Tag: Glorantha

Update on Adventures in Glorantha Take 4: Spirit Societies

In my previous post I presented a version of spirit societies for AiG as part of Gloranthan Cult One pagers for AiG. There were some questions in various forums that caused me to revisit the societies. Now most of the Bless spirits have aspects (skills, mechanisms etc) mentioned that what they might bless or boost. Curse spirits could use the same list. The totem animals have also been updated to provide some totem animal specific skills that bless spirits could boost. All of these are my view and nothing official. Feedback is welcome.

These are the spirit abilities by rune spirit (every spirit has a rune) – some of the abilities are different from RQ6 and then there are new ones. Spirit society has spirits from the runes it holds. I have made assumption that all of those spirits are friendly. Each rune has a list of the kind of spirits it ‘handles’. Each spirit can have multiple different kind of abilities – for example curse spirits are very similar to ones from RAW. Disease spirit is similar to sickness spirit. A spirit can sometimes have multiple abilities. I am somewhat hesitant to go deeper into describing the spirits as the rulebook is meant for that.

Without rulebook it might be just possible to map the names of the spirits to similar ones in RAW. Spirits in AiG are really cool…

So we have a new version of the Glorantha One Pagers for Spirit Societies in AiG 

Timinits and Nymphs – RQ Encounter Finds Some Odd Couples

There were few missing timinits as well as most of the nymphs.

You will find Arachans those spidery carnivores now created here

The nymphs are done according to AiG. Dryad given is a young one – the rest of them will be updated in due time.  I left the original Hag as is and created a new one named Hag of Darkness according to Adventures in Glorantha.
Some animals were missing as well from the edges of the world. Polar Bears are the largest of the bears and great swimmers.  Sting worm scuttle wherever there are Uz habitations and the smallest of the great sand worms has found its way here as well.

More Sea Monsters of Glorantha

Here is a taste of more sea monsters for RQ Encounter Generator  inspired by the excellent Hearts In Glorantha Collection, volume 1

There are many more monsters in the Hearts in Glorantha Collection – like Geysers, Whirlpools, Tentacled things and boatloads of enemies in the sea and scenario seeds.

More Sea Monsters are available here

Adventuring in Sartar – Encounters for RQ6

Here is a collection of few ready made encounters in Sartar area for Runequest 6. More can be found by going to the RQ Encounter Tool and selecting Parties with filter Sartar or selecting enemies with filter Sartar. Most if not all of the encounters from Sartar Companion by Moon Design are available. There is also a set of encounters for Apple Lane

At a village

On the road

Lunars

Walk down the memory lane – where it all began – Apple Lane – Encounters for Mythras

I still remember the first time I GM’d Runequest. It was sometime February 1981 and the scenario was Apple Lane. We had played D&D for a few years and I wanted to try something new.

It was love on first game – everything clicked – the combat – the milieu – the crunchy style, the tactics for the attackers, spells. I searched thru my garage and found my original Apple Lane set, still containing the markings of hit points going down, skill percentage changes and fallen marks.

Here are the stats for Rq6 for those who would like to try to help Gringle and Quackjohn. May your game with these create as good memories as mine did.

The young baboon troop contains

Xarban’s gang has

Added some villagers of the Apple Lane

A map for the village is nowadays available here . The Return to Apple Lane scenario there is for Heroquest and very different than the original and could be run as a follow-on to the original even.

Plants for Glorantha – RQ Encounter Tool study

Sometimes it is good to find enemies that you can actually run away from. Plants usually cannot run after you but they might have other ways to persuade you to stay with them- sometimes forever. The generation will be done with RQ Encounter tool with the direct links below.

Perhaps you want to invoke your inner Rodin Greenbeak – here are few of the plants that he was so fond of studying. This garden has been selected from the ones who have unfriendly instincts towards moving life forms. There are thousands perhaps millions kinds of plants which bear no ill will towards the two or four legged.

Here are plants that have been seen in Prax and Tunnelled Hills but may grow in other areas as well.

Prax Daily Event contains as additional features Plants – Wastes
  • Bronze Rust
  • Bull Reeds
  • Cherry Bombs
  • Dreamweed
  • Tori’s Bane
  • Deathspine Cacti
  • Gagarth’s Gifts (Scrub Burss)
  • Gutwrack
  • Sneezeweed – Blisterweed – Blindweed
Delecti’s swamp and many other swamps contain deadly plants. Blackthorn trees have so far been seen only at Delecti’s swamp.
Monster Island Daily Event contains occasionally the swamp plants also prevalent at Delecti’s marsh. Their effects are found as additional features in category Plants – Swamp
  • Darkdart bush
  • Wailing trees
Loral Island or Monster Island has many plants for example
Kulamyu pods and Mantithorn Cacti have close relations to some plants in Wastes.
Sources for the above have been the old issues of Tales of The Reaching Moon, Tradetalk, RQ Adventures and the wonderful supplement called Monster Island.  If you know other sources for plants that you would like to see in RQ Encounter tool – inform me.

Guest Post: Back Under the Glowline

A long time gaming buddy of mine Tom Zunder wrote such a great post on his Gaming Tavern forum that I asked his permission to reblog it also here. There is so much choice that we friends of Glorantha have now. So here is his post. 

So, time to return to Glorantha I feel. It’s been years, maybe a decade or more, since I’ve gamed under the Red Moon, faced the terrors of Thanatar and charged with my Enlo against Blue Moon Moth Riders. You know what, I kinda bloody miss it, and purged of all the accumulated cruft of the Glorantha nerds and the mismatch between myself and Hero Wars, it’s time to worship the Dark Mother, riddle with Nysalor and embrace the endless history of Darra Happa.

But, and this is lovely, there are so many choices.Firstly, and I don’t mind saying this, there is HeroQuest with the tailored match between the the recent setting books, all redolent in simple d20 keywords and meshed neatly between culture and game. There is some truly lovely stuff in the sources that meshes with HQ, and yet.. I’ve never really enjoyed a game of HQ, although a lot of that might be from the Hero Wars action point economy that bored me to tears. Also, and although I can enjoy the depth of Glorantha cultural minutia, it has been what turned me off the setting for so long. I am, and always have been, more of a greatsword swinging Zorak Zorani than a Lhankor Mhy, and so I don’t think it’s HQ for me.

Secondly there is RuneQuest. We approach a time of possibly the best moderately complex version of RuneQuest that we’ve ever had, one that fixes the old issues about divine magic, montheism in a polytheistic world, makes a bloody good stab at sorcery and delivers a folk magic that actually feels folksy and useful to a carpenter or potter. We don’t have Adventures in Glorantha yet, but Hannu Kokko and the Finns are making a very good stab at it with their proto-cult write ups and the joy that is the RuneQuest Encounter tool online.. a party of Chaos cultists heading out from SnakePipe Hollow, I don’t mind if I do. Only problem, I think RQ6, like earlier RQs, doesn’t scale to Heroic, which is, after all why HeroQuest was first conceived.

Thirdly, and this isn’t as mad as it sounds, is OpenQuest. Combined with the RuneQuest Classics RQ2 reprints from Rich Meints, or a selection of RQ3 adventures, one can run an OQ game in Glorantha with barely a flutter. The spells have the same names, the stat blocks are very similar, and OQ is lighter and involves less rethink that RQ6. I know Simon Bray runs all his Glorantha with OQ these days and if that isn’t a recommendation I don’t know what is. So, possible and do-able, but one also can’t help wondering if maybe a copy of RQ2 or RQ3 might also fit in this camp, they’re easily pickupable in the UK on ebay, if you haven’t already got them all on the shelf, which I have.

Fourthly, and here the ZZ beserker in me wails in joy, 13th Age Glorantha! This riot of a d20 game that won me over to D&D after 34 years just made me think of Orlanth, the Red Goddess, Kyger Litor, Yelmalio, etc. as I turned the pages. This is a game for the Heroic, and by setting it in the Hero Wars when Argrath wages devastation on the Lunar Empire, and the Red Moon wages it back in an apocalyptic frenzy that cracks Glorantha from Choralinthor Bay to Valind’s Glacier, is the time for the power and crazy that is a 13th Age player character. So, and this is a defininte, the d20 will come to my Glorantha table, but it will be rolling high and not low.

But that’s not all.

Oh no.

I have a steadily growing collection of skirmish minis and skirmish rulesets. I know Sandy Petersen is playtesting a Gloranthan Gods War game, and I suspect that like his earlier Cthulhu boardgame, this may lead to a big fat bunch of 28mm Gloranthan minis.

So how to skirmish in Glorantha?

Well the Glory Geeks, that brave band of Gloranthan wargamers, have valiantly field Hordes of the Things Gloranthan armies in the HOTT fields of war, and indeed Rich Crawley’s Goranthan HOTT bands are great to play. Just ask him, or Jane, for army lists and where to get the rules and you too can be playing Gloranthan battles in under an hour a time on your dining room table. I am odd though, I don’t like to base my figures in blocks, since I am a roleplayer first I like them singly based. So, not HOTT for me, although always up for a game.

Rich and I have been enjoying Song of Blades and Heroes from Ganesha Games in recent years. A fast 28mm/15mm/any scale skirmish game free of any tie in with any minis maker, SoBH or SBH is enjoyable, wonderfully generic, quick to learn and play, and leaves your minis free for any other use since it has no basing needs. I know Rich has done Glorantha with it and I was almost there until I saw..

Of Gods and Mortals, or OGAM. Published by Osprey this is in fact a superset of SBH, where gods (40mm+), avatars (28-40mm) and their forces (28mm) battle it out on the field of war. What could be more Gloranthan? Cacodemon and his warband facing down Storm Bull and his? It’s appealing isn’t it, and I think I shall have to lay down the ten quid to get OGAM and see how it’ll work if and when some good Gloranthan minis come out, so come on Sandy!

And that’s not all.. after all, if Sandy P does get the Glorantha boardgame going, is there any chance of resisting that?

Must go, Cragspider is calling..

The Troll

HQ: http://www.glorantha.com/product/heroquest-glorantha/
RQ6: http://www.thedesignmechanism.com/runequest.php
OQ: http://d101games.com/books/openquest/
13th G: http://www.13thageinglorantha.com/

SBH: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3080 … and-heroes
OGAM: http://www.northstarfigures.com/list.php?man=159&page=1

Tom Zunder: tom at zunder.org.uk
Encourage the Awesome!

Bring Out Your Dead

In the honor of All Hallow’s Eve (long gone now) here are a few new and tuned Undead mostly for Glorantha.  Here are some new or more strongly tuned enemies.

The usual suspects are there – Skeletons, Mummies, Vampires, Zombies, Ghouls but there are also parties for Vivamort and Gark the Calm and a Hag or two but also some rare ones like the Skeleton of Than or even Firebrand the Flaming Skeleton. There are now Skeletons for Dream Dragons and Minotaurs but quite a few others. Careful with the Zombies as they mostly are of the variety that reproduces well.

On the party side there is also a Ghost ship, Ship of the Dead and Mummy and Zombie parties…

All of the undead can now be found with the keyword Undead on the Enemies or Parties filter.

In addition to the Undead there is also a Lamia looking for more company.

http://skoll.xyz/mythras_eg/

Force Is Strong In This One – The Guide to Glorantha has arrived

Today I received my copy of Guide to Glorantha. 12 kg’s worth of Gloranthan goodness. This is the book that we have been waiting for all these decades.  Extensive information on all of lozenge in the two volumes of Guide and 1 of maps. Additionally all of Genertela in 6 maps and all of Lozenge in 24 maps.

Attached are few pictures before sharing the loot. The Herbert’s science fiction paperback shown as a size comparison.

The Guide is just gorgeous and full of info just on the right level at multitude of aspects of Glorantha so it can be used and extended for a multitude of campaigns and scenarios. Perhaps later a small review after I have had enough time to digest all of it. The guide can be bought as PDF’s but the print version really does justice to the contents.

IMG_0140 IMG_0141 IMG_1489 IMG_1490

Mythras Encounter Tool – feature recap for busy GMs

Mythras Encounter Generator (formerly known as RQ6 Encounter Generator) (the creation of skoll (his nickname in thedesignmechanism forums)) has grown lately to have quite a bit of new features and content. Content is crowd sourced.

So for the hard working GM’s there is now an easy way to generate many types of enemies. You need a herd of allosaurs – click, select number press generate and unleash doom. The characters finished them off – need a bigger reserve herd – click a number and generate again. Other beasts got attracted to the noise – perhaps a tyrannosaur – click a number and generate again.

Endless supply of Lunar more what you need – pick from the list – generate again. In units nicely formed of up to 40 individuals – they will march to restore peace and order in the name of the Moon again.

Town guards noticed your character’s getaway from the second story job – click a number and generate.

Serpent People to fill your jungle with silent death – select from the list.

More than 1400 templates (more than 1700 in Feb 2015, more than than 1840 in April 2015, more than 2800 in April 2018, 4000 public ones in May 2022 (and more than that in non public) have already been created for Gloranthan, Monster Island, General Fantasy settings by the users of the system covering most of the monsters in Mythras, Monster Island, Anaxial’s Roster and Anaxial Annex and many more.

http://skoll.xyz/mythras_eg/

Need a new kind of enemy – use the templates from existing races and templates, modify to your heart’s content and create away. http://skoll.xyz/mythras_eg/instructions/ You can add features to your template by selecting from over 100 (more than 400 in June 2022) categories ranging from abilities and  combat styles to disguises.

Most of the Gloranthan cults have templates from initiate to a priest (more than 450 cult templates, more than 600 in June 2022). You can search for them by name in the enemies tab or by name and cult rank in the home page. The cults are created according to Gloranthan Cult One-pagers while we wait for the Adventures in Glorantha.

You can create parties that contain variety of enemies.  Here are a few for an example.

Your own parties can have party features ranging from mission and fatigue status to sartar tribe names.

If you are in a hurry you can go to party (or enemy) page, filter the results and press “Do you feel lucky”.

The generated enemies names and note fields can be modified and saved either as pdf or web page to save your favorite enemy stats.

You can save your favorite enemies to your home page.

If you would like to encounter something you might not see every day filter your party page by “Off the beaten path”

Visual guides to RQ Encounter tools