Nozbat

On 10/15/2016 at 10:40 PM, HierophantX said:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribal_Hidage

So I am a fan of the Midlands partly because of this complex history of being a border.  I live a mile from the River Nene, and I am surrounded by layers of towns that were Roman and then Saxon and then sometimes even Viking. Some of the bits of bog iron I pick out of my flower beds may be slag from Roman iron works.  Anyways I want to set a campaign imagining a Saxon conquest/settlement of the Nene valley and areas around the Fens.

What would be useful to depict is Roman settlements north of London and south of Lincoln (Ermine Street or the A1 if you prefer), East Anglia, and a little bit to the left, say out to Warwick.  Terrain depicted.  Tribal areas.  What do you think?  

I just found this @HierophantX... did you @Belgath ever collaborate on the map?

6 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

MGF Sorry I don't know what you mean there. Could you explain what MGF stands for

Sorry... it means 'Maximum Game Fun'

6 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I think we can generally agree that the chances of breaking a limb with a punch are somewhat higher in BRP than in reality

I would always rule punching type damage as bruises, dead arms etc.. unless it's a single damage that does double the amount of HPs in a location .. then you have broken limbs, concussion, ruptured muscles, etc. Bruises are recovered quickly unlike weapon damage.

I still think what it comes down to is... if you don't like a rule .. change it.. we are not bound to RAW.. It is really about having fun.. mechanics are there to assist, not to take over

39 minutes ago, Beoferret said:

That's a 70's album cover, if I ever saw one. Or maybe something for the side of a van? 😃

70s Californiaesque

Could not resist...bought it

5 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

.... maran gor's afterlife... for a man.... never become a king... or start immediatly beer after death to not be... aware

a better way, probably a legend to convince them to accept their maran's doom gift

I suspect that the manner of death is kept from them and is a closely guarded cult secret 

As an example if we conflate the myths of Agamemnon and Lleu Llaw Gyffes both were likely told as a solemn oath that they would not die as long as he was  'neither clothed nor unclothed, neither in water nor on dry land, neither in the palace nor outside and neither fasting nor feasting'. 

As that oath was pretty foolproof and it seemed impossible to break, the sacred King would likely think they were the chosen of the goddess and they would not be sacrificed at Midsummer. Sadly they were unaware that the situation could be fulfilled by being in the bathhouse annex, being given an apple and setting it to his lips, being entangled in a shirt that was sleeveless and had no neck just as you step out of the bath. Who would have thought?

Interestingly, Clytaemnestra  used an axe to behead Agamemnon which was the Cretan symbol of sovereignty and also of the Goddess

I suspect Maran's Doom is couched along similar lines with a seemingly sacred oath that seems unbreakable. They just keep lining up... 

42 minutes ago, Mugen said:

@NozbatNever heard of this show ! 😄

From what I can see, it looks a lot like Le Chevalier de Pardaillec (sorry, I couldn't find an english version).

Sadly... Flashing Blades took itself seriously..

4 minutes ago, Joerg said:

It may very well be a form of subservient apotheosis - the sacrificed king becomes another cult spirit available to his people and successors.

That would certainly be true of yearly sacrificed kings who had oracular hero shrines dedicated to them after their deaths in Greece

15 hours ago, Beoferret said:

f not, which cultures seem most likely to do/have done something like that? I'm thinking here of the example of iron age Ireland (like the bog bodies of Old Croghan Man and Clonycavan Man) and the plot point in Mary Renault's The King Must Die.  

Jajagappa has given you the Gloranthan examples and there are plenty of examples in our world too

From the Middle East where human sacrifice was the last resort to some national emergency and often required the death of the king or one of his children. The Carthaginians and Phoenicians probably made child sacrifices but it is unknown for what purpose.

Human sacrifice is mentioned in Judeo-Christian texts where as I remember the King of Moab sacrificed his eldest son to Moloch to lift the Israeli siege of his capital. Also I think two Kings of Judah sacrificed their sons and 'angered the Lord' in times of emergency

A lot of Greek heroes interestingly suffered very ritualistic deaths (pricked by a poison arrow in the heel, flung off a cliff, gouged in the thigh with tusk, ripped to pieces by Orgiastic women, etc). Agamemnon suffered a ritual death which is similar to how the Mabinogion explains how to kill Lleu Llaw Gyffes (the sun god) which I suspect is not an accident. Of note Odysseus escaped his ritual sacrifice.

In Ireland and in Scandinavia we have ritualistically murdered people (strangled, garrotted, hung) which were nobles and were quite often mutilated (tongue, nipples or eyes).

The Year Sacred King is hinted at in lots of mythology and is probably been expunged from the record as societies became more 'civilised'. (Romans denied they sacrificed Vestal Virgins or walled up two Gauls and Greeks under the Forum during the Hannibal wars. There is mention that the Vestals threw straw people into the Tiber which were probably originally human sacrifice). They attributed human sacrifice to their enemies (those nasty Gauls, druids, Germans, Celt-iberians, Carthaginians) who were not civilised and deserved conquering. 

Blood sacrifice was always very powerful and the agrarian (possibly matrilinear) peoples needed to ensure that their crops would grow and they would not starve. What better way to do it than to kill the King since he is associated with the sun and dies yearly?

That's a few examples off the top of my head but there are lots more.. 

16 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Flashing Blades

I had to look that up and found you were referring to an RPG as opposed to where my thoughts went when I read it.. or in other words, the French 1960's TV programme Flashing Blades (Le Chevalier Tempête in the original) which involved a catchy song about 'fighting for what you want', jumping on horses to speed to some besieged castle, jumping on more horses and getting chased by the entire Spanish army while fencing with everyone. Great fun but probably not linked to Damage bonuses. For those that want to remember...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5Sb9AoirSU&t=26s

16 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I considered halving all weapon damaged and then doubling the dice per success level. A sword might do 1D4/2D4/4D4 or 1D6/2D6/4D6. That way a lot of hits would be minor strikes for minimal damage-especially if we added in another success level (marginal, half the success chance or higher). 

On a more serious note this might work well if you want to stop increasing the amount of one-limbed people who must inhabit most of the places that PCs move through with lethal intent but, it does make it more complicated and does it not take away from MGF? 

I have never run or played a combat heavy game since the early days of D&D and only briefly AD&D so perhaps it is not as important to me. Surely combat should carry a certain amount of risk? Otherwise the power balance shifts too much to the PCs?

Just bought it... I'm an Interested Cultist working out what the 'normals' do to try and stop me destroying the world...

Glad to support you Cream

1 hour ago, Barak Shathur said:

This is one of the qualities I love about the BRP systems. What I don't love is that arms and legs fly off a little to easily.  I solved it by simply halving the db die, it hits the sweet spot for me. Also the fact that combat lasts a little longer means that fatigue points come more into play.

But that is the great thing about BRP... if you don't like the RAW.. do some home ruling... graduate the DB (like in Mythras) .. change the way stats are rolled for PCs.. make sure people wear armour or make it cheaper.. make the damage with weapons less 

Fighting with weapons is deadly.. it may not always chop off bits but it certainly kills you

On 1/26/2020 at 1:15 AM, Lloyd Dupont said:

it is definitely unrealistic to die, on average, from 3 punches

Punches can come off general hit points.. and in general it should not kill.. home rule it so when people have zero hit points they are unconscious but recover the lost HPs quicker than they would from a weapon

I GM Mythras and CoC... play RQG and CoC.. combat is lethal and you don't enter into it unless you know you have an advantage (bigger, better, more armour, better spells, or  (and possibly the primary thing) you have a strategical and tactical advantage  ie there's two of you against the enemy

The important thing is that it works for you and above all it's fun.. there's really no point in doing things that aren't fun or else it's known as masochism 

2 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

I'll let you decide what is more likely:

A. In a 1 inch thick box we are including two 400 page hardcover books
B. In a 1 inch thick box we are including a 64 page intro to the World of Glorantha book.

I misread this and thought it read ... "I'll let you DECIDE"...

I'd choose (A)...every time

but then I realised it was not a choice but it was an INTx5 roll... which I fumbled so I still chose (A). The fumble was because I'm not very good at inches so if it had been in centimetres it would have been an easy roll...

I'm guessing I'll just have to wait having made my Knowledge roll x3 and discovered 1 inch=2.45cm... damn

I'm being lazy.. and I'm sure this topic has been discussed before...but

Is there any reference material for building things like.. Stockades, Steads, Boats, larger buildings etc?

Interested in costs and time

On 12/28/2020 at 6:44 PM, coffeemancer said:

why I presume the bride worthy of 20 cows will have the land

Only 20 cows for a bride... Kalfrik might buy some cows then... he is never going to be a silver tongue devil particularly when his Beastspeech is better than his Heortling... and that's barely comprehensible..unless he decides that his life partner is Lulla? 

14 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

How loud are they?

As loud as the New Years fireworks...

13 minutes ago, Kloster said:

Yes, but does that count as herd?

If they are marching on the ground, they are an army... or at least that's the collective noun for fleas.. so each baboon has a herd of armies which can be unleashed on unsuspecting victims

2 minutes ago, Kloster said:

Yes. For me, most baboons are standard, normal praxians. The only trouble I see is that they don't have a tribe herd animal.

Don't they keep fleas?

28 minutes ago, soltakss said:

I have always had special rules for NPCs. They often have special powers, gained from HeroQuests, or special abilities as gifts, or spells that PCs don't have access to, or even different ways of casting spells.

Is it against the spirit of RQ? No, not at all. We have always used house rules and invented magical items and powers that are not in the RQ rules. 

If you just go with what is in the rulebook than you miss out on so much. Similarly, if you only use what is in the core books, or books for RQG, or even books for RQ.

I am happy using magic items from Plunder, or from threads at BRP Central, or from someone's website, or something that I have made up. 

For me, making things up is exactly the RQ Spirit.

Absolutely, mixing and matching keeps the excitement. Presenting people with uncertainty and the unknown makes for both good stories, roleplaying and those are the ones people look back on. The antagonist having something the PCs don't understand is good for creativity too. I like it when the players triumph by clever means rather than knowing what to do. My PCs never know how the baddies pulled things off, they just see the effects and make plans. And usually I have no idea how the baddies pull stuff off they act out what I want them to for the story.

It's all about waugh! really. 100% don't understand it and it feels terrifying but we got through it. Then we waughed to the tavern and everyone bought us drinks when we told the story... WAUGH!

3 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

WAUGH!

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

WAHA! Surely?

It would be WAHA in standard English but WAUGH! in Irish-Canadian ... (and it's important to have the exclamation mark too.. so don't leave it out) and for those that don't understand Bill .. I'm sure there's something that can translate him into machine code/ beast speech/ Heortling/ duck etc. Ask the Librarian if you get stuck.

I also understand it's a useful verb.. Bill and I went waughing together but we came back later

(maybe I understand why WindChild has problems understanding now..

43 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Can we at least say ook?

Only if you’re a Librarian

20 minutes ago, soltakss said:

We had a magic item in one campaign that allowed Glue to be used on living flesh

Was it a Golden Goose?

I was thinking when reading this thread about what strength the Glue spell was in the Brothers Grimm Fairy tale... must have been way more than Soltak's

On 12/12/2020 at 12:42 PM, soltakss said:

Nab him! Jab him! Tap him! Grab him! Stop that trollkin now!

Bit too Dick Dastardly for me...lol

1 minute ago, Joerg said:

According to Bill, all of them:

 

I could see three... and that was only the team..

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

 

How many Gudjonson's were in this video?

On 12/2/2020 at 9:57 PM, Simlasa said:

thinking of knights as bullies who treated their 'lessers' poorly.

- I am your King

- How'd you get to be King then?  By exploiting the workers! By 'angin' on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society.

- The Lady of the Lake-- her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, 
Arthur, was to carry Excalibur.  THAT is why I am your king!

- Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government! Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some... farcical aquatic ceremony!