simonh

Roll20 sounds good, so I'll check it out and I've used Skype, thanks.

I'm thinking Saturday or Sunday evenings UK time / corresponding afternoon in the US might work?

Hi Joerg, thanks for the notes. I'll go through them and see how I can reconcile them with my own conception of the city. I'm aware my version of the city isn't canonical and although I'm quite happy to nudge it closer to canonicity where I can, it's not a major consideration for me. My Glorantha Will Vary.

The naming of the city I took the picture from is pure coincidence. I came across the image first while looking for references for my Karse game, loved it and then noticed the name clash some time later. Also the Anatolian Kars is inland. I cropped the picture to exclude some buildings in the foreground, which is where the port should be. My initial plan was actually to use the Thieves World map, but I liked this one so much I changed tracks.

I ran an early version of this campaign using Hero Wars back in the 90s. I'm really looking forward to updating it for the new game system. I have fairly extensive notes from the last run, but they really need revising as first time through I made it a bit too medieval/dark ages in feel.

Ok, here's my campaign pitch.

Moonrise Over Karse

This is a Gloranthan game of diplomacy, intrigue and adventure. The Lunar Empire has recently pacified central Dragon Pass and only a few desperate Orlanthi barbarians hold out against the invaders. Final victory over the violent storm-worshiping barbarians is close.

The Empire is now looking further south, to the lands sometimes called The Holy Country. This is a confederation of several nations bordering the great Choralinthor Bay. In particular, the small port city of Karse is now within military striking distance and would provide sea port access to the oceans of Glorantha, a long term strategic goal for the Empire.

The politics and cultures of the Holy Country are not familiar to the Lunars. Before embarking on a full campaign, it has been decided to send a team to investigate Karse and assess the options available. The team will be multi-discipline with diplomatic, military, economic and cultural dimensions. The team members will need discretion, initiative and resourcefulness to succeed.

Your goals are fourfold.
                    
1. To establish diplomatic links with the city. This will involve investigating it's political factions to identify enemies and potential pro-Lunar allies that can be cultivated. Options such as promoting a pro-Lunar coup or establishing a fifth column might be pursued.

2. To evaluate and advise on the military options for successful invasion, siege and conquest of the city.

3. The economic and trading potential of the city should be investigated. Since the strategic goal is ocean access, trading agreements with foreign nations or trading blocs should be explored and their potential evaluated.

4. The wider Holy Country region is little known to the Empire. It's cultural heritage, religious factions and magical traditions should be explored in preparation for their inclusion in the Lunar Way.

Having said that, the team will have wide latitude to take their mission and run with it in whatever direction they feel best serves the Empire. All Hail the Reaching Moon!

What's Glorantha like?
It's a swords and sorcery setting with a very rich history and mythology. As in real world history, religion and magic are inseparable in Glorantha.

Who are the Lunars?
The Lunar Empire is a rapidly expanding power to the North, much like the Romans or the Persians under Xerxes. They believe that everyone has a place in the world. They are an inclusive and tolerant society, but struggle against violent and primitive cultures that cling to the old ways. The Empire still supports and includes pre-existing traditions within the context of their overall Lunar philosophy, much as the Romans co-opted local cults.

Hang on, aren't the Lunars the Bad Guys?
If you have read anything about Glorantha before you might easily make this mistake because the default culture for PCs in Glorantha is Sartarite tribesmen. But they’re really just a bunch of hicks, while the Lunars are a cosmopolitan multi-cultural society.

What is Karse like?
It’s a medium sized city on the coast, beside the mouth of a river. The Choralinthor Bay and the oceans beyond it lie to the south. To the north is the wild region of Dragon Pass populated by beast people and barbarians, recently conquered by the Lunar Empire from even further north. To the east is Heortland, a dark ages style kingdom, and to the west is the insular Troll kingdom of the Shadow Plateau.

Troll Kingdom?
The Uz are a unique feature of Glorantha. They are bestial, horrific and cruel, yet they also have fascinating and ancient religions and culture. They are darkness creatures, born in the underworld (which they call Wonderhome) but now banished to the surface world. They trade and war with humans with equal ease and the people of Karse have a long history of dealing with them, and were even ruled by their overlord at one time.

What are the Rules?
This game will use the new edition, Runequest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. Likely homelands include Lunar Tarsh, Praxian Sable Rider and Grazelands. Sartar is possible as well. If you would like to create a character with a homeland further afield such as the Lunar heartland I have some resources we might be able to use to good effect, including the Yanafal Tarnils cult (Lunar war god), Danfive Xaron and others. Family history would only run up to 1617 as this game is set in the ‘classic’ RQ period.

Who are the Party?
The mission has been assigned to trusted members, allies and retainers loyal to Tarsh and the Empire. Ideally the group should include a Lunar military officer (Yanafal Tarnils cult) and a Lunar Priest/ess (Seven Mothers). Some other obvious choices are an Etyries merchant, a Noble and a Spy (thief, perhaps Danfive Xaron). There are plenty of other options though. As GM I reserve the right to be somewhat more generous in character generation, in terms of options and resources, towards character concepts that well serve the theme of the game.
 

I’m interested because I’m semi-house bound at the moment but I’ve not run a game virtually before. What are the pros and cons of Roll20 and Fantasy Grounds or any of the other options?or just doing it via Hangouts?

I should say if I do run a game, my first choice would be for a party of Lunars. I have a particular long term mission in mind.

I might be interested, possibly even running a game, but I’m in the UK so time zone wise it would be tricky with a mainly US based group.

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Now, it's only my opinion and I could most certainly be mistaken, but I think that the direction taken isn't going to even do as well as the BGB did.  

Well it was the number one seller on Drivethru for over a week and is still in the number 2 slot a fortnight after launch. I don’t remember the BGB making that kind of impact (much as I love it Jason!).

The brutal economics of cut down versions is that too many people who would pay for the full version, if it was the only option, end up buying the lite version instead. Too many companies have crippled or killed themselves making this mistake. The most popular way to mitigate this risk is to make the lite version too lite to be truly useful, at which point it starts looking like a scam.

Some of the differences between the QS and RQG seem to be things like missing options and missing limits such as how often you can do augments. I think that sort of thing is to be expected though and shouldn’t be thought of as a contradiction or actual difference, as it is a subset of the system. I’d really only be interested in any statements that actually contradicted each other.

1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

Blade sharp increases chance to hit, so you get the bonus twice if you split. I think that was always the case, but I once had a GM rule against it, on the basis of "where does the extra magical energy come from". 

That was probably me. I'd be ok with it now.

9 hours ago, Madrona said:

If I was to suppose, it'd be that illuminated people who aren't superpowered in some way, are usually too one with the background noise to be individually contacted.

 

Well firstly how come that doesn’t apply to non-illuminated plebs like old uncle Bob? He turns up for the Dance of the Ancestors every Holy Season just fine.

That also implies Illumination really doesn’t have anything to do with the realisation of the illusory nature of personal existence. Which is basically all we know about Illumination.

34 minutes ago, soltakss said:

What about Arkat? He was illuminated, died, came back and was pretty much OK with it.

Nysalor died and then became a sprit that the Red Goddess contacted on a HeroQuest.

I would guess that was Greg musing about something. Not something I would have in my games.

I won't pretend to understand all this completely, but they became Immortal. I should have caveated that I was talking about mortals but I think I said up thread somewhere that this is how e.g. the Seven Mothers get to still be contactable.

44 minutes ago, 7Tigers said:

I believe prinz.slasar was specificaly looking for web available RQG scenarios, not very old and out of print scenarios 😁 ...

Possibly, but any RQ2 scenario really is directly portable. Characteristics, strike ranks, location HP, weapon damage, etc are all usable directly. A few NPCs might have a skill or spell that's not in the new edition, and they won't have rune ratings or passions, but that's really about it. The main problem is most material on the web is for RQ3, which has different Strike Rank calculations, hit point/location, damage modifier calculations and such which is why I linked to an RQ2 scenario.

Wandering Nysalorian riddlers just spread their pearls of wisdom wherever they go and to whoever will listen, so thy are very much out in the world and believe that anyone can potentially achieve enlightenment. There are also Lunar mystics that will preach their insights to anyone who will listen.

Of course the Lunar, and before that the Dara Happan authorities crack down on this sort of thing, to varying degrees at different places and times. There's a history of this in the GtG.

I think anyone can become Iluminated, but that's not the same as achieving Transcendence and doing that might be a lot harder to a spontaneous Illuminate than for a trained reclusive monk, but there are many paths to both Illumination and Transcendence.

Sweet Is Revenge : A great RQ2 scenario by Dave Morris that would have been part of a Games Workshop supplement which was cancelled. It's non-Gloranthan but pretty easy to transplant.

I think what they do is just declare movement and run away per the normal movement rules. I imagine the free, extra attack triggers at the moment (SR) they move away at.

1 hour ago, Jusmak said:

I came into same conclusion, when tried RQ6/Mythras. Great troll with attack 70 % should still be a threat to consider to anybody. It is just, because of my nostalgic memories, that trolls are always dangerous. Now it takes only one character at 170 skill to make that troll helpless as an infant, which a bit violates my image of Glorantha, and how dangerous adventuring in that world was. 

Actually that’s a pretty convincing argument. I have been in favour of the ‘rebase highest skill to 100%’ rule, and it’s worked fine for me with characters up to about 130%, but I can see it getting to be a problem much beyond that.

Maybe cap the negative modifier to half chance? That’s just another rule you need to remember, but should only come up in games where your characters are already at very high skill levels.

1 hour ago, Beornvig said:

But for us die-hards, I'm just not seeing the point of any of this until there are brand new Borderlands and Big Rubble style and quality sourcebook/adventure packs produced again.  ...

Having talked to Jeff at Eternalcon, Chaosium are very much aware of this and it’s a top priority for the team. However I think a supplement for RQ2 with extra stats for passions would sell a tiny fraction of the copies a supplement for an already published, best seller on Drivethru could command. It might be the best order for some of us, but it would be a commercial fumble - hit self in wallet for Chaosium.

The upcoming GM guide should have a ton of playable material to run and several other major projects were teased in the seminars, so I’m hopefull that the situation by the end of the year, or at least this time next year should look a lot different.

19 hours ago, styopa said:

Then again, their paradigm was based on adventuring once per season, meaning essentially every session would start with a full roster of points recovered.  My game will be much faster paced, so rune point recovery will be a major balance factor I have to work out.

I suppose the default situation would be similar to RQ2 and RQ3, in that for practical medium term purposes rune spells will be one use, but with more flexibility about what spells the characters can cast. That’s not a terrible position for the characters to be in. They will be better off than their old RQ2/3 counterparts and no worse off and when they do get a refresh or have some points left and a refresh coming up soon, they can have some real fun!

However it might be useful to think about what options might exist for shorter term rune point refreshes. After all your game might default to a faster pace, but any game might do that from time to time. You’re not the only person that might have this issue.

One option might be holy objects, people or places that can offer a one off or occasional rune point refresh for friendly cults.

Maybe the standard rules apply if you always worship at the same temple all the time, but if you travel to a different temple and perform a rite you can get a special ‘pilgrimage’ bonus refresh of a few points depending on the size of the temple. That actually gives an incentive to do something religious characters should really want to do anyway.

19 minutes ago, styopa said:

In a sense, that holistically addresses the complaints from lindybeige (on youtube) that RQ doesn't reflect the primary improvement that higher skill gives you: speed of attack.  never thought of it that way.

Except that the extra attack comeseven later in the round, and the attack at Normal,SR is less likely to succeed to the point at which an attack is successful is likely to be ever later on average.

28 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

I think the rule made sense, if you really think about it. I mean, "Well I could really make a good effort to get a successful attack, but no, I'll make two half hearted attacks and that will have a better chance of getting past this guy's defenses." 

Realistically, it doesn't make any sense. The only reason why you'd do it is because game rules would let you get another damage roll at full ability. It's like how,  in most RPGs, knives and small caliber firearms aren't all that great because they don't do much damage, when is real life is less about how much damage you do but how well you place that damage.  

In reality you don't go into a fight planning which of the many blows you're going to launch in the next 12 seconds will be the one you 'actually' try to hit with. If you're good enough and you see an opening you'll land as many blows as you can.

I get cognitive dissonance from a rule that says on the one had an attack represents a series of blows, feints and attempts to probe an opponent's defences, but then says that in 12 seconds only one of those can ever be successful. Particularly with knives, once you get an opening you're going to stab the crap out of an opponent. Even with a longer and slower weapon though It's not as if you know beforehand which of those blows is going to be the one you're making the skill roll for.

I don't see splitting attacks as necessarily even throwing more blows at your opponent, I think it's more about taking more risks in the attack strategy on the off chance it will pay off in doing more damage. Not risks with your own defence, but risks that the attack strategy will wind up unsuccessful.

This is all abstracted a lot in the game of course. That's fine, literal blow by blow, manoeuvre by manoeuver simulation would be unbelievably painful to play out and as I said earlier this is all a bit artificial because if you actually got a chance to hit more than once you would anyway regardless of 'statement of intent'. However I find the tactical choices opened up by multiple attacks fun and interesting to play, and I don't find arguments that it's not realistic that more than one blow might land in 12 seconds very convincing. I'd be much more open to arguments that this unbalances the game somehow or is un-fun in some way, but that's not my experience from using the Elric rules.

Just now, Atgxtg said:

Yup, per RQ2 

 This technique cannot be used to attack or parry one foe twice in a round because any attack is a combination of blows (see Chapter II) and a character with 100% attack ability merely has a better chance of using the combination to hit his target.

 

And even if you allowed splitting against a single foe, why stop at splitting once? Why can't someone with 100% make ten attack at 10%? If feasible. Statistically better too, I think, once you factor in crticals, specials and the perks of hitting someone multiple times. 

I'm familiar with the old rules, I just think the restriction was unnecessary and didn't make a lot fo sense.

I'm used to the Elric system, where you can make split attacks so long as 1) You divide your skill evenly between each attack roll and 2) each attack roll muse be at least 50%. It works fine, but then in Elric you can also make any number of Parries in a round, but each parry after the first suffers from a cumulative 30% penalty.

3 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

I think the rationale was that your attack in melee isn't literally a single swing of the weapon, it could represent a number of blows, so there's no need to break it down and represent the same actions in two different game mechanical ways. The extra damage from a crit or special could be from multiple hits. It's only when you want to spread that out over multiple targets that you have to have a special mechanic.

In a system where opponents have multiple hit locations? And in which armour deducts separately from each hit?

19 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

 

It used to be exclusively for multiple opponents. Old RQ rules were that any "attack" on a single foe was a combination of moves, and you couldn't split you skill when facing one opponent. I guess it's like trying to play the same chess game twice.

 

I never really bought that though. In 12 seconds you can absolutely stab/hack/slice someone up more than once.

 I think classifying God Learner wisdom (of which there were many forms) as a form of illumination is using the term illumination in it's broadest possible sense, as just a form of enlightened insight into the nature of reality. It's certainly not the same as e.g. Nysalorean Illumination and I'm not ever sure it's similar in any specific sense.

1 hour ago, Paid a bod yn dwp said:

Marvellous - building a wealth of inspiring Gloranthan art. Nice to see justice done to the plant people. The drawings are really nice too. More!! *Jumps in time machine to tell younger self with newly purchased Elder Secrets, not to worry everything is going to be ok* 

This is nothing. Just wait and see what Chaosium are going to publish in 2047, it'll knock your socks off!

3 hours ago, Tarumath said:

To be honest I'm not sure to understand what you mean by personal identity and existence and how dead Illuminates are gone.

If it's only identity then yes it's not a big deal and essentially what happens to everyone in Glorantha when they die, if Illumination means that you stop to exist after a normal death then that's really bad unless you are sure to transcend in this life because otherwise you lose all forms of existence and thus all hope of transcendance. 

Most Gloranthans absolutely believe that they have a personal existence after death, and have evidence to back that up. Their ancestors are in the afterlife and contactable during some cult ceremonies or on heroquest. I think I can say that this is a 'true thing' about Glorantha. However....

Ilumination is the realisation that all personal existence is an illusion. Not just in death, but right now as well. 'You' as a conscious persistent self don't matter and are not real at a cosmic level. You become aware that the common conception of these things is a fantasy and none of it matters. The thing is, it depends how you experience this revelation. If you're just rudely thrust into this realisation with no preparation, it can be utterly devastating and many unprepared Illuminates just go mad. To those with a better grasp of philosophy and having under gone preparatory training and meditation to distance themselves from personal entanglements and petty concerns, often they are able transition into the enlightened state without mentally falling off a cliff.

3 hours ago, Tarumath said:

It's possible that a lot of Mystics and Illuminates develop a mentality where they don't care anymore about annihilation but that's suicidal even from a mystical perspective : someone who is destroyed by Chaos ceases to exist and will never ever transcend.

Transcendence isn't some sort of salvation of the personal self for eternity. You need to stop worrying about what happens to 'the person'. The personal self is scorched away by transcendence, so personal oblivion is a necessary part of the process. That's why Illuminates don't care about Chaos. Fearing destruction by Chaos is something the muggles trapped in the eternal torture of death and rebirth worry about. Illuminates have been freed form all of that. It;s not a bad thing, it's cosmic liberation.