soltakss

12 hours ago, g33k said:

I had a character with Fireblade... The GM rolled us a random encounter, got an odd look on his face, then asked for ALL the d6'es at the table... he got maybe 20ish of 'em.  Rolled 'em all, summed 'em, rolled 'em all again, summed 'em, then picked a few out and rolled those... I think he said the Giant striding towards us had SIZ 50d6.  He was swinging a fully-grown pine tree as a club.

By an unhappy concatenation of events, my character ended up being the ONLY member of the party engaged in the fight.  Everyone else was caught up in a wierd Dragonnewt-generated social/honor conflict thingie.

I don't recall if the Giant missed, or I got initiative, or what... but I managed to land the first blow, and it was a crit.  Down comes the giant, leg (the only bit I could hit -- the GM reported that the hit-location table was a coin-toss head/tails for R/L legs) completely disabled (into negative HP).

Then the giant started regenerating.  I think it was a chaos feature...?

Ack!!!

Across the next several melee rounds, it turned out that in general my damage and the regeneration just about exactly cancelled each other... sometimes the giant would pull a few points ahead, sometimes I would.  It was turning into a race... first one to manage 3ish successive rounds of "doing notably better" on the damage-vs-regen would get the win:  if the giant got his leg into positive points, my position so close-at-hand would probably let him render me into red mud on the ground; if I could get the giant's leg to negative{Original HP in the Location} then the leg would be permanently out of comission... while the rest of the party was having this tense social/chase scene trying to establish whether there was going to be in instant duel-to-the-death between party members, or if one or more were going to flee, or what...

And THAT is where the GM called rhe game 'til next week (apologies for not actually ADDRESSING the OP's query... but I think it was adequately-answered already, and this is really the only "Fireblade" relevant comment I had... ).

Sadly, my character later joined a Yelmalio temple, and had to give up Fireblade... but I (the player) still REALLY like the spell!

 

That's what spears are for - Stick it in the giant and get an impale, the giant can't regenerate damage while impaled, so keep on pressing it in until the giant falls over. Then cut his head off just in case.

9 hours ago, fmitchell said:

That's one reason why I dislike attributes for Intelligence.  Education or Quick Wits, maybe, but "intelligence" 1) is too general and 2) obstructs players' problem solving abilities.

On the other hand, I would have declared that "gunpowder" in a fantasy world either doesn't exist or requires a more difficult alchemical process than as seen on that one episode of Star Trek (which Mythbusters demonstrated is kind of true in our world too).  I'd also have him explain to the class what a "gun" was and why it needed "powder".  Then we could all have a good laugh about silly barbarian superstitions.

In the gunpowder example, they'd have to make an Alchemy roll to be able to find the ingredients.

I like the INT characteristic as it allows me to ask for an INTxn% roll, where n depends on what is asked. If they fail then they don;t know in game. If they succeed they've had a flash of inspiration.

We use a fast and loose version of the Runes from MRQ, which works well in our campaign.

PCs can acquire and attune a rune, giving a Rune Skill, extra copies of the rune can be attuned giving a RunePower value, spells are stored against the rune. The Rune skill gives you the chance of casting a spell stored against that Rune. RunePower can be used to bolster the effects of the spell.

The Master of (Rune) Heroic Ability allows the PC to directly manipulate the Rune, with a higher RunePower allowing more to be done with the Rune. So, someone with Master of Water could call a wave or drain a lake, a Master of Fire could set something alight, dismiss a Salamander or hold a burning rod without getting burnt and a Master of Harmony could calm a berserker, bring peace to two warring factions or cause zombies to sit down and contemplate the universe,

It works pretty well in our campaign and allows the PCs to do more heroic stuff than they would normally be able to do.

RQ3 for me, too. It works better than most and acts as a good base.

4 hours ago, TrippyHippy said:

What do the "ideas experimentally brought forth in Griffin Mountain" include?  

I would guess that this means Personality Traits.

Quote

After a short introduction, my question is why Pavis/Prax is actually a warm place? I mean mythical reasons. Everything in Glorantha is the way it is because of some mythic deeds/deities are causing it. So, what lies behind the warm temperature of Prax?

Urox is strong in the Wastes. Urox is the violent, warm and unpredictable wind. Is that the reason?

How to make a Valind heroquest about all this? Any suggestions? Valind and Urox are associated cults, so there might be a little problem. A Valind heroquest certainly envolves kicking somebody's ass...

To clarify a bit more, the aim of the quest is to alter the climate of Pavis/Pavis County specifically, not necessarily the climate of all Prax/the Wastes.

 

 

 

 

I would guess that Urox sits in his storm and blows Valind/Vadrus away.

In my Glorantha, I run the Winterfall HeroQuest, where the forces of Winter (Valind, Inora, Himile, various minor Storm Gods) come down from the Rockwoods to the north and invade Prax, but are fought off by a variety of people (Urox, Little Brother, Yelmalio, Lodril, various minor Praxian Heroes). In my current campaign, the Lunars took Little Brother's place as Orlanth was Dead, so the PCs stood in Little Brother's place, but on the Winter's side, bringing winter to Prax. They rationalised it by saying that Orlanth blows hot and cold.

You could find out why Prax/Pavis is warm and then counter that specifically. If there was a Goddess of Summer who keeps the ground warm then Valind could kidnap her and take her away (this is what Valind loves doing). If Pavis did a HeroQuest, way back when, to make Pavis warmer, the PC could counter that HeroQuest, or HeroQuest against him. The PC could gain a boon from Urox, perhaps promising to go and kill some vast Chaos thing, in return for Urox staying away from the HeroQuest, or the PC could point Urox to a particularly nasty Chaos foe in the HeroQuest and let Urox fight the Chaos instead of Winter (particularly good fun if the PC summons the Chaos Monster himself).

4 hours ago, clarence said:

I enjoy your rules very much. Excellent to use as a reference. Do you make any updates to them?

Thanks.

I am working on a Legend version, which will contain all the updates. Those rules were for MRQ1, which is long dead, hopefully a Legend version will last longer.

2 hours ago, Jeff said:

What do travelers eat on the road, and does anyone make a living preparing food for them at resting places on their journeys?

Flatbread, dried or cured meat or fish, fruits, cheese, etc. In Sartar, most towns and many villages have designated places where travelers are hosted.  Generally, if you travel a day on one of Sartar's Royal Roads, you will find a place where you can rest and eat.

in Sartar you have Geo's, which is a chain of inns and a cult honouring Sartar's Chamberlain. I see them having a big pot of stew bubbling away all day, with flatbreads and ale, almost like Baltis were supposed to be but not as spicy.

4 hours ago, TrippyHippy said:

The main thing I picked up as an extra idea in the RQ2 book, is the way in which you can delay SR standing in order to target HP locations more specifically. It's in the optional rules in the Appendix. Does this make it through to RQ3?

We used Option 1 with RQ3 as it was easy to use and to understand.

in my games, the Oasis people are lazy, for the oasis provides enough food for them to live without having to work. each Oasis has a different type of fruit, nut or whatever and has a lot of it. Sure, it isn't at Green Age levels of dropping a fig and a fig tree appears laden with fruit, but it is along the lines of the Oasis provides enough figs for all the Oasis people to eat and then more for the nomads to take as tribute.

The diet of the oasis people is, therefore, 90% based on the produce of their Oasis. So, 90% of the diet of the Fig Oasis is figs. The Oasis people don;t suffer any ill effects of this kind of diet.

Most oasis people think that everyone eats like this and are amazed if they travel to another oasis and see them eating dates, plums or ground nuts.

2 hours ago, clarence said:

Aha, LEN/MAS is good. I will check it out.

And a Zero-G skill is what I had in mind too. If a character doesn't have it s/he will operate with a penalty in all low-G situations. For those that have it most skill checks I reckon will be as normal, only in certain situations the Zero-G skill will be called for (or act as a cap). Do you have a Vacc suit skill too or do you bake them both into Zero-G?

I have a Vacc Suit skill as well. The rationale is that Adventurers with the Vacc Suit skill can operate in many environments, from Zero-G to High-G, as a planet with a high gravity can still have a toxic atmosphere that requires the use of the Vacc Suit skill. Similarly, an Adventurer in a space station can be in a Zero-G environment without needing a Vacc Suit.

My rules are at http://www.soltakss.com/rq_scifi.pdf - They are for MRQ1 so have a few things to sort out, but should be useful.

What I normally do is to look at the Grain Goddesses and see what they produce, that would be the staple crop. Then other things follow from that. For other cultures, the food derives from how they live.

Praxians live by the Survival Covenant, so they eat lots of stews, roast meats, beast eyes, strips of meat; they drink the blood of their beasts, milk, yoghurts, koumiss; they flavour with different grasses, herbs, roots and so on, picked up as they travel.

Pentians have similar tastes to Praxians, but they eat cattle and horses.

Orlanthi have a lot of stews and roasts, based on the grain goddess worshipped in the area. They drink mead, beer and ale. Bread and biscuits can be made of wheat, barley, oats, rye and so on, but they rarely mix their grains.

Dara Happan peasants eat a lot of rice-based food, with a lot of fish and farmed animals; I see them eating gumbos from the swamps of the Oslir.

Dara Happan nobles eat more refined food than the peasants; I can't see them eating anything that is rice-based for example, as that is for peasants, nor maize based as that is for Lunars. I can see them eating mythically important food, for example eggs. Pela is the goddess of barley, so barley-based foods would make mythic sense.

Lunars eat maize-based meals, with bread made of maize, roast/boiled corn on the cobs, plus the food of Peloria.

On 1/28/2016 at 9:19 PM, clarence said:

I've been watching The Expanse this past week (and found it to probably be the best sci fi show I've seen since Firefly) but when I started thinking about describing BRP characters growing up in low G it became a bit problematic.

STR -3 and CON -1 works fine, perhaps lowered HP. But what about SIZ? Those people are easily 2+ meters tall but really skinny. Should I raise SIZ because they are tall? Lower it because their weight is low? Or keep it as it is because body volume is the same as for earthlings, just slightly stretched out?

IIRC weight is the determining factor for SIZ in BGB, but it seems very unintuitive to lower SIZ for people 0.5 meters taller than most.

How would you do it?

The RQ Scifi document that I put together separated Length/Mass (LEN/MAS), using SIZ as the average of LEN and MAS if required. It turned out that LEN is nowhere near as useful as MAS in most situations. In low-G environments, I gave a bonus to LEN and an equivalent reduction to MAS.

I also had a skill of Zero-G that acts as a limiter of activities in Zero-G environments, with a Heroic Ability that removed the restriction for experts.

17 hours ago, g33k said:

 

@soltakss -- Not at all sure why you say it isn't Bronze-Age.  Sure, there's a bit of Iron-use, and spell-enhanced other materials.  But broadly-speaking, most of the cultures are mostly bronze-using (and most of the real-world cultural bases are bronze-age cultures).  Good point not to over-emphasize the 60's/70's roots, I guess; but if I don't mention dinosaurs up-front, they end up seeming like a random "WTF?" inclusion....   and we WANTS them, my precious, yes we does!   But I'm pretty sure I'm sticking with likening things to Bronze- rather than Iron-Age cultures.  Just cutting way way down on the number of cultures being referenced!

OK, first of all, having most people use bronze and rune level use iron might make the metal-using technology bronze age, but in effect that is pretty meaningless.

Orlanthi are roughly equivalent to Celts/Anglo-Saxons/Vikings, all of which are Iron Age cultures; Pentians are roughly equivalent to Mongols, Praxians to Mongol/Amerinds, neither of which are bronze age; the Holy Country is a mixture of cultures none of which are bronze age - Caladraland is Stone Age, God Forgot medieval, Heortland Iron Age, the sea people are fishers, trolls don't have a bronze age culture and Esrolia a mix of cultures which is the closest to a bronze age feel; Balazrarings are Mesolithic.

To me, Glorantha is ancient in style, but I don't see much that screams Bronze Age to me.

I used RQ3 Strike ranks but with 12 SRs per round, so each SR was 1 second.

For me, it made complete sense, each action takes a set time to complete, creatures with a longer reach can hit earlier, as can quicker creatures. It takes smaller weapons longer to reach the target. Spells take time to work up and cast.

I tended to use RQ3's 3SR gap between actions, rather than RQ2's adding the Weapon SR, as RQ2 could have a very fast troll with a troll maul split attacks at SR1,2,3,4, then sitting around doing nothing for the rest of the round. Better to hit at SR 1,4,7,10

I wouldn't emphasise the Bronze Age world part, as it isn't really.

Emphasis many cultures, emphasise that religion is important and that magic is commonly available.

I wouldn't have anything that details when the setting was created, as it has evolved a lot recently. It is no more a 70s setting that the 60s when it was created, or the 80s when it was detailed or the 2000s when it was changed.

In old RQ, you had to have a different Summon spell for each creature summoned, so Summon Shade, Summon Wraith, Summon Demon were different spells. The reason was that each deity had its own class of beings that it could summon. So, the Archangel Gabriel might grant Summon (Angel) and Beelzebub might grant Summon (Demon), but not vice versa.

I suppose worshipping a deity of Hell might allow Summon (Infernal Creature) which could be used to summon more than one type of being. It's your call as a GM, I suppose, or how hard the player argues for it.

19 hours ago, TRose said:

One thing to remember also that when Nomad Gods was first published in the 70"s( Forget year)  the idea that some dinosaurs had feathers was not well known.

Whereas Dragonewts rode Demi-Birds, that were effectively feathered dinosaurs.

The Pol Joni ride horses in defiance of the Praxians, to make themselves different.

I'd say that a Praxian Nomad who joined the Pol Joni would give up his/her herd beast and ride a horse. Mechanically, Zebra Riders or Unicorn Riders would be able to ride horses with no penalty, but the other nations would probably have some kind of penalty until they learn the differences between riding a horse and a rhino, for example.

We played that it took no extra SRs to cast, as it is a Divine Magic spell.

It also makes it slightly better than Heal, which does cost SRs to cast.

It is good when stacked with Cure Chaos Wound, as that will provide all MPs for the spell, so cures wounds of any size.

Nice place to live. That's where I come from, but haven't lived there for 30 years, but you'll enjoy the peace and quiet.

UzUz in my games are normally cloaked in shadow on the rare times that they venture into the sunlight. While pregnant, they remain in Subere's Darkness, where no light has ever shone, just in case.

Hot Trolls are not affected by daylight and are comfortable in the jungle sunlight.

Cave trolls and trollkin are affected, as stated above.

Uzko and Uzdo are not affected by sunlight. Whether they mind it or not depends on the GM, I suppose. I play that they are as happy in sunlight as humans are in the dark.

13 hours ago, ajtheronin said:

Question 1: Page 28 says that weapons takes damage when are used to parry a successful attack. This rule applies to successfull parry only, right?  (In a failed parry the defender takes all damage)

Yes, only successful parries, an unsuccessful parry means the parrying weapon has failed to block the attacking weapon.

We played that a critical parry absorbed all damage, but I cannot remember if this was a house rule.

13 hours ago, ajtheronin said:

Queation 2: If you successfully parry a successful attack done with a short stabbing or Long-hafted weapon how you calculate how much damage is transferred to the defender? (Those type of weapons do not damage other weapons)

Long-hafted weapons don't damage the parrying weapon.

However, we played that axes and spears would damage a Shield, as a shield is put in the way of the blade, whereas other weapons block the shaft. That is almost certainly a house rule.

13 hours ago, ajtheronin said:

Question 3: a critical with an impale weapon is both a critical and an impale? 

Not in RQ2.

We houseruled that scoring 1/100th of the skill is a Critical Impale, doing impaling damage ignoring armour, but this only applied to skills over 100.

In RQ3, a critical also did impaling damage, a rule that I never really liked.

On 1/6/2016 at 10:28 AM, Gollum said:

That's right. Since all success rolls are determined with a D100, it is easy to take any character from any game and to know whether he succeeds with any D100 rule ... But the problem comes more when you want to play an adventure designed by another publisher. You have some conversions to do to and this is not always easy. What BRP skill best corresponds to RuneQuest Essential Endurance, Evade or Locale for instance? Likewise for weapon damages and armor protections, which are not always the same ...

Personally, what I do is this:

Weapon damage is as written in the supplements, regardless of what the equivalent weapon stats are in the rules I am using. I don't mind if the rules say 1D8 and the supplement says 1D8+1, I treat them as variant weapons.

Locational Hit points and armour are as the supplement, regardless of what the values are in the rules. So what if one set of rules has 6 points in a leg and 7 in the chest, but the rules say 8 points in the chest? If chainmail is 6 points in the supplement and 7 in the rules, I use the 6 and don't even explain it.

Location D20 uses whatever the players roll, as they refer to their own hit locations when working  it out. If I have to work it out, I use the values in the supplement. Again, I don't care if 7 is an abdomen in the rules but a leg in the setting.

For spell effects, I generally use what is in the rules, except for spells that aren't covered in the rules, in which case I use what is in the supplement.

For things like movement, strike ranks and so on, I generally take whichever is easiest to use. 

It just makes it easier to use the wealth of RQ/BRP/Legend/OQ/Renaissance/GORE/D100/Whatever supplements and scenarios that are out there begging to be played.

8 hours ago, Gollum said:

I may be very pessimistic, here, indeed. Contrary to what I believe, the different essential rules may attract more players to the D100 system, and someone who tries a BRP Essential game may want to try an other D100 system after that ... But I doubt. I sometimes glance at what other publishers offer, thinking that it is very interesting, but, eventually, I only buy BRP products. And I suppose that a RuneQuest Essential fan, for instance, rarely buy a BRP product.

I see all D100 systems as variants of RuneQuest anyway, so happily buy things from all of them.

It helps to have the different sets of rules. so that stat blocks and skills can be understood, so I have copies of pretty much all the D100 rules systems.

As for supplements, I tend to buy Gloranthan and Alternate/Mythic Earth supplements, as those are what really interest me. I have bought SciFi supplements, but have not bought many supplements set in other game worlds. For me, what is important is the setting, not the rule system, as I can easily convert between BRP, RQ, OpenQuest and Legend.