A Short Detour is out!

[Lordabdul]

My first RuneQuest adventure is live on the Jonstown Compendium! Grab it now it still has plenty of typos!

When the adventurers stumble upon a mother and her son being attacked by wild boars, they are thrown into a tricky situation in which multiple powerful factions are on a collision course. What will your players do when they can decide who lives and who dies?

A Short Detour is a straightforward adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha that will take about one big or two short sessions of play. It can be placed anywhere around Sartar, with the text assuming that your campaign is based in or near Colymar lands.

In addition to the adventure, A Short Detour provides an insightful look at the nature of Chaos, with rules for Chaotic corruption.

A copy of the Glorantha Bestiary and Red Book of Magic are recommended to run this adventure, but not totally necessary.

Buy it now! Thanks!

Edited January 30, 2022 by lordabdul

[Austin]

Congratulations!

[Lordabdul]

Two days after release, A Short Detour is still in the top 5 of all community content on DriveThruRPG! Yay! (I suppose that's good, right?)

[Squaredeal Sten]

Many or all contingencies are provided for in this adventure.  It is really detailed and thought through.  Not all is as it seems -

[kr0p0s]

Really well written, with interesting characters and plot. I love the examination of an important part of the world of Glorantha and ways of dealing with it at the character level. Excellent short, but detailed adveventure!

Edited February 3, 2022 by kr0p0s

[Orlanthatemyhamster]

Even to Disneyland? 

What if it was only an extra 20 Mins drive? 

[Nick Underwood]

Urgh... Drive-thru payment problems... But you can count an additional "intended" purchase. That counts, right? 

[Lordabdul]

On 2/3/2022 at 5:24 AM, kr0p0s said:

Excellent short, but detailed adveventure!

Thanks a lot! Much appreciated.

[Lordabdul]

Since last time I posted here, A Short Detour has risen up to Silver Best Seller! Thanks to everybody who got it, and to the few people who sent me constructive feedback on it.

If you're still on the fence, read Pookie's review here!

Quote

A Short Detour: An Adventure for RuneQuest Glorantha confronts the Player Characters with a moral dilemma and excellent opportunities for roleplaying supported with some fantastic NPCs.

 

[Lordabdul]

A Short Detour is currently on sale for $5 (to celebrate Bog Struggles making it to Silver) so you can grab it for cheaper while it lasts!  It's got five 5-star ratings! It's got Chaos shenanigans!

[Lordabdul]

A Short Detour is part of the Christmas in July sale. You have two weeks to grab it for cheaper! A big thanks to everybody who rated it or posted reviews, this is much appreciated!

Edited July 18, 2023 by Lordabdul

[Karlak One-eye]

Running this at the moment. A great story which my player managed to de-rail in the first session through entirely reasonable role playing decisions. Thanks for putting it together. 

[Lordabdul]

1 hour ago, Karlak One-eye said:

Running this at the moment. A great story which my player managed to de-rail in the first session through entirely reasonable role playing decisions. Thanks for putting it together. 

Woooo, very intriguing! Please share what happened!  😄 (here or in a private message)

[Karlak One-eye]

11 hours ago, Lordabdul said:

Woooo, very intriguing! Please share what happened!  😄 (here or in a private message)

I will do Lordabdul, but a bit busy for the next few days and want to run the narrative past Staff (my player and co author of mgf) so probably next week. 

[Zalain]

hello hello!

i´m using A Short Detour as a guide to manage a character tainted by chaos, but with some little changes.

well, the tainted character keeps his chaos hide for the momment, but one of the other sorcery user characters are asking him to teach, steal breath (spell that was learnt from a chaos tainted book).

If the first sorecerer teach the spell to his mates, will they be able to get tainted too? ...or maybe trigger the spelll against them during the lesson?

[Lordabdul]

2 hours ago, Zalain said:

If the first sorecerer teach the spell to his mates, will they be able to get tainted too? ...or maybe trigger the spelll against them during the lesson?

I guess it depends on what, in your own Glorantha, is the "logic" to pass on Chaotic taint.  IMHO teaching or learning a spell might not cause someone to get a Chaotic taint, but maybe casting it could, depending on the circumstances... it's up to you, but the general rule of "more trouble means more fun" applies 😄  

Edited July 21, 2023 by Lordabdul

[mfbrandi]

10 hours ago, Zalain said:

steal breath (spell that was learnt from a chaos tainted book)

If a chaos taint is about acts, choices, and the soul (my takeaway from this), then in what sense is the book chaos-tainted? I am not saying it isn’t chaos-tainted, but your understanding of what that comes to may answer the question for you.

If the book is chaos-tainted in the sense that it contains spells which when learned confer a positive chance of becoming chaos-tainted on the learner, what of any “non-chaotic” spells in the book (i.e. ones it would be safe to learn from another — non-tainted — source)? My guess from the Greg Sez article is that even learning the usually safe spells from a tainted source would be risky — like eating the non-slimy venison from a chaos deer — according to Greg. But there is no reason you have to agree with Greg. I don’t even know whether he agreed with himself.

All hail the waiting mouth!

[JRE]

Steal Breath is a Tap spell, so it is normally forbidden to regular Malkioni. But that is quite far from being a chaotic act, unless we consider brithini, vadeli and others chaotic.

So I suppose the taint is in the book. Does the teaching require access to the book? Or has the character transcribed the spell to their own non-chaotic grimoire? In the second case, it does not seem necessary to taint the student, while the first would risk at least exposure.

Or chaos could be in the language of the book. Does the book implant or require a forbidden knowledge in the form of language? It is needed to cast the spell, so learning that form of the spell would include exposure to Chaos, and if the book does give you the knowledge, then it will spread Chaos on all its readers.

[mfbrandi]

3 hours ago, JRE said:

Steal Breath is a Tap spell … But that is quite far from being a chaotic act, unless we consider brithini, vadeli and others chaotic.

The in-world author of the Prosopaedia (p. 68) begs to differ:

• Jraktal the Tap …
  Leader of the Chaos invasion of Pamaltela …
  Jraktal survives, as the use of Tapping among the Men of the West proves.
  Each time they call on him, all unknowingly, they hasten the end of the world.

That is not to say that author is right, of course.

3 hours ago, JRE said:

Does the teaching require access to the book? Or has the character transcribed the spell to their own non-chaotic grimoire? In the second case, it does not seem necessary to taint the student

Or is it like benefiting from immoral earnings — yea, even at 7 generations removed! — or visiting a museum named after a dodgy benefactor: the Chaos taint is transitive and cannot be buffered? If there is Chaos in the stream, then everything downstream is Chaos-tainted, no matter what fancy dams, weirs, and purification plants we build? That would seem to suit the spirit of our age.

Of course, it is all cant and hypocrisy: the universe came from Chaos, and the world of time runs on it. Everything one does hastens the end of the world. If you don’t like it, salve your conscience by casting yourself into the Void today — there is always a friendly Chaos mouth waiting — and reduce your carbon footprint to zero. 😉

[Karlak One-eye]

On 7/19/2023 at 11:20 AM, Karlak One-eye said:

I will do Lordabdul, but a bit busy for the next few days and want to run the narrative past Staff (my player and co author of mgf) so probably next week. 

Hi all, As promised the story of diversions and insidious chaos, entirely based on "A short Detour" and then derailed by some great role play. Having said that it was a lot of fun to GM and the depth of the module made it very easy for me to extemporise as necessary. Indeed I now have a Roll20 page with 5 different flags on the GM level being moved around by the hour in play as each group pursues its own objectives and I need to understand where every one actually is.

I should also say we remain firmly in the Sartar as Celts, Lunars as Romans And DH as Greek.  It works very well for us though I can understand the appeal of a more overt Bronze age feel, also canon bends to our needs not the other way around.

I cannot work out how to post a hidden "spoiler beware" post so I simply attach a word doc. Please don't open if you want to avoid spoilers, otherwise enjoy.

The Home stretch and a small diversion part 1.docx

[Lordabdul]

2 hours ago, Karlak One-eye said:

I cannot work out how to post a hidden "spoiler beware" post so I simply attach a word doc. Please don't open if you want to avoid spoilers, otherwise enjoy.

Thanks a lot for this!   It's amazing that your game has been fast-forwarded into an alternate 1700s future!  And it was very enjoyable to read -- I love the obvious amount of roleplaying that happens at your table, good job to everybody involved. I'm happy one of your players got a crystal out of this so far 😄 

[Karlak One-eye]

21 minutes ago, Lordabdul said:

T I'm happy one of your players got a crystal out of this so far 😄 

And a likely long term feud - no good deed goes unpunished! The dice helped a lot in creating fun with several fumbles by both Entala and the PCs. the final fight started with a 00 fumble from Icarus and ended with an 01 strike.

[soltakss]

On 7/26/2023 at 5:37 PM, Karlak One-eye said:

I cannot work out how to post a hidden "spoiler beware" post so I simply attach a word doc.

Select text and click on the eye button in the toolbar.

 

Spoiler

Select text and click on the eye button in the toolbar.

[Karlak One-eye]

Cheers. I will know for next time.