Probably Typical Stupid Question from Newcomer to Glorantha

[soltakss]

20 hours ago, LordNigel said:

I just think it's very heartwarming to know that I can always count on this community if I ever have specific trouble dealing with all of this. I think that the seriousness and hospitality that I feel here are one of the best parts of learning about Glorantha in the end. There are serious hardcore fans for many games and worlds, but not all of them are patient and welcoming like this, haha.

The forums are very helpful, both here at BRP Central and on Facebook. 

Sometimes you get pages and pages of discussions that are minutely detailed and go into things very deeply, but even they tend to be friendly and useful.

[LordNigel]

34 minutes ago, soltakss said:

The forums are very helpful, both here at BRP Central and on Facebook. 

Sometimes you get pages and pages of discussions that are minutely detailed and go into things very deeply, but even they tend to be friendly and useful.

Which Facebook pages do you recommend?

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, LordNigel said:

Which Facebook pages do you recommend?

Personally, I find the RuneQuest group of most use: https://www.facebook.com/groups/482578525251485/

 

[soltakss]

On 12/21/2021 at 5:14 PM, LordNigel said:

Which Facebook pages do you recommend?

RuneQuest, Glorantha Fans, The Clan Hearth and QuestWorlds.

[Alex]

On 12/18/2021 at 12:54 PM, LordNigel said:

That being said, I do consider GMing Gloranthan adventures in GURPS when I'm comfortable enough with the world, even if it's just to see how it feels.

I think there's a lot of logic to at least trial-ballooning an adventure or two in RQ, especially if they're written for that system and you have them to hand, and you're curious to see how both the system and the world go down with your group.  Then you're mainly worrying about "cranking the handle" right, and not having to do adaptation as you go.  Then afterwards you can review, especially if you get feedback that they'd much rather be playing GURPS (or 13th Age, or Fate, or...), as well as what aspects of the adventure plotline and the world agreed with them, and what didn't.

[Alex]

On 6/13/2021 at 2:36 AM, jajagappa said:

"High level" really has to do with the stories told, not the game systems used.  Both HQG and RQG can be fully heroic and engage characters in heroquesting, or can be very gritty, low-level games.  Particular actions are more abstracted in HQG, more cinematic in a sense, but you shouldn't think that you have to use HeroQuest in order to go heroquesting or RuneQuest if you want to hang around lowly dives in Pavis.

Right, but that's addressing "heroquesting" rather than the "high level" observation.  It'd be over-egging things to say that one was necessarily higher- or lower-level than the other, but if you're looking to run an extremely powerful "I'm working on having my own personal DP counter" character in RQ, or conversely if you're looking to really get over a sense of "I might be rubblerunner kibble in an instant if this combat goes wrong for me" in HQ, the game system does much less of the heavy lifting for you, and you're going to have to do significant work to convey that successfully.  Which isn't to say that might not be worthwhile, depending on you and your group's specific and general preferences, and what the game is trying to do exactly.

On 6/13/2021 at 2:36 AM, jajagappa said:

Some heroquests may look very mundane and be entirely in "this world", but still have broader ramifications.

Ah, them thar ramifications, now there's the rub...

The tricky thing with HQs is that on the one hand, they may look like this, and then one has the tricky issue of reverse-engineering their metaphysical implications.  And on the other, they might very clearly be seeking to follow a given myth, so the potential magical angle is pretty clear, but then the trick is for the quest to play out in a satisfactory or even manageable manner.  Then there's all the other cases...  and they're probably not actually separate cases at all, they're all more of a somewhat fuzzy continuum.

So tack back to @soltakssand his work on heroquests (not specifically this book, also thinking of his website and what he's shared over a long time), there's quite a lot of descriptive complexity going on here, and he's done an excellent job of collecting that and joining the dots.  Were he to come up with some Big New Idea out of whole cloth, or conversely to have neglected or pruned some of the different cases, no doubt he'd be getting it in the neck for that, too.  A future Official System is more free to do that, though if I were to guess, it seems more likely they'll continue to nibble at the various edges to cover it progressively, rather than big-banging it.

[Ian_W]

I find throwing name of obscure Gloranthan thing or myth into the search bar more useful than hunting on facebook ...

[Alex]

4 hours ago, Ian_W said:

I find throwing name of obscure Gloranthan thing or myth into the search bar more useful than hunting on facebook ...

Just remember to add "Glorantha" to the search term, otherwise you end up with the thing Greg borrowed it from in the first place, or other shrapnel...

Also remember which world you're in, and if looking for a map, hit the "images" tab, and not the "maps" one.  True story!

[Joerg]

5 hours ago, Alex said:

Just remember to add "Glorantha" to the search term, otherwise you end up with the thing Greg borrowed it from in the first place, or other shrapnel...

Also remember which world you're in, and if looking for a map, hit the "images" tab, and not the "maps" one.  True story!

I blame the absence of a Google Maps equivalent for Glorantha. But then, if you google named Martian features like Pavonis Mons or Valles Marineris, the maps search points you to North America and India, respectively. Maybe the maps of the other planets are only available in Google Earth.

[French Desperate WindChild]

15 minutes ago, Joerg said:

I blame the absence of a Google Maps equivalent for Glorantha. But then, if you google named Martian features like Pavonis Mons or Valles Marineris, the maps search points you to North America and India, respectively. Maybe the maps of the other planets are only available in Google Earth.

could be great to add a waze equivalent :

How much time today (season, ...) to travel to Boldhome ?

 

of course you may find too :

where are the lunar / tusk riders / orlanthi / bizon patrols ?

is the road free or is there a traffic issue ?

😛

[Joerg]

11 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

could be great to add a waze equivalent :

How much time today (season, ...) to travel to Boldhome ?

 

of course you may find too :

where are the lunar / tusk riders / orlanthi / bizon patrols ?

is the road free or is there a traffic issue ?

😛

Actually, you could use a GIS and randomized events to model this, yes.

Also, do your travelers get notification of these difficulties before they encounter them, or are those difficulties baseless rumors spread to lure your travelers away into some alternative route (if only to enrich trading there)?

You could work out a couple of encounters, like the ones in Borderlands or Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes, and slowly add names and characters to those as you go.

You could determine a pattern between ship convoys reaching the Holy Country from all over the world, cargo availability, merchants specializing in certain types of goods, etc. one piece at a time, slowly adding to your back-log of pre-made encounters (and substracting from the random or "create a new specific one" probabilities).

Road segments come with their own difficulties - rock slides, mud slides, avalanches, snow drifts, road works in progress, military passing through, big caravans passing through, heavy loads transported, robber activity, raider activity.

Robbers and raiders may have patterns, and local clans and tribes have patrol responsibilities and response times and capacities.

Robbers and raiders also come in different patterns, and different attack modes. Trolls operate by night, which may mean they attack caravans at rest. Ambushes or brazen demands for protection money for a stretch of road where a certain band of robbers are said to be active are another way, with the protectors possibly in league with the robbers causing enough trouble (but little enough actual damage) to make this a legitimate, tax paying business. But then, such extra protection can turn out to be the insiders of a hustle. Possibly even an elaborate one, exchanging e.g. a bag of silk cloth for a very similar bag of raw wool.

A Thane of Apple Lane for instance would have all manner of such tasks put before him because of Byrne's Squeeze. He might have to offer guided crossings of that road, for a small toll, taking only full responsibility for traders using this service, but then having to take the responsibility if robbers do turn up and get away with loot or causing injury.

[Alex]

6 hours ago, Joerg said:

I blame the absence of a Google Maps equivalent for Glorantha. But then, if you google named Martian features like Pavonis Mons or Valles Marineris, the maps search points you to North America and India, respectively. Maybe the maps of the other planets are only available in Google Earth.

I've managed to be sent to places in Ireland and in Germany when searching for "Peloria", confusingly.  But at least those would be shorter commutes!