soltakss

I think that Gloranthan Plateaus are pretty much the high mesas, tabletop mountains and so on, but on a bigger scale.

9 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

It's like they are table mountains on steroids

Exactly.

16 minutes ago, The God Learner said:

What a pity, and what a coincidence. Apart from his movies he also wrote a number of books on Hollywood that I thoroughly enjoyed. 

Looking at his Wikipedia Page, he wrote an awful lot of good stuff, outside of his films. Anyone who could write the book and screenplay for both Marathon Man and Princess Bride deserves a lot of praise.

1 hour ago, jeffjerwin said:

Sartar turned some people into termites, so they must exist also.

Forgot that one, yes, obvious now.

1 minute ago, Joerg said:

The Puppeteers and the EWF have the temporary reality of on one hand the Illusions and on the other hand the dragon dream in common. Why that made them immune from the Inhuman Occupation curse isn't quite clear.

Because they weren't really there, or they were. 

There are rats and mice, because Orlanthi use Shadowcats to keep grain stores free of them.

Trolls have giant ants and cockroaches, so there could well be smaller versions.

Gophers exist in Pent, the Gord'Un are Gopher Hsunchen.

Weevils were associated with the navy, but Gloranthan navies are not very well formed. perhaps they are waiting for more ships to take to the waters.

I can't think of any evidence for moles, but why not? I can see a PC on a chair with a crossbow, Jasper Carrott-style, waiting for a mole to appear one night.

RQ3 had Insect Swarms, so presumably RQG has the same. I haven't checked the Bestiary in detail yet.

10 hours ago, thomas5251212 said:

Still keep trying to decide if this would be useful for my Fantasy Britain campaign; its up in the Carvetti area, so I can't make up my mind...

Yes, I think it would.

Although the Carvetti are on the other side of the country, they might want to travel into the Great mire for some reason.

The scenarios tend to me Angles vs Britons, but there's no reason you can't substitute another type of Briton for Angles, they would work just as well.

3 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Ow! The possibilities of that much POW plus enchantment is staggering. Especially if he has time to prepare. Enough multi-missiles to make a bow seem like a shotgun.

With Multispell III, he was quite effective.

I had several thoughts about dryads in the week.

Fun Fact - Dryads can command all the creatures born in their groves. In my games, Aldryani brought dinosaur eggs, that were close to hatching, to dryad groves, so they would hatch in the grove, similarly they provide safe havens for she-bears, she-wolves, she-boars and so on, to provide guardians for the groves.

Although an Elf can mate with a dryad, the dryad's physical form is almost an illusion, so the Elves are born from the dryad's tree. So, Elves are found under the Gooseberry Bush, or in the roots of the dryad's tree.

An Elf born in a dryad's grove can be commanded by the dryad, which has interesting ramifications.

It would be great to see them, if only as PDFs.

Although by no means canon, they were enjoyable, fast-paced, with lots of background, scenarios and ideas.

I live on the Birmingham Plateau, but it doesn't look like any of those. 

Quite a lot of real world plateaus are just flat bits of high ground, with varying degrees of slope down to the low ground nearby.

I imagine the Plateaus of Glorantha to be similar to the plateaus in the US deserts, but higher and larger. Sheer sided cliffs, broken terrain on top and so on.

3 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

I remember those! I miss all those wonky crystals. I hope they make a comeback in some way, maybe with a limit on them to keep them from being too powerful, now that the cap is off of Spirit Magic. 

Soltak Stormspear had a 9 point Power Enhancing Crystal (Started off as a 6 pointer but gained an extra 1D3 on a HeroQuest) and a flawed 6 point Healing Focusing Crystal that added +1d4 Healing, but that extra cost double MPs. He found an piece of Jewellery once that was valued in the hundreds of thousands, so used it to buy a number of 9 point spells. He had something like 600 points of POW Crystals, so he could vast spells until the cows came home.

On 11/13/2018 at 7:52 PM, JamesT said:

The Problem im having at the moment is that my PC is a new character in group that was previously five (Now six) experienced call of Cthulhu players (Of which I am not). The main issue is that I’m still a deer in the headlights in the sense that my character gets a lot of sanity checks whenever anything remotely interesting happens while the other characters can just brush it off ,  i’m starting to make my character come to terms with some things but obviously some things I can’t just glance aside. I have no idea what the best way to further evolve said Character is.

Advice?

Wait until the PC goes mad or dies and then roll up another PC.

I have only had one PC survive a scenario in Call of Cthulhu, and he was Withered so could not use one arm and one leg.

For me, Call of Cthulhu is a game of one-shots, not a campaign game, where you have the same PC for ten or one hundred scenarios.

Obviously, other people's experience of Cal of Cthulhu will vary.

Heal is a spell that must be bought and gained in increments. Heal 4 costs more than Heal 3, for example.

Heal Wound can be bought once and used as often as you have points in your Rune Pool and Magic Points.

You don't have to be an initiate in a cult to learn Heal, but you do to learn Heal Wound.

We played that Heal Wound went off at SR1, even with Magic Points stacked, but Heal costs SR to cast.

Heal Wound can heal very large wounds, but you need a large Heal to do the same.

In RQ2, there was a Powered Crystal that doubled Healing, so if you had a 4 point crystal it turned Heal 4 into Heal 8, however I am not sure if it worked with Heal Wound.

Certain Runespells provide all the Magic Points used to heal certain spells, for example Cure Chaos Wound. If cast with Heal Wound, this completely heals a wound, no matter how many points. If cast with Heal, it provides the Magic Points for just the Heal spell, so Heal 3 would heal 3 points but not cost any Magic Points.

Monster Man

Doburdan 😉

The various forms of Orlanth, written up as separate cults

The Thunder Brothers

All the Counters from Nomad Gods

The Sea Deities

More Chaos Deities

I think there are a variety of river boats.

There are some Newtlings, so they would use their reed boats. Ducks might use something similar, or might use wooden boats. Aldryami would use hollowed out logs, but beautifully worked. Trolls might use some craft from Skyfall Lake, down to where the waters fall into Snakepipe Hollow. 

Would humans use different types of boat? Maybe, but I would assume rowboats far upstream and then small sailing boats nearer the sea.

4 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I think knowledge about Gloranthan species  has reached the point where terms such as "elf" and "dwarf" probably confuse the issue more that they help. Over the years, as more are more info has come out, it becomes more and more obvious that the Elder Species have nothing in common with the typical FRPG humanoid species, or even their mythical antecedents.

Yes, but on the other hand, terms like Aldryami or Mostali just confuse the issue, as they relate to many different types of creature.

So, Aldryami include Sentient Trees, Dryads, Elves, Runners and Pixies, as well as things like Warriors of Wood. Mostali include Dwarves, Jolanti, Nilmergs as well as the True Mostali, from the various castes. Uz include Mistress Race Trolls, Dark Trolls, Great Trolls, Cave Trolls, Trollkin, Hot Trolls and so on.

If we are discussing particular races, using terms such as Aldryami or Uz is confusing. Better to use the term for each race.

My Hero Wars Cult Conversion List contains references to where the cults appeared. I don't know how complete it is, but I thought I had stripped everything from the sources listed.

The sources were:

• Barbarian Adventures:Sartar Rising
• HeroWars Roleplaying in Glorantha Rulebook
• Imperial Lunar Handbook 1 - The Lunar Empire
• Legacy of Pavis
• Tales of the Reaching Moon
• Thunder Rebels
• Storm Tribe - The Cults of Sartar
• In Wintertop's Shadow
• Imperial Lunar Handbook 2
• Blood Over Gold
• Men of the Sea
• Champions of the Reaching Moon
• Orlanth is Dead
• Barbarian Adventures
• Sons of Kargzant
• Gathering Thunder
• Masters of Luck and Death
• Thieves' Arm
• Wintertop Fair
• Tarsh in Flames

Moon Rites

Have a look at the below, from my website. If you include that with my Hero Wars Timeline, my Pavic Story Arc and my Pavis Story Arc with Griselda, add a lot of interlinking scenarios, then you have the basis of a Hero Wars Campaign.

The Super Campaign

For several years I ran a High Level campaign set in Glorantha, and before that I ran as part of a multiple GM game and thoroughly enjoyed both. However, I could not help feeling that the campaign had been inherited as it had been running for several years before I started playing/GMing. There were many things which had happened that I would perhaps had handled differently had I been the GM and I would certainly have moved the campaign towards a more Heroic campaign far sooner than I did, had I been in sole charge.

Since I started GMing in the mid-eighties, during the Golden Age of RuneQuest, I had access to the best of the Scenarios and Supplements. These, of course, ran out forcing us to create our own campaigns and settings. Then the Resurrection of RuneQuest occurred with new supplements and Packs appearing. This meant that some of our ideas had been superseded and somewhere wrong. However, I adapted the new material and continued regardless.

What would it have been like to start a new Campaign from scratch using the best of the RuneQuest supplements, knowing all that had gone before?

I started to think of what kind of Campaign I would run if I could start again with a fresh batch of players. It had to begin at low level and had to progress to high level. It would be Gloranthan and would use published sources. It would follow the Gloranthan timeline and would progress beyond the timeline. After much thought, I came up with my "Super Campaign" which sounds as though it would be good fun to run, to play and to detail. Unfortunately, it will never be run by me, but maybe someone else will give it a go.

The Start
The PCs are Light or Fire/Sky cultists from Pavis, probably Yelmalians but hopefully including a Yelornan, maybe a Yelm cultist, a Lodril cultist, maybe a follower of Polaris, son of a soldier, and perhaps even a nomad or two, worshipper of Sun Hawk or one of the Stars, probably from the Zebra, Ostrich or Pol Joni.

The campaign starts in Pavis, just before the Lunars invade the Holy Country. The PCs are associated with the Pavis Street Gangs and run with the Sun County factions, they may even make up a gang of their own. A Lunar Agent tries to take control of the gangs and gain some power in Pavis. The Agent persuades the PCs to liberate a Lunar Artefact from Duke Raus' quarters in Pavis. They are also taken to the Rubble to visit the Yelornan Temple there, possibly by the farther of one of the Yelmalians or maybe even by the Yelornan cultist if one is present. Whilst in the Rubble they will be attacked by Chaos and shown how weak they really are.

The Lunar Agent persuades the PCs to attack another gang, one highly connected, or persuades another gang to attack them. The PCs kill one of the gang members, who is linked to an important family in Pavis. As punishment, and to get them out of the way, the PCs are sent upcountry to serve as militia in the Sun County area.

The PCs join the Militia squad in Sun County, with Mello Yello, the Ballet dancing Yelmalian from the Garhound Contest and other assorted misfits. They run through the scenarios of Sun County, gaining in skill and prestige until they are seen as competent initiates. Finally, they perform the "Unbearable Lightness of Yelm" scenario which may, or may not, be their first HeroQuest. Having acquitted themselves well, they are released from their service and asked to deliver a message to a cult member in Corflu. On the way, they are drowned and are swept up in the Big Scenario from the River of Cradles pack. This means they advise the Sun Dome Templars, enter the Puzzle canal and fight Trolls when allied with a Sorcerer. At the end, of this HeroQuest, they are Friends of the River and are well-known through Prax.

Towards Fame
Duke Raus asks them to become mercenaries in his employ. Here they try the scenarios in the Borderlands pack. First they Scout the Land and, being Light cultists friendly to the River, they probably annoy the Morokanth. Then they rescue Jezra from the Tusk Riders. This is a good time for the Garhound Contest (unless it was performed as part of the Sun County episode). When they encounter the Five Eyes Temple they will probably act friendly to the Newtlings and be badly punished for this. If one of the party is a Yelornan who qualifies for Unicorn Rider status, this is a good time to Quest for a Unicorn. Also, they could look at the Thanatar Temple in the Wilds and maybe could even meet the Coders - how would Duke Raus react to a bunch of Lunar Agents on his lands? After the Duke's wife dies, the PCs can try the Muriah's Revenge Scenario. Having climbed Condor Crags they are asked to take the Condor Eggs to Giant Land to be passed to the King of Dykene. At this stage they should be nearing Rune Level, certainly they should have a few Acolytes amongst them. They could well have performed a number of HeroQuests, maybe against Muriah and the Thanatari and would be famous throughout Prax and Pavis.

At Gonn Orta's Castle, they would be met by the King of Dykene's man and would be persuaded to join him as mercenaries. As Duke Raus has released them from his service, they should try this as steady employment is always a good thing, especially as they would be taken on as officers and elite.

Now, things become interesting. The King of Dykene wishes to expand his territory at the expense of the Kings of Trilius and Elkoi, the Elves and Trolls of the Elder Wilds and even the Hunters of Balazar. However, Dykene could be overthrown by an experienced band of adventurers, especially Fire/Sky cultists of a Heroic bent. Will the PCs free Firshala and HeroQuest to spread her cult? Will they drive Yalaring Monsterslayer from Trilius? Will they help the Elven Yelmalians? Are they politically astute enough to cope with the Lunars of Trilius? Is it possible to complete Balazar's Quest and become King of Balazar? What about the Pentian threat as they attack the Empire? Could the PCs even cross the mountain and attack trolls or find treasures in Snake Pipe Hollow? What about using their Water Connections to sail the Black Barge through the Hollow into the Rainbow Mounds and maybe into The Upland Marsh and link in to the Duck Pond? They could even help Gonn Orta and become Giant Friends, maybe even being able to rebuild Dykene.

At some point, Zola Fel asks her friends for help in guarding a Giant Cradle. Gonn Orta's daughter must be helped pass down the River into the Ocean. Will the PCs help her and if so, would they be able to cope with fighting the Lunars, the Coders and their own friends the Sun Domers? What would they do afterwards with their treasure?

What Next
Where to now? They may be enemies of the Lunars and have to become outlaws. They may be able to shelter under Dykene's Wing or may have their own kingdom by this stage. They could perform the Hill of gold Quest and complete Balazar's Quest, proving their rulership over Balazar. What about their friends in Pavis and Sun County? Will they be drawn back to the Big Rubble or even exiled to the backwoods of Dorastor? Whatever happens, they have exhausted the published scenarios and will have to make their own way in the world.

Here, the campaign really starts and moves towards Herodom.

If only I could run it!

14 hours ago, drablak said:

I'm new to RuneQuest and to Glorantha. I looking to run a campaign of RQG.

You don't say what gamed you have played previously, but there is sometimes a shift in how you run things when playing and GMing RuneQuest.

Combat can be lethal, just because it's RuneQuest. There are ways around this. Some people prefer minimal combat, in fact my last Gloranthan campaign had little in the way of combat. If your players prefer going into combat then make Healing available - Let them have Healing magic, have a Chalana Arroy Temple nearby for the PCs to be healed, use Healing Potions, allow Resurrection for PCs who have died. Let the Players learn tactics and use them, although this takes time. Use "stupid" NPCs who don't always over-optimise everything, let NPCs use poor tactics, forget about all their abilities and so on, not everything needs to be a Total Party Kill.

PCs will use Experience Rolls to quickly increase skills. As it is in RQG, you are likely to get a party that is skilled in the same sort of things, especially if they all try the same skills in each scenario. I use Experience Points, rather than Experience Ticks, so I give out a number of XPs at the end of a scenario and the players can spend them on gaining experience for a fixed number of skills, this gets them to specialise and only increase the skills they care about.  Some people don't have this as a problem and, really, it only manifests when you have been playing for a long time.

Introduce things slowly. Don't read five chapters of background to the players at the start of the campaign. Maybe, introduce one Non-Human race, cult or type of people per scenario, unless an NPC crosses multiple categories. So, you could introduce Bison Riders or Lunars in one scenario, Yelmalians in another and an Elf Yelornan Unicorn Rider in a third. Introducing too many things at one tends to swamp players with information.

Use Cheat Sheets - RQG has a lot of tables, so put some of the tables onto sheets for the Players to use. The GM Screen is good for this kind of thing. Put the tables that you will need to use in one place, to save leafing through the rulebook. Use lookups where possible, rather than calculations. While I can do Special and Critical calculations in my head at a game, some of my Players can't, so it makes things easy for them. Don't bother working out Specials or Criticals before you roll - If you have a skill of 80% and roll 70, you know it isn't going to be a Special or Critical, so what's the point of working it out?

If you have Magical Items in your campaign, then be aware that PCs will accumulate them very quickly. If you have a 20 scenario campaign and each scenario give out 1 Magic Item, then a party of 5 will have 4 Magic Items each. I don't mind that, as I like having loads of Magic Items, but some people have a problem with it.

Allow things to get gross and stupid. If you have a spell that doubles damage and an ability that doubles damage, then allow them to stack to quadruple damage. So, if the PCs are fighting a troll and have an Iron sword, then that doubles damage, if they cast Truesword, that also doubles damage, if they have a Gift of "Double Penetrating Damage against Trolls" then that could double the eventual damage. So, a 1D8+1+1D4 sword with Bladesharp and Truesword could eventually do 28 points of damage, if you double penetrating damage as well, hitting something with 10 armour points could do 36 points of damage. Players love that kind of thing. I love that kind of thing, it's cool.

14 hours ago, drablak said:

I have the core book (physical and PDF) and the PDF of the bestiary, the GM's Screen pack and the Sourcebook (with Defending Apple Lane, Cattle Raid, and The Dragon of Thunder Hill), as well as the Quickstart PDF (with the Broken Tower) and Snake Pipe Hollow, To Kill a Monster, and Return to Griffin Mountain.

Welcome aboard. It looks as though you have a good plan for your campaign already.

14 hours ago, drablak said:

I like to start with modules so I get a feeling for the rules set and the setting, then I usually prefer running things of my own creation (although I'm more than happy to run modules if they're available and fit my players' tastes).

That makes sense. I normally run about a third of a campaign from modules, a third from scenarios that I have written and a third from things the PCs want to do. As you run out of modules, you will run your own stuff, out of necessity, assuming you are running a long campaign.

14 hours ago, drablak said:

So, I'm looking for any advice you can have, both in terms of what adventures to run and anything that can help running the game. In terms of adventures, there are many options made specially for RQG, but I'm guessing it's not too hard to adapt older material to the new system (with the advice at the end of the core rulebook).

Right now I'm thinking of running Broken Tower as the playtest, then start with Defending Apple Lane and run these three adventures as a starting point for the campaign.

I don't know much about the RQG Scenarios, to be honest, as I haven't looked into them. 

From what I have heard at Conventions, there should be a number of interlinked modules that would work as a campaign.

Scenarios from earlier editions of RQ should work with RQG, RQ2 works best, then RQ3, RQ4-6 would require more adapting as they use different mechanics for things like Strike Ranks.

However, many of the older scenarios don't fit with RQG, simply because the dynamic has changed. Pavis & Big Rubble and Borderlands, for example, have Lunars as a big part of the campaigns, but Lunars have been kicked out of Pavis and Prax in RQG. You could always start the campaign a few years earlier and do the Big Campaign, I suppose.

Orlanth Amourous, now there's a thought ...

1 hour ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

What about all the relatively nameless air elementals around? Speaking of which, how does theism explain elementals in general?

They descend from Kolat, in the same way that Darkness Elementals descend from Dehor or Subere.

1 hour ago, styopa said:

For me, Glorantha is about building a realistic high-fantasy world.  It's one reason I discourage new players from "I want to play an elf!" or "...dwarf"...or "...dragonewt".  I think that Glorantha - in strong opposition to D&D and pretty much every fantasy MMO - elder races are fundamentally alien in their their psychologies.  The (to me) hand-waving rationalizations about rootless elves or openhandist dwarves is just that: rationalizations to make them playable by people.  While I keep them, I don't think most new players would comprehend they they are, to their kind, literally insane.  Dangerously so, to some.

For me, Trolls, Elves, Mermen, Ducks, Baboons,  and, perhaps, Clay Mostali, are all descended from Grandfather Mortal and all share many characteristics. So, they are not alien, as they have a common "Humanity".

Living Trees, Dryads, Dragonewts,  Dehori, Jolanti, Unicorns, Minotaurs, many Nymphs and so on are not descended from Grandfather Mortal, so are alien in nature.

So, for example, I could not even begin to understand how an Alrdyami Great Tree thinks. It is stationary, lives for millennia, is connected to the entire Great Forest, reproduces in an alien way and so on. 

Elves, on the other hand, are much easier for me to understand. 

Some types of Elf do not have females and reproduce with Dryads. Others have females and reproduce through mating as normal, but produce a seed. I don't see why they would be any less attached to their offspring than, say, a creature that lays eggs. Once the seed germinates or the egg hatches, the offspring can be cared for and raised like many other creatures. Maybe Elves are raised by the Great Forest, due to their connection with it, that makes some sense, so perhaps they have a more communal upbringing.

26 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

LOL! What did  your RQ3 players do? Taken off thier armor and put up Protection?  Armor was much more expensive in RQ3.

Cast Shield 10 and bathe in acid.

On 11/4/2018 at 9:13 PM, Sir_Godspeed said:

Not sure how relevant, but most waves in RW are made from surface winds, so there is a very literal interaction between air and water.

Makes we think of how Heimdall had "nine winnow mothers". Maybe there's some wave-nymphs who are either Orlanth's lovers or daughters?

Very relevant. Orlanth Aquarius is one of the ways that waves are made. 

There are a lot of nymphs who were Orlanth's lovers and daughters. Wave-nymphs are just one kind. Orlanth got around and shared his love.

On 11/7/2018 at 6:19 PM, Jeff said:

But in my Glorantha (which is what future publications will reflect), there is unlikely to be any mention of Doburdan post First Age.

That is a shame, as he is one of my favourite deities. He blusters, makes a lot of noise but is basically a bit useless. He might have a big club and can fly with it, Captain Caveman-style, but he became a Husband-Protector or Ernalda and then gave her up when Orlanth returned. He's a bit of a loser, really.