klecser

Gorgeous. Well done Otter!

Unboxing:

If you're having a good time gaming, I'm happy. 😉

5 hours ago, MOB said:

Once again the pandemic-related disruptions to international shipping movements complicates things, but Children of Fear should be out in print in June.

No harm no foul Michael! I understand and am patient.

45 minutes ago, TwiceBorn said:

I must admit that watching/listening to other peoples' games usually bores me to tears.

Started watching/listening to this one, and wow, I was truly impressed. Talk about setting a really high bar for a tabletop RPG session!

I am very picky about the Actual Plays that I actually think are worth a watch. I prefer ones with trained actors. They are conscious of performance and that they have an audience. Most Actual Plays are boring to watch.

12 hours ago, glassneedles said:

That’s a long and confusing way of saying ducks are awesome 😛

Yes, ducks are awesome.

42 minutes ago, TwiceBorn said:

Additional reasons:

. Between D&D (various editions), Pathfinder (1e, not interest in 2e), Symbaroum, The One Ring, Shadows of the Demon Lord, A Song of Ice and Fire, Yggdrasill and Fate of the Norns: Ragnarok, I think I've got my fill of pseudo-medieval fantasy RPGs.

Runequest is not pseudo-medieval. It is Bronze Age. What makes it really interesting is that the base "rules" of culture are completely flipped on their head. You can offend NPCs in RQ in ways that would impress them in medieval fantasy and impress RQ NPCs with things that would offend a pseudo-medieval NPC. RQ is not about killing stuff and taking treasure. It is about brokering alliances, trading, feeding communities, prestige, and ransoming foes instead of killing them. If you are interested in Pendragon for what makes it unique, you might like RQ for the same reasons. Now that I've found Runequest, I find other Fantasy RPGs boring by comparison. RQ is fantasy role-playing for adults (but could be played at any age assuming table understandings.)

But, if your answer is still "no" for the many reasons you suggest, I support what is right for you! 🙂

2 minutes ago, glassneedles said:

what was it that put you off RuneQuest?

What put me on Runequest is that it's a sophisticated world with an amazing religious pantheon, Creation Story, and interesting cultural framework. 

Sounds like James made a mistake. It was listed as "Unlisted," but I'm not sure he expected it to be visible to subscribers? Or he changed it to unlisted after many of us saw it? Just in case Chaosium has any doubt that we're watching... 😜 

I don't know who at Chaosium is responsible for all of these unbelievable high-profile Actual Plays we've been getting over the last two years. But they deserve some kind of marketing medal. Or a fat raise.

It's a shame more people don't know Greg Stafford...

2 hours ago, TwiceBorn said:

In my opinion, Carl Sargent - the author of Night Below - was the best writer TSR/WotC ever had. 

I own but have never actually run Night Below, but other great products of Sargent's (all for the AD&D 2e era) are:

. Monster Mythology

. Greyhawk: From the Ashes boxed set

. Greyhawk: The Marklands

. Greyhawk: Iuz the Evil

. Greyhawk: Ivid the Undying (unpublished except for excerpts in Dragon magazine, but the complete book is widely available on the net... if I'm not mistaken, TSR themselves authorized its release back in the day)

Thanks for the additional examples. I was reading this and thinking "this person thinks how I think about role-playing."

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Many grognards don't like what Sargent did to the Greyhawk timeline, but I think the grittiness and historical/political cohesiveness he brought to the setting are second to none. Just as importantly, what he wrote was a pleasure to read, which I can't say is true of all D&D material, regardless of era.

If Gygax didn't want it altered, he shouldn't have published it. Especially for a game intended to be creative. I've never understood the Gygax worship. Yes, he was involved in the creation of something great. A lot of nerds, young and old, treat him like he's some deity. And there are plenty of examples from his life that should make one question idolizing him. You ask a lot of nerds WHY they love him so much, and when you get past the standard "he wrote DND" (which is only partly true), most of the answers boil down to "because reasons" and "because I'm supposed to." He DMed in it's infancy, and he just wasn't very good at it, by modern standards. Everybody defends his style as being common with his players, but there are many modern gamers that would feel absolutely retched at his table. 

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I look forward to seeing how you adapt the adventure to CoC. Many of the monsters in Night Below are great candidates for - and were obviously themselves inspired by - the Cthulhu mythos. 

I think if I did it would be in putting the factions and NPCs into Mythos contexts first. And then make the environments less serious threats and more of exploration.  It screams Yig and Tsathogghua, perhaps, with Serpent People and Ghouls and replacing Aboleths with Dholes or sentient Shoggoths.

14 hours ago, Joe Kenobi said:

I will also point out--not to undermine your point, but as a counterpoint to soften it--there is a documented perception of increased crime counter to underlying crime statistics that is often driven by improved communication, technology, and media coverage. I have not done my homework on changes between the 1870s and 1920s, but I have seen studies showing this change in perception with the dawn of the television, then the dawn of the internet and social media. It wouldn't surprise me to learn some (not all) of the increased perception of violence in society was actually driven by improved news communication, not just changes in the true underlying statistics.

Excellent point Joe. The classic example of this is in the medical field. Increasing our detection methods for disease finds more instances of disease, but it isn't evidence that disease is spreading in the population more. Likewise, humans not knowing how to recognize a mental health challenge in the past doesn't mean that when we recognize more of it now that it just didn't exist in the past. PTSD is an example. It was called "shell shock" in WW1. And people maybe didn't explicitly identify it as a consequence of war at all in the distant past. But that doesn't mean a human empathetic response to seeing death didn't affect them in the past.

13 hours ago, svensson said:

But something I should also point out here... history may be written by the victors but it's made by people. Those people leave survivors and those survivors write their own narratives completely separate from the winner's perspective. You can get an awful lot of good balancing information by reading the testimony of the losers. I did a college paper once on 'The Mythology of Defeat' and the Jacobite 'King Over The Water', the Confederate 'Lost Cause' and the German 'Dolschstosslegende' featured prominently.

Absolutely. I didn't mean to imply that the "losers" just disappear. The Germans have done a spectacular job of leading a mutual societal response to Nazism post WW2 within their own country. They are the ones who vowed to actively try to not let it arise in their space again. It wasn't the occupying forces who did that. In the modern age, with increases in communication and much more free press, it has become much harder for the "winners" to suppress the voices of the "losers."

I think this discussion has been central to what level of realism people want to portray in Call of Cthulhu!

2 hours ago, svensson said:

Some might see my comments here as disrespectful to veterans or those suffering with mental health issues. 

I don't get this from your posts. But I also think it noteworthy that neither veteran experiences nor PTSD are monoliths. So, I will always respect your perspective as a person who fits both of those categories. But I will always also listen to a full breadth of opinions and data on both of those. I appreciate your perspective of having a realistic view of history. History is initially often written by the people in power, or the ones who "win" conflicts.

14 minutes ago, Darius West said:

The aim IS to make the response times punitive, so guns become less useful and palatable as an answer to problems.  Trading a little realism to end murder-hoboism seems like a reasonable trade-off to me,  as seriously, what is less realistic than murder-hoboism?  VERY few people irl resort to anything approaching such behavior, and they normally wind up arrested or shot pretty quickly.

 

QFT

"Perfect timing" is another example of a common RPG element that is completely unrealistic, yet we all agree to suspend the realism sometimes, because the story might be more interesting.

Links for pictures are broken for me, but I'm wondering if it is the work filter. Can others see the pictures?

10 hours ago, wombat1 said:

I'm sure it will turn out to be a very nice product, and I wish the developers phenomenal success, but for my money the sailing role playing game to beat, leaving tentacles entirely to one side, is still the Privateers and Gentlemen/Heart of Oak rules set published all the way back in the 1980's. On the sailing side and on the cultural side, since Late Stuart and Early Hannoverian period isn't familiar as an RPG topic for most of us, that is the target the kickstart writers have to meet to my way of thinking.  In that game everyone has to think about how a ship actually moves in wind to be successful and that is a deal of the roleplaying flavor.

I really appreciate references to games of the past that people really liked. The core box set rules are available by the original author on DTRPG!

I hear what you say about sailing realism in games. And I don't begrudge anyone a target for enjoyment. If sailing realism is a target for people, I really doubt that the New Comet Games product is going to have that. 

Personally, I'm glad that they are pursuing a supplement that features a combination of two beloved genres.

I contacted Spence via PM and gave him my opinion a few days ago. But, he didn't like my opinion and proceeded to badger me. I guess that translates to "no one has an opinion." 😐

Page 405 Keeper rulebook: "(i) - Indicates a weapon category or specific weapon which can impale."

The entire category is marked!

Purchased in PDF. Now purchased in Print.

Spectacular scenario. I recommend it.

1 hour ago, Nick Brooke said:

YES.

The first chapter explains how the Haraborn Clan works (pages 7-19). The third chapter is all about Heroquesting (pages 29-33), followed by two initiation heroquests (The Riddle, pages 34-45, and Rites of Passage, pages 46-64). One of the Episodes is a generic template for heroquests (pages 128-132). There are pivotal encounters with Lunars (Chapter 7) and Lunarised Sartarites (Chapter 10), which are all about cultural interactions. The book is exactly what you're asking for, and it assumes no previous knowledge.

Well, I guess I'll just have to buy it then. 😜 Thanks Nick!

Would Six Seasons in Sartar be a good read for new players to understand cultural interactions in Glorantha and the basic logic/execution of Heroquesting?

54 minutes ago, DreadDomain said:

Hopefully not just a reprint. I'd like to see it expanded like MoN. 

Yes, this. An important clarification! Big difference between a reprint and a 7E conversation with updated layout, art, etc...