Running Gaumata's Vision (in Sandheart)

[smiorgan]

Hi, I'm about to run a Roll20 game of RQG for a bunch of Italian RQ fasns/ RQ curious.

I've decided to run Gaumata's Vision (from RQ3 Shadows on the Borderlands), because... well life is to short not to run it. And I wanted to move in the Sandheart district, to fully take advantage of the great Sandheart setting (Jonstown Compendium). It will be set in 1615 and will use the character generation in Sandheart vol. 1 

- MILD SCENARIO SPOILERS MAY FOLLOW -

I've a few questions:

1) How's Gaumata's Vision in play? Is it as awesome as it seems from reading it? For those who have run/ played it. 

2) Are there any specific pitfalls or difficulties in running it?

3) Anticipated issues with the RQ3 -> RQG conversion? My intention is mostly converting on the fly: add runes, passions and rune points as appropriate and use RQ3 stats as they are - including strike ranks.

4) I want to move Black Rock to Sandheart. I think it will become Cleft, which is just below the cliffs of Vulture Country. Basically, I move it from one backwater at the edge of Prax to another backwater at the edge of Vulture Country. Do you see any difficulty with that?

Wish me good luck!

Smiorgan 

 

[Bill the barbarian]

57 minutes ago, smiorgan said:

1) How's Gaumata's Vision in play? Is it as awesome as it seems from reading it? For those who have run/ played it. 

 

Friggin' awesome! Great for Halloween!

 

57 minutes ago, smiorgan said:

2) Are there any specific pitfalls or difficulties in running it?

 

30 or so years is a long time and I can not recall any. It is a mystery so... it will require a certain mindset to solve. Do not forget to give trigger warnings about 

 

Spoiler

harm to children, can be scary as shit, adult themes (rape and...)

 

57 minutes ago, smiorgan said:

3) Anticipated issues with the RQ3 -> RQG conversion? My intention is mostly converting on the fly: add runes, passions and rune points as appropriate and use RQ3 stats as they are - including strike ranks.

 

None what so ever... Hand wave what you need to. Ignore passions, add runes if you will be making the foes a bit more powerful so they can cast Rune Spells and see the next sentence for more on power...

Oh, you crew might be a little to powerful for an RQ3 adventure meant for beginners... Only you will be able to answer that particular question.

 

57 minutes ago, smiorgan said:

4) I want to move Black Rock to Sandheart. I think it will become Cleft, which is just below the cliffs of Vulture Country. Basically, I move it from one backwater at the edge of Prax to another backwater at the edge of Vulture Country. Do you see any difficulty with that?

 

Do not know Sandheart but if it also a MOB production you should be in great hands! I love his work. 

 

And here is another little bit more info on the question...

 

 

 

57 minutes ago, smiorgan said:

Wish me good luck!

 

In the words of Scooby Doo.... Rot's of ruck!

Edited October 12, 2022 by Bill the barbarian

[Joerg]

http://etyries.albionsoft.com/etyries.com/folktale/massacre.html

[smiorgan]

Yes, as @Bill the barbarian said, trigger warnings are important for this scenario. Especially because some of the players will be strangers.

My dilemma is being specific enough with the warning without giving away important bits of the investigation.

For instance 

Spoiler

Should I specifically mention rape?

 

[Nick Brooke]

My advice, as usual, is to play with an X-Card: 

http://tinyurl.com/x-card-rpg

The problem with trigger warnings is (a) they can give the game away, and (b) they can make players more concerned than they should be about content. (NB: I feel much the same way about those questionnaires that expect every player to disclose a whole list of potential psychological triggers before you start play: I wouldn't use them myself)

But if you are a reasonable person, and pay attention to your players, and they use the X-Card sensibly, you should be fine. Lines and veils, man: lines and veils. Sort this stuff out in Session Zero.

The Sandheart Militia are a shoo-in for Gaumata's Vision: this is exactly the sort of problem they should be tackling. And it's a brilliant scenario: Mike Dawson was firing on all cylinders when he wrote it. I don't see any reason not to relocate it.

Incidentally, if the Goldbreath Family are trying to make friends in Prax outside of Sun County (which they undoubtedly are!), they could send their local "expert" beat cops to help out Duke Raus or any other neighbour for the occasional season or so: that way the Sandheart Militia can take over missing persons investigations or impound rogue ducks and newtlings etc. up and down the Cradle Valley, reworking material from Borderlands, Shadows... etc.

Edited October 13, 2022 by Nick Brooke
Added links for Lines & Veils and Session Zero

[Bill the barbarian]

6 hours ago, smiorgan said:

My dilemma is being specific enough with the warning without giving away important bits of the investigation.

For instance 

  Reveal hidden contents

Should I specifically mention rape?

 

That is something I pondered as well, but... I think Nick may have a solution. 

 

5 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

But if you are a reasonable person, and pay attention to your players, and they use the X-Card sensibly, you should be fine. Lines and veils, man: lines and veils. Sort this stuff out in Session Zero.

 

X-cards and good will may well be the answer here.

[smiorgan]

@Nick Brooke is right. So it will be dealt in session 0 and by using an X card. No, detailed trigger warnings. 

 

BTW, I very excited by the prospect of running the Sandheart militia through that. Either I relocate the whole thing... or Allabeer's men (and women!) could be sent South as semi-unofficial and expendable (!) troubleshooters for a mission that promises to be either dangerous or embarassing or both. That would give the opportunity to travel through Sun County and provide a bit of Gloranthan lore.

And yeah a visit to Duke Raus' estate is a great idea. I might combine the two things. They could sent to check Gaumata's vision while on their way to the Lunar Grantlands.

 

[Nick Brooke]

Politics! Lady Vega runs the Sun County militia. Vega’s a Goldbreath. The Goldbreath Dynasty runs Sandheart. The Sandheart Militia is a new kind of force, made up of the famous “Specials.” So Lady Vega has an incentive to show that this new model of policing can cope with situations where more traditional Sun Domer militia might fail; the Sandheart Militia gets sent on tour; and Vega’s enemies in the Temple are going to try and undermine them if they ever get wind of what’s going on.

[smiorgan]

12 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

Politics! Lady Vega runs the Sun County militia. Vega’s a Goldbreath. The Goldbreath Dynasty runs Sandheart. The Sandheart Militia is a new kind of force, made up of the famous “Specials.” So Lady Vega has an incentive to show that this new model of policing can cope with situations where more traditional Sun Domer militia might fail; the Sandheart Militia gets sent on tour; and Vega’s enemies in the Temple are going to try and undermine them if they ever get wind of what’s going on.

Pure gold.

[Nick Brooke]

Also allows the GM to have the Sun Dome Templars be vindictively inept and useless if the Militia ever tries to rely on them. They want Vega’s prize crew to fail.

[Runeblogger]

On 10/13/2022 at 8:57 AM, smiorgan said:

Yes, as @Bill the barbarian said, trigger warnings are important for this scenario. Especially because some of the players will be strangers.

My dilemma is being specific enough with the warning without giving away important bits of the investigation.

For instance 

  Reveal hidden contents

Should I specifically mention rape?

 

I would use the lines and veils system. 👈   That way, players won't know what exactly you have in store for them.

BTW, I think this is one of the best scenarios ever published for RQ3, together with Melisande's Hand, and probably the Cradle. It's almost like a Call of Cthulhu scenario in Glorantha. On the other hand, I think it plays best in your head than when you actually run it. But I had fun with it nonetheless. As for running the scenario, when I ran it years ago, I feared that

Spoiler

players would recognize the problematic village too easily, so I devised 5 suspicious villages players had to investigate. Almost each had a distinctive element from Gaumata's revelation, so they had to dig a little bit deeper into each to try to find the one that was the cause of the problem. Of course that meant loosely defining some NPCs. And of course what happened was that the PCs ended up visiting the 5 villages and not knowing which one was the cause of the problem! They all looked fine!   I had had too much success, and that meant my players were not going to enjoy the scenario. What to do?

But then the PCs knew a former militia group had disappeared while investigating the 5 villages, so they visited each of them again, this time asking the locals whether a group of hoplites had been there some weeks ago. This time I made it easy for them, so the first 4 villages said the hoplites had come and gone, and the last one (Black Rock) said the same, but then those hoplites had not returned to its home town after that. So then the PCs decided to go back to that last village and approach it from a different direction to try and have a look at the locals when they weren't expecting it. "OK, so do you approach it from the right side of the path that leads to it or from the left side?" I asked my players. The replied "from the right", and so they came accross the barn, and everything went downhill from there. Of course, in retrospect the people at Black Rock should have told the players they had never seen any hoplites visiting, then the players would have had two suspects: thr 4th and 5th village. But I guess in that case the players' reaction would have been the same.

Be ready for some parts of the scenario to be left untouched by the players. For example, when I ran it no one went into the caves, which was a pity. Also expect the "widow" that can be encountered at night won't fool any player, as players tend to be paranoid all the time. Even moreso in this kind of scenario.

 

Edited October 14, 2022 by Runeblogger

[Bill the barbarian]

1 hour ago, Runeblogger said:

I would use the lines and veils system. 👈   That way, players won't know what exactly you have in store for them.

Thanks for that inclusion.

 

ETA

I have become a big fan of working with one's table... When, you ask, did this transformation begin...

Long ago on a lozenge far, far away!

Well, though I started to work with my tables back in the 80s to give them agency in a game they would spend years playing together, having the table be a healthy table (I mean the amount of Skittle and Jolt and Chips, prevented the game from ever being healthy from the get go)... that started with the re-discovery of fantasy gaming in 2017 with the release of RQ G... I was joined at my FLGS by a 20 something couple and a father/daughter (the daughter being a young teen) team for a demo of The Broken Tower at it's debut on Free Games Day. The game went well and all had a great time (well the male of the couple got badly confused trying to choose which of a myriad of spells to cast back when adventurers got all the spells in a Cult's set but that is not relevant to this discussion and was fixed in the core rules). 

I had a discussion with the father about the game being a bit violent and his daughter's choice of Yanioth mentioning she was described as a sensuous earth priestess. Nothing racy... He looked over the printout of Yanioth, thanked me for my concern and said she would be fine but wished more would come to him with these matters pregame. 

Needless to say, I was very happy to discover others had my qualms and that there were tools for this.

Edited October 14, 2022 by Bill the barbarian

[soltakss]

On 10/12/2022 at 11:12 PM, smiorgan said:

1) How's Gaumata's Vision in play? Is it as awesome as it seems from reading it? For those who have run/ played it. 

Yes, it is awesome and can be a really creepy scenario, especially if you use the children in a creepy children way.

On 10/12/2022 at 11:12 PM, smiorgan said:

2) Are there any specific pitfalls or difficulties in running it?

Spoiler

Sense Chaos sort of ruins it, at least a little bit. There is a reason why the villagers try to distract any Storm Bull Cultists from coming too close.

It can be a good investigative scenario, unless the Adventurers miss all the clues.

Spoiler

The beauty of it is that, even if the Adventurers miss all the clues, they can still be fought by the Lamias, Ogre children and the Succubus.

Child Lamias can be fun, instead of seducing people, they ask "Will you be my friend?" very, very strongly, and the Adventurers get to play with their dollies and sit down to endless tea parties.

 

On 10/12/2022 at 11:12 PM, smiorgan said:

3) Anticipated issues with the RQ3 -> RQG conversion? My intention is mostly converting on the fly: add runes, passions and rune points as appropriate and use RQ3 stats as they are - including strike ranks.

Yes, that is exactly how I would do it. Assume that the major NPCs have Runes at 70%-90% and make Passions up as you go.

On 10/12/2022 at 11:12 PM, smiorgan said:

4) I want to move Black Rock to Sandheart. I think it will become Cleft, which is just below the cliffs of Vulture Country. Basically, I move it from one backwater at the edge of Prax to another backwater at the edge of Vulture Country. Do you see any difficulty with that?

It really makes no difference where it is physically located, as long as it is in an out of the way backwater, so you should be fine.

 

I have added Spoilers, as per @Bill the barbarian's request. Bill: You do know that Players can just clock on the Spoiler and they can see the text, don't you?

Edited October 16, 2022 by soltakss

[Bill the barbarian]

19 hours ago, soltakss said:

I have added Spoilers, as per @Bill the barbarian's request. Bill: You do know that Players can just clock on the Spoiler and they can see the text, don't you?

Indeed I do. Hell, players can buy modules, steal them or borrow them. They can download them for free on the right sites. These days, the internet is yer friend if you wish to cheat. No, I do not want to tell folk they can not read an item. That is their choice. I am more worried about the person who is so immersed in what you (the generic you, here not Simon, although when I read your material I am usually deeply immersed and have been for decades), have typed, that they innocently read the plot point that unravels the mystery and then realize they can not unread it. Happens to me often enough, that I feel I should mention it when I see it.  I understand you feeling a little piqued, after all this is something you are never guilty of, as I said earlier...

In any case, thanks for the spoilers Simon! 

Oh well, that's my 2 bolgs worth. Thanks for listening and we now return y'all to this excellent thread.

cheers

Edited October 16, 2022 by Bill the barbarian

[smiorgan]

Small update:

I'm slowly recruiting the Sandheart militia.

We have:

An impala riding pygmie

A naive Sandheart farmer boy

A spoiled noble youth sent to the militia to straighten his spine

Two female characters yet to decide (possibly a Yelornan and an Eritha veterinarian)

Four out of five players are RQG newbies...

Lots of fun ahead