Ian Absentia

In my experience, "balance" at character creation is something people who aren't playing the game are worrying about.  Someone wake me up when the solution results in more than a 10% difference between a Lunar noble's Manage Household skill and a Sartar noble's.  Or if the difference doesn't disappear into insignificance after a half-dozen sessions in play.

Now, let me commence grousing about random Family History Events.  Why is anyone concerned about "balance" when these tables exist?

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Well, the only one who voted.  And 15 years after the poll was originally posted (I don't think the counts gets updated to the current date).  But I reckon you may still be in a crowd of one, even when corrected for the passage of time.

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That rule sounds very familiar to me, too, but I'm uncertain which BRP/d100 derivative I'm thinking of.

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[Edit: I've found a ruling for the carrying capacity for a flying mount (giant wasps), but that's for carrying a rider in flight.  It's Rider SIZ up to Mount STR, if anyone's interested.  Which seems awfully generous.]

10 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Urban, rural, nomad, and.... oh, we have a problem with the new PC woke world we live in, because we can't really say 'primitive' now, can we?

Ugh.

You don't need to say it now, do you?  Urban, Rural, and Nomadic work just fine.  Couple them with relative (if arbitrary) states of technological development appropriate to the genre (Simple vs Complex) and you can describe a character without invoking needless, quaint, and inaccurate real-world cultural bias.  Unless your game is actually about portraying cultural bias, in which case you're frying a different fish.

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16 hours ago, Scotty said:

This is not SimGlorantha, have fun, not maths...

In all fairness, part of the fun is a comforting sense of plausibility, if not realism.  So a SIZ 19 character standing at a corral, looking at a selection of Sereds and saying, "Something about this don't feel right..." while wishing someone could point 'em in the right direction is, in fact, fun. 

@ChrisWentWhere, a special character merits a special mount.  It's also fair to just agree that no one really thought this through.  There aren't particular guidelines for matching any SIZ of mount with a rider of any SIZ, but go with a proportionate response.  Just like they'll need a bigger suit of armor, they'll have to look for a bigger horse.

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2 hours ago, PlainVanilla said:

BRP is a 'universal game engine', so there are two essential products that, to my opinion, Chaosium should produce for this game:

1 - The first one I would love to see would be a scenario book compiling scenarios for different eras/settings.

[...snip...]

This way, we would have a scenario/settings book dedicated to players and gamemasters and that would be a good introduction to the BRP, and we would have a more creative book dedicated to gamemasters and to people who want to create their own games with the BRP.

This might be a little high-conceptual, but I'd like to see essentially the same scenario presented in different eras/settings as a means of underscoring how the same set of rules can emphasise and facilitate different genres.  Recognisably the same story, but told three different ways, à la Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven/Rebel Moon.

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[Edit: Oh, kind of like what TDM has done with the cover of their forthcoming edition of Mythras Imperative.]

45 minutes ago, Kloster said:

Even the duck had a better rep when we encountered trolls.

Ditto, though in the field ours sometimes became the de facto leaders of the adventure.  With two huge combat brutes marching point, other players invested in more specialised and delicate characters, and we were just too stupid and unruly to take orders.  Everyone had to follow us, and we were not suited for making wise mission decisions.

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On 10/24/2023 at 5:34 AM, David Scott said:

It's in the RQ Bestiary 71 (2019), Sourcebook 63 (2018) Guide page 91 (2014)

It is so, and that was our understanding all the way back to the original Trollpak.  In one notorious campaign, a friend of mine and I played twin Great Trolls, technically trollkin.  Dumb as rocks, built like bricks.

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Arguably, yes, in RQG.  One begins with conventional skill allocation, then modifies it year-by-year according to randomised events.

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15 minutes ago, Erol of Backford said:

Does Glorantha have Attack of the Killer Pumpkins? I suppose a bunch of baby Hungry Jacks would be interesting?

One of my favorite Scholastic Book Fair titles from elementary school...

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This is a gate that I don't think needs keeping.  RPGs are a grab-bag, and it may be worth looking at what's been done elsewhere and considering how it could be done more satisfactorily with the BRP d100 family of games.

Considering the hefty slew of popular licenses the Everyday Heroes series secured, I'm almost surprised that they didn't lock down Sin City, too.  I'm impressed, but then I see that it's level-based and I think that it's like wearing shoes on your hands instead of gloves.  But that doesn't mean there's nothing to learn from how they adapted the action genre to gaming in general.

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6 hours ago, daddystabz said:

What other games do you all suggest for Sin City?

I hesitate, because it's always frustrating when someone asks for help with one thing and others chime in with what amounts to "Buy and learn another game!"  But DreadDomain has it on the money with a direct BRP family member, Pulp Cthulhu.  It's almost ready-made for Sin City -- I'd still port the Passions rules over.  One could also reverse-engineer it from the Big Book BRP.

Farther afield, I was thinking of Mythras, which also features nearly identical Passions rules.  But I'm looking particularly toward the combat system, which maintains a mechanical crunchiness while introducing a narrative aspect with its Special Effects.  Rather than a simple random effect rolled from a table, a combatant can choose to press certain tactical advantages based on weapon type, training, etc.  Making the recommendation even more specific, I'll point to Destined, the superheroic comic book adaptation of Mythras that does gritty street level action like a charm.

All in the family, though.

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3 hours ago, Jakob said:

Are you still working on WRG? I remain intrigued.

WRG is still very much alive, yes.  Ironically, the return to business coming out of the pandemic has turned out to be a misfortune for the project.  My artist and I have been distractingly busy (he may be having more fun working with several major film productions, which is not great for me!).  Also, changes in the RPG landscape in the last year have altered options for mechanical approaches to the game, requiring some retooling.

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11 hours ago, daddystabz said:

Can the new BRP handle a Sin City campaign with its noir atmosphere and ultraviolence?

Yes.  If you have the new release of BRP, look to the Pulp guidelines on p. 208, and the Passions (p. 214) and Traits (p. 203), as Sin City is at least as much about the pathos of the characters as the violence they mete out and endure.  I don't want to muddy the waters by suggesting other games, but there are combat rules in other BRP-adjacent games that would mesh better with combat, particularly gun violence.  Combat in Sin City isn't so much about whittling down HPs as it is generating plot momentum.

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4 hours ago, Starcarr said:

Not a fan of the cover though. 

The corporate team photo pose?

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19 hours ago, g33k said:

If I were going to do this, I'd probably use someone's pre-existing system (like Myers-Briggs or Enneagram), and gamify those.

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.

9 hours ago, NickMiddleton said:

My first instinct re personality traits etc would be to use Passions: all PCs start with three, one each linked to  Culture, Profession and Personality type.

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.

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15 hours ago, tooley1chris said:

.

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.

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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.

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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.

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5 hours ago, Darius West said:

Okay, so New Pavis doesn't have a sewer system...

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!

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On 9/1/2023 at 2:36 PM, PhilHibbs said:

85% of Orlanthi are cat people...

But their cats behave like dogs, so does that make them side-door dog people?

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2 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

this is interesting, because for me I always think, "every Rune needs a Shargash"

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.

1 hour ago, Beoferret said:

My poor memory is telling me that the "Babs initiates can get it on (even with the boys), BUT can't get married and have to give up any children" rule/lore has been standard since the current iteration of RQ appeared. I don't have the book in front of me, but that's the take I've seen on these forums. I like it. It's playable, but lets the player know important things about their character: i.e., the importance of duty to their temple, the priestess they're protecting, etc. 

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.

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7 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

I always liked how hardcore HW was with the cult descriptions - BG and especially Eurmal were borderline unplayable.

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.

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20 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Just dump all the fiddly bits and recreate the Aspects and Stunts from the lore. Make sure to get HeroQuest: Glorantha...

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

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1 hour ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

There has got to be some Bestiary or story material in tumbleweeds.  Plants that break free and move with the wind  on terrain where there are no forests to break the wind - that looks ghostly right there.  Surely with an animist worldview it is obvious that tumbleweeds have spirits and both the movement and plant runes.  

A-hem...

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