Tag: Tools

Encyclopedia of Mythras Combat Style Traits

The directory based combat style cards have been replaced by Combat Style Card Encyclopaedia

Here is a list of many combat style traits that I have adopted or will adopt into my campaign. Currently the list is above 60 traits.

It contains the combat style traits from the following official publications:

  • Mythras Core,  Mythic Rome, AiG, Mythic Constantinople, Monster Island.

In addition to these official ones it contains few from RangerDan’s campaign and Raleel’s Martial Arts Combat style traits.

The unarmed set alone is quite an expansion to the ones in Mythras Core. The way I am planning to bring the unarmed ones on is to create schools that have some of these available – like the ones that come from Mythic Constantinople. Raleel’s set already has several that quite nicely will form a school as they depend on each other.

You will be able to vary your combat styles quite nicely by choosing a small set of “cultural” or brotherhood weapons (1-3) and adding one, maybe two combat style traits on it.

The list is available here

..and it is of course also updated in the Mythras Charts and Tables page

Updated Charts for Mythras – Spirit Combat as new chart

Here are some updated charts for Mythras.

New charts:

Updated charts

Updates include

  • Mythras 3rd Printing changes incorporated (for example Drop Foe, Spoil Spell). Page number references corrected to point to correct places in the Mythras
  • Clarifications on Prepare Counter, Grip/grappling and Impale.
  • Some readability issues fixed. The default font has been changed to Baskerville and some charts have Sava Pro
  • On the situational modifiers more used modifiers stand out a bit more clearly
  • The trademark texts fixed

The rest of the Mythras Charts are here

 

Morituri Te Salutant – Gladiators in RQ6 and Glorantha

Gladiators – Pete Nash wrote an excellent article on gladiators for Swedish Roleplaying Magazine – Fenix  He described well the many different forms of gladiators and their tactics which is well worth a look. Gladiators in history were very popular and could be a good source of scenario hooks in addition to forcing the players to arena to participate.

Here are RQ Encounter Generator versions of them. These are all human…

“Returning to the Arena today, after five years in retirement. We are pleased to bring you… the only undefeated champion in Fonrit history: the legendary Doom That Came from Temissrah

Here are all of them at school

So you want to generate RQ Encounters for RQ6 but do not want them to be in Glorantha

There are people who want to play in different worlds than in Glorantha but still want to use Runequest 6 and make it easy to create the encounters. That is very straightforward. There is an article on searching but below are few extra tips.

Use the filters

Select either “Fantasy”, “RQ6”, “Sea”. “Plant”, “Jungle”, “Monster Island”, “Chaos” as your filters in enemies or parties page. Most of the results will be non Gloranthan
There is a tag “Rq6” that shows you only the monsters defined in RQ6 rule book. There are a few missing (humans, elves, dwarves but they are described with their Gloranthan counterparts). I added the tag to most my creations but there are some in RQ6 book that I have not created the template but somebody else has.  There is also a tag “Monster Island” which shows all the entries from Monster Island.

Use the home page

Type -Glorantha on the home page and you will get only non Gloranthan results. Currently the minus only works in the home page. for example try typing into the home page (not enemies page, not parties page) Fantasy -Glorantha -Sea and you will see the list which has tags “Fantasy” but not Glorantha and not Sea.

Search with monster names

Search “Giant”, “Zombie”, “Skeleton”, “Lion”, “Tiger”, “Sorcerer”, “Primitive” etc and you will find quite a few entries.

About the tags. 

Tags are personal – so each creator of the encounter can only tag his own entries. There might therefore be differences in how people have tagged their creations over time.

Very short introduction how to map (Gloranthan) RQ Encounters to your generic fantasy world.

Many encounters in RQ Encounter tool are made for Glorantha but you can use all or most of them easily on any world with just a few tips.
 I am really direct and brief here – so forgive me – oh grognards of Glorantha for inaccuracies.
Forget about the names of the gods – think of the aspect below.
If you do not like to use the magic provided – discard it.
If you do not want to think of gods at all – drop them – just use the spells.

Mapping list

  • Orlanth  = Storm god, god of warriors. Worshippers of Orlanth can be used  as your standard barbarians
  • Umathela, Sartar = your standard barbarian areas
  • Afadjann, Fonrit,Kareeshtu = Think of thousand and one nights tales inhabitants
  • Agimori – Very tall dark people
  • Agartha, Akakor, Zerzura = Serpent people tribes from Monster Island
  • Anguri, Gabari, Gamari,Ghidori, Kamacuri, Kangi,Kumongi, Oodaki, Primitive tribesmen from jungle from Monster Island
  • Aranea = Spider god
  • Argan Argar = Troll trader god
  • Pavis = big frontier city
  • Balazaring = primitive hunter gatherers
  • Basmoli = Lion god
  • Broo = Chaos Hybrids with usually goat’s heads
  • Chaos = that unruly evil thing that you must oppose
  • Undead = those that live but do not
  • Doraddi = another tall, dark people tribe
  • Lodril = Volcano god
  • Exiger = excellent fighters
  • Etyries, Issaries = trader gods
  • Humakt = death god for warriors
  • Wachaza = Sea warrior death god
  • Ludoch, Malasp = mermen
  • Lunar = civilized warriors – think Roman, Persian
  • Lankhor Mhy = knowledge god
  • Odayla = hunter god
  • Waha = nomad chieftain god
  • Mallia = Causer of Disease God
  • Chalana Arroy = Healer god
  • Thed, Ragnaglar = Chaos Gods
  • Thanatari = Chaos knowledge god – headhunters
  • Yelmalio = Solar warrior god
  • Yelm = Solar ruler god.

This tackles most common ones in the RQ Encounter parties list.

Putting on my Protection from Flames spell with maximum intensity…

Creating your own encounters

If you do not find the right kind of encounters it is easy to create your own. Use a good tagging strategy when you do – see how others have tagged theirs.

Game Night supported by Mythras Encounter tool

RQ Encounter Generator provides you a way to very quickly generate evenings worth of encounters for your RQ6 game session. There are more than 1900 distinct encounter templates for enemies and hundreds of different ready made party encounters.  There are multiple ways of using the floor for preparing.

A. Using it on the fly

You need to have internet connection and preferably a printer available.

Find an enemy or party using the search tools

1. filter by category

2. search with any word and/or opponent skill level

3. browse or press “Do you feel lucky”

4. Generate

5. Save to a location of your choice or just print or use the pdf.

This might cause a disruption in the flow of your session so what I do usually is as follows.

B. Preparing for the session before hand

Sometimes you are preparing for a session well before the players come in. Sometimes it is half an hour or even less. The following approach is fit for both but of course you will have more time to think about the results of your preparation if you do it for example in the previous night.

I usually use loopy planning defined by Johnn Four which I have had very good experience so far.

Step 1 – the search 

What I have usually done – for an evenings’ game I create pdf’s out of the usual suspects of the area I am playing in – using the filtering and searching. I take care to look at the hanging threads and the plans of the enemies (loopy planning) when I am searching for encounters.

I might mark a few search results as favorites.  I might filter with a keyword and press “Do you feel lucky” a few times and create pdf’s out of those.

For example if I would need different kind of plants I would print out the “Not really a rose garden” – same for dinosaurs.

For a city I print out a bar and a market plus some random law enforcement and villains and/or gangs, a temple or two.

Usually it is enough to generate 2 or 3 encounters worth of enemies per terrain type or hanging thread. If the encounters are not rabble or underlings it might be hard to go thru more than a few robust melees or adverse encounters in an evening.

Step 2 – keeping the results

Usually I print the generated enemies out as I probably need to mark hit points down while fight goes on.

I keep a list of recurring enemies (the ones they did not manage to kill the first time round or that have hanging threads from previous session etc) in Evernote or Dropbox or printed out on a folder.

It is quite rare that I cannot live with these printouts as it is difficult during an evening session to go thru more than a few melees

Step 3 – adhoc

Sometimes during a game I need certain kind of enemy that I did not prepare for – I search for it and print it out from my iPad to a local printer.

RQ Encounter Generator reaches 1900: RQ6 Monsters all covered, Pamaltela and City Gangs

RQ Encounter Generator passed the 1900 templates mark this weekend. This also marks the point of having all encounters from RQ6 rules book covered.
Rq6 book encounters added
Pamaltela carnivore encounters added
City encounters added
Added also feature list for Pavis Street Gang names, Bakru Curses and Curse Durations.
Here is another undead – this time a Ghoul (Dark Troll)
Finally a possible campaign stopper – this time in Dragon Pass

Umathela – Orlanthi, Sedalpists, Vadeli in the Southern Continent of Pamaltela

RQ Encounter turns to South. Lord of the Storm is strong in the coast of Pamaltela (Fonrit, Fonrit update, Vadeli) even before the arrival of Harrek. The problems with Lunar seem remote when the real problems are forest elves, Afadjanni surges and Vadeli treachery and there is even talk of  new power of Kresh in the south. Sorcery is strong in this land. Thanks for Simon Bray for the very useful background discussions that will hopefully generate even more of Umathelan and Fonritan material in the future. Here are few encounters for Umathela in RQ Encounter Generator format.

Horses are rare in Pamaltela so Horse mounted mercenaries belong to wealthy employers or elite troops.  Some remote tribes have tamed large flightless birds (known as horse claws) as mounts.

Sedalpist Sorcery Order with Apprentice, Adept, Mage and Archmage has been created.

One of the cities has its own marine corps and it has been detailed here

Various inhabitants of Umathela have been created here.

The merchant caravan and Umathelan market has Common and Rare trade goods in Umathela according to the guide. Rare is rare if it is coming relatively far or is otherwise very precious…
Vadeli magic has been updated. A new sorcery order: Vadeli Sorcery order has been created.
Many of the encounters possible in Fonrit are also likely in Umathela even though they might be more hostile situations – so the relevant encounters have been updated with the tag “Umathela”
All of the sorcerers have been updated with Special Magic Component to Shape and Unknown Magic Component. The convention is that all the sorcery orders usually teach the default Magic Components by which sorcerers can shape their spells (Combine, Duration, Magnitude, Targets, Range). The order might sometimes not teach one of the default components (or might teach it only to higher ranks of sorcerers) and might teach one of the special magic components (Ablation, Focus, Fortune, Precision, Swiftness).
When creating a sorcerer you can choose one or more of these as a random feature or as non random feature. This will give even more variety to sorcerers. All of the sorcerers I have created have now this possibility of one of the default magic components missing and one special one added.

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.

Exigers of Pamaltela in Mythras – on the trail of Jeff Okamoto Campaign Log

I have long been fascinated by Jeff Okamoto’s campaign log of the epic Sandy Petersen campaign ranging from Pavis to Pamaltela. Years and years ago the original manuscript was on sale at Convulsion (somewhere in the 90’s) and even while fiercely trying with a friend of mine (hi Nigel) we could not get enough money together in the auction to purchase it. Luckily few years ago the manuscript became publicly available.

One of the highlights of the log was the exiger campaign. Now with some new information unearthed by Guide to Glorantha and the wonderful community at Google+ Glorantha forum I put together the exigers for Runequest 6 Encounter Generator.

Exigers are a group of fierce mountain clans in Mari Mountains in Pamaltela ruling over their Menial slaves who farm and live in the valleys while exigers trade with outsiders.

First exigers depicted here are Humakt worshippers. Very few of them actually ride horses – usually there are not enough horses to equip the men at arms. Some  tribes have ‘tamed’ mountain trolls – they gray giants in the Okamoto log.

All exiger at initiate level and higher are usually the original exigers each commanding half a dozen men at arms who usually have been flocking together to the fortresses of the exigers. Sometimes the exigers have a sorcerer with them.

Guide to Glorantha has a picture of an exiger at page 588.

Menials are slaves of the exigers who have been forbidden to use arms. They have been using staves and unarmed combat to defend themselves. Menials know of friendly shamans in the mountains – of whom the exigers are wary of.

Added also Doraddi Hair color and Appearance – Doraddi Skin to the additional feature tables and Exiger Tribes to party additional feature tables.