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Except isn't there at least some connection (and perhaps more than that) between Gbaji and the Red Goddess, implying that chaos wasn't incidental or accidental in her creation, but more or less fundamental? Or inevitable? Maybe the distinction is important here.

I don't know what the RQG rules for Grappling are, but for ours it's that the grapple is a standard attack. Can called-shot with the same penalty/delay. If the attack is successful, the defender can dodge (as usual) or parry. If the parry is with a weapon, the parryer can declare it's a counterattack, and attack the grappler (using their parry action and skill). If the parry is with a shield, a successful parry means the shield was interposed and the grappler doesn't roll a hit location - its the shield. If the attack is successful and not dodged, the attacker rolls the hit location. (EXC: if the grappler has the shield). That location is now immobilized until the end of the round, unless in turn the defender wants to use their attack action to resist the grapple (STR vs STR). If the defender wins, they've broken the hold. If they don't, the hold is maintained. While held and if capable, the defender can attack the grappler at +20%. (If the held location is LEG, likely the defender will also get +20% because the grappler is prone!). At the end of the round, the defender can drop a grappled shield as a free action, automatically giving up their shield but the grappler obviously doesn't have a hold on them anymore either. In the NEXT round, at the end of the round assuming the grappler is still holding on (the defender or their friends haven't injured the grappler enough to break the hold, or the defender hasn't used their attack action to win a STR/STR contest) then the grappler will do their damage bonus to the location held ignoring armor. Basically, with a shield, you're consuming the grapple's attack ablatively. You can hold onto your shield and wrest it back, just like you could your arm, but obviously the grappler, stuck on your shield, would only hold on with the intent to immobilize your shield arm (they're not going to do damage to the shield). There are a TON of ways we could make this more authentic, detailed...and unplayable. This suits our group as being appropriately powerful if you're dumb enough to get swarmed and not get out, but not making judo experts into some sort of martial gods, either. RQ3 Spirit combat was ENTIRELY different. Instead of an attack and "damage", it was a opposed table roll, with IIRC the mp loss fixed at 1d3. BUT, again IIRC (we have ended up with a different system that we like better & have used for years) it was MP vs MP, so there was a very strong spiral effect because your "strength" (MP) was also your effective hit points really (MP again). As one side lost MP, they became successively weaker, and thus more likely to lose the next roll. Once you were beating your opponent, it was unlikely you'd lose. Not impossible, though. Jajagappa is spot on in explaining the necessity of some magical defenses unless you had a friendly shaman nearby. Spirits are nasty. From my quick perusal of RQG, I think they're toned down quite a bit, so I'd hesitate to advise you how to intro them. Probably as you suggest, start with a very weak spirit by itself. Or, maybe have their local shaman put the fear into them by telling them a story (play it out) of some brave warriors going somewhere they shouldn't, and getting attacked by a powerful clutch of ghosts or something.

Meh. Particularly the snark "...excellent ways to cheat your players..." Classy.. Yes, they lack verisimilitude, but EVERY melee combat system rationalizes granularity and detail for playability. Feel free to write a detailed PhD discursus on the details of grappling, wrestling, locks, pins, throws, holds between humans (be sure you cover not just two combatants, but up to a dozen-man scrum), and then make sure it comprehensively ALSO includes physiologically reasonable approaches for everything from individuals of SIZ 1 up to SIZ100, kraken tentacles, animated vines, a clasping dragon claw the size of a barn, constrictor snakes, and giant centipedes, not to mention combatants with everything from a single arm to eight. I'm as sure it will be interesting (I'm a bit of a realism/simulationist geek myself...I actually TRIED to play Phoenix Command), as I'm sure nobody will play it. FWIW a parry with a WEAPON I'd almost always treat it as an opportunistic attack against the grappler, but using their parry skill (I'm still in the benighted ancient RQ3 system where they're different; this is the same approach I use to parrying natural weapons like bites and such, except the counter doesn't have to roll a location). If someone with a SHIELD is trying to parry an incoming grapple? Seems pretty obvious that their only choices are - 1) STRIKE with the shield as a weapon and hope the opponent is hurt enough to drive them off, 2) dodge, or 3) let them grab the shield, pull it away, and try to murder them with the weapon in your other hand. The dynamics of which of those make sense change extraordinarily if one is faced with more than one opponent, of course.* *And considering we're talking about a world where death isn't necessarily irrevocable, I don't see it as all that unrealistic anyway.

Lots of good advice here already. A few tips from our campaigns: - packs of intelligent weak things ie trollkin can team up to be effective. We have found that 3-4 trollkin grappling can be a surprising match for even a very powerful pc. Realistically they have to be at least moderately intelligent and motivated, as it's likely at least a couple will die in the process. I don't know the RQG grappling rules but if they're about immobilization of locations, that's the ticket. A PC with 180% attack is a lot less mighty if she can't swing her arm. And parrying works great against the first grapple....except you have given them either an automatic success imploding that arm, or you have to drop your shield.... - spirits. Most players thing of their physical arms and armor, the more sophisticated think further to their magical defenses...but it takes someone who has played rq3 a while to appreciate how nasty spirits can be, and how readily you should have defenses against them at hand all the time

Dipping works great for large area coloring, you just have to seriously thin the paint or lose lots of figure details.

Beautifully done but how 'necessary' the aesthetics are is up to your own personal showmanship/OCD. Miniatures are placeholders that show location and facing, minimally. Beyond that, it's up to you. We're pretty openminded - we have a huge pile of minis to pull from, but it's mainly a matter of convenience/speed/what we can put our hands on quickly enough in the course of play.. which means we're mostly using a well-worn set of crappy heroquest plastic minis for bad guys supplemented as needed from whatever other figures have been tossed into the bin over the years, each player has a "real" 25mm metal mini that they chose, some have painted them, some haven't bothered. Our player with a duck character found a duck and he's using that. The beast shaman has a figure, but uses animal ones when he's in animal form(s). Here's the annotated map from last session, unfortunately we had to end abruptly due to work circumstances, so we took a pic to save the gamestate. These are all runelord-equivalent characters in a ...not great situation right now. (I'm running the D&D Tomb of Annihilation adventure, they're fighting Ras Nsi and his multiarmed bodyguard Sekelok in the Audience Chamber of the Fane of the Night Serpent...details provided so you can look those up if you choose). Hexes are 1m. Explanations below are /spoileriffic, if you ever intend to run/play that adventure. Unfortunately AFAIK this board software doesn't have spoilertext functions. 01: Black Fang duck party member; in desperation has summoned from his Mud Ring a 6cbm earth elemental (the horse figure @01A) and this round a 4cbm water elemental (garados at 01B)...he can't actually control them. 02 the main tank of the party, orlanthi wl & his cat; he's on the ropes, his cat's out of mp. The red armless figure is Ras Nsi, in RQ setting an Apostate Zorak Zorani RL troll who'd been converted into a half-serpent undead monstrosity. Head of Yuan Ti temple, several hundred years old, pretty powerful, BBEG. 03 as mentioned the horse is the 6bm angry earth elemental; the tipped-over sheep is a party member that is a shape-changing druidy Shaman in grizzly form*, prone; grey thing is Sekelok, 4 armed massive bodyguard of Ras Nsi BBEG2, immobilized up to his knees in the floor by the elemental, he would like to attack the elemental to free himself but with only 9 INT he keeps getting stunned by... 04 ...the silvery figure is the party's powerful sorcerer, currently hovering about 5m up, can't really cast anything because his actions are used attacking with a (gained) psychic ability that allows a ranged int v int chance to stun target for some SRs. So far, they've been enough to keep Sekelok cc'd. The pearl is his familiar "glowy ball", an awakened floating stone ball 1m in diameter with a chain dangling from the bottom, it's floating about 2m above him. Some of you will know where he found that. Between the two of them, I think they've burned something like 50mp in this fight already so they're getting low. The prone figure is the party's Zorak Zorani RL* whose 1 POW (from a regrettable previous DI) left him vulnerable to being commanded to attack the party by Ras Nsi (has the innate ability to command fixed-int undead, has a chance to control intelligent undead); fortunately, his only having 1mp also made him easily knocked out by being drained of that 1mp by another party-member's magic item effect touch attack. (The other figure well back is a noncombatant scholar they have dragged along with them after saving his life.) *Both the player-bear and player-troll are ACTUALLY zombies; they died in play while the party is investigating a giant soul-sucking curse preventing people from being rezz'd. A witch they encountered had "fell magicks" that nevertheless could ... sort of... bring them back.

Summoning Martin....there's nobody here that has more meticulously documented and discussed the mechanics and details of Gloranthan militaria.

I'd probably actually rule the former. I mean, we're talking about an Initiate who isn't that high up the totem pole. Membership has its privileges.

But I'd argue the damage of a Greatsword is based on the use technique that gives the kinetic energy of a blade that's swinging through a 6' primary arc (+2 for the arm, etc). Thus they have high damages. I'm well aware that you can choke up on it and use it that way, but IMO if you're stabbing with it it should have the same damage as a broadsword, at BEST.

While I'd agree with you that theoretically they could impale, I imagine it would be pretty rare...using a great sword like that would be about as likely to bend it into a "U" than hurt anyone substantially. I don't have the charts here, but that brings to mind, I don't recall the rq3 fumble tables really even having a possibility of some weapon damage (other than bow string breaks)?

Average STR+STR+SIZ. For every 6 full points, +1d4 *starting at* -1d4. So 0-5 -1d4 6-11 - no mod 12-17 +1d4 18-23 +2d4 etc. I have it in spreadsheets so it just automagically spits out. That is a fair point, but that's IRL. Glorantha is a 'magical universe' so maybe it's not always so bad? Absolutely true, it was honestly something I considered but ultimately felt was a little fiddly. I settled on just saying physical armor (ie worn or natural) only counts for half.

Caltrops: Attack base 25%+target’s SIZ*3; Damage 1d4+(Target SIZ/3); Movement through: roll d4 for each caltrop hex moved through; if it’s less than your effective move, one of your legs is attacked. Physical AP only count half vs this attack. * Fall Prone in: 1 attack per 10 SIZ (FRU) of fallen. * *Normally assume 10 caltrops per hex; if less than, then fractional chance of everything. "Hex" = 1meter hex or 1m2 area (This is for RQ3 where humans move 3; basically if you're running you're going to step on one about 2/3 of the time; if you shuffle through them at MR1, you're perfectly safe unless you fall prone..which tends to happen if your leg gets wrecked.)

Thanks Phil. I rather expected so. Might be worth someone taking the time to put "revision date" on the download page? Esp for a 'living' document that's seeing a fair amount of revision/tweaking. I'd even say put it in the text itself in the pdf on the copyright page, but that might take minutes where a date on the download page would be seconds at most. And of course my question applies to all the other pdfs as well - for example my Bestiary is dated 7/20.

It's why mine replaced the original with a more graduated one with d4s. Plus, I've always felt that with muscle powered weapons that strength should be a larger element to actual damage. The only problem is that rolling 5d4 or whatever is a bit of a pain just picking them up.

Sorry, I hate to be the guy that replies to himself, but these seem pretty straightforward questions, or am I missing something obvious? Thanks!

I'd toyed with the idea of impaling weapons being capped at (location hp+1) for max damage, as obviously once something has gone through a location, going "more through it" doesn't really do any more harm. Thus their intrinsically higher impale/crit multipliers help them get to this cap faster, but then that's about all they do.

More GM tools: I tend to use a lot of audiovisual props in my game, lending to group visualization and atmosphere. Today quadspinner has released a public version of GAEA terrain creator. Highly recommended software for photorealistically rendering synthetic scenes. (warning, on install, my system rebooted when it was completed installing) Not to mention, their https://quadspinner.com/ splash screen I'm going to figure out SOME way to use that animation for a water elemental lord or something in my game. That is super cool.

I'd downloaded RQG when it first came out (75382kb), and then the revised version July 3rd I believe (92803kb). Now the version available from Chaosium.com seems to be a different size than that July 3rd edition - it's now 85598kb. Question 1: is the version that is for d/l now updated from the July 2018 revision? Question 2: is there some notation, somewhere in the product itself that would identify version from version? I don't see anything on the copyright page. Question 3: have any of the OTHER d/l products (bestiary, etc) been updated since release, and if so, (same question) how would we be able to tell? THANKS

Two points: 1) if the containers have to go to Brainerd to distribute, that's just over 2 weeks from LA port. Truck (technically, "drayage") from the pier to the railhead in Los Angeles. Then depending on routing, 10-12 days intermodal to the rail terminal in St Paul, then perhaps 3-4 days to deliver to Brainerd. Assuming no untoward delays at various rail changeovers and if we can avoid Chicago (hard, from the SW) which is a congestion disaster. 2) the firm I work for produces high speed uncoated inkjet paper - that is the tech that makes it possible to get such beautifully colored books in small runs as well as the whole print-on-demand industry. This industry in the US anyway is growing at 7-12% per year depending on metrics, there's more business than the printers can keep up with. So I'd guess domestic costs are rather high because they can pick and choose the business they want to serve. I suspect that part of the issue is hardcovers - they're pricey. With perfect-bound softcovers on the new machines, you can essentially just print an entire book from a single pdf file. It's amazing. But I expect the hardcovers pose a particular challenge that sort of requires more old-fashioned printing approach?

Fantastic news, thank you. I'll just warn everyone in the US to please be patient. EVERY US port is suffering severe landward congestion for a number of reasons. Customs clearance takes typically a few hours (unless there's an exam) but dispatch of the container inward is taking much longer than it should. I don't know how these are further routed and where they're broken down for distribution, but for example if it was a warehouse in Los Angeles, normally customs release & delivery should take 2-3 working days....right now it's commonly taking 8-10. I deal with this issue with customers multiple times a day: ETA Longbeach 3/6 means only the vessel comes to a stop alongside the pier on 3/6....everything else then takes time, and lately, unfortunately, more time than it usually should.

...if you like to personalize your campaign. Thispersondoesnotexist.com ...uses algorithms to generate synthetic faces. These people do not exist. Sure, they have modern jewellery and clothes. Personally, I tend to use Renaissance paintings as they have the right clothes, haircuts, background, and setting, but it's a pretty laborious process to give every significant npc a face that way. Edit: you can just refresh this page to get new images.

I'm pretty sure this is an argument in favor. This is IMO what a ridiculous skill of 200% would mean, they could lash out pretty lethally without anyone really even getting to react. Only if you believe everyone always has a 5% chance to hit? I mean, I think he's talking about -20 percentiles, not -20%. It's one of the enduring issues with a fixed SR system...once you're behind, you're always behind. Might as well go for that called shot if you're going to always swing after the other bloke.

Amusingly, this was later MUCH more nicely published as WHFRP Doomstones series (really quite well done). In fact, I was so taken with it that I adapted it completely for our RQ3 campaign (WHFRP is pretty easy to do) and my players had a blast, ultimately retrieving all 4 stones and bringing them back through the lines to Whitewall, where they were successfully combined into a potent item that destroyed the Crimson Bat (for a while, anyway) saving the city and breaking the Lunar Army. Years later, I stumbled upon the Halls of the Dwarven kings and thought "ooh, this is cool!" and was all worked up...until about 10 pages in I started to recognize the names of the NPCs and realized it had ORIGINALLY *been* a RQ adventure. I've told my players that history begins at the G2G today; if something historical doesn't contradict the Guide, I'll probably accept it, but basically the Guide's the baseline now.

Good observations. Our system (laid out previously in this thread) includes both of those appropriately, based around the concept that RQ3's "Humans Move 3" = 1 hex (1m) move per SR. So anything that has a move of "3" moves 1hex/sr. If the MR for a creature is shown as 6 it moves 2 hexes per SR. It might seem complicated to address MR of, say, 11 or 2 (ie they aren't multiples of 3) but it really isn't...the trick is just to look at it in pulses of 3 sr. A duck with an MR of 2 would move 1hex in their first available SR, 1 in the next, and 0 in the 3rd, repeating as long as they have SR to move. (So in 3SR she's moved 2 hexes.) Something with an MR of 11 would move 4, 4, 3 and repeat that pattern. A duck running (MR doubles to 4) would move 2, 1, 1. Thus faster things intrinsically move faster EACH SR, instead of the same speed and then getting more SR of movement (which I agree doesn't make sense). Of course, nothing is 'left over' as this is treated as a movement RATE, not a count.

It's why, I presume, the mechanic of having to 'learn' the spell from a spirit was implemented; it was naturally a gate against characters gaining powerful spells without having to climb their way there and, ultimately even finding them (iirc spell spirits strength capped what they could know, meaning it was a vanishingly small chance of encountering/summoning one powerful enough to have the super-spirit spells - of course, I could be misremembering).