JonL

As written in HQG, it manages to fill four paragraphs and still not make room for "e.g. -3 for the second opponent, -6 for the third, and so on." More painfully, "Engaging Multiple Opponents" is on page 81, while the alternate approach where you just do something like... ...comes on page 107 under "Militias and War Gangs." The intervening 26 pages contain the entire Auroch Hills interlude, some full page comic pages and paintings, and several other important and often unrelated rules in between them. 😫 "Poorly organized information." is a special Dead all its own. More broadly, MOP is another example of a rule that makes sense if Resistance is not affected by credibility, but is somewhat redundant if it is. If we're going to generalize the Stretch concept as @Ian Cooper outlined above, I wonder if there there may no longer be a need for a discrete MOP rule.

If @soltakss doesn't mind me paraphrasing, ECs take a perfectly simple and smoothly running mechanic and needlessly complicate it with point-counting, extra table look-ups and other unnecessary bits that break you out of the flow of play and don't necessarily make for a more fun game experience. While I don't share his perspective that there is never a time when the extra overhead is worthwhile, he is neither wrong in his critique of the trade-offs involved nor that he never finds them worth the bother.

I don't recall there being that level of mechanical detail, it being a Little Book after all, though it seems implicit in the premise. It actually never occurred to me that players might have to use the same ability for each exchange in an Extended Contest. Changing tactics and approaches in response to unfolding events just seemed like a natural thing. A quick check of the EC section in HQG finds mention choosing an ability at the beginning, but doesn't say anything about it thereafter either way. I do notice though that in the Auroch Hills play example, Vargast switches from using Thane to "I am the Thunderer!" mid-battle (though that AP has some issues).

I recall one of @Newt's neater ideas in Ye Little Book of HeroQuest Dungeoneering was to define a dungeon as a series of key challenges (traps, puzzles, hazards, monsters, etc.) and run the entire thing as an extended contest where the goal is to retrieve/destroy the McGuffin, rescue the Heir, or whatever. I'd like to try that approach sometime.

I also suggest a "Right Tool for the Job" or "Just the Right Thing" bonus as a converse to Stretches. If somebody with "Best Arm Wrestler in the West" at 15 and another with "Strong" at 1M put their elbows on the table, the first one should get a bonus. It also makes sense for situations where a character's ability is particularly apropos for a given obstacle, like a Fire Mage battling a Scarecrow Golem or someone with a Phd. facing a problem that falls within their specialty. I do this in play already, as though it were a Plot Augment. (The bonus needs a shorter name than "Right Tool for the Job", perhaps "Apropos?") GMs should also be guided that the more they rely on plot flow to set Resistance, the more these sorts of ability modifiers make sense, while conversely, the more they factor credibility into Resistance, the less the ability modifiers are called for.

Games like that are of course meant to be what they are. I participated in the Pathfinder 2e playtest earlier this year, and mostly enjoyed it. There were some battles that slogged on for hours though, which while not horrible also wasn't particularly exciting after a while. The player I quoted's point though (by way of further context), was that the encounter with the Gobs was meant to be an incidental one - that instead unintentionally consumed the entire session. The DM could have of course averted that via Rule Zero, but if you run a crunchy game more or less by the book it's a thing that can happen. HQ by contrast explicitly gives us these tools for dialing the detail up and down to suit taste and need, which I greatly appreciate.

I imagine chariots have greater utility in the Pelorian basin and the Redlands than they do in the rougher country of Dragon Pass.

The Iron Pillar ritual the Luatha used to shatter Seshnela might be effective in breaking up the mega-berg. Discussing anything with the Luatha is of course a fraught proposition, but I don't expect they want to their island's coasts and shores to be inundated either. For that matter, opening the gates of Dawn or Dusk as spillways might be a means of stemming the tide. I don't know how big they are relative to the opening beneath Magasta's Pool, but some drainage is better than none. Of course, you've then got doorways to the Underworld sitting wide open for an indefinite period, which may entail further complications.

Chained Simple was introduced in Mythic Russia, not Nameless Streets, which is good, as the former is still available. I prefer to refer to that approach as "Serial" rather than "Chained," but the idea is the same. Both approaches have merit, and I use each of them in turn depending upon which I find best suited to the situation at hand. Either one is something to do when interest and excitement in the game would benefit from "zooming-in" from overall conflict-level resolution to more detailed task-level resolution. I am more likely to use Extended Contests when... The conflict is a climactic set-piece confrontation (battle, debate, duel, fiddle-contest, race, dance-off, etc.) I want the pace/length/#-of-exchanges to be governed by the Result Point spread. I want the increasing threat of consequences hanging over the PCs raising tension as the exchanges progress. The feel of play benefits from dramatic reversals, coming from behind, and incentivizing assists. The time frame of the contest is long-term, perhaps even spanning multiple sessions, such as a courtship, war, political campaign, struggle with addiction, magical research, etc. The players are familiar and comfortable enough with conflict-based resolution to conceptualize the series of exchanges as a single contest. I am more likely to use Serial Simple Contests when... Zooming-in on the fly in response to player interest and developments in the moment. I want the conflict to be open ended, with as few or many exchanges as makes sense as they unfold. I want a grittier/grinding feel with consequences taking effect immediately with each exchange. The feel of play benefits from momentum/death-spiral effects as bonuses/penalties accrue throughout. The time frame of the conflict is a single scene, or series of back-to-back events in a single play session. The players are still new to conflict-based resolution and more easily conceptualize the exchanges as discrete events. I recall the look of surprise and delight on a first-time HQ player's face when we resolved a skirmish early in the adventure with a single Group Simple Contest and he said, "That's amazing! In my Pathfinder game last week, we got into a fight with some Goblins and it ended up taking the whole night." The flexibility to zoom-in to moments of key interest or excitement as desired and get conflicts done-in-one when you want to keep things moving is a huge strength of the system.

Oh man, now I want to explore a forgotten Zistori off-shore oil rig that has been uncontacted since the Closing. The Gift Carriers eventualy came in the night and slew everyone who actually understood the principles by which the whole thing was designed, but the Dronars have dutifully maintained things by rote as best they can ever since. They are of course now even weirder than a bunch of Zistorite rough-necks were to begin with after centuries of isolation. What does one do with several centuries' stockpile of Zistor's Blood?

I recall a side-bar in HQ2CR posing the question of "Why Advance Characters at All?" sidebar in HQ2CR poses that question, and it is a legitimate thing. I recall some versions of Fate where you don't increase your skills, but you can re-arrange their values over time depending upon what you want to emphasize in play. Catch-ups ameliorate this to some extent, though new stand-alone abilities gained late in a campaign suffer from 13 being weak vs an inflated resistance scale. I am of the opinion that the rating for new stand-alones should probably scale somehow as well, whether pegged to the resistance base directly or to the lowest-rated other ability you currently have. HQ1 took a similar approach, and there are those who still prefer it. For myself, I balance credibility WRT the characters' in-fiction capabilities with story-flow needs and how interesting results might be. The real wart at the heart of all this though, is that how a GM approaches the spectra of ability-ratings-as-abstract-oomph<->ability-ratings-as-in-fiction-capability and resistance-ratings-reflect-circumstances<->circumstances-are-described-to-justify-resistance need to be conscious choices that support a particular play-style. The rules should point out those choices and their impact, and give guidance on how to tune your game for the preferred feel.

My first thought was Lodril's poop. Fatherhood has clearly had an impact on my perspective.

WRT simple/serial (called "chained in Mythic Russia) simple/extended, I use all three approaches at various times. Simple: The contest is fairly straight-forward. Keeps the flow of the game moving. Serial simple: Creates a more traditional RPG blow-by-blow experience. Applying benefits/consequences immediately creates momentum/death-spiral effects. Open-ended compared to Extended. Extended: Deferring benefits & consequences to the end of the battle builds tension and makes more room for dramatic reversals and assists. Good for set-piece finales, but also great for long-term struggles or projects that may span multiple encounters or sessions. I more or less choose whether to stick with simple or zoom in to serial or extended based on what would be most interesting to the players and how the conflict fits in the overall flow of the session and game. Size of the group is another factor. I ran a game for nine young players at Archon last month, and I used the group simple and group extended approaches quite a bit (tallying rp for/against on a dry erase board as we matched up the rolls) in order to keep things moving with such a large and squirmy group.

You expect things to be hella different way across the world. To find something so alien right next door is a big surprise

The "WTF is all this now?" reaction I had when picking up The Entekosiad was a wake-up for me WRT the extent to which the Heortling+Esrolian+Dara Happan perspective is incomplete. We barely know anything about the perspectives of other cultures present in the central corridor (Grazers, Pelandans, Vanchites, Lodrili, Kitori, etc.) let alone folks farther afield. If we ever get a proper Ralios book, I would very much like to get a look at both the Enerali and non-Heortling Orlanthi perspectives on the world and lore (to say nothing of all the Arkatic madness). Things have to be different there, with Elhim & Humath/Orlanth as rivals but the Evil Emperor is Malkion. Six Ages is a real eye-opener in this respect (and takes some of the sting out of Elmal getting bulldozed in the new RQ books).

I think @Ian Cooper hit that nail on the head with the Red Cow by putting setting info in "The Coming Storm" and the campaign laid out in "The Eleven Lights." I think a similar approach might have been stronger with the earlier Sartar books as well, though SKoH was already having to do double-duty pagecount-wise, filling in much of the Glorantha-specific stuff that didn't fit in HQ2CR's appendix. The Red Cow books are in a better starting position with HQG as a foundation (plus the earlier Sartar books for supplemental info).

Unclear there. The Closing didn't hinder a bunch of Waertagi from riding Magasta's Pool down to the Underworld either. It may be that the Cradle's intended path was also on the list of acceptable dooms of the Closing.

Perhaps among the Durulz, the hoe or spade is blessed by Barntar's cult as a ritual representation of the plow, much like the spear can be a lightning bolt.

I would expect sorcery to come from a profession keyword rather rather than a culture one, though that line may be a bit murky among stricter Malkioni. It's really pretty flexible though. Look at how Magatheus has grimoires hung from both his Law rune and his Moon rune. The latter would be subject to lunar cycles, while the former would not, and he could use his profession to augment either one.

If memory serves, slaying the Crimson Bat banishes it to the Red Moon to recuperate. It can eventually be re-summoned to the face of Glorantha through a bog-ol expensive ritual.

I would expect the Western military orders to have distinctive fighting styles, signature weapons/techniques, etc. They also might be something that a learned eye might recognize in action. I wholly expect some Talar-focused fighting styles that exclusively teach their "I'm totally not wielding a weapon, it's completely normal for scepters to be shaped like this. Look at the gold inlay and designs on my exquisite tiara, just mind the edge." not-arsenal. The bloodier Safelstrian secret societies and groups like the Black Fang elsewhere no doubt teach a variety of dirty tricks. If I were running an HQ game that put this sort of stuff at center stage, I'd have characters describe their fighting styles as a keyword, take a couple of signature strengths as breakouts, and give bonuses/penalties in play when specific situations played into or against those strengths.

It was an Unspoken Word publication. Perhaps paging @blackyinkin might be fruitful.

Lots of good stuff here. I second the Go stones as HP tokens. This past weekend I added another prop: I took a bunch of white and red poker chips and marked the whites with +3, +6, or +9, and the reds conversely with -3, -6, and -9. Handing them out proved faster, more visually apparent, and less fumble-prone than my previous die approach. I recall fondly a player laughing, "Man, I gotta get rid of this thing." while holding a red -6 chip in his hand like it was heavy as lead.

I'm psyched about the wall-hanging cloth maps, and by "wall-hanging cloth" I mean "gaming-table-cloth."

I was prepping for Friday afternoon's session when I heard that Greg had passed on. As it turned out, I got two players who had never heard of Glorantha before. One of them had previously only played D&D and another had never played a tabletop RPG until that day. I can't think of a better way to mark the old man's passing than by initiating these lads into the mysteries of the tribe. One even hero-formed Ernalda while giving Wandle a piece of her mind. The youth session ended up with NINE players (two boys and five girls, including my two daughters), because I'm a big softy who couldn't turn away any kid who wanted in. For three hours, they exceeded my expectations when it came to world building, taking turns talking, listening to me narrate, enthusiastically finding ways to help each other with augments, and finding clever solutions to puzzles in the wizards tower at the end of the adventure. We took a couple wiggle/bathroom/snack breaks when the younger ones started to get antsy, but after they got to move around, they were back in earnest. I got a personal thanks from the gaming coordinator, and one of the watching parents described the kids as "absolutely enthralled."