icebrand

Well if you did they would be RAW right? 😂

Best.GM.Everrrrrr. I learnt that from BASH. You can sit down with a bunch of NPCs, roll on the patrolling tables, and the game gives you the plot. Its amazing and i totally stole those for RQ 😄 I really like your GMing! darkwalk or vision and PCs bypassing stuff, name a more iconic duo XD

They are actually pretty balanced! I just used this method and wrote down one of each god, and let my players chose which one they wanted. If they die they get to pick another sheet. If they run out of sheets they lost the campaign 😃 I shared this because after doing that i realized i just found out the perfect (for me) pre gen method. People get to pick everything about their characters, they roll stats, and character generation takes around 10 minutes (people spend WAY more time chosing a god and imagining their adventurer than actually filling the sheet now!). This is kind of a BIG DEAL to me, because sessions are short and the adventurers need to be back at the fort by the end (so characters can be revived, new people can join, etc, and i dont have a player losing almost 2 full sessions because he died early) Actually in RQ2 a character gets 1/2 his best Axe or Sword skill. So if you have 80 broadsword you also have 40 in all 1h sword and 1h axes. Its on page 26 of Classic Edition if you want to check it out! The RQ2 previous experience for mercenaries and barbarians has a pool of skills at 30% without bonus (or natual ability if better), and you get to pick two at 50+bonus. I stole it from there, and this way the experience for initiates is consistent with the one for lay members. I do not like similar situations solved differently, so i just kept it like that! The 1/2 spell is the list cult spells for starting characters. After starting play, characters can learn any spell they wish, either from their cult for free each sacred time, or for free by completing missions for the cult, or paying the cult, or paying another friendly priest. Of course not every priest knows every spell, so they may need to travel to get some stuff.

Judoka here. I have no clue about fencing but feinting in judo is a basic skill, not something complicated high level athletes do (and >100% should be Panam level at least) Like, you start training renraku waza at white belt!

Yeah but... In my glorantha *most* people arent initiates but lay members. Initiates are actually chosen by the god (only they dont know it), usually have 1-5RP and wont DI unless they are a named chatacter. RPs will DI with 10-100% chance (i make them use RP beforehand, 10%/point as per RQ2). RLs will always DI, but if they are unnamed they only ask for GTFO or full heal (depending how the fight is going). Named RLs have all the perks of an adventurer, and can ask their god for stuff as a PC would. By the way i run DI like this: you roll, and if you fail nothing happens. If you succeed you remove the RP/POW, and then your god appears before you in all their might and asks you what is it that you want. Time is stopped for everyone else (of course you can't move or anything, only your god is outside time, but you can petition and briefly interact with them) The god will pretty much give you what you want (with the usual restriccions). They are your buddy but they can and will get offended if they consider the ID frivolous or the petition goes against their values PS: CHAOS shouldn't get DI, change my mind

Sorry, i was too busy trying to decide if im selling drugs or stealing cars to fundraise so i have this on day 1, argentinas economy has seen better days 😂😂😂

Many of us find the RQ2 chargen "lacking" (to not use a stronger word). Mercenaries, Barbarian, and the (mostly laughable) guild apprenticeships are fine for lay members, but what about playing with powerful heroes like in RQG? So this is our (simple, powerful and amazing) house rule: 1- pick a cult. You now have 30 (or natural ability) in all the cult skills required for runelord, and every other skill the cult teaches at 1/2 price. Pick 5 skills from the runelord qualifying list, and you have 50+bonus (starting age: 15+1d6) or 70+bonus* (starting age 20+1d6) *If somehow you roll good enough for a skill bonus to bump you over 90%, skill stays at 90% Pick 3pt (or 5pt if you start at 70) of battle magic from the 1/2 cost list, and get 1 pt of whatever spells the cult teaches for free for... Free. You have 1 pt of rune Magic (or rune point if you use the '90s variant rule) for chatacters with 50 starting skills, and 3 points for chatacters with 70 starting skills. 2- roll characteristics and figure out abilities 3- ??? 4- PROFIT!!! ---- If you want to generate runelords, pick 5 skills at 90 (without adding bonus) and the rest at 40 (or natural ability if somehow thats higher, please lend me your dice!). You have 5 extra battle magic (from the whole list), and 2 extra rune spells/points (for a total of 5). Starting age is 25+1d6. ---- Well, i hope you liked it; this chargen does wonders if you play brutal campaigns (PCs are really easy to replace), and for NPCs as well, and i think it meshes really well with old school campaigns (westmarch-style)

This is gonna be long, so stay a while and listen! ----- 1 - Scenery, scenery, scenery. (Where are you fighting?) GET GOOD AT DESCRIBING LOCALES. This is accomplished by stealing from novels, but dont use Tolkien, he takes 25k words to describe a room. Burroughs, Howard and Salgari are my go-tos. So lets say you want the fight in a cave, but you already did that in muriahs revenge, and then in rainbow mounds, and then in that 5e starting adventure you adapted before finding out they shamelessly stole muriahs revenge map and you would have at least changed it a bit... Now even a well-descript cave seems boring, we did that already! In this case just add a (or a few) environmental mechanics (Aka make the players use STATx5 or a skill or even a rune or something) Imagine the cave has an boiling stream you can knockback people into... But wait! The stream also has a geiser... 1st (and every) round he ground is slippery, DEX x5 to not fall down and make a fool of yourself. On every 2nd round theres fumes and stuff that build up, giving some darkness penalty! Also if you fell down You can't clear the area you take 1d6 general HP due to searing steam. 3rd round(s) it erupts, launching boiling hot water (use a template in your map) that can be maneuvered / dodged / enemies thrown into it (otherwise you eat 2d6 boiling water damage to a location) Oh, also you can have a boiling water elemental!!! NEAT! OF COURSE you can always add some stalagmites for cover (and impaling enemies you grapple) and also stalactites you can attack so they fall on your enemies!!! Goes without saying you have unlimited rocks to throw... I just came up with all these while writing, i just add stuff like this all the time (though this example is very loaded, only good for a boss fight or when the ambient mechanics are the highlight of the fight instead of enemies). Advanced: change locales!!! In our cave example, a floor section might have low HP and be destructible. Fighters that fall down are now in a caldera room with burning lava and fumes. They start rolling asphyxiation while fighting, plus theres a ton of maneuvers they can try now. ----- So, now you have this amazing geotermal cave, or this canyon with sweeping condors, or this jungle with swarms of chaos bees and vines you can swing to places; we are just missing... THE FIGHT ITSELF Seriously dude, RQ is the easiest (and best) for this!!! Every attack and parry tells you a bit of the story, your job is to make it *AMAZING* Here i just steal from salgari fights, which are savage and gritty. Tarzan is also SUPER good for unarmed since his combats are primal and beyond brutal! Howard has excelent monster fights, but human v human combat is less exciting; Conan, who learnt how to (fight/climb/cook/skate/Javascript) before even walking usually effortlessly slaughters mostly everyone unless theres something ese going on. Of course you can steal from any author you want! ----- Well, hope it helps!

I love it! Btw i just read today that as late as early iron the sacrifices were thrown in a marsh/lake instead, so they actually sacrificed stuff for real (there was a lake with hundreds of animal skeletons). Only the fat was sacrificed for animals though, the meat was lunch!

Are the guiding passions in RQG? Index not helping me! Also what's a GDW striker???

Oh but i did my research! Turns out all that stuff doesnt do anything for your mental health when you are killing and getting killed! I did toy with adding SAN for everyone early on, but those are very heavy rules that add a lot of stuff and i like as rules light as possible (heck we even play RQ2 instead of G because it's lighter). I can frighten my players with music mood about half the time anyway... What i realize is that i don't need SAN rules, but *Morale* rules. Do we have those in any edition?

Yeah im gonna use that -or something like- with POW rolls. I suppose ill wing it as we go (as usual). It's not a "permanent" rule anyway, it's just for the Chalana RL heroquest when she becomes priest... Can't have a lord+priest without an epic "fight" and the CA will have to use lots of spells to keep her panicking people trying to hold the line till she defeats the malia champion in a magic duel and saves the day (or dies horribly, that works too) Magic duels are always hard to pull off! Of course im making the PCs roll for shock anyway, since it will last for 20-POW rounds and runelords will get Magic resistance on it so they have 5% to lose a round, nothing too drastic!

Back at you: magic is not only irrelevant, but detrimental for the gloranthan person. For every chalana arroy healer that saves your life and warms your heart with a smile, theres a thanatari broo thats ripping your priests head. Theres ogres eating your wifes family, theres vampires slaving and drinking your cousins. If you just run away you get eaten by chaos... If you are lucky. And the "good guys"... Well... You have Patrick batemans with swords, you have maniacs that seem to have catched rabbies on purpose, you have psychos that collect genialia from their víctims and attach them to their axes... Oh, and don't forget the Empire led by a literal god with his literal godling daughters that actively helps chaos unravel the fabric of reality... Dude, if chtulhu ever comes to glorantha it aint to destroy it, its to ask porchango for tips!!

Modern soldiers do use "Magic" (and better magic to boot, a flying wind lord has nothing on an f35 😂)... Check mate, theist!!!

many of them are. Many arent. What happens when the chalana arroy stumbles into a cacodemon cannibal orgy? Im sure the baabester gor starts play as a psycho already, but does being one give you immunity to violence??? Are all PCs Mike Myers or Jason Vorhees, unflinching killing machines, 100% hardened to everything? I mean *not even conan* is like that. Several times hes rattled or scared, and id argue any chatacter that isnt is just Mary Sueing, at least a bit

"UK researchers have found signs of PTSD up to 3,000 years ago. They say soldiers experiencing horrors of the battlefield (stock image shown) is not just a phenomenon of modern warfare. The earliest reference had been from the Battle of Marathon, 490BC. Pictured is a Mycenaean Vase decorated with Bronze Age warriors" www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2923799/amp/Did-ancient-warriors-suffer-PTSD-Texts-reveal-battles-3-000-years-ago-left-soldiers-traumatised-saw.html

Its been AGES since i read that book, gonna check it out when im back home!!!

Are they already trained killers by the time they start play? I can't really imagine a sword of humakt (or any rune lord for that matter) as a well adjusted individual... Do they sleep fine at night, or do they see the faces of every person they killed? Isnt the former MORE worrying? I don't own CoC dark ages, but the stardard SAN rules are too cumbersome and out-of-genre to use IMHO (especially for my campaigns which are quite rules-lite compared with RAW) Yes, completely agreed, the CoC system aint a good fit (thats why im not just porting it and done with it). I don't use passions, since i play RQ2 (please put those torches down, i have stacked extended shield on) lol so, the fix is too extensive to apply 😅 Players dont want to formalize mental disease, but being a bunch of highly trained murderers (and a healer that supports them) id hesitate to call them "sane" (this aint on them, anyone at their level MUST be wrong in the head) Im a firm believer that no matter how badass you are, seeing one of your close friends die in a horrible way in front of your eyes should maybe mean something, either now or later, instead of stuff being business as usual. It does! Would you Say gloranthans are immune to PTSD then? Why is the humakti with 200 kills (in melee combat!) a regular dude that can enjoy downtime the same as a 14-year old voria initiate? Shouldn't they be either a nervous mess or a fanatical zealot that hides behind their faith while performing "regular people" tasks that they shouldn't be emotionally fit to? I mean, in sure humakt completely protects them and im sure they feel at home while on the battlefield or cleansing a chaos nest, but what happens when they need to arbitrate a dispute (inane to them but still they killed people for less in the past) What happens when they need to give their nephew life advice? What happens after such nephew joins the cult, comes with the sword on a mission, and gets eaten alive by a giant spider while screaming at their uncle for help? (Pro tip: humakti suck at life advice) Does this guy just go back home, tell their sister "tough luck sis, ur son got owned lol" and keeps going as if nothing happened? What happens if its a less psychopathic cult? (Im sure most swords actually lean closer to "tough luck sis", but what about... I don't know, orlanth or something). And yes, i know passions already solve like... Half these issues 😅 I was thinking more about the horrors of war, but yeah, those seem issues. Like... Face chaos? No player ever ran from something they didnt want to!

Dont we NEED sanity rules? What happens when the PCs enter a chaos nest, and find human remains decorating the place? What happens when your friend, who fought side by side by you in countless battles, gets horribly mutilated and murdered in front of your eyes? What happens when you come face to face with an ancient terror??? Does any of you guys use SAN? If so, what rules do you use?

they are, each has its own distinctive appeareance. Both RQ2 and RQ bestiary describe them. "An earth elemental moves directly through the earth, leaving a trail of overturned and ground dirt behind it. It cannot leave the soil and looks like a whirlpool or pulse in the earth itself." Command cult spirit is very bare bones and doesnt explain how it actually works, does it mindlink you? because otherwise how do you control an elemental you can't see?. But ok, you summon the gnome and say "attack those guys" and the gnome goes. Earth elementals sink if unattended (uncontrolled). It moves the earth as it travels, and has no stealth ability whatsoever. Even if deep enough to be hidden from sight, you would surely hear something before? Ok, without breaking the phallanx we all stomp the ground. Base kick + Modifier + High Ground + "ITS ALL OVER GIVE ME A TO HIT BONUS I LITERALLY CANT MISS" (and here i scream like a maniac and blame you for making me play a yelmalion and break down in tears and throw the pizza box at you. SCREW THIS GOD) Giving the whole... 3? guys at least high ground modifier XD Ok, if the enemy melee combatants magical support is 175m away from his mates, then that side SHOULD be losing no matter the game system? Like cool, you used 2 spells and want to win a battle with it? Like hell thats happening unless this is DND and the spells are 7-9th level (unless ofc the other side is a bunch of complete mooks) The enemy can see and hear the initial attack (unless you have cast silence and invisibility on it, invisibility isnt a thing anymore is it?). Elementals always go last to give time to react because otherwise they are unfun and unfair to play against. Same as spirits, who need a whole round visibilizing before attacking. The elemental has no stealth skills whatsoever, no intelligence whatsoever, and your caster is 180m away, so they cant really micromanage the gnome. Dropping a weapon and unsheathing a new one is just +5 SR, not +10. By doing that you also break formation, now you have some guys with 1h weapon+shield, who can kill the gnome and quikcly fall to 2nd line, restoring the formation. Keep in mind that if a gnome is attacking them, then the enemy melee fighters cant attack (because theres a gnome instead, and as discussed previously the caster is 180m away and cant micro it, remember the elemental isnt intelligent and you are SO far away. Well, i would give an attack bonus, because you have high ground, and something engulfing you is something you cant miss your swing at. Also phallanx doesnt have any chance to hit companions, and not only front like can attack, but backline and 3rd line too. Im not trying to suggest that elementals are useless, but a formation should have some defense or they wouldnt be a thing. Also, in your example you have a guy with 5 RP to burn + a frontline capable of engaging the phallanx vs some guys that sit there doing nothing, have no magic support, and get ambushed and wiped out. Yeah, my yelmalions drop rocks over your orlanthi while they cross the canyon and kill you all! look, i didnt even use RP!!! wouldnt you let the orlanthi at least a check to see if they can react? Usually ambushes require set up and skills. You just let the caster have the setup while the enemy does nothing, and then ignore the skills (both the gnome inexistent ones and the phallanx perception) and auto kill several characters without any possible counter. Our MGF is different, your campaign sounds like game of thrones like, and theres nothing wrong with that, i just dont like it. I place the "gaming" part very highly and stuff needs to be fair or at least counterable to be fun for us.

In BGB, and RQ (all editions but 2) weapons and shields mechanically work the same. In ELRIC! a weapon with, say, 15 HP receives a 20 damage hit, so it gets pushed away, loses 1 HP (now its at 14) and the defender takes the remaining (5) damage in a random location (just like in RQ3). A shield (again, lets say 15 HP) on the other hand would just get hit for 5 damage if it receives the same 20 damage blow, becoming a 10 HP shield. If the same shield now gets hit again, this time for 18 pts, it would have 2 HP now, and the wearer wouldnt be hurt at all. Finally the 3rd hit, for 10 damage breaks the shield. Now, 8 points pass on to the defender's shield arm (armor protects). Note that with weapons the D20 location is affected instead. This works like targetting weapons/shield in RQ3, plus the "no hit location roll" thing.

i agree! In my current (INSANE) campaign, weapons & shields break on fumbles (magic weapons, i.e. iron you drop it 1d6m in 1d8 direction)! Theres nothing wrong in the RAW way btw, its just good old resource attrition. Plus, are you telling me you dont have a single PC with repair? (i dont lol)

Use them like elric! ? Weapons lose 1hp and wearer the rest when parrying. Shields, on the other hand lose HP when they get hit, and the wearer takes damage to the shield arm once the shield breaks.

Theres also BRP4e mass combat spot rule!

Surprise within 3 meters: +3 SR. How is the phallanx surprised anyway? Elementals are highly visible and theres a priest summoning it? Also its a whole other action to control it. The back ranks can freely attack the elemental, and the affected people can also kick to death freely, since you cant be standing there capitalizing action economy (because, you know, you just summoned an elemental there). Of course you can always break formation like you said. Surprise is +3 SR (again, this is with a pre-casted elemental w/invisibility, so how often does this come into play?) Dropping the pike and getting your sidearm is +5 SR not 2 combat rounds. You can also shield bash at no SR penalty.