Post-mortem for The Broken Tower Scenario (Free RPG Day)

[MOB]

How'd it go?

[Dimbyd]

It went well. Two old hands at my table- but hadn't played RQ in a long, long time or visited Glorantha for that time either. Three newbies to both BRP based games and Glorantha- 2 student aged folks with only D&D and Star Wars experience and the other player is in my Feng Shui game and likes more narrative games generally.

So all the players enjoyed themselves. Glorantha sold itself very well- magic rich bronze age went down well as an alternative to medieval "wild west" default. Lethality of combat was also appreciated- especially after the encounter with the rock lizards was not quite a piece of cake. There was much laughter with the one critical hit of the game i, when Idrima was crushing one player- the attacking PC rolled chest for the hit location- where Idrima was crushing the PC, so they killed in spectacular fashion one of the group. Much laughter. 

 

There were a few fumbles, which added to the feeling of lethality.  There was some good use of Rune Magic to aid the party.

 

Generally, the 2 old hands are both artists so they really liked the quality of the art.

 

I brought along the 13th Age Kickstarter maps which I had laminated at A3 size- that really helped sell the setting, and also give a feel of how far some of the PCs had travelled in their backstory. I also used the playtest rules at times. 

The adventure was easy to run, but not generic. Something to consider for the future- some PDF "show-mes" of the art/ untagged map to help GMs show to the players without possibly spoiling plot points. 

 

Andrew

 

 

[David Scott]

Very good. I was a player and the only real issue was that there is no description of Detect Magic in the QS rules. When a player fumbled, rather than use the RQ2 rules, we used the RQG table, which everyone enjoyed.

weapons and shields degrading was much more fun, although it was suggested that amour do the same, until I pointed out that it was an RPG not a book keeping exercise.

our game lasted 5.5 hours, one player nearly died, I was wounded as was my bison, no fatalities, but close. Those Earth monsters at the tower were tough.

sadly, only one young person in the game. 

[nclarke]

RQ-QS in Bournemouth went well. A couple of guys who had played earlier versions and two newbies but experienced gamers. Great fun although they didn't follow the tracks and I had to do a lot of on-the-fly adjustments to make things work. They never got near the Tower but did fight the rock lizards and the cattle raiders. They had some great moments as did I - the bison killing three of four raiders being one and a raider/bandit lopping the head of the bison another. Game ran about 3 and a half hours and I made sure of MGF by allowing their Runes to augment various rolls as much as possible so they got a good feel for how the new version is going to play.

Edited June 18, 2017 by nclarke

[GamingGlen]

Two sessions, 3 players and 4 (5) players, some have played RQ or BRP or variants.

No sense of scale on the adventure map.  Two days to cross what I gather is flat pasture ground?

Places' descriptions: I don't know if the players will read those, but the only ones that really mattered were the ones that were along the path of the scenario.

I skipped the (whiny) ghost part.  Way too dull and doesn't add anything, waste of game time.

Contradiction: Carthalo knows little about the Stone Woman from the bullet points on page 29 or but page 30 gray area describes what he does know (IMO, which is a lot more than page 29 bullet indicates).

Rock lizards were easy, even with their attacks bumped up to 30%.  70-100% most characters' melee with better armor compared to 25 (or 30) with 3 AP?  Piece of cake.  First group had the cow follow the bison, second group had 5th player leave at this time so his character took the cow home.

Neither group thought to use any magic detection on an intact stone-woman menhir.  Both groups have people that I play with that use Detect Magic from D20 systems.

No one cast a Rune spell until the final scene.  Air elemental kept the sprul-pa away during the fight in session 1; earth elemental (size 2) buried Danakos to his neck in session 2.  That final encounter seems a bit anti-climatic.

Could have used some guidance on what Idrima most likely does in combat with all the options she had.

Runes and Passions were pretty much ignored, except Passions for some token sense of character.  

Probably should include some mention of skill experience reward without going into detail, with a message like "will be covered in the upcoming rules, stay tuned!" instead of just reputation increase.  
 

[tedopon]

Overall, it was really fun. I understand that one of the goals was to give a pretty well rounded demo to set expectations for how mechanics worked, but I thought that the scenario and characters were a little too advanced for a "Quickstart".

The character sheets were way too busy. I had them highlight different headers on the sheet to make it a little easier to parse the wall of text, but it was still too much. I had two extra characters who just used RQ2 sheets, and they had far less trouble navigating their abilities than the packaged characters. If we could get actual character sheets before GenCon, I think that would help a ton.

The characters were too advanced for a pick up game. I had seven players. Three play in my home game, which right now is RQ6, but also has been OQ and RQ3 at other times. One other player has been at the home game a half dozen times as well. Over half of them are very familiar with the RQ family. Everyone, including me, had moments of scanning sheets or rules that went a little too long. It would have been nice to have a more streamlined set of abilities for each character. In a campaign, each character will organically gain these abilities, passions and interpersonal connections incrementally. Having a bunch of backstory and a large suite of powers thrust on you at square one is a lot to process.

This product seemed written for the existing fanbase. This is a fanbase that has been going strong for three or four decades and is very insular. Glorantha sourcebooks are like academic scholarship journals...and while I love it, it's not for everyone. The quickstart seemed more of this approach. Even though it is "scaled back" compared to the Full Monty like the Guide, Reaching Moons, Classics etc., it's still a lot of info to parse, even for casual veterans of the system/setting. I could feel some of the fun being missed as I had to explain something related to Glorantha as baked into their character in a pickup game.

Those gripes aside, everyone had a good time, and they were engaged and excited. They were really aggressive, which probably shouldn't have surprised me in a con game type setting, but they basically blew through the Carfalo encounter and ignored him. They destroyed the Rock Lizards. Honestly, the only encounter that gave them any trouble was the Earth goddess, and it didn't even get that hairy due to the Ernalda priestess being a diplomat due to her vested interest in Earth.

I want to be clear that I want this to succeed, and I'm not trying to be a Doomsayer. I just would like to see something with a little less steep barrier of entry to get fresh minds into this game/setting. I hope to play in someone else's session prior to mine at GenCon to compare notes, and I'll definitely run it at least once more before then to figure out how to make it a better experience for new people.

[Psullie]

had a blast! Played one session, with a mix of players none had much RPG's experience. 

I thought the character backgrounds were great, I used to their Power Runes to describe their personality which really helped. 

From the start we had steady use of Spirt Magic to assist, Farsee for example to examine the corpse from a distance then scan the area for enemies. Only issue here was that apart form Vostor, they all had pretty poor Scan (this is used a lot in the game especially in the first scene)

As a GM I enjoyed playing the Carthalo, really went to town on the mad Man-Friday gig! I felt Lannike's appears was great - rising storm, lightening with Vasana dancing an Orlanthi war circle and Yanioth singing earth songs - very atmospheric. (note Orlanthi prefer funeral pyres, as she was to be buried I suggested that Lannike was an initiate of Ernalda). A nice touch with my group was Sorala turning tor Harmast and telling him to back off when the Greydog ghost appeared before he had a chance to say anything!

Back at Carthalo's was a chance to offer essential back story but because to he madness the players were sufficiently sceptical. Vostor was very wary of the hermits cooking, without a cooking skill (or any remotely suitable) the player asked if First Aid would be applicable to see if the food was safe to drink! We all agreed that it was a long shot but when he rolled a 01 I immediately felt that obviously his time in Lunar Army camps had given him a keen culinary sense.

The next morning they were off. I tweaked the Rock Lizard encounter to place the poor bull at the centre of a large depression at the end of his chase. Initially only 3 lizards were visible (as knowing their type was irrelevant and no-one asked I didn't bother with the roll). The heavy hitters closed to engage in melee (I felt that charging the lizards with a bison would as likely stampede already exhausted bull) while the others provided missile support which was when 2 more 'rocks' became lizards much to their surprise. As time was limited I cut the encounter to just 5 and I felt that the purpose of this encounter was to simply demonstrate combat.

They saved the bull thanks to Yanioth's aid on the bull. Again Vostor's scan ability pays off and the start to notice the menhirs. Sorala starts to investigate and translates the carvings. The players getting more intrigued. Which presently brought them to the ruins. This is where the game really geared up.

Harmast, always looking to find the diplomatic solution (and not looking forward to fighting four Grey Dogs with the advantage of terrain, tried to open parley. With no response forthcoming Vasana stood up on her bison and began tracing a wide circle began chanting an Orlanthi flight poem. The wind picked up and with a sharp intake of breath was aloft. With the advantage of height she quickly located the herd and then aimed for the open topped tower. 

The others ran up the approach road to quickly give support. Once inside the tower Vasana witnessed the deadly scene and spied Danakos trying to hide. She swooped down slashing her sword, and managed to deliver a nasty leg wound to the Grey Dog. His reply however was much worse forcing the Oranthi to back off just with a crippled leg, fortunately the wind was still with her and she was able to stay back. 

Harmast and Vostor were quick then to gain access and after a brutal and exchange Harmast was nursing a badly wounded sword arm but the Grey Dod was dead. (got to love RuneQuest for it's short sharp sword fights). But thats when She awoke.

At this stage Sorala's investigations paid off as she received divine inspiration about the nature of the Stone Woman. Yanioth was at hand to speak the earth tounge and mange to strike the deal for half the heard. As they left the watchful Sprul-Pa made it clear they made the right choice. They never met Varanik who probably still ramble about the old ruins!

Overall.

A lotto get through in the 4 hours I had available so pacing was important. The storm and build-up of clues worked create a sense of fear of the Goddess. The scenario does however have a slight Call of Cthulhu feeling to it but it worked. 

The augments, Passions, and Runes all worked really well with my group and made logical sense.

I do feel that if you had no RuneQuest knowledge you'd find a lot of missing pieces, range of a bow for example, but as a taster it asks a to of interesting questions

More to come...

 

 

 

[smascrns]

Played one session with five participants:

     My three children (two girls, 18 and 13; a boy, 15)

     A friend (male, adult) and his boy (11).

Most of the players had no problem with English, so playing accross languages went fine. The children have all experienced rpgs, but not intensely. For them it was the first contact with RQ. The adult is an hardcore rules-heavy player. He wanted to taste RQ, since he is fond of several d100 systems.

I'm getting old and my ability to process data is going down. So, even if I'm at ease with RQ, keeping the new rule details and the scenario details in mind would be wishul thinking... Meaning I hardly played by the book!

 

The scenario is fine, it works very well. I had to push players to use skills, augments, etc. (except for the adult that was there to test the system, so he picked things fast). But in the end they had a good game, setting-wise and system-wise.

The route to the ruins was more or less according to the script.They didn't bite the 'fight the rock lizards' lead, though... Honestly, it's a bit of fighting that I was happy to avoid.

When they got into the ruins they started to spread, almost each one going in a different direction. As a GM this is something I like. It allows me (and the players) to play as an articulated group in a tv serial where you have different people doing different things and converging to a single place for the climax.

At the start fo the climax I had Vasana in the tower fighting Darkhalos alone, and facing the Stone Woman when she awoke. In the mean time the other adventurers got there (they shouldn't have, if I followed strict movement and timing rules, but I fudged for greater dramatic effect). Case is, I misplaced the Stone Woman's stats and data, so I just played like in CoC one plays one of the Old Ones: four or five masteries above the adventurers that just can't defeat her. So, Vasana tried to fight her while the Stone Woman was just starting to flex her 'muscles', and realised fighting was helpless.

The end of it was the Ernaldan negotiating with the Stone Woman how many cows the party would give her, by feading her 5 at a time. Each time 5 were sacrificed, the negoatiation ability of the Ernaldan would go up +5% and the Stone Woman's ability would go down -5%. After 15 cows the Stone Woman was satiated and allowed the adventurers to move out with some 40 heads. Not bad.

The bottom line is that it was a very enjoyable game session, with a lot of tension and suspense, but almost without combat. Very good.

 

Good points:

I like the scenario a lot.

I like the augments, but I have some reservations. For a start, they mean a duplication of rolls, an added layer I would live without. Next, they don't make sense if the ability to use for the augment is bellow 50%. In other words, I'm not sold on their mechanical side.

I'm not sold on the PCs. Their back stories are too similar (Grand parent / parent died in battle X fighting Y...). Some of their stats are too similar (all have DB +1d4, for instance). They all have good combat skills (even the Lankhor Mhy and the Ernaldan, and the best attack belong to the Issarites, not one of the warriors). IMO there's something wrong here, and it seems to be something ingrained in the character creation rules, not the way they were used by the people crafting those characters.

The skill stat blocks of the PCs are heavily imbalanced. All of them have good to excellent combat skills, and much lower skills in other fields. Given the fact that most of the action involved non-combat abilities, this became very evident.

High percentages are the norm, with values easily going above 100%. I know this was a design choice, but I'm not sold on it.

 

Still, it was a good afternoon playing RQ and Glorantha, an afternoon that lasted from around 3PM to 6:30PM. I plan to replay the RQQS with one or two more groups of players. I'll report when that happens. Just hope to be better prepared next time.

 

The funny story: At the end the 11 years old boy just couldn't understand all the fuss about the cows. Why all the negotiation, why not just leaving all of them to the Stone Woman. I and the father tried to explain to him that cows are one of the important resources and riches of the clan, loosing 60 cows was a major loss. But he just could not wrap his head around that idea...

Edited June 18, 2017 by smascrns

[10baseT]

It was nerve wracking... Steve Perrin showed up to play. That's like me teaching a punching class at the boy's club and Mike Tyson shows up . I say this in jest. Steve was such a cool and down to earth fun guy and the conversation alone was an enriching experience. And any rules questions were cleared up pretty quick.

There wasn't a starting time so I used Clayday, Disorder Week, Storm Season since it was rainy and cloudy. A question came up on if Demoralize would work on the Sprul-Pa and after a discussion, i ruled it would not since the Sprul-Pa had no Intelligence. When the rock lizards were encountered, Vasana charged them with her bison and used her lance. I she hit and i ruled the rock lizard was knocked back while it took Vasana 2 turns to turn around and come back (i had her moved thru the attack since a charging bison doesnt just stop)... the rock lizard was toast, but if it were alive, i would not have allowed it to attack since it was hit first by the lance and knocked back.

The party bargained with Idrina and was able to come home with 2/3 of the herd. They lost a further 9 cows on the way home when they fumbled their herd roll. Varanik wasn't encountered since the party chose to wait until night to investigate the tower and they didnt really look into the ruins except to find the cow pens.

The PCs had great detail that added flavor. The adventure evoked Sartarite life that i seemed to have been missing... well, it's back and i want more. Everyone loved the passions and runic abilities and the mechanics worked well

Here's a pic or Steve and my friend John at Brookhurst Hobbies in Garden Grove CA... then another pic of some RQ treats.

Thanks, Gil.

 

[styopa]

Started around 4pm, picking characters, introductions, rules explanations and general questions took about an hour, finished around 8, so with 5 players the scenario took about 3 hours to run.

5 players: 1 old RQ hand, hadn't played since RQ3, 2 very experienced gamers but only generally familiar with RQ, 2 young people (16? 17?) who'd never heard of RQ ever.  The first three were friends of mine, and very much let the two young players lead the party, which was really a great dynamic.  They understood the meta-concept of the demo scenario and recognized it was intended to be a little railroad-y, so for example when the young folks wanted to split up, with the riders racing ahead to cut off the herd, the older gamers sort of 'encouraged' the party to stay together.

My group really internalized the 'pursuit' element of the scenario, recognizing that with party of hardy adventurers (some on foot), they would be easily able to catch up to a party of 6 herding 60 cattle with only a half day lead.  No dawdling across the countryside for 3 days for these guys!  12km to the campsite at a strong pace is barely 2 hours across open country, so they reached the first camp early in the afternoon - I had to seriously compress the order of events to cope with the scale on the map.

At the campsite, they spotted Carthalo skulking about right away.  His evident fears of the stomping around 'stone woman' only heightened their motivation to not screw around and wait, dark or not, storm or not (I moved the threatening storm up too).  Nevertheless, they recognized the woman had been mistreated, and a detect spirit identified that she was still 'hanging around'.  They feared she was going to become a ghost, so they actually asked HIM to help put her to rest before he could suggest it.  They left him to physically deal with her body properly once the ritual hour had completed and she'd faded back away.

They dashed north after the cattle herd but diverted when they heard the rock lizards mauling the steer in a nearby copse where its horns had become entangled.  This combat went great.  Sorala, Yanioth, and Harmast all hung back with sling, javelin, and bow while Vasana and Vostor charged ahead.  Vostor tanked the first two, while Vasana lanced the closest to her, annihilating it.  Missileers killed the second about to attack Vasana before it could close.  Vasana lanced a third, annihilating it, while Vostor killed a fourth.  Missile fire killed the other 2 before they could close, and Vostor and Harmast (now out of javelins) killed the last.  Crazy number of specials rolled by the party in this combat, probably 1/2 of their attacks and parries were specials.

The young woman playing Vasana was absolutely tickled with being able to charge and be so effective.  The young man playing Vostor made many comments about how much he really liked the initiative system, how much sense it made.

Note: rock lizards have no dodge indicated?  I gave them 20% just to make it slightly interesting.  The fact that the encounter took place at about 20m distance (the lowest I could realistically rationalize in broken scrub) meant with their 'ponderous' 4m move (2m in combat) even seven rock lizards weren't much challenge to a party with ample missile weapons.

Following the track north, Harmast - thinking about Carthalo's fear of the stone woman - made clear and overt placation to the menhirs as they found them, even the broken ones.  Considering she was watching them occasionally through at least some of them, this contributed later to what happened in the ruins.

Party left the bison, and the zebras tethered when they finally were within sight of the wall of the tower complex (about 50y out).  Given their pace and the distances on the map, it was really only 5-6 hours after they'd started, so still quite a way from getting dark.  They spotted the person that spotted them approach, but couldn't identify more.  They 'snuck' up to the wall at the broken bit about 7 o'clock, helping each other over the wall.

Once they were about halfway between the wall and tower, they heard the cattle & decided that it was time to dump MP and rune points for the likely conflict only a few minutes ahead.  Find Enemy immediately pinpointed the location of Varanik (Danakos didn't know they were there, so not deliberately meaning them harm; further, with the constant respectful treatment of the menhirs, I deemed the Sprul-pa weren't actually hostile either), while Sorala used Detect Life and moved laterally to pinpoint where he was hiding.  Here was their first sense that the Spul-Pa were lurking, as her Detect Life would occasionally re-orient on a Sprul-Pa circling close to her underground, like sharks.  The entire party was quite creeped out. 

When she'd maneuvered to where she could see him, a Mind Read gave Sorala a solid picture of his crazed mindset, and what he was crazy about (increased by ANOTHER person in his mind, from his point of view).  From his description from Lannike, she figured it was Varanik, so boldly stepped toward him and called him out.  A timely CRITICAL orate, calling him by name, claiming she was the avatar of the Stone Woman (I should really have made her roll against her Truth Rune on that, but I forgot), repeating the very words echoing in his head I ruled pretty much unhinged him and he dropped prostrate, weeping, begging her to spare him.  She played the part completely, and ended up disarming him and tying him up with promises that this is what the Stone Woman wanted.

While this was happening, Harmast blew his 3 rune points on fly, getting the full layout of the place.  Vasana cast mobility on everyone, so Harmast's move of 24 let him scout the whole ruins easily.  He didn't spot Danakos hiding in the tower.  The only evident threat (Varanik) dealt with, the party closed on the tower.

Entering the tower, the party easily spotted Danakos hiding between the altar and the statue (he fumbled his HIDE, nice timing).  Nevertheless, Vostor approached too closely when trying to call him out, and was within range of buffed (bladesharp, protection, cast as the party approached the door without stealth) Danakos' jumping to the attack shouting 'blood sacrifices for Idrima!' .  Vostor parried his attack and specialed Danakos to the chest, killing him in one rather anticlimactic blow. :|

At Danakos' attack she began to stir.  A little bit freaked, Vasana and Vostor attacked her for minor damage, while Harmast flew down, cut his own hand and dripped blood on her altar telling her they didn't mean to disturb her, only punish thieves and only show her respect and honor (which was convincing, given his previous conduct).  A bit of a mixed message, so to sort of 'clear' the room she stomped and raised 2 Sprul-Pa on either side of the door, knocking everyone (but Harmast, obviously) to the ground.  

Vasana finally listened to the others in the party, and stopped attacking while Vostor leapt to his feet to continue, doing some decent damage.  So she grabbed Vostor and pulled him to her chest, about to crush him to death, while asking the others "What blood sacrifice have you brought me? Is this one a sacrifice?"  They all pleaded with her to let him go, and asked what would be a fair sacrifice, she replied "The animals outside".  They countered her by offering 35 cattle (assuming 100p for each cow, and totalling the party's own ransoms).  Not knowing that she would have automatically accepted this, Harmast kicked in the Bargain, augmented by his Harmony rune and Sorala's Truth rune (I ruled that in this case, it would be applicable to let them both augment) and she accepted.  They traded Varanik to her to release Vostor, and basically the scenario was done.

They forgot about Lannike's stone, until they got back to the village; then they volunteered to go back (with a cow paid for from their own rewards as sacrifice just in case she needed one to talk) and executed it by Danakos' bloodless corpse in the altar room, finishing the story.

All in all it went pretty well.  Players all had fun, I had fun running it.

All the players, including the old hands said that it ran smoother & faster than they remembered.  When they got the rules in their loot bags, some asked where the cardstock standups I'd used in the game were (oops, sorry, didn't mean to raise expectations).  I've emailed them to them.  If you're going to do that at all, I'd add the ones I forgot: Varanik, a bison, 2 zebras.

Players liked that the 'fight at the end' expected ...wasn't.  The "mob, mob, mob, lieutenant, BBEG" kill-them-all-to-win-the-prize trope is so ingrained from video games and D&D retail, it was very refreshing and interesting to negotiate to the end of the scenario (and that it was pretty clear that combat was not just not required, but the WRONG choice).

Other notes:

The 'character basically incapacitated when limb takes 2x' - so basically any place on the body that takes 2x hp means the toon is out of combat until healed - is a nasty rule, particularly for animals and things that don't have healing.  The (functional) lethality increase of that single rule I'm not quite sure is justified?  I ruled it did NOT apply to rock lizard tails.

The ban on shooting while moving doesn't make sense for hand axes and javelins.  

Personally, I'd say that runes and passions need some scarcity; they can currently be used too frequently.  I'd take away the penalty for simple failure, and make them "you can use each rune only once between worships" just to make them feel a little more like a valuable trump card to play, and not so much a regular crutch for everything they do.  Same with passions, per "adventure" basically.   I'd also suggest that a limit of one runic/passion augment be in place at a time; ie. one couldn't have a runic augment on their dodge and a passion augment on their attack at the same time. 

Spell casting chance augments seem a little unbalanced.  Meditation (for example) gives +10% for 2 rounds for a success.  Dancing for 2 rounds on a simple success is TWICE as effective (+20%), and has a chance to be much better?  Is that what's intended? 

As mentioned above, trying augments with a skill below 50% are not worth rolling, I'd say that should be explicitly mentioned in the rules.  It makes a sort of sense; you have to be meaningfully good/motivated/connected to a rune for it to really matter.

Edited June 19, 2017 by styopa

[Pentallion]

Had two newbies and three old hands.  Started at noon and were done by 3ish.  The Ernaldan was intrigued by the Stone Woman and when they found a bunch of busted Menhirs, took an hour to put one back together in the hopes that later on that might score brownie points if need be.   And that was one of the newbie players.  They didn't even search for treasure, but went straight to cattle rescue, splitting up and sending the herders for the cattle while the others went after the Greydog.  When the Stone woman woke up, the sage cast Truespeak and the Issaries used his bargain and they struck a deal, 20 cattle a year in return for her aid when they call on her.  As for combat, the PCs were a bit over the top for the things they went up against.  So combat was quick and easy for them, no real challenge.

 

Everyone enjoyed themselves and one of the newbies seemed very enthusiastic and wanted to tell her husband she'd found a new game.

Edited June 20, 2017 by Pentallion

[Jason D]

Glad to hear it went well! 

4 hours ago, Pentallion said:

When the Stone woman woke up, the sage cast Truespeak and the Issaries used his bargain and they struck a deal, 20 cattle a year in return for her aid when they call on her. 

On a side note, I ended up running this adventure around 7 times in the two weeks leading up to FRPGD, and every time I had Idrima make a different offer to the adventurers, ranging from half to 1 in 10 of the cattle. It's interesting how often they came away with completely different deals, all the while thinking that it was a good result.

 

[styopa]

13 hours ago, Jason Durall said:

Glad to hear it went well! 

On a side note, I ended up running this adventure around 7 times in the two weeks leading up to FRPGD, and every time I had Idrima make a different offer to the adventurers, ranging from half to 1 in 10 of the cattle. It's interesting how often they came away with completely different deals, all the while thinking that it was a good result.

 

It's really a good scenario.  Feels "Gloranthan" while not bogging the players down in too much expository fluff.  It's a railroad (which is fine for a demo game), but doesn't feel too much like one.  There's a little bit of combat, and a fair amount of opportunity for the players to use their magic.  Nice job.

[MOB]

Here's what we're going to do going forward:

Cult of Chaos Forum (password protected) - Discussion, questions, post mortems about "The Broken Tower" scenario in the RuneQuest Quickstart. 

RuneQuest Forum - Discussion about the RQG rules themselves, and the rules as presented in the RuneQuest Quickstart. No discussion or spoilers about "The Broken Tower" please.

[styopa]

1 hour ago, MOB said:

Here's what we're going to do going forward:

Cult of Chaos Forum (password protected) - Discussion, questions, post mortems about "The Broken Tower" scenario in the RuneQuest Quickstart. 

RuneQuest Forum - Discussion about the RQG rules themselves, and the rules as presented in the RuneQuest Quickstart. No discussion or spoilers about "The Broken Tower" please.

Clearly, someone is padding his post count today.

[Matt Ryan]

Nice to hear both positive and negative feedback.

I agree with those who said the characters and their sheets were too much for an introductory adventure. We also noted that all the characters had a lot of Magic points to spent on very few Spirit Magic spells, and very few Rune points to spend on many, many Rune spells. We spent too much time looking up Rune spells and then not casting them.

I also have to say that we missed many of the game-system innovations incorporated into the latest edition of Call of Cthulhu, and were hoping that this edition of Rune Quest would use some of those innovations.

I also really want this project to succeed. 

[Gryphaea]

Session run online using Roll20 as part of their Roll20Con. 4 players, 2 Gloranthan Vets and 2 with no experience of the setting but some knowledge of d100 play. I already knew one player from other games but the other three were completely new.

I was already aware of the potential for massive Gloranthan Lore Dumps disrupting play and being a barrier to new players so managed to avoid them in this session. I did find it possible to play with only the occasional 2 sentence explanation of concepts when required, and I think agreeing at the start with the vets that is was a potential issue to be avoided was a help.

I think the artwork and presentation was of an excellent standard and helped convey the settings atmosphere. I feel that with on line play you are reliant on visuals more than with face to face play, and I could adapt the materials provided into player handouts. A humble request would be that the artwork could perhaps be made available as separate files and the maps provided without the GM information on them.

I thought the Rune Affinities were the major thing to take away from the game. I tried to encourage the players to use them from the start, and to describe in a narrative sense how accessing their Rune’s power and Rune affinity assisted them in a skill check. All the players used them in an imaginative way by the end of the session. For example, the Earth priestess was able to call upon the maternal and soothing power of the earth to help calm down the maddened and freighted Greydog in the ruins of the Goddess’ compound. Also, the Issaries cultist was able to use the Harmony rune to give a boost to a group effort to topple the temple alter in the sanctuary.

Rock Lizards were an easy combat, but this was possibly because they were more interested in the cow and very nearly killed it before being driven off.

The session lasted for 5 hours, which is a long time online, and I had to rush it at the end to get it to finish. I prefer 3 hour sessions for an online game and think I would want to run the Broken Tower as 3 three hour sessions and go at a more leisurely pace.

As I am UK based I ran the session 19:00- 24:00 BST (GMT+1), there was plenty of interest from US time zones and I would think that if someone else was to offer sessions in a later time slot on Roll20 they would easily be able to attract players.

Edited June 25, 2017 by Gryphaea
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