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simonh

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Everything posted by simonh

  1. simonh

    A sense of scale

    For me Dragon Pass from Heortland up to Ivory Plinth is roughly comparable in scale to the area from the south coast of England up to Northumberland, which is roughly the range of my old Pendragon campaign. Excluding long trips 'abroad' to Pavis or the Lunar Empire in Gloranthan terms, or to Ireland or Paris in Pendragon terms. Simon Hibbs
  2. Personally I'd rather have a separate book dedicated to the gods fo Chaos, misc other sinister or malign deities and related background material and GM resources. I thought the previous separation and special treatment for those worked really well. This way the Gods and the Gods of Chaos books can have their own distinctive personalities and serve different purposes. Cramming them both into the same book doesn't seem very sensible, especially since it looks like the result would be excessively big. Simon Hibbs
  3. I absolutely love that picture. One of the characters in one of my HQ campaigns was a Lunar temple dancer, wish I'd had that illustration back then. Simon Hibbs
  4. Definitely start with previous experience, as a minimum. Otherwise you won't be able to use even the basic starter scenarios like Apple Lane without killing PCs. Also when characters have lots of low skills outcomes get very swingy, the chances of a catastrophically bad series of rolls eventually coming up is really high. Simon Hibbs
  5. If it's presented as 'how good you are at it' then I suppose I can see that potentially confusing people. Of course what it really is, is just your chance of success at a typical task under moderately stressful circumstances, with a cap at 95%. An objective measure of how good you are at something isn't directly represented in the game. I have to say I've never really had any problem with the concept and don't remember this ever being a problem with people understanding the system either in RQ, CoC, or any other game with percentage skills. My kids picked it up without breaking step when they were about 8 or 9. Simon Hibbs
  6. And in fact the bulleted text at the top of the left hand page isn't justified either so it seems consistent. Simon Hibbs
  7. But then his arrow flight arc would overlap with that of the sling stone and possibly the Javelin, visually complicating the illustration. But if you put the archer at the top to avoid that, the illustration would take up to twice as much space. Neither of those seem attractive. Simon Hibbs
  8. I dreaded getting into this thread, but actually it's quite interesting. I started with RQ2 and soon after moved on to RQ3, then switched to running Gorantha using the Elric game system with RQ3 magic. I agree with Jeff that the core game system in RQ2 is superior to that in RQ3. It's simpler, more concise and easier to use in play. On the other hand it's missing a lot of options and ancillary rules that really hamper using it in practice. Just look at the skills list. RQ3 is a much more capable system, but in the process of making it more rounded they also complicated it unnecessarily. If I had to choose one or the other right now, for a one-off or short run game I'd go with RQ2 but for a campaign I'd use RQ3. I am hoping that RQG will balance this out by going back to the simpler core system, but with the expanded capabilities a modern game needs. On skill category modifiers, I couldn't care less. CoC doesn't have them, Elric and Stormbringer didn't have them, and none of those games suffered in the slightest. The RQ2 method is the simplest to use, so it gets my vote just on that basis if we have to have one at all. On using the new RQ as a generic S&S system, I think it will be highly usable. The runes are really an add-on to they system that look very easy to drop. I think the only point at which they link into other mechanics is as the chance to cast rune magic, and that's easy enough to house rule. The cultural details used in character generation would take a bit of work for a new setting, as would cult write-ups or an alternate way to gain rune and spirit magic, but that's always been an issue with RQ so it's not like it's a new problem. Simon Hibbs
  9. As another option OpenQuest was originally derived from the MRQ 1st edition SRD and has it's own OGL version available. It's a much better base to start from than the SRD, if the MRQ2 SRD doesn't suit you. Simon Hibbs
  10. It isn that 1 handed weapons get 1 action. You can use a 1 handed weapon for both attack and parry if you want. It’s the character that has the actions, not the weapon. I’m pretty sure there’s no difference between a 1 handed spear and 2 handed spear in this regard. I don’t have RQ3 available right now to check the rules in detail, but I’m pretty sure that if you have a longer weapon and are closed on, you are down to one action if you attempt to use it with that weapon. If you use other means such as a kick, punch (presumably taking 1 hand off your 2 handed weapon to do so if necessary), etc, you still get 2 actions. I believe there were specific rules on how to close, and how to increase the engagement distance again without disengaging. Simon Hibbs
  11. The ‘handles’ are reminiscent of neck guard pieces you see on some plate armour, see below, although I’m sure like the similar hooded cobra piece on one of the helmets they’re mainly decorative. That doesn’t mean the armour wasn’t functional though, it just depends what the function was intended to be. I doubt she was intending to get into hand to hand combat, but could have wanted protection from arrows, grape shot, stray bullets at extreme range or even assassination attempts. The Rani however was an active military commander and died in battle. She plays a major role in one of the Flashman novels, which is where I came across her first. in any case, even if that armour as purely decorative, it shows that displaying anatomical femininity in armour was unquestionably a thing. Since we also know men wore decoratively sexualised armour functionally in battle too, it seems an unremarkable suggestion that women warriors might do the same. Simon Hibbs
  12. I started roleplaying in Glorantha with just the RQ2 rulebook and Apple Lane, a short introductory scenario book, and you should be able to do exactly the same with the new edition. If anybody says you're doing anything wrong, tell them you're playing in your Glorantha, not theirs or anyone else's. That's what we all do, it's what Greg Stafford does, it's the only sane way to play. In terms of exploring the world, well exploring it as published will really need the publications, but you can absolutely start small and go from there organically. The new edition will consist of a core rulebook, a GM pack of campaign material with a ton of scenarios, and a monsters book with info on playing non-human characters. The game is designed to be played with all three, so trying to do with less than that might be awkward at least to start with, but if cost is an issue you can pick up many old RQ2 and RQ3 scenario packs in PDF relatively inexpensively, or old scenarios from magazines and such. You should be able to use those with minor adjustments (how much you do that, if at all, is a matter of taste) since the new edition is designed to be pretty backwards compatible. If there's anything you're not sure how to handle, we're here to help. Honestly this year will be the best time to get into Glorantha in decades. Welcome to the tribe, and have fun! Simon Hibbs
  13. You can always use that for the example character. ....And now I have a name for my next PC! Simon Hibbs
  14. That all makes sense, but if the calculation is that a QS is good for CoC, then I don't see how the calculation is different for RQ. I suppose it depends to what extent it's a flagship game, after all I don't expect every Chaosium game to get a Quickstarts. Hopefully though, 90% of the work done on the QS already can be leveraged, and all that needs doing is updating the rules and characters in it to compliance with the final version of the game. Simon Hibbs Edit - 90%, not 9!
  15. I think having a QuickStart will be just plain a good thing to have when it’s out anyway. After all they did one for Call of Cthulhu so why not RQ? Simon Hibbs
  16. That’s beautiful. I think the subheading “Roleplaying In Glorantha” looks a lot better than just Glorantha, which would either need to be the same size as RuneQuest, or would have to be tucked underneath it with some kind of padding on either side. Either option would look ungainly. Add me to those that was reminded of ElfQuest, although it’s only a subtle echoing. I keep thinking I’ve seen an RQ or related product with that or a very similar font before, but can’t pin it down. I take that as a good sign. Simon Hibbs
  17. IMHO a great way to use material from DLoD is to import various nasties from it into games set elsewhere. They can either be one off local Chaos nasties, denizens of other chaos nests such as the Stinking Forest or Snakepipe Hollow, or captive creatures brought in by the Lunars as terror weapons. You can also bring in NPC specialist chaos fighters that have spent time in Dorastor and use info from the supplement to flesh out their back story. Simon Hibbs
  18. The main Earth goddesses represent different phases of womanhood: Maiden, Lover, Mother, Crone, etc. So Maran before she took Death could be another of the Earth Godess aspects and not necessarily a unique “Maran Gor before Death” aspect. Ernalda would work fine, for example, or Asrelia her mother and therefore perhaps her earlier form. Simon Hibbs
  19. In RQ2 cults were much less of a focus. You could load up on a very wide variety of potent spirit magic for hard cash. RQ3 narrowed things down a lot by only allowing theists to get a narrow selection of spirit magic from their cult, and dumping some of the most OP spirit spells completely. Cults became essential, and a lot more narrow. As for 13A, it’s easily the best of the heavy duty D&D family. Many of the classes offer a selection of varied customisation options. Icons and One Unique Things have a lot of narative potential and further differentiate characters. Every character has choices to make, none of the usual D&D “wait your turn, roll D20, miss, wait your next turn again”. Fighters are actually one of the most complex and tactical classes. Simon Hibbs
  20. If they had done that, they couldn’t have given the character classes such distinctive cultural and religious abilities and magic. How would you differentiate rune priests of Lankor Mhy, Hon Eel and Chalana Arroy if they were all the same class? Simon Hibbs
  21. Oh come on, T&T is pure class. Just check the dedication at the very beginning of RQ2. Simon Hibbs
  22. For it’s time, Cults of Terror was mind blowing. Over in the pages of magazines like White Dwarf players of other games were saying things like ‘you know, would it be a good idea if these monsters had, like, a reason for being bad guys, and a culture or something’, we had to this day the single most groundbreaking in depth dive into the mythology, culture and lives of utterly believable monstrousness born of desperation, outrage, fear and heartbreaking pain. Simon Hibbs
  23. Correct, 13th Age is all about the set piece battles and how to string them together. Thats not to say there isn’t any investigation, or deal making or politicking but it’s all handled just through roleplaying it out as you would in D&D. Your characters do have background abilities you can use, but that’s about it for not combat/‘adventure’ related abilities. Simon Hibbs
  24. I think he’s got a point, you can order the spirit to cast the spell, or to cast it under certain circumstances, but there’s no way for it to pre-judge the need to do so. That’s what the spell does. Simon Hibbs
  25. The same might also be true of depicting experiences from Heroquests. Kalin’s quest scenes in Prince of Sartar do have a distinct psychedelic aspect that works really well. Also Greg has said that different people’s experiences of a quest can be radically different, so it’s not as though everyone that does a certain quest will all have the same experience of a deity. I had the good fortune to play in a quest run by Greg, it was a rulesless narative game where Greg just decided how actions worked out, but importantly it was very difficult to identify specific entities. Some were reasonably clear, but others were very difficult and we suffered greatly from some unfortunate misidentifications. For example if you went on a quest which involves meeting Orlanth, suppose Vadrus, or Gagarth or even Heler turned up unexpectedly how could you be absolutely sure to tell the difference? You might think you’d already got to the point where you meet Orlanth, only to find out later that you actually hadn’t! What happened to us is we were expecting to meet and fight Fenris, but instead ended up friendly-firing Yinkin. Well it was dark! So you can’t always trust what you see in quests. Simon Hibbs
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