Bill the barbarian

57 minutes ago, Eff said:

Chaos in Glorantha really refers to a couple different things, out of universe. On one hand, there's the unformed or unsorted "existence before existence", the Kaos of Greek myth, the tehom of Genesis 2:2, the Ginnungagap of Snorri Sturluson, etc., which can also be translated as "void". On another hand, there's the transcendental "materialized ideology", the Chaos of Moorcock and Games Workshop, which is a kind of intangible or ethereal quality that causes icky mutations and typesetting that GoES LIke ThIs. On a third hand, there's the "moral tehom", Chaos as the source of evil in the world, which is Chaos as Poul Anderson used the term. 

 

God damn Eff, amazing!

12 minutes ago, Ali the Helering said:

It is also worth noting that tehom is cognate with Tiamet, and the portion of the Genesis 1 Creation narrative where 

 

A little Babylonian creation myth underlying the Talmudic creation myth. Cool. I know of a few other areas that the religions interact (Sargon/Moses, the floods) but that is just too cool. 

4 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

I have read through a few threads for lore, common knowledge, cult lore, etc. and am wondering if a young PC is traveling extensively, Heortland, Nochet, Crystal City, Clearwine, Boldhome, Dwarf Mine, Alone, Munchrooms, Pimpers Block, Pavis, Garhound, Corflu, Refuge, etc. and it takes then say 3 seasons plus holy time how often would you as a GM give them improvements on their World Lore, Cult Lore, Plant Lore, etc? Obviously they would need to experience said items/subjects directly while traveling in Glorantha but as the actual player learns about Glorantha wouldn't the PC's also?

 

I would treat this as an occupation. Choose skills that would be suitable for an occupation of traveller... For example I might choose twixt: Drive (?) or Ride (mount type) or Boat, Bargain, Speak Other Language, Bureaucracy, Insight (species/other), Survival, Elder Race Lore, Homeland Lore (other), Customs (All Others), Lore (Other), Conceal. Some of these will be conditional.

Then I would use the Between Adventures section and as it suggests choose 4 skills to be given an experience check and possibly one skill to practice or train, each season you are pursuing this "occupation"... If worship has been successfully led during the travels give a POW gain check for that season. 

Remember there is a great chance of getting experience ticks as you travel as well

10 hours ago, Darius West said:

We no need no steenkin' badgers!

On 10/3/2022 at 2:07 AM, mfbrandi said:

or Donald Duck.

Daffy perhaps... much more so than Donald (lest you refer to the small handed... never mind).

On 10/6/2022 at 4:23 AM, PhilHibbs said:

I liked Mad Sweeney in American Gods,

How could you not.

On 10/3/2022 at 4:18 AM, JRE said:

Sam (Lord of Light)

Would Sam not be closer to an Argrath kind of figure... he has trickster aspects but not sure he is a trickster. A great protagonist, yes!

16 hours ago, jajagappa said:

He would fit, though Odin and Loki in American Gods maybe more so.

 

Being introduced to Odin as Gaiman sees him was the first time I saw him as a trickster. Well played Mr Gaiman, well played!

18 minutes ago, Erol of Backford said:

I have been looking at my early 80's Griffin Mountain book so much the last few months the binding gave way.

 

Mine fell apart a couple of decades ago, so I ended up putting it in a three ring binder... works well and I can add pages of notes or shuffle pages to meet my needs. A good situation overall... add a PDF and Bob's yer uncle and he makes a wicked Bison Burger too!

9 minutes ago, svensson said:

. It's the AUTOTUNE that object to!

Myself and a few techs, were gathered together talking about instruments we hated during a lull in setting up a band. Autotune was my contribution to the discussion. I am with ya on that one. I blame Cher!

9 minutes ago, svensson said:

For example, I loathe boy bands as a genre but the Backstreet Boys have my [reluctant] respect because I heard them a cappella six of their songs without missing a beat or a lyric.

 

Yes, same here. There are many folk out there I do not like but one has to give kudos to talent, regardless. 

On 10/4/2022 at 9:03 AM, Ali the Helering said:

On 9/27/2022 at 7:00 AM, JRE said:

Our Glorantha may vary, but many of my dwarves are actually cleanliness freaks and it is one of their concerns with the Outer world and its dirt, organic matter and bodily fluids. Bring rubber suits, antiseptic baths, gas maks... And ever clean clothes.

IMG they have been played as Borg.  Which is fine.  Until you get to 7 of 9......

Let's see, dwarves, rubber suits, gas masks and 7 of 9... Sounds like a great party! What could go wrong, go wrong, go wrong?

16 minutes ago, svensson said:

I'm convinced that this is how 90% of US Top 40 music gets made...

 

Gadzooks svennson you old goat! Did you forget the meds again! As someone who has skin in the game (I am not only a musician, I make my living off of musicians), I should tell ya something I have to keep telling myself when I see something that the kids have made that I do not like...

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"Hey Bill, it's their world, you had your turn... You have been relegated to the dust bin of history, so shut tha' fuck up or you will end up sounding like your dad did when he first heard your Alice Cooper LPs."

Bill to himself

Taste is relative. And the kids do not want you liking or for that matter, even listening to their music... they are making it offensive to you on purpose... Same as we did when we were young!

3 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

  Glorantha is a fiction (as I beleve all of us will agree) and was conceived with a set of pre Christian and very pre modern concepts as its operating principles: As I understand it, these include what if-the commonly held beliefs of about 4 000 years ago are true in our fictional world? 

 

I would think that as it was made by a very modern (as of the writing) shaman and his very modern game playing buddies with modern educations, sensibilities and mores that are very evident in the anachronisms and conceits inherent in the game. They did try, but it being created in the 70s I am not sure it can be anything other than what it is. 

43 minutes ago, Ian A. Thomson said:

So desolate and magnificent it made me wonder about whether one can also write Cthulhu fan-stuff the same way

 

Yep, Miskatonic Repository is your friend.

https://www.chaosium.com/miskatonic-repository/

5 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

The English translation I know and love is “Beneath the streets, the beach!” which to my ear seems appropriately playful, but I shouldn’t bandy translations from the French with a Canadian! As I understand it, the reason the “beach” was being revealed is that the stones were being prised up to throw at the coppers.

Bandy away, French is my second language and one I have not—and at my age, I fear I never will—master. And as a note, too many Canadians do not speak french. This was how I translated it and just to be sure I went to a couple of translation sites before posting. Being Canadian I missed the tossing of the stones after the lifting, but seeing as we are stealing this great thread for small gain I suggest we retreat with the waves and leave this beach to the sand.

5 hours ago, Kloster said:

Also correct, although the poetic sense of freedom, as exposed by our on site barbarian, was also implied.

5 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Ah, have I made it to the exalted position of Site Barbarian.... I am honoured!

On 9/28/2022 at 6:33 PM, Erol of Backford said:

The duck is smaller than a trollkin and would be more aerodynamic so passing would be enhanced no? I mean they are a duck...

And the feathers!

On 9/30/2022 at 2:18 AM, Squaredeal Sten said:

But if you want him to have a cave in your Glorantha, go for it.   This one might be your model:  https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/worlds-largest-cave

 

Fit for giants!

On 9/30/2022 at 5:52 AM, jajagappa said:

(Of course, given the nature of Rumors, perhaps it is the rumor which has it wrong???)

On 9/30/2022 at 2:18 AM, Squaredeal Sten said:

Are you besmirching the legendary and famed Rumour Tables! Oh, you have gone too far... it is A/ too awful to contemplate...

5 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

. what could go wrong?

go wrong, go wrong. go wrong....

5 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

I was thinking a small giant ridding a small dino might be interesting?

Me too!

This is s very interesting caption for an expression which translates as "under the paving stones you'll find sand" and could mean "under civilization lies freedom!" I like both the original sense and the sense you have used scott. In 4 short sentences and a revolutionary bit of graffiti... you have me thinking as much as the other two had.

51 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Apparently, no one thinks that a metaphor is a metaphor. Why this should be so, I cannot say.

All of that sounds good to me.

9 hours ago, Agentorange said:

Here on earth the air we breathe is of course made up of a variety of gases, besides which you can get methane in mines ( firedamp ) and so on and so forth.

Nope, not as we know it... no atoms, no gases... no to many scientific facts in my  Glorantha. Does not mean there are not things that duplicate our world's "science" in explicable ways...

7 hours ago, Brian Duguid said:

We know for a fact that there is poison gas, and we can conclude from this that there are gas-like substances which are neither solid nor liquid yet which expand to fill an available space.

See!

7 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

And the absence of air is not a vacuum, it's the absence of the strength and movement and vigour that air embodies. So no, it's not a gas in the same way that our air is a gas.

Yep

7 hours ago, JRE said:

It is not the air that is weak, it is us, weak humans that are part earth and part air, even some fire and water and, whispering, dark. As you get into the air, only those strong in the air rune can be comfortable. Air creatures and those with strong enough air could fly to the moon, if those pesky moon rays and meteors did not shoot them down. 

It is a divine trial, to fly up the mountains. 

Most importantly, one most be able to explain a scientific phenomena in a mythical way. 

30 minutes ago, jean said:

As I understand it, trollball like football is obviously much more than a game. For the fans it is akin to a religion. They wait for the next match, talk endlessly about the referee's decisions (insert various football fans behaviours ...)

 

The authors were Californian or living there in the '70s. Football and America, well, us Canadians are said to be fanatical about our football (or were when I was lumbering across the plains with the dinosaurs), but I bet we can not hold a candle to thems south of the border! I can not believe that Trollball's religious aspect did not come from this American devotion to its distant cousin, American football.

19 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

This seems to be a category in which women are short-changed. Maybe the problem is drawing boundaries around the type. There are tricky, clever, appealing, and dangerous women who leave a trail of destruction — like the unnamed protagonists of We Who Are About To … and What Did You Do During the Revolution, Grandma? — but do they count even as Jacks? Are they, anyway, too rational. Is it a phallic category?

 

Nicely spotted! Is Dr. Harleen Quinzel one of the few woman representing mayhem and chaos and sheer way over the top tricksterism?

Just now, svensson said:

Yeah, I understand that. As a publisher, guarding your copyrights/franchise/IP is naturally a major concern. SOME game magazines have allowed old material out into the aether but not everyone can be so generous, and there's nothing wrong with protecting what's yours.

 

Publishers may want to keep their work and the rights to their work in hand and protect them and quite rightly as you say. That said, in this case It seems (my opinion only, and hats off to them if so) Rick and crew are also looking out for both the copyright laws their rights, and the rights of their contributors who took time out of their lives to make TFtRM as successful and sought out decades later as it is. I think you will find that the concern is as much for the article writer who would be difficult to find and get correct permission from as it is for rights held by the folk behind TFtRM.

On 9/26/2022 at 7:54 PM, Erol of Backford said:

Reasonably sure I see a typo in the Jonstown translation of that cheer from the original Darktongue... I believe the Notchet Library correctly translates the third line as 

Quote

All by uzselves!

Pedantically yours,
Bill the librarian

1 minute ago, Jose said:

HI, I realise that argan argar has rune lords in troll pack but not in RQG. Those who have seen the pre_cults book can tell me which is correct? Thanks

There are two answers to that question.

One, it depends. Which one does your table wish to use. Two, canonically it is RQG, but canonically affects Chaosium products not your table. 

1 hour ago, Agentorange said:

But I'm also considering buying her one of the various basic/1st edition d'n'd retro clones as a easy way into the hobby. But, i know nothing about them, which ones are good ( or bad ), how simple or hard each one is, which are good value for money and son on.

There is a Mythras game called Classic Fantasy that is kinda an OSR DnD clone.

http://thedesignmechanism.com/Classic-Fantasy.php

ETA

I have found it is not standalone but will require either Mythras (once known as RQ6) or the author states may work with other D100 games (RQ classic should be fine, I would think).

On 10/1/2022 at 1:14 AM, Shiningbrow said:

One of my mates is a huge Burning Wheel fan, and has suggested that BW is a great way to tell the stories of Tolkien's Second Age - much better than any other RPG system. He thinks so because of the way that the system is designed around character motivations and how they deal with the success or failures of those (and not so much about skills, abilities, or magic). He then referenced CoC's insanity system as a good way to represent joy, sorrow, suffering, etc...

 

Have you seen Cubicle Seven's The One RIng? There is a characteristic I love called Shadow (IIRC) that is brought into play anytime one has to make a sketchy decision of import. Go the bad route and gain Shadow... Someone else has The One Ring now, but I can not imagine they would drop such a great mechanism. 

1 hour ago, Ali the Helering said:

All of this, overlaid with the horror of the trenches as Bill says.  I have read LotR perhaps 38 - 40 times, but the implicit racism makes it harder each time.

 

I have heard this before and am aware of it... Have not read the books in a millennium (well this millennium, anyway) so my last impressions are those movies and I should get them out of my head and get back to the world I knew. What you say here is what has kept me from doing so...

1 hour ago, Ali the Helering said:

I've inhabited Middle Earth since '73 and Glorantha since '79

Amazing '73 and '81 for me. 

Bugs and Wiley for the win... the coyote from Grant Morrison for honourable (?) mention. Shit, I almost forgot Wesakechak who I was introduced to in American Gods.

On 9/30/2022 at 7:35 AM, Ian A. Thomson said:

Apologies to the contributors. I was trying hard to get personalised copies ready to send, but I've got less than 2hrs to pack before I go away.

 

Enjoy!

20 hours ago, g33k said:

Anyone who denies (for example) the fundamentally idealized-English-pastoral allegory of the Shire is going to have a steep hill to climb.  Tolkien himself admitted there were many "Dwarves-as-Jews" parallels in his work.  Eru Iluvitar as Yahweh, Morgoth as Lucifer, Valar as archangels, Maiar as lesser angels... it's Christianity all the way down, young man

Not sure that Ali is a young man or a young christian minister for that matter, an old christian minister... well that is much more possible.

Also not sure this qualifies as allegory. It is very difficult to write what you do not know, not impossible, but difficult. So, why take the hard road and ignore the great scenes and characters... the plots and situations, all of those great seasonings and spices that make a legendary story! All right there, burnt into his synapses. What happened to this gentleman as the whole world around him literally was raised in the air and turned upside down around him and above him all to come crashing down as whistling willie came to visit is epic. And that was just his war history. ... Figuratively as well, as pastoral gave way to industrial, mores changed—possibly forever, religion and Empire entered new phases... the centre began to unravel. Oh where to begin. I figure when you decide to create thousands of years of history and myth—just to tell a bedtime tale to satisfy an insatiably curious young boy—it is better to not invent the thang "whole cloth".

Now, this is simply my take and you can weigh it with as many grains o' salt as ya wish, but I am willing to take one of my fave writers at his word... mostly... kinda...

Now JRRT's buddy, CSL... there was a self-confessed and widely acknowledged serial allegorist!