soltakss

I am running two sessions of Robyn Hode at UK Expo:

Friday afternoon: The Morris Miners http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/game.php?id=RPG3143 

Saturday afternoon: Going A-Rescuing http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/game.php?id=RPG3144

There's spaces available, so if you're in the area and free in those slots, come and game. 

Thanks to Dimbyd for pointing this out.

On 5/25/2017 at 0:59 PM, Dimbyd said:

Folks will wish to note that the Simon Phipp is running two sessions of Robyn Hode at UK Expo:

 

Friday afternoon: The Morris Miners http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/game.php?id=RPG3143 

Saturday afternoon: Going A-Rescuing http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/game.php?id=RPG3144

 

There's spaces available, so if you're in the area and free in those slots, come and game. 

Thanks, I haven't had notification of these and was going to check later today.

On 5/25/2017 at 4:27 PM, Nel said:

I'm working on my calendar:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bz3yUt8lNxwhcEw4TmJpUzZ0b2c/view

 

Here's how I would do them:

Black Sun - Darness and Solar
Bloody Tusk - Darkness
Caladra & Aurelion: Kethaelan? - Probably Solar and Earth 

Donandar - Solar (Also Storm, as Donandar is the father of Orlanth's Drummer) 

Dorasta - Earth and Chaos
Frog Woman: Wastelands? - Water
Golden Bow: Pure Horse? - Solar, specifically Pentian Solar
Golden Eagle: Storm? - Solar and perhaps Praxian, definitely not Storm
Golden Horse: Pure Horse? - Solar, specifically Pentian Solar
River Horse: Praxian? - Water and perhaps Praxian

I'd give Citadel dwellers the Light Rune and Votanki the Earth Rune as a default. Others would depend on individual variations. It might be nice to list the Balazar clans and put a recommended Rune against each.

In my Glorantha, the Citadel dwellers worship Mralota as the Pig Goddess, who teaches them how to farm pigs, the other Votaki worship her as Boar Mother, who provides wild pigs for them to hunt.

15 hours ago, Iskallor said:

My character, Deep Derik, is a Lhankhor Mhy Sword Sage, which seems to mean that he steals stuff, raids dungeons, lies, makes bad prose and fails in all things romantic. Oh yeah he has a sword too.

In our RQ2/RQ3 campaign, Brankist Farlow was a Sword Sage. His background was in the mercenaries, so he saw himself as a Cavalier with a twiddly moustache and shaped beard, who told long, boring stories about his time fighting the Lunars "When I was in the cavalry ...", wrote long boring poetry and could never, ever destroy a scroll. He was an associate Priest of Orlanth Adventurous, as this tied in with being a Sword Sage, but LM came first. He went off the rails a little bit when he took the mantle of a Thanatri Hero (His rationale was that All Knowledge belongs to Lhankor Mhy and that having a LM Priest in the position would weaken Thanatar).

Wasn't Hearth Mother in Griffin Mountain? I seem to remember Griffin Island had a proper cult writeup, with cultists gaining magic in Sacred Time ceremonies.

I tried to do this, but there are so many RQ3 cults that it made it quite fiddly.

What I did was to put each cult into a pantheon and had default relationships between the pantheons, then I made adjustments for individual cults.

So, Eurmal is in the Storm pantheon, so would by default be Associated to Lightbringers, Friendly to other Storm Pantheon cults, Hostile to Solar and Darkness Cults and Enemy to Chaos, with other cults as Neutral, however I would then fiddle with certain cults, upping some and reducing others, so Eurmal is friendly to Thief cults, so Eurmal and Black fang would be Friendly, Krarsht would be Hostile not Enemy as Eurmal feels some affinity for Krarsht thievery.

Ernalda is in both Storm and Earth Pantheons, so would be Associate to many Earth cults, Friendly to all Lightbringers and Solar cults and Enemy to Darkness and Chaos. Orlanth becomes an Asociate cult, all the other Husband Protectors become Associate cults, any daughter of Ernalda becomes Associate, many Earth cults become Associate, the others become Friendly, Darkness cults are Enemy (Earth) and Hostile (Storm), so I would allocate these on a case by case basis.

The problem is, with a matrix of 100 cults you get a very complex set of relationships.

15 hours ago, Matt_E said:

Note that this could easily unbalance a low-magic campaign.  Before you go down this road, do sort out what level of magical gear you're truly prepared to deal with...because that is where you are likely to end up, if any of your players are at all Gamist.   I don't mean to suggest that you should avoid matrices, but I feel it's important to know where you're likely to end up if you don't take precautions.

RQ2 restricted battle magic spells to the INT of the PC, which means that PCs are very restricted in the number of spells they can learn. Binding spirits helps, as the Spirits' INT can alsoi be used, but you are restricted to CHA/3 in Spirits and the Spirits are unbound if you die, even if you are resurrected. So, Spell Matrices are very useful as they provide access to spells without having to use spirits.

We found that having access to a lot of spells did not unbalance a game at all. It just made PCs more versatile. 

RQ2 restricts many Battle Magic Spells to 4 points, which means that having a Bladesharp 4 Matrix is not particularly game-changing. RQ3 removed the limit, so a Bladesharp 4 with a Spell Enhancing Crystal produces Bladesharp 8, which can be game-changing, especially when combined with other spells. Spells such as Countermagic or Healing are also not restricted, so combining these with Crystals can produce very large Countermagic spells and very effective Healing spells. The Healing spell is potentially game-changing as a PC's limb can be restored completely with a large Healing, but that is probably a good thing. A large Countermagic (Soltak Stormspear had a Power Enhancing 9 Crystal and Countermagic 9, so could cast Countermagic 18, which became Countermagic 26 when combined with Shield 4) means that few NPCs can affect the PC with spells, but is that game-changing?

Where it does become potentially unbalanced is if you allow Spell Matrices to become the base for a spell that can be manipulated, in RQ3. Worshippers of the Red Moon can enhance Battle Magic spells, so starting off with Bladesharp 4 and adding 4 points makes it a Bladesharp 8, put it with a Spell Enhancer and you can get Bladesharp 12 (or 16 depending how you count). Sorcerers in RQ3 can take a Sorcery Matrix and manipulate it, potentially achieving a large and powerful spell. However, these are RQ3 considerations, not RQ2.

19 hours ago, g33k said:

Prax is a straight-up "post-apocalyptic wasteland;" you just need to wrap your brain around Prax's magico-mythical apocalypse story, instead of something from Mad Max or Gamma World ...

It's something that Gloranthaphiles already know; but it isn't an element I see presented very often, and I think it's worth including into the classic shortlist of newbie-friendly tropes & memes, to help bring them up to speed more quickly. 

You've got nomadic bands who come along and raid the struggling settlements, ancient ruins from long ago, a ruined city full of looters, a place where nothing can live, other places so blasted that only the desperate can live there and monsters beyond imagination coming from the wastelands. What's post-apocalyptic about that?

44 minutes ago, Dimbyd said:

Quick reminder- there's still two tickets left for "Into the Upland Marsh", a playtest of the new edition of Runequest. 

Friday 2nd June, 8pm til late, UK Expo, Birmingham http://www.ukgamesexpo.co.uk/bookevents.php?category=rpg 

Sounds great, but I probably can't stop until midnight, the trains back to Brum are patchy around then.

The thing about Dyson Spheres and the like that I really hate is that they have no sense of realistic scale. Something that has the equivalent of 44,153 earths? Why would someone need something that big? How much of the earth's surface does it take to support 6 billion people? Are we saying that a civilisation needs to support, what, 200 trillion people?

20 hours ago, David Scott said:

I'd wait and see how it all fits together. This is a book for new players as well. It's simply not going to go deep into everything gloranthan. That's what supplements do.

I always wait and buy all the supplements.

22 hours ago, Runeblogger said:

However, I think there should be fewer rooms on the first floor, since the doors on the front are very high, so any rooms on the sides of the 1st floor are going to have an extremely low ceiling.

One of the players in our campaign is an Architect in real life. Whenever I draw plans for buildings, he takes a sharp breath and tries not to point out the many places the buildings would fall down or the rooms don't get enough light, or the staurcases that don't work. I rarely bother with floorplans now.

21 hours ago, RosenMcStern said:

You have archery contests (how can you run a Robyn Hode game without them?), music contests, tournements, wrestling contests. Anything you would insert in a well developed medieval campaign. All of them follow the RD100 contest template, but have their own peculiarities.

It was surprising how easily the RD100 rules for resolving contests worked for this kind of contests. 

After all, in a game with four different kinds of minstrel professions, you will really need a situation when your entertainer can shine.

Four? Bard, Minstrel, Troubadour, Trouvere and Wayte off the top of my head, makes five. You can never have enough minstrelly people in a medieval supplement, otherwise Alan -a-Dale would feel lonely.

3 hours ago, Conrad said:

Why not have a world that isn't in the habitable zone, but is totally covered by a huge bubble (maybe of Precursor design) that absorbs all kinds of light on the outer surface and uses it to produce a fake sky and sun on the inner surface, regulating temperature to produce a Class M environment?

So, basically a Worldhouse, a dome that covers the planet. That would work in theory, but is an awful lot of work. The effort to cover a whole planet inside a single dome, or strucutre, is enormous.

I'd create smaller domes, to provide places for habitation/farming/whatever, then perhaps encase several domes under a larger one and repeat if required. 

On 5/11/2017 at 8:58 PM, Zit said:

Beside the rules, what are the main differences with The Age of Eleanor ?

A lot of Campaign Information describing the land around Sherwood Forest and major NPCs.

New rules for Guardians, if you want a Herne the Hunter spirit as in Robin of Sherwood.

New rules for contests of various kinds.

Lots and lots of scenarios hooks.

Adventurer Creation is now Revolution D100 style.

The Land and the People, Nobles, Knights and the Crown, Trading and Adventuring and Religion and Magic are pretty much the same as Age of Chivalry and Age of Eleanor. 

On 5/12/2017 at 2:42 AM, Vile said:

Is there any content in the earlier incarnations which is not in ME:RH?

Alchemy has been dropped, mainly because Wierd Science does a lot of alchemy, I might redo it in terms of Wierd Science in a Companion, if we do one.

Astrology/Divination/Demonology/Enchanting/Medicine have been dropped, for similar reasons and would be better in a Companion or Arcane Arts supplement.

Further Afield has been dropped, as we wanted to focus on England and Sherwood Forest.

The Crusades have been dropped, as I want to include them in some other Supplement.

The Afterlife has been dropped, as I want to include Heaven/Hell/Demons in another supplement, as above.

The Whitlingthorpe Campaign has been dropped, as I wanted a Sherwood sandbox with a lot of scenario hooks rather than a series of scnearios,

Now, that might sound a lot of things to be dropped, but Merrie England:Robyn Hode has 40 pages of the Sherwod Campaign, which is over 20% of the supplement.

Rather than squeezing things in just because they were there in previous versions, I would like to revisit them properly for Revolution D100, amending and expanding where possible.

7 hours ago, Jakob said:

Well, the recent situation was about tying someone up who doesn't resist (since there would have been no point), but would probably try to escape, and leaving him behing to pick him up later. Now I need a way to determine if he can somehow free himself of his bonds ... Of course, I could just consider the tying-up an auto-sucess and have the prisoner roll a hard atheltics test to get away, but I like to keep the die rolls player-facing. So I'd rather have the PC's roll for tying their prisoner up - if they succeed, he will be unable to escape, if they fail, he gets a normal roll to escape.

Basically, the test would not be: "Can I tie him up?", but "Can I tie him up so good that he will have no chance to escape?"

or the NPC who ties up so incompetently that it is easy to escape. That's what failures are for. On the other hand, a critical might make it harder to escape.

14 hours ago, David Scott said:

Simply put, not the all runes can be used by adventurers. Orlanth's rune's provide a very simple example of this. The Air and Movement runes define his two major subcults - Thunderer and Adventurer. Mastery however is the Rex cult, only the tribal leaders get to join that. The Orlanth Rex subcult isn't described in RQG, perhaps a future supplement (but the rune magic is described for completeness. Even then the Rex Rune Magic is Storm based, not Mastery.

Where is the Don't Like button? 

1 hour ago, Terry Mullins said:

Is there a timeline listing the events in Prax/Pavis 1621 to 1625?

I have some general Timelines at http://www.soltakss.com/timeline.html, http://www.soltakss.com/pavis01a.html and http://www.soltakss.com/pavis01.html but I am not sure how accurate they are.

14 minutes ago, Zit said:

Where can I find Heroquest examples ? To date I only have RQ supplements and the the GTG, so any recommendation would be helpful.

There are a number of HeroQuests on my site, but the links to other people's HeroQuests are probably out of date.

On 5/7/2017 at 8:13 PM, Matt_E said:

Incidentally, I think Simon's chart is not quite right toward the top, as it ignores d12s there.  Should not 2d10 be followed by 1d10+1d12? :-D

Maybe, but I copied these from the Mythras PDF, although I added 1D2 and 1D3.

A Slaver may well use Craft Slaver or have a Craft Knots skill.

Normally I would use this if I needed to tie someone up quickly who was resisting. Tying up an unconscious person shouldn't need a roll.

On 5/8/2017 at 10:17 PM, Dimbyd said:

I look forward to visiting the Revolution stand, and as you're in this thread, I'm sure you're considering joining the session on Friday evening? 

What session?

On 5/7/2017 at 6:39 PM, RosenMcStern said:

Slow down. We have yet to announce officially we are there

Well, ok. Let's announce it. We will be there. Stall K8. Merrie England: Robyn Hode is ready, and going to the printer right now!

(and with this it is two shameless thread-jackings for today)

That's good, otherwise I'd have been wandering around looking for you for a few days.

On 5/7/2017 at 9:03 PM, Claudius said:

Were RQ Land of the Samurai and its campaign Price of Honour any good? Did anyone here use them? How do they compare to RQ3 Land of Ninja? I have a chance to get a copy of both supplements, and I would like to hear some opinions.

As someone who knows a bit about Japanese history, but not an awful lot, Land of the Samurai was very good, I would say better than Land of Ninja. Price of Honour seemed to be a good scenario, certainly useable in a Nippon game.

If you liked Land of Ninja then these are worth buying.