I also like then a lot, they remind me of the swine-things from Hodgson's The House on the Borderland and the swine monsters from the videogame Darkest Dungeons. I'm not sure I have seen them portraited as noble savages, but that is not how I like my orcs.

Why are there orcs in this game? I haven't read all of the HPL, CAS or REH stories, much les all of Burroughs's, Merritt's or Lieber's, or anyone else's mentioned in AS&SH, but I haven't found orcs in their stories, so, other than a (sine qua non) trope of ficción, why are there orcs here?

I'm not saying it's wrong or anything, I'm just asking.

mabon5127 wrote:

Is there real-world historical precedent for a "common tongue" as used in many fantasy RPG's?   This seems to diminish the value of knowing languages as everyone knows this common tongue. 

 
Well, there is (it seems):

"A good part of the work that our linguists at SFI have been engaged in consists in tracing the histories of the world’s languages. We believe that these languages share a common origin. We believe in an Ur language. We believe that language is based on an idea."

This quite is by Cormac McCarthy, from Nautilus: http://nautil.us/issue/54/the-unspoken/cormac-mccarthy-returns-to-the-kekul-problem?utm_source=Nautilus&utm_campaign=96d6f93f51-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_11_29&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_dc96ec7a9d-96d6f93f51-60902025

Blackadder23 wrote:

Caveman wrote:

I a bit confuse about the officer when a character gets to 9th level, does he get one officer for each unit or just one officer for the troop?

They are called troops, then state a unit and a officer commands a unit. Is unit = troop?

I think each different type of troop has its own officer. Maybe Jeff or Dave can comment if this was the intent of the rules.
It's mostly a moot point, because how many campaigns really run to 9th level, and how many actually involve domain management? My experience back in the 1980's, when I was a teen and could play D&D all the time, was that the answers were "very few" and "none" respectively. I'm thinking for older gamers (which I believe most of us are) the answers are going to be "even fewer" and "still none".

Yeah, none or almost none. But still, there's rules for then because some people might be interested in this (there are, indeed, as de can read above). I have never been interested in then, but I have never been a player myself, only GM.

My own take? No rules apply. The rules as written don't make a lot of sense. It should be built on a case by case basis. Nothing prevents a 9th level wizard to hire more henchmen and officers as the player ser fit for his own purposes. There are clear rules for hirelings, it should be used here, as well.
 

I have yet to read the gazetteer, but if* I run a Hyperborea campaign, there won't be any gods.

*if, because I'm really attached to Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Call of Cthulhu and Savage Worlds, and I'm waiting for The King in Yellow, that I don't think I will engage with another game, at least until I get tried of these.