1d8+DB

So I assume we're not talking NPCs right? And you're going for a more 'Classic Fantasy' kind of feel?

It looks to me like you have a solid plan going forward.

I statted out Phantasm's Tall Man in an old thread about Monster creation, which I can't seem to immediately find. One thing I did was give him a teleport ability: to model the ability of those characters to always appear in the immediate vicinity of a hunted victim, without ever leaving a slow and steady walk.

My two copper pennies worth. I don't think typically Viking raiders would bother with a castle, other than perhaps putting a few raiders to watching it for any signs of a sally being prepared. But here's some ideas that occurred to me. 'Treachery': Lord B has sent an emissary to the Vikings. If they raid Lord A's realm this season Lord B's spy in the castle will open the gates for them. Possible complications: Lord B wants the Vikings to deliver Lord A's family, who are in the castle, to him. Do the Vikings (player characters) agree to this? Now they are involved in this ongoing war. Lord B is treacherous, and doesn't deal fairly with the Vikings. Perhaps his men show up to try to prevent the Vikings from leaving? Perhaps they end up being besieged in the castle they just took? Lord A has legendary treasure in a vault below; when the castle falls to the Vikings they're warned that this treasure is horribly cursed. Do they heed these warnings? 'Where is everyone': when the Vikings arrive the village, and the castle, both are strangely deserted. A plague? There are no bodies, no fresh graves. And the woods around the village are strangely full of ravens.

Mechanically I don't think it will matter much 'when' you play Pulp: the one thing that will change is the aesthetics, particularly in anything attached to 'Weird Science'. For instance, in the 30s Radium is going be a common component of any strange technology. In the previous decades it would be Electro-Magnetism.

I guess my point was that there's two competing schools of character creation. You could certainly figure out a way to create a warrior-shaman that would be very powerful out of the gate, but I prefer the 'discovery/evolve' path, which is what I think RQG's default is.

So this bit of musing was inspired by a recent post in the Glorantha sub-forum, about a player, coming from D&D, having a bad experience in RQ, when their shaman character turned out to not be 'special' when compared to the other characters. In the OSR world there is an idea that that you 'create' your characters as you play: that initially any one character is not differentiated to any significant degree from any other character; you have a few simple statistics, a weapon, and some items. It is IN GAME that you begin to specialize and differentiate your character: they acquire items and powers, they gain allies and make enemies, they learn secrets inherent in the setting. Your character, based on the choices you make, and of course quite a few dice rolls, BECOMES the character you want. In a way this can be seen as a kind of TTRPG Existentialism: your character is not what is penciled on her character sheet; she is what she has done and seen. You are WHAT YOU DO. I think RQ, and pretty much the games that make up the BRP family, share this with the games of the OSR sphere. In the deterministic and 'caste-like' system of D&D the choices made at character creation, the 'stars you are born under', pretty much determine your path, your 'adventuring career'. I chose the Warrior Shaman sub-class, so I immediately begin play with those abilities, advantages, and drawbacks. Going forward I am on a fairly linear path, one that mapped out in front of me, with clearly visible milestones and markers. In a game like RQ, I learn from the Shaman of the Gray Snake Cave of a powerful, aggressive spirit,the Black Mushroom Spirit, that I can attempt to bind; but first I need to collect that Black Mushrooms from the Stinking Woods, as only those hallucinogenic fungi can prepare me for the summoning of this dangerous spirit. Then I must persuade the unpredictable troll-witch to teach me how to distill the potentially toxic juices of the mushrooms for the necessary potion. It is the difference from simply writing a back-story, and actually playing it. Using these principles, you don't create a character. You DISCOVER a character. Its like musical improvisation; the Game Master lays down a riff, a setting, an antagonist, allies, victims, comic relief; and you jam with it, creating your melodic lines and branchings. I originally was thinking of combat-orientated character, but I made a quite few Stealth rolls in the Stinking Woods, and now I'm quiet adept at moving unseen. Now your character is on a new path, that was unforeseen. The map has been lost, discarded. Your character can grow and surprise you.

I would imagine in most cases it doesn't matter, and the character can take her shots in her normal order. This would most likely come into play in complex fights when many PCs and NPCs are acting nearly simultaneously; it might be a significant factor for instance in a big gun battle, where a dash for cover might delay a PC taking a shot.

What was the deadline again? Can't seem to find it.

Stay safe!

I believe the Dreamlands supplement (for 5th ed.?) had a mini-campaign that had the Dreamers encounter Atlach-Nacha as she endlessly spins her web across that impossibly deep chasm.

If you were doing Pulp you could always invent a 'country', ala Ruritania . Its really about the atmosphere; some villagers making the sign against the 'evil eye', a crumbling pile of a church, the ruins of a haunted Roman villa. The only significant history is what the scenario requires; who broke the veil between realities, and how, how it must be undone, and how long ago. Anything else is fluff. Unless of course you have the bad luck to have an historian at your table! 😉

Hmmm. Perhaps you're being overly ambitious? I would collapse the 'Ages' into three myself: pre-industrial (neo-lithic up to Renaissance), industrial (Steam up to Atom Age), and information age (beginning of internet age up to trans-human/cyberpunk era). I don't think the distinctions are otherwise, game-wise, that significant.

I hear that there's a 'director's cut' that you can only find in Europe! 😉

I suspect there's a quite a bit of importance attached to who specifically you're fighting. Tribal Enemies, enemies from within your home culture (in the default setting this would be Sartarites). Out of Tribe enemies, enemies from foreign cultures (in the default setting this would most likely be Lunars). And 'Enemies of All'; bandits, oath-breakers, and the Chaos-tainted. In the latter it would be straight up 'Murder Hobo' time: kill them, and if they have anything that won't give me a disease or poison my soul with Chaos, take it. Out of Tribe Enemies would involve personal ransoms, but not necessarily equipment; though much captured equipment might end as a temple offering (no self-respecting Thane is going to want to be seen wearing a khopesh!). For Tribal Enemies there's probably a lengthy period of negotiation before the combat; how long will we fight, what are the boundaries of the battle-field, who are the healers. Part of this negotiation might involve staking 'prizes'. 'If we lose you get two mounts of your choice, and their tack. And if you lose we get Tarrek's bronze greaves and vambraces, and the 'Ever Plentiful Jug'. In some cases the 'prize' might be in the form of promises or favors, or even reputation bonuses: 'Tell the next three people you meet how we defeated you this day.'