I would rather use the low-hanging fruits of K4 and I7, so that you have two 3*4 blocks - one of Ledenheim, the other of Chelemby and surroundings.
Apart from blocks covering regions, lines of work could be the coastline (E8, H9) or the stony backbone of Harbaal, with K2 (hint, hint) and K3 forming a cohesive stretch of alpine wilderness where coastline hexes can be attached.
Naturally the coastlines are imho the most useful for gamers and the hardest work to create - and will need some backup with kingdoms. Hurisea and Emelrene loom here at large, competing with Harbaal and Shorkyne for attention :-)
My "encouragment" would be to create K4, I7, K2, and K3 for "easy" gains on the map. From there on some obvious next steps would be G4 and E8. The four sea hexes of E3:F4 would then create a large chunk of sea, and H4 a major block of 5*7. Then there are only four chunks left on the southern coast of the bay of Shorkyne and another four to cover the whole coast - lots of work, but a major step towards complete coverage. May we expect these before 2017? ;-)
So you're perhaps encouraging us to work on SHKN-K4 and E8? Those squares would complete two more convenient blocks. K4 would be the last piece of Ledenhem-W. Hurisea block, and E8 finishes the central Shorkyne coast.
Actually, K4 is far enough along that it should be published this summer. E8 not so much.
It will depend on where exactly you placed the new freehold. If it's halfway from Steneken to Orgetkin, I would expect clan Kinule to shift useful pack animals away from the site as winter approaches. The reasons for this are that they would want pack animals to be located close to where the spring caravans originate and second that the new holding is likely to have limited forage to feed the animals through the entire winter. (Remember, even in well-developed areas, the greatest slaughter of farm animals occurs in late autumn when the farmers compare how many animals they have to how many animals they will be able to feed during winter.)
Absent a barn having been built my guess is that animals that are kept over at the holding all winter would be housed in sheds. If time has been limited, the sheds might start the winter open on some sides, possibly all four sides, and then perhaps be enclosed as time passes.
The Hurisea Road is mostly marked as "good tracks & trails". You can probably treat that as meaning that carts could traverse much of it, but there is no one performing any sort of maintenance and there are going to be spots where it is difficult for wheeled vehicles. Note the lack of any bridges marked where it cross the various streams and minor rivers. Crossing at these locations during spring runoff could be an adventure.
And, especially as it's the teamster clan Kinule's freehold, there'd be various pack animals as well or would they have travelled back home? Would they be sheltered in the houses or kept in a fenced off pen or something? And, while I think on, can carts/wagons traverse the Hurisea trail?
Thanks rbs (I assume you're Rob, the author?). I could just guess this stuff myself, I know, but it's nice to get some more knowledgable input.
I would basically expect a palisaded settlement, with surrounding cleared acreage determined by available labour and location.
If the location is a nice riverside meadow, there could be substantive cleared and planted area within a year. But if it's in the middle of the forest, then the "colonists" have probably spent much of the past year clearing trees. Expect a smoky atmosphere from burning out stumps and unusable trash wood.
Housing within the palisade will not be very impressive as the colonists will probably have had to spend more time clearing land and farming than on homebuilding. Wattle & daub houses and log cabins are probably as much as you can expect in a year. Some residents may be living in little better than huts.
Expect the wildlife near the settlement to be thinned out due to dependence on hunting for food. Tehre may be a fair number of pigs since they can forage in the woods for themselves; cattle will come later.
"However, many players take a superficial view of things"
Involving players in the game is almost always a mistake. ;-)
Your players simply need to realize that in this world you don't just choose your deity in isolation. Your faith comes from your community and your place within that community. Some faiths are explicitly ethnic - e.g. Sarajin/Ivinian, Ilvir/Jarin. Some faiths appeal to certain classes - Save K'nor/Scholars, Halea/Merchants, Agrik&Larani/Warriors, Peoni/Farmers, Morgath/Urban Poor. To choose another faith is to choose another society, which is something that very few people do willingly.
I find that most players easily get past the D&D-ish mentality once they realize that religion isn't just a game mechanic in this world.
I've started the Book of Quests scenarios, using Ledenheim as the setting - the first scenario (Caravan) is based along the Hurisea Road.
We've played one short session so far, and future ones unfortunately will be infrequent, so it's still early days to judge. But from what I've read and played so far I do like the system.
Regarding the download issue... When someone purchases the printed map, the KP store software stops partway through processing and does not list the order as completed until one of the admins manually acknowledges that the order has been received. The problem is that if the order also includes some PDFs, those PDFs won't appear in the customer's downloads until, you guessed it, the order is completed.
I can not speak to the reason, but my copy has the same blank pages. If I had to guess I would say it is an artifact of splicing the chapters together, and probably not noticed in editing.
Actually that one is easy. A 10 strength person has a base bash damage of 0 (zero) and a 20 strength person has a base damage of 2 (two) in Harnmaster Gold. Assuming no armor (cloth is 0 vs bash) that means that on a 1 die attack the 10 Str person will never get to the second tier of damage (requiring a 7+) while the 20 strength person will get thee on 1/3 of his punches. since blunt damage follows the breakpoints of 1+,7+,13+,19+ the 20 strength person will have a increased chance of getting in the next bracket with every additional die (though with diminishing returns as the bell curve makes the top end statistically less likely to occur with each additional die). As for the skill involved that is a factor of enviroment and experience. A 10 strength person with a 100 skill knows his weakness and probably should look to cultivate a edge. This edge can be increasing dodge or even honing special unarmed traits by following a specific unarmed regimen. A true master of unarmed does not rely on strength alone but also on speed and knowledge of where to strike for the most impact.
Thanx for yours answer, you have some good points.
I like the point that it help with the endurance and encumbrance, the avantage that you can carry heavier weapon.
for most player, they see the % skill to represente a chance to hit a target and they associate strength for damage. They need to feel that strength influence the damage. Strong men hit harder !
what do you respond to a player when he say
let imagine there are 2 warrior, both are master in boxing or something like that. Both have 100 in skill. The first have 10 in strength and the other have 20. the stongest boxer will need less punch to take the other because of his strength?
While I agree with what you say, that great evil can be done in the name of a supposedly good cause, I have unfortunately not yet read Venarive and have only read Harn Master Religion. So perhaps my concerns have already been addressed.
However, many players take a superficial view of things and a religion that seems to reward rape and pillage, murder and deceit can put a great deal of strain on a campaign.
is to some degree debatable. Most people do not consider themself evil even when they commit the most gruesome deeds, and some of the worst evils in reality were done in the name of some "greater good".
Imho Agrik, Morgath or Naveh do offer something in exchange for service, and most adherents gain (or think they do so) more then they give in their adherence. In regions where these faiths prevail, the "gain" for the common folks is often only to be spared from the worst, but that again has plenty of parallels in real history.
Most people are not evil in the sense that they revel in the misery of others for no gain, but try to achieve something for themself, their family, clan, nation or faith (be it religion or ideology) even when it costs others outside their group far more then they gain. The willingness to accept an imbalance between the losses for others to the gain for the own person (or group) is probably what objectively defines good and evil.
In that regard its harder for me to rationalize "true" Peonism then Agrikanism - mainly because it is harder to find someone who really examplifies all virtues of Peonie then someone who embraces the "virtues" of Agrik. Larani makes a pragrmatic compromise, and tends to be far closer to Agrikanism then Peonism in regions where the "others" are dismissed as worthless (eg. the Solori crusade).
HM Religion and Gods of Harn provide only a snapshot of what the faiths are about. Summa Venarive explains how each faith arose and how their respective communities evolved in the context of the cultures of Venarive. All the faiths have completely plausible origins, and they all offer very considerable benefits to their adherents.
In fact, I consider Venarivan faiths much more realistic than the sort of "religion by auction" seen in most fantasy. People emphatically do not choose their faith based on the goodies the gods offer. Faith is deeply intertwined with community and culture, as well as personal psychology. In my opinion, the Venarivan faiths capture that dynamic very effectively - once you understand how they developed and the environment in which they evolved.
Evil and morality are in the eye of the beholder. Also if you pick up a copy of Venarive you will see that this is addressed. In the global scheme of things the Agrikan church on Harn is a very unorthodox splinter group. But Agrik is no more evil than the Spartans or the Aztecs or the Mongols. You are looking at the religion from a distorted 20th century viewpoint. Agrik worship is very much like the Axtec worship. After all the Aztecs sacrificed thousands every year to insure the sun keeps coming up. In the Gods of Harn Agrik is seen as a intercessor with the elder god Manrusha to keep the world from being consumed by fire. All the bloodshed is to help in this deal. Now Morgath is a little harder to work on. All I can say is that on Harn the only place they have power is Golotha - they control the city, and when a group has that kind of power it will change the doctrine (even if only slowly over time) to strengthen the position they hold. I think the biggest issue with Morgathianism is that the CG made the Shadow WAY to powerful. I prefer the way it is addressed in Harnmaster Gold Bestiary. The CG way would make Golotha a ghost town (literally) within a hundred years tops.
I do not like the overly evil nature of Agrik and Morgath. While it is undoubtedly true that evil gods are worshipped, this tends to be destructive to the social structures that they would need to use to gain political control in order to have any influence on the populace.
So these gods would have to offer their worshippers something, like say the protection from disease that Malia (Glorantha) offers her lay worshippers.
This is an old issue. Robin was always defending his approach to weapon damage from similar arguements. The issue is you are looking at one aspect of combat (from a D&D perspective) and finding it lacking. Almost all weapons use Strength as a component of Skill determination. This makes the stronger man more capable of achieving a good hit with it. This also corresponds with him being able to use a heavier weapon made for his strength without penalty. This actually more accurately reflects the way the physics works. A ballpeen hammer wielded by a stronger man may do a little more damage than the same weapon wielded by a weaker man but it cannot compare with the ability of the stronger man to pick up a sledgehammer and wallop the poor weaker individual who cannot even heft it. Because the damage is not a linear value like in d&d but a modified bell curve it makes more sense to not artificially increase the weaker weapons as the distortion introduced skews the results on the injury tables. Besides it introduces a reason to wield a battleaxe or pol axe instead of the (yawn) almighty longsword - which is usually what happens in AD&D (in my experience at least).
Which on the surface sounds inherently ridiculous - surely the stronger man must hit harder, right? Consider it from this perspective:
Most melee weapon skills are at least partially based upon strength. Therefore, a person with a higher strength will likely have a higher SB, ML, and even a higher EML due to the impact of strength upon endurance and the impact of endurance upon encumbrance and injury penalties. So, the person with the higher strength hits more often, which is better, but how does that mean more damage (aside from using a heavier weapon)?
If a weak man swings his sword and hits a shield, then the shield may deflect the blow or not, depending upon the opposed rolls. A strong man has a better chance to prevail - he has a better chance to "power through" the shield. Likewise, more strength often means more speed in the swing of the sword, giving the target an overall smaller chance of dodging.
Finally, while canon HarnMaster compares the value of the armor against the impact of the weapon after a hit, it is nonetheless easy to imagine that some "misses" are weaker blows that do not have the potential to pass through the armor, and again a strong man would have a higher chance of doing this than a weak man would.
A strong man may not get a bonus to damage as in Dungeons & Dragons, but he does do more damage in a typical fight, all else being equal. He also resists damage better. And, as mentioned, he can choose to buy a heavier weapon that grants an impact bonus.
There is a strength minimum for each weapon. The man with the 18 could use a heftier weapon than the smaller man. But if he uses the same weapon he does the same damage.
I am also thinking of starting a new Harn/RQ6 campaign after a dry run on boxing day went well. My main problem is that I do not like the Religions of Harn but do not wish to rewrite the Gloranthan Gods for use in Harn.
Those are the two best game for me. I love Runequest and the last edition is very good. But for me all it start with Strombringer(box) in the 80. That how i found about Runequest :)
I would rather use the low-hanging fruits of K4 and I7, so that you have two 3*4 blocks - one of Ledenheim, the other of Chelemby and surroundings.
Apart from blocks covering regions, lines of work could be the coastline (E8, H9) or the stony backbone of Harbaal, with K2 (hint, hint) and K3 forming a cohesive stretch of alpine wilderness where coastline hexes can be attached.
Naturally the coastlines are imho the most useful for gamers and the hardest work to create - and will need some backup with kingdoms. Hurisea and Emelrene loom here at large, competing with Harbaal and Shorkyne for attention :-)
My "encouragment" would be to create K4, I7, K2, and K3 for "easy" gains on the map. From there on some obvious next steps would be G4 and E8. The four sea hexes of E3:F4 would then create a large chunk of sea, and H4 a major block of 5*7. Then there are only four chunks left on the southern coast of the bay of Shorkyne and another four to cover the whole coast - lots of work, but a major step towards complete coverage. May we expect these before 2017? ;-)
So you're perhaps encouraging us to work on SHKN-K4 and E8? Those squares would complete two more convenient blocks. K4 would be the last piece of Ledenhem-W. Hurisea block, and E8 finishes the central Shorkyne coast.
Actually, K4 is far enough along that it should be published this summer. E8 not so much.
And this completes the rehash of the 8 Chelemby hexes. Now on to new shores :-)
The Atlas Kelestia map starts to show completed blops.
It will depend on where exactly you placed the new freehold. If it's halfway from Steneken to Orgetkin, I would expect clan Kinule to shift useful pack animals away from the site as winter approaches. The reasons for this are that they would want pack animals to be located close to where the spring caravans originate and second that the new holding is likely to have limited forage to feed the animals through the entire winter. (Remember, even in well-developed areas, the greatest slaughter of farm animals occurs in late autumn when the farmers compare how many animals they have to how many animals they will be able to feed during winter.)
Absent a barn having been built my guess is that animals that are kept over at the holding all winter would be housed in sheds. If time has been limited, the sheds might start the winter open on some sides, possibly all four sides, and then perhaps be enclosed as time passes.
The Hurisea Road is mostly marked as "good tracks & trails". You can probably treat that as meaning that carts could traverse much of it, but there is no one performing any sort of maintenance and there are going to be spots where it is difficult for wheeled vehicles. Note the lack of any bridges marked where it cross the various streams and minor rivers. Crossing at these locations during spring runoff could be an adventure.
And, especially as it's the teamster clan Kinule's freehold, there'd be various pack animals as well or would they have travelled back home? Would they be sheltered in the houses or kept in a fenced off pen or something? And, while I think on, can carts/wagons traverse the Hurisea trail?
Thanks rbs (I assume you're Rob, the author?). I could just guess this stuff myself, I know, but it's nice to get some more knowledgable input.
Dan.
I would basically expect a palisaded settlement, with surrounding cleared acreage determined by available labour and location.
If the location is a nice riverside meadow, there could be substantive cleared and planted area within a year. But if it's in the middle of the forest, then the "colonists" have probably spent much of the past year clearing trees. Expect a smoky atmosphere from burning out stumps and unusable trash wood.
Housing within the palisade will not be very impressive as the colonists will probably have had to spend more time clearing land and farming than on homebuilding. Wattle & daub houses and log cabins are probably as much as you can expect in a year. Some residents may be living in little better than huts.
Expect the wildlife near the settlement to be thinned out due to dependence on hunting for food. Tehre may be a fair number of pigs since they can forage in the woods for themselves; cattle will come later.
"However, many players take a superficial view of things"
Involving players in the game is almost always a mistake. ;-)
Your players simply need to realize that in this world you don't just choose your deity in isolation. Your faith comes from your community and your place within that community. Some faiths are explicitly ethnic - e.g. Sarajin/Ivinian, Ilvir/Jarin. Some faiths appeal to certain classes - Save K'nor/Scholars, Halea/Merchants, Agrik&Larani/Warriors, Peoni/Farmers, Morgath/Urban Poor. To choose another faith is to choose another society, which is something that very few people do willingly.
I find that most players easily get past the D&D-ish mentality once they realize that religion isn't just a game mechanic in this world.
I've started the Book of Quests scenarios, using Ledenheim as the setting - the first scenario (Caravan) is based along the Hurisea Road.
We've played one short session so far, and future ones unfortunately will be infrequent, so it's still early days to judge. But from what I've read and played so far I do like the system.
Dan.
Those pages in Summa Venâriva are deliberately blank - so that major chapters begin on a new page when printed.
Regarding the download issue... When someone purchases the printed map, the KP store software stops partway through processing and does not list the order as completed until one of the admins manually acknowledges that the order has been received. The problem is that if the order also includes some PDFs, those PDFs won't appear in the customer's downloads until, you guessed it, the order is completed.
I can not speak to the reason, but my copy has the same blank pages. If I had to guess I would say it is an artifact of splicing the chapters together, and probably not noticed in editing.
The issue seems to have resolved itself, and I have been able to donwload the items.
However can someone tell me if pages 4, 24, 38, 48, 74, 112, 116, and 127 in the "Summa Venâriva" are meant to be completely blank?
Thank-you.
Actually that one is easy. A 10 strength person has a base bash damage of 0 (zero) and a 20 strength person has a base damage of 2 (two) in Harnmaster Gold. Assuming no armor (cloth is 0 vs bash) that means that on a 1 die attack the 10 Str person will never get to the second tier of damage (requiring a 7+) while the 20 strength person will get thee on 1/3 of his punches. since blunt damage follows the breakpoints of 1+,7+,13+,19+ the 20 strength person will have a increased chance of getting in the next bracket with every additional die (though with diminishing returns as the bell curve makes the top end statistically less likely to occur with each additional die). As for the skill involved that is a factor of enviroment and experience. A 10 strength person with a 100 skill knows his weakness and probably should look to cultivate a edge. This edge can be increasing dodge or even honing special unarmed traits by following a specific unarmed regimen. A true master of unarmed does not rely on strength alone but also on speed and knowledge of where to strike for the most impact.
Thanx for yours answer, you have some good points.
I like the point that it help with the endurance and encumbrance, the avantage that you can carry heavier weapon.
for most player, they see the % skill to represente a chance to hit a target and they associate strength for damage. They need to feel that strength influence the damage. Strong men hit harder !
what do you respond to a player when he say
let imagine there are 2 warrior, both are master in boxing or something like that. Both have 100 in skill. The first have 10 in strength and the other have 20. the stongest boxer will need less punch to take the other because of his strength?
but i fear to add more damage to deadly game :)
While I agree with what you say, that great evil can be done in the name of a supposedly good cause, I have unfortunately not yet read Venarive and have only read Harn Master Religion. So perhaps my concerns have already been addressed.
However, many players take a superficial view of things and a religion that seems to reward rape and pillage, murder and deceit can put a great deal of strain on a campaign.
is to some degree debatable. Most people do not consider themself evil even when they commit the most gruesome deeds, and some of the worst evils in reality were done in the name of some "greater good".
Imho Agrik, Morgath or Naveh do offer something in exchange for service, and most adherents gain (or think they do so) more then they give in their adherence. In regions where these faiths prevail, the "gain" for the common folks is often only to be spared from the worst, but that again has plenty of parallels in real history.
Most people are not evil in the sense that they revel in the misery of others for no gain, but try to achieve something for themself, their family, clan, nation or faith (be it religion or ideology) even when it costs others outside their group far more then they gain. The willingness to accept an imbalance between the losses for others to the gain for the own person (or group) is probably what objectively defines good and evil.
In that regard its harder for me to rationalize "true" Peonism then Agrikanism - mainly because it is harder to find someone who really examplifies all virtues of Peonie then someone who embraces the "virtues" of Agrik. Larani makes a pragrmatic compromise, and tends to be far closer to Agrikanism then Peonism in regions where the "others" are dismissed as worthless (eg. the Solori crusade).
HM Religion and Gods of Harn provide only a snapshot of what the faiths are about. Summa Venarive explains how each faith arose and how their respective communities evolved in the context of the cultures of Venarive. All the faiths have completely plausible origins, and they all offer very considerable benefits to their adherents.
In fact, I consider Venarivan faiths much more realistic than the sort of "religion by auction" seen in most fantasy. People emphatically do not choose their faith based on the goodies the gods offer. Faith is deeply intertwined with community and culture, as well as personal psychology. In my opinion, the Venarivan faiths capture that dynamic very effectively - once you understand how they developed and the environment in which they evolved.
Evil and morality are in the eye of the beholder. Also if you pick up a copy of Venarive you will see that this is addressed. In the global scheme of things the Agrikan church on Harn is a very unorthodox splinter group. But Agrik is no more evil than the Spartans or the Aztecs or the Mongols. You are looking at the religion from a distorted 20th century viewpoint. Agrik worship is very much like the Axtec worship. After all the Aztecs sacrificed thousands every year to insure the sun keeps coming up. In the Gods of Harn Agrik is seen as a intercessor with the elder god Manrusha to keep the world from being consumed by fire. All the bloodshed is to help in this deal. Now Morgath is a little harder to work on. All I can say is that on Harn the only place they have power is Golotha - they control the city, and when a group has that kind of power it will change the doctrine (even if only slowly over time) to strengthen the position they hold. I think the biggest issue with Morgathianism is that the CG made the Shadow WAY to powerful. I prefer the way it is addressed in Harnmaster Gold Bestiary. The CG way would make Golotha a ghost town (literally) within a hundred years tops.
I do not like the overly evil nature of Agrik and Morgath. While it is undoubtedly true that evil gods are worshipped, this tends to be destructive to the social structures that they would need to use to gain political control in order to have any influence on the populace.
So these gods would have to offer their worshippers something, like say the protection from disease that Malia (Glorantha) offers her lay worshippers.
This is an old issue. Robin was always defending his approach to weapon damage from similar arguements. The issue is you are looking at one aspect of combat (from a D&D perspective) and finding it lacking. Almost all weapons use Strength as a component of Skill determination. This makes the stronger man more capable of achieving a good hit with it. This also corresponds with him being able to use a heavier weapon made for his strength without penalty. This actually more accurately reflects the way the physics works. A ballpeen hammer wielded by a stronger man may do a little more damage than the same weapon wielded by a weaker man but it cannot compare with the ability of the stronger man to pick up a sledgehammer and wallop the poor weaker individual who cannot even heft it. Because the damage is not a linear value like in d&d but a modified bell curve it makes more sense to not artificially increase the weaker weapons as the distortion introduced skews the results on the injury tables. Besides it introduces a reason to wield a battleaxe or pol axe instead of the (yawn) almighty longsword - which is usually what happens in AD&D (in my experience at least).
Which on the surface sounds inherently ridiculous - surely the stronger man must hit harder, right? Consider it from this perspective:
Most melee weapon skills are at least partially based upon strength. Therefore, a person with a higher strength will likely have a higher SB, ML, and even a higher EML due to the impact of strength upon endurance and the impact of endurance upon encumbrance and injury penalties. So, the person with the higher strength hits more often, which is better, but how does that mean more damage (aside from using a heavier weapon)?
If a weak man swings his sword and hits a shield, then the shield may deflect the blow or not, depending upon the opposed rolls. A strong man has a better chance to prevail - he has a better chance to "power through" the shield. Likewise, more strength often means more speed in the swing of the sword, giving the target an overall smaller chance of dodging.
Finally, while canon HarnMaster compares the value of the armor against the impact of the weapon after a hit, it is nonetheless easy to imagine that some "misses" are weaker blows that do not have the potential to pass through the armor, and again a strong man would have a higher chance of doing this than a weak man would.
A strong man may not get a bonus to damage as in Dungeons & Dragons, but he does do more damage in a typical fight, all else being equal. He also resists damage better. And, as mentioned, he can choose to buy a heavier weapon that grants an impact bonus.
There is a strength minimum for each weapon. The man with the 18 could use a heftier weapon than the smaller man. But if he uses the same weapon he does the same damage.
What is it that you do not like about the Religions of Harn? An answer to that is a starting point for working out what to do instead.
I am also thinking of starting a new Harn/RQ6 campaign after a dry run on boxing day went well. My main problem is that I do not like the Religions of Harn but do not wish to rewrite the Gloranthan Gods for use in Harn.
Anyone out there got any ideas on what to do.
Those are the two best game for me. I love Runequest and the last edition is very good. But for me all it start with Strombringer(box) in the 80. That how i found about Runequest :)