JonL

There seems to have been a significant cluster of written Ogham sites in Dyfed. I could see such representing a minority population obscured by the quantization of boundaries in that map though.

It's always a delight to have an expert weigh in, thanks. How do the Ogham inscription sites in Cambria fit into this picture?

In pondering this dynamic, an interesting modern point of reference is that the country folk of Britain in the late-4th to mid-5th centuries have had their previous henotheism suppressed/supplanted by Christianity for only about half as long as modern adherents of Santeria/Lukumi/Vodoun have today. The "old gods in saint-drag" paradigm is strikingly parallel. In that context, I expect strict monotheism reigned only within earshot of the nearest Bishop.

Fun with names! "Vortigern" in in Old Welsh/Cymru is "Guorthegern," meaning "Great King." "*Arto-rīg" in Brythonic means, "Bear King." "Ard Rí" in Goidelic (which was widely spoken in West & Northwestern Britain in the 5th Century), means "High King." Neither "Arthur" nor "Vortigern" are likely to have been personal names, but rather tiles or cognomen. Might a leader among the Britons at Badon have carried such a title? Seems reasonable. (Gildas, born the year of Badon, does not name principal combattants in his account of the battle.) Later historians and fabulists mix earlier chronicles and (often syncretic) oral lore in languages at centuries of remove from original accounts. Unfamiliar once-titles in archaic tongues get interpreted as proper names, family trees and deeds get shuffled around to flatter current monarchs by proxy, fashionable romantic drama is inserted, etc. - eventually bringing us: A tale wherein the wicked High King Vortigern and his noble yet tragically doomed son Vortimer rising in rebellion after his father's fraught marriage to the latter's step-mother casts the realm into chaos. A tale wherein the wicked noble yet tragically doomed High King Vortigern Arthur and his noble yet tragically doomed wicked son Vortimer Mordred rising in rebellion after his father's fraught marriage to the latter's step-mother casts the realm into chaos. At such far remove, these tales could very easily describe the same people and events, descending from the tales told by those who reviled them on the one hand, on those who revered them on the other.

Mordred's got a legitimate beef or few.

I much prefer a game where Lancelot is just a high-powered veteran PK from someone else's long-running campaign, potent but not beyond what a PK could attain with enough time and a little luck, rather than a superlative fixed point you're wrong to even try to chase. Similarly, I dig the Percival Grail stories much more than the Galahad ones. Galahad is basically the Virgin Mary with a sword, born perfect and destined to deliver the goods, and that's about it. Percival's stories look like something your PKs could experience.

Know that your many years of hard work and passionate commitment to excellence in these projects and others like them is greatly appreciated. While I'll admit to now and again grinding an axe in frustration over a few decisions on direction or prioritization I wish you'd made differently, any criticism I make is coming from a place of gratitude and extremely high regard for the remaining 99%. I'm glad that you & your colleagues are taking the time to realize these projects in the manner they deserve and executing them in a fashion that keeps the company & its employees healthy. I'm proud to run your games for my children, and your face lighting up when you saw the pics of my players in their Red Moon Rising masks is my favorite memory from Gen Con 50. Thank you.

However much that should be something of a given, the repeated bad experiences many people had that led to the development of explicit safety tools demonstrate the value of spelling such things out. If everybody always handled this stuff as well as we might like, we wouldn't be having this conversation. It is giving one's word. No more, no less. Oathbreakers may find themselves unwelcome in places and groups that care about these things though.

This, very much. The GM is saying, "If you say something is bad for you in a significant way, you can trust that I will stop it, no questions asked. I respect and trust your judgement regarding your own well being to the point that you don't even need to explain or justify it to me. In sharing this power over the game with you, I am also trusting you to use it responsibly, just as I strive to do." That's a powerful pact.

If the GM has to think for more than five seconds whether including Lolth or Randy is more important to the campaign, once again - the problem is not the X-card.

Or, the GM could accept the minor inconvenience of swapping in Tsuggtmoi whomever for Lolth, proceeding with the overall adventure as planned reskinning spider monsters as fungus monsters, everyone has a good time and Randy doesn't have to suffer.

With skills over 20, you've got a broader range. That's where this matters.

(This is how I look at Barntar & Vinga.) This is my favorite new phrase!

Trusting your fellow gamers with a tool to signal their discomfort without needing them to go into (possibly unpleasant or intimate) details about what they're feeling and why is not censorship. Sincerely putting up a "please stop, this frightens/hurts/disturbs me" flag is not about control. Offering such an option to your players is an act of mutual trust and respect.

When one of us was going through a tough divorce, no one would've considered using his wife's name for an N/PC. He wouldn't have flipped his lid, but why would anybody want to bring him down needlessly? One of our players is a police officer. Closest we've come to a police procedural game is playing magistrates in L5R. Like much of this stuff it's just applying common decency in ways where you might not have considered it before. This is why giving players an opportunity to express content line & veil boundaries before the campaign even begins is a good thing, doubly so if it can be anonymized. If any such individuals walk this Earth, I expect they could be counted on one hand. If there is that level of deliberate disruption going on, the problem does not lie with the X-card. If someone has that much contempt for the GM & the rest of the group, they do not belong at the table. We (big-picture collective "we" here) drove a lot of people away over the years through ignorance, indifference to their well being, or tolerating behaviour we shouldn't have, more often through lack of understanding than malice (though jerks exist, of course), but the result is undesirable either way. We are all poorer for the contributions those people never went on to make, their characters we never met, the games they never ran, the books they never wrote, the newcomers they themselves never invited in. Unlike in the days of yore, we now know better, and so can do better - and in most cases the small effort required is not an undue burden. A quick heads up, a sign at a con-table, an extra ten minutes while deciding on the next campaign. It's an ounce of prevention to avoid needing the pound of cure. No one approach is right for every group/situation or capable of capable of preventing all problems, but let's not let perfect be the enemy of good. A practical 85% solution is nonetheless worthwhile, especially when playing with strangers. Looking back, I wish we'd had a few up-front chats about content over the years in my regular group. We might not have lost that player in our Rome game if we had, and I can think of another game that nearly went off the rails WRT mind-control.

In such a high-powered game, I'd seriously consider importing die-rolling mechanics from HeroQuest. It's built to handle such extremes gracefully. Something our group did back in the day was to have a crit vs crit result to be a regular hit by the high-roller. It reduced the rocket-launcher-tag dynamic of mighty foes facing off.

It is incoherent/jarring/frustrating for the rule book to plainly state that traits <16 are just guides for roleplaying, and then adventures turn around and use traits as saving throws left and right. See also: when a Player whose PK has a 21 CON asks, "OK, what's the intensity of the poison in the wine? This is gonna hurt, but unless the dice utterly hate me I ought to at least survive." and there isn't one because the adventure doesn't acknowledge the poison rules at all.

My daughter's Girl Scout troop is working on their "Playing the Past" badge, and rather than let them skate by with a pioneer-picnic or something, I'm running a time-travel/historical adventure for them with QuestWorlds. At the last meeting, they randomly rolled their characters' place and year of birth, and I helped them figure out what culture they were from, pick a language appropriate name, etc. Since then, they've (hopefully) been researching their characters' home era and culture and filling out their character sheet with details about their time-traveling tween adventuresses. Tonight, Hypatia of Alexandria, Empress Wu Zetian, and Admiral Grace Hopper will summon them to their Time Orrery with a mission.

Thank you for correcting my misconception. When I read the Rastalulf & Harmast sections of The History of the Heortling Peoples a few years back, I don't think I had context for who the Berennethelli were yet, and it blurred in with all the other unfamiliar names. I always took his being named for the earlier Harmast who proselytized Ralios, his association with Arkat before the latter came to Kethalia, their emergence from Hrelar Amali after the LBQ, and his participation in the Lightning Revolt to mean he was Ralian. (This connection does make me even more excited for future installments of Six Ages though. ) The Hrelar Amali connection certainly suggests that he learned it somewhere along the way. The dude certainly got around. OK, that's hilarious. Where is this recounted? I want to hear more. HotHP only briefly touches on the funky tattoos & Nochet around his meeting with Hendrik.

Arthur reviews with the repentant thief the various grisly ways Saxon lords would punish one of their own who so betrayed them, but then accepts his confession in the spirit of redemption through Christ's grace, and gives him the opportunity to atone by spending a season protecting his royal Almoner from thieves, and witnessing the impact of their work upon the lives of those in need. Whether these experiences move the PK to be baptized is of course up to the Player.

Downside: The recurrent rise of a Devil analog every several centuries may be Harmast's fault thanks to his baking the Future Pact into his LBQ to empower himself and Arkat as Orlanth and Yelm/Malkion to defeat Nysalor as Chaos.

Further wrinkle: Harmast Barefoot was Ralian, and their myths differ somewhat from those of the Heortlings. Pet Theory: Harmast researched/discovered/scouted many different versions of the seasonal renewal myth, and stitched them together in such a way to deliberately blur the Bright Empire's Theyalan+Pelorian syncretic Bad-Emperor=Yelm identification with the Ralian Bad-Emperor=Malkion concept in order to go into the Underworld and bring back his Malkioni hero to save the world from Chaos. See also: Argrath enacting the Orlanth+Yelm pact that the Future would be like the Past before bringing back fellow Arkat-walker Sheng Selaris as a weapon against the Red Emperor. Argrath:Harmast, Sheng:Arkat, Takenegi:Nysalor, with the added double whammy of Sheng already having been Takenegi's Arkat in his own lifetime.

Alternate budget-conscious approach to hit the ground running: Dragon Pass Gazeteer from the Vault + the free Players Primer and online clan generator available at glorantha.com.

There are gems to be gleaned from the Vault titles, the Dragon Pass Gazeteer, and Anaxial's Roster. Of course, for the price of those three combined, you could get one of the current titles. Depends on what you'd want to prioritize, really. If I were starting out and had perhaps $5/month to spend on HQ PDFs... ...and I wanted to do a community-driven game with an all original clan & NPCs, I'd save up for Sartar Kingdom of Heroes. ...and I wanted a community-driven game, but wanted a ready to go clan & NPCs, I'd save up for The Coming Storm. ...and I wanted to do a sandbox-style game in Dragon Pass, I'd hit the Vault for the Dragon Pass Gazeteer, then start saving up for the Sartar Companion. Anaxial's Roster is $5 well spent if you want a Monster Manual, as the creature info in HQG is a bit thin.

The timeline is there to support you, not constrain you. It's what happens if none of your PCs were ever born.