Hteph

On 10/21/2020 at 8:46 PM, g33k said:

2.  I actually don't see very much scope for Trickster in most PC parties; it's a bad option (and frankly I'm sorry to see it in the core book).  Eurmal is an asshole!  He cannot be trusted.  He's very Loki-like, the "Loki" of myth (not the one in MCU who was redeemed, and died in a tragic effort to save his brother), who betrayed the Aesir&Vanir to ally with the Jotuns & other monsters.  This is the guy who will  F_@K S#1T UP  just to see it happen, who will betray you for no better reason than that you shouldn't have trusted him ... and he wanted to teach you that lesson!  Eurmal didn't steal Death to give to Orlanth to HELP Orlanth; he DUPED Orlanth into using an unknown disaster, because Eurmal knew, not the details, but that it would BE a disaster.  In RPG terms, he is a pure PvP "spoiler" character, and I've never had or seen a good game with one of those.

 

I think you need to read up on the role of Tricksters in IRL myths, it is waaaay more complex than that. Snorre did not get much right in his interpretations of the nordic mythology and Loke may be one of the worst. Later christian propaganda to liken him to the devil did not make anything better. Look at Coyote and Anansi myth for better preserved source material. 

When my players come across an Clay Mostali corpse (an Openhandist that died alone in a cave workshop ages ago) I described it as a wrinkled doll filled with lumpy straw and odd pieces of broken glass bulbs and corroded metal clasps. Yes they just had to poke the corpse until it fell apart to be sure it was dead.

On 10/31/2020 at 5:42 PM, soltakss said:

That sounds like a really good tool.

Is it an online resource or does it have tables that could be published in the Jonstown Compendium?

Currently it is a desktop app, but the thought is to either make iOS app or a web app.

It is just a app to create a sequence of suggested stations with runic associations drawn from a database of archetypes.

With some advice about how to elaborate and interpret and modify for different uses, secrets, shortcuts and general shenanigans.

For local versions of greater quests, initiation quest, local heroquests for communing with the history of places to appease or strengthen local spirits and gods aspects etc etc.

I think one of the reasons the topic is more and less ignored is that those who like to twiddle with such stuff (me frex) realises soon that all the basic assumptions in economic and logistics modeling ... is not applicable.

For instance, if you do such stuff in ... say a very popular level based rpg, you can externalize magic and  say it is a special case that may apply bonus/malus to stuff. The model creaks and lists a bit, but it still feels relevant, because it is essentially feudal Western Europe with magic tucked on. Glorantha ... isn’t.

In order to model it you need to invent so many new tools, and test them and evaluate the implications and ... and ... and.

It is the same reason statistical black-box models usually works better than physical correct mass flow models in biological system modeling. We just don’t know enough about the mechanics, and there is too many non-linear parameters and feed back loops too include them all to get it even slightly correct.

On a low level you can do it, a clan level economic is probably describable and possible to model in a way it not feels too strange (see King of Dragon Pass computer game for one excellent example).

But on a “national” level ... it would be a huge undertaking and demand a lot of understanding of and inspiration to Glorantha. If Greg had shoehorned in a PhD in economics and logistics somewhere in the curriculum we would probably had it easier to build on something. Now I think hand-waving-black-box modeling is the only realistic way to go. All other kinds of models would have a difficult time to find a large base of players accepting for it to be relevant.

Arrrgggghhh I have an inspiration tool for minor heroquests in waiting orbits for over two years now, as the “new” heroquest rules will be published “really soon now” and I eventually wanted to align it with them (if I liked them).

Frakk, that, I should treat them as the vaporware they have been for 35+ years and do my own thing.
 

Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead.

I would say that the physical part is not exactly as how we, in this IRL world, would see it as physical. It is not your this-world body that traipses around on the mythic plan, but a mythic reflection of it, your this-world body ... perhaps it is in limbo? Perhaps in the same place as your image in the mirror go when you step sidewise, you can't see it any longer, but someone else can see it if they look at the right angle.

I would say (supporting the more elaborate posts above) that death from Heroquesting should be uncommon for two reasons, firstly a meta reason, it is boring, secondly it is usually not supported in the myth, and the myth is kind of the master script here. And remember, event if it is a this-world-dry-run quest, it actually deals with reality bending stuff, so the actual death event is symbolical anyway. 

Instead participants should be afflicted with mythic related effects, most could be expressed as various curses (on you, your bloodline, your village, your general area), but also things like getting lost and ending up in bad places (hell is one, so technically you are dead, but it may improve if you are as resourceful as players/characters usually are). 

<following is a completely demented try to explain my thoughts>

In my view of Heroquests each run of it strengthen or weakens the myth in it self, and while it can be bent into a pretzel it really never goes away (unless eaten by chaos) and is kind of set apart from our-world-causality. So death there is usually not relevant for living status here, instead the status of the myth is what affects the status here, and by joining a Heroquest you are irrevocable knitted into that mythic mesh and thus your death there is expressed in a mythic-related way here as you diminished the myth a bit.

So the Mythic death is is not expressed as a real world death beacuse that is not what happended in the mythic reality, instead it is expressed in the "mundane" world as a mythic related effect (curses etc etc) or as an even more dangerous diverge in the mythic world which may be a effective death in the "mundane" as you never return to the place you entered the myth.

hmmmmm need to find a clearer way to express my thoughts on this

I really want to hear what Chaosium et alhas to say about it....

I was thinking of this a bit ago and how to make the Ernaldan a bit more than the Healer on the battlefield (or the one that directs the Elemental). The "wield an husband or two" commet above triggered that memory. I was sketching on a set of actions for an Ernaldan battle field manager, how to improve and support more actively and dipped into the Pathfinders tactical Feats for inspiration. Never got any further than that but I think there may be something in there.

4 hours ago, jongjom said:

Good suggestion.  A printable PDF version that's functional rather than for its look might be well received? May be worth asking if you haven't already.

I recall RQ3 had separate booklet for stats for some supplements, even RGQ has it with the Pre-Gen characters in the box set. 

Hear hear! Eh I was GMing Borderland (I think) I found this being so frakking useful that I started doing that everthereafter in all games I GMing, I must have produced dozens of booklets with stats over the years, and you can often reuse them in a pinch. Pre PDF I either xeroxed and glued them together or typed them in to hypercard stacks. Ahhh ... those was the days.

Stat blocks in the texts I hardly read any more, they are just annoying. Sometimes I even make booklets with such stuff removed.

The Clearwine map (50-51) the numbers 8 and 10 are duplicated. I guess the left handed side are wrongly placed (unless I have misunderstood something about the map).

On 11/20/2019 at 4:40 PM, Akhôrahil said:

It is more than a little odd that the universe has a coherent line on what is and isn't rape (and that this line is pretty narrow). Stuff like raptus, marital rape and sexual use of slaves in ways that we most definitely would classify as rape in the modern world surely goes on in Glorantha all the time, without it seemingly "counting" as rape as far as divine retribution is concerned.

The way it seems to work is that rape is chaotic to the extent that it messes with the social structure. Meanwhile, it seems like a large chunk of the storm gods committed raptus, and surely a large part of male slaveholders have used their slaves for sex, without it being chaotic or leading to divine vengeance. This leads me to think that rape in war would at least be seen as less of an issue among some peoples - it's what you do, and it's not a threat to the social structure.

Example: I'm sure downright turn-into-a-broo, divine-retribution-incoming rape is rare among Storm Bulls - they know it's chaotic and not the Done Thing. But harassing and bullying that poor serving maid or servant until she's too scared to say no? That's Tuesday Waterday.

Absolutely, there is a disturbing tendency  amongst Orlanthi of "Might makes Right"  that is chafe a bit, and that is why Ernalda and Lankhor Mhy is essential to elevate the unruly Storm God  from a petty Warlord to the actually king of the Tribe.

There is a (non-canonical?) story somehwere about Orlanth and Thed going along the lines that he is unable to punish Ragnaglar for raping her as his brother is a mamber of his tribe and Thed is not. But he is willing to allow her a boon to compensate for the crime against her.

There is a lot to read from that story and others have discussed it better than I'm able to.....

2 hours ago, Glorion said:

Jajagappa: That's helpful, and I did read KOS. But what I'm not clear on is what about the quite significant Lunar population. And the Praxians hate everything about Pavis and now are in charge, and it also says in KOS it stays at one point that they sacked the city. For those unfamiliar with the Thirty Years War and such, "sacking" a city means an episode, generally a few days long, when soldiers take everything they want, burn or otherwise destroy anything they don't want which they find amusing, and do whatever they find amusing with the population, which always includes rape and murder, and usually means wiping out a significant fraction of the civilian population. Is that what happened, do you think? When my adventurers hit Pavis, if they hear about that they won't like it. A soft hearted bunch I suppose. They may not be too thrilled about Argrath becoming King of Sartar, which could be interesting. (One player who looked at some of the Glorantha websites has already said he has real doubts about this Argrath character).

I think, and that is just my own opinion, rape would be much less prevalent in a world with an actual present deity that abhor it and have a very, very dedicated daughter ...

Babs may not have time to find every last perp, but what she does to those she get is probably well known ... and I think people would look funny at everyone that just plainly refues to enter an Ernaldan temple  ever again (I mean would you even take the chance that the Goddess have gotten a whiff of your transgression?).

For those who don't care or are incapable of connect the dots ... well ... there is always Thed, and we know what that leads to ... I hope they like the smell of goats.

And most of the motley gang of the White Bull follows gods that have honor somewhere in the curriculum making repeated murder of defenseless less fun the next high holy day., 

So a sack is probably not the same as the horrors of the thirty years war, certainly violence, deaths and plunder, but less torture and rape, less of murder a orgy ...

I would have Glue affect undeads, as it is a creative (moderately so, but still) application of magic ... and you still have to touch them so there is no risk it will be overused. But I would also have the zombies tear apart, the skellies would be in a pickle tho.

On 9/30/2019 at 8:58 PM, Puckohue said:

Found it!

I’m so used to using pdf’s now I forgot to check my shelf...

 

Sigh, never got my hands on that one, Has any of that material found its way into a digital publication?

10 minutes ago, soltakss said:

For me, I can have a campaign of murder hobos in HeroQuest as easily as in RuneQuest, as well as emulating mythic stuff in RuneQuest and HeroQuest.

That kind of thing is just a state of mind. 

Yes, of course you are right, it is all about presentation and intent, I was more after the effect that changing system as a marker of that change of mindset. Then I also think HQ is a easier (for me at least) to build and maintain a mythic heroquest.

In RQ I like to like to be down to earth and gritty, the change to HQ allows me to use pastell and four colour and keeping the systems for that separate and not bleeding into each other.

One thing that I have used to insert "strange stuff my players want that has no apparent in-cultural support" is having strange stuff happening during the clan initiation rite. Unexpected visits from ancestors, trickster shenanigans, odd ancestral enemies appearing and mistakes/bad choices at critical points.

I usually have a clan-creation myth which is recreated during this initiation. it can be a bit much to start a your Glorantha experience with that level of prep, but you can always just say "it is because of strange things that happened during the clan initiation" and then do a flashback later in the campaign when things are clearer and there is an eventual need to actually know what happend.

Using chaos is not a good idea tho (IMHO) especially if you are new to Glorantha, better to save that for later as it is not a trivial topic and better savoured later.

I have also been thinking of this, mostly because I feel the narrative focus of HeroQuest feels better to me thematically and I also want a divisor between "here we are murderhobos" and "now we emulate important mythic stuff".

The HQ character making is also easy enough (when you get a hang of it) that it is possible to make a new "character projection" for each individual heroquest, putting emphasis on what mythic role (if any) the RQ character take on.

1 hour ago, David Scott said:

Separate Life, acts on anything living (I think this a costly method as no Death is involved, a "better" version would be Command Death)

hmmmm ... yeah, I would say that this would produce a ghost, or similar, perhaps a (dangerous) way for a Sorcerer to jump between bodies if combined with a suitable second spell for inserting them into a suitable vessel.

So now I have arrived at perhaps the most controversial part of all Runequests rules through the ages ... Sorcery.

I mostly like this version, but there is one thing that I really can't wrap my head around and that is the Separate technique ... and it seems the designers may have had the same problem as I can't find any examples of its use. The opposing Combine is easier to parse, but looking at those examples I have a problem envision a spell using Spearate.

A "Sever Spirit"-ish using Man, Spirit and Separate perhaps ... or a Man, Earth and Separate to create anti-gravity?

I really don't know, it feels like those isn't the opposite of Combine.

I saw the potential when it come, but i haven't played it or even studied it in any depth. With the right group i think it can be fantastic!

I think, if you have a web-shop, you should update your product pages at least monthly or something. That is a minimum level of maintanance, especially when a whole product line is dropped/suspended/whatever. The webshop has gotten better by leaps and bounds, but it is months and months now that Valiant stumbled into limbo.

of course you need dedicated (at least part time) staff for your sales venue, not having it feels .... dangerous.

Perhaps a bit of info on the product page would be .... professional, just a half empty page and broken links feels a bit ... unorganised.

Hmmm, interesting my last attempt to start a campaign (that fell apart as all my life did at that point, my gods, all the prep work we did together ... just lost) was a small remnant almost-a-clan of Redalda worshipers caught up in a Yemalio/Elmal theological tiff among the clans below Six Sisters.

The vague outline was the players being at the crux of going east to Pol Joni or getting assimilated into another clan (the clan was seen as very primitive, almost hsunchen by the others in the Tribe.

I encountered exactly this problem when I was sketching out a Borderlands campaign, I had some moments depend heavily on certain slaves and needed to think about how the slavery thing actually worked (as I just knew my players would speculate and I wanted to be able to produce some kind of story about it).

in the end I went for making up a minor god/subcult of slave holding (or fudging an existing minor one) which provided a sort of Slave Bracelet. Morocants was the main worshipers inPrax, but also Lunars had a version. Basically it consecrated the wearer (a tiny bit) making DI inpossible for sub Runelevels and limited divination for them, as well as the limiting the use of MP (IIRC it worked with using the bearers own MP for Disruptions spells when MPs was spent. So with some pain you could dosome magic, but as no MPs was recovered naturally while the braclets where in place  and you fastly deplete the pool while being zapped ... an escape apptemts was not trivial.

There was much more fiddly/padding stuff but this is the basic version.