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Good One-Shot For Introduction to RQ?


CitizenK2

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Hi all:

I'm going to be running an introductory one-shot of Runequest Classic Edition at our local roleplaying club in early March. This will be a 3.5 hour session, and I want it to be done-in-one.

I've looked at Apple Lane, and the pawnshop scenario has left me a bit cold. The Rainbow Mounds scenario might have more potential. Snake Pipe Hollow looks cool, but is a bit big and quite deadly from what I've read.

Any suggestions for good published one-shots I should consider? If not I'll just build up a scenario of my own. :-)

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31 minutes ago, CitizenK2 said:

Honestly, I could see some of my players feeling like the baboons are in the right since the item they are trying to reclaim was stolen from them. That's a big part of my aversion to that story.

I've run Gringle's Pawn shop quite a few times. It's never ended well. Most of the time the players get distracted by the bandits and the baboons get their stuff back. The best being "hey Gringle we caught these bandits breaking in but we've no idea why the shop burnt down" - "What about the baboons" - "oh yeah". I think in all my games, the baboons get it back. Gringle then sends them to the Rainbow Mounds to do another job - getting the stolen loot off white eye. Rainbow mounds is a dungeon/cave crawl, but an an enjoyable and shortish one. Steer clear of SPH - it's too deadly.

The first scenario I ever played in was a made up one. We were caravan guards defending against hungry trolls/trollkin. With this approach you can vary the strength of the adversaries easily. The Issaries priest defended his goods and healed/supported the PCs. It also introduced the idea of talking before fighting as the priest tried to buy off the trolls with food.

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Search the Glorantha Resource Site: https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com. Search the Glorantha mailing list archives: https://glorantha.steff.in/digests/

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I ran the bar fight as a free form introduction to a game I ran. Great fun. There was a whole bunch of trophy Baboon heads on the wall behind the bar, left over from their failed raid on Gringles. At closing their bound spirits all shouted "Time gentlemen."

Hell Pits of Nightfang is a particular favourite of mine as an introduction to the game.

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1 hour ago, CitizenK2 said:

Honestly, I could see some of my players feeling like the baboons are in the right since the item they are trying to reclaim was stolen from them. That's a big part of my aversion to that story. I'm gonna sit down and read Rainbow Mounds tonight. :-)

Have them play the Baboons.

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 Play Gringle Pawnshop in reverse. Have the Baboons hire the players to get their stolen heirloom back . You can also change Gringle then to n Eytries Merchant if people want to continue playing.

  Also can run some stuff  out of Borderlands. Recently I had my player deal with an Anklyosaurus  that was calmly munching on the crops of the Weis Village. They had to think their way out of that one as Dinosaur is not aggressive but also almost immune to any attacks they could make

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12 hours ago, David Scott said:

Genius.

I've run it with the players as the outlaws too. Each way is great fun. But Baboons are the best.

I like the suggestion that the Baboons hire the pcs, that makes lots of sense. Plus they get to loot Gringles just like the other groups.

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If they're big former D&D players, as a demo I like very much to take some utterly pedestrian D&D adventure, B1 or the Village of Hommlet and convert it over.  It's low powered, so conversion is a triviality.

For such players, that adventure STUNNINGLY highlights how much more realistic, interesting, (and frankly, far more lethal) RQ mechanics are.

It's the most fun, of course, when they've actually played the adventures but don't recall the details so there's still some room for dm surprises.  The predictability isn't a problem, as it builds them a little extra survivability advantage, which I guarantee they'll need.

If you want them, let me know, I'm pretty sure I have them already converted with RQ3 stat blocks lying around somewhere.

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I still seem to be unable to quote directly anymore, so I guess I'll just have to make reference to the original quotes another way...

David Scott said:

"That's also good, but it means finding an obscure White Dwarf."

 

I never even considered that, thought it was part of the original pack...but then they tend to run together after 30 years.  I do, however, have several WD scenarios hiding in boxes in the garage...have to dig them out.

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You should look at some of the RQ6/Mythras stuff and convert it. It's very easy. I converted Caravan from Book of Quests. I think i had the caravan leave from Jansholm. Then to Smithstone then Aylesford (i can't remember, but it was quite easy). Anyway, RQ6 has a good amount of scenarios out and they're top notch.

Edited by 10baseT
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Gaumata's Vision runs about 3.5 hours.  It's very interesting, good introduction to the strangeness of Glorantha and isn't too tough for beginning characters.

But my personal favorite is to throw the group into Scorpion Hall.  I know it's a solo adventure, but it's also just right for a group of 3-5 players.  It tends to invariably have some hilarious moments.  It does require you to map out the Hall and convert it from solo to a regular adventure.  But that's not too hard.  just make  a map and note where everything is and you're good to go.  I've seen some really hilarious things happen when the adventure is suddenly multiplayer.  It is deadly, but you feel like you really accomplished something.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 21/02/2017 at 1:31 PM, CitizenK2 said:

I've started creating some PCs, which took a few attempts to get the Previous Experience section right, but I think I've got the hang of it now.

This should be useful:

http://2ndage.blogspot.com/2016/07/runequest-classic-edition-char-gen.html

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