General Panic

On 6/7/2020 at 10:29 PM, Brootse said:

The clan chief is also their clan's chief priests of Orlanth, and the King is the tribe's high priest of Orlanth, so if they give Orlanth's worshippers gifts, it would be a bit silly if the worshippers had to give some of the gifts back the same instant because of tax reasons. Giving reciprocal gifts to gift givers is an important part of the local customs, but it's imo different from taxes.

This. Tithes make sense if applied to 'income' - stipends, harvests, contractual agreements (whether written or unwritten), debt interest, inheritances, lambs born in spring etc. From all these things the cult member may be able to declare a 'retained value' from which to pass on some of the gains. It doesn't make sense (outside a modern system finely tuned to close tax loopholes) to confuse tithing with things like gift-giving, which typically creates a reciprocal obligation of friendship, return gifts etc (is the cult also sharing in that obligation?). The value of any gift to a large extent resides in the mutual obligations that go with it; it may reside in the story or history attached to the item being gifted; and in the fame of people who have been connected to it in the past.  

So if you are given an armband by a clan leader in thanks, it may have been given for its weight in silver instead of minted coins, because he doesn't have any cash, or maybe it's just more  respectable than using actual money. It's in effect hacksilver, so you may even break some of it off and give it to the temple. Obviously you can't then wear it.

If he has given it as a gift as part of ongoing tokens of respect and mutual obligation and expects to see it on your arm, its value can't easily be measured in cash terms. It's an armband, not 400g of metal. There's no sensible way of tithing. You can imagine that if a tithe were to be imposed by a money grabbing cult or a mean GM, then the recipient of the gift may have to part with it to raise money to pay the tithe. That could bring shame, distress - and bloodshed.

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

Yes, but that was the purpose of the Iliad - to cram as many names and characters into one poem as possible to cover everybody's important ancestors, unmistakeably (just consider the two Aiases, and plenty other barely distinguishable names if you don't give the lineage etc.). The Iliad is a catalogue of the respected ancestries for important people, the proof of divine blood enabling a lineage to rule. That's how you get dynasties calling themselves the Heraklids or even the Tantalids (despite the evil in that lineage).

But the Iliad wasn't first and foremost a piece of entertainment - it was a re-affirmation of status for the hoi oligoi. It is a collection of celebrity selfies or 4 o'clock tweets.

In the Iliad, the main plot is the window-dressing.

In all fairness the main plot is not the siege of Troy, but the wrath of Achilles, and that's a proper character arc, can't be called window-dressing. Yes there's a lot of incident outside this main plot, there are the 'bonus content' sections that have been added such as the Catalogue of Ships and the Doloneia - but despite its length its pretty well constructed as a story. Other works in the epic cycle (for example the Iliou Persis, Cypria, Little Iliad), in so far as we can tell from surviving fragments, are pretty varied in their sense of story arc, whereas the other one that survives complete, the Odyssey, also so has complex narrative arc and structure.

The Iliad was devised to entertain, not to act as a source of genealogy. And it's way too long to hear it all in one sitting. But the audience for this entertainment was interested in names and genealogies of course.

But back to these Heroes' exploits compared to RQG 'heroes' - Greek legendary heroes are by definition born into it (they are all half divine, yet mortal). They are not on a quest to become something, but to validate or live up to what they already are. They have bigger characteristics, more intense passions, than normal folk. Their chief virtue is to do things that will be remembered in song, the klea andron, that's their immortality. 

19 hours ago, 10baseT said:

If you want stirrups in your Glorantha, i'd go ahead and use them. The technology of a Gloranthan bronze age doesn't have to mirror our real world bronze age timeline. I believe in our middle ages, the Arab world had more medical and mathematical advancements than the West. It could be the Gloranthan bronze age has more advancements than our bronze age. I'd do whatever works for you.

Given Glorantha seems to be a small part Bronze Age and more parts Iron Age, Classical and whatnot, I don't see how you can get hung up on real world parallels at all. Ancient Greece, Rome, Sarmatians, Scythians, Parthians, Cataphracts etc ad infinitum - none of these have anything to do with the bronze age at all

Mainly adventures, especially the Sands of the Korazoon mini-campaign for a group of starting level adventurers in the Taskan militia, posted to garrison duty on the volatile southern frontier; and the city of Sorandib. But I believe these are scheduled for revision, upgrade and release in the Mythras line before too long.

There are a bunch of rules material for Legend that will never appear in Mythras versions of the setting, at least without heavy modification, as the Mythras books are much more RAW friendly:

SOC (social status) as a characteristic

Rules for NPC reactions, and use of influence skills (including orate)

Enchantment and Summoning rules, as existing in Assabia and adapted into Taskan sorcery. A new version of these may appear in a future release but I would expect them to be heavily re-written.

My copy doesn't and I wrote it...

Mongoose lost the RQ licence shortly before publication of AoT - so it was last minute rebranded to Legend.  I'd love to have a copy with the RQ logo on it, but sadly I don't.

You could advance your skills by winning experience checks - ie just 'doing'. You could adventure and earn cash and buy training. You could do favours for a cult, guild or community you don't belong to, and in return get some training benefits, maybe get taught a battle magic spell. None of this meant you had to join a cult and 'play the mythic role', and if you did initiate was often as far as it went. In RQ2 when you started off as a lay member and had to work at the next stage, initiation was a thing. In RQ3 initiation often just came out of chargen because it was assumed to be a natural life stage. 

In the RQ2 and 3 games I played in almost no one lived long enough to make Rune level anyway, but of course if you did and picked the right cult you could be much more badass than anyone else. As for Humakti and Zorak Zoran adventurers teaming up together and coming to blows - and more broadly the 'social stuff' - is that really evidence for player immersion in the 'mythic' qualities of Glorantha? Or just grasping that there's roleplay opportunities because it's a rich and exotic world with a whole matrix of cults, races, species, expansionist empires and chaos monstrosities. Or looking up what Humakti, or trolls are like (and without a care for the mythological reason they are like it) and roleplaying.

In my experience, which I know may not be universal, everyone fell asleep at the table if forced to endure a digression on Gloranthan myth that lasted more than a few of lines. Of course our group, like probably everyone else, had whole campaigns where we started off as a connected community or clan. It's the social not the mythic that's interesting per se, the mythology adds colour to the social and properly handled makes the social aspects of the game and setting more convincing.  The obsession with 'myth' as the driving theme of the setting to the extent that the object or reward of the game is to immerse in and explore Gloranthan myth is for me, and so far as I believe for people I played with, a crushing bore.  

I cap skills at basic (stat+stat) x 5. Does the job.  And I still ask for stat x 5 or x 3 rolls if it's quicker or more appropriate than thinking about the right skill to use

I've never done a kickstarter before and will back this one. But as I don't really put a value on pdf's (I like physical), I'm a bit unsure what the implications are - looks like for printed product the top tiers effectively don't offer you anything more than rune-lord priest at $250 - so the volumes of collected unpublished material are effectively being priced at $800. Is that right or am I missing something?

I missed out on the previous release of 'Age of Treason: The Iron Simulacrum,' but the setting got great reviews and sounds simply excellent for gritty swords and sorcery (just my kind of setting). I am glad to see that the setting has new life, especially via RQ6. I think the city book with adventures is a great idea, but I would like to get my hands on the overall setting, and I was wondering how this would work as a stand-alone or intro to the setting, and if there are further RQ6 plans for the Age of Treason?

Hello Professor

Shores of Korantia actually describes more of the world than does the original AoT book. There is a (Korantine) city offered up with some detail, but this is a jumping off point for the adventures chapter and can lead to city-based, wilderness or sea-borne adventures, according to where you want to take the action or your players want to go. And there is a full run-down of Korantine culture, so you can pick any of some 40 cities to be your starting point or the point of origin for the PCs. Character Creation includes rules for many foreign cultures too. So where Age of Treason was very much about running characters born and bred in the Taskan Empire, SoK provides a much broader range of options, and expects your adventurers to take the leap into distant exotic lands at some point (hence the ship rules, and an easy link to Monster Island).

Shores will not repeat all the Taskan Empire background and adventures in the Age of Treason books - the intention is to revised and repackage all of that for RQ6 in coming months and I am doing that preparation work already in anticipation!

Very cool cover.

Pardon my ignorance: is this 'Age of Treason reloaded' or a different setting?

Shores of Korantia is a settings book in the same world as Age of Treason, and in the same era. However its focus and point of view is not the Taskan Empire but the land of Korantia, a collection of some 40 city states that comprise the Korantine Empire - although this is an Empire in name only and our young Emperor Koibos XXIV (pictured on the cover) has little actual say over how these cities govern their affairs and they are fiercely competitive with one another, even to the point of warfare.

Shores also explores the Inner Ocean and provides information on some of the exotic lands and people that lie beyond it - as well as the rules you need to navigate your way there. And there's an extensive set of adventures set around a recently Korantine founded colony, its people and intrigues with neighbouring lands.

I'm running a game on RPOL right now using Legend - if you go to rpol.net and look for Age of Treason or search under Legend game system, you'll find it - and you can take a lurk see how it runs. On the whole most of may players rarely take more than 48 hours to post, and I find combat goes just fine - if only because in Legend combat is usually over in 2-3 rounds as a Combat Manoeuvre proves decisive. Generally people will declare up front what CM they will use if they get one (and so far Trip is the favourite). Just finished a fight with a minotaur but if you look back you'll find a fight between PCs and 4 would-be assassins at an inn.

Hmm. Your approach seems to be along the same lines as the S&P Article. I was hoping to get something more with more believable effects, that could Ideally be generalized to be able to add more drinks of varying strengths on the fly.

I can see mine needing some revision to make it more easily usable, but I'm not confident in this approach. I feel that while it's simplistic enough to be more easily usable than what I originally put up, its simplistic to the point of not being realistic enough for me.

The effects in particular. The ones I mentioned match up well with the actual effects of alcohol, and include the potential for coma or death.

Now that I've seen the S&P Article, this approach, and what I started with, I'm more convinced I have the right idea, Though the presentation needs work and I need to make it so less calculation is needed. I'll try to take the comments in this thread into consideration, and I'll make a revision and put it up when I get the chance.

In fairness - because there's a system in Legend for poisons - and I see no reason to have an alternative one for alcohol rather then just use what's there. The poisons rules give you a bunch of characteristics (application, potency, onset time, duration etc) for which you as GM can put in your own stats and effects. If you can describe those - rather than ask the system to do that for you - you can fill out the sheet. If you wanted to you could do it for each drink (Troll Lagers, Elf Ciders) rather than for alcohol per se. Is there a reason your alcoholic effects need to be more 'realistic' than those for other poisons...or would you want a subsystem for cobra venom as well to achieve a more clinically realistic outcome?

Agreed and if you can make it easily usable and fun to use as well as being fairly accurate then it would be a good set of rules.

Can we start with the size of a dose (allowing some and spare the precise metric/imperial conversions)?

Suggest (because we can all relate by personal experience) 1 DOSE = 1/2 litre beer, or 0.25-0.3 litres wine, or 0.1 litres strong spirits

Application - Ingestion (really, I think injection calls for specialist rules or GM fiat for an unusual situation)

Onset time - 15 minutes (I'm guessing)

Duration - 2 hours (likewise)

Resistance - Resilience. Adjust Difficulty according to normal rules scale depending on whether you have eaten well, or are starving, or whatever

POTENCY - 40, but +10 cumulative for each extra dose downed within the onset time, and the drinker must reroll for each new application within the duration, again adding + 10 Potency per dose to what's already int he system.

Effects - Put your thoughts here, but as a discussion starter

Potency roll fails - no effect

Potency roll succeeds, Resilience succeeds, no effect, but Potency remains to be added to that of the next drink.

Potency succeeds, Resilience Fails, -10% to skills (including resilience). If you are using Passions - add +10 to the Passion. Potency remains as above.

Potency succeeds, Resilience Fumbles - Puke, pass out, do something embarrassing (scale to Potency already on board). Hangover assumed.

Remember you roll for each dose, and the effects are cumulative.

Not playtested, obviously, this is off the cuff, but similar to my drug use rules. But If I drink 5 pints within 2 hours, and have resilience 50%, succeed/fail/succeed/fail/fail - I'm now -30% on skills, +30% on Passions, Potency in system is now 90% and the next pint will see me home to bed. If I make it. Maybe a bit harsh...but I'll be fine in an hour...no, really, I'm fine to drive...honest.

I posted a new NPC file last night (AdventurerFile04.PDF). Arksum Hartimer is a very dangerous enemy, potentially a very useful ally - but with a 20,000 Taskeen bounty on his head, he may just be a lucrative job opportunity.

Age of treason blog

The third free NPC download went up on the Age of Treason blog last night - this fellow is an experienced Adventurer sporting a fine set of trophies from his exploits...keep an eye out as we add some patrons and foes over the next couple of weeks.

No, I never did. The name Age of Treason naturally invokes The Age of Reason, a historical period I'm not much interested in RPing in, and the second part of the name (Iron Simulacrum) brings to mind steampunk or mechanoids, which I'm also not interested in. I also have a once-bitten-twice-shy aversion to things associated with Mongoose. For these three reasons I never made an effort to learn more about it.

But if you feel it offers something different, feel free to list some of the highlights - what do you think sets it apart from other settings?

Ah...I can assure you neither of those impressions are correct...

I picked up on your being 'done with' elves and dwarves etc - AoT is humanocentric. Tech level/era is ancient world (Late antiquity with some earlier stuff thrown in). The Simulacrum is an iron golem, Viceroy of the Taskan Empire, and the Divine Emperor's familiar.

The first review that came out was on the RollforInitiative blog, here:

Roll for Initiative: Age of Treason campaign setting for MRQII/Legend

I have my own blog for the setting,last post was a preview on what's in the forthcoming companion, here

Age of treason blog

And you can also find some free pdfs on the blog - map of the empire, a couple of adventurers, a courtroom scenario, and a player's introduction.

And there's an extended thread on the Mongoose forum here:

Mongoose Publishing • View topic - Age of Treason WOW!!!!!!!

But to save you searching here's one entry ont he post that summed a lot of it up:

Age of Treason - Lots of Cool Stuff

A friend picked up Age of Treason for me at Gencon and I have been perusing it for the last couple of weeks.

I like this setting. There are a lot of very nice applications of and/or tweaks to the "Legend" core rules. Lots of cool stuff to borrow if you don't run your game the Age of Treason setting.

Examples of Magical Cool Stuff:

The religion of the Taskan Empire is a pantheon of gods which have some relevance to the peoples lives. The typical RQ cults don't control worship. Worship is an individual thing. Most people aren't initiated to a god, but attend the Holy Festivals and worship them. A person can establish a pact with a diety at special services, sacred sites, or even in the presence of a "Holy Man". A person can have pacts with several of the deities in the pantheon (requires at least one dedicated POW as usual), but they have one skill which applies to worshipping all of the gods in the pantheon. That skill is effectively Lore (pantheon). You can get divine magic from any of the gods you have a pact with, limited by the POW you have dedicated to that god. The gods only offer a few divine spells each.

Official religious worship is performed using various sorcery rituals to establish worship.

Cults of the gods do exist and there may be several rival cults worshipping a god. Cults may require that a person have a pact with the god as a prerequisite to joining.

Common magic is not common in the Taskan Empire. In fact, it is rare. Some special cults may offer magic that is essentially like common magic spells.

Sorcery is common. There are sorcery spells that are in the "public domain" and published for all who can read and understand them to use. These are mostly worship spells. Wealthy families may have a Family Grimoire with possibly more adventurer friendly spells. However, generally only people trained as a sorcerer's apprentice will have the Manipulation skill. So lots of sorcery at minimum levels. One NPC in the intro adventure has a family grimoire with 9 spells: Abjure Grief, Abjure Love, Restoration, Sanctify, Sense Honour, Worship Thesh, Worship Samanse, Worship Tethis, Worship Tarsen. I think this was intended to show a typical family grimoire. The Sanctify and Worship spells allow him to perform worship services where people can ask the gods for blessings.

Blessings are a new minor magic available. They are essentially one time benefits granted by a god. They can be acquired at properly sanctified worship services, usually performed by a professional priest. In game terms, they typically grant a 10% bonus one or more skills for a short duration. A carpenter might get a blessing from Hoonvel which gives him a 10% bonus to his Craft (Carpentry) skill for a skill test or an extended task. A warrior might ask Machank for a blessing to make his weapon true, which may grant a 10% bonus to his attacks for the duration of a combat. A typical character would be able to have 3 blessings available at time.

Spirit Walking is rare (a heroic ability or special divine magic).

Spirits are called to the shaman, or sought out at places where they are known to frequent.

Spirits can manifest into the physical world. Spirits may be able to force a person into Spectral Combat.

Spectral combat takes place in the physical world. (No getting jerked out of your body.)

You can do other things while being attacked by a spirit, if you need to.

You use your full Persistence skill or Spirit Binding skill (whichever is greater) to battle the spirit.

Several spirit Traditions are described.

Sorcery Duration (see the table in the preview) is extended over the core rules. Those of us who liked the long durations of AHRQ3 will like this. Two caveats: the maximum length of time for a spell is A Year & A Day (or POW X 1 month if you prefer); and the sorcerer can not begin to recover the magic points in the spell until it ends.

Alchemy is a form of sorcery. Manipulations include doses and shelf-life.

Enchanting is a form of sorcery. It generally involves permanent investment of characteristic points, not just POW. Characteristic points yielded are spent to add abilities to enchanted items. The amount of return on investment depends on the Grimoire skill. At 40%, a sorcerer could sacrifice up to 1/4 of a characteristic and receive 1D4 per point sacrificed to be spent on the enchantment.

Basic enchantments are generally available in standard sorcery grimoires. They include Create Familiar, Write Grimoire (sort of extra memory for spells), and Create Magic Source (object with MPs that regenerate).

Advanced enchants require the Enchanting Ritual and Craft(Enchanter) skill. These let you create enchantments with virutes and conditions. Virtues are grouped by the characteristic sacrificed for them. Some of the virtues are Armouring, Life Supporting, Anticipation, Magic Damage, Wand, Haste, and Fetish.

Non-Magic related Cool Stuff:

Extended tasks - this applies the Extended tasks rules introduced in Arms and Equipment to tasks other than crafting, engineering and mechanisms. Persuasion (influence, seduction, etc) and Education (a new skill) are given rules and examples for extended tasks. This opens up a lot of other possibilities for using extended tasks. Lockpicking and searching an area come to mind. There is a several page section devoted to the arts of persuasion and oratory and bribery.

Brawl skill replaces Unarmed as a common skill. Improvised and street weapons increase damage and may allow certain Combat Manoeuvres. For example, a broken bottle adds does a D3+1 damage and allows Bleed and Slash combat manoeuvres. Slash is a new combat manoeuvre.

The Brawl skill can be used by a person using a long weapon when their opponent has closed on them.

Drive is a common skill, Ride is not. You can sit on a horse while it walks and use Drive for steering and simple problems. Difficult terrain or problems require ride skill, or get off the horse and walk. To fight from horseback requires the Ride skill. To fight effectively from horseback requires Mounted Combat skill.

The Funeral Clubs are an interesting concept. Sort of social clubs whose members guarantee that they will provide a proper cremation and funeral for its members, they will be remembered on the proper Holy Days. This is very important in the Taskan Empire. Some have become much more than that and provide other services.

Some interesting tweaks to the combat rules regarding weapon styles and shield use.

The intro adventure is very interesting. The designer used it to good affect to introduce the setting and to demonstrate some of the concepts in the game, including some magic items and spirit traditionalists for the main opponents.

Essentially, the player characters are starting youngsters out to perform their mandatory two year militia service for the Emperor. They all end up in the same half-file of a company. (assuming that you have 6 or fewer PCs) I am going the have to sit down and tinker with this because it seems that it may be very deadly for the relative novice characters. The pre-generated characters mostly have low combat scores. They do get a little training, but it seems inadequate. But it looks fun none the less. I think a solo run through is in order.

The setting itself is interesting and has potential for lots of different styles of game.

Did I mention that every citizen of the Taskan Empire has a Pact(Emperor) skill and one POW devoted to it? The benefit is citizenship in the empire.

Hope this is of interest!

Compelling setting material that is thought provoking. I like things that capture the mind-blowing effect that good speculative fiction has. I like settings that have a 'what if' factor. I also really settings with verisimilitude - which include enough depth to feel real. In that vein, the settings for Artesia, Mechanical Dream, Jorune, Harn, and Hot War all appeal to me. I love fantasy, but avoid the traditional stuff these days. Unless I'm playing Tolkien itself, I'm done with Orcs, Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, Dragons, and so on.

I'm not interested in franchises from film/TV. I like original material. I want RPG settings to inspire me - not to copy other things that already inspired me. I do love historical settings, though. I suspect my tastes run in the minority, but if I don't speak up for them nobody else will, either.

Have you taken a look at Age of Treason: The Iron Simulacrum?

Hi all

The Simulacrum has today posted a run-down of the Age of Treason Companion book on his blog. Go take a look or be considered borderline Treasonous...

Age of treason blog

The second in the series of free to download Age of Treason NPCs was just put up on the blog. Belisar Nine-Scars, a korantine adventurer from Mersin, comes complete with allied spirit! Comments and questions welcome.

I have added a PDF file to the Age of Treason Blog, which you can access at Age of treason blog

This (free) pdf is a fully statted npc to use in your AoT game, and is intended to be the first in a series - so comments and thoughts welcome

IS

That's a good one. I'd like to know more about what sort of people worship Morrigan. Is it prostitutes and courtesans, or regular joes and josephines...and why? For example if you are a prostitute, does this cult help you secure a position as a courtesan in return for you using influence over your patron at its direction?

The 5SP/month for a lay member rules out working class folk, if you look at the Legend wages table. Better to suggest a small gift within their means or a tithe 5% or 10% (10% is typical of old RQ cult rates).

What does the cult do with all that money, and why?

In short - your last effort had promise to indentify an interesting and potentially important role for an organisation to fulfil on a game setting - and this one does too. But doesn't quite go the whole hog. I'd push you to be a bit more cut and dried about what the faction or cult is for and follow it thru in the text.

IMHO

paragraph 1 is sellable and rather good. It identifies an in-[any]-world need for the organisation that is a worthwhile bolt-on. I can take that, go think about how it fits/enhances my world, and it will spark further ideas as I work through the further implications. Likewise - the payment in shares bit. That's interesting...needs elaboration. A company of soldiers really is a 'company', after all (at least it was once)

BUT the rest is IMHO so vanilla as to be bit useless - "Ok, soldiers involved, let's give them some combat-oriented common magic". We can all do that part, in about 5 mins. Then the knights and squires bit...that's loaded language, arguably not really about mercenaries...definitely not about shareholders...etc. You get the point. What I and maybe others need is not that you do the write up of something very vanilla for me, but to do some thinking for me and put it in writing, because that's what really saves me time or gives me inspiration to spend a bunch of my own time. OK, so they attract people to join by offering training in martial skills and spells. That works, but its obvious. I wouldn't pay for it. Make an outfit who enforces mercenary contracts interesting because they do just that. Booty Merchants, Contracts, Funerals, Ransoms, Reparations, Repatriations, Prisoner Swaps, Talent Spotting, all the things that mercs and merc employers really need someone to do - make that lot interesting and work out how it provides play/scenario opportunities etc - that I'd pay for.

Thank you wb - I'm glad you are finding it interesting. It could do with a little more noise - there are no reviews on key sites as yet, but there are some very positive coments on the mongoose forum. The companion book should be at print within a couple of months.

Did this get posted somewhere yet ?

Here you go:

Please feel free to visit the new Age of Treason blog, where you can avail yourself of Strictly Courtroom, a free scenario to slot into the published campaign. You can find us at:

http://draconianpress.net/ageoftreason/

go to the archived post 'new scenario posted today' Simply click on the Strictly Courtroom link when you get there to access the pdf

With best wishes

GP (Simulacrum)

For my part I will be interested to see whether the massive sell-through of Legend at a zero barrier to entry price point will knock on the supplements. My Age of Treason book went on sale in late August and did OK. I noticed today it is now a "copper seller" on drivethru, but I have no idea what that means in numbers - 1 or 100? It's hardback and is not at digest price.