Elcid321

After reading this thread, it makes me think, how do you think it's balazar in the current in-game year (1625)? Has the lunars taken over it? Have they been expelled? Has everyone been eaten by trolls?

13 hours ago, Brian Duguid said:

Type it all up, add the right credits, boom, publish on the Jonstown Compendium.

I've done the cover.

Wow, this is an amazing painting, and yeah, i can try my hand at making a jonstown compendium adventure.

On 8/25/2022 at 1:27 PM, Beoferret said:

So, to continue with the Conan motif, set the adventure in one of the cities in Safelster. They're not well fleshed out yet, so lots of room for your own imaginings. The tower is the abode of a Godlearner (like EricW suggested) or a sorcerer who walks their path. The elephant is a captured and bound Kivitti hero or godling, who's being used by the sorcerer as a tool for exploring the God Plane, etc.. Make it even more decadent by saying that the sorcerer, over time, developed a serious hazia habit and now spends his time in a haze of hallucinogenic smoke ("Black lotus! Stygian - the best!"), leaving his captive to rot. A strange magician's tower in the middle of a packed sword and sorcery-style city; where the occupant hasn't been seen for years, but still employs guards and purchases the best hazia regularly (sometimes with strange old coins)? What foolhardy adventurer wouldn't be interested?!

I don't know much about safelster. Any place where i might read more on it?

19 hours ago, Crel said:

I've played a fair amount of non-RQ adventures using RuneQuest, and I've GM'd some RQG using non-RQ adventures.

Our old campaign ran through a number of classic D&D dungeons in RQ, and Glorantha. We nowadays call that system "RQ Bastard" because it's RQ3, but with ~20 years of oral houserules. The original campaign we got the rules from is still going, though our own campaign ended awhile ago. Some fun adventures we ran which stick out include Lost Shrine of Tamoachan, the Caves of Chaos (I believe?), and The Lost Island of Castanamir. I'm told the other game completed Tomb of Horrors and White Plume Mountain.

We didn't worry about trying to bend setting stuff much. Just pop and go. If something doesn't fit, well, that's weird magic stuff beyond mortal ken, ain't it?

Personally, I've run some Pathfinder and D&D stuff, and also some stuff from Forbidden Lands (by Free League) within my RQG campaigns. The Spire of Quetzel for FL was a lot of fun; it has the right sort of over-the-top crazy to feel like an uncontrolled jaunt on the Hero World. Also the Mellifluous Mage, or something like that, is interesting. A bees-themed dungeon with interesting secrets and weirdness. FL has a lot of good sword and sorcery vibes, which reskins pretty OK into Glorantha. Plus, its treasure values don't require much fiddling to fit Gloranthan economy. Another adventure I enjoyed running was I believe The Spire of Iron and Crystal for Pathfinder. Not certain the name, but I think it was by Frog God Games. I reskinned the adventure as a God Learner ruin on the coasts of God Forgot.

One of my rules of thumb for mechanical conversions is to take an attack bonus, and multiply it by 5 to get an RQ skill percentage. Damage values can remain similar at low D20 levels, but require more tweaking at high levels. This x5 trick works pretty OK with D&D 5E, though I've used it mostly with Pathfinder 1E.

Another useful trick for playing adventures out of the book is to take any difficulty class (DC) effect, and make it either a resistance roll (POW against the DC), or an opposed roll using the DCx5 against like, Dodge or Scan or whatever.

These tricks don't get you all the way, but they'll cover like 50% of "winging it" when playing an adventure written for D20 within RQ.

Magic is a bit trickier. It depends on how comfortable you are with the system, if you want to ad hoc stuff. I'm pretty OK with going "Eh, 3 to 5 points of spirit magic, made up as I go along" because I know that's usually a few points of Bladesharp, Heal, or Protection. Those are your staples, IMO. Other spells might wind up on the list, but are they actually gonna get cast in a combat situation? Hard to say.

Bigger magic is tough, because it's hard to have fluency with the whole RBM to sort of sideways guess at similar magic. Remember that everyone has common magic, though. And sometimes, it's more dramatic to keep an antagonist with the D&D-style magic. A fireball spell is VERY FUCKING SCARY if you're an Orlanthi fighting a weird enemy sorcerer. Area effect attacks? the horror! A rule of thumb which comes up less often is assume a Big Magic Dude has 18 MP (or maybe an additional 10-20 MP from enchantments), and that a D&D spell costs MP equal to its level. Disruption replaces basically all cantrips or magic missile or other basic damaging things. To be frank, with the speed of many RQ combats, casters with bigger magic shouldn't bother with Disruption - just bring out the big guns first.

I like to take notes first, but that's because I like having a good written skeleton before GMing. Not everyone's going to need as much support as myself, and not everyone's going to have fluency with the material for this prep process to be relatively quick.

Lore translations are hard, but honestly, a lot of the time we got away with just not worrying about it. Looking back, I think it's sort of a Gordian Knot. Shit's weird and strange and your problem is survival. This works well coming from adapting adventures out of the D20 publications because of the heavy use of combat, conflict, and dungeons. A lot of the time, you can place a dungeon within a broader Gloranthan story context. Feuds and rivalries are common setups, and you can adapt those to Orlanthi-style blood oaths and High Drama without too much labor. So what if dungeons don't always make "ecological sense" or some garbage - they're fun, yeah? Like, there's a reason people have been dungeon-crawling for over 40 years.

The best dungeons do make sense, but don't let that deter you from using adventures which have fun ideas with middling execution.

I know this is kind of long and definitely rambling, but I hope it has a few useful insights. We've had a lot of fun using RQ's system to play non-RQ adventures, and I definitely encourage other people to do the same. There's tons of cool stuff out there, and in my experience the dangerousness of RQ's combat makes playing through combat-junky D20 adventures more exciting, not less.

Oh, one last note - make sure to trim down the numbers in pretty much every D20 adventure you run. Equal number of antagonists to the adventurers is a good rule of thumb. Up to x1.5 for weak mooks like trollkin. And remember that a big baddie which can soak damage in D20 games is at a pretty serious disadvantage during RQ games, because of action economy. If you have 30 hit points instead of 150, you go down quick.

Wow, this actually quite detailed. It's easy to see you have done this. 

And now that i think of it, yeah, there are more games out there tgat have a closer feeling to runequest than dnd, so i should probably look into those (like trudvang chronicles, or symbaroum). 

Thanks for the info.

46 minutes ago, Darius West said:

When I hear "elephant" in Glorantha, I immediately think of Teshnos.  On the other hand, when I think about the Tower of the Elephant, I generally think about how the mysterious dead alien from the original 1979 Alien movie looked like an elephant (due to what I assume was a breathing apparatus it died wearing, but with everything so biomechanical in appearance, who can tell?).

I think I would put the Tower of the Elephant in the ruins of Feroda or the ruins of Sog City in Prax.  Why?  Because lore-wise in 1220, the Teshnans had conducted expeditions along the Genertelan coastline.  The creature in question could be some sort of Elephant hsunchen spirit (like Harrek's white bear) trapped by a scumbag sorceror (possibly a Malkioni from the Western invasion of the Holy Country, or from God Forgot, etc.) who has figured out how to milk it for magic somehow.

one thing that came to mind was the possibility of being a sort of minor deity, who, considering that in the novel it says that he was some former prince of an alien race that once rebelled against his own rulers, and that he ended up in earth, where he tried to teach the humans his secrets, but his apprentice (the sorcerer) betrayed him, and binded him to himself.

In this case, one idea is that maybe, he was a sort of deity, maybe of the solar pantheon, or maybe a powerful spirit, who upon seeing the chaos (without the bug C) of the godswar, he decided to take the opportunity to carve his own realm, but was defeated and hid himself, creating his own cult.

Later on, after the godtime, he would help create Nysalor, alongside the rest of the council, only to end up following him and becoming his apprentice. Of course, we all know how it ended up, once Arkat came up and kicked down the door. And so, again, he goes into hiding with his cult, this time, maybe in the west, where after some time, one of his apprentice, who would become a godlearner, betrays him, and bind him, and steal his powers.

Now, there's various things thay come to mind of what the characters can do, killing the sorcerer (hard, but possible) and stealing the power of the elephant for themselves, free him and let him go to the underworld, to so he can finally find some peace and quiet, or try to heal him, and maybe restart his cult.

Hey there everyone. So, as the title implies, the theme of this thread is about placing the tower of the elephant, one of Conan the Barbarian most famous stories, into the setting of glorantha, and mainly, the so called elephant (who in the book, it's an alien). 

It would be the sorcerer and the tower are the easy part, as it would probably be placed somewhere in the Big Rubble, and the sorcerer would be a sorcerer.

But what about the "elephant"? Would it be a deity, trapped by a group of godlearners? What would be it's runes? And besides killing it like in the book, what else could be done? Would it be resurrected?

Have fun discussing it and using it for your games.

Hey there everyone, so, as the title imples, what adventures from other games (or videogames) have you translated or converted to runquest, and how?

On 3/14/2021 at 5:01 PM, jajagappa said:

The tales of the Vingkotlings seem to consistently overlook or ignore Vingkot's Daughters (and she's one of the daughters of the Summer Wife who would have had connections presumably with the Life Rune and agriculture/horticulture).  Instead, both the Orgorvaltes and the Berenethtelli end up as tales about the Rider Husbands (pastoral over agricultural or even hunter-gatherer).  Using the Man Rune for Orgorvale strongly suggests community and civilization, but one that suffered during the Storm Age and eventually turned to or gained the aid of one of the nomadic horse cultures.  

The main thing we know of her tribe is that at the Dawn they hold the upper Stream Vale and the gap between the Quivin Mountains and the Storm Mountains (the lands of the Colymar, Locaem, Sambari, and Kheldon), and the closest tribe to both the Old Wind Temple and the Hill of Orlanth Victorious.  It's also the primary access to Prax so a focus could have been on trade instead of agricultural.

Did she have some relationship with the Stream?  Or have connections with the rolling hills of this area (Thunder Hills, etc.)?  Were her lands cultivated gardens?  Unfortunately we don't know, so you could go any number of ways with that.

Well, one thing that could be done is add her another rune, maybe the harmony rune, to represent her civilizatory influence, pr maybe the air or movement rune, to represent the influence of her grandfather. And of course, giver her spells that represent said runic connections.

As the title implies, can we have any info on any new release?

On 5/24/2022 at 2:01 PM, EricW said:

Just a turn of phrase, not a documented quest. But you could make it up, maybe tell us about it. Make it difficult and perilous, otherwise lots of people would do it, to gain powerful combat magic when their village is threatened or whatever. Maybe include stations like being tempted by Gbaji or meeting the red moon goddess, both of whom would offer “gifts” the heroquester badly needs but must refuse. Gbaji could appear in disguise, attempt to gain the trust of the PC by being their helpful companion, but wolves can’t trust anyone right? 😉 

Mmm, interesting. Yes, i might do that, make my own telmori heroquest. Tell you all about it once (if) it's done. Going to have to think how it will work.

7 hours ago, Darius West said:

I can see kinky Hsunchen adoption ceremonies in your player's future.  Warn him that if he lies with the furries he may rise with the fleas, however.😄 

Considering that the deal might be sealed with a marriage, ot's definitely a possibility.

6 hours ago, EricW said:

Could get a lot worse than that. Given how the Telmori myths were likely contaminated to some extent by their pact with Nysalor, and the modern day connection with the moon, I'd say attempting a rebirth of the wolf heroquest could quickly turn into rebirth of chaos.

Rebirth of the wolf heroquest? Can i get some more info on that, or at the very leadt where i can find more about it?

5 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

They may be canonical, but they're lame, like sparkly vegetarian vampires. "Non-cursed Telmori" are for wimps who hate facing up to the implications of their rashly-held beliefs. YGWV, of course, and maybe this is a story Telmori tell outsiders -- "Oh, don't worry about me, I'm one of the Pure Ones. Not chaotic at all, me. No, siree!"

One thing i do is that i make my players roll a luck roll, that might randomly affect the situation either in their favor, or hinder them. Example, player roll his luck, and it falls let's say 60 or 70, then some of the telmori in the group might be pure ones. Roll 90 or higher? They're pure ones alright. Lower than 50? Normal telmori, good luck being chased by the local sto bull.

Thanks everyone, your answers are going to be very helpful. Let's see how things go.

Hi everyone, as the title says, Are there non-chaotic Telmori?

You see, one of my players, a follower of foundchild, on his travels looking to learn more hunting magic, has met for the first time the Telmori, and he's now interested in joining them and learning their secrets. So, i know that as chaotic beings, once they are met by someone with sense chaos (stormbull), they are getting killed, but i don't want them to die that easy (yet) so i got thinking there might be some tribe or clan of non-chaotic telmori out there. Do any of you think that might be possible?

7 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

except baboons*, what players are allowed to play ? 🙂

Nice initiative by the way !

 

* I m sorry, so sorry 😛

 

 

Hey there, sorry for not answering quickly, went to sleep before your post.

About what is allowed to play, well, mostly humans (although i did allowed someone to play a duck), mostly because most players are new to the game. Also, the skill and stat bonises will depend on one of the 3 premade clan the players decide to be members of, which will be decided before character creation. Still, in the future, you might be allowed to play something else, like a praxian or a grazelander (or something else,if given a good enough reason pr context).

So, interested in playing?

Hey there people, im placing here an invitation to my Kong of Dragon Pass campaign, which will be on discord, on fridays between 6 and 10pm pacific standard time. There are 3 available spaces.

As you may know, this being a king of dragon pass campaign, the characters belong to a clan that has settled on the region of dragon pass, fleeing the tyranny of the Pharaoh. The characters will explore the land, steal their neighbors cattle and discover new magical secrets, and with their actions (and a bit of luck) lead their clan to victory and glory.

https://discord.gg/5sCjwswh

12 hours ago, Morien said:

I took those five fiefs to simply be those that were enfeoffed and available as prizes to the other PKs. If we go by KAP 4 scaling of bannerets, you'd expect about 50/50 split, so the 'kingdom' might be a small one with a £50 demesne and £50 enfeoffed manors, for a total of £100. However, if we go with BotW scaling of 10-20% enfeoffed, this would give the size of the full kingdom somewhere between £250 and £500. So about a regular baronial honour of £300 or so.

Given that the usurpers' army is 25 knights and 100 foot soldiers, about £300 would be in line of that. However, it is said that they are not popular rulers, hinting that the true power of the kingdom would be more. I would not go above £500 in any case, and even that might be a bit difficult to explain, given the geography. Unless you wish to invoke the Enchantment of Britain and have most of the Red City actually exist in Faerie, which is likely the case for the Kingdom of the Circle of Gold, given its geographical size (several days journey across) and isolation (traveling needed to even get to the border).

In the end, it is up to the GM, how big he wants to make it. If this is a climax of a story of a Glorious PK, who is retiring afterwards, I don't mind going big. It might be a bit more of an issue if the PK will continue to be active in play, since he has such a huge power base and a title that he would loom over the other PKs. If this has been more of an enterprise of equals, I would rather go for breaking up the kingdom, with each PK getting a £100 estate or something out of it, joined together in common defense. This would keep everyone on the same footing, but definitely reward them for their efforts.

I actually never took into account the number of soldiers, but considrring that 10£ is supposed to give you 1 knight and 2 foot soldiers (+1 for garrison), you might be right that becoming king of the red city might me close to a barony, and of course, it being a port city, it adds to the land wealth. Thanks for the info.

1 hour ago, AlHazred said:

There was another adventure, "The Adventure of the Circle of Gold," where a character could become a king of a kingdom. Once the character swears fealty to Arthur (as High King), he can continue adventuring if he desires. The scenario appears in Tournament of Dreams and Tales of Mystic Tournaments. It includes a bit of discussion on how being a king interacts with errantry.

 

EDIT: As I remember it, there was a land record sheet for the Kingdom of the Circle of Gold in that adventure. Is there one in The Dragons of Britain magazine for the Red City?

Nope, no mention for that stuff in the fanzine, but thanks for the info, i'll check that book.

So, in an adventure i found in the Dragons of Britain fanzine, called the King of the Red City, where in the end of the adventure, one of the characters may become king of the city, and it got me thinking, how would that work as a holding, the amount of money it would make, the improvements and the possible events.

So, do any of you have any idea of how it could work?

2 hours ago, g33k said:

Mad Knight is making Glorantha mini's already.  They (obviously) have a license from Chaosium.
Their skirmish-level wargame rules got badly-delayed in playtest phase by covid, but they are getting back on track.

If you are on FB, check here:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/272645093680305 (general "Glorantha Mini's" group, not exclusive to Mad Knight)

 

Also of some interest to the OP would be Sandy Peterson's The Gods' War (which has some not-so-mini mini's).

 

huh, neat.

2 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

The first thing for you to decide is what scale you are going to work in.

White Bear and Red Moon and Nomad Gods are strategic scale. 

It looks to me as though the minis rules being discussed at Chaosium will be skirmish scale, though i wouldn't bet much on that.

 

 

yeah, i'm talking about a wargame warhammer style. you know, with all the minis and stuff.

second, chaosium is making a runequest skirmish game?

34 minutes ago, Ladygolem said:

I think this already exists, it's called White Bear and Red Moon and Nomad Gods...

At the very least that's where I would start. I've also seen adaptations of Hordes of the Things for Glorantha - super old school, but thematically versatile! I think there's also a skirmish game set in Glorantha coming out at some point but I know nothing about it.

That said, there's design space here, and it's definitely a topic I'd thought about before. Especially if you decide to use RQ:G as a mechanical base. d100 roll-unders using a form of the Attack/Parry table could be central here, with a simplified character sheet for each unit as opposed to each individual (with many units being controlled at once, you don't want to keep track of a lot for each one!). The setting's emphasis on Heroes would require support for single-person units with perhaps more detailed stats as well.
 

maybe, i was thinking more in the line of something similar to warhammer, but now that you reminded me of the dice system that is used, it might actually work. And indeed, as you said, heroes would be the most important units in the game.

now, the first faction to create would be the sartarites, with it's most basic units being the fyrd militia, the thanes and the chieftain, with special units being humakti deathlords, storm bull bullzerkers, orlanthi windlords, hyaloring cavalry, chalana arroy healers, and so on.

Hello everyone. So, as the name implies, the idea of this experiments is that we design a wargames based on runequest: glorantha (chaosium, your free to use the idea if you want to). The idea came to me as i was walking around and talking with my brother about how to make wargames based on tabletop rpgs, but i decided not to talk about runequest with him (he's not that interested in the setting), so i thought to share this idea with all of you, and see what ideas you come up with, like for example, the kind of units each faction would have, their abilities, each unit cost, etc.

With christmas so close, and thanksgivings and halloween and day of the dead already passed, it got me thinking, how would one be able to fit various earth holidays in the setting? 

Some are easier than other. For example, day of the dead, which would be a day for widespread ancestor worshipping, probably with some humakt and other death and life deities thrown for good measure.

But others, like christmas and santa would be a bit harder (and i find it fun the idea of a cult to the jolly red man).

So what do you all think? Have any of you done this kind of stuff? And how would you fit your own national (non-american) holidays?

Hey there everyone, i got a question that might be of interest for everyone.

How would someone (let's say and orlanthi) can be adopted by another culture (let's say praxian)?

I'm asking becuase i thought of what would happen if by misfortune or stupidity, my players get themselves outlawed and exiled from their clan/tribe, and somehow, once they're in another land, they tried to join the native culture.

I'm mainly looking for praxian, orlanthi and grazelander examples (because of the possibility of their children deciding they want to visit their parents families).

Hey there folks, i have a question.

How would an eurmalian based illumination work? How did it came to be? It's possible pros and cons? What would be it's secrets and what it's all about? Etc.

This question came to my head as i was talking with my brother who came with an idea of an illuminated eurmalian.

so, you're saying that they should join their parents in the war against arthur? sounds cool, but i'm wondering, wouldn't they lose honor for going against their liege lord?