svensson

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.

Fair question. I mean, we have problems with that in the US too. For just one example, in a recent Congressional vote the Republican Party shot down a bill to compensate veterans who suffered lung injuries due to toxic fumes from burning garbage and sewage at camps in Iraq and Afghanistan. The press [which does indeed have a liberal bias - - that allegation is absolutely true] lambasted the GOP over it and waaaay down at the bottom of the article they finally mentioned why the GOP voted it down. Turns out there was half a trillion dollars -- 450+ billion dollars- - of pork money that absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with veterans or health care. This is right on point for the GOP: their big thing to cut government waste and cut the budget. Now, I'm not saying I vote Republican. I have in the past, for my own reasons, and may do so again when the right candidate comes along. But I'm not a member of any political party and I never, ever vote the 'party line'. In my state's politics I'm considered a Centrist, but the press and the Democrats were pretty unfair in this instance. And from what I've seen of Tory v. Labour politics in the UK, it appears that the same thing happens there. And I should also note that I'm not damning one party /position or another. BOTH of them do this kind of nonsense. What I object to is the practice itself, but then, that's politics in a democracy. It's a nasty business from one end to the other.

In my defense, I justified the shotgun for sound CoC in game reasons... 😁

The Crown is just a figurehead, a symbol of Great Britain. Elizabeth herself never expressed any strong political opinion other than to support the constitutional monarchy of which she was the head. In many ways, the ruler of the UK is rather like an American Vice President. They're seen but not heard. But blaming the Crown for policy decisions of its Government is like blaming the Vice President. The VP may have an opinion on policy, and that opinion may be solicited on occasion, but the orders to act go out over another person's signature, in the UK's case various Prime Ministers. As to your comments about several of the British military interventions, there were good and bad wars in there. As the UK retreated from empire, it had some major problems to deal with. If they'd just abandoned several of the colonial possessions, nations that had less than 100 college graduates in them for example, it would have been a tribal bloodbath.... Rwanda times ten. Then, of course, there is the UK's utter reliance on the Arabs for oil and access to the Med via the Suez Canal. That meant that UK policy was chained to Egypt and Nasser /Sadat, and the KSA and House of S'aud. THEN you add the attempt to pull out of India, by request of the Indian people, without IT turning into another farking bloodbath. We can see the results of that even today. Running down your list of colonial interventions, there were several that had completely legitimate causas belli. Malaya and Indonesia were completely legitimate. Putting down a Communist insurrection or a blatant power grab for territory... and doing so with remarkably few casualties... can hardly be called 'imperialism'. But others CAN honestly be called 'bad wars'... wars for the sake of corporate interests or proxy wars fought for 'allies' where just as bad as the enemy. Oman and the Radfan come to mind as conflicts in those categories. There is no literate citizen in the world who is completely happy with their military's record. War is a messy business and once you start dropping ordinance it can be very hard to reel it in. This is why war is and should be the LAST resort instead of the first. But you don't blame a flag or a document because poor policy decisions. You blame the people you put into office that made those decisions. Great Britain spent 1000 years pulling the teeth out of their monarchs in favor of the House of Commons and whoever the Prime Minister is. There is very little the person wearing the Crown can do if they violently disagree with policy, and were they to do so half of the UK would lose their freaking minds over it. Elizabeth Saxe-Coburg and Gotha /Mountbatten /Windsor had damned little say in the events some of you take issue with and it's rather unfair to blame her for them. Blame Churchill, Eden and MacMillan all you want. THEY made those decisions. PS: I understand why someone would not like the UK's military record after War Two... there really is some bad ink in there. But you can take comfort in this: At least Britain didn't screw the pooch like the French did. You wanna talk about nasty, culture-changing wars, nothing the UK did was as ugly as Indo-China and Algeria... or even America's Vietnam.

1. If you ever need evidence that Chaos is Real, the platypus ought to do it for you. 2. Hairless cats and dogs... they're just creepy lookin', so NOPE 3. Goblin Shark... quite possibly the ugliest creature with a spine on Earth [pic below]

Well, I don't think this is the thread for discussions about UK politics... Not that I wouldn't read them, it would interesting as Hell from an American perspective. But I think Charles III and William V have enough work ahead of them without people stirring the pot before their predecessor is even buried yet. We're all at a historical moment where the world holds its breath for a moment, that instant between the moment change happens and you first start feeling the effects of that change. I fully expect the UK to pull out all the historical stops in the funeral and national observance of the Queen's death. There are a lot of staffers at Buckingham, Windsor, or Canterbury Cathedral that are going to be short of sleep for the next 10 days. As I know from my own mother's arrangements, you can plan something to a fare-thee-well but when it's time to put that plan in motion things can get confused in a hurry. Something that not many Commonwealth citizens understand is that Americans have a strange fascination with the trappings of monarchy, even though we rather thoroughly rejected that form of government nearly 250 years ago. I think we quietly wish we had a steadying influence like a constitutional monarch like the Crown to focus all the patriotism on, instead of investing in an elected official who will only have the job for 11 years maximum [assuming a POTUS dies in office and the VP is reelected twice]. It makes one wonder what might have happened if George Washington has become King George I of the United States. Try this one on: with the vagaries of genealogy and all, there would be a fairly good chance that Gen. Robert E. Lee might have been King Robert I.... For entertainment value, here's a link showing the three senior lines if George Washington HAD become King [I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around 'King Bushrod']

The big trick with Heroforge or any other 'paperdoll' program is that it's very easy to keep going back into the program and fiddling with this or that detail. You can EASILY find yourself 'gilding the lily', so to speak.

I'm certain that many Irish and Scots have similar feelings. For that matter, a lot of my own Americans are in 'so what' mode. But I meant my post as a courtesy and as empathy [something I'm not altogether 'good' at] to those who are upset or saddened by the death of HM. Like it or not, Elizabeth was a constant in Western culture, a figure that most in Western civilization regarded with familiarity and respect. So I don't think it's inappropriate to recognize that and offer condolences for it. As for King Charles III, as I understand it he's actually fluent in Welsh and has 'taken an interest' so to speak in Wales generally. I could very well be wrong in that, but that has been my impression of the man for over 30 years. Think of it this way: I myself am not a Catholic, but in the inevitable event of the death of Pope Francis I will still offer my respects to my Catholic friends who will be effected by it. I see it as the civilized and courteous thing to do.

There are many British and Commonwealth contributors to the board here and today is a very sad day for them. I hope you all will accept the condolences and respects of an old American cavalry corporal on the passing of HM, Queen Elizabeth II. She was fixture in lives of everyone exposed to Western media, the stern but loving grandmother, and beacon of tradition when everything in the world seemed to be changing. This is the change of a cultural epoch for all of Western Civilization. The Queen is dead. God save the King.

Well the Hunnic comparison was on purpose. Anthropologists believe that, like the Huns, the Sea Peoples were a large grouping of various different peoples without common origins. What's more, there's evidence that the Sea Peoples were not a military invasion for conquest, but a mass migration of entire tribes, rather like the Germanic Invasions and Goths faced by Rome.