EricW

9GB is immense, must have taken you ages! Agree not something you could easily post on a website. But you might be able to post interesting pieces. I wrote a 3D model explorer, just a move forward, back, side to side, rotate, with the model hanging in black space. It was fun to navigate through models on a web page. Unfortunately the code is long lost, and this wouldn't by itself solve Scotty's problem of how to add this capability to BRP.

I completely understand blocking foreign HTML, but the raw 3D models themselves are not HTML, they are effectively a kind of image file. But just allowing uploads unfortunately would not be enough, you need to add a few javascript files to the page template to make it work. I'm not familiar with Invision plugin system, I mostly use Wordpress as the CMS when I do plugins, though I could figure Invision out pretty quickly, its what I do. There seems to be quite a demand for an invision 3D plugin, but probably not enough demand on this site for you to commission a bespoke plugin. Let me have a think about it.

Absolutely beautiful. I wish BRP website would let people post 3D models, its straight forward these days to display a 3D model on a web page, and provide basic interaction, so people can move around and explore it. The following is a partially built 3D chess game in a web page, which you can interact with, which I am posting as an example of this kind of technology. Click the pieces to move. The game is not fully operational, the main missing bit is if you move a pawn all the way to the other end of the game, it doesn't offer the chance to change the pawn to another piece. But the computer player is backed by stockfish, a brutal open source chess AI, so you probably won't get the chance to do this. https://chess.desirableapps.com

Absolutely - the bit about "if you are not serious..." is a tell, they'll remind you of this when they hit you with the membership fee.

New Eurmal spell - the summoning of fun. Causes gold coins, food, images of attractive people to appear in front of tricksters over a large geographical area, leading the tricksters to converge on the caster, where they scream at each other, complain, steal and fight until Eurmal appears. Naturally any non tricksters who catch on to what is happening attempt to break up the gathering before it reaches its terrifying finale.

They’re all thieves and cause mindless property destruction if it amuses them. I think of them as street hobos with dangerous magic. Barely tolerated, regarded with deep suspicion, but in Glorantha occasionally utterly essential, when normal paths to overcoming an enemy are closed. I don’t think anyone would tolerate a large collection of tricksters under normal circumstances. What if they manage a large enough worship group to count as a temple, giving them access to who knows how many dangerous trickster spells? Everyone remembers the infamous Sartar Teddybear Picnic. Better to disperse them, by force, before there is any chance of that happening!

Argrath and Elusu at the bar. ARGRATH: Your round. ELUSU vanishes. ARGRATH: You little shit...

You mean like Loki? 😉 Trickster is a despised outcast, a storyteller, unreliable, blamed for anything which goes wrong, utterly indispensable when only deceit and cunning can save the situation.

I don’t think it’s directly comparable, our world doesn’t have the power to summon ancestors who lived through those times to answer questions. In “Orlanth is Dead”, after the divine storm magic fails the first thing the tribes do is summon hordes of ancestors to ask their help figuring out what is happening.

The tribe members would have chatted to ancestors returned from the dead every sacred time, so they would have a good knowledge of what happened to their tribe, stretching back to the greater darkness. They would be very aware the skill they used to survive great upheavals. They would know about Lokamaydon, the traitor who sided with Gbaji. I don’t know if they would be aware of everything the god learners did, they were enemies, sorcerers, evil magic. The Empire of the Wyrms Friends memories might be confused, a lot of knowledge was ripped from people’s minds by dragons. Theu would know about the first dawn, how Orlanth and the lightbringers saved the world. The Lunars - some tribes are friendly, many hate them. Everyone knows they use chaos and a weird form of sorcery, which is a huge challenge to people who hate chaos and sorcery. But they are too powerful to challenge openly.

The stories are mostly not that long - surely they can muster up an hour to read The Call of Cthulhu, or The Shadow Over Innsmouth. A great adaption of The Shadow Over Innsmouth is even playing on Amazon Prime. Dreams in the Witch House Some terrific non HP Lovecraft mythos stories; Crouch End (Stephen King) Granma In the Mouth of Madness The Screwfly solution - not a mythos story, but sufficiently horrible to qualify. Seriously, don't read the books then prepare cheatsheets, that just seems wrong. Have a video night.

“Drink that ooze, the chaos power it will give you is the only way you can defeat the monster, and prevent a greater eruption of chaos.” An illuminate has no problem with the end justifies the means, but a Storm Bull who is not illuminated knows using chaos to strengthen yourself against chaos is fundamentally wrong.

I would argue it makes them more open, not necessarily to the truth. From Dorastor - Land of Doom; It doesn't matter whether Arkat or Nysalor were right. They both believed diametrically different things. That in itself is proof that illumination does not give illuminates some ultimate key to the truth, it simply gives them more degrees of freedom. What about trickster lie spell? From the Red Book of Magic; My point is, on what basis would an illuminate reject a lie about the need for them to embrace chaos? If a trickster told a non-illuminated Storm Bull such a lie, they would believe it for a round, then reject it - the idea of embracing chaos would be utterly revolting. Lets hope the trickster knows how to run. An illuminated Storm Bull wouldn't feel such revulsion, so they are more likely to simply accept the lie. It would seem perfectly reasonable to them, as would almost any other course of action suggested by the lying Trickster. Hence my argument that in this circumstance at least, illumination makes a person more gullible.

Weirdest spam email ever...

Not easy. Lovecraft was a US author who was virtually unknown in his lifetime, his fiction only became widely popular after his death. A group searching through book stores for obscure publications in English would attract the attention of the SS or other intelligence services, who would very reasonably suspect the avid pulp magazine collectors were spies receiving secret instructions through magazine articles. At the very least NAZI intelligence services would think the PCs were subversives, giving way too much attention to effete Jewish trash when they should be focussing on the patriotic work of Reich visionaries or reading the classic founding stories of the Germanic people. Any officer who read a few of the HP Lovecraft stories might even think the group were crypto-homosexuals, which if they survived the interrogation would earn them a one way train trip to a concentration camp. They might even attract the attention of the NAZI occultists, if word had spread that an obscure US author was spilling some of their secrets. If they do manage to get hold of a few stories without getting arrested or shot, give them 1% mythos?

I doubt a greater darkness style gaping maw of chaos could exist inside the compromise, so clearly the crater is something else, or became something else when the goddess won her place in the middle air. But the lunes do like to cluster there. Perhaps it is a place where reality is unreliable, no longer entirely a part of the mundane world, where the light of the moon shines strong, and uncertainty and madness cluster ready to rend the sanity of anyone foolish enough to enter unprotected by the power of the Goddess. All highly speculative of course!

Spot hidden fumbles can be entertaining, but only if the player does not know they fumbled.

My point is being liberated from conscience and culture makes you more susceptible to delusion, not less. My example, a tricker lie spell would almost certainly fail to convince a non illuminated storm bull to embrace chaos, because they fundamentally know this choice is wrong. Completely outrageous lies can be rejected because they are outrageous. But an illuminate no longer has the comfort of such certainty, they no longer think anything is outrageous. They would not find the idea of embracing chaos automatically repugnant. A trickster lie spell could more easily deceive them, to do something stupid.

Then why are they susceptible to occlusion? Illuminates are as susceptible to delusion as anyone else, particularly with regard to themselves, maybe more so, because they have lost the anchor of culture and tradition. A trickster who lied and told a storm bull he needed the power of chaos to defeat chaos would die a round later - outrageous lies can be rejected. But tell this lie to an illuminated storm bull and it might really cause them to question their choices.

I suspect Eurmal has no problem with illuminates, just makes them more gullible to weird pranks. Illuminates are not certain of reality or their place in the world , imagine the havoc you could wreak on their state of mind with a few lie spells.

Except the Storm Bull Oddi the Keen in Lords of Terror chose to obey the rules when he was illuminated. A trickster could similarly choose to remain true to their calling, of breaking the rules. Because if they choose to break the rule that tricksters break the rules, they end up obeying them 😉 Or even weirder, the trickster might not realise they are now an illuminate. All life is illusion, why would Eurmal allow a follower to grasp an introspective truth?

I think the key is to give the powers huge drawbacks, otherwise the PCs just psychic every locked door to figure out whether to open it, maybe some limited ability to sense the psychic history of objects, with a real risk of sanity loss if they discover something interesting. HP Lovecraft's original stories include psychic powers, but immensely powerful mythos beings are also masters of the psychic realm. Think Frodo putting on the One Ring, attracting the attention of Sauron. All the psychics in HPL's original CoC story went batsh*t crazy when Cthulu emerged from his crypt, and started emitting his psychic call. From "The Call of Cthulhu"

I think its even simpler than that - the moon rose into the sky because the world started to fall apart under the impact of Rufelza's chaos magic. When Prax started to disintegrate under the impact of the Greater Darkeness, the pieces which began drifting apart didn't respect gravity either. This would make the entire Lunar project an immense glamour, concealing the true nature of what happened when the moon rose into the sky - except maybe for people who stare too long into the crater, the one place where Lunar mysticism can no longer conceal the awful truth.

Lets not forget, it was Trickster who sowed the seeds of the EWF, by teaching a human how to speak Auld Wyrmish. Stealing dragon magic is a bit like the legend of Trickster stealing fire for mankind ;-). Since Trickster clearly understands dragons enough to cause mischief, a draconic illuminated Trickster is surely possible. In a world where humans mostly lost contact with dragons magic, a new draconic trickster would be a major draw, people from all over including the empire would seek them out, to learn wisdom and a bit of dragon magic.

Hence the constant phone calls - and not just with a single god 😉 I was once in a breakfast cafe in a unionist area of Belfast, Northern Ireland, trying to deal with a massive hangover. Half the street was rubble, but the surviving cafe was awesome - the food is always good, in places where the customers don't do complaint forms. There was a weedy looking but well dressed guy continuously babbling away into his phone, taking phone calls in quick succession so rapidly that he had barely touched his breakfast. A couple of enormous steroid enhanced goons in suits were eating their way through a huge pile of fry up breakfast food at the next table, glared malevolently at anyone who got too close to phone guy. I'm guessing the guy on the phone was doing a lot of relationship management, though I doubt he was arranging humanitarian missions for the United Nations. He certainly wasn't paying much attention to the world around him. That's what the goons were for.