A Variety of Replies

From: Graeme A Lindsell (gal502@cscgpo.anu.edu.au)
Date: Wed 29 Sep 1993 - 19:53:09 EET



Paul writes:

> Does anyone else besides me think of the God Learners as sort of hapless
>do-gooders, i.e., they are well-intentioned but unwise? I actually like

 There aren't that many societies who see themselves as evil. Of course, I don't see them as unwise: the destruction of the Jrusteli was just the early God Learners, who'd made it as gods, eliminating unwelcome competition. :-)

>casting the BRITHINI in the villain's role. Those old Talars have
>Spread Lies About the Enemy 2000%. Think about the Brithini's big enemy's:
>the Vadeli and the God Learners. Who else has such a bad reputation (barring
>Chaos)?

 The Lunars? The Brithini themselves? The auto-critical Spread Lies About Enemy is a nice feature, makes the Talars useful for something.

>There is only One earth goddess with six (or nine) faces

 I think this may be the best way, just re-write the earth goddess cult. I don't think any other cults have the same sort of progression.

 Lewis writes:
>Why doesn't everyone have Warding on their house?

 Good question. What about the house your Ernalda/Yelmalio family has lived in for generations? Warding is permanent: those nomad raiders will explode as they cross the threshold and the 20 points of warding

 Warding is a real powergamers delight (Five Eyes temple anyone? Took us three gaming sessions to clear out those bastards!). What's the best way to limit it a bit more? Change its effect (attacks people in spirit combat?), give it a limited but long duration (8 weeks?), or make it more expensive?

G. Fried writes:

>Ganesh (sp?), an elephant-headed Hindu deity. He is a god of scholars
>and merchants.

 I think he might have been in the TV Mahabarata (sp?) I saw a couple of years ago here. Great heroquest stuff as well!

Colin Watson on Dorastor:
> He said there were a couple of dozen pages of encounters which were so
>gross that he'd *never* be able to use them

 See my review of Dorastor I posted here a couple of months ago: I made the point that those gross encounters can't be used with the campaign given. I think the problem was that Dorastor had always been promised (I have an ad for Dorastor in the back of my RQ2 book!) as the grossest place in Glorantha, so they felt obliged to provide the gross monsters. The background info is excellent (I have a question for Ken below) and the campaign very good, but I think the campaign just doesn't go with the grossout stats. I would have liked to see the Lunar Trade mission scenario that I think was originally meant to be included, with Risklands as a separate pack (which I hope we'll see anyway)

 My question for Ken: the drawing of "Arkat the Destroyer" on P11 (I think): are the swords flanking the scene meant to be the Unbreakable Sword? Why is Arkat human? Did the artist get inside info or is the picture, as one of my correspondents suggests, just bad fantasy art?

 Otherwise I really liked the illustrations in Dorastor. The intelligent walktapus with the feather in his cap is a favourite!

 One of my friends who reads this list suggested that I repost the review to rec.games.rpg.misc to give it a wider audience. Good or bad idea?



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