Lordabdul

Heler is a bit weird to me in the sense that it looks like a fairly important deity (there's a ton of references to Heler throughout all HQ/RQ/Glorantha books), but he/she barely gets a short paragraph description. Only one of the old HeroWars books gives a more complete description, where Heler is given more backstory, along with a fluid gender, making him/her apparently popular with the transgender/non-binary minority in the Orlanthi culture -- although the HeroWars book mentions "homosexuals", which seems either misguided, or a miscategorization of gender-fluid folk. I'm wondering if that aspect of Heler was immediately skipped (AFAICT) in all subsequent books because the authors figured they needed to revisit that in a more correct and respectful way? I'd love to see Heler get a longer write-up in GaGoG, where @Jeff gets some appropriate consultants, the same way (as I understand it) he had some female designers consult on some of the female-only cults.

That.... was indeed not a very good explanation 😅😅🤣 I'm sorry maybe I'm missing something obvious, but there have been threads here in the recent past where people made a write-up of a sample RQG combat to figure out how things work. I remember one in particular where there was a mix of melee and ranged fighters, and they were co-existing fine, acting at various points along the SR track. Every action including moving and defending was having important consequences on combat tactics and it didn't look like ranged fighters were in any way "left outside" of the combat or whatever. Can you actually give a concrete example of what you mean? One interesting thing that I noticed in RQ3 is that a house rule I was considering to use in RQG to solve the "initiative ranking vs time allowance" issues of SR seems to be a RAW there: when you split attacks, subsequent attacks are made every 3 SRs, instead of every SR of the weapon.... only RQ3 gets it super wrong IMHO: as per RAW, you can't split attacks against the same enemy! My house rule was going to be "every 3 SRs against the same enemy, but every full weapon SR against different enemies".

Oh interesting, I had missed that. Huh. Thanks!

He has stolen powers from all the elements. This is one of the things I struggle with Glorantha, where I sometimes wonder why I bother trying to match Runes to Gods... If I understand this correctly, I guess it gets muddy because: 1) The Celestial Court had some well defined deities each representing a Rune, and they weren't doing much besides, well, being that Rune. Then as more things and entities got created, and the original entities disappeared or got killed, the new entities developed personalities (which the original Celestial Court lacked AFAICT) and started having drama between themselves, doing things with the universe, having kids and so on. It wasn't about being a representation of a Rune anymore, as much as being the best embodiment of a Rune. Like, I think at any point during God Time, anybody could have tried to act like an ever bigger jackass than Orlanth to try and claim the post of "principal Air Rune deity", no? 2) Even when we only consider the Runes themselves, it's tricky to figure out the, errr, "responsibilities" of each Rune, so to speak. For instance, making rain might not be the prerogative of the Water Rune. The Water Rune might be about controlling the Water but not creating it. Clouds and storms create water, and that's the realm of the Air Rune. It could be the Sky Rune if there was such a thing but in Glorantha the only other thing there is really the Fire Rune, representing the "sun" part of the sky -- and Umath kind of made it clear that the air was something separate between the sky and the earth.

Doesn't RQG have interwoven attacks/parries/magic too? (and yes, I realize that RQG has 12 SRs instead of 10, and has different SR modifiers for DEX/SIZ and weapons and such, but AFAIK all actions take part in the SR system) Yeah I was a bit disappointed by the lack of maneuver options in RQG -- there's a lot of text about dealing various kinds of damage, but not a lot about other things to do in combat (that, plus the weird editorial decision of having weapon/armor stats in the middle of the Combat rules, which I'm not a big fan of... I do however like the rules for chariot and phalanx combat, that gives a bit of nice flavour to the book). I would assume that high-level combat involves a lot of split attacks and aimed blows. Thankfully, it's also easy to bring simple concepts from GURPS that open up a bunch of other tactical options, like Feint, Deceptive Attack, or All-Out/Telegraphic Attack. Thanks for pointing out Runefixes though, I didn't know they had completely new sections in there, I thought it was mostly an errata. Having CHA instead of APP makes a lot more sense to me, but I think what's potentially missing from RQG (unless I'm the one who missed it) are rules for inter-species communication, and how a charismatic Dragonewt might just look like any other Dragonewt to you (and you would also look like any other human to it). I could see a rationale for charisma being universal in a world like Glorantha where magic and bizarres races have all been living together, but it feels a bit wrong to me -- a Broo is always going to be an ugly bastard to any non-Broos. It is, yes. There was a thread earlier about people's opinions regarding RQG/RQG-Bestiary being narrower+deeper vs. broader+shallower. I strongly prefer narrower+deeper books but of course that's purely subjective. Good points. In most cases I see the differences but can't really make up my mind yet about which rules are more sensible than the others (and in some cases, like skill category bonuses, I actually don't like that it's a thing to begin with, I would have just removed it or vastly simplified it). I'm curious about "missile target locations"? I don't see anything relevant in RQ3's combat rules. AFAIK you can just aim your arrows, like any other attack, in RQG. RQ3 was heavily criticized for its expensive price tag. I can't find any solid information about how much it cost exactly back then in the US or UK (feel free to give the exact amount) but I found the price for the Australian market, which was $85 AUD back in 1985 for the complete RQ3 box. When you account for inflation, that's about $255 AUD today (assuming that inflation calculator website I used is correct). The RQG slipcase (which includes the Bestiary) is sold at $172 AUD on Chaosium's website.... no wonder people complained about the price tag.

I have also had problems in the past with the Occult skill. I think it's definitely a useful skill if non-Mythos magic exists in your game. If it doesn't exist, however, what I'm doing is that I consider occultism to be what lies at the "edge" of the Mythos, it's the thing that cults either use to wrap their sanity-blasting knowledge into, so as to reach people and get them into their cult, or it's the thing that scholars would write about before they realize what the horrible truth is and, well, they can't write anything anymore because they're dead or insane. In that case, I effectively use Occult as a "safe" version of the Mythos skill, where you get only a partial or distorted version of the truth, but guaranteed without any SAN rolls. Also, you can improve Occult, unlike Mythos.

If you want your players to have epic battles against giant monsters, it doesn't really matters what the monster is called, as much as how cool he looks and what its stats are. Just make him as powerful as needed to make the battle challenging while avoiding a TPK. Just note that naming the monster "Cthulhu" or "Nyarlathotep" or whatever might set the wrong expectations with some of your players, who might decide to just run away and avoid the fight altogether because in CoC you never fight those things face to face if you want to live -- so use those names with care (remember the players that they're playing DnD or whatever it is you're playing, and/or change the name a bit, like "Kethe-lhu" or something). As for "Mythos that's not so tough" angle, yes it's been used somewhat in my games or in things like Delta Green. I don't know if you've seen "The Ninth Gate"? In that movie, the vast majority of the cultists dressed in robes, chanting "magic" stuff and so on, are actually just bored rich people who want an excuse to have sex orgies or to just feel like they know powerful things... only 1% actually have real power, and even then, it's... not quite that simple. Anyway, in some games, the PCs indeed have to get through a few layers of bullshit, fake gods, new age mumbo jambo, and other "cultists who talk big about their powers but don't really have much" before they uncover the real rotten core of Mythos-crazy priests (not that the outer layers are any less dangerous or rotten... in most cases we're talking cult organizations who prey on people and trap them in abusive financial/sexual/emotional relationships with gurus and the like, just like in the real world... but just without any magic or monster). This is really the basic structure of any "thriller" or "supernatural thriller" type story, where the protagonists peel away at various increasingly creep layers of a narrative or organization. For instance: Angel Heart, or True Detective season 1. However, this fits well the "slow burn investigation" scenario type, which may or may not be the type of scenario you want to play. As for Mythos creatures not being that powerful, there are plenty that are dangerous but definitely killable. My players just head-shot-killed a Deep One last week in one roll.

FYI that's more or less what Chaosium does already. Books have been available for purchase as PDF just as they were going to the printer... then when the books come out, you get the PDF price as a discount. Releasing "earlier-access" PDFs might be useful to crowdsource typos and other proof-reading stuff, but ultimately it also adds some management/production overhead, so it really comes down to whether the Chaosium people think it would make things easier or harder for them.

Chapter 1: The Star Brothers Here's my quick play report on chapter 1, which we finally finished this week. I hope it helps! Day 1 The PCs started by doing a bit of library research on Ipswich to get an idea of what the town is like. They got some basic geographical and historical facts, including information on the salt marshes. Since the Ipswich Inquirer mentioned gold coins, one of the journalists also decided to get some basic superficial knowledge about coins from the past few centuries. They didn't want to sleep in Ipswich however, "just in case", so they got hotel rooms in Salem. The clerk at the hotel, with whom they chatted about their destination for the day, told them in unsubtle innuendoes that Ipswich was a good place to get some cheap booze, which was a good way to make them aware of the bootleggers there. In Ipswich they went to the newspaper and got the basic story on Elsie and how the MiB came to intimidate the staff. From there they went to the Caldwell family home and after a tense face-to-face with Elsie's authoritative father, he accepted Elsie to talk to them. Besides giving a few more details about all the stuff the PCs already knew, she showed them one of the gold coins that Otis paid with -- it didn't look like anything the journalist character had seen in his quick coin history 101. She also revealed that Otis had mentioned that his mother was living on Little Neck Road, which goes out east of Ipswich. Coming out of the Caldwell's home, they realized that an MiB is inspecting their car from outside -- the MiBs, who wanted to talk to Elsie, had been observing her house for the past couple days, and got curious about these visitors. The MiB immediately ran (awkwardly) away to a black car, which drove quickly out in the night. Day 2 The next day they talked to the sheriff, who was reluctant in giving them more information -- he would prefer this whole story to go away naturally, instead of having people making things worse. But the players managed to get some very good rolls so the sheriff eventually comes around and agrees to share at least a few notes with them. The PCs spend the rest of the day doing some shopping to prepare for a potential hike through the marsh, and waste a bit more time coming up with plans, enough that it's time once again to drive back to Salem. On the way there, they realize they're followed by a similar black car to the one they saw earlier. They stop at a diner to see if the car stops too, which it does, a bit further away. The PCs decide to confront those MiB -- they get their first good look at them, and get threatened to drop the whole thing. "Many people disappear in the marshes all the time, you know", they get told. Day 3 The next day, they do some research on disappearances around Ipswich county, and talk to the sheriff about it. He confides that, with criminals using the marsh to hide illegal activities, it's no wonder that yes, there's a bit more disappearances here than elsewhere in the state. Of course, he complains about the lack of resources and budget for law enforcement. The PCs then go to Little Neck Road to try and find Otis' mother. After asking a few people living there in rundown houses, they managed to find the correct house. Upon arrival, they notice the MiB's car parked in front, and they spy on the last few bits of the conversation between the MiBs and Hannah. Later, once the MiBs are gone, they get to talk to her and notice the fake pictures in the living room. They also get a good idea of Otis' personality based on the magazines and posters in his room. When they mention the gold coins, the mother gets upset and immediately goes to check for something in her room. She comes back saddened, saying that the coins were a gift from Otis' father, which she kept as it reminded her of the day she met him and fell in love. She asks the PCs to leave, but not before indicating to them the direction Otis usually takes when he goes into the marsh. As they go into the marsh they run into George Fenton who happens to live nearby and knows the marsh fairly well. They interrogate him, asking if he's seen Otis -- which he has, since he regularly walks by back and forth. To cut things short a bit, after the PCs asked him if there would be a place in the marsh where Otis could have setup a lab, I had George mention an old ruin about an hour's walk away, which might fit the bill. He gives them directions, explaining how it requires going a bit off trail. Luckily, the players made their orientation rolls: I made them roll a hard Luck roll at this point to see if any of them were from "around here", and one of the players succeeds. That gave him bonuses for the rolls to not get lost in the marsh, as he remembered coming here regularly to visit his grand-mother when he was a kid. Of course, that was really a way to figure out who the "tagged" player might be for Chapter 2. Final showdown They arrive to Otis' lab in the late afternoon, as they had planned to immediately hike back with Otis before sun down. Too bad for them, upon arriving, they get ambushed by the 2 bootleggers, Eddy and Jimmy. They thought the PCs might be competing criminals responsible for their friend Aaron's disappearance. After things got cleared, the bootleggers still ask them at gun point to get in the house and find out who's living there. One of the PCs goes in the basement and find Otis swimming there, getting a glimpse of his rather strange physique. Some arguments start, as the bootleggers disagree about what to do about the whole situation. It of course gets more complicated when they learn that Otis has some gold. This all gets interrupted when the MiBs arrive. Them and the PCs and bootleggers yell various intimidating words at each other from either side of the door, the bootleggers having agreed to ally temporarily with the PCs against this new threat. Otis suddenly says that he has an idea, and turns on his machine -- "My star brothers will come save us!". Of course, what comes a bit later are the spooky marsh lights, and, soon after, big creepy swamp creatures. The PCs had seen a way out of the house from the side, through some rubble and into the mud, but they got scared about being chased in the marsh by the MiBs. Now they realized they should definitely have done that, because the creatures are scary as hell. While a couple PCs go temporarily insane, one of the bootleggers gets super lucky with a rifle shot critical success against a creature. Things immediately go downhill as 2 other creatures swarm the house, kill one of the bootleggers, and get everybody (the other bootlegger, Otis, and the PCs) to run down to the basement -- but not before a PC gets a lucky swing at the creature with an oil lamp. An MiB comes back for some negotiation with the group gathered in the basement. He's saying that they only want Otis, but that the creatures want the one who killed one of their own. If they give them both, the rest can live. Otis is having a nervous breakdown, realizing that it wasn't "star brothers" who answered the call of his machine. He starts mumbling that the water is where he's from, and starts undressing to swim around the basement. The surviving bootlegger (at the time played by a guest player!) realizes that Otis was the one who called the creatures, and decides to kill him. The other PCs try to stop him and both him and Otis die in the cross fire. The MiB demands to know what's going on, and they reply they had to kill the bootlegger who had turned against them. They hide Otis' body underwater and claim that he swam away through a passageway in the basement wall -- critical success in Fast Talk! A creature pushes the MiB away, and comes halfway down the stairs. It looks around, grunts, sniffs a bit a the "tagged" character, and goes back up (I should have made it grab the bootlegger's body, maybe). It says a few words to the MiB who replies "Really? Huh" and then leave after a tip of his hat and a "I guess I'll see you later, cousin" to the characters (they don't know exactly who he was talking to). Aftermath & Comments In the aftermath, the PCs go to the police to report the deaths of the bootleggers and Otis, and decide to publish the story mostly unedited... although I'm still waiting on the players to give me the exact story. There! It was quite fun to run, with a lot of elements to play with. A lot of things could have gone either way, and it was easy to tinker with timing and events thanks to the great sandbox of locales, characters, and factions. Even the experience CoC player wasn't really sure what to think about who the MiBs were until the end.

My understanding was that Gods could intervene in Time if they wanted, but that they most likely won't because that could trigger a new Gods War (see "Devising Rune Spells", RQG p348). It's called the "Great Compromise", after all, not the "Great Imprisonment" or something. Heh, that's an interesting way to think about it But when you consider things like Divine Intervention or Divination, it gets a bit... hazy. How can they answer your questions if they really can never ever ever do anything new or interact in Time? Does that mean your questions are just variants of proto-questions, and all possible proto-questions have already been asked during God Time? Or does that mean there is no free will? I don't know, it feels simpler and more powerful to say that the only reason Gods can get involved in those 2 cases (DI and Divination) is because it lies within the very limited "gray area" of the Great Compromise. Maybe one day someone will figure out another Rune spell or ritual that opens up a 3rd gray area of the Compromise... Also I find that having the Gods really truly frozen out of Time would turn them into, I don't know, less interesting things. They would be just like characters in a forever playing movie. Sure, it's a cult movie (ho ho ho), but at this point, the characters' only usefulness is that if you get all your friends to gather up in the theatre every month to cosplay and sing the songs and throw rice, then you, err, get alien transvestite superpowers (yes, my comparison breaks down quickly here). That turns Gods into simply a cheaper universal force to tap into compared to the basic Runes, and makes their motivations/personalities somewhat irrelevant.

It is already at the front of the line (it's currently Jeff's focus, as much as the GAC, last we heard). Chaosium staff has already explained elsewhere on the forum that the Cults book requires a lot of art to be produced, and that there have been a lot of revisions because it's supposed to be as much a foundational book at Guide to Glorantha, and as such, it has to be done right. So yeah, we'll be lucky if we get it in 2020.

I disagree completely -- Glorantha is a solid setting, you can tell many different types of stories, and you can play in it with many different types of RPG systems. You, specifically, might have a preference/a problem with one or the other, but as whole, the gamer community can (and does) enjoy Glorantha with a wide range of systems. In fact, several people (including the authors) seem to enjoy gaming in Glorantha with different systems themselves. What was surprising to me wasn't that Glorantha was using the RQ system per se... what was surprising was specifically Greg's choice, as a person, which went from "let's play with one of the most simulationist systems available on the market at the moment" to "let's create one of the most narrative systems on the market". And I mean, it could be that he loved playing and designing both equally, which is possibly part of why he was such a great gamer and designer.

Sure but still, it's weird that Greg got together with a guy who essentially went "D&D isn't realistic enough, let's add more rules" instead of what I would have expected, which would have been (in the absence of narrative rules innovation) "meh, I'm not quite sure WHAT I want yet, can't put my finger on it, but in the meantime, errr, let's just go with D&D but remove those 3 things I don't like". My players are the same, they won't be able to sit down and relax while time passes. I wonder if an Ars Magica-style troupe play could be the solution here? It might be worth starting a new thread on this, but I think it would fit Glorantha extremely well, especially with Sartarite/Praxian clan structures: you have a couple or a handful of characters, ranging from clan thane/shaman/inner circle member all the way down to teenagers about to get their initiation rites. Depending on the adventure, you pick one or the other, whichever is appropriate (doesn't make sense to have the clan shaman go out to retrieve stolen cows, but it does make sense to get him/her involved when the kids track down the cows to something powerful and evil!). As you switch characters, each character gets the downtime and "I actually have a job and a community to take care of" vibe, while the players get to enjoy a continuous and possibly wide-ranging narrative.

Is it because you're playing "in real time"? I think the game was mostly design for a 2-phase gameplay: 1) Play a "short" adventure, as in "it only lasts between a few hours to a couple days in-game". The PCs are focused on the adventure, and have virtually no time to bother with any worship/cult duties. 2) Fast forward to the next season. Look at the calendar for any Holy Days between the end of the adventure and the start of the next, roll for improvements. It indeed doesn't work super well at first glance with a more "free flow/real time" campaign, where Holy Days become a logistical burden for the party. It might also punish parties who are staying out in the wilderness/borderlands/etc. far from any big temple.

I've often wondered the same thing, yes. I'd love to get some behind-the-scenes tales about how the original first Glorantha RPG happened this way. That, however, I didn't wonder about. Writing Gloranthan material for crunch-loving/miniature painting gamers means access to a far bigger audience and market than HQ's... especially at a time when the OSR movement is strong, and all the nostalgic bearded grognards of old are seeing their kids move out of the house, leaving them with enough free time, money, and mid-life existentialism that they will want to get back into gaming. Chaosium only releasing for the HQ line wouldn't make as much sense both in terms of finances and in terms of just reaching more people with an awesome, original, mythic world, so it makes sense to maintain 2 lines. Also it's possible the authors just really like the visceral aspect of impaling a Broo with a spear.

Badaboom https://critrole.com/podcast/call-of-cthulhu-shadow-of-the-crystal-palace/ Now, note that half the appeal of Critical Role and other high-production-values actual plays are the visuals. Costumes, lighting, props, etc. I think it might be a lot less interesting in audio format, but anyway, here you go!

A few years ago there was unrest on the GURPS forums about a similar perceived lack of new books being released, and as a result Dr. Kromm (Sean Punch, line editor of GURPS) started giving out updates exactly like this -- no promises, just a "here's where stuff is at" including, in many cases, updates like "I spent half my time this week on a secret exciting project I can't talk about yet". You can see it over here on his LiveJournal (yes, LiveJournal... the SJGames people are old school!). There's also a more official, less regular, and less personal version over at GURPS News which mentions "future plans" on a regular basis. I'd love to see something similar from Chaosium, like maybe included in the newsletters or something, but it's fine if Chaosium doesn't want to do that for some reason.

Oh really? I only skimmed it. Thanks for the heads-up.

"Harry Potter and The Sorting Hat or Whatever" was actually the tentative title for the first book but it was rejected by the publishers.

Shit....errr.... oh hey everyone, change of plans! We're playing HeroQuest now!

On a purely anecdotal level, yes, I'm feeling this right now. I wrote a few (unpublished) scenarios in the past for CoC/DG for my groups, and it's not too hard. Scenarios in the 1920s/30s take a little bit more research or fact checking than modern-day ones, but it's a breeze and a pleasure to do. But now as I'm trying to write a couple Gloranthan scenarios, it's going so slow. I can't assume anything, I can't "write about something I know", and finding information or doing fact checking is a lot harder (although it's easy to ask here on these forums, thank god Lankhor Mhy). I'm thinking about switching gears and starting with, basically, "Dungeon+ scenarios" (simple dungeon crawl, plus a little twist somewhere) to cut my teeth on, instead of "real" scenarios with a stronger narrative or plot.

That's an interesting spin on the concept yeah. I can see it being a good base for social commentary. I'm currently trying to write a scenario based on a young Orlanthi whose initiation rite sees the Chaos Rune as one of his awaken Runes. This is extremely rare and the clan would typically kill the young lad (S:KoH p71) but of course in this case he manages to escape. I might tweak his origin story a bit...

Isn't it 85%? That's what the "Orlanthi All" was supposed to be, with 15% not following societal norms ("1 in 7 or so").

Ah well I'm an old guy who prefers forums and mailing lists, but definitely a new RQ player. You might not be the only one preferring Facebook groups these days: after several years of avoiding Facebook (for technical & political reasons), I find myself needing to log in again because several communities (including RQ) seem to have a growing activity there (maybe as a result of an exodus from Google+, which once also had lots of RPG people?). I partially reconciled my problems with Facebook by simply creating a "Lordabdul" account there for RPG groups, but that's a completely other topic.

It looks like "White Ladies" is an informal term for Chalana Arroy initiates and priestesses, I don't see any book actually formalizing it much. They got that name probably because most priests are female, but there's indeed no requirement. I have no idea what Arroini Bonesetters are though? I can't find any reference to those in any of my PDFs. Where is that from? Interesting but kinda weird to me because Runes already drive personality traits... that would reinforce gender stereotypes similar to the "women are moody and bossy" we get on Earth. Personally, depending on who I get in my next group and what they find fun/not fun, I might put in a bit of gender politics, with Esrolians being TERFs that gatekeep access to higher positions of power, while Ernalda/Babeester/etc. temples in other parts of Dragon Pass might be a lot more vague about gender/birth requirements. I haven't thought about it much yet though so I might change my mind.