Dumping Argrath

[JonL]

Argrath is useful to the extent that he supports your game. If Argrath is in the way of your game, cast him aside. It's all about the sort of game experience you're looking for.

I have found Garrath Sharpsword as an NPC highly useful for PCs in Pavis who are wanting to transition from "Gangs of New York"-esque hustling to playing in the bigger game. If the Players are into the style of play where their PCs are the go-to problem solvers for a busy patron who-knows-things, then Garrath->White Bull->Prince Argrath is a useful progression.

If the Players are more into their characters themselves setting the agenda for the big game, and crushing the jeweled thrones of the lozenge beneath their own sandaled feet,  let Garrath drown defending the Cradle and leave them the key to an, "If you are reading this I am dead... ...YOU must be the Liberator now." message.

(Personally, I like a hidden heir from the Puppeteer Troupe for Prince. 😉 )

Edited January 3, 2023 by JonL

[Nick Brooke]

1 hour ago, Eff said:

Kallyr has been deemed to have been explicitly wrong, to have been bad at her job, to not be all that good of an Orlanthi.

Unlike Argrath? I think not. (I am an historian; I feel quite confident in telling you that history will not be kind to him, because I intend to continue writing it)

[Lordabdul]

2 hours ago, jajagappa said:

You've bet on Kallyr and she's dead.

Or maybe she's not dead. Remember that there currently is zero Chaosium-published material that advances the metaplot (there's only one oblique reference to Kallyr's LBQ in one of the scenarios in The Smoking Ruin and Other Stories). So "canonically speaking" RQG currently has no metaplot.

Now we know there will be some metaplot material with (at the very least) the Dragon Pass Campaign book (probably only released in 2 or 3 years). But until then, the GM can easily do whatever they want with their Glorantha. They'll probably have finished two entire campaigns of RQG before Chaosium gets around to publish anything that contradicts it.

So Kallyr isn't dead. Yet. The GM can throw around opportunities to become a companion of Kallyr, Leika, Argrath, Samastina, whatever. See what sticks, what the players are interested in. Say they pick Kallyr. The GM can either go with it or throw a wrench in the player's plans. It's easy to pick the metaplot timeline and mess around with it. Maybe Leika dies before Kallyr. Maybe Kallyr leaves for New Pavis, allies with Argrath, and takes his place because he's too wasted on hazia to do anything. Or maybe it goes exactly as the metaplot goes.

It also all depends on whether the players know the metaplot or not. There's a big difference between players who rally behind Kallyr if they know her fate vs they don't. It's the GM's job to also correctly manage player expectations, the players' job to tell the GM what they hope to accomplish in the game.

 

2 hours ago, Eff said:

And what's more, of course, is that Kallyr has been deemed to have been explicitly wrong, to have been bad at her job, to not be all that good of an Orlanthi.

That's totally not what I got from my reading of the published material.

[QuestingAce]

I think this page from Well of Daliath may  illuminate part of this discussion around how Kallyr is read. I haven't been a huge fan of how she's been presented in the text myself.

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/kallyr-rocks/

Oh, Argrath was dead in a ditch during the short RQG game I ran. I am the person who would only run Star Wars, using a New Hope as canon and would start with an event that kills off all the major characters (good and evil).

In my upcoming Legendary Duck Tower game, I'm having a npc named Arquack, who is going to play a Zote (from Hollow Knight) type role as a special encounter.

I think he (Argrath) is kinda a boring authoritarian. I haven't liked how the important npcs are presented. Not for any canon reasons, but they lack the style, substance and utility I look for in gaming material.

Edited January 4, 2023 by QuestingAce
grammar

[Rodney Dangerduck]

6 hours ago, jajagappa said:

But why a waste of time??? 

Mainly, because Loyalty Leika is also  useless (or nearly so) upon the arrival of Argrath.  Whoever you "bet on", you lost.

What's even worse, some PCs used metagame knowledge and just backed Argrath from the get go.

[Rodney Dangerduck]

Arguing with myself, I do realize that replacing two feuding flawed leaders, Kallyr and Leika, with one awesome heroic leader, Argrath, makes Chaosium's task of writing and publishing The Great Campaign a lot easier.

[Nick Brooke]

"Awesome heroic leader"? Has he been lending you his stash?

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, Nick Brooke said:

"Awesome heroic leader"? Has he been lending you his stash?

Apparently the glyphs for "-some" and "-ful" are easily mixed up.

[radmonger]

3 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

one awesome heroic leader, Argrath, makes Chaosium's task of writing and publishing The Great Campaign a lot easier.

If the Great Sartar Campaign takes the form;

• adventure 1: Kallyr tells you to ...
• events of 1625: Kallyr fails and dies
• adventure 2: Argrath tells you to ...

Then it will be a pretty poor campaign that will be terribly reviewed when it comes out. That rarely happens to Chaosium products, so a reasonable assumption is that it will not be like that.

i would expect something more like;

• events of 1625; Kallyr has a base 100% chance of trying the lbq, and 0% chance of success.
• player influence on events of 1625: 5% for effects at level of a warband, clan, temple or guild, 10% per tribe or city.
• downstream effects; Kallyr remains Prince of Sartar either way. Record whether she attempted the quest, and if she succeeded.

There probably should be an appendix with 'default' outcomes. so that if you are running an unrelated campaign and visit Sartar for the first time in 1632, you know who is King.

That appendix can outline how Argrath forged a great nomad empire out of the beast and horse riding people, and used it to crush all city dwellers, whether lunar or sartarite.

And how that is the Gloranthan equivalent of the bronze age collapse, with mass death and the complete loss of literacy. 

 

 

[Martin Dick]

7 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

What's even worse, some PCs used metagame knowledge and just backed Argrath from the get go.

Putting on my evil-GM hat, that's just begging for the GM to unleash havoc on the timeline.

[Nick Brooke]

4 minutes ago, Martin Dick said:

Putting on my evil-GM hat, that's just begging for the GM to unleash havoc on the timeline.

Exactly. If you can't fool them into following "the wrong Argrath" with all the resources available, you're simply not trying.

[Lordabdul]

Really, there are 4 ways to deal with a metaplot:

- It's happening. Run adventures related to it, underneath it, or with it in the background. Can you play on Earth? A Call of Cthulhu campaign set in the 1930s in Europe? A Mythic Greece game set in the Peloponnesian War? A Three Musqueteers or Robin Hood campaign set in their respective eras? Yes? Then you can handle any metaplot. No? Try something else, like...

- It's frozen. The big NPCs are stuck in their patterns, and your campaign is effectively a procedural series instead of a drama. For instance, if you play a Robin Hood campaign, the Sheriff of Nottingham is always the bad guy. Prince John is always on the throne, and King Richard is always missing-but-hopefully-coming-back-anytime-now. The years go by but you don't track them. It's always the early 1200s and we never see any significant event shaking up the setting. The Lunars are always occupying Sartar and New Pavis, your Orlanthi PCs are always fighting them, the Dragonrise never happens. That's not bad! Entire beloved TV series made multiple seasons of this kind of stuff!

- It's a guideline. You have your key NPCs and some "example" events to play with from the "canonical timeline". But the PCs can directly affect these NPCs and these events, so who knows what will happen! Maybe they're Sartarites who save Kallyr or Leika, and that can change the timeline a bit or a lot. If you're playing Lunars, maybe you help prevent Argrath from taking back New Pavis, or maybe he still does but not as well as he's "supposed" to. This is the fun zone: the GM has toys to play with, the players don't know what to expect. If your GM still forces the "official" timeline down on you, knock them on the head a bit.

- It's got a PC-shaped hole in it. Dumping Argrath is only interesting (to me at least) if you replace him with the PCs. For the love of gods do not start your RQG campaign with the normal character creation, start it instead with already-powerful PCs, because if you start with "normal" PCs, it will take ages for them to become leaders and heroes, and all you did is remove interesting NPCs and make the setting more static (and not even in the "It's frozen" (see above) way -- at least with "It's frozen" the setting still has all the interesting NPCs!) So start with PCs who are Bison tribe khans and Paps priestesses and exiled Heortland kings. Or keep Argrath but dump Leika and make the PCs into Runemasters of the Colymar tribe who are coming back from exile to fuck things up. Or dump Harrek and have fun play super powerful angry pirates who literally destroy armies and pillage magical cities. It's a whole different game but that sounds fun to me. But again, do not remove Argrath "just in case my PC who has 3 points of rune spells wants to liberate New Pavis". This is like the RPG equivalent of minimum wage Americans who vote against social reform just in case the American Dream works and they become millionaires (which they won't).

Edited January 4, 2023 by Lordabdul

[Qizilbashwoman]

15 minutes ago, Lordabdul said:

Really, there are 4 ways to deal with a metaplot:

honestly one of the best discussions on how to handle this appears in the most recent iterations of the STAR WARS rpgs, because it's implausible to ignore that the canon exists. they suggest all of the above and more.

[Lordabdul]

6 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

the most recent iterations of the STAR WARS rpgs

You mean the FFG Star Wars games? That would make sense. I only have Edge of the Empire, though, which doesn't seem to have a chapter on that topic. Maybe it's in the Rebellion or Jedi versions of the game? Do you have some page reference? I'm very curious about this.

(edit, in EotE I can only find a small sidebar on page 295)

Edited January 4, 2023 by Lordabdul

[Qizilbashwoman]

3 minutes ago, Lordabdul said:

You mean the FFG Star Wars games? That would make sense. I only have Edge of the Empire, though, which doesn't seem to have a chapter on that topic. Maybe it's in the Rebellion or Jedi versions of the game? Do you have some page reference? I'm very curious about this.

rebellion! A chapter starting on page 318 entitled ""Player Characters and the Rebellion"

actually there is a better overview I'm thinking of but I have to track it down now, because it includes things like "there's an emperor and an empire and the characters don't know anything more. Is there a Luke? Is there a Sith?" and a "beyond the empire, everything else is up for grabs"

Edited January 4, 2023 by Qizilbashwoman

[Akhôrahil]

23 hours ago, Lordabdul said:

Or maybe she's not dead.

Or she is, and…

PCs: ”Kallyr Starbrow! We have heroquested far and wide to find the Pole Star and return you to life to save Sartar!”

Kallyr: ”Again, for those ingrates? I’ll just stay here with my boyfriend. He’s… stellar.”

[jajagappa]

20 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Mainly, because Loyalty Leika is also  useless (or nearly so) upon the arrival of Argrath.  Whoever you "bet on", you lost.

Like Loyalty(Sartar) was useless after the Lunar conquest in 1602, or Loyalty (Kallyr) after Starbrow's Rebellion?  Only if the GM makes it useless.  As @Lordabdul notes, there's multiple ways to deal with metaplot.

[Soccercalle]

On 1/3/2023 at 11:50 PM, Nick Brooke said:

Unlike Argrath? I think not. (I am an historian; I feel quite confident in telling you that history will not be kind to him, because I intend to continue writing it)

In my campaign I plan to let Kallyr warn the PCs about Argrath right before the Battle of Queens. She will hint that he may destroy the world if that is what it takes to bring down the Empire. I will later have them play Black Spear and use that scenario to give them more hints about what Argrath may become.

I may change this strategy. I am still in Storm Season 1620 and they are yet - in their next episode - to meet Garrath in Pavis.

[mfbrandi]

Argrath is dead. Argrath remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent?

Edited January 6, 2023 by mfbrandi
shortened

[Soccercalle]

If you start before 1625 it is quite easy to work with different Argraths. Not the "different Argraths" that Chaosium toyed with in the HQ/HW era but different possibilities. My PCs (and other orlanthi) has heard a lot of rumors of a "coming Argrath" (liberator) that will be some kind of reborn Arkat that will do to the Lunar empire what Arkat did against Nysalor. They are also hearing speculation about "possible Argrahts". One rumor is Kallyr, another is Broyan of Whitehall, another is Harrek and another is a strange fellow in the east that is also calling himself "the White Bull". I think one or two of my players knows more than they should about the meta plot but it hasn't ruined anything yet. We started the campaign in early 1619 and are now in late 1620.

I think that the PCs should influence history and I also think that "Argrath" is a role that can be taken by a PC. But it can also be taken by Kallyr, Leika or an NPC that I create as a GM. Someone will lead the "storm side" in the wars against the Red Moon. And I think that the "Great Argrath Campaign" (whenever it is published) will be flexible enough to allow all of the above alternatives.

If Argraht dies before 1626. Let Kallyr survice the Battle of Queens.

If Argrath f---s up after the Battle of Queens. Let Leika (or a PC) take command.

I can also see great roleplaying opportunities in a sartarite civil war. And a lot of other questions. Will for example the Praxians follow a non-Argrath sartarite? Can a PC take control of the White Bull Society? Can the PCs summon Jaldon and help Leika (or another leader) make him an ally?

Edited January 5, 2023 by Soccercalle
Forgot something

[radmonger]

I agree with the current chaosium line that the whole _multiple Argraths_ idea didn't actually work out that well in practice. Imagine trying to write a wwii scenario where Churchill personally tells you do do something vital for the war effort. But you don't know if that is Cigar Churchill, Steel Churchill or Wheelchair Churchill. Having a fixed name, but no known qualities, loses a lot of flavor, and doesn't actually gain you anything useful.

Much better to have background material that outlines the personalities, ideas and statistics of Churchill, Chamberlian, Halifax and Atlee, And then a scenario that says;

Quote

in 1943, the British PM is faced with a strategic dilemma. Key military forces are trapped in a lunar hell guarded by two giant demons. We need you to go in there and kill those demons.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guns_of_Navarone_(film)#/media/File:GunsofNavarone.jpg

 

[Soccercalle]

28 minutes ago, radmonger said:

I agree with the current chaosium line that the whole _multiple Argraths_ idea didn't actually work out that well in practice. Imagine trying to write a wwii scenario where Churchill personally tells you do do something vital for the war effort. But you don't know if that is Cigar Churchill, Steel Churchill or Wheelchair Churchill. Having a fixed name, but no known qualities, loses a lot of flavor, and doesn't actually gain you anything useful.

 

I prefer Pol Roger Churchill 😉

[Soccercalle]

I am toying with the idea of using the text in "King of Sartar" as a prophecy and run a "mini-campaign" in the far future. I can use my players characters and make a large time-jump. 

In some way both the PCs and Jar-Eel learns about the prophecy and decides that they must stop 1) the Monster Empire and 2) Argraths lunacies (Sheng Seleris, Wakboth etc). Jar-Eel would make an interesting ally.

 

[Jeff]

As the person who has put together the Dragon Pass Campaign, a few thoughts.

We know that a lot of the Hero Wars gets driven by a several key figures:

Red Emperor. He's a mortal holding the office of a god. A war leader, a magician, and the head of an empire. He's inescapable in the setting, and baked into the present and the past (or as King of Sartar puts it "Being").

Argrath. A mortal who is on the path to godhood. A magician, a war leader, and someone who is forging a new empire. He's also inescapable in the setting, but of growing relevance in the future (or as King of Sartar puts it, "Becoming").

Then we have three figures who are terrifying beings that are truly part mortal and part god. They smash things up and change the setting. We have:

Jar-eel the Razoress, a figure like Babalon, the Scarlet Woman, or Inanna, the living embodiment of both the positive and negative features of civilization and the Lunar Way. She's already present and doing things in the Lunar Empire right now and shows up in Dragon Pass in 1628.

Harrek the Berserk, a figure like a savage Heracles, Gilgamesh, Achilles, Conan, etc. He's the living embodiment of wanton savagery and barbarism, but also of fearless heroism. He's already present and doing things at the edge of Dragon Pass right now.

Androgeus, the Twins manifested in one body, but in Disorder rather than Harmony. A disruptive figure - strife bringer, avenger of the oppressed, drawn to conflict and perpetuator of it. They are not present yet, but coming. 

These characters form the Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin, and Mordred figures in the setting. Just like in Pendragon, players rarely want the responsibility of those roles.

[Yes there are also other characters like the Feathered Horse Queen, Gunda, Beat-Pot, Jaldon, etc., but they are like Percival, Tristan, Lady of the Lake, Galahad figures.]

As a writer, these characters are as baked into the setting as is the Red Moon, Orlanth, or the Lunar Empire. You can decide to dump any or all of them, after all YGWV, but they are present in everything Chaosium publishes, even if a book doesn't mention them. 

Your player-characters can have stories that weave around these characters, directly interact with them, ignore them, supplement them, or even replace them (if you want to have one of your player-characters become the next Red Emperor, go for it, although that's unlikely to be a path in published products). Present these characters as moral exemplars, villains, whatever - I personally view all of them as heroes, in the classical sense. They straddle the world of men and gods, which usually means they do great AND terrible things.  

 

Edited January 5, 2023 by Jeff

[Eff]

1 hour ago, radmonger said:

I agree with the current chaosium line that the whole _multiple Argraths_ idea didn't actually work out that well in practice. Imagine trying to write a wwii scenario where Churchill personally tells you do do something vital for the war effort. But you don't know if that is Cigar Churchill, Steel Churchill or Wheelchair Churchill. Having a fixed name, but no known qualities, loses a lot of flavor, and doesn't actually gain you anything useful.

Much better to have background material that outlines the personalities, ideas and statistics of Churchill, Chamberlian, Halifax and Atlee, And then a scenario that says;

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guns_of_Navarone_(film)#/media/File:GunsofNavarone.jpg

 

So I have a board game, if we're talking about WW2, which is called Empire of the Sun. Now, it purports to represent the Pacific in the Second World War, all theaters. But curiously, it has nothing in its guide to play about how to handle Guadalcanal. There's absolutely nothing to help me with ensuring that, playing as Japan, I can get 17th Army onto Guadalcanal, or playing as the Americans, I get 1st Marine Division onto the island before 2nd Marine Division. The Americal Division might never even land on the island at all!

Of course, this is a very silly complaint I'm making, because the game places the characters in operational command of the whole theater for either the Japanese or the Western Allies and the only guaranteed adherence to history is the 1st turn, where the Japanese player always has the means to execute Pearl Harbor and the sinking of Force Z. The 1st turn is also optional and omitted from tournament play. There are cards that reference historical events and can be used for relevant effects- for example, Hideki Tojo resigning as prime minister affects the victory conditions for both sides- but the players chose when to deploy them and how. It is quite entirely likely that the Japanese and Allies will slug it out in the Solomon Islands during the course of the game, but where the flashpoint is and how it will go will also likely differ quite a bit- I've played a game where, starting in the January 1943 scenario, I was knocking on the gates of Rabaul by April. 

"Multiple Argraths" put the player characters in the prospective position of, to continue this metaphor, Alanbrooke or Pound or Cunningham or Mountbatten or Wavell or Montgomery or Dowding or Leigh-Mallory or Portal or Eden or Churchill himself, with Argrath perhaps as George VI. Would it be hard to have a scenario involving a commando raid on a fictional Greek island if Churchill has been replaced by someone less concerned with the "soft underbelly of Europe"? Sure, but Jason Morningstar's Grey Ranks doesn't focus on Tadeusz Komorowski, commander-in-chief of the Polish Armia Krajowa, either, for a similar reason- the game's ambit is about something other than the decision to launch the uprising in Warsaw in 1944. 

The specifics of this method and its overall effects are of course debatable, but its aims were simply very different from putting the player characters in the role of a ragtag band of Allied commandos in the Dodecanese in 1943, or their equivalent for Sartar in Glorantha in the Hero Wars, and they should be evaluated in terms of those aims rather than how well they did something completely different. 

Lightning edit: And of course, if the PCs are on anything but an inflexible railroad, it helps to know the personality, goals, and beliefs of their superiors so that when the unexpected happens, the referee or GM can play out their superiors' reaction and things can continue from there. 

Edited January 5, 2023 by Eff