Lordabdul

Thanks for the write-up! In my game we're only 1 session in, and it will probably take another 2 sessions (my players are always careful, which makes things slow, and I tend to GM everything without many ellipses, so it takes time)... but so far the way I justify this is that Otis is now pretty much done walking around town buying equipment, and is spending all his time in his hideout in the salt marshes. So by the time the MIBs got together to search for him, he was already gone (neither his mom nor people in town know where he is at this point). They started searching the marsh by themselves but they ran into the bootleggers, which creates additional problems and risks... so that's why they haven't found Otis yet. While they leave the marsh and bootleggers to the Deep Ones, the hybrids are staking out Otis' mom's house (in the hope that he comes back once to get something like clothes, food, whatever), and are trying to get to Elsie (since she might know where Otis is). But after the MIBs spooked the staff at the Inquirer, Elsie's father and editor in chief ordered her to stay hidden at home for a while, so all the MIBs can do is keep an eye on her house. That's where the MIBs took notice of the PCs, as they visited her, and they figured that the PCs might lead them to Otis instead. Things will probably get more complicated, as Elsie will probably slip out of her father's over-reaching helicopter-parenting, and either get in trouble, catch up with the PCs, or maybe even save them by showing up at the right time when they're in trouble.

That's good since, at this point, they're waiting for more submissions so that they can open the gate with a reasonable amount of content already available

Where is that from, that it was limited and wrong? Because sure, "in character", the answer is "Yes, all of the above". However, "out-of-character", I'm pretty sure I heard Jeff mention that, in order to stay sane as he writes all the various myths and cults descriptions, he considers that all those things are different views on a single general storyline of the God Time (I think it was at one of the previous years' Kraken presentations). I mean, that's probably pretty much why the God Learners were written in: it was probably some meta-justification for the authors to make sense of things and have reason to write "in-world" texts that were gameable (i.e. cross-myth reference documents). Either way, I guess I may change my mind over the coming years but so far, my humble take is that there is such a thing as a monomyth, but given that the monomyth exists outside of time, and given that the entities involved in this monomyth are then, by definition, not bound to mundane definitions of "being", then they can indeed be multiple things, and do different things that are potentially exclusive... once time and causality are out of the picture, it gets tricky to reason about those things.

Indeed, and that’s why I’m a bit torn inside when I see how much super interesting stuff Chaosium staff (especially @Jeff) post on Facebook groups when we know this is going to be a problem down the road (and I’m not going into all the reasons we should avoid Facebook anyway). I would love it if there was a company-wide mandate to post everything on Chaosium-owned/controlled platforms only (blog, BRP forums, etc.), and post only previews/linkbacks out to social media platforms. It’s already partially the case but like I said, not completely.

Yes but again, I'm not sure if you become the god as they did that thing way back when in God Time, or if you become the god as they do the thing right now through you. Does that make sense?

Yeah I know that in the past couple decades I've played CoC, I've definitely ping-ponged between "What is this handout? A simple cursive font? How lazy of Chaosium! It doesn't look authentic at all!" and "Man this handout looks awesome but I can barely read it!". It's... difficult

Sure, but my original goal was to discuss casual (and forgettable) uses of Rune Magic and whether those are actually: Your God intervening on the mortal plane through you, in exchange for all the worship you give her. You doing a one-second long re-enactment of something the God did in some similar-but-different occasion... so Ol' Josie using Arouse Passion and appearing as Ernalda for a second was really Ol' Josie re-enacting some archetypal myth were Ernalda got passionate about something. Option 1 means that the God Plane is probably full of this "soup" of small events that Gods do as part of their eternal everyday job, while option 2 means that whatever the Gods did during the God Time is pretty much all there is to them, and they are eternal and immortal only in the sense that they can only live through people repeating their actions, never able to do new things... which... I guess is what the Compromise is about anyway? Option 2 would also mean that if, say, you're using Lightning to strike down a foe, you might say "Orlanth, hear my call, smite these foul creatures!" but really what you mean is "hey stupid Broos, remember when Orlanth raised his hand like this and screamed like this AAAAAAAH" <crack!!> "yeah, those were good times, you fuckers"... Orlanth isn't doing anything for you -- he's just letting you tap into that time he did something for himself.

Is there any precedent to somebody breaking the Compromise and Time showing up to slap them around? It wouldn't be easy, like I said, but my points/questions were that: Can you find a God Plane event for every action a God has ever done? I would think so, but only well known/repeatedly worshiped/legendary actions would be accessible from the mundane world. Trying to re-enact "Ol' Josie's wheat price argument" just makes you look stupid, while re-enacting the wooing of Ernalda most likely gets you on the God Plane if done right. Jeff often insists that when you use Rune Magic, for a second, you _are_ your God. So if Ol' Josie used Arouse Passion to give a better argument about why her wheat should cost more, then she _was_ Ernalda for a little bit. As such, that godly act, along with the other billion occurences of Gods manifesting through people using Rune Magic, would in theory exist on the God Plane, creating a "soup" of mostly unimportant and mostly unaccessible events. There's probably more in this "soup", like all the times Yelm circled his sky path for instance. And I'm starting to wonder that this "soup" may actually be important somehow... So if you're crazy enough, and have enough resources, you could start re-enacting "Ol' Josie's wheat price argument" on Earthdays, and maybe by the time your grandchildren are running around with Ol' Josie costumes, shouting her most famous lines from her speech, it has become a moderately accessible God Plane node... of course, that's God Learnerism at its worst but hey, we all know God Learners are cool.

Oh by the way you can still apparently grab some physical copies of the Genertela and Glorantha map sets but watch out... first, they come as multiple poster sheets (not one big poster) and second, once you assemble it, it's a huuuuuge map.

It would indeed, although I find those maps a bit... bland. The "zoomed in" maps feel more interesting to me, but of course your mileage may vary. And your Glorantha. Everything varies. Still, if you're interested in Dragon Pass maps of various styles, for instance (and a lot of other Gloranthan goodness), you can check out Chaosium's Redbubble store, like, say, the cartography section! You can print those maps on posters, canvas, cloth, even bed sheets and pouches and stuff! (I have the RQ2 classic Dragon Pass/Prax map on my pencils pouch for instance, it looks nice).

So by heroquesting enough you might be able to witness events that do intrude in Time but haven't happened yet? Is that how scholars manage to make predictions about the future, like the fact that the Hero Wars came with advance warning? Also, I guess technically any use of Rune Magic involves God intruding into Time, no? So even though that might be like finding a single drop in the middle of the ocean, you could in theory find that one time Ernalda intervened to settle an argument about the price of wheat at Ol' Josie's Earthday market back in 1602?

I would go with "The Duck Bandits!" and yes I know it wasn't in the options. As for why the ducks would be on the road, my first lame idea would be that they are on a quest to find some legendary McGuffin related to fighting their undead neighbours.

You just made my day

Heh, funnily enough that Genertela map is the same as the one in the AAA, but with a way better resolution than the unreadable one in the PDF...

Maybe controversial is the wrong word? But basically I have seen several online reviews that expressed disappointment with the product. The physical version (which I don't own) supposedly has not-great printing quality, and the PDF version (which I do own) is downright unreadable in some cases, so much so that the map legend is a separate downloadable JPEG file on the Chaosium website because you can't read it on the PDF. It's also generally speaking quite bare-bones: it's really just the assembled "green" maps that you can see in the (amazing) Guide to Glorantha, but without much else (no roads, no population info, etc.).

Are you talking about the product description on the Chaosium website? Additional materials include a 20-page reference booklet full of charts and references for ease of play, a 16-page full-color Gloranthan calendar, seven ready-to-play pregenerated adventurer characters, regular and deluxe adventurer sheets, squad and a non-player character sheets, as well as full-color fold-out maps of Apple Lane, Clearwine, Dragon Pass, and the world of Glorantha itself. If so, then yeah, sadly, those last few words are not correct, there's no map of Glorantha as a whole in the slipcase set as far as I can tell. Even the Glorantha Sourcebook only has a few maps that cover Genertela, with most maps focusing on Dragon Pass and its surroundings (although it has a few God Time maps based on God Learner documents, which show you the entirety of Glorantha at various points in non-time before it took on the shape we know now). For maps of the entirety of Glorantha you'd have to look at the Guide To Glorantha and the (controversial) Argan Argrar Atlas.

Thanks for the free scenario Chaosium! It's pretty cool, and I love the ducks on p16 I was confused about the full moon/black moon thing too. I assume there's still some editing to be done here and the final version of the scenario will have the killings happen on full moons (Wild Day). As for the original murders, my take is that the villagers kept it secret mostly from fear of reprisal from the Lunars, at first. Since Orlanthi are generally proud people who own up to their actions, there was probably shame coming later into the equation, along with a potentially disproportionate response to the Lunars' violence (see below)... so after the Dragonrise, which probably made Lunars (and their reprisal) less likely to show up in Farfield, they probably decided to keep the secret anyway. But I agree this is a weak spot in the scenario and should be cleared up in the final version. Maybe moving the scenario back a few seasons so that Lunar occupation is still active would also help. In my Glorantha, the Orlanthi would probably have no problem hitting back if a guest forgets their place. If the guest burns someone's face and cripples someone's leg, I think they would be justified to burn the guest's face and cripple his leg, and then escort him to the edge of the clan's lands to send him on his way with a strong kick in the rear. Killing the guest would, however, be potentially frowned upon unless the guest actually killed someone in the clan... but like I said, when the guest in question is a Lunar officer during Lunar occupation, things get more complicated... In the story with Orlanth, Arangorf didn't do nearly as much damage as Beleros, since Arangorf only did material damage and was generally rude. My guess is that Orlanth kept his composure in this case because he also had some important political agenda (establishing a truce between his people and the dragons).

Thanks Jeff! I'm actually surprised at Esrolia, which I pictured as the more civilized and progressive place around Dragon Pass. But looking at those numbers, you could interpret it as a ruthless oligarchy where Nobles rules over a majority (55%) of people that are enslaved or partially enslaved, with little middle-class people. I didn't picture Ernalda as the type of deity to condone this type of society either but maybe I have her wrong, or maybe nobody bothered to free traditional slave families dating all the way back to the Vingkotling era, but that feels like an awful long time ago.

Check the intro and pre-gen PDFs over here.

Adblockers are your friends... but you didn't miss much if you're already a DG player, as it was basically a short presentation and historical recap of Delta Green as a game, and what books are available now with the new edition. It's great to see it get exposure like that, though, and I didn't even know Forbes ran a gaming column. Hopefully that will translate to more horror gaming sales... now where's that Critical Role Delta Green one-shot?!

That's because it doesn't -- and I'm not sure that many video games provide what you say. That game is an adventure game with some RPG elements. There are many of them, but not too many in the horror genre, and even less in the Lovecraftian horror genre. I'll definitely buy it.

Hey there, I’m going to start playing The Star Brothers soon and I’m thinking of doing a couple of changes to the scenario. I’m hoping that some people will have some good comments and additions that I can incorporate! First, some of my players are experienced with CoC and will probably immediately think of Deep Ones when they see that they’re just next to Innsmouth. I don’t really want to move the scenario elsewhere, so I’m thinking that most people in Ipswich might talk about the “road to Little Neck”, which would move from its real world location further inland between Ipswich and Innsmouth... and then people don’t really talk about the strange and derelict houses further towards the ocean. The town sign might even be broken, lying down in the bushes, so that investigators would not even know where they are unless they spot it, or until it’s too late... any other ideas? Another change is to add an “in media res” introduction scene, a bit like the classic action/intro set piece would would see at the beginning of a movie. It might be the end of the previous case that the PCs did for Strange But True, or a flashback to the first thing they did together, so we get a glimpse of how they met. I’m thinking about something purely mundane but still a bit dangerous or weird... like we would start being chased by a murderous clown in a toy store, or a violent mobster in the back of a butcher shop, or whatever that previous story led them to. Any good suggestions? Thanks!

Yes but my point was that if you use big blown up numbers, you can break pretty much every RPG system around. Some might break earlier than others, sure, but it often has to do with whether that given system made more assumptions than another (for instance, a system where you're supposed to all play FBI agents in modern day USA, vs. a system where you're playing super heroes). And that's a totally fair flaw to point out, yes. My guess is that it's because offsetting numbers (addition/subtraction) is way easier and faster to do than scaling numbers (which includes multiplications and divisions). But, assuming that one contestant is always of human levels, and also assuming you actually don't want resolution to be linear (as in: you actually want 150% vs 75% to be "easier to win" than 60% vs 30% because you want percentiles' "effectiveness" to curve up to help with scaling against big monsters), then yes, some of the peculiarities of the table are actually by design. But sure, yes, I understand your point.

Interestingly enough, the CoC 7ed rules have a couple paragraphs about "Avoiding Nothing Happening When Both Sides Fail Their Fighting Skill Roll" (p125). While I didn't find that section particularly well written, it does spark a few interesting thoughts. A tie doesn't have to be "everything stays the same" or "nothing happened". It means "nobody got the upper hand", and that can be interpreted in different ways. For instance, it could be that "the 2 contestant both progressed equally towards their goal". If it's a race, a tie would NOT mean both runners stayed in place! No, they kept moving, but at roughly the same speed. The end of race drew nearer, so the situation after the roll isn't the same... there's less time left to win! If the task was somehow dangerous, maybe both contestants hurt themselves (or each other!) in a similar manner (1d4 damage each!)... again, the situation changed a bit, as there's now attrition coming into the equation, in addition to wasting potentially precious time if the task is time-sensitive. That's actually what happens in Spirit Combat! (RQG p368: if there's a tie, both combatants take Spirit Combat damage!) Another interpretation is that the conflict that sparked the roll is now moot. It's like the Gordian Knot of task resolutions. If it was a tie between 2 affinities/passions, it means that either the player is free to choose whatever they want (advancing towards a decision), or that the character surprisingly removes themselves from whatever debate it was, because of a clear conflict of interest (so again, the situation changed as a result of the roll).