jrutila

27 minutes ago, Tartarosso said:

Mmmh... so if I understand correctly from your note, do we have to wait an updated excel sheet to have actually valid general evaluations?
Or are the general conclusions you came to still valid?

I hope I get enough motivation to fix it some day soon (especially now that I know about the AnyDice implementation). I think the outcomes are quite close in the excel sheet already so you get at least correct ballpark numbers.

This was more of a mathematics (probability) practice for me and now that I have slept over the problem for a while I get that there is a way more easier way to calculate the outcome by just going through all the 400 (20*20) cases. But that would require doing that programmatically and result in "uglier" excel sheet. I think I know where the problem lies in the sheet at the moment. Let's see if I get it fixed. I also accept fixes from the community.

Has there been discussion about the mathematics behind the QW/HQ dice mechanics? I made an excel sheet to do some calculations and noted one interesting tidbit. The closer the target numbers are to ten, the more possible it is to get Minor outcomes over Marginal outcomes.

I wrote about this to my blog https://worldsofqw.wordpress.com/2020/06/08/mathematics-of-questworlds/

You can find the excel from the blog site, too.

I present one idea to decide the degree of victory in chained contest here: https://worldsofqw.wordpress.com/2020/05/04/long-contests-resolve-the-important-contests/

4 minutes ago, Loïc said:

In the Book the Red Cow (p33),

Can you tell me a little more about this book? I can't seem to find correct google search words to find something like this.

8 hours ago, Chiarina said:

Perhaps she only provides a tool that the characters have to use. Do you have a proposal? How does trickster magic work?

Well, that would leave the final conclusion in to the hands of the heroes. Jarana enchants (or something) a magic item for them as Queen Ivartha does not let her leave Red Cow. It could include a spirit (the Raven?) that requires the wielders to do some crazy stuff. Succeeding in this could be the final contest. You don't have to follow the magic rules from the book when doing this. This isn't an ability of a character but a story device.

And then follows the (very trickstery) instructions how to use the magic item. Coming up with funny trickster stuff might be challenging. You could (if that is suitable for your group's playing style) ask the players. Describe how Jarana makes the item. You can ask the players what item it actually is. Then say that Jarana instructed them leaving out the details. Finally, when they get back to Frithan and they start to activate the item you can do it as a group effort to come up with all the crazy stuff that is involved in the process reflecting what Jarana told them and how they misinterpret her (in case of contest failures) or get them right. As none of these details is crucial for the overall story arc it is ok (and might be even quite fun) to create them with the players during the play.

3 hours ago, Chiarina said:

Granted that Janara is successful nonetheless - with the help of Eurmal she convinces the lunar captain, that there is an illness starting to break out among the Frithans and the lunar soldiers leave the village in a hurry...

What is the characters role here? I am just enforcing the idea that the characters (in rpg stories) should be those who resolve the obstacles. Is the obstacle just about getting Janara there? Or should there be another complication at the Frithan? Maybe Janara comes up with some other scheme running the grander vision against Lunars where the fake illness does not match? Or does she need some kind of equipment to fool them. Equipment that isn't actually needed in the end. Maybe someone in Frithan resists using a trickster to solve this and the characters have to deal with it first.

I have been using draw.io for tracking the feelings and relationships. I add NPCs as they become present and how they feel about each other or (specifically) towards the PCs. The feeling against PCs is the color of the NPC name (Green to Red). Here is a snapshot attached. Unfortunately it is in Finnish but you can recognize familiar names. PCs are on green background and Stravul is a non-canon NPC that they have connection with.

Okay, I tell the back story quickly. Hendstaval is barefooted Red Cow. His brother was Stravul, great cow raider. Hendrillo is Stravul's son who has lived in Esrolia with his mother and now returned to Red Cow, his father's lands. Jaronil is a praxian Pol-Joni skald and got an epiphany about finding a great story from Red Cow. He arrived with Hendrillo in the same caravan.

Isn't this right job for the clan trickster? Or someone with a strong Illusion rune. Of course the ingredients would be one part of the act. Prepare yourself for the awful setback in the case of a failure. Maybe the disease becomes real...

2 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Since I doubt I'll learn Finnish any time soon, would you care to give us a short written version of your conclusions?

We had a 30 minutes analysis about the experiment in the end of the episode. We didn't try to find "best" system or anything like that. It was more of a discussion and interesting findings.

In RuneQuest we tried to bring the new mechanics to the table (augments, inspirations, runes) and the use of Rune Magic for grand magical effects. Achieving cool rune magic was incidentally something that only the NPC (Wothkarl) did. But hey, that's how RQ works, right? We discussed briefly about escalation dice and rune narration mechanics from 13G. Rune narration mechanic could be implemented in RQ also. 13th Age was declared to be quite tactical. One difference between RQ and HQ that was noted is that in RQ the GM can decide the "boundary conditions" for the situation. For example in RQ when Wothkarl gets angry there is no way for the players to use talking to calm him (we tried, though). On the other hand in HeroQuest GM should try to answer "yes" to players' suggestions. One note about character abilities was the freedom of choice. For example in HQ the player can come up with anything and in 13G and RQ the player's choices are more restricted but for example the One Unique Thing in 13G eases this a bit.

We compared the sessions. For example Lunars were only in active role in the 13th Age game because Vasana's player rolled Moon rune to be active in the beginning and narrated a Lunar patrol to appear (they actually helped us to bypass the troll bouncer). One common element in every session was Vasana drinking a troll beer (Mätäsuoli in Finnish, I didn't find the English word for it. Rotten gut or something like that). In RQ it was a CON check (failed a little, lost 1HP), 13G also CON check with a background and in HQ it was part of our extended contest in beating Wothkarl.

We shared some personal feelings. This was my first time ever playing any D20-style (or is it F20?) system. I am glad that my first one was 13th Age Glorantha. We ended the analysis with a brief discussion about GNS theory (I know, it is an old theory and all) as these games went quite nicely with that.

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Interesting experiment. Could you share your adaptations of the characters to the other systems? Not that we have any immediate plans to do such an experiment in the near future, but to see how differently they would turn out.

As requested:

13G characters: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15Pp27HwPCGQ6-2eZYDl6Oy9vCTSM-V6ulnCvve85Otw/edit?usp=sharing

HQG characters: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o1rvoM0TzYUFGrFYudD434n66o0czGv4KO4aPNVIMUw/edit?usp=sharing

Warning, these were created "good enough" for our needs to make the recording so they may lack stuff and look ugly. We also had the idea of sharing these at some point and JC would be interesting place to re-create all the characters from RQG in other systems.

Podcast news from the Finnish speaking world (and a challenge/idea for the English speaking podcasters out there). We recorder a bonus episode where we played the same session (same characters, same setup, almost the same story) in three different roleplaying systems: RuneQuest - Roleplaying in Glorantha, 13th Age Glorantha and HeroQuest Glorantha.

We took the three characters from RQ: Vasana, Harmast and Sorala (we recreated them for 13G and HQG). They entered to Notchet to find this local no-good Dark Wothkarl. Wothkarl was rumored to have access to the nobel leader of Esrolia's rebel forces against Lunars. In the games the heroes first had to find the bar where Wothkarl spends his time (Black Swan). The bar was a mix of troll and human customers. The dark troll bouncer was one of the obstacles in getting into the bar. In the bar the main obstacle was convincing Wothkarl to take them to the noble leader. Different tactics were used depending on the game.

This was an interesting tryout and I think we got the differences between the systems visible quite well. At least they sounded different.

As the QuestWorlds SRD is now out I have published a hobby project that has been in my mind for a while now. Let me present:

Worlds of QuestWorlds - A blog about QuestWorlds

In the blog I will write posts all things about QuestWorlds. Rules clarifications, product reviews, news about the system etc. I have lots of ideas already in the backlog and try to produce topics in steady phase from now on.

1 hour ago, Archivist said:

This can't possibly be how the game works. I think I've misunderstood something

Try to find analogue from tv series and movies. Depending on the story needs you either drill down to multi session (episode, if you will) season about taking control of the city contesting about the interesting bits. Or, if taking control of the city is mere nuance on their way to take control of the country you roll one contest for it.

Same way tv series and movies can "fast-forward" big events just by storytelling or foreshadowing the events. So, even if it would be technically right to contest about taking control of the city, story wise it is far more interesting (as you said) to split it to multiple sessions each having their own story arc.

1 hour ago, Jakob said:

Still not sure if this will ever become a rules-lite system that works for me (I just don't like the fact that the GM has to make an opposed roll for every test, and there seems to be no going around it, considering how much this mechanism is ingrained in the system). But I'm interested again!

Can you elaborate a little bit why the GM rolling a die is a problem for you. I am interested in the different factors regarding this aspect (GM rolling opposing roll) of QuestWorlds.

Would we get this thread pinned if I summon @MOB for help?

Great thing this is out now!

About Group Simple Contest boosts @David Scott in some other thread said that the boosts can be bought after everyone has rolled.

On 4/28/2019 at 4:40 PM, David Scott said:

As writer of the examples, this is an error in the RAW. The example is correct. This will go into the corrections page on the new Glorantha resource site.

Now, in QW2.2 in chapter 4.5.3 it is quite clearly stated that boosts can be purchased before the contest. Is this now the final ruling about boosts?

I... will... bump... this... thread... until it is sticky (prove me wrong)!

Is it okay if I post here about new releases of Dayzatarin tähtien alla, too? I know most of you can't listen to it but just to keep the podcasting hype up. And thanks for the shoutout , Wind Words. @Joerg did great job with the pronunciation. We advertised your podcast in our latest episode.

Here it is:
https://anchor.fm/dayzatar/episodes/Jakso-3---Issariesin-kuiskauksia-ja-HeroQuest-Glorantha-ecet1t

Edit: Oh, our topic was HeroQuest Glorantha.

https://dscarpenter.wordpress.com/2020/03/31/valley-of-plenty-heroquest-glorantha-campaign-book/

Interesting news, indeed! I have to say I got quite excited about the premise of this book.

There is clearly a huge surge in Glorantha podcasts as we are soon releasing our second episode of Finnish Glorantha podcast Dayzatarin tähtien alla (Under the stars of Dayzatar). In our first episode we reviewed Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass and soon we release the second episode about RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. We have been joking that we are the only Glorantha podcast (as far as we know) in the world. It is nice to hear we now have company! We will definitely give you a shoutout in our next episode.

13 hours ago, jrutila said:

Where is the Stagland Sour? I can't seem to find it in the map at all. Is it part of Long Marsh? Or is Wandle's Bog part of Stagland Sour?

Nevermind, I found it. It is part of the Long Marsh. It is easier to spot from the physical book than from the pdf.

On 8/18/2017 at 3:35 AM, Ian Cooper said:

Ashwater falls should be between the Stagland Sour and Wandle Bog

Where is the Stagland Sour? I can't seem to find it in the map at all. Is it part of Long Marsh? Or is Wandle's Bog part of Stagland Sour?

On 1/27/2020 at 6:14 PM, mikyra said:

QUESTION: May I make a healing attempt only once?

I would treat the healing contest just like any else: no repeat attempts unless the situation changes. Maybe time advancing is counted also.

Given the abstract nature of the system you can go quite wild with the healing ability. Just frame the (healing) contest so that it makes sense.

On 1/25/2020 at 12:40 AM, mikyra said:

Unfortunately writing up the example I forgot to translate the German "Trolling" back to an original "Trollkin".

In Finnish it is peikkolainen (peikko being a troll) so these kind of errors are not so prone to happen.

First of all, it is Trollkin.

21 minutes ago, mikyra said:

QUESTION 3: How to assign State of Adversity (SoA) in the following scenario?

I would say in Rising action it is the option (b) because of p. 82 box. So Hero suffers Hurt only once.

27 minutes ago, mikyra said:

QUESTION 4: How to assign Benefit of Victory (BoV) in the following scenario?

I think you got it right.

One point to clarify of HQ. Remember the contest is always about what happens to the Heroes. The Climactic Action chain for Hero victory is only for finding out the Level of Victory. Even though it now reads that the Dark Troll is injured you should still think of the Major Victory and what does that mean. The Troll does not necesserily get injured in the process. So, always from the hero point of view.