soltakss

23 hours ago, Yelm's Light said:

Interesting.  I've never played Apocalypse World, but the playbooks are reminiscent of the occupational keywords from HQ1/2/G.  I'm not thrilled by the overly-simplified combat, but then I never am.

I've played a couple of games at a convention and enjoyed them. They are a bit restrictive, when compared to HeroQuest, but I can see something like 13th Age in Glorantha as being easy to convert, with each Class being an Apocalypse Archetype, or whatever they call them.

Geo definitely had Geo's Bouncer, in Different Worlds. The illustration in ToTRM describes him perfectly, in my opinion.

As for not having all the powers, I would simply allow Psions to have a limited number of abilities, each with sub-powers.

So, you could have Telepathy (Mind Speech, Mind Reading, Far Speech), Empathy (Read Emotions, Affect Emotions, Block Emotions) and so on, so a psion with Telepathy, Empathy and Coercion would be different to one with Telepahy, Telekinesis and Jaunting.

Scanners is probably my favourite Psionic film, Tomorrow People is probably my favourite Psionic TV series (and the remake was pretty good as well) and Many Coloured Land is my favourite Psionic series of novels, all would work with BRP Psionics, but would work better with HeroQuest.

In fact, HeroQuest works well with generic Psionics, if you have broad abilities as Keywords and specific ones as breakouts. The only thing it doesn't handle well is the "Great Power but little Control" scenario, where a Psion suddenly breaks out from being Latent and has a lot of raw power but little idea of how to use it. BRP works better with that, as the POW rating represents the raw power and the skills represent ability to use it. 

On 2/10/2018 at 12:36 PM, MOB said:

As Jeff says, there is a plain text B&W character sheet as well. Here's the same section as the colour image that was posted:

That looks like a proper character sheet to me. Reminds me of the John Sapienza ones in RQ2.

Wind Voics used to have to own a cart pulled by oxen, I think, so maybe connected to Orlanth.

Geo's Bouncer is the only person the Lunars are afraid of, apparently, but I think that is hogwash, personally.

He may well have become the wyter of Geo's.

On 2/2/2018 at 10:49 AM, David Scott said:

To be honest I’ve not really looked in depth at some of the independent Tribes, they are tiny. However their protectress is called Ostrich Mother. She is the daughter of Father of Birds and an Earth goddess, I would say Ernalda. She births 10000 ostriches and 10000 Ostrich Folk, no father. She and some of her children survive (just) the gods war and the great darkness. Waha finds them and adds them to his collection of survivors. As with the other tribes, they are related. Waha’s Khan dynasty marries into the Tribe as with the other tribes. Although not directly of Eiritha, at the dawn Ernalda puts them in Eiritha’s care. This is somewhat similar to the Agimori, who Ernalda helps procreate, so almost certainly there’s an Ostrich Mother shaman-priestess at the Paps. This likely explains why they are the smallest tribe in the Wastes.

That is something that people tend to forget, Ostrich Mother is a daughter of the Earth. Her children do not fly, as they are bound to the earth. So, she is probably as much a natural part of the Praxian culture as the Herd Beasts, rather than being an adopted interloper.

On 2/1/2018 at 8:39 PM, Patrick said:

So  where would he stand:

- mystic?

- shaman?

- rune-level hero?

- all of the above?

... and what magics would his followers use today?

As mentioned, Sheng Seleris was a SuperHero, along with the likes of Arkat.

I doubt he has active worshippers now, as he is locked up so tight in a Lunar Hell beyond Hell that nobody can reach him. In my Glorantha, a lot of Pentian Nomads are performing the Yelm Seeks Justice HeroQuest, where Yelm calls out for Justice and brings someone to him in Hell to atone and release him, who knows, perhaps someone will answer the call and attempt to free Sheng Seleris from imprisonment ...

There was an excellent writeup in White Wolf, with lots of interesting subcults. I particularly liked Monster Man's smouldering rebellion.

19 hours ago, jeffjerwin said:

You're probably right...  Of course now I'm really wondering about them. What was their bride price? Did they have one? Did they bring herds into the Storm Tribe? After all the women of the Wastes are the real "owners" of the tribal beasts.

Herd Beasts come through Eiritha/Storm Bull and are only remotely connected to Tada. In fact, Tada is connected to the Oasis People rather than the Beast Riders.

18 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

Mongoose's license did not permit them to do Open Gaming Content. Once they did it in violation of their license, it's not something anyone could wave a magic wand over and make disappear, as if it had never existed.

In my opinion, opening up d100 gaming via the OGL was the best thing that happened to the RuneQuest family.

8 hours ago, Jeff said:

Actually I doubt Yelmalions would say Elmal is a different god from Yelmalio. Elmal was revealed by Monrogh to be Yelmalio. They aren't different gods, just a more profound understanding of the same god.

So, for me, there would be three types of cult:

• Yelmalio - Elmal is just another name for Yelmalio, so just worship Yelmalio and you get better benefits, Elmal would be a subcult of Yelmalio
• Elmal/Yelmalio - We worship Elmal, but can gain benefits at a Yelmalio temple, as the two gods are treated the same
• Elmal - We reject Monrogh's revelation and reject the outlander Yelmalio cult, we worship Elmal in Elmali temples

Of course, worshippers of the third kind can always go to a Yelmalio temple and be accepted as worshippers of the Elmal subcult.

Signed in with Google and it just downloaded the PDF. Lots of things to skip, though, but the PDF was downloaded before they were finished.

2 hours ago, Yelm's Light said:

According to you, it's an attempt at world-building from underlying mythic principles which quite literally denies all science.  I'm still waiting to see any canonical reference that explicitly states that there is no such thing as science in Glorantha, not some conclusion that you've drawn based on some highly questionable premises.  I won't find the word 'supercalifragilisticexpialidocious' in RQ either.  So what?

Of course there is science in Glorantha.

Mostali and Brithini use science all the while.

Science is Knowledge, classification, experimentation and so on.

Of course, in Glorantha, science is different than in the real world.

In the real world, if you chop the tails off 10 generations of mice you get tailed mice, same as Glorantha, but if you cut off Mother Mouse's tail in Glorantha then her children will be born with no tails. 

On 1/26/2018 at 6:34 PM, Yelm's Light said:

And to your 'devolution' point, what did species devolve from, according to your theory?  What was the 'super race' of men, or bison, or merfolk?

Super Men - Brithini, Agimori, Ogres

Merfolk - Tritons

Trolls - UzUz/Mistress Race

Dwarves - Original Caste Mostali (Not Clay Mostali)

Lots of devolution there.

22 hours ago, g33k said:

Apparently the Dragons got Really Pissed Off when that army went for Dragon's Eye... humans in Dragon Pass may not be ABLE to escape from Fear of Dragons (any more than the Trolls can escape from the Curse of Kin).

That makes more sense, I hadn't thought of it like that.

On 1/15/2018 at 1:28 PM, Yelm's Light said:

That's like electing Trump, only the baboon has better habits.

Exactly.

(Btw, it's Melo Yelo.)

He's King of Dragon Pass, he can spell it how he wants!

I always vary the spelling on purpose, no particular reason, just do.

On 1/16/2018 at 2:58 AM, jeffjerwin said:

 

A strange and perhaps lewd satire from 1777, regarding a witchcraft trial in the "Lunar Empire"...

https://books.google.com/books?id=2AVXAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

(The real world subject was the castrati and their vogue in Opera). Still...

I vaguely recall that castration was practiced in our Lunar Empire. Is it found elsewhere?

Pentians routinely castrate their male slaves, I believe.

Babeester Gor cultists also practise castration, but not for the same reasons. There was a writeup of a cult called Kanak Gor, in an unofficial supplement, that had extatic male Earth worshippers self-castrating to join the cult of Kanak Gor, an all-castrati subcult of Babeester Gor.

Ralzakark has an army of Broo Castrati.

On 1/11/2018 at 7:45 PM, Grievous said:

though I usually wouldn't consider ballet to be very Gloranthan in feel

The Contest of Dance between Yelm and Orlanth had Yelm performing an Imperial Court Ballet and defeating Orlanth's War Dance, so Ballet has a long history in Glorantha.

On 1/14/2018 at 7:21 PM, Grievous said:

The lyrics are from a poem from Kanteletar, the song by a Finnish folk band Värttinä (you can find that song "Raijan Joiku" on Spotify, at least) and I actually found a decent English translation:

You are very welcome here
my grand, my honoured guests
to join our joyful party
to celebrate the day

We rarely meet each other
or come together these days,
not in these fields of Väinölä
or the song lands of Kalevala

Sing, sing out, my dearest brother
Call, call out, my darling,
Take your time to celebrate,
Sing your joy for all to hear!

Take your lovely kantele,
play your golden song,
fit your fingers to the strings,
Let the tones, the songs ring free!

So that the whole village
and people everywhere would hear
the sweet sounds of Savonia,
The beautiful songs of Karelia.

Which is as good as, if not better than, the Gloranthan poetry we know and love. "Foul Slime ...", "Wandering Son, Jealous Uncle ...", "Flee, flee" and so on.

On 1/16/2018 at 1:25 PM, GamingGlen said:

Yeah, those are pretty much what we came up with.  That's when I realized that plant life is predominately a land-based life form. 

A quick Google search comes up with between 83-85% of all Plant Life is in the seas/oceans.

Sea Elves are associated with Kelp forests in the same way that land-based elves are associated with normal forests. I can see runners being associated with Algae as well.

Of course, Sea Elves are not Aldryami, but are Murthdryami, descended from Aldrya's sister Murthdrya.

I see shellfish, lobsters, crabs, fish and so on being available for meat-eaters. Algae and plankton could be harvested and used in soups, kelp and other sea plants could be eaten, I suppose.

It depends if the restaurant is for Murthdryami, all sea-dwelling people or both sea and land-dwellers.

On 1/19/2018 at 7:28 AM, Yelm's Light said:

Given that Fear of Dragons is pretty much ingrained in every mortal race HQ-wise, I doubt there's a whole lot of delight involved.

Fear of Dragons is quite reasonable anyway for most people, in my opinion.

Sure, HQ has everyone from Dragon Pass having it for something that happened 500 years ago, which is a bit much for me. 

Anyway, Dragonewts are not Dragons, so no need to Fear them! 

On 1/14/2018 at 7:10 PM, Richard S. said:

You're the guy who has a dragon magic system for rq3 on your site, right?

Yep.

I really like this idea too, though the reason I went with my approach was partly because there's not a middle space between the rune pairs where I could put right action percentiles. And if the RQ runes do function like Pendragon personality pairs then 50/50 does imply pretty solid control over your emotions.

I have always played Passions as though they are a choice between two. So, there is no place for something in between. So, someone with Brave 01-80/81-100 Cowardly rolls 1d100 and is mostly Brave but sometimes Cowardly. Dragonewts have the bit in the middle that they use to choose whether to be Brave or Cowardly.

I haven't really played Pendragon, so cannot comment on their Passions.

However, having something like Brave 80% implies that a failure of Brave means the PC acts Cowardly. It get tricky when the PC has both Brave and Cowardly as Passions.

On 1/15/2018 at 6:33 PM, Richard S. said:

I think having the man rune just means you're descended from grandfather mortal. 

That's exactly how I see it.

Makes sense to me - 17M2 means target of 17, with 2 Bumps. Easy. 2M17 would be really confusing, now that I have played HQ, but a newbie would find it easy, 2 Bumps to make 17.

Using the Mastery symbol and calling them W (17W2) is far more a crime than having the Target Number first, in my opinion, and I am speaking as a huge Glorantha fan.