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styopa

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Posts posted by styopa

  1. On 3/15/2023 at 12:09 PM, Rick Meints said:

    That chatGPT "word salad" might be interesting to read if you know nothing about Glorantha and don't care if it is totally incorrect.

    Otherwise it is a complete waste of time.

    Honestly, I thought that it was pretty fascinating that this bot (this was 3.5, not the new 4.0 mentioned this week as I don't have a paid sub) is *reasonably* well versed in the basics of a relatively niche RPG world. 

    No, it obviously doesn't quite connect the dots and the lines perfectly but the vagueness of who won Gbaji vs Arkat and generally the Lunar view on chaos isn't bad...no, I don't think that's worthless word-salad. 

    To be fair, half the Glorantha Digest for decades was people contradicting each other over this stuff so - short of spewing copyrighted text straight from the Guide to Glorantha - I don't fault some brainless heuristic for not getting all the details right.  I did like the bit about the Red Emperor 'defeating Arkat' due to his magic and technology.  I immediately had the image of some sort of WH40K emperor blasting away with a plasma rifle.

    • Like 1
  2. Q: Can you tell me the story of the Lightbringers from Glorantha?

    ChatGPT:

    Certainly! The Lightbringers are a central myth in Gloranthan mythology, and tell the story of how the sun was brought into the world.

    In the beginning, the world was shrouded in darkness, and the gods were trapped in the underworld. The goddess Eiritha, mother of all life, decided that something had to be done to bring light to the world. She gathered together a group of heroes known as the Lightbringers and charged them with the task of bringing back the sun.

    The Lightbringers consisted of several gods and demigods, including Orlanth the Storm King, his wife Ernalda the Earth Queen, and his brother Yelm the Sun God. They journeyed through the underworld, facing a series of challenges and tests along the way. They battled with monstrous creatures, outwitted cunning spirits, and passed through dangerous gates and barriers.

    Eventually, they reached the top of the cosmic mountain known as Kero Fin, where they found Yelm the Sun God held captive by the goddess of chaos and darkness, known as the Unholy Trio. With the help of their ally the Trickster God, who distracted the goddesses, the Lightbringers were able to free Yelm and bring him back to the world.

    However, the Unholy Trio were not willing to give up so easily. They attacked the Lightbringers and managed to steal the sun back, plunging the world back into darkness. Undeterred, the Lightbringers regrouped and launched a second assault on the Unholy Trio, this time with the help of a giant eagle named Gorgorma. The eagle carried them to the top of Kero Fin, where they defeated the goddesses and finally brought the sun back to the world.

    Thanks to the bravery and determination of the Lightbringers, the world was bathed in light once more, and the gods were able to emerge from the underworld and return to their rightful places in the heavens. The myth of the Lightbringers is a powerful symbol of the triumph of light over darkness, and the importance of perseverance and teamwork in the face of adversity.

    Something a little harder....

    Q: In glorantha, what is the relationship between Mallia and Razlakark

    ChatGPT: 

    In Glorantha, Mallia and Razlakark are both associated with disease, but they are not necessarily considered to have a direct relationship with each other.

    Mallia is the goddess of disease, decay, and corruption. She is a chaotic and malevolent deity who delights in spreading sickness and pestilence throughout the world. Her followers believe that disease is a natural part of the world, and that it serves a necessary function by purging the weak and unworthy.

    Razlakark, on the other hand, is a disease spirit who is associated specifically with the plague. He is sometimes depicted as a demonic figure with a swarm of flies around him, and is feared and reviled by many cultures in Glorantha.

    While both Mallia and Razlakark are associated with disease, they are not typically seen as being in a direct relationship with each other. Rather, they are each considered to be separate entities with their own distinct domains of influence. However, it is possible that followers of Mallia might seek to appease Razlakark or harness his power for their own purposes, as he is a potent symbol of disease and decay in the world of Glorantha.

     

    OK graduate level now...(I felt framing it 'in Glorantha' contextually would prevent wasting time/seed info on non-Gloranthan references like Arkat Mtn...)

    Q: In Glorantha, when Arkat fought Nysalor, which one won the fight?

    ChatGPT: 

    The outcome of the conflict between Arkat and Nysalor in Glorantha is a matter of debate and interpretation. The details of the conflict are shrouded in myth and legend, and different sources offer conflicting accounts of what happened.

    According to some sources, Arkat was able to defeat Nysalor and bring an end to his reign of terror. Arkat was a powerful hero and warrior who was able to combine the knowledge and powers of different cults in order to create new forms of magic and combat. He was also known for his strategic genius and his ability to outthink his opponents.

    Other sources, however, suggest that Nysalor was never truly defeated, but instead went into hiding and continued to exert his influence behind the scenes. Nysalor was a complex and enigmatic figure who was associated with many different cults and beliefs, and his true nature and motivations remain a mystery to this day.

    Ultimately, the conflict between Arkat and Nysalor is seen as a turning point in Gloranthan history, and the aftermath of their battle had far-reaching consequences for the world and its people. The legacy of their struggle can still be felt in the present day, and many believe that the forces of chaos and darkness that Nysalor represented continue to threaten the world and its inhabitants.

    (same question, '...answer from the perspective of a Lunar Noble')

    A Lunar noble might say that Nysalor was the true victor in the conflict with Arkat, as he was able to transform himself into a new and more powerful form known as the Red Emperor. The Lunar Empire, which was founded by the Red Emperor, is seen by many Lunars as the culmination of Nysalor's vision for a utopian society based on reason, justice, and enlightenment.

    According to Lunar mythology, the Red Emperor was able to defeat Arkat and his followers by using his superior knowledge of magic and technology. The Lunar Empire is seen as a beacon of civilization and progress in a world that is often beset by chaos and darkness. Lunars believe that the teachings of Nysalor and the Red Goddess offer a path to enlightenment and prosperity for all peoples, regardless of their race or background.

    However, it is important to note that the Lunar perspective is just one of many viewpoints in Glorantha, and other cultures and factions might offer very different interpretations of the conflict between Arkat and Nysalor. The history and mythology of Glorantha is rich and complex, and it is up to each individual to explore its many facets and come to their own conclusions about the world and its inhabitants.

     

    Wow.

     

     

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  3. All basically answered above but I would only add that - if you can find them on ebay, etc and are willing to venture out of the public domain, the RQ 3 rennaissance products:

    • Sun County
    • River of Cradles
    • Dorastor
    • Shadows on the Borderland
    • Strangers in Prax

    ...they are ABSOLUTELY worth it.  Some of the best setting and adventure writing in all the RQ oeuvre.

    • Like 4
  4. 2 hours ago, Silkhands said:

    If this is the wrong forum to post in, or indeed not allowed then please remove.

    If not, then I have quite a few old treasures that I've hardly ever used in the 40 plus years that I've owned them. I currently have two items on my eBay account, Authentic Thaumaturgy by PEI Bonewitz and Scorpion Hall, solo Quest 2.

    https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/275653045169 

    https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/275653049240

    Contact me via eBay if interested.

    Thanks.

     

     

    Is there a reason you're asking 20 pounds more for your Scorpion Hall than all the others on sale?  Autograph or something?  There's a striping on the cover that looks like it's been run with a black marker, I don't see on any of the others' pictures - is that a graphic artifact or what's that from?

    THANKS

  5. On 3/15/2022 at 1:43 PM, Crel said:

    I don't know for sure, but I have a friend who has been playing in the same game for about 15 years. His father started GMing this campaign with my friend, his brother, and a few friends when they were starting high school. Same characters, too.

    For what it's worth, we started when my sons were... I think around 9 and 10?  IIRC the first little 'test play' we did was a couple of farm kids who thought going out with spears would be enough to deal with a pack of hungry wolves...3?.  They died, as expected.*  Then we made their 'real' characters with the kid from across the alley.

    *to be clear, the intent wasn't sadism.  In RQ death is always a real possibility (unlike their experience in video games and honestly, D&D) and at their ages I wanted to insulate them against it being too traumatic.

    At some vague point this year that will make it 20 years of more-or-less every other weekend, 6-8 hour sessions.  We've occasionally taken short hiatus, most recently 2-3 sessions playing Traveller, and for close to a year they played an alternate set of RQ characters that were newbies again, but we're going back to RQ after the next session.

    And no, unfortunately nothing has ever been blogged/vlogged about it.  I started RPGs in 1979 so it was never really something I considered, to say nothing of the fact they were minors for the first several years.  Although I will say that our sons relating "you won't believe what happened this session" has reduced my wife to laughing tears repeatedly.  And none of the players now are writers at all.

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  6. 1. Which version of Runequest do you run? Or perhaps even another system? 

    RQ3+heavy modification

    2. How long have you ran your campaign? 

    I think we're going on around 17-18 years?  My sons were 10 when they started, and in late 20s now.

    3. What time period in Glorantha did you start? 

    1600ish

    4. Where in Glorantha did you start? What regions has your campaign covered since? 

    Pavis, but they've gone west to Sog and Yggs, north to Valind, south to Pamalt, east to Technos

    5. Where are your pcs from? 

    First 2 are River of Cradles folk, one is a troll from Fronela, the other a Hsunchen from Jonatela, the last a shaman from an Eagle tribe high in the remote Eastern Rockwoods.

    6. What products from any version of Runequest have you used? Which were particularly useful? 

    The RQ3 Renaissance products are absolutely excellent.

    7. Is it a sandbox or more plot led campaign? 

    Sandbox, but so much is happening that they have no choice but to deal with, sometimes it's a little linear

    8. How much have you followed the arching events of the time period or has your Glorantha varied? 

    Nearly no attention to canonical events.  Couldn't care less what happens according to canonical timeline, what happens in my campaign is what needs to happen for my story.

    9. How would you describe your campaign? 

    Sandboxy, dungeon-crawly, high powered, action oriented, loot heavy.  We use miniatures and maps for all interesting combats. Hopefully fun.

    10. What advice would you give newbie gms to runequest and glorantha? 

    I think far too much effort is made to try to stick to canon.  Glorantha's a wonderful place with some terrific stories, but there's also some silly and dumb stuff.  Too many putative 'experts' who will cheerfully tell you why (whatever) obviously can't be true because of something Greg vaguely alluded to 35 years ago. 

    Feel free to add, subtract, multiply, or divide.  It's YOUR game, do what you want.  The point is your players' MGF.

    As you can tell from an overview of my campaign below, I cheerfully steal from ANY game I feel like, any adventure that has an interesting story.  Instead of reinventing adventurous wheels, I use those resources and then spend several hours per adventure bending to fit the situation, finding ample character portraits for every NPC, building soundscapes for the setting(s) (they got heartily sick of the jungle in Chult, as well as of the mosquitoes and rain - and legions of undead ...and dinosaurs ...and Fonritian sorcerer-led expeditions looking for the same stuff they were...oh and snake-men....hahah)...

     

    To copy a post from the old Glorantha forums (https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/wp-content/uploads/www.glorantha.com-forums/www.glorantha.com/forums/topic/a-practical-guide-to-gming-runequest-3/index.html) from 7 (!) years ago...

    In summation, I just talked through it with one of my sons (they were the 2 characters that lasted through the whole campaign and various roster-changes of the party), the players did (sort of going by published adventures, but there was plenty of “stuff” in between)
    River of Cradles series – they find the glowy ball
    Sun County series – one player really wanted to be a sorcerer, so he found an amulet that gave him essentially basic sorcery skills
    Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan – one of the main characters got a super-axe, but it was turning him into a vampire over the next year. It did really incentivize him to work to get Rune Lord status, so he could DI and get rid of it.
    More Sun County
    They encounter Arlaten in Pavis, did some stuff for him, he helped train the newbie sorcerer who eventually took the glowy ball (they still had it!) and turned it into one of the most unique familiars ever.
    Some Borderlands campaign adventures
    White Plume Mountain
    Some ‘helping the Sartars resist the Lunars’ stuff; set a grudge vs the Lunar Coders when they killed one character's allied spirit.
    The entire A1-A4 series of dungeons
    Lord Skypens Mansion
    a Mission to the Block
    Forgotten Temple of Tharzidun
    Some Lunar Coder stuff
    The whole G1-G2-G3 series
    Rabbit Hat farm, etc – more Borderlands (Hunt for Muriah, Dyksund Caverns)
    More Sartar/Lunar stuff in Pavis, ended up fighting some of the Coders directly, they actually killed Nose-Ring (rezzed the same day, of course)
    Fleeing from Pavis 🙂 escorting young man named Garrath to Whitewall.
    Getting into Whitewall
    Crimson Bat approaching, to power ritual to drive it away, they gathered the elemental stones (The Doomstones Campaign; I converted from WHFRP only finding out later that it was, ironically, originally an RQ scenario that someone had converted to WH and published.) and returned to Whitewall through the Lunar siege
    Up to the swamp, Delecti stuff, encountered Death Knights
    Snake Pipe Hollow
    More Death Knight trouble
    Coders…again?
    Flee west, find strange place in mtns – expedition to barrier peaks
    Continue NW, up into Dorastor, meet Razlakark
    He sends them back in time to 2nd age Glorantha Ralios
    Dodging armies, they save 2 members of Jrusteli expedition from slaughter by troll ambush\
    fight a dream dragon in an underwater cavern
    help Jrusteli complete their expedition into a really nasty tomb ahead of approaching armies (Tomb of Horrors – end of that was Lich Acerak as GUARDIAN of entrapped Razlakark whom they then accidentally freed, which then returned them to the present)
    Unhappy at saving him, they head NW out of mts, save local monastery from ongoing curse in ancient dwarven tunnels
    Hints that Coders might still be tracking them
    Go to Sog City do stuff there, not as interesting as they expected (campaign was winding down, people were starting to graduate high school and move on)
    D&D adventures C4 and C5 except for the last bit
    …campaign finally ends with a wimper, sadly, with the only two remaining players (my sons) relatively crazy-powerful (making adding new players really hard), and all their friends having gone off to college in other states or cities, we just stopped playing. Really sad about that but not sure how else to end it.
    They were landed counts (having been granted title to the Rabbit Hat farm in exchange for bringing more settlers there, as well as to Skrypen’s mansion and lands) but couldn’t go back to either because of the bounty on their heads by the Lunar authorities. They were in Sog City (the sorcerer had finally, after 8+ years of play, reached the College of Magic Arlaten had explained to him, and he managed to join) with nothing much to do.

    Subsequently, campaign DIDN'T die.  They eventually did things like WHFRPs Bogenhafen (whups, major failure, demon gate opened, lots of effort to close), Tomb of Annihilation took them close to a year of play to complete (6-8 hour session every other weekend; amazing how easily Chult  =  Elamle in Pamaltela) turns out the Grung are a great opponent en masse, as grung-supremacist Nazi frogs, more or less.  They also spent a long series of adventures going through a heavily-modified RQ6 book of quests (some decent ideas but man that needed a lot of work).

    As those characters were getting too powerful to really be fun, they also created a bunch of new characters (so they could try new approaches themselves) that also operate in the same world, doing a little less world-saving sorts of things.  That group had a wonderful maybe 4-5 months accidentally getting sucked into a magical snowglobe and doing a cascade of adventures ending with the entire Desert of Desolation series, reformatted to be a sort of endless-loop trap for a massive chaos lord of fire that a Brithini wizard had built, but his instructions to them against even faintly suggesting to the inhabitants of the place that it wasn't real or the whole thing would fail prematurely, releasing the ifrit.  Now those characters are tasked with trying to find a home for the society of thousands who had been trapped in that bubble more than a 1000 years ago (they feel those people are entitled to be rescued from that purgatory).

    Still going strong in 2022.

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  7. Just wondering if anyone has the link to the Universal Price List put out by j.m.davidson@ic.ac.uk?

    It's an 80+ page document exhaustively listing the prices of everything in a medieval-era world, from refined white flour (1 3/4d per lb) to clothes, to silverware, to a large wooden basket (3d). 

    This is an OLD thing; I think they started it in 1982, my printed copy is from October 1996.  But I cannot for the life of me find the file from which I printed it.  Suddenly this much-abused clipped-together stack of old paper is precious!

    There are a lot of FRPG oldsters here, I'm hoping someone managed to save it, because extensive googling didn't find it.  Not only didn't I get a reply to the email, I can't even find ANY reference to that email address!  That's crazy.

    Edit: I did find several lists clearly derived from this ur-list, for example http://www.backgroundexposure.com/harn/eharnica/internet/Prices.pdf is for Harn and troublingly not credited (is is likely that two such lists would coincidentally have exactly the same prices and (for example) both have clothing prices for garments of linen, russet, buckram, and serge?).  But I'd like to find (and ideally credit) the original.

    The above seems to also be mirrored in a more hypertexty way at http://theharniac.net/alienage/mercantyler_guild_lists.htm

    Edit2: I'm coming to believe that it's possible that this original generic 1982 list (they specifically say 'if people like this for Harn I'll adapt it') was in fact adapted into the 1984 edition of Harndex, but I don't have that to check.

    Much thanks for whatever anyone can find. 

  8. On 9/12/2020 at 10:26 AM, Rick Meints said:

    I must confess I hadn't looked at Traveller Book 7 - Merchant Prince since the late 1980's. I love those little black books. The Merchant Prince trade system spans about 10 pages (little pages at that). I chuckled when I remembered how the trade identification abbreviations sound like items found on a Thai restaurant menu ("Lo Ni Po Ba" for example, is short for Low population, Non-industrial, Poor, and Barren). Anyway, adapting the Merchant Prince system to Glorantha would be fairly easy. If anything it could be even simpler, while also being more granular. By granular, I mean that in traveller you were basically shipping X tons of generic "goods" while in Glorantha we might as well just start with the standard price tables, which deal with specific items.

    The Trade and Commerce process has to two main activities: calculating the buying cost when you are buying goods, and calculating the selling price when you sell those goods. They have the same modifiers for both calculations. Of note is that with a base buying cost of 4,000 credits, and a base selling price of 5,000 credits, you have a base profit of 25% prior to any buying and/or selling modifiers being applied. The modifiers are basically the tech level, market level, and your personal skills. None of those three things would be difficult to adapt to Glorantha, or RuneQuest in general.

      

    This was something I'd set myself to back in the 1990s, all loaded up with Access programming skills.

    And then I thought, well, I need to develop a rutter that covers the Gloranthan coastline so I can figure out what ports/stops are available and what they sell.

    So then of course one would need to know sailing speeds to figure out trade routes...and to do that OF COURSE one would need to write a program that would reasonably simulate Gloranthan weather (at least in Genertela) and voila!  25 years have passed and I've completed precisely..none.  :(

  9. GE8dcQJ.png

    "Bother," thought Broo Bear.  "I think I'm stuck."

    "Well, if it isn't Pooh Bear?"

    "Oh hallo Owl."

    "Splendid day... to be up and about one's business... Oh, I say, are you stuck?"

    "No, no, just resting and thinking and humming to myself."

    "You, sir, are stuck. A wedged bear in a great tightness. In a word, irremovable. Now obviously this situation calls for an expert."

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  10. On 1/31/2020 at 1:02 PM, Joerg said:

    If you are playing in or reading about Glorantha under duress, where should I direct human rights activists to help you out of that quandary?

    Not sure how you got that from what I said?

    There was the burst of creativity that birthed RQ1/2.  Then a big gap (chronologically), a slight creative bump from RQ3...a span of nothing...then a HUGE bump (comparable to the first) of latter RQ3 (whence we get the vast bulk of explanation of non Dragon-Pass stuff, sorcery, etc) then nothing for while, etc.

    My point being that the root (many) of the inconsistencies that have cropped up over 50 years or lore are the result of people still playing the game through these official interregnums and having to creatively try to fill the lore-gaps that existed.  Subsequent canon then often tried to amalgamate some of that (very good, imaginative stuff) thus creating inconsistencies.

    It was my attempt at a serious answer after my lighthearted snark about Greg being a stoner, hardly a suggestion that anyone was playing under duress.  More the opposite - people playing when there WAS no official support = diversity of ideas.  Amalgamation of those ideas = inconsistencies.

  11. 7 hours ago, Joerg said:

    A big enough body of worshipers can shape and alter reality....

    ...your expectations are, an aspect or appearance of an entity may be colored by that.

    Or, it could be that Greg was a fantastically creative stoner when he started making this shit up, and remembering the details of Harmast's left elbow years later when he drifted past it again was neither easy, nor much of a priority, setting a standard of incoherence emulated if not outright celebrated by the legions of people forced (by lack of any alternative) trying themselves to fill the gaps however made sense to them.

    Or put otherwise: "Consistency," as they say, "is the hobgoblin of little minds."

    You choose. :)

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  12. On 5/24/2019 at 10:29 PM, Rick Meints said:

    While I am sure that somewhere, someone might have said that Delicti was a vampire, that's not the version of Delecti Chaosium has ever published. WB&RM, last updated as Dragon Pass said it quite succinctly:

    Delicti the Necromancer lived in one of the chief cities of the Empire of the Wyrms Friends. Delecti's practice of his arts led to a curse falling upon the city; it declined into ruin, and the surrounding countryside became a terror-filled swamp. By his arts, Delicti achieved a gruesome form of immortality; he was able to transfer his spirit into a freshly slain corpse and live through it until the rotting flesh could no longer sustain him; at that time he would seek another corpse. Delecti's greatest military asset was his ability to create and maintain armies of zombies.

    Of course, he's even more impressive when you give him some Dead Captains of Blood, Plague, or Frost to ...engage... players who feel that The Swamp is someplace to ply their adventuring trade.

     

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  13. On 1/10/2020 at 7:21 AM, French Desperate WindChild said:

    "and the gamemaster is free to come up with their own methods or point values as desired. "

    Well yes, but whatever is presented in the rules as "the way" is going to have heavy weight in a new GM's mind as the "right" way, even if there's flubbly-wubbly 'you can always make up your own' text buried in there somewhere.  

    Rather than force the body of players to abandon the rules that early in the process, I'd agree with Crel that a point buy would make more sense (and would reflect the desires of most of the players today anyway). 

    The 'roll 'em straight up' is a relic of the 1970s and 1980s that we didn't even REALLY use much back then in reality EITHER.    I can't be arsed to look it up but someone has a web page out there where they calculate the odds against being able to roll a paladin's stats legally and it's like 0.0002%.

     

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  14. On 1/6/2020 at 4:33 PM, French Desperate WindChild said:

    13 is the average score for human Int.

    Sorcery is one of the more complex thing to understand for a gloranthan (with illumination)

    You're too stupid to use sorcery ? you can use spirit magic

    You're too weak to use great sword ? you can use a dagger or... you can run

    The spell skill can also be seen as "remember" how to cast that spell

    I don't disagree that good Sorcery requires good INT.

    But let's remember, if you don't have the strength to use that great sword YOU CAN STILL USE IT, just badly.  Sometimes you don't have a choice.

    They don't just say "whups, you have a STR 8, can't use it at all."

     

    • Like 1
  15. 1 hour ago, lordabdul said:

    To show how limited that is: there is a total of 26 Runes/Forms/Techniques (there might be more if you consider condition Runes... I'm not sure why they're not listed). With INT 20 you can know 8 of those. So at most, a sorcerer can only master ~30% of all there is to master in sorcery.

    Not to mention the brutalist breakpoint of the 13 INT.   Very retro?  13 INT you can learn this stuff, 12 = nope, sorry, you're too stupid to even grasp the basics.

    Far better to have INT either cap your manipulation, or even better, something like a memory check (d20 vs INT or an INTx5 roll if you're wedded to d100s) to 'remember' how to cast that spell.  That's not a bad fantasy trope, the brilliant greyhair wizard absent-mindedly trying to recall the spell while the party is desperately holding back the beasties.  "Oh, what was that spell again?"  

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  16. On 12/31/2019 at 2:49 PM, g33k said:

    Wait...  Does that mean he gets the Cultural Skill  +10% Ride(Moose) during chargen??!?

     

    main-qimg-e7526716410c6f782f4ea9b63e45a4cc.webp Actually, a Russian.

     

    On 12/31/2019 at 8:55 PM, Shiningbrow said:

    Not sure what you mean... Beijing has snow.

    I thought at this point it's pretty much soot. :)

     

     

    In re the point of the thread is that RQ Sorcery is at the very least troubled.

    • There were NO Sorcery mechanics in RQ2, leaving our 'impressions' of what sorcery should be in Glorantha at best anecdotal "I remember Greg saying...". That said, it was obviously fundamental to Greg's imagining of the world; after all the story of Prince Snodal & Zzabur was IIRC the very first story he wrote down long before the idea of it ever being a game was even a twinkle in his eye.
    • RQ3 posited a highly mechanical, not-particularly-Gloranthan set of rules that (IMO) could be at best considered a late rough playtest draft.  It could be made to work with enough spackle and duct tape (obviously in Glorantha: duck tape), but even when it worked, sorcerers suffered badly from the D&Desque paradigm of "worthless in the early campaign, ridiculously overpowered in the late campaign".  It was sterile and flavorless; even with Sandy's excellent TC documentation there were severe balance issues.
    • RQG has a disappointing number of issues, as explained extensively in the previous pages of this thread.  IMO what we have today is the barely-viable Broo-spawn of a trifecta of:  the ideal of making Sorcery GLORANTHAN and connect it firmly to Runes (to meanwhile connect it to the source material that exists), to try to glean something of value from RQ3 but fix its weaknesses, as well as make it something interesting and playable for PCs (this last being - imo - the concession that's really warped the result).

    I certainly don't have the answers.   I don't know that the goals are reconcilable. 

    What I observe is that the idiomatic presentation of sorcerers in the source material (I bow to better interpretations, if people disagree: my knowledge is nowhere near as extensive as most of the long term Gloranthaphiles, to say nothing of Jeff Richard himself obviously) is more akin to the clade of sages and alchemists than adventurers clambering around tombs or mercenaries in the saddle.

    So for me, if I were ambitious enough to say "screw backwards compatibility, let's rewrite this from a true tabula rasa" the FIRST task before I write one word on mechanics would be: what are we even trying to create?  Following immediately behind that, though, is recognition of MGF: what do players *want*?  They have to be in that order because reversed it's unlikely to be Glorantha; but the entire exercise is probably pointless if you ignore the second.

    I'd speculate that the best way to address the spread of needs here might be to bifurcate sorcery somehow?  In the same sense that divine magic might be seen to be a sort of a glorified, grownup spirit magic, maybe sorcery could be addressed the same way.  Maybe there's a sort of journeyman-ish level of day-to-day sorcery that everyone can use, but scaling that, as well as employing the sorts of ritualistic, massive, collaborative, knowledge-intensive Zzaburian sorcery justifies the whole caste-concept for those societies because it's really a lifetime of work (or, ideally, more than one lifetime).

    (Of course, this is premised on my now-obsolescent conception that the worldview needed to use sorcery is anathematic to that which would use spirit or divine magic.  So there's that.)

    Personally, given the basic premises of Gloranthan magic and cultures behind them, I'd find such a comprehensive sorcery system AMAZINGLY interesting.  It would probably end up another 400+ page tome though. 

     

  17. 22 hours ago, Joerg said:

     But then the sorcerer has a chance to use himself up heroically in the straight "watch the awesome sorcerer" version of the scenario

    Oh.  Ick.  Never been fond of the "show the players how awesome they aren't" style of story.  (cf Guild Wars 2).

    18 hours ago, jajagappa said:

    Damn I hope that's stickied somewhere here or on the Chaosium pages for the majority of non forum-lurking players to find.

    Thanks

    • Like 1
  18. On 12/26/2019 at 11:21 AM, lordabdul said:

    😅

    IMHO the problem is that the authors are all great storytellers and designers, but they're not munchkins or rules lawyers or game mechanics engineers, from what I can tell. Not only do they probably instinctively use the rules only within the narrative framework of Glorantha because they're so used to it, but they also very much belong to the school of thought where the GM can manipulate RAW as necessary to keep the game flowing, players happy, and story consistent and plausible. For instance, I don't think any of the authors use the SR system as written. It's not a mechanical problem per se, but it's at least a problem of expectations, because a crunchy system is often expected by players to be solid and well defined. I think RQG would have greatly benefited from having a "soft release", like an open beta/playtest for an extra year. AFAIK the RQG production went super fast. Maybe too fast.

    I wish I could upvote this more. Well put.

    I haven't read TSR so I don't know about the items this particular Rokari has, but I think one of the first lessons a GM learns is: "never give an NPC magic items that would be unbalancing in in the hands of characters". 

    Simultaneously, I've always found the "this magic item can only be used by this bad guy and nobody else"* to be a cheesy way to essentially cheat players of rewards.  Particularly when the game has a penchant for magic items that are otherwise essentially rule-breaking or there's no conceivable way to make them given the game mechanics available.

    *as mentioned, I haven't read it so I don't know if this is even relevant to TSR specifically

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1
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