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If you want to distinguish between the two, you You could use Ryo or Bujutsu (Science or Study of War) for School and Budo (Way or Path of War) for the minor schools.

I think you're referring to the picture of one of Argrath's Headhunters from page 145 of @M Helsdon's magisterial tome The Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass. He's a Sartarite warrior from the Culbrea tribe, according to Martin's account of the Headhunters (p.324), riding on a Sable Antelope (Note that it's not unusual for Sartarites to be mounted on "Praxian" riding animals, cf. poster-girl Vasana on her mighty bison). You can tell from his armour (a scale hauberk) that he's a heavy cavalryman, so RuneQuest character generation is straightforward. Stats for Sable Antelopes are in the Bestiary. Obviously you would be much better off playing as a Sable Rider from Prax, or even as an Antelope Lancer from the Hungry Plateau, because the Praxian Sable Tribe is universally acknowledged to be most the intelligent, handsome and forward-thinking tribe of Prax (by Sable Riders and their honest allies, at least), while the Hungry Plateau Antelope Lancers are an offshoot who greatly benefited from their principled conversion to the Lunar Way in the First Wane. (Other people call this the "Great Sable Betrayal," but they really ought to be more specific since it turns out the Sables have a tendency to betray their allies a lot, cf. Second Moonbroth).

Going back on topic, I'm settling on this idea: There are Great and Minor Schools: Both Schools have an associated Learning skill, like, for example, "Doji Diplomat Learning" or "Matsu Berzerker Learning" Great Schools are heavily based on @Atgxtg. They have 7 associated skills. These Skills are benefit by faster learning, having a bonus equal to 1/5 of the Learning associated Skill to the Training Roll and a bonus equal to their Rank to the ammount of Experience they accrue on that skills. Even if a character is part of multiple schools that benefit the same Skill, they only benefit from the highest bonus. The Rank of the character represents how many Tecniques (Feats) they can learn. Equal to their Rank x 2. Characters increase Rank based on Classic Fantasy Mythras rules, using the Skills of the School: Rank 1 = 5 Skills at 50% Rank 2 = 5 Skills at 70% Rank 3 = 4 Skills at 90% Rank 4 = 3 Skills at 110% Rank 5 = 2 Skills at 130% Rank 6+ = 2 Skills at previous value +20% Additionaly to fulfill the requisites, the character needs to find a Master of their School or fulfill the requisites of the next Rank to completely fulfill their training in the new Rank and learn the new Techniques. Minor Schools represent single lines of Techniques like Martial Arts or Debate Styles. This depends only on their Learning + Single Skill. For example Mitzu-Do [Rokugan Aikido] would be Minor School. The requisites are more easy to fulfill in exchange for a more narrow focus, with each Rank giving access to one specific technique. Rank 1 = 2 Skills at 50% Rank 2 = 2 Skills at 60% Rank 3 = 2 Skills at 70% Rank 4 = 2 Skills at 80% Rank 5 = 2 Skills at 90% For people that know about Legend of the Five Rings [ @svensson ], Minor Schools are my approximation to the Paths in contrast to the Schools. But I will admit Minor Schools still don't convince me, but it can be my perfectionism kicking in.

...I speculated about doing so years (... erm, possibly decades...) ago, and more recently (a few years back) I started noodling away at a Sword & Planet-esque BRP thing with touches of Spelljammer (ships powered by a variant of the Rune magic in Advanced Sorcery / Bronze Grimoire), but that morphed in to its own thing, and switched systems to become AGE powered. Its odd - I can think of resources for Greyhawk, Dark Sun and Eberron using BRP (or Mythras) and as g33k says, "generic" D&D, but I don't recall ever seeing a specific Spelljammer adaptation.

That's a shame! But tends a bit to reinforce @Chaosium's scant resource-allocation to the QW project. It's not like the Chaosium-Con attendees will be generally unaware of the product-line; so it's not a matter of "lack of advertising" or the like. Attendees voted with their registrations, and their attendance. I do not doubt that there is some way to elevate the QW product-line in the market, attract new blood & new attention, etc etc etc. But in this "golden age" of rpg-productivity, it's increasingly hard (for which read "expensive") to stand out & gain that attention.

The Creek-Stream River is a weird one. I'm sure it gets some flooding, but it never dries up thanks to the Skyfall River. But let's just assume that there is a heavy discharge in Sea Season in Esrolia. I would imagine that there was an ancient flood control system that Belintar rebuilt and rescaled after he created the New River. So let's assume there is a good flood control/irrigation system in place. It might be getting creaky now, with Belintar being gone for a decade and several years of war. That sounds right to me. Worship Creek-Stream River/Lyksos to keep the god happy and keep the water clean and steady. This is going to matter a lot in Esrolia. Yep. Remember that the Heler cult is tightly incorporated into the Orlanth Thunderous cult. Creek-Stream River/Lykos is another form of Heler, but one tied to the seas. And all of these are tied into Ernalda and the Grain Goddesses. The coordination of these cults is likely complex and surprisingly harmonious. The end user, so to speak, is Ernalda and the Grain Goddesses. She has plenty of lovers, and needs them for fertility. Meanwhile, Orlanth Thunderous/Heler (Heler always works closely with Orlanth) control that rain function, but are associated with Ernalda and the Grain Goddess. And the river god controls the waters, but is connected with Heler and is associated with Ernalda and the Grain Goddesses. We end up with a triad of cults that work closely together. Does that help?

... Dude, you waited 19h (less than a DAY!) for replies. (FWIW -- I usually figure on a minimum of 3-4 days for specialty/oddity requests like this)

Note that there's a general-use "D&D-style" BRP engine, "Classic Fantasy". It's not Spelljammer-specific, but it'll do a LOT of the heavy lifting for you. I think it's no longer available for BRP directly; the author has moved to the (extremely-BRP-like) Mythras engine, from The Design Mechanism. You may be able to pick up the BRP edition on the used market -- it was Monograph #0383. But I commend TDM's edition! And it's eminently back-portable to BRP, if desired. The simplified & slimmed-down "Classic Fantasy Imperative" rule-set is available as an ORC-licensed product (with printed hardcopy available, complete with lovely production values) from the TDM website. Googling around, I find that noted Mythras content-creator @inwils seems to have done a Spelljammer session, playing a Spelljammer module AP on YouTube!

My Griffin Mountain campaign recently passed its 50th session and we are planning to introduce a "C team" of new characters. One of the players posted an image (from Arms and Equipment Guide I think?) depicting five rows of Gloranthan warriors. Some I recognize (good doggie!), many are still unfamiliar (wasp rider and levitating guy?). Because we want to open up the setting a little, we're using this diagram as a quick-start guide to character creation. One of the players wants to play the rider in a winged helmet with a spiral shield whose mount has back-curving horns. What should we know about that culture? Where might we find stats for one of its average warriors comparable to an Balazaring adult (the "A team") or a character generated with five years previous experience in Dragon Pass (the "B team")?

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Don't worry, it looked to me like a communication error. At least you didn't say her dress was colorful. That is was a diplomat say to a Japanese woman at a social at an embassy party. Unfortunate he attempted to say it in Japanese, and the Japanese word for colorful is very similar to a Japanese word not used at diplomatic events. So compared to that - your golden.

I think that is pretty exactly it. A shaman goes near a temple, discorporates. At one level of remove from the mundane world, they can see the temple wyter. This has properties as described in the RQ:G rules, including a large but, for a minor temple, potentially defeatable POW. If they were to beat that Guardian, without accepting initiation. they could head deeper into both the spirit realm and into the temple. Likely they come to whatever Great Temple the local temple defers to. If so, they would get to see how the local wyter is just a part of the bigger one. And _that_ Great Temple wyter is probably not beatable by anyone who wouldn't have their own counter in the Dragon Pass wargame. But still, they can theorize that if they could, thet could go further. And there they would find a Cult Wyter. or God, who collected together all the different strands. Even from Great Temples widely separated by geography and culture. At no point are you actually imposing your assumptions or decisions on the world. It is just that the process of determing the truth is an inherently destructive one.

Yes, as Brian noted, and including examples.

Arcane Lore has a hodge-podge of early ideas and interpretations on how to try to build a heroquesting system - some more successful than others. Largely the viewpoints/lenses are different, so how you perceive and interact with a given entity varies, but it's still the same entity.

Yes. Several pages of both mechanics and more general discussion about what Illumination is all about.

Ok, so apparently that's a no. I'll have to put it on my list of things to do, after I'm finished creating my vaesen style game.

are there illumination mechanics in the book? No spoilers if there are though please.

"My god, it's full of stars..." If I can run this, anybody can. (NB: David forgot to mention that you need to change a default CheerpJ plugin setting to get the CheerpJ icon added to your toolbar.)

@conajofa @Atgxtg Thanks for being understanding. My wife tells me that I can come across as arrogant when I'm trying to be polite. /shrug

Good point, Atx.

I have not any issue with that. I had an issue with the previous version, where lunar magic was "just" sorcery technics applied on spirit magic. Now, at least there is a difference 🙂 However something always disturbs me : there are specific rules or content on very specific characters (lunar initiate ... already illuminate, already priest / runelord; but also path of immanent mastery, comb and braid, etc...) Rules or content means efforts for very specific cases. And there is one case... one case which is the promise of the games names and period. Runequest, Herowar So I m happy that there was no change, no effort, with the lunar magic. At least, it saves time/workload on something I expect for more than 3 decades ! Note than deeper work on dragon pass, sorcery etc... is a good thing in my opinion. Just the big issue with the game is (imo) there are too many scopes to cover properly and satisfy every gloranthomaniac. So if the strategy becomes "less efforts on very specific cases, more efforts on the heart of the concept (we play hero) and the heart of the world (DP + peloria) " I can only applause. Just let JC makes a lot of exceptional work on strange and far lands, weird monsters and very local (sub)cults instead of fixing the missing part of the heart

Or viewing the same parts of the same thing differently?

Basic Roleplaying Line Editor Jason Durall does a deep dive on how to best approach the BRP System when designing a game for your original setting. Our $10,000 Basic Roleplaying Design Challenge is open for submissions now. The goal of the BRP Design Challenge is to financially assist new and upcoming creators in bringing their games to independent publication (be that digital or print). Chaosium seeks to empower designers from all walks of life, with original ideas, concepts, and systems, with the goal of seeing all shortlisted entries eventually published independently. Entry to the BRP Design Challenge is free and all entrants retain ownership of their work in its entirety. Chaosium does not require the signing over of rights of any kind in order to enter the BRP Design Challenge. Find out more about the BRP Design Challenge here: https://www.chaosium.com/blogthe-basic-roleplaying-design-challenge/

Well, Jeff seems pretty clear: You can’t contact [Wakboth] as he is dead … and buried beneath that Block of Truestone … part of the reconstituted mundane world and the source of moral evil in mundane life. But as long as he is imprisoned beneath the Block, that’s all But I am just reporting that and playing with it. I am not endorsing it. You are right that we can do what we like with Wakboth and friends. And we should. Beats blaming our faults on a dead monster. I tend to view the Block and whatever is oozing out from under it as a symbol of the integration of chaos into the temporal world. Perhaps lifting the Block would have no effect — it is just a symbol. In a magical world, perhaps the alteration of a symbol would have a large effect, but what effect? Accelerating entropy? Unleashing evil? Unravelling time and returning us to the timeless hell of the Gods War? Undoing the Compromise, thus killing all the gods relying on it for survival? 🎶 And we’ll have fun fun fun now that [someone] took the Truestone away 🎶

This episode is our latest exploration of the deities of the Cthulhu Mythos. We have devoted previous episodes to Dagon, Shub-Niggurath, Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep, Hastur, Azathoth, Nodens, Ubbo-Sathla and Mordiggian, Ithaqua, Cthulhu, Daoloth and Eihort, Gla’aki, Y’golonac, Tsathoggua, Atlach-Nacha and Abhoth, Cyäegha and Byatis, and Yig and Ghatanothoa. Here, we’re turning to the creations of Brian Lumley, specifically the gods Shudde M’ell, Yibb-Tstll and Bugg-Shash. As usual, we discuss their origins in fiction, how they’ve been developed in the Call of Cthulhu RPG, and how we might use them in our own games. We planned this episode some time back, before we heard that Brian Lumley had died.

On a game design note, sorcerers still have separate skills for each spell making skills for intensity etc. overly needless. For Red Goddess magic, the base for *all* spirit magic is POWx5% so having separate skills for prolong, combine etc doesn't seem that much of a burden to me.