VonKatzen

I have had a lot of discussions with Robert M. Price (famous for his view that Jesus is not a historical person, but also a huge comic and mythology nerd) about how much Superman has come to be to modern people as Apollo was to the Greeks and Romans; a sun god incarnated as an idealized man, sent from his father from Heaven to teach mortals how to live and to protect them from the dangers of the infinite void (space is the science fiction Ginungigap). I mentioned Georges Dumezil earlier, and I find him incredibly interesting as a scholar of comparative indo-european mythology. I think he brings out a lot of aspects that Campbell misses by overly streamlining things so they fit with his Jungian model. Whether or not Stafford was influenced by Robert Graves, Graves is a titan of religious literature and should definitely have his own cult. All I meant was 'deliberately constructed by a person', as opposed to the hodge-podge of organic and multi-source mythologies we ascribe to ancient cultures. Certainly most humans have their own mythos, deities, saints, etc. For some this is celebrities (and I have to admit I would probably make Henry Cavill and Clint Eastwood honorary deities if I were in the Senate). Though I don't burn incense or pray to them I am often surrounded by little idols (we call them action figures) - Thanos, Cable, Superman, Cyrus (the Persian king), and a little replica of the Great Khan himself in die cast steel.

Drugs certainly play a role in my interest in bronze age mythology, so I buy it. Seriously, though, it's like Georges Dumezil wrote an RPG. I have or have read most of those, aside from Borges.

I have a stupid amount of RuneQuest, Pendragon and BRp stuff that I never use except to read (it was absolutely worth buying just to read it), and I often wonder about this. I have been a convert to Mythraism ever since I read through RQ6 and I would definitely like to get some use out of all my percentile RPG scenarios and settings with Mythras

Gloranthan geography is a bit like how the ancients imagined far away and famous places, not as they actually were but how they ought to be. Mountains are spires, plains look like someone took a slide rule to them, plateaus and mesas have their own steppes, etc.

Gloranthan mythology is the reason I know about RuneQuest. I remember, years ago, finding the myths and legends of Glorantha on some website and pouring through them for days. By that time I already had an interest in comparative mythology, and the more I learn about it the more impressed I am at what a great job he has done of depicting the way in which deities overlapped, stories contradicted one another, etc. in the ancient world. Perhaps especially the 'dead' sun god raised to the God-Above-God with the chief-of-the-gods being a son of his (ala Baal), this ancient near eastern theme is almost lost to the present world but has echoes even in Christianity. The artificial mythology of Glorantha is more like the real ancient world than Tolkien's syncretistic mythology, and more pre-axial than the Gnostic weirdness of Lovecraft. What were Stafford's influences in the construction of his different cultures and pantheons?

Glad you put out a pdf of all the changes. I bought my Mythras (2nd printing) shortly before I read this through a 3rd party Amazon seller, but I can easily pencil in a note referencing the change pdf in the book when it gets here.

I can definitely second that, I have a couple of ratty old Pendragon books about Lordly Domains that is absolutely awesome for the purposes. Many 'domain management' systems have mechanics which are not actually integrated with the core rules of the game and can be transplanted. For example, you could use the Darkest Dungeons (a free OSR game, physical copy $10) with just about any medieval/fantasy game; if you're more simulationist then HARN is an excellent source. GURPS has a couple of supplements called Social Engineering that can be used to define organizations and their strengths, but it is premised on the overall GURPS mechanics.

I have a boatload of assorted BRP/RQ/CoC supplements, and I was wondering if there was a handy guide to doing conversions? For magic I would simply use the sytems from Mythras without trying to do too much direct conversion, so I am mainly thinking of characteristics and skills. It looks like Characteristics are almost identical, at least for human-level characters, so that's not too big of an issue. Just copy/paste the values and calculate the attributes from them. Are skill levels roughly equivalent? I.E. should I just average a character's martial skills and give him a combat style, or are the assumptions of skill levels lower/higher for Mythras? I think converting is pretty straightforward, maybe fiddling around with traits and special creature mechanics to fit better into Mythras for CoC monsters. But right now I'm only looking to convert over largely non-supernatural human beings.

I have had this book for years and I really like it for sketching out the relationships between empires. How well would this book interface with Ships & Shield Walls? Anyway, now that I was reminded of this book I will retreat to my dungeon for the statistics of mid-republican Rome, imploding Carthage, and the Seleucid Empire.

Offhand I know of no link, but also shooting that fast is going to result in a weak draw and a poor aim - this is basically something you do when you're showering arrows. Yes, and you're also typically having MANY archers fire into the target unit - it's basically the world's clumsiest machine gun, at least until they get tired or run out of arrows. I think this would be included in a more general Combat Style (depending on how you divide yours up) like Steppe Nomad, but when you're firing arrows that fast I doubt you could hit much except at very close range. Because showering arrows is more of a battlefield tactic than a personal combat tactic it's probably best dealt with in something like Ships & Shield Walls. The steppe archers would be capable of doing this based on their Combat Style, but it would only be relevant when you've got a fairly large target and a decent number of shooters. Otherwise it's mostly trick shooting.

Firing and aiming takes a lot of time. For a very strong person who is quite experienced, though, a bow can have effective shots (effective against targets in little armor, at least) of more than one per second. You can see Mongols doing this today, and the Persianids could certainly 'rain arrows' and even held 2-3 arrows in their hand in addition to the one they were firing. However, aiming this at a specific target is nowhere near as easy. And anyone who hasn't been shooting for years - maybe even more than a decade - will not be able to match this feat with any accuracy or power. A close-range attack is almost necessary for armor penetration, especially on a straight shot. Part of the power of a bow on a long-shot is that it arcs up and falls back down, accelerating before impact. An aimed shot - usually a straight one - will simply lose power and velocity the further away the target is. But since using a bow at close range is VERY dangerous, the only way to effectively do it is to also be a bad-ass rider so you can pop in, shoot a couple guys, and take off again on your pony. Movie Legolas is a joke. Nothing about Peter Jackson films should be in any way mistaken for either history or Tolkien. Even stabbing someone with an arrow is a bit questionable - shafts are quite flexible, and if the guy is wearing boiled leather or anything harder it might just bend and pop out of your hand instead of penetrating. And your bow would get broken very quickly. Bows are permanently ruined quite easily. In fact, if your players aren't starting out every fight with their bows unstrung then they may have to face damage and failure of their bow - most of them are not capable of being kept in tension without deformation of the stave and loss of tension on the string. A much more practical one-man weapon is the crossbow, which is easier to aim, more accurate, doesn't require arc fire, hits harder, has better range and is overall superior in every way except for complexity and reloading time. A powerful crossbow is a flea's knee away from an outright firearm.

I would have to find my old papers to remember exactly what I didn't like about the numbers, but IIRC it wasn't all one way. In some ways the rules were too conservative with bows, in other ways they were too liberal. Mostly it had to do with effective ranges and firing rates. The actual rules for firing on moving targets are fine. I'm also talking about fantasy RPGs in general - i.e. elves shooting bows down hallways at hobgoblins wearing half-plate. That's very likely to end poorly for the elf, but most FRPG rules treat it as a totally viable option and take no account of the problems from being unable to arc a shot, from the failure of bows to penetrate solid armor most of the time. A lot of this is because of the IGOUGO initiative systems, where you can basically do whatever you want to a frozen and hapless opponent who can only react after you're done. Unlike RQ these games have little or no 'back and forth' - partly because they're abstracted, which is fine, but the MISSILE combat isn't abstracted. Melee and hit points are loose concepts for multiple attacks and wearing down an opponent, but missile fire is a single weapon where a hit indicates a physical injury? Well, it can't be both ways! D&D is a clusterfack because of its Chainmail roots, but if you fix it you end up with...RuneQuest.

I wrote something up a few years ago to make longbows function more realistically in RQ6 (before Mythras came out) but I don't know if I still have it. But to point: It's really hard to aim a bow at a single, moving target in a complex environment. And, given the realistic sprinting rate of a fighting man, he (and his buddies!) are likely to be able to run up and curb-stomp you before you get one-or-two shots off. Bows are useful for surprise, and incredibly effective in mass volleys, but they work best when the shot is arced and you have a target rich environment. This is not to deny that some bowmen are really crack shots - obviously people hunt with bows, and there are weirdos that can do that Robin Hood trick of splitting an arrow down the shaft with their own arrow. But when you're dealing with a man closing on you, wielding a melee weapon, covered in at least partial metal armor, it's a poor choice. And, unlike a gun, a bow is basically useless at close range. This is, of course, why most bowmen carry knives or little swords or hatchets - and why some Eastern archers wore body armor. On top of that, contra D&D, nobody has deliberately used short, simple bows in martial engagements since the Assyrian era - the range sucks, the penetration sucks, and a slower and lighter projectile means they're less accurate - all war bows in the late classical period onward would be either a longbow or composite bow. Regarding your comments on the Mythras rules - they do handle most of this pretty well (aside from what I said about bow ranges and the like), and where they differ from what you'd find in an Osprey book is mostly a nod to the adventure theme (like Luck Points) - it's a deliberate feature, not a mistake, and can easily be fixed by changing some numbers. One of the things that makes RPGs in general so weird in their weapon selection is that they've inherited armament tropes from a game that was originally about warfare - using troop blocks. While it makes sense for a company of men to all have a longbow, it makes much less sense for a single person to have a longbow. Likewise with that old Baldur's Gate trope of some guy with a huge pole-arm in single combat - that crap will get you killed. A pole-arm is great if you're in a formation fighting men in heavy armor, but it doesn't do 'super damage' or anything, so it's a hindrance in single-combat and not some amazing weapon that blows enemies to pieces on a hit. It's made to punch through plate, against an unarmored person it's just too much leverage and not enough control.

That's what I was going to say, heh. The big thing with modern weapons is that they are easy to aim and easy to use - even for novices. In the chaos of the battlefield it's not nearly as easy as at the range, but if you present a man-sized target within 100m of men with rifles you stand a decent chance of getting shot. The solution has been to never offer the opponent such a target. While maneuver and flanking are factors, they're more typically useful for large groups - say ten or so men - because that way when you split-off teams you can still retain fire superiority and the huge efficiency boost from have 2-4 people working in concert instead of one. SWAT-style breeching works like it does because the SWAT team has massive superiority in armor and weapons, and is usually operating by surprise with sniper-support, battering ram tanks, etc. If SWAT came up against a hostile as heavily armed as they were they would camp outside and snipe at them, like the ATF did to the Branch Davidians - they wouldn't run in, because they'd probably get killed. That said, the attacker does have advantage over defenders in one key aspect - he gets to choose where and when the fighting occurs, whereas the defender has to spread his resources across all possible fronts. But again, unless you're working in a large area with a large number of people this isn't that relevant. Most real life gun-fights between small groups of people end with a random exchange, and then one side or both running away. A couple of casualties might occur, but an indecisive skirmish is more likely. Most real people will never fight to the death unless absolutely cornered, which will typically not happen because most real buildings have at least two viable exits. Really in any RPG the enemies should run away a lot more often and a lot earlier. The Hard Boiled scenario where you have criminals holed up in a building en masse is only likely to be acheived by near total surprise, because (if they thought you had a chance of dislodging them) they would just move to a new, hidden location before the attack. This is part of the reason ISIS was so hard to dislodge - as soon as they're spotted by the ground troops they move to the next building, and air support or artillery bomb the crap out of some empty ruin. It only takes a few minutes to evacuate, so catching them - even with overwhelming superiority - is a real pain in an urban environment or a forested/hilly area. I won't even get into the 'real people don't use bows in personal combat'!