PhilHibbs

On 6/4/2023 at 12:19 PM, Runeblogger said:

Only Nathem's shadowcat seems to be somewhat trained to follow Nathem's commands (to the extent to which anyone can give orders to a cat!), 

Alynxes are easier to train than domestic cats. They are pack hunters rather than solitary.

On 3/19/2023 at 5:14 PM, Ian Absentia said:

Are we still talking about Blade Runner 2049 seven years later?  If so, I feel that it's a film that, like it's predecessor, will be most appreciated in retrospect.

Bad sequels to great films will always be talked about, that doesn't say anything to the merits of the bad sequel. People still talk about Highlander 2, but only, like here, in the context of it spoiling the great film whose legacy it pooped all over.]

Back on the general subject:

• There is a market for dystopian films, films that shock and upset us, and the future is as good a place to put them as anywhere since you can make up your society whilst still claiming it is the real world. You don't have to put it in a fantasy world.
• As others have said, utopias are dull, and only work as a satisfying fiction if you break them at least a little. Iain M Banks's Culture series is a great example of this. The Culture is more or less a utopia, but the stories are mostly set around the edges where it interfaces with a larger, generally rather dystopian galaxy.

On 5/23/2023 at 11:30 AM, Jeff Freymueller said:

This tool is fantastic, and much appreciated.

I am having trouble with activating the Jonstown Compendium content, though. Even after activating it, nothing new appears in the menus. I am not getting any error messages (and yes, I did authorize the script).

When you first authorize the script, it doesn't actually go on to run the script. You have to click it again. Did you do that? Did the tick appear in the "Active" box?

I just tried it and it worked...

AI generated zebrhino:

It also came up with this at the same time:

5 hours ago, Bren said:

What are you reading into the text that I am not? The text says, "Bladesharp-6 on cutlass and Fireblade on cutlass." I only see one cutlass listed, so I infer the description means that Bladesharp and Fireblade were both cast at the same time on the same cutlass.

Ulforg can do this because chaos.

RuneQuest scenarios have frequently overridden the core rules with exceptions.

13 hours ago, g33k said:

AI "photo" of two women just won a major international award...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/apr/17/photographer-admits-prize-winning-image-was-ai-generated

That should have been obvious, look at those fingers!

16 hours ago, Bren said:

That entry is wrong. Bladesharp is incompatible with Fireblade...

Read the text on the left side.

2 hours ago, Zalain said:

As is said here: https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/gloranthan-documents/greg-sez/chaos-taints-qa/

i gave him a 10% of rune of chaos to begin with. And i think giving him extra 10% for each spell he learns from that book.

If you're basing that on the first question, that 10% is the chance of gaining a chaotic taint, not the rune rating. A 10% rune rating is a chaotic taint, not a 10% chance of having a taint.

On a personal note, I would not do this. A chaos taint for me is either end-of-character-story, or story-becomes-about-removing-the-taint. When it did happen to a character of mine, it was a kill-me-now moment resolved via a deus-ex-machina from the GM who realised that she had misjudged the mood. It totally dominates the nature of the character and the game. But your game group might be more comfortable playing characters who are chaotic, if so then have fun!

Runes can go up and down, particularly opposed rune pairs, any strong action that is against the nature of the rune or a fumbled roll can reduce it, but I would say that the chaos rune is different. It's very hard for it to go down, and typically requires heroquesting. There is The Cleansed One ritual of the Zola Fel, @soltakss has posted in other threads here on his thoughts on that. He tends to go for a very gung-ho gaming style that isn't my group's taste.

The immediate problem that I had with trying to implement the battle system from the fragments shown in The White Bull was finding a "guiding passion". There wasn't a passion that all three characters had.

On 4/23/2023 at 5:19 PM, simonh said:

I actually think that's pretty reasonable when it comes to widely publishing material generated by ChatGPT. You can't generally sue a tool maker for work someone did using their tool...  the EULA would not be relevant.

True, but having agreed to "indemnify and defend" OpenAI is then something that the user has to fight in court. It doesn't stop the rightsholder from suing, of course, but it does drag the user in with a potentially huge legal bill to fight their way out of.

Watch out for ChatGPT’s EULA.

If Chaosium decided to sue ChatGPT for copyright infringement, or libel, or anything else, based on you posting something that ChatGPT produced, then you agreed in the EULA to indemnify and defend them. That means they can hand you the legal bill and the fine for the lawsuit.

Whether or not they actually could do that remains to be seen in practice but if they tried it then it wouldn’t be fun for you.

On 4/16/2023 at 11:31 AM, DrGoth said:

I agree. Unless it was something clearly laid out in advance I would never give a player a chaos feature (and everything that flows from that) from a random role about a crystal. There would have to be warning signs the player deliberately ignored.

Same. Some groups might be okay with this, and I might choose differently depending on the group. Maybe at a convention game.

14 minutes ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Actually your answer is good and contains a Greg Stafford world design insight that informs us all.  Unsatisfying? Tempting of course, it's a variation on "don't eat the fruit of that tree".  My advocacy of mercy is from a GM viewpoint, not a Gloranthan lore viewpoint.

True, there's a tension between perfect world building and fun game playing. I suspect that things going horribly wrong and turning into a disaster is entirely within Greg's definition of a fun game. Not everyone has as robust an attitude as that. I've also had great times in roleplaying games when everything is going horribly wrong and ends up in a total disaster, but it isn't everyone's cup of tea.

An alternative outcome to you coming back with the blame for whatever imperfection you took there is that if you resist the temptation to exhibit that flaw, then you are stripped of it entirely along with a chunk of your Man Rune. And whilst you might not think that being stripped of a flaw is a bad thing, then if the temptation is carnal then you might lose your sexual desire. If it's violent, then you could lose the ability to fight. If it's pride then you could lose all your ambition. Some might prefer to take the blame.

3 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

I can see the GM having some very humorous opportunities there.  A, um, boon from Uleria - and then dump him out of the heroquest.  This is still more merciful than everyone blaming you in accord with Phil Hibbs' suggestion.

Yes, I certainly concur that the "don't do it, you will suffer, it will be terrible, end of" answer is unsatisfying.

What Greg has said about The Green Age is, don't go there. Everything is perfect in the Green Age. We are not perfect. Any imperfection that you bring will destroy the perfection of the age, and it will be YOUR FAULT that that evil entered the world. All you get from visiting the Green Age is blame for everything going wrong.

3 hours ago, Frp said:

You don't need to use your own POW to make an enchantment. A vampire worth his salt should be able to find someone to provide some. 

You do need to provide one point, so a sorcerer without POW needs some trick to get around that. And I'm not sure if that rule applies to inscriptions anyway, but I would extend it to cover them.

On 2/9/2023 at 3:35 AM, Bren said:

I agree the names of foodstuffs cannot be exhaustive. A quick search of the Guide to Glorantha Volume I shows many non-specific references to edible fish, but no entries for cod, herring, mackerel perch, trout, tuna, or whitefish. There is one entry for sea salmon on p. 97, and a few entries for a monstrous "black eel." 

It would also mean that the raspberry leaf mentioned in Greg's unpublished story that he read at a few cons is now wrong, because The Guide doesn't mention raspberries either. Jeff seems to be implying that it is exhaustive though. Not in The Guide, not in Glorantha.

On 4/6/2023 at 9:29 AM, French Desperate WindChild said:

now...

because you want to challenge your GM...

you decide to learn Lock with Issaries directly

So

if you cast Create Market, you use Issaries runepool

If you cast Lock, you choose if you use Issaries runepool or Orlanth runepool (same logic "where did you sacrifice POW")

 

Am I right ?

Yes. That's the rules-as-written.

On 4/7/2023 at 12:34 PM, French Desperate WindChild said:

A fervent worshiper will sacrifice pow without any gain expectation. You don't bargain, you offer

I don't think that most Gloranthans think that way. That's the kind of attitude that religions need to foster when they can't provide tangible benefits. Malkioni and Draconic/mystic cults might work that way, but not theists and animists.

7 hours ago, simonh said:

Apparently it's Forgotten Realms, or so I'm told.

Oh right, I'd forgotten about that one.

18 minutes ago, Bren said:

The unbearable pain that Mossmac uses in their example would awaken a light sleeper after two minutes, so not much rest. Needing to spend 90 MPs to give a sufferer an hour of rest falls into what I would call effectively useless for the noncombat purpose described.

I'm not sure that it would. I suspect that pain only wakes you up if it changes. People with chronic pain do sleep.

A "D&D" movie is a strange concept. What world is it set in? Greyhawk? Dragonlance? Dark Sun? Birthright? Order Of The Stick? I assume it's the first of those, if any. But that is the more interesting question to me. Making a movie about a game, rather than the world that the game is set in, odd. I mean I do understand it, it has the broad name recognition that none of the world settings have.

But I guess if there ever was a Glorantha movie, I can understand it being branded "RuneQuest" for the same reason. At least RuneQuest and Glorantha are closer to a 1:1 correlation than D&D and its various official worlds.

Looking forward to the OOTS animated feature.

On 4/3/2023 at 5:39 PM, Bren said:

Sleep has a 10 round duration. Two minutes isn't much of a rest. Still basically useless.

After the two minutes, they are still asleep. There's nothing in the spell that forces them awake at the end of it.

Also it might be difficult to tell whether you are actually talking to "the same" cult spirit, or one of a closely related class of spirits that can all be worshipped as one spirit cult.

9 minutes ago, Scotty said:

The circle is immobile on whatever it has been cast—if cast on something mobile (for example, a ship’s deck), the circle moves with it.

The circle was cast on the Storm Bull, so was immobile on the Storm Bull (ie moved with her). With a Range of 1, the circle is 1/10 that gave a 1m radius around the Storm Bull.

I'm pretty sure "for example, a ship's deck" is supposed to indicate that it has to be on a platform big enough to hold the entire circle. Otherwise what's the point of saying that it's immobile? By that definition, Bladesharp "is immobile" because it can't go from one sword to another.