Ian Absentia

About the only thing missing is this guy strapped to the Bat's forehead. But this is not a conversation about the Crimson Bat. Carry on. !i!

Included for emphasis, because I'm betting a lot of people are going to breeze straight past this statement and recommend it to you. Huzzah! A toast! We ruin everything! Knowing that you already have a playable (and largely cross-compatible) set of mechanics to work with, the one, single resource I'd recommend at this point is another vote for The Glorantha Sourcebook. For sheer joy, I'll also recommend the slipcase edition of the Guide to Glorantha, which is somewhat redundant with the Sourcebook, but just so very nice. More importantly, though, when you start a game, start small in a manageable locale and setting that you and your players could easily mistake for a simple real world analogue, then add fantastical bits of Glorantha a little at a time. Once you get the world under your feet, though, don't afraid to pull out the stops. However, it is seldom necessary to lecture your players on the history of the Crimson Bat during the first few sessions of play. !i!

This topic has been much debated over the years and never resolved. The best response I've ever heard to the issue is: Know what you're asking for before you roll. Set the parameters of the possible outcomes before asking players to roll for a result. "Fudging" is shifting the goalpost after the roll. For the sake of tension, though, the players don't necessarily need to know the stakes at the outset. HeroQuest 2.0 introduced the rather controversial "Mock Contest" in which the GM challenges the players to a series of rolls while having a set outcome already in mind. This isn't necessarily "fudging" as such, though, in that the contest still describes the process and quality of arriving at that outcome. This is an old trick that I've used as a GM for ages -- I know my players' characters are going to get through this situation alive and move on to the next scene, but I'm willing to either bruise them up a little on the way or let them proceed as total heroes, but death is not one of the options until later on in the adventure. !i!

Reviewing the current poll numbers (albeit with limited sample size), one emerging trend is becoming clear. Grognards ruin everything. !i!

Another vote for 1615-21 here. (I understand the date of 1613, though -- the original "events have been catalogued up to here" date.) 1625 and beyond has the same issue that post-Third Imperium Traveller experienced. The excitement in the setting was the dynamic tension of something big about to happen; post-Imperium was someone else's story, where someone else pulled the trigger and released all that tension. In the case of RQG, it's Argrath's story. I have a similar problem with lifepath generation tables (a direction in which Mongoose took their iteration of Traveller by some coincidence) which is, again, someone else's story. !i!

Or a magnet for trouble. It's the nail that stands out that gets the hammer. C.f., the Hounds of Tindalos. !i!

The character sheet or the kidney stone? Sorry! Someone had to ask. And it's probably no consolation, but I've been there. Ugh. !i!

Agreed! That's where the player decides to stick the butter knife in the electrical socket. Silly player characters. !i! [Edit: Hey! That's my name in the background! "ung"]

Here in the US, we have Red and Blue, and there's little consistency or coordination between or among either, except that the Reds are generally more willing to roll the dice on the balance between personal liberties and public welfare. You know that scene in, like, 25% of sci-fi movies where the crew is gathered around trying to decide whether or not to take their vacc-suit helmets off? Yeah, we're all still there. !i!

The more I ruminate on this statement, the more I realise that this goes to the heart of Lovecraft's Mythos and the whole discussion we had recently regarding the difference between "cosmic" horror and "traditional" horror. In the Lovecraft Mythos, the universe does not care about you. It's indifferent to our existence, and by and large we can go about our daily lives for generation after generation without interruption that we don't ourselves create. No good, no evil, just a train barreling through every aeon or two. No evil books, no evil artifacts, no evil hell-spawned monsters; just bodies in motion and huge disparities in power, awareness, and empathy. That is cosmic horror. And that's why the tarot or a Ouija board or whatever in a game of Call of Cthulhu should be nothing more than a set of tableware that, for whatever reason, you occasionally insert into an electrical outlet with predictable results. !i!

I'm with @Baron -- rather than interpreting the tarot through the sinister lens of the Mythos, allow it as a simple, practical tool. Tools aren't good or bad, they just allow you to do things you couldn't otherwise, but perhaps shouldn't. I'd allow the tarot use to peripherally touch on the Mythos reality, something like the device in "From Beyond"; the player can potentially sense something that perhaps they really don't want to. I wrote some rules for using the tarot in the Nephilim Gamemaster's Companion, way back, as a tool for the GM in play for characters with Tarot Lore skill. I have a long-standing tradition as a Call of Cthulhu GM of letting my players roll the percentile dice for one hobby skill, the only proviso being that it can't be a practical skill. In one campaign, one player rolled up Piano 83% and another Trumpet 100%; they actually found use for them in play and leveraged them for a minor Sanity bump. !i!

If he was wearing his sunglasses when getting dressed, perhaps the wardrobe he chose looked black. I've made similar mistakes getting dressed for work in the dark. !i!

Any day now. !i!

A friend and former merchant marine once got into an argument with a street food vendor in the Philippines as to whether or not the "pork on a stick" was really pork and not bush-meat (i.e., monkey). Aside from being a questionably bigoted suspicion, the transaction did not end well. I can't imagine it would go down any better in Prax. !i!

Any day now. !i!

My, she's yar! !i!

In the interest of symmetry, may we see an @Davey account, too? !i!

Yeah, "clear to everyone" is a culture-specific assumption. Thank heavens for that table, huh? I'd add that, along with unarmed foes, cultural mores might extend to engaging in combat with an inferior foe, which might fall into the category of "cowardice," making the slope even more slippery. "Inferior" might be interpreted on a scale from armed-and-aggressive-but-incompetent, to armed-but-significantly-less-competent, to armed-but-beneath-your-station. It's a broad rubric with room for fuzzy interpretation. !i!

Not even as an excuse for a trip to Vegas? Or Macau! !i!

A ) Did you each use your own dice for all rolls? B ) Did you repeat the experiment switching each others' dice? C ) Did you repeat the experiment using "neutral" dice provided by a third party? I'm eager to get the two of you back in the room together. I recommend a neutral space, too -- Las Vegas! Or maybe Macau. I'll write up the procedures and analysis. !i!

To be clear, I generally support Kickstarter/crowdfunding campaigns for creative projects. They're like an advance on a publishing contract, or pre-orders on sales. Capital where it's needed, up-front. However, I'm careful to look for explicit statements of "This thing is already finished and ready to go into production" before I pitch in. And I'm not impressed by -- I'm even leery of -- stretch goals unless, again, they're explicitly production-ready. And, to be frank, I get nervous when I see projects get funded to +1,000% of their goal for a commercial product. That says to me that the creator underestimated the nature of their project and that it's too big for them to handle -- crowdfunding shouldn't take the place of a retail storefront. All that said, I don't know the history of the 7th Sea Kickstarter campaign and how it was handled. My comments are based on observations of several other projects, wildly over-funded and sheepishly under-delivered. If only they'd hit the big, red button at 100% then figured out post-production marketing separately... !i!

Beware the pitfalls of the too-successful Kickstarter campaign. And that's more a caution to the host than to the backer. I'm aware of the power of public discussion, but have you contacted the Kickstarter host directly? I'm not sure if Chaosium has taken up the responsibility for product fulfillment for 7th Sea as they did with the ill-fated CoC Kickstarter. !i!

Hooray! The ICM Manual! Finally, a digital copy to back up the tatty hard copy I printed over a decade ago. !i!

Nicely played, young sir! Now, that is how the review business is done. Aside from being among the key structural supports that kept RQ alive? And some neat licenced titles under their belt? And a remarkably robust and generous third party license? Enh, maybe not so much. !i!

Boo. Head-butt. !i!