Traversing the Lunar Heartland

[Jeff]

Just pondering through EvilRoddy's original post. The party wants to travel across Vanch and Sylila, avoiding population centers, and skirting along until they reach Talastar. That's certainly doable - and if the gamemaster wants to simply narrate the journey, knock off some silver (for the ferry across the Oslir at the very least), I'd certainly view that as perfectly reasonable.

If on the other hand, the gamemaster wants to introduce some tension and excitement to the travels, here's some off-the-top-of-my-mind suggestions:

• Local villagers are convinced the skulking barbarians are the same bandits or raiders who have been troubling the area and either send out the militia or recruit the Seven Samurai to hunt down the "bandits";
• The party finds themselves drawn into an "anti-Orlanthi" ritual of the local temple - maybe Hwarin Dalthippa, maybe Yelm, maybe Yelmalio, etc.
• The party finds themselves drawn into a "enlighten the blinded" ritual of a Red Goddess priestess. The priestess is friendly, helpful, and determined to Illuminate the barbarians.
• A band of Pentan scouts offer to ally with the party. They too want to find a route that a small army could travel through South Peloria without notice....
• A big unfriendly spirit - Lunar or Fire - is wandering across the landscape and drawn towards the party.
• A Lunar aristocrat is hunting with companions and decides to hunt "the most dangerous game".
• While trying to cross the Oslir, some Water spirits or intelligent fish wish the party to help them with a ritual to undermine the dykes that keep the Oslir River in its banks.
• Vanchite Orlanthi contact the party and beg the Rune Lord to help them summon a more powerful manifestation of Orlanth into their temple in the hills. Of course this might require overcoming the manifestation of Hwarin Dalthippa or Yara Aranis or whoever is "suppressing" Orlanth in that area.

 

 

[Mark Mohrfield]

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

 

• Local villagers are convinced the skulking barbarians are the same bandits or raiders who have been troubling the area and either send out the militia or recruit the Seven Samurai to hunt down the "bandits";

Or the PCs could be recruited as the Seven Samurai.

[Tim Ellis]

On 7/20/2017 at 8:50 AM, Darius West said:

in HQ by comparison you have to rely on GM fiat to say, "you can't keep casting the spell because I say so".

Not exactly....

In RQ  You ask "What are you doing?" - "Casting 'Detect Rebel Scum'"

In HQ You ask "What are you hoping to achieve?" - "Locating the Rebels" - "How are you doing that?" - "with my 'Detect Rebel Scum' Feat"

If 'Detect Rebel Scum' doesn't find the Rebels, you can't keep trying until the GM says "No," because it failed to solve the problem the first time, so you need to find another method to achieve your aim, or set a different aim (or wait for circumstances to change sufficiently that you can justify trying the original method again - say if the Rebels did something particularly noticable) 

The approaches are different, but the underlying Gloranthan reality is that while the Lunars might be able to magically detect a couple of powerful Orlanthi trying to sneak through the hinterlands of the Empire, they certainly cant be certain of identifying the whereabouts of every Orlanthi who happens to be travelling through...

 

[Steve]

On 20/07/2017 at 10:51 AM, David Scott said:

 I'd suggest Robin Laws' other books - Hamlet's Hit Points, Hillfolk and of course Sharper Adventures in HeroQuest Glorantha.

Ooh, thanks for the recommendations, @David Scott. I have the latter but not the first two. Just ordered Hamlet's Hit Points.

[Steve]

On 20/07/2017 at 8:50 AM, Darius West said:

HQ lacks granularity on this point.  Whereas in RQ there is a natural limit built into the game mechanics by limiting magic points, in HQ by comparison you have to rely on GM fiat to say, "you can't keep casting the spell because I say so".  Because GM fiat is really what you mean when you say "it all depends on the story".  I think that is too authoritarian a style of play for my liking.

I think we're all aware that you don't like HQ. But it seems that you are missing the entire point of the system, since there's nothing authoritarian about it. Nowhere in the rules does it tell you to do anything like that as the GM - you've totally misunderstood, I'm afraid.

[soltakss]

It shouldn't matter which system you are using for the rules. 

If you travel through the Lunar Empire, why should the rules matter?

RQ spells and HeroQuest Abilities work in essentially the same, way, at least I have always thought so. Sure, HQ allows things to be used more often, but Detect Enemy is Detect Enemy, a clan wyter is a clan wyter and so on.

[Evilroddy]

On July 20, 2017 at 2:50 PM, Jeff said:

Just pondering through EvilRoddy's original post. The party wants to travel across Vanch and Sylila, avoiding population centers, and skirting along until they reach Talastar. That's certainly doable - and if the gamemaster wants to simply narrate the journey, knock off some silver (for the ferry across the Oslir at the very least), I'd certainly view that as perfectly reasonable.

If on the other hand, the gamemaster wants to introduce some tension and excitement to the travels, here's some off-the-top-of-my-mind suggestions:

• Local villagers are convinced the skulking barbarians are the same bandits or raiders who have been troubling the area and either send out the militia or recruit the Seven Samurai to hunt down the "bandits";
• The party finds themselves drawn into an "anti-Orlanthi" ritual of the local temple - maybe Hwarin Dalthippa, maybe Yelm, maybe Yelmalio, etc.
• The party finds themselves drawn into a "enlighten the blinded" ritual of a Red Goddess priestess. The priestess is friendly, helpful, and determined to Illuminate the barbarians.
• A band of Pentan scouts offer to ally with the party. They too want to find a route that a small army could travel through South Peloria without notice....
• A big unfriendly spirit - Lunar or Fire - is wandering across the landscape and drawn towards the party.
• A Lunar aristocrat is hunting with companions and decides to hunt "the most dangerous game".
• While trying to cross the Oslir, some Water spirits or intelligent fish wish the party to help them with a ritual to undermine the dykes that keep the Oslir River in its banks.
• Vanchite Orlanthi contact the party and beg the Rune Lord to help them summon a more powerful manifestation of Orlanth into their temple in the hills. Of course this might require overcoming the manifestation of Hwarin Dalthippa or Yara Aranis or whoever is "suppressing" Orlanth in that area.

 

 

Thank you Jeff. Some great ideas, two of which are variants of things I am planning to do. You almost read my mind on the hunting party encounter. My plan is that a small group of off-duty Lunar cavalry officers plus a gaggle of beaters and some dog handlers are after a Vanchite smilodon when they spot and/or are spotted by the party near the cliffs at the southern tip of the Hungry Plateau. What happens next is anybody's guess. The only thing that is certain is that the cavalry officers are bored and spoiling for some adventure.

The second similar idea is that the party meet or are ambushed by some Vanchite brigands/rebels. When the brigands realise that the party are mostly Lightbringers they suspend hostilities, parlay and then bring the party before a powerful Kolating shaman -Umaskamar Thunder-drummer. The shaman demands that the party help the brigands to attack a fortified farming compound which has been recently built too close to the brigands' territory. If the players agree and succeed in the task they will get a scout to guide them to the Syilian frontier. If they fail in the attack and survive they will be allowed to proceed but without help and with the Lunars alerted to their presence in the region. If they refuse they will be harassed by the shaman's sendings and possible brigand attacks plus the locals will inform upon the party to the Lunar authorities.

I have already used a variation of your second bullet point before the party (in a slightly different form) joined the trans-Pent caravan. They were drawn into a ceremony by the local Hon-Eel temple to protect the Orayan marches from rogue Kashis raiders as they rode towards the Red Hair Place. While riding towards the caravan marshalling point, the party found themselves lost in the dark spirit-ridden mists choking the undulating grasslands of the hero-plane and battled both Orayan militia cavalry and Kashis reivers to prove their worth to Hon-Eel the Artess. Then the mists cleared and they had to pick which side to support in a mundane but small pitched battle. They chose to support the militia cavalry and tipped the scales enough to drive the renegade Kashis off. They were then allowed to continue on their way.

By the way, for the benefit of all who have posted to date, this is a RuneQuest game using elements of both RQ II and RQ III with some home brew modifications.

The new leg of the adventure starts tonight, so we'll see how the party fairs and what choices they make.

Cheers and good gaming.

Evilroddy.

Edited July 22, 2017 by Evilroddy

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, Evilroddy said:

The second similar idea is that the party meet or are ambushed by some Vanchite brigands/rebels.

Vanchites are notoriously sneaky and treacherous (they do follow a raccoon god after all).  They happily adopt new magics, tools, etc. and trade away their old worthless debris.  They are also happy to join heroquests and ransack those as well.  One of their favorite things is to accompany Yelmalio questers at the Hill of Gold and make off with Yelmalio's goods after he gets ambushed by Orlanth.  Of course, it can work the other way too since they are ostensibly an Orlanthi-derived culture.  "Sure, we can help Orlanth defeat Yelmalio", they say.  Of course, they encourage "Orlanth" to provide them weapons so they can "distract" Yelmalio at a critical moment.  And disappear from the quest with the weapons, right before Orlanth has to deal with Inora.

[Darius West]

17 hours ago, soltakss said:

If you travel through the Lunar Empire, why should the rules matter?

RQ spells and HeroQuest Abilities work in essentially the same, way, at least I have always thought so. Sure, HQ allows things to be used more often, but Detect Enemy is Detect Enemy, a clan wyter is a clan wyter and so on.

4

Well, consider if you will, that the rules measure what is possible.  In RQ there is a natural limit put on your ability to cast spells based on your magic points and your POW stat, whereas in HQ there isn't and you can essentially repeat the action until you finally succeed, or your GM vetoes your right to persist.  As for what detect enemy means, it isn't the same in HQ as it is in RQ as you can cast it indefinitely without issue.  As for clan wyters, spirit combat and "clan buffs" bear little similarity between the systems, and may be one area where I marginally prefer HQ for a change, as the RQ spirit combat system is pretty "bare bones". by comparison, and RQ can only benefit if it gives clans more magical identity as HQ has done.  Then again RQ is a much older system, and one that was abandoned, and is only now being rescued.

Edited July 23, 2017 by Darius West

[Darius West]

On 7/20/2017 at 7:51 PM, David Scott said:

HeroQuest doesn't actually limit  repeat actions, except augments. In my games players often repeatedly cast magic, they normally stop as they've won or been knocked out of the contest or circumstances change. You've either played in some oddly GMd games, not played HeroQuest or not understood the rules (or maybe not read them?). As HeroQuest is very player driven and the answer to any contest is yes, but... I've never seen the authoritarianism you speak of. For a better understanding of the system, I'd suggest Robin Laws' other books - Hamlet's Hit Points, Hillfolk and of course Sharper Adventures in HeroQuest Glorantha.

1

Totally read those books some time ago.  Hamlets Hitpoints can be of some value to GMs who don't know how to structure a plot.  Hillfolk is an interesting but flimsy system, but I could see how it is worthwhile to integrate elements of its plot creation system during character creation.  As for Sharper Adventures, I would say it was a bible for HQ as it provides work-arounds for some of the holes in the system, but was still not enough to make me want to play it again.  As for the lack of authoritarianism in your games, that's great, I am glad your GM is good.  A good GM can make even Shadowrun, or Spawn of Fashan work as a system, but an even better GM knows how to use a system to improve the story and wouldn't choose a bad system to run except as comedy.

Edited July 23, 2017 by Darius West

[Steve]

4 hours ago, Darius West said:

As for what detect enemy means, it isn't the same in HQ as it is in RQ as you can cast it indefinitely without issue.

You keep repeating this, and others have already told you that this isn't the case. I will now repeat that - if you think that in HQ you can just keep casting "Detect Enemy" until it succeeds, or until the GM arbitrarily says "no, you can't do that any more, you've run out of tries" then you've totally misunderstood the rules.

It would be weird/boring if we all liked the same rule systems, just like if we all liked the same music/food/whatever, but you can't credibly criticise a rule system when you have misunderstood completely how it works.

 

[Jeff]

Please take the HeroQuest/RuneQuest discussion to a separate thread. It is definitely off-topic (and if I want to be uncharitable, I'd call it thread-jacking and trolling, but I am in a charitable mood today).

Edited July 24, 2017 by Jeff

[Roko Joko]

Separate thread: https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/6545-using-magic-repeatedly/

[Jon Hunter]

Confuse them with kindness...

Have them treated with some level of respect  by well meaning souls who do not question there disguise.

Give them the opportunity to serve or save these individuals but in doing so will aid the agenda of empire.

a nice humanity vrs philosophy & prejudice  moral dilemma