Ian Cooper

I have found that RPG newbies get HW/HQ intuitively, whereas those used to traditional games struggle more because they have 'learned' that an RPG has a task-resolution system, characteristics, weapon and armor charts, fixed scales etc. Intriguingly I don't think this is as true for folks who favor non-skill based OSR approaches such as OD&D, MA, EPT or T&T, perhaps even CT whose mantra was 'rulings not rules' and whose universal mechanic was the 'saving throw.' I think they find the step to something like HW/HQ simpler.

Given the suggestions that a divine Rune affinity can be used as a flaw, I would offer that nearly any keyword should be co-optable as a flaw by a GM if they feel that it covers certain behaviors. That is another ability/keyword trade-off, make it broad enough and it could be used as a flaw.

There has been less 'drama' than their perhaps was on fora like the Glorantha Digest back in the day. I think that the emergence of the the Guide has certainly helped, because whereas before there was a lot of 'fan theories' that people were protective of, there is now a pretty authoritative source. Beyond that the growth of YGWV (your Glorantha will vary) along with HW/HQ helped persuade people that canon was really only for writers, not players, and so folks didn't need to argue so hard about what constituted it. The main thing the community will have to learn to stay away from is: which system is best. Glorantha will host three 'official' systems: 13th Age, RQ, and HQ:G and it would be a shame if we became mired in arguments over which was the 'true' presentation of Glorantha or treated one or the other as especially privileged.

Yes, some of those rules are very nice.

I'd agree that HQ is cinematic and suits a 'pulp' genre very well. Star Wars works very well, as would Guardians of The Galaxy, Lankhmar, or Doc Savage. I've played a '50-60s space opera at a number of cons inspired by Forbidden Planet, Lost in Space, even TOS Star Trek etc. at cons and that works well too. Intriguingly it was intended to be able to play the kind of stories in Greg's unpublished novels (which are not really RQ in the way that they describe Glorantha). It's worth a pitch to Chaosium if you have an idea.

Its confusing isn't it. But I think the way to think about it in Glorantha is the Great Compromise. In the godtime death sends you to the Underworld, but concepts like life and death don't really exist before the Great Compromise; you can't really use cause-and-effect or strict separation of binary opposites to describe this at this point (although human imposition of there will gives it this form because they can't understand it otherwise). So before time 'dead' and 'alive' don't really exist, they are just ideas we impose upon them from within the world of Time. But IMO the Great Compromise established that things in the Underworld are dead, since Time began. Now some beings can pass from death-to-life, such as gods and heroes. Gods do it because the Great Compromise established they had roles in both worlds. Heroes do it by heroquesting. Both the scenario in Sartar:Kingdom of Heroes and the one in the forthcoming Eleven Lights have quests to the Underworld that involve the heroes traveling the Path of the Dead and entering the Court of Silence. So they die, but come back (hopefully) by the mechanism of heroquesting (see below). So are there 'living things' in the Underworld? IMO not since Great Compromise said anything in the Underworld is dead. But anything that emerges is also alive. The exceptions i.e. trolls living in the Underworld occur before the Great Compromise. Are any trolls in the underworld dead? Yes. But if they are heroic and come to the surface world they are alive. Is a demon summoned from hell dead? Only whilst it is in hell, but when on the surface world it is alive; of course the magic used may only violate the Great Compromise for a short window of time, before it snaps back, the creature returns and is 'dead again.' In Glorantha 'undead' certainly don't die i.e. they don't travel to the underworld. They are folks who purposely avoid traveling to the underworld, because that means death, in defiance of the mortality imposed on them by the Great Compromise. [Now I think it's possible that in order to return, someone in the Middle World always has to 'summon' you, but that's my magical speculation i.e. if you are a god you need worshipers (even collateral so great gods don't get forgotten) or community support as a hero. Remember mythically Orlanth wandered lost until folks in the Middle World sacrificed to him, and I think that the Lunar attempt to 'kill' Orlanth depended on this idea of 'removing' his worshippers and trapping him in the Undeworld (remember that Orlanth's Ring enters the underworld). I think if you set out for the Underworld alone, with no community support, you would not return. Remember that Pinching entered Glorantha when someone prayed to a pile of gold. But as I say, that's my speculation.]

I'd be interested to hear from folks as to why they like Heroquest (no agenda). For me it is: Single Mechanic: I don't have time to learn different rules for different situations, one mechanic, easily internalized that can handle all situations. [As an aside I think there is a lot of cross-over here between this and the OSR dictum of Rulings, not Rules, where OSR GMs speak about focusing on the story and not looking up rules in play as that breaks the story flow] One-roll (with options): I like the fact that I can resolve in one-roll, but drill if I want to allow players to express themselves more with augments or an extended contest. Concept based Character Creation: I am a [Distinguishing Characteristic] [Occupation] Stolen by games such as Monte Cook's Numenera this idea of building on a 'concept' is powerful for helping folks create a character quickly. The runes also really help here in Glorantha. No skills: No constraints from skill systems at design, or in play. Could a warrior do that? Then so can you. I hate the way skills systems turn into 'hunt the skill' or 'wow, I am poor at that, better do something else' as they stifle my creativity with regard to action No NPC stats, just resistance: This is a prep godsend. Hell under HW I prepped stats, only to have to fudge numbers half the time for my feel of the game. This is just easier. Genre Packs: A little forgotten post HQ:G but I think this chapter of HQ2 is well worth reviewing if you want to use HQ2 for your own games. But one key point is the sense of creative freedom as a GM. I loved the fact that I could just describe the world, without worrying about how it should be explained systematically. With Greg's cries of "Gloranthans don't know the numbers," and "Your Glorantha may vary" ringing in my ears, I loved the idea that I could just make stuff up that seemed appropriate without having to worry about whether that was 'in the rules.' So I no longer had to worry whether an Orlanthi magician could produce that effect, if it fitted the runes and the mythology, then just describe it happening. Magic seemed magical again. I felt my table owned the Glorantha we were playing with. I also loved the way that in both HQ and HW Greg seemed to encourage to indulge creativity in play (without necessarily deciding it was part of canon Glorantha). So in the example game we get 'origami magic'. Is this something a future genre pack for Genertela will detail? Perhaps, probably not. It doesn't matter, what Greg was trying to show, IMO, was that you could add to Glorantha in play, make it yours groups at the table, because people wanted to introduce that element to their game. This is OSR to an extent again, the slightly 'wacky' desires of players at the table. Greg seemed happy to encourage people to 'play' in all senses of that word in Glorantha, as opposed to simulating what Glorantha was exactly like. That spoke to me. Are Puma People canon any more? Probably not, but there are an example that you can add details like that to your Glorantha in play, if it suits your tables needs. Heroquest told me to go out and tell stories, and that brought me back to playing in Glorantha and with Glorantha in a way that had not happened for years. What is your story? (PS If you don't like HQ/HW fair enough, but this is not the thread for that whining. I want to hear from folks who love it, about why).

I certainly tend to treat the community as a keyword and the relationships with community members etc. as breakout abilities. Sometimes it makes sense to just elevate an ability to a keyword because we want to track some related items under it.

I believe that it has some value. Previous articles (RQ era) by Greg offered the opoinon that as Glorantha has secrets, it must be hard to simply extract them with magic. So Mind Reading, Mind Control, Invisibility, and Teleport Somewhere Never Seen are difficult and the preserve of special cults. Only the Blue Moon Trolls have decent invisibility magic for example. Whilst Detect Lie is valid in a Gloranthan context, spells like Compel Truth are harder, and only Lhankor Mhy is going to have Reconstruction to view the past. I believe some of the inherent difficulty numbers reflect that thinking. Other articles on creating RQ rune magic suggested that new magic should not affect more volume than an elemental, or do significantly more damage. Whilst that is RQ specific and thus less useful to HQ:G as a yard-stick, once you have a spell that the fiction agrees effects multiple targets, more than about 10' square, does more damage as a 30' fall etc. you start to edge into the area where you have a ritual that requires multiple individuals to complete. IMO multiple targets is a particularly good dividing line between 'ready' magic and something that requires time and effort to cast.

Changing a PDF requires working with InDesign to update the files used to produce the PDF. If this is a simple correction there might not be an issue, but a correction risks altering the length of a paragraph may then cause the text to flow differently resulting in pages of changes to layout. I'm not saying that fixing all instances would require that, just that I can sympathize with the opinion who think that taking a range of errata and incorporating it into the existing PDF is a project that needs resources allocated to it. I'll chat to @Rick Meints and @Jeff next time I catch up with them, and see if I can't get you guys something more definitive on how to support your efforts here.

HQ:G is certainly not forgotten, its just that the RQ people are being noisier right now. I had a chat with @Jeff recently and the goal is definitely to keep to a cadence of two books a year for the HQ:G line. Of course RQ books will be usable by HQ:G players, just ignore those stat blocks. We just got The Coming Storm out in print, which is the setting for the Red Cow, the campaign, the Eleven Lights is following. We have art and ms and are in the final stages of layout, fixing proofreading errors etc. It should be out in the new year in PDF with print to follow. It is worth bearing in mind that the process from pitch to printed book takes about two years. Now, there is a lot of opportunity to improve that, but that is where the situation is today. As a result, people become quite hesitant when talking about books that our further out. A lot can happen in that period to derail a book. However, new troll books are in the pipeline, with one ms complete and others in development. Nochet and Prax are also in development. Falling Star is the working title for my Sky Ship and Dragonrise book. Beyond that? Pipe dreams for now, but I would like to develop Safelster next as my players want to move out of Sartar, and Ralios lets us take Orlanthi and trolls, which we already have, and add western culture. Plus Arkat. @Jeff and I discussed that it is easier for HQ:G to break ground in new areas, because we don't have to playtest the mechanics in the way RQ does. So we may get to pioneer a bit. So we may be a little more reserved, but HQ:G will continue to release.

There are several things to reconcile here. All IMHO from working with the Chaosium crew, not 'official.' What is errata? Chaosium has a strict definition, errata is game text that is wrong as written. Whilst typos etc. will inevitably exist, these are not considered errata. So if a rule is wrong, or an example illustrating a key rule is wrong, that is errata. But if a name is misspelled or a comma is missing that is a typo, and whilst no one really wants those, they would only cloud errata. That means that Chaosium is likely to find itself in arguments over individual items as to their status as errata or proofing error. Its not to say the collating potential proofing errors might not have value to someone in the future, but that if something was to be produced now as an official 'errata' it needs to focus on rules concerns. Clarifications are also not really errata. But where a rule is unclear or ambiguous it may make sense to issue clarifications with errata. When does Chaosium intend to do another print run? The most likely point to fix both electronic and print versions would be when existing stocks of the print version decline to the point that it becomes necessary to print more, presuming there is sufficient demand. I am not aware when that might happen, or how stocks are etc., but it seems unlikely that the effort to reconcile the errata would happen before then. The unofficial errata does have value, in that it could form the starting point for such an effort, when it made sense to begin any such process. There are only so many people to go around. An effort to review and make decisions on the errata takes the time from someone who could be creating new product, and so the two possible uses of that person's time have to be weighed against each other. It's hard to compare against other companies practices because they may have different pipelines, tooling, working practices etc., which mean that they find these updates simpler or more cost effective. It is useful to indicate the bar, but that does not mean its possible to clear it yet.

Maybe. I'd try to work either Harmony or Stasis into all the explanations. So Soothe the Dyspeptic Stomach would probably Combine Harmony and Darkness - in essence the darkness is calmed by Harmony. I'd agree on Harmony of the Parts I would suggest that Enter the Room without Doors would be Summon Stasis. A 'room without doors' sounds like an 'unchanging location' perhaps a short world, so the Summons would open a gate, but you would step through as opposed to something coming out. Of course, on a complete failure it's possible something is in the room and comes out...

@David Scott I think we should look at a WF for HQ:G that covers off how to pick up some of the ideas in RQ4 like Spirit Combat more clearly and give some notes about running games in the 1627 era of the new source book. Ping me if you have time and are interested

I don't have any way to control how sign-up happens, but I believe that the doors open at 09:30 for sign-ups etc. 30mins before games start. I have no idea if all games go out, or just the morning ones, then the afternoon and evening ones are up later. Still, hope to see some of you at my table :-)

Hi guys, Due to cock-ups its been a struggle to get my Heroquest games registered for Dragonmeet, which means they won't appear on the electronic reservation sytem, just on the main sign up board. I am running twice, afternoon and evening. Pitch The Dwarf has sent his strange servants again, bearing gifts of iron. A tribe that must face the Telmori werewolves knows the value of the ‘death metal’ and the Cinsina Queen, Ivartha, is keen to pay the Dwarf’s price for his metal. Refusing the request might mean the Dwarf will never send his servants again. The queen has chosen you to fulfill the Dwarf's demands, but exactly what will he require this time? It is a two-our game, not four hour (though it's possible we will slip slightly that is the goal). Post improving it feedback I may look into packaging it up as part of a quick-start, hence the length. It shoud be for four players, but doubtless that depends on how they configure the sign up sheet.

Thanks this is awesome. The example helped as it clarifies that there is probably not much dispute between us on the idea of there being something you could use to resist a spirit, but it would likely be a stretch. It does make spirit combat hard on those without the relevant magic, but RQ4 is trending that way.

Greg? later revised this to indicate that the default 'goat' broo was a polite fiction and that most broo were incrediby varied due to their reproductive approach. That came to be reflected in later supplements such as The Big Rubble. Are their goat-headed broo in Dragon Pass, given the Orlanthi don't keep goats. I would suggest only in areas where 'civilized' broo herd goats to provide 'mothers' for their offspring, and to prevent the need to 'raid' exposing them to retaliation. Otherwise, I would have thought it would be whatever was 'to hand'. I did write an essay once about the broo ecology of Snakepipe Hollow, and considered submitting it to WF, but no one seemed to really like it.

Any leading "woman's goddess" is going to have protection in childbirth as a major part of her remit. In our own world Isis, Astarte, Tanit Hera, the syncretic Catholic Mary, etc. all have protection of mother's in childbirth as a primary role. Anyone who has gone through parenthood (or understands the mortality rate of childbirth) will know that it is definitely sufficently terrifying that a goddess who can intercede to ensure safe delivery of a healthy baby would be very, very popular. In Glorantha, where magic is real, the role of these cults is a significant difference from our own world. (I like to say that Glorantha is the world our ancient ancestors wanted to live in)

We are hard at work on layout of the Eleven Lights (the campaign pack for The Coming Storm). I'm busy collating proofreading feedback, and the Chaosoum gnomes are working on getting some art files etc. So if you were worried that this would not be coming hot-on-the-heels and be available at least in PDF soon, fear not. We are working on it. (Usually when I am quieter here, it means my daily tabletop rpg time is consumed with a project, not that I don't love you all)

Yes, that is the current thinking. The Culbrea tribe warband is described as such in The Eleven Lights for example. The Lant Ulfar idea is quite nice.

I'd be cautious, Jeff might have had new ideas in the last 18 years, certainly the old Germanic/Celtic division between Ralios and Dragon Pass is no longer what it was. Working on the Guide will do that for you.

With the switch to 'high roll wins' it feels as though it also makes logical sense that the highest roll under the number is a critical. So, instead of a critical on a 1, a critical is a roll of exactly the TN. A 1 is a fumble. This makes higher rolls consistently better. It also fixes abilities of 20 as they now make a difference, because you can roll a 20 and critical. Has anyone played this way?

I assumed in most cases that a charm was a friendly entity that you could negotiate with, but spirit combat was a fight with a hostile entity. We do have an example in HQ:G of an allied spirit as a follower (a sidekick) so it seemed like one way to model it