creativehum

Since we're all going all in now...

I find the argument "When we invade your lands we'll let you keep the parts of your culture and faith that don't interfere with our cultural and theological imposition" to be kind of a weak-sauce argument on behalf of the Lunars.

1 hour ago, SilverSeraph said:

Will any of the classic titles be getting any kind of print option?

Do you mean like KAP 3rd and things like that? Or something else?

I'm inclined to listen to people smarter than me on these matters than me to adjust timelines as needed or as useful.

Dates might be adjusted from the published books with hindsight. Or maybe have two timelines listed for accuracy: the dates as published, and the dates as revised with hindsight.

1 hour ago, Nick Brooke said:

You have the chronology slightly wrong. Sandy came to the UK in 1986 and told us that American gamers with no previous exposure to Glorantha thought the Lunars were the setting's good guys. (Well-informed Brits were interested to hear this, as obviously the Lunars are baddies). This was a few years before the first issue of Tales of the Reaching Moon, which is the first explicit example of "Brits falling for this nonsense" (that is, if you read David Hall's editorials with a profound and inappropriate lack of irony) that comes to mind. Hope this helps.

Hey, hey... I meant no offense to Brits. And as far as timelines go, you are deep into weeds of RuneQuest's history that I know nothing about. I came to Glorantha by way of Hero Wars. So a lot of the ins-and-outs of 80s and 90s publishing, editorial, arguments and more is legend to me. 

My timeline of the events under discussion has been based entirely off this thread!

A couple of pages back...

On 5/26/2020 at 4:03 PM, lordabdul said:

I heard the story from different sources (mostly some interviews with Sandy Petersen) that Greg and the other mostly-north-american designers were favouring the Orlanthi in the early days (if not by "preferring" them, at least by having planned a whole bunch of books on them), but after travelling to the UK and meeting the British fans, they were amazed to see people who were pro-Lunar even though they read the same books as the US fans... Greg then allegedly decided to keep any future writing more "neutral" than what they had planned.... I'm not sure if I'm phrasing this all correctly and conveying the information accurately, but that's the general idea from what I understand.

And then you replied to that post:

On 5/27/2020 at 12:19 AM, Nick Brooke said:

The way I remember hearing it from Sandy Petersen (at Games Day 1986 in London) was that players who were new to Glorantha with RQ3 and read through the Gods of Glorantha (1985's "Red Box") What the Priest Says narratives came away thinking the Lunars were the "good guys" and the Orlanthi were some terrible bunch of wreckers. (Because they didn't have the WB&RM / Wyrms Footnotes / Cults of Prax / Pavis box hinterland, and didn't know how the game had usually been played before).

So I thought you were confirming Lord Abdul's take on the story. I thought the "players who were new to Glorantha with RQ3 and read through the Gods of Glorantha" you referenced were the British players Lord Abdul had referred to. I see now this was not the case! (Please keep in mind, again, all matters of RQ2, RQ3, different publishers across The Atlantic, and so on, is something I have no solid reference to. I'm aware of all of it -- but mostly I'm digging into Glorantha itself.)

So, again, apologies for the error on my part.

With that said, the Voices section of Gods of Glorantha seems to go out of its way to favor the Lunars and contort the Orlanthi!

It is fascinating how a few choice words and images as a starting point can often influence the direction one's thinking goes on in the long term.

Thank you for the clarification!

19 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Thank you! I made it this morning, to delight you. The art is from the 1985 Voices: cool modern vaguely sci-fi levitating buddhist chick on the (political) left, who you'd love to hang out with, and some sinister shifty guy who looks like he's about to murder his uncle in a minor Shakespeare play vanishing into the shadows on the (far) right. 

The more I think about Nick's (accurate) summation of the Orlanthi image, the more I am struck by how utterly WRONG it is.

The top of the Orlanthi pantheon revolves around Air, Earth, Movement, Life... and we've got this dude twisting up on his own spine, trapped in what seems to be some sort of cave!

The whole image is clearly part of some Lunar propeganda program. No wonder the Brits fell for this nonsense!

@sirlarkins I too would be interested in at least a general sense or general direction of how the game might be shifting. Presentation? Rules? Learning toward more historical and fiddley bits, as 5th edtion did in the supplements?

24 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

Thank you! I made it this morning, to delight you. The art is from the 1985 Voices: cool modern vaguely sci-fi levitating buddhist chick on the (political) left, who you'd love to hang out with, and some sinister shifty guy who looks like he's about to murder his uncle in a minor Shakespeare play vanishing into the shadows on the (far) right. 

Nick, I think we're all aware that predatory cults use enticing women to lure potential victims.

On 6/8/2018 at 6:23 AM, Rick Meints said:

I have never heard of such a list, but it would be quite useful. Are you seeking the date each scenario is set in? Are you asking for the years/ages covered in historical material? 

For example, the RQ2 rulebook has a timeline that ends at 1613. You could say that it is set in 1613+, yet it also covers information from 1100-1613.

I forgot about this thread!

@Rick Meints, to answer your question, I'm looking for the dates scenarios are set and the key information in a product that is covered for contempoary play.

To use your example, RQ2 has history spanning 500 year... but for my purposes the key is it brings us up to date for the year 1613. 

A lot of Gloranthan products have information going back years, if not sometimes centuries, but each is usually anchored in "the now" of a particular year or years. What I'm looking to build is a Timeline of "the now" for each product. Clearly @Corvantir already did a lot of the leg work on this.

My goal might be to add in non-official stuff like Tarsh in Flames and so on. (I'm not a canon-head. I'd be looking for inspiration to steal from along the timeline as my desires demand.)

5 minutes ago, Brootse said:

It's from the RQ3's Gods of Glorantha.

The two images are from that book, yes. 

I was asking specifically about the two images being placed side-by-side, with colored letters identifying them as "Good Guys" and "Bad Guys." 

(It certainly isn't in the edition of of Gods of Glorantha I'm looking at.)

Thanks for all the replies so far!

@Nick Brooke that's fascinating about how folks reading the Gods of Glorantha (1985) drew their loyalties from the "Voices" section of that set. Without greater context I can easily see how it could happen. The Lunars are urban, forward looking. Meanwhile, the first word that describes the Orlanthi is "Barbarians" -- a word that is definitely how the Lunars see them -- but not how they see themselves and definitely not what they are from an objective point of view.

Where did the image you posted come from? It's hilarious. 

I have my own thoughts on the matter, of course. But for the time being I'm still curious about what Greg might have said on these matters or other thoughts. (My big overview: "Extremism is probably not good." But, like some others, I'm not trusting the side that is so confident in itself that it feeds countless people to a giant bat. I think the Lunars are very modern in their hubris and arrogance, and so modern folk can lean into them with more ease!)

There might well not be an answer to this, but I thought I'd ask since it's been at the back of my mind for some time.

I know that most of the material presented for Glorantha is usually/often presented in a subjective manner from within the point-of-view of specific cultures within Glorantha. This means the Orlanthi trash the Lunars and praise their own culture and vica versa for the Lunars.

I also know that different people have their own takes on these two cultures, usually siding with one over the other. (As much as one can side with fictional cultures of a mythical world!)

I was wondering, however, what Stafford thought of the Orlanthi and the Lunars? Did he have a preference? They are obviously both set up with virtues, but also loaded with problems. Did he ever talk plainly and openly about what he thought of them? Did his view shift on them over time? (I'm sure the answer is "YES, DAMMIT!" to that question.)

I'd love to know if there are any specific sources where he wrote about these matters.

Thanks!

I've always wanted to bring HeroQuest Glorantha to my group. I think building a template for a character sheet like this might be the easiest way to sell it!

Thanks!

@sirlarkins Thoughts on the upcoming changes for KAP6?

Hi @Rick Meints,

Can you talk at all about what sorts of changes are planned for KAP6? In general or specifically?

6 hours ago, Luca Cherstich said:

@creativehum

OneNote seems simple and fine and possibly worth my time (especially since it seems to be way safer to trust than other platforms), although maybe it requires more time to build the whole thing and it is less dynamic, lacking tags and similar things....however, I'm frankly also considering it.

OneNote supports Tags.

Another option: Microsoft OneNote.

It can be shared like a wiki. 

You can build several subjects and subjects.

You can past as many images as you want into a file. You can paste maps. Tables. All sorts of stuff. 

it is incredibly easy to set up and continue to build.

Here are two screenshots of a OneNote KAP Notebook that I set up (but haven't used yet)

You can see that I have a Group labeled Maps, and within that a Section for Salisbury, and that I have selected the Page continuing Travel Times map from within that.

Here is the same Notebook, but this time showing elements within the Group for Player Knights. Each Player gets his Section. And then, within each Section each knight/family gets Pages for enemies, land, family and so on. (There is no information yet since we haven't started playing yet.)

You can also see that for Annual Events Log I have created a Section for each Phase. Within each section there is a page for each year.

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

The Battle System in the rules was never about who won the battle (players couldn't even  affect the outcome of the battle normally, as the battles were scripted) and that only came around in the Book of Battles. So Jeff's statement there doesn't make sense.

I think you need to listen to the video once more. Jeff is agreeing with your point. He is saying Greg finally accept that the focus needs to be on what the PCs do, and the system should lean into that. It is about Greg (apparently) finally accepting this and building up the PC material.

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

And dividing the GPC into four books in almost certainly going to end up costing GMs more than the GPC.

From what I've read on this board (and, in fact, on this thread) people want more (a lot more) material for the campaign in the later phases of the game. The only way to do all that and put it in one book is to make that single book prohibitively expensive. 

Diving it up allows each of the phases to be as rich in material as anyone could dream of, with GMs either focusing on one or two books (as a lot of people will, since most people don't need or want to play through 80 years of gaming), or pick up all four books, spread out over a two year period of purchases. It seems like a feasible model given the peculiar nature of the Great Pendragon Campaign. 

3 hours ago, 7Tigers said:

Curious people about 6th Pendragon Edition should listen from 31rst minutes of yesterday Lore of Glorantha with Sandy Petersen and Jeff Richard video:

 

I love that even after all these decades Greg was still trying to get the Battle System right. (I emailed back and forth with him about the 3rd. edition Battle System when it came out. He wasn't satisfied it's it as soon as it was published. It's been a long journey!)

The idea of having four separate timeframe/setting books does make a heck of a lot sense, really. Different people are going to have different ideas of what Arthur "means" to them... and the ability to pick and choose what to focus on seems like it might be a winner.

I have enjoyed the work of the writer/director who made it. 

This summer a film version of Sir Gawain & The Green Knight is coming out

We're wrapping up a campaign with my Monday Night Group. (We're currently playing the compelling module Silent Titans using the Into the Odd rules.) 

We might continue playing Forbidden Lands. Or jump back into the D&D 5e game one of our players has been running with great delight. Or we might play something else.

Since I'm itching to run Pendragon I checked to see what folks thought of Arthurian legend as a backdrop for a game. Apparently some of them only experienced Arthurian legend through some cartoon about high school football players who get transported back to old England, become knights, and fight Morgan le Fay. And I was like, "Yeah. Not that." He had not idea it was more about conflicts between choices and family and the fall out of lingering bad blood and histories.

So I whipped up a pitch document that sets out what I think are the interesting bits that matter to me... that is, the way I'd focus the game. I'll mail it out to my player when it is time to pick the next game. 

Here is an image of the first page. Here's a link to the doc.

12 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

The whole situation is just ambiguous enough...

Which, like Cerdic and countless other examples from the GPC, is exactly as it should be. The Players (and by extension the PKs), need at some point to make their own choices about who to back, how to act, what is right, what is knight, what is a good king, how to use their authority and power, how to interact with those without power, and so on.

There are assumptions of law and custom... and then there are interpretations and application of those laws and customs... and then there is rejection of those laws and customs. All of this is possible by various NPCs -- and by the PKs as well. 

First, thanks for pointing me to the name of the husband. Greatly appreciated.

Second, I have Lordly Domains, and I will definitely look at it. But I'm not going to try to assume I need to square the element in one supplement with the elements of another.

Third, my inclination is to build the situation along the lines of what @Atgxtg proposes: That the Countess' husband died at the feast of St. Albans. I like how it echoes the situation in Sarum; I like how it nails down how the loss of the nobility of Britain is causing havoc. (It is what I assumed had happened before I read the passage @Morien quoted.)

As for the claims the brothers make about title being ridiculous.... well, the text of the GPC makes it clear the brothers make ridiculous claims. Note that their claims are not objective reality. That the brothers, in the wake of Uther's death and lack of order in Britain make claims that would not otherwise be supported is great in my view. There are rules. And then there are the people who follow them or break them.

I think the Countess has a son, and he should be heir. He is young, must be protected, but also must become a knight. There is plenty of Adventure material there. 

The brothers are saying they don't care. "Men are what matters, not boys. "Aagain, and echo of Sarum, and later Arthur. This flaunting or tradition and law is exactly what would want. They might be knights, but they are bad knights. They are perfect foils for the PKS. If the knights decided to take this problem on it will provide Adventures for several years worth of play in the Anarchy Phase.

Thank you for all the help.

Question:

One of the smart things about the structure of the GPC -- as far as I can tell so far -- is that Greg keeps expanding the geography of the PKs concerns. In the Uther Phase the Players get a handle on their own little world in Salisbury with a few trips a afield. There is time spent in Cornwall for instance. Then, in the Anarchy Phase, he offers up deeper information about Rydychan and Cambria. This keeps the campagin both novel (new things!) and manageable (new things introduced over time!). These elements also serve as models for the GM to follow: "Here is an example of how to build conflict and rivalries in a neighboring county."

The Anarchy Phase chapter has information about the county of Rydychan and introduces several NPCs for the PKs to interact with.

The Countess of Rydychan, widowed, is now facing off against three foul knights who are brothers. (My plan is to introduce the characters in this section during the Uther Phase -- most likely at Madoc's funeral at Stonehenge or Uther's wedding. It could be simple or complicated: seeing the Countess with her (still alive at the time) husband, dealing with the three brothers being jerks, and so on.)

Here is the introduction of the Countess:

Quote

Countess of Rydychan

The Countess of Rydychan is very attractive, a desirable heiress (though she is worth no Glory or income if she does not have her lands). She is a middle-aged woman, still quite pretty after all the years and children and sorrows. She has been married twice, and borne a daughter by the rst and a son by the second, but both husbands have fallen in battle. 

I searched, but have not found any information about the Countess' recently deceased husband. Clearly I can make up a name and such, but wanted to know if was missing anything.

More significantly she has a son. I can't find anything about him either. Of course, his age matters, whether he already a knight matters.

The Countess is "middle-aged" so I'm thinking she had to have had the son 10-15 years ago. So he is still a boy. Is there any information in the book I might have missed?

Thanks!

Good points! Thank you!