Gryphaea

Roll20 can be found at roll20.net. It is far and away the more frequently used when compared to Fantasy Grounds, not least because it is free to use. But is also has a effective LFG system and it is pretty easy to link your friends into the game from outside. There are character sheets that have been set up for RQG, RQ3 an RQ classic, and these can be chosen from a drop down menu when you set your campaign up. There is plenty of support, demo vids and an active forum to discuss problems. There is also an integrated market place for VTT counters and backgrounds, though very little of it matches the RQ vibe and themes. Most people use Discord for audio, this gives a stable and easy to use platform for the audio and allows easy messaging out of game. Having said that I have always found that the audio on Roll20 worked reasonable well - but many disagree with this. There is a limit to the storage space that you are given on a free subscription - but if you are careful with your file sizes that shouldn't be a problem if you are just running three or four games. Drivethru recently took over another VTT provider and re-branded it Astral, it is also free to use. That is worth looking at, but is still in its infancy. What makes it interesting is that you can set up the PCs tokens with a link to an external URL - which can be an editable PDFs if you have that saved in Google Docs. To go back to the OP, I know that is it is a hassle to have two different accounts - but if you want RQG on a VTT I would suggest you at least look at Roll20. I can vouch for the system and have successfully run an RQG campaign there most weeks for about a year.

Invitations to GM at Aethercon VIII are now up so you can register a game and time slot. If you are interested in running either Broken Tower or Stealing the Eye For RQG I have these games prep'ed in Roll20 and will very happily share a copy with you to minimise your prep. PM me and I'l arrange how we get you a copy. I had a fun time playing RQG and AetherCon seems to attract a good crowd. They also give out prizes for participation and I have seen players win those prizes!!

Sir Ethilrist wasn't dead when he went to hell, I don't think Argrath was either. In King of Sartar there is a list of Argrath's Companions, some of the entries about the companions end with the ominous line 'who did not return from it' which I feel implies that if you die in Hell then you can't come back

@lordabdul You may find this useful as well... How Frog became a Frog. In the Green Age the world was so abundant, all you had to do was drop a seed on the earth and a tree full of delicious fruit would spring up where you stood. During that time there was a small creature that kept getting stuck in trees. Help me, the creature cried out and '********' helped him by stretching his legs to make them larger and teaching him to fly through the air so he could jump from tree to tree. When the lesser darkness came the little creature became hungry as all the insects that came up from hell with the Trolls had eaten all the fruit on the trees. Again the creature called out for help and again '******' helped him. This time ******* stretched out his tongue and taught the creature to use it to catch insects. And Frog grew large eating the insects, and grew to the size of a Buffalo. When Chaos came and the Greater Darkness fell, Frog was very hungry. Frog heard about the great compromise where men and animals would throw lots to see who would be herded and who would herd, who would eat the dry grass and who would eat them, and who ride and who would be ridden. Frog went to the meeting place were all the animals and the humans were and asked if he could join in. But all the Humans laughed at Frog as no one wanted to ride a Frog. So in shame Frog ran away to the swamps and hid there. I am not sure who ****** is in this tale. When I first drafted the story if left it blank and I have decided to leave it that way. Initially I was thinking Trickster, but a dead and now forgotten god is also possible. Genert fits well. But I also do like the helper being open ended. There is the possibility to extend the story to include that origin of the Storm Bullfrog, but I'll leave it up to you.

I would say just go with it, find the type of stories that your players enjoy and you enjoy telling them. It could be said the story at the core of Glorantha is; Orlanth gets into more and more trouble and has to keep going till he fixes it. I posted something in the advice for Game masters' thread on how I have been dealing with XP roles. The Adventure is called War in Winter (not Winter War as I thought) and can be found here . I think that is a good question and posters should be called out on what there sources are more often I feel. However, as to where do I find out about the Storm Bull Frog cult is unfortunately that you can't, it is a silly improvised pun made by one of my players and it kind of developed a life of its own in game. Sorry. In my game it is a Spirit Cult for Newtlings in the Marshes south of Prax. It is a re-skin of the Storm Bull cult but localised to meet the needs of the Newtlings, who every so often have to band together to deal with a Chaos infestation taking hold of a part of the Marsh.

I started an RQG campaign in April '18 on Roll20 made up of a group of people who I had played online with in other games and felt would be a good fit, we did our 26th session last week and aim to play each week but don't feel bad if we don't. I started off with a sand box type approach based around Clearwine, with the first adventure investigating the ruins of the Lunar Villa on the Broken Tower map. then rounding up some lost sheep that had got into the the Cinder Pit and finding out what had happened to the shepherd boys. At this point it was becoming clear I wasn't going to maintain seasonal adventuring and we would just have to follow the story arc where it took us. I re-skinned the adventure from River of Cradles with the Gorps, which did need to be reworked significantly. The Giant Catfish Zola Fell priest was morphed into a Giant Salmon, and the Gorp/Manlings got a 21st Century update (see below) We then spent a couple of sessions on the events covered in the Winter War adventure posted on this site, got distracted by some dinosaurs north of the Upland Marsh, had a Christmas themed special adventure in Sun Dome County - (which some day I'll write up the notes for properly and share with the community). I had been seeding the main campaign adventure from the GM screen pack with the players over the preceding weeks but at this point they decided that the Big Bad was somebody else's problem and stated looking for something else to do. We then did my own 'Clearwine must Flow' adventure from the Cult of Chaos competition, and then explored some of the politics of Boldhome under Queen Kellyr - the queen and the party ended up on bad terms as she blamed them for her loosing a bet with the Pol-Joni on a sporting match which was a Quidich/Polo mash up. The party are currently in the marshes to the west of Corflu to which they were magically transported. They have been restoring the lost Newtling Cult of the Storm Bull Frog, and are currently exploring the ruins just outside of Corflu where they have discovered a lost Zistorite temple/manufactury and have just begun to fight off the automated guards. They are also considering the possibilities offered by the unidentified magical prosthetics that can be found in the workshops. They have visited the Hero Plane twice - once when one of them accidentally had a heroic death and needed to find his way back to the mortal world, and the other time when they encountered grandfather frog and his founding myth - which unfortunately then resulted in the Storm Bull Frog mix up. I am rather keen to see the official rules for these rather my improvised approach to HeroQuesting. The group consists of a mixture of players who are completely new to RQ and Glorantha (I brought them over from WFRP) and some old Grognards who have been around since RQ2. They are all loving being in Glorantha. As you can tell, we are a little off canon now, so there is some ruling hacking going on to keep up - which is fine. The character advancement systems from the book is the area which is most under strain and really isn't fitting well with the needs of the campaign I am finding myself in. I am just giving characters spells and training as in kind rewards from the cults and communities they encounter as the XP rolls and particularly the POW gain rolls don't seem to give rewards that match character efforts. This isn't a complaint, simply an observation in keeping with the original question that started this topic.

Nice piece of work, I thought it hung together very well

1st Century is pretty late though - I guess I forgot that Western Genertela is based more on the late Classical period rather than the actual Bronze age. That does to some extent apply to much of Genertela, but it's more evident in the West. Those early 1st Century Christian books were quite small - more the size of modern note books. The much larger book that is shown in the illustration of a Malkioni wizard in the old Gods of Glorantha box turn up in the 4th Century CE. The picture on p380 of RQG with the scrolls placed on sloped shelves reflects a more Bronze Age vibe, but would also represent a serious investment of time and money for its owner. I imagine the Abiding Book used by Malkioni liturgists as a large scroll rather than a large book, and therefor the ceremonial practices of the Malkioni as being more like those of Orthodox Jews in the RW. I have an image of important worship ceremonies featuring a group of elderly bearded gentleman dancing around with 1m+ scrolls covered in expensive cloth while chanting and singing discordantly.

As well as face to face convention play, can I also quietly advocate for on-line play as well. While there is a great deal of overlap between the two, there are some differences and potential opportunities that on-line presents. I think a future facing development strategy for RuneQuest (and Cthulhu) should also consider online play, if only as a facet of a wider stratergy. If we organise games as outreach for new players I think the on-line arena is important for several reasons. On-line is often a way that those returning to the hobby after decades of absence dip their toe in the water again - RuneQuest has a very strong competitive advantage here as it was a dominant brand in the previous decades. Online play has also had an historic association with maintaining play groups which would otherwise break up when players physically move away from one another, and bringing such groups back together again. Also, the new generation of players are far more comfortable with on-line play and if we are looking at under 25s then we really need to have some kind of online stratergy. From my own experience I would also like to share two further thoughts, online play give us a chance to reach out to potentially ignored or difficult to reach players. In the sessions I have GMd for in on-line conventions I have had the feeling I was enabling players to join in who because of (for want of a better phrase) their additional needs would not have been able to access traditional convention play. Secondly, I have found that if I have scheduled games in time slots that are accessible to folks beyond the USA and Western Europe then I still get players and that they are grateful for the opportunity to play. RuneQuest is a game with truly global reach and one which is not so deeply tied to Western Cultural stereotypes - I think it would be interesting to see if we can strengthen the global community that plays the game.

Had the opportunity to slot this adventure into a weekly campaign and it went reasonably well, or at least the things I would 'want to better with' were all on my side of the ledger and not with the adventure itself. I added to the adventure by having a Grazelander PC acting as a kind of Aide de Camp presenting Queen Leika with the black arrow, and then riding between the two queens with messages. The summary and time line made it easier to work out when things were happening and there were some strong, evocative descriptions. If you do another one - and I hope you do - putting these descriptions in a text box would make them a bit more accessible. I created a few crude graphics by cannibalising a map, these helped players get where everyone was going and some of the strategic points you were making. I can share those if folks would find them useful.

I would love to have a OpenQuet book hard copy. I would prefer option 3 I like the OQ2 rules and think that they are pretty sound as is... so revisiting them with new art and rule tidy ups would get my backing - so I would buy that one anyway. But on balance I prefer the three book approach. I personally want to use OpenQuest as an introductory game with the legs to go the distance for a long form campaign, if there is the take up. Having a free no frills players book pdf and a hard back with all the things you actually need to run the game is the ideal solution. It fits well with a world of tablets and smart phones with free dice apps and pdf readers. The World Builder Book would be a welcome addition as one of the strengths of OpenQuest is the way it was always supported by some evocative campaign settings - Life and Death being a case in point. The idea of a unified magic system is something that now that it has been proposed I like the sound of too. I don't know if it is even possible, but a unified magic system that can handle Glorantha lite, D&D 5e conversions and perhaps even a bit of grim dark would be wonderful. Not asking for much I know.

As we are still going on this... another thought arising from actual play Player occupations during down time. Players do not have to pursue their character occupation during down time, especially if that doesn't fit the story. If Sorala the Lhankor Mhy scribe spends two or three seasons travelling with Biturian Varosh the trader wandering through Prax, then as a GM you may offer her player the choice or even insist that Sorala uses the warrior profession as her occupation as she has spent her time as a caravan guard.

Just found these battle maps suitable for roll20 or other VTTs. They have a nice bronze age/gloranthan feel to them, which makes a refreshing change from the more medieval stuff artists tend to produce. There is a patron too if you want to support the artist. https://crossheadstudios.com/2018/06/05/forest-battlemaps/ (I have no commercial interest here - just liked the artists work and wanted to share it with people who may like it too)

I think there is a lot of truth to this, but I think we need to recognise that there are different styles of play and people have different needs and expectations in games. D&D is the quintessential game-ist game, it asks the questions such as 'What would it be like to be a... brave knight/powerful wizard etc' and gives them lots of rules to find out RQ is the simulationist anti-thesis to this it, it asks the question 'what would happen if... I started waving around this sharpened piece of metal/if the storm God did actually grant miracles' and gives you a rich and detailed world to find out in. I don't think it is a case of re-training your players to a different set of expectations but case of explaining that this a whole different approach - and they need to buy into this. Some of players intuitively get the simulationist approach, some players actually don't want it and that should be respected. But I think you should explain it not just let them pick it up by trial and error in the hope that this is a game style for them - that's just not fair.

Regular fortnightly game held November 11 with a moment to remember the designer who passed on

A second game from AetherCon VII played Nov 11, 2018. There was a chance to talk and reminisce with some folks sharing their positive memories of meeting and talking with Greg Stafford

@drablak you seem to have it covered; start with the Quickstart, then let player either continue with the pre-gens or role their own. Then start working through published adventures in the RQG adventure book. I am using a similar route for a group and it is working well for me so I would support the approach you are proposing. Based on my experience of starting campaigns I would recommend that you reserve judgement on the initial stages of the campaign till you see what characters your players finally end up with and what bonds are created by their personal histories. I have found that the stories the players can create by trying to reconcile their backgrounds with each other can take the campaign off in interesting and unexpected directions. Plan time for character creation within the sessions and start with a really simple go here and get this/find this type adventure so everyone can work out who they are and how they relate to one another before starting the campaign proper. I had the players search the ruined lunar manor mentioned on the map in the quickstart guide and let them fight a few rubble runners. Keep it loose and vague in the early sessions while everyone gets caught up with the basics of the setting. Also I have two different games both with a Grazelander characters in them. While both of the characters are good strong characters that the players are enjoying playing, if you are playing in Sartar and Prax they add an additional level of complication to social situations. If I was planning to start a group to run the the Apple Lane/Dragon of TH stuff now, I would probably ask players to avoid a Grazelanders.

Game played Nov 9 2018 on line through AetherCon VII dedicated to the memory of G Stafford

OK your right, apologies about that - my roll20 listing has the wrong time though so need to check that out.

I would love to have you on board if you can make it. Here is the listing that I see from AetherCon - which agrees with my times on Roll20. (Psullie you can DM me here or on Discord as I may have an alternative for that slot)

Hopefully folks have seen the Blog post from MOB with suggests running games in memory of Greg Stafford in the week of his memorial service on Nov 10, 2018. If not the blog can be found here. Roll20, the on-line RPG site, noted Greg's death and a few personalities associated with the site commented about the importance of Greg's legacy. This would suggest that they may be sympathetic to efforts to memorialise Greg with games played on their site. What do folks think about reaching out to Roll20 and asking if they would be interested in enabling users of the site to tag games as memorial games? Perhaps even a splash banner on their home page to note the event. Some of us could also run demo games of CoC and RQG as part of the weekend. We would need to act quickly as we only have a few days but who knows... What do you think? If it is any help I have both Stealing the Eye and Broken Tower for RQG set up as Roll20 games and would be more that happy to share these with anyone who wants to run the games themselves

Next weekend (Nov 9-12 2018) is AetherCon and I have the honour of running a couple of RQG games there for the Cult of Chaos. There are still 5 slots open for a game of RQG - Stealing the Eye. Two slots on Friday and Three slots on Sunday. The slots are early evening UK time so that would make them afternoon in the US. The games will be played using Roll20 but you have to register using the AetherCon event, which is free to register with. There are also some CoC events listed and some seminar events. There are also some games that do not come from the Chaosium stable - but why would you want to play those? If you want to honour Greg Staffod's memory by playing RuneQuest on the weekend of November 9-11 but can't find a game, you would be very welcome to join me and my players. https://www.chaosium.com/blogplay-a-game-and-honor-greg-stafford-next-weekend

If you are thinking of playing something with a short life span - 4-6 sessions as you mention - the OpenQuest is a strong option, It incorporates all the standard fantasy tropes that you mention so can be run 'out of the box' or to fit your existing prep so all the decisions that you need to make for BRP about which option to use are already made for you and laid out in a rule set. It is also pretty simple to pick up and gives you characters that are reasonably competent from the start. It will give a game that is recognisable to D&D players but also sufficiently different, and there is a basic rules set available as a free pdf that players can access if they want to refer to the rules themselves. I have run generic fantasy with the rule set and think it is very fit for purpose for a more casual style of play. You may well need to do some quick house ruling to allow characters to everything they want - but it sounds that you are not new to gaming so this should be something you are comfortable with. Combats can bog down, but that would be an issue with BRP, as well so you need to think about how you will run combats and change them on the fly. Classic Fantasy for Mythras has a bit of a learning curve attached to it and you will need to spend time explaining rules and letting players work out strategies on how to fight.

As the GM of the two RQG events listed this year. This is my first time, but I did run some games for Roll20Con this year and last year, and my sense from those events is that two weeks out it is still early days. l am listed as a staffer - I am not, but I would guess that is because I registered in the first wave of registration for event sponsors and supplied a link to Chaosium as this was an Cult of Chaos event. There is no updating of you as a GM if a new player has joined - you just need to keep an eye on roll20 However it would seem that they player has to be registered and be logged in for the application for the game to be forwarded to Roll20. I think you may have to register, then log out and log in again for this to work properly but I can't swear tot his being the case. Also I can't seem to match my registration to my activity as a GM of a game. I have two players through their systems and am confident if they both show I can run a successful game - all credit to the Stealing the Eye scenario writer who has authored a very flexible adventure hat can be scaled on the spot to meet the number of players you get. It seems to be very hands off and automated so far, but as I said it is early days and I'll reserve judgement till after the event is finished. I'll update this post after then.

Thanks for posting and sharing. One very quick comment is that Black Fang brotherhood I think has been tied down to Pavis and the Rubble and is not a general cult - it is very location specific. No doubt others have feeling about this and will comment. However, there is no reason why you can't re-skin the spirit cult and just change the name while keeping as many of the other details as you want. I think the re-purposing the bandit and the fisher is definitely the way to go. I spent a few hours looking at how I could home brew a wolf pirate for a player who was interested in playing one of those and was coming up with many of the same conclusions you seem to have reached. As we are still in the very early days of the publishing cycle for RQG we are missing some things needed for building maritime characters - one of the really key things is the cult of Dormal and the way it approaches sorcery and rune magic. The cult book is on the slate for publication so hopefully we should see some answers there. We already have a few of the pieces of the puzzle in the RQG book, with the important Open Seas spell on p397 and Lhankor Mhy as a model of how a cult could combine sorcery and rune magic. My guess is that based on some postings elsewhere the write up of the cult in Tales of the Reaching Moon no 10 will be a useful source. Also tales of the Reaching Moon number 17 has some useful information too - although I am well aware referring you to fan magazines from over 20 years ago isn't the most helpful of feedback.