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Richard S.

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Posts posted by Richard S.

  1. 16 minutes ago, Sam E. said:

    Some folks, myself included, were interested in playing a FRPG in ME without feeling like we were limited to canon, and were happy to take some liberties in the name of fun.

    I can understand that, I asked because Barak earlier mentioned that he felt a skill-based system was "a better fit for talkien's middle earth", which to me implied he wanted to stick to canon, though if he wants to be more lax with magic then all power to him.

    I would like to know though, if you don't mind, what the appeal of middle earth is to you once you add in regular FRPG trappings? To me, the subtlety of its magic is one of the major differences between it and much of modern fantasy, and if you make spellcasters who can fireball and heal and so on a regular thing it removes a lot of the charm.

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  2. I guess my question is if you're going to be playing a middle earth campaign, why do you need a spellcasting system? Only the elves and ainur (plus a few non-elf relatives) have real magic, and very little of what Tolkien described is anything like the flashy spells of most FRPGs.

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  3. 36 minutes ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

    That wasn't my impression, since Sedenya was not a party to the Compromise, having died before it and been assembled after it.

    When did Sedenya become part of the Compromise?

    https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/conflict-in-the-middle-air/

    Near the end of this post it's implied she lost her agency after she ascended. Maybe she's not fully part of the compromise - she definitely wasn't while she still walked the earth - but she's now restricted by it to some degree.

    "During her lifetime the Red Goddess was not and she could do things that had not happened in the God Time. But now she too cannot do other than what she is and must fight Orlanth."

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  4. The Red Moon waxes and wanes as the pieces of other gods that make up the Goddess die and are reborn. She made the Moon so they'd have a closer otherworld to die into, so she doesn't have to go all the way to the underworld to bring them back.

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  5. 4 hours ago, metcalph said:

    My theory on why the Telmori are chaotic.  Nysalor taught them how to change at will through breaking the Cosmic Compromise in a specific way (he has form as can be seen at the Battle of Night and Day).  But breaking the Compromise causes chaos.  Ergo by changing at will (and later changing without will), the Telmori repeatedly break the Compromise and are chaotic.

    All Hsunchen can change their form at will using rune magic. What the Telmori got from Nysalor was a stronger wolf form that doesn't require rune magic to use, but it came with the caveat of being an unwilling transformation. It's chaotic because it was a gift from a chaos god.

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  6. 1 minute ago, Gallowglass said:

    Aren’t “modern Orlanthi” able to visit the time of the Vingkotlings in Heroquests? I would think that still makes them feel more relevant, even with all the time that has passed. 

    While there's probably several myths of the Orlanthi from around the same "time" as the Vingkotlings, it's not time travel. Modern Orlanthi will probably be aware of the Vingkotlings as ancestors, but they won't really interact with them as anything other than characters in the myth being told. You could take part in a play set in the time and place of your own distant ancestors and probably have about the same level of interaction with them as Gloranthans would have on a this-world heroquest, which is the farthest most will ever go.

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  7. RQ2's Sun Dragon is the only canon dragon cult we have currently, unless you count Kralorela's Path of Immanent Mastery from RQ3. I wrote up some ideas for EWF hero cults a while back, in the blog section of the forum, but stuff like that probably won't be around in the 3rd age since their patrons are long gone. I feel that most dragon magic in the late 3rd age is going to come from outside the context of a cult, either one-off gifts from dragons or inherent powers like what the dragonewts have, probably gained from heroquesting.

    Kralorela has kept some tradition of real draconic mysticism, but a) players can't really be mystics and b) we've got no clue how mysticism works yet.

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  8. 4 minutes ago, Erol of Backford said:

    I thought so but found it interesting that Grazers would be excited enmasse at becoming shamans per the Sky Ship scenario?

    Considering that scenario was designed over a decade before the modern Golden Bow writeup was, I don't think that's what it means. If I remember correctly, Golden Bow was just the name of the spirit tradition followed by the Grazers in HQ1, or at least an important society within it. It wasn't exclusive to shamans back then.

    If it was rewritten today with similar wording, it'd probably be more like "this journey will make us Sun Lords" or something like that, though they'd probably just change it entirely so it doesn't sound like they're just excited about a promotion.

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  9. 21 minutes ago, Erol of Backford said:

    I am reading the Sky Ship and its possible link to being a Golden Bow. I had read it was a shamanistic path somewhere but am thinking like Elmal it has its own cult write up somewhere as well?

    Is it just another rendition of the small sun but based in the Grazelands? As Hipster noted - Jardan is the Grazelander's little sun?

    Please forgive my ignorance but who, what why where when and how related to Golden Bow? Is Golden Bow in the new books?

    image.png.00ff1d1bc000d0b0227c3193652a96f8.png

    Golden Bow is Yelm's shaman path, followed by the Pure Horse People (and I think Jeff mentioned that even some Dara Happans use it). It's included in RQG as a shaman-only subcult of Yelm.

    Kargzant is the Pentan name of Lightfore, but the Grazers probably just call him Yelmalio nowadays. Jardan I think is an aspect of Yelm the Warrior, one of his other sons or titles or something, and so worshiped by Yelm initiates as part of that cult.

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  10. I think that most of the time, if you meet a dwarf who's willing to "trade", they're either insane or on a mission to get a very specific component for the world machine, anything from rare crystals to sacks of horse dung. They won't barter, or even understand what bartering is, they'll just say what they need and what they will give for it, and good luck if you try to refuse them since it'll be iron dwarfs making the offer. I'd personally use trading dwarfs as more of a plot device than a merchant, to give something important to the players. They'll never trade for anything dwarf-made. They'll just take it, by force if necessary.

    Openhandists might understand trading better, maybe even be willing to alter their deal or trade for other things (even occasional dwarf treasures), but they probably still won't have a good grasp on how humans value things.

  11. I like to imagine the green age kind of like the stereotypes of our mesozoic era. Warm, wet, and full of giant plants and scaled or feathered creatures. Beasts may not start appearing until later in the age, but there's a much greater variety of now-vanished draconics. You can go there to bring back earth, plant, or dragon secrets, but the sheer amount of life and growth going on is dangerous and even hostile towards mortals, who have too much death in them. You might find your feet trying to grow roots, or vines sprouting in your hair, or feel the inner Beast try to take over and send you running wild. Hills and mountains might suddenly decide to get up and walk to a nicer spot, or river dragons could flood across the land devouring everything in their path, or the sky might come a bit too close and burn you into fertile ash. In any case, if you're deep enough in the god time to even reach the green age, going back is going to be incredibly difficult even if you can make yourself do it.

    I'm with Hibbs and Sten on advocating mercy if players do somehow end up there, unless they try to take advantage of it, but I don't think it should be a place anyone should be going intentionally unless they're an elf, a dragonewt, or an earth hero.

  12. 5 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

    You don't heroquest to "The Green Age', you heroquest to a myth you know about the Green Age.  So you can come back with things related to that myth. 

    From what Jeff's said recently, I think that old KoDP model has been ditched. As it stands now, a myth is just a map of showing key points in the hero plane and how to get past certain obstacles, not a tunnel that you're forced to follow. Anyone can step outside the myth into the wider story of creation if they're willing to face the danger; the God Learners just had a lot of practice at it, specialized magic to help them, and thanks to the monomyth a much better understanding of what they could encounter at any given point.

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  13. 24 minutes ago, SDLeary said:

    I can't see anything that mentions the Impala are any less focused on Waha and Eiritha than any other tribe. Even in the Guide. Can you point me to the reference? Of course they would be focused on light cavalry. And if fighting along side the Domers, they would probably be in support of the phalanx

    Waha and Eiritha are still their primary gods, but Yelmalio has equal members with Waha according to Cults of Prax (and Orlanth is slightly higher apparently). The Sables, Zebra, and Unicorns also have considerable amounts. Tribal praxian Yelmalians in general outnumber those along the River of Cradles, though it's still the closest great temple so they'll worship there for important ceremonies and are technically subservient to its Light Captain.

    And here's a collection of references pulled from the Well. Not all of them are directly relevant to the Praxian question, but they're the most recent stuff about Yelmalio so they might be useful.

    https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/yelmalio-cultists-numbers/

    https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/the-sun-dome-temple-in-sartar/

    https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/sun-dome-information/

    https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/notable-people-of-the-impala-tribe/

    https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/light-in-the-sky/

    https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/yelmalio-description/

    https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/horsemen-and-charioteers-of-the-yelmalio-cult/

    https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/river-of-cradles-farmers/

    https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/yelmalio-cult-in-sartar/

    https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/yelmalio-adventurers/

    https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/cults-of-differing-power/

    https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/how-cults-change/

    https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/15-sun-dome-temples-again/

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  14. No cult has a complete monoculture. The same deity might be worshiped by wildly disparate temples while still retaining the same core myths and powers. Yelm is probably the most obvious example, with the differences between the Pentans, Grazers, and Dara Happans, but even the various types of Orlanthi aren't all the same, and the Malkioni warrior societies certainly run themselves differently than their Hsunchen cousins. Lightfore is a god of light, not the phalanx or bow. Those are just tools that help his cult survive, and each Sun Dome will specialize in the ones that help them the most.

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  15. 2 hours ago, DrGoth said:

    I take Jeff's points, but in 1625 how many would be Yelmalions and how many Elmali? I know Harvar is a Yelmalio Light Captain, but even so there would still be a substantial Elmal population at that time, wouldn't there?

    As of 1625 there's no difference between Yelmalions and Elmali in Dragon Pass in general. Not all of them live at a sun dome temple, of course - there's still probably some who worship the Little Sun within the context of Orlanthi society - but the names Yelmalio and Elmal are more or less interchangeable.

  16. Chaosium also isn't unique in doing this. Setting up threads or other central locations to collect customer feedback and corrections that were missed in editing is fairly standard practice in the ttrpg industry from what I've seen. There's always going to be mistakes that get missed, and the fans are going to point them out already, so it makes sense to set up a place for them to do so in an organized fashion so the company can find and correct them in a timely manner. Listening to customer feedback isn't exploitation.

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  17. I believe the main requirement is awakening a Hero Soul: https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/so-what-is-the-hero-soul/. In short, a Hero is anyone who has a piece of themselves permanently in the Hero Plane/Gods War while still staying active in the mortal world, unlike gods who are fully trapped in the Gods War.

    I don't think there's really a difference between heroes and superheroes, especially to people on the lozenge, the latter is just shorthand for us to identify the Heroes who are farthest along in their development.

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