Shawn Carpenter

I think you're right on the money. If Ernalda was presented as a goddess whose compassion is mixed with a healthy dose of pragmatism whose main goal is the continuance of community, I think she'd be a lot more popular with players. I've always been of the mindset that an Ernaldan rune lord would be much more intimidating than an Orlanthi rune lord. She's much more politically astute, has the force of community behind her, and has extremely powerful rune affinities.

There's always next time!

Yeah, that's gorgeous. If I wasn't already playing HQ, I would be after seeing that. The character sheet clearly shows the narrative strengths of the game!

Valley of Plenty, which is meant to be new HQ/QW GM/PC friendly, includes lists of "things your initiate of cult X can do" and "things your devotee of cult X can do." They're examples, not an exhaustive list. They're intended to help players get a feel for the sort of magic associated with each cult. I might put together a free download that also gives some examples of charms and "battle magic." It's pretty easy for those of us who played RQ1, 2, and 3 to come up with magic appropriate to a character belonging to a specific cult, but it's not as transparent to a player who's being exposed to the setting for the first time. I strongly agree that a set "spell list" is not the way to go with HQ or QW, but I think a solid list of cult specific examples are very helpful, especially for new players and GMs.

I'd love to see that happen!

After talking to my smarter-half, I've come to the same decision. I'll make sure that these guidelines are posted on our FB page and my blog (and here, of course) and point folks at 'em untested suggestions.

I don't think it would be difficult at all. A lot of the content focuses on social RP, which is system agnostic. The rest should work as a strong outline for a reasonably experienced RQ GM.

Here's one idea for converting the childhood adventures of the Wildlings to RQG. It relies on some storytelling game-style abstractions, so it may not be everyone's cup of tea. Determine basic traits like STR, DEX, CHA, as usual, but assume that they are only comparative to other children. When the Wildlings grow up, their stats will be comparitive to other adults. Assign each character a skill called Child's Play with a base rating of 50%. This skill represents a Jaldonkiller kid's basic proficiency in childhood activities. Determine each character's primary trait. Do they bull through games by relying on their STR? Or do they relay on the INT to find a smarter way to win? The bonus associated for whatever trait you choose is added to your Child's Play skill. Use Child's Play in place of all other skills on the character sheet. Want to punch someone? Child's Play. Want to jump across a creek? Child's Play. Want to win a game of Finding Ernalda? Child's Play. All of the Wildling's opponents will also have a single skill: Bully. Set an opponent's Bully skill to represent how much of a challenge you want them to be to the Wildlings. If they're a push-over, make it a 30%. If they're average, make it 60%. If they're tough, go with 75%. Really dangerous foes might be as high as 90%. Determine Hit Points normally. Determine damage normally, but bear in mind that unless a scenario states otherwise, damage to children represents bruises and scratches, not great gashes and severed limbs. Armor doesn't count. Kids don't have it and their opponents don't need it. They're tussling with KIDS. Nobody has any spells or magic abilities other than those described in a given scene. Once the Wildlings reach adulthood, work out their normal starting skills based on their traits. If you think they've done things as kids that might give them an extra bit of skill as an adult, award skills or bonuses at a level that suits your style of play. If you guys like this and think it's workable, I'll add it as an appendix to the book.

Disregard what I said above. I misread RQG as HQG. RQG would require some hacking. The source material and scenarios would still be useful. You'd need to cook up some stat blocks. I have some ideas on how to handle kid skill levels, too. I'll post them up later.

The only problem you might run into is that we use the extended contest rules from QW in some of the scenarios. You can grab those rules from the SRD or just use the scored contests from HQ instead. There's really no hacking required.

Thanks! I'm using the spelling provided in the SRD licensing chapter. Here's an example: We're writing this for QuestWorlds because that allows us to support Chaosium's new product. Since QW is substantively similar to HQ, that's no impediment to folks using the book for those rules instead.

I thought some of the folks here on the forum might want to see the introduction page for the Jonstown Compendium book Peggy Carpenter and I are working on. We expect to release it in two or three weeks (the long Memorial Day weekend took some of the wind out of our sails). I'm really happy with the work that Dixie (our layout guru) did on the page design! I hope you like it, too. If you have any questions about the book, don't be shy!

THIS is why QuestWorlds is going to be such a great ruleset and HeroQuest already is. There's literally NOTHING players can throw at a GM that can't be handled by some application of the basic rules. That makes for some FUN games, and fun is what it's all about, IMO!

In initial character creation, they cost 1 point and come with 3 breakouts with set values. You get extra points to bump those ratings up if you please. If your Sidekick dies, you can replace them for free. If you want to add a Sidekick later, I'd go with Simon's tip: charge the PC for a new keyword. I'd still give the Sidekick the breakouts and points to improve them, though. Like Peggy said, Sidekicks are great RP hooks. They're people, after all, and probably have baggage of their own that the PC has to help carry now. It's also fun to play a PC's SK as the GM, or even let another PC play them. You still have to obey the PCs instructions, but you can have a lot of fun putting the SK's personality into the execution of those instructions! The whole Sidekick and Follower mechanism is one of my favorite things about HQ/QW.

Now that is vengeful behavior!

Sounds like a great time was had by all! Your campaign seems to be off to a stellar start! The longer I play HQ/QW the less likely I am to use an extended contest unless the players will be disappointed if I don't. I've found that group simple contests satisfy them enormously and give each of them a chance to shine in some way. We've gotten to where we'll go two or three sessions without rolling a die, which might be excessive, but it works for us!

Thanks for this! It just gave me a great idea for something to include in the next Jaldonkillers book.

I'm following and I've put a link to it on my blog as well.

Thanks, Bruce! First, the good news: You can't put more than 10 points in anyone ability during character creation and you only have 20 points to spend. You have two traits that start at 17, so if you dumped 10 points into each of them, you'd have two abilities at 7M and everything else at 13 (or +1, for breakouts). Unless your narrator only hits you with challenges involving your two uber-abilities, you're probably going to have a rough time with most contests. A rating of 13 isn't bad, but the baseline resistance number is 14, so it isn't great, either. This probably isn't going to be the answer you're looking for, because I'm terrible at optimizing characters and I discourage it in my game, but hear it is, anyway: Don't worry about your scores too much. They can be augmented, bumped up by Hero Points, raised by positive modifiers, improved through play, and brought up in batches by mastery catch-ups. Instead of worrying too much about spreading points around evenly or most efficiently, pick the key things you want to identify your character and run those up. If that leaves you with 13s in several abilities, who cares? You can improve them through play and your low scores in an ability are giving another PC with a high score in it a chance to shine. This is entirely my opinion. I'll bet their are more mathematically inclined folks out there who can give you an answer that addresses your question better.

There have been a lot of questions about QW character creation on the various Glorantha related FB pages, so I wrote up a step-by-step walk-through and posted it to my blog. If you're interested, you can find it here: https://dscarpenter.wordpress.com The character I use in the example isn't Gloranthan. She's an Operator that will feature in a small project I'm working on. I think it's still useful for Gloranthan players, though, and demonstrates that QW can handle any genre.

In most cases, you're not going to resolve the entire plot with one die roll. Why would you want to do that? If the story is interesting to run, it's interesting enough to spend some time telling it. Break the overall story down into Acts. Then break those Acts down into Scenes. Then break those down into Beats. Then play your story out a beat at a time to resolve the scenes, or a scene at a time to resolve the acts. Roll the dice when a random outcome would make the game more fun, tense, or interesting. Truthfully, from a game-mastering perspective, I don't run QW any differently than I run ANY game. I'm a big believer in following Elmore Leonard's advice and skipping the boring stuff.

Outstanding! Congratulations to the whole QW team for their hard work!

We'll be publishing our stuff as Troupe Games. Since I like how it came out, here's our logo!

Yes. For it has taken on the symbolic role of 'wanting compatibility between the vision of Glorantha presented in multiple *current* products is a valid player desire that should be supported, not treated with bafflement or condescension'. I'm not saying that nothing should ever change, but at least some understanding that there is an actual issue, and perhaps some suggested options for resolution, would be nice. For myself, as a somewhat successful game publisher in another branch of the hobby, I can't think of anything better than having a significant portion of my players enthusiastically identify with some aspect of my game. I always looked at player investment as a good thing, even if it sometimes baffled me (and it did). It's a lot better to have players vocally arguing to retain a beloved aspect of a game than screaming to have something hateful removed. I honestly don't understand the kerfuffle here from a design standpoint. Having two competing sun gods in the same region makes for good social RP. Leaving the outcome up in the air for the moment makes for good suspense and allows GMs some latitude in putting their own spin on things. Where's the problem in that? Again, I know that everyone is free to ignore the official published take on E vs. Y, I'm just baffled that player loyalty to Elmal is seen as "non-Gloranthan" instead of beneficial and satisfying. Also - if YGWV, how the heck is anything "non-Gloranthan?"

Yeah, there's not much to be done when you're moving a plot forward that has been more-or-less static for a couple of decades. You are definitely damned if you do and if you don't. In that case, you might as well be damned for doing and hope that some of the old fans will come along for the ride. The "lesson learned" should be that if you keep the plot moving, people can follow it at their own pace. If you the plot is static too long, people will move it forward themselves and will likely be annoyed rather than excited when the story does jump forward again.