SDLeary

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.

SDLeary

I think there were some incursions in Umathela as well.

SDLeary

Todd is at it again, this time with Matt Easton's assistance. This time its a Rondel Dagger vs... Things!

Main video with Todd and Matt talking and stabbing things! 

Second video, a postscript by Matt:

Comments?

SDLeary

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

You are welcome to do whatever you want in your Glorantha. However, in canon lay members and initiates of Chalana Arroy are forbidden from learning combat skills and take an oath against harming an intelligent being. They do not carry weapons - after all, who would harm an initiate of Chalana Arroy? 

Blocking the strike that is coming for you, or that is coming for those under your care, is not harming the protagonist, it's protecting yourself, or your charge.

Who would harm them?

Broo

Mostali? After all they are not "theists", and may not have the same prohibition as they simply see the "thing in my path preventing me from fixing the Machine".

Humans, who might, in the heat of combat, not notice that the person they just attacked was a Chalana Arroy follower. 

And then, of course, there are beasties who don't care at all.

SDLeary

5 hours ago, g33k said:

It's a fine needle to thread, "BRP" as a Chaosium product, with (tm) and (c) and brand-identity to protect, vs. "BRP" as a colloquial fan-use term for the sorts of things BRP is known for.

I'd hate to think Chaosium saw a business need to quash the fan use.

Pendragon has been called "a BRP game" right here on the BRPC forums... skill-centric, roll-under &c.  Early-iteration d100 BRP from Chaosium was mostly in 5% increments (and thus mostly was functionally-equivalent to a d20 roll).

Drakar och Demoner moving from d100 to d20 -- and now the new release of "Dragonbane" -- seems to be (in the fan-use sense) still within the "BRP" framework.
 

Perhaps it belongs in the "Family" section, along with Delta Green and Renaissance.

SDLeary

8 hours ago, Vile Traveller said:

I must say that in 30-odd years I have never come across a PC making a magic item, and only once or twice creating a new spell, so in practical terms I don't think rules for that are too important. In other words, the referee has to do the legwork and make up all that stuff! 😜

Just arrange for a Hoolar to appear at strategic intervals!

SDLeary

16 hours ago, Joerg said:

Not quite correct. Hags are nymphs of such places, but have nothing to do with trees. They are comparable to Limoniads or Oreads, nymphs of meadows or mountains.

Hags correspond to uz ideals of beauty rather than human or aldryami ones. "Terrible" is not a negative value for uz.

Hags are nymphs... I wonder if they degenerate the way they "do" on Earth. If a place succumbs to corruption or extreme degradation, does a Gloranthan Nymph turn into a Hag? Are Chaos corrupted areas full of Hags? 

Or, do they follow a seasonal model, nymph in summer, hag in winter, and in between in spring and fall?

SDLeary

Doesn't seem to like training rounds...

SDLeary

3 minutes ago, Mark Mohrfield said:

Good answer, especially since I’ll probably be using the Pulp rules.

In fact, if you are Evil™ like me, you might want to say that not only did it cost more, but that there was some... "special handling involved in getting it into the country. Oh, and don't get arrested with it!"

SDLeary

7 minutes ago, Mark Mohrfield said:

Would they have been available via import, presumably at a more expesive price?

Why not! Whether or not it was in the real world is irrelevant! 😉

SDLeary

21 minutes ago, Vile Traveller said:

Romans regularly marched 7-9½ hours a day carrying 20 kg (not sure whether this includes armour) without undue strain, covering 18 miles (as @Nick J. mentions).

This, because in many cases they needed to build their marching camp at the end of the day.

SDLeary

Also remember though, this is a European firearm. While it may have been available in Europe, that doesn't mean that it was available in the US. I see that Canadian manufacture was set up in the early 40s, but that was a War concern... and apparently to assist in fulfilling Chinese contracts.

SDLeary

I believe that it was available to civilians in the year of its release, 1935; or shortly thereafter. I see no reference stating that it was available for military sales only.

SDLeary

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

"hiking Elf"

I never knew that the Aldryami had something akin to Orlanth Adventurous! 😉

SDLeary

9 hours ago, Mankcam said:

I would go with CoC7E Dark Ages or Mythras

He seems to not like the way characteristics are handled, so 6th Ed or Mythras would probably be better… though he could just use the /5 value (though probably not something supported on VTT systems).

SDLeary

6e Chthulhu + Dark Ages? Then you should be able to import just about any BRP beastie, and you could also make use of Malleus Monstrorium … for those difficult opponenets!

SDLeary

Xd20?! Where did that come from?! 
 

SDLeary

For melee weapons, the category should not really be Range. It should be Length, Reach, or some such (short, medium, long reach). Traditionally, the longer weapon gets the first strike, regardless of the DEX or SR of the person with the shorter weapon; theory being that you have to get past the business end of the longer weapon. In order to get past the business end of the longer weapon, you must declare that you are Closing, succeed in a defensive roll (getting past the business end), and then you can strike.

If you want to use a weapon length system in BRP, I would suggest that you lift from Mythras, which has thought this through much better, or at least presents it in a much more coherent way. It should slot into BRP just fine.

SDLeary

I wouldn't necessarily place a battlefield weapon like a Pike in this grouping. No one would be using it outside a Phalanx. Its even too long for a standard Shield Wall. Too unwieldy.

A dagger on the other hand could be interpreted in one of two ways. Something along the lines of a shortsword if its long enough (and thus should be in the 1M reach category), or as a simple HtH weapon if shorter. In this case, an HtH weapon simply turns what would normally be unarmed combat more deadly, and doesn't really extend the range of the combat.

SDLeary

The issue to me is that AFAIK, we only have personality traits listed for some of the Runes (Elemental Runes), and multiple traits per Rune at that. I have seen no definitions or charts that provide traits for the other runes, though of course they can be inferred from the nature of the runes themselves. And, I may have missed something somewhere!

After reading the OP yesterday, I went back and checked all my PDP sources (including a Digest archive that I have). All seem to keep Traits and Runes separate. Using Traits as listed in Pendragon; and some suggestions of using Runes for magic, with most using variations of the more traditional RQ magic systems.

Please make sure you post the rest of what your doing on this here! I'd love to see what you come up with!

SDLeary

9 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

RuneQuest players know that this is a really bad take: until the Mongoose era, no edition of RuneQuest had ever had anything called a Game Master's Guide, and frankly the less said about the Mongoose era, the better. But the perception is there, and is reinforced by the RQG Core book's (doubtless well-meant) indication that some secondary stuff is "coming soon."

Not quite correct on the timeline; RQ 3 had the Gamemaster's Book right there in the box with the Player's Book, and of course the Magic, Creatures, and Glorantha books.

RQ 6 had a Games Mastery chapter (Chapter 16: p.413). It would be more accurate to say that RQ:G is the first version of RuneQuest since RQ2 to NOT have some sort of central location for basic gamemaster guidance. Possibly an artifact from the decision to use the second edition as the basis for the new game (possibly starting out with 2's Table of Contents as the basic outline??).

While much of this type of information is scattered throughout RQ:G, having it all in a central location for the new GM cannot be understated.

SDLeary

Come on all... seriously! The OP has a valid point, from the perspective of someone who has not spent that last 30-40 years with this game/world. 

Someone coming into the game/setting cold, who wants to run the game for their friends, is NOT going to find the same published GM support as they would find in many other popular systems. This is NOT the first time this issue has been brought up here.

Sure we have bits and bobs here and there, but even for many of us they can be hard to piece together. 

So rather than belittle their position, is there something concrete we can help them with? The Guide and Sourcebook (probably more this) are excellent starters for a new GM to get an overview of the world, but neither product offer much in the way of guidance as to how to place this information into a game or campaign.

@Zelmor, I'll DM you a suggestion. Its certainly not ideal, but its all I've got at the moment.

SDLeary

5 hours ago, sladethesniper said:

Ars Magica (via MtA) is where my idea came from, actually. The spontaneous magic stuff is great, the 53 pages of "spells" is what I am trying to get away from.

What I really, really want is the Magic system from Mage: the Ascension.... without a flowchart and 9 spheres (10 with qlippothic) to play with. So, a simplified MtA magic system.

-STS

Have you looked at Lawrence Whitaker's magic system from The Unknown East/Advanced Sorcery?

SDLeary

On 6/24/2022 at 4:29 PM, svensson said:

Maces have one HUGE advantage over swords and axes.... you don't have to worry about the striking angle. You don't have to bend your elbow or wrist in such and such a way as to put the edge on to your opponent. ANY strike with a mace hits with striking surface.

Another advantage to it is that any stupid peasant farm boy could pick it up and kill any knight in Christendom. It is for this reason that the Pope declared the Flanged Mace to be 'Unchristian' and 'unsuitable for use in Christian warfare'.

Yup, that's basically what he said in the video. Along with the downsides of a mace.

SDLeary