soltakss

On 8/9/2018 at 1:46 PM, Joerg said:

A little gem I overlooked in the Second Age Slontos box on p.351:

God Learner ducks, just south of the Trickster Temple. And their neighbors on Herilia to the west worshipped the Blue Moon, though apparently not in connection to the Lopers.

Are there massive stone heads of giant ducks staring out towards the sea?

I would have thought that Issaries was going to be important, as Issaries was of fundamental importance ti the Middle Sea Empire, as opposed to the God Learners. Issaries helped the Middle Sea Empire to spread and contact people all around the Middle Sea, including in Umathela. As a Lightbringer, he has a pretty important place in Orlanthi mythology, so would have definitely had a place. After the fall of the Middle Sea Empire, somne things would have been purged, but I very much doubt that Issaries would have been completely purged, as he is too useful.

Similarly, Umathela would have retained the Lightbringers, perhaps as minor cults. Ernalda would have been present, as she is related to Aldrya and the earth cults are generally friendly. I am not sure about the Thunder Brothers, as a lot of these were local to Genertela.

I cannot remember if the Umathelans were originally native or were all brought to the land in the First/Second Age. If they were native, they would have their original Orlanthi beliefs, perhaps adjusted by the Middle Sea Empire. They probably would not have been affected by the First Council and their attempts to awaken people and to rationalise the fragments of cults they found. However, if they were transported in the First/Second Age, they would have brought their beliefs from Genertela and would have had all the First Council insights.

Grappling rules have always annoyed martial artists as being nowhere near complex enough and non-martial artists as being too complex.

For me, we have used Grappling to break bones and so on, doing 1d3+DB, but only if the attacker succeeded and defender failed the grapple roll. 

Memorably, a Humakti PC was placed in a gladiatorial area with a shield and spear, but had geases of "Never use a Shield" and "Never use a spear", so he dropped them immediately, grabbed hold of the attacker's arm, with a critical grapple, broke the attacker's wrist, disarming him, with another critical grapple doing something like 12 points of damage, then wrenched the attacker's arm out of its socket, with a critical STR vs STR roll and proceeded to beat him to death with the bloody end. "I always wanted to do that", the player said afterwards.

If you want RQG-like magic in HeroQuest, just have a Common Magic ability with RQG Spirit Magic spells as breakouts, or have an ability for each cult and use RQG runespells as breakouts. It just means the HQ PCs get the RQG flavour without a lot of extra rules.

On 8/7/2018 at 11:57 PM, g33k said:

It seems that "canon" has become so vast (both broad and deep), and so oft-revised (via Greg or Guide or whatever) that our hoary old acronym needs a new meaning ...

Your Glorantha Must Vary

My Glorantha has always varied, ever since I ran my first scenario.

Between the previously-canonical stuff you don't want to change, Chaosium's new canon you don't know of, your group's Glorantha-in-play creating at-the-table-canon... variance (from published canon) seems virtually certain!

Back In The Day, playing RQ2+CoP, a "canonical" game was easy and almost insvitable:. Canon was a few big elements, which everyone knew and played.  People's table-canon didn't so much depart from canon as extend it to new places (indeed, authors' House Games became canon, fans became authors with House Games (that became canon) &c...).

We changed some of the canon almost immediately, as it didn't work for us.

Even in RQ2 there was a lot of extra canon that some people did not accept. In our RQ2 gaming group, we had some people who only had RQ2/Cults of Prax/Cults of Terror and accepted other stuff grudgingly, people who had all the RQ2 stuff plus JG/DW/WF and odds and ends and I knew of people who said "If it isn't in the RQ2 rulebook, I am not interested".

But these days?

There is.  SO.  MUCH.  CANON.

Honestly, that's a.GOOD thing!  Who wishes for no Guide?  No new edition?  Etc...

There is a lot of stuff for Glorantha, but npwhere near as much stuff as for Earth, for example. I can go onto Wikipedia for many settings and build up thousands of pages of information very quickly. Nobody questions that as canon and nobody minds that it is there.

But canon-worries online... Not so much, no.

I learned to stop worrying about canon years ago. If something new comes out, I either incorporate it into my Glorantha or ignore it.

One problem that sometimes happens is where canon is driven by game mechanics, which is something that I detest. So, if the game mechanics change then canon has to change.

On 8/10/2018 at 4:24 AM, daskindt said:

You have no idea how much I want to see a King of Dragon Pass for Trolls.

Queen of Dagori Inkarth.

Derak the Dark Troll, one of the PCs in an old campaign, was eventually made King of Dagori Inkarth, which he was really pleased about, until he remembered that Dagori Inkarth was a Matriarchy ruled by a council of ancient UzUz, so he had no power but lots of people against him.

The God Learners started off by taking a red pen to all of their religious texts, striking out anything that wasn't canon or connected to the Invisible God. In doing so, they had to learn more about the Invisible God, their history and how other cultures related to them. That then led to them studying the other cultures, so that they could see what was foreign and what wasn't. That, in turn, led to them studying other mythology to find distinct patters, which finally led to them studying how to use and abuse those foreign mythologies.

So, the term God Learner has meant different things at different times.

It is more about researching.understanding Mythologies than God, at least in its later form.

Not sure if that helps, though.

Dragonewts are probably not very good against a shield wall. When fighting a shield wall they use another tactic, "Fetch the Dragon".

Eating a plant might bring you close to the Green Age and give you some of the euphoric feelings that might be found there. This may well prove addictive over time.

10 hours ago, Merudo said:

Your comment made me think, how is the monster supposed to come and go from the Cargo Hold? Is it jumping or climbing through the big Cargo Hatches, or is it small enough to climb the three ladders?

Give the monster a key and allow the cargo hatch to open enough to unlock the padlock. Have other ways in that are not obvious, or have been covered by tarpaulins. 

Please bear in mind that I haven't read the Derelict so am just making things up.

A lor of answers about Glorantha begin with "It depends" ...

It depends on how you believe that Spirits and Gods behave.

Some people think that Spirits and Gods come from different places. There was a theory of the Three Planes that collided to create Glorantha, a theory that I am not at all fond of, by the way. If you believe this then Spirits are Spirits and Gods are Gods and there is no bridge between them.

Personally, I think that there is no intrinsic difference between a Spirit and a God. None. However, there are differences in how people interact with them.

A group of people can attempt to worship a minor Spirit shamanically, which means that the link to the Spirit is through a Shaman. The Shaman leads a ceremony to contact the Spirit at a sacred place and the worshippers get a benefit from making a Pact of some kind with the Spirit. This gives the worshippers access to one, or maybe two, powers/skills/spells granted by the Spirit. They can only really regain Runespells at that sacred place and can only gain the Runespells gained through the Shaman. A Shaman can also access a Deity in the same manner, normally at a sacred place, so the Shaman creates a link to the Deity and worshippers can get access to very limited spells from the deity, again probably one or two spells. So, there is a place in the Stormwalk Mountains where a boulder is sacred to Storm Bull (He urinated on the boulder once and it shines as if wet if it rained the previous week), a shaman can contact Storm Bull here and any worshippers can access one or two Divine Spells, probably Face Chaos and another spell. There is no temple here and no permanent shrine, but every season the Shaman and worshippers can congregate there and worship Storm Bull.

Someone can access a Deity, or Hero, by contacting the Deity/hero and offering to worship. Depending on how important the Deity/Hero is, the answer might be "No, go and join my cult like everyone else" or it might be "Yes, yes, please become a Priest or God talker and worship me". The worshipper can then become a God Talker, and eventually a Priest, by sacrificing a point of POW, or whatever the current mechanism is, and setting up a Shrine at that place. The Shrine would probably only grant one Runespell, as the deity would still be weak there. As the god Talker attracts more and more worshippers, the Shrine becomes more and more empowered, gaining power as it gains regular worshippers. As it gains power it becomes a stronger contact point and grants more Runespells. As it grants more Runespells, it gains more worshippers. More buildings are put up and it becomes a Minor Temple. Eventually, cultists of friendly cultists set up small shrines to their Deities and this atracts even more worshippers, so it becomes a Major Temple. It is unlikely to become a Great Temple unless it attacts a lot of worshippers, but it is possible. An Adventurer could find a long-lost shrine to a water deity and could sacrifice to that deity, re-establishing the shrine. That deity might provide a Runespell that keeps gorps at bay, repelling them, very useful in the nearby marsh, so the shrine might attract more and more worshippers as above. This would be a permanent shrine, not a temporary one.

Now, for me, the important thing is that exactly the same thing could happen with both Deities. A Storm Bull cultists could encounter Storm Bull's Boulder and could decide to set up a permanent Storm Bull shrine there and establish a temple there. A Shaman could find the old Gorpbane shrine and could contact Gorpbane and gain Repel Gorp as a Runespell. It doesn't matter that one is a Deity and the other is a Spirit. The important thing is that both can be contacted and both have a way of being worshipped.

Shamans in Prax can contact Orlanth and gain Runespells from him Shamanically. Yelmic families can worship their ancestors using a Divine Cult that really worships Daka Fal. 

Of course, that is my own interpretation and I have been wrong many times in the past ...

11 hours ago, BWP said:

Everything you wrote here just reinforces my opinion that the whole "morokanths are vegetarian" concept is incredibly dull.  I don't want my Glorantha to be a dull place.

I agree, it makes no sense in terms of the Survival Covenant, so is one of the things about the new revised Glorantha that I happily ignore.

4 hours ago, Merudo said:

I've seen that video, but it doesn't address any of the concerns I currently have.

Normally, what I find is that concerns about a scenario on first reading are normally solved when players start playing the scenario, as I can guide them as a Keeper. Even if they shortcut the normal flow, a Keeper can amend the scenario slightly to resolve any concerns.

Under Wraith, it says "If an adventurer survives a wraith’s attack, the lost characteristic points are regained at their healing rate per week. They can also be restored with a Restore Health spell.".

I would assume the same applies to similar attacks, for example a Bloodbird's Blood drain.

Lunes, Selenes, Babaka Fegh, Dancers in Darkness and Vampires drain Magic Points, which presumably regenerate as any spent Magic Points. 

On 7/30/2018 at 2:40 PM, styopa said:

Honestly, it's only in our Monday-morning quarterbacking that people care.  If the people at the table walk away saying "that was a blast", nobody gives a crap that rule X wasn't applied exactly how the book said it should be.

Yes, in a way.

But, people do listen to real play examples from games designers to see how the rules work and how they are applied. Some people haven't played using multiple previous versions and don't have the same comfort levels, so don't realise that they can just pick and choose from rules over a nearly 40 year period. Instead, they want to see how the rules work and look to these podcasts as good examples. If they differ from the rules, it can be very confusing for new players.

A transcript of the session, with notes on where/how the rules used diverge from those in the rulebook, would be very useful for new players.

On 7/30/2018 at 2:53 AM, Briquelet said:

Thank you for the awesome feedback!

This is the place to come for awesome feedback.

And endless discussion of minutiae ...

On 7/31/2018 at 1:07 AM, Armadeus said:

I'm going to be running a game set in Sartar/Dragon Pass soon. The PCs are going to be the young adult children of members of the clan ring/prominent thanes who get tasked by the ring to be kind of problem solvers in an attempt to make a name for themselves and make them worthy of inheriting their parents prominence.

Sounds like a good basis for a Sartarite campaign.

The way I'm currently thinking about doing prep is taking the Dragon Pass board game map (available via google image search), noting where the PCs clan tula is, figuring out where the other clans/tribes are, stocking some hexes they are likely to go through using the Ruins & Relics tables from the old Judges Guild Wilderlands products (ignoring the ones that aren't very Glorantha), and putting 5-10 ruins/dungeons for them to explore because both my group and I like dungeons. Then I would use a random hook generator I have to make up what problem the ring needs dealing with (or what problems they can pick from) in a given session.

Sounds good.

For me, a clan tula is probably a single hex on the Dragon Pass board, with the surrounding 6 hexes considered clannish lands, but maybe with overlaps to other clans. 

Have you given any thought to where the other clan tules would be? That can generate scenarios straight off.

Have you looked at the Judges Guild RQ scenarios? I have used Duck Pond and Duck Tower very well in Glorantha, around the Upland Marsh. I always thought that Hellpits of Night Fang wasn't that good, but it fitted in to a Pavis campaign very easily and would work well in Dragon Pass. Broken Tree Inn works well in Dragon Pass.

Does anyone have any advice for this sort of game? What are some things that can be interpreted as dungeons that exist in Dragon Pass/Sartar? What are the best things I can read in a short time to get my head around that area of Glorantha? What would be a good way to introduce my players to being Orlanthi?

The HeroQuest Sartar books have already been mentioned. I would try to get the Dragon Pass Gazetteer, as it drips scenario hooks off every page. 

As for Dungeons, Snake Pipe Hollow is a classic. The aforementioned JG RQ supplements work very well. Every place marked as a ruin on the Dragon Pass Map should have at least one Dungeon, but they might not always be your classic "Cave System/Underground complex filled with monsters" kind of Dungeon. The Upland Marsh should have a lot of EWF ruins, if there aren't any then just make them up. Even temples might be built on older temples, perhaps long-forgotten, delving into these ancient crypts and sub-temples might be good. Chaos Temples make good Dungeons and can be put almost anywhere. In fact, enemy Temples make good Dungeons.

How to introduce Orlanthiness to players?

• Hospitality - This is very important to Orlanthi, when you are accepted as a guest in a clan, you are under the protection of both the Chief and the Clan, so attempts to insult you or force you to break the rules of Hospitality are good for roleplaying.
• Travelling through other clan's lands - Entering another clan's tula means engaging in a lot of ritual posturing, which might make for good roleplaying, especially if the other clan is hostile to the PCs' Clan or to the PCs themselves.
• Cattle Raiding - Nothing says "Orlanthi" like a spot of cattle raiding, especially if you kill one fo the guards defending the cattle, or are attacked by raiders trying to get your cattle
• Foul Slime - Orlanthi have poetry for everything, in fact Orlanth is the God of Bad Poetry*. Meet a Yelmalian - There's a poem for that. Meet some Chaos - There's a poem for that. Meet other Orlanth - There's a poem for that. Sure, some are only for Wind Lords, but there's no reason you can't all join in, we used to and had a great time reciting Orlanthi poetry.
• Violence is Always an Option/Nobody can make me do Anything - Orlanthi are stubborn and unpredictable, so treat them that way. If not the PCs, then NPCs might use those forms. At the end of the day, if endlessly talking something through isn't working, then drawing your sword and saying "Enough Talk!" normally works.

* He isn't, according to Gloranthan Lore, but you know what I mean ...

I wouldn't use shields with dragonewt formations. Stick with Klanth and Swordbreaker. If you wanted shields, make them look like the Beast Rune, which is based on the Dragon's Eye.

On 7/30/2018 at 4:40 PM, styopa said:

It's an interesting viewpoint on language, though.  Is that your interpretation or did I miss something (admittedly, I had nothing to do with Heroquest, and it seems a lot of the magical structure underpinning Glorantha was evolved there)?

It's more a case of devolution of language.

The first Elemental languages (Darkspeech, Seaspeech, Earthspeech, Firespeech and Stormspeech) were partly magical in nature, as was Draconic, or Old Wyrmish. As other languages sprang from them, they became more mundane and less magical. So, Theyalan came from Stormspeech and then devolved further into Heortling and then further into things like Sartarite, each becoming more mundane and less magical. Earthspeech and Stormspeech sort of combined to make various Theyelan dialects, again each less magical than their parents. Firespeech became Dara Happan, which then combined with some heortling language to become the language of Sun County.

New Pelorian seems to be an attempt to retrofit Pelorian into the Lunar Way, by adding "lost" magical parts to recreate a non-existent parent language.

Passion Spirits and a form of Greed both work as possible rules mechanics of why someone becomes addicted.

I don't think there should be a single way and that multiple ways are far more interesting.

Addiction could be the result of a Curse of some kind. It could also just be a property of the thing consumed, perhaps a POT vs CON roll on the Resistance Table to gain a Passion for the substance.

On 7/30/2018 at 5:10 PM, galafrone said:

In all the sources i found out the elf sea inhabited by "strange, dangerous creatures" but no mention of them actually

the only exception is the random encounter table in the Griffin Mountain Sourcebook. 

Anyone out here has more suggestions for me ?

We had sea dragons, plesiosaurs, giant sharks, giant squid, giant octopi and that kind of thing. Sometimes, the boats were just grabbed by giant tentacles, with no idea of what they belonged to.

19 hours ago, MJ Sadique said:

Sorry, I was just trolling XD but one question came to me .....do they drink human's milk ? or another beast's one ?

Definitely not human milk, as that is only for babies and infants.

They drink Herd Man milk, as that is their own Herd Beast. They also frink the milk of other Herd Beasts, as Praxians keep herd Beats of different types, mainly for exchanging with captured Beasts of their own type. I think that all Praxians know how to tend and milk other Praxian Herd Beasts, as all are children of Eiritha, but they know more about their own Herd Beast type.

Sorry, forgot this wasn't the Praxian Thread ...

We simply played that swimming in the Styx would kill you, unless you had very, very strong powers of Darkness or Death. 

On 8/1/2018 at 8:30 AM, TrippyHippy said:

You said: 

You also said: 

All of which are entirely contentious, and make incorrect uses of the word 'generic'.

In my experience, when a discussion/argument resorts to "You said/I Said" then it's time to stop. Two people are not going to admit defeat, especially on something that is as nebulous as "generic".

4 hours ago, Merudo said:

Hence my first question: how can I deal with shotguns and satellite phones in my game?

If the PCs have a good reason to have a shotgun with them then they should have one. However, would you board someone else's yacht carrying a shotgun? Probably not, as that is a good reason to get shot at yourself. Point that out to your players.

As for satellite phones, there are enough sea-based, and land-based for that matter, horror tales where phones just don't work. Either there is static that cuts them off, or they just hear a creepy voice repeating a message over and over again, or all channels are dead. Just because a PC has one, doesn't necessarily mean it works.

How can I prevent my players from going directly into the cargo hold?

Nothing. 

I'd put a padlock on the hatch, nothing wrong with that, It gives them a chance to find the key. Again, point out to them that smashing the padlock is fine, unless they meet the ship's master or crew, in which case how are they going to explain a broken padlock? Have them find the key at the right time and they will probably follow the flow.

Having said that, I am never keen on making PCs follow a certain flow. If they do go into the cargo hold first then let them. Either fudge it so the encounter is somewhere else, or have them encounter the monster and deal with the consequences.