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Ian Absentia

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Everything posted by Ian Absentia

  1. Gamified more than they already are? They're the corporate HR counterpart to old school D&D's alignment system and about as scientifically valid. I think Nick is on the right path here. The fact that fixed personality "types" seem too narrow and limited won't be remedied by expanding the list -- they'll just highlight a narrower range of exceptions that the players come up with. Elsewhere, I was involved in a similar discussion about the inadequacy of cultural backgrounds like Primitive, Barbarian, and Civilised, in that they front-load stereotypes that aren't necessarily helpful for individuals (and that are woefully outdated* academically). Passions are ripe for the picking on p.214. !i!
  2. Gender: (M) = Male? (FM) = Fee-Male? (O) = Optional? You might neatly avoid a minefield of assumptions by simply placing a blank space after "Gender:" as you did with all of the other Identity qualifiers. !i!
  3. So I realise MGF and IMG and YGMV and all, but the notion that Praxian riding beasts are "just another riding animal" rubs the wrong way. In all my years of Gloranthasising, part of the joy of playing a member of, say, the Rhino tribe is that you get to ride a rhinoceros. And perhaps as importantly, that you're unique in your tribe's ability to do so. And furthermore that it's a very Praxian thing to do, due to niche environments and divine pacts and traditional exclusion of (possibly/probably) more versatile mounts. For some reason it's only just registered with me that Vasana rides a bison, even though I've read the description and seen the images for years. I guess I've always assumed that she's special that way for expositional purposes. You know, like being a puma-person. 😇 I definitely roll to disbelieve that any ol' person with Ride skill could mount and manage a high llama, an impala, or even an ostrich. I'm more flexible where Praxian zebras are concerned. Getting back to the question of economics posed in the original post, I maintain that a simple horse is more expensive because it's inherently more versatile and manageable in more environments than any of the Praxian riding beasts. !i!
  4. The Ride skill is specific to the type of mount, suggesting that there's a lot to know about handling that kind of animal regardless of availability or price. And each animal features different advantages and disadvantages; it's probably fair to assume that a horse is the most versatile and manageable outside of niche environments. !i!
  5. Not pertinent to Pavis, but I want to encourage GMs who set games in cities that do have sewers to employ pockets of noxious gases that more often than not kill intrepid adventurers outright. Confined spaces should not be trifled with. Don't forget to bring a canary, or an air elemental, or both! !i!
  6. But their cats behave like dogs, so does that make them side-door dog people? !i!
  7. You mean in a Flipside-to-Every-Coin sort of way? I agree -- there's the cult that you want to belong to, then there's the cult that you actually have to belong to. Like above, there are cult/Rune ideals, and then there's how people actually live their lives. "Yeah, yeah, I know what I was supposed to do, but this is how it actually turned out. What's it going to take to smooth this over?" Not to be flip, but as in the real world, we aspire to the divine, and then make do with what we can manage. Babeester Gor should be no exception. !i!
  8. It felt like there was a real effort to make Babeester Gor into Humakt's female, but not feminine, counterpart, even if women are eligible to join the cult of Humakt. And maybe that eligibility for the baseline "death cult" is what led to making BG such a woman-not-woman, spear-carrier stand-in. The recent write-ups inspire me to expand the cast members of my Humakt/Zorak Zoran action/buddy film franchise, Dead and Deader. Because it's really been crying for a feminine voice. !i!
  9. Quoted for emphasis, because I don't know that I have anything to add to Akhôrahil's advice except appreciation. The idea of playing a completely Runic game is wildly appealing, if daunting -- like Pendragon, players would be simulating myths and stories about their characters' behavior rather than the physical reality of their actions. So, hmm...maybe have a look at David Dunham's PenDragon Pass notes. Not FATE, but walking another similar path along with HQG. https://www.pensee.com/dunham/pdp.html !i!
  10. I joked up-thread about Rowsby Woof, a character in folk stories from Watership Down, but a Fool rather than a Trickster. Apparently that's what you get for being domesticated. Wile E. Coyote suffers a similar indignity for resorting to The Man's technology. !i!
  11. At the risk of falling into the old real-world equivalencies, I've envisioned Pent as looking like the Mongolian or Russian steppe, or perhaps even the central prairie of North America. Wide expanses of low, rolling terrain, low hills and tall grasses, rimmed in the distance by tall mountains. With LOTS of room for variation. As for seasonal differences between Prax and Pent, the verdant green is definitely a telltale of Sea Season. Come Fire Season grasses will have turned brown and you'll see a preponderance of dull, grey-green in the "evergreen" plants that survive all seasons, like in the first photo of the Columbia Ridge/Vulture Country I posted above. !i!
  12. Looking at the photos that both Jeff and I posted, the real take-away is that no matter what you call it, there's green to be found in Prax. It's relative, though, and you need to know where to look. Which is what being a member of the Praxian cults is all about. Not just a religious cult to ally with a god or spirit who'll magically do the work for you, but a cultural framework that has taught you how to live. Waha and Eiritha & Co. may not be the optimal cult choices in terms of game mechanics, but in Prax they provide where outsider cults see nothing but "desert" and wasteland. I don't doubt that the nomads have a wealth of idiomatic terms for microclimates and ecosystems that "chaparral" and "steppe" and "desert" only scratch the surface. Names and traditions for spirits that hold sway in a given place and explain how to live there or grant passage. Names that are lost on most residents of Pavis, and certainly lost on their Sartarite neighbors or Lunar interlopers. !i!
  13. I've shared this before, but my vision of the Zola Fel and environs is the inland shrub-steppe of the Columbia River Basin. Look! The rise to Vulture Country! And, look-- the Zola Fel! Maybe even Weis Cut. !i!
  14. Isn't Rowsby Woof a hero/demigod among the rabbit hsunchen peoples? !i!
  15. I reckon that, as in a world operating on science and not divine influence, Prax is composed of a sequence and patchwork of climate-driven ecosystems. Chaparral where marine air precipitates moisture on highlands and hills, shrub-steppe as it becomes increasingly arid inland, steppe and desert as it grades into the Wastes. And, to be fair, there's a wide variety of generic or colloquial terms describing local specifics (plains, grassland, veldt, savannah) that could be employed in describing one part of Prax or another. The Zola Fel, due to either magic or physics, is a greenbelt for obvious reasons. !i!
  16. Steppe or shrub-steppe. Chaparral suggests marine moisture precipitating on mountain slopes. Looks dry, but it's decidedly lush in comparison with steppe or desert. Because why not discuss the ecosystems of Prax? !i!
  17. Guilty as charged! And I'd neglected the Mythras tables, which are quite good. One of the things that emerges from these discussions is the realisation that BRP-adjacent SIZ scales best with that 3d6 range, then gets increasingly wonky as you approach either the very large or the very small. !i!
  18. Oh, duh-doi. RQG, p.52. Adventurer Sizes. Which might suggest that I'm closer to SIZ 15. !i!
  19. So far it looks like you've gotten the usual references to weight and mass, which mean little in the context of the question: "I'm 6 feet tall - what SIZ am I?" I seem to recall something somewhere for BRP-derived games that addressed SIZ as, you know, relative size, and not as a scientific quantity, but I can't think of where now. Attached is a scan from White Dwarf #14 ('cause I'm old!), which will be sure to court controversy. Though intended for D&D1e, it's height and weight tables for humanoids on a 3d6 scale. I feel it's a little forgiving on the distal ends of the normal curve (I've personally know people much shorter and much taller than suggested), but it's a couple of tables that formed a foundation in my mind for several decades, and an interesting springboard for conversation. I welcome the inevitable refutation! On a personal note, I'm 6'2" and 185 lbs, and I somehow know that I'm SIZ 14, which might even be generous. I honestly do not recall how I arrived at that number. !i! WD14_H-W.pdf
  20. There are some scaling differences as well, but as an abstraction of something resembling reality, they don't really matter that much. However, when mixing and matching weapon/armor effects and creature abilities between the two, you'll sometimes find yourself saying "Oh, that was much more/less deadly than I expected." !i!
  21. I'll see your Stephen Strange and raise you a Tony Stark: ...who are, of course, flip-sides of exactly the same character. One Science, the other Magic. All the same prestidigitation. Slight differences in wardrobes and facial hair. The holographic UI invokes the mandalas and magically inscribed sacred spaces that are, in fact, "shadows" of transdimensional spaces where they intersect with ours, er, Glorantha's. !i!
  22. Quoted for emphasis. I realise that things have changed over the years, but particularly in Pavis, feel free to engage in more conventional RPG activities at first (whatever that means) and drop in Gloranthan details little by little. Hostile natives on zoo animals, the occasional dwarf or troll, talking tapirs herding man-beasts like a scene from Planet of the Apes. And, of course, tension with the Lunar occupiers/settlers (at least until the ethnic cleansing commences). Pavis is a great starting point to allow gradual course correction toward a more "realistic" Glorantha. !i!
  23. The less prominent older sister no one talks about because crazy Jezra hogs all the attention and gets abducted by bandits (or was it baboons that time?) and (possibly) eaten by hyenas? Yes, I love the Raus family, and Jezra especially. She has been, to me as a GM, the exquisite intersection of Princess Jehnna from Conan the Destroyer and Jen Yu from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I hope her sister has an easier time of it. !i!
  24. It was especially bad, even for the Dark Ages. I've described my ire here before. I'm almost sure that I've been much harsher elsewhere. They took money for that thing. But back to the topic at hand... !i!
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