Jeff

That's not a terribly good map I fear - one of our early ones. I'm working on a map of Kethaela at the same level detail as the Dragon Pass master map. In the foothills of the Storm Mountains, you'll find lots of pine, oak, maples, laurels, and possibly even the occasional redwood grove. Once you get above 750 meters, it ends up being a lot like Sartar, including higher snowfall. The plateau is mostly grasslands with scattered stands of oak and pine.

I can't speak for the other moderators, but I think we are pretty much able to keep having nice things without a long list of regulations. Although we have the occasional chuckle-head, I trust most everyone on this forum to Be Excellent To Each Other. And if you wander off into un-excellent territory, I trust most of you to react to a simple warning to knock it off. The audience on this forum is for the most part excellent. The rare chuckleheads to the contrary are the exceptions that prove the rule.

Some impressions of the river valleys of Heortland. They are often called fjords, but aren't actually the results of glaciation. Here's the entrance to the Horting Fjord - the mouth of the Bullflood River. I suspect further upriver near Durengard it is more like: As you can see, above the river valley cuts through a plateau with gentle hills. As we go upriver, we get back into rugged hill country into we get into the Storm Mountains. This is in the Jab Hills south of the Print:

If you really can't figure out Be Excellent To Each Other, then I fear pretty much any ethical system around Treat Each Other Respectfully - be it Islam, Bill and Ted-ism, Zensunnism, or even Rokarism - is not going to work out for you. This forum really may not be a good fit for you - we expect folk to be able to behave like respectful adults here, regardless of their ideological or religious beliefs. Heck I'll even tolerate 49ers fans if they can follow these basic guidelines. Jeff

Here's the official snippet from the RQ Campaign: BATTLE OF PENNEL FORD - The Lunar army abandons its siege of Nochet when Harrek the Berserk and his Wolf Pirates ally with the defenders. At Pennel Ford, 8,000 Lunar soldiers face 4,000 Esrolians and Heortlings, 3000 Wolf Pirates, 2500 Caladralanders, and 2000 Western Barbarians. Despite the defection of the Western Barbarians, the Lunar Army is decisively defeated. 3000 Lunars and 500 Western Barbarians are killed or captured, against 1500 allies killed. The Lunar Army is harried all the way back to Dragon Pass; only 2500 Lunars return.

Here's another take:

As an aside, my main rule on moderation is "be excellent to each other." And stay on topic. So that is what kind of site I want this to be. One where people are excellent to each other, and where they stay on topic. Is that too much to ask?

Gang - I don't want this descending into broadly discussions of politics, other websites and forums, etc. This is about who BRP Central should be - not what is wrong with other sites. And it isn't helpful for us to see litanies of complaints about other sites' policies (however cathartic that might be for you) - if the point is only "don't be like that." Keep it positive and focused on what we should be. So please knock it off. Jeff

Sometime contests don't resolve. They stalemate. And that's perfectly fine and that stalemate moves the story along. The opposed skill resolution is not used for combat, they are used for things like a test of Runes ("hey you seem to be equally strong in the Air Rune!"), opposed communication ("both of you are persuasive, and there is no clear winner of the debate"), conflicting loyalties ("you don't know what to do - both loyalties tug equally at you and renders you indecisive"), etc. A tie is not "nothing" - a tie is no clear-cut winner. And something that happens in stories and in life.

Why is that problematic? All it means is no resolution. You both succeeded, so it is a tie. No resolution. Retry later when the GM thinks appropriate.

So always roll low on the D100 except when in this specific type of contest, and even then, certain types of low rolls are better than high rolls except when they aren't? We didn't think that was elegant at all and rejected it.

1. It lets us avoid using a roll high system for tie breaker (which really would be a case of having a mechanic that runs contrary to everything else). 2. It lets us avoid using a roll low tie breaker which has a really non-intuitive and weird spread of results. 3. Ties in skill use are pretty common in real life.

Attacking someone with a sword is very predictable, defending with a shield is very predictable. We don't combine those rolls and have a single result - we have an attack (which either succeeds or doesn't) and a parry (which either succeeds or doesn't). Then we figure out damage, how much is blocked, how much gets through armor, etc. We DON'T have a single opposed roll. The Opposed Roll used in RQG results in a lot of ties - by design. It is roll low with the better level of success the winner. If both succeed, it is a tie. This wouldn't work for magic resistance - like combat spell casting is a regular matter of life and death in the game. We considered a roll high system which was mathematically as predictable as the resistance table, but it was a TOTALLY different mechanic from every other dice roll, and so rejected it. The resistance table works like all other dice rolls - roll under the ability to succeed. So no, getting rid of the Resistance Table was not an option. And it is easy to use, quick to remember, and disappears in the background pretty quickly.

That doesn't sound like a modern v. old-fashioned to me, but just an aesthetic preference. Like Greg, I like tables and charts. I don't like dice mechanics where "I" find it difficult to intuitively understand my likelihood of success. Other people disagree. I don't find FATE games particularly modern - just with a different set of assumptions from BRP games or D&D games. . As for RQG - whether it is "modern" seems to come down to a handful of elements: the resistance table, pushing results or Luck points, and MRQ2. The resistance table - which might as well be called the Magic Resistance Table given that almost all of its uses are for magic resistance - is there because it makes the likelihood of success immediately predictable. Like your chance to hit with a weapon, knowing your chance of overcoming an opponent's POW should be predictable. In RQ attacking something is a different action than parrying something - you as the player know this and can work out strategies around that if necessary. Opposed rolls seem intuitive, but few people actually know what their likelihood of success is (the procedure is more intuitive than a resistance table, but the spread of results is far less intuitive for most people). Given the centrality of magic in RQG, the resistance table was a better mechanic than opposed resolution. Others have said RQG would have been more modern with some mechanics that let you Push results or Luck points as per CoC 7e. But RQ has magic, augments, and divine intervention that already push things far more in the players' favour than Luck or Pushing Results do. And ultimately, I think that it is important for RQ that players can fail. They can and do die. They can get around that with things like Resurrection, heroquests, and divine intervention. Then finally, there are those who liked the some of the mechanics in MRQ2 that were rejected for RQG. That's a style choice - we didn't use them in RQG because we didn't like them. If you liked MRQ2 and thought its combat system was the bee's knees - go for it and knock yourself out with it. We rejected MRQ2's mechanics and found it got some extremely negative feedback from our newbie playtesters when compared with RQ2, but again that is not a modern v old-fashioned thing, just a matter of differing styles. Some people love the MRQ2 mechanics, more people (at least in our experience) didn't enjoy them. In both cases, RQG and D&D5e have looked at what was most popular in the most popular previous versions (RQ2+Greg's RQ3 material for RQG, D&D 1-3 for D&D5). And both games passed aside elements of versions that didn't have the same popularity (MRQ1&2 for RQG, D&D4e for 5e).

Eurmal can and does shape change.

The Rocky Mountains are the WEST, not the mid-west. That's like calling the Swiss Poles.

A good source of new ogres!

Gruyéres is probably a good point of comparison for Clearwine or Apple Lane, Davos is a good point of comparison for Boldhome.

The source is also the new Cults Book, which has a full Uleria writeup.

I've found our combats in RQG are over very fast - a combat is long because either both combatants are very powerful and equally matched OR there are a lot of combatants involved. I don't buy the idea that whatever the current edition of D&D is by definition "what is modern". I think 5e is good at being what it is supposed to be, but I personally find it to be very much a throw-back to the early 1980s in terms of design. Sure, some things are sped up (D&D combat was always attritional rather than dynamic, so it is easier to speed up) or cleaned up (although D&D still uses D12s) but in general, it is basically a cleaned up best of editions 1-3. Which is exactly what it is supposed to be. Its success is not a result of being "cutting edge" but by hitting a comfortable sweet spot for old fans and new. It is not for me but that's totally fine - I'm not its target audience. Honestly, I don't know what a "modern game" is anymore. PbtA? Fate? None of those have particularly new and cutting edge mechanics. To me the most cutting edge game is Pendragon, any edition, with RQG and CoC7e close behind. Arguably 4th edition was much more "modern" - that's been dialled back in 5th edition (to its benefit, IMO). At the end of the day, D&D and the BRP family of games took different design paths a VERY long time ago. Comparing them is like comparing apples and oranges. Both are fruits. If we go back to the Triassic Age we can find they had the same ancestors. But now they are very different games and very different experiences. I "personally" prefer oranges to apples, and I "personally" prefer BRP games to D&D. But that's just a matter of aesthetic taste.

Uleria is the power of union and the Cup of Life. She was present every time the old gods combined to create burtae. Present when Umath was born from Sky and Earth, when Orlanth was born from Air and Earth, and so on. She is a fairly impersonal deity, but is present whenever more than one being joins with another to create something. That can be erotic, friendship, community, whatever. Although some of her spells are eros - others (like Transfer Pregnancy or Community) are not particularly erotic.

Uleria provides the following Rune spells: Birthing, Community, Erotocomatose Lucidity, Extension, Reproduce, Sanctify, and Transfer Pregnancy.

That's why the Great Winter plays a big part in character generation family history.

The Battle of the Auroch Hills takes place in Earth Season, but during the Great Winter - so temperatures were totally haywire. Dark Season didn't end and rather than start thawing in Storm Season, it just kept dropping. Normally the range in late Dark Season is -10/4. During the Great Winter it might have gone: early Storm -12/2 late Storm -14/0 early Sea - 16/-2 late Sea -18/-4 early Fire -20/-2 late Fire -22/-4 early Earth -24/-6 late Earth 7/18. So basically, in Dragon Pass and Kethaela, we have a huge harvest failure in 1622. So in truth, 1623 is the hardest hit year. Which gives a wrinkle to the siege of Nochet. Nochet is likely running low on food, but the besiegers are completely out of food (at least initially). Nochet likely is able to supply itself from abroad (echoes of Athens in the Peloponnesian War). 1625 is an excellent harvest, and ends the several years-long famine.