Monty Lovering

5 hours ago, lordabdul said:

f they need to spot an ambush about to happen, or a trap about to go off, I let them roll, because if even if they fail, well, the ambush or the trap will be revealed a second later

If there's an instant resolution, fine. But if people are hiding from them, then they won't know that they passed them three hours ago, or spend twenty minutes stalking a bear.

5 hours ago, lordabdul said:

They know to separate their knowledge from their character's knowledge

I think a character thinking they've been insulted by someone who asked them to pass the salt plays better if the player thinks their character has been insulted by someone who asked them to pass the salt. And it's hard to play a character that you know has fumbled a knowledge roll and now thinks something totally wrong about the Thanatari they are about to attack.

5 hours ago, Mechashef said:

I'm not sure I'd agree with all of those.  

 

I'd put Hide in the GM category.  I can see arguments for Sneak (Move Quietly) being in either.  Communication and Knowledge skills could also be in either.

 

I think in general, I have no problems with the players rolling Move Quietly, Communication and Knowledge skills because usually, except for a fumble, they know whether they have succeeded.  

That’s the entire thing. If you roll and they fumble, then they think they’re tight about what someone said, or a fact. etc., and you misinform them accordingly. 

Good question and one I need to resolve before my next campaign. 

I am paying Pathfinder as a player at the moment and that’s got a Spot roll based on the Perception skill. 

And the GM rolls it. 

For RQ I’d make a roll based on the highest Scan skill of the party with a bonus based half next highest Scan skill or 2% x party size > max 20%.

Things that were not in plain sight would need a roll of x0.5 of the above. Less obvious things x0.25. 

I’d treat Hidden things like Dodge to an attack.

And in general I am totally down with the GM rolling skills where the player will not know if they have succeeded or failed or fumbled until after they roll. 

Because people hear things wrongly or make a mistake about what they have seen. Or think there’s something there when there isn’t, etc., or think there’s nothing there when there is. 
 

You just need to record who gets a skill check.

I assume Oration-based attempts have been made to convince people. Maybe just targeting the women who were not blood kin, as the women of the village would know if he was a wrong 'un.

As far as summoning a spirit goes, if it could be proved it WAS his spirit, even if the abductor was in their right mind, as the OP points out, expecting him to say "It's a fair cop guv, I done abducted her, I deserved being killed" is a bit of a stretch. How do you know if a spirit is lying? Dunno.

So I say, isn't this what Divination is for?

As there are no witnesses, she can challenge them; "Take me to the temple if you think I Iie, pay the priests, let them determine if I lie or not. If I lie, take my head and everything I posses".

Obviously this leads to a whole bunch of questions, like how much would it cost, would the priest's want to get involved (maybe they reserve Divinations for actually important stuff not petty bloodfueds), would the caster of Divination tell the truth about what the spell revealed, etc.. And the first of these questions is whether they would call her bluff and actually do it or back down.

The performance is Orate for some types of poetry, and Sing for others.

You can't deliver 'If' by Rudyard Kipling by singing. But arguably 'Sing' would be a better skill to deliver Beowulf with. I'd say just decide what from of delivery is used by a culture. For Orlanthi it's probably Sing.

Either can be augmented as per normal by an appropriate Passion for the subject of the poem.

For writing I would make new skills, maybe 'Lyricist' and 'Composer', Lyricist being used for poems and the lyrics of songs/

In my house rules a special gives a choice of special attacks rather than just a damage bonus.

So, for example a 2H spear user specialing can choose to have  a follow-up attack (which takes place in the same MR), attempt a Knockback, inflict Maximum damage, or attempt a Trip attack. 

Other weapons offer different choices. 

I’ve also tweaked SRs so there a bigger difference between spears and other 1 or 2H weapons, and if an attacker misses and the defender has a successful parry, they can then choose to make a follow up attack. 

Basically any combat system should make spears a clear choice for primary weapon as that’s what they were in real life. 
 

4 hours ago, Loïc said:

The Roman army beared the cost of it when they began to colonize North Africa.... They quickly understood light cavalry was more efficient than the legions! 😁

There is:

No leather under the strips of metal, but of course you coudn't wear this straight on your skin. The contemporary texts are quite unanimous (for the Roman army) about woolen or flax clothes (tunics) - probably depending on the climate and/or season.

Don't know for Greeks, sorry!

No, that's lorica segmentata. Not what I meant.

What is generally understood by the term splint mail is something like this:

Basically thick leather greaves or vambraces with relatively thin strips of metal running along their length. In part the transition period (from full maille armour to full plate armour) they were very much a thing (along with brigantines) and as an ensemble would look like this.

Obviously this is as Ancient as a grenade launcher (looks at Mostali), but equally obviously taking heavy leather vambraces and greaves and adding strips of metal is not high tech -  they'd just not have couters or poleyns (elbow and knee protection).

Bronze Age rapiers are long blades optimised for thrusting but still with a cutting edge, and a thick central rib down the length of the blade to make up for the relatively poor choice of bronze for a thin pointy weapon (it's too bendy). The handle were simple, literally a handle. They were very distinctive in appearance and in use from the shorter cut/thrust blades with leaf-shaped blades that are perhaps what come to mind when one thinks of a Bronze Age sword.

They share a name with the Renaissance rapier, which were longer, thiner, might not even have much of an edge, were made of steel, and had a complex hilt to protect the user's hand.

The similarity is they are both very much a 'stick them with the pointy end' sword, as distinct from a cut & thrust sword.

I'd totally agree that studded leather was very much not a tin and is the result of the rivets in a coat of plates being misinterpreted in visual representations.

But splinted armour  - where strips of metal are added to a leather or linen base - was very much a thing, even if only for limbs and maybe helmets.

I'll argue extensively about medical armour as that what I now a bit about. I don't know if there is any proof of splinted armour in the Ancient world.

It is not exactly rocket science - making a cuttable material less cuttable by putting ruddy great strips of metal along it. Hard to believe no one thought of it until the transitional period of Medieval armour.

Anyone better informed than me about this? 

15 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Except that they did make Plate Curisasses, which are also rigid. There were curiboilli curiasses in RQ2. Stats were identical to the Linen Cuirass except that they cost 40L instead of 25L.

The Cuirboilli Cuirass was probably dropped because no one is going to spend nearly twice the price for functionally identical armor. Especially when Ring Mail protects better for 50L.

Except ring is noisy and linen problematic in the wet or extremely hot environments.

7 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

That's probably how it works in Glorantha. Hippogriffs have some sort of air rune association that lets them fly, rather than generating lift to overcome the force of gravity (does gravity even exist in Gloantha?).I think it has to work that way. With what I know of aircraft and horses, I doubt a hippogriff could run fast enough for it's wings to provide enough lift to make it airborne, plus I doubt the wings could take the wingloading (around 125kg per wing) if it could. So probably magic is providing most of the lift.

 

Yup. And allowing their flyingness to be intrinsic and magical, and their wings to just be feathery oars, also means they can actually have riders. Otherwise they'd be grounded as soon as someone sat astride.

It reminds me a bit of the dragons from the Pern books by Anne McCathery. At some point it was realised that they shouldn't be able to fly, let alone with a rider. It was realised they primarily supported themselves by subconscious telekinetics. From then on the answer to 'how much can a drain carry' was "However much it thinks it can".

There's no point in treating hippogriffs, griffons, dragons, etc. flying as an exercise in physics. Handwavium, or hippogriff wingwavium rules.

This thread is quite lovely.

I've seen Todd of ToddsWorkshop make some cuirbolli (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO_nG6OpCKg), essentially using hot animal glue to soak leather, like using resin to soak glass fibre. This leather hard is enough to cut softwood with, but didn't perform well against arrows, which he thinks is an indication that some work is needed on his recipe to make is less hard.

The guy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwGW_qwpxYsThis bloke approaches if from a SCA perspective http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Articles/Perfect_Armor_Improved.htm and dips leather in 80C water before forming. Tis produces leather resilient enough to be used in full-contact non-sharp combat.

Historically, from cuirbolli shield found in Irish bogs to language (cuirass, as someone has noted) to multiple reference of it being used, cuirbolli was a thing, and a thing used for armour.

It seems that we have a classic issue here of people with siloed specialities not getting to look into other silos where people are talking about the same thing.

Makes me want to go buy some veg-tanned leather and play...

As for ring mail, oh I love 18th Century "research". This all too often consists of someone (well, a white male European) sat at a desk reading and then making stuff up as they went along. The differences the different patterns used to portray armour in the Bayeux Tapestry could be no more than an individual embroiderer's taste. In some of the scenes where it varies from circles to squares it's where one individual partially obscures another, making a choice of a different patterns to show 'armour' an obvious artistic choice. Embroiderers were likely neither asked to show the various forms of armour worm on the day or even knowledgeable of the same. Etc..

Again, with ring mail there's a lot of smoke. I don't mind having ring mail. Seems a reasonable form of armour as does stud, I mean bezainited leather 😜 

Well, as everyone knows, there are neither African or European hippogriff in Glorantha. It's Genertelan or Pamatelan, obviously 😛 

I think the answer to your question depends on how you see Gloranthan physics and biology.

Hippogriff range from 99 to 366kg. They are logically carnivores although they might be scavengers as well as hunters. In the Bestiary it says they are 'tamable if raised from the egg', but then seems to imply that the 'impression' of the Hippochick is immediately followed by breaking it. Which sounds hinky as it implies they emerge from the egg fully grown. Big eggs. I think MG will vary with "Impression" taking place two years before they can be broken.

But I digress.

Given a value for G of anything that makes sense and an oxygen percentage in the atmosphere that is likewise believable (maybe it's called Oooo-gas, but you know what I mean), they cannot fly. At all. Just no.

So they are intrinsically magical flyers. The wings are there because flying things have wings, but the majority of the 'uplift' is magic.

So, of course they can hover.

I'd say they have an ability to float at whatever altitude they want (like a fish in water), but use wings to waft themselves about. At a hover they probably just lazily station-keep with their wings.

It's good in the upcoming cults book the requirement is simply no marriage. The ones in Storm Tribe would be unhealthy, to say the very least.

On 8/8/2020 at 4:16 PM, soltakss said:

I have always allowed it, even if a head has been chopped off.

Although lip-reading or a handy set of bellows are useful in this circumstance.

On 8/7/2020 at 9:33 PM, lordabdul said:

I personally run with the same house rule than everybody (dead at the end of next round), but I did mention the possibility of something like this (dead after CON rounds). Interesting to see someone running with it.

It has the (maybe desired?) effect that bigger monsters will take longer to die. For example, dinosaurs would take more than 30 rounds to die, unless someone puts them out of their misery... do you have anything for this, i.e. a "threshold" past which the dinosaur would die immediately? I think that threshold could probably be "minus CON in HP"... so if you manage to put the dinosaur at -31HP it dies immediately (assuming CON 31). That requires tracking negative HP, but at least you can indeed put someone out of their misery.

I'm also curious about the extra bookkeeping. Counting CON rounds until death is simple enough, but actually reducing CON every round has side-effects:

• CON affects HP, so as they lose CON, their maximum HP also goes down. If you cast the spirit magic Heal spell on the victim, you have to consider that they only gain HP back up to their current (lower) maximum HP. Do you play it like that?
• CON also affects ENC, so after you've cast Heal, they might not be able to carry their full loadout to go to safety. Do you also track that?
• CON and damage are also intertwined in other situations such as drowning, asphyxiation, and poison, but I haven't looked too closely at what your rule would mean there.

I'm personally a big fan of re-using similar mechanics from one situation to another, so if I wanted to lower the mortality rate of RQ characters, I would probably use a kind of "Saving Throw" mechanism similar to the mechanics for drowning and asphyxiation:

• Every round after you reach 0 HP or less, you roll for CONx5. After the 5th round, decrease the multiplier (x4, x3, x2, x1). On a failure, you die.
• If you take further damage, make an extra roll. If you reach -CON HP, you die automatically.

....or something like that.

Oh if Fred with 2HP left and 10CON takes three arrows in a round totalling 12 damage, Fred dead. 
 
But outside of that, anyone who has been incrementally reduced to 0HP, big monsters with massive CON and otherwise (without an 2x to vitals on the way) will take a while to die. 

I would even give a single CONx1 roll for the character/monster to stop losing CON before death and remain unconscious until natural healing put them in positive HP or a vulture tore out their gizzards.  There’s plenty of accounts of people waking up on battlefields after being left for dead, and of big animals shot by hunters being left for dead and then not being there when the bearers turn up to skin and butcher it  

It’s fun. PC’s have to decide whether to just leave fallen foe, finish them off, or heal them and ransom them. A messy encounter with a herd of buffalo outside of Dykene can end up making future trips through the area riskier as there’s that one bull everyone swore was dead but now holds a grudge against the party.

And it means that if a well-loved character dies because of stupid bad luck when scouting ahead, or something, they can be found in time. Rolling up new PCs or having every party eternally indebted to CA is just not fun. You can even have a new party who screwed up and thought they were playing D&D end up on the floor or fleeing survive, as the ones who fled can return to the stripped bodies and find that they’re not quite dead.

It’s all about narrative. Bad luck and inexperience can be ameliorated. If someone knowingly takes a chance or knew better I am less sympathetic. People can die easy enough in RQ (many crits on any vital), and my games have a fair potential amount of ‘percussive negotiation’  Violence  is always an option. 

I could not be arsed tracking HP reductions due to losing CON, but I like my HP RQ3 style, so it’s not as much of an issue (and being a duck is risky and big creatures are really fucking tough). 

I’ve no problem with a character recently healed to postIve HP being weak as a kitten if they took such a mauling they lost CON too. For me, normal healing magic knits together what’s there. It doesn’t recreate limbs or blood lost. It stops the Enegizer/Duracell Bunny syndrome of parties getting hacked up and healing and repeating the process again and again. CON loss can necessitate withdrawing to recover.

I’m not too worried about drowning rules as getting stabbed in the guts is every few sessions. Drowning? Less so. 

I’ve played with reducing CONx% rolls and prefer just docking CON. 

And I came up with a system for poison I far prefer. Wish I could find where I wrote it down, LOL

I feel characters go from running around right as rain despite being covered in wounds to unfixably dead far too quickly.

IMG, characters take damage to CON after reaching 0HP, and when at 0HP or below will lose 1 CON per MR until they hit 0 CON. Then they are dead dead.

If they get healed before then, they will stop losing CON, even if it's just a successful First Aid roll and they are still below 0 HP. They can be healed to positive HP as healing magic and first aid allows but are unconscious until then.

This stops people dying with such annoying regularity.

So, basically an average human taken to 0 HP will bleed out and die or have their brain turn to mush because of not breathing after two minutes (10MR). None of this dead in 12 seconds stuff, it's just not a thing. Unless they lose their head or its contents or have extreme damage to chest or abdomen, people, don't die that quickly.

I balance this by making CON healable only by Heal Body or subsequent First Aid rolls taken on a daily basis (I actually treat First Aid as a Healing skill, not solely a First Aid skill), or weekly gains based on their normal CON, or potions.

This creates great tension getting to someone in a realistic amount of time to stop them dying rather than the oh well can't do it this MR, and means if characters are unlucky or bite off more than they can chew, then they will be licking their wounds and learning from their mistakes rather than rolling new characters.

I run similar 'lose CON when below 0' rules for locations too.

On 5/24/2020 at 8:09 AM, Brootse said:

Roleplaying in Glorantha p. 219 says that:

The Lance: A lance can be used in a charge, a straight run of 20 meters or more. If a target is hit during a charge, the damage bonus of the animal ridden is used, not that of the rider. If the adventurer using the lance has had no training in its use, they can use it at 1/2 their normal attack chance with a one-handed spear, unless their Ride skill is below that. It can also be used as a one-handed spear if the adventurer has the necessary STR and DEX to use a long spear one-handed.

How much STR and DEX is that?

Oh that's a whole can of worms.

On 5/24/2020 at 11:56 AM, soltakss said:

p209 says STR 9 DEX 7 for a Lance and Short Spear or STR 9 DEX 9 for a Javelin.

 

It most certainly does but those are 1H weapons on the table whereas on p211 it says that the "long cavalry lance about 3.5–4.25 meters long, used with both hands"

So we have the lance referred to as a one handed charging weapon that can be used as a 1H long spear when not charging when there is no 1H long spear in the weapons tables, and the lance being described as a 2H weapon, all in the space of 10 pages. I'm a copywriter, I will literally proof RuneQuest stuff for free, just so you know. 😄 

I think the problem is that we have a confusion in the Core Book of the later the 'we have stirrups' 1H lance, that was couched under one arm at the charge and indeed, used as a 1H long spear when not at the charge (don't think of the conical ones with hand guards used for jousting, that was much, much later) with the much earlier 'we do not have stirrups' 2H lance, or more properly the xyston or kontos, getting thoroughly mixed up with each other. Maybe different people worked on different sections? Did I mention I am a copywriter? 😛 

Glorantha canonically has stirrups, and IIRC correctly, everyone is totally aware that this is utterly anachronistic and many are not bothered by it, which I heartily approve of.

So you can choose to have a no stirrups and the lance then HAS to be 2H, and you can just read the line on p209 as saying the lance is 2H, which then makes total sense. Just ignore anything that says otherwise.

Or you can choose to have stirrups and to read the lance as being 1H, like it says in the table. But in that case which case STR 11/DEX 9 might be mores sensible for 1H use, and this would allow a new line for 1H long spear as well, which was definitely a thing.

Or you can have BOTH, and have some cultures using stirrups and others not. But given the rapidity with which horses were adopted by plains Indians along with all their tack, it's hard to see say, Praxians not adopting the stirrup when exposed to it - unless it's associated with horses I guess.

Roll20 for the virtual tabletop, character sheets and dice plus Discord for voice.

In some respects the fog of war feature offers better functionality than playing face-to-face, for example when the players are exploring an area.

17 hours ago, prinz.slasar said:

I guess the thing you are looking for is not in the MYTHRAS Core Rulebook.
In the supplement MYTHIC CONSTANTINOPLE are additional, new Weapon traits named Flanged and Puncturing.
These traits and rules are made for your suggestions that pointy and crushy things are better against armour.

In short and to simplify here, both weapon traits enable the weapon to ignore some armour points.
Flanged is for blunt weapons and Puncturing is for pointed ones.
 

Yeah, that's kinda of what I want, but I think I'm just going to handle it with a damage + on a dice for weapons that are better at penetrating armour that only counts vs armour.

And all weapons would just get a set die or dice of damage, no plus, normally. And damage bonus would come down to simple pluses rather than whole die.

This stops, foe example, daggers doing 4 damage minimum if you have a damage bonus, which is just not right.

And it makes it easier than traits, which are kind of deal with by my specials table.

So what I am boiling it down to is:

Criticals do double WEAPON damage or ignore armour, whichever is more damage.

Specials are resolved on a table with a result according to weapon type (varying between a follow-up attack with the dominant hand or offhand, or a weapon specific weapon effect, such as axes pulling shields aside and allowing attacks with no parry from the SR of the axe blow to the end of the round (and that means if it happens on SR7, someone fighting with the axeman can change intent and attack the target who can't parry, which is exactly why axes were so cool). I have a d6 table with columns for Slash, Impale, Crush, Articulated, Shield, Brawling, Axe, 2H Pole and Missile.

And if someone hits with say a war hammer which is 1d8+3 on leather they do a d8, it they hit someone with plate they still do a d8 but ignore 3 points of armour.

Of course, after play testing I might junk it and go raw.

1 hour ago, Thaz said:

In the shared Glorantha of Beer with Teeth :-

Ducks do indeed lisp.

Trolls talk in 1920's gangster ergot (We is Uz, this is DagoryInkearth and we is the boyz gunna make you gory)

The Dwarf of Dwarf Hold at least speaks in a thick Yorkshire accent (And what's tat to do with price o' fish in Pavis?)

Elves dont talk much at all but when they do it's like sunshine through the trees....which doesnt sound like anything and is confusing.

Bad Tradetalk sounds like Zomerzettt

Bad language skills result in conversations about Mushrooms. ("What did he say?" "Something, something, Mushrooms?"

Dragonewts alternately hiss and click and speak Received English in between. With occasional science terminology, 

Eeee by gum. I'd not thoht a'Yorksire accent like. Mayhap m'dwarves will be Yorkshire like en me elves Welsh. 

12 hours ago, jajagappa said:

I never did any during my face-to-face campaign days. 

But in my current PbF game, Ducks have a definite lisp. And Ravens always have a lot of interjected croaking sounds.

Love the lisping ducks idea!

10 hours ago, JustAnotherVingan said:

I'm not good at accents and not sure who would suit my limited repertoire.

Geordie trolls and (South Wales) Valleys elves perhaps?

I refuse to do Scottish dwarves though, too cliched.

Dwarves are Welsh IMG. Trolls speak like the trolls in Terry Pratchett books, as exemplified in this troll explaining the definition of the troll word for forbidding "lit'rally der time when you see dem little pebbles an' you jus' know there's gonna be a great big landslide on toppa you and it already too late to run", but not in any particular accent that would render if offensive. Elves speak posh English "Oh I am so sorry to disturb you, but you seem to have taken an axe to a cousin of mine and I am going to have to kill you". Dragonewts, just stick your tongue out when you speak...

19 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Make sure to advertise it here in case you're looking for players... some of us might be interested!

I realized that I had thought of Russian accents, but I figured I would reserve those for things like Fronela, where they have big furry coats and big furry hats. Especially the Rasputin-looking Zzaburi sorcerers.

Good idea, I will advertise here.

Reason I go for Russian is I play with a German so using it as the stock baddy accent won't really work that well!

31 minutes ago, AndreJarosch said:

For me Illumination has something in commen with science. 

If you live in Glorantha, where everything is about myth, and you see the patterns behind these myth, rather to follow the stories, then you become something like the first natural scientists of Earth: Galileo, Newton... 

There comes a moment you see behind all these myth and stories and see the pattern, and from there is no way back. You always will see the patters besides or instead of the myths. 
That makes you a very lonely being: because with your understanding of the world you are outside of the group you were raised. 

You can still follow the way of Orlanth, Ernalda, Humakt, ... but with your understanding you don´t belive in them anymore, you use the patterns for which they stand for your own interests. 

Yeah this is kinda like the spin I put on it.

Illuminates are ambitheists; they know gods exist but realise they were once mundane and that the mundane may become gods, so don't think it's that special. Just dangerous entities to be avoided or exploited.

I like the idea of Praxian's having untrained camp dogs that alert them to strangers as that is what dogs do, but the dogs are essentially scavengers and playthings for children plus occasional food; the animals that the Praxians are fixated on are their herd animals.

This makes Balazar different, as they have no herd beasts but a closer relationship with dogs who are well trained and valued.

Nice contrast. And it makes me think that the Lunars have adopted the use of trained guard dogs originally from Balazar that are regarded as scavengers by Praxians and appositional to alynxes by Sartarites and Heortlanders.