styopa

Name checks out! (Samurai champloo) Anyway, nah, I don't see the anime here either, honestly. Too quasi realistic in both musculature and lighting to make that connecting, but I'm hardly an expert.

Those are good goals. When people ask me, I say yes, it might SEEM like the game has more 'mechanical' bits than other games (let's be candid it's always going to be compared with D&D) but the key distinction is that the mechanics in RQ make such intuitive, logical sense they actually don't get in the way. My go-to example is combat: D&D seems way simpler, right? - In D&D, the attacker rolls to hit, if they hit they do damage. Simple, yes. However, that number they need to hit is a single rationalized result that comes from combining in specific ways their skill, their proficiency with the weapon they're using, the armor of the target, the size of the target, the nimbleness of the target & the awareness of the target. What all those mean, and how they go together is in fact fairly complex. - In RQ the attacker rolls against their chance to hit. The defender, if they're aware of the strike, can try to dodge or parry. RQ has more rolls, yes - more complicated? To the average person I don't think so.

I prefer to send an Elf ambassador, two birds with one stone.

Nah, this is 2018 and the internet. Let's begin: (text is greg's from that link, pics from internet searches) Feethos River 27, Abiod Valley; aka Fever Trees. This is the borderlands between the Wastes and Teshnos. The river, deeply lush, flows from those distant Ti Shan mountains. Those cities of mud huts are populated and often raided by animals nommads. Seshnelan Islands 36, Aland Isles These tree-covered islands lie south of the Old Seshnela Penninsula. We can see that the land there just slowly sank, leaving these slightly higher places above water. in the Wastes 54, Arak Gorges desert gorges The Vent 55, Mount Ararat Here we see the largest volcano in the Holy country. Pencilled in are some slight changes to the photo to add other nearby landmarks. Valind’s Glacier 58, Arctic Region mountain tops sticking out identify this as Alustan Mts, sacred to Valind, Winter Storm God. (Edit: I used Ellsworth Mtns in Antarctica) Vulture Country 65, Badlands Typical of rugged, hostile lands between Prax and the Wastes. Please remember that Vultures Country is worse than either Prax or the Wastes. Southern coast of Wastelands 70-71, Band-e Amir This is typical of where the plateau meets the sea, showing why it is considered inaccessible to sailors. Sartar Hills 73, Bateke Plateaus These rolling green hillsides are pretty typical of the hills around Quivin Mts., and across most of eastern Dragon Pass (ie-Sartar.) Sable Plateau 75, Benbulbin We are looking here at the northern edge, which is nearly fifty miles wide. That shows that they are almost fifteen miles high (!) Manirian Coast 78, Big Sur shows typical occasional beach all along Caladraland and its chain of volcanic hills. An Eastern Isle 84, Bora Bora gee, pretty. Skyreach Mts. 95, Caucasus Mountains The Skyreach are the tall peaks which abruptly rise to reform the Rockwoods Range. One of these (arrow) is Orlanth’s sacred Mount Arrowmound. (KoS, p 74) Dorastor Today 110, Craters of the moon A portion of the desolated land as it appears today. Mislari Mts 111, Crimean Peninsula From Maniria, looking northward to mts. This is in the Arstola Forest, looking towards where Captain Ethilrist found his (now lost) pass. The Zorian Gorge 115, Danube River In Fronela, north of Zoria. Note how the gorge goes right to the river. Stormwalk Mts. 131, Drakensberg Looking westward, from Prax. The scattering of buildings barely visible below are the “town” of *. NB – tops of other mountains should be visible over that crest line. Someone else can start from the New Fens, if people find this interesting.

Simple answer: No chance, in my view. NatGeo just fell on its sword this month in frenzied virtue-signalling about their (discontinued) penchant for including a picture or three of topless tribeswomen in nearly every issue. Just as we've finally dispensed with the tatters of Victorian Puritanism in the West (whose intent, while well-intended, was a patronizing "protection" of women from exploitation by men), we've invented a whole new "feminist" Puritanism in 2018 (whose intent, well-intended, is a "protection" of women from exploitation by men). I hope the irony is apparent. Simply: due to the pervasive over-sexualization of culture today, any mass media depiction of nudity will 'trigger' someone looking to be outraged. The Manchester museum said explicitly that they removed Hylas and the Nymphs ("nsfw" link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hylas_and_the_Nymphs_(Waterhouse)) due to #MeToo impact, and a Utah teacher was fired for showing students Boticelli's Birth of Venus ("nsfw" link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_Venus) because it made 12 yr old students 'uncomfortable'. I can't imagine Chaosium wants to die on the hill of sane expression of historical genitalia, no matter how justified. Then again, PT Barnum said "there is no bad publicity"....

You mean, otherwise authentically like every early-age society in warm climates (and even some current ones today)? Heavens.

I did not expect the discussion of RQ's new cover to run to boobs and then Flashman.

"Orlanth has been the poster-child for Glorantha in every edition of the rules. It's the bad-boys they always bloody swoon over. -Yelm"

Precious snowflakes can suck it. They'll always find something to be offended about. The dude above/right is wearing FAR less, and hell most of the background men we're practically getting upskirt sausage shots. (shrug) It's a good cover.

I'm a traditionalist too, but I very much like the cover. Sure, have the homage art as the frontispiece or whatever, but FLGS have a *ton* of games on the shelf - RQG has to jump out and grab people. Cover art is HUGE at doing that in the waning days of physical-book purchasing. Plus, every review, every selling-link is going to use that cover art and it's exciting, it's engaging, it suggests drama. I get the point about it sort of suggesting heroquest instead of the gritty RQ thing, but hey, maybe this time since we're starting default a little higher up the adventurer food-chain as nearly- or actual-Runelords, we'll get a little more mechanics to represent the mystical levels of hero operations. I think that part of the focus of RQ on the gritty lower stuff was because a) there never WAS this extra-high-power detail and b.) the RQ core mechanics sort of broke down at those points. Hopefully RQG addresses both.

My campaign started as stickpickers, and now they're so bloody capable it's honestly hard to run adventures that are challenging.

I think their approach as now described in https://www.chaosium.com/blogdesigning-the-new-runequest-part-23/ will be just right as mentioned above: start small, learn your immediate world, then branch out and upward.

Just want to say that https://www.chaosium.com/blogdesigning-the-new-runequest-part-23/ has been really the best post of all. Great, beautiful cover art (yes, we've seen in other threads here but there's where the WORLD will see it) as well as a solid (as much as dared) outlook on what's coming in what order. Seriously good post. Now....take my money!

Oh absolutely.

W00t - thanks MOB!

I will be making a dust cover for the RQG rules from this, and will certainly be uploading it for sharing. I mean, it's critical we protect important books.

Was just going to say the same thing. I understand in 2018 the idea of a poll seems like a good idea, but this is a flagship brand for the company. That's not something you really want to the "Boaty McBoatface" internet voters. I could certainly see opening it up for submissions, with the winner signing over all rights in exchange for a free copy of the rules or something. But the company and it's management would need to OWN the choice, not vote for it. Too serious a thing.

https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?825601-Glorantha-Good-setting-How-the-!-do-you-play-it "[Glorantha] Good setting. How the @#%! do you play it?" The longer version, from the thread:

I think it's a non-trivial amount of work to cull down a rulebook into a functional micro-version of itself. Comment, Jason? I agree it's a great idea from a marketing perspective. Given the small staff at Chaosium it's a zero-sum thing: the number of products they are pushing out, and in particular the intent to follow RQ:G hard after with sourcebooks, adventures, supplements, etc (that all must be in the works already, obviously) means that producing product X means less time for product Y. I just don't know that they have the resources to do that without hurting something else.

I don't see a point in another quickstart per se, but AFAIK Chaosium did pretty well by having the BRP model of a simplified version of the rules available for free (really, the progenitor of the d20 licensing concept which was a *fantastic* one in terms of revivifying D&D - only that WotC stepped on their own toes by releasing 3.5 and then 4 and then 5 so fast they undercut the value proposition and handed customers to Paizo).

My first response as well. Probably because of the E's. Personally I liked much about the typeface used on the free RPG day version. (although that lacked the - necessary in my view - rune bar) Maybe it was too specifically Nordic in implication? Let's be honest, "RUNES" in the modern vernacular have unavoidably Norse connotations and they wanted to veer from that? Or maybe that's just because I'm in MN and Nordic culture here is pretty dominant. I liked percolator too, but agree that it's too connected to WoD visually now. I can ignore the E's and I don't know that Elfquest is much of a recognized property to anyone but dinosaurs. I don't understand the point of the highly-stylized S though. That just sort of sticks out.

New? I'd assumed it was going to be essentially the same art that was covering RQG - that was really a lovely homage to Louise, and it remains a clever bit of continuity from edition to edition. So cool - more new art. Always happy with that.

"Chaosium: It's called the Second LAW of Thermodynamics for a reason" You're not kidding. Bad layout, frex the lack of an index, can KILL an otherwise solid game. It seem unfair, but usability is part & parcel of your game; if people can't FIND your clever mechanics when they need them, they won't keep trying forever.

I'd guess they were struggling mightily to get it out the door in time for Gen Con but as g33k observed there are perhaps some unanticipated roadblocks. My understanding is that the rules are done, and the last step they were in was layout which involves commissioning art...which can always be a tricky process, as artists have a famous disregard for mundanities like schedules and deadlines. Not blaming artists, btw, just commenting that phase very often takes longer than schedulers would like to allow.