personal bias would limit that to Centaurs and Minotaurs if I allowed them at all. [Note: IMG, nobody gets to play dragonewts. They're reserved as the DM's weirdness gun 🤣]

For every pantheon the entry of Chaos into Glorantha is a major theme. That inevitably leads to the explosion of The Spike in the Gods War. The Gods War forms the frame work of most of the most epic of a given deity's mythic deeds and therefore their Runes, portfolio, and abilities within the framework of Time. So it would seem to me that The Spike [and the destruction thereof] is known by most worshipers about as well as the Garden of Eden is to Abrahamic monotheists. The Spike was the axle of the world and your deity's dogma describes it in individual ways, all of which could be literal truth or allegory. But nobody, not even HeroQuesters, knows for sure. Well, perhaps certain Mostali do.. Isidilian of Dwarf Mine is specifically said to have lived in the God Time before the destruction of the World Machine so he could probably tell you... good luck getting that interview 😁 Oh, and welcome to the board, Jex.

Is this a webcomic or something?

Magic in LOTR is not 'common'. Depending on the era in which it's used, any overt use of magic draws the attention of Sauron -- and that is manifestly not good for you. What's more, the era just before the War of the Rings [say, after the Battle of Five Armies] is THE most dangerous time for any spellcaster to cast magic outside of certain very deliberately defined safe havens. To put it another way, if Elrond, Galadriel, and Gandalf are extremely reluctant to use any form of active magic, player characters should consider it suicidal. Passive magics, those that might be considered 'background noise' like the enchantments in Lorien, Fangorn, or Old Forest, are safe enough. In RQ definitions this would be Illusion Rune magics that misdirect and confuse. But nobody is out casting Lighting or Sun Strike spells. I think BRP is a not-bad fit for Middle Earth, licensing issues aside for a moment, but I think it would need to be toned down from the 'damned-near-Rune-level' heights of RQG. I think that an ME conversion would have to be more like an RQ3 situation, where PC's start at lower levels of skill and magic is harder to learn and harder to cast.

Just spell my name right 😁

I can easily identify with with the 'extreme partisan shift' issue. I strongly feel that the voices on the lunatic fringes of the Left and Right are getting entirely too much airplay and credence for their positions. And the news media and internet sites are NOT helping. For those who don't know, and I mean no condescension or disrespect here, it works like this: It's a development of the old newspaper editor's adage of 'If it bleeds, it leads'. Consumption of news, be it viewership, news subscriptions, or internet clicks, earns revenue, so in order to get that revenue every news source has to get you, the customer, to click that bait. This requires outlandish and misleading headlines that 'process' the actual facts of the news story to fit one group or another's narrative of events. Left wing papers tilt the language one way and right wing tilts the same story their way. Eventually, this process illuminates one one viewpoint over any others and this feeds the extremist worldview. There's an excellent expose on this phenomenon specifically about 'cancel culture', but it can easily translate into news culture. It's called '15 Minutes of Shame' and was produced by Monica Lewinsky... and say what you will about her, I think we can all agree that she knows a lot more about this subject than most of us.

One word: holyshitfuckingWOW That's my story, and I'm stickin' to it....

Well, you can't say Isis didn't put in the time to look for it! 😁

And all of this is the reason why such laws exist and are, by and large, necessary.

Hey @Ian A. Thomson, when do you think /guess /estimate we'll see the Pavis vol. 2? I've enjoyed Vol. 1 immensely and am looking forward to more.

Well, I replied to you PM, but I'll repeat the important part here. The 06JAN riot gave a lot of people around the world the wrong impression about the US. Don't mistake me, I completely understand why they came to that conclusion, but nevertheless it is a mistaken one. Let me be clear: The US is not one incident away from mass political anarchy. My intention with my post was to inform, not to criticize. OK, I don't have a lot of respect for the Big Two US parties, but that's about as far as the hyperbole went. It really is the voters in the middle that decide things in US elections, the Center /Moderates that I happily identify myself with. I'm willing to give anyone on the stump a fair hearing, but they'd better be able to answer my questions and I tend to keep track of their performance on issues of concern to me. And let me be clear about that part: At no point have I ever, or would I ever, vote for a candidate who sought to reduce or eliminate the rights of any lawful citizen of my country. I wholeheartedly believe that there is plenty of room at the table for everyone. What's more, I also believe that we [American society as a whole] has a ways to go to make the promise of our Constitution a reality for every citizen, all the time. And every two years I put my vote where my mouth is and vote on candidates accordingly.

As a general rule, I prefer a fairly even split between all parties in government. Giving one party the legislative, executive, and judicial mandate is a sure recipe for corruption and the legal erosion of rights of the citizen. Yes, Bill, I know you think things are hunky dory in Manitoba and you're probably right... I most likely wouldn't like it there very much. You're happy there, and that's all that counts anyway. You're the one who has to live there, right? But I strongly believe that a dissenting voice [that has legitimate concerns and has their facts straight -- QAnon types need not apply] is an absolute necessity in the preservation of democracy. Checks and balances are there for a reason, USE THEM. Remember, Adolf Hitler was legally elected into office with only a 33% majority in the vote. From the looks of things, the Republicrats didn't make the huge gains they were hoping for. They'll probably get a VERY slim majority in Congress and the Senate will stay split. This leaves the POTUS [a Democlican's Democlican if ever there was one] to veto any truly stupid legislation that comes down the pike. In short, just about what I thought it would be. What a lot of people don't understand about the American democracy is that only about 15% of our population calls themselves a 'party loyalist' on each side [15% Left and 15% Right]. Another 15-20% couldn't be bothered to vote if you gave away free money with a valid ballot. So it's that roughly 50% of 'Purple' [kinda Red, kinda Blue] voters that actually matter. These are the people who will elect you or boot your ass if you mess up. I have no idea about Canada, but as I understand it, the UK has more parties but a larger proportion of the population that consider themselves diehard Libs or Tories. British folks, correct me if I'm wrong on that one.

*sigh* I know why these kind of laws exist and by and large I don't take much issue with the necessity. But a fan made adaptation converting a milieu into a game system is really just free advertising. No one is making money and no one is losing money. And there's no such thing as 'bad publicity'. OTOH, and speaking as a lifelong Star Trek honk, yeah, Axanar is better than ST: Discovery, so there is that....

Well, the Seven Mothers did it... sort of. They reassembled the scattered parts of Sedenya and then gave birth to her avatar. Mary Shelley would be so proud...