Ultor

My players are in the process of unifying the Rubble to provide the basis for the expulsion of the Lunars. The newly-crowned Queen has appointed a Ring and Seal that includes her loyalists (including half the Pavis priesthood), the Survivors/Royal Guard, Orlanthi like Garrath, the Flintnail Dwarves, and representatives of the enclaves, and is in the process of securing delegates from The Garden and the Troll clans. Keeping them from squabbling and the whole effort from falling apart is going to be fun.

7 hours ago, Kloster said:

Remove the 1 adventure per season, and replace it by 3 weeks of extraordinary activities per season. This solve several problems: The one you noticed and the very short duration adventures. It also force players (and the GM) to plan the longer adventures.

I've been tending towards something like this. I suspect that it'll involve something like an En Garde order sheet for activities like training and research as well.

I'll be frank - I've found that there's a major tension between the calendar and the "one adventure per season" framing. If we assume that everyone has full Rune Points and so on at the start of the adventure, there's no real need to consult the calendar (unless that's part of the adventure or you enjoy stopping an adventure half way through and heading back home for a few rolls.) If we assume you have to use the calendar, timing any adventure that involves more than a few different PC cults becomes difficult if you want to ensure everyone starts with a full battery.

We did use universal coordinated Minor Holy Days to try to obviate this problem, but it wasn't satisfactory and felt forced and non-Gloranthan.

I'd love to know how others have handled this at their table.

Monkey has already been mentioned, but Stephen Chow's Journey to the West is a nice film-length take of the beginning of that story.

Kurosawa's Throne of Blood is a reworking of Macbeth, but there's nothing wrong with that - as an examination of the consequences of kin-slaying and breaches of hospitality.

A lot of this looks to me like Special Effects for Runic Inspiration or Passions or even skill augmentation.

I'd say the Orlanthi poetry is accompanied by an Air Rune check (or other as appropriate). The verse against Chaos would go with a Hate Chaos passion roll. A customs roll for the sort of thing @soltakss suggests would give you an augment on your communications skills (or a negative if you fail and forget to take the cloak off). Hand signs against the evil eye and the like could be defensive augments to POW v POW rolls.

I agree that traditional curses are difficult - I haven't seen any RPG handle them well. My thought is that the really nasty ones would require a Divine Intervention roll. They'd require a similar level of commitment to shake off - a Heroquest at least.

KODP, I'll note, is full of bad omens and terrible things happening because a ritual wasn't done properly. There's lots of inspiration for this sort of thing there.

I've now used the Simple rule in two sessions, and it worked extremely well. 

My PCs have several skills well above 100% and have been taking every advantage of RAW. I'll be using the Simple Rule in my game tonight to see how it goes.

On 3/16/2020 at 3:05 PM, Runeblogger said:

What if a character casts Protection-5 on his elemental before sending it against the other elemental? In spirit combat, Protection is of no use, but in physical combat it is.

Hasn't come up. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

As I say, it's a glaring absence from the rules. I hope there'll be official guidelines as this is clearly a case where people are having to make up their own systems and they vary wildly.

I’ve played it as spirit combat, working out the skills and damage as normal (double POW to substitute for CHA). I give disadvantages of 20% according to the rune wheel.

It is a glaring omission for higher level play, when combatants are going to be hurling elementals at each other.

11 hours ago, Crel said:

The other challenge is that if an adventurer is trying to optimize their access to and use of Rune magic, then the "one adventure per season" paradigm RQG encourages breaks down. For example, I can't just narrate "Weeks pass, and it grows hot as the world turns to Fire Season, when a mysterious courier comes to Pavis..." because my Issaries merchant player will go "hang on hang on hang on! I've got weekly holy days, and I want to be poking around each week to see if there's any new opportunities to Spell Trade with my bonus 1D6 Rune points on those weeks!"

I've found the same problem. I have been trying to move the players from continuous play to one-adventure-per-season and the Holy Days screw that up. Not to mention the Shaman musing about things he could be doing in the spirit world during the weeks not adventuring, all of which would require some form of roleplaying. I'm contemplating having some sort of "seasonal activity sheet" where the players can "schedule" downtime activities including worship and spirit quests, but it's hard to see what that will look like.

On 11/2/2019 at 3:22 PM, Joerg said:

One far-fetched myth I can think of is Annilla giving birth to the dead child of her slain giant husband. Any other ideas?

A long time ago I had an idea for "The Bull Hunt of Murharzarm" that was meant to be a riff on the Calydonian Boar Hunt and involve a lot of demigods and heroes. The idea was that some Great Bull had gone on a rampage, slaying the local goddess of the land and destroying so much else he created the Elder Wilds. The Emperor therefore sent out a call for heroes to stop it. I never worked it up, however.

6 hours ago, David Scott said:

Do you know what issue that was? I can't find it.

SP 90. I have a copy - they may have had to pull it.

ETA: Sorry, just saw the question was already answered.

There was also that issue of Signs & Portents that had the MRQ2 write-ups for Blueface and Muriah that they weren't supposed to use...

There was an issue of Heroes that had a fully worked-up RQ3 shaman. I remember thinking that really wasn't what I expected. Of course, RQ3 shamans had all sorts of rules-derived spirits like INT and POW spirits that aren't reflected in the current rules (thank goodness). It'd be really helpful to see a powerful RQG shaman (and sorcerer, for that matter).

Definitely part of the soloquest "Adventure Path" for me, along with the Maze of Shaxry Oborok from the Companion. There were a couple of solos in magazines I never saw, I think.

On 5/18/2019 at 4:05 AM, Smokebadger said:

I actually contacted the staff at south Shields Roman fort to get an idea of the width of each gate door.

I now have a mental picture of Duke Raus buying a Minchella's with extra monkey's blood for Jezra...

1 hour ago, Tywyll said:

Sorry, I think I may have not been very clear or misunderstood your stance.

What I was meaning, say you've played a character for a year and then the new edition radically changes what you can and can't do. Of course, you can ignore it, but if a big part of your concept or enjoyment of a character is X,Y, and Z, it seems asking the player to ignore that they can't do those things anymore (or their effectiveness is seriously reduced) does feel like asking a bit much. 

I wasn't trying to imply that you should incorporate the mechanic changes in a in play world altering event (though that also isn't really a bad idea now and again, especially in a setting like Glorantha where such things actually could happen in canon). I was just meaning that it seems like expecting the player to be happy with dramatic shifts in their fortunes seems fairly harsh. 

As someone who has changed systems on my players numerous times throughout the years, I've tried to sell the line that 'oh, nothing's changed in the story, your character is still the same fundamentally' repeatedly. My players never buy it. 

My campaign started in RQIII, and went through MRQ1, MRQ2, and RQ6 Mythras before landing on RQG (I always like to play with the supported rules set). The Humakti and Vingan characters who survived through those changes didn't really notice. However, a third character was designed as an archer/sorcerer. Under MRQ2 and RQ6, archery was nerfed compared to RQIII, so she relied much more on sorcery. Now sorcery has been nerfed (mainly by loss of the Targets mechanic and the bizarre restoration of Free INT) but she's an absolute killing machine with her bow. She saw an opening for Champion of Pavis and aced the interview, so we'll see what direction she goes in now (especially with the question of whether Pavis has sorcerous elements as in HeroQuest still open), but the character has certainly changed over the years.

I find that a lot of the abilities/feats/etc. in 13th Age Glorantha, with a bit of tweaking, make for good heroquest rewards.

2 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

12 geases (no idea of the plural)! That poor individual would be so regimented he wouldn't know whether to sh** or go blind.

"Excuse me, sir, can you direct me to the nearest riddler?"

These are great @gochie - we've had problems running out of space in some places with the official sheets and these look to solve that problem.

On 4/16/2019 at 1:11 PM, jps said:

Winded: -1 movement, -10% to appropriate skill check

Tired: -2 movement, -25 to appropriate skill check

Exhausted: movement and appropriate skill checks halved

 To shift from one state to another (for instance Fresh -no penalty-) to the next (Winded) you will have to fail at a CONxX (usually 5) roll.

This is basically the way Mythras does it, with a few extra bells and whistles. I found it a pretty easy system to use. I'd say that in your super-simple RQG system skill checks that are normally [characteristic] x 5 become x4 in winded, x3 in tired and x2 in exhausted.

18 hours ago, jajagappa said:

What's a "prison"?!  

Seriously, it doesn't really seem to fit the Bronze Age world theme.  The Salt Mines of Pavis are probably the best example of a "prison", or one of the Lunar slave farms.

Exactly. Search the ancient cities for signs of prisons as we know them today and you won't find any. The closest is the Tullianum of Rome, which was simply a holding center for those awaiting execution, like Vercingetorix or Sejanus.

Instead, you'd be sentenced to hard labor, which makes the salt mines of Pavis a great example. And a great adventure seed...

On 3/6/2019 at 3:35 PM, EpicureanDM said:

Please do. My party's also in the Big Rubble, but we're only a couple of sessions in. The PCs still have that new-car smell.

 

So...the planned encounter with a couple of Zorak Zoran priests (one also a shaman), some experienced troll warriors, trollkin slingers, and a variety of Dehori and spirits never occurred because for once the players decided to talk it out first...

The Death Lord on the other hand later on released his shades, had his allied spirit cast darkwall, cast seal wound, hammered against the Humakti's shield and broke it...and was promptly decapitated by the Vingan, who critted to the head despite the -75% penalty for the dark (so much for the allied spirit healing and supporting). The large shade did take out the Humakti and the Vingan, and a medium shade took out the shaman - all with fearshock. However, elementals are very easy to hit, and the Champion of Pavis armed with a composite bow and Multimissile 3 (3 magic arrows per shot, 3 times a round thanks to 19 DEX) and a quick NPC with Speedart were together able to make short work of them.

At some point I will have an encounter where the PCs are actually up against roughly equal numbers of similarly-skilled opponents or larger numbers of less skilled, and I'll try to post a summary here.

I had no idea what a West Marches-style campaign meant, so I found this. It's a bit too long and neatly formatted to quote here.

It sounds perfect for a Gloranthan campaign, especially with the 'Home base' requirement that fits neatly into the RQG framework.

And Griffin Mountain provides everything you need to run exactly such a campaign. Sun County/Shadows on the Borderland can be used that way too with a little more work.

The Pavis Heroquest book has a nice set of random encounter tables for a Prax/Pavis campaign too - each one of the encounters can be a session if played right.

I'd love to hear what you come up with.

3 minutes ago, EpicureanDM said:

Thanks for sharing your experiences from the table, Ultor. Did you throw Small and Medium elementals or spirits at your party before they graduated to Rune Level? If so, can you share what the relative strengths were of each side? Any disasters or near-TPKs? 

It's actually the players who realized this first at my table - they used a Shade they'd got from a Heroquest to waltz through the rune-level adversaries I'd thrown at them (they had luck on their side as well - two insta-kills in the first two attacks). Our Foundchild shaman is already making plans for bargaining with powerful hunting spirits (who of course will have Multispell Disruptions) to have them help out. This week's session should see them take on a party of trolls occupying the Champion of Pavis' manor, so I'll be deploying these tactics back at them. If I keep detailed enough notes, I'll post what happens here.