Keeping Glorantha Weird

[icebrand]

On 6/4/2022 at 8:56 AM, SevenSistersOfVinga said:

Where do you stand between "Keeping it bronze" age and "Keep it fantastic" how weird does your magic go?

YES. 😂

On 6/4/2022 at 8:56 AM, SevenSistersOfVinga said:

Are your ghosts 'spirited away' style?

My ghosts are overly edgy and dramatic and obsessed with whatever they made them ghosts. Ghosts are kinda losers and played for laughs. Some have STR (and can move stuff) and those are the assholy variant.

Spirits are mob psycho 100 style (or studio ghibli style if they be good).

On 6/4/2022 at 8:56 AM, SevenSistersOfVinga said:

Are your bear strength casters full blown werebears or at least shirt-ripping fma style? 

Not only that but you also get a bear avatar behind you while you cast!!!

On 6/4/2022 at 8:56 AM, SevenSistersOfVinga said:

Are there ancient alien blasters or old abandoned buildings from before the monkeys took over glorantha?

My characters once found "the horror from the stars", a curious stone from the stars that teleported them wherever they wanted (at -1 CON price) and answered whatever they asked (INTx1 or fall down in agony while too much information floods your head).

Of course "it" had an agenda; the players throught it was an alien supercoputer but it was the one and only nyarlathotep speaking through his Shining Trapezohedron. Sadly for Big N, the players threw the item in a lake, and we all know thats a foolproof way of getting rid of it (or not?)

On 6/4/2022 at 8:56 AM, SevenSistersOfVinga said:

Are your shields glowing balls of lightning or dragon ball auras ?

My shields are big semi translucent magical shields in front of your character. This gives me a way for crits / powered spells to byspass them!

On 6/4/2022 at 8:56 AM, SevenSistersOfVinga said:

How weird does it get? I guess most people keeps it close to bronze age, just with invisible armor and damage

I did that my previous campaign. Magic gets very "meta" this way, enemies can't tell if you have a sword or a man-portable WMD, 

Edited June 6, 2022 by icebrand

[SevenSistersOfVinga]

1 hour ago, icebrand said:

it was the one and only nyatlathothep speaking through his Shining Trapezohedron

😂 (🤔)

1 hour ago, icebrand said:

My shields are big semi translucent magical shields in front of your character. This gives me a way for crits / powered spells to byspass them!

I see you too lean on the anime school of making it easy for the player to understand 

 

[JRE]

As I tend to have few players for long periods of time, one of the discussions is how their magic appears, and we go spell by spell thinking of manifestation, sensitivity and any special effects. 

Sorcerers normally you cannot identify the spell, but with the change to rune based casting I would allow anyone with magic sight to see at least the runes and the MPs. For mundanes, the first 10 MP are difficult to see, though the sorcerer is obviously gesticulating and whispering. Each extra round the glow of the focused magic starts to glow the hands and head. But even a 30 MP spell looks little more special than a 4-5 point spirit magic,

For spirit magic I make the MP go through the spell focusm making it glow, and more as more MP go to the spell, so usually it is easy to know what is the spell focus if you have line of sight, though while casting it is not always clear what is the spell. That has meant some forceful tattoo removal to captured characters. Each spell varies but a bladesharp from different sources gives a similar glow and appeareance to the weapon, though the player chooses the color and if there are sound effects from the magic. A bit like jedi light saber color and hum. Befuddle is a projection of the face of the caster that goes to the target. If the target fails to resist, the face remains superimposed on her, and you know when the spell ends because the face disappears. Heal just has a flow of colored (of choice) magic to the wound or limb. The LM caster has a cool blue light effect, while the humakti has a blood red effect, like bleeding in reverse.

Rune magic is very dependent on the god. Shield may be a light shield, but in some cases it could be armor, or wisps of darkness surrounding you, though never affecting visibility. Our current Humakti, after seeing the illustration of Humakt in the RQ:G decided that his feathers turn black and a belt of skulls appears on his waist while casting, and the skulls remain after casting shield, shooting rays to any deflected spell, while a black aura surrounds him and absorbs damage . Continuing with the theme, True Sword turns the sword black with black flames. Sword trance superposes the figure of Humakt over his, and it looks like he has four right arms and four swords, never knowing which one is the real one (all are). Meanwhile the historian looks like a more handsome, twice as tall version of himself while casting, no matter if it is an Issaries or a Lhankor Mhy spell, though Issaries is garbed in browns with the Issaries rune while Lhankor Mhy is garbed in grey with a truth rune. Lock creates an iron padlock that in a few seconds is absorbed into the container, though it still can be seen if you know what to look for. Path watch makes the eyes glow yellow, though outside obeservers do not notice anything else after the spell is cast and he returns to normal size and attractiveness, though the eyes remain yellow (without light) while the spell lasts. Heal wound just brings forth a medicine pouch and he applies some bright white bandages from it, that disappear the following round. Analyze Magic, Knowledge or Truespeak look quite similar, with the truth rune from the clothes projecting to the target, whether an object or a person, Analyze magic has the truth rune then return to the caster, and the observers have no indication of what information was acquired. Knoweledge has a constant stream of images flowing back to the caster, while the spell lasts, and observers may have some fleeting vision of what is being learnt. Truespeak, if succesful, has the truth rune manifesting over the mouth of the target, and it can be seen to hold the mouth closed when activated by a lie. 

As they get more magic we will have to add other effects, and they also enjoy guessing spells from the description, but the players are quite familiar with RQ3 magic. 

[jajagappa]

14 hours ago, SevenSistersOfVinga said:

What about the magic (rune mainly) does it glow faintly, almost imperceptible to the common eye or it blasts the ears of the soldiers around and Summons awe and fear all the same?

Generally, a strong glow (e.g. something like Heal Wound, Shield), though it will depend on the Rune spell.  Thunderbolt is going to blast some ears!

14 hours ago, SevenSistersOfVinga said:

I'm taking your notes on the axis mundi.

In the recent instance at the Wild Temple, it looked like a giant tree reaching up towards the Sky.  Since the shaman PC in our group was welcomed into the Spirit World by Grandmother Spider (and has a spider fetch), the approach towards it had many spider webs reaching across the standing stones of the Wild Temple.  And Cragspider herself climbed down one of the branches towards the PC's to talk with them.

(They had encountered the Half-bird by one of the distant standing stones at the Wild Temple, and aided the Half-bird in reaching the Axis Mundi.  The whole action of doing that brought them into a mini-heroquest where they had to fend off a blustering Storm spirit, and then overcome Zorak Zoran at the Troll Bridge.)

 

[SevenSistersOfVinga]

15 hours ago, JRE said:

Our current Humakti, after seeing the illustration of Humakt in the RQ:G decided that his feathers turn black and a belt of skulls appears on his waist while casting, and the skulls remain after casting shield, shooting rays to any deflected spell, while a black aura surrounds him and absorbs damage . Continuing with the theme, True Sword turns the sword black with black flames. Sword trance superposes the figure of Humakt over his, and it looks like he has four right arms and four swords, never knowing which one is the real one (all are)

Oh yeah! Like I've said I'm too vanilla with my spell descriptions but I love this.

Thanks for taking the time to share how you play the spells, I know this is not exactly a rules topic but it helps a lot.

[Orlanthatemyhamster]

On 6/4/2022 at 3:45 PM, Eff said:

I run Glorantha very weird by conventional fantasy standards and still fairly weird by my own. So there's Blue Moon hoverboats as a secret project, there's heroes jumping hundreds of feet in naval battles, there's lots of visible and immanent magic, people's tattoos glow, the gods regularly speak through their worshipers to have a chat with PCs, wyters and city-gods are a kind of genius loci able to influence the physical environment. It's fairly tilted towards an animistic view of reality despite having very few explicit shamans as prominent characters- things are mostly alive and mostly have personhood, and the struggles are often to successfully empathize with them or evoke empathy from them and achieve communication.

I think the best way to put it is that I'm inspired by how the novel Dream of the Red Chamber opens with a cosmic backdrop for its intimate story of family life and personal relationships. So my Glorantha runs in a kind of high-drama mode where the relationships between people are mirrors of the cosmos, and building these relationships shapes the universe. It's also very puckish and lighthearted, and exceptionally queer.

That's not really weird, that's pretty standard fantasy fare. At least the first couple of phrases.
So are your chairs working towards personhood, what about gold leaf? That would be weird but not that interesting.

5/10 weirdness.