Dissolv

I am running a bit of a mix. When the players are in clan lands, taking on odd tasks or self directed adventures, they follow the seasonal rules, with the extra exp checks, Pow gain rolls from the handy local temples, etc. Montage training for several seasons while adventuring on the side has been a heavy focus, especially for the Lhankhor Mhy player, who needs his lores skilled up via training. When the players venture out of these safe zones, then it all starts to go real time on them, with multiple encounters before holy days, extensive travel time between any type of civilization, and so on. Right now the players have had a couple of sessions where there were limited or even no ability to get back rune points or refill the Pow crystals, so are aware of the temporal limits of their abilities. They have consciously chosen to stick to being big fish in a smaller pond and are working with clan politics and local adventures currently. They are aware of a bigger wider world. Actually, as an aside, a great example of limited resources happened tonight. a character is a member of the Two Pine clan and has been rallying the clan to get the seven tributes gathered before Storm Season sets in, or the Lunars interfere. To do this, he wound up challenging a clan to a duel for it, when negotiations broke down. He burned 3 out of 5 Rune points but managed to win. Then he wound up in a serious clan raid (150 vs. 230) just a few days later, still low on Rune points. In this even he had his leg chopped off clean by a critical and was hors de combat. Accelerating the pace of the encounters is a thing, especially as the hero wars draw near! 🙂 (His leg was fully healed before the battle was totally over, and he was fine.)

Hopefully he kickstarters those some day.

I dug into his Facebook page and he has exactly one sculpt of a Sable showing. I gather it was for a hero of some type, as opposed to generic Praxians. Rapier Miniatures also showed one of a couple of years ago, but they never seemed to put it into production, and now they have taken their Runequest section down. 😞

That's just it -- javelins are supposed to be thrown on the run. See -- any Olympic video of the event. I have read several accounts describing their use in this manner for ancient battles, particularly for the loose order units. Thrown weapons are just different from modern mechanically or chemically powered weapons, where the body needs to be still to let the mechanism work at maximum accuracy. Thrown weapons are very much integrated in our own bio mechanics, and humans can throw things extremely well. https://www.businessinsider.com/most-important-human-adaptations-2016-6#though-other-primates-have-the-ability-to-understand-the-trajectories-of-thrown-objects-allowing-them-to-dodge-no-animals-can-aim-and-throw-with-the-power-and-precision-of-a-human-12

To add a bit of fuel to the fire, I allow moving and throwing weapons, because in real life, that's how that was often done......

aaaaaaaand backed. 🙂 The Lunars are welcome, as are the Trollkin with spears, although the goofy ones are hilarious. The killer need is Sable riders.

Not much use honestly. Random runes are not a thing, and the strike rank die can be used to keep track of the strike rank, but I would look at the Infinity-Engine strike rank tracker if you playing with that level of tactical granularity, which these days, even I am not. https://www.infinity-engine.com/index.php?id_product=123&controller=product

Congrats! I would have voted for ya!

She had a near infinite supply of Mossbacks and over 30 rune points to Berserk them while being able to retreat and hide and the branches, likely to never be spotted again in the campaign, let alone the adventure. I figured that was enough against a 3 man party without a single member even sporting 100% metal armor yet. 😉

I think it is much more about being potentially damaging to the Empire. An illuminate getting control the Bat would be in a great position to start a civil war, and would have no religious restrictions against doing so.

I'm not sure everyone who has done wrestling would agree with that! However this is likely one of those "internal disagreement" things. I can imagine some Chalana Arroy temples teaching never touching a weapon, while others would advocate a shield as acceptable, while still others might allow more borderline actions such as grappling with the intent for restraint. There is certainly room in Glorantha for that sort of disagreement, and it might spice up the campaign with CA PC's a bit. 😉 I would definitely want a Kraloria influence before we can even talk Judo. Advanced unarmed combat is commonly associated with the Far East these days, but it wasn't true at all historically. There is a ton of wrestling in every ancient fighting tradition, because it the only thing that makes any sense to do if you lose your weapon. In fact in my campaigns the PC's who eventually picked up the "extra" skills of first dodge (for giant fighting), and then grapple (for when you lose your weapon/had to kill a Telmori with your bare hands) were the greatest of all the warriors ever in any of my campaigns.

Hey, you are right! I misread that for some reason. That puts her back down to just 10x Sever Spirits with her 32 Rune points, backed with a 32 POW. She has significant weaknesses that no PC would want to live with (fragility, lack of Allied Spirit, no Divine Intervention), but dang.....the lethality is there in spades. I don't mind a final boss/world fixture being OTT, but she was out of balance with the rest of the scenario, was more the concern. Just removing the Sever Spirits would have fixed that imo, and the most likely outcome would be her getting away with the PC's saving the child. WITH the sever spirits, she is a potent menace, and I'm not sure if the players understood what they got away with, during their swashbuckling antics.

I ran my players through the Woods of the Dead, Gloomwillow mission from Pegasus Plateau. ***Spoilers*** ***You were warned*** My first take was that this was a beginning level adventure. The creatures were 50% to hit, no magic, and don't hit hard at all, 1d6 +1d4. Literally newly rolled up characters out of the RQ:G book can take them. Some of the creatures were a bit stronger, but still not Grendel "rip your arms off" tough. Then I read the final encounter, saw the massive amount of Rune points, the ridiculous POW, the 2 point Sever Spirits (thanks to the woods effect), and the superhuman ability to fight from the branches of the tree while hiding at %140. She can cast through any Mossback in the woods, so there is no getting out of line of sight here. My players are new to Glorantha, and don't even know that Sever Spirit exists. Only one of them has ever even attempted to cast Shield. From my reading of the scenario, they only have one round to do something to Gloomwillow, after that she will literally kill one per round, 95% of the time. They won't even see her killing them. So I lowered the difficulty. I added an arc where Humakt was upset with the stolen powers of death, and from the Judge of Death at Dangerford, they acquired small wooden Anglo-Saxon looking chess pieces that would protect them from non-Humakti cast Sever Spirits. That way they could fight the Mossbacks normally, Gloomwillow could Berserk them after the first few failures to insta-kill the new players, and the mission could proceed as normal. Instead they wind up climbing the tree, making six consecutive Sneak and Move Quietly rolls to get the drop on Gloomwillow. The only one able to melee her has an iron Kopis taken from a Lunar officer which takes off an arm. The Sable Rider nomad puts an arrow into her other arm. She attempts to retreat but is cut off by the party philosopher, who gives her the coup de grace. Glass cannon villain killed in 6 strike ranks by three PC's with 14 sessions under their belts, run by players who have never heard of Glorantha before this campaign. This is my usual experience as a GM. The players are highly motivated, take the game seriously very quickly, and always find a way. The Orlanthi with the iron Kopis had Darkwalk, but chose to rely on his natural skills (which weren't expert, but were decent) because he wanted to reserve his Rune points for teleporting the children out. So it wasn't like they didn't weigh the risks, and it wasn't like they didn't realize that they could all be rolling new characters soon. They joked about it, talked about, and in the end....fortune favored the bold. I needn't have helped them at all.

This is one of those "advanced" options where the player must be able to rise to the adventure without using violence -- like Orpheus. The GM must also be on his or her toes to make sure that plenty of "there is always another way" things are available to do in the campaign. This doesn't require a withdrawal from heroic fantasy, but it does require an enrichment of the situation to include options for the 100% non-combat character. The situations are the same, but the point of view must be made "sideways" from the usual hero's perspective. On rough dungeon type mission it can be very rewarding to play a healer, and some people favor the role. I know I do. It is the lack of options that hurt the CA player compared to a D&D fighting cleric, or video game healer. But sleep can be a crowd control option, the players will get lots of practice with ransoms, they will become vastly more socially acceptable, and If played well, the CA character can easily be the most powerful thing about the party, and what really sets them aside from other adventurous groups. This is very much like the Inara character from Firefly getting Mal and the gang into higher society adventures they would not have gotten to on their own.

Prax on the march. Some pictures of the tribes as I have worked up so far. Only Sable Riders and Impala riders elude me still. However now that these are done, it may be time to look and see what can be done.

They ride single file....to hide their numbers. The greatest tribe in Prax -- the High Llama tribe. These are the Barbaric Splendor Llamas, listed a while back on this very thread. My dull coat had some trouble with them, but I decided to post them up before a second coat anyway. 🙂 The riders are Foundry Scythians, as I wanted a top notch sculpt for the top notch tribe.

Arrowstone archers. I used older Wargames Factory Persians, as you can have quivers with bows in them on a model shooting a bow -- so multiple bows on the figure as expected from Kastokus style archers. I used the really old fashioned "figure eight" shield, which we all know from the RQ2 cover. Not my best painting effort as I struggled with aging varnish and some very basic plastic models, but 12 more figures, or three TTS! units towards my goal. These I felt that I needed to do these mainly because of their presence at the battle of Auroch Hills and also Dangerford, so the unit really merited a figure presence -- especially as my campaign creeps into 1618! There is no physical description that I find for these, not even in Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass, so they get to be portrayed by the figures that I have laying around. 😉

I would like to add that this sort of possibility (summoning the dead for answers) has been used in fiction, such as my favorite -- Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword. In this work Scafloc summons up the spirits of the dead, only to learn not only what he asks of them, but other, horrific facts besides! (no spoilers). Anyway, great book, and an example of how it is done for powerful narrative effect -- and a strongly recommended read anyway. This sort of scenario I think should be the chance for the non-combat types to shine. A shaman might summon spirits known to be friendly and truthful (or at least believed to be), an Issaries following PC might work out some type of deal to placate the spirits, or lure forth living witnesses, and of course a Lhankor Mhy initiate has so many truth finding spells as to dominate the situation. They should be strongly in demand for these situations in Glorantha, and can serve as a chance for those players who like those roles to strut their stuff. All the GM has to do is to understand that these are logical moves for the world the players inhabit, demonstrate that the NPCs have done sensible actions, but are at the end of their resources, and present a story to the PCs that takes twists and turns as they go through the logical actions of investigation within a magical realm.

More Solar Power! I'm back after a break. This time I support the Yelmalian pikemen with psoli archers, and throw in a unit of Yelorna unicorn cavalry. The archers are cretan archers, quite a few companies make these sorts of figures, and they look perfectly thematic with the Sun County theme. These are Crocodile Games Amazon Outriders. They were suggested way, way back on page 1. The Amazon raiders would have worked as well, but I figured that depicting them archers best suits their initial take on a conflict. I made the unicorn horns quite poorly out of green stuff. If I hadn't been time pressured I might have torn them off and done a re-do before painting. My daughter chose the silver color for the horns, but it works.

I went the other way and made all successful ties = both damage each other. Part of it was interpreting the wording, but also part of it was a desire to get spirit combat moving on faster, and to give the lesser POW spirits the ability to be dangerous en masse. There is a real reason to burn Rune points this way if you fall into a gave with seven POW 9 spirits. Not so much if they can't hurt a person with a success, most of the time. The same goes for Shamans vs. spirits -- the spirit armor spell suddenly looks very appealing for those extended romps in the spirit plane.

I'm in! 🙂

For day to day life sorts of things, I would recommend the comic: Age of Bronze, by Eric Shanower. It is the Trojan war, and is unfinished (after a decade!), but the first volume or two will accomplish the task of understanding life in a Bronze age world, complete with rituals, kings, passions, and trials. http://www.age-of-bronze.com/

First let me say that I am sorry for your loss. On the topic of a new book, I think that Northern Pamaltela might be the only thing not hemmed in with official projects. Although YGMV I have seen the depiction of the Lunars shift greatly over the years......from Roman-esqe thugs, to an Alexandrian system, to more of a Persian or even Assyrian look. Pamaltela is more of a blank slate in that regard, but it would be nice to (literally) see some representation. Who knows, maybe I can find some figures for it?

Purchased. Something in the bag now is 100x times better than a promise in 1980. 🤣

I can't believe you quoted my whole post and got this out of it. No one is there to "kill the players", and we are all gaming for fun. 😀