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56 minutes ago, klecser said:

No, folks, Chaosium is not destroying your life with their decisions.

C’mon @klecser, that is ridiculous hyperbole. All I did was state that I’d be paying for something I already have. Mike’s reply made some good points about why I might want to do that. It’s still a disincentive for me though, as I own and have run Deadlight and have made my own tweaks to it. Chaosium is a company I am fond of and want to do well, and they’re doing a good job of that right now.  That doesn’t mean I have to like, support or buy into everything they do, and that’s fine because we all have different tastes. 

On 11/4/2019 at 9:03 PM, Mike M said:

the forthcoming revised new edition of Dead Light includes a new scenario called Saturnine Chalice.

Hang on. So if I've already bought Dead Light I'm going to have to pay for it again to get the new scenario? 

There's nothing specified in the rule book, but with attribute rolls having a max of 18 an attribute shouldn't be higher than 90. It is suggested that SIZ and INT have a min of 40.

Skills can also be spent on at will, but I like my players to bear in mind this rough scale:

So if a player wast to be 21 years old and have, say, 95% in chemistry, common sense says it ain't happening. Match the skill to the realistic experience of the character.

Assuming the investigator isn’t a psychopath, shooting another person in the head in such a manner is not something that comes easily to people. Imminent threat to ones own life might change that. I managed a similar scene by not letting the investigator shoot until they failed a sanity check,as they couldn’t do it in their right mind. This took them a couple of rounds and resulted in some loss of sanity. I also made the death of the target automatic. 

The player was a little disgruntled at the time, but we discussed it and he agreed it made sense, and it certainly added drama to the scene. 

1 hour ago, lordabdul said:

(or any game for that matter) available on it, so I wouldn't hold my breath. 

Sorry dude, can't let you get away with that. There's plenty of games available on the Mac app store (Categories: Games). Still far from the number of games available for Windows PCs, though, but developers tend to overlook the MacOS market and Apple struggle to get them interested. But TBF, if I was serious about playing games on my iMac, I'd use a VM and install Windows to run them on. 

53 minutes ago, Runeblogger said:

You're going to love this one-shot when it comes out in the Jonstown Compendium:

By the way, what title do you prefer?  The authors are undecided...

The Duck Bandit Gang sounds awkward to my ear. Yozarians Gang doesn’t convey the essence of duck, but the cover pic does. How about Dastardly Ducks? Yozarian’s Gang is my favourite though. 

8 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Avian Ducksberg (well?)

Terrific!

8 hours ago, seneschal said:

What I love about this is the lack of agenda.  These Ducks aren't warriors or outcasts or heroes.  They're just out for a good time together, with a pleasant lunch enjoyed along the way.  If only the Canadian geese that regularly invade my neighborhood were such decent fellows.

I think our merry band of ‘beakniks’ should be lead by Quack Kerouac. Their shtick is to regale friendly hosts with poetic tales of their exploits and the spiritual teachings they glean from them. These teachings are often troublesome to the local priesthoods, leading to the souring of their welcome, but moving on is what they are driven to do anyway. And so they happily proceed, ever onwards to the legendary endsville.

The lack of agenda, along with following a path by gut instinct, gives great opportunity for an episodic campaign, one where the beakniks are led to the next encounter as is the GM’s whim. Yet it will be an encounter coloured by the developing story, if not driven by it. There is a purpose to their journey, even if they are not aware of what it is, and as it is a migration, a time limit too. If they tarry too long they will develop an overwhelming sense of urgency that may turn destructive – whether through driving themselves too hard or violently removing any perceived obstacles in their way. 

Quack May become involved with Eillen Ginsbill* at some point on the journey. (* Not the best play on the Allen Ginsberg, I admit. I’m open to improvements.)

5 hours ago, seneschal said:

What other reasons can we come up with for our favorite waterfowl to be On The Road?

We appear to have overlooked one reason we see ducks travelling in our world — migration. The gang of ducks has been overcome by an urge to travel somewhere warmer for no better reason than it’s just what they do at this time of year. They don’t plan a route, they just set off trusting that their gut Instinct will lead them to the right destination,  never questioning the path it leads them on, prepared to face all the hardships and joys they may encounter on the way. And of course, they always travel in a wedge formation. 

18 minutes ago, klecser said:

Update: 

In prepping my game, I've found the text for Handout 3 to be very difficult to read due to the text size and my personal vision limitations. No offense intended to the artist/writers or Chaosium. In a game situation, there is always the chance that players get frustrated not being able to read text, especially tiny cursive text in a darkened room. I understand that there is some mystique to struggling to decipher clues, but sometimes it just leads to frustration. I typed out the text from zooming into the PDF to have handy as a backup if I see players getting frustrated. The only word that I couldn't make out or figure out from context clues was in the April 12th entry after Lousy. It looks like an -at at the end but I can't make out the first letter. I'm tentatively at "cat," as in "he's such a cool cat" but it doesn't seem to fit. Suggestions are appreciated.

Looks like ‘Lousy rat’ to me. 

I agree that handout is not the easiest read, though as handwriting fonts go it works well. Thanks for the transcript. I usually rewrite such things and print them out on suitable note paper, so that’ll save me some typing. 

It looks like only the Pendragon and CoC scenario have been made available so far. Go the Chaosium blog page: it looks like they’re making an entry for each  scenario as it’s released. I’m sure the others will be along soon. 

3 hours ago, lordabdul said:

LOL what kind of an expression is that?

One not to be confused with the dog’s dinner,  the dog’s life, nor it’s antonym, the dog’s bollocks. 

Fair enough. Thanks for the reply. That’s a shame, but I understand your reasoning. 

Have you considered collating them into one volume? I’d love to have them in one or two nice hardbacks to go alongside my other Chaosium books. Having a bunch of individual copies at PoD quality doesn’t appeal. Of course, I appreciate there needs to be a demand to make it worthwhile. 

‘Extra-terrine creature”

And in an innocent typo lies the seed for a truly horrific scenario. What is the celebrity chef encouraging people to layer into their terrines that drives them to madness? What Eldritch creature has fallen into the machinery at the factory and been inadvertently added to the terrine? Whatever it is, it’s determined to reassemble itself, with dire consequences for those who’ve innocently eaten it with their dinner. What’s causing the spate of gory deaths in the city? Forensics are baffled and are insisting that the deaths were caused by an exit wound from the stomach, but they can find no  evidence of an entry wound. What was it that slithered past the butler as he rushed towards the screams coming from the dining room? Whatever it is, terrestrial or extra, you can bet your life, if you dare, that it’s now sorely riled and most certainly very, very anti-terrine. Someone is going to have to pay for this meal from the stars. 

Now that’s a duck mini I could get behind. I saw some on a current KickStarter that are too medieval for my tastes, so don’t really fit Glorantha. That said, I’d to see a duck’s webbed feet on a mini, or at least see them in flared boots reflecting the shape of their feet, but that’s a minor complaint; one doesn’t notice such things in the midst of a minis melee. 

2 hours ago, Jeff said:

It was a strange review IMO. I made a very deliberate decision not to include Pamaltelan or Jrusteli or even Teshnite/Kralorelan monsters unless they are likely to appear in the "core lands". And other creatures he seemed upset about not appearing may not actually exist in Glorantha.

I too have no problem with this approach. It makes sense to focus your efforts on the areas of Glorantha for which material is being produced. And also you need to save some material to go in the (hopefully) inevitable supplements for different locations. Perhaps in a few years there might be an argument for a grand Bestiary to collate all added creatures into one book, much like the CoC Grand Grimoire of spells, but it’s not necessary now. 

The reviewer is right on one thing though – it can be hard to find a creature if you don’t know what section it’s in. My only plea for a future reprint is to fill out the ToC with the monsters in each section. I know there’s an index, but it’s easier to go from the front, for us righties anyway, though left handers may have a different opinion. Oh, and the cover is a bit dark which doesn’t make the most of the lovely detail in the image, which is hardly a problem. 

Who better to advise you than the game's creator

12 minutes ago, Morien said:

Amen to that. My wife just commented on that the other day that one can live next to a famous site their whole lives, and it is only when some friends come over that you get to see it as well, acting as their local guide.

Yep, exactly that. What some the places around here (Dorset, UK) do is give you a ticket that can be reused for a year. For once marketing came up with something useful – it certainly encourages me to take visitors to places if I don't have to pay again.

Pleased you had a great time, and it makes a change to hear our trains complimented. Now, I must confess you’ve inspired to me pull my finger put and get up to Old Sarum. It’s ridiculous that I haven’t visited it as it’s only an hour’s drive away, and especially as I’ve driven past it often enough. As ever, we often don’t get around to visiting the things under our noses.

I fell down the rabbit hole a bit and stumbled upon this rather evocative piece

and that led to this delightful bevy of Ernalda priestesses that are clearly blessing the fields 

This has been listed already, I think, but I'll add this version at it shows the instrument being played: live performance of 'Hymn to Nikkal

And these nordic lurs, which I'd seen pics of but not heard before, are particularly intimidating. The sound of an advancing Orlanthi warband, of the oncoming storm.

2 hours ago, Marty Jopson said:

The rule set was also seen as overly complex and simulationist for our play style. Runequest was rejected. 

I can see why they would think that, I confess to not having worked through the whole rulebook yet myself and, for example, am frankly not that interested in sorcery, for which reason I will steer my players away from it. There are a lot of elements to the rules, but the same can be said of D&D – there's so many class traits, spells, monster specific rules, etc. that it's impossible to track them all and something is always forgotten in play. I guess one advantage of D&D rules wise is it starts simply and the complexity develops over time as they level up.

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Instead we are first having a gonzo break and I will run a spot of 5e DnD partly for my son who wants to have a go at the system. 

We are playing D&D5e at the moment as my players wanted to try it, and TBF it's a cracking iteration.  Even the initial doubter is now saying how much he's enjoying it. Personally, I've had enough now – The Lost Mine of Phandelver campaign is good, but it does go on somewhat. I'm sure you will all have a good time with 5e.

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…I tried to get across my own enthusiasm for the setting - but that was a mistake as it just made it seem daunting. … Maybe just running them through the quick start adventure with no other background would have worked but that was specifically not what they like doing (they like making characters in a setting they relate to). 

You have made me wonder if I've fallen into that trap, waxing too lyrical about Glorantha. But I have also sold it to my players as something which can be episodic with fairly self-contained adventures, much like Call of Cthulhu, and as such we can drop in and out of it rather than be committed for six months (which I feel has happened with our D&D). 

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So what have I learnt from this? Maybe, just maybe, Glorantha is not the best sales pitch for Runequest. 

This sound odd to me, but then for me the two are synonymous. Runequest without Glorantha is Mythras, I guess. When I got back into gaming I looked at RQ6/Mythras, but without Glorantha it just wasn't RQ for me. Of course, we all have different tastes, the world would be a far less rich place if we didn't.

9 minutes ago, nclarke said:

The OP is probably not used to a stick shift so trains is probably safer.

I did consider that when I posted, so checked his profile and it says Helsinki, so though I’m not familiar with Finnish driving preferences, I would imagine they use stick shift given it’s the European preference. It’s always poss to hire an automatic, though it does cost a bit more, which is why when I’m abroad I revert to stick shift despite preferring auto – saves a few pennies and keeps my hand, or rather my left foot, in practice. 

3 hours ago, Morien said:

 Thing is,  neither one of us wishes to drive on the left-side traffic, since we have no experience in it.

From my experience (as a Brit) of driving in Europe It really doesn’t take long to get used to it. If you have a hire car you’ll be on the correct side of the car, which helps you adjust. After bashing the door with your hand a few times when going to change gear, you’ll soon learn to use your other hand. I’d say it’s a useful skill to have, but then that’s more relevant to us left side odd balls than you righties.