albinoboo
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Posts posted by albinoboo
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26 minutes ago, Joerg said:
True, the wooden roof construction of Constantine the Great's basilika in Trier lasted until about 50 years ago in the German climate (though in an airy and dry environment, without any other material than timber involved in the construction).
Wood exposed to rain and sunlight will only last a few years in German climate - a well-impregnated scaffold around the caravan parking lot next to my house was reduced from three inch solid timber to paper thin remnants within two decades. Forgetting a gardening tool outside last autumn meant that the 1.5 inch diameter wooden handle had rotted so much that even light stress made it break.
Dead wood buildings exposed to the elements (and wasps) require maintenance and constant replacement of exposed portions of timber.
One way to prevent such exposure is to plaster or chalk such constructions, creating a look indistinguishable from a plastered stone or brick structure. But this very act will weaken at least the outside of the timber so covered, weakening the structure from the onset in exchange for keeping off damage.
Depends on the wood. Untread softwood will rot , hardwoods like Oak will last longer but some species last. Douglas Fir, Iron Wood, Cedar and Chestnut last centuries even in the ground. The Vikings used a method to prepare pine, in which they would deliberately wound the tree so that pine resin would leak out and form a natural preservative. That's why there a is an 11th Century stave Church at Urnes in Norway.
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5 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:
I'll go to my dungeon now...
Back to the mistress race roll?
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4 hours ago, Joerg said:
Material and technology is shaping architecture. Technology including enchantments and sorcery when it comes to Glorantha.
Poured concrete is mentioned as a technology employed in Pelanda in the Entekosiad, alongside bronze-clad hoplites.
Wooden mega-architecture doesn't have that many ways to go, although the wooden core can easily be hidden by a layer of plaster. Still, it is hard to avoid reminiscences of staff churches, Kiewian fortifications, Fort Laramie, etc.
You can span a great distance with wood than you can with stone, however in the Mediterranean climate, and further south, termites will eat the wood sooner or later. Hence the use of stone and mud brick for monumental buildings. The development of stone vaulting allowed greater distances to be spanned. However in the right climatic zone, a Greek design temple would have fewer supporting columns than the stone equivalent. A Gloranthan equivlant of Cedar of Lebanon that can produce beams around 30m in length gives a lot of freedom with design.
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1 hour ago, Gallowglass said:
I've been struggling to get a good visual sense of what Western cities actually look like. We have some excellent pieces of art from the GtG showing some background structures for cities in Seshnela and Safelster, and also Sog City, but these offer only tantalizing glimpses. I was initially thinking of all Malkioni as being way more Greek/Byzantine with style of dress and architecture, but the more I look into images of ancient Indian cities, temples, costume, etc. the more I can see that influence. Here's a good image I recently discovered on Wikipedia that could easily be a city in Seshnela or Ralios, minus the elephants.
For me this fits with the cities depicted in the Guide, a mix of stone and timber, stylized roofs in an apsidal structure, or lots of domes and spires. The only thing I'm noticing about ancient Indian architecture is that the pillars, walls and so forth are absolutely crammed with reliefs, statues, and depictions of gods, heroes and so forth. In Safelster I would bet this is also the case, but in places like Seshnela or Loskalm, I would think the decorations would be more abstract, favoring geometric principles. The description of temples to the Invisible God on p. 53 in the Guide kind of backs that up.
The pink city of Jaipur could be a model
https://www.rightpoint.com/-/media/jaipur/jaipur.jpg
http://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/180221121624-victor-cheng-jaipur.jpg
https://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/0d/27/24/4d/amer-fort-near-jaipur.jpg
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18 minutes ago, Ian Absentia said:
My immediate thought was the MGMT. On a Moore-ian level, is this an expression of the creator of the fiction recognising the role of a co-author? Or, mystically, the One God recognising the multiple facets of itself and its witnesses/agents, being MGMT and ENGR, or Greg and Sandy. It's starting to sound awfully Mostali, frankly.
!i!
You could argue it is a gnostic position with two equals battling for control of Glorantha.
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3 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:
Eh, personally I find "sir" fine. I mean, if Pentans can be "sultans" it's difficult to argue that "sir" somehow is inappropriate.
Depends on how much you disliked the RQ3 D&Dish version. I never really found a substitute that didn't sound a bit daft when you still have Dukes and Kings.
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3 hours ago, SDLeary said:
Just an FYI... regarding the collapse of cities, this viewpoint is not considered as hard and fast as it was even just a few years ago. Many sites in recent digs show some evidence of a switch from stone to more perishable materials for building (read wood).
As far as the Plague of Justinian is concerned... I'd pull the timeline forward, so that the Plague hits after the Lonazep Tounament (not a big shift), so that the beginning of the decline and the plague track each other... as does the fragmentation and fall of the countryside to the Saxons after.
SDLeary
In the case of Cirencester, the unburied bodies lying in the street is a bit of give away that the place was, in effect, abandoned. I know wood was used in some areas like Wroxter but even then 33 wooden structures dont make up a city of 15,000 that it was under Roman rule. Even the place was abandoned by the 670s
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Jar-eel likes to be told if she looks fat in that outfit.
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47 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:
I disagree. KAP1 certainly seemed to follow a sub-Roman view too, with a lot more Roman Names in use and Cadbury Castle as Camelot, and why the Romans as a people and military force continue to exist in the game. I think Pendragon could (and has) worked out fine for such a campaign. I think Greg's shift in empahsis from KAP1 to KAP 3/4 was becuase of his love of Mallory's work.
KAP5 seemed to be shifting thing further towards a more feudal, Norman Britain with more of the dark and gritty historical stuff coming back, even if it was from a later period of history.
Personally, I'm for starting the campaign more Roman-post Roman in flavor and having the culture evolve through the Periods.
I was refering to the real sub-Roman era. For instance, the Roman settlement of Cirencester. In 410 the city was a thriving town with a large forum to a few houses on the site of the amphitheatre by 440. Even though Saxon expansion was halted for 40 years, outside of the far North England, urban populations collaspsed. The country was reduced to a patch work of petty warlords and when the Justinian plague hit perhaps as much as 30% of the population died.
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2 minutes ago, Byll said:
I've got the planetary orbits to tilt with time of year, moved the south path to its approximate gates, and added the stars of the sky river to the sky-dome in this version. There's a chance that Orlanth's ring may be climbing the wrong side of the sky (opposite Rungate instead of through it). I can fix that later. I'm parking it for a few days now, as I'm off to a boardgames convention and then to the Royal Welsh Show. Nos da.
Is there a best herdman class at the Royal Welsh?
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23 minutes ago, Jeff said:
The Eye of the Half-Bird
Description
A perfectly spherical golden-yellow gemstone almost 6 cm in diameter with a large 3 cm black spot. The gemstone is semi-semi-transluscent.
Cults
Associated: Belintar.
Friendly: Lightbringer cults.
Knowledge
Famous, One of a Kind.
History
The Half-Bird is a remarkable entity that exists half-alive, and half-dead. The Half-Bird is claimed by some to be a child of Androgeus; others claim it is suffers under a curse from that entity. Belintar stabilised the Half-Bird's condition so that half of the bird is alive, while the other half is now skeletal remains. The Eye is part of the mortal remnants of that remarkable entity.
Powers
By expending 1 magic point and looking through the Eye, a user in the Mundane World can peer into the Spirit World; with 2 magic points, the viewer can see into the Gods World that lies behind our own. The viewer can see otherworld entities and interact with them.
The reverse is also true - and it enables discorporate spirits in the Spirit World to peer into and interact with the Mundane World.
Value
2000 L or more to the right buyer. The Half.Bird greatly desires the return of its eye and offers invaluable knowledge and magical secrets for its return.
Schrödinger's bird?
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The early Bernie Gunther novels, collected as Berlin Noir is good for the feel of inter war Germany.
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Great write up @Crel. Great ideas and nicely balanced.
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8 minutes ago, jajagappa said:
Small city-states. Perhaps some blend of ancient Mesopotamian (Ur/Gilgamesh etc), with ancient Greek (flavored by weird cults crossing Orlanthi and Seshnegi and Malkionism - sort of Hellenistic?), and then with a heavy dose of the multitude of Arkats.
Thanks for that. I will use Mycenaean Greek titles, like Wanax and Wanakt for officials and maybe the Sumerian Lugal. Perhaps use the glazed tiles of Ishtar gate as model for the city walls. A different tile colour could represent the local version of Arkats.
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I just watched a few of them through and the ones on about how to make your games scary contain good advice for any GM regardless of what rules you are playing.
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I know that most of the RQ3 era Safelster is now gone. Personally I never felt that comfortable with the pseudo medieval version so I don't mind that it has gone. However, I am trying to rework some old RQ3 material for RQG. I just need to get a flavor of Safelster's current culture for one section. So what direction should I be looking in.
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26 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:
Err, when?
I guess somewhere around 1972
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28 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:
By Crom, but that blew this barbarian's mind! And all I watched was the 34 second trailer!
You failed your San roll
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13 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:
Cool, jive hipster zoot suit wearing trolls, swinging pocket watches (taken from fallen Mostali (latest tech, split minute accuracy) wearing obsidian shades in a dark nightclub, wrong but... so right!
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The Crimson Bat isn't dead it's only resting
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40 minutes ago, klecser said:
Right now I have a prospective Green Elf and Duck. What might be some examples for them?
Ducks are largely the same as Orlanthi but anything after Starbrow's revolt would change. Fazzur Wideread declared a Duck hunt and all Ducks had go to into hiding untill the liberation of Sartar.
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3 hours ago, fulk said:
In the end, whatever works in your game.
I'm for a higher default for several reasons. If you look at late medieval and early rinascimento fencing manuals (Fiore, Marozzo) one of the things they point out is that the principles defense (footwork etc) are the same. The guards, footwork, etc for a pole axe are the same as for a longsword, etc. Some like Pietro Monte point out that everybody knows that you can use a one-handed sword more or less the same way as a longsword/bastard sword, so he's not going to talk about 1-h swords. These manuals also show that fighters trained and were aware of a range of weapons. I assume, in a KAP environment, that knights are familiar with swords, maces, and axes, but prefer one. So dropping to 5 as a starting point, seems unrealistic. YPMV
It's not just about stance and guards. It's about where you target and the angle of impact of the blow. You can't target weak spots in the armour with a mace in the same way that can with a sword. What would be a glancing blow with a sword would cave in armour with a mace.
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The tone of the sub Roman Arthur just doesn't fit with Pendragon. The 5th-6th century Arthur is a world in collapse, with Arthur desperately trying to hold back the incoming tide of Saxons. The rules are written with the 15th century idealised version of chivalry in mind, not the grim dark last stand of the Britons. The historic Arthur, if there is one, should be a setting for BRP rather than trying to get Pendragon to fit.
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Does an Uz s**t in the woods?
in Glorantha
Posted
Do windlords fart ?