Austin

DTRPG's print cost per book calculator can be found here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/pub_pod_cost.php

I think it may be useful for this discussion because it helps estimate if it's worth it for a creator to make something available POD. Messing around with small books myself to get some number guesses, the calculator doesn't seem to like some of the very-small books the listed categories below it indicate DTRPG can publish.

The minimum size for a Perfect Bound color softcover book is 49 pages. The smallest size the calculator will let me do is 18. I've not personally seen Standard Color works, but the consensus I've heard is that they're a significantly inferior product to the Premium Color option. Other creators I've spoken with have been setting up files planning to use Premium Color, but I can't speak for everyone.

The major complication with POD is that, because this is a community content program, Chaosium needs to approve the process. I don't know if they need to approve a creator one time, or if they need to approve each work which a creator wants to provide as POD. This is a much smaller hurdle than doing the technical work to prepare files for printing—@MOB and everyone at Chaosium and DTRPG have been perfectly pleasant to work with in getting one of my own works set up for POD—but there's still several more steps in the process. When normally uploading a PDF to the JC, you can do it all yourself.

21 minutes ago, Agentorange said:

I'm just old fashioned, I like having a print/POD version.

I think yours is the majority opinion in the fan community. I agree with you myself, at the very least! Reading something like the Rough Guide physically is a different experience to reading it digitally.

23 minutes ago, Agentorange said:

But it got me wondering what do people think is the minimum viable length for a print product ? The Design Mechanism are doing Mythras modules with print options down to about 16 pages and many D'nD modules were smaller than that.

Let's assume a short, 20-page module. On the calculator, that will cost $3.51 to print, and I presume it'll be Saddle Stitched (stapled), not a Perfect Bound (glued) softcover. Using the Brooke Scale* let's assume the PDF is priced in the middle of the Average range, at about $0.20 per page. That puts the PDF at $4. Would you pay $10 (plus shipping & handling) for that book? $8?

I'm not sure what I'd say the minimum length is, but I figure something down in the 20 page range is probably close to that line. It depends on how adept the creator is with the technical parts of the POD process, in addition to if, basically, they're willing to pay for an Adobe subscription. You can do it without Adobe, but it's a lot harder. If you can do the technical parts, it's probably worth it for a small increase to your margins. If those are a huge, difficult pain for the creator, they probably aren't worth doing (or paying someone to do) unless for a larger publication.

3 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

11 hours ago, Psullie said:

I feel the biggest paradigm shift for new players is to abandon the 'murder hobo' mindset. Your characters are an integral part of a community, be it clan and/or cult.

You can play RuneQuest that way. Perhaps you should play it that way. But you don't have to play it that way. If murder-hobo is your group's idea of fun, then it isn't wrongfun to be forbidden.

RuneQuest is an awesome murderhobo game.

12 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

The RQG sorcery system is already a skill-based system.

I don't see Free INT systems as skill-based systems because while each spell is a skill, your ability to perform magic doesn't improve as your skill increases. Might just be a difference in the way we each define things.

15 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

A hierarchical system where, for example, Runes/Techniques are percentage scores themselves would let you have a mechanic where newly learned spells can start higher if they are "in your wheelhouse".

That's one of the routes my brain's been exploring for a second run at sorcery rules. I don't know if I would organize spells as a skill or not, or just have the casting percentages be entirely based on the Rune/Technique percentages.

Another option could be always casting on spell%, but manipulation is governed by R/Ts using a concept like Ability values in Glorion's house ruled sorcery. Hrm. The rabbit hole beckons...

25 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

It can eventually get your character in a corner that you don't like. That is: once you've mastered a Rune or Technique, you can't unlearn it

The limit on R/T's known is interesting. It's the sort of thing I would assume I dislike, and my initial reaction was negative, but it's sort of grown on me. I agree that pigeonholing yourself is a real danger, but at the same time I've come to like how it works as a soft limit on spells known. For me, it adds the flavor of "I follow X school of sorcery." Plus, the "gain insight into other R/Ts" mechanic helps keep what you have total access to really broad. The main tricky part are the Form Runes since they don't have insight into any other Runes.

20 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

Are you still using some house rules in RQG right now or did you revert back to RAW for now?

Our current game doesn't have a sorcerer. Basically, our RQ3 game didn't have Rune magic—we had a couple initiates, but only one person could be bothered to sacrifice for divine magic—so we've been playing more 'staple" RuneQuest this time around. We keep mucking over bringing sorcery back in when someone dies and considers new character options. I don't know exactly what we'll do.

21 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

How does the Free INT mechanic not accurately represent Gloranthan sorcery in your opinion?

I can't comment re:Glorantha. Or maybe I just don't really have a comment. But it feels really weird to me that the more sorcery you know, the worse you are at sorcery. If you know a ton of cool spells you can't use any meaningfully. I don't understand how some notion of "empty brainspace" translates for the designers to "I can use that to be really good at sorcery".

For me, it feels really natural that as your skill in a spell improves, the stuff you can do with that spell improves too. It feels intuitive—number goes up, do more cool stuff. I don't understand why in RQG's sorcery, if you get really good at a spell, it doesn't mean you understand that spell more (as measured by how much cool stuff you can do with it).

To me a skill-based sorcery system feels "obvious" in ways Free INT-based systems don't.

47 minutes ago, dumuzid said:

what about another less than accessible goddess: Arachne Solara.

In The Smoking Ruins & Other Stories, several of the beast men have Rune points associated with Arachne Solara. She appears to give Rune magic and a variety of spells.

9 hours ago, MJ Sadique said:

Another problem is that we don't know the POW of a healing spirit (did not find it in any book)

Read more carefully. Glorantha Bestiary 169:

Quote

Their attributes are identical to those of a disease spirit (see above).

7 hours ago, Glorion said:

Did he do something about Free INT?

He nixed it entirely, and replaced it with something called Presence. Free INT still adds to your Presence in his Western Sorcery, but there's also several other factors. The main factor is the Presence gain from the High Vow of Sorcery which your character swears. This gives Presence equal to the character's Magic category modifier (minimum 0).

Your total Presence operates in an analogous way to RQ3's Free INT.

7 hours ago, Glorion said:

The whole business of learning and forgetting sorcery spells to make RQG sorcery work strikes me as a silly crutch to make a foolish rule work.

I think it's interesting. In the sorcery rules I was working on I had rules for writing grimoires (no relation to the HeroQuest rules) which fulfilled a similar role. I can't remember if I developed that before or after reading RQG, but it was one of a small number of my own actual additions to the ruleset, rather than editorial mucking about.

Even if you aren't using Free INT-based rules, I think some sort of rule in that manner is useful. For my gaming group, at least, one of the draws of sorcerers is their ability to learn a varied and strange mix of spells. Provided you're retaining total INT as a limit on the number of spells known, at some point you'll want to go beyond that number. Being able to temporarily remove a spell, and regain it at the same percentage later, helps keep the super-utility-caster feel.

I agree that using this as a workaround for Free INT-based sorcery still feels strange. I asked in the "Ask Jeff" thread about why Free INT models how Gloranthan sorcery operates, and got some answer about spirit magic pollution instead. I presume he misread my question (or maybe I phrased it badly--I'd have to go thread-diving), and since then haven't bothered trying to figure out what in some way feels "right" about that approach for the designers.

1 hour ago, MJ Sadique said:

I've just read a ridiculous thing about the fetch POW " regenerates magic points at the same rate as the shaman’s own magic point regeneration." So a 15POW shaman will have his 300 POW fetch regenerate his full MP in 20 days !!!?

Well of Daliath:

Quote

Fetch’s Magic Points Recovery Rate

The fetch’s magic points regenerate at the normal rate, in parallel with the shaman’s. If the fetch’s POW is 12, for example, it regains 1 magic point every two hours.

What the Fetch Provides the Shaman, page 356

This additional POW regenerates magic points at the same rate as the shaman’s own magic point regeneration.”

Second POW, page 358

These rules seem to contradict each other. I wish you would clarify the recovery rate of the fetch’s magic points.

Use the fetch’s POW to determine the fetch’s magic point recovery rate.

5 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

meanwhile, work continues on remastered versions of Sandheart Volumes One and Two.

Ooh, I was hoping that'd happen!

2 hours ago, lordabdul said:

What made the designers think that it's "more correct" to add 10%?  

Because in that first printing, the Bad Man has 35 POW. So POW×5=175%. 

1 hour ago, Glorion said:

IMHO dreadful RQ3 sorcery rules were Charlie Krank's idea not Sandy's.

I don't know who was behind the RQ3 sorcery rules as published by Avalon Hill. Sandy published a set of Western Sorcery rules which riffed off those (kinda). I consider his Western rules to be the "core" doc for what we ended up playing about twenty years later. Sandy's sorcery is, I think, hosted on Phil Hibb's site that he linked above, if you want to check it out.

1 hour ago, Kloster said:

I, being french, am not accustomed to form 1040, but frankly, yours is so close to what I had to fill 2 years ago that I had trouble to stop laughing.

Clearly, this is evidence that Tradetalk is not only the language of commerce, but also the language of bureaucracy. Truly a universal tongue.

24 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

I think it really depends on how the GM presented the cults and the world to the player. A GM might say: "Humakt is for warriors, Chalana Arroy is for healers, Lankhor Mhy is for intellectuals and researchers, and... errr... Orlanth is kinda for farmers who can fight a bit and most everyday guys, and Ernalda is for everyday ladies, they can, err, bless crops and heal a bit.

In particular, what's in my mind is players coming from The Other Game and seeing cults as similar to classes. Your summary presents that somewhat well, actually . Orlanth is cool, but depending on how he's presented it can come across as a bit all over, conceptually. He does X and Y and Z, and Humakt does the One Thing really well, and Chalana Arroy does the One Thing really well. Orlanth and Ernalda are certainly powerful cults, because they do lots of things really well, but if you're new and still feeling stuff out your core concept is probably "warrior/Fighter" rather than "storm worshiper" and Humakt looks more immediate. He appears less like a corner case, and more like a generalist, when in practice it's often the other way around--Orlanth's the generalist, and Humakt's in the Combat Corner.

(As an aside, I think some of the most fun I've had playing 5E was playing a Storm Domain cleric basically as an Orlanth Adventurous warrior . Reskinned to the game's setting, but stacking STR and clobbering people while chucking lightning is lots of fun in any game.)

On 6/29/2020 at 12:15 PM, Nick Brooke said:

Changing the subject completely: one thing we do know (or possibly not)

Is it just me, or is this pretty much the TLDR of every Glorantha conversation?

21 hours ago, jajagappa said:

While a Yelmalio quester might go alone, if they do go in a group, it is likely a group of four.  The reason I suggest that is that there are three points to the Truth rune, plus a center point where the arms join.  The leader of the quest, Yelmalio, is at the center.  He is accompanied by his Shield-bearer (always on the left), his Spear bearer (remember that Yelmalio still carried a sword before the quest), and his Torch bearer (the symbolic bearer of Fire).

I really like this, because I think one of the challenges to playing heroquests is getting everyone at the table involved. I suspect that's part of the popularity of the Lightbringer's Quest when roleplaying; everyone can participate.

17 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

This is interesting - who would the most traditionalist major Orlanthi heroes be? I'm thinking Alakoring, Vargast Redhand (slayer of Loko Moko), Garundyer...?

Broyan? I feel like he gets a bit overlooked in RuneQuest—his real moment of glory is the skipped period between 1621 and 1625—but it seems to me that the raw narrative is something like "Broyan was great, Broyan was the Vingkotling, Broyan's gonna kill Shepelkirt and save Orlanth—whups, he's dead now, who's next?" Broyan was the obvious savior, but he fails, and dies, and doesn't return. So we're stuck with Argrath.

There's an important part in the Glorantha Sourcebook (which I think was somewhere in KoS as well) along the lines of "Only Argrath brought new ideas."

17 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

A friend and I (sadly Jim died a couple of years ago) created an extension to Sandy's rules to deal with non-Malkioni sorcery that got rid of vows. Sandy hated it. Specifically the idea that as you gain magical power you forego your free will is specifically countered in these rules.

http://www.hibbs.me.uk/snarks/meldeksorcerors.html#Top

I remember stumbling across your site when trying to figure out what the sorcery rules actually were, as opposed to what we had turned them into. There's a lot of interesting stuff there. I appreciate you hosting Sandy's stuff too—I think it was your site that I drew un-messed-with "Sandy's Sorcery" documents from.

My friend's solution to the "learn Intensity to get Presence?" thing was to make the Vessel be the sorcerer's first vow, then swear the High Vow once you got a sorcery skill to 90%. It was part of trying to make my basically-RQ3 sorcerer with low Arts fit into the Western framework, and still have been able to do the sorts of spells he had been casting.

1 minute ago, Mugen said:

Thank you for taking the time to explain all those differences.

My pleasure! It's totally valid to not wanna read my Monster.

2 minutes ago, Mugen said:

Yes, that was a really good way to do D&D-like magic.

If you want that vibe in RQG, go check out Issaries. Spell Trading is really, really good. You don't lose the spell anymore, and the Rune points spent just come back as usual when you worship (I've ruled that if you trade an extended spell, it doesn't come until the extended duration ends, based on when you "cast" the spell to trade it; I think this is a natural consequence of the Extension rules in Rune Fixes #1, but it is technically a house rule). In my Glorantha, Rune Priests of Issaries are often handled like D&D wizards—people tend to leave 'em alone because you're not exactly sure what magic they're capable of. Mostly benign, sure, but I'm sure many Trader Princes are carrying around a Thunderbolt or two for a rainy day.

I've also been tinkering with some metamagical sorcery ideas for RQG, that let you turn your Free INT into a held spell, basically.

On 7/6/2020 at 11:05 AM, Akhôrahil said:

Perhaps the only god who has both Cloud Call and Cloud Clear, for one thing!

Um. Orlanth Thunderous?

But yeah, Ernalda's spell list is awesome. I'm mildly disappointed I didn't end up with a player choosing her. I think there's a tendency for some gamers to overlook her in favor of Chalana Arroy because of a "this is a game" attitude. When you look at the two, I think it's easy for a player to go "well, if I wanna be a healer I want to be Chalana Arroy because she's the best healer," especially newer players who haven't gotten a feel for how important/useful Ernalda is when you're immersed in the setting.

49 minutes ago, Mugen said:

Concerning "flavorful" versus "generic" spells, I like how Mage:the Awakening or Ars Magica work in this regard, where magicians have access to very generic effects, but casting specific spells is quicker and far more effective.

Ars Magica's in my reading stack!  Its position tends to vary each time I return to the Stack and decide what to read next. I've heard tons of good things about the system.

28 minutes ago, Mugen said:

This is clearly an evolution of Sandy Petersen's rules, isn't it ? Could you summarize the differences between your rules and Mr Petersen's, please ? I honestly don't have the courage to read through your rules just to figure out what is different.  😓

Yeah, it's explicitly based on Petersen's sorcery.  If you're familiar with his Western Sorcery, the basic spellcasting procedures are similar.

In the original, Arts are similar to RQG's Runes & Techniques: you either know them, or you don't. Petersen has you gaining arts through worship of Saint Malkion, one Art per year, sacrificing a point of POW and gaining the Art. The sorcerer has an attribute called Presence, which is generated through swearing Vows. Your Presence is like your Free INT in RQ3's generic sorcery. A notable difference is that Petersen's sorcery removes Duration. You fill your Presence with Art Levels of various spells, and they're just always there. You're also restricted in how many Art Levels of a spell you can use by your skill percentage in that spell.

The way we played, Duration was still an Art, and all the Arts were skills with a percentage, instead of a binary YES/NO. Once you hit 90%+ in an Art it no longer restricts how you can manipulate a spell, but your skill with a given spell always limits you. Having Duration as an Art, but not really "baked into" the system was a major element in making the whole thing go sideways. We also played that Presence worked differently--it wasn't capped by total levels of spells in play, but by how many individual Arts were being used in those spells. Although we used the Tekumel entities as demons & saints for different colleges of sorcery, they weren't as integral to the system as they are in Petersen's.

A major "D'oh!" moment for me was when I finally discovered Petersen's saints document when researching and trying to find his actual core rules, apart from the bastardizations our game started with.

One of the cool things we liked was that a sorcerer with a good bit of Presence could use it with the Hold Art to have prepared spells. With the lower requirements on how much Presence a single spell took, the main use for us of growing more and more Presence was to be able to prepare more spells for insta-cast. Coming from a Pathfinder background, it was fun for us to see a caster slowly becoming a classic D&D-style wizard, and to have the wizard's notion of preparing spells and spell slots mechanically represented in what felt, to me, to be a more organic way.

TLDR I suppose the differences boil down to that it's less built into a "cults"-like system like Petersen's, and more focused on "sorcery is a skill." Anyone can learn it, hypothetically, although your priest or your god may have some words about that.

17 hours ago, GianniVacca said:

OMG downloaded the rules; hope to find some time during my hols to read them.

Hope you enjoy them, or at least find them entertaining/amusing.

15 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Creating rule systems is hard.

Yep. I had enormous fun writing this project, but I think that's because I never ended up doing a major revision on it.

10 hours ago, MJ Sadique said:

Personally, your magic is not very Glorantha

YGMV.

10 hours ago, MJ Sadique said:

Spells list can take a lot of pages about 3-5 spells per page is ok.

One of our collective frustrations with the documents I worked from was unclear spell descriptions (which, to be fair, as I worked I discovered was about 50% the prior documents' fault, and 50% our house rules transforming a perfectly fine spell entry into confusion). One of our collective joys was having that gigantic list of spells to peruse and consider learning. Something I'm conflicted on with RQG's sorcery is that a sorcerer can't learn EVERYTHING anymore. It's interesting and more thematic, but for us part of the fun was having the party sorcerers be really the ultimate utility caster. RQG's hard cap on how many Runes you can master removes that, and whether I feel positive or negative about it kind of depends on my mood.

10 hours ago, MJ Sadique said:

boon of KT

Boon of Kargan Tor is a great example of what RQG Sorcery does much better than our game did. Instead of the generic spell "Boost Damage", you're Summoning Death upon a weapon. Much more exciting and imaginatively engaging. If I did/do a rewrite, one of the goals will be to reduce the amount of generic spells.

10 hours ago, MJ Sadique said:

Yep, clearly... you need to decimate it at least twenty times. No ... sincerely, if your rules are longer than the original : simplify it.

I disagree. In part, these do come about because I was trying to figure out how we were actually playing, which leads to why they're such a bad mess, and need to be cut down heavily. But I don't think a (perhaps) over-thorough explanation is bad. Comprehensively explained & defined rules are, in my opinion, important.

Plus, for me, at least, the complexity was part of the fun . I think that was true for the player of Jeb (who gets used in some of the rules examples) as well. There's something about the big, complex system with all the obnoxious math I'd have to hurry to do between my turns which made it feel like "I'm doing magic!"

12 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

I really need to make time to write that RQ:Ghostbusters scenario I've been mulling over.

Ooh, please do. I'd subject my players to it play it.

11 hours ago, Psullie said:

Just to rock the boat, I believe that there are places where the Spirit World overlaps the Material World.

I don't think that rocks the boat too much.  That's basically how I understand RQG's "spirit places" and "spirit vortices."

11 hours ago, Psullie said:

There is far more to the Spirit World than the souls of the dead...

Totally agree. I think the Spirit World is more like a "second Glorantha" than like an afterlife.

48 minutes ago, Nick Underwood said:

The Munchkin context: 500 clan members could chip in a point of POW to create an Inscription for Enhance Int 100 with a few years of duration... Then cast on each of the clan members.

My understanding is that Inscription doesn't equal enchantment, but just looks similar because it's a funky magic item which you sacrifice POW to create. For example, there's no "Create Inscription" spell. So the others add POW rule wouldn't apply.

Of course, if I'm wrong, there are.... implications. Terrifying implications.

4 minutes ago, Kloster said:

This one bother's me because that means that the cult is not giving enough to the priests they are supposed to support: A priest income is at least 5 hides of land (=160L per year). As priests pay 90% tithing, remain 16L per year to pay for a noble lifestyle (200L/year), and the priest is supposed to be supported by the cult.

My understanding is that it's like, the priest gives over 144L, and then looks at all the cult funds, and determines that they need 200L from the pot to pay for their livelihood because they're the priest and they're in charge (or have a very large say) in determining where that goes.