Giants of Rock

[whitelaughter]

Was looking through the Bestiary, and struck by the thought of what Giants could do with their high Manipulation % (typically gaining 15% for every 2 Metres in height). Yes, on average, giants are stupider than humans, but the handful who are smart will explore their capabilities.

Sure, they can fight, and makes arms and armour: but there's another old giant trope that doesn't get explored much in RPGs - the giant musician. Both Craft(instrument) and Play(instrument) will start high, and then go through the roof with experience; a centuries-old giant might have skills of >480%, effectively ensuring a Special Success...that can be heard for miles.

Of course, Giants also have a Disorder Rune of 95%, so just because it is good doesn't mean it is calm. A human kingdom could be woken in the middle of the night by a giant three valleys away rocking out the bronze age equivalent of 'Highway to Hell' on his bagpipes.

Cults might like the idea of a Giant to provide music for Worship ceremonies, given that an entire city will hear the music. Of course, the cults that Giant will be interested in will be those with the Disorder Rune: Eurmal, Maran Gor, Black Fang. So this may make things even worse...

Edited November 9, 2022 by whitelaughter

[Bill the barbarian]

Exhibit one:

May I present for your amusement:

 

Bundalini and His All-Skeleton Band

No bones about it they are the best!

If you have access to Sartar Companion for HeroQuest (alas no longer available, but may make a comeback with QuestWorld) you can read about this fellow and he does make surprise appearances in the King of Dragon Pass video game.

Edited November 9, 2022 by Bill the barbarian

[PhilHibbs]

3 hours ago, whitelaughter said:

Was looking through the Bestiary, and struck by the thought of what Giants could do with their high Manipulation % (typically gaining 15% for every 2 Metres in height). Yes, on average, giants are stupider than humans, but the handful who are smart will explore their capabilities.

Hmmm... if you're a "rules literalist" then yes a 12m giant by the book has a +95% Manipulation modifier, therefore they are all masters of every musical instrument ever invented. They might have the world's worst Hide skill, but they are masters of Conceal and Sleight. Watch out for those 12m giant pickpockets!

Clearly this is the human-centric rules breaking when applied outside of the human scale.

[whitelaughter]

1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

Hmmm... if you're a "rules literalist"

Yes. If the rules aren't what they say, then they are pointless. If you are judging them by some other standard, then simply use the other standard and throw the rules book in the bin.

[PhilHibbs]

8 minutes ago, whitelaughter said:

Yes. If the rules aren't what they say, then they are pointless. If you are judging them by some other standard, then simply use the other standard and throw the rules book in the bin.

I think that's a bit of an extreme reaction. The rules work fine for 99% of use cases.

[Scotty]

13 minutes ago, whitelaughter said:

Yes. If the rules aren't what they say, then they are pointless. If you are judging them by some other standard, then simply use the other standard and throw the rules book in the bin.

As it says in the Core rules:

Quote

Follow the steps below to create an adventurer. This procedure lets you create human adventurers from the greater Dragon Pass region

and the bestiary says:

Quote

 

applying human criteria to the cultures of other species can be a pointless exercise.

 

While it's fun to run with an idea, many of the rules mechanics for human adventurers fail when applied to huge creatures.

The idea of a giant who is overcoming his desire to eat humans and yearns to play the harp could be a fun one. There are however some stories around this this subject where it takes a turn for the worst 🙂.

Have a look at some of the giants that have been created for adventures: The issaries merchants in Griffin Mountain (and the stories of others), and the giant group in Snakepipe Hollow.

[PhilHibbs]

Of course the other way to look at it is that not all instruments are alike and a humongous harp ten meters tall would be virtually impossible for a human to play, so you apply a minus 100% chance to play such an instrument. That nicely cancels out the giant's bonus, and they are starting off with a low chance of playing it.

Similarly, the chance to pick the pocket of a super huge or super tiny person (compared to the pickpocket) involves a situational modifier as well. This still leaves giants (and any similarly large creature) being super skilful at picking each others' pockets, but you can't win 'em all.

I noticed on your profile @whitelaughter that you call yourself a grognard, and trace your gaming story back to 1979, that's one more year than me. Surely you know this stuff already! RuneQuest - and to some extent all the game systems -  always did break in certain ways when the characteristics strayed far beyond the human scale.

[Joerg]

One note on giant-sized string, reed or brass instruments: Those would work in infra-sound, creating earth-quake like frequencies, rather than audible music.

 

Edit:

That said, if you can live with the panicky exposure to infrasound, the range of upper harmonies such instruments may generate might be astonishing.

Edited November 9, 2022 by Joerg

[Akhôrahil]

20 hours ago, Joerg said:

One note on giant-sized string, reed or brass instruments: Those would work in infra-sound, creating earth-quake like frequencies, rather than audible music.

We do not talk about the day the Brown Note was experienced all across Dragon Pass.

Edited November 10, 2022 by Akhôrahil

[whitelaughter]

[whitelaughter]

On 11/9/2022 at 11:45 PM, Joerg said:

One note on giant-sized string, reed or brass instruments: Those would work in infra-sound, creating earth-quake like frequencies, rather than audible music.

 

Edit:

That said, if you can live with the panicky exposure to infrasound, the range of upper harmonies such instruments may generate might be astonishing.

Interesting, but giants aren't very big; 15 metres at full growth. Wind instruments are going to have tubes about the same size as a church organ.

[Bill the barbarian]

I have been trying to find a bit more reference to musical giants and did find this in Ian Cooper's masterpiece... "The Coming Storm"....

Quote

 

DRUM POINT

Called Drumtop, this hill was the drum of Lant Ulfar.

Spoiler

The clans around it can gain special Drum magic when they drum upon it, and they do.

 

and I will tease y'all with a taste of a tale of Lant Ulfars... just a tease though, there is more in "The Coming Storm"...

Lant Ulfar the giant lived in the Quivin Mountains during the Gods Age. He was content just to live his life and beat his drum, but one god annoyed him: Larnste, the God of Motion. Larnste could not stop, no matter the need, but was always constantly in motion. His footsteps would interrupt Lant Ulfar’s drumming, so the giant decided one day to stop Larnste.

 

Makes me think of that great song... "I don't want to work I just want to bang on my drum all day!"

Edited November 11, 2022 by Bill the barbarian

[DreadDomain]

On 11/9/2022 at 3:35 PM, whitelaughter said:

and struck by the thought of what Giants could do with their high Manipulation % (typically gaining 15% for every 2 Metres in height).

The rules in the core book are very human centric and do not seem to attempt to resolve issues outside of that purview. Personally, I believe the impact of secondary characteristics (and perhaps even of a primary) on a skill should be capped at, I don't know, 20%, 25%...

[whitelaughter]

1 hour ago, DreadDomain said:

The rules in the core book are very human centric

yet work for a centaur or a duck. A giant is just a large human.

Now, real world a giant makes no sense because mass is increasing 3 dimensionally, while the application of strength only increases in 2 dimensions; the tallest ever human could only walk with mechanical assistance, and those braces ended up killing him. A real world giant at 6 metres would break his hip every time he tried to take a step.

But in Glorantha, that isn't the case. And no, it isn't because giants are different; a size 6 Impala Rider and a size 21 Bison Rider use the same STR and CON rules.

[PhilHibbs]

1 hour ago, whitelaughter said:

And no, it isn't because giants are different; a size 6 Impala Rider and a size 21 Bison Rider use the same STR and CON rules.

5 and 20 are the "comfortable range" for the RQ rules. Anything outside of that gets a bit weird. That's the way it's always been, nobody is going to "fix" RuneQuest at this stage of the game's life cycle (although people do house-rule things like proportional resistance tables and alternative category modifier charts, I mean nobody is going to "fix" it officially).

[DreadDomain]

18 hours ago, whitelaughter said:

yet work for a centaur or a duck. A giant is just a large human.

Perhaps my meanings were not well explained. What I meant by "The rules in the core book are very human centric" was that it is only concerned with the human range of characteristics and does not concern itself with whatever is outside that range. Any races with characteristics more or less within the human range would therefore work without too much need for exceptions and house ruling. I feel the bestiary should have covered some of the differences with the "human range centric" core book assumptions and how it applies to some creatures. Skill categories is an example of that, move is another. Skill categories, when STR and SIZ are involved, simply do not work for large, strong creatures. As far as I recall, they never worked in any RQ iterations. 

[whitelaughter]

18 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

5 and 20 are the "comfortable range" for the RQ rules. Anything outside of that gets a bit weird. That's the way it's always been, nobody is going to "fix" RuneQuest at this stage of the game's life cycle (although people do house-rule things like proportional resistance tables and alternative category modifier charts, I mean nobody is going to "fix" it officially).

Yet starting PCs can set themselves up to have a functional 42 strength: Bison Rider + 2ndry darkness rune serving Odayla or Orlanth with bear's Strength+4 levels of Extension, or CHA 40 with anybody serving Ernalda, Eurmal, or Yinkin with Charisma + 4*Extension.

[PhilHibbs]

8 hours ago, whitelaughter said:

Yet starting PCs can set themselves up to have a functional 42 strength: Bison Rider + 2ndry darkness rune serving Odayla or Orlanth with bear's Strength+4 levels of Extension, or CHA 40 with anybody serving Ernalda, Eurmal, or Yinkin with Charisma + 4*Extension.

Yes, you could sacrifice 2 extra POW and get Charisma for an entire season. Or 3 POW to get Bear's Strength. That's all your Rune Points locked away for the duration though, so you can't cast anything else. And if the next seasonal holy day doesn't coincide with the expiry of the spell, you lose it until the next worship opportunity. I can only see 40 STR as being achievable though without something like a Humakt or Yelmalio gift.

So yes, you can do that. You'd get +25 to all your manipulation skills. That's starting to get a little strange, that a huge strength suddenly makes you a proficient flute player, but it doesn't bother me too much.

Edited November 12, 2022 by PhilHibbs