d(sqrt(-1))

I found it very difficult going and in fact I still haven't managed to read all the way through it - as you say too many NPC interactions at the start, and I felt too much vagueness about the actual site. I can't imagine running it as written. It felt too much of "Here are all these wonderful NPCs for you to portray having interactions with your PCs" and not enough of "Here's actual description of the situation for you to run it". 

The above posters have covered it much better than I could.

There's also the saying (and rumoured God-Learner secret) "It's a game"

On 1/23/2021 at 12:39 AM, egyptian said:

First off, thanks for all the answers. I didn't quite expect so many responses to what I thought was a pretty innocent question!

 

re: The Greatsword Thing-from my admittedly limited research it seems like we don't see evidence of bronze swords of more than about 100cm, and most are 60-70. The one one bronzeworker who I heard comments from said that the 'leaf swords' which we find in abundance were near the limits of bronze's mechanical strength. I'm sure magic would let you make more impressive weapons, and in a magic-pervasive world it's certainly reasonable, but it would probably make that base cost we see in the rulebook a couple shades higher.

 

Maybe it's enough to just have some expected technologies missing. No flint and steel obviously, and characters will probably want to keep a firepot so they can carry a glowing coal from one campfire to the next. No book bindings, but scrolls are everywhere and can be flipping massive (look at some of those Torah scrolls!). No horse collars mean that horses are for transportation, and oxen for work. No potatoes means that everyone knows there should be something else in the stewpot, but they don't know what...

The thing to remember is that our world runs on physics. Glorantha doesn't, it effectively runs on Mythology. The bronze dug up is actual bones of dead gods, it's not necessarily what we call bronze. The Sun really is a guy in a chariot riding across the Sky (well, depends on who/what you believe). There are rivers that run uphill. You can go to the Sky, descend into Hell, and meet gods. This changes a lot of the way things work and perceptions.

It's not this Earth, but it has internal consistency (well until somebody changes the rules under you...)

15 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Eight pages on running rules-light Gloranthan games, which John Wick shared with anyone who turned up to last week's ImpromptuCon.

Would have been nice to know about it in advance though and I would have turned up. From what I can tell it was promoted on Facebook? Or did I miss a mention here?

Isn't at also likely that the presence of magical healing, limb reattachment and resurrection are likely to make violence more common?

Not that I've got anything against running NV scenarios/campaigns.

32 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

Which is exactly why I wrote what I did. Maybe it does need some kind of prefacing text encouraging the GM to fill in the blanks where something is merely referenced as a name, an extra line in the introduction.

I agree, but it might need a bit more than that as you still won't know, without a reference, if it's something defined somewhere else! Ideally (but it would be a lot of work and so probably impractical) to have references to a list at the end of the book, or maybe even just a sentence about whatever it is.

When I write scenarios or campaign stuff I don't plan everything out as that's way too much work, but usually if I put something in I have some idea of what /where it is/might be, and that's fine, because I can then fill it out later on if needs be. If I let someone else run games in that setting then they won't necessarily know my thinking if I don't tell them my intentions.

It works really well as a technique in fiction to mention things in passing because it evokes atmosphere and the author can choose to give us as much or little detail as they want. In an RPG though, with active participants they may well want to know something about it/go there/steal it/whatever. At that point I'm left with three options a/tell the players I don't know 2/ try and find a definition somewhere, 3/ make something up that may or may not later on turn out to be incorrect. I guess it's a classic problem with metaplots.

I love Tekumel as well, but it has similar problems, maybe even moreso, as Professor Barker seems to have written most of his massive amount of notes in Urdu and/or Tsolyani, and most of those notes are now with the Tekumel Foundation who seem to have little resource to actually get much published. The great thing about Glorantha is that it is thriving and getting a lot of publications precisely because it started to "open up" to other contributors. In general I like the direction of travel and obviously things have to be written that will sell, but I've never really been able to cope with huge info dumps of background material very well or interlinking references where you have to puzzle out what the hell it means. I much prefer to have it upfront TBH.

What's it for? It looks to be stretching a Gloranthan year to a terrestrial year - but why?

2 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

I'm seeing a lot of situations where some flavour text is included, like "journey to the thunderfountain" (I just made that up) and people react by asking "where is this thunderfountain detailed". Now the author might write the name of a place that Greg or Jeff or Sandy has talked about, that's in Heortling Mythology, but that doesn't mean that you as a GM have to have access to these ancient obscure sources, just decide where it is in your Glorantha. That can seem daunting, but it really doesn't have to be.

Well true, but if you don't know if it's a real (i.e. defined somewhere) place or not then that's just a bit annoying TBH. It's not just really not knowing where it is, but not knowing WHAT it is either.  I know a lot of it is just passing references to things that maybe weren't ever defined, but even just knowing that is a better than no information at all.

As you say, if it's cropping up a lot in people's questions, that's surely an indication that it's a problem of some sort?

5 hours ago, allenowen said:

A link for what?

Well it's a bit of a stretch I know, but the dice you are talking about maybe? (Yes, I know a link has since been posted)

8 hours ago, allenowen said:

Obviously, I know what the hit location die is used for, but what is the Rune die and the Strike Rank die for?

Any chance of a link?

I always read that bit about "cannot impale" to mean that a rolled impale was a normal hit, but a critical still did extra damage and ignored armour.

Don't think I would ever have arrived at that interpretation TBH.

And non-thrown missiles don't get a damage bonus...

8 hours ago, Dissolv said:

I ran my players through the Woods of the Dead, Gloomwillow mission from Pegasus Plateau. 

***Spoilers***

 

***You were warned***

 

Then I read the final encounter, saw the massive amount of Rune points, the ridiculous POW, the 2 point Sever Spirits (thanks to the woods effect), and the superhuman ability to fight from the branches of the tree while hiding at %140.   She can cast through any Mossback in the woods, so there is no getting out of line of sight here.

My

Just checking - I can't see the bit about Sever Spirit being 2 points. p97 says "Rune magic cast based on these Runes costs 1 less magic point than normal..." - magic points, not Rune points. Is it mentioned somewhere else that I've missed?

I'd agree though, the stats for Gloomwillow do seem OTT, not much armour or HP so if you can close great, if not you're dead...

As an aside on maps, am I alone in that I really don't like the style of map in e.g. Smoking Ruin p 10-11, Pegasus Plateau p 4-5? They look nice as pictures but I find it almost impossible to read some of them and to actually find some of the places mentioned. I would much prefer clear B/W maps and the nice pictures to be separate.

36 m/s climb rate seems high, especially if carrying a rider. Also how does the rider feel about being on the back of a winged Stuka? Hippogriffs have a MOV of 12, so 36m/round if they do nothing else, but climbing I'd expect maybe half that at a maximum.

Not quite sure why falling damage is used - after all the Hippogriff has got to pull out of its stoop, so it's not coming in at full speed to do so or hitting the ground in an uncontrolled manner. I can't see it would really get more than a fly-by claw attack, maybe plus a little bit more. 138d6 is...well I don't know what to call it - why don't they just take out the Crimson Bat? They really aren't going to be as fast or manoeuverable as a falcon, even with Air/Sky runes in their heritage just due to mass and wing surface ratio (if you're using the physics that is!). 

Compare it to a Sky Bull Stomp attack of 2d6+4d6

Bit of a spoiler...I was kind of surprised that they were able to just walk into a large-ish temple of the Lunars with not a single entity or defence around. No wards, wyter, active temple guardians, priest/esses, spirits, guards? No wonder the Lunar Empire is going downhill.

They could be the same end result, just for different reasons...

Aha, I knew I'd seen it somewhere:

https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/8399-runequest-core-rules-questions/page/3/?tab=comments#comment-129421

I agree that the wording is weird though!

p366 says "Spirit Combat may occur between two discorporate entities  or between a discorporate entity and an embodied entity", and later "Any number of discorporate spirits may attack a single entity at a time" - so I guess multiple embodied entities can't engage in Sprit Combat vs the same foe at the same time.

p368 "Resolving Spirit Combat" says "Tie: A tie (same quality of result) means the situation is temporarily unresolved. If both participants rolled a critical success the result is a tie. Both parties do spirit combat damage to the other". I find that a bit oddly worded but I think it means that you only mutually inflict damage on a tie if criticals were rolled, otherwise no damage is done. 

17 hours ago, MJG said:

Surely all sages wear 'Y' Fronts in honour of their rune? 

Maybe that's why Orlanthi don't wear Air rune underpants - too difficult to untangle yourself from.

I would think they can hover? Stall speed is only really relevant if you need to keep moving in order to provide lift - unless there is some Motion/Air rune element to a hippogriff that requires it to keep moving?

There seem to be no Bonnacon in Glorantha, (although there really ought to be), and I can imagine they would stall if their jet propulsion failed or they hadn't eaten enough beans...

9 hours ago, g33k said:

A serial panelist, I think he said.
It's like a serial killer, but not /quite/ as antisocial.

Would be really serious if you swapped two grain goddesses and became a cereal killer.

I think the axe doubles up as a bottle opener

I happened to watch this the other day re cuir boilli: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO_nG6OpCKg

Maybe they only take one hand and one wang from each enemy?