radmonger

from the steam page:

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In Lights Going Out, you can continue a game you began in Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind, or start a new story in this Great Darkness.

45 minutes ago, DrGoth said:

a) RQ combat applies to superheroes/heroes

Absolutely; in hero wars, the ruies were specially set up so that a PC could never threaten a hero, and no hero could ever challenge a superhero, like they were d&d level 1, 8 and 20 respectively. I never really understood how that was supposed to be fun to play out, and it got dropped pretty early in the HW/HQ/QW rewrites .

45 minutes ago, DrGoth said:

b) a given hero or superhero doesn't have a gift like "take minimum damage from all weapons"

That's a classic conditional immunity that is going to get you killed the first time you go up against anyone who has done their pre-fight research.

59 minutes ago, Darius West said:

Given that Orlanth killed Yelm, Yelmalio's relationship with Orlanth is never cordial and is one of ritual rivalry as demonstrated in both cult write-ups. 

Elmali[1] agree that Orlanth killed their father too  The choice is having that conflict  inside the clan or outside it.

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

Any Elmali who joined Yelmalio would have been exiled from their clans.

i'd imagine so. And then the exiles from different clans would join together with colonists from the empire and found temples capable of defending themselves.

Once Monrogh had his revelation (that Yelmalio was Elmal _after_ Orlanth left to bring back Yelm), things came to open conflict less often.

All sun dome temples[2],  and almost all orlanthi clans accept the Monrogh doctrine[3]. In those majority clans, any nearby Sun Dome temple became a completely acceptable way for a young adult from a non-thane family to go and learn the skills and magic to become a professional warrior. Certainly doing so functionally works; they can worship at an Elmal shrine and regain rune magic learnt at a Yelmailo temple.

Only in Sartar and Heortland were there ever actual Elmali organised temples that provided an alternative. And as of 1625, those are almost entirely gone.

[1] meaning those brought up in Lightbringer tribal society who spiritually identify with the fire/sky rune and the stories of Orlanth's solar thane, perhaps without necessarily qualifying as rune cult initiates by the RQ;G rules.

[2] so far as we know, there is some room for variation in lands with little published about them yet.

[3] you know how you reread a Pratchett book and you find a pun that has been sitting there all along?

20 hours ago, Jeff said:

So Argrath is a hero to the Orlanthi and Praxians, the Red Emperor is a hero to the Lunars, Jaldon to the Praxians, and so on. But Harrek, Jar-eel, and Androgeus are feared throughout the world. They are the personification of a million dreams (or nightmares) rolled Ito one body. 

The thing about RQ combat is that while you can be powerful and scary, you can always be killed.

But if you kill a hero, someone will want to bring them back, above and beyond the normal 7-day CA resurrection. However, they live locally, and someone probably knows where. So that is a solvable problem.

If you kill a superhero, the set of people who desperately want them back is large and widespread. So their return is as inevitable as that of, say, captain america that one time he died.

Being really really good at fighting is a downstream effect of getting into lots of dangerous fights and getting to keep your character sheet.

Kallyr's death as the battle of queens would have been a beat in her story arc, had she been a hero, not merely a heroquester. But the Lunars and/or Argrath were able to dissuade or take out her most dedicated and powerful supporters. And, canonically, there were no PCs there to fill in the hole.

Arkat is the ultimate superhero because, despite his peaceful death of natural causes centuries ago, he is coming back. And not just once...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Captain_America

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_America:_Reborn

The rq;g rules re reasonable enough for the in-adventure activities of a shaman, but they are currently lack anything structured on the kind of things they would do in downtime. The same applies, of course, to sorcerers.

What you shouldn't do is use the in-adventure rules to run a minute-by minute simulation of every magic thing the character does during downtime.  Which i think is what you would get if you just converted the rq2 encounter tables. This is likely to be horribly broken, as 3 months of simulated adventuring would be the equivalent of 30 or so gameplay sessions.

if your pc says 'ok, over the next season i want to learn some fire magic', ideally there would be a table listing things that could happen as a result. in the absence of such a table:

1. have them roll a selection of shamanic skills, applying bonuses based on season and relevant spirit society membership.
2. count total successes (accounting for specials, critical and fumbles in the obvious way).
3. decide if that is great. good, mediocre, bad or terrible.
4. make up an appropriate result, something that wouldn't have felt out of place in the table, had it existed.

for example, if they get a truly  great result, then they may well establish friendly relations with a Great Spirit who may well be Lodril, or a close relation. They have the opportunity to learn a Lodril -only fire rune spell. On a mediocre one, they get a chance to learn ignite. On a terrible one, they get a curse, or fire-scarring.

56 minutes ago, DrGoth said:

Which seems to imply that the Far Placers were never Elmali, they were always Yelmalio, although not always Sun Domers. Which does retcon WF#15.  

The relevant bit of wf15 is;

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At that time the lunar authorities constantly advised the leaders of the solar religion, and someone among them decided to import the cult to Tarsh to pacify some troublesome Tarshite natives. Later, the cult was transplanted elsewhere. In this manner the number of initiates grew, and it increasingly adopted other lowland solar ways.

Have to admit, i don't see any contradiction. It says 'cult' not 'deity'. The Yelmalian templars in Tarsh and other provinces simply picked up some new mythic tricks from Monrogh, unifying the worship of Elmal and Yelmalio (and Khelmal etc.) in a single cult. Unlike in Sartar, this didn't involve any mass migration, or adoption of a new way of life. That gave the the Templars better diplomatic relations with the local lightbringer tribes, and greater independence from the lunar authorities.

Rather smart move by the lunar authorities of that period to encourage the adoption of the only solar cult that isn't waving a giant mythic 'we are your enemy' flag at the hill tribes.

For sequences, then, using the tiebreak rule assuming the same skill is used each time, you get the following table:

the outcome is a little irregular because of the varying relative chance of a critical. bu the main takeway is that, due to the law of large numbers, the output is all but deterministic. A 3 point advantage in skill can give a 85% or more chance of winning, a 7 point disadvantage is less than 5% chance of a win.

this seems problematic to me, as it will taker a _lot_ of dice rolls (minimum 10) to get to a result that is almost always pre-determined. what's more, the difference between this and a simple contest result means players are incentivised to request this method in boring cases where they have a skill advantage, and avoid it in climactic scenes where they are outnumbered.

You can avoid this by using different skills, but it seems hard to make that an interesting process when, mathematically, the best solution is clear.

part 4: sequences

And now we hit what I would consider the problematic part of the rules.

As i read this section, a sequence is a set of opposed rolls that, instead of stopping immediately, continues until some condition is met.

There are 4 different variants of this, representing things that have been tried by different editions and spin-offs.

5.1.2 group sequence; pair up until all of one side defeated. The heading level of this version is a bit ewierd, perhaps it is supposed to be a default with the others variants?

5.2 scored; first side to 5 RP wins (RP = net sucesses + 1, or 1 if tiebreak rule applied)
5.3 wagered: set AP based on skill, win lose lose or transfer an multiple of a stake set based on how significant the roll is to the contest.
5.4 chained: classify opponents as mooks/named/PC, they lose individually when their resolve hits zero, where resolve is the negative of RP.

from tfe linked article;

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Now Monrogh only shows up into this story after around 1582 or so. The Provincial Kings, seeking military allies, encourage the local Yelmalio cult to organise along Monrogh’s lines and into Sun Domes, thus returning the cult back to where it was in the Second Age, as valuable mercenaries for whoever is the regional ruler.

So while Monrogh may have only been reminding them of things they previously forgot, that comes under 'well they would say that, whether or not it was true'.

post-Monrogh yelmalian sun dome temples in the lunar provinces claim the right to be paid as mercenaries, rather than just ordered to do stuff. On what basis do they make that claim?

My assumption is it is a consequence of holding legitimate sovereignty over the land they occupy. Which, in at least some of the provinces, they get from being married to Ernalda. The period of pre-Time Yelmalio spent accompanying Ernalda into exile with Orlanth is mythically necessary to connect Yelmalio being loyal to Yelm and him being married to Yelm's widow without a lot of obvious accusations being thrown about.

if they had forgotten about that, then Monrogh's reminder would have allowed them to reassert the independence they had lost. If not, they must have made a simultaneous independent rediscovery of the same idea, which seems redundant.

Note that none of this applies to the true Pelorian heartlands,where Ernalda is replaced by other earth cults, and Yelmic rulers have a monopoly on legitimacy.

1 hour ago, hipsterinspace said:

The big point there in what Jeff posted seems to be that, in contrast to the Pelorian tradition, Elmal is a mythically constrained version of Yelmalio.

Yes, they have 14 great temples, compared to the 0 to 2 remaining minor temples to the Elmal subcult in dragon pass.

Given the relatively short distances involved, along a major trade route, and the (since Monrogh) mutual cross-recognition of initiation between temples, there is really no plausible way for those temples not to know and teach every myth known to the Elmal subcult that they find useful.

2 hours ago, hipsterinspace said:

In short, they don’t have Elmal.

I think that's the wrong way to read what Jeff writes. To him, Elmal is entirely and 100% Yelmalio, just as orlanth thunderous is 100% orlanth adventerous. So when he says 'Yelmalio', you cannot conclude form that 'not Elmal'. 

To most Glorantha lore fiends, Yelmalio worshipped as orlanth's sidekick, married to Redalda, is Elmal. Just as to Police fans, Gordon Sumner on stage singing _Message in a Bottle_  is Sting. if someone decides 'he is a pretentious prick and i am not going to do him the honor of using that silly name', that doesn't imply 'Sting is somewhere else, not on stage'.

A deity by any other name is still going to be able to stab you with a big spear.

All Great Temples to Yelmalio will provide, by the RQ;G rules, access to all Yelmalio subcults. if they don't do that, they are merely major, not great. So at all of the 15 canonical sun domes, the version of yelmalio for which he is an exile working as a horse patroller is as mythically available as the ones where he is son of the sun, or the cold sun in his own right.

This is natural; the distances involved are not that great, and Yelmalio is relatively formally organised as cults go. So as soon as cross-initiation was demonstrated to be possible (by Monrogh), all magical secrets would have been disseminated to all 15 great temples within a decade at most.

On 4/17/2023 at 11:00 AM, Kloster said:

Humakt views the Red Goddess as an enemy and the Seven Mothers collectively as hostile.

The Malani aside, I don't think it is going to be the humakti making that decisions. It's basically going to come down to the clan chief, as advised by their ring, and bearing in mind the first rule of orlanthi leadership:  never make a decision that causes the clan to decide violence against you is a good option.

The default clan chief will be an orlanth rune lord, and so ritually obliged to consider all lunars as intolerable chaos enemies. So a clan that treats lunars as fully initiated citizens will need to be lead by someone like a Barntari or Ernaldan. Or maybe a heroquester, who personally discovered the secret of not hating lunars.

if you follow Yelmalio's path through myths, you find three stages[1] in his life;

• A a junior son of yelm, and loyal to him
• B an exile who followed chalana and/or ernalda when they left with orlanth, loyal to him afterwards
• C  ruler of their own domain after orlanth went off to the underworld, making their own decisions and answerable to noone (except Ernalda).

By the nature of god time, all three stages, and more, can be contacted[2]. Monrogh's novel claim, which he was able to prove, was that they were all the same. Perhaps he started a heroquest at a temple to A, lived through the events, and emerged at a temple to C?

To Sartarites, this was relevant as it showed Elmali how to be true to their god, and win the hand of Ernalda, without breaking any vow they swore to Orlanth.

But to the north[3] it was equally important as it provided a path to be independent of the legitimate hairs to the Yelmic empire without ever actually rebelling against it. They were Templar Spearmen, and they stayed Templar Spearman. They likely know secrets of fire spear magic forgotten in dragon pass. But now they are not necessarily a formal part of the imperial army,  but mercenaries hired by it. which is a much better deal.

So in the north, Sun Dome temples provide subcults A and C. In sartar and prax they provide B and C. Standalone small temples that provide B alone are rare, in most cases B is worshipped at either shrines in an orlanthi clan, or at large or great temples essentially run by subcult C. The fact that this arrangement works and persists is generally regarded as further proof of the underlying mythic identities Monrogh discovered.

A could be Yelmalio Golden Spear, one of many Dara Happen yelmic gods

B could be Yelmalio the Sun Brother, one of the thunder brothers collective, and Orlanth's solar thane. Known as Elmal for short, Elmal being old Sartarite for sun.

C is Yelmalio Cold Sun, and is the only one covered in the current RQ:G rulebook.

[1] Similarly, Orlanth Adventerous and Orlanth Thunderous are both Orlanth at different stages in his life. 

[2] Little of known to Sartaries of the time he spent with the elves, or underwater.

[3] Canon status; not known to  contradict anything published. 

55 minutes ago, Joerg said:

I read the absence of separate horse archer counters in the Sun Dome County military as these outriders being attached to the phalanxes as designated skirmishers keeping enemy skirmishers off the flanks.

Likely when patrolling and fighting in defense of their own lands, they rely on auxiliary cavalry raised from the surrounding area. The preferred recruits for this are those who have some level of religious compatibility (Elmali in Sartar, relevant spirit societies in Prax). In the course of drilling and training, some of these initiate, or demonstrate that they already qualify as initiates.

But when they hire out in someone else's war as mercenaries, only the Templars go. The hiring army is expected to provide its own cavalry/avilry/vespertilary. This simplifies logistics, and provides a better value proposition than bundling elite heavy infantry with an undersized unit of not especially elite light cavalry.

6 hours ago, DrGoth said:

Sorry, but I'm still confused.  Let's say we've got a small(ish) clan.  500 initiates.  100 of those initiates are Seven Mothers.  I can't see them all packing off to the city come Sacred Time.

Unless the city (or tribal hub) is very close (4 hours travel at absolute most), i'd agree.  Of course, some of the time it is, Sartar is not large, and has magically-built roads.

Otherwise i think it comes down to a conflict, with one of several possible outcomes:

- most of the 7m initiates leave their cult, as per standard 'leaving a cult' rules

- most of the 7m initiates leave the clan, and move to the city. There, they by default continue all their existing religious affiliations, in two temples and paying two tithes. if they later drop one, that counts as 'leaving that cult' as above.

- they hold ceremonies in secret, as orlanth cultists did during the lunar occupation, using sites and Sanctify rituals. This seems relatively unlikely, unless they have a lot  of passive support. 

- some lunar cult is accepted as one of the deities worshiped by the clan, on one particular day of sacred time. On that day, all the initiates, and some of the rest of the clan, worship at the clan shrine to that deity.

- they leave the clan and merge with others in the same situation to found a new one where a lunar deity is accepted as above.

Note that I don't think there is any current widely-accepted mythology about how Orlanth has a loyal lunar thane, or Ernalda a lunar aunt. No doubt it was forgotten during the ages when it was not relevant to anyone's life.

59 minutes ago, svensson said:

Bows are seen to require more skill to use, more skilled maintenance, and are therefore considered more 'professional'.

Firing a bow  from horseback in a militarily effective way, using no magic and bronze age gear,goes beyond professional to requiring a whole way of life. Even most roman and medieval mounted archers would dismount to shoot, although the Romans did have some nomad auxiliaries with the relevant skills.

Meanwhile in Glorantha, Yelmalio teaches Kuschile horse archery, which while badly represented in the rules, is clearly meant to let someone fire from horseback while moving, with unexceptional ride skill. And whatever Elmal cultists may or may not think, Yelmalio temples absolutely do consider Elmal initiates to be one of their own, and so will teach them that.

I do think most Elmali thanes would take advantage of that offer. But if there are any that reject it, they are probably better off using javelins well than bows badly.

2 hours ago, svensson said:

As to Spirit Magic spell selections, Elmal's cult is small.

But Yelmalio's cult is not, and does have Rune Priests...

It is a Chalana Arroy cult secret that the birth of the red goddess was a perversion of a resurrection ritual, peformed by the apostate priest Deezola. The innocent young Teelo Norri was slain by the murderer Danfive Xaron, so that Rufelza could be brought back in her vacant body.

Somewhere in the lunar provinces, someone believes that the lightbringers quest was the same deal. The elderly loyal thane Elmal was murdered by Orlanth, as his weak light was no longer capable of sustaining life. The emperor Yelm took possession of the vacant body, shining brightly again.

4 hours ago, hipsterinspace said:

I’d argue that Vasana is more likely to be placed into the role of Larnste than anything else, especially given that her god Orlanth, in his guise as Larnsti, has mastered the magic of change

i'd suggest it would be inherently a multi-stage process. Use orlanth rune or ritual magic to travel to Orlanth's stead, making sure you get there before the spike explodes. Travel to somewhere where you can meet Larnste. Convince him to personally initiate you, probably by passing some suitably epic test.

Use Larnsting hero magic to emulate being Larnste's companion at some earlier date. Repeat until failure.. 

Looks reasonable to me. I'd add a few rune spells or enchantments; 14 seems a good rule of thumb for a cult with (presumably) only small temples. PCs shouldn't be running out of spells to learn during any reasonable length campaign. Catseye, Vision and Command Hawk would suit a horse-patrolling, cattle-guarding thane. I am not sure command horse really belongs, that is more for horse-taming or capturing.

i assume 'sunbrighten' is a typo for 'sunbright'? 

By the rules as written, the skills/passions should be;

• cult lore (yelmalio)
• worship (yelmalio)
• devotion (yelmalio).

Which is actually silly; what makes much more sense is;

• cult lore (elmal)
• worship (yelmalio)
• devotion (elmal).

The RQ;G cult rules are quite specific that a cult picks an arbitrary single name for the deity worshipped, even if it's worshippers call it something else. Which is fair enough for the role of the worship skill in regaining rune points, and how that actually plays out in game. You don't want an initiate of a 1 to 2 temple cult like Elmal to never be able to leave town.

But for me, it breaks suspension of disbelief for a Yelm priest to be automatically taught, and care about, the myths of yu Kargzant.

1 hour ago, metcalph said:

Unspecialized shrines would teach Reflection, while specialized shrines would teach Regrow Limb (Deezola), Madness (Jakaleel) and Mindblast (Irrippi Ontor). 

Reflection makes perfect sense; it was common magic in RQ2, and so would likely have been available to most or all the individual 7 cults, if they ever had a long form write-up.

It also justifies why 7 mothers is a city-based religion; their shrines suck. No clan chief would feel a pull towards establishing a 7M shrine to get access to Reflection. So 7M is  all about city-based temples.

Note that, with a few local exceptions, most of the barbarian belt, from Imther to Tarsh, didn't really know how to city before the lunars showed up. So before Sartar, they never had to deal with a rural population who couldn't be won over by simply demonstrating the inherent advantages of urban living. Sharing specialist temples means your clan doesn't have to dedicate itself to some pacifistic healing god to get access to a full range of healing magic. But the Sartarite clans already had Chalana healers, trained at the nearest city hospital.

11 minutes ago, hipsterinspace said:

It’s possible to worship just one of the individual mothers, it’s even possible to transfer initiations from the Seven Mothers cult into to one of the individual cults

Yes, but is it possible to establish a shrine to them collectively? A shrine provides a single spell, not 7, and the current writeup doesn't say which it would be. At the very least if would seem hard to distinguish between, say, a Seven Mothers shrine that provided Truesword and a Yanafal Tarnils shrine that did the same.

51 minutes ago, DrGoth said:

If the tribe has 500 SM initiates, than I think a few clans around Alda-Chur would have Seven Mother shrines. 

One thing I am not clear on is whether you can have a shrine to the seven mothers collectively, or if they are only unified at the temple level. Isn't a 7m temple really just a collection of shrines to mutually associated deities, with the typical central god left out?

iirc, Etyries is accepted as both a subcult of Issaries, and one of the seven mothers. If a clan wants to avoid internal religious strife, with two clashing ceremonies and conflict over which to go to, that seems the most likely compromise. The trade routes to the north stay open as armies come and go, and your trader needs to have a stand at the market where the wagons stop.

This of course applies to a baseline orlanthi clan. The telmori, or any other clan where the chieftain isn't expected to be at least an Orlanth initiate, will be different.

1 hour ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Heroquesters only ever have second hand accounta, whether from the Elder Races or from human priests. 

In most cases, anyone heroquesting from Orlanth's stead will have prior personal experience of the initiation paths that lead to that stead.

To start somewhere else, they would need to either learn a different set of initiation paths, or accompany someone else. Or maybe be a shaman, and so get to start from wherever they are. 

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

Few minority cults outside of the associates of the main clan deities can accumulate enough reguiar worshipers to maintain a shrine - that's a normal situation for speciality cults like Humakt or the Seven Mothers (outside of Lunar-dominated areas).

Agreed; the shrines I am talking about are those associated with the main clan cult. This requires only 75-225 lay members, which shouldn't be hard to rustle up on the chief's say so.

i guess the objection someone will come up with is ''Jalakeel isn't an associated cult of Ernalda'. To which the clan members will reply "sorry stranger, but you are mistaken; here is her shrine, in the clan Ernalda temple. Would you like one of her initiates to demonstrate the magic they learnt at it on you?"

21 minutes ago, Joerg said:

These extra roles don't require that the participants are Lightbringer cultists or anything like that.

The experience of I Fought We Won is universal, at least amongst those who agree with the 'won' part. So for everyone except ogres, if you don't get to have your form of participation represented, then you are not fulfilling your cult obligations, at least in the context of the clan.

The duration of a sanctify spell is 'so long as the ceremony continues', so I would suggest that any shrine unused during Sacred Time would need to be resanctified. And remaining an active cult member without a shrine locally is difficult at best. so if you have an elmal shrine, your clan holds 'Elmal guards the stead'. If you have an Hedkoranth shrine, it holds 'Hedkoranth does the thing [details tbd]'. If it has a shrine to a sister of Ernalda that the Red Lady says is a mask of Jakaleel, it has a night that some of the women go off and do something mysterious and necessary for the renewal of the world.

The limited length of sacred time is ultimately what governs the number of shrines a clan can support. There are accounts that in earlier ages, before the last time the world was broken and remade, sacred time was longer. Things were possible then that were not possible now.