Grievous

12 minutes ago, Stephen L said:

As a working assumption, I assumed 1/3 near the marsh/Lismelder lands, 1/3 in beast valley and 1/3 distributed throughout Sartar.  Obviously this fluctuated in the Duck Hunt, as a good proportion of the distributed either get killed, or flee to the marsh/beast valley, before some fraction cautiously return.

Yes, indeed, we have all been foolishly skirting the real issue: is Boldhome/Sartar overopopulated by ducks? 

On 1/2/2021 at 6:03 AM, Storm Khan said:

I always thought that the central Illumination for Glorantha was that of Nysalor / Gbaji, whereby Law and Chaos were declared The Same Thing.

Illuminated Lunars believe this, making way for a fatal degree of relativism, fatal in that it would accept the undoing of Time and the destruction of the cosmos.

After all, nothing really matters, right?

 

I do think this thinking is a trap that people unintentionally fall into, leading them into believing Illumination to be a thing that it (at least in my view) clearly wasn't intended to be by the concept's creator (ie. Greg). I wouldn't really mind it, as YGWV and all, but it does seem to lead a lot of forum discussions into a particular mold of Illumination-bashing.

Oddly this reminds me a lot of certain critiques of Buddhist thought (and I'm mildly loathe to bring in iRL religion here, but this is particularly appropriate), where the Buddhist notion of sunyata (ie. emptiness) is sometimes stated to lead to an utter nihilism in its desire to reject eternalism. Famously, there is a very influential rebuttal to this by Nagarjuna, stating that Buddhism is the Middle Way, neither leading to an eternalism nor nihilism.

I think that's an idea that should be carefully considered in also understanding Illumination.

Now it is important to also say that I don't think that the criticisms levelled on Illumination are always wrong and indeed sometimes in-setting it does lead to horrible outcomes, solipsism and nihilism, chaos, etc. (which is also useful and fun for roleplaying/storytelling purposes), but this isn't intended to be 100% of the time and believing it to be leads to a misunderstanding of Illumination that in my view doesn't do justice to the setting or the concept.

As an aside, with the very real possibility of aerial opponents appearing in Gloranthan battles, I guess it would make sense for organized armies to keep unengaged troops behind the lines ready to deal with them. These could run the gamut and would of course depend on the army's available resources, but anything from specialized archers, "siege" weapons, to specialized magicians (if the army has these, they're gonna be behind the lines). Not sure Martin's Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass dealt with this, as I am one of those fools who's waiting for PoD options on these things. This isn't going to be a thing that should surprise experienced generals in the setting. Of course, a hill tribe militia is probably going to be ill-equipped for these, unless they have to have a few heroes at hand...

36 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

It will only provide a couple years of material I think?

Nooo, or at least the way I've understood it from what communications we've got is that it's going to more like the Great Pendragon Campaign. At some point someone was musing that it might be split too, but not sure about the source of that. Whatever form it's going to come out as, I do believe it's going to be the whole thing.

21 minutes ago, DreadDomain said:

And novels require less effort apparently. I read "The Barrow" and thought it was quite good although it tookm me a while to get use to the narrator (I listened to the audiobook while I drove to work) and there was a bit too much porn for my taste.

I actually dropped the Barrow half-way on my first read. When I restarted it out of pure interest for the setting, I devoured it though (I knew what I was getting into), and the sequel Blackheart that's at work over on Patreon is very, very solid. I think he's really nailed down his tone and storytelling in that one (and the porn feels less gratuitous overall - and I'm not saying I'm at all opposed to a fantasy story with more abundant sex, but I can definitely understand that it can be jarring).

Every now and then I think I have a pretty decent grasp of Glorantha and some of its mysteries, then along comes a thread like this and.... it's like I know nothing at all.

Enjoying the reading and my feeble attempts at connecting the dots tho! 

As I've understood it, it's unlikely the comic will get finished, but we will likely see Artesia's story picked up in the novels - here's hoping they turn out to be commercially successful! Of course, things might always change somewhere down the line...

From my perspective, while I understand the shift to the novels as a less cumbersome way of delivering the story, it would be perfect to bring the comic to at least somewhat of a conclusion before moving into pure text though, instead of the immense cliffhanger it currently ended with. Also, the comics stand out as one of the most amazing things in the fantasy genre so yeah, I'd love to see more, even if it would be just a little bit more.

7 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

I thought this supplement is pretty good. Please consider a full Artesia RQ game. Just sayin'.

Huge fan of the Known World setting and Mark's art. I have wanted for more Artesia RPG stuff to come and know he is thinking about a 2nd edition, which might indeed use RQ. While it is a relatively good fit, I do also very much like what he did with Fuzion, making it very much his own and giving the game a unique feel. So I'm a little bit on the fence on whether he should ditch that uniqueness to come into the RQ fold. 

Very happy to see him involved in making art for Chaosium and Jonstown Compendium 

Of course, there's many ways you could go with this, but a few suggestions come to mind. If you want to focus on the entire clan's story, it's probably best to play as members of the clan ring. This will be a more political game. If you want a smaller slice of action, focus on one of the clan's settlements outside of the main one (you could be the settlers that set that place up). This type can include a dash of politics, but also veers more on the adventuring side as players tackle local issues. A third suggestion would be to play the chieftain's huscarls. This will put the players in the middle of the clan's affairs, but doesn't necessarily give them political control over those issues (however it will certainly give them opportunities to influence the execution of those affairs, as they get sent on missions by the chieftain and the clan ring). 

12 hours ago, HreshtIronBorne said:

Not sure if this should be in the Sillh Ideas thread.

 

Playing some sorcerer-type characters with each of 6 specializing in an Elemental Rune, Summon, and Command techniques. Yeah, we are doing Captain Planet, Rings and all. It works either as an Argrathi Warlock group with Captain Glorantha as wyter. Or an experimental HeroQuesting group out of Loskalm or something. 

 

I was just rereading the Summon Sorcer spell and it is absolutely bonkers. Combine it with lots of research and prep and almost anything is possible. You could even have the Players roll a second set of dudes as their bondsmen/henchman or whatever and go troupe style play and bring out the Wizards when stuff gets real bonkers. 

I thought Belintar was Captain Planet?🧐

1 hour ago, Nick Brooke said:

If everybody else joined you in that bin, @Grievous, no Jonstown Compendium books would ever come out in POD. But you know that already...

I know, I am a baneful freerider, but I just want to appreciate this product in my way. 

I'm firmly in the "waiting for POD"-bin.

22 minutes ago, g33k said:

There's a pretty deep current of "things not only probably will, but absolutely must, get horribly worse before they can get better" running through Glorantha.

So that "extended Summons of Evil" concept looks very very Gloranthan.

That said... I'm kinda over grimdark play.
 

Indeed, if your PC's work for/with Argrath, then you are already part of this (at least for the Lunar Empire and the Red Goddess).

55 minutes ago, 7Tigers said:

"Elf with Black Sword", by Dan Brereton

Well, I googled Elric and went for it. /shrug

The Eternal Hero and Darksword...

Yeah, I get it...

On 10/16/2020 at 10:45 PM, jajagappa said:

The manifestation of Argrath/Arkat as the Devil who deceives and devours the gods.

Much like this thread. It starts out dumb, but once you read it the dumb becomes you, and it's actually pretty profound. It was the Gbaji-Nysalor-Arkat swap in forum form all along. 

Now roll for Illumination.

I think the Dragonewts that take part in wars as mercenaries are fighting because fighting or wars is something they need for their own personal development or something that they need to experience, so it's just a convenient way to make it happen without starting a war of their own. Of course, it could be lots of different things really (so whatever works for you), but that really strikes me as the go to answer.

I may be making an obvious statement reflecting 100% of the community's opinion, so bear with me for being this obvious, but I'm sure we're all pretty much pumped at the possibility of getting our hands on all the French/Dundealos material that is being created for the French edition. While I don't speak French, I do have a wallet which I am not afraid to utilize to buy whatever translation may come to exist! 

Also, great map of a lovely looking town. Those large areas in the middle are for the horses, I assume. Cool stuff. 

On 8/21/2020 at 9:46 AM, Jeff said:

The Orlanthi were originally presented as being very "Ancient World". 

With all due respect, we've come a long way. I mean that sincerely too, and recognize that for many of the folks out here there's lots of nostalgia, but for me the journey to find out about Glorantha involved a look into Runequest during the olden days.. but I bounced hard off the aesthetics. Ultimately I came to see the creation for the brilliant thing that it was and now here we are hooked.  

3 hours ago, Mankcam said:

Cool, thanks for the above link!

Interesting to see that Greg envisoned Big Sur for the Manirian Coast - I was not aware of that - however, it certainly makes sense

It's pretty cool, as when I was last down on the Great Ocean Road (Victoria, Australia), I remember thinking that this could be what the New Coast of Maniria must be like, well in summer anyway, and it turns out that it fits Greg's vision reasonably well

I bet the surfing's goodin Maniria. You can find those crazy Indlas Somer worshippers around there.

3 hours ago, Richard S. said:

Magic is a part of day-to-day life in Glorantha. People probably expect it to be used in all situations, it'd be odder for someone to not try and magically gain an advantage. Also keep in mind that Rune augments can be considered a form of magic too, so even if there's no overt spellcasting going on people will still be pulling on the cosmos to help them out.

Yeah, not using magic when you could be using magic, well that's just not really even trying, isn't it...

I've thought about this in regards to charm effects in RPGs quite often. I've a question that I've used to bring perspective into this, though: have you ever talked to someone who is so attractive that you know that their beauty and/or charm is effecting your way to interact with them? Yeah, so yeah, you know you've been Charmed, but in most cases it kinda still doesn't matter/help.

1 hour ago, Eff said:

After all, if the Mostali are repairing the World Machine in order to exterminate every other thinking being in Glorantha, we must question why they accept the existence of Uz and Aldryami at all and presume that they are normal functions of the universe that have gone awry rather than thinking of them as Chaotic infiltrators attempting to sabotage the World Machine by any means necessary. Ideology shifts to justify actions, and if Gloranthan societies really were preparing to commit genocides in the lead-up to the Hero Wars, we would see that manifesting in the ideology on display. And we do not. 

I like the idea of extending Mostali ideas of Chaos to cover the buggy organics.

"Sorry, Sir Mostali, but we have trespassed on your lands only to hunt a Chaos warband..."
"Designate Overseer has judged that you are Chaos. Your erroneous self-destructive vocation does not alter your fundamental registry, thus the suggestion is to start with yourself. However, your presence will be tolerated until system wide repairs are completed. You may proceed, but do not disturb any work crews working at higher than Beta-8 priority."

40 minutes ago, soltakss said:

The Compromise allows or mandates their existence.

Surely the Compromise is only a temporary patch that keeps the system working while ordinary functioning is restored. 

1 hour ago, Akhôrahil said:

I keep saying Illumination looks like a mix of post-modernism and existentialism in its effects.

But surely there’s far more to it than that, or most every half-baked arts student would count as Illuminated? It is, after all, a fundamental mystical experience, not just a choice of methodology.

I can see the thinking that leads to seeing them as somewhat the same kind, of thing yeah, but I don't think it's fundamentally right. A lot of western occultist thought in the 19th and 20th century actually looks a lot like post-modernist thinking (to really badly turn the complexity of it all into a phrase: "you create your reality"), so there is that, too. So, I think some of the mystical strains may actually have been building towards ideas that later emerged as post-modernism. However, just to pick one thing, and I think this cleaves in on the experiential (as opposed to simply philosophical) side of things, in mystical traditions there's also the concept of ego death to consider, which I guess in Gloranthan terms is equating the one and the many with each other.

As for the Illuminated folks not really changing so much, I think that is actually a big feature of mystical experience. A zen saying goes “before I sought enlightenment, the mountains were mountains and the rivers were rivers. While I sought enlightenment, the mountains were not mountains and the rivers were not rivers. After I reached satori, the mountains were mountains and the rivers were rivers.” So there is this idea that while you sort of get excited by the ideas that lead you on the path, you get lots of fanciful notions (which if not doing anything else good, at least sort of tend to inspire you to continue), but eventually the craziness (or what I have heard referred to as the "stink of enlightenment") sort of subsides.

4 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

I don’t. However, it’s pretty clear that it’s epistemically correct. This is what I meant with ”getting it right”. Nothing stops you from being awful just because you understand the world better - if anything, Illumination enables it by removing the checks and balances and traditions that can otherwise make people behave. 

I think that's a fair warning about one potential issue with Illumination (which indeed is fairly well represented in the core story of Arkat-vs-Nysalor), but still, in most cases the checks and balances you remove are actually more likely to be such that they mandate awful behavior and thus you can actually be a far better person than someone who can't see beyond the blinders that cause grief and suffering to one and all. To put it in practical and less mystical terms, it's stuff like: "No, we don't actually need to enter a cycle of vengeance that our gods demand, but we can forgive instead"; "No, we don't have to make them our thralls as our custom demands, but we can grant them full rights as citizens"; "I see how my emotions create the circumstances of my downfall, and instead I choose to recognize them, face them and then let them go, proceeding from a state of equilibrium rather than imbalance"; etc.