simonh

Now we just need to know how Kate Blanchett’s Hela and Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn inspired two of the character portraits on the back cover, decades before they took the roles.

I love the concept of the Esoteric Mystic, but I think the feats need a bit of brainstorming. Resist Magic is a bit too passive IMHO and if anything an Imperial mystic should be creating illusions or warping people’s perceptions or reality, rather than banishing them. Rather than suggest my own ideas for feats, let’s start with figuring out what these guys are about? There’s no bones about it, the Empire is corrupt and despicable. They’ve sold out to dark powers for material gain, but how would that manifest in a mystic? I was just thinking about a power that turns other people’s feats against them, or subverts people’s powers somehow.

Wow, those are awesome. I was thinking of doing an Imperials set as well, but never even sketched out any ideas. I love the Geas for the Mystic, that’s just perfect. The feats are very much going in the right direction, and a good touch of gonzo I think suits the Imperials just fine. In this system +1 to do anything is a big bonus, and really the biggest mod Id give for any one source. I’ve tried to avoid straight bonuses to do things wherever I can though, and make feats more about changing the situation. Take the Imperial Agent’s Charisma ability. What do agents do? They cultivate networks of informants and assassins. So how about this: Infiltrators: Roll+Wits (An agent is in place/you have information/it’s all gone John Le Carré) Notes: You have a web of informants and spies you have leverage over, in your pay or blackmailed into doing your bidding. One thing I’m not sure about is expending Will points to invoke feats. I’m not sure it’s necessary. You could just ask for Grit rolls if people start spamming their Feats.

I don't know if anyone here is familiar with World of Dungeons, but it's a super lightweight RPG in a handful of pages. It's based on the Apocalypse engine as seen in Apocalypse World, Dungeon World and others. It started as a Kickstarter bonus, as an in joke. If Dungeon World was modern D&D in an alternate reality, what might very early White Box and Basic D&D look like? There have been other World of Dungeons inspired min-hacks since. There's a micro-Warhammer Fantasy RPG called Streets of Marienburg and a micro-Traveller called Rovers. What might a micro-RuneQuest look like in the same vein? Well, here's my attempt at an answer. RuneSlingers Google Docs It's a love letter to RuneQuest II in 8 pages, two of which are character and reference sheets. The thing is, these micro-RPGs rely on the reader brining a familiarity with roleplaying conventions, and in particular Powered By The Apocalypse game mechanics. On the other hand, many early RPGs really were extremely bare bones. The idea is to provide the minimum needed to get started, while providing the maximum scope to expand and extend the game your way and really make it your own. It deliberately doesn't answer all the questions you need to deal with to play, but provides just enough tools to reasonably come up with your own solutions. Note, the idea isn't to close RQ or Glorantha exactly. This is trying to be it's own thing. As an RQ2 homage though, it needs to make sense to people who don't know anything about the PBTA mechanics, and I could rally do with feedback on that. What makes sense, what doesn't?

The nearest equivalent I can think of would be a campaign centred around a single clan or Tribe, extended over several generations from before the Lunar occupation, about 1590, through to after the liberation of Sartar and the coronation of Argrath as King of Dragon Pass in 1643. We have clan and Tribe based campaigns for the Red Cow and Colymar but they’re much more constrained temporally.

Exactly. A wiki is a much better format for a resource repository, but they usually have limited storage as well. For example fandom, which hosts the RQG wiki, limits uploads to 10MB, it's really just intended for images but makes for a good way to organise and annotate material. I'm just saying file storage itself isn't a particularly good match to the Forum format as forums don't really give you the tools to organise and present it. But then organisation and presentation is a different problem to storage anyway.

From my experience, forum download sections are where files go to die. Nowadays anyone can have a Dropbox or google drive account to share stuff from, so there isn’t as much of a need for a shared repository.

I’ve no particular dislike of points buy and have used it occasionally. I select which skills to spend which points on and choose spells and such, so why not? Stats are just another aspect of the character. In fact the stats themselves don’t really matter, it’s the derived values that actually make a difference anyway - Hit Points, Damage Bonus, Magic Points, Strike Ranks, etc. The underlying stats are incidental.

At first I had no words. Now several hours later I don’t think there’s any way to say enough. I met Greg about half a dozen times at various conventions, and once at Chaosium HQ while on holiday in the US. He was a hero, mentor and friend to me since my teens in the early 80s. I used to read Gloranthan myths and stories to my kids at bed time and they loved it. My great regret is that they will never know him.

Just use whatever rune you like when casting Drain Soul. I don't see anything that contradicts that.

I may well be pretty out of date. I hope so, I'd be very happy to be wrong.

From looking at the reviews it's the cults, homelands, runes, passions, magic, etc that are selling it. It's the fusion of BRP and Glorantha that brings the magic, there's a special alchemy there, but I don't think the specific iteration of the BRP combat mechanics is a differentiating factor.

RQG is in the odd position where it's probably the most complex iteration of RuneQuest ever published, but most Gloranthaphiles are more into rules light systems. I like the form and shape of RQ and BRP for Glorantha, but the internal mechanics of RQG are way too intricate for my tastes. Even if it was all super consistent and complete, I could never hold it all in my head anyway, so there's no chance I'd be able to run it as written without checking the rulebook every combat round, and that's not happening. So for me I use the rules as a toolkit but not proscriptively. I use it to assemble an experience in play, but it's what seems right in the moment that matters, not what it says on page 192 in the Strike Rank Modifiers section, or whatever. If you want an example of how stripped down and straightforward this system can be, check out the free downloadable Basic Roleplaying Quickstart. One way to get a handle on the complexity might be to start with that as a minimal replacement 'combat chapter' and adopt in combat rules for RQG that you like bit by bit. I think what RQG could really do with is an alternative minimal core combat system implementation. Like a drop-in replacement combat chapter that strips it down to a playable, balanced but consistent subset of the rules.

I there’s something above for it to be attached to, an illusory rope might work.Or for extra daring do, and illusory tightrope.

Plant tendril. Definitely not a tentacle. Nope, definitely not.

As a general point on making up your own cults, Glorantha is pretty big and there are a lot of migrations and upheavals going on. It's quite possible entire cults and ethic groups might show up in Nochet, Karse, or Pavis (or all three) from distant and unfamiliar corners of Glorantha. If you have an idea for a cult or secret society or whatever just have them be refugees from Kralorela, the East Isles, Fonrit, etc. You don't necessarily have to bend and twist your idea and bend it to fit into a pre-existing Glorantha shaped mould. So for example you could come up with a political faction that has had to flee Fonrit in Pamaltella. There have been Fonritan enclaves in the Holy Country from before the Closing and recently this faction has come over and now they make up the majority of Fonritans in the greater Dragon Pass area. So you have Some Fonritans who have maintained their traditional heritage but somewhat assimilated due to have ancestry living in the area for many generations, while there are many newcomers all from this one faction. This new faction can have whatever religious, magical or cultural traits you want to introduce. Faceless man death worship, peculiar school of sorcery, whatever. It could also explain why your PCs aren't familiar with Dragon Pass culture and practices, since your players are new to Glorantha. It's your game, own it. Glorantha has a very specific flavour and lots to offer, but it doesn't have to crush your own ideas under the weight of it's uniqueness. There's an old saying round here, your Glorantha will vary.

Sarah’s also said that the FATE variant she’s developing for this is intended to be a lot grittier and dangerous than default FATE, because she didn’t want to lose that aspect from the BRP edition.

If you happen to have the COFE supplement for BRP, that would probably give you a really decent start at a conversion for the FATE edition.

As long as the player of the troll understands they are just as responsible for the story as everyone else. They can’t just blame ‘the story’ for not coming up with a reason. “So Dave, Trolls are the natural enemies of Elves but also are symbiotic with them in some ways. They have allied or co-existed with them before in various councils and empires. How come your character has good reason to tolerate or even ally with the Aldryami?” Much better than imposing reasons by GM fiat.

Also, it's the Hero Wars. The old ways are failing and new ways, or old ways with a new twist, will be needed to survive.

This reads to me as saying that Nontraya is the divine personification of the emergence of the dead into the surface world, and their intrusion into the affairs of the living. I think it's reasonable Nontraya worship would therefore give the power to make it happen. To moderate my post earlier about objections to undead from locals, there's the example of Bundalini, the mute giant, and his all-skeleton band from Barbarian Adventures, a Hero Wars supplement. His troup is a popular attraction at fairs, although preparations have to be made to ensure any local Humakti are sent off on some very important mission for the duration of his visit.

I don't see any particular reason why a Humakti would be prudish about sex, because of being a Humakti. Traditionalist minded Orlanthi are the ones that are big on family and social cohesion. A Humakti's concerns are oaths and valour in combat. They're not big on family ties and they're just as human as anyone. Humakt and Ulerian are in some ways like the martial aspect of Orlanth and sexual aspect of Ernalda taken outside their social role and context, making them similar and perhaps sympathetic or balancing forces to each other in some ways while also having the potential to be be destructive to society in others. Plus I'm pretty sure warriors and the 'oldest profession' have had a close association since the dawn of time.

Necromancy is problematic because RQ/Glorantha doesn't tent to gloss over cultural and religious objections to it that many RPGs do. Where do you get the corpses, who's relatives or ancestors are they and what do they think about all this? In many fantasy RPGs that's abstracted away, but in Glorantha that's the sort of thing that tends to get grabbed hold of an turned into a source of drama and conflict.

Since all the groups I’ve been in or run used the even split method, and they did so in (our) Glorantha, it must be a Gloranthan method of treasure distribution. Mandatory rules are for Dara Happans, and I don’t think any of our PCs were Dara Happan.

My hope is that Chaosium have so much original RQG material in the works that they just don’t have the bandwidth to reheat the old stuff that way. Id much rather have a brand new Pavis supplement, fully updated to the new timeline and rules set, than yet another reprint of the old one with RQG stats.