styopa

Of course this is the prettiest Theleyan calendar I've ever seen: Not terribly useful for campaign notes, but gorgeous and nicely laid out.

Fair point. It's a good guide, in any case.

Thanks for the clarification - that MJ's comment totally lost me, and I was wondering how I could miss something so obvious?

RQ's skill-check system is about as nearly a realistic system as I can imagine that directly rewards players for practicing their abilities. If you use it, you can get better at it. As straightforward and logical as can be. As far as parity for someone who isn't able to get to all the sessions - that's such an entirely subjective thing between a DM and their players/group and expectations, I'm not sure a written-rules solution is really going to cover it. I'd certainly agree that's a place for suggestions for new DMs about various alternatives for 'catchup' xp checks for missing toons, for example.

I don't interfere with my players choices. I'm the DM, not their parent. My role is to neutrally rule how the world logically responds to their actions, not to make preferential judgements reacting to their choices, and run a game based on what I "feel" is appropriate. Since you apparently missed my previous example: the enemy clearly had to focus on the primary warrior of the group, but there were plenty of PCs to fight it. The 'backup' PCs could surround it, and "get in" a stab or two as best possible. It remains dangerous - the creature could certainly turn on them, but honestly is unlikely to unless they crit and do a surprising amount of damage. So it's still 'stressful'. They use weapon 1, succeed. Now, they could continue to POINTLESSLY use weapon 1...or, with an eye toward character improvement...switch to weapon 2 and try to get a check with it. Personally, regardless of how I feel about their choices (perhaps my use of the word "bane" would suggest I don't really like it), I'd say a system that either i) mechanically incentivizes such behavior or ii) requires DM "interpretive intervention" saying "well that's not how it's SUPPOSED to be used" a BAD RULE and needs fixing. FWIW that's why I could never like RQ6 much, despite some good ideas in it... too many exploitable mechanics that would require DM fiat to prevent game-breakage. If find that sort of DM-intervention unappealing. Maybe you don't. You're taking a bit of crap for being a bit of a drama queen, more like. You're the one who somehow jumped from my commenting that "this is a broken bit of the skill check system" to concluding that this means I don't like it - which is simply, completely untrue. I't better than anything else out there - I don't pretend it's perfect, however.

Note that she's not SOLELY a troll goddess, but the goddess of the "protecting darkness". From GoG, p.75 "... Xiola Umbar is the goddess of protective darkness. Xiola Umbar preserves and heals. Even mighty queen trolls recognize her help. Oppressed peasants, grandmothers, and despised trollkin revere her name...." It's pretty easy to see a PC starting from a background of an oppressed peasant? Although personally I'd have to say as GM it would have to be an area that has relatively frequent contact with Uz, like Southern Sartar (by the Shadow Plateau) or Eastern Ralios.

To be clear, in that same thread: This person was of course either begging the question or building or strawman. I personally have NO PROBLEM with skill systems and skill checks (it's miles better than level based systems). My point in bringing up the whole issue in the FIRST place was more about addressing the 'false bottlenecking' of skill checks being limited to "one per skill per adventure". THAT was my goal, we just got dragged off into a tangent with people insisting that "skill check hunting" was apparently inconceivable to them. We currently use a probably-overly-complicated system of checks and ticks which I've laid out elsewhere but the gist is: Success gets you one check, a special gets you two, a crit gets you three. Subsequent successes either give you more checks (if they were better than what you'd had) or 'ticks'. Ticks can be "spent" during xp roll times. Before the roll, they can be spent 1:1 to give you +1% to 'fail' the xp roll. After the roll, they can be traded 4:1 to increase the skill gain by +1. Ticks are all reset to zero when xp rolls are completed. What I didn't like is that if my player swung his sword 'successfully" on the first blow of an adventure, welp, he could swing it 1000 more times before the next xp check-time, never going to learn more than from that first swing. Frankly, THAT'S SILLY. Further, everyone seems to insist that there's always "ample time to buy training". What a sedate world their campaigns must run in?? Hell no, my PCs are seen as troubleshooters and problem-solvers by their communities; as they advance in power and capability ever moreso. Their services are always in demand, if not by their own cults, relationships, or responsibilities, then by associated cults or simply people in trouble. If they see a quiet week or two they're utterly delighted, Moreover, likely a part of it is that I have dispensed with the overly simplistic and risk-free training rules from RQ RAW where you "block out" time in weeks and spend it training. No, using the RQ RAW as a guideline, and (IIRC) Kim Englund's great stuff on varying cost and difficulty/risk of training, I'd built a calculator (an excel sheet) that you enter: (select what skill you want to train) (from a dropdown) Enter starting skill % Enter that category bonus % Enter INT Enter APP (as a standin for CHA; usually I'd modify this up or down based on their local reputation) - the calculator would determine if you could self-train You pick if you are self-training (if available). Self training made it MUCH cheaper, slower, and one category more risky. - the calculator would display the hazard level (inherent to the skill, raised if you were self-training) training pace - you could select if you were trying to rush it, go at a normal speed, or be extra careful (with concomitant impacts on risk) Enter trainer's skill ..and from that, it responds with: "After 103 hours of training, I get a skill roll" "That will cost me 5p (based on 2.05p/week)" It also actually does the xp roll, showing the result, skill gain (if there was one) and if a fumble was indicated, the injury result. (For example, I just did a low starting skill, self-training, hasty, very risky skill until a fumble, and the result was "Medium Injury;-8% to skill, -4% to Manipulation skill group for 1 days.") I don't tell them the "hours needed" until they reach it. Meaning, if they start training, and after a week and a half, (~60hrs) someone needs rescuing so they abandon training, I simply say "you haven't seen much improvement yet". My judgement call if they can come back and restart training at that same point, or lose some ground being away from it for a while. This makes training 1) more interesting, 2) much less predictable as a mechanical money=skill transformer, imo 3) more realistic, 4) FAR faster to implement than people scratching out their hours/week calculations. If you think training is a safe way to increase your skills IRL, just ask Teddy Bridgewater this week....

Nice! I'd only add that Xiola Umbar (if the party context supports it) is generally considered by my players to be a far more "adventuring" PC-friendly 'healing' cult. Her special spells from GoG: (Attract Attention, Group Defense (no duration!), Healing Trance, Shield of Darkness, and Turn Blow) are crazy good, verging on the overpowered. Chalana Arroy's complete pacifism might be a fun challenge for some players, but others just find it annoying and rather dull.

That's my point. The mechanics of a rule set should promote the same choices as IRL. It's on of the key reasons I love RQ. To reflect this, I considered for a while suggesting that the 'special' effect of blunt weapons would be to reduce defender's effective armor by 1/2, but I wasn't sure what that would do balance wise. It would certainly make blunts more attractive against high-armor targets but I doubt in RQ2/RQ4 (with a max armor value of a measly 6ap) it would be attractive enough.

Season-ly calendar, printable PDF http://www.dimacleod.co.uk/rpg/rq/monthcal.pdf With plenty of space for jottings.

You have no idea how many times with new players I hauled these out to show them "armor like this" or "sword like that"...in that way they were some of the most-referenced books in my gaming library cross-genre. FWIW it's one of the things I'm most happy about the Guide to Glorantha art, because now I can use that the same way for architecture, dress, jewelry, etc. I tried for years to figure out a useful/interesting but not too laborious way to translate their weapon/armor stats into conversion rules for RQ. Battle Axe, Type: H, Length: .8m, Mass: 2.1kg, Dex: 1, Parry: 2, Damage: 3, Throw: 2 Attack Types: Chop, 1H Dur: 80 I ended up with some interesting stuff (armor values are pretty close to RQ3, actually; a little high for RQ2) but TBH too much crunch as it had (for example) cut/chop/thrust/impact armor values. It DID make it obvious that maces and such were the smart move against many heavy armors....but too many rules to get there.

Edit: Just saw MOB's 'end of skill discussion' - so removing my reply.

(shrug) If every swing of a weapon in your game has a character's life "on the line" then you must have extraordinarily thrilling sessions. Perhaps the "height" of excitement? Or the "height" of hyperbole? There are plenty of instances in the course of usual gameplay where a melee-skilled character is fighting an enemy, perhaps the last of a bunch of chaos monsters that they cornered, upon whom that enemy MUST logically concentrate, but against whom other, less melee-focussed or otherwise less-formidable PC's might want to get in a stab or whack if they can. (*Particularly* with a fixed initiative order as in RQ RAW, where they can be (reasonably) certain the order things are going to happen in the next round.) Their blow will certainly contribute to ending the combat (if it lands), and involves some risk, but not likely life-threatening unless I'm being a punitive, reactionary DM.

http://www.gangleri.nl/articles/59/rune-calendars/ Hopefully it could be evocative AND useful, something like or or even

Not sure why you're so hyped on this? Check hunting is a long-recognized issue in RQ, and any skill-based BRP system really. If spells are skills (and not just multipliers like POW*5) then they'll be victims of it too. No, I didn't spend a long time crafting my example. So? You're telling me that if a player genuinely tosses a spell to-purpose, and they succeed at casting it, you wouldn't "allow" a check just because the circumstances (that they might have no idea knowing) were inappropriate? Bill the Warrior falls off what appears to be a cliff, Jimmy the Wizard casts a last-second Fly on him to save him, succeeds, and then the players find the 'cliff' was only 1m high or an illusion? I'd call it 'arbitrary bullshit' if a DM said "well it turns out you didn't need it so your casting doesn't give you a check". So you're going to say that if Bill the Warrior uses his mace (which is at 54%) instead of his sword (which is at 56%, but already has a check) he gets no checks? Again, that seems pretty arbitrary and frankly petty. Yes, OBVIOUSLY you don't give them skill checks for stabbing rats while sitting at the pub table, or POW gain for Disrupting rats from the inn window...I'm talking about reasonably sophisticated players making INTERNAL choices, not dimwits that call out their motives for every choice.

Nonsense, of course it happens with Sorcery. Unless you're saying that your sorcerer only has one spell for doing damage? No? Then I'm going to guess he/she is going to try to cast successfully through all their attack spells as much as possible until they can nab a tick for each. Detect Iron? Well, let's see if we can find the treasure chest hidden in the room, I'll tell the DM I'm going to cast Detect Iron (knowing full well there IS no treasure chest, but if I'm earnest enough, I'll still get a tick).

Basically, it's the Encyclopaedia Gloranthica. Seriously, if you want a comprehensive encyclopedia of everything Glorantha, it's there. Pictures of money, there. Architecture, there. Weather, there. Name it, plus a ton of stuff you didn't even know existed.

I agree that no, there's no need to collectivize such spells due to try to be thrifty with skill checks.* Of course, the flip side of that is since checks are effectively limitless currency, it does reward 'check hunting', the bane of RQ forever - that is, deliberately using sub-optimal skills at times because "I already have a skill-check in my sword, I might as well use my mace and get a skill check in that". *there are other reasons to organize them into quasi-schools, which the RQ4 mechanic of rune+method sort of already does, to synergize spells of similar flavor for a whole host of interesting reasons The RQ6 approach to apportion out limited skill increases as the rewards themselves was a reasonably clever attempt to get away from skill checks, but IMO sort of went against-grain by backing up into a D&Desque xp-reward corner. No, the way to disincentivize check-hunting is to attack the other end of the stick: the fact that once you'd gotten a check in a skill, there was no further value to continuing to use that skill. But that's meat for another thread.

Let's not forget, this is a rules system like any other. Is there any game out there that isn't immediately houseruled to some degree? I'm delighted if we get a robust, thorough set of rules that generally seem to balance. I have no doubt that I'll have several pages of homerules that better reflect what I (and hopefully my players) expect from the game world. After all, YGMV,

Honestly, this was my only qualm about your description. Having spell flexibilty tied to a STAT and not a skill level makes it more or less fixed, not progressive. It's not going to change materially (particularly as INT is a very-fixed stat) as the character develops. Billy the New Wizard can adjust a spell as much as William the Magus 100 years later? That seems counterintuitive? Do we want a mechanic that says starting-out sorcerers are able to whomp stuff with 4d6 damage (perhaps offset by a low chance to cast)? My gut reflex says that this is an approach that might have worked in old-school rpgs, but is ultimately unsatisfying today both as a player and DM. Is the 'sorcerer' character in the party the gal with the "one shot kill" gun, but only has a 1 in 8 chance it goes off? So in the fight with the BBEG, the (young) sorcerer is doing nothing most of the time OR killing the BBEG in one shot making the other characters less relevant? The time to cast only matters if combat's actually begun. Giving beginning sorcerers the ability to fully manipulate their spells to a high degree gives them OP alpha-strike capability.

I understand the need for this descriptively, but as an esthetic I've always far preferred more evocative names for what would be IRL amazing, wondrous things to see. Not to get into Psychology 101, but I have to expect that sorcerers would want to make sure that the spells they cast sound as impressive as possible. "Globe of Distant Discernment" sounds so much more potent/cool than Farsee. "Expeditor of the Skein of Destiny" sounds cooler than "Jump ahead in time", "Fulguration of Immanent Grandeur" sounds scarier than "Zap with light beam". "Food of Chaos" is terrifying, calling it "Carnivorous mold" just sounds like something annoying you found in your damp basement. (these names are all from the Tekumel RQ *also* by the inimitable Sandy Petersen - *fantastic* to read if you haven't) Curious that we're at opposite positions on this, considering our opposite stances on evocative rules-writing vs rules-as-reference-work. Frankly RQ2 spell names were pretty dull, RQ3 sorcery even moreso.

Reference? Because from what I've seen in the lore, sorcery is very much collectivist (ie you can have multiple casters all cooperating) which would imply that scaling and variability are core concepts in sorcery?

I think the only one that could give you an authoritative example would have to be Jeff, or a playtester released from NDA to do so. I could give you what I THINK would be an example, but it's going to be colored with my long experience with RQ3 sorcery, so likely to exaggerate the similarity to RQ3 and miss some subtle new differences. Re RQ3's version, I think it's relevant to point out that our main character that played a sorcerer...has just completed his degree as a MATH MAJOR. The amount of number crunching and fiddling needed to play a sorcerer PC as an ongoing major role was....substantial. He *enjoyed* it though. Even he recognizes that was not broadly appealing to most customers, so is willing to accept a sorcery that still delivers the variability (that's what made it so massively better than any other system we'd encountered) but at a lower MFLOPS cost in use.

It ain't just you.

Hell, I'm still just trying to wrap my noggin around the idea of Lhankor Mhy having sorcery. Old dogs, new tricks.... I think it's important for everyone to recall that Jeff's guiding theme has always been to hew to RQ2 generally in writing RQ4, and with Sorcery he's working (as far as RQ2 is concerned) ex nihilo; the "original" version of Sorcery was RQ3. For that matter though, I wouldn't say that this version as briefly describe is much at all like RQ3. First, this is much simpler and more approachable for new players than the many-fiddly-bits gearfest that was RQ3 sorcery. I believe that was a big goal to make sorcery a playable choice. I like the core focus around the 4 abilities and their relationships to the runes/elements. Very much the opposite of RQ3's genericized system which was a little more D&D'ish "pick whatever spells your DM will let you have" thing. I like that sorcerers are forced as they grow in power to make meaningful strategic choices about their character. From what I understand, they're really constrained to either becoming master manipulators of only an element or two, OR being able to only do a few things to several different elements. That's inherently more interesting, as well as putting a brake on the (RQ3's-nearly-unlimited) power curve for sorcerers. I like the explicit connection to the Brithini, the caste system (which always felt afterthought-y in other previous discussions), and the concept of Vows. This ties the system more fundamentally to the world. It makes sorcery (as Malkionism has always been described) a traditionalist system: constrain yourself to the codes laid down ages past, and you can be more powerful. I like that Spirit magic isn't banned to casters, it's just strongly incentivized not to have it. It fixes (for me) a dichotomy in the source material that said that Western cultures had these castes, but (in RQ3) seemed to imply that trivial sorcery was everyone's gig, which really then conflicted with the role spirit magic played in the game-ecology. In this case it would be typical for Westerners to maybe still have some spirit magic, leaving Sorcery to those for whom it's appropriate for their caste. I like that casters will care about the calendar. I know this is Glorantha, and analogies aren't perfect, but it 'feels right' to me in a way that sort of recalls the IRL Arabic/Persian golden age of astronomy/math. I think this approach also offers a TON of flexibility for later works, as the combinations of manipulation+rune can almost be approached as schools, with collections of spells accessible thereto. Jeff's only given us a pretty basic overview. From what I've seen so far, I'm looking forward to more details.