Akhôrahil

On 12/21/2023 at 7:23 PM, Mark Mohrfield said:

I’ll soon be starting a game of Questworlds for Doctor Who, and I don’t think that powering up is appropriate for that setting. Would awarding extra Story Points be a viable alternative?

This seems preferable, agree.

My PCs tried to set up a complicated plan using Darkwalk, until I told them they wouldn’t be able to see or hear each other.

On 4/15/2024 at 11:53 PM, scott-martin said:

It's really a state of mind where you're at home in the landscape and that feeling renders every hill and bush somehow sacred. You can be anywhere and be in "Prax." The shamans just have better records for the part west of the river.

Prax is where your heart is?

On 4/20/2024 at 12:17 PM, Joerg said:

Jaldon is not a deity, but a re-appearing mortal hero (or if you aren't a Praxian, a mortal monster).

However, it's interesting to ask who the Waha that Pavis defeated and then healed was. Even if you just say "an avatar of Waha, not the big kahuna himself", this means that a god can act within time using such an avatar, and this seems as though it would be important and a Compromise workaround.

1. One of the players made a temporary Voralan PC to use while his main one is off fighting in Hahlgrim's War. It seems INT 22 gives you a lot of solid skill category modifiers...

2. You missed the opportunity of calling this RuneQuest: Mycology.

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

The illumination of Sedenya and Nysalor have nothing whatsoever to do with Buddhism and enlightenment.  Glorantha itself is implicitly and joyfully spiritually materialist in a way that Sakyamuni would 🙄 at.

In terms of Illumination there is a HUGE disconnect between Buddhism and illumination.  Buddhism recognizes morality as an essential part of its teaching, while illumination is "beyond good and evil" (shorthand for being evil AND arrogant).

I keep saying Illumination is Existentialism. There is no objective good or evil, no-one has real authority over you, and you get to create your preferred self without limits. God might not be dead, but if you're Argrath, that can be arranged.

On 4/6/2024 at 5:38 PM, Zalain said:

And: the only rune spells avaiable for thieves are Divination Block and Dismiss (elemental)? WHat sense does it have dissmiss a elemental and not be able to summon it? (what sense does it have a thief can be summon/dismiss elemental?)

Elementals are often used as temple guardians.

1 hour ago, Malin said:

I have always been of the opinion that if Wakboth is the moral evil of the mundane world within time and trapped there, then the Wakboth you meet on a heroquest is formed from your own inner evil, that little shade of darkness at the heart of every mortal. Or, he can be formed by the evils of opposing forces on the quest. In either case, it is the mortal heroquester that brings the fuel that becomes the devil with them.

This is why some can call the Red Goddess, once mortal, the devil, while others call Argrath the same thing. Every mortal can be the devil, if given the opportunity.

Hell is empty, and all the devils are here?

3 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

EDIT: Although coming back with the Bat may make the “full victory” over chaos-as-evil ironic and make the “I am the Devil, now” reading tempting. Maybe.

49 minutes ago, EricW said:

Yep, I'll withdraw that one, I can't recall the source. 

It's from KoS when Argrath says it to the Devil. It doesn't seem all that supported there either.

8 hours ago, EricW said:

What about every 500 years the devil returns?

Seems unsupported (also, it’s 600, right?) - when in the Second Age would that have happened?

2 hours ago, svensson said:

I suppose we'd need a mechanic to sort out whether or not a given Shaman knows of a specific ancestor that was an initiate of a specific deity. Off the top of my head that would probably be a Customs [Own], Cult Lore, or Insight [Own] roll, probably requiring a Special or Crit success.

If you have the time and magic resources, you could also map your ancestry by summoning and questioning ancestors, and working your way back that way.

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

If an encounter is contact, consider:

I don't think this matters for heroquests. Vadrus is also annihilated and without a cult, but you can explicitly run into him in heroquests (such as Orlanth Forms the Storm Tribe). He just can't provide magic through worship. Similarly, you will have to defeat Wakboth (using the Net) if you're doing the LBQ - otherwise, how would it even work?

I believe that quote is about what you can do from/into the mundane world.

4 hours ago, EricW said:

Surely in a sense awakening a fetch must be a mini hero quest, at least as much as any initiation ceremony is.

Yes, hence the idea that you can defeat god-like beings in Spirit Combat within a heroquest framework.

4 hours ago, EricW said:

If a shaman meets a god on the spirit plane, are they protected by the compromise? Is there a risk of meeting a god who is not fully bound by the compromise, like encountering Wakboth if a Shaman wanders the spirit plane in Prax? Are gods accompanied by large spirits who might not feel bound to respect the compromise?

1. Yes. Any gods you meet will act according to their behaviour in the myths. Possibly this might not hold true if you meet a heroquester who has taken on the role of the god, but even in this case, acting out of character opens them up for an identity challenge.

2. I say no. The god world and the herorealms have a timeless quality to them, where you can encounter entities before they get destroyed. I don't think the Spirit World shares this quality. Wakboth in a heroworld heroquest, yes; in a spirit world quest, no.

3. This seems perfectly reasonable. Although most spirits act only in accordance to their natures as well.

16 hours ago, Darius West said:

Gods can't be defeated in spirit combat.

This is an interesting suggestion, because they can be defeated in physical combat, on HeroQuests. Perhaps it's rather that you need the correct mythical framework (I don't know exactly who the Bad Man is, but shouldn't he be vastly stronger if he's the enemy of someone divine or godlike? this suggests that a mythic frame has been created where a would-be shaman has a chance of fending him off).

18 hours ago, radmonger said:

Personally I rule that 0 hp, or head severed, is merely clinical death, and is just as reversible as it is in the real world.

Actual death, requiring resurrection, happens 3 minutes after clinical death. This  is the time for the spirit to leave the area. That time can be extended by shamanic practices, which will involve talking to the dead person and persuading them to stick around.

This isn’t the case - the spirit hangs around for seven days.

You raise a really interesting point, though - since you can perfectly re-attach a severed head in fraction of a second, why is decapitation instantly fatal?

On 4/5/2024 at 11:56 PM, PhilHibbs said:

Any ideas on how to handle sudden fatal blows near the end of a melee round?

Me and a lot of other people houserule this as ”end of next round”, or if you want to particularly meticulous, ”in 12 SRs”.

3 hours ago, Super Thunder Bros. said:

Thanks @Akhôrahil I’m going to leave things on the Wyter front for now as it probably complicates things.

Just to check, post adulthood initiation, you’d award them all of the Orlantha/Ernalda cult skill bonuses?

Welll... technically you earn the bonuses in the time between adulthood initiation and cult initiation, which can be a few years, but this is probably worth expediting so that the PCs can get the magical goodies. It's probably easiest either to ask them what cult they're looking to initiate into and give them the cult skill package soon enough (within a season or two?), or if you want it more detailed, simply ignore the cult skill bonus package altogether and run it as regular training where the cults provide such training in cult skills and ignore the cult skill bonus package altogether (after all, it's meant to be a simplified way to keep track of what you were taught in a cult, so it serves no particular purpose if you just track in-game training instead). I would lean towards the latter if you're tracking season by season, honestly.

On 3/17/2024 at 2:07 PM, Super Thunder Bros. said:

Players will start as young Lay members of their cults as well as lay members of Ernalda as she is a central figure in this clan. First sessions will be adulthood initiations, cult initiations will be played out further down the line.

What I’m wondering is what to do about skills. SSIS suggests characters should start as lay members of Ernalda/Orlanth thus gaining those passions and cult skills? (Do Lay members start with cult skills?) Then going on to initiate into the clan Wyter and community through the adulthood ritual.

In my opinion, you become a lay member of Orlanth or Ernalda (typically) through adulthood initiations, with the cult skills arriving as part of the training and education for it (some of which might come beforehand and some after, but it's probably easiest to hand them out as part of adulthood initiations). Cult initiations typically come a few (but only a few) years later, maybe at 18. The Wyter... not sure, but it seems weird to me if you would be an adult in the clan without magical clan membership for any length of time, so it might either come as part of the adulthood initiation or very closely afterwards.

I don't think shamans are any better at handling gods than your average initiate, unless that god specifically has a Spirit World version or connection (like Waha or Storm Bull, the ones that would have been classified as Great Spirits in the HW era). Most gods probably don't, although with Orlanth, Lightning Boy and Little Brother are reflections/incomplete versions of him in the Spirit World, and it's doubtful to what extent Kolat isn't just "Spirit Orlanth".

It helps a lot against unbalanced encounters if

1) Victory isn't mandatory to solve things, and

2) There are possible consequences well short of TPK.

Of course, this doesn't always work - when the PCs enter Dorastor with two Storm Bull initiates as in my campaign, every fight will be either a victory or end up with 2+ PCs dead (as those two won't retreat, and if berserking, will fight on until they're outright killed). That's their own damn fault, though, and a dead Storm Bull has no grounds to complain! 🙂

On 9/22/2018 at 10:42 AM, soltakss said:

However, my rules of thumb are:

• A PC Party can usually defeat an NPC party of similar skill level/numbers
• A PC Party often defeats an NPC Party of similar skill and slightly higher numbers
• A PC Party often defeats an NPC Party of higher skill and similar numbers
• A PC Party sometimes defeats an NPC Party of similar skill and much higher numbers
• A PC Party usually defeats a single NPC of higher skill 

Making the NPCs tougher, by making them trolls, giving them better armour, just increases their effective skill.

 

Also: Most monsters are less dangerous than they seem, because they're highly front-loaded. They can dish out damage if they luck out (this is one reason Shield is so good, or for really huge monsters, Earth Shield), but they're usually really bad at defending themselves, so they go down fast.

High armor helps them a lot, though, especially if combined with good POW (or they just go down to spells instead). Zeeth the Chaos whale with his 22 points of armour took a number of turns for my players to grind down (although the crit that sliced his tail off was fancy).

5 hours ago, SDLeary said:

A line of inquiry that should be played out in the BESTEST game for Mostali... Paranoia!  😆

”But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Mostal.”

Do dwarves have souls in the first place?

How does it work when a river flows uphill, in Glorantha?

For the regular flow, the logic is obvious - rain falls, runs downwards, collects into a river, flows out to sea, rises as clouds, and so on.

But when a river flows uphill, then you end up with a lot of water further up. But then what happens to it? Does it find some other place to flow back? Get absorbed into the ground? Something has to happen with all that water deposited further up on land!