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Roko Joko

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Posts posted by Roko Joko

  1. @Stew Stansfield also invented the Scoriaguard Rumbleriders Caladraland hippo cavalry.  Google image search shows what they look like: https://www.google.com/search?q=scoriaguard+rumbleriders&source=lnms&tbm=isch 

    IMG there are two types of duck clan in dragon pass.  Lowland clans use "duck boats" that are like canoes with a sled rail and can travel on both land and water.  They're pulled by teams of regular-size beavers together with the riders, who sit in saddles that let them use their feet to paddle or push Flintstones-style.  Smaller instances would be like chariots.  Highland clans herd and ride sheep, without chariots.

    • Like 1
  2. 13 hours ago, lordabdul said:

    the surface of a balloon is limitless but not infinite.

    ...

    if you want to get trippy with it, ...

    Yeah.  Another idea I had was that if you sail way out on the Sramak, well, there are heroic challenges doing that and surviving or retaining any kind of consciousness, but if you went out far enough, you would get to a place of pure current where there's just water, more water, and three directions: with the current (which goes somewhere and nowhere at the same time), in, and out.  The only thing present is a circle eating its own tail, very draconic.

  3. On 1/7/2021 at 6:25 AM, Brootse said:

    Wouldn't the Skydome be somewhat behind the Gates?

    Oh, OK; yes, you're right.  The sun path is inside the sky dome.  At least at the top it is; almost everything about the rim of the sky dome is an open mystery.  And the sky dome itself is supposed to have multiple layers, so that complicates it as well.

  4. Sramak's River is often described as infinite.  For example "The Inner World, the world of mortals, is shaped like a huge cube of earth floating in a limitless sea of water. " (https://www.glorantha.com/glorantha/)

    Whether the sky dome extends all the way down to sea level is one of those unanswered questions.  Perhaps Umath's lift separated the rim from sea level, and the four pillars held it up.  Perhaps sometimes it dips down to sea level and even lower, when part of the outer edge is hidden seasonally.  I think the the physical form and size of the outer world is very interesting, but I'm not too fussed about it.  I figure it's magic, and you can always fake it and say that it's not Euclidean.

    By the way, one time I was curious how fast the sky dome moves at its perimeter, and you have to make some assumptions but I came up with 5000 miles (diameter from the Gate of Dusk to the Gate of Dawn) * 3 (pi) / 24 hours (one rotation per day) = 625 miles per hour.  You could suppose that the Srmak current gradually increases to the same speed once you get out to around where the gates are.

    • Like 1
  5. I'd like to suggest adding an LFG subforum for BRP and Chaosium-family games.  (Looking for group, looking for players.)  Examples on: reddit, rpg.net, enworld, Design Mechanismpeginc.

    There's more online gaming now and a lot of games are advertised in more than one place.  I wouldn't expect a forum here to get a ton of traffic, but every outlet helps since BRP is a bit niche.  Seems like good business to me.

    I'd add a top-level forum and make it prominent, placing it just above or below the Cult of Chaos forum, for example.  For comparison, I don't remember ever noticing the Alastor's Skull Inn forum before today.

  6. I think ring mail in the specific sense of armor with non-interlocking rings probably did not exist (except in Renaissance Italy and rarely in Asia) after reading this forum thread and a few things cited there.  I don't see any good evidence that it did.  The museum guide mentions broigne but not rings, and it's not a academic piece; there are no sources.

    I'm suspicious about the historicity of cuirboilli too.  It existed, but I don't think the details of how much and how it was used are very well understood.  But it doesn't bother me much because I think it's good for Glorantha, where breastplates and greaves are a good look, as is any kind of ancient material or technology.

    • Like 1
  7. Here are some Unicode symbols for the most popular runes.

    I mostly chose the symbols that I think look best in Chrome on Windows 10.

    • I've seen that some of the alternate symbols look better in Notepad on Windows 10.
    • To avoid any confusion about what does and doesn't represent a rune, I excluded Latin characters.
    • To keep a consistent look, I excluded emojis.
    • There are some astrological symbols such as ︎ that look good in some renderings (in Chrome), but bad in others - including the way this forum renders them on the final page that you read.  So I've excluded those.

    I'm open to proposals and might revise this post.

    ⬤  Darkness ....... ●
    ≋   Water ....... ≈ 
    ◻  Earth ....... □
    ⨀  Fire ....... ⊙
    𝔖  Storm ....... ₪ ☁ ⛈ @
    Ф  Moon ....... ᛰ Φ

    ≬   Disorder          
    ⫼   Harmony      
    ∴   Illusion ....... ⛬ ⁂
    Ῡ  Truth
    ∮  Movement ....... § ⟳ ⌬ ♻ ₴ ∯ ∰
    ⌓  Stasis
    ⧖  Fertility           
    †  Death 

    ᛟ  Spirit
    ᛉ  Plant ....... ᛘ ♣ ♧ ☘ ₸ ῒ ΐ ῗ ᚠ ᚡ
    ⧨  Beast ....... ⧩ ▽ ⍫ ⛛ 
    옷  Man ....... 웃
    ⍲  Dragonewt
    ☿  Chaos

     Communication ....... ᚺ
    ᚱ  Magic
    ш  Mastery
    ∞  Infinity
    ⚻  Luck      
    ⚹  Fate      

    ◯  Light ....... ○
    ∀ ︎   Eternal Battle ....... Ɣ 
    △  Law
    ※  Dragon 
    ↑    Power
    ᛞ   Unlife

    • Like 11
  8. Yeah, it's a little weird.  Your job as a temple guard is to prevent anything from needing to be avenged in the first place, not wait until it happens and then act.

    You could say the myths are about vengeance whereas the social role of the cultists is to be guards, though.  They don't have to be perfectly identical.  If someone crosses the line and trespasses, I think a guard could still mythically identify them as the right kind of enemy.

  9. There's no one answer and the answer to "could x possibly be y?" is yes.  The texts don't directly answer the question and do say that Sartarite clans vary.  All Orlanthi will vary even more.

    S:KoH talks about exogamy and a wide range of marriages so you can infer that typically the former will be a bigger deal.  The parents of the RQG pregen Yanioth probably were not married - they could have been, but Vasana is only two years younger and her parents were married, whereas Yanioth's father is unnamed.

  10. Necro to discuss some details.

    On 1/5/2017 at 8:13 AM, Byll said:

    does [the] Full Moon phase run from noon until noon instead of midnight until midnight? or does it snap to a one midnight-midnight day or the other?

    This came up for me too: exactly when do the phases switch over?  You can narrate that the change is gradual, but you might want to establish a switchover time for rules purposes.

    I don't think anyone knows the answer precisely.  GtG 648 says "The Full Moon phase in Dragon Pass ... begins at sunset on Wildday".  You could interpret that to mean the end of daylight on Wildday.  Or you could interpret it to mean the previous dusk, based on "The Orlanthi arbitrarily divide the day into 24 periods termed hours, beginning at nightfall," from S:KoH 358.  It's ambiguous.

    I don't like the second interpretation because it's awkward, but I think it's more likely what was intended.  Starting from there, you could choose to say that Telmori territory is a point where it's precisely true, and then you'd say that the full moon pie slice passes through your area:
    * from Fireday noon to Wildday noon, in Shadows Dance;
    * from Fireday 6PM to Wildday 6PM, in Telmori territory;
    * from the midnight before Wildday to the midnight before Godday, at the dragon pass dragon skull;
    * from Wildday 6AM to Godday 6AM, in Esrolia.
    The exact window would be shifted forward/backward the farther southwest/northeast you are.

    So in the middle part of Dragon Pass, when the calendar says Clayday is phase black, what that means is, it's phase black the night before Clayday, and Clayday during the day.  I guess that's about as good as you can do.  And as a reference for figuring out other phases in other places, you might say, consistent with the above, that the trailing edge of the full moon phase points south at 6AM on Godday.

    Alternatively, the simplest option would be to choose to not use the bits of rule text I quoted, and just say the switchover always happens at the same time of day no matter where you are.  Or instead of a fixed time, say it always happens at dusk (or dawn), so that the moon phasing follows the seasons.

  11. Ideas:

    * go around to all the Darkness-related factions in the area (Cliffhome, Dagori Inkarth, Troll Woods, Shadow Plateau, Arkat's Hold, Ivory Plinth, Black Horse County) doing deeds and collecting wisdom
    * undergo the troll initiation and join the cult of Kyger Litor
    Neither of the above is directly mystical, but you could depict them as broadening the PC's consciousness.
    * join the cult of Subere, deep in troll territory
    * join the cult of Arkat, maybe through Argrath
    * join the cult of Jakazeel (Spirit, Zorak Zoran) or Yanafal Tarnils (Darkness) and learn from Lunar masters
    * serve Cragspider and learn from Arachne Solara, who was associated with Cragspider in earlier books, and the Black Dragon
    * have crazy adventures in the underworld

    • Like 1
  12. 1 hour ago, lordabdul said:

    So someone buffs a speaker, and the speaker then debates with somebody else. Rolls are made, and a debate winner is decided. It's somewhat irrelevant whether the opponent was aware that the speaker was using magic or not: even if they were aware, they would still have had to engage in the debate and roll the dice!

    I don't understand why you think they would have had to engage in the debate.

    "We'll discuss the price of my horses after you're finished with your sorcery."

    "I'll debate you all night long as soon as you're ready to address the question on its merits rather than rely on that magic to turn our heads.  So what's it going to be?"

    "Get the hell out of my temple."

  13. https://glorantha.steff.in/digests/HeroQuestRPG/20464.htmlThere's always a question in fantasy games about when you can use social or mind-affecting magic effectively, if ever.  Will the people affected by the magic know about it (either they see you making the magic or they can tell that you did) - and if they do, when will they know and how will they react?

    GMs, how have you answered this for your Glorantha games?

    Some Glorantha rule books talk about which casting actions or magical effects are perceptible, up to a point.  RQG is clear that rune magic is perceptible, and calls out Lie as an exception, but it's ambiguous about the other types.  HQG says direct magic can be perceptible, and that magic augments are not.  I don't think the rules texts are a good place to find a final answer on this - the texts don't give complete answers; it would be easy to house rule if they did; and in any case social stuff always involves GM judgment.

    I'm thinking about this in the context of Glorantha games in general, but I'm asking here in RQ to make it more concrete.  In RQG some of the spells this might come up for are (Spirit) Glamour, (Rune) Arouse Passion, Charisma, Clever Tongue, Detect Honor, Detect Truth, Harmony, Inviolable, Lie*, Mind Read* (the last two have explicit guidance), (Sorcery) Dominate, Logical Clarity.

    Edited to add background notes.
    Earlier discussions:
      * Do spells have a visual component? . brp.org  2019
      * Spell Manifestations . brp.org 2018
      * bargaining chips . HeroQuest RPG list, Greg, Feb 5, 2004
    Text in rule books about magic visibility:
      *  RQG 248 and 315, HQG 146, S:KoH 82, HQ2 (HQCR) 111, HQ1 (HQ:RiG) 98, HW (HW:RiG) 163.

    • Like 1
  14. I wanted to understand the Gloranthan calendar better, so I aligned the solstices and equinoxes to Earth's and came up with this table.  The lineup was never quite intuitive when you have 4 seasons that are like the regular ones, plus 1¼ extra.  This is cool; I never knew Storm 1st was January 1st, for example.

    Glorantha-Earth calendar alignment based on solstices and equinoxes
    (Northern hemisphere).
    Earth day = 87 + (1.2415 x Glorantha day).    (365/284 = 1.2415.)
    Glorantha day = (Earth day - 87) x 0.8055.    (284/365 = 0.8055.)

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Sea Season:         Sea 1      Mar 28            April                
    late Spring
                        Sea 29     May 2             May


    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Fire Season:        Fire 1     Jun 7             June
    early Summer        Fire 12    Summer solstice                      
                        Fire 29    Jul 12            mid-July to mid-August


    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Earth Season:       Earth 1    Aug 15            mid-August to mid-Sep
    late Summer,
    early Fall          Earth 29   Sep 19            October
                        Earth 30   Fall equinox

    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Dark Season:        Dark 1     Oct 24            November    
    early Winter
                        Dark 29    Nov 28            December
                        Dark 47    Winter solstice
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Storm Season:       Storm 1    Jan 1             January
    late Winter
                        Storm 29   Feb 5             February


    -----------------------------------------------------------------------
    Sacred Time:        Sacred 1   Mar 13            mid-March            
    early Spring        Sacred 9   Spring equinox
    -----------------------------------------------------------------------

     

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  15. Thanks for the comments.

    "What's the goal, though? You want a more regular gain over adventures, free of the disappointment of a failed experience gain roll?"

    Mainly that.  But also if you understand how fast the rules will advance PC skills in fictional time, it might be easier to plan a campaign, decide how often to do advancement, or decide that you need to house rule the advancement rules in order to get a certain game pace.

    It might also give you a more specific understanding of the worldbuilding compared to the novice/amateur/professional/master table.  For example if I have an analysis that tells me that most people have 75% in their best skills by age 20, that's helpful to me.

    "[Why did you use a table rather than a delta formula]?"

    I think it's easier to understand; you can work with it in your head.  And it's OK with me if the advancement curves have elbows rather than being perfectly smooth.

    "[The RQ:G advancement rules are written for adventurers, not ordinary NPCs]."

    Sure; I'm showing what would happen if you did use them for ordinary NPCs, and comparing it to two things that were written for ordinary NPCs: the novice/amateur/professional/master table, and (arguably) the RQ3 Skill by Occupation rules.

  16. To go a little off topic, but continuing with the idea of improving skills by 1%, seasonal experience can give you a way to limit a spent experience system.  For example, suppose you say that at the end of every season each PC just chooses 8 skills and advances each one by 1% (or maybe 3% if it's below 25% and 2% if it's below 50%).  Spent XP systems sometimes let players load too much XP into their top skill, but when you limit advancement to 5 times a year, you know it maxes at +5% per year.  Then if someone who wants to max their top skill starts at 100% at age 20, the max is 200% at age 40.  That's high but not crazy for a hero, and it's easier to make it work if you're expecting it.

  17. I double-checked myself and noted that the RQ:G rules advance you faster than 1% per experience check at low levels.  Using a 0% skill category modifier to keep it simple, the average skill advancement per check is 3%, 2%, and 1% at the following skill levels:

    Skill    Average advancement             
    13%      +3%    = 87% x 3.5%
    43%      +2%    = 57% x 3.5%
    71%      +1%    = 29% x 3.5%

    So instead of 1% per check from 0-75%, you could say that you advance:
    * 3% per check from 0% to 25%
    * 2% per check from 26% to 50%
    * 1% per check from 51% to 75%
    Then you get from 0% to 50% in 20 checks (4 years at one check every season) rather than 50 checks (10 years at one check every season).

    I think it's better to do that.  PCs won't get a lot of experience checks for their low-level skills - both because those are probably the skills they use less often, and because they'll fail the skill checks more often - so it's better to give them the full 2 or 3% when they do get a check.

  18. Here are two simple tables that:
    1. Give you a way to handle skill advancement without experience rolls at the end of the season.
    2. Tell you the level of an average person's highest skill, by age.

    I'm sure I'm not the first person to homebrew something like this, but here goes.

    1. Experience

    Record experience checks normally.  Then at the end of the season (or whenever), instead of rolling to see whether each experience check advances your skill, give yourself a fixed advancement that depends on your current skill level.

    Skill        Advancement
    up to 75%    1%    
    76-90%       1/3%
    above 90%    1/5%

    You could either track fractional skill levels, or (what I'd do) track the number of experience checks that you've accumulated toward the next 1% improvement.

    There's a refined version of this table, using skill category modifiers, in section 3.

    2. Average person

    Let's call him Olaf.  We're looking at his best skill or skills.  He has 13 INT and SIZ, one other 13, one 8, and three 10s.  We can assume the skill category modifier for his best skill is +5%.  Let's ignore all the cultural and rune stuff, and even base skill levels, and just say Olaf starts getting an experience check in his best skill every season starting at age 5, checking for advancement every season.

    Then, using the fixed advancements above, the level of his best skill will be:
    Age  Skill
     5     0%
    10    25%
    15    50%
    20    75%
    25    85%
    30    90%
    40   100%
    50   110%
    60   120%

    He gets his 5% skill category modifier added to these.  There's a little rounding in there at ages 25 and 30.

    I don't know about you, but those numbers look pretty good to me.  Page 63 of RQ:G calls 0-25% novice, 26-50% amateur, 51-75% professional, 76-90% veteran, and 91%+ master.  Veteran at age 20 - I don't know, maybe it is a little higher than intended for RQ:G?  But given that it's the premodern world the general statement doesn't really bother me.

    3. Comments

    • I believe Olaf's pace of advancement in section 2 is in the ballpark of what you get if you calculate it using the actual RQ:G skill check rules.  I won't spell out all of the arithmetic, but for example, at skill level 100% Olaf's chance of an experience advancement is just his category modifier, 5%.  That means once every 20 seasons, he gets an advancement of either 1d6% or 3%.  That's about 4% every 4 years, hence 1% per year.
    • Up to 75%, the advancement is 5% per year, the same as you get in your best skill using the Experience by Occupation rules in RQ3.
    • You probably want PCs to advance faster than Olaf due to their heroic ability scores, as they do in the standard rules.  One way you could do that is with a table like this.  Compared to the simple table in section 1, this makes high category modifiers give faster advancement at high skill levels, where they make more of a difference in the standard rules.

           Skill Advancement per Experience Check
                          Category Modifier
         Skill         +0%     +5%    +10%    +20%+
         Up to 75%:     1%      1%      1%      1%
         75-90%:      1/5%    1/3%    1/2%    1/2%
         90%+:       1/10%    1/5%    1/3%    1/2% 

    • Fixed advancement makes it easier to round skills to 5% increments, if you're into that.  With advancements based on +1d6% or +3% that's a bit awkward, but with fixed advancement you can count the number of checks required to advance to the next 5% increment.
       
  19. more small bits:
    . Kralorela entries in HeroQuest Voices
    . Revealed Mythologies, but most of it got into the GtG
    . Glorantha Intro to the Hero Wars, like the GtG with a slightly different take
    . martial arts and mysticism rules in the Hero Wars core book

    • Like 1
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