The God Learners Episode 19: Jackals and Ancient Worldbuilding

[Lordabdul]

Episode 19 of the God Learners welcomes Evan & JM from "Exploring Glorantha"! We discuss JM's bronze age fantasy game "Jackals", its worldbuilding, campaign framework, system, and what we can learn and apply to Glorantha gaming!

 

[Beoferret]

Fun to listen to, as usual. I have a copy of Jackals, but haven't read completely through it yet. The world that JM created is pretty interesting. Regarding mechanics complaints; Ludo, have you actually tried any of the 7th ed CoC mechanics (whether for combat or otherwise) in your RQ games? If so, how did they work out? Do you think JM's clash mechanic would work in RQ, without fundamentally altering gameplay? Or what about a GURPS-style approach to combat mechanics? What I mean is, to officially provide a simple baseline set of mechanics that can then be added to in as great a detail as one desires. So, for example, starting out with attacks vs active defenses, and keeping armor as damage resistance, but not worrying about hit locations or damage to weapons/shields. Not sure that'd totally work with RQ (one hit from a typical dark troll would often be instant kill,) but I hope my main point is still coherent. My personal concern with simplified mechanics is that they end up reproducing a level of abstraction (often boring abstraction at that) typical of D&D - which many of us are trying to get away from in the first place. What did you think of the simplified rules in the RQ Starter Set?

As for the discussion of setting a campaign during the early Third Age resettling of Dragon Pass, maybe someone should put something together for the Jonstown Compendium, complete with revised character histories, etc.