creativehum

Per the story above, somewhere around here you'll find a list of four things that make RQG different than many other RPGs. One of those things is combat. I would take the time to lay out those four differences to make sure the Players understand and are on board with that this game is going to be. For myself, as a GM, I see myself as a bit of a host, setting the table for the evening's entertainment, if you will. There will be plenty of surprises... but I try to reveal the fundamental ("We're having fish tonight") so everyone knows what they're getting into. I would never spring the combat of RQG on a group of people without explaining the edges of where combat can go. If they choose to ignore my little introduction, that's there business. But simply springing RQG's brutal system on them without warning and details, knowing how many different people carry so many different expectations from different RPGs? I'd consider that rude.

There were five players. Three of them had played in Glorantha before (Hero Wars/HeroQuet) and so had some familiarity with it. Two were new to the setting. For the session I told a brief introduction about the world of Glorantha from the Orlanthi point-of-view. That is, that once there was only earth and sky, and that all was fixed and nothing could change, and there was no room for people. But Orlanth rose and pushed the Sky up, creating room between Ernalda (the earth) and Yelm (the sky) so there would be room for people, and air to breath, and things were no longer fixed but people could have lives and make the lives they wanted. I told them that Orlanth married Ernalda, and the Orlanthi are people or the soil and air. That they feel the air around them and in their lungs, and the soil at their feet, and they value the world -- the physical world -- in a way that we do not. The elements of the world feed their spirit and give them life, and so they give thanks to the earth goddess and the god of air, and in turn the gods of the The World -- the world of soil and air and storms and rain protect them. I said the Orlanthi love life, love the world. I told the Players tha "cult" comes from "cultivate" and it is in cultivating their attention with the world... to love tilling the soil, to pay attention to the air they breath, to stand out in the rain as the Storm God washes them is to love the world and love their gods and give thanks every day for the blessings they receive. I said the Orlanthi have fought for generations to protect the world. The fought against Chaos which set out to unravel the world generations ago. And had fought against the Red Moon, which rose into the sky only a few hundreds years ago. The Red Moon and the Lunar War sought to trick people... to make them think that Chaos could be controlled and balanced by clever word games and games of cleverness. But it was all a lie, because the people of the Red Moon, in their devotion to Chaos, wanted us to all be one thing, and not ourselves. They wanted us not to love our children, nor love the world, or the earth or the air or the rain, because to them all of these things that mattered were nothing but illusion. By their reasoning our wives and husbands were but illusions, our children were illusions that had to be shattered. Our love of moist soil at our feet was an illusion, our love of air in ou lungs was an illusion. And if the Red Goddess and her followers won, they would take away the earth, take away the air, and we would have no lives, and no children, and no world, and no love, because it is with each other -- you to I, not as one thing -- that love exists. And they said there was no you, and no me, only us, and so love did not exist. And so we fought. And we won. And we are the Orlanthi and we saved the world. Because that is what Orlanth taught us to do, and so we do it. So I said something like that. It seems maybe like a lot, but I told it as directly as I wrote it above, like a storyteller telling a just-so story of the world. Which seemed to anchor everyone in the kind of mythical logic and sense of pride they should have in their people and their tribe. I then had each player read along the section where the PC "speaks" in first person from the pamphlet. This tied them to the setting details and the history I had just told. And then I read the introductory material from the QuickStart that leads into the adventure.

I ran Broken Tower for my friends at a local convention and they had a blast. It is really well designed to introduce new rules and concepts in deepening layers as the scenario progresses. It introduces a lot of the cultural and magical setting of Glorantha in digestible chunks. I consider it rock solid. If you are interested, as play aids, I made Player Character Pamphlets that you can download from the download section. You might find them helpful. Some people balk at the notion of a 20 page pamphlet as a character sheet. But what can I say? Everything the player is going to for the character, from attributes to attacks to descriptions of the PC's key runs, to each spell the PC can cast is right there. All I can say is they worked for my Players. Please note that in the Harmast is listed has having Passage. But the RQG says Passage requires Lock. And Harmast doesn't have Passage. I haven't had time to look into this or what to do about it, so its' still there. You can strike it out, or give Harmast Lock.

I said to some friends a few months ago that I don't think Glorantha could be properly portrayed until printing technology advanced to make a color-heavy rulebook from a small press publisher possible.

Thanks!

Is there any way to know when the second printing is the printing available for purchase?

One key alteration for me: In KAP 5.0 the rule that awarded Glory equal to the value any Trait or Passion at 16+ was dropped. In KAP 5.1/5.2 the rule was reinstated. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is as it should be!

Actually, that's not how Special Crushing Damage works. Which is my point. And Impaling and Slashing Special Damage has qualifiers on which damage elements are doubled and which aren't. I appreciate you are satisfied with the what he said. On the other hand, you took what he said and came up with a reading of the Crushing rules that runs counter to what is actually in the rules.

I know this reveals an OCD I never knew I possessed... but Jason's statement is incorrect. The phrase ins't a clumsy way restating the rules. It mistakes the rules for Special Damage wholly. If one looks at the sidebar which defines Special Damage, and breaks out the three ways Special Damage works for three respective weapon types, one finds that trying to sum up the rules in this manner ignores the rules. Some dice are rolled twice, others are not, and Crushing Damage doesn't double any damage at all. The game establishes a technical term ("Special Damage") and all that had to happen was to use that term consistently so that anyone using the rules would know immediately what the text was supposed to mean. What gets to me is not the errors at this point. (There will be errors.) It is Team: Chaosium's inability so say, "Yeah, wow. That's a fuck up. Sorry about that. We should have done better. We'll get on it. That's some sloppy writing there." The errors are one thing. The inability of the team responsible for the book to look at the work and see what is right in front of their eyes is the part that is driving me nuts.

🤣

Someone just pointed out to me that KAP 5x introduces British Christianity as a set of Virtues and bonus distinct from Roman Christianity. In 3rd edition there was simply Christianity, with one set of Virtues and one bonus. Even in 3rd edition's Knights Adventurous, whcih goes into detail about different types of Christianity, there is still only one set of Christian Virtues and one bonus. The British Christianity makes it easy to hit both the British Christian Virtues and get the Chivilary bonus. With the original CHristian bonus Chivalry is harder to attain. I think this change in the rule might have something to do with why Greg thought he had to make Chivalry harder. For myself, having been reminded of the rules from 3rd on this point, I will stick with those. I like the idea of not only ideals clashing with harsh reality, but ideals clashing with each other. Which solves the conundrum for me.

A clarification 110 pages later. Because different magics work different ways (a strength of the game, as far as I'm concerned) one can read the rule on p. 194, and assume the notation on p. 193 does not apply. In fact, one needs only look at this thread to see exactly that happen. And for obvious reasons. Depending on which page your gaze last fell upon when looking something up, you might, or might not have that clarification in your head. My point isn't that many, many rules aren't explained in the text eventually. Or ambiguities and contradiction within specific passages can't be sifted through after several readings and re-readings, with a player making a final call as best he can. Anything can be sorted out over time. My point is: Why the eventually? Why is the sifting required? I can do it. But I stand by my statement: It's a pain in the ass.

Right. The rule is unambiguous on p. 314 The rule found on p. 194 is also unambiguous. The two unambiguous rules contradict each other. i know I'm being a pill about this... but this is a pain in the ass.

I guess? But what then of the sentence d( quoted? At what point do we know the intent and phrasing of these rules? I'm not saying you are wrong. I'm saying i have no idea which is right. (So... hello Pendragon! Good to see you again, you lovely and well written rulebook!)

It takes place on SR 1 of the round per the answer Jason gave in the RQG Core Rules Question thread above. Does this mean they don't need to be prepared for 5 SR? Does this mean they don't go off later if boasted with Magic Points? I assume from the phrasing they don't need to prepared and there is no extra SR for boosted MPs. But I'm reaching a point of fatigue on sorting out these issues.

Thanks for the reply. As for rolling vs. allocation, yes, the default changed. But I'm not seeing much of a change there. I keep hearing there's some sort of big change about Squire expirence between one edition or another.... but I keep not seeing it. That doesn't mean it isn't there. Simply that I haven't found it yet. And as for the "Books"... for my own needs, the Book of Knights & Ladies and Book of Battle are all I'm really paying attention to right now. Anything the moves us into a lot of economics isn't something I envision for the kind of play I want to run. So the lower half of your post is full of things I know other people care about.... but it is extraneous to the rules of KAP as far as I'm concerned. (I'm one of those weird people who thinks a) core rules should provide a game that works and no other book are needed; and b) supplement are there to use as a person wants, and are not required to play the game or are assumed to be part of the core rules as soon as they are published.)

I thought the SR in melee was the order of the combatant's most effective strike. There are all sorts of bits of footwork, feints and stuff, but only one blow is going to be landed, and if I am quicker than you (in any number of ways that keep my SR low) then I can kill you before you land your effective blow on me. I might be parroting the "official line." But that's simply how I saw the mechanics in play when I read the book.

Did anyone say it was in KAP1? For what its worth, the big difference in KAP1 and later editions the mechanical benefits involved: KAP1: Later editions: So, in part Greg was reacting to the fact that there was a solid mechanical advantage offered in later editions at the same "cost" of the first edition. As for which requirement/model to use, I think it comes down to how important the group/GM wants Chivalry to be, how hard they want it to be for their setting, and what it means to them.

Can you talk more about this? Except for a few subtle points, as far as I can tell everything in KAP has been rather consistent going back to one. Languages were dropped from the 1st edition in all later editions, which is the big change from that one. And FYI: 2nd edition was announced, but never published. So there is no second edition. Third edition put play directly in Arthur's realm and so the starting year was 531 (I believe) with Cymric Christian knights. The supplement Knights Adventurous expanded character creation to all sorts of lands and faiths. Fourth addition was 3rd edition stapled with Knights Adventurous, along with the magic system for PCs. (And I mean, pages from 3rd and Knights Adventurous were simply copied and pasted into the new book.) Fifth edition brought the assumption of play back to 485 and limited choices of knights in the core rules. But The Book of Knights and Ladies expanded character creation again as Knights Adventurous did for the 3rd editions rules. But if there a lot of ingesting changes between the editions I'd like to hear more about them. (In fact, I started a thread on this top here.) Also, can you tell me more what you meant by this: "that actually appear to be the SAME game version, but different methods" And can you tell me what you meant by "too simplistic, some are too complicated and some are simply too strange." (This may be more work than its worth, so I understand. But I'd love to hear more about the "strange" part.) Finally, yes... I'll set the level at whatever I want for the Chivalry Bonus. The point is that most knights are going to have a few high Traits that fit the Chivalric bonus, which means that if the average is 13.33 (😉) then some Traits could hang out at 10 or less. And that would kind of suck for someone getting a magical bonus. I think Greg brought up a good point. I'm wondering if he ever settled anything... or if the next printing of the game might reflect his thoughts on the matter.

Yes. After five years of thinking about it Greg might have changed his mind... which would be why 5.2 kept the 80 requirement. Which is why I'm asking about this. I'd love to know for sure. As to the second point, Greg discusses it in the thread I linked to. He wrote in part: "Do not think that everyone in the literature who calls himself chivalrous is in fact chivalrous, especially by KAP standards." Again, this is seven years ago. And we can't ask him now.

Yup. After poking around a bit I realized this. And have posted a comment over at Nocturnal pointing out that a) Greg's reworking of the rule makes a lot of sense b) if Chaosium is going to be distributing the game next year it would be awesome if someone made the small adjustment to bring the rules into alignment.

You are the best. Thanks!

Yes. A lot of work! Again, I wasn't expecting such a thing to be lying around. There are a few quotes I want to pull for a blog post about the need for making your Glorantha YOUR GLORANTHA. But I'll dig them out with a little bit of work.

In this thread over at the Nocturnal Pendragon Forum, Greg Stafford announced that the requirements for The Chivalry Bonus have been wrong in each edition from the beginning. Having 6 Traits total 80+ allows the Traits to average 13, and he thinks that is too low for such a vital quality for the game. He announced the requirement should now be 96, requiring 16 or better in the Chivalric Traits. (Note that this makes it hard for Pagans to get the bonus. Greg said this was exactly as it should be. You can go check the thread to see the back and forth on this.) The thing is, Greg made that announcement in December 2011. Five years later, in 2015, KAP 5.2 is published. It still has the Chivalry Bonus requirement set at a total of 80 for Chivalric Traits. (Note that the fillable KAP Character Sheets Nocturnal created reflect the change to 96.) As Greg noted in the linked thread, KAP is always a work in progress for him, and so he might have switched his mind and decided it was 80 again. I have no idea. I was wondering, especially with Chaosium about to bring KAP 5.2 to print next year, if there is any official word on this? Also: who is the person to ask now?

When Chaosium begins distributing King Arthur Pendragon next year, would it be possible to have maps of England and Logres, and the such, in all the variety of material currently available for Glorantha? I'd love to have a big, gorgeous version of the Pendragon Player's Map at the end of the 5.2 rules printed on fabric to set under the table for play. I'm sure there's more content to create for Glorantha, but I'm sure some lovely items could be created for Pendragon as well!