From: akuma@netcom.com (Steven E Barnes)
Subject: Re: RQ: River of Cradles (*Spoilers*)
Organization: Radio Free Arcadia
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 00:22:10 GMT

In article <ROWE.93Jan27035353@soda.berkeley.edu>, rowe@soda.berkeley.edu (Eric Rowe) writes:
> Following the switch from the current River of Cradles supplement to the old
> RQ2 in Big Rubble I felt a few things should be replied to.
> 
> In article <1993Jan26.004137.14713@netcom.com> akuma@netcom.com (Steven Elliott Barnes) writes:
> 
>    I went through the original version of this scenario; I don't
>    know what the new version is like, but I had some major gripes
>    about the RQ II version.
> 
> As has been noted, this scenario is not in the RQ3 supplement, but all your
> gripes are in error anyway.

In hindsight, I realize my message was a bit hasty.  I have
to admit that I didn't actually read the scenario, I merely
played in it.  However, I will still stand by a couple of points.

> You must have missed this part...."This scenario is dangerous. It could kill
> 80% or more of the player-characters. It is a good place for Rune Lords and
> Rune Priests to fight, and they will need all their stored POW."  As to
> being a big flow-chart. That was part of the point. The characters are not
> heros, and cannot affect the big picture in a great way, but they can help it
> along.  As to deviating, there were many ways, though admittedly most meant
> leaving the cradle and exiting the adventure. I see no problem with that
> route as it was clearly the rational thing to do at several points.

So, when do we get to be heroes?  (I mean, Hero in the Gloranthan sense)  
That is one of my major gripes, which I'll get into later.

>    In one scene, the boat is being stormed by mercenaries.
>    As my initiate struggled to help defend the boat, I just
>    looked at things, and thought "Why are we doing this?
>    there is no way we can win."  Sure enough, events forced
>    us to hide in the interior of the boat.  Of course, my
>    Humakt initiate died before this happened.  In hindsight, 
>    we should have just ran for the hold as soon as we saw trouble.
> 
> If your character did not understand why he was probably giving his life
> away to save the baby he had no business on the boat in the first place.

Perhaps I mis-stated things.  We were holding the forces off
for a while; then the Lunars did something that forced us into
the hold (dumping oil, I believe).  In other words, the scenario
was structured: the PCs WILL be forced into the hold.  Why lose 
a character permanantly to satisfy a flow-chart?  This isn't 
proper role-playing, but then, neither is the flow-chart structure.

>    An interesting note was that it was raining in that scene;
>    I believe the Lunars were dumping burning oil on the
>    cradle.  The scenario had a note that any Yelmalio
>    initiates with the geas "never seek shelter from storm"
>    had to stay on deck!
> 
> Yeah, so.  Geas' are like that.  A smart Yelmalio jumps ship at that point.

Of course, I would interpret it differently; who cares about the rain?
It's the burning oil that we were hiding from.

>    Finally, things looked grim; we were hosed; there was nothing
>    we could do.  But wait, Argrath the Hero shows up to save
>    our asses.  Talk about un-satisfying.  Basically, our entire
>    effort was irrelevant.
> 
> Oh, so your characters have to be the heros all the time.  Had you not been
> there the lunars would have killed the baby before Argrath arrived.  That
> shows that you contributed, but that there are still things you can't do.

I just don't like being ineffectual; I also don't like deus-ex-machina
endings.

Suppose we had all just jumped ship at the first sign of real trouble?
I'll bet the Cradle would have been saved by Argrath anyway, due
to the flow-chart structure.  Am I wrong?

>    Lastly, as our reward, we got: all the gold we could carry.
>    This seemed pretty arbitrary, and unsatisfying.  I mean,
>    here we are on a boat filled with awesome magic goodies,
>    and they give us gold?  Aren't giants darkness creatures?
>    What about us low-strength characters?  I ended up with
>    11 STR * 100 gold; the rune lord, on the other hand,
>    got 21 * 100 gold, plus he loaded up his sky bull ally
>    with so much gold it couldn't fly.
> 
> First, it was strength * 150, and recall a gold is worth 20 silver, no mean
> sum.  Does it surprise you Rune levels tend to be stronger and deserve
> better rewards?  Also, he should not have been allowed to load the bull.
> That is just one more error upon the GM's part, not the scenario's. As to
> giving the great magic treasures, guarding them was the point of the
> adventure. Perhaps with your attitude you should have been on the side of
> the Lunars.

The problem was that a characters strength is not directly related
to his usefullness.  I notice that I forgot to mention that
my PC was a priest.  In my case, I recieved less money than the
surviving initiates, despite much superior magic abilities.  As
for turning my nose up at gold, we are talking about Rune level
characters.  Call me a power gamer if you want, but I would have
prefered a crystal, a matrix, or something directly useful to
my character.

>    But there was a final indignity waiting for us.  The scenario
>    had a note, something to the effect that:  "now that your 
>    characters are so amazingly wealthy, they should retire; 
>    besides, you don't want all that gold to unbalance your campaign".
> 
> Boy, you shouldn't read so fast, you miss things. That is one of many
> options and definately not a 'should'. This is the list as given. 1: Lugging
[etc...]

Well, I apologise for making remarks about something I didn't
personally read.  That's just the way I remembered things.

Perhaps it stuck in my mind, since a few months later, we
read the playtest 3rd edition rules.  It had the great
"conversion" note: (paraphrased) "Rune Lords no longer
exist; you should probably retire them anyway".

> Ignoring of course that this was primarily written by Gregg Stafford. Perhaps
> it is his style you dislike.  When we ran this years ago the PC's all came
> to realize the world did not revolve around them, and that there was a bigger
> picture in the world of Glorantha.  Instead of driving them into a "we are so
> weak and ineffectual" state, they realized the potentials they could aspire
> to if they were true to their gods and worked very, very hard. Of course, you
> could just be confused because you misread all the rules.

This is about the fourth time you have directly insulted me.
You know, you could phrase things a bit more diplomatically.

I was under the impression that Peterson co-wrote the
module.  If I am wrong, then I shouldn't have mentioned 
him; the comment was related to a different set of gripes 
I have, mainly concerning third edition RQ.

What I realized from the scenario is a general attitude from
Chaosium that we (the PCs) are not the heroes.  On the one hand, 
Stafford will say: "Why do you want to be powerful?  You can have 
fun playing initiate-level characters".  Then he writes up tales of 
awesome heroes that slaughter armies.

I realize that in the cosmic scheme of things, there will
always be entities more powerful, even if my PC does attain
Hero status.  I would like my characters to be able to
influence history in a real way, and not just be a bench 
warmer for Staffords Heroes.  I have this feeling that
he doesn't want anyone mucking about with his precious
Glorantha history.

-steve