smiorgan

How much do I miss if I try to play it using Mythras only? Is there a lot magic specific to Classic Fantasy? Unstatted monsters that require looking up in the CF book?

If you want to have a copy of RQ3, the AH RQ Deluxe boxed set is the best option.

The GW hardbounds have weak binding and fall apart.

The otherwise nice AH softbound published in 1993 also suffers from weak binding as well.

13 hours ago, Kettlehelm said:

It's called Runequest Classic/2e/3e and the conversion guide at the back of the RQRG book helps you play through all the adventures released from 1612/1613-1620. Now these are consistent with RQRG canon just as much as Orlanth is Dead is, but that's part of the fun of being a GM.

Thanks, that's wise advice. I've got almost all the relevant RQ2/3  stuff and I hope to use some of it soon with RQG.

However, none of it (except the Cradle scenario, perhaps) is about the major events that lead into the Hero Wars. It's another style of campaign entirely. Plus, there is the 1621-25 gap, in which a lot of things happen ( which are covered by HW and HQ supplements).

2 hours ago, rsanford said:

I have heard Rogue Mistress is a huge railroad... Is that true? Did you do anything to make it less linear?

Yes, it's a railroad. No doubts about that. But it's one of the best rollercoaster railroads I've ever seen. It's a railroad just like it's a railroad when Elric boards the Black Ship and sails on the seas of Fate.  It's a mystical hero-quest where the characters find themselves as the agents of Fate and of the Balance.

Each episode is rich enough and provides hard battles, problem solving and memorable characters to interact with. And the player characters will be very busy just surviving. But going from an episode to another is rigid linear sequence.

I don't think you can really fix it and give it more meaningful branching. 

I'd rather embrace the railroad intradiegetically (within the fictional world 😁). It's not a railroad because the master is an asshole, it's a railroad because they are the Slaves of Fate. I think one can focus on how the PC develop their relationships with Maria and the other crew members of the Rogue Mistress as they all gradually realize that they are embroiled in a cosmic conflict. 

I'd also work on the possibility of bringing people on the Rogue Mistress, from the various worlds as companion characters or secondary PCs. And bringing stuff onboard. And perhaps trading it in other worlds.       

4 hours ago, Gaynor the Damned said:

Prior to rogue mistress we'd played through Whisperers harvest and on fleeing the melnibonean battle barge ghost ship they'd been picked up by pan tang slavers. 

Nice. So, Pyaray already hates them.

28 minutes ago, Oleksandr said:

smiorgan, well, Sikelgaita was among examples in rulebook. That's why i omitted her. 😉

As another example, i read that in early Robin Hood stories maid Marian was excellent archer and better fencer than Robin.

P.s. what i find funny is that, in modern highly politicized society, i meat angry comments in similar discussions from member of both extremes of political spectrum. Right-wingers can't believe this because it doesn't align with attitude of "distant past" (a.k.a. last few generations), while left-wingers often reject it because middle ages supposed to be exclusively oppressive and unfair. 🤣

Sorry, I don't have 5th edition Pendragon. I'm still at the 4th edition brick.

Ideological reading of the past is as ugly as widespread. For the Middle Ages it starts right from the Renaissance. And yeah for women's condition it's supposed to serve as the standard example of evil. 

15 minutes ago, Gaynor the Damned said:

They'd recently escaped pan tangs slave pits and needed money so the offer of employment was jumped on. Don't want to say too much in case of spoilers but not sure what you mean? 

Makes sense.

I guess there are hundred of examples both real and fictional, but I cannot resist mentioning two Italian ones.

The most famous, almost legendary, is Grand Countess (Margravine) Matilda of Tuscany (1046 – 1115) who was a major political player on the European stage in her times and was also celebrated for her military virtues - even if the extent to which she directly took part in specifically knightly endeavors is disputed. She was enormously admired, but also hated by some - not surprisingly given the power she had and the conflicts in which she participated. In later centuries she became a quasi-mythical figure of warrior woman.

Less famous but really striking is the example of Princess Sikelgaita of Salerno (1040 – 1090), the Lombard wife of Duke Robert Guiscard of Apulia. She fought the Byzantines at the Battle of Dyrrhachium riding in full armor. The Byzantine Anna Comnena, not surprisingly, compared her to the Greek goddess Athena describing her with verses from the Iliad.

On 10/21/2021 at 5:50 PM, Gaynor the Damned said:

Campaign wise, rogue mistress is ace. I'm about half way through running it atm. Scenario wise I really like perils of the young kingdoms. Game wise I'm using the mongoose elric of melnibone rules based on mrq. But I probably prefer stormbringer plus corum as the default rules set. 

How did you run the hook of the campaign? Because I think the start is the only real weak point in an otherwise stellar campaign.

9 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

In Pendragon that's how Love/Amor passion work. If you encounter someone and get a new Amor at a higher value it wipes out the old one. THere is something about knights avoiding looking a Guinevere so as to protect thier current amors.

 

In Pendragon multiple Hates are't really a problem. It's rare to have multiple hated foes to show up in the same adventure. Even rarer if the hatred is for a specific person rather than a group, as PC tend to kill off enemies.

It does look like most people in the Young Kingdoms hate Melniboeans and Pang Tangians, both with good reason. 

 

Pendragon had Loyalty (Group) that handled this fairly well. Thus a Knight could have a Loyalty (Lord) and a Loyalty (Knights of the Round Table) or some such. I think a Loyaty (Group) passion could work out fairly well for Strombringer. Dorian Hawkmoon has a half dozen or so friends, and the second Hawkmoon series sort of depends upon that. 

In general multiple passions lead to richer stories as they can come into conflict. For instance Elric was torn between his Loyalty to Melnibone, his Love for Cymoril, and his hatred for Yyrkoon. Of course in Elrics case most of loves enemies and friends die off before he gets another one to worry about anyway- which is convenient, I guess.

 

The problem I see with incorpating RQG passions into Stormbringer is that it does seem to make passions a bit more frivious. In Pendragon passions only really took over when they were high, and the penalties for failure helped to curb frivious passion roles.  In RQG the skill peanlty for failure is only 10%, no one ever goes mad fumbling a passion roll, and no one has to roll of the aging table for failing to accomplish the task for which they were inspired. So they are just an easy way to get a boost.

IMO, Pendragon style passions would work much better in Stormbringer than RQG passions, as they have more depth, and Pathos. Elrics failure to save Cymoril hits hard because that was the only thing he was trying to do. He was willing to turn his back on Melnibone (they did it first) and everything just to have her, and he ends up losing her anyway. In Pendragon he's suffer for that. In RQG not so much.

 

 

 

Lot of food for thought! Designers of future editions take notes!

13 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

 

Well, RQ did have previous experience rules in the back of the book. I think the comment is probably aimed more at level based RPGs, where characters start off at first level and players did have to "play for months to develop a character worth having". At the time most RPGs on the market were level based. I think most still are today.

 

I'd say both. Stormbringer in this respect was different both from D&D and RQ.

7 hours ago, Gaynor the Damned said:

Dont you think things like passions etc are there to encourage RP in a rules heavy system and shouldnt be as required in something like Stormbringer? Re magic, have you seen the way corum handles it? id mix that with stormbringer, removing binding and just use a summon and command type approach and stop there. 

I kinda disagree about passions. They originally were in Pendragon, which is not really a rules heavy game. The problem one could have with passions in the current RQ is that characters end up having too many of them. One interesting trick for keeping Stormbringer simple could be to limit the number of active passions a player character can have. For instance, one could say that at any given time a PC cannot have more than:

One Love: Cymoril, then Zarozinia. Or Rhalina, then Mebdh

One Enemy (Hate): Yyrkoon, then Jagreen Lern, or Earl Glandyth na Krae.

One Companion (Loyalty): Moonglum or Jhary-a-Conel.

Three passions only.

The fact that your hate or love or loyalty can have an effect on your dice rolls is cool and heroic in my view.

As for Corum magic, yes I think it is very well done. Much better than standard Elric magic. Just slightly too brutal for the Young Kingdoms.

21 hours ago, Gaynor the Damned said:

I'd agree bar the rq comments. Imo that's where stormbringer lost its way. Elric with its dumbed down spirit magic and Mrq1 and mrq2 variants of EoM for example. It needs its own identity else I'll just play rq. For me recently picking up the corum supplement shows the direction stormbringer should have gone. Rq can be quite rulesy. I prefer the more fluid approach of stormbringer. 

I agree with you that Stormbringer needs to remain simple and fluid. And I think Jason is of the same opinion, actually. The reference to RQ was for things like passions and augments, which are simple d100 rolls and allow PCs to fuel their actions with the passions that drive them. Personally, I would NOT add strike ranks, hit locations and the more rulesy bits of RQ to Stormbringer. That would be quite antithetical to the spirit of the source material.

An I also agree that spellcasting was the weakest part of Elric! rules in terms of flavor.  Mechanically the spells are perfectly OK, but don't feel right for the Elric stories.

On 10/24/2021 at 9:53 AM, Jason D said:

NOTE: This is in NO WAY to be taken as anything official and does not represent any future plans or anything in development. 

First off, I love the randomness and would probably keep many of the random elements of character generation as the preferred method, but would allow for "roll on the following table, or pick a desired result" just to keep the influence of Chaos present.  

If it isn't mentioned down here below, it's not something I feel strongly about changing. I am a big fan of random armor values, for example, as I think they fit the setting and solve the problem of using light weapons vs. heavily armored foes. 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

• Include a pregenerated spread method of assigning characteristics. 
• Scaling back homeland characteristic bonuses (probably by half).  
• Getting rid of the skill category bonuses entirely and improving base chances for skills across the board. 
• Giving player characters their starting language skills (Speak at INTx5) automatically. 
• Rather than random skills (1d6+2 skills at 1d100/2), players just get X skills with standardized bonuses (five skills at +20%, for example). 
• Rebalance classes so nobles are not the end-all of character creation, assassins are not better than dedicated warriors, and make craftsmen more of a well-rounded artisan class than the wild card that they are.
• Probably add a few interesting missing classes such as Performer, Nomad, Healer, Scholar, Trader, etc. 
• Maybe add a sidebar with suggested options for characters from others of the Million Spheres, stranded in the Young Kingdoms.  
• Add RQ-style Passions (Hate, Fear, Devotion, Love, Honor, etc.). 
• Add RQ-style augments for skill rolls. 
• Remove some of the less useful skills (Ambush, Scent, Taste, Memorize), rename some others, and add some more useful missing ones.
• Adding something about background - either some background generation or some means of giving the character some initial trajectory. Something to both tie the character to their homeland and past, but also give them some pathos, including some skill bonuses and some initial Passions. 
• Cut a few of those weird exception-based rules that are buried in the text. 
• Replace Elan with Allegiance (from Elric!). 
• Add Distinctive Features (from Elric!). 
• Use the updated damage bonus chart.
• Add a Renown or Reputation value.  
• For the "lucky" few that begin with magic, make sure that they begin with a pact of service already in place, either hereditary (such as the folk of Melnibone) or a bargain they've made prior to the beginning of gameplay 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Magic... that would be a page 1 rewrite. While I think the 1st edition demon/elemental summoning worked best so far, IMO there's never been a magic system that really got the flavor of the fiction. 

Gods and cults... I'm not convinced that there are elemental cults as described in SB1, and I'm not a fan of many of the additions made to flesh out the Lords of Law. My gut feeling is that most worship in the Young Kingdoms is at the "lay member" level, versus being particularly fervent. 

Seems like a good plan, @Jason D! I hope you one day get a shot at designing your version of Stormbringer. I'm sure I'm going to like it.

So far it seems a healthy mix of Stormbringer and Elric! with very fitting additions from Rune Quest (passions are a must!).

Very interesting posts. But it seems that the situation is quite convoluted:

There is:

1- Chaosium with whom  MM's agent is talking about a limited reissue of Stormbringer.

2- Other rpg companies who are developing games, with whom Chaosium should not compete directly.

3- Sombre Projets to whom MM gave rights to do a Mournblade game, but to whom the agent gave more rights than intended.

Ouch, for Sombre Projets ! Years ago I had read much more appreciative sounds from Moorcock about them. As a backer of their  Hawkmoon RPG crowdfunding I am slightly worried...

I hope that everything can be worked out and Sombre Projets can keep doing Mournblade and Hawkmoon in French while Chaosium reissues Stormbringer (hopefully in a not so limited fashion).

58 minutes ago, Alex said:

To put it in very broad strokes, RQG has changed the preferred term,...

... unless it simply stops, or confines itself to just prophecy and future history stuff beyond a certain point.

Thanks @Alex that's a very helpful answer.

My understanding was that the upcoming RQ campaign, will be a kind of Great Pendragon Campaign of the Hero Wars starting with the Dragonrise. Is that correct?

As someone who has basically missed the HW/HQ era, I'm attracted also by the potential of what happens before. So I wonder what's the best approach if I want to cover that period in my games.

Possibly, Six Seasons and Company of the Dragon offer the most solid source, as they have been developed with RQG's approach in mind.

1 hour ago, Nick Brooke said:

But once you move the setting into the prime-time Hero Wars, the publisher has to choose which "true Argrath" to support. 

Don't like it? Don't use it. Same as with anything else. We trust you to make the right decisions for your table.

@Nick Brooke Just to be clear, my original post was a question. I was asking whether the publisher had chosen a true Argrath or the HW idea of multiple possible Argrath was still supported. Thank you for answering.

And I did not want to say I dislike this approach, sorry if I wasn't clear.

If Pendragon is any indication, it can be a lot of fun. What I wanted to say in the post you quoted is that I find it interesting to have in the fictional world people with differing opinions about who's the Argrath, and, even when the majority settles for an answer, having stubborn/ non-conformist people who have widely diverging interpretation of myth/ history as it happens.

And just one last thing. I'm almost ridiculously a fanboy of everything Chaosium is putting out and of everything the community is putting out (Jonstown).  I'm not the kind of guy who goes in search of reasons for discontent.  

On 10/24/2021 at 9:53 AM, Jason D said:

Miraculously, all of the characters survived (mostly by avoiding combat) but it did serve as an excellent reminder of the paradigm shift of what players find acceptable in gameplay. 

Recently, I was re-reading the GM's chapter of Stormbringer and there is a passage where St. Andre + Perrin say that unlike most RPGs on the market Stormbringer is designed to have "fairly powerful characters right from the beginning" and that "you will not have to play for months to develop a character worth having" (page 113). 

Which is a bit surprising if you think of today's standards. But if you compare Stormbringer characters with RQ2's 16-year old characters it's kind of true. 🙂

 If I can put my two cents on the issue of the power level in Stormbringer, I think an hypothetical future edition should consider offering a level of play where all players start from the beginning as agents of the cosmic forces, as it happens in the French game Mournblade. The characters can still be pretty ordinary, vulnerable and very mortal but a whim of Fate decided that they entered a pact with some god or cosmic force bigger than them, and they have some dangerous power / curse straight from the beginning. I'd like to have that at least as an option alongside starting with ordinary people as in earlier editions.

Another option that leaves things more open could be having such a pact dormant at the beginning: the character has hazy memories of past lives or extraplanar experiences, but the consequences of that will be revealed as the game progresses. That could work great for players who don't want to decide from the beginning if they serve Hionhurn of Chaos or are sworn lover-champions of Myshella of the Law.

@Jeff Related to my original question... are there any plans for a pre-1625 part of the RQ campaign? A bit like Uther era for the Pendragon campaign? 

4 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Since Argrath means "Liberator", anyone who has liberated an area (e.g. Broyan in Heortland, Kallyr in Sartar) could be reasonably called or hailed as The Argrath. 

Argrath Whitebull, born of the Colymari, is a distinct individual and is presented that way in RQG.  He is the White Bull.  But if playing in the 1621-1624 period, then there are only rumors of such a figure drifting into Sartar and the Holy Country.  In 1621, many may see Kallyr Starbrow as the prophesied "Argrath"/Liberator (including Kallyr).  Others see High King Broyan of Whitewall as the Liberator.

Up to you to decide how you want your own campaign to play out.

Edited for clarity.

I like the idea of in-world confusion and disagreement about Argrath as a campaign theme. My true Argrath can be your false Argrath and even when the prevailing "canon" settles on a specific individual, there will be always apocryphal sources disagreeing and telling a different version of the story. As it happened with Arkat and Nysalor.  

Heortling messianism (Argrathism ?) and its uncertainties is a very interesting theme for a campaign and one that - at least to me - gives it a flavor that is much more Middle-Eastern / Mediterranean than anything (Northern) European, or at least not Pre-Christian European (obviously Arthur and Charlemagne do have a messianic component, but they're Christian/ Christianized figures).

On 10/24/2021 at 9:53 AM, Jason D said:

NOTE: This is in NO WAY to be taken as anything official and does not represent any future plans or anything in development. 

@Jason D thanks for super-duper non-officially posting your thoughts on Stormbringer! Love it!

EDIT: Short clear version: I have these old HW booklets which I never used - I never got to play HW or HQ - but now they seem kind of fun. How can I use them with RQ? Will that period (1621-24) be covered in future RQ supplements? How has the approach to the Hero Wars and Argrath changed in RQ?

ORIGINAL RAMBLING VERSION:

Yesterday I was reading "Orlanth is Dead", the Hero Wars module, which made up the second installment of the Sartar Rising campaign.

The book is partly written by Greg Stafford. 

Paging through it raised a number of questions, which are mostly RQ related so I post them here.

How canonical is it? The depiction of Orlanthi, even if we discount the Viking looking art, is much more barbaric than the current one. Certain terms, such as the Battle of Iceland, for the Battle of Auroch Hills, are not used in RQG.

Will future RQ official products explore the pre-Dragonrise era and, in particular, the 1621-1624 period? It's true that earlier RQ2 and RQ3 products are all pre-Dragonrise, but they're mostly not about Sartar and don't go beyond 1621.

What are the best sources to run a RQG Sartar campaign set in that earlier era? I know of Six Seasons (which I own in PDF) and Company of the Dragon. How compatible is that version of Sartar's history with earlier material for Hero Wars (Sartar Rising) and for Hero Quest (Red Cow campaign)? Do they gel together or it's really three incompatible Sartars...?

I read that in the Sartar Rising campaign the identity of the Argrath was not pre-defined. Argrath could be a number of different NPCs or even one of the player characters. Will the upcoming RQ campaign adopt a similar approach? Or it is decided that Argrath is White Bull? The RQG corebook seems to suggest the latter.

Thanks for your wisdom and help!

Bought! The review convinced me with the magic words "Griffin Mountain". It looks like it's a terrific addition for a Sartar campaign in the new timeline.

13 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

 Have a look at Andrew Montgomery's somewhat revisionist, but spiritually correct approach to the Nephilim's dualistic nature:

 

Thanks @Ian Absentia, that's a pretty interesting take, which I wish were more explicitly suggested in the Chaosium edition.

Getting back to the topic of the thread, the d100 system of the "new" French edition, looks a lot like the d100 Lite system of Barebones Fantasy with past lives instead of "classes".

Sounds interesting. I'm tempted by the rules light d100 system, even though the crunchiness of BRP still appeals to me.

I wonder if they modified the setting so that Nephilim don't seem extradimentional predators possessing human victims...which was the major turnoff for me.