Date: Sat, 6 Mar 93 01:24:46 +0100
From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Digest Subscriptions)
To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest)
Subject: The RuneQuest Daily, Sat, 06 Mar 1993
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---------------------
From: arthurr@thuban.crd.ge.com
Subject: Re: Neutral Lunars
Message-ID: <9303031414.AA01828@megrez.crd.Ge.Com>
Date: 3 Mar 93 14:14:17 GMT
> Just to get another thread of debate up and running, I'm interested
> in whether anyone has depicted the Lunar Empire and the Red Goddess as
> a force for Good in the world or even just as a neutral power. The
If you are familiar with P.E. Zimmer's "Darkborder" books, you will
see where we took the following from... the books are excellent, and
good source for RQ-compatible (IMO) ideas.
The Sky/Storm gods held most of the territory outside the Lunar
Glowline. Skirmishes were common for centuries.
Then a new sort of glowline was born, when the Seven Dark Gods of
Chaos were released from within the bowels of the world by a foolish
Troll King. Their shadowy presence covered most of the continent.
Hundreds of Rune Priests of the Sky/Storm/Earth gods met and
sacrificed themselves to form towers as a "border" holding back the
darkness. This formed one front, while two seas and the Lunar
Glowline formed the other three.
Here we have a three-way confrontation - the Glowline-Shadow war, the
Tower Border-Shadow war, and a truce between the Lunars and
Non-Lunars. In this situation, the Lunars held back the spread of
{Primal Chaos, Thanatar, Thed, Krarsht, Bagog, Cacaodemon, and -- add Rune of Darkness where needed}, while also vowing to
leave the Sky/Storm/Earth lands be.
Rumor: This could happen in Glorantha if the next Throne-giant
was used to move The Block. :)
---------------------
From: ade@insignia.UUCP (Adrian Brownlow)
Subject: Lunars are nice
Message-ID: <7374.9303031429@piglet.insignia.co.uk>
Date: 3 Mar 93 07:33:18 GMT
> So: has anyone else got a different angle on this conflict? Has
> anyone had Lunar citizens and Lightbringers within the same group > of PCs?
Or a group composed entirely of Lunar citizens?
Er... Yes, aren't you supposed to do it this way?
In my campaign the players got kind of drafted into the Lunar army.
They all originated in Sun County and were Yelmalian, one had since
left to join Orlanth whilst they were in Pavis (we play lay membership
rules).
I play the Lunar empire as a stabilizing influence, bringing
civilization to the wastes rather than an oppressive force. Of course
some of the PCs don't quite see it that way. Yes the Lunars take away
certain freedoms, but that tends to stop people getting hacked to
pieces quite as often.
Since being press-ganged into the army as scouts, the players have
managed to acquit themselves well and two have been granted
citizenship (which is a great honor for a barbarian (so think the
lunars)) which means they have also joined lunar cults - this meant a
brush with one of the big `ole spirits of retribution from Yelmalio
for the one who was an initiate.
Two other players are both still entrenched in the barbarian
superstitions for Yelmalio one of whom has managed to persuade the
cult to buy him out of the army (he is still acting as a merc though),
the other is still bonded.
Because the PCs have their actions limited by their responsibilities
to the Empire or Yelmalio, they are controlled and have to act in a
fairly civilized manner. For the Yelmalio bods that means that they
have to cooperate (if not like) with the last member of the group, a
dark troll. (It is stated in Pavis that within the city ZZ Trolls and
Yelmalian Paratroop loonies can pass each other on the street without
having to hack bits off each other. This lack of freedom is mainly
because of the attentions of the lunar guards. In the army those
attentions must be much closer. Because this sort of control restricts
religious fervor then priests and glassy eyed fanatics must find it
unbearable - no wonder the Lunars get such a bad press, bringing peace
& control undermines most of the local cults.)
---
Exchange from last game session.
(GM, Experienced Player 1, Newby Player 2)
GM : ........and there's some crystals in the trolls belt pouch.
P1 : I grab them.
P2 : What are they?
P1 : Probably power storage crystals.
P2 : Whats a power storage crystal?
P1 : Its a thing you store magic points in.
P2 : Well why would I want to do that?
P1 : So you can use them later.
P2 : But I've got all these magic points (pointing at character sheet).
P1 : Yes but this'll give you more to use if you need them.
P2 : Well how many?
P1 : Depends on how many it can hold and how many you put in it.
P2 : If I put some in it don't I loose them from here ? (pointing at character
sheet)
P1 : Yes but you regenerate those. Its a bit like p*ssing in a bottle, you can
fill the bottle and keep it. Your bladder then fills up and you have a bladder
full of p*ss plus the bottle you filled up earlier, so you have more p*ss than
you would normally have. You can then use that p*ss for whatever you'd normally
use it for but you'd have more of it. If you see what I mean.
P2 : So MPs are like piss? I don't think I want any then.
Hmm....
Ade
---------------------
From: tzunder@cix.compulink.co.uk (Tom Zunder)
Subject: RQ IV
Message-ID:
Date: 3 Mar 93 21:08:00 GMT
I also do not want RQIV to too radically crush RQ3. But I'll reserve
judgement for the playtest rules which I'll promptly give my
players/refs a chance to break.
Previous experience is okay but boring, a better one could well be
devised, I'd like to see something like the Adevtures in Tekumel stuff
that TOME are doing with MAR Barker. Not in the core rules but as a
solo alternative character gen. One could be easily written for Sartar
and Prax.
Shall I elaborate? Have people seen the AiT stuff?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
tzunder@cix.compulink.com.uk
"May the Red Moon Illuminate You All!
--------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------
From: MILLERL@WILMA.WHARTON.UPENN.EDU (Loren J. Miller)
Subject: manufacture of magic items
Message-ID: <9303032143.AA03513@noc1.dccs.upenn.edu>
Date: 3 Mar 93 20:41:00 GMT
SPECULATION ON HOW THE GODLEARNERS MANUFACTURED MAGIC ITEMS
Well, how would you set up a magic weapon factory?
First you heroquest to set up a cult that accepts decent weaponsmiths
as priests, with little or no other requirements for priesthood. Use
Vulcan as the template for the god. Then you heroquest so there are
seven different variants of the cult with seven different holy days,
one every day of the week. Then you teach mindspeech 1 to all the
smiths so they can communicate in a single large room with all that
hammering going on. The smiths get several attempts each week to
overcome somebody else's magic points with their own. Every week each
of the smiths gets the opportunity to lead a worship service for his
variant cult, and six other smiths are initiates at this worship
service. (You could also set this up with 42 different subcults with
42 holy days if you wanted to get extreme) Okay, with all this, each
smith gets a POW increase roll once per week. On the average they will
pick up 6 to 15 POW per year, all of which goes into enchantments.
They are also trained to 90% or higher in the enchantment skill, and
all know bladesharp 3 or 6 or 9. Each one of these smiths could turn
out 2 to 5 swords with bladesharp +3 matrices on them every year. If
these smiths were sorcerors or shamans, or if their cults emphasized
such spells, they could also be expert at binding various spirits into
the swords, which might be a more effective means of production. Let's
say they can summon magic spirits and spell spirits, and they enchant
a binding for magic spirits into each sword. Then they summon spell
spirits to teach whatever spells are necessary to the magic spirits.
Other ideas:
1. Use spirit domination spells to forceteach enchantment skill and
various spells to magic spirits, then use spirit domination and
befuddle to force them to spend all their POW in enchantment spells
making magic items. When they've destroyed their POW making magic
items, finish them off so they don't go complaining to their patron
gods. That was the magic weapon factory's mistake, not killing the
victimized spirits.
2. Research a heroquest where a god finds a powerful magic weapon,
then reproduce the heroquest in quantity, carrying tons of enchanted
weapons out of it. As this might dilute the power of the mythic weapon
after a while, keep other heroquesters looking out for other magic
weapons to be discovered and exploited.
Any more blasted ideas?
whoah,
+++++++++++++++++++++++23
Loren Miller internet: MILLERL@wharton.upenn.edu
S sign lists littles what wetland received in phire bonuse --1M Monkeys
---------------------
From: MAB@SAVAX750.RUTHERFORD.AC.UK (Mystic Musk Ox)
Subject: RE: The RuneQuest Daily, Wed, 03 Mar 1993
Message-ID: <9303032345.AA17132@Sun.COM>
Date: 3 Mar 93 14:28:00 GMT
A few points and queries:
HeroQuests: I have seen a few articles telling what they are, who does
them, what happens on them et cetera. What I haven't seen is something
telling me how you actually RUN the things i.e. in gamespeak. Anyone
have any suggestions? (I have the Tales of the Reaching Moon issue,
but didn't find it that useful...)
[Next year... :-]
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Armour: One thing that will get round the problem is to take the
knockbacks into account. Even if one guy is taking 40+ hits of damage,
it is still going to knock him flying, possibly into something, and
off his feet, probably taking damage not stopped by armour etc.
I have always ruled that critical hits ignore all physical armour, but
magic still stops incoming damage. Thus if you are magically powerful
enough, you CAN stop all damage - it may knock you over, but it won't
harm you. It has always been vague in the rules as to what actually
happens, but I guess the interpretation is that criticals DO ignore
spells.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Magic and POW: We found that PC's definitely specialised. The
characters with low POW (<10) have a difficult time getting ANY POW
ticks. Many of the standard cults (in the Magic Book) don't teach any
spells to actually attack people with. Divine magic was hardly used,
as players were very unwilling to lose 5-15% 'attack and defence' on
their POW rolls to get a one-shot spell - although many had one divine
spell sacrificed for just in case they ever needed it. The standard
response to seeing a spirit was to run for it! (This was in an 18
month long campaign)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cities and Towns: I've always assumed that the numbers are total
inhabitants, and thus do include children. An interesting thought - I
have heard it said that contrary to popular belief, in the Middle Ages
families were not as large as is generally thought. The big expansion
in families came about in Victorian times due to simple hygiene and
medicine becoming fairly widespread. Thus a medieval family might
produce the same number of children as its Victorian counterpart, but
fewer of them would survive the first few years. The question here is
what effect does this have on RQ/Glorantha, where due to the spells
etc available, death is much less common? Would large families be
commonplace? Uleria could supply contraceptive spells, but would some
cults regard them as immoral/ungodly? What would the spiritual view of
such acts be, given that the soul is KNOWN to exist?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Buckley
---------------------
From: trystro!rune@Think.COM (Peter Maranci)
Subject: RQ cult nomenclature
Message-ID: <9303040213.AA23473@Early-Bird.Think.COM>
Date: 3 Mar 93 23:32:19 GMT
One thing I've often wondered about is what to call certain cultists.
Humakti, Orlanthi, and Lunars are obvious -- but what do you call a
bunch of Storm Bull worshippers (I know, you call them "sir" 8^>})?
Chalana Arroy Rune Priests are called Healers, but how would you
distinguish a group of Initiates from a Priest? How about Daka Fal?
Lhankor Mhy-ites?
It seems to me that there is no appropriate group-appellation for
worshippers of Gods with two-part names. What sort of names have been
used by other GMs?
-->Pete
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Maranci
trystro!rune@think.com or rune@trystro.uucp
"Hey! Your Tien fell in my Atyar!" "Well, your Atyar got in my Tien!"
Thanatar -- two great Chaos Gods that go great together!
---------------------
From: mace@lum.asd.sgi.com (Rob Mace)
Subject: Re: Lunar Empire as a force for Good?
Message-ID: <9303040351.AA14607@lum.asd.sgi.com>
Date: 3 Mar 93 11:51:36 GMT
Faust writes:
> Just to get another thread of debate up and running, I'm interested
> in whether anyone has depicted the Lunar Empire and the Red Goddess as
> a force for Good in the world or even just as a neutral power. The
> impression I've gotten from most other RQ-Glorantha players/GMs I've
> ever met has been that they generally potray the Lunar Empire as a
> fairly corrupt, evil empire with unsavoury chaotic tendencies
> bent on world domination. The Sartarites and Orlanthi are usually the
> freedom loving underdogs fighting back against oppression.
>
> So: has anyone else got a different angle on this conflict?
In our game the Lunar Empire has been presented as very
non-monolithic. We have run into both very corrupt/evil Lunars and
good Lunars that are honestly working to make the world a better
place. I think that treating the Lunars as a monolith of sameness
ignores a lot of possibilities. Having them be all evil or good makes
it too easy for the players to deal with them.
> Has anyone had Lunar citizens and Lightbringers within the same group of PCs?
Our current group does.
> Or a group composed entirely of Lunar citizens?
Years ago we did. It worked fairly well, but most people liked their
non-Lunar characters better.
Rob Mace
---------------------
From: b_kondalski@vssi.trw.com (Brian J. Kondalski)
Subject: Broos & Villians
Message-ID: <9303041554.AA05603@Sun.COM>
Date: 4 Mar 93 15:57:44 GMT
Well the stuff I saw here about the sky bull broo and a conversation
with Loren Miller got me thinking about how much (as a GM) I like
broos. Seems to me the various combinations of broos that you could
get together are really mind- boggling. Add in the chaos feature bit
and you can make some very interesting critters. I was wondering what
combinations others may have used for broos.
In my group, I also had a couple of Sky Bull broos. One was male
(Sarbor, real heavy hitter physically) and Sarbora (female, real heavy
hitter magically). These two eventually went on to become a Thed lord
and priest and proved to be great foils for the PCs. It was most
disappointing (for both me and the players) when they finally died.
Some other combinations I've used are Giant broos, gargoyle broos,
scorpion broos, gorilla broos, walktapus broos, wind child broos, hmmm
and probably a few others that I can't think of.
What other combinations have been used out there? And what traits did
the new combinations pick up from their none broo halves?
And on the nemesis vein, what great foils have the PC's out there had
in RQ? IE, what race, cults, personalities, etc....
--
Brian J. Kondalski b_kondalski@vssi.trw.com
---------------------
From: rog@insignia.UUCP (Roger_Nolan)
Subject: RE: Lunar Empire as Goodies?
Message-ID: <988.9303041835@vic20.insignia.co.uk>
Date: 5 Mar 93 18:35:07 GMT
>So: has anyone else got a different angle on this conflict? Has
>anyone had Lunar citizens and Lightbringers within the same group of PCs?
>Or a group composed entirely of Lunar citizens?
Yeah, due to an altercation with the authorities in Pavis, our group
of PCs are now members of a Lunar Penal Batallion.
On a recent sortie, a couple of the PCs managed to gain Chaos
features. Rather bad luck for a normal adventurer type but not in this
case....The priests attatched to the batallion, upon realising that we
were now much more useful than mere slave/scouts set about persuading
us that the Lunar way was better than all that shouting and painting
yourself blue that the Orlanthi get up to.
The up shot of this is that two of the PCs (myself + one) are now
initiates of Yanafal Tarnils (excuse my spelling) and although it
initially seemed to be bad and evil and against all that is good in
Glorantha, the longer you do it the more sensible it all seems. Why
should we actually go and kill those Broos?
They don't actually seem to be doing anyone harm (at the moment)
whereas all those nasty hill barbarians are stealing from honest
traders.....
Try it, you never know.
Hail the Red Emperor!
Rog
---------------------
From: MILLERL@WILMA.WHARTON.UPENN.EDU (Loren J. Miller)
Subject: All or nothing healing
Message-ID: <9303050549.AA02417@noc2.dccs.upenn.edu>
Date: 2 Mar 93 14:06:00 GMT
Whenever GMing RQ I always find it annoying how easily players can use
healing spells to get rid of all their damage. Even if they don't get
"all better" in a single round it still doesn't take them too long to
get "all better." They just wait until they have a little time then
cast another healing spell. If the GM enforces only most powerful
healing spell on a single wound that's a little better, but it still
makes them able to run around with no real damage all too easily. I
have an alternate set of healing spells as a possible solution. Note
that this is not in concept for Glorantha, but it is very much in
concept for Alternate Earth based campaigns, or any campaign that has
Conan fans in it. :)
Remember the scene in Conan where the old shaman-fella stakes a nearly
dead Conan out and summons healing spirits to heal him? Well get a
load of these rules, which could be just as easily done with Sorcery
also...
EFFECTS OF DAMAGE
When you get to zero or negative hit points your character goes
unconscious and bleeds at one HP per round. When at negative full hit
points your character is dead. If someone can perform first aid the
bleeding will stop within 1d3 HP of time. After a while (how long is
up to the GM) the character may awaken, but is incapable of serious
exertion. Count the character as permanently Incapacitated under the
new fatigue rules until HP go to positive.
DEATH'S DOOR
Variable
Duration: until next midnight
With this spirit spell the spellcaster can revive a dying character to
a semblance of full health. How good the semblance depends on how many
points are cast. One point is good enough to stop someone from
bleeding to death. Each point adds one point to the apparent HP of the
target. If Samhic has been damaged to -5HP and a comrade casts
DEATH'S DOOR 6 on him then Samhic will be brought to consciousness and
may function as if his HP were 1. If the same comrade cast DEATH'S
DOOR 9 on him then Samhic could function as if he had 9 more HP than
previously, that is 4 HP. When the spell stops working the spell
caster may want to renew with another spell, to keep the target alive
for another day, but if this fails for some reason the person
protected by DEATH'S DOOR will drop to
[message ends here... Loren?]
---------------------
From: alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk (Alex Ferguson)
Subject: Orlanth Sub-cults
Message-ID: <9303051949.AA02369@carcass.dcs.gla.ac.uk>
Date: 5 Mar 93 19:49:42 GMT
I must admit I'm getting more confused, rather than less, about the
relationship between the different Orlanth sub-cults. The River of
Cradles writeup seems to rather mix and match, without making clear
whether the two are separate, as seemed to be the case in RQ2, or
differentiated only at Rune level ranks. Does one, for instance get a
Storm Voice of Orlanth Adventurous membership? Or acolyte of same?
Very possibly not, since Wind Lords get some rune magic anyway, so a
Rune Lord/Acolyte position would be a bit much. If temples aren't
dedicated to one aspect or another, does this mean the same cult
hierarchy is common to all sub-cults? If not, is initiation into each
separate? These both sound a little unlikely to me.
Also significant differences between the Gods of Glorantha priest
status and River of Cradles. Bets as to whether this is due to
sub-cult distinctions, or is simply a revision? And how does the Rex
sub-cult fit in to the above?
Not even mentioning magic weapon subcults, Alex.