soltakss

Rich, deep mytholody, detailed cultures and a fun place to game, for the last 35 years, for me.

13th Age in Glorantha is Gloranthan D&D, with levels, classes and everything else. So, Glorantha has another official rules system.

The whole point of the OP was to compare RQ and HQ magic, how they are used and what effects this has in the game. I don't it's fair to accuse @Darius West of trolling when he is responding to the OP. I like both HQ and RQ and have played/run campaigns for both with equal fun. Magic is treated differently and players cope with that really well. You just do things slightly differently in the two systems.

I would guess it is part of MOB's future Sun County timeline material.

Sounds like our campaign. I might ask you for some ideas, as I am running out of things for the PCs to do. They are currently in Dorastor, building up their reputation before approaching Ralzakark and forcing him to reveal secrets about Nysalor, Gbaji and Arkat. They defeated the Hand of Gbaji, that had the Adamantine Claws, so freed two grandsons of Arkat, a human Humakti and a Troll, who have gone to ralios to bring back Arkat. The PCs want to find Arkat first,l so they can make him their bitch. However, I am running out of ideas. They have done a lot of the things from King of Sartar (Dragonrise, becoming King of Sartar, defeating the Crimson Bat) and are waiting for the Lunar counterattack.

In my current campaign, Shan Agar, one of the PCs, took a pearl from the head of an NPC. The pearl acted as an eye and granted Farsee and Second Sight. With a bit of investigation, she found the eye could be used to remote view. However, it gave the PC a vision of a dark pool surrounded by ghostly white trees. As she is a shaman, that intrigued her, but she managed to roll 01 on attemnpting to control the eye and saw Genert's Eye instead, which was lucky as the PCs were HeroQuesting for parts of Genert. Looking into Wakboth's Eye would probably have sent her mad, or would have caused some problems. The Second Age River Voices, in my campaign, included one who had looked into Wakboth's Eye and caused his eyes to bleed acid, blinding him but giving him sight, also sending him mad. Shan Agar subsequently looked into The Void in order to bring back Genert's Soul and her pearl eye was replaced by a mini Void, so she now has the equivalent of a non-chaotic, non-wailing Wailing Void instead of an eye. You can have a lot of fun with Wakboth's Eye. Seers can use it to gain abilities, in the same way as Middle Earth has a Palantir, but they are drawn to Wakboth's Eye, in the same way as being drawn to Sauron's Eye. Ogres are HeroQuesting to find Wakboth's Eye, in order to resurrect Wakboth, in the same way as my PCs HeroQuested to bring back Genert. Obviously, bringing back Wakboth would be worse than bringing back Genert. Having said that, both gods returning would cause wars to erupt. I played that Wakboth's Eye cries occasionally, this causes the Gorp Geyser from the River of Cradles supplement. What causes Wakboth's Eye to cry is currently unknown. Our River Voices had a Black Barge, a funeral barge from the Styx, that they found in Snakepipe Hollow. This had the properties that it could not be sunk or overturned when on underground water and that it could slip between small cracks, smaller than the barge. They used the Black Barge on a HeroQuest to travel down to Wakboth's Eye, slipping through the various cracks in the ground and following the course of the Gorp Geyser. They met more and more chaos until they reached Wakboth's Eye. When they got there, they didn't want to mess with it, so simply stopped the Gorp Geyser, leaving the Eye intact.

I absolutely hate the idea of something too powerful for PC Heroes to destroy. If PCs have reached the level of Argrath, Harrek and co, there is no reason why they cannot do heroic or godlike things.

I never bother converting Gloranthan years to earth years. A year is a year is a year.

Let us all Invoke the Harmony Rune together ... Yelm's Light has already seen the light, can Styopa overcome myopia?

The Helium nucleus is an Alpha Particle. If you emit a stream of doubly ionized Helium then you are emitting a streeam of high-energy alpha particles. I am not sure if fusion also produces gamma rays.

One of the things mentioned in the 13th Age Glorantha stuff is that the Hero Wars needs the combined might of all the races and religions. So, for example, Orlanth on his own can only do so much, but Orlanth combined with Kyger Litor and Aldrya can do more. Mixed parties can use their abilities, magic and HeroQuests together in far more inventive ways than a group of all Orlanthi, or all Aldryami or whatever.

Now you've got it!

I am not at all sure about the ears on the phallic lodrili mace. Maybe they have different shaped phalluses ...

Because one of their Gods stole the mace from a darkness foe? Maran Gor uses maces for that exact reason. Lances are fine for distance but useless up close, whereas a mace is perfect for hitting footsoldiers on the head while sitting on a horse. In any case, some weapons are culturally good or bad, regardless of how useful they are. Maces for solar cultists seem to fit in that category, so we need a mythical explanation as to why they are used.

Thanks, that's a good start. If I have the time, I'll add the ones I know about from various fanzines.

I love the photos, thanks for sharing them.

In our current campaign, Melo Yelo has become King of Dragon Pass! Of course, it took a number of HeroQuests and a lot of jiggery-pokery.

You need Hero/Luck/Fate/Whatever Points to reroll nasty rolls. Also, try to stock up on healing spells, healing potions, healing salves and healing pills. If those are not enough, get a healing matrix and a bound spirit that can cast Healing. Seriously, when solo roleplaying, good healing is a must, as you can become functionally incapacitated without being killed, but without healing you will be captured or killed very quickly without anyone to help.

Take it to its extreme. Is a campaign of 2006-2006 one year or zero years? If one year, then 2006-2007 is two years, 2006-2008 three years, 2006-2009 four years, 2006-2010 five years, 2006-2011 six years and, wait for it, 2006-2012 seven years. If zero years, then subtract one year from the above. Having the same year as one year makes more sense to me. As a programmer, this is one of the things that constantly comes back to haunt us. Do we count the first day/week.month/year as one? It depends on the situation in most cases.

Good Humakti everywhere will be in uproar over the inclusion of maces in an article about swords.

I remember reading somewhere that Clasical Greece had clockwork and steam engines, but they were only used for novelty toys to entertain rich children. Sure, that is later than Bronze/Iron Age, but not too distant. It is a small jump for Mostali to use something similar. Also, Mostali use magic to power a lot of their machines. Jolanti are effectively stone golems, so don't need clockwork. Nilmergs might be clockworky, but are limited. True Mostali themselves are not clockwork, as they are brough out of the vats. Clay Mostali are also not clockwork. Iron Mostali might be, but I doubt it. We had an Iron Mostali NPC who was clockwork but covered in an outer skin, he had red glowing eyes and spoke with an Austrian accent ...

We had several PCs per player, except for two players who only had one PC each (Zorak Zorani Dark Troll and Yelornan Elf). One PC group had trolls, the minotaur, Morokanth and some Storm Bull humans, the other had the duck, elf, centaur and more humans. So, it was rare that the trolls and elf joined in the same scenario. To add complication, the Duck was a Sword Drake of Humakt, two of the trolls and the Morokanth were Death Lords of Zorak Zoran, the Centaur was a Light Son of Yelmalio, the Elf was a Unicorn Rider Rune Lady of Yelorna, the Minotaur was a Storm Khan of Storm Bull and the Dwarf was a Sword of Humakt. So, the Humakti, Yelmalians and Yelornan could eaily play together, the Orlanthi could play with both sets of parties, as long as they challenged the Yalmalians to riddling, the Zorak Zorani and Storm Bulls worked together well and could tolerate Orlanthi. It got a bit tricky when players with one PC played together. That meant that you had a Zorak Zorani Dark Troll and Yelornan Elf in the same party. Fortunately, they were both Illuminated, so could tolerate each other. The Yelornan had a Unicorn that could have been a rune lord itself and had a very sharp horn, she also had Power Arrows that turned normal hoits into impales, implaes into criticals and criticals into critical impales and wasn't afraid of using them against uppity trolls. When the Humakti Duck played with the trolls, things got interesting. He always killed any zombies or mummies that the Zorak Zorani raised, for example. The party were climbing a staircase when they set off an arbalest, which hit the lead PC doing 19 damage to the chest, ignoring armour, Pektok the Duck was in front, followed by Masher, the Great Troll, Masher's PC laughed at the Duck getting creamed, until Pektok's player argued succesfully that the arbalest would have been set up to hit a human and miss a duck, so it would hit the second person in the party, oops! Once, the Dwarf was travelling with the trolls. Even though he was a Humakti, he was attuned to a Godling Bone, which kept his soul bound and allowed Resurrection without losing skills due to the delay (We played that Humakti could be resurrected but couldn't ask for Resurrection through Divine Intervention, otherwise they were unplayable in a long and deadly campaign), so he had a handle built into the back of his plate armour, in case he was killed. Needless to say, he was killed and taken back to a temple to be Resurrected. Derak the Dark Troll offered to carry him back, to show there was no ill will between Zorak Zoran and Humakt. As they went, they could hear Derak eating noisily and assumed he had a packed lunch, it was only when they reached the temple when they discovered the dwarf had a lot more bite marks on his arms and legs than before. When challenged, Derak's reply was "Well, Dwarves are tasty..."

In my Glorantha, each Temple of the Reaching Moon has a daughter of Yara Aranis, effectively a nymph-avatar, who lives in the temple.

Exactly. That's why HeroQuesting is so much fun. Think of a myth, lay it on the world and go on a HeroQuest. Easy-peasy.

When playing a non-human, I look to the examples in the many Gloranthan supplements. The mythic background and cults give some ideas about how they react/act, Elder Secrets and Troll Pack give a lot of information about the Elder Races. Anything else can be made up and thus becomes canon for that campaign. In our old RQ2 campaign, we had a Morokanth, a Duck, a Minotaur, an Elf, a Dwarf, a Centaur and several Trolls. They behaved how the players thought they should behave. It seemed to work for us.