JonL

That's kind of what catch-ups end up doing, especially if you've got a a culture keyword that implicitly involves a lot of the basic "I'm an adult member of this species & society." common knowledge and things that most people can at least somewhat do without specifically training for it (though perhaps at a stretch or broad vs specific disadvantage). The other thing about it is, if you hold to the abstraction of ratings as problem solving effectiveness rather than in-fiction competence, I don't know that the cloistered medieval monk suddenly thrust into a basketball game against robots and aliens (it's actually a testament to how hard to come up with a total fish out of water scenario that I had to mash up Space Jam) is any worse off if it happens later in the story rather than earlier. Capping Very Low at six does this a little bit already, if inversely. Anybody has no worse than even odds to try whatever wild-ass out-of-context thing they come up with against VL resistance at any time. Against any other Resistance, Minor Defeat gets progressively more likely. This is less of a problem with your searonal-increase idea though. If we're following the fiction here, I think there's actually a pretty strong case to be made for this. New capabilities gained later in stories tend to be meaningfully effective wrt the intensity of the current conflict, even if it may take time to realize their full potential.

One thing that's occurred to me about rising resistance values over time is that in the current game the No-Relevant-Ability default TN of 6 does not scale along with the base resistance. Very Low resistance being the lesser of 6 and Base-M softens that somewhat, but 6 vs low(8) in a starting game compared to 6 vs low(12) a couple months later is a very different thing. Catch-ups prevent your less-central abilities from becoming ineffectual over time, but No-Relevant-Ability has no parallel to that.

I play, and highly recommend, that rolling a 20 with a 20 rating results in a fail rather than a fumble. Otherwise, a 20 rating is no different than a 19. Mastery essentially phases in at the cusp: at 20 you stop fumbling, at 1M you stop failing, at 2M+ crits become more likely. When combined with ctir-on-rating rather than -crit-on-1, which has the desirable effects of avoiding tied crits most of the time and allowing occasional upsets vs masteries, 20-rated abilities continue to crit on a rolled 19.

I saw the topic and was like, "Oh, I guess we can talk about QuestWorlds now." 😂

Antirius manifesting as the Sun of the Dome beneath the glacier is concurrent with the Storm-Age/Lesser-Darkness Hyalorings in Six Ages migrating southward with their independent Elmal. They rode out of Nivorah rather than heed the call to shelter within the dome. Elmal's regency of the Storm Tribe during the Lightbringers' Quest comes within the depths of the Great Darkness, so later than Antirius - to the extent that God Time events can be looked at sequentially.

When I first got in to all this, the times when HQ books would seem to presume context that an old RQ hand takes for granted but which I did not have were a real frustration. Much better overall. Ian takes advantage of the ample page count and focused scope to give you plenty of useful information without drowning you in it.

I mostly agree. The area where I feel it doesn't quite hold would be new cults. The Lay-Member/Initiate/(RuneLevel/Devotee) breakpoints don't quite map the same way between the two games. The "special rune spells" in RQ cults are often good signposts, but it's not always obvious to someone only casually familiar with RQ which ones are a Big Deal vs merely something they're good at. A good GM with a solid handle on the lore could wing it, sure, but for a previously unseen cult it would really be helpful to have the half-page or so of "Initiates of this cult can use these runes like this, but not in these other ways. Here are some example devotee-level feats, that are also an implicit ceiling on what initiates can do." guidance available somewhere, whether in an appendix, a separate download, or what have you. (WRT this particular case HQ is already quite well served by P:GtA - thanks for that. 😊) They're so often awkwardly done and full of design compromises, just "Uggh." I'm very happy that one of the upshots of electronic publishing has been enabling publishers to do "Cool Setting Guide, available in FATE, Savage Worlds, and 5e editions!" with several weeks to a few months of extra effort rather than years. (To be clear, I'm not suggesting that approach here. 😅 ) The one multi-system approach I did like was how Adkison did The Primal Order, with the main text all self-referential with meta-mechanics, and then implementation notes for various systems in the appendix. That was genuinely useful. I happened to get into a Chaldea game Peter was running at last year's Gen Con, and when I pulled out my copy of WOC0001 for an autograph, he was so delighted to see it he came around the table (with clear consent on my part) gave me a hug & a kiss on the cheek as well. 🤭 Hmm, now I'm wondering about using TPO with RQ for a Hero/Superhero/Demigod-level game. 😈

Anaxial's Roster is a great creature reference, even if you ignore every single stat block.

That's the one that most significantly used this rune, yeah?

If it says says "Sartar" or "Pavis" plus "Moon Design" on the cover, you're golden. It's that simple. There are some gems in the earlier material worth mining for ideas, but if you want to restrict your HQ to the latest & greatest, go with the above rule. In particular there has never been a Dragon Pass setting book for Runequest on par with the level of gamable goodness to be found in Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes and Sartar Companion.

It's called 'Runequest,' so runes should be treasures that you can go on quests to find, right?

The gent to my left Saturday morning had a set, and they are lovely. Were my eyesight not deteriorating with the onset of middle age (or had if it already deteriorated to the point where I always wear glasses) I would have bought a set, but the smaller numbers combined with the busy patterns on the many-sided ones were just a little to much without my readers on. Still, excellent work. I wanted to get several Game Science d20s for HeroQuest, but they only had blisterpack polyhedral assortments at their booth. I ended up going with Chessex.

For a long time now I've been setting an oversized d20 down on the table with the current Resistance face up, so that it's easy for everyone to compare their rolls. I use a step-down layout one like MtG players use to make it easier to find the face I want. I've toyed with the idea of using a different colored one or more than one for Mastery levels but that feels awkward. I might use a base or something down the road. When handling group contests, I used to roll as many dice as I had players all at once, and the die that landed closest to each player at the table would be that player's opposing roll. It's super fast and works really well when everyone is sitting around an actual table, but it's less clear when folks are scattered around a living room on couches & easy chairs. While looking over the Chessex booth at Gen Con last week, I had a further inspiration. I bought several pairs of d20s in an assorment of colors, two reds, two blues, two greens, etc. Next time I run a game, I plan to give each player one of a color pair, while I keep the other. when a group contest rolls around, I'll roll the corresponding dice - and everyone can then see at a glance which die matches with which player. The other thing I do with respect to group contests is roll my dice onto a dry erase board, and keep a result point tally right on the board as I go over the dice - again, very fast and easy for everyone to see if we're sitting close. Dice can also make handy tokens for lingering benefits & consequences. I keep several d6 and d10 handy when running a game, and when someone gets a bonus or penalty, I'll hand them a die with the corresponding face up - red dice for penalties, other color for bonus. Having the die sitting there helps it keep from getting forgotten. Does anyone else have helpful methods (dice or otherwise) to share?

I don't think the setting info in the HQ2 era Sartar & Pavis books has been superseded by anything. The new RQ material is set a few years later, but doesn't portray a different world. The exception to that is where magic game mechanics intersect with how magic is portrayed in the world. Just the same "I'm casting Bladesharp." and "I'm calling upon my Yanafal Tarnils Initiate breakout to augment my Lunar Hoplite ability." are supposed to be representing the same in-world sort of things, even if the implementation details differ.

Antirius isn't a perfect match, but in Plantonius's account he was the manifest sun within the dome beneath the ice, is a champion of justice, was wounded fighting the Cruel God and the Selfish God upon the Hill of Gold, and upon his death his spirit rose as a great hawk. That's a lot more like the later Yelmalio tradition than the Elmal lore of the Heortings or the Hyalorings.

What are the Bolges made from? Are those the only two molded shapes, or are they actually goring nuggets of whatever in a press?

Right, it makes sense, especially for something like Big Rubble. Something I do lament though about supplements being moved into the RQ column, even as i respect the business logic of it, is that word-count/page-space that goes into all those stat blocks etc. is space in the book that might otherwise go to more info about the setting & how to use it in your game. We inevitably end up with less qualitative info to make room for the quantitative, or the pricepoint climbs along with the page count. While I have yet to see a dual statted game book that didn't end up rather awkward in implementation, something I would appreciate going forward is forward is for books that come out for either system that introduce new cults to put the crunchy bits for the other system in an appendix. I also would be keen on systemless setting books that are accompanied by small PFD/POD pieces that have system notes for RQ, HQ, or even 13thAiG.

Now that RQ stat locks have things like passions and runes, you can eyeball them for HQ inspiration n the fly with little trouble. I also think it makes sense as HQ already has an excellent Pavis book in the can, and the spelunking in the Big Rubble is a very RQ passtime. I do hope that the long spoken of Nochet/Esrola book comes out yet for HQ though, even though it may well be sucked into the business decisions gravity well of the financial success of RQG.

Elmal is the warrior path for those who more than anything else fight because they feel at at their core that the lives of those around them are worth fighting for - and that is awesome. He's quite well represented in the Sartar books for HeroQuest, with the cult write up in Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes and Runegate detailed in the Sartar Companion. Agreed.

Ya know, if you did go with the Lunars summoning Lodril version, that would mean that God Time overlapped there, which means you could sa HeroQuest to the battle.

I don't think the Morokanth need to be vegetarian in order to stand out among the tribes. Being sapient giant tapirs who herd homo non-sapiens is plenty distinct without a What A Twist! inversion of what it means to have won or lost Waha's contest. Put me in the creepy awesome herd-man eating Morokanth camp, where getting to have conciousness be the norm is winning rather than having to keep herds being losing.

You can find a fan made one linked in the HQ links thread at the top of this sub-forum.

Find below the application of the Law Rune to empower the Movement Rune through the Fire & Air Runes pushing one another back and forth in opposition: A shaft in the center of the Fire Rune above connects to the center of the Air Rune, embodied thusly: The Fire Rune wishes to steadily turn from East to West, but the more it does so, the more the Air Rune chafes and resists - first slowing Fire's pace and eventually rising in outright rebellion as it violently spins the system from West to East. Because the world is broken and out of balance, Fire and Air eventually exhaust one another in their struggle, and Movement halts. The Mostali must then reassert the Truth of the proper order of things to re-energize the system: Depending on the metals used in the mechanism and the connected hardware surrounding the system, various effects can be produced. One especially noteworthy implementation involved applying the Movement of the shaft to spin a Death metal rod within coils of meticulously wound Fire metal wire, causing lightning to leap forth from the coil when the Storm Rune rebels and spins Death against Fire. Magic is often applied symbolism.

Vulcanism would be one way to get land up above the water line. (I originally mist-typed "Vulcanism" as "Vulvanism" - which which I'm less familiar, but sounds like it might be a way Ketha or Esrolla might rouse Veskarthen to action.)

The Emperor's, surely.