Sumath

Good, don't let me trouble you then. But equally, don't imagine that your Never Never Land in which HPL was some beleaguered innocent is ever going to be accepted as the real world. Or... you could give up: - pretending you're a victim; - the idea that literary history and matters of record should be whitewashed in order for you to feel better about your favourite author; - trying to stifle other people's freedom of speech; - generally behaving like such a ludicrous fanboy.

Oh, come on. Read back what you've written. If this is what you're expecting for HPL then you're basically asking for a safe space for yourself, in which nobody denigrates your literary hero. And you're objecting to Chaosium telling the truth about HPL's thoughts about other people. You're essentially asking for a cover-up. There is no need to bring all that ugliness up? So you think it's best that people remain blissfully unaware that HPL was a racist, and considered other people to be subhuman? Why should anyone who held those views have their image pampered? Why is that more important than knowing the truth about what he believed and what he wrote?

You're in luck! There are plenty of them still about. And just to be clear, I do not consider myself to be politically correct, and indeed I have argued against political correctness on many occasions in the past. This is not a matter of following a fashionable etiquette or trying to show how 'woke' I am. It is a case of recognising really quite blatant bigotry in a body of historical fiction and being honest enough to say "yeah, that's what that is" and then moving on from that. In the same way that Heart of Darkness is a great novella, and inspired a great film, but is also a fundamentally racist and misanthropic book. Recognising the deficiencies of an artist and their work, as well as their merits, is a sign of honest and credible critique. Total denial of an artist's deficiencies should be left to fanboys.

1) Nowadays people are more likely to associate VW with the emissions scandal than Adolf Hitler (that's Trivial Pursuit-level association, not brand identity). 2) The world changes. Businesses attempt to change with it. Those that don't, tend to disappear. And really, you're criticising a business for acknowledging that some of their previous products could have been better? If you looked back at a product you once released and were now cringing at bits of it because, you know, the world has moved on and so have you, why wouldn't you be honest about that? It's also what capitalism is implicitly made out of ("New and Improved!")

1) Ford aren't selling model T's either, and Ford is a brand in its own right and not reliant upon Henry Ford - indeed he forms no part of their modern brand whatsoever. That is never the case with an author and their works which will always be associated with one another. So again, it's a poor analogy. 2) And yet Chaosium are selling thousands of CoC RPG books. 3) I have no idea who ST Joshi is, so I have no idea what bearing that has upon the human capacity to admire something produced by someone you profoundly disagree with.

Are you seriously suggesting that if Ford were asked 'Do you agree with Henry Ford's views on Jews?' they wouldn't fall over themselves to say no? Besides, the analogy is a poor one - many people have never heard of Lovecraft or the Cthulhu mythos. If you're going to introduce people to a body of work, it's advisable to be open and honest about it from the start, not sweep it under the carpet, only for people to find out afterwards and say "Hey, you never said anything about that...". Because the art is not the artist. But there is the possibility that some people will write off the Cthulhu mythos on the basis of HPL's prejudices. It is not only honest to make a statement about where Chaosium stands, it is also commercially sensible. Well, that's a very interesting theory and perhaps you'll write a dissertation about it at some point. I doubt that anyone is going to base a business enterprise on it just yet though. Are you related to HPL somehow? I can't help feeling you're taking this all rather personally. I'm not denying HPL's creative talent (he wasn't a great writer, but he did dream up a fascinating mythology). I like some of Jamiroquai's songs, but that doesn't stop me thinking Jay Kay is a bit of a prat.

Wow, this all escalated quickly. My take on this is as follows: If you and your gaming group don't want to discuss HPL's racism, or play scenarios with explicit parallels between HPL's xenophobia and the horror themes of aliens from beyond, then... don't. That's fine - everyone is free to decide what they want to explore in their own games. But that goes both ways - so coming on to a forum and trying to tell everyone else they (or Chaosium) shouldn't talk about HPL's racism is an imposition upon others. You don't get to decide how other people game. And the idea that politics doesn't belong in role-playing is itself a political position. I can't think of a single role-playing game that doesn't adopt a political position of some sort. As far as freedom of speech goes, trying to stop people referring to HPL's prejudices is just an attempt to close down discussion. Why shouldn't they refer to them? There is no obligation for gamers to refer to them (much as there is no obligation to talk about how carcinogenic a packet of cigarettes is - you can just smoke them if you want to). But there should be no bar on referring to the author's personal beliefs either and there are clearly strong feelings about this. Finally, from an ethical, reputational and business point of view, the OP's idea that Chaosium (or any other modern international business) would not seek to distance themselves from the kind of repugnant views expressed in some of Lovecraft's stories is incredibly naïve. Which company is going to promote a product based upon the work of a highly problematic writer, yet not acknowledge those problems, or point out that they absolutely do not agree with such views?

Ah, sorry. I just naturally assume anything on here is about RQG these days. Didn't even notice the RQ3 comment at the beginning.

Even with high CON, your max ENC is limited by your STR though. Every point of ENC above that penalises your parry by 5%! The extra few armour points is not worth borking your 12-point shield parry for, surely?

But what 'small person' can afford to carry 20ENC of weight anyway, before you even pick up a weapon, shield or backpack? There's not much point in having such armour if your parry, attack (and most of your other skills) are suffering high ENC penalties.

There are plenty of Chaosium publications that indicate that 'Incomplete Modelling' is in effect. For example, in the Dragon of the Thunder Hills, reference is made to several rune spells that might be used to defeat the dragon, without actually using the Runequest rules names for those spells. Equally, I can remember POW or magic points being referred to as 'soulforce' etc. However, even if the relationship between rules and game world is 'Incomplete Modelling', that still doesn't rule out the idea of different rulesets modelling different versions of Glorantha...

That could be why actually: snakes, as creatures of Earth, should in theory be associated with axes. Swords are weapons of Air, and maces of Darkness. But an 'axe-snake' would look silly, so that's probably why they've been dropped in favour of more traditional pythons etc.

They got the axe.

Gods of Glorantha is a 2020 release. I haven't seen anything confirming that there will be 2019 releases yet. I'm not sure what the hold up is on putting up the RQG repository - 7th Sea has one already and the licence for that has been with Chaosium five minutes.

Or, failing that, the RQG repository?

So, do we think there will be any more RQG releases in 2019?

The Humakti could be asked about decisions the party made regarding confrontations/encounters and about the outcomes of any melee. Also for an assessment of the fighting prowess/future threat of the Stone Woman to the clan. As a custodian of the truth he may also be asked for an opinion upon Danakos' motivations, and what threat he poses (if he is still alive/at large). The Herder might be quizzed upon the health of the cattle returned and asked about how the clan's herders were murdered (and by whom). They might also be asked how many cattle would constitute a suitable ransom/restitution from the Grey Dogs. The Eurmali could be asked to conjecture upon Danakos' state of mind, and also that of the Stone Woman. As an entertainer, the Eurmali may know (Lore roll) the story of Danakos' kinstrife and/or the mythology of the Stone Woman. They could also be asked to compose a song/poem to commemorate the party's/clan's achievements in recovering their cattle, avenging their kin and overcoming a goddess. For all of them, their Rune affinities (especially Powers) could be used as inspiration for what they might be asked about, since this is an indication of how other people will perceive them and upon what subjects their opinion might be valued.

You could always have them engage each other on a dynamic battleground - by which I mean one where the environment changes during the course of the battle. There are a couple of ways to achieve this - the obvious one is a static battle in a changing environment (e.g. a collapsing building/mine/cavern with floors or ceiling dropping away, a coastal or river area where changing water levels alter the terrain, or amongst a herd of animals providing cover or obstacles to movement). This allows combatants to be creative with the opportunities the environment provides (pits, rock falls, pools, stampedes, etc) and combat options like knockback can be used. But you could also play the combat as a running battle with the party pursuing or fleeing from the enemy, or with both groups trying to reach an objective first (e.g. a prisoner, a door, a McGuffin). In that case they could move through a varied environment in which the terrain might favour one side or another randomly. Debilitating injuries would see combatants fall behind or be out of the fight altogether. Spells like Mobility and Slow become more important, much early combat could be missile or spell fire, and aimed blows to opponents' legs and throwing obstacles in the enemy's path become important group tactics. You could also break the fight up into chunks if one group gets ahead for a while before the other catches up again etc. There are chase rules in RQG that can be used, but it would probably be best run as a miniatures battle on a moving grid.

Get yourself a hippogriff or a Pegasus (if you can catch and tame one). By the way, I'd imagine that Move represents how fast a creature can reasonably go whilst still maintaining control under combat conditions. 12 seems to be the upper limit for the creatures in the Bestiary, but I'd still say that a flying griffin or dragon would be faster than a horse in a straight line.

Indeed. If you really want to advance your character quickly it's best to attempt as many different things as you can - something that's worth pointing out to new players. This in itself will spur them into thinking up ways to make use of the relevant skills. My only criticism of RQG in this respect is that I do think there are a few too many skills.

'Monsters Are People Too' is quite a nice little essay and still very relevant. So many GMs I've seen still run monsters as though they are suicidal killing machines. Characterisation and player-immersion are surrendered in pursuit of routinely emptying monsters' hit point totals. If character advancement (XP) is dependent upon killing monsters and acquiring treasure then those activities will be hard-baked into a game, which is why D&D and similar systems seem to struggle to move beyond murderhobo playing styles. At the other end of the spectrum, I GMed Blades in the Dark last year, a game which rewards players with XP only for addressing challenges in character, expressing their beliefs, drives, heritage or background, and dealing with personal vices (which were mandatory) or trauma. What was immediately apparent was that players will role-play better when they are incentivised in this way. The character notes actually got referred to during play instead of being drawn up in chargen and never mentioned again. This also meant that as a GM I had to raise my game in terms of the depictions of complex NPCs with which the PCs could interact. There's a lot of good ideas from that game that can be ported over into other systems. With RQ2 & RQ3, on reflection, I feel the skills/experience check system sat somewhere between those two extremes, but the average RQ PC or NPC was still more well-rounded than the average D&D PC or NPC. Even so, characterisation was still overly dependent upon GM and player imagination and effort. With the introduction of Runes and Passions in RQG, there are now in-game incentives to role-play adventurers and monsters according to their 'nature', and this can also develop over time. Rune and Passion % scores are a handy tool for the GM to figure out how an NPC might approach a particular situation. The 60% Cowardice passion for Ducks that was mentioned in another thread for example, or just the characteristics associated with the Runes.

Hmm, I guess so... As desirable addresses go, I can see why that one might have been left off the map though.

Personally, I wouldn't impose that on a PC Duck unless the player was genuinely interested in role-playing such a character.

You most certainly can have an elf adventurer, and it could inspire some fine role-playing opportunities, but I think the thing here is that it should not just be down to the GM to come up with a credible reason for Aldryami to be part of a mixed adventuring group. If your player wants to play an elf then let them rationalise what the bejeezus they are doing outside of their forest, getting into scrapes with a bunch of Orlanthi etc - and if it doesn't make sense, tell them nobody believes them, have NPCs (and perhaps other players) react in an appropriately suspicious fashion, and encourage them to come up with something better. Also, think about the other practicalities - where will they worship to recover their Rune Magic? Will they return to the forest regularly to do so? Will they face prejudice amongst the Sartarites? At the very least they'll be looked upon as an oddity wherever they go, and will be singled out by trolls on sight. These are problems that you could base at least a session or two around (e.g. founding a shrine to Aldrya outside of the forest). I think players intending to play non-humans should be aware of what they'll be up against, otherwise they are likely to feel put-upon when the world does not respond to them in the same way as the Forgotten Realms etc would. A common goal is fine, but once it has been achieved you'd probably expect the elf to return to the trees, so you'd need to think about transforming that goal into something long-term sooner rather than later.

What is the name of the settlement on the North side of Kjartan Lake? Is it just known as the Kjartan Lake settlement? The adventure book in the GMs Screen Pack seems to go out of its way to avoid mentioning it by name.