Stats for NPCS: Starbrow, Fazzur, Argrath, etc

[pachristian]

On 9/30/2017 at 9:34 AM, soltakss said:

 

 

Why?

Unless the campaign hangs on the fact that Argrath becomes King of Dragon Pass, it shouldn;t end the camapign. It might send the campaign in a different direction, but shouldn't end it.

 

I think that PCs who are in a lomng-running campaign can become Heroes in the same mould as the likes of Harrek and Jar-Eel. Lesser Heroes such as Argrath or Kallyr Starbrow are fair game.

My favorite change in RQ over the years was converting Argrath from a name to a title ("Liberator"). In other words, your character could be Argrath, if you really want to be. I run my game that way.

One of my Ironclad rules is: No NPC is more powerful than player characters can become. So I make sure I have paths of development that will allow a PC to become as powerful as Harrek, or Jar-Eel. It takes time (many game sessions, good choices, and a bit of luck). My games are not about "powerful NPC's doing things cool things that you can never do".

[Atgxtg]

11 hours ago, Jeff said:

We've got that covered. In the scenario booklet that comes with the GM Pack, we've got statted up figures that include a tribal king, the high priestess of an Earth Temple, a chieftain or two, their bodyguards, some Issaries priests, etc. Very similar to what was done in Griffin Mountain. 

And in the second wave of releases, we are doing a big book of statted-up encounters. Need a dark troll war party? Here it is. Need a Grazelander war band? Here it is. And so on.

Ya mean something along the lines of Fangs and Foes? I feel like a kid again!

[Atgxtg]

3 hours ago, pachristian said:

My favorite change in RQ over the years was converting Argrath from a name to a title ("Liberator"). In other words, your character could be Argrath, if you really want to be. I run my game that way.

I hope it took a bit that than just "wanting to be." I'd expect it to be difficult.

3 hours ago, pachristian said:

One of my Ironclad rules is: No NPC is more powerful than player characters can become. So I make sure I have paths of development that will allow a PC to become as powerful as Harrek, or Jar-Eel. It takes time (many game sessions, good choices, and a bit of luck). My games are not about "powerful NPC's doing things cool things that you can never do".

Just as long as "can become" isn't "wlll become", that's kinda what D&D does. As long as you don't get killed, you eventually end up with enough XP to  match up with anything.  Nor do I think that the "can become" thing shoul apply completely to everything. I wouldn't want to see a Killer Whale's STR nerfed down to the PC range. 

[pachristian]

1 minute ago, Atgxtg said:

I hope it took a bit that than just "wanting to be." I'd expect it to be difficult.

Just as long as "can become" isn't "wlll become", that's kinda what D&D does. As long as you don't get killed, you eventually end up with enough XP to  match up with anything.  Nor do I think that the "can become" thing shoul apply completely to everything. I wouldn't want to see a Killer Whale's STR nerfed down to the PC range. 

Of course it's difficult. It requires years of play, and the support and cooperation of your fellow players. 

Can become. 

"As powerful as" does not mean "have the same stats as". Prince of Sartar describes the fight between Harrek and Jar-Eel. We are told that he was stronger, but she had greater mastery of magic. The characters are equals, but they have different abilities. So, no, a killer whale's STR is not nerfed down. I keep the rule statement simple, as the more complex a rule is, the prone it is to rules-lawyering. 

[Atgxtg]

On 10/7/2017 at 3:45 PM, pachristian said:

Of course it's difficult. It requires years of play, and the support and cooperation of your fellow players. 

Can become. 

"As powerful as" does not mean "have the same stats as". Prince of Sartar describes the fight between Harrek and Jar-Eel. We are told that he was stronger, but she had greater mastery of magic. The characters are equals, but they have different abilities. So, no, a killer whale's STR is not nerfed down. I keep the rule statement simple, as the more complex a rule is, the prone it is to rules-lawyering. 

Cool. I just wanted to be sure we were on the same page. Generally speaking, I agree and do the same. I say generally because there are some situations and games where I would allow a NPC who might be more powerful than a PC could really hope to become (for example, it's virtually impossible that a PC hero is going to be more powerful that Superman, no mater how much training and experience he gets.-but that is an extreme case). 

[simonh]

Don’t forget the stats for all the main characters from White Bear & Red Moon, way back in Wyrms Footnotes issue 2, for arguably the original game system for Gloranthan roleplaying - Arduin Grimoire.

Edited October 14, 2017 by simonh

[Atgxtg]

2 hours ago, simonh said:

Don’t forget the stats for all the main characters from White Bear & Red Moon, way back in Wyrms Footnotes issue 2, for arguably the original game system for Gloranthan roleplaying - Arduin Grimoire.

Forget them? I never had them! WF 2 was a bit before I started playing RQ, I think. 

As for Arduin, it would be an interesting argument. From what I've read Dave Hargrave wrote it for Glorantha, but Greg rejected it. Odd that Greg went with the RQ rules though, as we've been told that RQ isn't a good fit for Glorantha. Odder still that Greg's gone back to it. 

 

[Yelm's Light]

5 hours ago, simonh said:

Don’t forget the stats for all the main characters from White Bear & Red Moon, way back in Wyrms Footnotes issue 2, for arguably the original game system for Gloranthan roleplaying - Arduin Grimoire.

Since when?  I owned the AG trilogy way back when.  It's nothing but a not even very thinly-veiled expansion of original D&D, which is hardly a fit for Glorantha.  As a matter of fact, Greg stated it explicitly himself in the intro to those character stats; there was no way AG was ever going to be the rules system for Glorantha because of the copyright issues that he saw inevitably occurring with TSR.

Edited October 14, 2017 by Yelm's Light

[MOB]

6 hours ago, Yelm's Light said:

Since when?  I owned the AG trilogy way back when.  It's nothing but a not even very thinly-veiled expansion of original D&D, which is hardly a fit for Glorantha.  As a matter of fact, Greg stated it explicitly himself in the intro to those character stats; there was no way AG was ever going to be the rules system for Glorantha because of the copyright issues that he saw inevitably occurring with TSR.

Stafford's Star Bridge

[Yelm's Light]

3 hours ago, MOB said:

Stafford's Star Bridge

Yep, Hargrave's a crank.  So what?

Quote

Hargrave felt that Stafford had betrayed him over a Chaosium publishing deal, thus "falling through selectively". According to Stafford, Hargrave was later very upset with himself for having created this spell and for his behavior in the situation.

Welcome to the wonderful world of copyright law.

[MOB]

1 hour ago, Yelm's Light said:

Yep, Hargrave's a crank.  So what?

Welcome to the wonderful world of copyright law.

Sounds like it was more a case of quality and incompleteness than copyright, though that may have reared its head in due course if things had proceeded. The full story (from Greg's perspective at least - Dave Hargrave having passed away in 1988) is here: 

https://www.acaeum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?cache=1&p=58553#p58553

Edited October 15, 2017 by MOB
typo

[simonh]

On 14/10/2017 at 4:37 PM, Yelm's Light said:

Since when? 

In my defence my tongue was, metaphorically, jammed very firmly into my cheek while writing that.

Simon Hibbs

Edited October 16, 2017 by simonh

[Shiningbrow]

I know I'm resurrecting a 2 year old thread here, but I do want to know if there are stats coming for some of the Big Names in the Hero Wars (past, present, and possible future).

We do have stats for Queen Leika and her entourage, and they're not particularly impressive - but, they're just mundane queens - not full-blown heroes! (for those who haven't seen, they've got good attributes - but only occasionally does someone have anything over 18 (humans), and only rarely a 21. Skills tend to be 80+, but highest weapon skill was only 130% (and that's with a "magic" weapon... meaning, our newly formed characters aren't that far off from these people who would be veterans).

In RQ1/2 versions, I was seeing stats in the numerous hundreds for weapon skills.

So, given we're heading into the Hero Wars, what would be appropriate skill levels? And magic? Why is Harrek almost unbeatable? Just how awesome is Jar-eel? What makes Argrath amazing?

And, of course, how can they pull off what they did?

 Ambitious adventurers need to know!!!

[Tywyll]

I doubt we'll ever see them. Glorantha has always been a metaplot driven setting where Pcs aren't as cool as the Npcs. Giving them stats would mean you could kill them and change the metaplot. So I doubt we'll ever see anything official.

And the new Heroquest rules might bridge the gap, but I am not holding my breath. 

Also I just don't know if a gritty realism focused system like BRP can handle the high power levels of such characters. Even superwoman characters weren't really 'take on an army by yourself' level of power, which the superheroes of Glorantha could do.

Edited May 4, 2019 by Tywyll

[Shiningbrow]

1 hour ago, Tywyll said:

I doubt we'll ever see them. Glorantha has always been a metaplot driven setting where Pcs aren't as cool as the Npcs. Giving them stats would mean you could kill them and change the metaplot. So I doubt we'll ever see anything official.

And the new Heroquest rules might bridge the gap, but I am not holding my breath. 

Also I just don't know if a gritty realism focused system like BRP can handle the high power levels of such characters. Even superwoman characters weren't really 'take on an army by yourself' level of power, which the superheroes of Glorantha could do.

I do get that... but having some idea of what makes someone a 'hero' category... or 'superhero' category??? Is 300% plus 20 RunePoints enough? Or does it need to be 500%? Or 1000% and 50 POW?

[Joerg]

21 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

I do get that... but having some idea of what makes someone a 'hero' category... or 'superhero' category??? Is 300% plus 20 RunePoints enough? Or does it need to be 500%? Or 1000% and 50 POW?

Gloranthan superheroes break the rules of the world, and by extension every rules system applied to the world. Capital H Heroes are within the grasp of player characters who are experienced and accomplished heroquesters and find communities willing to bet their magical resources on them rather than on some specialized deity. Carving out or taking over some stronghold in an Otherworld may be part of that.

Aside from that, a capital H hero has support from a dedicated bunch of sidekicks of hardly less accomplishment.

[PhilHibbs]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Gloranthan superheroes break the rules of the world,

Correct...

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

and by extension every rules system applied to the world.

No, it's perfectly possible to have game rules that cover world-rule-breaking.

[Joerg]

14 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

No, it's perfectly possible to have game rules that cover world-rule-breaking. 

If the game rules have rules how to break their own rules, fine. I don't deny the possibiity. I deny that such rules exist in the present day.

RuneQuest is a system which has a much greater reliance on obeying rules than other approaches. That's its strength, really - a set of rules and meta-rules that are easy to apply and to conform to, so you don't have to learn every exception.

The D100 system still breaks down when abilities range far above the randomisation range of a D100., and the straight substracions create about as strange distortions of probabilities as do most attemmpts to reflect the outcome of democratic votes in representative democracy, and approval or disapproval of those shifts may depend on whether you are on the winning or on the losing side of those statistics.

Trying to define capital-H Heroes in percentiles or spell points is an exercise in futility, IMO. Those shouldn't be the source of their powers or their influence. They draw these powers from a combination of the meta-rules of magic (support group size and intensity), from the willingness of their followers to be led and swept along by them and their agendas. Only after those factors, personal prowess and possibly individual stats on a standard character sheets come to bear.

Yes, there will be situations in which these capital H or even S guys act as individuals, in highly magical environments where other individuals might have a chance to challenge and even overcome them. But such duels - like Harsaltar vs. the Red Emperor in Boldhome 1602 - are not decided by die rolls yielding crits, but by breaking crucial geases or similar, rather extracurricular abilities.

RuneQuest is (or at least can be) a vehicle to accumulate such abilities. But extreme mastery of the blade coupled with extreme blade magics will only be matched by a similar champion alongside one  of these heroes, and deadly wounds in a duel are a mere inconvenience for these types. It must have been really frustrating for Belintar's opponents in the years between 1613 and 1618 to kill, dismember and even devour him again and again only to have him return with a new army and new magics. Tackling these capital letter heroes is bound to be similar.

[Grievous]

30 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Yes, there will be situations in which these capital H or even S guys act as individuals, in highly magical environments where other individuals might have a chance to challenge and even overcome them. But such duels - like Harsaltar vs. the Red Emperor in Boldhome 1602 - are not decided by die rolls yielding crits, but by breaking crucial geases or similar, rather extracurricular abilities.

Ok, but give me the rules for breaking crucial geases or similar rather extracurricular abilities. They don't have to look similar to the rules for other stuff, but they definitely could exist. Otherwise essentially GM fiat will create the rules for you, which will basically just keep the players and player characters in an inferior position (as the only approach is to "play the GM", which is adversarial and dysfunctional). A very old school approach to gaming, which in my view has been superseded by more modern approaches to game design.

[PhilHibbs]

52 minutes ago, Joerg said:

If the game rules have rules how to break their own rules, fine. I don't deny the possibiity. I deny that such rules exist in the present day.

We're not talking about breaking the game-rules, we're talking about breaking the world-rules. The two are entirely different. What we are lacking is a clear line between what is a world-rule and what is a game-rule. For instance, is "species maximum" a world rule, and are the various ways of bypassing that "game-rules for breaking world-rules"? Not really, but that's the sort of thing I'm thinking of.

In fact, I would argue that RuneQuest, HeroQuest, and 13G don't actually model world-rules at all. It's all game-rules. For instance, Strike Ranks aren't a world-rule. It would make no sense to have an "I have 13 SR in a round" Superhero power. A negative DEX SR might be cool, but that isn't breaking a world-rule.

I'm trying to think of a good example of a world-rule. Any ideas?

And there are games that have rules for breaking their own rules, the original Illuminati card game for example had rules for cheating, but that's a bit different. 

Illumination, maybe. That's a game-rule for breaking world-rules. Before Illumination was invented/discovered in Glorantha, it was impossible.

Edited May 4, 2019 by PhilHibbs

[Brootse]

19 minutes ago, Grievous said:

Ok, but give me the rules for breaking crucial geases or similar rather extracurricular abilities. They don't have to look similar to the rules for other stuff, but they definitely could exist. Otherwise essentially GM fiat will create the rules for you, which will basically just keep the players and player characters in an inferior position (as the only approach is to "play the GM", which is adversarial and dysfunctional). A very old school approach to gaming, which in my view has been superseded by more modern approaches to game design.

Use rock, paper, scissors, and give each character lives based on how tough you think they are.

[David Scott]

3 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

I do get that... but having some idea of what makes someone a 'hero' category... or 'superhero' category??? Is 300% plus 20 RunePoints enough? Or does it need to be 500%? Or 1000% and 50 POW?

I use Superworld and GURPs Lensman as my guidelines for RQ power. Hero points for building characters was based on a total of the seven stats, you rerolled if under 91. This was so close to GURPs 100 point standard build that it was easy to use the GURPs point scale to measure character build. I played GURPs Lensman and that had a good scale for measuring heroes, so using my previous table, I'd add this to it. If you've no idea what Lensman is about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lensman_series

Fair  75

Good 100 - (Citizen of the Galaxy) (Normal Gurps & superworld)

Very Good 150

Excellent 200 - (Galactic Patrolman) 

Renowned 400 - (Lieutenant Lensman)

Heroic 1000 - (Unattached)

Super Heroic 3000+ (2nd Stage Lensman) (Kimball Kinison 4158)

Theres a level beyond this that's unplayable.

I built a Troll heroquester team at 500 points (each) who still struggled in Snakepipe Hollow.

[Grievous]

34 minutes ago, Brootse said:

Use rock, paper, scissors, and give each character lives based on how tough you think they are.

Yeah, that works. I'd appreciate rules that convey the flavor of Glorantha, though.

[PhilHibbs]

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

If the game rules have rules how to break their own rules, fine. I don't deny the possibiity. I deny that such rules exist in the present day.

I would contend that such rules (at least, traditional mechanical rules) should not exist, but that does not mean that adventurers can't ever do the cool things that "heroic" Gloranthans do.

Urrrgh the Ugly achieved the impossible when his player rolled 01 on his attempt to worship his gold. Do the RuneQuest rules say that this is possible? Is there a rule that says "if you roll a 01 on worshipping something that can't be worshipped, then it becomes Gloranthan reality"? Clearly not. Should they? No. There will never be a definitive list of Impossible Things And How To Do Them, that would take all the fun away. If an adventurer is going to "do the impossible", then sometimes it needs to be a spur of the moment call. What GMs need, maybe, is clear direction that this sort of thing should be something that they can consider. Most GMs in that situation, particularly those new to Glorantha, are just going to say "no, don't be silly", assuming that "Glorantha just isn't like that". It is, though. Well, Greg's Glorantha is.

[Joerg]

51 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

I would contend that such rules (at least, traditional mechanical rules) should not exist, but that does not mean that adventurers can't ever do the cool things that "heroic" Gloranthans do.

Urrrgh the Ugly achieved the impossible when his player rolled 01 on his attempt to worship his gold. Do the RuneQuest rules say that this is possible? Is there a rule that says "if you roll a 01 on worshipping something that can't be worshipped, then it becomes Gloranthan reality"? Clearly not. Should they? No. There will never be a definitive list of Impossible Things And How To Do Them, that would take all the fun away. If an adventurer is going to "do the impossible", then sometimes it needs to be a spur of the moment call. What GMs need, maybe, is clear direction that this sort of thing should be something that they can consider. Most GMs in that situation, particularly those new to Glorantha, are just going to say "no, don't be silly", assuming that "Glorantha just isn't like that". It is, though. Well, Greg's Glorantha is.

Yes, that character did the impossible, doing it over and over again, until the world reacted. Now, if you don't have Greg as a GM and haven't ever heard about Gold Wheel Dancers (I wonder whether Greg had, at the time), what would you pull out of your hat?

And does it have to be a critical success that triggers awesomeness? In the end, Urrrgh did a This World heroquest, again and again. And what he received wasn't an immediate magical advantage (although it ultimately gave him a second go at existence, with a significant improvement in a number of stats... including INT and CHA).

The anecdote is great because it shows that players can affect the mythical reality by (re-) discovering something in Godtime.

These days we have volumes of notes on the myths of Godtime which a GM might study (or ideally have studied) to pull out this or some other such rabbit out of his hat.

 

But back to facing those capital H heroes or even superheroes directly. In the end, I would probably set this up as a heroquest, where preparation and symbolic activity create a build-up that scale what amounts to a world-shattering conflict down to a duel between individuals, with their skills and magics adjusted by what went on before. Greg's story Morden Defends the Camp shows how someone with the right preparation can perform on that level, and how he can prevent his opposition from maintaining that level.

I trust myself to have a sufficiently good idea what myths or just mythic episodes the participants might have encountered that may be a good or at least adequate choice for interaction with the story. I'd also allow the questers to call for extra encounters, allowing them to attempt to seek out or summon those encounters.

RuneQuest has skills like Cult Lore to simulate character knowledge independently of player knowledge, but I would delegate such die-rolling mainly to the preparations for the actual quest, or allow it when the prepared solution has gone haywire for whichever reason (e.g. an opponent coming up with a different version of the myth and the player characters allowing him to drag them into his mythical terrain rather than to keep him on their path).

I wouldn't hesitate to improvise such a game, but it takes quite a bit of familiarity with the myths, or otherwise great creativity on the spot, to come out with a satisfactory set of mythic alternatives. Writing up such a sandbox of mythic scraps is a lot harder, but might still be feasible, possibly in the style of encounters similar to those in Griffin Mountain or Borderlands, but with additional identifications for the encounters.

If you had the chance to play the freeform "White Bear and Red Moon", you might have had prepared alternative scraps for the rituals, or you might have been able to intrude into a station of the rites where you had little or no business, and challenge the questers. I have participated in this twice, once with very improvised alterations to the proceedings which left quite a few participants with meaningless lines and no support for ideas how to get out of that, and moreover lengthening that scripted part of the game significantly more than you might want to tolerate for such a multi-player event. The other run offered prepared deviations rather than that freeform approach, and while that was more railroading, it did speed up those ritual parts.

 

Basically, I am grasping for a way to create a sufficient basis of either prepared fragments of myth (e.g. cards, with runes, passions, or mundane skill tests or even melee) or rather generalized bits that can put the player characters' nemesis onto the playing field. I have a good idea how to improvise such a game, and some ideas how to bring in some semi-random elements. Possibly in the shape of a player aid quite similar to Chaosium's foray into collectible card games, Mythos, or using something like Topi Pitkänen's GloranTarot cards which provide an alternative to a D20 with five sets of runic cards with associated runes, deities etc., giving both the narrator and the player the choice what aspect to identify with and to bring  into the evolving story. And possibly some mechanic like the corrals in Khan of Khans where the questers can take their current achievements to the bank, from which to determine the post-quest effects.

As you can see from these thoughts, this touches on narrative gaming, a weird sort of magical resource economy, improvisation, and the rpg rules not exactly getting the main focus. Something like opposed rolls between "my story" and "their story" and how much either side has invested, maybe. Defining the number of tasks and their nature for each stage, leaving it to the protagonists and the antagonists to choose their identifications and resources.

 

So, back to the original question - how would I stat the npc protagonists and antagonists? What skills matter? What weirdness do I leave for the spur of the moment to pull up, or not?

When GMing Harrek as the antagonist in a player character attempt to thwart the Berserk, do I use one set of stats, or do I have a couple of character sheets with Harrek in different moods, with player character actions deciding which mood (and set of skills) I employ against them?

Must I expect effective weapon skills of the players in the 150% range, or do I have to deal with stuff like Weapon Trance and effective skills in the 300% range? Will Harrek be well represented with relaxed 200% combat and perception skills, or do I pull the bear's pelt and let him turn out some 500% heavy hitting in berserk mode?

Does damage go to the bear aura, or to the human body, and why?

 

Other weird things I expect to have to deal with:

If player characters bring one-use special magics into the fray (e.g. through Spell-Trading), will they be able to use their normal, highly developed rune ratings, or will they possibly have to use under-developed runes to activate the magic?

Does the antagonist use similar one-use effects that the players may be unprepared for, but with much reduced attack chance? And when?