Dissolv

The art is fine. I refer to Armies and Enemies of Glorantha while trying to paint and purchase figures for Gloranthan gaming. My main complaint is lack of PoD, as I find that: 1) Google Drive frequently fails to load multiple pages, typically ones that I am interested in referencing. 2) Some words are repeated so frequently that they essentially defeat a search, especially on a smaller device. This isn't anything to do with the work itself, just my desire to have a real dead tree option, like I now have with Guide to Glamor. As a frequent user, I use the art as much as the descriptions, particularly while trying to match figure purchases with potential units.

It is extraordinarily hard to shoot while moving in real life. It's like running while holding a full mug of coffee and not spilling any. Ben Stoeger, a noted IPSC World Champion and multiple time USPSA National Champion is noted to be able to draw a pistol, and score a bullseye while running from rather close distances, 25 yards IIRC. This is rarefied air and with a modern weapon. There are multiple accounts from the American Colonial period of some Indians and backwoodsmen being able to not only shoot on the run, but load on the run as well! There are even people who attempt this on video, with some success, on You Tube. The average solider is utterly incapable of this feat. In RQ:G, this is one of those "break the rules" rewards that I would use as a benefit of a Heroquest. In fact that's a very easy to way to sum up my use of Heroquest rewards -- you can get things that you cannot get through strict adherence to the rules as written. So it is important to stick to the rules in the first place, to allow breaking those barriers to matter. If the players are "too special" because they are the players, I think it cuts into the meaning of things in the game. Basically they get a power boost in terms of Rune points, skills, etc., over the average schmoo, but if they want to actually and literally break the rules, then it's time to roll up the sleeves and do a heroquest. Just my take on this sort of thing. As an aside, I actually worked up an Advanced Runequest combat system for use with the original Questworld boxed set. It featured many "combat maneuvers" that could be learned from various societies, many secret, around Kanos. It was extremely popular with the players as it allowed non-magic solutions to be employed, which was a very big change from Glorantha, where the solution to more or less every problem is "more magic". This type of thing was exactly what the players could potentially have their characters learn to help distinguish them from the rabble, even highly skilled rabble. Joining a cult, becoming a priest, was no longer a long term necessity and a couple of the old timers were thrilled at the way it performed like a lower magic Conan setting, rather than the wild weirdness that is Glorantha.

My players are hitting this exact problem and they are pretty annoyed with it. I'm pretty sure that they are going to go out into the wilder world to fix it. My next session is going to include a set of potential tasks to undertake for cash (from nearby Jonstown), which also include a caravan travel option or two. Basically I am treating the home clan as a "cradle" for adventuring, but they price of the many benefits (free healing, ransom, tribal support) is a barter and favor economy.

ha ha, now I can't unsee that! OH YEAH!

@borbetomagnus Those look great! The hand painted runes really are something that I've been unwilling to do too much of, and you've got ten on the same guy!!! lol. It is striking just how different these figures look when painted by people with differing styles -- and also that they continue to hold up over all of these years as pretty much the best glorantha figures out there. Your basing makes most of them look like they are in the Big Rubble -- was that the goal?

These descriptions are very helpful.

My take on this is pretty much mostly a no. A big part of the whole breakdown of the Celestial Court happened when the various powers were used not just irresponsibly, but even against themselves. This was the oft repeated line where Acos rules against himself, Kargan Tor is called to face himself in battle, etc. Use of these powers in that way was what broke everything. Most of the current holders of those runes are newer gods, and they seem to be much less abstract, and more like a hyped up mortal. Basically, they react to their misuse -- and harshly. So the creative aspect is really dialed down within time. And that's the caveat to my general stance -- to make a new thing, or at least a new BIG thing, you need to be a firing on all cylinders hero -- at least in my Glorantha. It isn't that it can't be done, exactly, but that the barrier is high. Since this is the type of activity I generally reserve for a high powered, long-running campaign, I should have left around several Chekhov's guns for the players to exploit. A couple of times I got caught out, and quickly discovered Eurmal is always the answer when ad-libbing. But it is much, much more satisfying for a long running narrative hook to be pulled off the shelf from four months ago by a heavily engaged, thinking-cap-on player and be used for something like this. That's pretty much what I am looking for as a GM in this situation. I want a character who is powerful enough, has suffered the "Arkat grind" enough to have earned it, and the player has had the "eureka!" moment using information introduced within the campaign itself. Short of these things, I think the established order's barriers to such changes are too great.

Okay, pic dump time. I have two Yelmalian pike blocks completed. One is the Golden Shields, and the other, well, they are just Sun Dome Templars. The plain white shields are intentional. I wanted just "more bright" to shine through, and actually went back and touched up the whiteness after applying varnish. The Golden shields are using the Macedonian Royal guard box set, which is exactly the same figures as the regular Macedonian Phalanx boxed set, except that it has metal heads and shields. The pikes are indeed fragile, but do respond well to plastic cement glue. I repurposed a very old figure (I am thinking he was painted and used in gaming back in the 80's as a Priest. Another bonus figure from Warlord games is the Rune Lord. I also painted a couple of "loose" Beryl phalanx hoplites. These are for skirmish gaming or RPG purposes. The big guy will be the incarnation of Yanafil Tarnils. The figure is very much a kludge, but I gave it a shot. Same manufacturer as the "Orlanth" figure above. Also included is a werewolf that I somehow forgot to paint with the earlier Telmori batch, and my version of a spirit wolf. The final figure is a jack o'bear that I picked up very on when I decided to paint Glorantha figures. Extremely easy to paint, he just didn't the painting table for no particular reason.

Looking deeper at the Fireforge catalog, I note that the Byzantine foot does not have chain mail, either the spear man nor auxiliaries. These could be used for Glorantha figures very easily. I don't know exactly what troops I'll be modelling with these, but I plan to pick some up. https://fireforge-games.com/byzantines-25 Their Mongol cavalry could be Char-Un, and the Mongol Heavy Cavalry Lancers I posted the image of earlier. https://fireforge-games.com/mongol-horde-22

The art direction hasn't provided a clear enough place for me to land on. However: Or Sarmatians. Sarmatians are always my "go-to" for heavily armored, no chain mail, yet "not-Knight" ancient extra heavy cavalry.

Frozen II struck me as exactly the blueprint of a heroquest, honestly.

This has had a very big shift to my own understanding of what Lunars "look" and "feel" like coming back after 20+ years. Definitely a lot of Assyrian in the sense that they might armor anything, even the archers. Polyglot and held together only be constant success, like the Persians. Yet they are described as having a "Macedonian" style combined arms, yet using old fashioned Hoplites as some of their best shock troops. Orlanthi have always worked well as Thracian in feel, with some Celtic thrown in. Important to my own understanding of the game universe -- the armies are NOT well armored, even the Lunars. Hard Leather, Linen, and Cuirboilli are rampant. This was by no means made clear in the RQ2 days. To the OP's main point, an astonishing amount is still on track. You don't really need to bail on anything. If it works for your particular story, the rock on. YGMV.

Quite.

I did Ancient Greece run in Fantasy Europe in 3rd Edition. It was a diversion more than a campaign, but was very popular. Everyone already knew all the deities, and many of the heroic characters, including Chiron the Centaur. Most of them learned about the city states and their great rivalries. The campaign itself was noteworthy in that the main villain of the piece was actually the stable boy, and he ultimately "won" the campaign, by pinning a crime that he committed on the players, getting them exiled -- presumably to Persia.

This is why POD upfront matters to consumers. DriveThruRPG is just a different beast than Chaosium.

Thanks! I really appreciate the feedback. 😄 You can probably tell I was having fun with this one. The Hoplites are indeed Victrix Spartans. The sculpts are great, the price is excellent, and there is not "too much" detail on the figures -- sounds counter intuitive but figures fighting in formation with large shields often have most of the detail work totally obscured, mooting all the work you put into them. The one downside of Victrix is that the plastic they use seems fragile -- I snapped the spear of one figure while just reaching over to pick him up. Despite this, Victrix is still easily an A-, maybe more if you are basing and storing your miniatures as a unit, as I am. I've got a set of "Athenian" Victrix Hoplites and some good looking shield decals, so the next set may or may not be as close to the canon description in "Armies and Enemies". Based on a blogger's recommendation, I also ordered a box of Victrix's "Warriors of Carthage", but who knows when the heck that may get here, or what unit they will be used to represent. I've still got plastic Persians (defunct Wargames Factory) and Arabs (Gripping Beast) in the closet anyway. Lots of stuff to work up in front of them.

He is the "Of Gods and Mortals" Zeus figure. I saw him in my friendly local game store and snapped him up, but he's still available. 60mm tall and easy to paint, the color scheme is right from the book, but he REALLY needed the light blue tattoo scheme to not look horrible.

Okay, so I started on the Lunar Hoplites. First up are my versions of Beryl and Quartz Phalanxes. I've got five additional Beryl (light blue scheme) Hoplites based individually. Next up........What are you god of again? Muwhahaha!

Okay, we are finally getting somewhere. I'm not sure what hardware you guys all have that so enjoyable reading 600+ pages of PDF on, but my devices SUCK for doing so on. The computer is tolerable, but hard to transport around. Even putting aside the battery issues, it just isn't a good experience. And frankly there is a lot of demand in my family for those devices right now, school, girl scouts, all that jazz. Print on Demand is important to some of us. Thanks for this!

This one is good. I'm somewhat notorious in my gaming circle for sometimes popping out a very extended, nearly a campaign in its own right, Lewis and Clark style adventure. There are plenty of travel stories to lean on -- Around the World in 80 days, Little House on the Prairie (seriously, the chapter where Pa gets surrounded by 50 wolves without his gun, and then the wolves surround the house at night -- which doesn't have a door yet, had my kids' eyes popping out), Gulliver's Travels, Anabasis, heck, the Odyssey. The trick I found, was to make it arduous -- at LEAST six sessions, well planned terrain and NPC descriptions, a couple of scripted encounters and some long term concerns for the players to fret over (supplies, water, mcguffin safety, being found out, etc.) It has to take a lot of game time with lots of little and large problems popping up along the way, and no "time skipping". Basically video game style fast travel kills the spirit of the adventure. Even if no violence occurs, something must be felt to be happening, and some concern and problem needs to be present. Man vs. Nature is perfect for these interludes between "heroic" combat. At the end, the players *always* felt like they had been on an epic adventure, and often wound up with dramatically better characters through wholesale use of skills. And once the players learnt to use skills like Craft(wood) or Survival, they don't tend to go back. You start seeing plans like "we'll disappear into the mountains, they'll never be able catch us there, and we know how to live on the land -- they don't", or "I'll use the snare trap like that time in Tarsh. You buy time for me to devise it, and then don't forget to jump." The game changes after an adventure of that sort, and always for the better.

I voted 1613. However I have run even earlier, and if you want, you can go full Pendragon now, playing a multi-generational story that uses Argrath as a King Arthur like prop to rally the players around and introduce plot hooks. This is a great way to game, although Pendragon is a LOT more abstract. I find that the Runequest crunchy bits are important -- yes the game mechanics DO matter when telling the story. That makes the sessions generally cover less game time as there is a lot more planning, preparing, and plotting than ever there was in Pendragon. Since the individual sessions tend to cover less game time, I prefer long campaigns with the opportunity for many call back references. This also gives the players lots of opportunities to have their say in how the story goes, which may or may not be improved by the presence of Argrath. Sometimes it is better to make the players be Argrath (or they step up and do it themselves). Other times the story takes a turn and they wind up on a quest to return some hyena skin to deep in the wastes for three game years, only to wind up in Kralorela. Pushing the starting year back a scootch gives more time to allow the players to unknowingly "vote with their feet" on the most important issue for any Glorantha campaign set in the Hero Wars. Does the GM introduce Argrath and follow the script laid out in King of Sartar, or does this campaign vary? My first campaign started pre-Lunar invasion, and there was plenty of breathing room to introduce the world. My most recent fledgling campaign started in 1618, (A shout out here to Early Family history from Jonstown Compendium!) and the various passions almost pushed the players into be rebels. This is not bad in any way, but it is just a very different story set in the 1580's, for instance.

Purchased. Excellent, ty for the post!

Yeah, I kinda feel like the the old baseball quote on that one. "Ask a baseball question, get a money answer. Ask a money question, get a baseball answer." Mechanically --game mechanically mind you -- Yelmalio is just a second rate god for warriors or adventurers. He just doesn't offer anything other than "fighting in pike blocks", which you have to wonder, what does he have to do with anyway? Can't they form up without the correct sacrifices or something? And since the enormity of fighting by PC's is heroic in nature, as opposed to set-piece battles, is he simply not supposed to be a good god for player characters? Certainly it can be a fun arc to heroquest to try to make his cult better, maybe combine the Elmal aspects with the Yelmalio aspects for "Yelmalalio" or such. But if the GM wants to play it straight.......well........he offers next to nothing for his archery clientele, which is supposedly the other aspect of his fighting style. Actually not true -- he offers significant limitations over a wholly uninitiated archer. They can take firearrow at least, by far the most effective spirit magic spell once things get within effective range. He is clearly substandard for day to day adventuring. And yes, the Shield spell is vital for surviving serious encounters. If you are confronted with a Rune Lord Priest of Thanatar and his vile minions, you don't "save" rune points for a rainy day. This IS the rainy day, and dying with points left in the tank is not a good way to go out. Which character is the most vulnerable in this sort of do or die scenario? Any of them without shield. You simply have two good options for your first round. A spell like Lightning or Sever Spirit to blitz the big bad Rune Lord Priest, or Shield for the long game. Those with allied spirits may try both, or Shield and a buffing spell, like Truesword or Bladesharp. That's a common response as well. Yelmalio doesn't have either option. In fact he lacks a protective, an offensive, AND a self-buffing option. Pretty much a Yelmalio following character caught in that kind of a confrontation is looking at spirit magic. That in a nutshell is the problem. When it is do or die, you bail on the Rune magic of your war god and reach for the spirit magic (!!!!) This may be intentional -- not everything is supposed to be balanced maybe? But he simply isn't as good as the other possible options. Now one can argue that fishermen and housewives and hairdressers worship him, but the question remains -- why? Why would they? There are plenty, and I mean PLENTY of other spirits/heroes/demi-gods/gods to worship in Glorantha, so why follow this one? But that's a lore question. My main one is: why should player characters? Mine certainly don't, and I got into this game with Ruric Runespear and the Hoplite on the cover. I like the cult in general, event that he lost his fire Rune and is still kicking along at partial power. It adds character. I don't agree with many of the proposed solutions presented, but his appeal as written right now is very much built around the gift/geas being worth it to take him, and his simply don't stack up to Humakt's, while the geases are potentially quite rough. In short, he is someone you take because you want to role play a Yelmalio character. ANY other war god is a better choice for in game effectiveness at the tasks that players are supposed to lean on their divine patron for. That's just how he is, and he did take a step back even more in RQ:G with the loss of the sheild spell. That seems very apparent to me. Suggestion: Take this debate to Wind Words!!!!

Although the specific criticisms are debatable, the core question is how Yelmalio can be a war god when he provides no war magic is legit. "He organizes people to fight in pike formation" doesn't really cut it in Glorantha. Is he the god of Light or a god of war? He favors archery but provides no bonuses to it. Same with the spear and pike. Either he is a secondary god that players everywhere have rightly avoided (unless for RP reasons), or he needs *something*. A blinding ray or light or something. On the other hand, Elmal has been totally pumped up as a loyal, nearly unkillable, chaos facing bad-@$$ ever since King of Dragon Pass, and Six Ages: Ride like the WInd didn't exactly diminish him either! He beats up Shargash in one of the Heroquests, and this isn't the action of a lightweight. It isn't Yelmalio "whiners", it's that hard nugget of illogic that people are having a hard time with -- more Elmal/Yelmalio fall out I am afraid . The various proposed solutions are more about bridging that gap than specifically "Yelmalio needs to be better". Well, on second thought, he seems like he needs *something* to hang his hat on. A blinding Ray of Light, ability to see the truth (as per the myth), or even ability to survive wounds others might not, just.....something.

You are a Pavis Survivor trapped in Pavis at the time of the Troll Occupation. Your heroes have fallen, Balastar lies moldering in his barracks. What will you do to ensure survival in this post apocalyptic nightmare? Turn to Chaos? Cannibalism? Become a troll slave? Because the other humans are doing these things, and many not hesitate to sacrifice you......