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19 hours ago, JRE said:

rather than a True Mostali, but it is true that there is a True Quicksilver Mostali in Dwarf Run. Isidilian is the "face" in the arrangement, exactly for the same reasons he proposes. A True Mostali could not comprehend the modern world, while Isidilian is a shrewd politician that has weathered quite a few crisis and still manages to play an empire against the other. Many people meet him, but none understand him.

There are actually four Mostali at Dwarf Run... Isidilian is lower right. They only come out when their services are really needed!

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3 hours ago, g33k said:

In general, they find smaller units are (much!) more-versatile:  they can get into tighter spaces to perform necessary repairs & adjustments, and the Mostali have a LOT of those spaces.  They can always get 2+ small units to collaborate on a project 1 larger unit could perform, but cannot split large units without making them non-functional.

After all, its much much more reliable for an Iron Dwarf to fix the cannon barrel from within, if such a repair is needed.

SDLeary

More experimental Archaeology from Tod and Co.

Backers, you should have an email from Kickstarter today. If you don't see it, Tod says to check Spam.

Everyone else:

In addition to this Main video, there are three supplementary on Armour Plate, Mail, and Arrowhead materials. 

Tod's Workshop

Any insights?

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8 minutes ago, Godlearner said:

Are you kidding me? Its not like I am presenting a scientific study here. Yes, I have stated that small game was hunted with bows, but the major missle weapons used for hunting were spears, boomarangs, throwing sticks and atlatl.

... and in some areas, bows. It's a regional and/or cultural thing.

A bow is certainly higher on the tech tree than a boomerang/throwing stick, so the period in Time matters. Once Bows were thing, then they were, well, a thing! You might not use the bow (early bows anyway) to take down large game, but your group might use them to ring the game in from a distance and harry them, while others move in with heavier weapons for the kill.

In areas that were resource poor, say wood or appropriate wood poor, then things like slings might take up the slack. At least until some enterprising person, with an obvious knowledge of archery, managed to come up with the Composite Bow.

SDLeary

6 hours ago, Barak Shathur said:

I feel vindicated. This is exactly how I feel about it. For me, BRP systems flunked the SIZ stat in a couple of ways. One being that it was completely untethered to STR, which could make for some absurd combinations.

Not completely untethered...

Quote

I'm sure this isn't really what you mean though. 

I do seem to recall one game that we played that restricted STR maximum to 1.5x SIZ. Can't recall if that was a published work or house rule, or not. But it is a restriction that I have played in some of my games.

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9 hours ago, Al. said:

No less a figure than Steve Perrin mentioned in (one of) the RuneQuest playtest(s) that SIZ was always supposed to model mass not height and that given the chance he'd go back and make SIZ for Dwarfs 3d6 or 2d6+6 just like for humans.

I remember Steve saying something along those lines; I'm not sure that would fit with Mostali though. Tolkien's dwarves, most certainly!

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8 hours ago, soltakss said:

At the risk of being cheeky, any news on the eagerly-awaited Mythic Greece?

"Mythic Greece"

<Pete> Sloooowly I turned! Step by step; inch by inch... </Pete>   😁

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18 hours ago, JRE said:

Gunpowder is known to almost all dwarf cities and made by the Quicksilvers, so bombs, mines and demolitions will be typical tactics of Octamonists.

Of course! Blackpowder is a tool! Charges are used to create initial voids for new halls and workspaces. Much easier to excavate once you have set off a charge or two to loosen things up a bit. Work smarter, not harder! 

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5 hours ago, Jeff said:

Remember that hit points are not the average of SIZ and CON. The average dwarf has 18 hit points instead of the 11 hit points an average human has.

How do you figure 18? In the Bestiary it states 12, and based on the averages in the stat block, that tracks.

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2 hours ago, Ludo Bagman said:

The mismatch that I wanted to point out is that the characteristics (STR 4D6 etc.) are of an average dwarf independent of caste (there are no other dwarf characteristics) but skills etc. are of a heavily armored iron dwarf that needs a high strength (magical improved or not) to fight as intended. The average dwarf strength used in the example (14) works for the role, but if you consider all strength values instead of the single fixed value, the spread would be something like 11-24 or ideally 14-24 instead of 4-24, resulting in a higher number of dwarfs with a damage bonus that can use crushing weapons effectively (instead of 100% of the dwarf warriors having no damage bonus at all).

I'm not sure this would be a thing. Obviously, when the Dwarf comes out of the vat, it is to a certain set of specifications for their intended role. If something occurs that causes a defect, then they simply get tossed back into the vat, unless that worksite has a severe shortage of workers. In which case the defective worker is placed into a new cast, more suitable for their specifications, and reprogrammed.

Thus, the stats are obviously for one that has strayed from the path, and obvious defects are beginning to creep in that compromise them even further. Not even allowing them to properly use the tools of their trade anymore. 

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5 hours ago, g33k said:

May just buy another copy.

Do it! 

...then you'll find the old one!

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11 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

On another note what would a male counterpart be to a dryad?

I believe it's simply Elves... at least in Glorantha.

In Greek mythology, probably a Silenos (Satyr).

SDLeary

7 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

So Faerie Magic would work fine as a GM thing to explain away the magical nature of Faerie, but might not be something that a GM would want to run in other BRP games. 

True, but tweakable if you really want player magicians.

SDLeary

And I think I just answered your question on RPGnet. 

Pendragon 4e. A very <air quotes>Celtic</air quotes> style magic system that even has a Glamour talent within.

Thanks Much
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All I have to say on the Rent front is... San Francisco Bay Area. 🙂

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5 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

These pre-roman era articles seem to be exceptions.

Probably more than you think, but Rome and Greece does get the focus.

I like them. The artwork is very good, the writing pretty decent; good enough that its really the only print magazines that I buy anymore with any regularity. Being on the Left Coast though, the supply is sporadic at best at the local B&N.

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12 hours ago, Jeff said:

Many orthodox Malkioni don't consider the Aeolians to even be Malkioni.

Do they consider themselves Malkioni, Orlanthi, or something else?

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6 hours ago, David Scott said:

Yes, sadly it's one of two sites that are not yet fully integrated. (the other being the Old Glorantha.com Forums).

Perhaps a temporary link on the front page that says something along the lines of Non-Searchable Content in the sidebar under Sections?

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7 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

Any written stats someone might link?

No stats that I remember, but there is some information on one in the campaign log for Sandy Peterson's campaign, in the later sections on Pamaltela.

Hoolar Mugumma-friend was its name

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7 hours ago, Agentorange said:

I was over at DTRPG looking at Runequest stuff and decided to have a bit of a stooge around and came across Cthulhu Eternal. , which as far as I can see is CoC in all bar name. same % based mechanics etc etc. I thought Chaosium had the licence for Cthulhu based RPG's ?

Can anybody enlighten me as to what the situation is here ?

Its based on the Delta Green engine, also known as The Misery Engine. The published game Apocthulhu, also from Cthulhu Reborn, is also based on this. 

Differences off the top...

No Size

Bonds

Sanity mechanic has Stress Types; Violence, Helplessness, and Unnatural

Automatic weapons fire and explosives are different. They have a Lethality rating; its listed as a percentage, and if (on a hit) you roll under that, the target automatically perishes. These percentages tend to be low-ish, between five and 20% IIRC.

And as @harunmushod states, much (but not all yet?) Lovecraft's work in in the Public Domain. This is how other games such as Trail of Cthulhu, The Yellow King, the afore-mentioned Delta Green and Apocthulhu, and others can exist.

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6 hours ago, Mugen said:

I had never read the RQ2 rule prior to this thread, but I must say that I prefer it over RQ3.

I don't really like the idea that a called shot will either hit the targeted location or miss. It seems to me that there should be a chance that you can hit another part of the body.

However, I think I'd rather put a negative modifier to the attack skill rather than one on the Strike Rank.

In Mythras, the equivalent of a called shot would be to chose a Special Effect to target a specific location. It means you'd have to get a better success level than your opponent : critical versus success, success versus failure, and so on. Back-porting this idea to RQG could be done by allowing one to chose the location on a Special Success instead of the standard weapon Special Success effect.

Contrarily to Mythras, declaring the Called Shot could be done prior to the attack.

In clear : if you want to do a Called Shot, you declare it when you do the attack. If you succeed with a Special (or crit) you hit the expected location. Otherwise, it's just a standard attack. 

Because of the variability that your method introduces, should the player not roll a special, you might want to also use the High/Low options for locations, d10 for low, d10+10 for high. That way if someone was going for the Arm, and they miss, there is no chance they could hit a Leg. Not ideal, but can eliminate extreme variability.

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22 hours ago, Joerg said:

The way these Lore skills are presented, they look a bit like formal training.or book learning. ...

This. 

So if anything, I would think that traveling to locations where you stay for a decent period of time might result in a Folklore (location) type knowledge. A Lhankor Mhy initiate may be disciplined enough to pull out checks in individual Lores from Folklore, but only if they commit to further Research of what they have learned during the time between adventures, preferably in the area where they learned the Folklore.

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31 minutes ago, Eff said:

And because Middle-Earth's history is significantly sparser and less sociological than Glorantha's, I think putting together a serious timeline like the RQG family history would involve significantly more invention. If you're making someone from Bree in a game set during the time period of TOR (between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings), what events would they reasonably have been involved with in Eriador that could be found in the appendix timelines? Let alone for someone from a much less detailed area like the Woodmen or Rohan or dwarf communities not under the Lonely Mountain? 

And then on the other end, you could have characters that have been around for thousands of years, and have the "background from hell" if you tried to map it out.

SDLeary

Its a bit old now, but you might also pick up some insights from Ambarquenta, found at The Heren Turambarion; and the Hall of Fire Fanzine, apparently gone from the inter webs, but the Internet Archive is your friend. You might also be able to find a fan conversion called Lord of the Rings Unisystem (never mind... found it... Now in WIKI format!).

For BRP, I'd use MagicWorld to get into things somewhat quickly. It can scratch the basic itches right up front. Or, as mentioned up thread, Age of Shadow is another good conversion.

On the other hand, if you really want to get into the weeds, and explore personal interactions and the influence of personality and bonds, I'd probably head right to Pendragon 4e. For ME, Personality Traits and Passions (or Bonds if you prefer) seem to fit really well. I would probably tone down Damage though, to /8 rather than /6. This would be some amount of work though, as you'd have to figure out Virtues for the communities. The basic magic system seems to be somewhat in line too, though I'm not sure I'd keep the dice pool needed to figure out latent natural MP to power things.

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I think there were some incursions in Umathela as well.

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