soltakss

Is there any Open Game Content in the new version?

The old version didn't have any, which is a shame.

5 hours ago, Newt said:

From my experience as a D100 (see I did it again ) publisher and the feed back people give me either directly or indirectly via forum posts is that the vast majority of d100 (gosh there it is again! ) GMs and players are happily mixing and matching different flavours of D100, being aware of both the bigger and dominant Chaosium RQ/BRP/CoC and the various other D100 flavours.

Its not rocket science

For most people, no, it is not rocket science, However, some people like their rules a certain way and having different stat blocks, for example, completely throws them. 

I think the people with the most problem are publishers of various D100 games, some of whom see other publishers and supplements for other D100 rules sets as competitors.

2 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Her parentage and origins are mentioned in some detail, in The Fortunate Succession, page 57 of the recent versions. Yara Aranis resulted from the Red Emperor mating with a demon in the Pentan Hell. The Sartar Companion names the demon as the Goddess of Tormented Death.

Someone said on the forums that the mother wasn't Gorgorma, which is a shame

If anyone wants a copy of some document or other, then send me a PM or email soltakss at yahoo dot com. Don't forget to include your email address, though!

Don't forget that this is a snapshot in time.

The Orlanthi tribes moved about a lot, formed, broke up, reformed, merged and split many times.

The tribes in Sartar now don't match those in Sartar 600 years ago and these don't match those 1200 years ago.

The conservative Orlanthi clans from Heortland left the Holy Country to form Sartar, the tribes under the Olny Old One probably don't match those under Belintar and the tribes post-Belintar have probably changed as well.

That's just a small area of the Orlanthi lands. Take into account the Lunar Empire and the tribes would have changed a lot over the past few centuries.

So, all the Orlanthi lands are a heaving mass of tribes, constantly in flux, constantly changing, the only thing that keeps them united as Orlanthi is a worship of Orlanth and Ernalda.

On 12/27/2015 at 2:16 AM, threedeesix said:

True, but you cant just quote part of my post and not the part relevant to your argument

Of course we can, this is the Interweb!

8 hours ago, jajagappa said:

If you're doing a RQ style game with random treasure, I could see a need for that.  But personally I find it far more interesting to explore the implications of using a crystal derived from a different rune (e.g. acquiring personality traits/flaws of that rune, acquiring unexpected foes, attracting the wrong type of attention on a heroquest, etc.).

In my experience, most magic items were gained by defeating foes who used them, rather than randomly rolling treasure.

If a band of PCs defeats one NPC group every 4 sessions, with each NPC group having one magic item, then over a weekly campaign lasting 4 years the PCs get 52 magic items. As PCs become more powerful they are met with more powerful NPCs who might have more magic items, so the PCs get more items. Sure, they can give them to the temple or sell them, but they will accumulate useful items.

MP Storage devices such as POW Storage Crystals are very useful and PCs can accumulate them very quickly, but Powered Crystals are rare and were restricted so that each character could only have one attuned at any one time. Having a different power per rune works well in HQ, but would need some work in RQ to assign a mechanic to each rune.

My current players love Hero Points and use them all the time. If they spend 5 Hero Points in a combat then they feel as if that was a difficult/important combat, more so than by just scraping through.

1 hour ago, M Helsdon said:

Even more intriguing from a modern point of view is that the Classical authors rarely if ever referred to the inhabitants of Britain and Ireland as 'kelts', but there's a widespread modern assumption that they were. Then there's the fact that Tacticus infers that a Germanic language was spoken in the south east/east of Britain in the 1st Century AD, long before the Saxon invasion (which left little genetic footprint on the population compared with, say, the later Danes).

Barbarian Belt is probably more meaningful, those for ease of usage, Orlanthi as a template is here to stay.

As Germania was the heartland of the Celtic people, it makes sense for the Romans to treat Celts as a kind of germanic people. To me, this means that tacitus recognises some sort of language similarity between the people of south east Britain and the people of Germania. Having them both as speakers of Celtic languages seems OK to me.

I am not sure how much the Romans analysed languages and whether they split them into our family trees of Celtic and germanic.

23 hours ago, Pentallion said:

Then the problem with tick boxes IS a myth in other words?

For me, it is a problem, one that I sorted by limiting experience.

For others it isn't a problem and they are happy to continue doing things their own way.

The Night of Horrors has become an event in God Time, as have all the major mythic events within Time.

HeroQuestors can travel to these events and participate in them. This happens on a regular basis for the Uz, who travel back to the Wounding of Korasting and participate in the mythic event, time and time again, but they don't affect the actual event as it has already happened

The Night of Horrors seems to be one of those events that has attracted HeroQuestors from within Time who affected the event as it happened. 

Maybe the Orathorn magicians have magic that allows that, to allow HeroQuestors accessing the mythic event to influence the actual event. You could read it as imposing the GodTime on Time, as GodTime HeroQuestors can affect the actual event, if they are powerful enough.

18 minutes ago, Pentallion said:

Sorry you have such rotten players that it's a problem.

I have played with 3 RuneQuest groups in my 30-odd years of roleplaying.

The first, at Uni, lasted for 3 years, before we all left and went our separate ways.

The second, post-Uni lasted for eight years before I moved to Ireland.

The third has lasted for 10 years and is still going.

Each group has had a fairly constant set of players, the last group having lost and gained one player, so I would not say that any of my players are rotten.

5 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

I don't think the source material supports the idea of a limited understanding of Orlanth. 

The Thunder Brothers give a great deal of variation, and can be understood as regional interpretations of the Great Storm King concept.  Similarly, the Ernaldan sub-cults may be understood as a conflated series of local earth deities.  The red-headed warrior woman of Saird may be identified as Vinga, but she is far more than the female aspect of Orlanth, and far more than the cult of Vinga as known in Dragon Pass.

As a RW example, the Treaty between Mursilis of the Hittite Empire and Duppi-Tessub of Amurru invokes at least (some parts of the Treaty are missing) nineteen different deities simply as 'the Storm-God of x', without mentioning any names.  It is the Orlanth function that is common, and so named by Theyalan Dawn Missionaries and by God Learner scholars, not a single god himself.

"My clan follows the noble storm-raider Orlanth Finovan, our neighbours are untrustworthy Orlanth Desemborth skulkers!"

 

My feeling is the opposite, in that Orlanth exists as a Greater God and is worshipped in a number of different cults, each tapping into an aspect of Orlanth. These cults might be different in various areas, because they remember different things about Orlanth, but they are all Orlanth.

The idea of Finovan or Desemborth as cub-cults of Orlanth comes from the Hero Wars and is OK, for a very pantheonic view, but I don't think it reflects Gloranthan reality. Finovan and Desemborth are worshipped both as deities in their own right and as part of the Thunder Brother subcults of Orlanth, but the subcults are not Orlanth Finovan, but Finovan friend of Orlanth.

The Guide to Glorantha p451 says "Exile Stead (small city): Also called Barbarian Town, this walled settlement is populated by Pol-Joni and by exiles from Lunar occupied Sartar." and p254 "Exile Fort (small city): This fortified village has long been home to the desperate, outlaws, and exiles. In troubled times, the population swells with refugees fleeing the troubles in Dragon Pass.".

So, Exile Stead is another name for Barbarian Town and Exile Fort is a nearby village.

6 hours ago, nDervish said:

I don't have extensive enough BRP experience to say whether it's true or not, but the complaint I usually hear is just the opposite, that, as the game progresses, characters become increasingly similar because of the way that skill progression works.  You get to roll for improvement in every skill you use meaningfully, so carry a golf bag of weapons and you can roll to improve every weapon; look for opportunities to sneak, so you can roll to improve that; etc.  But the roll to improve gets less likely as the skill gets higher, so the people who started out low will catch up with those who started high.  Play long enough and (so the complaints claim) everyone will have all the same skills at roughly the same (high) level.I

If you have unlimited experience then that can happen. However, I have restricted experience for a long while now and that allows PCs to specialise.

On 12/15/2015 at 4:41 PM, Archivist said:

I like it, and my player's are happier, when each character has their "thing" (this is just a preference). In an OSR RPG, every character has a class; in Savage Worlds, characters have all sorts of Edges that give them very different abilities); in the world of darkness game, each character has a splat that gives them completely different powers. However, it seems like in D100 systems (I happen to be using Renissance D100 and Pirates and Dragons), you end up with very similar characters - just a handful of % points difference. I'm sure I must be missing something. How do you differentiate characters?

In D100 games, PCs are differentiated by their attributes, skills, spells, abilities, allegiances, personalities and weapons. 

Two fighters can be very different, one could be a strict bodyguard who hates undead and the other can be a berserking killer of anything that moves, one can use a sword and the other an axe, one can have Truesword and Turn Undead, the other Berserker and Face Chaos, one could have mastered Sense Assassin the other Sense Chaos. 

Now, in a game without vastly different cults, such as Renaissance D100, the options are more limited, but using different weapons and having different skills is often enough to differentiate PCs. As starting characters, they may well appear quite similar, but as the game progresses they should become more and more different.

The thing about "I Fought, We won" is that it is a battle for survival after everything else has failed.

Your clan has failed, you family has failed, your friends have failed, you have failed. There is nothing left, you are about to die a horrible death, eaten by Chaos.

But you don't. Instead you survive, you fight, just one fight, one thing and you win.

But, everyone else fights, but each fights/does one thing and each wins.

In doing so, everyone fights their own little battle in their own little corner of the world and together they win and survive, beating the great unbeatable evil.

So, how to run it?

Not as a party, as the party should be defeated beforehand. In fact, I Fought, We Won is the culmination of a series of defeats, when the PCs are at their lowest ebb. It is the final roll of the dice, because losing means you die, dead, finished.

It is about individuals, so I would split the group up and run each player through a short scenario of how they fight and what happens. When they all come together, they find that each person has defeated a particular part of the enemy and, in so doing, the enemy has been defeated.

You probably will find that some other people, possibly including enemies of the PCs, have also been involved and have helped in the fight. That binds them to the PCs in a way, making them allies of a kind.

This is all probably wrong, but ...

I sort-of remember someone saying that a god of the dead reached up from Hell to the surface but was stopped just as his finger broke through, so the tower of Orathorn is the finger of the god, connected directly to Hell.

In my Glorantha, the sorcerers can inhabit the bodies of the dead, looking through their eyes and animating them. As Orathorn is part of Hell, the dead walk there without being undead. I don;t see them as being Maklioni, or in any way, shape or form related to Malkioni, but have their own death-magic. They would be a powerful elite, with human and inhuman servants, a lot of dehori would serve them. It says somewhere, can't remember where, that they were enticed out to help other people twice and neither went well, one time was the Night of Horrors where they fought against the Lunar Empire, but I cannot remember the other time.

How do I see Orathorn? An impossibly tall crooked black spire. Inside are chambers of the dead, including the Hanging Room, Walking Room, Play Room and a staircase into Hell that goes down the god's arm and through his body. If you think of Clive Barker's hellraiser films then you might be close to seeing what is in Orathorn, although the Sorcerers themselves are quite different.

At some point, the PCs in my campaign are going to encounter Orathorn and may well try to persuade them to help a third time ...

The Orlanthi of the Holy Country are different to those of Sartar and those of Tarsh, becoming more different as you head north and westwards. 

Sure, they have clans which have tulas, they worship Orlanth and Ernalda, but the other deities would vary depending on location and type.

In Sartar, clans are formed into tribal confederations, in the Holy Country, the Orlanthi of Heortland seem to be formed into several tribes, but those of Esrolia seem to be clan-based. I am not sure about Tarsh and beyond, but I would guess that clans are more important than tribes.

Sure, it could be argued that this is just nitpicking and Sartarites having clans and tribes, worshipping Orlanth and Ernalda makes them all the same, but that loses a lot of the subtlety of each area.

On 12/5/2015 at 3:22 AM, MOB said:

Rick has found another previously-unpublished Old School gem to add to the RuneQuest Classic Kickstarter... "The Sea Cave", a medium level adventure for 4-8 players by Greg Stafford, added free as part of the Old School RQ Source Pack to the $100 Rune Priest backer level and above!

See more about it here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/224590870/runequest-classic-edition/posts/1435473

 

Is this available to those of us not at the High Priest level? For example as a PDF? Ignore me, it comes free as part of the Old School RQ Source Pack, which is now available in PDF form.

I am being slower than normal today.

On 12/12/2015 at 11:00 AM, MOB said:

Please note, the "Old School RQ Source Pack" (consisting of the earliest RQ1/RQ2 supplements published: Militia & Mercenaries, Scorpionmen & Broos, Trolls & Trollkin, Balastor's Barracks plus Greg Stafford's unpublished scenario The Sea Cave) now has a PDF-only option. 

Why, thank you very, very much!

If you have the River Voices in the game, then you can use something of their history for them to sweet-talk the river into moving.

In my current game, the River Voices awakened more and more powers through HeroQuesting, until the became the Voice of the rivers of Prax, then the Wastes.

If you scanned the images form the book then some of its power would accompany the scanning process and imbue the scanned file with power. OCRing the image would concentrate the power, as you are effectively turning pictures into knowledge/information. 

I am not sure what effect it would have on the computer itself, but reading a tome on a computer should have the same effect as reading the actual tome itself.

Computers storing many such tomes might become self-aware, in the same way as magical libraries in Discworld. That would probably be a bad thing.

7 hours ago, TrippyHippy said:

OGL/Open License/Unified systems simply don't work that well for RQ/BRP based on all the evidence we have seen over the last decade or so.

Legend, Renaissance and OpenQuest are still going strong and producing supplements, all are OGL versions of D100 games. A number of third party publishers have been producing some good work for Legend.

I agree with both. Allegiance fits as an Honour perfectly and you can use it pretty much as it is in the book. You can also expand it to other areas, as Chris says, with Ambition/Corruption/Renown/Whatever.