Squaredeal Sten

So Gonn Orta sits in his castle in the Rockwood Mountains and trades.  He is a priest (?) of Issaries so must trade fairly well.  But he doesn't go anywhere these days-

What would he have to trade?  What would he be interested in trading for?

Not for items of ordinary use like food:  With only a mule train you would be unable to carry enough food for a large giant's snack, and Gonn Orta is very large.

Trading for magic and making a profit, as in give me two and I'll give you one?

Seems to me that for his own use he would be above trading for most common magic items humans use.  A magic ring wouldn't fit his finger.  Maybe a magic barrel hoop would. 

On 3/8/2021 at 7:01 AM, jajagappa said:

I don't think there are any tribes - the culture wouldn't support that.

When I ran Griffin Mountain material, I based clans around the camp sites/hearths marked on the Balazar map, though as a hunter-gatherer culture, I'm sure their 'territories' would vary widely.

The Balazar map pack now on Jonstown Compendium has a "political map".  That only defines the three citadels' territories, and does not go down to clan level.

15 hours ago, SJB said:

Converting real world historical data to the ‘Lunar silver scale’ would suggest 1.8 cubic feet per person-day at a cost of 22L per cubic foot (including labour, materials, transport and expertise). Width in the volume calculation is taken to be the thickness of the outer wall. Multiply construction time and cost by 0.6 if building in wood rather than stone.

SJB

or to round it off, for generic construction,

working in wood  13 lunars per cubic foot. 

working in stone:  22 l per cubic foot

But in the case of a clan building its own new longhouse and felling local lumber, not using any manufactured components, and doing no masonry,   money is negligible but man-days are the critical issue, and that would be 3 cubic feet per man-day in wood, 1,6 in stone.

So to raise a log cabin 20'x12'x12' high with 6" thick walls, that's 64 feet of perimeter x 12' high x.5 = 384 cubic feet /3 = 128 man-days? 

No,  I think it should be less, at least until you attempt  higher quality construction.. 

Why?  I understand from a book about Lincoln's life that a frontiersman would fell trees inside of one year and then before winter invite maybe 12-20 neighbors to a one day house raising -  and still manage to feed himself and family. 

Of course that's a frontiersman with an iron axe.  How much to allow for bronze or stone tools?  What's the nature of the real world historical data?

This thread - "A House" 

ended up with a consensus cost of 200L for a house with a chimney.  But IMHO the average Satrtarite house doesn't yet have a chimney.  YGMV but for a new settlement I'd advocate saying chimneys are a luxury, so save the cost of a mason.   This is construction coast, does not include clearing land or sacrifices.  

On 7/4/2021 at 11:44 AM, Diana Probst said:

..... We have seriously considered whether we should just do this until the whole place is covered... but we reckon there are probably at least three more things we can do.  ..... We're not saying we WILL do all of those, but those are the things we'd like to cover if we could....

That sounds like a doable program.  But why not do the Earth temple later?  It would have great usefulness.  Whose PC hasn't needed to go to the Earth temple?

There are references to  "Lunar hell' or hells, but I have never seen specifics of what is there except the souls of leading Lunar  enemies.  However i get the idea that these are NOT the generic Gloranthan underworld.

My hard copy arrived this afternoon.  It's great to page through it, game ideas come to mind more than with the PDF -  I'm just a hard copy kind of guy.

I've been looking at the 2019 and 2020 topics on training, but would still like your opinion on this narrow question:  What should be the limit on number of skills an "adventurer" can train in at the same time?   "five" seems reasonable to me.

I saw Jeff's 1/20/2019 restatement of the (p.416 RQiG) general training rule , but that's in a context of the adventurer having to work for a living.

On 1/20/2019 at 9:48 AM, Jeff said:

I will defer to individual GMs how to handle that in their campaigns. In my campaigns, the idea of "training full time" just isn't plausible. All characters have cult responsibilities, occupational roles, community obligations, etc. Even if you were living in a Humakt temple as some kind of devoted initiate, you need to eat, sleep, worship the god, pray and meditate more than persuade a Sword Lord to train you. In a Knowledge Temple, you are going to be copying scrolls, writing down records, and working as a scribe. And so on.

Once upon a time, Greg and I played around with breaking down the percentage of time a character can devote to any type of activity - working, cult responsibilities, family obligations, praying and meditation, dreaming, sex, whatever. It was an interesting exercise but waaaaaaay too much book-keeping for a game system. What is in RQG gets you to more or less the same result without the bookkeeping.

and I accept that the limits are really a GM's choice- and that simplicity is a virtue in rules -

But I am also aware of

(A) GMs and players who want to arrange a full-time training situation, whether by spending sudden riches or by giving someone what amounts to a scholarship-

(B) The volume of training at least one well known GM gave - in Six Seasons in Sartar, where new adults are getting 100L of training per season and that might be in common skills tat only cost 10L to train, or might be in rare skills.  I rationalized this as the clan really wanting the new adults to succeed in life, so they don't actually work seven day weeks of 12 hour days -

(C) The proposition that new Initiates (inexperienced adventurers)  are going to be educated in Cult Lore and Worship skills, in addition to any other cult skills, and that this happens in the five years from ages 16 to 21 to make an Experienced adventurer.  This is rarely gamed out but you still have to admit it happens in the abstract background.

(D) the proposition that someone might go to a Lhankor Mhy library and get what amounts to a bachelor's degree

After reading the discussion i am thinking of saying" you can train in at most 5 skills."

My rationale for why that's a ballpark number:

1) if you can get occupational and cult experience on four skills, and train in one, while working a full time job - that's five things you are learning during the time you are not adventuring.

2) If you can take off up to three of the eight weeks of a season and adventure -  and in the other five weeks you get that occupational and cult experience -

Then I'm looking at the ability to learn 5 things if you are not working a job.   And in terms of time alone  if adventuring more than three weeks  displaces training then we have to say that training takes no more than five weeks of spare time if you ARE working a full time job.  How much spare time per day or week does the individual have/? undefined.  But if they work 12 hours a day farming (which seems to have been a pre industrial RW reality) and sleep 8 hours then that's max 4 hours spare time for all activities including eating and dressing.  Say take half that to train?  So if they didn't work, that's about six training subjects worth of time freed up.

So soon after the Red Book of Magic hit the warehouses!  This is an eventful summer.  I will check daily to see when it becomes for sale.

On 6/28/2021 at 4:53 AM, Byll said:

..... The uncontrolled fire elemental is useful if summoned in a sensible place, possibly the water one too, but most of the rest appear to just flee the scene if you have not controlled them (it's going to be rare for there to be no light for a darkness elemental to flee)

Summoned indoors, a Darkness elemental will not go outdoors into full daylight and I don't see that it has a  reason to wander around when it is already in a dim building. 

Summoned darkness elementals in choke points, right on top of the enemy.  The elemental doesn't have to go anywhere to be effective.  If it just stands it's driving them crazy with fear. 

Now if you wanted it to pursue - IMHO that takes Control.

I got my hard copy with yesterday's mail.  It looks great!  And I find hard copy easier to read than PDF.  Used your rebate certificate code last week to get more color hardcopies before the prices go up.  😀

On 1/14/2017 at 9:55 AM, m0n0cular said:

I play it as the escape route that Torath Manover and the other Sartarite Orlanthi of Trilus used to get to Balazar, and it's still being used as conflict continues. Despite its dangers the alternative route through Tarsh is a tad too red for desperate refugees from Imperial conquest to take.

Same in my campaign, as of year 1620.

1 hour ago, Shiningbrow said:

Don't forget skill points for hometown/region from p105 onwards, particularly for Esrolians.

Good point. That should be part of the skills sheet History column, column   F.  But some of it goes to the runes, not the skills.

OK, this is two documents:

1. My character creation checklist ("notes")

2. The skills spreadsheet

Genericized Notes on character generation.docx Blank Skills spreadsheet.xlsx

42 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Yes, I did that as well, I would post mine but it has a lot of cute and paste of text and graphics from RQ RiG, meaning I would be breaking several copyrights to post it.

Mine is not nearly so fancy.  I originally tailored it to my campaign but have genericized it, and will post if anyone asks for it.   I hereby grant free permission to use and copy to anyone who reads this and to Chaosium.

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

BTW, RQ3 did have a couple of special attacks such as a sweep that a giant might use. Basically the sweep attacked an arc rather than a specific character, and the attack hit each character in the arc, in succession until/unless the attack failed to knock a character down. A big powerful creature could send characters flying like bowling pins.  

......

The giant's sweep is retained in RQG.  It's in Glorantha Bestiary, p.46, the small print under the giant's weapons.

I have made up a checklist and guide plus a skills spreadsheet.  I THINK it may speed character generation up a little, but what I really did it for was to help spot and prevent omissions and mistakes.  Things like skipping the extra rune %, or getting confused about characteristic bonuses and skill%.  I've made omissions myself and realized it when i was playing the character, why not help my players past that?

3 minutes ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

In Runequest -  you can't parry with your hand: p.197 of RQG says "If the adventurer is armed with a weapon or a shield" .  and if you go on to read that section you will see that the parry may very well NOT deflect all the damage.  It can damasge the weapon, the arm, and excess damage will get through to the body.  So if you want more crunch, go on from generic BRP to the  specific Runequest rules

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Lloyd Dupont said:

The default BRP rule where parry just deflect all the damage, as I think of it, become increasingly inadequate.... For example it's fine to use parry with your bare hands against sword, or even the club of a giant...

.....

In Runequest -  you can't parry with your hand: p.197 of RQG says "If the adventurer is armed with a weapon or a shield" .

Hurray!  Thanks to all involved in publishing the hard copy book.  We do appreciate your work.

4 hours ago, 7Tigers said:

The AA Atlas says that Giant Bones is indeed one of the 5 dragonewt cities indicated in Guide.
Troll Ruins are page 190 of Guide.

Yes, one sentence about Troll Ruins:  "These ruins in the Stinking  Forest are the remains of a troll stronghold destroyed by a war between the Elder Races." 

Has any detail been written on giant Bones or Troll ruins, both of which map west of Cliffhome and 30km or so south of the Rockwood Mountains?

I found a post from 2017 in which it was said Giant bones is a city -  but I'm not convinced that is true.

Not much in Guide to Glorantha.

I'd like to give credit to Dragon for raising an interesting topic;  smell and taste in GM'ing descriptions. 

I can't recall ever including smell or taste in my description of a scene, and since I'd like to improve i will try to remember to do so.

15 hours ago, Dragon said:

.....But you could lick a dryad while it is manifest. I recommend gaining consent in such a case. Licking an apple tree dryad could taste like either licking generic bark or licking the skin of an apple, depending on where you lick the dryad.

Since the cacao is not processed, I expect the lick to taste like unsweetened chocolate if you licked the bean part.

This deserves its own thread, since it has gone away from potions and alchemy.  Relevant to GM's description of a scene or event -

What is the smell of an apple tree dryad like?

What is the taste of an apple tree dryad like?  Does this differ by body part?  Is this "adult" content?

New topic created:  https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/14360-gming-descriptiveness-smell-and-taste/