svensson

"I was once acquainted with an officer of Royal Artillery. The man owned a tom-cat that he'd named 'Imperial Cavalry' because, he said, all the damned thing ever did was eat, drink, fornicate, and groom itself..." --Rudyard Kipling

But to your main point, yes, EVERY sci-fi franchise and IP seems to have anthromophic species in it. Cat-, Dog-, Bear-, Ferret-, Whatever-'people' that we're all supposed to take seriously. Fair being fair, Anderson's Kzinti [and Traveller's Aslan for that matter] do not behave as cats beyond some surface behaviors any more than humans behave like monkeys [although you could make a real argument for Facebook being the 21st Century's equivalent of baboons throwing poop....]

Well, my main impression of the Kzinti is of a mangy group of derps-in-space in an old Star Trek Animated Series episode... Kinda hard to take them real serious after that.

RQ is like the Forgotten Realms, Traveller, L5R, and other games... the well of lore and canon is a deep as you want to swim in. For a lot of people, this is pretty daunting. They worry more about being lore-correct than actually getting in there and playing. That is the absolute wrong way to approach Glorantha. Just find a small out of the way corner... Apple Lane, for example... generate some characters and jump in. Introduce the lore in small chunks. The players don't need to know all the meta-plot stuff at once, just what is relevant to them and their adventures of the moment. Let's face it, an expedition to the Rainbow Mounds [a bandit lair in the Apple Lane adventure] has about as much to do with Orlanth and the Red Goddess as stealing mushrooms from Farmer Maggot's Farm does to Sauron in LOTR.

UPDATES: 1. Characters: Decided that the military guys will be one each British, French and German. The Tommy and the poilu are separated from their respective patrols. The Tommy is bringing along the German, who was recently captured. Plot twist: The 'Frenchman' is a Foreign Legionnaire from Bavaria. He knows the German POW from school... "Klaus?! Is that you???" "Uh, they call me 'Claude' now, Hans..." The civilian characters are a refugee farmer, a Red Cross medical volunteer, and one wild card... a teacher or some other mentally focused character. 2. Scenario: It wont be specifically Cthulhu Mythos, but will include mystical elements. A band of deserters [mostly French and Germans] have taken shelter in the monastic basements. They're all more than a little paranoid and with the recent battles in the area, they've been drinking water that's been heavily polluted with arsenic. There are, however, several grains of truth to their paranoia. Firstly, if they get caught by the authorities there is a very good chance they'll be shot. Secondly, the crypt really is haunted by the ghost of a Knight Templar who was denied shriving and Christian burial when he wouldn't give evidence against the order. The scenario involved both dealing with the desperate and somewhat half-crazed deserters and putting the spirit of the Templar to rest.

[This is me not going into a tirade /rant about catgirls, Omaha the Cat Dancer, fuzzies and anime pervs...] [This is me reminding myself that my beloved Traveller game has a long history of 'dog people' in the Vargr and 'cat-ish' people in the Aslan] [This is me recognizing that all this is all somewhat hypocritical, but also acknowledging the *ick* factor] [Your mileage undoubtedly varies]

Nice of you to say /support. Since I'm writing the scenario for an American audience, I'm using American terminology for it. The Great War /'War One' didn't effect America the same way it did England. While we suffered frightful casualties we didn't lose an entire generation to the meat grinding abattoir of the trenches. Therefore the War doesn't ring in our consciousness the same way it does for England, France, and Germany.

Okay, it might be a good idea to submit all this stuff to Jeff, seeing as Gods and Goddesses is still in the production stage. There may be logic that we don't know of, but a lot could be just simple oversight.

1. And the tensions within that organization... You can't put disparate groups like the Pol Joni, Zebra Riders, and Bison People into one group following a Hero-Khan and not have several pissing contests just under the surface. 2. I didn't know he died. Still, the story must be interesting. He wasn't a bad boss in the RQ2 game I played in. 3. The deity and the tribe are two different things. The Berzerkers have enough of a presence on the Plains to hold their own with the Minor Tribes, so there must be something to them. I haven't gotten the Bestiary yet, to I'll take your word for it on the Agimori [extra points for character generation info ]. And yes, more info on the Minor Tribes would be VERY helpful. Not everyone wants to ride with the Big 5 Tribes, man!

The Prax Book needs three things: 1. An explanation of clan politics post Liberation of Prax. 2. What happened to Raus. 3. Writeups on the Basmoli Berzerkers, the Men-And-A-Half, the Ostrich Riders, and Rhino Riders That's it. Everything else is padding the term paper. [This presumes that Pavis and the Rubble get their own book]

RHINOS FOR THE WIN! [In homage to the memory of Grettir Sharpwind's beloved mount, Windbreak]

"If at first you don't succeed, run the Hell away..." -- From the fight song of Miskatonic U [Go 'Pods!]

@Beorne A lot of games have this problem. There's so much lore and canon that it's really easy to get overwhelmed. My suggestion is this: Start small and work outwards. Pavis is a good spot to start a campaign. It has a large amount of lore [if that's what you want], ready-made dungeons all over the place [if that's what you want], and a wide open frontier. It's the crossroads to several different cultures, with every major race present. And it's also kind of out of the way of the major events of the near future [Argrath's assault on the Lunar Empire and the Red Moon], so you have a little wiggle room in order to tie the characters into the main epic if that's what they want to do. As to rules-sets, I really prefer RQG because it does a good job of giving the character a history and a sense of 'place'. In my experience this grounding goes a long way in getting the player invested with his character. You know the people you want at your table and whether they'll accept a random die-roll history [as opposed to one they cook up themselves], but I've put together about 5 characters now and I rather like it myself. Welcome to the net.

Thanks Colin. Yeah, I was aware of much of this. I've other things in mind as well. One thought that occurred to me was that the monastery was 'haunted' by a band of deserters, perhaps aided and abetted by an actual supernatural force. That's all still up in the air.

Side note to the pigeon-handler thing... When the Special Forces went into Afghanistan right after 9/11, they had to have WWII manuals on how to handle mules sent to them. The horses they could figure out, but muleskinning was an entirely lost art in the Army by then

Fair point. I'm a big fan of Tekumel as well, but I'd kind of forgotten because of all the fits and starts with the IP. Like CoC, Tekumel is a heck of a lot of fun, but it's definitely a niche market

I'll look for it. Thanks.

Welcome to the net, EP. There are only TWO rules in RQG: 1. Maximum Game Fun. Jeff explains this handily in the RQG core rules. 2. It's YOUR Glorantha now. The minute that you sit down with your players it becomes your game, to be played the way you like it. As you've seen, there is a whole bunch of lore and canon printed about Glorantha. As you are beginning to find out, there are a whole bunch of grognards [guilty as charged, yer honner] who just love to argue ephemerae, apocrypha, and minutiae until Yelm rises, sets and rises again. Don't let any of us tell you what Glorantha is or isn't [except fun, Glorantha IS fun]. It's your table, and we're not sitting at it. So welcome to the oldest continually developed milieu in gaming. We're glad you're here.

Could even be completely mundane... a band of deserters, for example.

Well, in the RPG sense, 'modern' means 'lots of guns, no armor at all, and learn the difference between cover and concealment' I did consider Cthulhu, but I'd pitched BRP to the young lady as 'everything to do everything in one book' so I want to keep it to that. Yes, SAN rolls will be part of it. By 1917 nearly every adult male within 1000 miles of Paris had lost some SAN points through one cause or another, and more than a few women and children as well. I'm very guarded about having The One in the game. If Powers are selected and they are used I plan on narrating them as part of the environment rather than 'magick-with-'k' as in FRPGs. No lightning bolts but the lightning might hit some masonry which falls on the target for the exact same damage, that sort of thing. The trinket suggestion isn't bad. Superstition was rife and everybody had some kind of voodoo totem of one kind or another. I'll give that one serious thought.

So I've been asked to help a DnD player do a 'modern' game [she's dissatisfied with D20 Modern, no surprise], and I counter-offered a BRP game. She seemed interested enough that I'm beginning to sketch together a scenario /adventure /mini-campaign. Here are some of my thoughts. 1. Setting: I thought I'd run a World War One scenario in the Chemin des Dames zone of the Western Front. This is an 'interesting' area because it is roughly where the British, Canadians, and French intersect, thereby providing a variety of backgrounds. The time is Autumn 1917, when Allied fortunes are at a low ebb. America has entered the war, but all they've done is promise a great deal as yet. The few troops that are in France are still training. British and Canadian forces are still reeling from the Somme and the follow-on bloodletting of Vimy Ridge and Cambrai. The French forces are near mutiny. I'll set the area in the fictional 'Valle'e du faucon and a ruined medieval monastery [cuz, duh...] 2. Characters: I figured that I'd assemble a group of 4 or 6 characters, evenly divided between military and civilians. I'd do the basic generation and professional skills and then leave a generous number of skill points for the players to customize to their tastes. All the military characters will have a 'Basic Training' based on the general practices of the armies of the day [so there won't be any one running around with submachine guns...] and then I'll have NCO packages and officer packages for those who want those roles. I'm open to the idea that one of the military players is German, having just been captured. One key point, just because I'm a historian and we can be jerks sometimes, is that the ammunition between British, French, and Germans are not interchangeable. Whatever ammo the character has at scenario start is all they'll get unless they scavenge more of the right caliber somehow. The civilians will, of course, have a more wide ranging set of skills, but with enough base minimum ability to survive. Being an Expert [75%+] farmer is all well and good, but it won't help you in the denuded Autumn countryside near the front lines that have been scavenged and picked over in three years of static fighting. Therefore, the refugee farmer will need some Scounge, Survival, etc. type skills, just as one example. The basic idea is to have a Religious [nun, local pastor, chaplain], a refugee, and perhaps an aid worker /Red Cross /volunteer medical worker. To show the players that the BRP system is open to all kinds of interpretation, I'll allow Psychic and Basic Magic Powers in the game, but at an 'Unusual Background' penalty of about 25% of their customization points. The idea behind this is twofold: a] I don't want Powers to overshadow clever play or skill and b] with any unusual background the practitioner ends up being not so good at more common things because they've studied their unique ability so intently. 3. Scenario /Theme: I'm looking to allow the players to find themselves sheltering in the monastery as they are caught out in the open in a really ugly storm. The soldiers will be lost, having been separated from patrols or what-not. The civilians will be likewise be taking shelter from the storm, having been separated from a convoy. From there The Fun ensues, although I haven't precisely decided what that Fun will be just yet. So, what do you guys think? Too much? Not enough? On-the-right-track-but-need-work? All constructive input gratefully received.

Side note to the segue about the digression to the sidetrack.... Some folks PM'd me about my old heraldry. Here it is, THL Iain macDhugal Cameron of Ben Liath [AnTir, 1992] Gules, an Otter couchant to sinister guardant within a bordure Argeant

I was in the SCA for many years and my heraldry featured a river otter. A friend found Evil Otter for me and I immediately adopted it as my spirit animal I mean, just look at that face! Anyway, about 13G... I'm fully happy that anyone is happy in the game their playing. Tabletop RP is too niche a hobby for us to piss in each other's corn flakes, after all. I haven't bought any 13th Age stuff because I have all the information on class-based systems that I'll ever need. That doesn't mean that I think it's a bad system, it's just not my thing. Sorry to hear the publisher isn't being more supportive, but if 13G needs a home then there's no reason why it can't be here.

When you're the 'bad' uncle, Easter is AWESOME You buy up a bunch of candy on Easter Monday and feed it to the nieces and nephews three weeks later at the family picnic. And then send their screaming, sugar-spinning rumps home with your sisters. People say 'Evil' like there's something wrong with it or something....

More importantly, the Day AFTER Easter [when all the Easter candy goes on sale...] is coming