jeffjerwin

It bears a remarkable resemblance to our world map, and/or cartography of the Earth from the 15th century. The main deviation is the area around the Spike, Pamaltela closely resembles Africa, and Abzered Asia.

7 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

 

Just to clarify, its the random traits that can be problematic. I don't mind the other random stuff. Sure a CON of 6 is practically a death sentence, but the odds of that happening are low, and the effect of a very high CON isn't going to put the game out of whack. PKs netting 300-500 glory a year, can. 

 

On the other hand, every knight at the table having the same personality traits is a decidedly uninteresting game. That Valorous story is fun, and also something that happens in the stories themselves. I'm not all that fond of point-buy and static systems, because the story needs to include some diverse personalities. Perhaps there's a 'middle way' that could generate surprises, without being completely random?

16 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

 

Now if heroic characters high high traits are supposed to be the norm, wouldn't the standard method get more bumps?

 

The standard method is the safe method: you won't end up with an incompetent unable to qualify for knighthood (I'm paraphrasing Greg here) which could easily happen as well in KAP 1.0. It's obvious that (meta-fictionally) whoever rolled up many of the main characters used dice.

For Uther's reign and the Anarchy it's very important that PCs be competent warriors.

For Arthur's reign, it's important that PCs be dynamic and interesting courtiers, knights errants, etc. Of course, they gain benefits from their father and/or mother to make them so.

10 hours ago, Pentallion said:

Sorry, I'm just a bit slow today.  Day 7 of the flu and I'm getting up there in age.  Probably should just delete the whole thread. 

Feel better! But I agree, this is an interesting thread.

27 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

I disagree. I've ran all the editions of Pendragon, and have had quite a few powerful PCs, including some Round table members, with just a few 15s and 16s on the sheet. So its possible.

If you go with the recommended, standard method in KAP5+, including the Book of Knights & Ladies, traits are not rolled but set at 10 plus religious, cultural, and regional modifiers. With that method, a few 15s and 16s is about the best you can hope for. So the higher traits aren't really a design goal. More a by product of roll over a dozen traits randomly, then applying a few modifiers, then being able to raise something to 16, and then have 6 points to spend on top of it all. 

That doesn't mean that the results will get out of hand, but It has the potential to. In my last campaign I wound up with half a dozen paragons of virtue and chivalry. Most weren't that bright though, and died before they could ride the glory train. The ones that did survive, though, became something else again. I've never seen PKs as powerful in Pendragon, except for Lancelot.

Gareth, Lancelot, and Tristram are between the ages of 16 to 17 when they defeat or kill powerful, veteran knights. Lancelot, of course, fights multiple knights at once. Gareth (and his close analogues Erec and the Bel Inconnu) fights a series of increasingly more formidable opponents, with hardly any chance to recover from wounds. While I don't suggest using Lancelot's starting abilities, Gareth and his type are the very model of second-string Round Table knights (or future Round Table knights, really), and they all possess toughness, significant skill, and pronounced positive personality traits (Valorous, Energetic, etc. at 16+). Well, you may say, that is because they are the hero of the story. Well, then, what are the PCs? These kind of characters aren't immortal, but they tend to be killed by treachery or impossible odds, rather than by the dice alone. So I think PCs should be heroic from the start, kind of like in RQ:G.

Edit: this is particularly true for the second generation of PCs, born early in Arthur's reign or during the Anarchy.

39 minutes ago, creativehum said:

I just took a look at the Knights & Ladies rules for randomly determining Traits and all those modifiers. YIKES!

There's no way I'd use those... for all the reasons Atgxtg notes in his posts. The possibility of everyone running around with those huge modifiers is out of control.

That's a reasonable reaction if you want to give the campaign a 'grounded feel'. However, KAP is predominately about being a hero of the Round Table, which is not a 'grounded' sort of story. The game ought to support both approaches, and I think Greg, based on my conversations with him, intended for there to be a more than one option; there was discussion of different character generation methods based on group expectations.

More potent starting knights may reflect the literature more than 'realism' - the generic Arthurian literature has squires and newly knighted youths accomplishing great deeds: think of Tristram, Lancelot, and Gareth (and Gawaine in some versions).

This sort of story would be impossible if a few 16s and 15s aren't on a character sheet from the start. KAP has leaned more toward making the PCs major figures in the Round Table (displacing more obscure characters) rather than being bystanders, as the editions roll along.

Non-PC knights and ladies presumably do not have so generous a starting assortment of abilities.

4 hours ago, Pentallion said:

Okay, I just finally noticed this so forgive me if it's been already brought up elsewhere and just link to that thread please.

In RQG animals have no INT stat.  They never know spells.  Animal spirits, however, have INT and know spells?  This makes no sense to me.  Can anyone explain to me why this should be so?

If I sacrifice my cow and bind its spirit can it cast it's spells for me?  With the INT it never had and the spells it never knew during its lifetime?

There are animals with an INT stat in the non-spirit/mundane world in Glorantha. Not merely awakened animals, but also magical ones. These are likely to become spirits after death. Also, before the Storm Age, and definitely in the Green Age, there was no difference in INT between animals and humans, and many spirits originate from that time.

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Going back to Glorantha, I think that might be one the the differenes between the Lunar Empire and Rome. The Lunars don't seem to adopt as much from other coutures. 

The entirety of Lunar culture is an artificial synthesis. I mean that in the best possible way, but it borrows from everyone: Kralori tea, Dara Happan beards, Carmanian sorcery, even from the Orlanthi of the south, I'm sure, there are at least fashionable barbarisms to be had beyond simply gladiatorial styles. 

34 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

That makes a lot of sense - effectively they've become sorcerous symbols.

I like it too - it makes sense with the notion of Free INT in RQ (at least for me) - I mean, it is through the 'storing' and inner-eye visualisation of hermetic symbols and patterns that, for instance, that Giordano Bruno perceived the will acting on the universe (and, of course we see elements in this in the Golden Dawn, and through them to modern Chaos Magick).

3 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Well, these are problems for ordinary lumbering as well, for carpentry purposes - and they clearly manage somehow, so there's clearly a way around it.

I always imagined the Heortling 'stick-pickers' as charcoal burners... it's a similar activity and similar (very low) social status as it was in at least medieval times.

1 hour ago, jajagappa said:

He's a small god of a small cult.  If your entertainer is worried about such, then have them join Ernalda, Orlanth, or Yelm as an associated cult and get access to their Healing powers.

In fact, it would be kind of unusual to not belong to one of these as well.

It would be a little like being a Yinkin initiate without an Orlanth or Odayla initiation on the side.

3 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Beah the triot boar cover is a beauty. I was surprised by it, too. It's not something from Mallory, nor something most people would be aware of or associate with Arthur.

It was Stewart Weick's idea (I seem to recall Greg mentioning this to me). If you look on p.2 there's an explanation.

I think it isn't entirely representative of the game. My favorite is the one on the 1st edition box, though I also like the 1st edition cover to the Kerr's Companion. The helmed tourney knight of the 5.2 edition is kind of distancing. Maybe that's the point: Arthur became increasingly flawed in later editions.

19 hours ago, Joerg said:

An identity of Dendara and Entekos is more or less true - it isn't bi-directional, but Dendara and Entekos share a lot of myths. Entekos has myths unknown for Dendara.

The real quest of Valare was IMO to prove an identity of Entekos with the Red Goddess. That was a major failure. But then, there is no clear identification for She Who Waits.

And given that Hon-Eel 'proved' that She Who Waits was Ernalda, or more broadly, the Earth itself, perhaps we ought to note the unclearness of the boundaries between Ernalda and Dendara, sisters, and co-wives, of Yelm/Brightface?

We may also note that the Moon was birthed from the Earth... And that Entekos is called 'Mother of Moons'.

35 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I realize it's not a huge deal, but just thought it was interesting, and kind of a bold move on the part of the writers.

 

I have a sense from my reading that the Sourcebook is more-or-less a Kethaelan/Manirian document (in fact, a lot of the art is Esrolian), and the scribes of Nochet are more likely to be familiar more with the well known Teshnan deity Tolat than with Shargash, whose cult is limited to weird Pelorian traditionalists who are deeply insular. There is a Teshnan community _in_ Nochet, but there really isn't an Alkothi one.

12 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

That's... both awfully convenient (no need to involve yet more names and identities, which strikes me as a bit artificial-feeling) and weirdly contrived (So did the Orlanthi just not have a butcher deity before the Dawn? How did they import him?

I don't see the importance of him being related to Orlanth via Storm Bull either, really. Vingkot is the nephew of Storm Bull, but he doesn't have any significance to the Praxians, from what I know.

I don't know, it just doesn't quite sit right by me. Give it a few weeks, maybe, and I might get used to the idea.

Well, Vingkot _did_ marry one of Tada's daughters.

22 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

A bit of a side-note, but I always just assumed that "Shadzor" was a garbled pronounciation of "Shargash", and that the Shadzorings were Shargashi berserkers risen to some kind of rulership position, and by extension gone kinda nuts, with the lack of an emperor, or just due to the insanely hostile conditions of the Greater Darkness in general. I considered whether the Greater Darkness-era cult of Shargash's berserkers might've also allowed the induction of trolls, both for practical concerns and due to some kind of realization of Shargash's partly darkness- aligned nature/parentage. Later Dara Happa would obviously have covered up any troll presence if there actually was one, much as they tried retconning the identity of the Hyalorings. I didn't actually think the Shadzorings were a different race of beings until I read threads about it here.
Still not sure how I feel about that. Somehow the idea of humans (or humans-and-trolls) gone so bloodthirsty that even the Vingkotlings saw them as demons seem more interesting to me than another race of literal demons. Eh, oh well.

Devoted followers of Shargash can in fact be reborn as demons after death, was the impression I had. Similar to how Orlanthi heroes can become Thunder Brothers...

29 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Is Waha even a figure in Orlanthi mythology? I always thought of specifically as a Praxian Culture Hero, much like Heort to the Heortlings.

Jeff Richard has confirmed that Waha is the Orlanthi god of butchers, I think (he may be able to confirm). He's the son of Urox/Storm Bull, after all, and Orlanth's nephew. 

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

 

Or she became better known as Rumplestiltskin in folk lore - the same unreasonable reaction to being found out. 

This seems like the sort of thing a Disorder or Hunger spirit might do if it is defeated.

Isn't skinning an aspect of butchery? And thus a sub cult of Waha or whatever the Orlanthi call him?

Iron. Trolls won't eat iron, which is why you need a can opener to eat a dwarf.

On 23 March 2017 at 10:34 AM, Tcneseis said:

Zorak Zoran and Xiola Umbar are well-known Darkness deities who have no inherent Fire/Sky relationship. 

Zorak Zoran is the only troll deity to master fire. Xiola Umbar is part of the myth when ZZ discovers part of Yelm's soul in the Underworld.

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

Ernalda (or/as Durev's wife Orane) really is the goddess for all kinds of textile work - spinning the threads, weaving them on the loom, sewing and embroidering the raw textiles into luscious garments.

Her temples are often called Loom Houses...

7 hours ago, g33k said:

Yeah; it's the conjunction of darkness and secrets that make me think Primal Dark.  I guess it depends on whether Alusar is more attuned to keeping secrets or uncovering/sharing them.  Keeping secrets sounds solidly Darkness to me; sharing what is uncovered is pretty Fire/Sky.

YGMV

 

Asking a cat to share their secrets is a pretty pointless endeavor. They do so only at their own initiative.

Though it was Alusar who knew that Yelm entered the Underworld by the Western Gate. http://glorantha.wikia.com/wiki/Alusar

The fact that he told Orlanth may be a story in itself: no doubt Orlanth asked everyone, but forgot about the little black cat sleeping in Ernalda's basket.

I suppose I have to take into account that the king of the Durulz, according to Sartar:KoH in the early 1420s was Good King Stoutgild, who was secretly coerced by Delecti along with his Hoarfoot Clan into betraying Indrodar Greydog at the Howling Tower (see page 319). The King or Queen who succeeded him (though there may be a short reign in between) is probably ruling in the 1440s/50s, and as I indicated above, I'm going to go with Brackblood, a handsome drake and initiate of Orlanth Niskis.

Edit: you are already know all this, having written that excellent article in Hearts in Glorantha. Anyway, Brackblood is no doubt not a Hoarfoot and part of some rival clan, which benefited from Stoutgild's decline and death in 1429.