Pentallion

9 hours ago, styopa said:

Call me a quibbler, but IMO RQG has overcomplicated this.

If you have a 155 vs a 50, in the various interpretations it would be played out as:

1. RQG RAW: 100 vs 0%
2. RQG Amended(better): 110 vs 05 or really 95 (with special of 22/crit of 6) vs 05.
3. RQ3 results in 95 (with special of 31, crit of 8 I think) vs 50

While I agree that #2 is way better than #1, it seems like 3 is simpler, still gives the lower-skill the full 'value' of the skill they have and likewise acknowledges a diminishing return on super-high levels of skill - essentially you're just a) better able to cope with disadvantages, but b) mainly (slowly) increasing your special/crit chances...

Yep.  We tried out skill reduction with RQ6 and didnt like it.  No one likes it any better in RQG.  It's the one rule we instantly tossed out and went with RQ3.

34 minutes ago, Scout said:

This attack v parry thing is a bit much to remember 😕 I know there's a table, but it's another table alongside the Resistance table you have to look up.

EDIT: So a shield's special damage is Crushing?

Not sure what you mean by "this attack vs parry thing".  You attack, I parry and vice versa.  You get the hang of crits vs specials, etc. quite quickly, if that's what you mean? 

Yes, a shield does crushing damage.  You could also think of it as Bashing damage.  Maces, fists, shields all bash you in the face.  Crushing damage isn't very good for most humans though it's crazy good for trolls (and Conan, but that's another thread).

That's a good question I've always pondered.  Why is there a spirit world where spirits can be found if the dead are supposed to go to the underworld?  I've wondered if perhaps the spirit world is simply a shamanistic means of interpreting where spirits go and the underworld is the divinistic way of interpreting it, but then I can't account for trolls.

Perhaps someone within Chaosium would care to enlighten?

3 hours ago, creativehum said:

All true. And these are questions I wanted answers for and I asked several times here. The answers ranged, as far as i remember, from "It's a tool kit, do whatever you want!" to wordy posts that I could not decipher. I know I can do whatever I want with the setting. But that it is so hard for me to get a clear answer to these questions from the authors of the setting--what they expect the setting to be like in their own vision--kind of boggles me.

RQ3 handled aging better IMO.  Skills were based directly upon age.  Older NPCs were definitely better skilled than younger ones and it made sense.  Farmers farmed better, older hunters hunted better.  But adventurers increased in skills much faster than NPCs.  And that was good.   Being older in RQG doesn't feel like the NPCs improved enough in their skills.

On 12/29/2018 at 8:54 AM, Scout said:

I'm reading all this background here and thinking .... what? This setting really is something else!

If anyone figures out how to fudge the numbers so my group and I can experience Apple Lane (and Snake Pipe Hollow), please post it up. We've never had a look at Glorantha and I am very excited to GM it. 

Ask and ye shall receive!  Since you are looking to start back in 1613, you're adding 12 years to the Family Timeline.  Characters that are born in 1604 with RQG are now being born in 1592.  Your grandparents were born in 1549.  Though your parents would be born in 1570, we're gonna fudge it ahead one year earlier.  Your parents careers start in 1597, fudging that back two years.

Year1549 Events:  Your grandparents were born this year.

Year 1569 Events:  Homelands All.  Prince Tarkalor crowned King of Dragon Pass and the Prince of Sartar.   Your parents were born this year.

Modifiers:  Lunar Tarsh -8. Old Tarsh -5.  Prax -8

1-10:  Nothing happens.  11-12:  Dies of Random Causes.  13-20:  Witness crowning of Tarkalor.  Gain Loyalty (Sartar).

Year 1582 Events:  Straight out of RQG

Year 1592 Events:  You are born.

Year 1597 Events:  Your grandparents career now ends.  Your parents career begins this year.  Other than that, this is straight out of RQG. 

All Events from 1602 to 1608: Identical to RQG except they happened to your parent(s).

Year 1610 through Year 1613 Events:  Your career starts now.  Your parents retire.  All references to "died" are replaced by "nearly died".  If you fight in any battles, give yourself +5% Battle for merely surviving, +10% Battle if you converted "killed at the Battle of..." or "died with great glory" to "damn! that was close!" (in addition to the other 'rewards'.)  Oh, and toss in a scar.  (gnarly scar if you used to play Stormbringer)

And there ya go!  Easy peasy.

On 12/30/2018 at 6:01 AM, Jeff said:

Lanbril is a far less cosmically significant god than Eurmal.

At least, that's what Lanbril wants you to believe....

55 minutes ago, jeffjerwin said:

Magic is not science; nor is it technology. Unless it's sorcery... and the intimate understanding of the spiritual world that Praxians have and Lunars and Sartarites do not gives them a significant advantage in their homeland. The Praxians were 'conquered' (extremely temporarily) because they were disunited, not because they were inferior.

It was the caltrops.  They'd never seen them before.  The lunars came up with the idea after their failed invasion of 1608.

They weren't replaced by the bow because of damage capability.  They have immense damage capability.  They were replaced because of range and encumbrance.  Humans hunt by marathon running the prey until it drops.  Having a lightweight bow and being able to hit from a distance at an exhausted animal is easier than keeping the long javelin from striking the ground while you ran and also carrying the atlatl.  Besides, once mega fauna became extinct, the extra penetrating power is pretty much wasted.

13 hours ago, soltakss said:

I've seen that, thanks, but not sure if our players want to try out SciFi just yet.

It's more like Sci-fi Cthulhu set in the 20's on an alternate earth.  Prohibition, aliens and madness.  What could go wrong?

Nice, thanks.

Once RQG came out, we began the Eleven Lights campaign by Ian Cooper and Jeff Richards.  We've gotten to 1622 and I've gotta say Wow!  This is a job well done.  I remember back in the 80's when Borderlands got a fantastic review in Dragon magazine.  I can't even begin to imagine what kind of rave review Eleven Lights would have gotten back then.

There'd be people who no longer had lower jaws.  They'd have just dropped right off.

If you don't own it, buy it.  It's absolutely the best Chaosium has ever had to offer and that's saying a lot.  If I had one complaint and I always do, Ian can attest to it because I shared it with him before Eleven Lights even came out, it's that the Dragonrise Heroquest isn't in there.

Yeah, I'm THAT greedy.

But hey, it feels like it's leading up to it and the PCs should be a part of it.  But that aside, this is the best campaign money can buy and I feel there should be credit where credit is due.

Thank you.

Above 100% the chance for specials and crits increases so that is handled fine.  Of course, if you use RAW, you reduce the higher skilled person to 100% and the lower skilled person by a like amount.  So no problem there.  In fact, that works great in opposed rolls.  In combat, I absolutely despise reducing skills to 100%.

12 hours ago, Tywyll said:

I'm not saying that that shouldn't still be a risk, but what I'm pointing out (and was pointed out by others above) is that as damage is boosted, because of the way it works in RQ, extra d6 are more swingy the more you add. A character might have 12 or 18 points of armor, but if that soaks an average hit from foes they face, a good damage roll is almost guarenteed to be a serious injury. There seems to be little wiggle room...they laugh it off or they lose a limb. 

How did you address this?

Two ways, though I prefer the former and only slowly add in the latter:  Early on in my campaigns I give them item(s) enchanted with regrow limb and/or Resurrection.  This offsets the odd "oops, I fumbled, sorry buddy" dice rolls.  the latter method is to once in a blue moon give out Strengthening Enchantments.  Of course, in RQG that currently isn't an option anyways, but I understand that soon they will be.  In our campaigns, you can receive one when you become a Rune Lord/Priest and whenever you do something epic for your god he might reward you with one.  But I'm incredibly stingy.  You can't go buy the things.

6 hours ago, davecake said:

 We know a lot more about both sorcery and mysticism than we did back then. 

Well, as they say in Kralorela "Good on ya mate!"

(literally waited 30+ years for that one)

My son's character had a Detect Cwim spell.  Only worked once.....

On 12/4/2018 at 9:09 AM, Tywyll said:

Yeah you nailed it. Most supplements in the old books showed beings that realistically had levels of power you couldn't achieve in actual game play. At least in Dnd you can reach 20th level in a campaign and reasonably take on Tiamat. RQ never felt like it allowed that. And you certainly could never hope to be the next Arkat as a Pc.

I appreciate that RQG characters are more powerful to start with than older editions, but they are still as chaff before the power of some older edition heavy hitters. 

Another issue I think comes from how damage is handled. As damage dice produce wide results, especially for large mythic foes with several dice damage bonus, but armor and protection exists in a linear line, the further you get from human expectations the more swingy combat becomes. Basically you either laugh off damage or lose a limb...there is little middle ground.

I've had TWO players be the next Arkat because I've played Argraths saga twice now.  Ask them if they can reasonably take on Tiamat and they'll tell you sure, there are levels to RQ, you just have to play long enough to discover them.  Everyone knows when the party just "levelled up" and they can even tell new players what they need to do to do so.

As for damage, lopping off PCs limbs can put a lot of tension into a game. Some of our most memorable moments came when the best warrior in the group went down to signal the start of hostilities and the party had an "oh S***!" moment.

15 hours ago, womble said:

Sure, they were farmers when they went to Iceland. No problem with that. But while helping Samastina out in Nochet for a year, then trailing after Argrath to Pavis via Pennel Ford, they won't have been being farmers; they "should" be selecting from a different skill development list for those years. For that matter, they weren't being farmers for 1622 either, because there was no farming going on in the Great Winter.

The 'previous experience' bit represents a synthesis of the character's 'life so far' which includes childhood, adolescence and their 3-5 years since initiation into Adulthood. Yes, someone born a Farmer should have an improved Farm skill, but 3 years 'off adventuring' (which is what a lot of the lifepath stuff leads your characters to doing) won't do much to bring that up to the same level of Farm as their cousin who stayed home in Sartar til the Dragonrise. Sure you can shim the system, but it's disappointing that it's so necessary.

You're completely right.  I don't know if you've heard of M-Space but I just completed a character generation system for it called Origins that does that exact type of thing.  Gives you your skills as your life events unfold.  You're a smuggler?  Good chance you wound up in prison and learned a lot about hard labor and prison life, more so than smuggling and your career starts the day you're released from prison - or escaped.  Also quite possible you were a wildly successful smuggler and have a starship of your own to begin your career with.

But RQG didn't go that route.  Their intent was different.  The intent is not to create a character generations system that builds the character, it's to give new players an introduction into the world so they can start off being immersed, instead of feeling like they don't know anything about their character or the world they come from.

From that perspective, they did an excellent job.

What you want sounds more like what Origins does: give a character generation system that provides their background and explains who they are.  But my system could create characters in any universe.  What Runequest needs is to give players a sense of where they are.  You can provide both with a little extra work of your own.  Just take the background stories and when you reach the point where the characters are gaining their own skills, add in your own skill generating personal background events.  You'd have to build said generators for every character class, much as I did for Origins (actually, my system is way more complex as it combines character class with homeworld type to provide over 500 templates for each possible character background).  So get creative!

And have fun doing it

PS.  Origins should be coming out sometime next year in the M-Space Companion.  If you need inspiration before then, I suggest looking into Mongoose Traveller's Core Rule Book for ideas of how to create characters based on Occupation while giving them a background grounded in Glorantha.

I am so looking forward to what Jeff comes out with, but in the meantime, I've run tons of heroquests using what I've gathered from official publications and things I've house ruled.  In my current campaign, it shouldn't be too much of a problem if Heroquesting turns out to be way different when Jeff comes out with the rules than what we'd have been doing up to then because of this wonderful little thing Glorantha has called "The Day the Magic Changed".  No one knows when this is, but for us it will be the day I get my hands on Jeff's Heroquesting rules.

So everyone is on board and we're all okay with plunging ahead using my long standing HQ rules.

They work like this if you'd like to go the same route:  Each heroquest is made up of stations built around a myth.  You give the PCs the myth and they make whatever preparations they think necessary.  Then the HQ mirrors the myth right up to the point where it inevitably doesn't.  Chaos always intrudes on the myth and no myth ever repeats exactly the same so HQing the same myth twice can turn out slightly differently each time.

After each station, if any power is marked or any skills are marked, the PCs automatically go up.  This is how characters can HQ to improve themselves dramatically.  It's also how they get skills well above 100%.  Power gained HQing can go above maximum, but it doesn't establish a new maximum.  So on the mundane plane they can't improve POW if it's already above max. 

If they crit on the HQ they get some small power related to the nature of the crit.  Example:  A PC critted climbing Stormwalk Mountain.  I ruled he can't fumble his climb when climbing mountains anymore.  Next time he did the same HQ he critted again same thing!  So now I ruled as long as he's lead climber on a mountain, no one on his team can fumble their climb.

If they fumble on the HQ, bad things happen.  We currently have a thief who can't succeed in a fast talk vs other criminals.  I never tell the player the nature of their disability if it's not immediately apparent.  So the thief has yet to realize his problem.

And of course, the heroquest itself generally can give out powers or treasures.  The PCs have some idea of what they're trying to get out of the HQ before they begin.

The best rules for comparing successful rolls?  RQG's rules as written.

I own it.  I'm happy I bought it.  We've had lots of good heroquests from the information I found within it's pages.  You want a rule book on how to heroquest, this isn't it.  But you want actual heroquests, then it's a must have.

So I'd say whether you wait for Jeff's cool rulebook coming out in - when did you say that was Jeff? - or dive right in, I'd say Arcane Lore is something you should get either way.  And for $10 it's a great deal.

On 12/4/2018 at 8:00 AM, womble said:

To be fair, the previous experience system in RQG often makes very little sense when combined with the 'lifepath' stuff, if you're just letting the dice roll. Anyone who set out to Iceland, travelled with Broyan to Esrolia, stayed there until Pennel Ford and then went via Jaldon's Rest to Pavis with Argrath would have an 'Adventurer' or Warrior background, not 'Farmer' or 'Noble' or 'Priest'. Maybe they were just a herder or scribe in the army's train. It seems often to require some mental gymnastics.

I totally disagree.  The majority of those who fought in Iceland were farmers, nobles and priests.  Many of them would have followed Broyan to Esrolia, their homes having already been destroyed.  If you've actually fought the Battle of Iceland, as I have twice, you'd know there's even a place on the battlefield where the scribes were deployed.

And a certain scribe was as much the hero of that battle as any of the combatants were.

I think you guys missed the OP's point.  Say I'm 100% to hit.  I go for headshot, I'm now 50% to hit.  With sureshot, I'm still 95% to hit.

Perhaps all sureshot needs is to be renamed Called Shot.

zombies

I've used gorp flinger as a slur

I wonder, since Malkion is descending from the perfect Mind or Intellect and draconic lore is all about ascending to spiritual perfection with the dragon, which is a beast, if what we've got with the God Learners/EWF is a ying-yang situation.  at some point Malkion will be at a mid point just as the draconic mysticism reaches its philosophical midpoint and that seems to be about when both empire fall.  Or right about when Pavis is mucking about.  Pavis is where the western philosophy and the draconic philosophy met as they passed so to speak.  His city represents that mingling of Man, Intellect and Spirituality.

Only out of that could the perfect mixture of Man, Intellect and Spirit arise which became the Argrath.  Or Elusu the little shit, take your pick.  Either way, project complete.

Doesn't it make perfect sense, then, that the Argrath first act upon returning from his circumnavigation isn't to become King of Sartar, it is to liberate Pavis and become it's King?