Greville

I hated the idea of the Ducks until my players choose them for their PCs and I had to run a campaign for a party of Durulz. Now I'm a full on convert, it's the most fun I've had running RuneQuest.

These will be on my post-Christmas shopping list for sure.

As some of the others in this thread I am a Pākēha from New Zealand/Aotearoa. I went to secondary school in the late 80s and early 90s and I can say that our history was only glossed over, and what was taught about Māori history were mostly racist myths used to justify colonialism. Reading through the twitter thread so much of what is highlighted matches those old, false narratives, and sounds very similar to what is spouted by white supremacists in our country today.

I'm not saying the authors are white supremacists, but Mythic Polynesia reproduces a false history of Aotearoa that is widely used to this day by racists and bigots to foster hatred against Māori.

In the recent years there has been a big push to teach history properly in New Zealand (it's still ongoing) and resistance to this by, well, racists. There is a whole raft of newer, more accurate sources that also celebrate Māori and Pasifica culture.

That's the saddest thing about the whole situation - it could have been so easily avoided.

I've used Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Indesign in the past. I no longer have them anymore so am giving Scribus a go. It's an open source desktop publishing program and I'm hoping it'll work for my new character sheets. For graphical stuff you can try Inkscape, it's also open source so they're free, and if you don't like them it's only cost you time.

In the past I've used Pages, back when I had a Mac, but it's pretty basic.

 1. Runequest - Roleplaying in Glorantha, mostly as written, however I do have a house rule where people get fate points as well.

2. Just over two years, although Covid has slowed things down.

3. We started in 1625, we wanted to try things as written first, especially as this is my first campaign set in Glorantha.

4. The campaign has mostly been the area between the South Wilds, Clearwine City, and as far north as Apple Lane.

5. Duck Point. After a throwaway comment of mine in session 0, my Players decided to play ducks

6. Before the bestiary came out for the current version I used my other Chaosium books to crib monsters from, especially RQ3.

7. A bit of both, the campaign started with the party travelling to the Stone Nest ruins to do some investigating for Joseph Greenface, but no other constraints. So they've been able to go off on side quests and explore as they will. It's a bit like Skyrim - there are plotted quests to do, but they can choose to pick them up or not and there's plenty of other stuff for them.

8. I was intimidated by the sheer amount of history and also tbh by some of the posts on here about the history. I did get a lot of helpful advice, but the threads also tended to attract posts that started "You can do it your own way. But here's how to do it right....". 😀

So I only dipped my toe into the established timeline and only been following it very loosely past the Dragonrise.

9. It's really just two ducks, learning about the world, making a name for themselves and becoming seriously capable in the process.  

10. There is so much history and lore with Glorantha, a lot of it contradicting other parts, or stuff that has been ret-conned multiple times that trying to get it all to fit together is impossible. So don't.

The most helpful piece of advice I got is to treat it all as true, even the parts contradicting each other and then pick the bits you want to focus on.

In terms of getting started the introductory adventure and Vassana's Saga are helpful in seeing how the starting characters can fit into the world.

I really enjoyed the first part of the DnD 2nd Ed Night Below Campaign. There were a lot of different things to do and they all connected you with the people in the region. There were multiple solutions to each problem (non-combat ones too). It taught me a lot of good techniques for introducing characters to an unfamiliar area and ensuring they give a crap about what happens.

I really liked the premise, and the first act was fantastic, but the 2nd part just killed it for me.

I'm a bit late to the party here, but I'll give my answer.

I prefer hit locations:

• I like the piecemeal approach to armour, it just feels a bit more gritty.
• Using hit locations gives you more options in combat, especially if you want to disable someone quickly without killing them outright.
• It makes combat feel more dangerous than using the major wound system. You can loose the use of a limb due to several hits, rather than just massive ones.

That being said in games where I want less combat I don't use hit locations, which is mostly just Call of Cthulhu.

18 hours ago, smiorgan said:

Sounds interesting. I'm tempted by the rules light d100 system, even though the crunchiness of BRP still appeals to me.

I wonder if they modified the setting so that Nephilim don't seem extradimentional predators possessing human victims...which was the major turnoff for me.

 

 

Quote

But you've more or less front-loaded your disappointment by airing that old complaint.

It might be an old complaint, but it's still valid, and people have posted a lot of workarounds. One of the most common is to have the PCs be an awakened Human that will transform into a fully spiritual being, by reaching Agartha, over many lifetimes.

It's my favourite because you can play it from the point when the current incarnation is exposed to something magical or a piece of history from one of their past lives that starts their awakening in this time. When confronted with something that relates to the past life roll to see if it triggers a flashback. Relay the memory and give a past life check. As the past life score progresses you get more of the relevant skills. I plan on using a version of the allegiance rules to handle this.

I don't like the idea of having the human be a willing host/sacrifice that chooses to become a vessel for a Nephilim because there is no guarantee that they haven't been manipulated or coerced into it.

Thanks for the link. It's not what I was after, but there's a lot of other cool stuff there.

Hi,

A while back someone posted a link to an online tool that rolled up the background options for characters and I've gone and lost the link. Google has not been my friend, I find no end of encounter rollers, but not the character background options.

Can anyone here point me in the right direction?

Thanks,

Grev

You're welcome 😀

Let's call it a collaboration, rather than a creation. I'd been thinking of the Allegiance mechanics in BRP for a while. The way they're used in Mythic Iceland really highlighted how well they can they can show gradual changes over time. They're also good for simulating level based abilities/effects I've seen in other games.

I'm going to use it for powerful magical items, where more powerful abilities get unlocked as you show yourself worthy (getting more points). But I hadn't thought of using it for magical corruption until I saw your post.

Your game sounds pretty cool, I hope you have fun with it.

Mythic Iceland used the allegiance mechanics to show advancement in the worship of their chosen god and corruption by Loki.

If you want the save roll to be something that is easily resisted at first, but then spirals out of control as the corruption take hold then use POW vs Corruption Points on the resistance table.

Or roll under (POWx5)-Corruption Points as the save for a more linear progression.

I would use a variant of the allegiance mechanics to determine the effects of the corruption. As the corruption points pass thresholds then certain conditions can take hold. Here's a quick example:

Corruption Points          Effect
10                                   Mark of the Corrupt. Roll or choose one of the following:
                                       1. Flame glows blue in your presence,
                                       2. Animals are scared of you and shy away from you.
                                       3. Your eyes become different colours.
                                       4. You give off a faint smell of brimstone.
                                       5. People feel uneasy in your presence.
                                       6. You have a prominent birthmark that looks like a symbol belonging to an evil cult/religion.

25                                  Once per day you can use your corruption points as temporary magic points. Your corruption points
                                      will increase by the number of magic points used in this way. This is in addition to any points you'd normally get for casting the spell.

You can add more stuff as needed and anything beneficial should come with a cost.

I just had a quick look in my Rolemaster FRP rules. The Creatures and Treasures book doesn't give perception skills to basic monsters. For humanoid/sentient creatures you create them like Human NPCs, apply the racial stat modifiers, and give them Observation and Alertness skills under the Awareness category.

If the party is in the wilderness then they roll avoidance rolls to see if they encounter creatures rather than rolling to see if a creature spots them so no skill is used.

It's not very clear. When I ran Rolemaster I'd take the BRP approach and give the creatures the appropriate skills based on what type of creature they were, which is not covered in the rules, but made it easier for me.

I like the Rune Magic system in Mythic Iceland. People know runes, that have certain effects (both physical and narrative), and combine them to build whichever spells they want. The runes could be easily reskinned just by referring to them by the effect and calling them powers/talents/spells etc. It will be the magic system I'd use in any non-Runequest BRP game I run.

https://www.chaosium.com/mythic-iceland-2/

Sorry for the late reply - I've been mulling this one over.

To start off with I wouldn't make a character for each life unless you were going to play out that time and that could cause issues if you had people with different past lives. I guess one option is to play the past life stuff separate from your normal game sessions, but that could cause a disconnect between the past life and how it impacts on the present.

Here's a slapdash run down of what I would try. I have all the Nephilim books so your mileage may vary.

I really like the idea of having a mechanic to cover recall, I think a modified version of the allegiance system could work for that. You could generate the past lives in a similar way to Nephilim to see what significant events the person was involved in, and give each an past life score. The score for each past life would be independent. 

Then when confronted with something that relates to the past life roll on the allegiance score with modifiers to see if it triggers a flashback. Relay the memory and give a past life check. As the past life score progresses you get more of the relevant skills.

E.G

Past Life score at 25% could give you the language skills at full levels, the rest at 50% percent of their values. Vague control over the memories, and still difficulty recalling specific events. They don't feel like you yet.

Once the score gets to 50% you have all the skills and broad memories. You know this was a past life and these things happened to you. You remember a lot of your day to day life, but still have difficulty (must roll) to recall significant or traumatic events.

In terms of the occult skills you have them as latent knowledge that come to the fore when triggered. Once they have a reason to research occult techniques the knowledge starts bubbling up.

Sorry this isn't more polished - I'd need to work on it a bit more to get it playable. I'd also want to clean up aspects of the past life system:

• Get rid of the variable number of skill points - a set number of skill points mean that each past life in equally valuable in terms of skills.
• Flesh out the events more and make then relevant to the campaign at had.
• Have reputational effects from the past lives. Other people who know who you were could react more (or less) favourably because of what you did.

Cheers,

Grev

Thanks for this free adventure. I'll have fun inserting it into my campaign as the player characters are all ducks

On 7/10/2019 at 2:12 AM, Calvin said:

One of my friends is trying to get into the main book at the moment. We are hitting similar points, a lot of high concepts and not a lot of "so what are we going to do now?" 

I ran into the same problem, until I picked up the rest of the books. We found the GM's book to give a lot of insight (I remember reading that half of it was supposed to be in the main book, but cut due to size issues).

I really like this idea, I think there are a lot of possibilities, especially if someone strays into the hero plane accidentally.

I'm currently running a Mythic Iceland campaign and think it'll work just fine with Cthulhu Dark Ages. Mythic Iceland does refer to the BRP Big Gold Book, but after character generation it's mostly the combat and advancement rules you need, which you can just replace with the one in Cthulhu Dark Ages.

27 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

And you're partially correct. When you're dealing with dragons, everything is both correct and incorrect! (At least until the publishers give us some better material but that's never gonna happen.) 

To be honest I like the ambiguity. It lets me try out different ideas... 

Hi,

I'm pretty new to Glorantha and have a couple of questions about how people see Gloranthan dragons. I love the difference between true dragons and dream dragons, although it took me a while to get my head around.

What kind of dragon does a dragonnewt turn into? The book mentions ancestral dragons, but isn't clear if they are like dream dragons or not. Either way it's a good thing that they are rare.

I'm planning on them being like dream dragons for now, but am open to any interesting ideas.

Secondly, if dream dragons spring from the subconscious of a true dragon does that mean there can only be one at a time per true dragon? I like the idea of dream dragons being born of errant thoughts and desires, but then be their own beings out in the world.

Do a dragon's dreams always form into dragons? What other creatures are spawned by the sleeping dragon?

To be honest it feels like there are no right or wrong answers here, I'll go away and ponder a bit.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks for posting this. I love it. There's enough to spark idea's, while still being bare-bones enough to avoid being prescriptive.

I ran a fantasy campaign for two years using the Big Gold Book and didn't have any major issues.

Here is a brief list of the challenges faced by my players from a typically DnD background:

• Characters felt vulnerable due to fixed hit points and no leveling. They got over this very quickly once they made it through a few fights and realized how capable their PCs were.
• Treasure, just treasure. They came from a game that expected a certain gear level; where PC power is as much about the gear you walk around in as any innate abilities they have.
• Balancing encounters can be a challenge: it's pretty easy when the party is not outnumbered, just think about skill levels damage etc. But things can go sideways pretty quickly when people start running out of reliable dodges/parries.

Most of this was because the game feels so different, but once they started playing the players got used to it very quickly. My best advice is to just start playing and tweak things as you go. Especially if you let people change their characters as they get used to the game.

One issue I had was making magical items, I wanted them to be rare, and a big deal, but didn't really like the flavour of the example s in the book. So I went digging online, Pete Maranci's web page has lots of examples that I used, or modified, for the game. http://www.maranci.net/rq.htm

You can also lift a lot of stuff, as others have said, from other BRP based games. I have Elric and RQ3, so had plenty of stuff to mine from.

12 hours ago, Madrona said:

I TBH, would take between 93 and 95 as a point buy thing. But I'd probably, if my players objected to rolling, just tell them to take the D&D elite array +an average score and deal with it.

I agree with Madrona in terms of a straight point total, especially as the rules (on page 53) say:
 

Quote

 If the total of all these results is 92 or less, you may allot up to 3 more points to your adventurer’s characteristics, as desired.

The average would be 13.5. The only issue with point buys is that players can get carried away min-maxing, but given that Runequest is pretty unforgiving, the in-game consequences of having some very low stats would prove educational for all.

I have a fan-made character sheet, made by Dan Pettersson in 1995, that I downloaded from a public ftp site in the late '90s. Probably ftp.cs.pdx.edu (the rpg section was taken down a long time ago), UMich, or Berkeley.

Could one of the site mods let me know if I can upload the character sheet here?

Cheers,

Greville

I voted for the fixed armour values. Mainly because I don't want to slow down every combat by adding another roll. As it stands combat can take quite a while once characters are moderately skilled and have semi decent armour. 

If you are using Elric/BGB default style combat you're extending any combat round, which connects, by 25% (20% if you have to roll a major wound).

If you are using the hit location rules then the player can choose to target an unarmoured location by making a difficult attack roll. There are also rules for aiming on pages 212-213 of the BGB that I would let people use for melee attacks as well as ranged.