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Gene M.

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Posts posted by Gene M.

  1. 27 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

    My Vinga worshipping PC has an explicit long-term goal (mainly a section to give GMs ideas).  Along with "Stick it to Annstad" and "Outshine her brother" she has:

    "See Jar-eel from a distance and survive.  Even better, meet Jar-eel and survive."

    Reminds me of the Sharpe TV series when they're at Waterloo and want to see Napoleon on the battlefield.

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  2. Need some stats for Orlanth so we can kill the big blue bastard.

    More seriously, it's a tough situation to balance fidelity to the setting with player agency. Suggestions like looking to her runes or it being an aspect of her seem the right track to me. You could stat her up reasonably high, but I think the flavor of it should be weird and challenging, especially if she acts in some way unexpected to the players (maybe drawing on that Harmony rune). What are the players willing to risk?

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  3. Just want to add that I always think of classic Ray Harryhausen movies I watched as a child when I think about RuneQuest. The 1987 TV adaptation Ramayan might also be good Glorantha inspiration.

  4. 38 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

    All the main cults of the Lunar religion will get official writeups in the forthcoming Gods of Glorantha books (or whatever they end up being called) for RuneQuest. Chaosium would simply love to bring out a “serious” Lunar sourcebook. And Jeff Richard hasn’t said the Rough Guide to Glamour is 95% official - he’s said it’s 95% “how he sees it.” Which aren’t the same thing at all.

    I linked to Andrew Logan Montgomery's review of our book up-thread, which could have warned you exactly what you were getting yourself into before the book went on sale. The cover has a picture of Elvis front and centre, and I made sure Jeff’s foreword was part of the public preview on DriveThruRPG:

    “The Glamour presented here is illuminated with shifting beams of Moonlight. There might be a stray reflection from the pop culture of lost Cool Britannia here and there, bouncing off the glitter of a New Wave discotheque or off the chrome of Telly Savalas’ pate. But that is what happens when you explore the City of Dreams. We aren’t living in the real world here – we are in Glamour, where gods and goddesses walk with men, and where nightmares and fantasies are made flesh. “

    If you saw that and still expected a “serious” sourcebook, I’m not sure what else I can say. We are proud of our work, it was literally 25 years in the making, and coming back to it this year has been a source of ceaseless delight for everyone involved in the project. We are happy to share the fruits of our labours with you. But if fun and games are not your thing, there’s still everything in the Guide to Glorantha, the Glorantha Sourcebook, the forthcoming Gods books, the deprecated HeroQuest handbooks, the wargames, the websites...  there’s plenty more Lunar stuff out there, if you want the foundations for your own take on the setting.

    I bought the book on the strength of the recommendations and mentions I had seen of it over the years as a good source for Lunar material. Unfortunately I did not check the forums first before buying it on DTRPG or I would have come across ALM's review. 

    "If fun or games are not your thing" reads like a bit of a jerk thing to say. I mostly run lighthearted games with lots of humor; actually, the majority of my players are former members of a sketch comedy group. I just wasn't expecting it in this based on the contexts in which I had seen it mentioned. I've also said that my first impressions may be unjust and I will be reading through it to see what's still useful to me. I think I've been pretty measured in what I've said and acknowledged that my disappointment was from having mistaken expectations. I'm certainly not trying to say that it's a bad book. Lots of people are praising it. I apologize if I am misinterpreting the tone of that remark but it seems a bit mean-spirited to me. 

    It's worth considering how others who have not been in the Glorantha club for as long as the posters here and don't have the social background in the old conventions and listservs understand the material. It feels a bit like I've trespassed on someone else's property and should leave it to the people it belongs to. 

  5. 53 minutes ago, g33k said:

    Hmmmm.

    I mean, "don't judge a book by its cover" and all that; but if I saw a "funny" cover I would presume the interior was funny, too...

    But this seems like a reasonable criticism of the promo-text on DTRPG...  I mean, if you already knew -- roughly -- what you were getting into, the "blurb" makes it clear that's what you're getting into.  But if you don't already know...  Does it let you know that the product is so full of jokes???  hmmmm...

    Right. Jeff Richard citing it as one of the best sources on the Lunar Empire along with the Guide to Glorantha and the Glorantha Sourcebook led me to think it would resemble the latter two works in tone and content. I think this is a case where familiarity with the original means you know exactly what you're getting into, but if you only got into Glorantha since 2012 or so, your expectations might be frustrated. 

  6. 4 minutes ago, g33k said:

    This began life 20some years ago as a convention-centric adventure, a 1-shot thing.  It was filled with anachronisms and jokes and pop-culture references... and it still is, being true(ish) to the original.

    But Glamour herself, the goddess, is all about pop-culture; it's apropos!

    If you read it as "mostly official" but simply written with an ironic and humorous lens, I think it still has tremendous value... even for "serious" campaigns!

     

    The description on DTRPG mentions its origins but bills it as a useful guidebook for the Lunar setting, not necessarily as a tongue-in-cheek 90s artifact. 

    There are a lot of funny games out there I could run that don't require extensive player buy-in for the setting unlike RuneQuest Glorantha.

    YGWV, but if I have to make it Vary by a lot, I'm probably better off not buying a book and just doing the work myself. Again, I haven't finished reading it, so maybe more is useful than I'm getting initially, but if this Jonstown Compendium publication & its portrayal is all we're seeing for the Lunar Empire, I'm not thrilled as yet. I've wanted a good guide to spare me the work of heavy worldbuilding to run a Lunar campaign and based on the description I thought this would do the trick.

    I am not trying to be insulting by any means. It seems a lot of people like it. It's just not at all what I was expecting. I thought the cover was funny but figured that was just a gag. Didn't realize the book's tone was overall humorous.

  7. Just now, Sir_Godspeed said:

    My impression as a newcomer to Glorantha is that this is a throwback of sorts to back when ALL of Glorantha had the tongue at least somewhat stuck in the cheek. There's still some of it left (ducks, "casino town", trolls parahernalia, punny names), but art direction and nomenclature has taken a different direction. 

    Anyway, I could be wrong, it is what it is.

    That's fine but I don't get the impression that we're going to see a serious Lunar sourcebook. Unless Jeff or someone can correct me?

  8. Initial impressions leaving me disappointed. Not sure why the Lunar Empire gets such a jokey presentation when Sartar gets treated so seriously in the official material, especially given Jeff Richard says this is 95% official. But first impressions can be wrong, so hoping my opinion shifts as I read it. 

  9. 1 hour ago, creativehum said:

    Here's the quote:

    So, the "GM's book" might be part of the GameMaster's Pack? Which is really a setting pack, not a GM Book?

    I guess? I don't know? I give up?

    Given it says "the GM's book will also feature," the "also" implies it's the same book. It's called a pack, I imagine, because it includes a GM's screen.

  10. My local game store stocked the Coming Storm for some reason, which my wife impulse bought for me because of Glorantha and the cover art. I only play with friends and do not go to the local store. It seems geared more towards Pathfinder and Warhammer, and I'm not into either.  

  11. 26 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

    Yeah, I can see the whole single household thing. When I was younger I had a roommate who was a gamer and usually one copy of stuff was enough. But, as a D&D player, would she have bought, seen, or even been aware of RQG if it were not for you. That's my concern here. It seems like people already have to be fans of a D100 game or Glorantha to even be aware of RQG. I have other concerns, such as the fact that my players can't handle RQ magic, but that's them.

    I mean, I am also new to RQ. I'm 31, so I am too young to have been a RQ3 grognard (to bring it back to the thread topic a bit!). I was interested in older forms of D&D (I used to run an open table D&D session using the original 1974 rules--by the way, the Jack O'Bear is based on the original pumpkin-headed bugbear illustration from Supplement I: Greyhawk!), and I ran across a discussion about RuneQuest on one of the old school D&D forums. Classic had come out, so I bought that and got very into it but held off on running it because I knew the new edition was coming out. I also checked out Mythras (their Monster Island module is great), but it's a little too crunchy for me to run. Anyway, I got into Glorantha but held off on running a campaign because I knew the new edition was coming. I considered running HQ, but after playing HQ for the first time I concluded it was probably a little too free-form for my player group (great game though if you have a particularly imaginative group). My main exposure to RuneQuest is only what's available through Chaosium right now. So that means not much RQ3 content. I wouldn't be surprised if people who knew about RuneQuest found out just by browsing the Chaosium website. But that means you'll have people like me who know RQ2 and RQG but not RQ3. When people talk about the superiority of such and such RQ3 rule, I just have to take your word for it! 

    You're saying that you're worried people won't even be aware of RQG. I mean, that's also a question of marketing and promotion.  It seems to me Chaosium has been trying to roll it out in a big way. I know the Quickstart's timing was a bit off, but that they decided to do a livestream to launch it, and chose an already established streamer group to do it, is an indication that they are serious about promoting it. I am not the biggest Actual Play viewer, but it's a huge part of the tabletop scene now, driving D&D growth, and that they knew to launch it that way makes me confident they'll promote it well. I watched the RQG stream live and answered questions in chat about the game to the best of my abilities and knowledge (which is so very meager compared to some of the minds on the Glorantha subforum here!). But also the product itself has to have some hooks to appeal to new gamers. That's not only a matter of the written content, but also the way it's presented. That edge in presentation can immediately grab people. RQG not only looks better than pretty much anything else out there, it also looks different. It's not a generic fantasy world, so people who want to branch out from the blandness of the Forgotten Realms may find it intriguing.

    Of course, the rollout is also subject to financial pressures, not having a huge staff, and at this point being known only for Cthulhu among the D&D set. But given these constraints I think Chaosium is doing a great job. I'd love to see them convince a streamer to launch a RQG campaign as that could bring in a lot of people. 

    On the financial side too it's worth noting that more books are sold than actually played. Having it double as an art book is pretty nice for those isolated people who don't have the chance to actually play it.

    EDIT: Apologies for the wall of text! feel free to skim or skip

  12. Just now, Atgxtg said:

    Oh sure. no sense it two PDFs. I just mean is she actually going to be playing the game and getting more RQG products? 

    Yep. My wife plays tabletop games and is a D&D referee. I doubt we'll have a need to buy two of the GM pack and the Bestiary since we're one household and unlikely to be running two games of RQG at the same time, but a second copy of the main rulebook is a very likely purchase. 

  13. Just now, Atgxtg said:

    Yeah, RQG is, for better or worse, all about G. 

    Did she buy a copy?

    I mean it was me there at midnight hitting the purchase button, but we share funds. I don't really see the point in buying the PDF twice, but once I'm running a campaign we will probably get a second hard copy as I'll need one behind the screen for just myself. 

  14. 1 minute ago, Atgxtg said:

    That is probably the one thing about RQG that everyone seems to say. I haven't seen it, but apparently it's gorgeous. But does anybody play an RPG because of it's looks? Do they run a campaign because of it? If they do, great.

    The art can draw people into a setting, and RQG is as much about its setting as a game like Numenera is, to name something else as art-heavy. My wife became interested in Glorantha because the recent art is so good (she's a painter with a BFA in Studio Art).

  15. 35 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

    Well, I think you should worry. I suspect that Most of those $50+ computer games fizzle out.

    I mean, they keep porting Skyrim to new platforms and people pay a full $60 to buy it all over again, so I'm not sure about the force of this objection.

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