styopa

"Going to"? No, I think the Guide, and particularly the attention to every aspect of art direction from the images to the simplest details of layout in (something as nominally trivial as) the RQG free rules HAS ALREADY quite clearly shown that the art inn RQG will be: - evocative - referential and meaningful (as Jeff mentioned, no more pointless cavorting eye candy) - extremely high quality - meticulously planned to convey not just a useful visualization, but generally be chock-full of interesting and insightful tidbits of Gloranthania You may feel you have even more bar-raising coming in the pipeline, but already I can't think of any rpg whose art is so tightly integrated into the world. (Honestly, most fantasy art feels like layout blocking more than anything...) Is that partly due to the depth of Glorantha? Sure, a bit. But it's you guys taking the initiative, as well as investing the time and money that shows that it editorially matters to you. That's a pretty high bar already.

Are you guys talking about (for example) the bimbo on MRQ2 p102? (I quickly flipped through and found another on 132.) It may be cheesy, cheap, pedestrian, uninspired, prepubescent boy-fodder fantasy art, but it's certainly not BAD as art. What's next, you're going to say Boris Vallejo was a hack? We're talking about technically terrible art, not offended sensibilities. If a couple of cheesy pics of girls with improbably big boobs "totally ruins" a set of rules I think you're paying way too much attention to the wrong bits. I'd say the same thing to Evangelicals who think RPGs are about Satan-worshipping because there's a picture of a demon or two. Daughters of Darkness was a TERRIBLE module, only made worse by the accompanying art, not that it was a terrible product because of the terrible art. Elder Secrets had abysmal art, but was a decent product informationally.

There's no quick-button for it, so Rather Patronizing, +1

Wait, what?

Any Chaosium presence going to be there? Too late to get in for 2018, but I'm going to check it out in Feb and see how well-attended it is. (Haven't been to a con since Gen Con went to Indy) I'd be happy to run RQG there, presuming by then the rules are fully released. http://www.conofthenorth.org/registration.php#onsite

No problem. Actually on of my better-documented conversions.... Comments welcome by the way.

Meh. I used to think that too - hell, that was the entire point of the Glorantha Digest - ceaseless OCD navel-contemplation, with duelling obscure referents. There's still a fair amount of that. But it's what you make of it. The RQG free rpg day adventure was a pretty good, straightforward one, so I'm encouraged that sort of direct, 'here to have fun' play will be strongly supported (or at least not body-blocked). Sure some people might enjoy more of a mythopoeic Campbellian approach, I hope the game allows that too. I'm more of a 'swing the sword, kill shit, take their stuff' sort of dm/player - and I still find plenty to enjoy in Glorantha, no matter how many canonic tropes I'm disregarding. Heck, I generally use D&D adventures as source material (!shock!) and my players LOVE it. The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan the God Learners was a terrific adventure all around.

As of the quick-start rules and free rpg day, the goal was end of 2017. Right now it is (I believe) 2Q 2018, so an optimist would say by Gen Con

Sure spirits can be 'wandering monsters'. If we postulate the Spirit plane as an alternative ecosystem, there must be predatory spirits and benign spirits. I don't see why predator spirits wouldn't be attracted to a fetch floating around (from their perspective). The rules even support this, with the % of random spirit plane encounter for shamans (IIRC it's fetch's POW as % every few hours?). No, it's not "worse" if they're moving vs stationary (the specific point of the OP), but certainly that is reasonably representative of the fauna of the spirit world 'noticing' the fetch and...investigating?

Just brainstorming here, what would be the impact if - for missile fire - dodge (or even parry) acted like defense did? Because I do agree that where in melee dodge is more of a 'transactional' event, it makes sense for missile fire for it to be rationalized as more of a 'state of jittery moving about'. First missile attack it would be at full, 2nd at half, 3rd at 1/3 (or half again, if you prefer), etc. OR the character could say at the statement of intent "I think I'm going to get shot by all four archers drawing at me - preallocating in statement of intent would let them simply divide that rating evenly against that number of shots, making it likely worse against the first but better for those others. This would also partially mitigate the inherent game-rule advantage of most missile fire getting multiple attacks/round, where the vast majority of melee do not - thus missile fire intrinsically denigrating the value of defenses. Again, just spitballing - I'm so jetlagged right now I don't really have trustworthy brain cells to error-test the idea.

Unfortunate. I can see dodging any missile at extreme range, or thrown at normal range, but a crossbow bolt at point blank is like a gun: nobody's dodging that except accidentally.

Not really RQ specific, although it translates pretty easily to d100, obviously. I found this delightful table from a CIA document on intel analysis: what do people perceive words like "probably" to actually mean as %? Interestingly, things like probably and probably-not are NOT mirror-images of each other. Source https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/psychology-of-intelligence-analysis/art15.html

Personally, I very much liked the visual representation of elves from Guild Wars 2 for aldryami in RQ: certainly vegetal, with more-or-less humaniform features (but not too much; nobody would ever mistake them for human from any angle). What I also found tangentially interesting was own reluctance to use them...it seems odd to want to source pnp FRPG ideas from video-game material, somehow, despite video games' tenure being only slightly shorter than FRPGs themselves. Certainly some ... cross-pollination in that direction can be viable?

I think it's worth remembering that many species of plant are determined, aggressive internecine "predators" within their vegetable w context, preying upon and/or killing competitors for space, sun, or soil. While anthropomorphizing plants might allow us to postulate a "general" unity of purpose for an elf wood, individually plants (and thus elves, img) are quite remorseless. I don't at all see elves as hippy tree huggers, not even with each other. Elves with axes make perfect sense to me.

Don't even get me started on the fundamentally different rules for melee initiative vs missile. :|

Yelm beat me to it. The simple workaround is cast your defensive spells before fanaticism. Voila, no (real) downside. As far as using it as a putatively 'offensive' spell taking away their parry or defensive spellcasting, meh. While I understand it could work, honestly, I've *never* seen anyone use it that way.

I'd include thrown weapons ONLY IF THAT'S ON THE WAY TO melee, or if the target(s) are unreachable in melee. I can't see a fanatic (ie junior berserker) holding back and performing missile fire if melee combat is available.

It's ENTIRELY a walkover for the elves in their forests. Outside of it? I'm not so sure. Underground would be utterly trollish advantage.

So let's throw some mechanics out there? (Just using your anecdotes as, er, idea-seeds) In the forests, they can hide... so let's say that due to their intimate knowledge of their own forest, and their innate coloring that's going to match the specific foliage, within a generally matching forest area (ie brown elves in deciduous, green in coniferous, etc) elves have a +20% or higher bonus to hide and sneak. In their OWN forest (regardless if they match 'type' because there's always some mixing), it's anywhere from half-again (at the edges) up to 2x hide/sneak in the depths of the forest. In either case, hide is at full even when moving. Couple this with the Elfsense ability mentioned above, and elves in their home forest would have total situational awareness day or night, which should be a HUGE advantage. ...and shoot, ... forest cover can be anywhere from -5% to -50% on missile fire, and entirely prohibits fire at extreme ranges. Neither of these penalties apply to elves in their home forest. they have magical plants to help them and have magic that helps do this. .... Of course the Aldrya cult has War Trees, but there should be something far more accessible generally. Part of this is the Elfsense, but also maybe allow Aldrya initiates (ie every non-rootless elf) in their home forest to spend mp for a list of spell-like EFFECTS that could be plant-delivered in context. ie they could use their mp to slow a target (ground vines tripping and grabbing), disrupt (stinging nettles and poisonous plants can even work their way through the toughest armor), blur (for the elf, plants moving, distracting, and camouflaging slightly), etc. Certainly the elves would constantly harass and guerilla-war the trolls, trying to maneuver enemies into 'setpiece' killing zones where more substantial murderous defenses were set up with War Trees, not to mention bio-versions of every nasty booby-trap that you've seen in Rambo movies, from giant spiked spring-branches to punji-trapped pits (oozing anything from soporific to lethal poisons as desired). The tangled forests confuse Uz Darksense, ... I'd say that (again depending on how far 'into' the forest one was) Darksense is impaired anywhere from -10% to halved. Earthsense too, as the ground cover and humus layers permeated with life would throw up an almost impenetrable static.

It's a challenging comparison, but I would venture that elder secrets was even worse than DoD. Not sure whether the troll, elf, or dwarf that haunt me more to this day...

I've tried to figure this out for years as well. The character sheets was a downright offensive cash grab, even in an era where copies cost you $0.06/sheet. Turning Trollpak into FOUR products? Seriously WTF? (Was there anything actually new at all in those? I never bought the AH ones as I already had it.) The paper-covers for the rules is an easy one, in contrast. Look at any other AH product - wargames. Rulebooks were ALWAYS paper covers, even substantial products like Squad Leader. It makes sense from their view that a "game" sold in a "box" didn't need more-durable covers. FWIW lots of peers at the time did the same thing: Judges Guild products, for example, were all paper-cover. Cardstock covers were only a thing for when the product wasn't boxed. Art? From their view, again who bothers with art in a "rulebook" (ala Squad Leader) unless you're diagramming line of sight? Hell, I'm faintly surprised looking back that they didn't give us a little sheet of counters for our characters. "Harrek 10-2 SMC, Berserk-capable leader" And, while it may be heresy to bring up, of course the next question is: why did they sell Runequest to AH in the FIRST place? Granted, it's not like there was a thriving RPG industry to choose from - it was pretty much what, TSR or Chaosium? I guess there were also FASA, SJG, Flying Buffalo, Iron Crown. Was FGU a thing yet? Anyway, the market cap of all of them combined (less TSR) in 1981 was probably less than AH. I'd love to have been a fly on the wall in that discussion: what was promised? What was paid? There had to have been a contract with expectations and failure clauses? We look back with 20/20 hindsight to say that it was a dumb sale in retrospect, but if we grant (as that linked article does) that 82-23 was the Golden Era for Runequest, why sell out at all? Was Chaosium already on the financial ropes that badly?

Exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. AFAIK nothing in RQ3, even Elder Secrets, really explained any Elven special abilities within "their" forests - in fact what identified something as "their" forest, etc wasn't even really described. Things like "automatically friendly with all nymphs, sprites, etc." or perhaps Nick Effingham's suggested ELFSENSE (SP) Possessed by Aldryami and other plant species. Sentient plants often have this. It allows the character, by touch, to detect the emotions of a creature, sentient or otherwise. It also allows communication with the trees within an Aldryami Forest. If a message wishes to be sent an entire MR must be spent trying to commune with the plant life around, if the skill roll is successful then the message is implanted and spreads throughout the entire forest quickly and soon reaches its intended destination. The Great Trees of the Elf Forests are the epicentre of such information flows.

I'd agree, but I think Elves need a lot more 'love' mechanically in terms of the *actual* advantages they have in their forests. I think a lot of it is implied in lore, but hasn't been laid out in rules (I haven't read the MRQ Aldryami books, so maybe much more is already there.)