HeroQuest Character Sheets

I put these together a while back and they are on the Issaries site. Word 97 and StarOffice/OpenOffice 1.0 format.

Forgotten Cults

One project that I considered was to use the Forgotten Realms maps for an alternative far future Glorantha, where Orlanth and the Red Moon fought to a standstill, and Jar-Eel ended up in a role akin to the Lady, out of Glen Cook's Black Company books. The campaign would be set long ages after the fall of the Red Dominion. The AD&D2 Complete Priests' Handbook is assumed. The inspiration was sparked when a player chose a priest of Strength with the Barbarian kit, and it looked a lot like a Storm Bull cultist…

Commentary

Mother Night is probably not an attractive choice for players; Lady Starbow will gather some women warriors; the Secret Moon is not really a player character option, given its secrecy and restrictions; the Blood Moon is a relict cult, found only in a few out-of-the-way places and usually despised. The Red Magic secrets it teaches are one of the prized posessions of the Red Wizards in their mountain lands, rumour of which makes them hated and feared beyond what their own efforts can achieve. Mistress Moon is a semi-fighting and partly mystic priesthood, suitable for player characters.

Mother Night

One of the nameless spirits of the Dark under the Earth, Mother Night first became noted when Thunder Father struck down Emperor Sun from his throne at Skytop. As the dying, bleeding Sun fell down the sky into the underworld, its inhabitants fled the sudden light. Mother Night led those who ascended into the sky, spreading her protecting cloak of darkness over the land, as she still does to this day.

She has only a small following, as she is content to spread her benefits to all, each night. Her importance is more mythological and practical than spiritual.

Alignment: True Neutral. Priests and worshippers may have any alignment.

Minimum Ability Scores: Wis 9

Races allowed: Any, though most common are creatures of the underdark.

Proficiencies: Recommended — Religion, Blind-fighting (no extra out-of-class cost).

Duties: Protecting those who are distressed by the raw light of the Sun.

Weapons and armour: Chain, shield, any club or similar blunt weapon.

Other Limitations: Function at -1 level in natural light, and half level (drop fractions) when in direct sunlight.

Spheres: major — All, Sun(reversed), Protection, Wards, elemental fire (reversed); minor — Healing, Necromantic.

The reversed form of Summon Fire Elemental summons an elemental of darkness, with similar stats to a Fire elemental, whose attack has the effect of a Cause Fear along with regular damage.

Followers and strongholds: As a minor deity, her priests only have those followings they can personally attract.

Powers: Darksense (sonar based sense, including “acoustic daylight”, rather like dolphins); Hide in shadow 50%+5% per level, modified by race, armour and Dexterity as thieves; Carpe Noctem: Once per level per night, the priest may cause a 10' radius sphere of night's darkness around him or herself to become fixed, and endure through the coming day. If the priest has cast any spells during the day, one of the priest's choice is renewed at sunset.

Symbols: A black disk.

Lady Starbow

As Emperor Sun fell dying into the underworld, splashes of his burning blood fell onto the sky. When even Lord Gloaming, the least and last of the sons and retinue of the Emperor, had followed his master beneath the Earth, the spiritual nature of these bloodstains quickened them to life. Nurturing these last remnants of light came a hitherto nameless and despised sister of Lord Gloaming (the Sun having considered the only feminine spirits of worth to be the fertile Earth, and then worthy only for their fertility).

Defending Heaven and Earth against the encroaching Night, she took up the great Sky bow her father had let fall, defending each remaining spark until the Sun was finally freed from Hell.

Alignment: Neutral Good. Priests and worshippers may have any good alignment.

Minimum Ability Scores: Wis 12, Dex 12, Cha 12

Races allowed: Human, elf(except drow), half-elf; only women may advance beyond 4th level, and only those who have quested for and won a Unicorn mount beyond 8th.

Proficiencies: Required: Riding(land-based) Recommended - Religion, Blind-fighting, Tracking. Crossover: Priest, warrior.

Duties: Protecting the weak and oppressed, especially women.

Weapons and armour: Chain, shield, spear, lance, javelin, shortbow, short sword.

Other Limitations: Often despised by patriarchal Sun worshippers (her worship being most common in areas that revere her father and brothers).

Spheres: major — All, Sun, Protection, Combat, Elemental Fire; minor — Healing, Necromantic.

Special spell: Shooting Star: as the mage spell Flame arrow, but the spell is cast on the weilder's bow, which then transfers the spell's effect onto each arrow fired and lasts until the maximum number of arrows have been affected, or one hour has elapsed. Detect Silver and Gold (1^st level)

Followers and strongholds: As a minor deity, her priests only have those followings they can personally attract.

Powers: Infravison 60' (120' for elves and half-elves); May track as a ranger if there are stars visible in the sky if she has the Tracking proficiency. At 4th level, if virgin, may quest for a Unicorn mount (stats as for a Paladin's war horse). May choose one melee and one missile weapon to have Warrior THAC0.

Symbols: A silver bow; a labrys (double bitted axe) — note that this is a weapon that the Starbow priests may not actually use in combat.

The Secret Moon

Only initiates of her mysteries know any but the barest rumours of her past and current actions. She was the barely visible moon only glimpsed in the radiance of the Unfallen Sun, and who fled beyond the sky at his fall.

Alignment: True Neutral. Priests and worshippers may have any alignment, but usually tend to Lawful Evil.

Minimum Ability Scores: Wis 13, Cha 13, Dex 15

Races allowed: Any, though usually from outcast populations.

Proficiencies: As the Assassin kit from the Complete Thief's Handbook, plus Recommended — Religion, Blind-fighting (no extra out-of-class cost). Crossover: Priest, Thief.

Duties: Furthering the cryptic purposes of the Secret Moon; ensuring that things best kept secret remain so.

Weapons and armour: As thief; weapons of quiet death like the stiletto or the garotte are preferred.

Other Limitations: Must obey their superiors without question. All aspects of the Assassin kit.

Spheres: major — All, Summoning, Divination, minor — Healing (both normal and reversed), Necromantic (reversed), Sun (reversed).

Special spells: Glow: A variant on Chant. The priest glows with an eerie blue light, which gives him and all his associates +1 on all their defensive rolls and -1 to be hit. Lasts 6 rounds, plus 1 per level of caster. Summon Secret Moon Elemental: As Summon Fire elemental. The elemental is invisible.

Followers and strongholds: As a minor deity, her priests only have those followings they can personally attract.

Powers: Gain thief skills as a thief of the same level and the benefits of the Assassin kit.

Symbols: A wavy-bladed dagger.

The Blood Moon

After the first War in Heaven, and the return of the Sun from the Long Night, there was at first no moon. How the Moon later arose is not known. She may have been the Secret Moon returned, or a once-mortal sorceress who attempted to fuse Solar might with the feminine principle, or even a synthetic construct built through arcane engineering as an anti-Sun either by creatures of Darkness or as a weapon against them. Whatever her origin, the presence of a new power enthroned in the sky led to a Second War in Heaven, culminating in a battle between the Moon and the Thunder Father from which both took sore wounds, and in which the world was shaken and remade.

The worship of the Blood Moon is a weakened survior into historic time of the days before that final war; and is without doubt a debased form of the original worship

Alignment: None. Worshippers may have any alignment (but see below). The worship of the Blood Moon is often appealing to mages of an appropriate mindset.

Minimum Ability Scores: Wis 12 Int 13 Cha 15

Races allowed: Any.

Proficiencies: Required — Spellcraft, Astronomy, Recommended - Religion, Reading/Writing, Ancient Languages, Ancient History, Astrology. Crossover: Priest, Wizard

Duties: Spreading the liberating and enlightening message of the Blood Moon, if desired.

Weapons and armour: Chain, shield, Sickle, Scimitar, Shortbow, Scythe, Rhompia (crescent bladed axe).

Other Limitations: Receive only D6s for hit points; subject to the equivalent of Ravenloft Power Checks, and hence may often sport some malformation (power checks may occur for any essentially selfish act): with freedom, such as the liberation from alignment, there comes a corresponding responsibility, and those who succumb to temptation wear their failures externally. The Blood Moon is also regarded as a demonic figure from myth, so her followers also labour under that burden of prejudice, especially in areas that were once conquered by, or under threat of conquest by her Dominion.

Casting of priestly spells is affected by the phase of the moon as follows:

• Dark of the Moon — 1st and 2nd only
• Crescent Moon — up to 4th
• Gibbous Moon — up to 6th
• Full Moon — any

This does not affect casting of wizard spells for split or dual class Wizard/Priests.

Spheres: major — All, Law, Chaos; minor Sun, Charm

Special spells: Moonbeam (Sun 5th), Summon Moon Elemental: As Summon Fire Elemental. The Moon elemental attacks for only half the damage of a Fire elemental, but those attacked must save vs Death Magic or make a Madness check.

Followers and strongholds: As a minor deity, her priests only have those followings they can personally attract.

Powers: Worshippers may follow any alignment, but its value is hidden. Alignment detecting spells yield only "Neutral"; and take no damage or other adverse effects from magic items based on their alignment; and gain benefits as the better of their own alignment and Neutral. When casting any spell, may modify it with metamagic spells (as per Tome of Magic) as follows:

• Dark of the Moon — none
• Crescent Moon — level totals equal half spell's
• Gibbous moon — level totals equal to the spell's
• Full Moon — level totals equal to spell's + 2

without memorising the metamagic spells or using extra spell slots. If the priest is also a wizard, these benefits transfer to casting wizard spells as well. Spells so affected glow bright red, even if normally not visible.

Symbols: A half-red, half-black disk.

Mistress Moon

After the War in Heaven between Thunder Father and the Blood Moon, when calm at last returned to Earth and Sky alike, and the clouds that had long blocked sight of Sun, Moon and Stars alike parted, a white moon was revealed, rolling along the same path as the Sun. Perhaps this was the conquering Blood Moon washed clean by the storms, but broken like the Sun before her to wheel between Heaven and Underworld.

Worshippers of Mistress Moon align themselves according to their age into the appropriate aspect — maiden, matron or crone.

Alignment: True Neutral. Priests may have any part-neutral alignment. There is no restriction on worshippers.

Minimum Ability Scores: Wis 10, Cha 12

Races allowed: Any surface dwelling; only women are permitted into the priesthood; few men even join the worshippers.

Proficiencies: Required Astronomy; Recommended Religion, Navigation, Astrology, Spellcraft, Reading/Writing.

Duties: Guidance, Marriage, support of women in the transitions of their life.

Weapons and armour: Chain, shield, Sickle, Scimitar, Shortbow, Scythe, Rhompia (crescent bladed axe).

Other Limitations: The secretive and nocturnal nature of their worship can cause a negative reaction from non-worshippers.

Spheres: major — All, Charm, Divination, Summoning, Sun; minor - Elemental, Healing (and Necromantic if you use the unrevised spell spheres).

Followers and strongholds: As a minor deity, her priests only have those followings they can personally attract.

Powers: A priestess of the moon as maiden has Charm/Fascination; a priestess of the moon as matron has Soothing Word; a priestess of the moon as crone has Turn Undead. Saves against any of their magical effects are at -1 during the appropriate phase of the moon.

At 5th Level, all gain Inspire Fear (as per the CPHB).

Symbols: A silver disk.

Mountain Daughter

The martial daughter of Mother Earth, the patron of warrior women, and especially those who fight to defend, or, damage done, to avenge.

Alignment: Chaotic good.

Minimum Ability Scores: Wis 10, Str 12 (gain +5% xp if both are 16+)

Races allowed: Human, elven or half-elven women.

Proficiencies: Required Tracking (as Ranger); Recommended Religion, Reading/Writing, Riding, Healing. Crossover Priest, General and Warrior

Duties: Defending, especially other women; avenging harm done to them.

Weapons and armour: Any armour and shield, any axe or axe-like pole arm. May specialise in one chosen weapon.

Other Limitations: Joining this priesthood separates a woman from her normal society. In particular, she may not marry

Spheres: major — All, Healing, Protection, Elemental Earth; minor - Necromantic, Guardian.

Followers and strongholds: TBD.

Powers: Bladethirst, level times daily, castable on her own axe. Incite berserker rage in self or other members of the cult.

Symbols: A bloody axe.

Sir Sword

Once a brother of the Thunder Father, now the wielder of the archetypal sword, and that sword itself, that first brought death to the world.

Alignment: Lawful Neutral.

Minimum Ability Scores: Wis 9, Str 13

Races allowed: Any.

Proficiencies: As CPHB war god, including crossovers

Duties: Excelling in martial prowess, separating the living and the dead (including laying to rest those who should be dead, but are not - the undead).

Weapons and armour: Any armour and shield, any sword. May specialise in all swords.

Other Limitations: May not be raised or resurrected or even turned into undead (though the physical remains of the priest may be animated as a skeleton or zombie). Any transition to undeath e.g. by level draining by high level undead, results in the character's death rather than transformation into undead.

Spheres: major — All, Combat, Necromantic (but may not raise the dead); minor Healing, Protection.

Followers and strongholds: TBD.

Powers: Turn Undead; Sense Assassin ( WIS based proficiency ); CON bonus vs poison and such as a dwarf (doubled if you are one).

Symbols: A sword.

Volcano Brother

The youngest brother of the Sun, who fell into the Earth, not into the Underworld. As the CPHB Fire god with the following changes:

Proficiencies: add bonus one forge-related and one farming-related

Duties: Aiding and being an example to the workers on the land.

Spheres: major — All, Healing, Elemental Fire; minor — Healing, Necromantic, Protection.

Symbols: A burning spear.

Thunder Father

The son of Sky and Earth, who fell in the Gods War long ago. This is how his priests of that age might have appeared.

Alignment: Neutral good.

Minimum Ability Scores: Wis 10, Con 12

Races allowed: Air-breathing males.

Proficiencies: As CPHB Sky/Weather god

Duties: What a man's gotta do; to be an exemplar of the role of man as father, provider, protector, and, as needs be, warrior.

Weapons and armour: As the CPHB ruling god.

Spheres: major — All, Weather, Elemental Air; minor — Healing, Combat.

Special spells: Add the following mage spells at their original level — Fly, Dimension Door, Teleport, plus Conjure Air Elemental (as Conjure Fire Elemental).

Powers: Incite berserker rage and Inspire Fear as CPHB.

Symbols: A thundercloud.

Desert Storm

A brother of the Thunder Father, patron of berserk warriors who strive against unnatural monsters. As the CPHB god of Strength, with the following changes

Alignment: Chaotic (urrr... Disorderly) neutral.

Duties: Destroying unnatural monsters.

Special spells: Replace Flamestrike with Conjure Air Elemental.

Symbol: A bull's head.

Mothers of the Moon

The wizard-priests who created, empowered or restored the entity whose remnant is now the Blood Moon were at one time worshipped as demigods in their own right, and in their collective role as those who brought the moon into being, as a fully powered god-equivalent. This is how their worshippers might have appeared

Alignment: Neutral.

Minimum Ability Scores: Wis 10

Races allowed: Any.

Proficiencies: As CPHB god of Everything

Duties: Spread the word. Bring civilsation to the barbarian and savage.

Weapons and armour: Any armour and shield, scimitar, sickle and scythe. May specialise in scimitar.

Spheres: major — All, Charm, Necromantic, Sun; minor — Healing, Combat.

Followers and strongholds: TDB.

Other Limitations: Casting of priestly spells is affected by the phase of the moon as follows:

• Dark of the Moon — 1st and 2nd only
• Crescent Moon — up to 4th
• Gibbous Moon — up to 6th
• Full Moon — any

This does not affect casting of wizard spells for split or dual class Wizard/Priests.

Special spells: Summon Moon Elemental: As Summon Fire Elemental. The Moon elemental attacks for only half the damage of a Fire elemental, but those attacked must save vs Death Magic or make a Madness check.

Powers: Turn Undead.

Symbols: A silver moon.

Emperor Sun

The first ruler of the cosmos.

Alignment: Lawful (= bureaucratic) good.

Minimum Ability Scores: Wis 12, Int 12

Races allowed: Men whose fathers were priests of Emperor Sun.

Proficiencies: Required Healing; Recommended Religion, Reading/Writing, Riding (horse), Play Harp. Crossovers as CPHB Sun god.

Duties: Governing. Being an example of austere virtue

Weapons and armour: As CPHB Sun god

Spheres: major — All, Divination, Healing, Necromantic, Sun; minor — Charm, Elemental Fire, Plant, Protection.

Special spells: Imbue with Spell ability — despite only having minor access to the Charm sphere.

Followers and strongholds: TDB.

Powers: Turn Undead, Soothing Word, Inspire Fear.

Symbols: A golden sunburst.

My Life in Glorantha

As anyone who's read my other RPG posts — and especially my background page — will know, I burned out on gaming in early 1995 — and that I spend a lot of time on those pages talking about either variant D&D or Champions, but other systems are only mentioned in passing.

As it happens, I've had a love/hate relationship with RQ/Glorantha for going on 25 years now.

I first encountered Glorantha in the form of the original Nomad Gods game at the Wargames Soc. at college, and thought it a little bit silly — though by no means as bad as Greg Costikyan's humour in the SPI Swords and Sorcery game. It was a while later, when looking to other systems to find bits to plunder to fix D&D, that I picked up a copy of RQ2 (the new edition at £8, as opposed to the old one at £5, this being back in about '78). RQ2 had a lot of things that I thought made for an ideal game — individual skill ratings rather than blanket levels, fixed hit-points — but it didn't have a splashy magic system in that way that *D&D always has, so while I tried a few one-off sessions, and Karen even did her first bit of GMing c1980 with RQ set in a setting of her own, Glorantha languished as something I read fragments of in Cults of Prax, Trollpak, and Cults of Terror, but never did anything with.

Neil Taylor picked up a copy of Borderlands, and started to run a campaign based on that set. The characters were mainly Orlanthi (Sartar's equivalent of the Church of England), with a neo with a death wish playing an Humakti. With the limited source material, we modelled Sartar after high classical Greece, like the pictures in the rule-book suggested, and the Praxians — at Horn Gate, at least — as Arabs at the stereotypical oasis.

And at that sort of time, the group burned out on the whole fantasy genre, and Karen and I moved house from Cambridge to Stevenage because I needed a job. When we found our feet there, we started playing other games with a new set of players (the group that Phil Masters had accumulated), mainly Champions. Meanwhile HeroQuest had gone from being a “source to be published” in the list at the back of the RQ2 rulebook, to an item in the Spring 1982 issue of the Chaosium Games catalogue in which promised it for that summer.

Time passed. RQ3 happened, and the combination of the dollar price hike, and the pound falling almost to parity meant that it cost 5 times what the previous edition did — £40 in 1985 money [by comparison, HeroQuest is priced at about £24 in 2003 money]. I did pick up the hideously expensive boxes of Gloranthan background (Gods of... , Genertela) and pored over them for arcane details, while the modified rules stayed on the games' shop shelves.

By the late 80s, I was back in Cambridge and working at the same company as Neil Taylor. As the Champions game folded due to increasing dissatisfaction with the Hero System, he and I would spend hours going over the minutiae as revealed, especially the new scraps in a new fanzine, Tales of the Reaching Moon. I remember fascinating discussions about recherché topics like the implications of the RQ2 Prax map showing the burial mound of a prehistoric hero even larger that the specially large mountain pictogram used for Kero Fin, the mighty goddess-mountain.

And so he set up an RQ3 game based in a slightly variant Glorantha (the big conflict was Tarsh — oriental in flavour — vs. Sartar — more like the current received wisdom, though Babeester Gor was in the role now occupied by the Vinga cult which hadn't been discovered at the time, and Yelmalio was taken as the cult accepted as the Sun among Storm), based alternately in Pavis and Sartar. I had problems stumbling over bits of rules that had changed subtly since the previous edition; other players had problems with other bits of the system like the experience rolls (one Unicorn Woman had her most frequently used combat skills stick at ~45% while others went up to ~70% because the dice would hardly ever convert a skill check into a % increase). We all found that the restraints on spirit magic meant that the old standby of “Glue” (Healing 6) battle-magic that made combat a survivable thing was no longer a plausible strategy. A belated change to Pendragon, to use the virtues and passions system as part of the cult attributes just made things worse — the movement rates and ranges meant that we had something like five times as many rounds to take damage from emplaced trollkin slingers when advancing from their extreme range to contact. [From this experience, I'm somewhat dubious about Pendragon's ability to truly emulate the almost D&D-like combats in Malory.]

The game also suffered from the “tourist trap” tendency — with a detailed world, the temptation comes to play tour guide, and escort the PCs around all the interesting parts — so our lowly step-and-fetch PCs were sent hither and yon, until the game folded under cumulative dissatisfaction, and I ran some cathartic high level D&D to permit some righteous ass-kicking that the RQ had denied us.

With the '90s also came the RQ-revival, spearheaded by a group that gave the appearance of seeking to play something between “Morris-dancing, the RPG” and “Iron John, the RPG”, which is still present in Hero Wars material like Thunder Rebels. The Glorantha that came out of this was trapped in a Procrustean bed of unsatisfactory mechanics, and with revelations that changed my perception of the world — not essentially trivial things like the (Y)elmal(io) flap, but that the Sartar/Lunar conflict was a lot more German/Roman rather than Greek/Persian as the RQ2 art implied. Yes, Orlanth is meant to be Tiw, not Zeus, and the new vanguard had only contempt for the stuckist grognards who liked the old way better.

In the middle of this I burned out on gaming, and when Hero Wars came out, I couldn't even gather the energy to focus my eyes on Neil's copy. I knew I had reservations about what I heard about the system — important events getting handled in a quantum box, with abstract action points expended until the state collapses and you can tell what happened — like who got wounded and how much. Later on, I did buy Storm Tribe, another gods book, and without the damnable barbarian culture.

But this year, HeroQuest — I did like what I saw at Conjuration enough to look out Storm Tribe, if only to try and answer the question “who are all these strange gods that the demo game PCs were devotees of?” and then get a copy of HQ for my birthday. I'm still not sure about the system, the extended resolution in particular; and when I'm in a mood to worry about having too much arbitrary fiat power as GM at the totally free scope of attributes (like Over the Edge, but more so). The rules hacker in me starts to think about perhaps using something like the West End Games' StarWars D6 system, with a HQ keyword corresponding to an SW stat. But I was motivated to at least think about doing something.

Having been out of the loop for a while, I found much Gregging and counter-Gregging had gone on, but I think that Glorantha has reached a point where it has completed a metamorphosis, to a new understanding and a new system, unlike the very awkward state in the '90s when the New True Way and the uninspired changes that went into RQ3 mechanics tore in different directions. Now at last we have a mechanical exposition that supports, rather than thwarts the subjectivist approach.

For example, back in RQ2 days, there was the assumption that a warrior would be an Humakti, and there was the one-size-fits-all cult of Humakt; but in ST, Humakt is a seriously scary god that only dangerous weirdos follow (normal warriors would follow Orlanth sub-cults that no-one who hasn't been following Gloranthan events in detail for the last few years will have heard of, like Hedkoranth and Helamakt). In HQ, he's back to being a standard warrior god – but only for cultures neighbouring Sartar. This I interpret as being because the core Orlanthi culture has access to all the minor attributes/associates of Orlanth, which squeezes the other big gods out into the margins. A similar process seems to have taken place with Babeester Gor, with the Orlanthi having Vinga in the place that the Earth Avenger takes in related cultures who don't also have the Defender Storm.

Of course the process is not 100% – it doesn't fix the (Y)elma(io) problem that really set the cat amongst the pigeons over a decade ago, and had been just about reconciled (provided you don't enquire too deeply into how the myths fitted together) – the ST version of Elmal as the Orlanthi sun-god doesn't really hang together as a myth (it singularly ignores who it was that the Orlanthi think was the object of the Lightbringer quest, or the fact that Yelmalio is the light of the sunless sky i.e. twilight). So far he's swept under the carpet in HQ, in favour of (St.) Ehilm (a Saint in Aeolian Esvulia (formerly Heortland)) — and we last heard of Ehilm as a western figure, the sorcerer who had become too entangled in solar powers, cognate to Yelm.

It is interesting to note that, having the assumption in the examples of a PC party made up from folk all across the continent, and with only distant ties to their kinfolk (occsaional calling in of favours for support in the play examples), the game has drawn back from the anthropological style of RPG that was going to have killed the setting eventually. The rigid tribal Sartarite society is alien to most 21^st century players, more so than easy things like feudalism. Indeed the restrictive elements are stronger than some in real-world societies which are causing active harm to people in the UK caught between their ancestral ways imported from the Indian sub-continent and the ways of their peers and age-cohort.

Having the God of the New Way of Things associated with the people of “We've always done it this way” isn't something that most people will get.

One thing that hasn't changed in HW, and by adoption, HQ, are the rather silly monsters, which hark me back to the first encounter with Nomad Gods. One thing that has improved a bit are the scenarios. I dismissed an early famous RQ scenario with this summary:

The adventurers are approached by a man seeking armed assistance. He explains that he has bought, for resale, a sacred item. The person who he'd bought it from had stolen it from a small nomad tribe, killing most of the adults in the process. When two of the survivors demanded its return from the man now seeking PC assistance, he had his assistant shoot one. He has now found out that they intend to return in force to recover their property, and is seeking help to defend his house and this item. – What do your characters do?

The scenarios in HQ are better than this.

---

Happy Fun Legal Text

Glorantha is a trademark of Issaries, Inc. HeroQuest, Hero Wars, and Issaries are registered trademarks of Issaries, Inc. These they tell me about on their web site.

Nomad Gods, Borderlands, Cults of Prax, Trollpak, Cults of Terror, Gods of Glorantha, Glorantha : Genertela were presumably Chaosium trademarks (and are presumably with Issaries, Inc. now). Presumably Storm Tribe and Thunder Rebels are trademarks of Issaries, Inc. [I have to guess not only the changes of ownership, but also the trademark status of the current material as the books lack any legal indicia, unlike the usual case with comic-books. Pick up a copy of, say Lucifer, and the On the Ledge section tells you that indicia — and that would include Lucifer and On the Ledge — are trademarks of DC Comics].

I'm not certain of the exact status of the RuneQuest trademark these days. Ditto for Tales of the Reaching Moon. King Arthur Pendragon used to be a Chaosium trademark, but they sold the property on, and I can't remember to whom (Green Knight?).

Over the Edge is a (registered?) trademark of Atlas Games.

D&D is a (registered?) trademark of Hasbro, Inc. Swords and Sorcery turns out to have reverted to Greg Costikyan, rather than having been inherited in the Hasbro buys WotC buys TSR acquires SPI chain of events; Champions and Hero System are (registered?) trademarks of Hero Games.

Star Wars is ultimately a LucasFilms registered trademark, though the game rights are currently with Hasbro, Inc.

Conjuration might well have been a service mark of the British Role-playing Association.

All omissions are purely accidental. I'm certainly not an owner of any of the cited intellectual properties.

Doesn't it get complicated when you try to cover yourself while writing an overview that spans much of the life of this turbulent hobby industry!