g33k

Something I learned running games at 'Con events (where time is at a premium, and you don't have a commitment to pick things up the following week/month/whatever) ... In a mystery, have a few Red Herrings in your back pocket that you can throw out to slow the pace; occasionally, the players will luck into the Right Answer and slice anticlimactically through most of an adventure in half an hour; also have a pocketful of clues, ranging from subtle to blatant; usually, the players will need some extra help.

It's still moving stuff. The stuff people are pointing to as not-working-in-zero-G , even though it may seem like nothing's moving, stuff IS moving. Still, it could be using much LESS energy.

Must you ALWAYS contort things so, Joerg? (and with ducks!)

Which leads me in turn to wonder about red-headed female thieves . What other separate-identity masks does Orlanth have?

Desemborth is a thief, one of the warband of Vingkot, possibly a Thunder Brother. Possibly "the thief god" of the Orlanthi. Possibly a mask or an avatar or an aspect of Orlanth, "Orlanth the thief" in a similar way to how Vinga is "Orlanth the woman;" separate, but the same (gods are weird that way). Possibly this has changed, through the years and the iterations of publication? Possibly this has always been ambiguous? Possibly I don't know what the f--- I'm talkwriting about?

Pretty much what it says on the tin. We got these "dinosaur" thingee's in Glorantha. On the one hand, we know that dino's are "devolved" or "degenerate" dragonewts. Dragons summoned dino's by the hundreds to the Dragonkill, used them to break the formations of soldiers, etc. Pretty much "Dino's come from (and are subject to) Dragon(ewt)s" and DONE. On the other hand, we have Maran Gor, the Earth Shaker, the Mother of Quakebeasts. She created them. They obey her. DONE. Now, I am ... hrmm... I am pretty sure that Maran Gor is neither Dragon nor 'newt. And that they don't particularly honor or revere her. Is this just One Of Those Things? Or is there some Deep Mystery -- or obvious d'oh -- that I'm tripping over as I post, but haven't yet painfully hit the ground with my already-tender face?

My inner snarky a**hole seems to have had an Unholy Lovechild with the anal retentive geek in me. This nasty offspring points out that it's one-sixy-NINE that's square. Somebody is off by 2.

Yes, but the query is specifically (as I understand it) if the player may opt to change the "form" of the value received. If the table specifies 200L from here, and 500L from there, may the character instead begin play with 700L worth of goods and/or services? Still coming from the same ancestor(s) and patron(s), but coming as non-cash awards...

Well, maybe SOME buying. Maybe he inherited a busy mercantile operation in Boldhome, and needs to buy goods to sell there; maybe he inherited lands outside Sartar-proper ("outside" because, as noted, Clan lands are Clan-owned) and needs to decide if he'll have ranching or farming, and either way what he'll put onto the land... and then BUY that! (And get some people to work the hides). Etc.

No, mon. Once dem Hyeen' gets dere teeth in ya, Mon... thy fate be sealed, mon! Quest on, righteously!

Did/does Ralzakark pass the Ten Tests? Or did that become obsolete with the Monster Empire? Or are TPTB still dancing around the question of whether the Illuminated-Broo-Unicorn-Hero Monster Emperor was-or-was-not Ralzakark?

A similar spin-off that came to me as I was thinking about this thread is to take a group of Praxian's from different Tribes, organized around a cult/religions mission (such as all Daka Fal, needing to find some skull, or a Fetish once wielded by Tada, or etc; or all Eiritha, dispatched from the Paps by MRE, to investigate/remedy the loss of fertility at an oasis; or etc) ... and then have the PC's all be the awakened Mounts

Pouty, self-obsessed teens ARE a madness-inducing horror. Shoggoth's are an afterthought.

Yep. Although, @Oracle beat you to it by a few hours (scroll up). But it's worth repeating... 😁

TYVM Chaosium & MOB! I've already got this item, so will just donate; the links are useful! But I have fwd'ed this to my current gaming group, and also to past gamers with whom I am still in touch.

Very good. Now roll SAN.

I think the idea is, can you take a given sum (rolled before birth as inheritance-to-come) as alternative "services" of equivalent value (such as Bless Pregnancy)? I am inclined to look with a jaundiced, anti-munchkin eye at the general question, and say "MAYBE: decide case-by-case, and disallow anything too munchkinous." But there's too much scope for awesome stories in these sorts of custom backstories; a flat always-disallow would disallow that awesome. Others' GWV.

Turns out that there are still hold-outs from that era! Some if my RL gaming friends report the "D&D = Satan" belief in the past year or two. Most days, I can drive you to where a couple of aging hippies are selling their own tie-dyed-at-home stuff out of their '60something VW microbus. We have another local hippie still preaching the Communist Revolution as our coming salvation from The Pigs who serve The Man. <shrugs> Oh, me too! Our brand of grognards&nerd is kinda over-represented among RQ fandom... 😉 Those people aren't actually curating content; at least, not explicitly. They are writing code to look for patterns in link-clicks. If you are seeing "possession" topics in your SW-RPG feed, and haven't looked up possession yourself, then I can confidently guarantee that "possession" IS a search topic and/or a link-follow for others looking up SW-RPG...

Just out of curiosity, I went looking... Not SEARCHING for the story, just hitting top-pages of sites... NBC news - had to scroll down a half-screen from the initial splash, but the Australia-Fires story is prominent CBS news - About 2-3 screens in (if I don't count their ads... I seem to have been shopping for my wife this Xmas season...) is a less-prominent story, leading with "Pink" (the singer) who is donating to the Australian fire relief. Weaksauce, CBS! The news is the fires, not the celebrity donation!!! ABC news - had to scroll down much further -- 4-5 screens -- but they have a big obvious hard-to-miss photo... IF you scroll down. Gonna count this as "dubious" at best Fox news - Nada. They show a lot of small items, and I only skimmed quickly, so maybe I missed something? I haven't noticed the story at all in 6+ screenfulls. Gave up when I dicovered I was chest-deep in cheescake puff-pieces. Utter and complete fail, FoxNews. Apparently Fox doesn't think their audience is interested? Fox really leans-in on feeding their customers what they want to consume; it was one of their defining innovations. AP news - Their frontpage splash has the fires in Australia as the last story visible on the splash (down in the lower-right corner), which maybe(?) puts them above all the others... I guess? But it's a lot easier to miss than on NBC (or BBC, below). BBC.com - not on the "splash" screen, but fire-photos from Austrialia are visible at the bottom of the screen as 2 of the top 3 stories under "News." This appears to be the best treatment. FWIW and all that...

I live in California, and discovered a few years back that Californian and Australian firefighters have a pretty longstanding tradition of travelling to one anothers' locations to cross-train and skill-share and even to fight one anothers' fires.

I fear that's likely an artifact of a few holdovers who still believe in the whole "satanic panic" schtick, who try to get Harry Potter books banned as witchcraft, etc etc etc. Because aggregating THEIR interests in SW & RPGs &c gets a bit of bleedover effect... akin to the "customers who bought this also bought/looked-at" in e-vendor sites.

I usually see the "get it validated" as a personal experimental/experiential thing -- try your new discovery in play -- not as a appeal-to-authority validation.

Specially for Jedi and Sith -- trying to imagine a "Force Sensitive" in proximity to the Mythos...🤯

Ordinary magnets won't power a railgun. You need mag-fields you can turn on and off very quickly, e.g. electromagnets; electromagnets need portable power, e.g. batteries, and the speed of discharge to fire a railgun says capacitors (all this is with our current state of the art tech & science, of course). That can be resource-conservative, none of this gets used up. Or build it with "Ancient Martian" Clarketech, or other Handwavium.

I sincerely meant my suggestion that your existing news feeds may be placing you in a "bubble.". I have been getting the Australian-Fires story since before Christmas -- yes the crisis has been going on THAT long. So I know the news IS out there, on major channels and feeds. Thus my suspicion that you are a victim of a "bubble" effect. The online algorithms study us, and what we click/follow, then present to us only what they "think" we want to see (plus whatever their paid advertisers want us to see). In effect, they edit and gatekeep what we can even learn. It is a pervasive and pernicious "service" they provide to us, and remarkably difficult to escape from.