Beornvig

On 9/25/2019 at 11:05 AM, Aubrey the Malformed said:

RQ scenarios in the past have pretty much all been sandbox in style.  They have also, by and large, been the main ways in which detailed setting material has been presented.  Without the scenarios, from an RQ perspective there wouldn't be much setting.  Nice histories of the Lunar Empire or detailed cult descriptions don't really cut much ice if you don't have somewhere to play a scenario, like Pavis or Sun Dome Temple or Snakepipe Hollow.   Most background setting material presented recently has been so high level and broadbrush as to be very hard to use, or not really focused on what you might need to build a scenario at all (Gloranthan Sourcebook, I'm looking at you).  I get some people love all that stuff and, to a point, so do I.  But I want to play RQ, not debate the finer points of Gloranthan mythology.  Personally, I'd like more than having to reread old supplements from the 1980s, which we all played decades ago anyway, I'd like some new stuff.  I'm also busy and don't have much time, so it would be nice if professional scenario writers could give me something to work with rather than having to do it myself, probably to a lower quality.  I get a little concerned sometimes that the ordinary punter who plays RPGs every couple of weeks with his mates (when our wives don't find something else for us to do) gets a little bit forgotten in the enthusiasm of the Glorantha scholars at Chaosium.  I'm not complaining, I'm loving that RQG has come out, RQ(2&3) was my favorite game in the 80s when RPGs were in their heyday....  But RQG scenarios are still thin on the ground, and in the end are the lifeblood of any system that either mean it gets played, or not.

On 9/25/2019 at 1:05 PM, lordabdul said:

A "fully developed adventure" doesn't have to be a railroading exercise with a detailed narrative structure. Actually, good adventures (excluding the ones written for specific situations, like intro adventures or convention scenarios) are indeed written in a sandbox-ish style. Take any investigation based scenario, for example (pretty much anything from Call of Cthulhu). It's totally foolish to try and write it as a linear adventure, but I wouldn't call it a "sandbox" either -- Masks of Nyarlathotep surely has a sandbox aspect to it, but it also has a strong narrative spine. Snakepipe Hollow on the other hand is pure sandbox: a dungeon map, some encounter tables with a few story hooks, and that's it.

So yeah, bring on the adventures. The short linear ones for running intro games. The big non-linear ones with a strong narrative spine. The pure sandbox ones. I want them all.

As a long suffering RQ GM, like almost 30 years, at this point, someone needs to listen to these guys.  We need more, and a LOT more adventures.  

The tendency amongst the Chaosium folks and the Glorantha grognards seems to be to go down rabbit-holes within the context of individual publications, and even moreso in the overall publication schedule.  I can certainly understand why publishing a new GoG is sort of necessary for the newbies, but it doesn't do much for us old-timers.  I know more than I need to know (more than one should be allowed to know) about Orlanth and Humakt and Krarsht.

So please, for the love of all that's holy, make more Pavis & Big Rubble / Borderlands, and make more Apple Lane/Snake Pipe Hollows.  

On 6/25/2019 at 11:31 AM, albinoboo said:

If you are prepared to dig about on ebay you can get some old white dwarf adventures for RQ3, mostly from issues 80-100. You can also can get tradetalk magazine from drivethru.rpg that have some RQ3 and HQ adventures. 

My collection includes pretty much everything that's ever existed, including most if not all of those issues.  But we've been playing for 20 years.  The well has all dried up, and I don't have the time I once did to write new stuff from scratch.  

Long suffering RQ GM's like myself need many, many fully-fleshed out adventures and campaigns in the vein of Borderlands, and NOT in the vein of Griffin Mountain (which I love, but has been the source of never-ending work for me).

If you could even have smaller adventures available for purchase online, or in some periodical format that would be great.

The strength of D&D was frequent and prolific modules.  Whatever format it comes in, we need more, and lots more adventures/scenarios/campaigns with full stats and such.

5 hours ago, 7Tigers said:

All printed books (Core reprint, Bestiary, GM Pack, Slipcase) will be in same containers on the 3 boats. They will be available for customers at same time.

That's fantastic, I was wondering about this as well, can't wait!

It's crazy to think we have "real" Runequest back in print after all these years.  I never thought I'd see it!  

Glad to see this so soon after the other two books, and I love the return to Sartar!  Excellent news.  

Looks like our US bound boat is just offshore from Long Beach now.  Huzzah!

Hoping to get the print copy of this by the fall, anyone heard any schedules on that?  A good, comprehensive Bestiary is actually going to be pretty useful for me as a GM.

Very encouraging to see the bestiary coming out so soon, I expected a 6 month wait between books.

23 hours ago, g33k said:

Honestly, I seldom run pre-published content.  Most of my games -- in any system -- are my own plotlines & NPCs.

I actually plan to depart from that habit & run quite a bit of the old stuff, as my current group has minimal experience of Glorantha.  I'll start with Apple Lane Date Palm Oasis where they impress the Duke's Man who hires them down to Ronegarth and thence into Borderlands campaign, and we''ll see if Pavis / Big Rubble goes next, or something else...

But frankly, if I had a bunch of Gloranthan grognards I wouldn't hesitate to create new material for them to adventure with.

 

I haven't run any pre-written content in years, and it's killing me.  And Balazar has become the place I love to hate.  It is not at all easy to develop adventure content there that doesn't set off some kind of powder keg in the region and mess up all the original source material, and in fact, that's exactly what ended up happening.  That weaselly Lunar in Elkoi with the silent picture villain mustache got shot in the face with a pistol by a quick-trigger-finger Mostali PC and that was it for most of my Elkoi source material.

23 hours ago, simonh said:

Having talked to Jeff at Eternalcon, Chaosium are very much aware of this and it’s a top priority for the team. However I think a supplement for RQ2 with extra stats for passions would sell a tiny fraction of the copies a supplement for an already published, best seller on Drivethru could command. It might be the best order for some of us, but it would be a commercial fumble - hit self in wallet for Chaosium.

The upcoming GM guide should have a ton of playable material to run and several other major projects were teased in the seminars, so I’m hopefull that the situation by the end of the year, or at least this time next year should look a lot different.

Well that's good, and maybe it would sell a fraction, but I'm concerned they will lose steam for any numbers of reasons, and those adventure packs will not be forthcoming.  It's an entirely separate need.

18 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Hey, it doesn't have to be RQ3 if it's a Campaign Pack. The RQ2 boxed sets were superior to the RQ3 ones. But it the whole campaign setting plus multiple adventures and plot threads that I want-not one offs. 

Amen.  They have set a standard for themselves with those RQ2 packs , especially Borderlands, which I find to be a perfect balance of background and adventures.  I'm not asking for another Pavis.  But a campaign arc I can build off that can be logically set in a popular area.  We're probably due for a good old fashioned Sartar one, and that would fit in with the "starting over" aspect of the new rules.  I can squeeze dozens of new/tertiary adventures out of one of those.  

20 hours ago, styopa said:

There are 3 tiers of issues, as I see it:

Tier 1: actual typos and such. I think it's fair to say that Chaosium welcomes such crowd editing (although I saw one poster whose repeated semantic and grammatical corrections were pretty consistently wrong, so that's negative productivity right there)

Tier 2: issues with mechanics - less productively useful for Chaosium, but useful for other players to see alternatives to the mechanics presented.  The Runequest community, like most street orphans (and for kind of the same reasons over decades), has grown to be astonishingly flexible, resourceful, and creative...they've likely home-brewed a dozen alternatives to every single rule.  Chaosium obviously had to pick one to be canonical, but ygmv: seeing these alternatives may even spark a new gm to come up with something nobody else has thought of.  If nothing else, it will teach them that nobody need hold these rules as sacrosanct , which imo makes for better gm'ing.

3) tier 3 is just bitching, complaining that the rules didn't include x idea, or y approach.  It's the least constructive but due to anonymity finds fertile soil on the interwebs.  Frankly, Chaosium forum managers have a firm understanding of the Streisand effect, and generally lets these threads die a deserved death as they peter out, only stepping in when the tone gets excessively personal, etc.

May I add a new grouping?  I'd like to complain about the fact that we're on the, what, seventh version of the rules, and yet I still don't see any relief for us GM's when it comes to new adventure content.  Not sourcebook content, but adventures we can use/adapt to our campaigns.  

One of the things that attracted my groups to RQ3 instead of D&D was the simple, common-sense rules that lent a grittiness to the games.  We liked Glorantha just fine, and came to love it over time.  But the way to experience Glorantha (and the rules) is through adventuring.  And one of the biggest sins of RQ3 was the lack of module/adventure content.

So an honest question to you GM's out there, what are you going to do with these new rules?  Run Apple Lane with them?  For people absolutely new to RQ, I guess that's exactly what they will do. 

But for us die-hards, I'm just not seeing the point of any of this until there are brand new Borderlands and Big Rubble style and quality sourcebook/adventure packs produced again.  And frankly, I wish they'd just started with that first plus a rules addendum for passions (something I've already got bolted on to my RQ3 anyways).

So wake me when there's a new Borderlands, until then I'll be paying through the nose for the one or two 20-year-old TotRM's I don't have yet off Ebay for adventure ideas because that's my pain point.  I got lots of rules (arguably way too many) already.

I certainly hope we're going to see lots of adventure content ala Borderlands for the new RQ, but that schedule doesn't mention anything in 2018.  I'm working my butt off creating enough content for my groups in Balazar, Dragon Pass, Prax, etc over here!  

Has there been any update on the timing of release of reprints the old classic modules in the RQ Classic line?  Christmas is coming up, and my family keeps asking for my Christmas list.  I can only hold them off so long!

The 3rd edition rules box was the first RQ product I ever bought, love that cover!

On 9/9/2017 at 11:38 AM, g33k said:

It's worth remembering that in fact, the RQ3 bathwater was NOT thrown out.  RQG is a blend of maybe 60% RQ2 / 15% RQ3 (& 15% other games & 10% new content).

There were just so MANY babies in the bath that Chaosium had to ... cull ... a few of them.

Personally, I'd be interested in a short appendix of "alternate hit location" figures -- the classic RQ2/RQ3 figure, but with alternate d20-results; missile-fire could be one, and I am fond of skewing the R/L results when someone takes a strongly "sided" combat-stance.  I think a flail might generate different table when facing a shield?  And I'm not sure I'm satisfied with "roll hit location with a +10" for mounted-vs-unmounted.

Then there is the whole size-differential thing... for example, a trollkin should be barely-able to hit the head & less-able to hit the chest when facing a nomal-human sized foe; and similarly head-and-chest should be easier for the human to hit on a trollkin.

One of my most-memorable-ever combats in RQ was vs a giant, where the GM only allowed melee weapons to hit the leg (he rather ostentatiously flipped a coin for R/L instead of rolling a die), but smaller size-differentials should show up, too.  Head out of reach; head & chest out of reach, etc...

I'd love for Chaosium to take some time again with SCA/HEMA/etc folks (and maybe medieval/classical archeologists who look at war graves), to revisit and re-polish the combat; I bet the "state of the art" has advanced in the last 40 years!!!

 

We just add + 10 to hit location if the bottom of the creature is not realistically hit-able.  Is that a HR or an actual rule?  I have no idea

On 9/6/2017 at 4:55 PM, styopa said:

Oh I'd entirely disagree.  There was a rather significant difference in results possible.

We used that hit loc table for missiles, thrusting weapons, and spells (where needed) making the choice of such weapons/attacks a more tactically interesting one...

/unsurprised it was dropped, however.

Yeah, my group liked them too, and had no problem using them, they're on the character sheets we use in the table at bottom right.  I'm considering trying to retrofit some of the new passion/background rules in to existing characters to help flesh them out.  My group has already forbidden any kind of mass move to new rules, but I'll buy the new rules/materials and see what I can house rule in.  The challenging part will be character sheets.  Everyone loves their classic character sheets from RQ3:

Any reduction in complexity from the standard of RQ3 will be met with derisiveness from my group of wargame-centric players!

I prefer the RQ3 logo as well, but I'm unable to tell how much of that is nostalgia talking.

I don't remember what I loved about Glorantha twenty five years ago when I got into it, but what I love now is that every time I get back into it, it feels like coming home.

I mean, childhood homes go away, friends and loved ones move, but Glorantha is always there; a place where you can meet up with old friends and start new adventures.

Anyways, it's great to see new products coming out again!  Keep up the good work.

Our HR is similar, I suppose.  A slash (20%) is normal damage, just rolled twice (with all bonuses and adds), and a crit (5%) is max damage + normal rolled damage (all bonuses and adds).  All considering armour (no "through armour" stuff).

On 7/12/2017 at 8:34 PM, styopa said:

One further thing I just stumbled on in my old RQ2 notes:

From a Wyrms Footnotes rambling runequestion:

"ON SPIRIT COMBAT
A convention of play which didn't make it into RQII is the ability to ignore Spirit Attack. This means that a character who’s attacked by a Ghost or a Shaman's Fetch or controlled Spirit can refuse to fight the attack. This has two effects.

1. The Spirit will be able to take POW from the victim without danger to itself and the attack will keep the victim from using any POW to make spells.

2. The victim can continue to move, attack the shaman perhaps, and otherwise operate physically as if he was not in Spirit Combat. This technique’s particularly useful when the only way to possibly survive a Spirit Attack is to kill the person who set the spirit onto you."

Excellent, I'm adding this to my games. 

I have never been able to lay my hands on a hardback of Pavis/Big Rubble or Griffin Mountain, and would pay quite a bit for those, even though I have the softbacks and PDF's.  Hopefully they come out in some form in hardback in the new line.

In hundreds of gaming sessions with the same core group of players, we had exactly two Runelords, a Humakt and a Zorak Zoran (different parties).  It was definitely considered an end-game goal.  Now that we play less, there's little to no focus on getting there.  Which is kind of nice, I don't have to put up with players trying to raise their "thrown rock" skill every session any more.  I've actually had more apprentice shamans become actual shamans under my watch, casualties notwithstanding.

1 hour ago, Yelm's Light said:

I tend to prefer Griffin Mountain for that very reason; it gives the raw materials for scenario-building without everyone and his brother knowing the particulars of the campaign I'm running.  More room for creativity, too.

Heh... I pulled out my TotRM's to do a little refreshing on things Praxian, and what do I see at the top of Beornvig's desk stack?  #14.

Pure gold man, pure gold.  Don't forget part deux of Prax in TotRM #15.

And I hear you regarding Griffin Mountain, I'm warming up to it the further along I get.  But you have to realize we're crazy, and most people will find something like Borderlands a more accessible way to get in to a given region of Glorantha.  And if you don't have Borderlands in its "Gloranthan Classics" incarnation, snag it.  I believe they still have softbacks in print.  Getting Plunder and Runemasters included is a nice perk.

As a veteran RQ GM of about twenty years and hundreds upon hundreds of RQ sessions, this is great news.  I do have some thoughts and requests, be they ever so humble.

I own and have used pretty much every scrap of material ever produced for RQ2 and RQ3, including a lot of the 'zines (Tradetalk, Reaching Moon, etc).  And perhaps the most accessible and useful single book in my arsenal has been the "Gloranthan Classics IV, Borderlands & Beyond".  The reason?  The quests.  Accessible, often open-ended, in addition to using almost all of them, they have spawned dozens of side quests for my groups.  That compilation is a great mix of locales, local history and background, NPC's, and adventures.  We need more books like this.

The other Gloranthan Classics are also wonderful, and go-to books for me.  But Griffin Mountain especially is the book that loves to hate me.  It's so incredibly exhaustive, yet leaves me wandering in the wilderness of Balazar.  My current campaign is actually entering Balazar this month after retrieving Raus's sword, and the preparation time for me has been extensive to say the least.  My players prefer the option of episodic adventures (side adventures) as well as larger primary narrative quest chains, and they don't want to be caravan guards working for pennies.  Griffin Mountain provides me with few fully fleshed-out side adventures, and no overall narrative chain of quests to build on. 

If you wanted to make Griffin Mountain the best thing ever, you'd do a Balazar Quest book as a companion to the existing materials.  I'm working on writing it myself right now for my group, but I've got a day job!

So to sum up:

1.  Give us adventures, and lots of them, primarily for mid-level adventurers.  Hard-working characters with skills in the 50's - 70's who get their hands dirty.  Not fancy Rune-priests who always have their salamanders handling their wet work.  RQ has always been at its best for our groups when our characters are middling in skill and power. 

2.  Build on well-established and beloved areas.  Take us back to the roots, and let us delve deeply in to those areas.  More personalities, more background, more enemies, just plain more of Dragon Pass, Sartar, Prax, Sun County, Balazar, Dorastor, etc.

So basically, fix the sins of RQ3.  I want more of the books that I have constantly rotating across my desk:

And less of the pretty stuff that never leaves the top row of my bookcase:

Anyways, my group is excited and ready to go.

Bring on 2018!

On 7/5/2016 at 3:25 PM, Pentallion said:

Jack O'Bear is high on my list.  But meantime I will be snatching these babies up.  I haven't painted miniatures since I painted the RuneQuest miniature box set in the early 80's. 

Yup, Jack O'bear's, Walktapi and ducks would be my first priority.