g33k

One word for you, Bill. Just one. I want you to imagine... brooduck

I like that one! But the temptations to make SW/Sith jokes is ... strong, with the Dark Side. Hellfather or Hellsire ?

It appears that there's something less mechanical going on. Upthread, @Joerg reports: so something from the male line has bearing...

On the landscape front, the "Wastes" split roughly in half, just to the east of the Valley of Cradles. The western part is Prax, mostly American-Southwest-ish. Sagebrush, tumbleweeds, chapparal, desert. A bit less hospitable, though... most of the water is too alkaline (or otherwise contaminated) to drink. Most of the plants have either insufficient nutrition, or extra compounds that are dangerous to eat (or both). Occasional oases, lush and luxurious. Occasional stretches of uninhabitable badland. Only herbivores of the Survival Covenant can eat safely (although the sentient Covenent-members can (if willing) usually find enough forage for small numbers of other beasts); even a species "known" to be healthy fodder from elsewhere, cannot be relied upon in Prax. The eastern part is... worse. More hostile. Mostly badlands. Drinkable water is MUCH rarer. Edible forage -- even for the Covenanted -- is harder to find. Mongolian desert X Sahara, plus hostile mythscape making the land less-able to support you. Stormbull is here often... usually expressing his fury & rage.

I describe the Praxian Tribes as a melange of Native American plains-tribes (after the advent of the horse) - n.b. "Braves" as a term for warriors Mongol steppe-tribes - n.b. "Khan" as a ruler Bedouin camel&horse desert tribes African herding tribes With none of those really "the" dominant/primary influence; but also bits of post-apocalyptic survivalism, and some Other Weird Shit, because Glorantha. Plus the Sables obviously have their own extra Moon-thing going on, and the Morokanth ... they have Herd-Men, fer Waha's sake! and that looks like the "biggest thing" (from the non-Praxian POV) .... like I said: Other Weird Shit. I believe this to be, roughly, "canonical" for whatever that is worth and whatever it means. I look forward to (the eventual release of) the new PraxPak, and expect to adjust, at least some, at that time. For some reason (this is just me... and My Glorantha Varies!) I think of the Impala tribe as a bit more Native-American-ish X Mongol-ish; the Great Tribes broadly as being a bit more Bedouin-ish; the Minor Tribes (struggling more and thus) a bit more post-apocalyptic survival-ish (and/or having their own odd backgrounds, like Yelornan unicorn & Old-Pavis Zebra); Morokanth prefer to be more Oasis-and-Zola-Fel (because water & tapirs); tribes of the biggest creatures (bison, rhino) tend more to the stoic & inscrutable tropes; some times one influence will be situationally prominent (e.g. I model lone/few scouts on Native American models, for most tribes); and so forth... I still play the older, more-carnivorous Morokanth (vs the new, nerfed, eunuch'ed, vegetarian ones). I'm (strongly) considering a wildly-divergent Bolo-Lizard tribe: each family or clan has one (or occasionally more) of the larger thunderlizard types. These form a nucleus where young children, elders, and other less-strong members can ride at need; they carry tents and other gear; occasionally a tent will even remain pitched, howdah-style, as the family moves from place to place. Like the Morokanth, they prefer to travel directly from one more-watery location to another (for their thunderlizards), but the braves on their bolo-lizards travel as freely as any other tribe.

I honestly think that the modern perspective will dominate. Hawk's-eye view, Fly with some +duration, etc etc etc. Issaries merchants can easily get Fly from Orlanthi allies, and will like to use it to map places. They will regularly be producers of highly-functional maps, and distributors of the same (e.g. copies of new maps made on the journey). I suppose I can see a 3/4-view perspective (like Boldhome on the RQGcore endpaper, or Clearwine in the GMScreenPack) becoming the accepted standard, for artistic/stylistic reasons. But this is really one of the places I expect magic to make a big difference vs. RW historical realities.

The other thing to remember is that Humakt is a god of emotional isolation, of severing relationships. In times of war, many Orlanthi will experience the kinds of events that make those "severed relationships" seem like the best choice. Most of the rest of the time, it's likely to be discovered and/or confirmed during one's adulthood-initiation ritual... And be pretty rare.

Sorry, Jeff, but the essence of the Other WomanGame is that you're cheating on your own. Nothing from Chaosium counts. Just be glad you wound up with Tekumel! Imagine if it had been D&D... I've heard she's been with virtually everyone...

and winding up the day where everyone in the party can get a broo? Sounds like a fun day, you sadist.

The other thing is magic. In cultures where "Fly" is relatively common, those modern overhead-view maps become less of a rarity. Similarly, many paths of shamanism &c can let someone see from the eyes of a hawk, overhead. How many Lunars have been on the Red Moon itself, and looked back at the Empire below? Looking back at the maps of antiquity is the wrong take on Gloranthan mapmaking. Those maps are amazingly cool artifacts... but not even slightly Gloranthan. As always: YGMV (mine certainly does).

Note that this calls for you to suspend the character-creation process & produce a (temporary) playable character-sheet, then play the "get acquainted" scenes, and then resume your character-creation-process to finalize your sheet. It seems to me like it takes the already-substantial process to new levels of complexity and is much more time-intensive. I really like your basic idea of these little "slice-of-life" scenes, however! I would, honestly, probably do the entire sheet before beginning play, then run your scenes as "flashback" moments. Pick the PC's apex-skills & strongest runes, look at their backstory (& the life-events from character-creation), and consider what their early exposure to those skills would have been like, what growing Rune-affinities would have been like. Work out some standards by which to "nerf" the PC back to roughly 12yo, 14yo, 16yo (initiation), 18yo. Heirloom sword & a (surviving) war-hero ancestor? Play out the first time Grandpa/whoever allowed them to wield that sword (obviously, after learning with various beaters & lesser weapons). Movement-Rune Affinity? Play out the time they Crit'ed an Rune-Augment (that is to say, don't roll that one roll, fiat the Crit) to chase after a runaway cow, and ran it down on foot. I observe that this looks like it might involve a lot of 1:1 scenes between GM/NPC and proto-Adventurer.Even in the same clan, they won't usually be learning the same lessons at the same time. 4 scenes that take 30m to play through (and if part of the plan is to teach the rules, 30m is an optimistic timeframe) is 2 hours. Per character. If you have half a dozen players at the table, that's a LOT of time for each of the other players to be sitting around with -- effectively -- nothing to do!

Jeff, Jeff, Jeff... <sigh> That's really just an egregiously kinky reading of the language. "Mistress" here is clearly the Other WomanGame. You'd use it when you were referring to your GM for your Tekumel campaign.

Said it before, and no doubt I'll be saying it again: Jeff, you are SUCH a tease! Also, I may need to send you a bill for some napkins, because wiping up the drool is beginning to look like a serious expense.

With a good enough roll... maybe! I figure that prone, a 20' giant has a profile maybe 2m (shoulder-to-shoulder) X 1m (front to back), and "shrubbery" could effectively hide that outline...

Previously mentioned as "like" the CoC7 starter set. I'd look for descriptions & reviews of that, and envision a RQ/Gloranthan instead of CoC/Mythos product. (I too would love an "official" answer with, e.g., a definitive contents-list)

Take it to the munchkin thread. (but I believe not -- under the RAW, there is no way to achieve Scrooge McDuck levels of wealth at the start) (OTOH, it's probably possible to get there in play. If you must.)

This is cutting a bit too close to the bone, Joerg. You're asking for the uncomfortable topic to go elsethread, and then explicitly invoking it, in the same post.

"Order of the Blackened <no! bad g33k!>" ???

The quoted official material appears to say that (officially) Lascerdans are extinct. Is that so, or my mis-reading?

In another thread, Jeff just confirmed this. It's currently 3rd in the queue; NONE of the products have ETA's/dates attached. Vagaries of artists and authors & other publishers' banes being what they are, it's always possible that it will come out in a different order than 3rd; but it's where the smart money goes today.

Back in my RQ2 days, I liked the separation of Attack and Parry. It matched my own martial arts experience: while I might generally be about the same skill as someone else, I'd find it easier (or harder) to manage to get a blow past some people's defenses. They were worse (or better) at parrying. Similarly, they might be a bit better (or worse) at getting through MY defenses -- better at attacking. Now... if they were harder to hit, AND harder for me to block... well then... they were better than me, and my calling them "about the same skill" was just vanity on my part. 🤫 HOWEVER, RQ2-style skills, with completely decoupled Attack and Parry, can lead to absurdities like someone with 90%Attack and only Base skill at Parry. I've seen some arguments to that end on this forum, and found them... unconvincing. The 2 skills should REALLY remain somewhere close to parity, and should mostly go up together (barring spells like Parry or Bladesharp). The obvious and simple solution is to make them a single skill. Which, frankly, suits my desire for elegant and simple rules! OTOH, it leaves me with this gap where my experience doesn't match the RAW. It leaves me wanting something like a non-heroquesting "gifts" system. "Minor Gifts" or some such... "Skilled Defender" = Choose "Dodge" or "Parry." Treat one as if your skill is 1.2X your written skill. "Knack for Languages" = When rolling an experience-check, you gain 1% to the skill on a failed roll! "Eye for Beauty" = when evaluating art/etc, when Dressing To Impress, when creating or looking at any display... treat any relevant skill as 1.2X the written skill. etc... Of course, THAT leads to issues of how-many-gifts, what about anti-gifts / minor-geasa, quirks/flaws... a whole new subsystem. NOT great for "my desire for elegant and simple rules!"

Full stop there. HARD stop. RQ is a game, an RPG set in a fictional world. There is no "truth" here. And particularly, in a forum where virtually every poster comes from a different table, a different Glorantha... anything resembling "truth" at one table has no presumption of a similar resemblance at another table. Your table's "truth" has zero validility at my table, and vice versa. Moreover (as noted above, but worth repeating) RQ is a game. It's about having FUN. By all means, let's _DO_ have emotion (specifically, MGF & enjoying the game and friends 'round the table) get in the way of "truth." (edit to add: "<something something>, BUT <something else>" is a notably-problematic rhetorical maneuver)

+1 to Bill the Barbarian's request. Glorantha has some VERY uncomfortable parts, particularly in regards to sexuality. The whole unicorn/virgin thing is lifted AFAIK straight out of early Christianity. It sits kind of... oddly... in Glorantha's pagan mythology & often rather freewheeling sexuality. There's also some frankly-outdated & regressive "1970s" points of view interspersed with the broadly enlightened and forward-thinking setting. I'm generally and vaguely in agreement that, from a story-telling & game-mechanical perspective, "geasa exist to be broken" (the same way Champs/Hero "Disadvantages" are supposed to be leveraged by the GM to cause problems for the PC's, "Flaws" in Ars Magica likewise, etc etc etc). At the same time, I'm rather sharply in agreement that it's never OK to inflict rape on a PC without extensive pre-negotiation (and likely use of some "safety tools"). Just saying "then don't play that character-type" is... kind of blinkered, and rather petty. The Unicorn Riders' virginity is a horribly entangled issue. Perhaps an alternate geas might be a good way to get away from this rather prickly tangle? "Always help a woman in need." The Yelornan's Green Age quest could involve some such aid to a woman... Other suggestions?

Oh yeah, you can definitely increase the simulationist crunch, if so inclined. Personally, I don't want to increase the complexity that much; I don't want to get into yet more bonii / penaltii rules. I may dial back to "less than half move" and still attack (unless a charge), just resetting the default breakpoint; same complexity. I doubt my players will even notice, none are as rules-geeky as I.

I'm unconvinced; you seem to be implying more cognizance and combat-savvy than I'd expect from a wild animal... going for the flat of the blade??!? A haft is still a heavy piece of hardwood; even not striking the weapon-head, it's still roughly a d8 Quarterstaff! I agree that a knife, even a shortword/handaxe, puts the weapon-bearing hand and forearm in reach. Granted, the haft is less-damaging than the head. But particularly a thrust, like a spear... I wouldn't expect a beast to let the nearest bit get close while it reached around to the bit behind! Obviously, almost any weirdness could crop up in a wild melee. But an out-and-out "parry" is -- mostly -- an intelligent trained response. I've seen a cat try to claw at objects, you're right -- they do use their paws that way. But when I see cats actually FIGHT, they mostly go for each others heads/shoulders (with a rear-leg rake if they get 2 good clawfulls at the front). I've seen a sort of "guard pattern:" one paw high/wide, threatening and possibly doing a series of fast swipes, sort of interdicting a vector-of-attack & threatening a Big Hit if ignored. But preferentially striking each others paws, "block" style? Not much, not really. Sometimes a cat will get a claw "stuck" in their foe; the victim doesn't even use a paw to knock the (static, unmoving) limb off them. I have been known to "kitty duel" if the cat seems like it's in WildBeast mode -- my speed vs. theirs -- to go for a lightning-fast tummy-pat, paw-tap, jaw-scritch, etc. If I've mis-judged the cats mood, it leaves; but often it stays to play a game for a minute or several... (and yes, it gets me scratched sometimes; not all cats play that game with velvet paws! (I figure it's my fault if I get hurt, not theirs). And sometimes instead of bloodsport, it turns out the cat was into cuddles&scritches&purring; and that's good, too! (The one cat who liked to purr & nuzzle WHILE ripping at me and drawing blood... OK, that was a bit creepy...)) They are clearly treating my hand as the "attacker" (they ignore everything past the wrist (except an occasional claw/claw/bite&Rake, when I've been REALLY slow...)). They'll nail a finger if they get it, but what they're aiming for is the whole hand. But the closest I've seen to a "parry" (from "duelling" a dozen so so cats (not all cats are interested & willing; and some don't see the "game" in it)) is more like a "trap" from martial arts -- a hook-and-draw-in motion (taking advantage of those curved, ripping claws), not so much "blocking" my finger as trying to grab it to bring the "body" of my hand in for the kill... === I haven't seen as much of bears -- never owned one, pet-sit one, visited other owners, etc -- but from what I've seen they too do little to "parry" -- when they reach out a paw in a fight, it's to HIT (or to threaten). Bears will swipe, but not really paw-v-paw "parry" -- a meaningful blow is to the head/body, not an opposing paw. They mostly try to hit PAST the paw, and defend by biting an incoming paw (Paw meets Jaw is usually worse for the bitten paw!). If an animal was intelligent -- awakened, or with a Spirit inside -- then all manner of good tactical and strategic options open up, including parries. Even a good trainer might be able to elicit non-instinctive combat mannerisms. But for wild animals, I'm gonna stick with my "mostly no parries" rule, unless I see pretty convincing arguments (or video?) otherwise. I can probably find youtube vid to support most of my points, if you'd like.