svensson

Maybe I'm just a geezer, but the idea of charging money to ref a game is... almost offensive... to me. I've NEVER paid a ref, I can't imagine a scenario where I would pay a ref, and the only thing I ask as a ref is my fair share of the pizza we buy. I dunno, maybe it's because I've never been in pay for play game or maybe it's because the expectation for a game referee has always been that you're supposed to be able to have a job AND your hobby. And that is the real sticking point for me: THIS IS A HOBBY, NOT A JOB. Charging someone for the privilege of having a game with someone who has a personality and can do voices isn't what this hobby is about. You wanna be a voice actor, go do that, but don't expect me to pay you for that while you interpret work somebody else wrote in a milieu a third guy imagined. AFAIC, paying a referee for a role playing game is like paying somebody to sing on a karaoke machine.

Welcome to the board, Nemesis! There's a lot of information in previous editions for different races and oddball cults. In RQG [the current edition], I'd suggest getting the RQG Bestiary. It has rules for playing Aldryami [Elf], Mostali [Dwarf] and Uz [Troll] characters. In addition, there is information on the Beast-Men [centaurs and Minotaurs] and some odd human cultures, like the Agimori of Prax. That ought to get you started.

Well, first off, welcome to the board! CoC does have some pretty non-happy assumptions from the get-go. 'Mankind is doomed and there is no saving it' is kind of a downer. I'd start off with being up-front with everyone... Call of Cthulhu is a horror game, emphasis on 'horror'. The most important conflict or struggle in the game is holding on to your humanity and sanity while at the same time becoming an effective fighter against the 'devils in the dark'. How that is received will depend on the campaign you want to run. An 'Innsmouth' cycle might have a very negative effect on a table with a lot of women in it, for example [the forced breeding of monsters aspect]. I'd suggest starting small, maybe a 'rescue a child from cultists' type adventure to give everyone a sense of the game but not getting into the real 'tentacles' yucky part. That will come later 😉 Another suggestion is to find a year to begin the campaign in and do some research on what's happening that year. Who is the popular singer? What theater show is bringing down the house? What movie is all the rage? What are the fashions? What is the latest whizz-bang invention? Another aspect that you will probably want to look into is the firearms laws of the nation you'll be starting in. Ironmongery laws are going to be a lot different the UK than they are in the US. Many male characters will have had some military experience during the Great War if they're old enough. Most European males have a near certain chance of seeing the Western Front. Characters with extensive combat experience might have SAN damage to start with, perhaps in exchange for skill points in the Soldier profession.

Then the abilities granted should directly reflect the Runes of Death and Truth and be most effective against Undead and oathbreakers respectively.

But aren't you looking for inherent powers, not just item abilities? Or is the goal of the Heroquest to acquire a legendary item? We have two examples of Heroquesters who were successful in their quests and are described by RQG statistics: Queen Leika of the Colymar and Sarostip of Jonstown. Both of these worthies have legendary items in their possession, but both have inherent abilities granted by their questing. My thought on this is that Heroquests for items are of a lower magnitude than Heroquests to gain inherent abilities. My reasoning on that being that items are, by their very nature, temporary. After all, items can be stolen and an item's power is only available when the character is actually using the item in question. This isn't to trivialize 'item quests', however. Some items are legendary enough to require MAJOR Heroquesting. Something else on this subject occurs to me: Humakt's system of Gifts and Geasa/Geases indicates a 'power versus sacrifice' system in his cult. It's not too far-fetched to extend that into his Heroquests as well. We have the example of Sarostip Prince-Killer who can kill with a glance, but the cost was the vision in one eye. Both the ability and the cost are directly stated as being the results of the same Heroquest.

Hmmm... powerful anti-undead blessings for a successful Heroquest.... Hmmmm.... OK, just a couple of ideas off the top of my head: - Sever Spirit on Undead at will w/o needing Rune Points - Any Undead slain by the hero is automatically released to their afterlife and can never be raised, resurrected, or bound again. The corpse immediately turns to dust and cannot be reformed or reanimated. - Any Undead must make a POW v. POW /MP vs. POW roll against the hero or act as if Demoralized

Not snarky at all. I already did tell them.

That's kind of what I'm getting at. We don't know what kind of game it'll be and that's certainly something I'd like to know!

I'm of two minds about the length of time in development... On the one hand, the 12-year-old wants to open his present NOW!!! On the other, I have a deep and abiding affection for three RPGs /settings: Runequest/Glorantha, Traveller/OTU, and L5R/Rokugan. I would LOVE to have computer RPGs developed with the attention to detail and love of the milieu that I have coupled with the same skill and innovative that have given us the stellar titles that so many of us love... the writing of Baldur's Gate, the open world exploration of Witcher 3 etc. etc. And on the third hand, I don't want the game to be a hustle wrapped in a boondoggle like Star Citizen and I don't want it to have the launch day issues of Cyberpunk 2077. Let me note that I pre-ordered CP77 and played it on PC. I got my money's worth in the game, but I completely understand those who wanted to play it on console being pissed off. They were sold a bill of goods and that bill didn't deliver. Nevertheless, I'm still pretty impressed with CDPR for the amount of transparency they had, their wilingness to refund the full purchase price immediately, and the efforts they made to fix the problems. Not many game companies would take that level of responsibility, certainly not Bethesda Softworks, or BioWare, or Ubisoft... all of whom once had stellar reputations but then pee'd all over them in the last 5 to 8 years. Quality takes time and I certainly don't want to rush Black Shamrock. What I would like to see is some kind of progress announcement. I'd like to know what kind of computer game they're developing. I'll be a lot more excited about an RPG than I would for a fantasy battle simulator, for example. And if the average development time for a new property is 5 years, then 3 years isn't an unreasonable time frame to start previewing the early Alpha development.

GREAT to hear. Thanks @Jeff Are there any details on the project for us? Like what kind of game it'll be? You know, RPG, Strategy, etc?

So, it's been three years since the announcement that Black Shamrock was creating a Glorantha-themed computer game. But not a word about it since. Black Shamrock's website doesn't even list Chaosium as a client. Much as it pains me to ask, did this project die?

Well, Firshala is... obscure... to say the least. Besides that, she's a location cult and that location is in the Elder Wilds of Balazar. But Orgavale Summer or Beneventos Dragonslayer [from the GM Screen Pack] might be real possibilities if you're looking into very local spirit cult worship. In the case of Beneventos, you'd have to make up a cult using Orgavale as a template, but given the power of his spear it's not unreasonable for Beneventos' cult to have a significant Fire presence. I would ask whether or not a small cult can have two Elemental Runes, however. I don't see Lodril as a good option because he's a very Pelorian and Esrolian god, with a subcult of Agimori in Prax. From a cultural standpoint, he's as foreign as the Red Goddess to Hendriking /Sartarite cultural Orlanthi worshipers. Seems to me that the locals would be more accepting of a Yelmalio worshiper in their midst than a clansman rejecting the Storm pantheon AND Hendriking/Sartarite cultural roots both. At the very minimum, Yelmalio has familiar customs and rituals the character's clan and tribe can work with.

From where I'm looking at it, it seems to be more a 'get a franchise IP on the street' sort of thing. Pushing a Bladerunner K/S instead of getting promised support for The One Ring out. It took them over a year after The One Ring's print K/S shipped to get one of the stretch goals out to the public, for example.

Depends on the character's activity. If he's a crafter, Gustbran. If he's a warrior, Elmal. Remember, Elmal's main focus is the stalwart protector and patron of horses. He's not a watered-down Yelmalio or Yelm analogue. Elmal is entirely Orlanthi in its cultural basis. So your Malani player can emphasize any of those aspects: Spearman, Archer, Protector, or Horseman.

The West Wing was a myth wrapped in allegory with a large spoonful of bullshit thrown in for flavor. The last US President that held St. Bartlett's level of moral high ground was George Washington, and even his boots were a little muddy when it came to the French Revolution. I will certainly grant that TWW was what people think the operations of government ought to be, but then so was 'Mr. Smith Goes To Washington'. To quote Bismark, "Laws are like sausages. The people love them but they don't like to watch them get made..." [Seriously, you'd think it would be a fellow member of Smartass Unlimited who quipped that one, Winston Churchill maybe or DeGaulle. NOPE! It was the old Prussian ramrod himself. 😂]

Well the thing with the Lugar Artillariepistole was that the 32 rnd snail drum magazine was heavy as all get out. A lot of historical users said it had a poor balance inasmuch as the weapon liked to climb quite a bit, the snail mag was off-set from center so that climbing motion also pulled left, and the lack of a foregrip made it difficult to get back down on target. To put it another way, there's a reason why BGen John Thompson invented his submachine gun so soon after the advent of the BAR and examining the Bergmann MP18s that were captured at the end of War One. Even with a heavier .45 cal round the Thompson was still easier to control and keep on target than any of the automatic carbine pistols on the market. In a CoC sense, a pistol is a weapon of absolute last resort when dealing with Mythos creatures. Unless it's a heavy round [.45 cal or larger], you might as well throw it at the squiggly for all the actual hurt your little .38 cal round is going to do to it. Hunting Mythos cultists and creatures is a serious business and that business requires serious tools. Your Lugar might look sexy AF on the cover of the penny dreadfuls, but you're really gonna want something that does 2d8 or better damage when it's time for the metal to hit the meat [or whatever eldritch, primordial goo it's made of].

I didn't back it, so I don't have the rules in front of me, but it might be a BRP OGL setting. That would authorize them to use many BRP mechanics with their own elements. I DID back their Twilight 2000 K/S, and I'm very satisfied with the product I got, but they have released ZERO support for it since the original boxed set was delivered. Meanwhile lots of support for Aliens, Tales From The Loop and other games have come out and they've been cranking out kickstarters like it's going out of style. But I'd REALLY rather that they support the two games that I DID back... The One Ring and T2K... before I back any of their other K/S efforts.

My Traveller game has several 'traditions' based on historical reading [and Victorian militaries show up a lot there], my own experiences, and some practical thinking given the realities of the milieu. And there are some that I've utterly discarded. There was, for example, some Traveller grogs who insisted that the Imperial Marines of 5500 AD played bagpipes and wear solid color maroon purple kilts in their dress uniforms. And there is just so much wrong with that visual that it makes my stomach flip just trying to explain it... ROFL 🤣

Gads! I'm sorry about your friend's wedding. That's happened to more than one active duty troop [generic term for all the services] that I've known. I knew one poor guy that got married, took a week's leave for his honeymoon, and at the morning formation the day he got back his command put him on deployment orders to Afghanistan. They gave him 10 days total to clear post. His wife was, um, 'distressed' over it all. Fortunately he made it back in one piece. He's now a Staff Sergeant [US E6, a senior Sergeant in the UK system], his marriage survived the stress, and they're the parents of a boy and girl.

I've kind of let this thread play without my input to see everyone's thoughts on this one because I've seen references for and against the idea. It's been a good exchange of thought and ideas, and I appreciate them. So, thanks all! It seems that, whatever past editions might have said, Vingans can rise as high as they wish in Orlanth... Or at least however far their talent, success, patronage and lineage will allow.

Well, I'm reasonably certain there is a pretty thick volume rules, regulations, and precedent on Royal Ceremonies. For that matter, and I just found this out today, the British Army maintains a major general who is in charge of ceremonial duties and occasions. And it isn't as if the system didn't get a proper test when Prince Phillip passed away. But Prince Phillip was a prince. Nobody swore any oaths in his name or directly to his person, save for a few staffers. I'm thinking that for the men and women involved with this event it's probably a whole level of magnitude different.

Completely separate from the political discussion about Her Majesty's death and funeral, I just wanted to share some thoughts as I watch this from literally the other side of the world [I'm 4800 miles /7750 km from London on the US West Coast]. I've been youtubing a lot of this because, like it or not, this is a major world event and I've never seen a Royal transfer of power /responsibility before. No surprise there. The last UK succession was 10 years before I was born. Because of all that, there is a certain mix of curiosity and morbid fascination with it all. I've seen US Presidential funerals, of course, but this is an order of magnitude more elaborate. From a veteran's point of view, this looks like [and no disrespect intended] 'the Mother of All Dog and Pony Shows'. The sheer number of troops involved in all this is surprising to me, for example. Beyond the Guards Division [whom you'd expect to have a role], it seems as if every single regiment and branch of the British Army will be involved in some fashion. I saw the RAF pallbearers, which I thought was odd but made sense once I thought about it, and I'm sure the RN will be involved in some way. There's one company of Guards [sorry, I forget the regiment] that got back from Iraq the Tuesday before HM passed away and THEY'LL taking part! Wow, you'd think that 6 months or a year of counter-insurgency duty would get one a pass from all this. And one can only imagine the attitudes of the officers and NCOs in the units participating. The number of inspections and rehearsals must be mind-boggling. Every coat, seam, buckle, piece of leather-work, and hobnail must have been examined twice by now with at least two more inspections scheduled before Monday. I'm also guessing that more than one drill square has been pounded just a little flatter and half the NCOs in the London Metro area have screamed themselves hoarse.

Yeah, Cameron was pretty... 'gauche' I guess is the right word... in that instance. And I object to that kind of 'House of Cards' [both the UK and US versions] undignified conduct in our politicians and gadflies here too. Politics are weird for me in many ways. On the one hand I pride myself on seeing things as they are rather than through idealism or patriotism or any other -ism. I am a student of 'realpolitik' and there's not a lot that shocks or surprises me when it comes to political, economic, or military decisions [those are all the same thing in the end]. But on the other there is that old Boy Scout in the back of my head that still says, "Can't we all show just a little bit more class and dignity here?" Thinking of the UK House of Cards, I'm gonna have to watch that again. This time I need to pay attention to the forms of parliamentary government [who does what and is responsible to whom] rather than just the plotline and dialogue.

Yeah, we heard the shouting about that comedy of errors all the way on the US West Coast.

And here's the thing about Mr. Nuka-Crockett.... You could fire that thing at maximum charge and you'd STILL be inside the instantly lethal radiation zone, if not the actual blast radius, when the SOB went off. So, yeah, unless it's Cthulhu his-frikkin'-self at the end of that trajectory, you can bet that Mrs. Hicks' Little Boy IS NOT pulling the lanyard on it. It ain't much of a face, but it's the one my momma give me and I'd kinda like to keep it.