Apple Lane Again and Again

 

Over the years I have posted about my use of the old Runequest Apple Lane setting. Multiple times. For both its intended Glorantha setting, and my D&D homebrew world. Some names get changed up, and other details (mostly to prevent internet lookups by players), but basically present it as is. I renamed the town "Lemon Tree," for example. 

This is a location in my world that runs on Negative Continuity. In other words, different players have gone there again and again over the decades, and only minor changes will be there, usually left over from the previous campaigns. Like when a female character married a major NPC. But most things just do a soft reboot. The Pawnshop gets assaulted on the full moon again and again. Sometimes by baboons, sometimes by orcs. Or in the recent games. Vaishino, a type of serpent people introduced in Magic the Gathering. 

I was looking for something new to for the Pawnshop Scenario, and stumbled across these fierce reptilians. I imagined them easily being able to scramble up walls and across the roof of the shop.

I had designed the entire campaign to lead up to the Pawnshop scenario, followed by the Rainbow Mounds. A couple of the characters at chargen came up with an NPC, Billy, a fellow villager they grew up with. They would be going out in the world to look for him, armed with only a few clues. Intending to lead up to the Rainbow Mounds, I would put Billy in there, captured and charmed by Adorra, an Enchantress NPC who got involved with previous characters in another campaign almost 10 years ago and got magically trapped within the mounds. 

Anyway, the campaign, which I called "Trade and Turpitude", was mostly up to this point a caravan guarding series of games, leading up to the characters being dropped off in Apple Lane, uh, I mean Lemon Tree.

With the Pawshop encounter being the showpiece at this point in the campaign, I wanted to work up to it. I placed Lemon Tree in the Eastern Highands of the southern shires (in previous campaigns I was not calling the area highlands yet) and I wanted the area to have a decidedly Glorantha flavor. People almost living in a bronze age, and worshipping older gods not usually associated with the Kingdom. So Issaries, the trade god the pawship owner worships, or the Sheriffs deity Orlanth, are influential in this area. It's part of the kingdom, but no tax collector ever comes to call. 

The Pawnshop encounter went well, I think, though it took 3 sessions to finish. For reasons I think I might explore in my next post, the PC's came into the evening pretty beat up from several encounters that day. Also, the encounter also involved the NPC's Relanis and Demul who I have mentioned before. the party is very divided about these NPC's, so as always they added a little extra tension. It was a hard fight, probably the toughest I've done for the pawnshop encounter, over several games, but they won. 

I love that I can go online and find pretty decent maps of the area and the pawnshop. This was my first time doing it electronically. All the others were of course done on grease mats. That was always  a lot of work.

I added all the numbers...

"come visit relaxing Apple La...um, Lemon Tree"

Cheers

Nazi's of Tekumel

 

Hardly a subtle title for a post about an obscure game/setting that after several decades is getting more chatter than it ever did, though not for reasons (most) of its fan base is happy about. 

A focal point of the sudden controversy is over at the blog Grognardia, where blogger (often pejoratively referred to as "The Pope of the OSR") James Maliszewski has, since his return from his abandoned Kickstarter debacle years ago, been making the occasional post about his long running Empire of the Petal Throne campaign online. Though the setting has its fans, the posts about his gameplay seem not as welcome as his posts on old gaming magazines and Dungeon Master Guide snippets such as hit point generation and henchmen concepts. 

Maliszewski even did a post not too long ago seeming to lament the lack of comments on these entries and threatened to stop posting them. "Oh no!" cried his faithful. "Please don't!" OK, maybe not so much. But this campaign he does, along with posting long (quite dry IMHO - I rarely could get past a couple paragraphs when I tried to follow them) entries about the gameplay, seems of prime importance to him. But now his heart is broken. Sundered. He is bewildered and lost. Naw, after the weeping and gnashing of teeth he started posting again chop chop. Will he continue his campaign? Perhaps, but I might hazard a guess he'll stop posting about it. At least one of his posts following the wake seem Tekumel related. 

FYI this post seems to be about Grognadia only because the blog kind of seemed to have more Tekumel stuff going on than other places. Though I didn't look too hard. I'm not real in touch with what is going on in Grognard circles these days.  Tenkar's Tavern seemed to have a video post about it, and no beef with The Tavern, but I can't get past a minute or two of most OSR related videos anywhere on the net. His are no exception.

OK, enough potatoes and on to the meat. Apparently, MAR Barker, creator of Tekumel, is an unabashed Nazi sympathizer and anti-Semite, as evidenced by some Sci Fi book he wrote while still living, extolling the virtues of Nazi ideals (and perhaps even ripping off decades old Marvel Comics Captain America plotlines regarding a "4^th Reich").

The big takeaway for this image is
Jane Weidlin from The Go Go's
has a blog about comic books

 Ouch. Not just that, but that the Tekumel Society, (Made up of his fans? Family members? I dunno), has known about it for a long time. 

I don't know about Nazi, but Barker
could have a Blofeld/Goldfinger
 thing going on here...

Maliszewski is shaken. His readership pop up in the comments to offer support/unsupport. 

My heart breaks for you. May you find peace with your relationship to Tekumel and all the joy and belonging that it has helped you find.

This really must be the utter worst for fans of Tékumel. It's bad enough when a favorite author turns out to be a bit of a prat, but in the RPG setting you feel like you've been walking around inside the mind of the author. I'm sure people in online fora will be debating and relitigating for years over whether Tékumel is "tainted" by its author's views. Just a sad situation all around.

I refuse to join in with an outrage mob of barbarians seeking to destroy all art and civilization.

It's really awful, and I sympathize with your situation as a "name" in the fan-community. 

OK, I'm not here to make fun, though acting like a family member died over finding out some fairly unknown game/setting/fictional language designer turned out to be a skinhead at heart is.. I dunno. Nothing I can say in that regard won't sound bad. Sure, James at Grognardia was in love with this stuff, and even had a fanzine going, so I guess you can feel bad for him. But, you know, campaigns end. You stop liking some stuff. I read LOTR 3 times growing up, and loved the films. But if I found out Tolkien ran around secretly setting homeless people on fire it would Surprise me. But overall, my reaction would probably amount to "...ah well. That sucks. But I was probably never going to read the Trilogy again anyway." Sure, if I did I would look at it differently. But it wouldn't ruin having hobbits in D&D for me. Oh well, there but for the grace of God go I.

Though I suppose if I was running some long campaign in Middle-Earth it would give me more cause to think. But getting all verklempt over it? Naw. Life is too short. If you can move on from a lost loved one, you can move on from an RPG to another. There are plenty of setting and genres to love (shit, there are guys like Erik Tenkar who appears to love and play them all). Many not put together by a modern Nazi. That we know of, anyway. 

 I have my own history with Empire of the Petal Throne. Not deep in experience, but deep in time. You see, as a youngster I hung out at Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica (famous in OSR circles for its mention in Playing at The World), and here I was exposed to early RPG's at around the time they came out. When I started playing there the owner Gary and his crew were pretty much past playing D&D. They were playing Bushido, Runequest, Traveller, and even a bit of Chivalry and Sorcery. And also some Empire of The Petal Throne. I think I only played a couple of sessions. It had a dungeon crawl element, which made it a lot like D&D. But other than that it was very different. I appreciated that in a way. Its even possible I tried a session or two with my friends, though If I did it clearly did not stick. 

Big time EOTPT fan. I get the feeling this
guy isn't too worried about the 
nazi stuff

In Tekumel, Culture and such were very different. There were oddball aliens races. And it had a very complex history involved that I found fascinating at first. An advanced resort planet out of Star Trek or Dr. Who or something. Indigenous races rounded up into reservations so visitors from outer space could enjoy Space-Disneyworld.  The whole shebang getting lost in a dimensional vortex and smooshed together on one interdimensional planet devoid of stars. And THEN the apocalypse begins. Flash forward ANOTHER 60,000 years and hey presto Sci Fi world is now a fantasy world. Hmm..Ok, that all does sound pretty cool. Assuming I got it right. 

Like I said, fascinating at first. But these concepts did not hold my interest for long. I was far more interested in other batshit and perhaps more lowbrow stuff like Arduin or Wilderlands of High Fantasy. City State of The Invincible Overlord. This stuff was not the type of setting implied in early D&D. But I could grasp what it was. More or less easily described to players, if needing described at all. I don't remember my first time as a player in Empire of The Petal Throne. In fact, the older dudes briefly all wrapped up in it at Aero probably didn't even bother to describe the background to a young teen. But I can imagine there was something like "Your fighter of the single Gammahydron, "Umaoprah", arrives on the shores of Whatasnozz, and exits the boat. A large Sar'to'nack approaches you and hands you a moldy purple plum. This is your invitation to fight in the labyrinth of Gr'in'zel'mort for prestige, honor, and a shot at becoming a fighter of the second Gammahydron.."

Ok, it's been over 20 years since I read the book. But I'm sure a lot of names were all Ch'alty. 

 Arduin and Wilderlands were far more accessible. And they were full of variety. They were chaos really, and as a very young person I did not need more explanation than that. And I don't think it was less serious than some far flung, mushed together pocket dimension, high tech as magic setting such as Tekumel. Now, decades later I learn more and more about Wilderlands and Glorantha, that makes me wish I appreciated those even more back in the day. Wilderlands was a setting at the end of its days, a land made up of layer upon layer of civilizations that lay under our sandaled feet in the form of endless ruins, and a place still reflecting the remainders of ancient interstellar war. That was at least as awesome to me as what EOTPT had going in terms of background IMO.  And Glorious Glorantha, which I loved perhaps most for its divided map of "in Column A you get ancient Ireland/Germany and in Column B you get ancient Middle East...with a topping of ancient Greece." Great stuff, mostly just lacking made-up languages. Unless somebody did that. I'd like to know what Praxian sounds like. But again, more accessible. 

I suppose many consider Empire of The Petal Throne is more for the "intellectually" inclined. If you are like James at Grognardia and say "indeed" a lot, then I guess that's for you. 

So back in the day during its brief run at Aero, I got a copy of the game. I don't know when the boxed edition was available, but mine was pretty much the rules and a map in a plastic bag. For decades it was in my collection, occasionally pulled out to look at and wonder if I should try to run a campaign, or just stare at it like the oddity it was.  But I usually ended with a "nope," and playing something else. So many good things to play. 

Around 2000 I put up a lot of my old unused game stuff on Ebay. Bunnies and Burrows, early White Dwarf issues. And EOTPT went as well. Don't even recall what I got for it. But while I regret not holding on to that adorable old copy of Bunnies, I never missed Empire of The Petal Throne. Thought to be honest I'd like to look at it now. 

Would I run it? I guess. Maybe not. I dunno. If I did it would be as a museum piece. I don't really tend to hold up classic game designers on pedestals. Gygax, Perrin, Peterson. I loved the games but most of the time don't think much of the men behind them besides basic historical context. For the most part these guys despite often being the catalysts were just part of the ultimate stews they made, especially as time went by. But Barker was the sole dude behind EOTPT. It makes a difference. Yeah, I'm not Nazi, but I'd maybe run a short campaign of it if give the opportunity. Mostly if I didn't have to study the ins and outs of the backdrop. And I guess I would have to. And that combined with the Nazi stuff would probably make me "nope" and save the (probably pirated) PDF onto one of my old external drives. 

YMMV, as they say. 

Bugbears. Jack-O-Bears. Same Same?

 I barely manage to make a post a couple of times a month lately. Besides my very casual approach to the blog these days (I make pretty much no attempt to advertise it in any way. If I was I would comment at Grognardia and other popular old school spots on the reg). Plus I work in health care which means often 50 hour weeks on the job. But one of the handful (and yes you could count them on one hand and have change left over) folk who are kind enough to comment on the occasional post had a comment on my post earlier today, and I thought "what the hell" rather than bury my reply in comments I'd make it a short post. Go a little deeper in the weeds on Bugbears. 

Not a bugbear. More
 like a Walktapus

The thing you're calling a "Runequest bugbear" is a jack-o-bear, a Chaotic critter that looks and acts less like a D&D bugbear than the similarly chimerical owlbear does. Just because the names all include "bear" doesn't make them the same thing, or even related. Doesn't even work as an attempted joke.

I could say "Fair enough," especially when it comes to my weak (I am a gamer after all) attempts at humor. But to the because the names all include "bear" doesn't make them the same thing, or even related I feel like I have to blow a time out whistle, or at least throw out a less shrill au contraire mon frair. There is a clear connection between the D&D bugbear and the Runequest jack-o-thing. 

Here is the current D&D bugbear.

Here is the 1st edition version.

All good. Now here is the earliest known depiction of a D&D bugbear.

Dang. That thing has a pumpkin for a head! 

OK, the crux of the matter. I am no D&D historian. And I certainly care less about the historical context of gaming things than I did when I started this blog. Though it's fun to walk down memory lane now and again. And it is memory lane, seeing as I pretty much was living it in my early gaming. As an adult I really didn't follow much of what was going on in the decades between my teens and when I first noticed the OSR about 10 years ago or so. But in my early to later teens I was in the thick of it. 

My earliest gaming outside of my friends was at Aero Hobbies, one two hobby shops in Southern California that specialized in D&D stuff and every other new RPG on the scene. I was playing games there starting around 1978 or so. By then the older locals were into Runequest, Traveller, Bushido, Empire of the Petal Throne. Anything but D&D. Some of the folk there would in some OSR circles be considered minor celebrity. And the older folk there certainly had plenty to say about the industry. I mean, we were surrounded by all the new books, and a galaxy of early miniatures. 

So, on bugbears my understanding is this: The artwork of "bugbear, ghoul, and friends" bugbear was a misunderstanding of Gygax's description (an "oval head shaped like a pumpkin") or some such. So there you go. Instead of a big hairy Chewbacca wanna be, you got that monstrosity. 

Mini's were produced before Gaz could get on top of it, like so:

So sometime during the populating of Glorantha, the powers that be suggested they come up with some creatures that already existed as mini's you could find. Things like Griffons were a no-brainer. Plenty of mythical creatures from D&D getting made. And maybe Prax is filled with herds of everything BUT horses because you could find packs of other kinds of hooved animals at the 5 and dime. Antelopes and boars and so forth. 

But this mini, this pumpkin bear thing (or another like it) inspired the creation of the Jack-O-Bear, as seen on the cover of the campaign book below:

Now, bugbears aren't known as spellcasters. But pretty much everything in Runequest is a spell caster. I think Jack's had some paralyzing power or another. They are chaos creatures and therefore are part of a solid ethos/grouping in that setting. And whereas D&D bugbears are fairly oricish/ogreish in general (big thugs who crack your skull for laughs), the Gloranthan ones at least appear (modernly) more bestial in nature. 

Just because the names all include "bear" doesn't make them the same thing, or even related. Doesn't even work as an attempted joke.

Wellll..., my weak jokes aside, there is a very clear line between the creatures. More than just the word "bear." The similarity to an Owlbear things is fine, but if you look at pics like the one of the Griffin mountain cover, they weren't meant to be four legged animals. I know bears can stand on hind legs, but that thing is blocking a spear and casting a spell. They were literally using the early D&D mini, a two-legged humanoid, as the basis. And the mini does not have a bear body. It looks more to me like they used a shambling mound mold and added the pumpkin. Regardless of what they make them out to be in later edition. That old stuff does still kind of count (if you are anywhere near my age anyway). So the joke, such as it is, has some validity. 

Or not. But fair enough. 

Cheers

Your Gameworld: Reboots and Retcons

I was very fortunate as a kid, early on in my gaming, to have started a game world and kept with it for decades. It was really just a dungeon and a tavern to go to between games. That really only lasted a couple of sessions, as supply shops and residences besides the tavern became necessary. And that's how my setting Acheron grew. As things were needed. Often locations would be created by players as backgrounds for their characters, and that added to my world. So it was a growing thing, created out of shared experiences.

I always tried to maintain a consistency in my world. If something happened, then the world was forever affected by it. The Isle of Dread visited for the first time? OK, now it was no longer virgin territory. The Caves of Chaos battled through and the evil temple destroyed? Guess I'm never using that location again. At least not the way it was. 

But I softened on that consistency in the last decade or so as I found myself wanting to reuse certain adventures that I loved. Mostly notably the old White Dwarf Magazine dungeon The Lichway. Also, I have had a lifelong love for the Runequest Glorantha town of Apple Lane, a module I also adapted for use in D&D. In the Lichway you very likely release a hoard of undead in the complex. In Apple Lane you will defend a pawnshop from an evening attack (in the Runequest material its a tribe of baboons), and eventually explore The Rainbow Mounds and fight the forces of the Dark Troll White Eye (an orc in my D&D setting). 

Apple Lane I could reuse a couple of times because the first time (and maybe second and third) I used it for Runequest. Decades ago. For D&D I changed some names; Gringle became Gengle. Apple Lane became Lemon Tree. But most details stayed the same. Lichway was sort of "one and done" because, well, hundreds of undead at large in the place. 

But there came a time when I realized the only person I was fooling with a sort of enforced purity of continuity in the world was myself. Every few years I found myself with a brand new group. In every case nobody had ever heard of Apple Lane or The Lichway. This was a fantasy world with no real value outside my games. Why was I so worried about continuity. Did it really matter? 

But in a way I have found, for me at least, a happy compromise. A location reboot. I decided that some locations might be in sort of a dimensional loop (or whatever). Perhaps a curse or will of some godling that no matter what happens it returns the location, all its inhabitants, back to a zero setting. When one group of players is out of my life, I can refresh these old favorites to use again if I so choose. The undead of The Lichway return to their crypts. Dark Odo and her followers rewind back to their old positions. The local fishing village forgets the adventurers who came that time and unleashed the undead hoards who would keep them awake at night howling within the necropolis. Apple Lane itself is also in a continuity loop. Gringle will always need brave souls to protect his pawn shop. White Eye the orc always returns to life and haunts the Rainbow Mounds. 

These are out of the way locations, so its easy to just reset and reuse.

There is a new wrinkle though. One of my old players from my home town is involved in my online Roll20 games. I want to use Apple Lane and its environs once more (maybe for the 5th time, in two worlds). But the thing is she had a character experience this 20 years ago. The entire adventure was a major point in her characters life. Back then she ended up falling in love with the pawn shop owners assistant "Hobbit John" (a duck in the Runequest version) and marrying him (yes, she was a hobbit as well, a cleric and local sheriff). So she would surely remember all this. 

But its cool. She is a trusted old player. She has played in several different groups of mine over the decades. So I can go ahead and jerk the curtain a bit in her case. Let her know what I am doing. Tell her about the reboot concept. It would be a rerun for her, but its been long enough where she won't remember every detail so it can still be fun for her. And of course there will be differences. Hobbit John is gone, having married a players character and being released from whatever curse maintains the retcon in Apple Lane. My last go at the Lichway was different as well (she was not involved in that campaign as it was face to face before the pandemic) as noted in my previous posts about The Lichway. 

So things can and should be changed up. But there is no negative side to reusing beloved modules and disrupting the continuity of your world. And modules aren't the only changes I've embraced. Hell, back in the day I let a friend run a campaign in my world where he promptly affected things on a continental level. For the longest time I just kept all his messing with the world as part of its history. But it got to the point where I said "why?" and just dismissed those things. Wiped them from the history. He certainly would never know. He died in the 90's.

Nobody really knows but me. And as I get older I just don't care any more. I'm not writing The Silmarillion here. Its just a D&D setting. When I'm gone it comes with me.  Its just about having fun and is no more serious than that. 

2012 - a great year of just plain gaming

With the Temple of Demogorgon 4 year anniversary just this last week, I thought it might a good time to talk about some of my gaming from the last year (as seems to be the tradition). Mostly the last year was about focusing on actually running games over blogging or kerfuffling in the OSR, and I found it both peaceful and fulfilling.

In 2012 I didn’t do much in the way of gaming outside the regular group. After a couple of shitty experiences in the previous and other years both at tabletops and online (there were some good ones too), I dedicated myself to the regular group and to new campaigns with gusto, and kept my posts here to an average of 2 or 3 a month.

Pretty much started the year jumping right into my long-daydreamed about classic Runequest game. I did a lot of research, and dreaming up of my own stuff in relation to existing data for this campaign. It was a lot of work, but I love Glorantha and could not wait to portray my version of it. Though I used a lot of the Celtic imagery and some clarifications on locations from later editions, I did my best to keep my Glorantha very basic, they way I experienced it as a kid. There was a bit of work to be done with the crunch, as I almost immediately threw out some of the Strike Rank stuff and started houseruling to make the game and all it’s combat focus go smoother. I think that went well, as I’m pretty sure I captured the groups imagination with strong tribal-clan setting, a nice break from generic medieval Europe setting of D&D. I finally got to do the classic Gringles Pawnshop and Rainbow Mounds scenario’s, and it was all good. I think I left the campaign off later in the year with the players wanting more, and that is the feather in the GM cap as far as I’m concerned. I will for sure revisit the characters later this year.


In January regular player Paul brought a copy of Arkham Horror boardgame when we were low on players, and though lengthy (as most boardgames seem to be) it was fun, and got my juices flowing to do some Call of Cthulhu. We did eventually get a few sessions in, and it was good times. I called this part of the campaign “Fangs of New York,” with a classic New York setting. Byakhees and Chinese Gangsters over Times Square on New Years Eve, Cho Cho People and Chaugner Faugh in the Jersey Pine Barrens. Really great sessions, and as in the past some players hemmed and hawed about the genre, but loved it once we played. Quite honestly, I think I do my best GMing with Cthulhu. I’m really “on” when I run it. Looking forward to getting in some more of this soon. It is a good game for when you are low on players.


Just a quick video gaming mention as an aside. Around the earlier part of last year my video game of choice ended up being Fallout 3. I hadn’t played a video game with this much enthusiasm since Resident Evil 4. Just a great and immersive game, and a big time waster in 2012. Right now, into 2013, I’m putting a bit of effort into Borderlands 1 and Bioshock (I might have mentioned in the past that I am always 2-4 years behind on my video games).

My Knights of The Old Republic campaign continued. Despite the crunch, or maybe even because of it, the group on a whole seemed to really enjoy it. I cannot compare it to AD&D as I hadn’t run that for the group in over two years, but out of everything else I have done; Mutant Future, Champions, and Call of Cthulhu, this seemed to be what the gang liked best. I ran it right up to the holidays, but have set it aside since I want to do D&D so bad. We’ll hopefully get back to it later this year, maybe summer.

In addition to this new D&D campaign we are just getting underway, I also still want to do a mini-campaign with the high level dudes left over from the Night Below campaign I ended two years ago. The players seem very attached to these characters, and it seems a shame to not do the occasional outing with them, despite my mild dislike for high level play.


So we in the group have started my new AD&D 1st edition campaign, and the characters seem like a lot of fun so far. So my gaming wish list for lucky number 2013 is to do a bunch of this AD&D campaign, a smattering of the high level AD&D, More Call of Cthulhu here and there, a continuance of KOTOR later in the year, and…heaven forbid…maybe sneak a little Champions in? That would be a damn good gaming year for me.

Another Campaign Ends

Last night we wrapped up the fairly short (maybe 8 sessions or so) Runequest campaign I popped on the group a few months ago. I had actually intended to mix in a lot more Call of Cthulhu, a sort of Chaosium mix, but we were having such a good time with the RQ that we pretty much stuck with that and breezed through the campaign.



I used the classic Apple Lane setting for this, and went through the usual progression (besides my own added bits and encounters) of the tribal initiations battle circles, Pawnshop Baboon attack all the way through finishing up Rainbow Mounds last night. Whiteeye and his trollkin defeated, and the Lizard Mother and the Lizard Spirits destroyed (the Newtlings made Terry’s character Rowan their queen – for what it was worth).



The party got to touch the adamantine column hidden behind the newt idol, gaining some spells. They also found the Issaries statue to later sell to Gringle. In a wild twist, the party forgot to search White eyes’ lair for the main treasure. They rested after the White eye fight for a night before moving on into what they though was a tunnel to another area (it was actually a small chamber with White eyes bed and the main treasure of the adventure), then later got distracted and didn’t finish searching that area! Thousands of lunars and other precious stuff left behind! Kind of a hoot.



I mean, they were told there would be a lot of items White eye and gang robbed people of, but they happily left without any of that. I waited until they were back at the village to tell them. There was the usually thrashing around for a couple of minutes trying to find the poor GM at fault, but the realization set in that they had been idiots to not realize they didn’t have what they, in part, went to the Rainbow Mounds for. Doesn’t really make up for anybody not getting killed or maimed in the campaign, but it helps.



So time to regroup, get out the Star Wars stuff, and repack my mini’s box with Sci Fi figures. We’ll be doing KOTOR for the rest of the year, with the odd Call of Cthulhu game thrown in here and there when we are short on important players.



But yeah, there ya go. Another campaign in the bag. It’s always kind of a satisfying peace that comes over you when you are at the finish line of a fun campaign.

Runequest: Dragon’s Pass is so Passe

So far so good with my old school Dragon’s Pass Runequest campaign. I think the players are liking it, despite not everybody really investing a ton of interest in the setting (my fascination with Glorantha since childhood being my main reason for running this now) or the whole rune concepts. Only a couple of the characters have a god association at this point. I think that the main appeal so far is the down and dirty nature of the combat (one lucky hit can kill anybody) and it’s often visceral outcomes, and the fact that it is just such a different system than D&D. I’m glad it’s fun, although it is still a tad early to see if it will have the surprising wild popularity of my on-hiatus Star Wars KOTOR campaign. Of anything non-D&D I have done with this group, that seems to have had the most appeal to them, despite nobody in the group being overly fond of Star Wars. Even Big Ben has expressed interest in a SW campaign of his own (though sadly he seems to want to do it near the movie timeline).

Anyway, I’m jazzed to finally be doing some classic Glorantha, and I can foresee running it for several more sessions before needing to get back on that Star Wars track. One of the interesting things I’ve found online is how many people have played RQ for decades almost non-stop. To many of these people, the thought of somebody doing the “old setting” in Dragons Pass seems almost quaint. They are like old warriors “Ah, I remember Dragons Pass and Prax from the days of my youth. Sometimes I long for those humble and basic places.” You see, they have long since moved beyond the very basic locations of Dragons Pass or Prax. They have had campaigns where the braving of Duck Tower and Snake Pipe Hollow are distant memories. Their adventures have taken them to Griffon Mountain and beyond deep into the Lunar Empire, and off across the sea to other continents. You see, while Dragons Pass is sort of a Scotland/Finland amalgam, and Prax Mesopotamian in nature, other parts of Glorantha that are akin to Pirate genre, Medieval England, Africa, and Asia have long since awaited exploring, and these old RQ fanatics have explored them all. I get bits and pieces of info from my communications online about these great campaigns, but just not enough.

Will I run enough Runequest to let my players explore beyond the basic setting? Who knows. But I did nab a pdf of Griffon Mountain today. That’ll get saved on a flash drive in the hopes that in a year or two, we’ll still have enough Runequest interest to move beyond the humble hills of DP and the arid plains of Prax.

Runequest - the Buzzkill of Strike Rank

Ran the second Runequest 2nd edition session the other night set in that famous Sartar lane known for its apple orchards. The Tin Inn and environs were still hopping from the Spring festival. I say “Spring” because I have yet to memorize the names of Gloranthan days, weeks, and months, and seasons. As an aside, speaking of the calendar names in RQ, I have been reminded of how much I snagged out of Glorantha as a kid to plug into my game world Acheron (I still hate that name for a game setting, but I was a kid, man). The names for seasons and some of the names of days (such as “Godsday”) were apparently shamelessly ripped-off by me. I totally forgot about that over the decades. That’s OK of course; I hardly ever use them in my D&D game anyway. I get lazy and just call the days Sunday, Monday, Tuesday…

Before I go any further, let me lay out the characters for any Runequest fans who might be reading. Their backgrounds were all rolled out of the RQ 2nd edition chargen section. None of the characters are laymembers of any cults yet (well, Paul’s barbarian “Bjorn” being a herdsmen is automatically a lay member of the storm god Waha).


Catuanda – from the sage-heavy city Jonstown. He himself is scholarly, but like all the other kids he is setting out on the bloody road of violence to better himself physically. Instead of being a follower of Lankhor Mhy, the main knowledge god in Sartar, he went with a minor one (the name escapes me). Has a preference for the long spear, and is pretty lucky with it in combat.

Rowan – from main Sartar city Boldhome. At 21 years old, she is the oldest of the PC’s. Her father was a successful weaver in the city. Like all the new young fighters, ask her why she is setting off down the road to violence and she will tell you “because everybody else is doing it.” She has a liking for the warrior girl goddess Vinga, daughter of Orlanth. This last game she met “Siobhan Lomand,” a Rune Priestess of Vinga, who has offered to make her (and some other girls at the festival) lay members of the Vinga cult. So Terry will probably be the first character in the campaign with a god connection (BTB you need to be a lay member for a year before you can get to the Initiate stage of worship, and all the perks it comes with). Rowan currently uses a short sword as her main weapon.

Bjornheld – the only “barbarian” of the group, Bjorn comes from a sheep herding tribe. He left because they made a lot of fun of him…he has a size of 4. That makes him small. He could wear Vern Troyers kilt. Bjorn makes himself look even smaller by preferring the long spear in combat.

Tensen – From Boldhome. Started with a dagger for combat, but has a bow and is favoring its use. I see a bow-master in the future! This last game Big Ben decided out of the blue that Tensen would be very vocal of his hatred of the Lunar Empire who are occupying Sartar. Just goes to show you, you need a couple of sessions before characters start to differentiate themselves. Even in RQ, where human characters can seem very similar, these characters are standing out from each other pretty good.

Yuri – Little Ben’s new character (LB missed the first session the other week). Guess what? Another townsperson from Boldhome (that makes three character from the capital city). Hasn’t been fleshed out fully yet. I can’t even remember what weapon he used.

Yuri showed up in town while the festival was still going on, and the other characters had finished up their blood combat initiation from the previous game. To give Yuri his own combat, the character volunteer to fight again as teams in the Humakt battle circles.

Which gets me to the topic subject; strike rank. Ah, the buzzkill of it. It’s crunch man. I had forgotten how much there was too it. Too much Call of Cthulhu in the 90’s, where Basic Role Playing left SR out of the mix. The system is soooo easy without SR.

OK, it ain’t rocket science (I have Champions for that). But it requires a lot of rewriting the order folk go in from round to round, especially if they are using missile weapons. Basically, your strike rank is an attacking order based off of weapon length, dexterity, and size. So a fast guy with a spear is going to hit before a slow guy with a dagger, capishe?

Look, I like the grim and gritty nature of RQ combat. Every blow can be crippling or deadly. Odds are some of these characters will be missing a limb or dead before somebody is advanced enough to have a six point healing spell (needed to attach limbs and bring you back from the brink of death from a stoved-in head or skewered torso).

But the busy work of strike rank – is it worth the trouble? Well, although I am a 50% combat/50% roleplay kind of guy, the group on a whole might actually be more like 75% combat/25%roleplay. With 50% I feel like I can relax, have a beer, and paint a world around the characters shenanigans. When the combat encroaches on that, I start feeling like it’s work. Don’t get me wrong, I love the action, irony, and heartbreak of RPG combat. I just don’t want it to be what it is all about. I put heart and passion into my GMing in part because I think that is a bit of a lost art these days. People are either too much on the serious side, or too much on the “beer and pretzels – games are a party” side. I just want to be in that sweet, sweet spot in the middle. But not sure there is room for both me and SR.

Next session things are going to heat up, and combat situations are going to get a bit more complicated. But we have had some good practice over two sessions now. Two combats among characters in the battle circles, and last game a nice fight against some weapon snakes (snakes with swords and maces for tails – chaos creatures), and also a couple of Broo. So for next game, we’ll continue to use strike rank as is (but without movement and encumbrance considerations). But I’m still looking at toning down the crunch factor a bit so I can relax more.

Runequest – how much flavor do you force on it?

One of the most challenging things about running classic Runequest, beyond the mechanics of full character creation and combat crunch, is setting the mood. Hell, originally I wasn’t even sure a proper mood could be set.

A little over 30 years ago I was a kid at Aero Hobbies in Santa Monica, playing in whatever game one of the older pricks decided they wanted to run (and that owner Gary Switzer wanted to play). That meant very little D&D, and lots of things like Bushido, Traveller, and Runequest. There were always a couple of Runequest campaigns going on.

Outside of the focus on god worship and common spell use (I do remember thinking that everybody pretty much ran clerics in RQ), I don’t remember much of what I learned of the secrets of Glorantha at that time. The older guys seemed to know the world and it’s conflicts very well, and it makes sense that Gary would because as a store owner he could read all the material in the form of books and fanzines that filtered through. This and that battle; this and that war; this and that location. Stuff on that classic setting that you have to search through a thousand sources to get bits and pieces of. And it’s worse now, because there is so much more that has been added to the milieu over the decades.

With limited time on my hands, I put in much more research in the Dragons Pass setting (where I would ultimately start the first game; that was another hard decision – Prax or DP?) than studying up the rulesbook. In all honesty, I forgot how much there was too the crunch. I ran a lot of Call of Cthulhu in the 90’s, but I forgot that is a fairly retarded down version of those RQ rules. Basic Role Playing at its most basic.

But whatever. In games I’m a “flavor man.” A good solid foundation in your setting and the player’s surroundings is crucial for my style of character development. So, with the under-populated classic Runequest forums being of little help, I thrashed about for Dragons Pass location info, at least enough to hang my hat on and add my own items to it to make it my own. I got the Kerofinela Gazette, but that describes things to a certain degree in terms of at least several years after the time period I am using. So I have to play fast and loose with that info. Just use what I need to describe a location. And of course Cults of Prax is big help, but that describes the gods in terms more of the natives of that area.

So into it I go with only shards of info and my own winging skills, on the raggedy edge of trying to express a world I did not create with scattered and sketchy info.

I did not want to hit these guys over the head with too much data. A few days before the game I created a several page primer on the setting. Basically, getting across that it is a Bronze Age version of a marriage between ancient Scotland and ancient Norway. That city civilization is a very new thing, and that even the haughtiest noble is not far removed from barbarian herd culture. I gave the basics of how the Lunar Empire has spent a generation chaining Dragons Pass because they need it as a highway to the holy land, and how they are suppressing the god Orlanth. That all the characters, townsfolk or barbarian, are of the kingdom of Sartar, and how it is a conquered kingdom, but has not been so for long.

As far as the official history of the era, I hope I am not too far off with all this. So much is assumption.

To get away from the D&D reasons for adventure, I explained that this particular period (1615…two years after Starbrows famous Sartar rebellion) was a time of youngsters of both sexes hitting the bricks in search of combat and mysteries for a variety of reason that created a perfect storm: a feeling that major wars are on the horizon, that the gods and their before-time adventures and dungeon crawls are to be emulated, that success in all endeavors is achieved by personal fitness and growth, and a sort of hipster faddishness (“everybody’s doing it, mom” sort of thing). That last reason alone seems to makes sense to me as to why teenagers who can’t use a weapon for shit would set out into a world where one lucky sword hit could take an arm off you, and probably will no sweat.

As you might know I like to have music going during my sessions, although in the long run I’m not sure how the group on a whole feels about it. But in all honesty I don’t really give a rats ass about that. The “right” music going during a game is important for MY mood, and I’m running the game so my mood matters most. But when you run your games somewhere were somebody else is the host, there can be some ackward moments. There was a point not too long ago when our kind host seemed to think Butthole Surfers was good for D&D. And when I emailed the group saying to bring any ancient Celt/Tribal music for our first Runequest session, the first thing said to me when I showed up was “we decided David Byrne was ancient enough for Runequest”. Oooo-kay. "We." Right. But again, MY mood, so before long I had some drums and pipes going, as well as some Vasen (Swedish super-folk group I met last year at a music camp). Set the mood for me.

As for the combat, I think it was a good “working out the kinks” session. It did take awhile. You can tell when a combat it taking too long – I usually judge it by the look on Terry’s face. If it is kind of blank, half smiling, with the eyes half shut zombified sort of thing, then things are getting old. But I think it will go quicker next time, especially when people have better chances of hitting and are a little less challenged by everything. But just the fact that they are young dumbshits with no training; punks cracking wise and full of piss and vinegar, seems flavorful to me. I hope they see that too.

And I see things already for the characters that might evolve naturally for maximum flavor, things I realized later on after the session. Big Ben’s guy seems to favor the bow, and with archery being invented by the sun god Yelm he might want to go in the direction of that cult. Might go good with his characters apparent love for singing. Andy’s guy has a Power and INT of 17, and he happens to be from the city of Jonstown which has the biggest library in all of Sartar. That might make Jonstown a “college town,” and that would go good with his apparent scholarly leanings. Terry as a female fighter and devotee to Orlanth’s daughter, Vinga, will surely lead her to some interesting things. And Paul’s midget barbarian, well, nuff said there. Character was born with flavor (and “Shorty” uses a long spear, which is pretty amusing).

In the long run, the guys seemed to have fun doing something new. But it was very much a learning experience for us all. I’m sure the second session will go much smoother. If not, well, Terry was hoping we were doing a Call of Cthulhu campaign instead of this…




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasen

Finally…Runequest!

My little dream of running some classic Runequest, and current obsession months in the making, has come to wonderful fruition! Well, OK, don’t want to oversell it. Character creation took a little longer than I had planned, and seemed crunchier than I expected. I always found character creation sessions some of the most fun you can have in gaming, and it was, but with a voice hoarse from a cold the other week and NYE this week, it was a bit like work as well. A couple of the players had unusual levels of bitchiness (post holidays blues?), and I had to repeat things a lot as we went through the stat rolling and skill and ability modifying process.

Weapons and strike rank (hoo boy, strike rank) set-up too, and all during the process I tried to interject setting info that had to do with this and that. Without stuffing it down their throat, I mentioned cults and gods here and there and how they might fit in with the lives they have planned for the characters. And they did pan out pretty good, considering I made them all Sartarites and had them roll for background (human characters can be overly similar in RQ, so a little personal character flavor can go a long way). Three of the four players present this night rolled townspeople, and Paul got to be the sole barbarian. Amusingly, he decided he wanted his tribe to be sheep herders. “I wish I could quit you!”

Most interestingly, Paul’s barbarian got a 4 for size (I actually had them roll three sets of stats in order, and the one with the size 4 was most appealing to Paul). So, the party had a midget in their midst. An M&M in a bowl of Snickers Bars.

Terry’s girl and Big Ben’s dude were from the capitol Boldhome, and Andy made his guy be from Jonstown, near as I can tell from the setting is the sister city to Boldhome. You see, the setting info for classic Glorantha is spread out over tha’ internets like melted peanut butter. Most of the stuff you can find ends up being about Heroquest or other Glorantha games set in time periods different than the classic one (the period after Starbrows Rebellion). Even though I have a couple of items with info on classic Dragons Pass, I’m still having to guess and half guess so many things it makes my head fucking spin. But I guess this is a good way to make Glorantha your own. Intentional? I dunno. Pain the ass? Kinda. I don’t want to buy any Runequest material (last I looked a year or two ago the 2nd edition Runequest book of my youth was going for more than 50 bucks), so I’m restricting myself to online info (the Runequest forums aren’t exactly hopping) and whatever I can pilfer online in terms of PDFs.

Anyway, the three young townies and the barbarian midget (with a size of 4 he could wear Vern Troyers kilt – but I still let him use a long spear) came to the spring festival in a certain town famous for apples and a tin roofed public lodge, and ended up doing the “tribal initiation” routine found in classic RQ. Basically, fighting other young, wisecracking punks to the death in Humakt Battle Circles, with a powerful healer nearby. Good thing, because after the characters paired up in teams of 2 (I wanted to go easy on myself and have them fight each other instead of NPCs) and fought the good fight, Ben’s guy was taken out by a spear through the bread basket, and Paul’s wee sheep laddie found his left arm chopped off. This was nice surprise for these guys used to D&D, I tell you what. As the healer did her thing, they got the gravity of the situation; you can get seriously jacked-up in combat in RQ. Death and amputation lurks around every corner. Nice.

Anyway, that combat took awhile as many RQ combats do. They take awhile early on when nobody can land a blow for shit, and it will take awhile later on when everyone can parry every attack. But it was a good practice session for characters, players, and GM. Still a lot of kinks to work our regarding movement and statement of intent in combat (it’s a realy buzzkill in gaming), but I think I made my rules skill check. Hopefully it will be easier next time.

The characters retreated to the Inn to have refreshments bought for them by amused combat spectators, and celebrate their first real life or death combat.

Next time, a little more festival fun and mini-games to get them a variety of skill checks (I also had the Humakt guys build an obstacle course that could test jump, climb, and dodge skills), and perhaps the characters first job and a brush with something they have been frightened of since childhood: Chaos.