soltakss

There was an article in Different Worlds that gave you a "Lawful feature" if you were born in Sacred Time, basically roll on the Chaos Feature Table, reroll any obvious mutations and that gives you a permanent Blessing. Now, obviously, that took the game mechanics of the time and used a version of those to give a random Blessing. We can probably do better than that. I think anyone born during Sacred Time has the chance of having a permanent ability. In Revolution d100, it would be easy, as you would just get an Innate Power, however, RQG does not have such a concept. Sample Abilities: Casting a specific Common/Spirit/Battle Magic spell without spending Magic Points (Can't remember the term that RQG uses) Never Tire Use of a specific skill is always one level of success better than rolled Special connection to a specific deity (Maybe automatic Rune Pool = POW) Roll on Chaos Feature Table, ignore obvious mutations, don't sense as Chaotic Gain a power of a specific animal (E.g. See in the Dark, Track by Scent, Speak to [Beast])

I think there is a difference between alien life and playable intelligent alien life. Sure, we can have all kinds of alien life, as the equivalent of animals or plants. Why not have something that is just a blob, with no sensory organs and moves by being picked up by another creature? It wouldn't lend itself to be playable. For me, having an intelligent playable alien means: Mobility - It has to be mobile Tool Use - It has to be able to use tools Sensory - It has to have senses that go beyond touch Communication - It has to be able to communicate with its peers

Ah, but that is Tolkein's waste paper bin, completely different to Greg's works in progress. 😉

He did try to curse the Dragonewts and successfully cursed the Trolls, just because they did not support him. That was definitely Nysalor and not Gbaji.

Maybe it is far too soon, but is there any chance at all of getting PDF copies of the unpublished stuff that Greg Stafford was working on? I know that it would take a lot of work to turn them into Stafford Encyclopedia-quality works, but just scanning them and making them available might be possible. After all, raiding JRR Tolkien's waste paper bin has kept his son in gainful employment for years.

I like the "do not copy" instruction on your copy!

Dodge is to doge an attack, a DEXx3 is a general balance roll. I would allow anything like Jump, Acrobatics or similar skills to work just as well. I think it has to be commanded by the caster and moves according to the caster's wishes. After all, this is not just a piece of darkness, it is a living shadow. Why Range Self? I could cast it on someone else 30 yards away. I think the way that these things work is that the Range is the furthest distance the spell can be cast, but then the spell just works. So, if I cast it on some 160m away, they could move another 100m and still be under the effect of the spell. You need the element available to summon the elemental. In RQ2, you just needed some of the elemental and could summon it anywhere. In RQ3, the element became the body of the elemental, so you summoned it into the element. As a GM, I would always ask for a POW vs POW roll if you cast a magical effect on someone, including summoning elementals. However, summoning a Shade a metre away from someone and then moving it to attack is just fine and doesn't need a POW vs POW roll. I would think that 2 points of Create Shadow is enough to summon a Shade.

Personally, I have never used the BRP Rules, as such, as my main rules. For years, I have based my game on a heavily-adapted RQ3. Now, I am basing it on an RQG-Revolution hybrid. Mythras or Legend are better options than BRP, for me, because of the way they handle combat. The BRP rules were, for me, an uneasy mix of Stormbringer, Call of Cthulhu and RQ3, with too many options. I know that some people used it, but it was not easy to write for or GM for.

Eternal GM, I am afraid.

Also, please treat the rules as guidelines rather than things that must be slavishly followed. In my games, Strike Ranks go something like this: GM: Ok, so we have had the Statement of Intent, lets get to combat. GM: Strike Rank One, Two, Three, Four Player 1: Oh, I'm on Strike Rank 3 ... GM: [Does the combat] GM: Strike rank Four, Five, the NPCs attack [Does the Combat] GM: Strike Rank Six, Seven. Eight Player 2: When does my Befuddle go off? GM: What's your DEX SR? Player 2: What's that? GM: It's on your character sheet and you've been playing RQ for 20 years Player 2: Oh, right, it's 3 GM: Then your spell goes off on SR 4 Player 2: OK, I befuddle the NPC that has just attacked, do we take time back GM: NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! Arrrrrgh!

He's loaded though, he just sells a few trollkin ... 😉

Sure, there are several races of Giants. Gonn Orta's lot are True Giants, in my Glorantha. They grow to hundreds of metres in size. Lesser Giants are the ones who only grow to around 16m. Jolanti are Stone Giants made by Mostali. Grey Giants are from Pamaltela, if I remember correctly. Only Gonn Orta's Giants send Cradles down the Zola Fel. These are the ones who had a war with True Dragons deep in the depths of God Time.

I just assumed that Greg was as bad as thinking up names as the rest of us.

The Tunnelled Hills and Plateau of Statues is, for me, almost as big and nasty a Chaos Nest as Dorastor. He didn't figure in our campaign, to be honest. I had him as the father of many of the chaos of the area. I saw him as a Fiend/Broo hybrid who could control any creature of Chaos. We had it as one of the cities of the ancestors of the Oasis Folk. So, lots of earth shrines and long-forgotten earth deities. Lots of secrets about the oasis folk just waiting to be discovered. Lots of ogres, scorpionfolk and broos. In my Glorantha, it was Genert's Palace and the Statues were the servants of Genert, or his enemies, turned to stone. We had Genert's Hall in the middle of the Plateau of Statues and within that was a giant bed and a throne. The throne contained a Faceless Statue, identical to the one that Pavis found. The bed was used to resurrect Genert, in our campaign. We had it as the Place of Atrocities, where atrocities had happened again and again. The Atrocities were never described, just hinted at as being so horrible that nobody remembered them. We used the Thanatar Temple at Than Ulbar. I think it had a full temple to Than, Atyar and Thanatar in my game, so three Great Temples in one. It also contained Major Temples to other Chaos Deities, so was a good place for an adventure. It had the Crystal Skull, which was the head of Tien, which sent anyone who looked at it insane. It also had the Broo with a Thousand Heads, a Thanatar Hero with 1,000 Thanatar Heads, providing him with as much Divine Magic as I could think of. Basically, he had access to all divine spells. I think we had Only Safe as a Storm Bull Great Temple, like the Bull Pen near the Footprint. Storm Bulls used to gather there and then march into the Tunnelled Hills as a great Storm Bull Army, never to return. It was a safe place for the PCs, if they could reach it. That makes sense, as he is Wakboth's grandchild. We never got to awaken Wakboth, as our campaign stopped before that, but it was very much on the cards. I planned on having several groups of chaos HeroQuestors each trying to awaken Wakboth, one from the Tunnelled Hills, one from Dorastor, one from the Lunar Empire and one from the Big Rubble, each fighting against each other and trying to get to be the First. If they had worked together, it would have been easier.

We had our weekly RQ session on Monday and spent half the time talking about Greg. One of my memories was at a games convention. I'd already met Greg at another convention and was with some friends, so took them to meet him. "Hello Greg", I said, "Hi Simon", he replied, to the amazement of my friends, for not only did I know Greg Stafford, but Greg Stafford knew me. For a short while, I was one of the Cool Kids. He probably just read my badge, but I don't think that was the case.

We always played that holding a spell matrix told you what it was. Otherwise, you just cast it and see what happens. Analyse Magic works, but you need a specialist for that. If the item has runes, they might give you an idea of what the matrix is. I would expect a matrix to have the rules associated with the spell as part of its makeup.

They are good as templates. I have been meaning to draw up some image templates and put images from the web in them for my weekly game. However, my group prefer metal figures and view paper ones as inferior.

Personally, my view is to use whatever method you are comfortable with. It might not be in the rules? So what? Character Generation is the start of the journey, the first steps, so is, in many ways, the least important part. Some people say it's the most important, the bedrock or foundation, but I disagree. For characteristics, yes, it has a permanent effect, for everything else, things change. Your PC at Session 0 is not going to be the same as at Session 100. So, if you want to use the Points Buy from Mythras or Legend, then use them, it won't affect your RQG Character particularly. The difference between Character generation from RQG and other D100 Character Generations isn't how you determine Characteristics, it's the Gloranthan layers that are applied afterwards.

Oh, he played them exactly by the rules, they became visible as they attacked us, from behind, flying so they could hit us anywhere they wanted. So, an empty corridor suddenly became full of Poleaxes that seemed to be fighting by themselves, until we saw the teeny-weeny Pixies holding them. We received a penalty to hot as they were (a) small and (b) flying. Oh the joys ...

We are using Revolution skills in out current Dark Ages game and I was explaining Stunts to the players, when I had a bit of a revelation in how I was going to use them. Stunts are to Traits what Traits are to Skills. So, I am going to use Stunts in my game as more freeform than in the Revolution rules. In my current game, I am using a Bonus/Trait as +10%, rather than +30% in Revolution, for several reasons: +10 is easier to calculate; a Smaller plus means we can have more Traits without getting silly skills; It suits a lower-powered game. Now, in a modern game, a paratrooper might have Agility, with a Trait of Parachuting and a Stunt of HALO (High Altitude Low Opening), I would say this gives a double Bonus to Agility. I also though about how Stunts would work with other skills. We have an Alchemist in the party, who has Alchemy and Herbalism as Traits under Knowledge. He recently made a Healing Potion, so I have said he could have Healing Potion as a Stunt under Alchemy or Herbalism. Then I thought about Languages and how Stunts would work with them. Each Stunt represents a dialect, so someone with Language:French might have the Norman stunt, so can understand/speak Norman French even better than standard French. Then I thought about spells and religions and they work in the same way. Spells are Stunts and belong to specific Traits. So a religion might have Lay Member as a Trait and the Stunts would be Cantrips. Initiate or Priest are Traits and the Stunts are Divine Spells. In Merrie England, some religions can gain knowledge through other means, such as Sacred Texts, these just become Traits and the spells gained become Stunts under the Trait. Saints would just be a Trait, with the spells gained as Stunts. For NPCs, I would write a skill as Skill (Trait [Stunt]), for PCs, they would have the Skill on the Character Sheet and they would write Trait (Stunt), Trait (Stunt). So, Simon the Simple is a monk in Merrie England and he has Christian as a religion. This would be written as: Christian 80% (Priest [Bless Congregation], Pilgrim [Strong Faith], Relics [Create Spring], St Patrick [Drive off Serpent, Rousing Voice], Gospel of Mary Magdalene [Wash Away Sin], Hermit [Absorb Sin]) Please note, the spells in the example are made up, as I don't have the Revolution rules to hand.

One of our RQ2 GMs used Poleaxe-wielding Zombie Pixies in a scenario, as he had worked out that, with the STR bonus and DEX reduction, a Zombie Pixie could use a Poleaxe. So, there we were, minding our business in a Vivamort Temple, when suddenly, 6 Pixies appeared behind us and hit us with Poleaxes and Bladesharp 4, of course, being Pixies, they still retained their Invisibility power, so attacked us from being Invisible. Oh, how we laughed ...

I am now of the opinion that if something made an impression on God Time then it can be the focus of a HeroQuest. There are many examples of events that happened after Time began that had an impact on the God Time and can be used for HeroQuesting. Maybe those events created some God Time event that we are not aware of.

That is unlikely, as the Mistress Race Trolls (UzUz) gave birth to Dark Trolls (Uzko) when they emerged from Wonderhome in the Lesser Darkness. It is possible, of course, that the mutation of Cave Trolls happened to the first generation who emerged from Wonderhome, but if it happened to the second generation then it would have been Dark Trolls. We also know that Cave Trolls do suffer from the Curse of Kin, as there are many examples of Cave Trolls with Trollkin children written up in official supplements.

In theory, there is nothing wrong with two Cave Trolls producing a Great Troll. Cragspider produced Great trolls by incarnating powerful Dehori and making the mother powerful in Darkness, to produce a superior troll. So, the Cave Troll mother could incarnate a Dehori and give birth to a Great Troll. Alternately, Cragspider did have a Runespell that allowed a mother to give birth to a Great Troll, maybe it's as simple as that.

I think they would use wood. After all, they recycle dead Aldryami as food, so why not recycle dead plants as raw materials? There would be a lot of straightening, reshaping and reprocessing though.