soltakss

You should have a lot of fun, HeroQuest is a fast moving, fun game that is easy to pick up and learn.

My main piece of advice is "Ignore what is in the rules". Just stick to the very basics and you should be fine. Anything else can be added if you feel like it, or ignored.

Stick to simple skills and breakouts, so Clan Ring 20 (Chalana Arroy +1, Preserve Harmony +1), Clan Rung 2M (Eurmal +2, Defend the Clan +1, Cause Trouble +1) and so on.

Make rolls count, so use automatic augments, rather than rolling them.

I have added both the Gargas Gang and Xaragang maps and linked them to the original web pages. Let me know if they need rotating or moving. I think the scale is about right, but scale in the Big Rubble is tricky.

I always liked combining Second Mouth and Swallow ...

Sureshot means you "Always" hit, even when aiming, so yes, I'd say that is how it works. As has been pointed out, with bad weather and poor visibility, your chance to hit might be reduced to virtually nothing, but Sureshot means you hit on 01-95. 

On 12/4/2018 at 8:23 PM, Tywyll said:

One of Humakt's Gifts allows a weapon to do double damage.

True Sword allows a weapon to do double damage.

Do these things stack?

In my games, yes they stack. Other people don't allow them to stack.

Iron also does double penetrating damage to Trolls and Aldryami, so an iron sword with Truesword and double damage doubles, doubles again, subtracts armour and doubles again. Happy days.

On 12/4/2018 at 5:22 PM, Tywyll said:

So out of curiosity, what flavor of RQ where you playing? How did you handle such high powered characters?

RQ3ish, so RQ3 with a lot borrowed from other systems and a lot of houserules.

To be honest, these weren't that high-powered, their highest skill was around 120%. However, the magical adds for Runes meant they got high skills.

How did I handle them? Like HeroQuest does, so their main powers came from HeroQuest abilities, skills and spells were, to a large extent, irrelevant. If they had a spell, then I used it more like an ability, or modifier to a power. It was free-flowing, fast and exciting, allowing the players to do a lot more with their PCs than the "Sunbright only covers 15m" restrictions on spells.

On 12/4/2018 at 4:06 PM, g33k said:

Necro'ing this to suggest (if y'all haven't already settled on something):  Odd Soot from our own Clarence Redd.

I've seen that, thanks, but not sure if our players want to try out SciFi just yet.

On 12/6/2018 at 12:37 AM, Bohemond said:

The rules say that the PC has to overcome a Plot Obstacle.

My advice about anything regarding HeroQuest - Ignore what the rules say.

Seriously, for me, the strength of HeroQuest is the really simple and elegant rules system, which can be put on pone page of A4. Anything else is surplus.

However, in this case, it makes sense to overcome something to become a Devotee. I wouldn't do it as a Plot Obstacle myself, but would have it a something that naturally comes out in a scenario, as a reward from a HeroQuest or as the result of a challenge that you have to overcome to become a Devotee.

In my Glorantha, Uz can be used as part of a name, so Mistress Race Trolls are often called Uz-Something, for example Uzarl, Uzkogag or Uzant. Clans have Uz as a suffix, so Sazdorfuz is the Uz Sazdorf Clan. The founder of the clan often uses Uz, so UzSazdorf is the Mistress Race Founder of the Sazdorf Clan.

Also, in my Grloantha, UzUz (Mistress Race Trolls) know a Sonar frequency that kills trollkin, yes, just kills them dead. They don't often use it, but when they do, they get closer to the frequency, as a warning, then kill the trollkin if they get angry, or hungry, or want to make a point. The trollkin just drops dead.

Thanks, will add them both at the weekend. I just need to copy the image, resize it, overlay on my master and trace over. Doesn't take long, apart from the resizing.

By the way, if anyone else has any locations in the Big Rubble, or special building in Pavis, then let me know and I'll add them to the maps.

6 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

No ones' told me. I've read the SRD, but what's so special about the skills & traits? 

For me, it's the best thing about Revolution D100.

You have a reduced set of skills, off the top of my head there are about 12 skills.

For each skill you can have Traits, which are specialisations, or things you can do better. So, you might have Athletics as a skill but also have Climb, Jump and Swim as Traits. So, two PCs could have Athletics 50%, but one could have Climb, Jump and Swim as Traits and the other could have Run, Throw and Brawn, so they have the same base skill but have very different skill sets. It becomes really useful with things like Sense Chaos, in other D100 games, Sense Chaos would either be a skill on its own, in which case it has to be increased separately, or it is a special ability, in Revolution it is just a Perception Trait.

Its real strength comes when using Revolution with different genres. You have the same base skill set, but you might want to add Science, perhaps, but you use different Traits. So a Space Marine might have Parachuting as an Athletics Trait, for example.

With Traits come Stunts, which are specialisations in the Trait. So, the Space Marine might have Parachuting as an Athletics Trait but have HALO (High Altitude Low Opening) and NOLO (Near Orbit Low Opening) as Stunts, allowing him/her to parachute down from very high altitudes without being spotted.

For me, they are extremely flexible, get around a lot of the problems I have had with D100 games, being a long-term player, and are very easy to use. I like large skill sets, so RQ2 was great for me, then RQ3 dropped Trap Set/Disarm in favour of Mechanisms, then MRQ dropped even more skills and Mythras/Legend dropped them further. I hated that, as it reduced the complexity and variety of a PC. Then I saw Revolution D100 and it hit the sweet spot, with a reduced set of skills but a large number of Traits, allowing me the flexibility of an RQ2 PC with the simplicity of "new" versions of D100. 

19 hours ago, metcalph said:

So Cwm is the demon described by the Composite History of Dragon Pass as having "two arms, and an extra one"?  That is almost Nysaloran...

It is also written up in Elder Secrets, for RQ3.

17 hours ago, olskool said:

...(Sighs)... looks like I have another reason to buy Revolution now

Has anyone told you about how Skills and Traits work? If you want Revolution because of the Advantage rules, then you are going to love the Skills and Traits. Well, I love those, anyway.

On 12/4/2018 at 4:56 PM, Tywyll said:

I assume that mechanic bottoms out at skills of 100%. What happens beyond that?

There is an optional rule that if you roll below the amount of skill above 100, it is an Advantage. So, if I have a skill if 120% and I roll 18, then that is an Advantage, as it is below 120-100=20.

I have an optional rule of a Double Advantage, where if the above rule is applied and the roll would naturally be an Advantage then you get 2 Advantages, so 10 is an Advantage as the tens digit is higher than the units digit and is an Advantage as 10 is below 20.

From a Narrative point of view, it affects what it affects.

If I want a rainstorm, there is no point it covering the size of a house, I want it to cover a larger area than that. 

My rule of thumb is that Bigger is Harder, so if you want to cover a bigger area, you have to overcome a bigger opposing roll. Now, the value of that roll depends on how you run your campaign and, to a certain extent, whether you run HQ1 or HQ2. But, if I have Flood 10M, for example, then I could flood a house near a river fairly easily, maybe with an Opposed Roll of 13, I could flood a nearby village with an Opposed Roll of 20, I could flood the fields between the house and village by opposing 10M and I could flood the whole area next to the river by rolling against 20M.

Arcane Lore is a mixture of very different rules sets, so is of limited use.

However, it also has a large number of HeroQuests and describes cults in HeroQuest (The act not the rules) format, which is useful.

Although it is of varied usefulness, I definitely think it is worth buying if you are interested in the theories behind HeroQuesting.

Very nice indeed.

Would you mind if I added the location to my map of the Big Rubble?

Revolution just says the highest roll wins. Since it doesn't rely on a low roll for an Advantage (Critical), you don't have the problem of aiming low but needing high.

3 hours ago, The God Learner said:

A pit ... with a great troll in it.

 

Make it a zombie great troll and he could be there forever, waiting for someone to fall in.

1 hour ago, Corvantir said:

There are no Action Points in HQ2G. Instead, the winning side of an exchange scores between 1 to 5 Resolution Points (RP) according to his success level (Marginal Success = 1RP, Complete Success = 5 RP). The first to total 5 RP against his opponent wins the contest. This is a bit like Stress Points in FATE.

The difference between the RP scored against the loser and the RP scored against the winner (Rising Action Conflict) or the total number of RP scored against a contestant during the conflict (Climactic Conflict) determines the consequences.

These are the basic principles of course and there are more details especially when it comes to Extended Group Contests. I think this is enough to catch the main difference between HQ1 though.

Now, that makes a lot of sense. It isn't far off the way I do it anyway, so that makes me feel a lot better.

Thanks for the summary, that is very helpful.

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

Ooh, I think I like that better than the RAW. So anything under one keyword can help to augment that keyword, assuming that it can logically apply the the situation. So a Warrior who has "archery" as a breakout skill could use it to augment his ability to shoot a bow, but he couldn't do the same with his "guard duty"  breakout?  

Pretty much, unless he shoots his bow while on guard duty, of course.

36 minutes ago, Psullie said:

soltakss, Pity missed meeting you, or perhaps I did, how was your day?

Very nice thanks. I don't think we met, unless your real name isn't PSullie, of course.

I ran a game, with 2 kids below 10, played a Cthulhu Hack game that I enjoyed, went to Greg's Seminar and did not have any time where I thought "Oh no, why am I here ...". Bit of a nightmare getting back, but booking a local hotel seems to be the way forward in future.

20 minutes ago, davidthegnome said:

I am in a group of people who run games at five or more conventions each year. We started with only D&D Adventurers League, but now we run Call of Cthulhu, Conan, Esper Genisis, Savage Worlds, Star Wars, and more. For 2019, we will be doing 8 cons. We will start running RuneQuest this coming year.

Good to hear.

Have you heard about Runemasters? We are a bunch of Gloranthan GMs who commit to running at least one Gloranthan game at a convention under the Runemasters brand. It's just to get more Gloranthan gaming at conventions. Send me a PM if you are interested in knowing more about this.

4 minutes ago, Crel said:

Ooh, I like that. That's super gross. Thanks!  Even just "throw some bugs in the tunnel, collapse our end, no more problems" works for my module.

If you like super gross, there are lots of things you can do with insects.

Some wasps bury their eggs in hosts, for the larvae to eat their way out, so you could have those in a trap, some even try to take control of their hosts.

Insect swarms are always good, the classic "Wasp Nest hanging on a rope that gets cut by a trap" is always good for a laugh, especially in a tight tunnel where you cannot just run away, a sliding door containing an ant swarm is a good one as well, as the PCs get covered in a blanket of biting ants. If you have ever watched I'm a Celebrity Get me Out of Here, you will have seen the various challenges involving bugs, just multiply those by a hundred and you get the idea of what trolls can do.

What I sometimes do is to check out insects on Wikipedia, or something, find out what they do and work out the game equivalent of the standard and giant-sized insects.

Aldryami do similar things with plants in the Garden. They are nowhere near as inventive or developed as the Poisonthorn or Hellwood Aldryami of Dorastor, but still have some cool stuff.

Dwarves are far more boring. They rely on pits, falling blocks of masonry, crossbow bolts fired out of walls and the occasional poison gas trap. One of our PCs was a Great Troll called Masher, he was in a dwarven complex when they set off a trap and a block of stone slid down to block their exit, Masher being Masher rushed forward and grabbed the bottom of this 20 tonne slab of rock, trying to hold it up, but all that happened was that it hoit the stone floor with a satisfying Splat, leaving Masher with two bloody stumps.

If you were at Dragonmeet yesterday, you might have had the chance to see Martin's book. It is a very nice piece of work. The layout is so clean, it makes everything look sharp. The illustrations are superb, the descriptions informative and the whole things feels as though it has been put together with care, rather than being a mishmash of various people's work put together. It is also a brick, a huge thick book, thicker than one of the Guides to Glorantha. The white cover really adds to the loom and feel, as that aesthetic carries through the whole book.

I was seriously impressed.

Shame I didn't get to meet Martin, maybe I will get the chance at another Convention.