Beoferret

A wicker shield should definitely have lower HP than a wooden one (but maybe have less encumbrance?) I suppose it might be best to look at the provided stats for shields as guidelines, rather than outright rules. 

On another note, if a hoplon is classified as large, shouldn't there be an extra-large size shield that fills in for the scutum/Mycenaean figure-8 shield/larger Assyrian-style shields that clearly provided protection for the entire torso and legs (or head, if one wanted to show one's ankles)?

22 hours ago, g33k said:

@Steve
New info about next-up, best-guess about order-available.

Jason D said earlier today (on the "Glorantha Fans" FBGroup):
Dragon Pass Gazetteer,

Cults of Glorantha + Prosopaedia,

Gamemaster Sourcebook

This is very interesting. If the Dragon Pass Gazetteer incorporates part of what was going to be in the Sartar set, then ... what's going to be in the Sartar set? In-depth description of Boldhome and a campaign?

In regard to #1: I can see your point. I would worry that it'd end up prolonging combats, but maybe that wouldn't be too bad of an effect in practice. Shields should be pretty effective for parrying and probably more so than weapons. Maybe just give them a blanket +20% to parrying? Then the unaltered shield skill would mainly be for using the shield offensively. Characters with high weapon skills might remain interested in parrying with their sword/spear/whatnot; but the real boost to survivability that a shield provides militia-types, etc., would still be present.

in regard to #2: You could easily just modify how many hit points a shield can take according to it's material construction (and quality, for that matter). A few points more or less here and there could add verisimilitude and player choice, without threatening to break the game in any way.   

1 hour ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Spoilers please...

Whoops!

4 hours ago, Cloud64 said:

 

I've found it challenging to run and found a lot of prep was necessary, though I can be guilty of over prepping. This prep was at times frustrating, revealing flaws in the scenarios, whether that be story logic, desirable handouts not being provided, stat block errors, etc. I'm considering writing a constructive critique of the scenarios, if I find the time and motivation.
[...]

* A pet RPG peeve of mine is when a review expresses scenario length in sessions with no indication of how long their sessions are. Without that, the statement is useless. Please don't do it, people.

Good point about how reviewers sometimes do their audience a disservice by neglecting to tell you just how long their sessions are. I'd love to read any reviews you write on the starter scenarios. One aspect of "Rough Landing" I found kinda funny was that

Which leads me to say that I'm running "Rough Landing" as an introductory one shot for four people who have some experience with TTRPGs (overwhelmingly D&D), age range of late 20's to late 40's (my wife). The provided suggestions on how to play the pregens has been very useful (one player is using Vishi Dunn and has already used Cousin Monkey to good effect.) One important piece of prep I did was to put together a handout for each character providing the descriptions, etc. for each of their spells; I also put together another handout with descriptions of the common Rune spells - all in order to provide players with important info right at their finger tips. I think that really helped, though it took me a long time to do. Everyone seemed intrigued by aspects of the system. I'll know more after our next session, when they actually start exploring Menyr's Landing. I'm curious to see what they think of the combat system.

In the spirit of Delecti, let me engage in some thread necromancy... 

Since the Starter Set has been out for some months now, it seems like a good time to revisit these questions. How many of you have seen/experienced newcomers to RQG purchasing the Starter Set (and maybe even using it)? How many of you have used the Starter Set to win new (especially younger) players to RQ and/or Glorantha? What really grabbed them about the system and the setting? Any newbies who ended up deciding that RQ and/or Glorantha wasn't for them after trying the Starter Set adventures?

Any update on these? Totally curious about what advice players are going to be given on how to play members of each race.

Wasn't there an article in one issue outlining the Cult of Geo? (Maybe Jeff's written that into the forthcoming Sartar material though.) I've got a soft spot for DW, even though I only have two issues. The issue with the "Cult of the Tiger" article by Steve Perrin was my introduction to TTRPG. The cover illustration totally caught my eye and fired the imagination. Thankfully my parents were willing to buy it for me, even though I was maybe 8-9 years old. 

How much of the Glorantha and RuneQuest material from articles in Different Worlds made it into current Glorantha cannon and RuneQuest publications? Most of the material on the Mostali, at least, am I right? Is any of the other material ever going to see updating and republication?

There's a definite Mythos vibe here. I could see a RQG campaign centered around stopping a group of Chaos cultists (in the Lovecraftian sense) who've decided to try and speed things up. Lots of room for parties made up primarily of Lhankor Mhy devotees who've teamed up with a couple of Uroxi. Wacky hijinks ensue.

I'd be pretty stoked if this was ever translated into English, even if only released in pdf format.

John, thanks for chiming in on this thread. I enjoyed The Queen's Heir overall (and absolutely love the mental image of the hero running around for a bit wearing a spirit-infused wolfskin) and had a good time trying to figure out all the Gloranthan elements. Two questions though:

1) Do you have a map of the setting? I ask, since it's my understanding that you took the real world eastern Mediterranean map and then altered it significantly. 

2) Why wasn't this produced as an explicitly Gloranthan tale? I understand that you might/probably have some behind-the-scenes reasons you'd rather not discuss as to why - so I certainly don't want to pester you for an answer to this one. 

Thanks for some of the good ideas, guys. It occurred to me too, that there are a couple of ways to tie the starter set adventures in with "The Broken Tower": Basically, after running through TBT, the party are asked to escort a Colymar sage to Jonstown so they can visit the library and research: a) Idrima, and/or b) the tribal territory lines between the Colymar and the Greydogs/Lismelder.  

Are they possible? If a Humakti wanted to stick around for awhile as a spirit (perhaps to act as a guard for someone they'd pledged themselves to), would they be able to? Would they experience spirits of retribution? If so, what would those spirits be like?

Woo hoo! I was wondering about this. Are they going to come with short intros to each race that's represented?

7 hours ago, Eff said:

I don't know what the canon answer is or if there is one, but in the big broo metaphor of cycle-of-abuse, broo reproduction is clearly the result of Thed's influence in essentially metaphysically raping all of her children by dictating how they are allowed have sex- it must be violent, it must be traumatizing, and it must result in the death of the other partner in a gruesome, painful way- and so we could hope that broo don't reproduce in that fashion if they're free from Thed's tyranny. But that's why I'm pretty down on broo as a major part of Glorantha, because of that central metaphor being focused on a rape survivor reenacting her trauma by raping all of her mortal progeny in an abstract fashion.

I saw it less as Thed victimizing her own children/progeny so much as her using them to get vengeance on the rest of the world, i.e., using her people to inflict what she had suffered back on to Orlanth and Yelm's children since those gods hadn't provided the culturally expected aid she needed when she needed it. One way or another, she's getting recompense. I also like the image of the Chaos gods that's presented in the Iconic Productions "Exploring Glorantha" Youtube series (in their vid on Chaos) - basically that each god of Chaos represents the inversion of a key virtue. Because of that I think the broo do have a key part to play in Glorantha, even if they don't show up very much in particular group's game.

1 hour ago, Alex said:

Plus of course there's the "vegetarian vampire" model:  'civilised' broo than don't force themselves on sentients, but still reproduce "the same way" but exclusively with animals.  After all, they're "not people", merely "property", so with a little bit of sophistry and ignoring how horrific that process still is, that'd work for some.  "You want to kill and eat animals just out of dietary preference;  for us, it's either using animals or genociding ourselves."

Oh, that's an interesting angle! I tend to think that a broo cleansed of Chaos taint would end up having their bits and pieces magically changed (just like they'd lose a mouth on their stomach or a tentacle arm) so that they'd reproduce in a standard mammalian P in V kinda way.

3 hours ago, AndreJarosch said:

Maybe the only way to "heal" the broo race whould be to help Thed to recover from being abused. When Orlanth/Yelm/??? apologises for what was done to her, she many find peace with her situation, and give amends to her children the broos by "healing" them to become just another species of beastmen. 
Unfortunately the gods are bound within time and can´t change anymore. 
So Thed can´t heal from her psychic wounds, and the broos stay chaos monsters. 

To change this, heal Thed and the broo race, would be an epic campaign for a group of PCs!

That's a hell of an idea there. It'd be a campaign that probably relied heavily on heroquests too. As why PCs would undertake such a quest? Hmmmm..... maybe a truly saintly Chalana Arroy healer proposes it. Or a Lhankor Mhy sage comes across an ancient Godlearner text suggesting the possibility and then wants to test the hypothesis out. Some leaders are looking for a way to tame a local broo menace without having to spend lots of blood and treasure. Etc. And there could be the fun challenge of successfully warding off any Storm Bulls who catch wind of the plan without ending up as enemies of the entire cult (or accused of Chaos taint.)

4 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Ecologically feral and wild broo are disasters. They impregnate as often as they can (think xenomorphs or parasitoid wasps) in order to propagate their species - domestic animals such as cattle or sheep are easiest, but humans or other beings also work.

Quick question that has some bearing on this discussion. If broo are cleansed of Chaos taint, do they still reproduce the same way?

My understanding has always been that the broo are the antithesis of virtually all human/uz/aldryami/etc values. And that they're gleefully so. In other words, at a baseline they're monsters, even if they're sentient (perhaps they're even more monstrous because they know what they're doing and they love it.) But since they're sentient, there's the ever so minute chance that they're capable of rejecting their normal path and becoming worthy of consideration as people. The one in 1,000 non-Chaotic broo individual has a harder path to redemption because of this, but that's frankly the fault of their former fellows not that of the humans and/or uz who might try to kill them. A "kill them all" approach is morally acceptable, perhaps exemplary, when applied to the average broo - whose appearance in an adventure should trigger feelings of deep fear and loathing (among both players and characters.)

Just like with recent discussions of Tolkien orcs (and broo are far worse than mere orcs), recently dominate anti-imperialist sentiment among Westerners deeply colors how many of us look at these questions. Yes, actions of conquest and/or ethnic cleansing during European and American imperial expansions were often justified by claiming that the people being conquered were monstrous savages, etc., etc. (I'd venture that other cases of imperial expansion - e.g. Chinese - were similarly justified.) That wasn't the only way imperialism was justified, but it was a biggie. There were always Westerners who spoke out against imperialism and/or the dehumanization of non-Western peoples (yes, even in the 16th century), but that's now the dominate frame of mind. So some people involved in fantasy/sci-fi/imaginative genre literature and gaming have developed the suspicion that a) monstrous humanoid races are just deliberate or unconscious fill-ins for American Indians/sub-Saharan Africans/Aborigines/etc., and/or b) that treating monstrous races as monsters legitimates, breeds, and encourages racism towards real people in the real world. In a perverse way, it's a post-colonial racialist lens through which to view things - i.e., that race, ethnicity, and dominance hierarchies (oppressor/oppressed, in this case) are the primary filters through which the world should be seen. In our hobby, this view risks doing exactly what it sets out to undermine: mapping real world ethnic groups onto monstrous humanoids in fantasy (something worth avoiding, in general). But what if that was the wrong lens through which to look at the question of monster races? What if the proper lens is one of morality? Are there behaviors and actions that need to be actively fought by any and all means necessary? I'd say yes.

If early 19th century American settlers in Ohio hated American Indians because they thought Indians (Shawnee, Miami, etc.) were vicious, violent "savages," were they wrong because a) American Indians in Ohio were not really defined by a culture of vicious, violent savagery, or b) that they really were vicious, violent savages, but that was their culture and we shouldn't judge? In game, if it became know that a band of creatures - who really are defined by their love of rape, murder, torture, and spreading of diseases - was traipsing about in the woods near some farming village, what should the appropriate player/character reaction be? Let them be unless they're actively in the process of hurting someone? Go into the woods and have a chat with them about peaceful coexistence and the importance of consent in romantic relations? Or make sure they can't hurt anyone, by killing them or driving them away? One could be a little more inventive here, but those seem like the baseline alternatives.

Glorantha already has a great deal of multicultural moral ambiguity in it. Look at the first adventure in the Starter Set, for instance. What does one do with the rampaging trolls? But I think it's entirely appropriate for there to be races/creatures that are sentient, but also 100% OK for your characters to kill off and know that they did the right thing. And frankly, it also makes the scenario of the broo who rejects chaos all the more interesting.

Any idea if we're going to get some alternate/optional combat rules with this or equipment-specific rules?

On a side note, I'm really hoping that we get extra-large shields (scutum or figure-eight styled) and pectoral armor.  

18 hours ago, g33k said:

I expect *most* of the sales -- thus far -- will be to the grognards.

This may change; it's well-timed.  When US Turkey Day is over, the shoppers will hit the stores heavily.

There's enough time for the FLGS's to have ordered these, and begun getting (hopefully positive) feedback, so they'll recommend this as a solid offering when Aunt Edith asks for "something D&D-ish, but not D&D," or people look to branch out, etc...

 

I probably did start this thread too soon. I'll definitely be interested to see what responses are by the end of January '22 - after the shopping season and when folks have had a chance to play a session or two from the Starter Set adventures.

21 hours ago, Alex said:

You very generous person/sly pusher, you. 😄  Any early signs if they're falling on the "too... much...  information..." side, or more in the direction of "this is great, only the lack of chariot rules and character generation is a real deal-breaker for me"?

Not sure yet. There's definitely aspects of the system and the setting that she liked right off the bat. I'll have to check in soon and see if there are further impressions.

Hey everyone. Do any of you have a sense of whether a sizeable number of new gamers or younger gamers new to RuneQuest are getting their hands on the Starter Set or is it primarily (perhaps overwhelmingly) RQ grognards? What do the aforementioned new and/or younger gamers think of their intro to RuneQuest and Glorantha?

* For my part, I bought a Starter Set for a co-worker/friend (mid-20's), who seems to like what they've seen so far from their as-of-yet partial read.

Just finished this episode a few hours ago. Good stuff. More please!