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simonh

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Posts posted by simonh

  1. 30 minutes ago, Snugz said:

    I've never managed to work in Kralorelans into my game, maybe as I feel they're too China-like and not distinct enough; but also as my campaigns have always been far from there, so I am blissfully ignorant. I am working the Black Sun into the West IMG, so we'll see...

    Ditto for Vormain/Japan. But I'd love to be a player in a good campaign set in either place. I just don't feel good enough of a Gloranthan GM to figure out how to make them work myself.

    There was a “Little Teshnos” district in my version of Karse, but many of the residents were actually Kralorelan, and a Kralorelan street magician was an incidental character but that’s about it. Mainly I just wanted to show that Karse is moderately cosmopolitan so I had incidental characters from various corners of Glorantha.

    • Like 2
  2. 28 minutes ago, Shawn Carpenter said:

    2. Saying "that's just how it is for women in Glorantha" and changing the fictional approach to embrace that still leaves women who want to play a warrior but aren't keen on the few options available to them in the lurch.

    Which options for warrior characters do you think aren't open to women? There might be a few that are tricky, but they are very few. 

    EDIT: The only one I can think of in the core rules in the Yu Kargzant cult is restricted to males. Beyond that, maybe Karrg's Sons for trolls.

  3. On 10/10/2021 at 3:32 PM, HeartQuintessence said:

     But it got me thinking about how a women are even in Glorantha sterotyped and maybe we should all be looking towards building better scenarios, better fiction, that show cases women, homelife and the general craziness of living in a town or steadding.

    I don't think it's fair to characterise showing that, in addition to their prominent, frequent and non-sexualised representation in adventuring and leadership roles, many women in Glorantha follow traditional feminine roles, is stereotyping. A stereotype implies a fixed and simplistic representation, and I don't think RQ represents women's roles in a fixed and oversimplified way.

    RuneQuest is primarily a game about adventuring and it 's rules emphasise adventuring activities in the rules. Nowadays with passions, rune affinities and such the game system much better supports other types of conflict and drama, but it could be that QuestWorlds would be a better fit for a community based campaign.

    • Like 1
  4. On 10/10/2021 at 10:13 AM, Jokum said:

    So how is it that Daka Fal is hostile to most cults in Orlanth pantheon but not Yelm or Seven mothers? (Cult compatibility RQ p.310-311) Even Yelm is not so hostile towards orlanthi. For some reason other cults are not so hostile against Daka Fal...

    Yelm is another ancestral cult. Not sure about Yelmalio.

    EDIT: I suspect the neutrality to some cults foreign to Dragon Pass maybe just that they’re foreign. There’s no history there.

    i believe ancestor worshipers exist among the various cultures of Dragon Pass and Prax, but as a separate and competing religious tradition. As a small minority in the culture, they're permanently at risk of getting assimilated into the majority culture and so can only maintain their separate identity and traditions by constantly striving to assert their separate identity, and jealously guarding their privileges. Cult relationships are organisational, not necessarily personal. The dominant religions such as the Orlanth cult don't reciprocate the hostility because DF isn't a threat to them and they don't care about them except when they jealously guard their privileges.

    Quote

    Also, does the shaman ability to establish spirit shrines shake the cosmic compromise? For there is a path from mortality to godhood in there, if only a mortal hero would get enough worshipping.

    Creating a Spirit Shrine doesn't do anything to undermine the compromise. It might be a step towards it, but so is putting your cloths on in the morning.

     

  5. Firefly had this problem because the core worlds were super high tech surveillance states with extremely efficient law enforcement. The solution was to not go to the core worlds. There's no reason everywhere has to be like that, especially if habitable worlds are common and space travel is relatively available, people will just spread out indefinitely into the galaxy. Plenty of space for wild west style settlements and nascent societies that don't quite have their crap together that well yet.

    • Like 1
  6. Heroquesting is tricky that way. Maybe Eurmal didn’t know what death was and what the outcome would be, but how do you do a HeroQuest of unintentionally causing a killing due to reckless mischief? You know what the outcome is, so it can’t be unintentional.

    Did Eris intend to cause the destruction of Troy? Probably not, she had nothing against Troy, but if you do the HeroQuest to disrupt the party on Olympus with a golden apple you know you’re causing the destruction of a city and the deaths of tens of thousands.

  7. 8 minutes ago, Jeff said:

    Even the Yelm cult doesn't have that power. 

    I was wondering about that, after making my comment about ruling like a Yelmic Emperor I had a look at the Yelm cult and it's notably missing an Emperor subcult or obvious rulership type magic. I'm guessing that's because the cult writeup in RQG is mainly of the cult as it's worshiped in Dragon Pass? Or does Murharzarm have his own cult in Peloria?

  8. 3 minutes ago, DucksMustDie said:

    Well, I'm not looking for ways for this possible queen to rule like men, especially like orlanthi men. Orlanthi are useless. They don't even make decent arrowfodder since they fly or teleport away when the going gets tough. I'm looking for an equal opportunity for her to command priests and worshipers

    OK, but commanding priests and worshipers as per those spells is ruling like a man. I mean, how can they possibly think interfering with a priest's communion with their god is a good idea? It's that sort of authoritarian coercion that breeds resentment and rebellion.

    • Like 2
  9. 2 hours ago, DucksMustDie said:

    If an orlanthi king can command priests and worshipers, why not an ernaldan queen? Ruling queen, not some stupid barbarians consort 

    If an Esrolian Queen can rule a certain way, why don't Sartarite kings? If a Yelmic Emperor can rule a certain way, why don't the Orlanthi?

    If a woman wants to rule the same way that men do, they can become a Vingan.

  10. It seems like queenship is an indivisible part of her identity. Orlanth earned the chieftainship but Ernalda was always the Queen, in fact the male right to rule derives from a relationship with her so she's the source of sovereignty. I think Ernalda already provides plenty of suitable magic for a ruler anyway. Arouse Passion, Bless Champion, Charisma. All good stuff for a leader. The Orlanth Rex magic is a bit unsubtle in comparison and I don't think it would be appropriate.

    • Like 2
  11. On 9/20/2021 at 10:49 AM, Darius West said:

    There are a whole group of broos who have no chaos taint, at large in the world, but most people never twig to the fact. 

    They are called satyrs.

    According to King of Sartar satyrs are deermen (page 86 in the Revised and Annotated). Sartar - Kingdom of Heroes describes their lower parts as deer like.

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  12. 5 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

    When one of the PCs in melee fumbles, rolls hit nearest, kills her, and is cursed forever, I hope she feels guilty.

    They chose to make the attack and risk a fumble. The point of walking into a combat like that is to try to stop the combat, not to just be an arbitrary obstacle.

    • Like 1
  13. 2 hours ago, Martin said:

    So... if a Hero asserts their own mortal desires (free will) and acts in a way that defies the mythic identity of the god whose deeds they are performing during a Heroquest; does  that violate the Compromise...as those sort of deeds that are not within the  nature of the deity and the  realm of the myth they are performing could have an impact on the Mortal World?

    Mostly this is a horrible mistake and such heroes never come back.

    • Like 2
  14. When Yelm the Burner arrived in the underworld, his fiery rays penetrated so far that the Trolls emigrated en masse to the surface world. I imagine Yelm performs some sort of procession through the underworld, similar to the way the Egyptians depicted Ra travelling on a boat, but maybe on a palanquin carried by demi-gods, or maybe a chariot. A worshiper of Yu-Kargzant will see something different from a Yuthuppan nobleman.

    • Like 2
  15. 18 hours ago, Raebon said:

    How did people handle shamans back in the day? Could they become rune level characters? It seemed strange to me that there'd be a career that could never get rune magic. I've basically just inserted shamans in place of priests for some of the tribal cults and created a system for them to acquire rune magic by fighting spirits for it.

    In RQ2 shamans generally got no reusable rune magic. Their power was in their impressive spirit magic, the fetch, spirit combat and the ability to wield spirits and elementals. Don't worry, they are plenty powerful enough. In Cults of Prax it implies that priests of Daka Fal are shamans. It's not really explicitly clear exactly how that works I don't think, but it's not all that hard to reconcile either. It never stopped us.

    RQ 3 clarified this by creating the category of Spirit Cults with a Shaman status that were also effectively priests. This gave them reusable rune magic, but they generally only got access to a small subset of the common rune magic, some rune spells specific to shamanic practices (Axis Mundi for example) and magic for their specific cult (e.g. shape changing spells for hsunchen). A lot of cults that had rune priests and rune lords in RQ2 switched to this structure, such as all the native Praxian cults. I remember players asking what would happen to their Priest of Storm Bull when they converted their character to RQ3.

    EDIT - Going through the RQ2 classic books again for this thread makes me super nostalgic. In some ways RQ2 was pretty crude, but it's also incredibly atmospheric and is such a great little game. Once you figured out how to handle some of it's odd kinks it was a ton of fun.

  16. On 9/20/2021 at 4:52 PM, Raebon said:

    The cult requirements are a big one. They're all over the place, and some practically preclude adventuring as more than a hobby (looking at you, Lanhkor Mhy and The Seven Mothers). Do you enforce them? I've more or less decided on merely requiring tithes from initiates and rune level characters, the idea being that proper adventurers are rare and valuable commodities to cults. My players are averse to running a rotating cast of characters and, for the moment, I am too. Maybe when someone unceremoniously dies we'll change our minds.

    Even requirements for being a lay worshipper can be stiff: mandatory attendance at weekly worship scenarios is tricky in a campaign where I'm enforcing travel times, and random encounters, bad weather and getting lost can all slow you down.

     

    We never really found these a problem. Often the characters would be notionally on cult business anyway, and even if they weren't there's generally an "if at all possible" caveat that's a handy get-out clause. If you're in the middle of the wastes, clearly it's not at all possible to be at a Temple. Maybe a bit of fudging going on, but as long as the character put in some extra effort to stay good with the cult, it was fine.

    To be honest back in the early days we didn't think about tribal politics because we didn't know it existed. The only social context the game gave us was the cult relationships so that's what we focused on, that and chafing against Lunar rule. Yes of course we realised there was a political situation, but at the time the Lunars ruled Sartar and Pavis so we assumed it was a period of relative stability.

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  17. In Grappling the initial attack works very closely to the same as any other attack. It can be parried, and if so the attack hits the parrying arm/shield. Defence can be used against this attack as normal.

    In subsequent rounds to carry out a hold or throw you have to make a successful Grapple roll again, and make a resistance roll. I think the skill roll is to execute the technique correctly, and the resistance table roll is to overcome the opposition of the target.

    This is the full text of paragraph 6 on two weapon use:

    Quote

    6. A character using 2 weapons at 100% or more with each weapon may attack one foe twice at full attack percentage (once with each weapon). He may attack 2 foes twice at 1⁄2 normal attack percentage (each being attacked once with each weapon). Or he may attack one at 1⁄2 attack ability with one weapon and the other at 1⁄2 attack ability with that weapon and with full ability with the other weapon.

    The bit I put in bold, which you quoted, is all talking about the same weapon. The character is making a 1/2 chance attacks against a target with one weapon, a 1/2 chance attack with the same weapon against a second target, and a full chance attack against the second target with their other weapon.

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  18.  

    1 hour ago, Darius West said:

    Surely broos who lack the chaos taint are just satyrs?  *chuckle*  Imma gonna post that on "your dumbest theories" now 😄.

    According to King of Sartar satyrs are deermen (page 86 in the Revised and Annotated). Sartar - Kingdom of Heroes describes their lower parts as deer like.

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