Passions and Runes in Play

[Eff]

8 hours ago, Eff said:

The Passion rules had to be largely junked after my player and I agreed that they made very little ontological sense as a conscious invocation. They also wanted to know why Rune values going above 80% meant regular episodes of mind control, so that's also still in negotiation. 

7 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

Would you please spin this out into a thread of its own? (if you haven't already)  Because, much as I've appreciated Traits and Passions in both KAP and RQG as a meta-mechanic, they do strike me as self-fulfilling prophecies in play.

!i!

6 hours ago, svensson said:

I agree with @Ian Absentia. This does deserve it's own discussion.

From:

So for a little context, my player was completely new to role-playing games when we started and was very willing to ask questions about the purpose and effects of the game rules. So my quoted post is really summarizing a process of attempting to think about and with these rules and then finding them difficult to use for our purposes. Why?

Well, I can mostly speak for myself, and as a somewhat experienced player of RPGs in general. But one thing that has been a serious question is whether invoking a Passion or a Rune and rolling to augment is a representation of something the character is doing, or a metagame action the player is doing outside of the fictional space of play. (The text says that it's a character action, for what it's worth, "An adventurer may attempt to be inspired by their Passion and request a Passion roll to augment a skill, with the gamemaster’s approval", RQG p. 236.) And the reason why this is a question of import is because the mechanics of augments are a fairly simple gambling operation- you have x chance of a good outcome and y chance of a bad outcome, so you make a calculated decision about whether it's worth that chance for a +20%. But what's actually happening?

Let's say that I am playing Vasa-nya, a Yinkin initiate, and I decide to roll for Passionate Inspiration using her 70% Loyalty (Sartar) Passion. Obviously, there are five possible outcomes here. On a 01-04, she gets a critical success, an experience check, and +50% augmenting an ability for the duration of the scene or task. On a 05-14, she gets a special, +30%. On a 15-70, she gets a regular success, +20%. On a 71-97, she gets a failure, -10% to all rolls in the scene forward. On a 98-00, she gets a fumble, -1d10% to the Passion value and a random duration of Despair that completely disables her for that entire duration. That's the mechanics.

What's going on in the fictional space? Is Vasa-nya thinking hard of Rex, Country, and Mom's Apple Pie, and 4% of the time, this motivates her so strongly it strengthens her feelings, and 66% of the time it motivates her, and 27% of the time it demotivates her, and 3% of the time it causes her to fall into a depressive spiral? What does this randomness represent, psychologically?

And these abilities on the sheet, if they are at 80% or above, force mandatory rolls in some circumstances to dictate the player's actions. This is one thing for Passions, but for my player, the fact that Runes seem to be connections to the outside world of Glorantha meant that they took it as "so if I go above 80%, I end up getting mind-controlled by the Air Rune every so often?" To be a little bit flippant.

And then on top of that, are Runic personalities meant to be package deals? If I'm strong in Air, am I passionate and violent and proud and unpredictable? Setting aside whether having consistent pride or passionate expression is compatible with being unpredictable, how should I, as the GM, react to a player who is passionate but not violent, or violent but humble? Are they acting in keeping with the Air Rune or out of keeping with it? For that matter, how do the Runic personalities for Water and Moon work, in practice? Should I ding a player for not saying that they seek liberation from the material world at least once a session if they've got a 90% Moon Rune for casting Reflection as often as possible? How do I reward them for playing in concert with their high Moon Rune?

Of course, I've played in Pendragon and loved it. But Pendragon made sense to me because it was Arthuriana and derived from Malory. And Malory is just filled with people having psychotic breaks and psychogenic fugues. So fumbling a Passion roll on my character in battle and having her run off into the woods and spend the rest of the year trying to build seawalls against the encroaching tides was appropriate for the setting. And Traits are virtues and vices and concrete, singular things, generally. Pendragon doesn't produce psychologically realistic people, as such, but it produces a particular type of fictional character.

And Pendragon's 80% rule (there the Famous traits at 16 and above) always made sense to me because (though I didn't articulate it that way at the time) the fact that these were Famous Traits and Passions meant that they had a implicit social context. You were pushed into fulfilling them because the expectation is on you to behave "in character" as your socially defined self. This was not always realistic, or even often realistic, but it had a meaning that I grasped right away, even if at the time I was chortling at how I had developed a starting Love (wife) Passion of 23 (115% in RQG) because I was marrying a fairy with superhuman APP and I had rolled a very high random component.

I don't grasp that meaning for RQG's equivalents. Are we (my player and I) just missing something? What are your thoughts on Passions and Runes as things that define character psychology, and the mechanics associated with that?

[Rodney Dangerduck]

I like Runes for casting rune magic, and for gently guiding behavior.  I dislike the 80% GM can force rolls, since you really need high runes to cast rune magic semi-reliably.  IMO, a game mechanic shouldn't be used to control players.  Our GMs seldom enforce the 80% rule.

I'm more o.k. with Passions.  If you don't want a GM to mess with you, keep them below 80%.  In practice, my main complaint is that players often choosing their highest passion instead of a more relevant one.

How they "really work" when you augment is above my pay grade.  🙂You bring up many good points.

[Bill the barbarian]

I am positive (in far too much pain to check, but...) that you are not forced to act against your wishes when denying a 80% rune or passion, just you stand to lose some of the “Ability” and possibly suffer emotional pain or loss of runic inspiration. Now if I am wrong that’s fine, but this is how I play it. 

One rolls an Ability (Rune or Passion) that one wants to oppose and if they succeed (a good possibility for an Ability above 80%, so do not give an Ability this easy to roll percentages unless this is how you wish to be whether it helps spells, etc. or not) they have the choice of following their inclination (the 80% + Ability) or going against it. Should they decide to go against it, use the failure (or fumble if this is dictated) penalties... a rolled percentage loss of the Ability and a bit of turmoil for x amount time or loss of inspiration until prayed for again. The percentage loss should remain, until earned up again.

Edited March 25, 2022 by Bill the barbarian

[Ian Absentia]

1 hour ago, Eff said:

What are your thoughts on Passions and Runes as things that define character psychology, and the mechanics associated with that?

Yeah, I think you gave voice to a lot of my feelings about marrying the Augmentation meta-wager to Passions and Runes and what I described earlier as a "self-fulfilling prophesy".

In KAP, Passions and Traits always felt like they were a vehicle for taking my character someplace, or even an obstacle to grapple with.  In response to the typical complaint that they undermined player agency, I often likened them to making, say, a Strength roll to break down a door -- while people wouldn't blink at the idea of physical resistance, they chafed at the notion of emotional resistance.  Your point about the transient (or sometime chronic) "madness" of Malory's characters is on the nose.  An appreciative player lets the ball roll and enjoys being part of the show.

In RQG, Passions and Runes are instead a carrot-and-stick.  The gamble of the multi-tiered Augment, I realise, is supposed to reflect this same sort of pagan mainline to the mythic, and thereby reinforce the cosmic structure of Glorantha.  But in practice it instead underscores a fickleness of the spiritual component of the game.  Players generally do it because it may benefit themselves in play, not out of sympathy with their character.  Generally -- I realise there are exceptions.  This can be alleviated somewhat by taking the gamble out of it and opting for a straight 1/5 Passion or Rune bonus, but it still misses the mark of how Passions and Traits are arguably the central mechanics of KAP, and everything else peripheral.  If it's supposed to represent the vagaries of the Olympians pushing Achilles across the game board, then that's the game I want to play.

And then there's the issue I've mentioned elsewhere of having a multitude of often inconsistent Passions at scores upwards of 80%.  I feel it dilutes a character's personality rather than defining it.

1 hour ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

In practice, my main complaint is that players often choosing their highest passion instead of a more relevant one.

This.  This is the self-fulfilling prophecy I referred to.

For the record, with my RQG character, I purposefully split my best Rune scores between his cult's ideal Rune and the ideal for a conflicting cult.  Because the fun is in the dynamic tension, not in maxing out a particular Rune because it gives me the best buffs.

!i!

Edited March 25, 2022 by Ian Absentia

[svensson]

For me, Runes and Passions are a matter of context and situations.

Somebody with a 90 Death rune affinity is still able to breed children, for example. Crops don't die when they walk past and infants don't cry in their presence. They're not the funniest guy at the feast, granted, but unless they Heroquest for some really Gawdz-awful powers, they're still a human being. This means that people with a 90 Movement rune are still able to settle down and marry, people with a 90 Truth rune can lie if they have to [though they're probably not very good at it], etc.

This doesn't apply to Heroes-with-a-capital-H like Argrath or Jar-Eel, of course.

The same can be said of Passions. You can Hate Lunars all you want, but if it's just little ol' you versus half the Silver Shields legion, you're gonna hold your tongue and get revenge later. And you shouldn't have to roll vs. Common Sense in order to do it.

HOWEVER, COMMA, BUT... if you have a 90 Honor, a 90 Death rune, and a 90 Hate Lunar Empire and the aforementioned half-legion arrests your mate, well, this is a dramatic, story-driven moment. The odds are you WILL attack them. And then you wake up shackled in a caged wagon on the way to the arenas of Furthest, where the story of Our Hero picks back up.

The point is that referee should be aware of the Runes and Passions of the players and write those motivation into the story, not use them to bite the PC in the butt.

[Steve]

The player is never forced into "mind control". The rules say the following about Runes and Passions that are 80% or higher (my emphasis):

Such extreme Passions can require the player to make mandatory rolls due to these beliefs, if the gamemaster chooses. In general, the gamemaster has several options if the player has their adventurer do something inappropriate for the adventurer’s rating in a relevant Passion.

It also goes on to say that the GM can choose to immediately reduce the Passion in such circumstances.

It's there as an aid to role-playing, not as a mandatory straightjacket.

[JRE]

We have been using for many years the extended traits in RQ3 extended character sheet, so we are used to it. But it was not linked to any game benefit. We used it as an aid to roleplay, or a way of counting score, and in some cases undecided players rolled to see what way the character would go. That made Pendragon easy to follow, and as mentioned the setting justified losing player agency once in a while (and with a lustful 18, that was clearly exploited by the GM).

I have not yet fully played with RQ:G, and we are still debating what will probably be a mix, but we will give it a chance. This is not a community driven game, so players actually are aiming for low passions, being skeptical of giving up control, even if the game benefits of being over 80% are big.

I see what Chaosium is trying to do, creating emotional, passionate heroes and heroines, but it requires a particular understanding between GM and players. My players do not fully trust I will not exploit their passions to make them do something they do not want, so they prefer low passions, just in case. It fits as well with the rootless wanderers game, driven more by curiosity and greed, than loyalty and faith. 

Some early conversion experiments had players with 3-4 high passions and it was clear they would try to use them all the time, till we saw the effect of a fumble. The current consensus is that if you refuse a passion the efect was as we used the traits, automatic reduction but no other game effect. Right now they are joking how long will it take Loyalty to drop down to a value it never has to roll.

[French Desperate WindChild]

just my perspective, how I understand it

 

Passion:

there are two cases for me

case 1) there is a situation and the player convince the GM that her character has some reason to be "more motivated" to do something because the passion.

the dice roll says if the character is extremely motivated (criticial), motivated, not really impacted or overwhelmed (fumble)

imagine you in real life, you are convinced you can lift 50kg. Now, there is a big issue, your love will die if you don't succeed to lift 60kg and you succeed because you want to save your love, you would fail if it s to save the new-table-you-just-bought because you don't care this table.

 

case 2) there is a situation where the character is facing her passion obviously.

For example the character is fettered and is seeing an ennemy threatening to kill a friend/love (any "loyalty /love" target)

the GM clearly (or not) explains the character passion is screaming to do something. But the player refuses.

It means the character doesn't hear the passion. It means the passion is not so important, for any reason the player may invent (or not).

 

Now, why the passion score change?

it changes positively when the character's actions demonstrate how important is the passion for the character :

1-critical success, 

2-player decision to act, according to the passion, in a critical situation)

 

it changes negatively  when the character's actions demonstrate how the passion is a "failure", a "lie", ...

case 1-fumble,

case 2-player decision to not act, or act in the opposite way, in a critical situation.)

 

Runes :

the  80% limit

What I understand is the character runes build the couple (spirit and body) character. There is a level (aka 80%) where the rune is so "obviously" present that it drives the character behaviour.

IRL, sometimes you are angry, and this anger may "decide" for you your reactions. You know what you are doing is not what you want, but you do. You do because this anger

so at the 80% I consider (as a GM) the player+character is under a "rune passion" as previously. If the player acts in opposition to the rune, the rune must decrease

so for a gameplay  the player has the choice

- to follow her runes because  it is RP OR because it grants her a better % when rolling (spells, augment)

- or to not follow her runes and keep her free will but with a lower % when rolling (spells, augment). No pain no gain

and in the glorantha world, it is just to see if the character is imbued or not by the great powers. A "true" hero is imbued. A "common man", not. True heroes don't do what they want, true heroes do what they have to do.

 

 

[EpicureanDM]

We got rid of Passions pretty quickly into our RQG run and only used Runes. Their analogues in Pendragon made sense in exactly the way you described, @Eff, but they felt like double-dipping (or overegging the pudding, as the Brits would say) next to Runes. 

We only used Runes and settled on the idea that just like the gods, our characters were comprised of the Runes in a way. To use a modern analogy, our characters' bodies, minds, and soulds were made of Runic energy in the same way we would describe modern bodies as being comprised of carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. We didn't get too into the weeds about exact compositions. 😉

We settled on this analogy because that's how we made sense of how invoking Runes works mechanically. When you decide to invoke your Air or Illusion Rune, you're trying to make a small connection to the fundamental forces of the universe. That's always dangerous to do, like playing with live electrical wires. Most times, it went fine (Success). Sometimes it went great (Special or Crit), and sometimes you got burned (Failure or Fumble). That's to be expected when you try to contact the fundamental forces of the universe.

The vast majority of people in the world don't have Runes at 80%+. Those who do essentially have a lot (too much?) of that Runic energy filling their bodies and minds. We used a caffeine analogy. Consume too much and you get jumpy, your heart races a bit. You might knock something over accidentally or talk too much. You can't help it. You're full of caffeine. Same with Runes, but more broad and metaphorical. 

EDIT: It just occurred to me that you might analogize Pendragon's failed Passion rolls to Runic "mind control." Have you tried that explanation with your players? Would it work? 

The big conceptual hurdle is to both get rid of Passions and then remember that even though Runes use the same mechanisms, they aren't intended to be used like Passions (in either the Pendragon or RQG sense). We rarely used them to guide conduct in the way the rules suggest, the "mind control" option. But when we did, it arose very naturally and it just made sense to roll. We didn't look for opportunities to use Runes that way in the same way you might playing Pendragon. 

When someone actively invoked a Rune for some benefit, though, that's when we leaned into the personality/mind control stuff. You had to describe your action in a way that suited the Rune and the influence of the Rune lasted the entire scene. If you invoked your Darkness Rune early in a negotiation, the GM would put limits on how the Darkness-invoked character could act for the rest of the scene. If someone invoked their Death Rune in combat, the GM would force the Death-Runed PC to kill every defeated opponent, forgoing the chance at ransom. That sort of thing. If someone wanted to invoke a Rune for a more discrete action, we'd make sure that the approach they described fit the Rune's vibe.

 

Edited March 25, 2022 by EpicureanDM

[SevenSistersOfVinga]

5 hours ago, JRE said:

It fits as well with the rootless wanderers game, driven more by curiosity and greed, than loyalty and faith. 

I guess this is the key. 

Part of the World or in it. 

My only grievance with the Passions is mechanical, people have to do a very important roll. Like swimming (30). They want to improve their chances rolling love for the sea (85). 

They roll 19 then roll swimming 80 and we all laugh while someone drowns.

[Eff]

12 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

Yeah, I think you gave voice to a lot of my feelings about marrying the Augmentation meta-wager to Passions and Runes and what I described earlier as a "self-fulfilling prophesy".

In KAP, Passions and Traits always felt like they were a vehicle for taking my character someplace, or even an obstacle to grapple with.  In response to the typical complaint that they undermined player agency, I often likened them to making, say, a Strength roll to break down a door -- while people wouldn't blink at the idea of physical resistance, they chafed at the notion of emotional resistance.  Your point about the transient (or sometime chronic) "madness" of Malory's characters is on the nose.  An appreciative player lets the ball roll and enjoys being part of the show.

In RQG, Passions and Runes are instead a carrot-and-stick.  The gamble of the multi-tiered Augment, I realise, is supposed to reflect this same sort of pagan mainline to the mythic, and thereby reinforce the cosmic structure of Glorantha.  But in practice it instead underscores a fickleness of the spiritual component of the game.  Players generally do it because it may benefit themselves in play, not out of sympathy with their character.  Generally -- I realise there are exceptions.  This can be alleviated somewhat by taking the gamble out of it and opting for a straight 1/5 Passion or Rune bonus, but it still misses the mark of how Passions and Traits are arguably the central mechanics of KAP, and everything else peripheral.  If it's supposed to represent the vagaries of the Olympians pushing Achilles across the game board, then that's the game I want to play.

And then there's the issue I've mentioned elsewhere of having a multitude of often inconsistent Passions at scores upwards of 80%.  I feel it dilutes a character's personality rather than defining it.

This.  This is the self-fulfilling prophecy I referred to.

For the record, with my RQG character, I purposefully split my best Rune scores between his cult's ideal Rune and the ideal for a conflicting cult.  Because the fun is in the dynamic tension, not in maxing out a particular Rune because it gives me the best buffs.

!i!

Yes. I think that there's a tension operating between Runequest as the game where "a trollkin with a spear can kill a Rune Lord" and Runequest as the game where you play someone who's got a direct channel to the mythological world running through their body. And this tension is what shapes the augment mechanic and requires it to be a potentially serious gamble. 

Going back to my experiences playing KAP 5.1, my character had, to the best of my knowledge, five or six passions: loyalty to Lancelot du Lac (she was an Aquitanian), loyalty to Arthur, and loyalty to the PC group, and two passions garnered through events in play- the aforementioned Love (Wife) and one, I can't remember the organizing term, but a friendship with Gawain formed from having both gone berserk and murdered a Roman senator*. And obviously, because Love (Wife) at 23 was so potent, I generally lead right off with it. So with them, I had two basic principles to guide my character:

1. She was an incredible Wife Gal. 
2. She was required to be part of Lancelot's faction by her duties, but by her inclination affiliated with the Orkneys. 

And with these two principles I could sketch out a basic career trajectory for her, and a potential culmination for her or for her successor- namely, having to pick sides when Camelot falls apart and breaks in half. The game never got that far, but with that understanding, it was easy to play her as a character- she could bring up her perfect, saintly (if fays can be saints) wife whenever it was vaguely appropriate, or inappropriate for comedy purposes, and she would be confronted with the tension between Gawain and Lancelot and get herself dragged into interacting with Gawain's unbearable brothers. 

But of course, loyalty to Arthur and to the PC group and whatever the sixth Passion might have been was kind of uninteresting by comparison. And mechanically, they would get used as needed for extended battles or whatever, but in a dutiful fashion of "might as well use this mechanic". Which is exactly what that self-fulfilling prophecy is all about- it is to your mechanical benefit to have many Passions, but making a cohesive character is easier when you have a tight set of them. 

On top of all of this, Passions might be more "realistic" as a more passive mechanic, Inspiration potentially firing off when the subject is relevant, (or more definitively a metagame mechanic) and this is of course not really workable when you have eight or nine Passions but is more workable if you have two or three to work through for given high-tension scenes. I think it comes down to what kind of game we want this hypothetical "RQ Gaiden" to be- are we trying for something like Achilles' rampage, Arjuna's fight with Shiva in the disguise of a hunter? Or do we want Passions (and/or Runes) to be something different? 

Runes themselves ought, I think, to be a core mechanic for a specifically Gloranthan game, but of course there is much work to be done there in articulating what the mechanical tension and output and all that should look and feel like.

*Generated at a low enough rating to be risky to use, which has some meaning but not really what I thought was cool about the tension there... 

EDIT: Of course, one way of thinking through the Passion raising and lowering is that the Passion is being put to the test and you're uncovering its "real" value, but I'm not sure that this interpretation is useful or intentional... 

Edited March 25, 2022 by Eff
Additional thought.

[soltakss]

Some people hate the very idea of Passions, as they can force the Adventurers to do things that the Players don't want to do.

Personally, I think the strength of Passions is exactly that they can force Adventurer to do things, otherwise they are conflicted in some way.

Acting honourably or following a Passion to the detriment of the group is fine by me, both as a Player and as a GM.

If you have Fear Dragons, see a dragon, roll the Passion and succeed then you are afraid of the Dragon and can run away, or can try and face your fear. Either is good to me.

I have never railed against an GM because they used mind control or command on my Adventurers, nor because they used Passions to drive behaviour.

[jajagappa]

3 hours ago, soltakss said:

Personally, I think the strength of Passions is exactly that they can force Adventurer to do things, otherwise they are conflicted in some way.

In my games, I utilize Passions in the following ways:

1) as a rough guide for the players to help shape their character's story and personality.  Entirely up to them if they stay with those, or decide to lower or remove certain Passions (e.g. Love, Loyalty, Hate).

2) as Augments for specific situations.  Entirely up to the player whether they wish to invoke or not.  I remember vividly way back in the Quickstart when the first player who ran Harmast encountered Danakos, and immediately invoked his Hate(Greydog) getting a great augment with that and cutting Danakos down in one blow.

3) as a means to determine what alternative to pursue.  On rare occasions I ask a player to test their Loyalty to X vs. Loyalty to Y (or similar).  However, far more commonly, it's the player who does this as they can't decide which way to go and the Opposed Roll gives them a way to randomly determine what the PC does. 

4) as a test of Reaction.  Usually this occurs with an existing Fear or Hate, and a situation with the object of that Passion occurs.  The Passion exists, and it's triggered.  If they "succeed" the Passion may increase, if they "fail", they can diminish the Passion. 

I find the above works fine, and none of my players over nearly 5 years of play have expressed issues with this.

As for Runes, if a player thinks the Air Rune makes them quick to violence, that's fine.  If they think it makes them adaptable or changeable, that's fine.  There are plenty of ways to interpret any of the Runes in regards to personality - up to the player to take those how they want to.

Where we do utilize Runes, it's in the following ways:

1) as Augments (e.g. "magical" boosts) for specific situations.  Here there needs to be an obvious way that the Rune applies as with benefiting relevant perceptions, abilities, etc.  This occurs fairly regularly.  (Note: there can be negative consequences as well when certain Runes are invoked as augments.  E.g. you invoke and succeed with your Darkness rune to become larger and enhance your Intimidate.  But the Earth Queen present becomes enraged by your action, and invokes her Earth rune and Charisma spell to counter.  The Earth goddess manifests and puts you firmly in your place, and likely positioning you as a foe to the community.)

2) as possible tests during interactions with the Otherworld or Otherworldly beings (i.e. Heroquest-like situations).  E.g. the shaman in one of my games just encountered a Storm spirit at the Wild Temple.  The Storm spirit challenged the shaman to a test of changing Forms.  The shaman used a Rune of their choosing for each test vs. the Storm spirit's Air Rune.

Might be a few other cases I've forgotten about.

Overall, I find both work great in helping the player develop their character as they wish. 

Edited March 25, 2022 by jajagappa

[Byll]

I pretty much decided that my RQG characters wouldn't be seeking inspiration from Runes or Passions when I fell into despair after fumbling against devotion to my deity (about 75% I think) in my very first combat. Fortunately it was a big enough party to survive instant loss of one character for the episode, and the RP was interesting, but would I do it again? well I did once, with another character for a mere fail penalty... - that's enough inspiration.

Just keep your nose clean, keep the faith and don't be trying to show off with that 'holier than thou' shit 

[Rodney Dangerduck]

3 hours ago, Byll said:

pretty much decided that my RQG characters wouldn't be seeking inspiration from Runes or Passions when I fell into despair after fumbling

My PC, so far, has been lucky with Inspiration rolls.  But most of us are much more cautious after witnessing the downsides.  I'll usually wait partway through the climactic scene  to see if it is "really needed".

[andyl]

15 hours ago, soltakss said:

If you have Fear Dragons, see a dragon, roll the Passion and succeed then you are afraid of the Dragon and can run away, or can try and face your fear. Either is good to me.

TBH if they have a high Fear Dragons and they roleplay their fear (or how they overcome it) when they see a dragon then that would be good enough for me. I wouldn't make them roll the passion as well.  But if the player does not roleplay any fear of dragons then I ask them to roll it.  As you say if the roll succeeds they must then decide how to play it - run away, stand stock still in fear, hide, fall to the ground, or do something that lets them overcome the fear. What they do is their choice, but their fear must influence their actions.

[Kloster]

18 hours ago, soltakss said:

Some people hate the very idea of Passions, as they can force the Adventurers to do things that the Players don't want to do.

I'm part of them. This is exactly the reason why I don't like passions.

18 hours ago, soltakss said:

Personally, I think the strength of Passions is exactly that they can force Adventurer to do things, otherwise they are conflicted in some way.

Agreed.

18 hours ago, soltakss said:

If you have Fear Dragons, see a dragon, roll the Passion and succeed then you are afraid of the Dragon and can run away, or can try and face your fear. Either is good to me.

Agreed, but the problem is not in the 'can', it is in the 'must' if you are above 80%.

[Bill the barbarian]

19 minutes ago, Kloster said:

Agreed, but the problem is not in the 'can', it is in the 'must' if you are above 80%.

Hmm, interesting. Kloster, you and I almost never disagree, but I am surprised how many people are saying that 80%+ is a “must do" situation. I can not find anything that says you must do anything other than roll. After that there are offered options as noted by a few here. This might be that many here are contrarians by nature (Don’t tell what to do!), but that does not apply to you good sir. 

I wonder why so many are missing what seems to me to be clear.

 

Edited March 26, 2022 by Bill the barbarian

[JustAnotherVingan]

5 minutes ago, Kloster said:

I'm part of them. This is exactly the reason why I don't like passions.

Agreed.

Agreed, but the problem is not in the 'can', it is in the 'must' if you are above 80%.

But as has been pointed out there is no must for Runes.

RQC p230

The player, however, can always choose to override the will of the rune, though an adventurer will lose -1D10% from that Rune's rating due to its influence being ignored, exactly as if the Rune inspiration roll were fumbled.

In the case of Passions mandatory rolls are at the GM's discretion. You could choose not to force mandatory rolls on a player. You still have the option to lower their passion to below 80 if you feel they are not roleplaying it. p237.

I've only used a mandatory roll once. Fear (Dragons) when the PC was about to confront Yerezum Storn. I had the player make an opposed roll of Fear(Dragons) versus Loyalty (Tribe). The PC succeeded on both with the same level of success so I allowed them to decide that although scared they were resolved to face her.

I allow players considerable latitude in drawing up their characters so that they have a character they are happy to play but I do expect them to roleplay that character.

[Bill the barbarian]

3 minutes ago, JustAnotherVingan said:

But as has been pointed out there is no must for Runes.

 

3 minutes ago, JustAnotherVingan said:

In the case of Passions mandatory rolls are at the GM's discretion. You could choose not to force mandatory rolls on a player. You still have the option to lower their passion to below 80 if you feel they are not roleplaying it. p237.

 

Thanks I was just looking that up.

2 minutes ago, JustAnotherVingan said:

I've only used a mandatory roll once. Fear (Dragons) when the PC was about to confront Yerezum Storn. I had the player make an opposed roll of Fear(Dragons) versus Loyalty (Tribe). The PC succeeded on both with the same level of success so I allowed them to decide that although scared they were resolved to face her.

 

And of course I was thinking of this but did not mention it, Thanks Just!

 

 

Edited March 26, 2022 by Bill the barbarian

[Steve]

Another rulebook excerpt:

The gamemaster should always ensure that players have a say in the behavior of their adventurers, but players should also accept that high Passions and affinities risk being weakened through contrary behavior. This does not result in your adventurer being forced into a mold, nor is it the intention of the system to take away your ability to make decisions for your adventurer".

 

[French Desperate WindChild]

6 hours ago, Kloster said:

I'm part of them. This is exactly the reason why I don't like passions.

Agreed.

Agreed, but the problem is not in the 'can', it is in the 'must' if you are above 80%.

 

Is it a problem to be an humakti or a yelmalian and have geas ?

Or a shaman with any taboo ?

That is the same for me with runes or other. That gives advantage (as gifts) but may "force" you to do things (as geas), when the advantage is powerful (aka 80%+ of success)

note that noone say you "must" have runes 80+, you can stay below, can't you ?

[Bill the barbarian]

Ya know, I am being rude. I love Eff’s comments and she is good and always on point. If I don’t agree with her I am sure I will mention it, but usually if I don’t agree it is because had no idea what she was talking about (not a lack of clarity, just it went over my head). So, I did not mention her original post as what’s to say, she’s good! I only reacted when I saw folk mentioning items I thought fallacious (it’s the editor in me). Still, sorry for ignoring you Eff, let’s see what you said...

 

On 3/24/2022 at 10:01 PM, Eff said:

Let's say that I am playing Vasa-nya, a Yinkin initiate, and I decide to roll for Passionate Inspiration using her 70% Loyalty (Sartar) Passion. Obviously, there are five possible outcomes here. On a 01-04, she gets a critical success, an experience check, and +50% augmenting an ability for the duration of the scene or task. On a 05-14, she gets a special, +30%. On a 15-70, she gets a regular success, +20%. On a 71-97, she gets a failure, -10% to all rolls in the scene forward. On a 98-00, she gets a fumble, -1d10% to the Passion value and a random duration of Despair that completely disables her for that entire duration. That's the mechanics.

What's going on in the fictional space? Is Vasa-nya thinking hard of Rex, Country, and Mom's Apple Pie, and 4% of the time, this motivates her so strongly it strengthens her feelings, and 66% of the time it motivates her, and 27% of the time it demotivates her, and 3% of the time it causes her to fall into a depressive spiral? What does this randomness represent, psychologically?

Sounds about right, to me.

 

On 3/24/2022 at 10:01 PM, Eff said:

And these abilities on the sheet, if they are at 80% or above, force mandatory rolls in some circumstances to dictate the player's actions. This is one thing for Passions, but for my player, the fact that Runes seem to be connections to the outside world of Glorantha meant that they took it as "so if I go above 80%, I end up getting mind-controlled by the Air Rune every so often?" To be a little bit flippant.

 

Oh Eff, you know better, if anyone is going to be flippant around here it will be me... that’s my gig! Not much to say here... it has already been said in the following posts, and while I think this might be overstating the case to to mention mind control, but you are not alone on that issue. Poor wording might be the culprit here toexplain how this fails in RQ RiG. 

 

On 3/25/2022 at 11:16 AM, Eff said:

And with these two principles I could sketch out a basic career trajectory for her, and a potential culmination for her or for her successor- namely, having to pick sides when Camelot falls apart and breaks in half. The game never got that far, but with that understanding, it was easy to play her as a character- she could bring up her perfect, saintly (if fays can be saints) wife whenever it was vaguely appropriate, or inappropriate for comedy purposes, and she would be confronted with the tension between Gawain and Lancelot and get herself dragged into interacting with Gawain's unbearable brothers. 

 

So, in KAP the narrative arc as imagined by Malory, passions are a big part of the scene. Big enough that the players are willing to fall in line and become believers. Makes sense! Noteworthy is that I believe this was Stafford’s fave game and the passions were his creation... says something. eh. Of course, we all know a little about King Arthur’s tragic tales here in the west. Heck, probably even in the east! 

Glorantha not being as well known as Camelot might be part of the problem (assuming passions are not broke in the first place). 

On 3/24/2022 at 10:01 PM, Eff said:

And then on top of that, are Runic personalities meant to be package deals? If I'm strong in Air, am I passionate and violent and proud and unpredictable? Setting aside whether having consistent pride or passionate expression is compatible with being unpredictable, how should I, as the GM, react to a player who is passionate but not violent, or violent but humble? Are they acting in keeping with the Air Rune or out of keeping with it?

Moi, flippantly, might want more of a buffet approach. Rather than following a Runic Ideal to the nth degree I will nibble on a bit of “proud" and nosh on a bit of “violence" but leave the other “passions" under the plexiglass for someone else. After all I am an imperfect human and not a runic ideal. 

 

On 3/24/2022 at 10:01 PM, Eff said:

Should I ding a player for not saying that they seek liberation from the material world at least once a session if they've got a 90% Moon Rune for casting Reflection as often as possible? How do I reward them for playing in concert with their high Moon Rune?

Hm, good question, I would be prone to reminding the player of his missing a few Hail Moon, full of graces... and hope that the reminding is gentle and not chiding. I would think good natured play and a bit of trust and good will will be needed twixt player and GM. Reward, well not taking away percentage points might be the reward here. Stick, not carrot.

 

On 3/24/2022 at 10:01 PM, Eff said:

And Traits are virtues and vices and concrete, singular things, generally.

Used to use traits (yay, Griffin Mountain!) back in my heyday in the 20th century and did like them more than passions. 

 

On 3/24/2022 at 10:01 PM, Eff said:

I don't grasp that meaning for RQG's equivalents. Are we (my player and I) just missing something? What are your thoughts on Passions and Runes as things that define character psychology, and the mechanics associated with that?

For most of us, I would say a familiarity of the topic. One so deep that we can easily predict the actions without a rule system. Like how a knight of the round table might act under certain circumstances.  I am sure most of of can do this. Mind you, Eff, if you are not there in Gloranthan terms I fear for the rest of us!

So, I asked you last winter during our campaign when you first broached the subject, how would you handle it. I may as well ask it again. How do we bring what made Greg’s fave a great game, into the RQ milieu?

Once again, a great OP, now translating into a great thread!

 

39 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

note that noone say you "must" have runes 80+, you can stay below, can't you ?

Can't say I recall a mechanism to limit the Passion/Ability from going above 80% but I have been postulating letting the players have a say about crossing that threshold and how I would do it. 

Edited March 26, 2022 by Bill the barbarian

[Eff]

1 hour ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Ya know, I am being rude. I love Eff’s comments and she is good and always on point. If I don’t agree with her I am sure I will mention it, but usually if I don’t agree it is because had no idea what she was talking about (not a lack of clarity, just it went over my head). So, I did not mention her original post as what’s to say, she’s good! I only reacted when I saw folk mentioning items I thought fallacious (it’s the editor in me). Still, sorry for ignoring you Eff, let’s see what you said...

 

Sounds about right, to me.

 

Oh Eff, you know better, if anyone is going to be flippant around here it will be me... that’s my gig! Not much to say here... it has already been said in the following posts, and while I think this might be overstating the case to to mention mind control, but you are not alone on that issue. Poor wording might be the culprit here toexplain how this fails in RQ RiG. 

 

So, in KAP the narrative arc as imagined by Malory, passions are a big part of the scene. Big enough that the players are willing to fall in line and become believers. Makes sense! Noteworthy is that I believe this was Stafford’s fave game and the passions were his creation... says something. eh. Of course, we all know a little about King Arthur’s tragic tales here in the west. Heck, probably even in the east! 

Glorantha not being as well known as Camelot might be part of the problem (assuming passions are not broke in the first place). 

Moi, flippantly, might want more of a buffet approach. Rather than following a Runic Ideal to the nth degree I will nibble on a bit of “proud" and nosh on a bit of “violence" but leave the other “passions" under the plexiglass for someone else. After all I am an imperfect human and not a runic ideal. 

 

Hm, good question, I would be prone to reminding the player of his missing a few Hail Moon, full of graces... and hope that the reminding is gentle and not chiding. I would think good natured play and a bit of trust and good will will be needed twixt player and GM. Reward, well not taking away percentage points might be the reward here. Stick, not carrot.

 

Used to use traits (yay, Griffin Mountain!) back in my heyday in the 20th century and did like them more than passions. 

 

For most of us, I would say a familiarity of the topic. One so deep that we can easily predict the actions without a rule system. Like how a knight of the round table might act under certain circumstances.  I am sure most of of can do this. Mind you, Eff, if you are not there in Gloranthan terms I fear for the rest of us!

So, I asked you last winter during our campaign when you first broached the subject, how would you handle it. I may as well ask it again. How do we bring what made Greg’s fave a great game, into the RQ milieu?

Once again, a great OP, now translating into a great thread!

 

Can't say I recall a mechanism to limit the Passion/Ability from going above 80% but I have been postulating letting the players have a say about crossing that threshold and how I would do it. 

Well, I think that there are two forks to the "mind controlled by my Rune" aspect, one which I focused a bit on and one which my player focused on. I'll leave the latter one to my player for now, if they want to comment. So for me, the "problem" there is itself forked yet again. The one fork feeds right back into the primary issue I have with the Runes as a psychological system- how should we handle the vagueness of the Runes when it comes to them as a force acting on the character? The other fork is a bit simpler- should players (and GMs) understand their characters as people who ought to have free will, and would desire to keep themselves as free from Runic dominance over their selves as possible, or should they understand their characters as people for whom free will is a neutral phenomenon, and would be uninterested in keeping free from Runic domination? And by this, I mean by the cultural defaults- should a starting Sartarite eagerly embrace acting in accordance with their Runes and only really worry when confronted with things that tug them in both directions? This is in its own way somewhat minor- I think it's an artifact of systems and premises coming together in unintended ways.

But Runic vagueness is for me a significantly thornier problem. Because there is an intended reward/penalty kind of mechanic associated there, and while it's optional, it's what's presented as the default play option. And let's take the Illusion Rune as an example.

"To be strong with the Illusion Rune is to distort truths or fabricate untruths, for one’s own ends or on behalf of others, or in some cases simply for the sake of doing so. Such adventurers view reality as something subjective, and subject to their imagination." (RQ:RiG, p. 50)

Now, I can interpret this in a kind of archetype-first way- the Illusion Rune is how you lie, and someone who is willing to lie is strong in Illusion, and player characters should be getting ticks in Illusion if they engage in deceits of any kind. And I can interpret this in a kind of behavior-first way- being strong in the Illusion Rune makes you a solipsist, or a player character from Mage: the Ascension, or at high levels, a pathological liar, so if a player wants to play an Illusion-related cult, their ability to use their Rune Magic should be related to whether they act in that fashion, and if they don't, they should probably start getting ticks on Truth.

Within the corebook, of course, the only Illusion cult is Eurmal, and while the Sartar book will reframe tricksters as sacred clowns and holy jesters and all that, there's a whole lot of Gloranthan media which presents Tricksters as unrelenting colossal assholes who always defeat themselves, like their god does. So that's, perhaps, appropriate. But then Illusion is associated with Donandar and with the performing arts. Now, maybe this will change, and Donandar will be firmly Harmony-primary and Illusion-secondary or Illusion-tertiary, but it's a bit confounding to ask, "so are musicians and actors in Glorantha openly narcissistic about half of the time?"

And it's more confounding to try and think through how to explain these character options. There are certainly definitions of Truth and Illusion which are not quite so unusual psychologically as this one, scattered throughout the existing material and the paratextual fan conversations. But then they tend to be even vaguer, less useful as Trait analogues.

Some Jonstown Compendium materials set out an example of how the Rune influences the personality of an NPC, which is a good idea. I think for PCs it somewhat requires a fair amount of up-front character definition, and I think that sort of conflicts with the way that the game starts you as a young person and puts you at the beginning of a long epic string of events and presents you with the opportunity to learn more about the world and yourself.

This is an awful lot of text, so I'm going to split this into several posts.

[g33k]

For myself, I'm mostly OK with the "80% forcing" rule* (I might HR it up to 85%, or even 90%; still pondering this).

Sometimes, a character *should* act in accord with their own nature, even if it's "sub-optimal" in a tactical sense, or otherwise "not what the player would do."   And Gloranthan runes define the character; this is fundamental to the setting.  Glorantha is not a world where each PC is an utter "tabula rasa."  Some peoples' slates are made of fine hardwood, some are etched clay... some are even slate!

The point is, things like "Air Rune" in Glorantha aren't separate tools for you to pick up and set down, independent of your PC and their choices.  If you don't want to play an Air-Rune-y character, don't play a character with high Air Rune affinity.  This is part of what Glorantha is.

And in the final analysis, if you DON'T want to do something your 80%-and-over AIr Rune says you "must" do... well, you got choices.  Roll another Rune or Passion that supports your preferred choice, in opposition on the Resistance Table.  If nothing else... player fiat can overrule the rune, just take the hit to the Rune score.  These choices per-RAW, so the "forcing" really isn't... forcing.

Edited March 26, 2022 by g33k