Ducks: best source for info?

[Jon Hancock]

It’s been a long, long time since I played a Gloranthan game (there’s a battered copy of RQ2 around here somewhere) but I have recently found myself interested in the setting again, not least because the recent HeroQuest books have been getting excellent word of mouth and look to be a good place to start. In the past I never ran games in Glorantha but did play in some, whereas these days I’m far more likely to be the GM.

With that in mind I was hoping that someone could suggest the best place to find information about ducks in the available publications. They seem to provoke everything from weary sighs to outright anger from some people, but I always liked them and have been wondering about running a few adventures with duck player characters, probably using HQ2; ideally I’m hoping to find material covering the basics of their society and place in the world, enough to give the players some grounding. Many thanks for your help.

[Roko Joko]

Very brief “literature review”:
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?673061-Glorantha-So-Ducks&p=16368564#post16368564

and other good references and stuff in that thread.

[Jeff Richard]

I’d say the best introduction to the Ducks is actually in the Colymar Campaign section of Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes. It describes the “city” of Duck Point, introduces the Duck Hunt, Yellow Flower Island, and includes duck NPCs.
There’s also a fair amount about Ducks in the Sartar Companion.

[Jon Hancock]

Ah, that’s very helpful, thanks. Pity the Mongoose ducks book doesn’t sound too promising but I’ll have a look at some of the sources mentioned.

[Jeff Richard]

For what it is worth, with the exception of Dara Happa Stirs and one or two other books by Loz, Greg and I were extremely disappointed with the Mongoose line. That may be putting it mildly.

[David Scott]

If you don’t own Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes or the Sartar Companion, type in Ducks in to the search – top right. You should notice that the index to both of those volumes appear. This should let you see the number pages with Ducks references on. We’re hoping to get all of the product indexes up soon to aid you in finding the info you want. Just type index to see what’s already available.

[Hervé CARTEAU]

The best source of information about these ridiculous feathery little bastards is “Waterfowls in Sauce”, a lunar cookbook detailing how to get the best of these absurdities: by eating them with proper dressing. Did you guess I’m no duck fan?
Seriously, there are interesting duck scenarios in the fanzine RUNEQUEST ADVENTURES 1 and 2 (from 1993, must be on line somewhere); your character must save the legendary newborn triplets Huey, Louie and Dewey. I kid you not.

[Jon Hancock]

Thanks for the suggestions. I’ve fallen foul (fowl?) of index searches before, unfortunately, as it’s rarely easy to gauge the depth of coverage from the number of references (see the 10th anniversary edition of the otherwise excellent Fudge RPG for an example of an exhaustive but essentially very unhelpful index); however, I think I know where I can have a flick through a copy of the Sartar guide, so armed with the index references it should make it easy to establish how useful that book will be for me. It’s on the “to buy” list anyway, but limited cash makes it necessary to choose wisely 🙂

The Mongoose line caught my attention when their first RuneQuest rulebook came out, then I leafed through it in the shop and immediately spotted that there wasn’t actually a credit for Steve Perrin… struck me as a rather colossal oversight. After that I never got around to looking at other volumes; it’s HeroQuest that has brought me back around to Glorantha.

[Carcosa]

Mongoose no longer owns Runequest, and Runequest 6 is now out… best version yet…

[Kuningas]

If you ask me, the lack of information about duck culture is one of their strong points.

Ducks are very quirky, uncentralized, and even veiled in mystery. On the other hand they pose little political or military power, yet tend to thrive in most places (wet, ugly places anyway).

Because of this I have felt I could take considerable liberties with local ducks, adapting them to different roles. They are almost omnipresent, it sometimes feels, yet they rarely conflict with anything.

Most of my actual information is old, hailing from Elder Races (which had quite little on them), and Zola Fel Valley (which had surprisingly much).

[Runeblogger]

I liked the book about Ducks that Mongoose published. With it, it is easier to run an all- durulz campaign!

[Jon Hancock]

Perhaps one small silver lining with the seemingly poor reception for the Mongoose book is that it appears to be available for very little money 😀 I might take a look. My main objection is the way they visually depict the ducks, basically as muscular humans with spiky duck heads. Call me old-fashioned but I prefer the Howard & Donald model.

I’ve found quite a lot of interesting material thanks to the suggestions in this thread, certainly plenty for me to get a game started. The lack of a thoroughly detailed background is no problem; indeed, I agree that some degree of sketchiness is appealing. Too many games, not to mention films and novels, have been spoiled by the mania to fill in every square on the map, every picayune facet of culture. What I was aiming for is enough background to get started without later clashing with established details too badly, and I’ve certainly found that.

[Jon Hancock]

A small padded envelope dropped through the door today, containing three small duck figures from Rapier Miniatures. Very nice pieces, the sculpts are a bit static and they are perhaps slightly larger than I’d like, measuring roughly 25mm from foot to top of head, but then most minis seem rather oversized these days. Good to have at least a few character figures to choose from for duck fans.

[Niall]

I asked this question on theMoon Design forum, but never took the answer down (bad memory I have) and now can’t access it, so here goes again…

What year was the Duck hunt and how much for one duck?

cheers

[Niall]

I asked this question on theMoon Design forum, but never took the answer down (bad memory I have) and now can’t access it, so here goes again…

What year was the Duck hunt and how much for one duck?

cheers

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