Yelm's Light

Rene Descartes was a drunken fart, "I drink, therefore I am."

I wouldn't mind a good Supers game, and Austen would never have entered my mind.

Cool...I look forward to it. Just hope my connection isn't pulling a recalcitrant child act then.

I guess I'm an anomaly; I actually come originally from a wargame background, having played them for much of my young life before RPG's and somewhat less after that point. They'd become the same old thing to me, set counters, move them around, roll some dice according to a set of (normally) unchanging rules, master the strategy and move on...and this coming from a huge WWII history buff. RP'ing ripped the lid off of that for me. Rules weren't complete, let alone set in stone, because they couldn't cover every situation in the same way that counters games could. My issues with RQ3 were twofold; the absolutely poor design from a physical standpoint and the fact that I didn't like what I read of the new rules. Fatigue/encumbrance, if you took it to its logical conclusion, left you with PC platforms that couldn't move. And sorcery was beyond fiddly which, if you projected it, meant LM types who spent their lives in a room surrounded by arcane books and parphernalia trying to cast spells. Not particularly interesting from a player's perspective, and much easier for a GM to have a set, if growing, list of spells. RQ2's combat already worked fine for me, and the 5%-to-random increase for skills didn't have much weight with me one way or the other. That doesn't mean the RQ2 combat rules were complete; I made numerous rulings not covered explicitly in the rules when wearing my GM's hat. But I saw no reason to spend my limited funds on a product that appeared to have planned obsolescence which, by the way, was in the upper spectrum of pricing. And it did nothing for me rules-wise that I hadn't already done for myself.

I played Squad Leader, and I played ASL, and quickly tired of all the times we'd sit and wait for someone to consult one of the myriad rulebooks for the latter. I count myself lucky that it was a store copy and that I never bought into it.

It was a perpetual motion power strip.

For a start, you could do worse than reading Oliver Dickinson's Griselda tales. I believe Chaosium carries The Complete Griselda, and the author has a website devoted to her with some excerpts and short tales: http://www.griselda.org.uk/main.html .

I never used it in HQ, because I never really ran a campaign as such except as an adjunct for the more powerful members of my RQ game (and thus already had established personas). What I would do wasn't so much part of the system as the structure of the game. At natural breakpoints, like at the end of a campaign, I'd schedule a short night where I'd spend 20 minutes or half an hour with each player discussing privately where they wanted to go with the character from there, what changes they foresaw, etc., and then we'd briefly go over their downtime activities. I'd use the information garnered in my plotting for future games, some immediate and some less so. Of course, there were no such things as flaws when I instituted the practice, but it helped keep the players in touch with the characters and made them think about the future and where they'd like to fit into it, and it also aided me in GM'ing. I drew entire campaigns from some of their ideas.

I don't think 6 or 8 pages is excessive for a major cult, especially if you're going to play an involved member in a campaign. (And those are only for the major cults; the smaller ones usually get about a paragraph's mention under Associated Cults.) Even the lowliest lay member knows the cult's mythology if they've been around for any period of time, especially in a community as insular as the Puppeteers'.

And another Lunar one, Hon-Eel.

Unless, of course, you're playing ASL the RPG... <shiver>

But would he be able to use it as well as someone who had experience with axes, or as well as he could use a sword? I think not. It's apples and oranges anyway; this is about using the same weapon in a different hand, a different proposition.

I haven't been particularly proud of my country since at least Nov. 9, 2016. Quite the opposite, to be frank. And on a related note, RPGNow is running a promotion to fundraise for RAICES, a private organization trying to reunite detained immigrant children with their families. A $30 donation will net you something like $700 in free PDFs.

My take was that Conan would have been a Pentan captured as a youth in a raid by one of the Praxian tribes (or vice versa, captured by Praxians during a Pentan raid), as stated above likely Bison, since they ranged near enough to that area. (Strangely, we never had a Conan archetype in a campaign I played in or ran, other than as a bruising barbarian. Future kings are rare indeed.) Jaldon would be about as close a Praxian as I can think of that approaches Conan, and he's wrong for the archetype. Sheng Seleris, maybe.

Muscle memory is an entirely different matter, though, especially with most people having a dominant (read 'main') side. As Morpheus said, "There's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path."

I'd've thought it'd be the other way 'round...studying and applying the 'laws' of magic is what sorcerors do. Spirit societies might be unwilling to provide info to the would-be shaman, but that doesn't mean he/she couldn't find other avenues for research. Whether they'd be suited to it (i.e, high CHA) is another matter...

Reminds me of an anecdote from one of my early campaigns. (I'll keep this derail short...) One of the group was a ZZ initiate dark troll named Urgor who, shall we say, wasn't the brightest bulb in the box, and he'd wheedled a Terror Mask out of his mentor, who was a Death Priest. Waving off the priest's words of warning, he wore it into combat for the first time. Unfortunately, his opponent resisted, but his two trollkin followers didn't, and one of them ran through the fight, nearly getting its master and itself killed until Urgor booted it out of the way. It ran off, never to be seen again, probably as a tasty morsel for some gorp. (Everyone but his player had a good laugh.) He was substantially more careful about its use after that.

He definitely didn't have a problem with riding horses.

It all depends on how you run it. At least in RQ, magic items were super rare in my campaigns, aside from the basic stuff like battle magic foci-inscribed items. rune metal weapons and armor, and the occasional crystal. (I'd progressed beyond Monty Haul in the D&D days.) Most of my 'special items' were low- or no-powered things that gave flavor to the setting (mostly Prax, with the occasional side trip to Sartar, Pent, the Elder Wilds, and Dorastor). See my entries in our little 'More Plunder' project for a representative distribution: (Our friend @Sayerson created a nice little PDF with all our entries; the link is on the last page of the thread. Unfortunately you can't tell who wrote what there; you have to scroll through the thread for that.) Most of what would properly be classed 'magic items' of mine are one-of-a-kind. The rest generally have very minor effects or are extrapolations of RW things.

Ditto. I've been more interested in the plot than the nitty gritty dirtnap factory for quite a while, and so have most of my players. My hack-and-slash days were left behind as a teenager.

Nice handle. I'll let you know if I see any walking trees. First rule of Glorantha: YGMV (Your Game May Vary)...the second being MGF (Maximum Game Fun). Or maybe they're 1A and 1B. Do it however you want. The rules aren't set in stone.

Hahaha I never actually saw Lou Zocchi before. He looks like Colonel Sanders.

To be fair, generally only the well-to-do would be able to afford swords, and the general citizenry would be far more likely to carry a staff, which could impact the interpretation of those death numbers. Nevertheless, there's an issue of range here. A sword wielder will generally have a hard time getting within the guard of an experienced staff fighter in order to do that greater damage.

That doesn't mean it would be approved of or encouraged by the higher-ups, especially in a cult that is very much militarily-oriented in attitude and organization. The Humakt cult has always been severe and uncompromising (unless, of course, you ask a ZZ). And, to the specific point: (edited the text of the quotes for typos)

Sheet protectors and grease pencils worked well for me...and I agree, a countdown is a waste of space.