DreadDomain

This is Chaosium's challenge. I trust they will strike the right balance between credibly stretching diversity and inclusion without attempting to erase the ugliness of the subject matter. Women masquerading as man, men masquerading as woman, women rising into knighthood and position of authority, characters with secret (or not so secret) same sex lovers, characters from far away lands... They are all fairly common tropes in the story and I see no issues (on the contrary, they enrich the stories) including and enabling such elements to the game. I fully support it. The ugliness of the era remains though, slavery, inequities, second-class citizens, the poor abused by the rich, the stranger being feared by the community. They are also all part of the stories but that challenge is not for Chaosium to manage (well aside from not publishing scenarios that are not blalantly pushing these buttons). These topics are managed at the table to ensure people will have fun with the game and the stories shared. I'd be very surprised if Chaosium would depict the era as an egalitarian, equal opportunity society where every one is vying to strike a gender balance in their workforce and ensure everyone from every nationalities, orientation and creed are included in every strate of the society. I would be flabbergasted if Chaosium would be so inclusive to add African-American, Québécois, Aztecs and Mandolarians into the game, nor would Arthur be Japanese and Guenever of Brazilian origin. The subject matter is anachronistic but I am pretty sure they will stick with nationalities featured in the story and others that would make sense for the era. I might be wrong but I trust they will manage it well.

This is not what I meant but yes, absolutely! Do I? I don't even recall stating what I think the right values should be. Mainly because I believe many options are valid.

Your reply to my post seems to imply I am against including black characters. The part of my post you did not quote clearly states the opposite.

RQ does not really go to that level of detail in combat and there are no real mechanical incentive to use anything else than a sword parry followed by a sword attack (perharps using aimed blow) and describe it as you did. Of couse to be truer to the move, dodge or martial arts could be used but unless your skills in them are pretty good, or at least close to what you have in your sword parry, their is no mechanical reason to do so. In any case, I wouldn't see the sword, dodge, martial arts skills as "separate arts" but simply as components of a single fighting system. Games like Mythras or GURPS would be much better at mechanically emulating what you describe. Personally I would have liked if the Attack vs Parry/Dodge matrices would have given more options say on a special defense vs failed attack or critical defense vs normal attack instead of just damaging the attacking weapon. Something like an immediate riposte would have represented what you describe fairly well.

Good point. In a system like this, a major wound does not have to be ½ HP. It could also be ¼, 1/3, 1/5 depending on the location.

Not surprising for 6th century Britain. Granted Morien or Palomides could have been in the picture but I hope art direction will not fall into the trap of thinking that diversity and inclusion means that every pictures needs to include 50% female and 50% non-white* * Just to be clear, I want inclusion of female, moorish and black characters. I just don't want it to be dogmatic. To be honest, I like Andrei's art but from what we have seen so far, I am more put off by the bland, generic "medieval England" style chosen. Hopefully, diversity of style will all make it blend beautifully.

That is the GURPS and HERO way of managing hit locations. To be fair something similar can be achieved if the Major Wounds table would be segregated by hit locations. MW would still be triggered by half hit points but consequences would be calibrated by the MW table.

Not sure if this as been reported. Book 1 p. 29 Natural Healing: "As a location recovers lost hit points, the level of injury improves and the speed of healing increases." The bolded part is not in the core book and is incorrect. the speed of healing does not increase. The core book mentions instead "...and any penalties for being incapacitated are adjusted based on the new state" which is correct. I suggest to keep the original wording.

The way to represent this in RQ would be to use the Martial Arts skill.

Agreed, parrying is not only put your weapon in the trajectory of the the take the full impact which is probably why on a same-level-of-success-attack-versus-parry, only 1HP is inflicted to the weapon if damage is above weapon HP. When it comes to parrying a weapon with one of your body part, I can definitively see how it would be harder to acheive without getting hurt. In a sense, only you acheive a better level of success, you are really chosing where the blow will land. If you have better level of success, you are deflecting the blow, moving aside the weapon and side stepping the blow, stopping the limb, etc. Unless you are a trained martial artist (term used loosely here), what would happen in the real word is an unarmed combattant would try to avoid the blow altogether; dodge. Not only it could be seen as such but I am 99% the extra 6 pts of damage blocked is all about positioning and deflecting and not really about toughening up. You only get the benefit if you succeed at your martial art skill so it does represent a martial parry.

@Scottywas describing a fail attack (natural weapon) vs a successful parry (weapon). I believe an equivalent level of success will bear the results as per the matrix, Normal attack (natural weapon) vs normal parry (weapon) should be: Attacker rolls normal damage. Defender’s parrying weapon takes 1 HP damage if damage more than its current HP. Any excess damage goes to the affected hit location. Weapon parry will only be as damaging as an attack if the level of success is higher than the natural weapon attack level of success. It could be assumed that on a normal attack (weapon) versus normal parry (natural weapon), only 1 HP is inflicted on the arm if the damage is above the AP (natural or worn) of the location... but based on the martial arts note (Smoking Ruins p.140) it seems like all damage above AP is inflicted on parrying limb. Succeeding a martial parry (the roll is bellow both your parry % and martial arts %) deflects an additional 6 points of damage. In the end, I do not think it would break anything to use the matrix as is ("only 1 HP is inflicted on the arm if the damage is above the AP (natural or worn)")

Hmmm... good point... it does mean that parrying a natural weapon attack is akin to just making an extra attack with the benefit of stopping the NW's damage...

Yes, this is also my understanding.

Do you have an example of this? Most of the results on the table are "weapon takes N HP if damage is over current HP", where N is "1" or "damage in excess of HP" depending on results. As I understand for natural weapon attacks, it becomes "if damage is over current AP" and N is always "damage in excess of AP" When does it happen that a weapon takes 1 HP even if not over current HP?

¸Based on the last sentence on page 112 of the Keeper's guide, I believe this is the correct interpretation. You do not recalculate your Hard and Extreme results but on a very long range shot, you do not impale on an extreme success but on a critical (otherwise, every long range hit would be an impale).

Cthulhu by Gaslight has probably all you need (from page 25ish) but I am surprised the Hudson and Brand do not have the info. If you want a full book about equipment of the era, there is also The Gaslight Equipment Catalogue

Would the liberation of Pavis be the event where Lunar would really start paying attention to him? Is it the moment when they realized he was a threat? Probably. It makes sense that defending the cradle and then disappearing with Harrek for a few years probably did not put him very high on the list of imperial priorities. At the time the Empire was still on the up and up in the region anyway. That changed between 1622 and 1625, when the Empire had to deal with many disruptive events (Auroch Hill, the Old Earth Alliance, the Wolf Pirate fleet, the dragonrise, etc...) involving various factions or leaders (Broyan, Kallyr, Samastina, Harrek, Argrath, etc...) so it may not have been clear before the liberation of Pavis that he was a real threat. This would be a real possibility. All of this makes me realize, it's been too long since I read King of Sartar, I forgot most of it!

Personally I thought it would have been interesting to hear about when Argrath was the most vulnerable, how the Lunar could have taken advantage of said vulnerability, how it would have unfolded and if successful in removing him, what would have been potential consequences (Lunars win! is not the only possible outcome). "Argrath is hard-wired to the setting!" is by far the least interesting, most defensive, least creative answer possible. I was not aware Your Glorantha Will Vary had been cancelled (I am sure it hasn't). Sure Argrath and his deeds are important to the setting but talking about where it could have gone wrong makes the character, and his exploits, more interesting, not less. Argrath is a polarizing figure both in Glorantha and on these forums it would seem.

Sorry, I missed that part of the question. As Phil said, I do not think it would be difficult at all to jump from the starter set to the core book. Aside from the lack of character creation (but you can get a quick character creation from the wiki. In fact, so quick and summarized that it would have been nice to have it in the SS), the SS covers a surprinsgly broad ground. There are a few rule changes that are a bit baffling (see other thread) but it is generally consistent with the core rulebook. For published scenarios, I cannot think of anything else then maybe some spells not in the SS but that are all described in the Red Book of Magic.

There are some difference but it's not always clear if it was intended or accidental.

The piece above is one of my favorite for R:W&E!

This is an alternative. The reference, would need to be about an urban center/culture with potentially a criminal or possibly gladiatorial connotations.

Yes, I know, and I was not blaming you. I was replying to Phil to give him an alternative.

"Américain" in this context really means "american" so yeah, doesn't quite make sense in Glorantha. how about a more generic "jointures de métal"?

Very interesting. Reading the table of content gives me the feeling this book will read less like a catalogue of gear and more like a glimpse in the lives of gloranthan (which is a good thing)