g33k

*cough*cough*BRP*cough*cough* As Chaosium's narrative (and universal) game system, perhaps? 🤡 ("storyteller" being a specific other game-system from another publisher; "narrative" seems to be the preferred term for engines like HW/HQ/QW & Fate &c)

Wow... this is an extraordinary value!

Are you referring to this: https://www.chaosium.com/brp-system-reference-document/ ??? Honestly, as of mid-early 2023, I would refer you to: https://www.chaosium.com/basic-roleplaying-universal-game-engine-pdf/ This uses the (IMO far superior) ORC license. The problem with the earlier SRD was IMO two-fold: first, it was so minimal as to require a lot of extra work by creators to achieve a useful chassis for their RPG; it simply left out too much. Second, Chaosium was (at the time) being very protective of their IP's. It's sensible not to undercut their own "bread and butter" make-a-living products, but IMHO they went overboard. In particular, I think you're right to worry about the term "substantially similar" -- notwithstanding the (AFAIK not well-tested in court) assertion that "rules cannot be copyrighted" the BRP-OGL referenced above relies upon contract law rather than copyright law: you will be in violation of the license if you produce a rule or setting "substantially similar" to one of those Chaosium protected in their license. You can violate that contract without violating (c).

Huh. I think I was unaware of the pre-BDBoM books. Would you be open to re-issuing the BDBoM (with new art, an OGL release up-front, and maybe a very-few deletions of whatever entries are most-likely to draw ire (and fire)? I bet folks would be willing to pay for that... Which would fund some art! 🙂

(D) All of the Above. Yes, Hippoi was a Feathered Horse; as queen of the people descended from the original Horse Folk, she honors that ancient origin. Yes, the FHQ regalia includes feathers (so does her informal/daily wear!). Yes, she rides horses with extensive "feathering" (flowing hairs). Yes, sometimes the Goldeneye breed actually has throwbacks (or Heroquest effects) with real feathers in place of the hair-based "feathering;" these tend to be the mounts of the FHQ and other VIP's of the Pure Horse People.

Cite, please? This looks like the kind of "playing fast and loose with ransom" that would just automatically get all captured Lunars killed...

<heh> The old joke goes, "the only thing scarier than a hardware engineer with a patch-tape is a software engineer with a new circuit-board." (n.b. which is the scarier depends on how you tell the joke, to which audience) I'm mostly a software guy. I can solder... kinda (if you don't mind large blobby masses on your circuit-board).

IMG, you spend years learning about your God, before you Initiate. Lay members who are especially ardent, inquisitive, generous with MP-sac at worship, etc... they get noticed by the priests, get invited to extra worship ceremonies, taught some of the inner mysteries. In time, the priesthood judges them a likely candidate for Initiation, and begins to seriously-prepare them. THIS is where you learn about channeling the Deity. But it's a surface-learning, an intellectual teaching. When you actually Initiate, it's a Much Bigger Deal. It's fundamentally a mystic experience, not an intellectual one. It's where you actually create a connection to your Deity (and your Deity connects to you). You sac real (permanent) POW, not (auto-regenerating) MP's. And you get access to the basic "lingua franca" of god-magic, the Common rune-spells... plus, one Rune Special that you got from your specific deity. But if you hadn't prepped beforehand -- for years! -- the chances of your Initiation succeeding would be very, very low.

IMO, the approach of "experimental archaeology" is relatively-recent (Kon Tiki was 1947, Wikipedia tells me -- AFAIK the oldest "serious" project, though I think a few prior anthropologists have immersed-in / practiced-with some of the primitive cultures they studied; Sagnlandet Lejre was 1964; Butser Farm was 1970). AFAIK, the field remains remains relatively-sparse and IMO under-utilized. I would *not* presume these "practical" ancient skills from most professional Archaeologists. It's entirely-similar, IMO, to how a "Physicist" may understand a nuclear reaction better than than an "Engineer," but an "Engineer" has a much better grasp of a nuclear reactor !

*cough*cough*Dragonbane*cough*cough* Do you feel younger now? 🤡 Please double-check that, Nick! I'm pretty sure the (2020?) BRP OGL only covers the (quite brief) SRD included in that release ... and NOT the full BGB rulebook! TYVM. I prefer d100 While the d20 is identical to 5%-slice's of d100, I really like the fraction-of-skill for critical/special/fumble, which slices much finer than 5% increments! I don't *think* the Pendragon-style roll-under-skill is very akin to D&D's class-based roll-over, despite both using d20's. I wouldn't expect to see greater acceptance from the group because of the shared d20... But then, I'm me, and I'm none of the players in your group! You're the one most-likely to know if they'll prefer the system rolling-low on d20's instead of rolling-low on d100's ... As Nick points out, very VERY few BRP variants use the d20 in place of the d100' there is absolutely no indication that BRP games, broadly, will move to d20's.

How do you derive the unit's "Off" & "Def" from the character sheet? I'd expect those numbers to be directly-comparable in an "off vs def" sort of way. Is it that the guns are almost-pure-Off, and so much more dangerous than rapier&dagger? But that ignores the missing "ROF" from the character-sheet... I guess I'm puzzled by off/def being fixed values on the unit, vs the more-dynamic situation of gun-or-blade / ranged-or-melee.

Don't forget Water! The Oslir (and several other rivers (and their deities)) are central to the life (and worship) of a great many "Pelorians." Really, I see "Peloria" as much more of a geographic than a cultural term.

That's an interesting way to analyze the area! If it's not too much trouble, could you give a quick list of the dates/battles or other events that lifted DH into (or other powers into) being "the dominant hegemonic power in Peloria" ? (and of course any periods where there was no such single "dominant" power)

I think it does, in that both implicitly admit to wrong-doing. An apology expresses regret. An atonement furthermore attempts to correct the wrong-doing and/or to compensate those harmed.

The point is, within each milieu each group of Angels were "Protagonist" characters. Your initial query was about quick easy NPC writeups for GM use.

I am actually considering a version of this for my own in-development BRP-based RPG... even for PC's! Take a "Profession," defined as a suite of skills (and backstory). "Professionally-relevant" skills would all be at a single % (decided by GM according to their campaign). An example would be an "Archaelologist" (they explicitly have skills including Excavations, Linear-B, Cuneiform(Sumerian), Cuneiform(Akkadian), Culture (Sumerian), Culture(Akkadian), History (Ancient World), Library Use; but likely also includes other specific skills discovered/defined in play (whatever the GM/table decides is separate-enough to be its own skill, and is the kind of Professional skill this archaeologist would have had (e.g. likely not skills with mesoamerican cultures -- that's a different Archaeologist) if the idea had occurred at initial character-creation). Each Professional skill would begin at a fixed %age (say, 60%), but gets skill-checks & advancements separately; if our Archaeologist is on an Akkadian dig, they might advance their Akkadian skills (culture, cuneiform) but not likely their Sumerian ones; if they are examining inscriptions in a university/museum setting, they might advance Cuneiform and/or Library Use, but not Excavations; etc etc etc. Don't bother writing the individual skills as separate line-items until it becomes relevant to do so.

Yes. I'm pretty sure Jeff explicitly said so in one of his dev-notes series before RQG was released. There's just too much sheer utility in those Common spells. It would lead to all the Gods' Initiates being same-y, instead of reflecting their own God's specialties.

IMG, initiates & even priests do not "learn" Rune-Magic. You are channeling the god when you cast Rune Spells -- i.e. your god is casting the spell through you. You do not "know" Rune-magic; you know how to channel your God (via own Runic affinities); it is that ability which is learned in your studies, and mystically-unlocked during the Initiation ritual. (There's an exception at the Hero-level and above... Some of them (not all) actually do originate Rune Spells from themselves, without backing of any deity).

Except that this ISN'T the presumption of the RAW. Some deities do not have the full suite of "Common" Rune magic (they are common but not universal ). The "visuals" and "lived experience" of each deity's Rune Magic vary from one to another; the game-mechanics are the same, but the "spells" differ. But I'm sure you're absolutely correct that this is a game-mechanical ease-of-use issue. It'd honestly be poor design -- as a playable game -- for dozens of cults to all have minor but meaningful differences for each of a dozen "common" Rune Spells. That way lies insanity... or perhaps unplayability.

??? Can you say a bit more about this, please? I had thought that basic framework (Imperial/Barbarian conflict) was in place as of WBRM (and thus pre-RQ) ... ? Certainly Harrek's bit is steeped in "Barbarian" tropes. Obviously, Greg was creating the world for some years prior to that... but I wouldn't necessarily think of WBRM as "late addition" content.

Absolutely! A very-commonly-adopted GM practice. I do something similar, but not quite so brief -- usually 3-5 skills. I only define skills I expect to be "relevant," so only combat-skills for the NPCs setting up the ambush (after they first fire from cover, I don't expect the PC's to engage in "social skills") but only social-skills at the swanky party where the PC's need to find their Contact. Also sometimes known as "Skill as Profession" or "Profession as Skill" (n.b. it effectively becomes a character class, defined as the skill). But the "Charlies Angels," in-narrative, are supposed to be protagonists, so I wouldn't use that as an example.

There's quite a bit of "startup" / "entrepreneurial" / "hustle" attitude of "no time for that negative shit." Yes; the military is, if anything, even more prone to this mode of error. Business has long realized the strength of group decisions -- hence a BOD sitting above the C-suite. Because decisiveness in wartime is critical, the military almost-always works in that entirely-hierarchical top-down mode. Plus, in all cases, people are people. The ones with the ambition and the drive to get stars on their shoulders -- or corner offices on the top floor -- tend to be the ones with strong opinions, strongly expressed, and impatience with disagreement.

I don't read it that way at all; I think @scott-martin hit the nail on the head calling it a "cri de coeur." The OP really, really likes the DH empire and/or dislikes the Orlanthi (or maybe both, in various measures). They also display some misunderstandings, e.g. sometimes conflating DH with most/all Solar worship, and DP with most/all Storm worship... but not always doing so. They apparently consider Draconic Kethaela to be yet another instance of "Storm beats Sun" (?!?) . They even appear to have recorded Pent's conquest of (much of) DH onto the "Solars suck" side of his Storm/Solar ledger...?! The OP has been presented with data -- such as the several other substantive (non-DH) Solar powers, the substantive numbers of DH victories, long DH Imperial eras, Storm-Carmanian subjugation by DH (& Orlanthi-Tarsh subjugation by thev Lunarized Dara Happans), the long Solar Tripolis history of survival (unmatched, ever, by any Air/Stom power) &c -- that don't fit their narrative (that the setting is treating DH badly)... they basically seem to take a "that doesn't count" attitude toward all these facts that don't fit their narrative. This is the perspective of someone who has already chosen a side, who has already made their decision. This isn't "malicious trolling" (i.e. trying to cause trouble for the sake of trouble), but voicing a (legitimate by their lights) complaint about the setting as they understand it. Now, let's be honest and admit -- as the OP points out -- that the Orlanthi/Lightbringers *have* spread more-successfully. A priori, there is no reason the West shouldn't be fundamentally Solar instead of Storm (or Earth; or a mix, with Water-powers dominant around Lake Felster & the Sweet Sea, and other Elemental powers elsewhere); but again this overlooks the fact that the West is more "Malkioni" than it is "Storm." Insofar as this point goes, the OP is 100% correct... but this doesn't really reflect a "Storm conquers Sun" outlook; rather, it's the fundamental mytho-historic fact that Orlanth&Co -- in Lightbringing to restore Yelm -- set the pattern of Lightbringer-Questing that their followers continued with the Dawn, spreading Theyalan ways broadly. The Solar powers had no such initiative... part of the "Compromise" was that Orlanth recognize Yelm as "Cosmic Emperor" (in a largely-passive role) while Yelm recognize Orlanth as "King of the Gods" (in an active, adventurer/warleader role). It's very reminiscent of the Shoguns rendering the Emperor more-passive, or what the Magna Carta did (or at least began) with the English throne. The Theyalan "missionaries" are also reminiscent of Christianity's proselytizing ways & worldwide spread. I don't know if Greg explicitly took any of this as inspiration into Glorantha, or not But let us also admit that Greg's original genesis of Glorantha (which is written onto the very bones of the setting) is a very American-POV narrative of bold vibrant "Barbarians" facing-down invading wrongbad "Imperials..." and with DH in the "Imperial" camp, there's definitely some lingering corners of "they're wrongbad."

First you have to Heroquest to find the secrets of an ancient Hero -- nobody alive knows his origin -- named Vet Ternary Den Tist

Go to Milsim and ask them. In the USA, my nearest FLGS e-mails me a code that lets me d/l the PDF.