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Sumath

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Everything posted by Sumath

  1. Relevant to this very question, there's a great BBC documentary covering the discovery of a Bronze Age village at Must Farm in the Cambridgeshire fens. As the archaeologists excavated the site they found evidence that the occupants raised cattle, grew crops, owned scythes, made their own high quality textiles, and traded for goods from the Mediterranean. So they were herders, farmers, weavers, traders. But they also owned a lot of swords and spears, and had built a stockade around their village. Very few people in a Bronze Age society would be full-time warriors - they would be expected to defend themselves and their community when called upon, and take part in raids on other settlements. The village featured in the BBC documentary was ultimately destroyed by fire. It was possibly torched by rivals, but it's also likely that those who did so were not full-time warriors either, but perhaps fishermen, herders, farmers who wanted to consolidate their territory. Violence was always an option. RQG chargen reflects this, and I think that whilst it can be tempting to just roll up a warrior or noble with great martial skills, a party of humble farmers, herders, hunters etc is a) more colourful and interesting (why are they adventuring, why have they been chosen by their community/clan ring?), and b) allows for more of a character arc as they each become renowned for something other than their occupation (it also gives the GM some room to plan some 'low-level' style encounters before the adventurers build up their combat skills). But RQG chargen allows quite a bit of flexibility in your initial starting skills too, so if you want a farmer who is both an Ernalda initiate and deadly with a sword from the outset, you can have one. It's largely up to your GM as to what opportunities there are to use your occupational non-combat skills in-game, but you can also use them for augments and they will be important in determining your annual income.
  2. In practice, you're right, it wasn't omniscience. But it came from Ceridwen's cauldron and IIRC when he sucked his thumb he knew everything there was to know (or something like that - it's been a long time since I read it).
  3. Hilarious, but also fits well with mythology. Taliesin was gifted with omniscience and sentience from birth. Cu Chulainn was a boy (Setanta) who had immense strength and skill from an early age, and defeated armies without making it to adulthood.
  4. Eddie Izzard used to do a stand-up routine about how cowardly characters in peril are actually so much more interesting and relatable than heroic ones. He cited Shaggy and Scooby Doo as examples of very reluctant protagonists, along with Falstaff...
  5. But the effect of the magic is that you would think they're right. Just as it's easy to say you won't be swayed by a charismatic person in real life, but might find yourself being so when they are in front of you, charming your socks off with suddenly compelling arguments. Of course, there's always CHA vs POW contests if you wanted to allow someone to resist such blandishments.
  6. I'd use 'Hide' for situations where the adventurer is static and avoiding detection, and 'Move Quietly' for situations where the adventurer is mobile and avoiding detection.
  7. Yes, but how often is an adventurer going to try to move quietly and yet be perfectly happy to be seen? For MGF I'd assume Move Quietly means Move Stealthily.
  8. I'm really not convinced I would distinguish between 'sneaking' and 'moving quietly' for game purposes.
  9. As Bill the barbarian says, I'd run them as is, apart from replacing old spells and adjusting HPs. The main issue is going to be that the standard RQG timeline is a generation later than RQ2 was, when the Lunars no longer occupy Dragon Pass. So you either have to base your RQG campaign earlier (which means handling CharGen backgrounds slightly differently) or try to update the old scenarios (which could be a lot of work).
  10. You might be interested in these, which are some temple guardians for solar, earth and trickster cults that I created based upon Assyrian spirits of protection.
  11. That's my point - you're adding the modifier to the roll. You're not using the prime stat. So why not just generate the modifier to begin with?
  12. You'd still have scores called STR and DEX (they'd just be +2, -1 etc. instead). Ascending AC was introduced without affecting the identity of the game, so I can't see this being a big deal. Retaining unused 3d6 scores in CharGen just for nostalgia seems silly to me - isn't that what OSR rules are for?
  13. That's a fair criticism, RQG is not especially innovative. But then for the most part it doesn't need to be. There are a few areas (e.g. strike ranks) that haven't aged well, but the chassis of the game is sound. It's mostly tweaking that's required. The introduction of Runes and Passions is the greatest improvement IMHO. D&D 5E is also a missed opportunity - full of things that should no longer be there (e.g. prime stats, which aren't even used - modifiers are, so why not generate them directly?). WoTC also passed up the opportunity to solve many of D&D's shortcomings, particularly how lightweight combat is when that's supposed to be one of the three pillars of gameplay. There are similarities between 5E scenarios and Chaosium's old campaigns, but even for some of WoTC products they seem to be similarities in style rather than substance. We're currently playing through Tomb of Annihilation and it has plot holes that you could ride a T Rex through! Looking back at Borderlands or Griffin Mountain, they were rooted in a consistent and well thought-out fantasy world, and that depth and consistency mean that you can still pick those products up now and run them pretty much as they are. ToA is a couple of years old and already looks hackneyed.
  14. I think they'd have to at least buy him dinner first though.
  15. I ran a Griffin Island campaign when I was younger in which all my players used spirit magic or sorcery. It was fine, but as a party they were the least RuneQuesty (yeah, I know, just go with it) that I ever GMed for. No cult affiliations meant less integration into the world. More like a D&D party. However, Griffin Island was non-Gloranthan anyway, so that didn't help.
  16. A captor could always ask a prisoner to take an oath that they would not attempt escape. Although given that the alternative could be to kill them I'm not sure how binding such an oath might be. But if it was freely given then that could be an option.
  17. Honour would be a good way of ensuring captives honoured their captivity. If you offer your ransom to save your skin then reneging on that could be seen as dishonourable.
  18. Right, but magic-capable prisoners are a problem Gloranthans have that ancient world humans didn't have. If you take a lot of prisoners after a battle, for example, there could be some very potent magic capability there, not necessarily individually but amongst the troops as a whole. So you'd need to keep them apart as well until you can ransom them - no communal prisoner camps, unless they were well guarded enough or segregated enough to prevent the occupants combining their magic to punch a hole through their captors' walls.
  19. And does this vary by cult?
  20. Besides cult elemental affinities presumably dictating whether bodies are buried or cremated (are all sun cultists cremated?), what are the exceptions? For example, most Orlanthi get buried, but Kallyr Starbrow was put on a pyre. There would also be other exceptions, such as if a corpse had been ravaged by Chaos or disease. Are there conventions of belief on this subject or is it more a matter of practicality?
  21. Fair enough. I started to look for a poison or plant that would fit the bill, and couldn't find one that was really suitable anyway.
  22. Magical options might include casting Extended Hallucinate or Fear spells on captives to keep them subdued. Or summon a spirit and have them possess the prisoner until ransom time.
  23. I'd imagine that drugs or poisons that render prisoners unconscious, docile or suggestible would be used for the duration of captivity.
  24. Shield is a very useful combat spell, but not having it is not the end of the world for a fighter. There's always spirit magic like Protection or Shimmer to fall back upon. The exclusive use of certain Rune spells is what gives Runequest that paper-scissors-rock balance to it. No single cult has access to all the best spells, so their followers can always be overcome with the right tactics. In my experience, uber spells make players lazy and less likely to come up with tactical solutions. I think if certain cults were unstoppable in combat then there'd need to be some explanation as to why they weren't more dominant, and why Glorantha wasn't a less diverse place.
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