soltakss

As a general rule, yes, almost any D100 supplement can be used with almost any D100 rules set without many problems.

As for openQuest and Classic fantasy, I think it would be relatively easy to do this. After all, Classic fantasy has its own spells, so you probably don;t need the OpenQuest spells, you can use the Classic fantasy stat blocks with OpenQuest fairly easily and can decide which parts of Classic Fantasy you prefer over OpenQuest and vice versa.

I would play that they are destroyed. 

However, you can probably HeroQuest to get them back.

You haven't highlighted which container they are in! 

2 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

Of course! Crosspollination from the broad BRP family is another good reason that I should have mentioned. What are Legend supplements that you consider a top notch resource for Legend or any BRP tupe game? Are the Xoth supplement worth it?

I wrote Land of Ice and Stone, Legend's Ice Age supplement, so I would say that is worth it for the survival rules alone. 

Vikings and Samurai of Legend are well worth buying. 

The Xoth supplements are OK, but I am not particularly interested in the setting.

2 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

From a rule perspective, do you believe Heroic Abilities are a definite plus compare to Mythras?

Yes. It was a shame that they were dropped for RQ6/Mythras. I understand why they were dropped, but they filled a niche. The way they are gained in Legend is better than in MRQI, so they have evolved a bit.

From a player/GM point of view, Legend is a bit simpler that Mythras but there isn't much difference between them. Of course, The Design Mechanism will disagree with me here! 

However, from a publishing point of view there is a big difference. Legend is OGL and Mythras isn't. That means that someone could publish a Legend supplement without asking permission from, or signing contracts with, Mongoose Publishing. This gives a lot of flexibility for people wanting to write supplements.

The fact that legend can be used with Mythras very easily means that Mythras players and GMs benefit from Legend supplements, more so than BRP or OpenQuest supplements. 

I tend to use whatever supplement with whatever system I am using anyway, so they are all the same to me.

7 hours ago, Byll said:

Do we know anything about unicorns' mythic ancestry?

How (if at all) are they related to Hippogriff?

Why do they have curative powers?

The excellent RQ Companion had a full writeup of unicorns, but I no longer have a copy.

22 hours ago, TRose said:

 So a Eumal trickster goes to Heler for some sex change magic, then tries to ride a Unicorn.

Is he a virgin, though? You have to be a virgin female for a unicorn to let you ride it.

1 hour ago, Iskallor said:

Hypothetically would would happen if a man landed on the back of a unicorn, owned by a unicorn woman. Would he be hunted down mercilessly by the tribe....Killed by the unicorn?

 

 

The unicorn would try its best to throw him off and would never be tamed - Imagine a bucking bronco with a horn and you get the picture.

What the Unicorn Tribe would do depends on how it happened. If accidentally, they would probably let him go. If he tried to steal the unicorn they would try to track him down and kill him - Yelornans are very good at tracking due to their Yelornan magic.

On 6/26/2016 at 2:29 AM, TRose said:

 And we know Broo raise goats. So how come a Broo  shepherd does to rape and destroy his flock in a few weeks?

In pastoral communities, male goats and sheep are usually slaughtered for meat, leaving the females as breeding stock.

With broos, the same thing probably happens, where female goats are bred to produce more female goats and non-breeding male goats are corralled for broo mating. This has several advantages:

• The females are left alone to replenish the goats
• Males are set aside in a corral for the other broos to mate with as often as they want
• When the broos eat their way out of the males, they can easily be captured and become part of the clan, the dead goats then become food for the clan
• Goats can live almost anywhere, eat almost anything and need little in the way of tending, so are perfect for broo husbandry

They probably should be an initiate, but it is your campaign. This could be their final year as a child, the year before Initiation, so perhaps this is their chance to decide who they want to follow.

You might want to merge their Initiation ceremony with the start of the "This World" HeroQuest. So, they follow the huscarl up the slopes of Kero Fin, then choose their cults and use their new cult position to protect him on the HeroQuest.

On 7/9/2016 at 1:04 PM, Belgath said:

Is my understanding of illumination correct in the following statements.

So any path to becoming A Gloranthain hero, demigod, or dragon, is  essentially illumination.

Having reread the Illumination rules in Sartar Kingdoms of Heroes, your interpretation of those rules is probably correct.

Illumination from Nysalor/Gbaji/Arkat/Red Goddess is treated as functionally equivalent to draconic Illumination or the insights that becoming a Hero gives you. I am not sure if I like that idea, but I see why they have done it.

Pregens are OK for one-shots, but people have more buy-in with PCs they generate themselves.

I would use augments straightaway as they are easy to use. I cannot abide extended contests, so would not introduce them, however if you like them then introduce them when at an important and complex stage.

On 7/8/2016 at 3:57 PM, Runeblogger said:

- How hard is it to run this campaign if you started with the Colymar campaign and your PC belong to the Orlmarth clan?

Is there a campaign in the Coming Storm Vol 1? I have glanced through it but cannot see any scenarios or scenario hooks.

2 minutes ago, Belgath said:

Is my understanding of illumination correct in the following statements.

Not in my games. 

2 minutes ago, Belgath said:

So any path to becoming A Gloranthain hero, demigod, or dragon, is  essentially illumination.

Not really. Rashoran fortified a few Gloranthan deities, to strengthen them against the Chaos in the Greater Darkness, but he did not illuminate all deities.

Nysalor taught a doctrine whereby people could essentially free themselves from the belief that Chaos is always bad, so they instinctively know that neither Chaos nor Law is good or evil. Some of the Greater Gods, for instance Orlanth, Storm Bull and Zorak Zoran, have a fundamental belief that chaos is always bad (Well, except for Zorak Zoran and cave Trolls), so they have clearly not been Illuminated.

Illumination can certainly help when becoming a Hero or Demigod. The Lunars fast-tracked the Seven Mothers and a number of others to godhood, partly through Illumination. However, I don't think it is necessary.

Nor do I think that becoming a hero, demigod or dragon means the person become Illuminated.

2 minutes ago, Belgath said:

Luners use chaos in there form of illumination to speed up the process judging increased risk worth the reward.

I don't think they do.

Illuminated Lunars know that Chaos is not fundamentally bad. However, even Illuminated Lunars don't normally want broos and scorpionmen living nearby and don't want their daughters to marry ogres. 

Chaos is a tool for the Lunars. They are happy to manipulate the cults of Thanatar and Krarsht, happy to use vampires as special forces or broos as mercenaries in certain areas. Even things like the Crimson Bat is seen as a symbol of the Red Goddess' power over Chaos rather than something to be embraced.

Having said that, Lunar broos and ogres tend to be more civilised than their wild counterparts, so exposure to them is not as threatening as coming across a broo nest in Prax or an ogres family in the wilds. If Illumination involves exposure to Chaos, which I don't think is true, then Lunar chaos is probably the most benign type.

7 hours ago, Joerg said:

The most numerous seagoing Hsunchen probably are the Sofali, who once occupied all the four corners of the Homeward Ocean and still persist in the Northeast and the Southeast.

Rakuti Shark Hsunchen plague the westernmost East Isles.

The Kralori use Orca Hsunchen as marines (the Guide presents this as "the cult of the Orca" as revealed by Thrunhin Da to fight the "evil Zabdamar").

As a rule, the sea beings have Triolina magic that allows them to alter their shape, so the Hsunchen shape-changing magic may be less of a big deal in the oceans.

These are humans who become sea-creatures, I think.

Are there any Merfolk Hsunchen, in other words merfolk who can naturally turn into sea creatures or who claim descent from/kinship with sea creatures? 

7 hours ago, Jeff said:

I lean the opposite way. I suspect accusations of Occluded is often whispered, but who is to say who is Occluded, when many of the most powerful politico-religious figures in the Empire exhibit bizarre, even deviant behavior.

This becomes more of an issue with the rise of the Monster Empire, which I think is led by Occluded Illuminates who follow Gbaji more than Nysalor/Red Goddess.

11 hours ago, ChildOfEru said:

Thanks for all the great information.  My Glorantha experience dates back to RQ2 and a bit of time playing when Avalon Hill was publishing.   I'm slowly buying the current set of books and reading them.

RQ Illumination is very different from Lunar Illumination, especially that described in the Lunar Handbook 2.

Personally, I think the old HW/HQ treatment of Lunar Illumination is far too complex and leaves a lot to be desired.

However, in the Lunar Empire there are different types or schools of Illumination:

• Nysaloran Illumination - Remnants of the Bright Empire, these have had a presence in Dara Happa since the time of Nysalor
• Arkati Illumination - A counterpart to Nysaloran Illumination, these may be hunters of "bad" Illuminates
• Lunar Illumination - Those who follow the secrets and teachings of the Red Goddess and her followers

I also think there are schools of Yelmic Illuminatio, among the leaders of Dara Happa.

In my mind, they are different sides of the same thing. Mechanically, I treat them the same. However, Lunar Illumination provides some extra teachings that go beyond the vasic illumination, so Sevening, for example, is not available to the other types as it is a new teaching specific to the Lunars.

1 hour ago, Corvantir said:

You are right but part of the reason why I assume most of the players will be Sartarite exiles is that I want to use the clan creation rules of Sartar:Kingdom of Heroes and Pavis: Gateway to Adventure. I consider them to be a great tool to present Glorantha to the players as it conveys a lot of information about the setting in a fun way.

They could have gone to Pavis to make their fortune, or to follow earlier relatives who went with Dorasor. Maybe they have feld some clan problems, or made an enemy of a powerful warrior from a rival clan. Perhaps their families have fled the rebellion or were outlawed by their clan. They could be mercenaries, starting out to build a reputation. 

Not all Sartarites in Pavis/Prax are rebels, fleeing the Lunars.

My players are new to the setting, so it can help a lot to get the ball rolling. And being strangers in a strange land, it explains why they don't know the area and thus their lack of knowledge about this part of the setting.  

In that case what is the problem? New players won't care about Sartarites working for the Lunars, even though you are not keen on the idea.

Let them roll up PCs and start them off as mercenaries working for Duke Raus. Don't give them a choice, just put them there and let them work out the ramifications. Have a rabid Wind Lord turn up sometime and shout at them for being traitors to Sartar, keep him as a recurring NPC to stir things up a bit. Have the PCs compare him to the Humakti head of mercenaries and with the eminently reasonable Duke Raus. Put some ogres in Roneland and have Duke raus order the PCs in no uncertain terms to get rid of them, to show his anti-chaos feelings. 

11 hours ago, Mankcam said:

I think the Skill Check progression may need to be slowed in such a campaign, otherwise the characters would peak too early and it end up being a grind until the Hero Wars kicks in.

I would probably use a system where you determine what skills you used the most over the past year (maybe a number of rolls equal to half POW?),  and make the Skill Checks during Sacred Time, to mark the passing of the year.

The characters could receive bonuses to their Skill Rolls for any skills that they are constantly paying in-game training costs, to keep the training economy valuable.

We moved away from skill checks to Hero Point spends, so you have a limited pool of Hero points that you could spend to try and increase a skill. It works well to slow down the progression and allows players to lead their PCs in certain directions.

6 hours ago, Joerg said:

All reported broo, even the most extreme ones like the stove one and the allosaurus one, were bipedal and mobile. I know of no reports of broo having functional wings. The scorpion-armed broo fighting Harrek on the cover of Genertela Book may have gotten that appendage either from scorpionman parentage or from a Chaos feature.

There are other ways of becoming a broo:

• A Broo undergoing Bagogi Rebirth will come out as a Scorpion-Broo.
• Curse of Thed could turn the recipient into a broo, perhaps retaining the original bodily form.

6 hours ago, Joerg said:

Broo semen intrudes into the donor body, transforming part of the donor body into the larva. Alternatively, the "males" really perform parthenogenesis and just implant a previously formed larva. (In that case finding a rape victim would be a survival strategy, or the larva might consume the father.)

When mating with a male, I can see larval implant being an answer, but it still has characteristics of the host, so there must be some form of hybridisation.

Farming technology now is far more advanced than 100 years ago, presumably it would be even more advanced in the future.

A single modern combine harvesters does the work of teams of horses and men, so it would make sense to have that technology. Similarly, modern ploughing and planting technology is more efficient than men and horses. You would only need horses if the terrain does not support a tractor or tractors need fuel that is not available.

Farming today is far more efficient than in the past, so fewer farmhands are needed.

Unless, of course, the rule is that technology is at a premium and labour is cheap and plentiful in which case farmers toiling in the fields with horse-drawn ploughs would be fine. Maybe the powers that be want a bucolic image of farmers working in the fields as an aesthetic.

3 hours ago, Alex said:

As in Glorantha 10k-high mountains are ten-a-penny, sticking a seamount in any part of the oceans that aren't actually bottomless in that exact spot seems pretty low-end sort of speculation.  (Do we have data on a typical depth of the Homeward Ocean, aside from the "infinitely" bit right in the middle?)

The Guide to Glorantha doesn't say, but I would guess that most, if not all, of the Homeward Ocean is in the Abyssal Plain, deep, dark and dangerous.

3 hours ago, Alex said:

It's a fair point that these will be more common nearer the continents, and in particular in various sunken lands.  Nor are they necessarily just former human cities with merfolk squatters, as the best spots will likely be those that were formerly rather remote and inaccessible to surface-dwellers.  But I'd still like to put in a good word for at least a couple of deep-ocean cities, as first, it'd be cool, and second, it better corresponds to the reported distribution of most of the kindreds.  (I'm referring in the first instance to the Bestiary's maps, as I happen to have that readily to hand, which I realize officially it would be over-charitable to regard as B-Canon, but I'm sure people will put me right if there's been an explicit material change on this.)

The Gnydron live in the abyssal depths, so deep ocean cities are certainly reasonable.

3 hours ago, Alex said:

I think, on this pattern, it's not plausibility-stretching to suppose that merfolk might only need relatively short and relatively shallow periods of sleep.  Doubtless several such periods, though.  (Human polyphasic sleep fiends claim to be able to operate indefinitely on 3-5 periods of anything between 30m and 2h a go.)  Conversely, if they can go for an hour between breaths during normal waking activity, they can likely do so for longer while their metabolic rate is reduced during sleep.  Certainly two hours doesn't seem like a big stretch, maybe four at a push.  That's getting toward the range of the normal human sleep cycle, which isn't so much 8h as it is 2*4h, optionally but not necessarily banged together.

I'm not a big fan of such a high dependence on magic that they essentially can' survive or have even a rudimentary culture without it.  Sure there are beings like that in Glorantha, but I don't see the typical merperson as being in that category:  they're one (really, several) one of the "basic major races"...  just a rather under-reported one.  Rather than being comparable to Peaceful Cut, this might be more akin to needing to have the local wizard cast a "Chew" spell on the entire village prior to each meal.

That sounds reasonable to me. I am also not keen on having to use magic for day to day activities.

3 hours ago, Alex said:

OTOH, each kindred could vary significantly.  In particular, I rather like the idea of the Zabdamar as surface-sleepers.  Or rather in their case, above-the-surface sleepers.  Imagine sailing warily through the outer fringes of the Kahar Sea, and through the fog faintly glimpsing a manatee-like silhouette, and then the garish shamanic tattoos and outlandish jewellery...   as he snores his head off, floating in mid-air.

Now, there's a sight that I am going to have to steal for my current River Voice campaign.

24 minutes ago, MOB said:

I love the apologetic note from the editor, which comes straight after the ad for the new edition of RQ: "Sorry for the delay. This issue was originally due in 1983 – but a couple of things came up."

Fits in perfectly with the history of Chaosium schedules then. 

8 hours ago, Pentallion said:

I think they mean sea creatures they can ride as mounts, not sea mountains.  But I may be the one who is mistaken.

By seamount we are talking about underwater mountains that rise from the seabed but do not reach the surface.

8 hours ago, Pentallion said:

As for Mermen sleeping.  So I have a group of fresh faced PC mermen.  We adventure.  At some point, the mermen must sleep.  Unlike humans, where this can be skipped to "the next day....", or "who's on watch?" we have an issue here.  HOW is it exactly that they sleep?  My brand new mermen PCs either don't HAVE any magic to help them sleep, or there's a spirit magic as common as Peaceful Cut that every merman has.  Except then, how do the children sleep?

So just waving a hand and saying Glorantha is magical doesn't cut it.  Having established that sleeping is a very social issue for mermen, then I think it needs addressing on a societal level.  Something that would make sense in their mythology, in their spells, in the way they get played and rolled up.

Because they have nowhere safe to sleep.  the water around them will kill them.  When landlubbers sleep, the earth doesn't rise up and bury them and if it did, you can bet it would result in a huge part of their social structure being developed to deal with it.

How to whales or dolphins sleep? Even young/baby whales and dolphins sleep without a problem. Air-Breathing Merfolk could sleep the same way. When in their cities they would have air available when sleeping and might have some kind of harness keeping their bodies below water and their mouths above water.

1 hour ago, Corvantir said:

What I would like to do is to start early in 1615 and then play through the years until we reach the Hero Wars. I think the Hero Wars will be far richer if the players know the setting better. Another important advantage with Borderlands and Beyond is that you start rather small and can build brick by brick from there on.

Funnily enough, that's exactly what we are doing in our current campaign. We started off as a street gang in Pavis, explored Prax and gained copper limbs from an idol, went to become convict-militia in Sun County, became River Voices, did some of the scenarios from Borderlands and the RQ3 Pavis/Prax supplements, liberated the Earth temple in Snake Pipe Hollow, resurrected Grandfather Newt, righted the wrongs of the River Voices, went into the Eternal Battle, resurrected Yamsur the Splendid, Orani and a son of Genert, pulled Storm Bull cultists from the Eternal Battle, sent a Death cradle down the Zola Fel, defended pavis from a Chaos attack by raising the Dead of Pavis to fight, restored the Giants' fertility, rescued a Life Nymph from a Short World prison, sent a Cradle down Zola Fel and escorted it to Magasta's Pool, went down Magasta's Pool and met the Giants there, resurrected Tada, Pavis and finally Genert, killed the Crimson Bat by turning it inside out and pulling its soul from the Chaos Void at its heart, rescued a True Dragon from the remains of the Crimson Bat, brought back Tarkalor and Sartar, organised the Boat raising and performed the Sky Boat HeroQuest to restore the Boat Planet, instigated the Dragonrise and broke the Lunar power in the region, drove the Lunars out of Pavis, then Prax, then the Holy Country, then Sartar, made Harrek Duke of the Upland Marsh, one PC did the Pharaoh's HeroQuest and reunited the Holy Country, they brought back the Only Old One and are now HeroQuesting to unite the world's waters.

So, they went from startup PCs to Heroes in a campaign that has lasted 10 years so far and did it in the same way as you suggested, starting small and building brick by brick.