svensson

I would submit that most gods communicate through their priestly hierarchy exclusively unless the faith has a shamanic component... Some Hunter gods have a shamanic branch of the faith, for example. But the whole point of having a priesthood is to make the powers the god offers exclusive to it and not available to just anybody with a fetch.

However, there is an oblique path shamans can use to access some theistic powers, that of summoning specific ancestors and receiving Rune spells through them.

I'm glad for all these maps.

I run a tabletop game with my nieces and paper maps have a sense of 'real' that electronic maps don't. They seem to take the situation more seriously.

2 hours ago, kalidor said:

We have waited for two years the already "infamous" GM Book wich is teased in every book but never comes. So no surprises here.

Where is the GMs Book /Guide /Whatever 'teased'?

Here in the forums, the GMs Book has been mentioned as an idea for after the Gods of Glorantha series is done. There hasn't been a proposed date, author, or list of content or anything. I have seen no cover, content discussion, or literally anything saying the GM's Guide is upcoming any time soon. 'Back burner' is the closest description I've seen.

Now, the Gods of Glorantha project HAS been held up by that bane of editors everywhere, artwork. Add to that COVID, economic hassles with China, and shipping backlogs. The wait for GoG HAS been significant. And GoG is supposed to be a 10 volume set, which is not yet at the halfway mark [the Lunar Pantheon is Book 5].

Meanwhile, Jonstown Compendium keeps us their stellar work keeping you supplies with adventures, locales,stat blocks, cultural descriptions and other material. Quite frankly, it's one of the most active 'third party fan content' milieux on DriveThru.

And given the GM's Pack content, the Glorantha Bestiary content, and so forth, I'm not really seeing what a GM's Guide could add to the body of material already available. But then, I've been wrong before. There's no doubt a corner or cranny that I have thought of.

Insofar as I can see, we're getting the content that was promised us and since last summer it's been on schedule.

4 hours ago, g33k said:

paging @svensson ...

You rang?

@Jim Rickel YES! These will be useful. Thanks!

On 12/24/2023 at 2:30 AM, Darius West said:

Again, agreed.  I heard apparently MIT (afaik) created a machine that drops glass coke bottles to shatter and produce a single micron edge that lands in a painted circle nearby every time.  They are used as scalpels for microsurgery.

We discussed this in a discussion of RQG hunting and weapons therefore.

There are neurosurgeons who insist on igneous glass scalpels because they're the only instrument with a fine enough edge to slice a nerve lengthwise. I met one once from the University of Washington School of Medicine and that's where I learned about that.

Well SOMEbody has an 'in' with the Easter Bunny!

Enjoy!

This just came across my desk, though I'm sure those of you in the UK are fully aware of it.

For archeologists and to a lesser extent anthropologists, the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow is the midden pit... the trash pit of all the cast-off items of a culture. Certain types of midden pit are more valuable than others. A midden dug into soil with little or no acid or oxygen content preserves the items within nearly perfectly, but these are incredibly rare.

In Cambridgeshire in England they've recently discovered and excavated an entire burned village circa 800 BC... a pre-Roman Celtic village whose artifacts were almost hermetically sealed. It's as close as the UK gets to 'the Pompeii Standard'... where a habitation was preserved in an almost 'frozen snapshot' state.

Anyway, here's a link to the BBC story. Enjoy!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/68620228

Last one, and FAR more on-point.

An inspirational image capture from The One Ring RPGs title, 'Ruins of the Lost Realm' of a Human trading with the giant otters of the Swanfleet Marshes. This seems to capture a sense of the OPs question, if a bit colder.

Art on specific pages is not credited, but the artists in the book are: Antonio de Luca, Jan Pospisil, and Federica Costantini

I am about to make your day better.

No, really. I am about to make your day 1000% better than when you woke up this morning.

And I'm not selling anything, asking you to take a religious tract, or asking you to forward anything for 'good luck'

Just relax and enjoy Snoop Dogg's take on 'Otters'

You're welcome

Meet my spirit guide, Rufus the Evil Otter

Life got much less complicated when I started asking myself, 'what would Rufus do'? 😆

And it's your Glorantha anyway.

If you want a couple of Eiritha Zebra women at Zebra Fort, have at it. You certainly don't need OUR permission... 😆

[Ya know, I was kinda hoping for some love regarding 'Honest Atilla's Mounts and Tack'.... Just sayin' 😆]

@French Desperate WindChild @metcalph

And yet the tribes have consistently been portrayed in multiple editions as highly biased against horses and the people who ride them. Horse riders are singled out in raids, the horses themselves draw fire, the PJs are written as having a tenuous perch at the edge of the Plains because of excessive raiding by all the Tribes.

@David Scott @Nick Brooke

You both make good and related points.

What I'm wondering is this:

The PJs are the 'interface' between Sartar and Prax. It seems likely, or at least possible, that they could make a lot of coin if they were a source of cavalry zebras for Sartarites traveling to the Plains.

Thane Bob gets outlawed for some reason and decides to head to Pavis, where he's heard that good sword can find work. He mounts up on his trusty Sered cavalry mare and rides for Barbarian Town. There he finds out that riding horses in Prax is bad voodoo indeed, but he sure the Hells ain't walking across the Plains if he can help it. So what to do? Then he finds 'Honest Atilla's Mounts and Tack' and Atilla is *perfectly* willing to buy Bob's Sered and sell him an allegedly cavalry-trained zebra.

As for 'The PJs don't care what the Praxian tribes think', I would think that the one thing the Bison and Sable tribes would agree on is ridding the Plains of the Non-Covenant heretics and their filthy beasts! Should that be the case, the PJs would be well-advised to find some sort of accommodation with the Tribes, or else their very existence would be in jeopardy.

Like a said, there are good 'Greg reasons' for and against the PJs and a healthy zebra herd.

59 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

rune lord or priest, very very good warrior (included mounted weapon) > 100% (I imagine the only way to be rich enough to buy or get it from the clan chief)  ==> war

noble (occupation) ==> 50% war, 50% cavalry

others ==> cavalry

 

imo praxians tribes are not rich enough to provide war "machine" at will. A war mount needs a lot of season, it is a big investment.

then only those who are so effective that they are praised (and have collected enough slaves) could hope to obtain the best mounts of the clan

of course... when your dad is the clan chief and your not too bad, you may expect it after your first exploit..

 

more a question than an answer : is it so easy to bread mounts from another tribes (magically, mundane secret, ...) ? Is there even any taboo to ride them (from a praxian perspective) and worst to breed them ?

I imagine that when a bison (or other) warrior get a sable (or other), he see it more as food than as mount (well maybe as a pack animal if there is a lot to carry)

Taking European destriers as an example, training a war horse also is a matter of temperament and intelligence. You can't take a draft horse and make a war mount out of it if it doesn't have that fighting instinct. That also serves to keep the eligible candidates small.

I've read in RQ3 sources that Praxian braves own only their own personal mounts and those beasts he takes from enemy tribes. All other animals belong to his wife, if he has one, or the clan herd under the care of the herd-mothers. His captured animals are a form of counting coup and are a secondary food source.

And the Great Table fills another seat.

My sincere condolences and regrets to his family and friends.

Thanks guys.

A couple of minor points /thoughts /questions

a] Mounts of all sorts are a lot cheaper if you're breeding them and not paying with cash. One would suppose that Pol Joni Eiritha-women can keep the costs manageable and increase breeding of war-zebra sized mounts to a reasonable level. War zebras are not common and are rarely for sale to outsiders, but I would guess the PJs have a sustainable population.

b] When you guys are generating a Praxian brave, what skill-level of mount do you give them, 'cavalry or 'war'?

I ask all this because I'm thinking of putting together a Pol Joni Elmal cultist via my cult writeup.

Given that the Pol Joni are 'invaders' in Prax and are considered the 'clan of outlaws', do they ever ride zebras?

On the one hand, it could ease relations with Praxian tribes. On the other, there are good 'Stafford reasons' why they don't.

So, keeping this in the BRUGE realm, you can assume that most rolls for a native are automatic. It's when you get into the nit-picky details of culture that rolls are even called for.

I would give Culture [Native] about 35%. This would represent basic cultural 'literacy' for someone with little formal schooling but who was raised in said culture..

1 hour ago, Nick Brooke said:

Here in the UK, retail prices have increased by about 160% since Sun County came out back in 1992. It was $18.95 back then, so it'd probably set you back $50 or so nowadays, and that's before any premium for scarcity value. Just putting things in context.

There is no need for anyone to "helm a project" or "organise people to do layout." The Chaosium moves at its own ineluctable speed.

Sadly, nostalgia jacks up the price by 150% of CURRENT retail value, not ORIGINAL.

And when you're an RQ or Traveller fan like myself, it's a rare thing indeed to find your treasures at the used book store.

4 hours ago, brionl said:

Do you have a list of the books in the series? I'm not sure if I have them all yet or not.

I don't like DTRPG's new website, it makes it harder to tell right away if I have a book from the product page.

There's the list in order:

1. New Pavis: The City on the Edge of Forever

2. Old Pavis: The City that Time Forgot

3. Pavis and Beyond: Secrets of the Borderland

4. Old Pavis (II): The Good, the Bad, and the Rowdy

Ian also recommends and refers to pages in the Glorantha Classics 1: Pavis and the Big Rubble pdf.

Do androids dream of electric sheep? 😆

[I'd tell you I couldn't help myself, but fact is that I didn't even try]

For those of you who didn't know or cannot get it with your services, F/X's remake of Shogun is currently streaming on Hulu in the US. A previous commentator said it's on Disney+ in the UK. The series premiered on 27 FEB with the first two episodes, and a new episode follows each week on Tuesday until the conclusion on 23 April. By way of formatting, when I compare the original to the remake I'll refer to the original as 'Shogun 80' and the remake as Shogun FX.

I continue to be amazed at this series. Episode 4, 'The Eightfold Fence' streamed last night and I thought it was pretty amazing. Shogun FX takes some writing liberties with the novel and Shogun 80 but I have to say that each instance that I've seen has made the story and characters more clear and more realistic. In this episode, Blackthorne is asked to help train a 'regiment' of samurai to use European tactics. Now, the book explains how he knew enough about European tactics to advise professional warriors like samurai, but in Shogun FX, Blackthorne is more realistically portrayed as naval specialist. Makes sense, right? So in Shogun FX Blackthorne teaches samurai gunners how to effectively deploy cannon using a compass and gunner's protractor to effectively aim the pieces. He also teaches them the different kind of shot other than just round shot [chain shot, for example]. And in one particularly brutal example, the filmmakers did not blink at showing the effectiveness of such tactics to troops in the open.

Again, it's this attention to reality that DEEPLY impresses me. Here's why

I've mentioned that I am a Civil War reenactor. We use cannon in our skirmish battles in that we load powder but no shot. One of our members owns a farm out in the rural part of my home state and had two large hogs that needed to be put down due to disease. That member was also a cannoneer who owned one of our pieces. So he invited a bunch of us to a cookout. He had three hogs humanely euthanized [two diseased hogs and the center piece of the cookout] and then the next morning demonstrated what a real smoothbore cannon firing round shot and canister [think of it as a shotgun shell the size of your head] using the diseased hogs carcasses. It was 'educational' to say the least. Then he sealed the diseased carcasses in a plastic barrel and sent them to be cremated as our local laws require. Since then, as a company First Sergeant and now a commander, I insist that my troops take at least 1/3 casualties when we're 'hit' with a cannon blast.

Other aspects of Shogun FX continue to impress me as well. Several characters that were glossed over the book are given greater depth and greater agency in this version, something that I appreciate. And at least one character that I never liked very much is sidelined.

All in all. I can't recommend this production enough for those of you who are interested in RQ/BRP/CoC for other settings. This show has me reexamining my copies of Land of Ninja and Samurai of Legend quite closely.

On 3/5/2024 at 12:05 PM, pachristian said:

What goes around comes around.

Forty years ago, I and a college friend wrote a science fiction game together. We were both big fans of Runequest, and our game reflected that. We got Tadashi Ehara to produce a test print run, which he pitched to several game companies - in 1985-1986. In particular, I remember Steve Jackson saying that while he liked some of our ideas, his company was about to release GURPS:Space, so they didn't need our manuscript.

     Well, Ted never gave up. Over the last forty years he reworked and rewrote Blackwatch a dozen times. Then, a couple of years ago, he decided that we'd had a lot of fun with the original manuscript, and so he expanded it, hired some artists, and the game is now finally out via DriveThruRPG: https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/458659/blackwatch-2385

     I can't claim any credit for the update - but it's fun to see the game I helped write get in print. Check it out if you want to see a 'first try' from some gamers with no experience but a lot of enthusiasm.

Hey, it's nice to see one of the 'dumb ideas' of your youth pan out. GRATZ!

That would go a long way towards getting more RQ content on all the VTT platforms.

And let me just go ahead and say it, NICE WORK so far. I look forward to seeing more of this project!