Ian Absentia

Dude. Where were you in the '90s? https://www.chaosium.com/nephilim/ !i!

The pole lasso (a common herding tool in real world cultures, such as Mongolia) is included in RQG, but not the thrown lasso, which is a different beast. Personally, for my Sartarite outlaw herd rustler, I just used the pole lasso stats, called it a thrown lasso, and agreed with the GM to give it a marginally longer range. As Joerg points out, the bolas are used by at least one notable Praxian tribe. A while back I banged out a conversion of the BRP bola stats for RQG (along with the bullwhip). !i!

Or, of course, X-Files. Remember when that was a fresh cut? Tynes and the Pagans will be quick to point out that the original Delta Green article in The Unspeakable Oath preceded the airing of X-Files by a year, which in turn means production of the show was already under way a year or two before that. And The Men in Black comic book was published a couple of years before either, so put that in your pipe and smoke thoughtfully. It was a zeitgeist of the post-Cold War. !i!

This is Delta Green in a nutshell, and was the original premise at its inception in the early '90s. Originally government investigators and their "friendlies" on official assignment, the program goes underground, creating a sense of danger on multiple fronts and general conspiratorial paranoia. It's about the only modern setting for Call of Cthulhu that I can take seriously for extended campaign play. !i!

The more I think about this, the more I realise what a great '80s-action movie franchise this would've made. Dead and Deader Dead and Deader 2: The Deadening Dead and Deader 3: Die, Die Again Dead and Deader 4: Stay Dead !i!

To the original post, I recommend that you and your fellow player watch the movie 48 Hours together, rinse, repeat. The two of you then go on to play Bad-Cop/Bad-Cop with every opponent you meet. Zorak Zorani: "Hey! Hey! I'm gonna kill you! Humakti: "No you're not! I'm gonna kill him first!" Zorak Zorani: "Yeah? Well, I'm gonna kill him more!" Ah, buddy-cop movies... !i!

Too true. Consider that bullet dodged! !i!

Fuzzy on the first two, but the third is clear: Krarshtkids. One of the inevitable problems with "history" is inadvertently or purposefully mis-remembering cultural events to match current values. Cultural drift, revisionism, what-have-you, Jaldon's potential as a magical resource was evaluated incompletely, though (presumably) without intent of malice (well, without malice toward anyone other than the Lunars), and he turned out to be something more of a loose cannon than anyone'd anticipated. At least the monsters ended up on the side of the White Bull, and history will eventually remember those "eating things" as something far more benign. !i!

Allow me to say that, in today's media landscape, the only reliable protection against spoilers that I count on is my own critical ability to stop paying attention when I realise someone is discussing something that I want to maintain as a surprise. Honestly, I'm generally cognisant enough to work out on my own when spoilers are looming, and not so delicate that I need to be shielded against my own curiosity. That's a responsibility I've learned to take on myself. Furthermore, as a player in RPG campaigns who's more often than not a GM as well, I know from experience that actual play in any given scenario unfolds organically and unpredictably, even when I know what's been scripted. This is an improvisational hobby, after all. !i!

Dude! Not cool! 🤛😾🤜 !i!

That may be a generous assumption, as in power vacuums, "collaborators" are often targeted by the locals, unless the new regime institutes firm order. From what I hear, Argrath falls short of "firm order" in liberating Pavis, so I don't feel optimistic about the interim guard under the Lunars. !i!

Brother and sister, yeah. Sunlight and Starlight, and of similar -- but distinct -- militant bent. !i!

The topic persists because people are still trying to wrap their heads around it. Hooray for RuneQuest becoming so woke with regard to gender (see RQG p.80-81), but not everyone has entered the fold, in this world or that one. !i!

🤜Correct!🤛 Normal people stay home and worship normal gods. History seldom remembers the homebodies. If your character doesn't start out a weirdo, she or he quickly becomes one. And they find a niche and mode of faith that supports their behavior. The likes of Vinga and Yelorna are pathways to faith that's generally of like mind to typically masculine gods and pursuits. To riff on Voltaire, if Vinga didn't exist, we'd have to invent her. And, lo and behold, we did. !i!

"Everything was fine with our system until the power grid was shut off by dickless here." !i!

I have been Greg-splained by players at the game table before. Recently, even. It's a tedious and demoralising affair. But it's also part of the appeal of playing in Glorantha for some. They just need to be reminded that what they read in Lost Guides: Sartar+Prax may not be an actual reflection of playable reality. !i!

Well, that was a helpful discussion regarding psychic abilities that went south. !i!

We're discussing the list from the BRP Big Gold Book? if so, you're on the money about some psychic abilities seeming more like superpowers...and you'll find them in either the magic or superpowers sections of the book. I've used all three sections a la carte, picking the powers that suit the setting. Now, the setting is what's really going to determine the appropriateness of any given power, with, say, The Ipcress File at one extreme and perhaps X-Men or even Lensmen on the other. What's the genre backdrop against which the players will be using their psychic abilities? How obvious are the powers in use? How understood/believed/accepted are they by society at large? How much is too much? !i!

Land of Giants, dealing with the Beowulf legend. More Germanic than Norse, but almost directly portable. Great stuff! And you're right about using virtues to help define cultural beliefs, even if individual characters don't necessarily adhere to them themselves. David Dunham used this several decades ago in his famous "PenDragon Pass" game, for which I think we can thank in some confidence the introduction of passions and runic affinities in RQG. Okay, the latter we may attribute more to HeroQuest, but what are affinities but case-specific virtues? !i!

a) I lose points for not reading that book more closely. b) I gain points for being right on the money. In the end, Even-Steven! !i!

I actually wasn't trying to be a doubting Thomas, but as you point out, there are many other very fulfilling letters that occur earlier in the alphabet. "Profit" and roleplaying games are infrequent and often uncomfortable bedfellows. !i!

Emphasis mine. That's an ambitious leap from A to Z. !i!

Well, there it is -- under the Byzantines, along with Neoplatonism! I hadn't noticed it before. It's worth noting that the religious virtues underlined for Manichaeism appear to be the virtues of the spiritual world, not the material. And these, by the way, are the virtues I'd assign to the Cathars of the 12th-14th centuries. !i!

That, quite simply, is because you are impure. Pick a lane and it all becomes much clearer. [Edit: Also, that's where Spiritual vs Material may be more useful in a game of Manicheanism.] .:.Ian

The Manicheanism angle is really just a side thought. It was one of the dualistic, gnostic religions that emerged at the same time of -- and had a mutual influence with -- early Christianity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism In essence, there's a good and spiritual world ruled by a good deity, and a bad and material world ruled by an evil deity. We're effectively stuck in the middle, and could go one way or the other. In game, this could provide two paths of "virtue," the irony being that they might both lead to heaven. The '90s game Kult (Swedish, in fact!) played with this concept. !i!