soltakss

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

Of course, the accomplished trickster will use the Lie spell openly to spread truths, especially uncomfortable truths. It will cause those opposed Lhankor Mhy lawspeakers and Humakti oath guardians to tear their beards and bend their swords trying to disprove what the trickster said.

We used Lie to tell the truth on a number of occasions. We mainly used it to convince disbelievers that something happened the way we knew it happened. 

The Trolls in our RQ2 campaign used to play Duck Golf. You take a Duck, a Troll and a Troll Maul to the top of a hill and see how far the Duck flies ...

Thanks Phil.

Is the Gods and Goddesses book out yet? I haven't seen the announcements.

1 hour ago, Bill the barbarian said:

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

You can always wrap a Spoiler tag around the answer.

 

soltakss you old nerd, how exactly does one achieve such a result?

 

It's magic, innit?

[spoiler]This is a spoileroo[/spoiler]

6 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Don't get me wrong, I am not sure I should give away plot points that big in a specific way. Discussing i a general way... that intro module for very new comers... surprise there are no large magic items or imo most modules do have big shiny magic.. Naming a module, telling exactly what and where and when with a bit of how... I get a bit queasy at this point and I don't exactly mean my stated aversion to spoilers. It seems wrong. Is it just me? Again, not a flame just a valid question.

You can always wrap a Spoiler tag around the answer.

If you pick up things despoiled by Broo then you can be exposed to a disease.

Mallia used to have Cause Disease as a runespell, not sure if it still does.

In our gaming group we have PA-vis (rhymes with pa as int pat), PAY-vis and PAH-vis (rhymes with far or car).

On 5/20/2019 at 11:22 PM, Rojo said:

In the beginning, I visualized Vingans as men inside women jackets, but after I tried to learn more about them (damn my players) my vision is changing. At the moment, and knowing that Vingan is a gender, I´m having a few problems:

Vingans are female adventurers, or Adventuresses, they worship a female version of Orlanth Adventurous.

In my game, they aren't men-as-women or women-as-men. They are women who Adventure.

Now, you might say "Ah, but in Orlanthi society, women stay at home and men adventure", to which I'd say "Phooey!". 

On 5/20/2019 at 11:22 PM, Rojo said:

- I´m supposing that a Vingan can marry both men (Nandan or not) and women (Vingan too?) alike. Not having found anything canon about that (in my limited knowledge of the setting), I´m not totally sure.

Sure, Vingans are women and can marry whoever women can marry.

You could say Vingans are men, as they follow Orlanth through Vinga, in which case, sure, why not, Vingans can marry women.

On 5/20/2019 at 11:22 PM, Rojo said:

- What kind of Ortlanthi marriage would they use? I don´t see Vingans subordinating themselves to men, for example. Any canon response about that?

Orlanth Marries Ernalda is the model of most Orlanthi marriages, but there are others.

Vingans are women, even though they haven't gone down the Ernaldan route, so they can still use the Orlanth/Ernaldan marriage.

You could have a Vingan marrying a Nandan, I suppose, but that would also use Orlanth and Ernalda.

On 5/20/2019 at 11:22 PM, Rojo said:

- Are Vingans able to get pregnant? I´m inclined to think that they can, as they aren´t men but a different gender. 

Sure they can.

If Humakti can get pregnant, with their strong Death rune ties, then Vingans can. There was a Humakti PC in the Temple of the Wooden Sword who gave birth during a battle.

Vingans are women, so, unless they are infertile, they can get pregnant.

On 5/20/2019 at 11:22 PM, Rojo said:

Dedicating themselves to childcare is a different matter (that´s women or Nandan stuff).

Not necessarily. If they have a boy, they could raise him as an Adventurer, if they have a girl they could raise her as a Vingan Adventuress. 

On 5/20/2019 at 11:22 PM, Rojo said:

- My final question: any idea if Vinga would be included in the new Gods of Glorantha, or Vingans in general in another book? It would be really useful to have a better (and canon) idea about them.

I think it is there as a subcult of Orlanth Adventurous, rather than a cult on its own.

On 5/20/2019 at 11:22 PM, Rojo said:

My players and me are new to the "true Glorantha", and we have a lot of questions (and I have two Vingans to be players).

Don't bother about True Glorantha. 

Whatever makes sense in your games makes Glorantha True.

On 5/22/2019 at 4:11 AM, Nebuchadnezzar said:

HQG is a storytelling game with a loose, fairly vague ruleset to encourage player and GM creativity.  Players who min/max to try to exploit the letter of that ruleset deserve to be stymied at every turn, IMO.

Exactly.

HeroQuest isn't about the rules, or shouldn't be.

On 5/22/2019 at 6:07 AM, Shiningbrow said:

Only -5% for wearing sunnies in the dark??? I think you missed the 0 on the end of that number there!

Trolls aren't really affected, as they use Darksense rather than vision, or rather they have both.

On 5/20/2019 at 10:59 AM, Cloud64 said:

On 5/20/2019 at 10:57 AM, PhilHibbs said:

Don't worry about me, I've been around a while and should have seen that slug coming! Jeff knows I don't need the kid gloves.

OK, I figured that may be the case. Still, to newcomers it doesn't look good.

He's old and gnarly, like a mature Aldryami, so he'll be OK. 🙂

On 5/21/2019 at 3:32 PM, 7Tigers said:

Hum, is it really reasonable to want to attack a Dream Dragon, most of all with beginning characters?

Yes.

You might win, you might lose, you might end up as dragon-lunch or run away screaming, but why not try?

Encountering a Dream Dragon isn't always about combat, but sometimes it is. If you think it's too big and powerful to fight directly, you think of inventive ways to kill it. Hiding in a put and gutting it, wearing spike armour that impales it as it constricts you, feeding it poisoned sheep, jumping on its back and stabbing it in the head, wearing special armour and letting it swallow you then tearing your way out from its gut, there are many ways to kill a dragon.

19 hours ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

I agree 1000% because of one thing in Glorantha that terrifies me above all others... ACID!

In our RQ2/RQ3 campaigns, we had GMs who threw acid around like confetti, ruining out nice iron armour. We loved it when the throw, spit or projectile vomit scored a critical as it missed the armour completely! Result!

On 5/20/2019 at 7:03 PM, PhilHibbs said:

Yes, good fun, but I do think it can be taken too far. Like Soltakss's story about the halberd-wielding pixies (high DEX compensates for low STR), just because it's possible in RuneQuest doesn't mean that it should happen in Glorantha!

Yes, but, but, but, it happened in Glorantha!🙂

On 5/22/2019 at 4:15 PM, Bohemond said:

So how do Animists use their non-Spirit Runes? What am I missing?

There is nothing stopping you from putting charms, magical abilities and so on as Breakouts of the other runes.

So, if I played an Animist and had the Water Rune, then I might have Water 10M (Breathe Water, River Eye, Frog Woman Leap, Head Waters Jump) with the various water abilities as Breakouts. These are different to charms in the normal sense, but are definitely water-based spells.

I really don't have any time at all for HeroQuest's insistence that Animists only use the Spirit Rune or whatever. I have a Keyword, I can put Breakouts onto the Keyword, that is how it works in my Glorantha/HeroQuest.

I play you can catch diseases mundanely. However, the effect is that a disease spirit grows within you.

Cure (Disease) and Cure All Disease used to be Runespells and should come back.

RQ2 had Treat Disease, which could stop a disease.

Helaoing Spirits should be able to drive out the Disease Spirit and heal the character.

Well, looky here.

If you download the images, put them in a Google Document, download as a PDF, upload the PDF to My Drive, open the PDF in Google Docs, Select All and Copy into a Text Editor, you get all the text. It is lousily formatted and jumbled up, but is all there.

Amazing what you can do with modern technology.

6 hours ago, soltakss said:

Coming from England, people pronounce all kinds of words differently, even if you move 10 miles/15 kilometres away, so I've never really bothered with "how" something might sound.

There you go - Three people and three different pronunciations. I rest my case, M'Lud.

3 hours ago, jajagappa said:

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

or the three challenges of Yelm (Basko, Molandro, Jokbazi) and made our heads smoke for years.

And still have not been fully captured in the larger sets of myths

Even though the Red Emperor was clearly doing a Solar HeroQuest as Basko when he ambushed Sheng Seleris' nephews on the Ten Tests, or however many there were at the time.

3 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

What!? And there I thought your started with RQ3 and that it was your first love 😉

Nope started in RQ2 with Gringle's pawnshop and then bought the RQ2 rules box set the weekend afterwards. I kept asking the GM whether we had finished a campaign, so that I could go and buy the campaign set.

I prefer RQ3 to RQ2, as it has better rules, in my opinion, although RQ2 was far more atmospheric. RQG is better than both, anyway.

42 minutes ago, Smokebadger said:

With Scale

Thanks!

As Joerg says, Narrators can impose penalties, if they wish, for using keywords that are not appropriate.

So, for example. if I have Warrior as a keyword, then I could just use that when fighting with a Sword without a penalty. However, I could be trying to jump across a ditch and could claim that Warriors are trained to jump across ditches, so I should be able to use it without a penalty. If I wanted to row a boat across a lake, then claiming that Warriors can row boats is a bit of a stretch, but I might have an Upland Marsh breakout of my Homeland Keyword, so could argue for that instead.

Part of the joy of HeroQuest is bargaining with the Narrator as to which skills you can use in inventive ways. Sometimes the Narrator will agree, sometimes they will need persuading, sometimes they will assign a penalty and sometimes they'll say no. 

3 hours ago, Richard S. said:

I didn't even know there was a companion! Someday I'm gonna have to buckle down and buy all this old stuff just to see what all I've missed.

I thought it was the best RQ2 supplement. Very evocative, loads of scenario hooks, a full writeup for Unicorns and much more.

6 hours ago, Silentium said:

So, I´m a curious and eager fan of HQ 2, and by chance I found this on google. 

Oh, you are a very naughty and beautiful person! Thanks for finding these.

I wonder how long it will be before they are taken down. Time to save them locally, I think. By the way, it doesn't look as though you can save the individual images, but if you save the whole page as a Complete Web File, then open up the web page, you can copy the links into a browser and save off the individual images.

7 hours ago, Silentium said:

I am really happy of what I read. It´s looking neat guys! =D

Me too. It does look good.

3 hours ago, Richard S. said:

Well that's cool. It looks great so far, I can't wait to see the finished product! (but I'm probably gonna have to wait a bit more)

Well, if Silentium can complete another HeroQuest, we might be able to see more pages.

1 hour ago, lordabdul said:

I don't know if there was ever a push to differentiate Orlanthi from Vikings and Lunars from Romans and all that, but I think it's useful to draw parallels to establish baselines. For me, "bronze age" evokes tribal and shamanistic societies as opposed to feudal ones, it evokes distinct aesthetics in art and architecture, wooden palisades and cruder stone walls in some places, primal forces of nature and weird local cults as opposed to territorial and well organized monotheist religions, etc. It's a whole different flavour of "fantasy" and at the point where you're still pitching the game to people, I think it's important to communicate how the world will be like in as few words as possible.

For me, Glorantha is about the Religions, the people and the History/Monomyth.

I have never really bought in to the "Orlanthi are Vikings" model, as I started when Orlanthi were just normal people who worshipped Orlanth and his mates. The Storm Stead/Storm Tribe ideas appeared in Hero Wars and, while very evocative, they still don't really gel for me. Sure, I get the Clan/Tribe relationship and the importance of weregeld, honour and so on and it all fits. I see Orlanthi as Heroic Age people, similar to Vikings/Celts/Angles/Saxons/Homeric Greeks, with Mead Halls, Chieftains, Warriors and so on.

Where things get interesting is in the other cultures, such as Praxians. I really like the Praxian Culture and how they are described. Pavis is interesting, as it is a mixture of cultures, all trying to get on and never quite succeeding. Troll culture is fascinating. Even Mostali and Aldryami have interesting cultures. Balazarings were touched on, but not really well described, which is a shame. I'd love to see a proper rendition of Pentian/Grazelander culture, as that should be as interesting as the Praxians. Even the Lunar/Dara Happan cultures are interesting, especially where they diverge and what they have in common.

The powerhouse of Glorantha is, however, the cults. If you have a cult, you can see what the people who normally worship the cult are like. You see how they live, what they believe, how they act, who they generally like/dislike, what they do and don't do. It really shapes people in ways that their culture doesn't. 

2 hours ago, lordabdul said:

I think the main downside for me is that Glorantha has so much detail that some things might feel hard to change. I know that I'll get hammered with endless "YGWV", and I have to applaud the way the original authors seem to embrace variation in the fan community, but I'm very hesitant to run a game where Kally Starbrow doesn't get killed and is the one that effectively pushes the Lunars back, or one where Lunars regain their foothold over Dragon Pass by killing Argrath early in his career, or some other big change like that. Glorantha's strength is that PCs can be part of very heroic, high stakes events, but you gotta think twice about giving the players agency over the course of those events... if only because it's unclear how many future sourcebooks will actually rely on a specific timeline or not. So "you can affect the history of entire nations" may or may not be a 3rd selling point -- I'm not sure yet.

Take it from me - It is easy!

The "official" timeline is just a guideline as to what might happen in the future. If your PCs make changes, then all you need to do as a GM is to decide what effects those changes have. It's the same as with a scenario. If you have a scenario which says "The PCs meet Fred the Blacksmith" and then, at a later point in the scenario, "Fred brings the PCs a piece of Sky Metal that fell to the earth", but when the PCs met Fred there was a disagreement and they really annoyed him or killed him, then the GM either finds a way for someone else to bring them the Sky Metal, tell them that Fred had some Sky metal or find it themselves. It's the same with the Timeline. If the PCs really annoy Kallyr or Garrath Sharpsword, they become their enemies, which affects how they interact with the Hero Wars. If they kill a key NPC then they might take on that key NPC's role or the key NPC's actions might never happen or might be done by someone else. If your PCs are adventuring in a different place, then the Hero Wars events might happen in the background or might move to where the PCs are.

I have generally taken official scenarios and adapted them. Sometimes, I run them as they are, sometimes I run bits of them, but in a different order, sometimes I run a bit of one, a bit of another and so on. The scenarios should fit the campaign, although sometimes it is fun to run a campaign around a set of interconnected scenarios.

In one of my campaigns, the PCs killed Argrath, as he was seen as a potential rival by one of the PCs, which meant they had to kill Harrek, as he was mates with Argrath. They ended up becoming friends with the Red Emperor and the King of Balazar became an adopted son of the Red Emperor. In our most recent campaign, the River Voices brought back the Sky Ship, brought back a whole host of gods and goddesses, caused the Dragonrise, purged the Crimson bat of Chaos, killed Ralzakark, incarnated Arkat, freed Prax, Sartar, the Holy Country from the Lunars, became Queen of Prax and Mello Yello became both King of Dragon Pass and the Golden Dragon Emperor of Dara Happa. None of those followed the canonical timeline, but it worked because it was in the context of the campaigns.

So, don;t be afraid to change things. Let the PCs do something stupid or something that might change things in the future. It makes for a far more interesting campaign and the Players feel empowered, that they can make a difference.