radmonger

51 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Short answer: Yes.

Did you mean to say 'no'? The text you have quoted supports the reading that SR is not an action point economy, and so you do not delay your attack by 'spending' strike ranks moving. The characters with the lower strike rank simply attacks first; that's all there is to it. Longer weapons and greater reach mean lower SR, and so, other things equal, attacking first.

Unlike RQ3, there is no rule covering how SRs are spent while mounted or not, because SRs are never spent, merely compared.

The captive daughter obviously represents the upland marsh. Now an upland marsh is a rare thing; the water would normally drain out. An upland marsh in long-populated territory like Sartar is even rarer; someone should have long ago drained it. Delecti's undead could presumably fight off the workforce required for conventional drainage methods. But the kind of earth magic that defeated the Lunars at the Building Wall Battle could have done it in a day.

Which implies such magic doesn't normally work within the swamp. You might summon an earth elemental, but it is weak and diffuse, containing too much water to be effective.

So a simple reward power is just to negate that. If you know the secret, your earth elementals remain solid when summoned in the upland marsh. En masse, they can be used to create solid ground for an army to fight on. Without the terrain advantage, no undead army will last long against the Lismelder Humakti.

But then why would the Lunars, who are allies of Delecti, be promoting this quest? Is it just backstabbing internal lunar politics?

Also, do the ducks really want to drain the marsh, where they are the masters of combat? 

So maybe the whole thing is a setup; the daughter is in fact corrupt, not merely captive. The secret works, but Delecti knows of it, and has a counter. A raiding party using it might have great success, kill many undead and win great renown. But when an army marches into the swamp  trusting in that magic, it will not return.

And Delecti will have a fresh supply of corpses...

There is a discussion on the RQ Facebook group about orlanthi craft gods; i think this is better discussed here.

Crafters are, naturally, a possible occupation for the Sartar homeland. You are not going to have a material culture like that of Sartar without specialists making pottery, weapons, carts, buildings and tens to hundreds of other distinct things.

Also, I agree with the consensus that the is no widespread 'rune cult' of crafters that is a peer of Issaries and Lhankhor Mhy. You can't just take every name from the book of heortling mythology and write them up in rune cult format.

Mythologically, Mostal is the Maker. You are not Mostal, nor his kin, so you don't know how to make the things he does.  So where does craft magic come from?

• Some crafts secrets are only know to outsiders, like Third Eye Blue.  These are presumably ancestor-worshipping spirit cults. Steal a secret from the dwarves, you get to spend your entire afterlife as a spell-dispensing machine.
• Some crafts are only practiced in the cities. Sartarite stonemasons can clearly do non-bronze age things, so in the absence of friendly aliens, they must have some kind of magic. Is it a guild that teaches rune-like sorcery, or a cult that teaches sorcery-like rune magic? 
• Some craft secrets are wrested from sprits by a shaman. These show up suddenly without context, are widespread for a generation, and then fall out of fashion just as suddenly. they never outlive the shaman. So 1613 was the year every orlanthi princeling and merchants daughter had a wooden flying toy.
• Some craft is done as a clan specialty, representing a magical secret known by the clan wyter or ancestor. so only the wind whsilte clan knows how to make wind whistles.
• Most craft is done in the home, produced for family members without payment. As such is the domain of Ernalda, not Orlanth. Ernalda worked as a seamstress in Yelm's palace, and she has daughters who have mastered every domestic craft. One of the roles of Issaries the trader it to gather together those handicrafts, by exchanging gifts with their producers. If they then sell them in the marketplace for coin, that is how the magic works.

But a full-time crafter  has an occupation and associated income. Which means they are not followjng that kind of archetypal Ernaldan gender role. So their deity and cult of choice with be Nanda. This doesn't actually provide them with crafting magic. Glorantha, sans magic, is a bronze age world, not a stone age one. So not all crafters _need_ magic do do their work. Instead, Nanda provides them with the magic they need to follow their occupation within traditional Heortling tribal society.

RQ2 itself is fine; it has a 1 page explanation of melee round and strike rank that works both self-consistently and corresponds to common sense expectations in just about every case,

I just looked it up and on p16, under 'minor criteria', it say pretty much exactly what I've been saying here. I guess when I last read it many years ago, I internalized it well enough that that's what a 'common sense' interpretation of the RQ:G rules looks like to me...

Getting to that understanding via reading the RQ:G rules, or (especially) the FAQ is not a task i would choose.

I haven't seen where you defined you house rules such that there exists a separate movement phase, or whether it is before or after combat. Either way will likely have problems, at least if you expect to follow it mechanically and produce plausible-seeming results where archery and melee are viable but different. 

I think what I am describing is the intent of the rules. Just as it was always the intent that 'spent' MPs come back daily, but 'sacrificed' POW was permanently lost. Even when the RQ2 rules confusingly used the same term for both POW and MP.

2 hours ago, Barak Shathur said:

This is not how the rules work. Once you're engaged in melee, the only way to leave is to disengage, which takes a round of dodging and parrying. Or if you simply run away, the opponent gets a free swing at you. So no, this wouldn't happen.

I do think your proposed houserule makes 'kiting' a bit strong. Bowman starts 10m away, fires at sr3 and 10, moves 20m for free.  Swordsman could  maintain relative position for free, and have the same thing happen next round. Or do a full sprint with no dodging and still not attack till next round. Meaning they take three unparried attacks before they finally get to strike. Better hope they are wearing very heavy armor that doesn't have any rules about it affecting movement rate.

it's accepted wisdom among gun nuts that a knife beats a gun at ~10m range. I've not seen any videos of someone countering this by running backwards and firing. Whearas using SRs as intended (if perhaps not as written) gets you the gunner having 1 shot before the knifer starts stabbing, which seems about right.

SRs can answer two questions, and two questions only

1. who attacks first?
2. can you do something else (move, or cast spells), before and/or after attacking?

In the case of a SR3 archer and SR5 swordsman, the answers are;

1. the archer; they have the lower SR
2. the swordsman has 7SR spare (12 -5), so can close any distance up to 14m before attacking.

Using them for any other purpose than answering those two questions doesn't work, which is fair enough. What's somewhat unfortunate is that using rules intended for question 2 to answer question 1 also doesn't work. A bow already has a low SR because it is usable from range, and so will normally attack first. Using 'movement SRs' on top would be double dipping.

Which is why if i redrafted the rules, I would split SR and AP, just as RQ:G splits MP and POW.

35 minutes ago, Jason Farrell said:

So continuing to think about this and talking out loud now, one scenario in which it makes sense to count movement in strike ranks would be the following:  X casts a rune spell at the beginning of their round and does nothing else.  Y casts a rune spell but only after running across the room.  Y would not cast their rune spell as soon as X would because they are, say, running 18 meters ( so they would cast it on SR 7)

The generalization of p194 is that combat starts at the point one combatant is _in range of_ another. This allow attempting to charge down an archer, and determines how many shots they can get at you as you close.

But really the rules need a clean rewrite splitting up strike rank (SR) and action points (AP), and making AP optional. If used, you have 12 AP per round and attacking with a weapon costs you your SR in AP.

SR alone determines who goes first. But AP determines if the person who goes first has time to do some other action beforehand. If the other action costs more APs than the _gap_ in SRs between the two combatants, it can't be done in time. If that action was a necessary precondition for attacking (i.e. closing to range, drawing a weapon, or reloading) the opponent goes first instead.

if you have more than 2 combatants involved, you repeat that procedure pairwise until everyone involved has an order assigned.

2 hours ago, David Scott said:

Keep it simple, this not a moment by moment simulation, otherwise combat will take you ages.

The rules are hardly well-written, and I am not sure they are completely self-consistent on that point, being sometimes only about attack order and sometimes doing moment--by-moment stuff that only works given minis on a map, and takes a long time even then.

The simplest approach is, as per P. 194,  strike ranks start when melee starts. Consequently, movement into melee by either side does not change order of attacks, and Larry goes first. The movement costing SRs rule should only be used if you _are_ doing moment by moment accounting, with everyone in a known position on a map.

The tricky case here is when Stevie joins a combat between Larry and a Broo.  As usual, Stevie must beat the broo's SR to attack before it, and so must Larry. However, that doesn't tell you whether Stevie attacks the broo before the broo attacks Larry. That's the case where, if you are using minis anyway, you could reasonably use the 1 SR = 3m rule. This implicitly means you are using SRs to track things second-by-second, giving an absolute, not just relative, ordering of events.

Or you could not bother and just stick to the printed SR to determine _player_ order (or, even simpler, just go round the table). NPCs act on the 'turn' of the player they are attacking. Whether that is before or after depends on relative SR.

So humans don't inherently have the plant nature; whatever plantlike stuff may or may not be present inside their body is not normally integrated into their consciousness, or part of their psychology.

Presumably a human with a plant rune is consciously aware of the process of digestion, and can choose to alter their metabolism in desired ways. This may be why most depictions of elves show them as skinny.

1 hour ago, davecake said:

using draconic magic and 'having the dragonewt Rune' are different things.

As are the dragon rune and the dragonewt rune.

I don't think it is explicitly stated anywhere, but Dragonewt may reasonably be considered a hybrid rune of Man and Dragon, like Trade is a hybrid of Mobility and Harmony. This allows a rune cult that has that rune to teach magic that would otherwise require both runes, as many Issaries spells do

My understanding is that vanilla humans have two runes, Man and Beast. Godunya's guards develop Beast into Dragon. By their RQIII rune spell list, they looks suspiciously like they are either descended from dragon hsunchen, or represent the god learner's idea of what dragon hsunchen would be.

The EWF instead developed Man into Dragonewt, by surgery and ritual. This was considered to give a better basis for then developing the Dragon rune, because that is what dragonewts do all day.

The Kraloreans would no doubt disagree; high imperial officials have high Dragon rune ratings while remaining fully human. They just use that rune according to some unwritten mysticism rules that doesn't involve anything as crude as sprouting wings. 

Certainly if you don't get the rune, then knowing rune magic that uses that rune is pretty pointless.

There is a caveat here, that correctly being draconic is a big complicated mystical thing that isn't a matter of merely having a rune. The caveat to the caveat is that humans who want to fly, breath fire and have diamond skin are not always capturing that subtlety. 

The dragonewt rune, at some level, is clearly a mistake. The historical question s whether it was a mistake made by the Empire of Wyrm's Friends itself, or a mistake made by the god learners in understanding the EWF.

3 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

But I don't see how we get from that to making all the babies grow beards.

Covert possession of the community wyter by a mischievous aspect of Eurmal, or maybe a confused aspect of Lhankor Mhy. Likely beyond the ability of any shaman to resolve directly; sounds like grounds for a hero quest.

guide to glorantha, p49.

Note that Rokari wizards are actually _supposed_ to be celibate, so there is no automatic inheritance of zzaburi status. I suspect this is a relatively recent societal reform precisely to prevent the issue that plagues some other Malkioni societes of there being large number of useless zzaburi ritually prevented from doing anything much useful.

I'd doubt it is the kind of simple binary the rules might suggest. More that.some zzaburi are not going to be producing much of useful value by means of sorcery. They may be 'subsidised' to do it anyway, even if makes no economic sense. Or they may just do something else for a living. So long as that thing is not clearly violence, labouring or ruling they are not really breaking any caste rules.

Brithini zzaburi generally don't have children except as part of of an elaborate magical project. The resulting child will be considered a disappointment if they haven't mastered their first spell by age 5.

Other Malkioni could be counted as aspiring to that idea, but not getting there. The more spots there are open for non-sorcerors in the zzaburi caste (scribes, priests, holy fools) the lower the resources required for elaborate marriage, birthing and education rituals.

If i recall correctly,  the new Rokari in particular aggressively search out for individuals of partial zzaburi ancestry, which manifests itself in an an early aptitude for wizardry. Such an aptitude may even be taken as proof of zzaburi birth, despite the child's parents admitting nothing of such a thing.

On 1/7/2023 at 5:28 AM, Shiningbrow said:

I'm sure many of the Wolf Pirates would have a high loyalty to him... but would that ever get reciprocated? And to anywhere near the same extent if it was?

Loyalty to Harrek means loyalty to Harrek as he is. Which means the expected level of support on a simple success is 'will not go out of his way to kill you'.

Perhaps what loyalties need is a mechanism to 'take them up a level', i.e. to take a numerically high but low-intensity passion and turn it into something more significant. so maybe Gunda has 'companion of Harrek 30%' and so has that chance of him actually listening a suggestion. 

by that logic, say Mello Yello has loyalty temple at 90%. Being a near hero they would normally have graduated a simple temple loyalty to something like 'temple champion'. That would let them ask for iron armour, or a squad of bodyguards. But instead they are still at the level where they need to roll the dice to get a bed for the night.

Note if you use questworld-style 'net successes' math for rolls, you don't need that. Gunda can just have a 'loyalty harrek; 130%' that will almost always get 1 success and commonly 2. 

24 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

given how it conflicts with sorcery I doubt any serious Zzaburi would know many spells to teach.

A Zzaburi only needs to know the sorcerous version of _summon ancestor_ to provide virtually any spell to any worthy noble, warrior or artisan. Assuming, of course, that there has not been any dirty caste mobility going on...

7 hours ago, davecake said:

In terms of RQG Runes, Dragonewts should not have the Man rune. Even though elves, trolls, dwarves etc have the Man rune, so it clearly doesn’t represent humanity, it does represent mortality, and dragonewts are not mortal but ever reborn.

i would say that makes dragonewts very mortal; they die more often than anyone else...

The falling dragon meets the rising ape at the man rune. The dragonewt 'rune' is just a compound glyph for that plus 'dragon'

Some sages theorise that the process of becoming a dragon involves splitting up that compound rune into its components. This requires fully develop that man rune, by living a full human life in all aspects, from youth to rulership.

Only once complete can it be discarded. without it, only the dragon remains.

A clear majority of contemporary people do believe in some form of religious magic; angels, miracles, curses, horoscopes, etc.This is as true in the heartland of the american empire as it is in the lunar one. 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-nearly-8-in-10-americans-believe-in-angels/

https://www.livescience.com/38033-how-vatican-identifies-miracles.html

The difference between illumination and enlightenment is that illuminates only believe they are _personally_ immune to magical consequences. 

To be clear I don't believe in that kind of religious magic, and likely you don't either. But reasoning from that belief system to how those who don't share it think and feel is making an error similar to a christian who asks 'why do pagans worship false gods when that means they will go to hell?'.

People believe in _their_ belief systems, not a wrong version of anyone else's.

Argrath believes the lunar empire is fundamentally chaotic, and acts to destroy it. A lunar might well believe Argrath is the moon's shadow, and so acts to challenge it to become something better.

They might act on that belief; Argrath won't.

3 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

the way it makes things “literal” or “real” twists everything to no longer have its real-world meaning

Real-world meaning to modern post-Enlightment types, that is. As Bret Devereux argues below, it is generally safe to assume that people in the past believed their own religion.

https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-polytheism-part-i-knowledge/

Using runes _instead of_ stats is not a net increase in complexity. But yes, this is more a seed idea for an entirely different game system than a drop-in house rule.

How about a short list of skill verbs, but instead of tying runes to skills, and have the rune used to augment a skill determine the flavour and details of what the skill does.

So influence augmented with movement is fast talk,  with life is charm, with death is intimidate, and so on. detect augmented with beast is scan; you are using your senses. But detect augmented with man is investigate; you are using logical deduction.

I agree with the current chaosium line that the whole _multiple Argraths_ idea didn't actually work out that well in practice. Imagine trying to write a wwii scenario where Churchill personally tells you do do something vital for the war effort. But you don't know if that is Cigar Churchill, Steel Churchill or Wheelchair Churchill. Having a fixed name, but no known qualities, loses a lot of flavor, and doesn't actually gain you anything useful.

Much better to have background material that outlines the personalities, ideas and statistics of Churchill, Chamberlian, Halifax and Atlee, And then a scenario that says;

Quote

in 1943, the British PM is faced with a strategic dilemma. Key military forces are trapped in a lunar hell guarded by two giant demons. We need you to go in there and kill those demons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guns_of_Navarone_(film)#/media/File:GunsofNavarone.jpg

3 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

one awesome heroic leader, Argrath, makes Chaosium's task of writing and publishing The Great Campaign a lot easier.

If the Great Sartar Campaign takes the form;

• adventure 1: Kallyr tells you to ...
• events of 1625: Kallyr fails and dies
• adventure 2: Argrath tells you to ...

Then it will be a pretty poor campaign that will be terribly reviewed when it comes out. That rarely happens to Chaosium products, so a reasonable assumption is that it will not be like that.

i would expect something more like;

• events of 1625; Kallyr has a base 100% chance of trying the lbq, and 0% chance of success.
• player influence on events of 1625: 5% for effects at level of a warband, clan, temple or guild, 10% per tribe or city.
• downstream effects; Kallyr remains Prince of Sartar either way. Record whether she attempted the quest, and if she succeeded.

There probably should be an appendix with 'default' outcomes. so that if you are running an unrelated campaign and visit Sartar for the first time in 1632, you know who is King.

That appendix can outline how Argrath forged a great nomad empire out of the beast and horse riding people, and used it to crush all city dwellers, whether lunar or sartarite.

And how that is the Gloranthan equivalent of the bronze age collapse, with mass death and the complete loss of literacy. 

21 hours ago, Eff said:

To contrast, Runequest 2 generates ties for new player characters to institutions

i have to admit the rq;g approach of personal loyalties is a lot more flavoursome for bronze age fantasy than going out working to pay back your college debts.

The problem is it is not really followed through  (yet?) in a way that supports any type of campaign other than metaplot npc as questgiver. Even Black Spear is based around that, just with more flexibility than most about what it means for the quest to succeed.

Canonically, Kallyr fails her LBQ and dies in battle shortly after the default campaign start date . if that is the point in the classic hero narrative where the mentor dies, the satisfactory follow-up is not usually 'and then I found someone else to follow'.

Argrath will have a higher sword skill than virtually any player, and some nifty magic items and hero powers. But the thing that really separates him from a starting PC is that he has hundreds to thousands of skilled and tough people with 'loyalty; Argrath' written on their character sheet.

There are no real rules to track those values, to give the gm guidance on how a given action might raise or lower it. what they need to do to maintain it, and what use it is in a battle, moot or quest. The JC product _company of the dragon_ does have rules for running a warband. But, independently of their personal heroic power, the major npcs are at least one level up from that.

The question 'how many divisions does the Moon Pope have' is one that really needs an answer if you are going to play as one of his peers.