Dissolv

Man versus nature is a huge opportunity adventure here.  Periods of low food, or discovering that water in a certain area is impure in some way (naturally or magically), dealing with harsh weather -- storms and especially dark season should be major challenges that stretch the players to overcome them.  Will they turn to robbing farmers of their sheep to survive if they cannot pass survival rolls and hunting attempts?   Will they venture into unknown territory, possibly ghost or troll haunted, in search of game they badly need to survive?  What will they find there?  Can they repair their armor (leather working), make new arrows (woodworking, fletching), and what will they do for metal if their tools break or are lost trying to flee some creature?

There are incredible opportunities here to stretch the game system and use what Runequest does best.  What if they fail a plant lore roll and ingest some mild poison?  Is one of them dedicated enough to try to create a shrine to their deity, and will the others supply that person with food and shelter (do all the work) while they are on their religious quest? 

Is there a friendly NPC who is nonetheless forced by duty to hunt them down?  What happens if they encounter another outlaw band unexpectedly?  There are so many plot opportunities here that it makes me want to run a campaign built around the concept! 

I definitely experienced hit parry tedium back in the day -- early RQ3 time period, and either low-magic (non-Gloranthan obviously) worlds or else the typical high-initiate but not quite Rune Priest where you can't expect Rune Magic to be used to break things open. 

Luckily, RQ:G has the huge boost to Rune magic that seemed to break this up naturally.  If an opponent was too tough -- Lightning his arse.   Similarly, some spirit magic goes a very long way towards hammering down mooks.  Bladesharp is the king of this.  Most players can get a combat character up to 90% or so very quickly.  Bladesharp then lets you subtract from his parry, as well as add the damage needed to get through common armor.   Sometimes players can even be 90% skill on roll up (another big change in RQ:G).  Every percent you knock off your opponent's parry, is a vastly greater chance you do real damage to him. 

I also keep armor rare.  Helms are typically 4 points.  Body armor varies greatly, but a common Orlanthi call up should not have more than 4 point body armor, and 3 point limb armor.  That's the BEST non-thane, non-notable personage.  A high percentage should show up like Saxons, with 2 points of leather.  Pentians should definately be armor deficient as well, and even Lunar soliders will commonly have little armor on the arms and legs, and not great shakes on the body or head necessarily either.  Obviously some units are vastly better equipped than this, but this comes at the cost of fatigue.  Since my players are mainly Orlanthi, they can just out climb and out swim and out jog a group of such foot knights.  Full bronze plate armor is freaking heavy!  I kept armor so rare that my players didn't get more than 3 points for the first game full game year.  This really, really, really made combat tense.  And you knew when you went up against someone with Heavy Scale that you were in a for a time of it.   And when the players managed to get their preferred level of armor -- that was a happy day for them and a big turning point in the campaign. 

The combat "main character" in my Eleven Lights campaign liked to use the "Hercules gambit".  He managed to get a 1d6 natural strength bonus, which he would augment by preference with the Strength spell.  That's +2d6, and a hefty bonus to hit as well.   If the opponent wasn't going down, he (or his allied spirit) would cast Fireblade, and he would just beat the thing down with 5d6 of magical damage.  This was murder against his common Telmori foes, and generally worked on everything short of Bigclub the Giant. 

He was counseled by the Two Pine Humakit that he might do better switching to Bladesharp + Strength, after he had gotten his skill over 100%, in order to maximize the amount of parry he can remove from his foe.  But the threat of high armor enemies ultimately kept him with that combination throughout the entire campaign.  Not bad for a sword and board type!  Normally I see Storm Bull types with two handed Axes try this, or Humakti with two handed swords.   But frankly any player that has a means to muster a LOT of damage with melee has a means to win.  Parrying weapons break, and criticals and even specials become deadly even through a parry.  So you can out-skill the parry, or you can overpower it.  True heroes are doing both.

When I ran a low-magic Runequest campaign in Questworld (the original boxed set Questworld), I developed the "Advanced Runequest Combat" rules, which beside some tweaks (lower SR as your skill increases, etc.) it featured a series of special combat maneuvers that could be learned from various fighting societies or master trainers.  There was a strict cap on these based on intelligence, with the most astute warriors being able to learn three.  These were specifically there to break up the hit parry tedium, and the system was very popular with my players. 

Currently, I don't think RQ:G as written needs that, although there would no reason not to have secret special combat techniques anyway, if it sounds fun.  The main thing is to stop attempting to melee things all the time, every time.  Even Romans threw javelins before every battle -- and multiples of them.  Conan struck from the shadows when he could, and the Greek heroes used every artifact and wiles they had for an advantage.  If the players don't used three dimensional combat and just draw broadsword and charge, that's no problem.  The NPC's should be using lots of missile and spell combat, getting allies, sneaking up on the witless players, befriending and betraying them, wearing them down with elementals (and trollkin), all kinds of things other then the last desperate melee.   After all, it's their skin, and just having a parry between it and death is pretty much the last desperate cast of the dice.

1.  Each Heroquest requires special preparation and ceremony to enter voluntarily.  Someone has to know the way, items, animals, and persons of symbolic importance must be gathered, and a ritual must be learned. 

This plays out a lot like the investigation for a Call of Cthuluthu adventure in my Glorantha, although campaign long call backs (and foreshadowing to this moment) are very important.  That troll you befriended last Dark Season?  Now is the time to call in that favor so he can teach you the secret path of darkness.  You rescued the daughter of the Clan Chieftain?  Now is the time to use that influence that you gained to orate the Chief into committing the clan magics during Sacred time to help you breach the barriers.  This can be quite long for new Heroquesters, with many MacGuffins to track down, secrets to learn, and wise elders to persuade. 

It helps have the players see this done from the Initiate point of view, as they help out a Rune Priest try to get things together for his heroquest.  This is kind of an important education for the players.  The Priest acts as a quest giver for the current adventure, the players get to see him actively organize the needed elements for a Heroquest, which they can mimic later, and they may even learn their tribe's sacred magic this way too.  When they become Rune level, the roles reverse, and now they are the ones trying to get the elements all together, or even enhance or modify the ritual. 

2.  YES!  A couple of ways this can happen.  The players may wind up in a spot, being captured by enemies.  Rather than ransom, they can play out the part as enemies in a Heroquest not of their liking!  The players may also blunder into the other side from a place where the barrier is weak.  Magical places, particularly at times of great holy significance might trigger this in a number of ways (the thief can't resist touching the statue, the earth opens up and swallows the players, strange winged beings scoop the players up, the forest takes unexpected twists and turns, the storm blows the players off course, and so on).   The players may not even realize that they have left the mundane world -- indeed in Glorantha not a whole lot is mundane in the first place.  Are you in Beast Valley, in a land you have never seen before, or you have crossed over to somewhere entirely different?  How can you tell, unless you were an experienced quester?

Finally, I run a lot of "this world" Heroquests.  Epic adventures to unknown lands are a staple, and if the players journeyed across the Wastes to visit Kralorela, I would run that as an epic mini-campaign, and also treat it as a Heroquest.  Sometimes players get chased or maneuvered into these types of things, like the Issaries who has to return the hyena skin.  Or heck, the Lunars might capture them and sentence them to the Risklands in Dorastor.   At the end the players would likely gain something like free stats or Rune points or such as the result of their trials and heroism, very similar to an Otherworld Heroquest.

3.  As stated above, even a party of Rune levels can't do it on their own.  There will need quite a lot of preparation and support from NPCs, his clan, and maybe even his whole tribe.  In the Eleven Lights campaign, the final epic Heroquest was set up by the players finally bringing peace to the North, and earning enough reputation, doing enough favors, and knowing the right people, that they were able to access the resources of two tribes. 

As the Hero Wars carry on, and the players grow in power, it should be more common for non-Lunars to Heroquest, and the many requirements may already be met and not require 4-5 play sessions to get ready for them.  However I would never cheapen them too much, unless your players are rolling around with demi-gods, and even then the Heroquest ought to be thing that is most likely to kill them dead, or deal them permanent wounds.

Besides the artifacts, and rituals, and such, the way I play it is that it takes a certain amount of raw magical power to pierce the barriers.   Normally this is what the clan(s) are doing, just providing a large amount of magic points to power the ceremony.  At specific times and places though, it should take less power to punch through than it would sitting comfortably in your Tula at Sacred time.  There should always be these secret places in the world, that the players might find, or be taught about, where they might go beyond what the clan can do, and forge their own way.  But this should be exceptionally dangerous, and these secret places should be just that....secret.   Typically these are providence of wise men, fools, or the Elder Races.  You may need to contact the dead and persuade them.  Or you might even go on a Heroquest......just to learn how to do the Heroquest that you are really yearning to do. 

56 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

I must be the last person on the planet that figures to be heroes you have to be heroic, not stack the dice

You are not the last.   I have consistently seen in my campaigns over the......decades.......that the players who stat focus will inevitably falter during actual game play.  Those who focus on role play typically wind up with stronger characters in the long run, even, maybe even especially, when their characters are fairly meh to start with. 

Two explanations:  Those with weaker characters I see explore the rules, and the world more aggressively, while those with stronger starting characters tend to sit pat.   More importantly, the world intrinsically rewards heroic, even sometimes downright sacrificial actions.   At least my Glorantha.

Although my players have more collective time in Glorantha, Pendragon is an instant favorite, and we actually did the entire cycle -- twice -- with the same gaming group.  It is really that good of a game. 

Also, there is waaaaaay more opportunity for humor and (medieval) social hijinks. 

Giants traditionally have antipathy to the Gods in most, if not all mythologies.  My Glorantha follow that trend.   In this case Bears are tiny creatures, like mice.  So why would a Giant ever worship the Bear god in the first place?  This makes no sense.    Better to be big and powerful.  Ho Ho Hrrrrm.

Inexperienced players -- 4-6.

RQ Vets -- around 12

Tick hunting isn't a problem that I can see.  The main thing is that use of a skill does not generate a check unless under some type of duress.  So maybe you wind up with a check in sing, dance, and orate, but you also failed those skills publicly, likely repeatedly.  Those actions have consequences in later role play. 

However I do allow much more skill increase from baseline in many situations.  For example a player has rock bottom riding skill, but winds up with a horse and is asked to ride around all season doing some horse related thing.  By the rules this should not earn a check mark, so it does not.  However I typically just give the character up to 25% riding skill for generic familiarity, assuming that significant off screen time is spent doing some activity with the horse. 

Up to a certain point (25-30% or so) it just seems utterly illogical that a season of riding around with the Pol Joni tribe taught the PC nothing more than he knew when he didn't even have a mount.  I believe that connecting those logical dots, particularly for non-role played time, is an important part of the GM's job.  There is a real chance that the players don't grub so hard for checkmarks if they can take actions to gain skills in other ways.  If you only give your players a hammer, then every box on that sheet will look like a nail.

I didn't know him, but he was the RQ person that I (eventually learned) was the game mechanics master.  It took me a long while to realize that he and Louise were a husband wife duo (I was pretty young for RQ2 era stuff and a lot sailed by me).  After learning more about RPGs in general I admired his work more and more.  He contributed something badly needed to the world, then and now -- organized fun. 

7 hours ago, Godlearner said:

Magic points were mostly available in games I been after a session or two. Everyone had at least one POW spirit or a magic point matrix.

This was a major difference in Gloranthas then -- or probably more accurately the scope and theme of my campaign, which was very much aimed at local flavor and built to support new players.  My crop of PCs were the greenest of the green, literally farmers and other people on the outs of the clan power structure who had grown tired of the situation(s), and determined to step up and make a go of changing the world, even if they were woefully unprepared to do so.  

Because the players were also completely new to RQ or Glorantha, they did things a lot differently than my old school group of players ever did.   So not only did none of them start with any sort of stored power, they also didn't prioritize gaining any.  Even when I explained the concept they sort of looked at me like they wanted to ask "but how does that help defend the central grazing lands against the Emerald Sword cattle raiders?"

For the Heal 6 versus Heal Wound thing, my players were not fans.  Healing 6 took up a ton of space against the limit, and would have been over half of several characters starting maximum.  They stuck with Heal 2, mainly for after combat recovery, but also sometimes during combat, such as after a missile exchange.

When they absolutely had to heal someone who was clobbered by a critical hit, giant, or other gloranthan life menace, Heal Body was the go-to.  The Yelmalian worshiping Praxian pulled off many an in-combat save with this spell, and used it even more than Sunbright, which was his favorite.   Heal Wound was used sometimes, but it costs both Rune points and magic points.  My players were not swimming in stored power, and they had to start from scratch with the Rune points, so I believed they looked upon it as a wasteful emergency heal. 

In any event, their preferred take on the subject was to try real hard not to need a heal at all.  The campaign saw extensive use of "three dimensional" combat, with stealth, ambush, extended ranged combat, and solving situations with social skills whenever possible.  They definitely got the hint that this wasn't a game you beat down with "levels".  I saw more tactical approaches to combat situations and the approaches only got more creative as they got used to the game system.  As such it became more common to need either no healing at all......or things went really, really wrong and Heal Body was the most economical method to restore a fighter quickly.   But the group was not really into stand up, heroic combat as their first option.  They were a lot more Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser than Sir Gawain, and that worked. 

I'm curious to see how they might handle a higher power campaign a bit deeper into the Hero Wars, but I suspect they would do more of the same. 

A full year of campaign, and spirit spells remained fundamental.   The best combat PC was an Orlanthi, and he used Fireblade (matrix on an iron weapon taken from a Lunar officer) plus Strength every single encounter that he had a chance to prep for.  And some he didn't. 

A big part of this was that I didn't let the PC's conveniently rest to regain full Rune points just because they had spent them.  The world had a flow to it, and the players generally could tell when they weren't out of the woods just yet.  They tended to conserve Rune points in favor of spirit magic whenever and where ever possible.  Rune point exhaustion was a strategy used by many NPC's, and the PC's picked up on it very quickly.  Save the good stuff for when it is time to shine.

The non-combat PC's tended to use Rune points to Dismiss down enemy Rune Spells like Shield or Truesword, and the Lhankhor Mhy player famously saved three different PC's from spirits with a very timely Spirit Block. 

On another level, a bastard sword is pretty pointless. 

Spears are superior weapons for most purposes.  Longer reach, better penetration, cheaper, much less metal used, etc.   I don't mind a broadsword being a fine weapon in any fantasy game, especially if it doesn't dominate the spear.  Runequest is great that way!   However no matter your main hand of choice (and a battle axe is underrated here!), a good shield is a must.  Arrows and Javelins are a thing, as is weapon breakage.  My campaign's main fighters generally needed a new shield after every significant adventure.

However if your concern is fighting non-human opponents, then the two handed weapons start to make a lot of sense.  Two handed spears are already good.  Two handed axes are just a take-no-prisoners option if you need to power through troll armor, Dragonsnail shell, or even an expected 4 points of Protection.   Two Handed swords are also extremely good, and definitely a strongly rated option, although a Humakt follower who needs that much damage is going after serious game indeed.    So much so that the 1d10+1 that we used to use for the Katana and two handed Longsword might not be enough to push you over that threshold to make it worth it.  This more than anything else explains why it wouldn't exist.    For (regular) humans a magically boosted Broadsword more than suffices.  Against serious non-human game you need the full two handed weapon for weight and killing power. 

1d8+1(x2 Truesword) +4 (Bladesharp) + 1d6 (Damage bonus, often boosted with Strength) is 18.5 average damage.

1d10+1(x2 Truesword) +4 (Bladesharp) + 1d6 (Damage bonus, often boosted with Strength) is 20.5 average damage.

2d8(x2 Truesword) +4 (Bladsharp) + 1d6 (Damage bonus, often boosted with Strength) is 25.5 average damage, and remains the gold standard for big game swords-ing.  Accept no substitute! 

Frankly the main reason to do the sword and a half is more as a fun thing to do for the player.  I have had many, many players with 1d10+1 swords and it is in no way overbalancing or such.  My original group generally preferred Storm Bull's with Great Axes, until they realized how easy it was to buff up a Berserk Storm Bull with a Bastard Sword (from previous editions).  It could get silly fast, if everyone would lend the Storm Bull follower their god's power in the form of Rune magic, but that was 100% how the myth goes, so I thought (and still think) it was excellent play.

I figure there should be quite a few Rune Priests per Rune Lord.   The 18 CHA requirement alone is extremely rough, especially for those people with a low value to start.  The skills are also a very serious hurdle, and involve potentially a LOT of fighting -- and therefore chances of dying. 

Also, unlike Rune Priests, I can see them being a lot more free to roam.  So even if a Rune Lord does rise up in your location, they might feel religiously compelled to quest, join a hero band, fight the Lunars, that sort of thing, so seem more likely not to be necessarily be at home base all the time.  I expect a Priest to be at the temple for Holy days, so a chunk of them are going to be present locally (if you have a temple/shrine) all the time to hold the ceremonies. 

So in this edition of Runequest, I have made about 5 Priests per Lord my rule of thumb. 

By chance, we just wrapped our year long campaign of the Eleven Lights.   The campaign definitely is not on rails and is more of a set of problems for the players to interact with.   As such it looks to potentially vary very dramatically towards the end.   Here is the write up I gave to my larger gaming group.

Raibanth Line. 

Figures are Fireforge Games Byzantines. I used one box of spearmen and one box of Auxiliaries.  There are left over figures, including 5 slingers that will become Thunder Delta Slingers, and 10 extra melee that I assembled as swordsmen.  Still looking into which unit this might be, but I am thinking Bagnot foot.

This produced one large unit (single rank spearmen, double rank archers), and two regular units -- one rank of each.

I have been running a campaign via Zoom for over a year now (how the time flies!).    It is very old school, with oral descriptions only.  Anything we need share I put into a shared Google drive, which is also where the character sheets live. 

It is not optimal, and everything goes way slower than in person, but after a period of adaptation, it has produced some very dramatic moments.  🙂

I posted a bit about this topic here:

I definitely try to stage mass battles by doing smaller battles first, and with the PC's in non-leadership positions.  This sort of sets ground rules and expectations.  Bonus points if they see their leaders fail, and learn a lesson for when they are Rune level and in charge later on.

Just three weeks ago I ran the Battle of Iceland. I do not use the rules in the Main Rule book, and originally intended this to be a miniatures session using TTS!   Sadly despite the fact that I have painted both sides for his, including personalities and giant Chaos horror, due to the constraints of Zoom it was run in old school, oral narrative fashion.   However that method still works, was extremely epic, and took a very lengthy Zoom session to resolve.  Here is how I did it:

1) I set the tone well in advance.  The players have been gaming weekly since May 2020, and have been involved in quite a few cattle raids, clan vs. clan skirmishes, a Yelmalian phalanx vs. Troll mobs throw down in Pavis, and knew the basic gist of mass combat.   The conflict between King Broyan and the Lunars in Hendrikiland had been the subject of news and rumors for months.  When the Windstop hit, the players were given impossible options, and rose to the occasion.  Specifically they were asked to choose between their kin, their clan, and the cause.  The PC's scrambled to find a way to save everyone....but....we'll get there later.

2) The Battle itself had the players in mid-level leadership positions. They weren't top tier heroes just yet, but were well respected and certainly better than the rank and file.  They acted as Captains of men, but still were being directed to carry out battlefield tasks by superiors.  They were effectively throwing the weight of around 100 Thanes, nearly half of whom were Humakt Initiates, and therefore had magic.  Because of their unit's great relative power, they received a place of honor (read: Danger). 

3) The battle itself was a series of narrative events, player decisions, and sharp combat.  Their first task was to defeat the Beryl Phalanx, who could not be allowed to use their anti-"Ram people" magic.  The best combat PC led the charge, covered by the PC archer, and backed by the sole Rune level PC, the Grey Sage.  In a tough combat where most of the clan(s) magic was spent, the Beryl phalanx was crushed before they could form ranks, the archer PC managed to down the best enemy Priest with a couple of critical arrows, and the combat PC was able to heroically slay the Beryl Phalanx commander in hand to hand combat twice (thanks to the Grey Sage Dismissing every protective spell cast by or upon the commander).  After that there were a series of battlefield tasks to deal with -- cut off the Lasdag Lions who were moving to flank the army, protect the (civilian) sleepers from Lunars intent on killing them, save Hendrikiland militia who were neck deep in angry Lunars, meet up with Broyan, that sort of thing.  In between breathless rushing from task to task I would give them a snippet of the events in the battle.  The lightning used against Broyan, spotting their clan's former Chieftain who had been driven out by the Lunars, the arrival of the sky people, that sort of thing, but generally fairly quickly.

4) The climatic finale was the Chaos beast (which I made a thing that grew stronger and larger as it absorbed the bodies of the dead as it mucked around the battlefield.)  Finally the Grey Sage stood forth and used a temple treasure -- an enchantment of Impede Chaos of tremendous magnitude.  Then he did his level best not to die while being attacked by 20d6 damage attacks with Lhankhor Mhy knows other effects.   When the combat PC realized that he had magic again he dumped 13 points into Lightning and seriously wounded it.  Eventually the mercenary Sun Domers showed up and everyone held their breath.  The group had taken serious losses and were out of magic.  The NPC thanes had dragged the combat PC off the field to save him, and no PC had any Rune or Magic points left to do much more than the exhausted thanes might do against the massed pikes and Lightwalls, which would be to run in and die.  However the bargain had been "no Chaos", and to everyone's relief and amazement, the Sun Domers hurled pikes first at the chaos horror, and eventually ended it.

If you notice this resembles a Heroquest in that it is a narrative encounter with a series of stations each with different tasks to fulfill.  In many ways I find that "real world" Heroquests are the best ones, as you shouldn't need to always travel to another plane to be the Hero.  You can be heroic right here in the Middle World, and while the rewards may not be quite so great as a Heroquest proper, the landscape is more understandable, and the rewards are real all the same. 

A major difference is that the players had quite a lot of followers to manage, which in the game session were broken up into elite warriors (Humakti generally), good warriors (the highly skilled and well geared but magic-less Orlanthi), special skill NPCs, which were mainly hunters and ranger types, but also included a support group of Priests.  At different points in the night all of those sub-units had to be managed, even if just loosely in the abstract.

It is often called "Heroic scale", and is 32mm or even 36mm scale.  A great example of this was how GW Imperial Guard (ordinary humans) eventually became taller than their iconic Space Marines (who are supposed to be 7-8' tall).  This led to the release of "true scale" Primaris Marines. 

Historical miniatures are generally better in this regard, and while there has been a bit of scale creep, I still have true 28mm miniatures mixed in the many photos that I've posted in this very thread.  The Buffalo Riders being a very strict true 28mm group.  It works well enough with the other figures, although they are clearly bigger if you look. 

The larger figures actually work very well for heroes, monsters, and leaders.

He looked like he had a lot of the component work done last year.   I'm not sure where he is in the process but I will certainly be picking up a copy. 

Right now you can modify Frostgrave into "Pavisgrave", and I have run Simon's "To The Strongest!" for Glorantha based battles (including one in the middle of a RPG session), so to me the figures are more important than the rules.   Rules I can replace, or make up.  Figures for Glorantha can be highly specific.

aaaaaaand pledged.   This particular Kickstarter is very beefy, by the way.

Those are extremely good (but pricey) figures for forest guardian types.  Way too large for standard Aldryami though.    I was looking at the old Mirilton wood elves for those.  They might mix well, honestly, with the size of the huge Sylvaneth looking more like trees against the diminutive mirlton elves.

My own painting has stalled temporarily due to RL, but the quest continues.

https://mirliton.it/wood-elves/wood-elf-archers-we001

They are great resources for a campaign.   My players just hit the Windstop late last meeting, with tonight being the end of the world.    Recommended to grab while you can.

Risklands is awesome in its concept, I had great fun with that one....for a short time.

Borderlands is possibly the best introductory campaign pack ever published for any game.  For new players there just isn't a contest.  Work up to Risklands, and use it as an outlet for Rune levels who insist on annoying the Lunars.

10 hours ago, Godlearner said:

If we stick to the basic tenet of shaman / priest /sorcerer donating 50 - 90% of their time and money then we should not be seeing these characters adventuring, except in unusual circumstance

If by adventuring, you mean "doing my own thing for my own fortune and glory", then yes.  But a hallmark of a lot of Glorantha adventures has been that your characters are propelled by clan, cult, and kin into sort of "adventures of duty". 

In many ways this is where the world shines -- the players are often embroiled in feuds, wars, and troubles not of their own making.  There is a world outside the mad lust for bigger numbers on the character sheet, and the players frequently feel motivated by things other than gold and experience points.  

In the Hero Wars time frame those shamans, priests, and sorcerers are the leaders of their social groups, and the most likely the last best hope for those groups to survive the storm.  In this sort of world, all manner of adventures may be had, just trying to keep the NPCs that your players have come to know and love (or hate) alive. 

On 3/7/2021 at 3:47 AM, resurrected duck said:

Is there a cheatsheet somewhere for quick RQG character creation?

My crew is all new to Glorantha, so the backstory really helped.   Who are these Lunar guys you are talking about?  /rolls dice.  Oh no, they used Godzilla to eat Grandma?  I have a passion of hating them?  /direction achieved.

It did slow things down a lot, but not really.  We might have wound up with a lot of those questions the first meeting anyway, just to ground the characters into the world.  Actually that's the biggest advantage of the process -- these aren't generic fighters or thieves, or what have you.  They have families, communities, and passions from prior life experience. 

What really sucked was the second stat calculation via Zoom.  I may write a simple program to let us do that without my voice going hoarse from so much repetition.  In person that was never a problem. just a chore to crank through.  Also part of the charm.