Madrona

Having introduced a lot of very new players to Glorantha, I've learned its generally best to just leave out Argrath. He's interesting in fiction and basically uninteresting in gameplay. There's both too much written about him, and not enough. Honestly I feel the 1625 time period was just a bad time to set the RPG in general as its when things have been set into motion in a distinctly Argrarthward direction, or just to kind of leave him out or use him just as a rebel army that threatens or fights with the Lunars and leave most of his deeds out of it. It's like making an RPG around King Solomon, but with only Song of Songs, a rabbi's blog where he mentions him in relation to something entirely different, an Encyclopedia Britannica entry and just to confuse you, a copy of Key of Solomon and a early 90s episode of Adventures in Odyssey (A childrens oriented evangelical Christian scifi-ish radio drama) that mentions King Solomon a lot. Meaning: You can get an image of him...kind of, understand what he did...kind of, but you're doing so through a pile of media and everyone who decides to take the plunge is coming out with a bunch of contradicting viewpoints. One person will end up wanting to be him, most people will be confused, one will just be sad that the comic is dead, and one person will decide its their quest to get Ralzakark to rule Dragon pass and wants to become a servant of evil Unicorn dad. All of Glorantha writing can get a bit like that, but Argrath is that way with extreme enhancement. He's both too central to things in the era of RQ:G but also because of the nature of Glorantha's writing, hard to get any kind of grasp on. Maybe its my failings as a GM but I think its not that he's from a different game than a roleplaying game, he's someone else's character from a decade or more long roleplaying game, in a campaign that wasn't yours.

This, entirely. I love the Bronze Age ascetic, but honestly the kind of aggressive 'THIS IS NOT LIKE BRONZE AGE VIKINGS' or 'THIS IS NOT LIKE BRONZE AGE ROMANS' in RQG majorly turned off my players who, at least one of, didn't feel much like using the book at all because of it. However, my group was honestly a really difficult sell. I don't think I succeeded. One player was turned off by the art they loved from KoDP not continuing, and ended up a trying-to-be-civilized broo, one player just wanted to play a feline Hschuchen 'wandering assassin with no family.' and wanted the concept very, very badly and nothing else really made them want to play. One player was uncertain what they wanted, but was extremely into Monster Hunter at the time and wanted to just hunt mythical beasts, was disappointed at the lack of 'diversity' in the artwork, kinda wondered where the black people were, ended up as a Sable Rider far from home (in southern Peloria) and the last was a very Roman-Goth Tarshite who had no real complaints or problems beyond annoyance at the anti-Dog propaganda in Glorantha, we lacked any real community aspect, though we were theoretically supposed to be doing Lunar missionary work. The game fell apart due to unfortunately out of game issues. But honestly I feel we were having difficulty from the get go, been wanting to give it another go but other games took up our time. I'm still not sure how to sell the setting, as it was only really sold to the players who already knew KoDP.

The wiki really hurts to look through. Like, I know its fandom made. But compare it to Wookiepedia or the Forgotten Realms wiki or one of the WH40k wikis. Its tough to sell to a lot of new folks who are like, "Ok, my GM wants to play a game in this really old cool setting" and then they look to the wiki and leave confused or wonder why its so barren. I.E. My friend wanted to be a nomad, and ended up as a Praxian. He looked up Prax on the Glorantha wiki. Climate? Nope. What the people are like? Well they herd animals and worship spirits and raid an oasis. But thats all pretty vague. Geography? Nope. Just a list of places of interest that are all hotlinks. It doesn't even mention the Praxian tribes. If we compared it to say, The Hordelands of Forgotten Realms (A rather 'off to the side' region far from any real focus in FR) the wiki page is far larger, carefully crosslinked in a rational fashion, and even has a ~map~ (from the one time a map was made of the place, so its a terrible map) I don't know if the Glorantha wiki has serious controls on what it can post or something, but I've had half a mind to investigate it and see if I can at least update what's there.

I just care about the form fillable one.

I think you guys overthink this. If something says, "You gain battleaxe' and there's two things in battleaxe, the simple solution is, "Well it does not specify which, therefore I gain both of them." If something says Javelin, and there's a thrown and one handed javelin. YOU GAIN BOTH OF THEM. If not specified you gain both. If your GM has a problem with that, ask them which one they want you to get.

Yeah holy crap, I've seen more people throw good books aside due to their art, and pick up bad books specifically for their art. Most notably, I've seen people stare in awe over Dark Sun books in used book stores because of how frickin amazing Brom's art is, similarly I've known Dark Heresy and Time of War be bought purely for artwork. Hell, my local gamestore was giving away Cyberpunk v3.0 for free because literally no one would buy it, usually citing how ugly it was. 14 years after they purchased their sample copies that had become so worn with people flipping through it, that they resembled the 'playable' copies of the game they kept on the non purchase shelf. (for in house games) Also just, Mouseguard. Mouseguard is so far gone into presentation it is hard to reference as rules and you'd be hard pressed to find a gamer who doesn't think its a masterpiece. I think the only games that don't need presentation are: GURPS and Traveler. GURPS has its reputation and is either a love it or hate it sort of situation. While Traveler is going to appeal to people who are going to want to play traveler, and not appeal to people who won't like to play Traveler. Playing a middle-aged retired spaceguy in a hard sci fi setting doing hard sci fi stuff isn't the most widely appealing thing out there, but it really appeals to its core.

Some cults in the past have embraced that to become truly Christian, involves becoming simply part of Christ. It involves becoming illuminated in the truth of the cosmos and heavens. Upon achieving that form of enlightenment, upon reaching that perfection, they do not have an afterlife in the traditional sense, for they follow Christ's journey and become one with him and God. In Glorantha, their afterlife would diffuse them from being contactable as their enlightenment would imply they were no longer individuals. Still others, say a certain monk in the 16th century, wrote erotic, obsessive poetry about Christ, and believed he would live in heaven as one of the 'infinite wives' of Christ, reborn a woman and living in eternal ecstasy, a dutiful servant and loving wife of Christ. But maintaining, if transforming theirself in the afterlife. In Glorantha, they would be contactable as their afterlife told them they would be an individual. Basically, becoming one with the red goddess=/=Individuality. Becoming a servant of the red goddess=individuality. Least that's my reading of it.

TBH I forgot about MRQ. Which is pretty derpy cos its right next to me.

Ok, ok, but has the world collapsed into an anarcho-capitalist hellscape of megacorporations strangling the proletariat, or has the revolution begun? On a serious note, I'm glad this didn't come out two weeks ago. I had a player who I barely got to talk out of playing an elf! This is ~super rad~. The birch tree made me reflexively hum Russian folk songs though.

Honestly, lack of adventures has been kind of a problem. But it doesn't bother me. I tend to just mill through piles of random adventures, freebie adventures, or othersuch things, and then adapt them to whatever I'm playing. I've run CoC adventures so butchered to be unrecognizable for Dark Heresy. (Hey, a giant rusted metal insect like walking machine with a megacity on it is identical to a sleepy new England town if you squint long enough) I even ran the absurd 3rd edition D&D 'pizza golem' miniadventure as part of that. The players were none the wiser. Pick thematics out of something, and understand the systems well enough, adapt and adjust and reinterpret, and Hiro Protagonist and his Katana are just as viable Glorantha content as Sartar, Kingdom of Heroes. You got great set pieces. It focuses on the Spirit World, a floating city of oceanic nomads in interconnected rafts, an ancient and mysterious tower. Chaos-Speech, Malian diseases combined with Lunar illumination, you got hideous rat-monsters as minions, even a Dwarven superweapon named Reason.

Sometimes I think folks take creators words too seriously or as too much dogma. Greg's interesting to listen to and created a fascinating setting that I admire deeply. But like, YGMV. And TBH, his G is probably pretty V from any of anyone else's Gs. If I was to suppose, it'd be that illuminated people who aren't superpowered in some way, are usually too one with the background noise to be individually contacted.

Yeah but there was a lot of barking and hissing about disarm. Almost everything vaguely related to 'theme' or 'magic' is crazy expansive in RQG. Heck, I think this is the first edition of RuneQuest to have runes be a front and center thing and a seriously important mechanic. As for knockback and disengagement, most people were comparing it unfavorably to RQ3, which had those mechanics. (Knockback maybe, I think a lot of people like the large creatures doing knockback on hit from RQ3 but I heard little barking about it and honestly forgot about it) Also TBH I really don't know RQ2 too well, I don't own a hard copy and my limited reading was like reading a AD&D core rulebook. Very, very aged, regressive and mechanically less interesting than RQ3, which I had read extensively. For the most part, reading RQ2 and telling me its better is like someone handing me a AD&D 2e book and saying, "thAC0 is logical and sensible and not even slightly confusing! 3rd edition initiative is so much more confusing than AD&D initiative! Psionics in 3rd edition is less functional! Nonhumans need level caps!" So TBH I had to do digging to find out if some of these things were even in/weren't in RQ2, mostly based on people's incessant bickering across the internet since Usenet about which system is better.

Page 373 of RQG. And it DID?! Man, before my time, but I never knew.

I dunno if I speak just for me, but literally nothing is hyper than a bestiary (Except maybe a Broopak). I was literally introduced to RQ by being told it was an "RPG where you can play monsters" which while not accurate, made me kinda hype. Ya know what got me into RPGs? The AD&D monster manual and all its pretty pictures. First book I got for any RPG? 3rd edition D&D monster Manual. You know what the best thing about RPGs is? Monsters, really neat monsters that spark the imagination and make you try and draw scary pictures with crayons as a little kid. Most of you may be too old for that to have been part of your life, but it sure was part of mine.

Here you go! Don't take it too seriously but this is about what I've determined. (Don't scream people please, its not meant to be 100% ultra serious on all statements, its mostly accurate for the ones that are system referential! Its everything notably different I've found)

TBH I can't blame you. While I've seen a lot of disarm checks, I tend to play with people who like that kind of thing. I.E. One of my ex roommates I don't think has made an ordinary attack more than a half dozen times no matter the RPG. In Pathfinder he disarmed, Dirty Tricked and tripped, in Dark Heresy he Takedowned constantly, etc. In my current Mithras game I think every combat has involved a disarm attempt. Then again our accidental defacto partyleader is sort of an watery-eyed idealistic do-gooder. Even with that taken in mind, I've seen a lot of people long wonder if there's a point to disarm in 99% of scenarios, beyond maybe "oh jeeze that guy has a soul eating magical death sword that talks", most people are going to ignore disarm anyway.

God I know. I'd sacrifice at LEAST three captured victims for Drastic Resolutions: Chaos. Though a surprising amount of fanzines seem to be floating around the internet, I've never seen that one in any shape or form. (and its one I want desperately) Dorastor: Land of Doom was without the book that turned my interest in RQ from "wow this is such a cool game" to "OhmygodIlovethisgame". Is it? I've not read over it too closely.

Honest to god, I think its complete enough. Yeah, there's no disarm rule and no monster statistics. But thats not necessary for a book. It has the necessary components to create enemies, just human ones. And being limited to human enemies is entirely within the scope of a adventure or even campaign. Almost, caveat coming: The free preview bestiary contains the 'common' enemies/playable races of setting and ALMOST all you need to expand a bit (Ducks, trolls, trollkin, runners, broos and horses) EXCEPT and my biggest gripe... Praxian animals and to a lesser extent Yinkin. It feels like including praxians in the book at all is pretty much pointless if you don't include their herdbeasts in the preview bestiary pdf. If there's any serious oversight in my opinion, its that one. Is it a gamebreaker? Not really. We have that big free Mythras encounter generator where I can quickly say "I want a high llama" and randogen one with a button click. So what it has slightly different skill names or compressed skills, its not hard to fix that. Ya know, you're right, there.

I was thinking as a thought exercise of hacking Sanguine's 'cardinal game system'. into BRP once upon a time. (Combat is based around not HP, but hits. Which range from 0-6, 0= unhurt, 1=hurt which causes future damage to do extra, 2=hurt and unable to attack (They're afraid and retreating from combat unless rallied by an ally, 3=badly hurt and afraid. (Which boosts damage against you more) 4= dying and helpless, 5= dead, 6= catastrophically killed and demoralizing allies.) You survive by avoiding damage, or expending gifts or using soaks. (soaks are a defense that can vary in system both in the power of them and their times used, I.E. A warrior may have better stay in a fight with reusable soaks, but a peasant may literally have "flees in terror", which would have a higher mod than a steady defensive fighting style but has the disadvantage of only being effective if you're, well, fleeing in terror. Basically I'd use defensive degrees of success with armor points levels counting as expendable 'soak' modifiers, and add in a combat gift system like Ironclaw. It never went anywhere but it could probably be done without too much effort. That does shift combat to a more narrative sort of thing though.

Not to just be an echo box, but oh my god yes. I've been playing a WHFRP 2e game and it really feels like a haphazard beta for the WH40k games and its just. So.... ok? I feel like the WH system feels good with ranged weapons and lousy with melee. Though my current game is absolutely going to likely shift to a partial-Mithras partial RQG. There's no way I'm slipping out of a combat system that got people in my personal group to stop combat just to giggle with glee. We're kind of in a discussion of what we want to do as there's so much I love about RQG.

Absolutely true. I decided to do a quick scan of my RQ3 box (I don't have RQ2 outside of a pdf) And discounting the duplicate adventurer sheets and duplicate ship sheets, including each map panel as 1 page... Its 301 pages, which includes its rather short bestiary and GM guide. However, RQ3 has small font, basically no illustrations, and a minimum of fluff, mostly in Cormac's Saga, which are short inline paragraphs. However as far as amount of rules go, RQG has a lot of absolutely new rules.. If we calculate things that RQ3 didn't have. (I'm counting Shamanism as this because TBH RQ3's shaman stuff was basically not a thing) family genning/homeland, runic affinity, everything to do with passions and runes, that adds in 68 pages of content completely unfound in RQ3. Though RQG also, as the above poster stated has significant expansion of certain things, like language. It honestly has a pretty surprising amount of content considering just how much art is in the book and how comfy it is to read.

Discounting furry or anthropomorphic animal focused RPGs I'm guessing for that one? If you include them you get: Albedo (first, second and Platinum Catalyst) Just about anything by Sanguine Games (Ironclaw, Jadeclaw, Urban Jungle) Oh and uh. I'm not sure but I imagine Hc Svnt Dracones probably has waterfowl and ducks gennable by its nature. Not played it though. Also anything in the 'silly extreme post apocolypstic category' like Gamma World and After the Bomb. In the less furry focused RPGs, I think Victoriana has duckfolk. But yeah, that is a pretty narrow margin that comes to mind. Wait, Battletech almost counts, right? Since Far Country (clearly the best and most well received battletech novel) had bird people? If I had to list the most unique traits (not distinct, they're very different words) I think the OPs post is pretty distinct, yeah. 1) A focus on religion in culture. Other games talk about culture, but I can't think of one aside from Dogs in a Vineyard that tries to talk about religion and its place in culture. 2) Chaos. Once upon a time Chaos wasn't unique. Lots of games focused on its concept. Not anymore. You have Elric as a forgotten ghost, you have Warhammer doing it entirely different in every way. RuneQuest's chaos is distinct for not using the eight-pointed wheel/star symbol. Not being treated particularly the same, and most notably, for being opposed by barbarians and 'accepted' as part of nature by civilization. Chaos is many things that disrupt natural laws, and isn't treated in a way even close to D&D, Warhammer, or really even Stormbringer. The way Chaos works in Glorantha is distinct and even confusing to people coming at it from other settings, who either expect it to be 'random uncontrollable realms of madness and randomness' ala D&D, or some manifestation of base emotion (ala Warhammer) and somehow RuneQuest's Chaos ends up being more vile--and more diverse than most of its peers.

If I was to venture a guess, its the way combat is handled. The 12 second breakup of combat round and 'prestate actions' and all that tends to turn most people I know off, who'd consider RQ6 less complicated in that regard. Its not something most systems do, heck, even my group of rather experienced people are pretty keen on not using RQG combat at all. Its just not a system that anything else they've played uses. But thats my group, not anyone elses.

The moon is a red moon that is orbited by I think an invisible body that casts shadow upon her. She has features on her surface that resembles a face. And astronomers can note forests and ravines and such on her. If I remember right, when looked at with magic sight as a non Lunar, it radiates divine magic but its cloudy and wrong, which leads a lot of people to the "AH CHAOS KILL KILL!" sort of feelings on the matter. When looked at by a lunar follower with magical sight, she shows as Sedenya's face itself, always half lit and always half obscured. Physically the moon is a real place which has its own terrain, features and things about it. There's a map of it somewhere but I forget where. It has magical forests with its own species of elf, its own seas, palaces, thrones, cities. Its both heaven for some, hell for others, an otherworld and a real world. Its part of Sedenya's nature as being outside of the compromise so her things get mixed up. Or something like that. I'm talking halfway out of my butt right now.

You know at first glance, I thought you were totally wrong I was confused here till I looked it up, you left out the key part. "Sorcerers arrange the Elemental Runes into a pentagram called Zzabur’s Sigil. Each Rune is thereby connected to two others—these are its minor Runes" The elemental weakness from one to the next doesn't seem to be an error. (As the RQG book is not talking about susceptibility of elements to each other) but the makeup of the pentagram. My assumption is the GTG pentagram is showing a sorcerous relationship of elemental trump, and, well. The pentagram is meaningless in that context except as decoration. On the other hand, the Minor Runes are the reason for the original pentagram, and the two are not reconcilable if we assume the Zzabur's Sigil in GTG is supposed to be the Zzabur's Sigil described in RQG. Therefore, I think... They're not representing the same thing. Basically, the book is written from a God Learner sort of perspective (from the 4th age). I think its a recreation of Zzabur's Sigil that was only concerned with elemental trumps and dismissed minor runes as unimportant. This one is Rokari and is probably taking pentagram symbolism (from a version of Zzazabur's Sigil) for ornamental and instructional purposes. And is not confering minor rune relationships. Or, the sorcerors of Lunar Tarsh, Sable Riders and of Dragon Pass in general do not agree with Rokari symbolism. (I think the wheel on the character sheet isn't representing anything related to Zzabur's Sigil, relationships could make some amount of sense. I.E. Fire>dark>water>earth>air, Darkness prevents light's touch. Water keeps darkness down deep into hell. Water's domain is ended by earth, and air is what separates Earth from the sky, (and Fire is what is above the sky) Or some other ~spiritual~ or non-materialistic relationship.