Michael Hopcroft

I've been away for a while (when you're in so many fandoms, and discovering new things all the time, it takes effort to track them all). Anyway, I've been watching the Chinese TV fantasy series Ice Fantasy on Netflix, and it struck me that if I want to run a game like that HQ2 would be a great fit. (BRP proper wouldn't -- that much crunch would really get in the way of the action.) This series, for those who haven't seen it, is about a war between clans of pseudo-gods that spills into the mortal world. The main clans have formidable magic and combat skills, but are limited when dealing with mortals. Mortals don't use magic nearly as much, but are versatile and numerous. Battles are spectacular, with people flying everywhere, both when attacking and as they get hit by attacks.

How would people adapt this sort of setting to HeroQuest 2?

Since the RPG Meeting site only included pricing in Euros (or, presumably, UK Pounds) I got the impression (perhaps unfounded) that the discount does not apply to North America (of course, shipping a book to Portland has its own complications). So, while no discount is going to apply, do we know anything about when the print book will become available to North Americans that would not require them to be shipped directly from the UK?

I just got my copy of the new Mythras core PDF and haven't purchased Classic Fantasy yet, but I do have a question: if you see a class/prestige combination in any of the D&D series that you want to model your character around, is there a systematic way to go about it?

I may not even need CF to answer this question. And I do have a quick example of wanting to have some of the cool essence of a class while stripping out some of the baggage. In D&D 3.5 there was a controversial "new core" class called the Hexblade. It was controversial because it was considered a poor example of class design that was underpowered for what it was asked to do, and difficult to play in a party to boot. The idea was that the Hexblade could simultaneously fight, cast spells, and use class abilities to manipulate the luck of his enemies and make things go wrong for them in combat. The problem was that the class was so closely tied to the alignment system that if the character performed a good deed, even by omission, his powers would vanish until he had wiped the good he'd done away. That part made little sense. But a spell-slinging swordsman who could make his opponents foul up has appealing story potential, especially if he has to have at least a front of callousness,

Mythras, of course, does away with the strictures of the class system (except perhaps social), so there's no reason for a swordsman not to be able to sling spells with the best of them. Giving other people bad luck, though, that's tricky. I wonder how you would do it.

Just now, auyl said:

Ha! Funny thing is if I format one, it is in the public domain so could publish it!

Now that's a good adventure seed. The incredibly seductive, madness-incuding play is perofmred for the entire world on Youtube. Whenever Youtube takes it down, five other people post it again. The result is a maddengly seductive meme that may wreck civilization....

I had a lot of fun with the first Tablemaster. IIt's a great source of inspiration! (And humor, as one can continue to add entry after entry to a table at whim.producing weirder and weirder results).

Now if someone decides to offer The King in Yellow for sale on Lulu I'd be worried.

i once had a convention roommate who had surgically transformed themselves into a Cat-Person, including new teeth and a revised nose area. Other than figuring out how to address them (they were transgender as well as transspecies) it worked out OK. I heard about a cat-person who underwent similar procedures commiting suicide last year, but I don't know if it's the same person.

I personally have no tattoos. I just don't like the idea. But I really don;t look down on those that do (and some of the people I see in Portland are inked to the eyebrows, which might take it a teeny bit too far). I've also heard about people piercing things that really shouldn't be pierced (how can one breast-feed an infant if both your nipples are/were pierced?). I see it as a sign of the times, and an understandable resistance to the conformity everyone seeks to impose on modern youth. That I wouldn't do it myself doesn;t make it threatening in itself.

Of course, we have all seen what happens when a tyrant or dictator has people tattood to identify them as a class everyone else is mandated to hate (sometimes to homicidal degrees). I wonder if some cults have their initates be required to accept a tattioo orf piercing as a symbol of their devotion (much as the Isrealites and their decendants had parents cut off the foreskins of their newborn sons). Perhaps some tattoos even have magical significance -- spirits linked to a cult are more friendly to its initiates and might eve3n embody some of their power into a person's tattoos.

I wonder if there are any Durulz in any of the cities who had become phenomenally rich (and what people of other species would think about him if there was).

Carl Barks references aside, large cities in the sense of a Rome or Athens don;t really exist in Glorantha, do they? And I doubt they would ne nearly as cosmopolitan or welcoming. This is not a nice world. Durulz outside their own areas face degrees of racism that would astound modern sensibilities. Even the name Ducks can be viewed as a racial slur. So a Durulz making a name for himself or herself in the general area faces a struggle, is often resented, and might well be threatened more often than a person of another species in a similar situation.

How often do you want a GM to set out that either only one power category actually exists in the campaign, or no chartacter can take powers out of more than one category?

In RQ3, it seemed like everyone knew at least a little Spirit Magic (heck, peasants cast spells like Bladesharp on their implements to make plowing more effricient) and if you got high enough in your cult heirarchy you learned a Divine spell that was powerful and nigh-automolatic but costy you a permanent POW expenditure to cast (so it is rarely used). Sorcery comes along and attempts to provide secular magic, but I'm not remembering whether knowing Sorcery meant you couldn't use Spirit Magic spells anymore. My memory of RQ3 is incomplete at best.

I would think that in a supers campaign Superpowers would be about it -- just with different flavoring. Dr. Strange's eldritch bolts and Cyclops' eye-beams do the same thing (Blast) but feel different. So is there a reason to model Dr Strange with a different power structure?

Glorantha will always have room for Ducks. Of course, so do Broos....

Incidentally, if you're a durulz and walk into an eating place to find them serving normal, non-sapient ducks roasted upon spits, are you offended? What do the diners think when they see you? (I wouldn't think the existence of Broos would make people give up on hunting antelope or deer for food, even though Broos are distinctly inedible!)

6 hours ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

I'm wondering now just what sort of spell pelting someone with a rain of rocks would be. Would each of the forms of magic have their own way to create this (or any other) effect?

 

4 hours ago, TRose said:

 In the Mongoose rune spell book  magic book there a spell that pelts people with rocks.. There was one rock per intensity  level and each rock did 1d4 damage armor protecting against damage.

You're probably not going to kill someone that way unless you get really lucky with a Hit Location roll. Which is fine -- if you want to kill someone with stones, it will propbably take a while (unless it's a small rock used as the bullet in a sling or something like that) and a lot of people throwing a lot of rocks. Execution by stoning was decidedly unfun.

Given that in our world stoning was a popular punishment for offenses against religion (blashphemy, sexual sins. etc.) I can see something like this being used by priests and other religious figures as a means to kill their enemies in a humiliating fashion. Since it's a formalized execution, the executionee won't be wearing armor (and might be wearing virtually nothing!).

Is there such a thing as a secular art form in Glorantha?

Religion is, if anything, the central feature of Gloranthan culture, It's been that way from the very beginning, so it is natural that most arts would serve the needs of the cults. And almost nobody doubts that the Gods exist, not just as a way to explain the inexplicable but as objectively verifiable forces of nature that have a direct impact on human life. So naturally if you are a sculptor or architect you want to create work that pleases them (or at the very least won't get you cast out or smitten). But are there also works of art celebrating more mundane pursuits? Is there comedy in a world where risking blasphemy is a physically dangerous thing to do?

Didn't Strombringer/Elric! have its own system of magic that is not compatible with the rest of the BRP series?

I'm wondering now just what sort of spell pelting someone with a rain of rocks would be. Would each of the forms of magic have their own way to create this (or any other) effect?

37 minutes ago, Simlasa said:

I agree, that NEEDS to be a spell!

I picture black smokey tentacles that see out an entrance to any room or container... the tiniest crack will not evade them. The tentacles then congregate around the one that finds and opening and force their way in, widening the gap... more and more till the spell is terminated. "No one is safe when Evan's Tentacles come calling!"

What a horrible thing to do to someone. Which is why I hope the spell does not appear in the game, at least not often.

On 5/4/2016 at 9:13 AM, TRose said:

 I kind of like that idea of Monster wanting be left alone and live in  Peace. One of the reason Ebberron isone of my favorite fantasy worlds is it has Orc Farmers who are just interested in getting their crop in and raising their children in peace.

But lets look at the Medusas and how to have fun with that legend. According to some legends Medusa was a beautiful Maiden who was raped by Poseidon in a Temple of Athena. And instead of kicking Poseidon butt for being a low life thug, Athena decided to punish the victim and turned Medusa into a monster..

 So perhaps the Medusas in your world could be suffering a similar unjust curse and the players meet one who just wants the curse removed and enlist the players aid.

The person who finds a way to stop her "stone gaze" would have her eternal gratitude, Even changing it to an at-will ability as opposed to the original form which is outside the creature's control (if she looks at a being, even without making eye contact, it becomes a statue regardless of her intentions) will be a marked improvement for her.

In the Mongoose book on the Ducks, ther common belief seemed to be that everybody hated the Ducks and their utter extermination would have been viewed as a good thing. The only thing preventing an organized campaign to wipe the Ducks off the face of Glorantha was everybody having "more important things to do".

This seems unfair to the Ducks. After all, they fought just as valiantly against Chaos as everyone else, even knowing they would get no thanks for doing so. And as long as you don't get deliberately silly (like quackming everything you say) I can see a Duck PC can be quite viable.

It's been a while since I've read BRP Mecha (is it now out of print?) and how they dealt with size questions. I think they did go into a few suggestions about kaiju and kaiju-sized critters (like the potential for dragons).

Getting back to the original topic, I'm thinking that without a true alignment system in BRP/RQ/CoC It would be possible for an enterprising GM (who has tolerant players) to break a setting without neccesarily breaking any rules. For example, one of the core principles of the Lovecraftian universe of CoC is that those parts of the Universe that care about Humanity at all are implacably hostile. We are an accident of nature that nature wants to erase.But what if there exists one or two massively powerful beings who actually kind of like us? Who see something in Humanity that would sadden them if it no longer existed? Such a campaign would not be Lovecraftian. The very idea is sacreligious to the dedicated CoC fanbase, and few of them would want to play in it. Yet under the rules is it quite possible. (Of course, so is running a Mythos campaign starring the cast of Scooby-Doo Where Are You?, which was actually a Gen Con fixture for a while.)

But one of the joys of our medium is that you can explore different takes on a setting or story with relative impunity. The first CoC game I ever played (one-on-one) involved a meeting with a Ghoul, with whom my PC actually had a relatively pleasant conversation. It was a lot easier to talk to him when it became clear he wasn\t going to make me a corpse (and that he only eats dead bodies, and doesn't manufacture them). If you put ghouls into a fantasy setting, you could imagine a situation where some of the dead would be deliberately fed to the ghouls and everyone is OK with it. Such a mindset would be alien but imaginable. Perhaps there are necromancers about who animate corpses for nefairous purposes, and the people would consider it preferable for the ghouls to eat a relative's corpse and leave nothing for the necromancers to animate.

40 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

King Ghidorah, possibly mind controlled by aliens planning to take over the word. Maybe even with Gigan to back him up. Or, you can use a giant robot, possibly backed up by Gigan, King Ghidorah, or some new monster. Or the Japanese military and their latest ultra tech vehicle.  You can even bring out King Kong, Gamera, or Daimagin if you want to. 

 

All in all it wouldn't be too bad. Kinda like D&D but not quite as silly,  without the muckinism and treasure hunting, but with the possibility of actual role play and character development.

There were a couple of American cartoon series about Godzilla (one was even of the '90s American version of the character) in which the big guy featured very little, and was mainly summoned by the human protagonists when they got into trouble with other big monsters. The series were bad on an epic scale, and I can't imagine Japanese fans liking them (though you never know). It reduced him (or her -- the '90s Godzilla was female, and I'm kind of ashamed that I know that) to a deus ex machina solving human problems, when human problems are basically irrelevant to Godzilla.

The idea of a kaiju campaign is remeniscent of the often-postulated campaign with Dragon PCs. Which has the additional advantage of dragons being intelligent enough to be relatable (after a fashion, as their concerns are probably alien to humans).

44 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Monster Island? 

One player gets Godzillia, another Rodan, a third Mothra, a foruth Angurius, and so on?

What do you challenge a party like that with?

The mention of Hero System makes me wonder about GM or Player creation of Spells in BRP/RQ/MW. Certainly a spell that does sometrhing you don't expect (like the hopefully-fictional "Evan's Tentacles of Forced Intrusion") will come as a surprise when a PC party faces it for the first time.

I wouldn't make a document deliverately collecting "All the Spells" unless it gave me a little bit of guidance on how to come up with other effects in a non-point-based spell creation idea set. Say I want to make a spell that pelts my foe and his companions with a rain of rocks (bevause Everybody Must Get Stoned), how much damage do the rocks do? How long does the rain of rocks continue falling? How difficult is the spell to cast, and how many MP does it consume? Can it not be cast indoors or in other enclosed spaces like caverns and tunnels? Is it meant to annihilate the enemy or to hinder/annoy them?

Monster is as Monster does. That is the theme of popular films like the Disney version of Hunchback of Notre Dame and the Shrek series. In Hunchback, the deformed Quasimodo is scorned, mocked, and called a "monster" by the surrogate father who is raising him out of guilt for a misdeed, while it is that father whose actions continue to demonstrate just how monstrous he really is. Frollo is in fact one of the most memorable "true" monsters in the genre -- a vicious racist and authoritarian whose evil is more real and plapable than that of your typical Disney megalomaniac. At the very beginning of the film we are asked "Who is the Monster and who who is the Man" and over the course of the film we get our answer. You could ask the same question about the protagonist of Frankenstein.

Monster is as Monster does. And if your players can come to realize that it will improve your experience as a GM.

One idea for a one-shot game I had thinking about this topic would be a bunch of monsters in a dungeon -- with the monsters as the player-characters. The mad wizard who had assembled and stocked his fortress against an inevitable adeventurer attack that somehow never came died decades ago of boredom and natural causes (while engaged in an evil plot that has\d something to do with purple raspberries), leaving the "monsters" to fend for themselves as best they could. By now, they've built a community of sorts and found ways to keep themselves warm, fed and occupied. They are raising families, building lives, and generally behaving like anyonhe else -- only they are confined to the tower and its underbelly because people tend to get all screamy and running-away-like when they show themselves on the surface. Life isn't great, but it's not as bad as it could be, and they're trying to make it better.

And now the adventurers show up, seeking to stop the moribund evil plot of the decades-dead master of the dungeon. A plot that never really got off the ground in the first place.

For werewolves, legend and reality can be very different. If you ever get the chance to, you should see an anime film called Wolf Children. In it, a woman falls in love with a wolf who can take human shape and bears him two wolf/human hybrid children. The wolves in that world aren't monstrous at all other than having an animalistic side, yet they remain out of sight because they fear they will be viewed as the mythical, predatory werewolves of lore. (The movie is about the children deciding which path they want to take in their lives -- human or wolf.)

With a little bit more difficulty, you can adapt a less evil take to vampires. Literature is full of them (and some of it is actually good). Perhaps the drinking of human blood from a willing donor is a very sexual thing for both parties, and sustenance can be had from animal blood (or blood is only needed very rarely -- on the night of the full moon, for example -- and the vampire can eat normally otherwise). There would be a lot of relationships and marriages (depending on how rare vampires are) between mortals and vampires. But there will be horrifying legends and rumors, and vampires will have to be watchful for overzealous "crusdaders against the unholy".

When I downloaded that enormous  monster book from this site (The Big D--- Book of Monsters), which I have not read completely through given how enormous it is, it occured to me that I would have the opportunity to do a lot of futzing around with critters. A lot of the description in that piece is informal, even in direct descriptions of creature abilities to do damnage and the like.

Another RPG book I recently read put forth the radical idea of a fantasy setting where most "monsters" are just very different kinds of people trying to live out their lives, and that "eye creatures", Medusas and the like could actually be very friendly and helpful once you get to know them. Of course, a lot of humans would think monsters need killing regardless, because some people are just like that. Anti-monster rampages could prove troublesome at best, especially in places where the monster in question is actually a valuable and respected member of the community. With an alignment system fundamentally different from that in D&D, you can actually futz around with the monsters that way.

My question is how much alteration to a monster one needs to do if basically all you're adjusting is their attitudes and the abilities related to them. Your friendly Eye Creature might have the same powers, and maybe a few extra, but adapted to very different purposes. I'm wondering about how non-combat uses of "anti-magic rays" would play out. And since that Eye Creature might potentially be a player-character, how worried do I need to be about making her balanced?

On 2/8/2016 at 5:47 PM, TRose said:

 There are two times I had fun with drink in Glorantha.

  The second time was when they went to a newly opened Cadraland restaurant in Pavis.

  Now for some reason Cadraland has always seemed  a little like Meso America to me so I had Cadraland cuisine similar to Mexican food. So Our Urox hero goes in and sees a bowl of these slices of pickled vegetable on his table and figure Im hungry  so I will eat them in one gulp as a snack. Ever try to gulp down a bowl of jalapeno peppers? Good thing there was a small bottle of red vegetable juice also on the table for him to drink.:=)

I wonder what the response of the local observers was to those scenes. I imagine it would depend on how xenoiphobic they were. Any chanced of passing as a local vanished with Urox' adventure with the peppers, so I hope he wasn't in a situation where he would have had to. In some especially bad situations, it could be that inability to enjoy the local cuisine could get a visitor killed as an obvious outsider in a situation where outsiders are despised, hated and feared.