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Dissolv

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Dissolv last won the day on February 27

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  • RPG Biography
    Long term RPG'er, RQ2, 3, Questworld, Stormbringer, CoC, and too many others to mention
  • Current games
    Glorantha RQ
  • Location
    Shadows Dance
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    I heart Glorantha

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  1. A few more pics. The most joked about match up of the day, the Lasadag Lions versus the Pavis Survivors. Literally the lions versus the zebras.... The Yelmalian Pike were unstoppable. For as much grief that they get on the adventuring circuit, this was a welcome change of pace, and I think very much in line with what was envisioned by the lore, based on Dragon Pass/White Bear & Red Moon. More llama action... The fight for the Highlands was uneven. The Red Cow and other Jonstown Tribes were empowered by the Eleven Lights, while the Tarsh militia were low morale, with no special supporting magic, and they ultimately crumpled as soon as the Tarsh Furthest Foot gave way. Speaking of, this is the Tarsh Furthest putting up a valiant effort on behalf of Lunar Tarsh. They were ultimately swept from the field by the Power of Orlanth (with a little help from some Humakti Death Magic delivered via Two Pine), but our after analysis of the game showed that the Lunar wings, which had definite disadvantages in terms of magic and manpower, had enough moxie to but time for the center to grind straight through the middle of the field. Their tough fights ultimately won the day, even as they gave their lives for Empire. Such an analysis was necessary because with 12 foot tables, one side had no idea what was going on anywhere else!
  2. I can post it here. It was really just normal TTS!, but with two changes. First, the unusual unit types and abilities had to be defined in TTS! terms. For the most part this was easy. Bison Riders always count as having lance, due to mass. High Llama riders have Lance, and also extra ammunition. Even the Black Horse troop was fairly easy to define within game rules -- Later Knights, Veteran, no Lance. The second change was to add the magic system. For the most part, Gloranthan magic works off of expendable resources, either mana (power), or favor of the Gods (Rune magic). To simulate this, I added a new chit type -- the magic token. The more magical units were given 1 magic chit, which they could spend on whatever their special power was, often just attacking slightly better, or negating hits in some way. Some units were better than others by design. For example the Orlanth skirmishers could spend a magic counter to make a missile attack that hits on a 6+. But the Thunder Delta Slingers were skirmishers that could spend a magic counter to hit automatically. They are just supposed to be better (but much fewer) in game lore. The very powerful units had 2 magic chits, and these generally had the best magic power, in addition to multiple chits to use it with. Again, by design. Note, you can also spend the magic to restore a hit against your unit. Some units were a bit better physically than magically, like the Yelmalian Pike units, others had very good but highly specialized magic, like the Bison Riders, and so on. In this game: Orlanthi Skirmishers -- 1 magic each, could expend to hit on a 6+, rather than an 8+ Telmori -- 1 magic, could spend it to transform. When transformed non-magic weapons required a redraw to hit against them. Beryl Phalanx -- 1 magic, could spent it to negate any damaging hit against them from a Storm tribe unit. Yelmalio Pike blocks -- 1 magic, Sunbright/Lightwall can spent it to negate any 1 hit against them Black Horse Troop -- 2 magic, could go on a Doom Run where for the next four full turns, they automatically hit. Then at the end they take one non-savable wound due to their riders souls being consumed by the steeds. Lasadag Lions -- 2 magic, on attack only, 1 magic gives both: Frightening Roar, opponent cannot fight back & Lion Shield Bite, make an extra attack Bison Rider Leader -- 2 magic, with 3 magic he can summon the Great Bison, which acts as a Knight unit, and automatically destroys any chaos, no roll to hit required. and so on. In addition the intrinsic powers of the various units, each army had a reservoir of power that they could use to do different things -- heal a unit, give a unit a magic counter from the reserves (to power its own ability), summon an entity of some type (usually elementals), or the big gun -- incarnate their primary deity on the field of battle. The Lunars had a zero cost power -- use the power of Chaos, but while this cost them nothing, it gave the Orlanthi players 2 magic tokens to reserve, as their god was most directly opposed to Chaos. There was never enough magic to do everything needful, and hard choices had to be made. I have attached the two OOBs, as which include a page on the magic available for each army commander. Lunar_OoB.odt Storm_Rebels.odt
  3. AAR -- Lunars attack the Northern tribes. Today, the Lunar army attacked the Jonstown confederation plus allied Nomads, and other willing tribes in an attempt to avenge their loss at the battle of Dangerford, where the Eleven Lights were used with devastating effect. Lunar magicians had calculated when an attack might be made when the Skyfire magics could not be used at least, and so the Empire scraped up what they could, and attacked. The core rules set was To The Strongest!, with my own additional magic system for Glorantha. The table was 12 feet long, and supported 8 players. I couldn't get it all in a single picture! However the close end of the table (much of which is not seen), is hilly and forested. The far away end is mostly open, and that is where the cavalry forces clashed. The Lunars were the aggressors, and having the initiative, immediately attacked. Lunar Nobles starting position. By the end of the top of turn 1, they were right in the Rebels faces! Sir Ethilrist's Black Horse Troop was left far out on the left flank, and was facing a lot of bull. The Lunars cheated immediately, summoning a chaotic horror that devoured half the Pol Joni heavy cavalry. But the power of the Bull was summoned to the battle, and quickly put paid the threat. While the cavalry battle swirled, things were kicking off in the center of the field. This is where the Beryl Phalanx, Quartz Phalanx, Lasadag Lions, Thunder Delta Slingers, and deep pike blocks of Yelmalian mercenaries were pitted against a motley variety of Orlanthi tribes, the Telmori bodyguard, the Babeester Gor manslayers, and the Pavis survivors. The professional Lunar line was a major strength here, and the power of the Yelmish pike, and the Beryl Phalanx (who has anti-storm tribe magic) proved nearly unstoppable. In an attempt to shore up the line, the Telmori transformed, becoming nearly impossible hit without magic, which was being used by the bucket load, and was becoming an increasingly rare resource. But the Lunars, as they so often do, had the exact counter. Their general blew all the magic reserves in a single moment, and incarnated as Yanafal Tarnils, the Lunar God of War. His mighty power was pitted against the Telmori, and although taking serious wounds, he overcame the Orlanthi attempt to salvage the center. Meanwhile, the Tarsh Line had met with the Red Cow clan's warriors, as well as the more elite Two Pine Humakti. The going was slow due to the terrain, but here too, it looked like the superior equipment and training of the Tarshites might earn them a victory. It was not to be. Powered the magics of the Eleven Lights, the protected Orlanthi of the Red Cow shrugged off arrow after arrow as they closed on the enemy, at which point they pulled out their own magics, and incarnated Orlanth himself! Here he devastates all in front of him with Thunderbolts, and then turns to assist the tribes as they surge against the sheildwall of Lunar Tarsh. The Tarsh general was wounded by an Orlanthi hero at this time. The Tarsh line fought valiantly, but their militia already was low morale due to not wishing to fight against their kin. With Orlanth launching his mighty thunderbolts the Red Cow rallied, and the Humakti used their special magic of "Death", to eliminate another unit, causing the command to collapse. Who can blame them? But looking up from their flank's victory, they saw only defeat on the greater field. The Lunar cavalry had lost its general to the Pol Joni counter attack, true. And the High Llama tribe had proven its overall dominance, despite lacking access to their Praxian summons. But although battered, the Cavalry Corp had held long enough for the Lunar center to..... ....clear the field. (The Wyvern Riders had been sent to capture the Orlanthi camp) So although battered severely, the Lunars managed to break the Orlanthi rebels first, winning the field, and the day. I hope you guys enjoyed the AAR, I think my players did!
  4. Not so fast! In fact my latest gaming session with the "old guard", was Paladin. They are a group of experienced RQ and Pendragon gamers, and they took to the mythology of Paladin easily, but also with an incredibly positive reaction. So far we have only run the first three years of the campaign, so I have -- as is my GM'ing style -- been setting up a lot of the cast and situations. First of course, they had to save the Pope from the combined Saracen/Dane alliance (the adventure of the Humble Squires), followed by the introduction to the yearly court intrigues, most specially dominated by the Frankish split between Charlemagne and his jealous brother, Carloman. This schism was made worse when their liege lord, Lord Thierry wound up in the Carloman camp. It took a while for them to realize that in this game, the Frankish nobles are frequently at odds with each other (and the big Roland vs. Oliver duel was foreshadowed, as well as the ominous potential for a catastrophic civil war between the Kings of the Franks). They sort of plowed through that, doing a garrison stint at la Roche before doing the adventure of the King Thief (from the Paladin adventures). The Ardennes was a rough time for the group, and nearly the entire group was majorly wounded by Ogres before they realized that the solution to that quest was not necessarily to battle their way through it. (They had been set up by unscrupulous locals who didn't like the land holding Knights). Then they turned back to Italy, to settle with crude Lombard knights who were denying trade to the Vatican, and spoke (un)surprisingly like guido's. After some marketplace hi-jinks they settled with the "it's only business" knights, asserting their Frankish might of arms against the locals on behalf of the Vatican. Now they are trying to wrap up whatever is causing the food shortage in Vatican City/Italy so that they can get back north and participate in some of the ugly wars of Saxon pacification that Charlemagne gets into. After all, one player already has holdings in Saxony..... Overall, the players enjoyed the heck out of it, despite my "Pendragon rust". Some of the minor differences in rules turned out to be pretty big, when you get to playing, but nothing that could slow down players who had gone through the entire Pendragon cycle -- twice. One thing that surprised them greatly was how all of the main Paladins are killed.......extremely early on in the cycle. Then they realized how much freedom that this gave them, and they started salivating over the possibilities. My preparation for playing the game was to skim the rules, especially character creation, listen to an audiobook Song of Roland, which is HIGHLY recommended. Nothing like a diplomatic exchange where Bishop Turpin strikes down an enemy knight emissary "because you have told a lie". Also the enthusiastic cries of "Montjoie!" are extremely catching. However, I have had to buckle down and really read the full chronology, as well as pick up a copy of Bulfinch's Mythology: Legends of Charlemagne. (And three hearts and three lions -- a must read!) There is vastly more material there than I had ever realized, and it does have a distinctly different flavor than the Arthurian cycle. The mobile nature of the Franks, and the fact that they have to rush around all over Europe, definitely has a bit of a "take on all comers" feel, as well as being nearly hopelessly outnumbered, so the tone is a lot more dire than with Arthur, who heroically raises the Bretons out of the Dark Ages. In Paladin, the players have to do the civilizing themselves, and by the sword, more often than not. It feels like the Franks themselves are on the knife's edge, and that only the valor and honor of the players can set Europe back to rights, with a new Roman Empire...only a more....Holy .... one, this time. God speed player Knights. Those berzerkers hit hard, and for some reason they keep rolling the Giant on the Battle encounter table. I have another session with the gang scheduled, and they are all pumped. Montjoie!
  5. Full Moon Corp from Mad Knight! I emphasized the silver on these guys, because I have way too much bronze and red in my Glorantha figures at the moment. In theory this should make them stand out a bit when I get them worked into an army.
  6. Well specifically -- putting aside a maturing play style as I grow older and wiser (and I DO still like me some hack and slash, with heroic triumph at the end, mind you), it comes back to the Heroquest. The whole point of the thing screams personal growth to me. If the players insist on role playing what comes down to a very powerful , but carefree magical warrior then they are basically playing Sigfried from the Ring Cycle -- minus the whole Brunhilde arc, which is pretty much the entire plot for that portion of the Cycle. Robbed of something meaningful to do, or something internal to overcome, it really comes down to something extremely mundane seeming. I think there is a very good reason Romeo and Juliet is the classic, while the thousands of "will they or won't they" Hallmark channel Romances are read once and forgotten. And that reason is that Romeo and Juliet makes you FEEL it. Deep down, and lasting. The emotional surge is the spice that elevates the RPG session/campaign to something they talk about for years. Just hacking down a bigger dragon is not. But without deeply emotional character dilemmas and even sometimes tragedy's, how can a GM draw that out of their game? I have run comedies (my Superworld is 100% slapstick), but I don't run Runequest that way. And it has seemed to me that in order to get the highs of emotions from the triumphs, I have to introduce the valleys as well. Hence the discussion on how other GM's handle this.
  7. I can certainly understand that sometimes players might not want to be "plot railroaded", but killing one's family seems a bit.....extreme. This is the central point though. The GM can use the personal tragedy of the characters to push the plot along, but the players steadfastly refuse to care about the NPC's, and are 100% intolerant of their character having any sort of suffering as they game away the years....what then?
  8. I got to thinking about the whole "Hero's Journey" thing that a good Heroquest ought to fulfill, and it occurred to me that my last couple of campaigns have had some quite serious events hit my player's characters. This is a LOT different than my early days 80's GMing, where the heroes more resembled Saturday morning cartoon heroes, who were confronted with external threats, which they then overcame. In my latest one: The Praxian nomad lost his favorite mount to a pack of Telmori wolves, and then later on a Heroquest to the Underworld fumbled his riding skill and failed to recognize his faithful steed, and thus missed his opportunity to bring her back. The Orlanthi hero lost his family -- twice. Once to the Bat upon roll up, but then a second time when the Windstop caused terrible losses to his clan. (Okay, his wife and child survived, but six other family members did not.) Pretty much everyone rolled up orphans -- the Blacksmith, the farmer, the scholar, the warrior. Only the Praxian had a fully intact family at the start of the campaign. The starting roll up very dominated how the players saw the world, which was huge since all players were new to Glorantha. Both of the in-game events were major factors in how the campaign turned out, and incredibly motivated the players into doing something risky that they were generally prone to avoid. In this case the Eleven Lights Heroquest, and finally fully committing to the rebellion. Do you guys have heroes who suffer losses, particularly personal ones that might sensibly drive a movie plot, for example?
  9. This is news to me.🙂 Take heart! I certainly treat it that way, especially when miniatures purchasing and painting for Glorantha.
  10. Hopefully no one got too carried away with my list. Lots of things are helpful, useful, and even excellent for Glorantha releases. Even more Prax and Pavis material, despite that fact that these are incredibly well covered already. The reason I would like "completed" RQ:G Sorcery rules is simply because I thought I had the Sorcery rules in RQ3, but there has been a significant reworking of the mechanics. Game Mechanics changes are not easily dealt with if a player wants to go down that route. IIRC I looked at Darkness Rune based sorcery some time ago, with the idea of making up a Muse Roost based sorcerer, and there just wasn't enough in the RQ:G book to do this. Again, from memory, something like 3 spells related to that rune or such. Since then it has been posted on this form that the rules are incomplete, and aimed at Dragon Pass sorcery users. Now I can make things up or plug in RQ3 Sorcery, but there is little chance that it matches whatever is being done in-house, so that's a problem for me. I totally lost track of which supplement this might be in, or how far out. I am assuming 2023 at best. The big "Boy King" type campaign book was announced already, so I knew it was in the works. I found the Pendragon campaign book astonishingly useful, nearly invaluable honestly. Something like that for the Hero Wars just takes off a huge burden as a GM. Heroquest rules are pretty much a meme at this point. However......as a GM, I think the main thing is to push meaningful character development. If you can pull this off, it is huuuuuuuge for the role playing experience. No rules or framework will replace this. The player(s) have to feel it. That's the important part, and the hard one. Help accomplishing this is of course welcome, but I've tempered my expectations. What I'm really looking for is "what the NPC's do" for Heroquests, if that makes sense. The PC's might do it a different way, and will face different challenges, but establishing Heroquests as part of the setting is what I basically want. That would include crossing over to the "other side", the different places they may go, different ways they might get there (including accidentally), and ideally -- how their relationship to the various gods might be changed. I don't like that my players often define themselves by the Rune spells that they have, and once they hit Rune level, I like to use Heroquests as an opportunity for the player to define the character as more than a "devoted worshipper of this god or another", and to really come into their own as a Hero. I don't have current plans to run a campaign in the West, or Pamaltea, or the Eastern Isles, or Kralorela, but these remain interesting places that are ripe for adventure, among others. And they just provide a unique, non-Dragon Pass/Prax point of view on things that sometimes helps a lot. Really a content creator with a passion for a place is far superior than a "connect-the-dots" type coverage of various locals. And I DO want the Lunar Empire, and Lunar Tarsh covered before more further afield. And let's not forget Muse Roost and that fun little mercenary company, either. 🙂
  11. I thought that part of the compromise was to sort of freeze things the way they played out in the Gods War. Darkness had an iron grip on Dagori Inkarth, so they retained extra power there during Time.
  12. Sorcery rules, Heroquest framework(s), Larger scale, Ritual magic (wyters and up) rules, A few more settings (Western lands, Eastern Isles, Pamaltea locations), The big Hero Wars campaign book And I think I am good to go. Everything else has enough out there that I can wing it in what appears to be a lore-friendly manner. I've already come around to the belief that a Heroquest must be personally transformative to the character (and the player!) to be a true Heroquest, so that makes it a very locally manged thing to pull off. But deeper Glorantha lore for the process is always welcome. Actually, everything is welcome! I am simply pointing out the hard blocks for my efforts at running a campaign where any element introduced may wind up greatly retconned later. Not so much a problem with the plot, but a real annoyance with rule mechanics. Sometimes a headache when trying to portray the more powerful, but still human entities as well.
  13. I would definitely put these in Pamaltela. Not sure why, just an intuitive feeling for it.
  14. I like this idea a lot. Of course you can always have untrained fighters just hold the shield over left arm, chest, and possibly more if if the shield is large enough) for melee attacks as well as missiles. That should honestly cover the concept of a shield being good even without a lot of training, and would use an existing rule. But honestly a slightly higher parry for a shield is not at all unreasonable. Remember that larger shields are generally wooden in construction, you really can't make a large metal shield and wield it with your non-dominant hand for an extended period of time. Just too heavy. For the OP, parrying with a spear or axe is abstracted. Mechanically you would be stop thrusting with the spear and weaving a figure eight type pattern with the axe, making it too dangerous for the opponent to step in with his attack, and interfering with his lines of attack. With a shield you block. With a sword you parry. But in Runequest you get all of that under a single skill. It doesn't really deserve a huge penalty. I would suggest mixing up weapon hit points quite a bit, however. A good smith should make better quality weapons and shields by a point or two, and worn equipment should have quite a few dings in it. Even a repair spell can't fully restore all the hit points of a damaged weapon. Shields being disposable damage eaters was a running theme is my last campaign, as no one's medium shield returned fully intact, ever, from any adventure. However parrying with the swords got to be expensive, and when an iron sword was nicked up a couple of times during emergency parry situations, the permanently lost hit points were savage. The player vowed to fight to the last wooden shield before he parried with his superior iron Kopis again. Also -- dodge is a thing. Real high end adventures learn to dodge at high levels, not just parry. Parry is for things that do reasonable levels of damage, dodge is for when something really Gloranthan tries to step on you. 1H Axe + dodge as the defensive skill seems pretty reasonable to me for a RL fighting style. American Indian with a Tomahawk, for instance. Not exactly something to beat the Romans with, but it "makes sense". 1h Spear should always be 2H spear if you've got nothing in the other hand. If injured, then you use your footwork and fight like it's a wooden rapier.
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