Darius West

On 10/21/2016 at 11:37 AM, EricW said:

So I suggest that mythos skill should surely be the dominant determinant of "psychic sensitivity". A "humanity" skill might well provide an initial measure of predisposition to sensitivity to psychic events, but as soon as some mythos skill is acquired, surely that would dominate?

Actually Eric W my friend the Keeper is a Vegan.  I think he is using psychic sensitivity based on a humanity as a vegan super power without telling us, as the more sensitive you are to suffering the more sensitive you are to the world at large, or so it seems within the game.  I hope he doesn't see this, and I hope he laughs if he does.  Interestingly he made us roll our SAN, HUM, and BRA separately, and it was not based on POW as it usually is.  I don't know all of the inner working he has planned of course, nor what our adversaries are using, but your point regarding cultists stripped of their humanity is something I agree with.  I think it should be tied to POW, not some arbitrary human moral overlay.

Name:  Way Stones

Description:  These stones are simple hemispherical rocks of granite, two foot across and weighing the limit of what a strong man can lift (45 Enc) marked with two mobility runes and a depiction of a chariot in the middle at the apex of the curve.  The cut of the stone is remarkably smooth, suggesting Dwarven work. 
Cults:  Associated: Mastakos, Orlanth.  Friendly: Lhankor Mhy.  Enemy: Mostali
Knowledge:  Cult secret.  Few temples possess a way stone and they keep the knowledge to themselves as much as they can.  No secret can long be kept from Lhankor Mhy however, and the Senior scribes do know about these items but rarely mention their existence, preferring to simply buy the item outright and return it to its rightful owner for the bounty.  The Mostali know of the Way Stones and while they no longer know of their locations, they would seek to retrieve them.
History:  The chariot of Mastakos was the fastest thing in Glorantha after Krarsht bit Larnste's heel.  Mastakos was the loyal charioteer of Orlanth and often provided him with help.  Once when at war with the Mostali, Mastakos was trapped by the enemy who used the power of Stasis against him, denying his ability to move as he pleased within a web of static power.  Orlanth and the Thunder Brothers triumphed regardless, and part of their booty were the 16 hemispherical stasis stones.  Mastakos complained to Orlanth about the power of these stones and claimed they should be destroyed, but Orlanth said "there is always another way", and together they worked on binding the stones to Mastakos so they could help him rather than hinder him.
Procedure:  Perform the sacrifice for Guided Teleport at an altar of Mastakos where one of the Way Stones is in place.  It need not be prominently displayed.
Powers:  The Way Stones serve as anchor points for the spell Guided Teleport.  If the stone is moved, all the initiates who sacrificed at the stone (knowingly or not) will find they appear at the location of the Way Stone.  Way Stones are not required as anchor points, as a properly consecrated altar to Mastakos, as found in most Orlanth Temples is more usual, but Way Stones are sometimes employed by the tribes and priests who possess such items as the Way Stones can be moved, while other anchor points cannot.
Value:  100,000L or the equivalent in cattle.  The Lunar Empire would pay more for the knowledge of such items, let alone the possession of one.  The Mostali would potentially pay double this king's ransom, and seek to retrieve the items violently if refused.

Is the Old Wind in Dragon Pass or Hendrikiland?  It is on the border.

That is an entertaining system and a nice interpretation of how to use the various indices of normality.  As to dark secrets, I never had any problems with players coming up with multiple dark secrets within play on their own.  Introducing a new character became a complete minefield as the longer term characters were all so ashamed of or incriminated by their past deeds that they often lied to the new characters.  As to your mythos index, it is good.  I did something similar with Aklo to provide a bit more meat as to how spell creation could work.  Here is the file of my Aklo house rules.

Aklo.pdf

I could also be persuaded that CD Projekt Red could do a good Glorantha.  The Witcher series has been great.

There is literally only one company who could do a Gloranthan game and get it right, and Chaosium has already had dealings with them.  That would be Bethesda Softworks who do Elder Scrolls (which has major Gloranthan overtones), and Fallout etc.  In the past they did Call of C'thulhu; Dark Corners of the Earth.  With all the new source material available in Guide to Glorantha and all the amazing source material and adventures already out there, isn't it time that Glorantha finally landed the epic sandbox treatment?  I know King of Dragon Pass has experienced a new lease of life on mobile phones.  What are the chances of this happening?  Don't get me wrong, I love paper and pencil RPGs, but this would bring Glorantha to the general public and give it the attention it deserves.  Then all you precious hipster jerks can be all "I was into Glorantha before everyone knew about it" and lament how a new generation is discovering what you have devoted so many hours to making so cool.

Does anyone know anything much about Ex?  It is a big divot in the ground from where the Block bounced before hitting Wakboth.  Are there any write-ups?

Also, what is at Feroda and Sog's ruins?  Are there any write-ups?

Thankfully the Maslo don't make sacrifices at the Pyramid of Needs.

On 10/15/2016 at 5:50 PM, Darius West said:

For extra bonus points, who were the only humans to survive the Dragonkill in Dragon Pass? (Delecti wasn't human by then, but immortal).

The correct answer is "The Cannon Cult".  Human slaves under thrall to Osidilian in Dwarf Run who "serve the guns".

11 hours ago, g33k said:

Ahhh... a Gorakiki cultist!

 

Nice work g33k.  Kudos.  I confess an inordinate fondness for beetles.  Such is my godliness.

For extra bonus points, who were the only humans to survive the Dragonkill in Dragon Pass? (Delecti wasn't human by then, but immortal).

4 hours ago, SDLeary said:

Well... Plant – Beast; in our world it could be Man – Spirit, though might not be in Glorantha, or not all of it anyway. 

As far as the elemental runes go, I'm not seeing how the you've listed are opposites. The "logical" oppositions would be Fire – Water, Earth – Air, Moon – Darkness (A Yelornan pairing no doubt, as the Light against the Darkness).

SDLeary

Elemental opposites are probably pretty weak.  As are form opposites.  I think therefore that Undeath (sentient, life draining) is the opposite of plant (non-sentient, life supporting).  Dragon is clearly the opposite of man  .  Beast (material) is the opposite of spirit (immaterial), while dragonewt is the opposite of dragonewt. LOL.  Michel Foucault would support my classification system, even as I totally disagreed with him.

Runes often have a logical opposite.

Death-Fertility/Life.  Mobility-Stasis.  Law-Chaos.  Truth-Illusion.  Harmony-Disorder.  Luck-Fate.

It can be argued that Element Runes have opposites:

Darkness-Fire.  Earth-Water.  Air-Moon.  And if you are feeling charitable Shadow-Light.

Some runes don't have opposites however.  What is the opposite of plant for example?  Dragonewt?  Man?  Undead?  What is the opposite of Mastery ?  (There is no known Rune for incompetence, but I have known a few people who have integrated it.)

Change his name to Hei Yu. (jk)

I have been playing (gasp) CoC rather than keeping recently.  My friend the Keeper (Ralph Lowe), has done something quite interesting with the SAN rules.  Quite apart from Sanity, and Luck, he has also added Bravery, and Humanity as indices that can be damaged by events.  He has also incorporated rules for relative levels at which various behaviors become (or are no longer) a cause for a check.  I think this has been a response to his time playing my game, where over the course of time the players began to make increasingly horrible and desperate moral choices that impacted their SAN, when the consequences of those choices became apparent.  Thus Zero SAN means becoming a madman, zero Humanity means becoming a ruthless sociopath, and zero bravery means becoming a quivering bundle of urine soaked laundry.  He seems to have been using Humanity as a means of measuring psychic sensitivity too ( I think).  As far as house rules go, this is a nice novel one that draws  a bit upon Unknown Armies and Vampire to give your character a bit of a grading as to how their characters are mentally collapsing. 

So with shipping and handling (6 weeks) it will be arriving in Australia around early December.  Guess what I am getting for Xmas?

Firstly... which god would that be?  And secondly, I vastly prefer tick farming even if the little bastards do suck your blood.

A fair point, only we know that Delecti was deeply involved in some fairly disgusting experiments regarding vivisculpting, and the Beast men of Beastman Valley are essentially the descendants of Delecti's horriffic "Island of Dr. Moreau-esque" zoo. Clearly he was morbidly doodling with body parts, and that normally means looking for a way to defeat death.  Now Delecti was a God Learner, so whether he ever really worshiped anyone but the Invisible God is up for grabs.  I get the distinct impression that Vivamort was a cult he found useful for his followers, but not for himself.

Back around 1998 I ran a game where my players were Tovtari and started in 1593.  By the time the 1602 Lunar Invasion began they were Rune Level and part of the Northern Counter-Offensive out of Alda-Chur led by the Household of Death against the Temple of the Reaching Moon in Tarsh.  They got raided by Tusk rider mercenaries and saw them off, then fought against the Tarsh militia just within the Glow Line and were victorious.  When they got to the TRM things went exactly as Lunar propaganda said it does.  The frontage of the Lunar Hoplite Phalanx proved savage, as did the Lunar Sorcery, but the players persevered despite being very depleted and actually got inside the temple, then realized they were outnumbered, and the wardings would blow down their shield spells in about 2 minutes.  It was around then that they realized that they needed 20 points worth of extension, at least another 60 MP in storage, and that you can't get divine intervention in an enemy temple.  Having fought their way in, they had to fight their way out again, before activating their Guided Teleports.  If they had managed to pull off the attack I was going to run things with Sartar surviving the invasion due to the Lunars being put out of supply in rotten Sartar weather.  As it is history went according to plan. 

I made extensive use of the Battle Skill during the scenario, both to determine how the unit commanders were doing in terms of leading and noticing opportunities, and for the individual players to see how well they were reading the battle, the quality of their enemies, and how well they were able to position themselves etc.  Basically this meant that they were given a report on how their unit was faring, and then they would have to fight a set number of enemies based on their Battle Skill vs the enemy troop formation.  The actual combat was handled like normal RQ combat, but sometimes they had friends helping, or were able to maneuver themselves out of facing multiple attacks.  I created a table that had an axis of quality and an axis of quantity, with 5 columns, crit, special, success, fail, and fumble. For every level of success you could shift the axes in your favor by a column on either Quality or Quantity, and you got a bonus column shift if the opponents got a fail or a fumble. 

The game started with player characters being initiated and ended in 1605 with the Building Wall battle during which one of the characters, a Vingan named Tora won singular accolades for having devised the strategy of the Building Wall without knowing Gloranthan history, earning herself the title of "Tora the Glorious".  The party eventually retired to Esrolia where they got bogged down in politics but made a home for many Sartarite exiles.

RQ has no grind for XP, it was traded in for "tick farming".  LOL.

Knowledge skills could be learned to 100% through training.  It used to be a matter of prestige to have a Lhankor Mhy who had trained to 100% in General Knowledge because they supposedly "knew everything".

Here is one to wind your head around... In the Second Age, the God Learners generally liked hero quests involving non-warlike deities, and top of the list of those who co-operated with the God Learners was the Lhankor Mhy cult.  But wait, there's more, because the God Learners put a lot of effort into understanding Dragonewts, but utterly failed, because humans simply don't remember reincarnating.  Now does it say anywhere that Lhankor Mhy was ever draconised ?  Because as a Lightbringer the LM cult would have been operating within the EWF.  Did the EWF consider them dissidents at the time?  Or was Delecti not actually a Vivamort worshipper, but a Lhankor Mhite with sorcery and dragon magic and a thesis in anatomical manipulation ?

9 hours ago, Mankcam said:

I think perhaps a skimpy one heh heh 

LOL, Esrolian priestesses be like "tits out for the goddess" Minoan style according to Prince of Sartar webcomic.  What are Uleria-ing at?

Yeah. if you think about it, in the game Dragon Pass, Sartar/Argrath pretty much always sacrifices a unit of Ducks to Delecti to ally him.  Ducks get a move bonus in the marsh so they always get there first.  Necroduck is inevitable.  Humaktiduck is just a precursor to necroduck.