radmonger

This mythic map from Ships & Shores of Southern Genertela, may add some points relevant to this discussion:

Air/storm is everywhere. But it only actually rules marginal lands, in the form of Ygg, Valind, Gagarth and Storm Bull. Most of the places people live are actually Earth Godess territory, and merely defended and protected by Storm gods. Teshna is an earth godess carrying a fiery weapon (Tolat?),; all the other earth Godesses are unarmed.

For solar gods, Yelm rules a small but significant territory, dominating an air goddess (Entekos) rather than protecting an Earth Godess.  but the other prominent fire/sky god is, perhaps surprisingly, Kalikos .  He is shown as a Yelmalio-like spearman figure, defending Pelora against Valind.

His appearance here suggests to me Kalikos is a more significant god than generally presented, perhaps a major cult in the western reaches. Likely he has the heat powers that Yelmalio lacks, perhaps at the cost of light powers.

6 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Screwing around with ransoms is a gross violation of civilised norms, one that invites retribution from your own side as much as it does from your enemies.

However, there is nothing in those norms that says a ransom has to be paid in cash, The default lunar playbook when a ransom is demanded for captured troops is to take an equal ransom value of hostages from the clan or tribe of those making the demand. If such a hostage exchange is accepted, no further action is necessary. 

If anyone refuses such a deal, they are clearly outlaws, and so subject to summary justice without compensation.

Ir clearly doesn't make any kind of in-world sense to have absolutely everyone, in a clan or not, everywhere in glorantha, receive a standardised multi-season magical education of exactly the same long list of mostly low-value spells.

For one thing, it would make joining a cult in-play impractical.

Maybe those spells are just completely natural expressions of magic, as intuitive to anyone who has gone through the initiation process as breathing. Or maybe, common spells are, as they were in RQ2, just 'spells you can commonly learn'. Or maybe they are  mostly ritual magic, not castable in combat and so different from full rune spells that are.

Or, ideally, someone goes through the list and sorts them into those 3 cases.

The way I specifically rule this point is that after completing the adulthood initiation heroquest, PCs get a standard heroquest reward; a single-use rune spell. This is could be  freely chosen Or it could be suggested by the GM, perhaps based on their actions during the initiation.

Making the new spell reusable requires learning a worship skill, which is done by joining a cult. In the case where a spell can come from one of several cults, this means they get to choose which cult to join. This is one common path to becoming a Vingan or Nandan, based on the pair of rune spells Orlanth and Ernalda share by association.

It is also possible to disregard the free spell and join any cult However, this would generally be seen as rejecting the clan heritage, and perhaps going against the will of the gods. This is likely what prospective Seven Mothers initiates in Sartar during the Lunar occupation would have ended up doing.

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

we can get further with the Brown Sage than they can with the Knowing God alone.

As i see it, you can follow Buserian up until the point Yelm died.

Or you can follow Lhankor Mhy on the first Lightbringer's Quest, up to the point of the Great Compromise. 

Or you can follow Irripi Ontor on the _Second_ Lightbringer's Quest, to the Amended Compromise.

It's one linear narrative, albeit involving a sequence of characters inheriting their predecessor's legacy and titles. Like any reader of the Dune books, you get to stop where you like, and can say 'everything after that is non canon.

On 11/4/2023 at 11:32 AM, Martin said:

I always go with Yelmali

In the Sartarite dialect, the 'y' is commonly silent.

13 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

After looking at a few actual plays (including Chaosium's) and witnessing how combat did (not) flow or looking at people getting confused by the rules, I concluded that RQG's combat needs a cleanup.  

I would second that. Though imho part of this issue is that runes and passions were literally layered on top of RQ2 combat, rather than integrated into it.

So there is a table that says how much a given level of success on a runic inspiration roll will modify your chance at succeeding in a weapon attack roll. The value in that table is added to your skill. This modifies the values of the success, special, critical and fumble thresholds you need to roll under. Once you have rolled the dice, the level of success attained looked up in another table, cross-referenced with the similar level the defender rolled, to see what actually happens.

Or if you look at the section on chariots (p221), you will find that being trampled by a chariot deals 1d6+6 points of damage to each of 1d6+1 random hit locations, with details on how armour and spells protect.

That seems a reasonable enough rule, and would means a tough guy wearing leather armour is reasonably likely, though far from guaranteed, to survive. That seems a reasonable baseline for what would happen to someone trampled by a herd of wild horses.. But because it is an add-on rule specific to chariots, rather than being part of the core rules, it isn;t used elsewhere. Instead you will find that a horse (in the bestiary) has a 'trample' attack that is entirely different (4d6 to a single location, and being able to miss, fumble or critical). 

For an opposed roll, I would interpret a failure versus fumble to mean the goal is accomplished, even though you failed at the task. For example, you collapsed on the road 5 miles from Athens, but the runners the Persians sent themselves got captured and revealed their plan. 

58 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

if Att has only 10% chance of success its roll, it is not possible to be the winner with 13.42% (> 10) once you compare with a potential success of the defense.

There is a 5% chance of the opposition fumbling, as they only have 10% skill too. In the table on p199, a failed attack versus fumbled parry results in normal damage being dealt, as well as a roll on the fumble table. 

Note that this rule means if you have a skill of less than 30%, it is actively a bad idea to attempt to parry or dodge and opponent with lower skill.

One thing is I think there are different possible ways to interpret the 'over 100%' rules. The code assumes:

• The adjusted chance is used as the basis for calculating criticals and specials for both sides.
• the opposition skill only needs to be reduced to 0; any excess after that still adds to the chance of scoring a special/critical.

A couple of conclusion stand out from that table:

• for values less than 100, the table is irregular, over that is changes structure and repeats.
• because the the hard-coded '5 is success, 96 is a failure' rule, even extreme skill disparities have a chance of not ending the way you would expect. 
• as there is no WQ/Pendragon-style 'tiebreak rule', any given roll has a non-zero, and sometimes large, chance of producing no decisive result

For example, a contest between 90 and 80% skill has about 30% chance of being won by the higher skill, 205 by the lower, with 50% of a draw.

I did this previously for questworlds, and now here it is for RQ:G.

RQ;G has a core mechanic for opposed rolls, described on p142. in short, both sides roll, and the one who gets a better degree of success wins. A critical beats a special, and so on down to a failure beating a fumble. This is adapted for combat by the 'attack versus parry' and 'attack versus dodge' tables, which contain more specific details about each case.

Working out the chance of success when a skill of 40% is opposed by a resistance of 70% is actually suprisingly tricky, as there are lots of special cases like 'a roll of 1 is always a criticial'. and doesn't necessarily produce intuitive results. So i wrote a simple java program to do the calculations. This produced to following table:

in it, rows are the skill or weapon attack percentage, and the columns the opposing skill or parry percentage. Both numbers go up to 250%; the 'abilities over 100%' rule from p144 is used.

for example, a sword skill of 30% opposed by a parry of 10% has just over a 30% chance of landing a blow, based on combining:

- chance of successful attack and failed parry

- chance of special or critical attack and normal parry.

- chance of failed attack and fumbled parry

59 minutes ago, Wheel Shield said:

Because learning 1 point of spirit magic is a week of doing nothing else)

The rules p253 actually say 'nothing else in the way of learning may be done that week. it also says this does not apply to spells learnt from shamans, or those learnt on cult holy days.

I don't think any of the 6SiS adventures have the kind of extended duration that would cut into the normal routine of farming, herding, militia drill and so on.

p416 says you also get 4 occupational skill checks per season of downtime, or one per week. So one option would be to look at the holy day calendar for each season, and offer a menu of spells that can be learnt for 'free'. But then allow picking different spells at the cost of one of the 4 occupational rolls. Or you can spend all 4 to be trained in something that is either not part of your occupation, or not increased by experience.

It's also pretty reasonable to allow some or all of those rolls to be spent on cult skills, as they will be getting at least a 'windsday school' level of education from the clan. And 16 year olds, not fully grown, can likely complete characteristic training in 1 season, not two.

if you want faster advancement than that, count up the number of extra skill percentages they would have if they were standard 21 year old PCs. These points may be spent 1:1 to increase the 1d6 skill gain roll from a successful experience check, to the usual maximum of 6.

i'd imagine the Pol Joni had a large proportion of thanes who wanted to be chieftains, farmers who wanted to be thanes, and thralls who wanted to be farmers.  And relatively few farmers who wanted to be rich farmers, and thanes who wanted to be long-lived.

4 hours ago, Erol of Backford said:

"Hey I could be a knight, warrior, whatever somewhere else, why sit hear and be a farmer giving a good portion of my efforts to the rich, high and mighty Esvulari as rent or whatever?

Unlike other Malkioni, but like other Orlanthi. warriors and farmers are a single caste. This changes the fundamental power dynamics enough that rulers will effectively need the consent of the ruled, just as the case in other Orlanthi societies. 'Noone can make you do anything' is likely their slogan too.

An Aeolian clansman has most of the same freedoms as an Orlanthi. There are just two things they can't do:

a: magically demonstrate they have the right ancestry to be a clan leader

b: go back in time and spend their childhood indoors reading sorcery books.

They would probably regard those things as inherently impossible for them, not imposed social restrictions.

Incidentally, point 'a' sounds rather like the whole deal with lighting the Flame of Sartar, which is notably different from how tribal kingship works. Is there any canon word on whether Sartar was an Aeolian?

5 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Always. If you're not ready for adulthood, you're certainly not ready to enter the mysteries of a cult (nor will you have the knowledge and clan markings to protect you when the bad spirits or demons come into the ceremonies).

I think this is why the RQ;G rules specify that initiation is automatic and test-free for anyone who had a parent who was an initiate (p275). Anyone in that position will have already gone through a compatible adulthood ordeal or cult apprenticeship before play starts (assuming default starting PC age, of course).

However, if you are a refugee or exile, you come from no clan, or one that holds no land and so no temple. So it is likely you missed out on a proper adulthood initiation, and there is noone to sponsor a cult apprenticeship. Many Orlanthi in Pavis in 1615 were in this position, as are many Lunars in 1625. Or maybe you just were one of the minority who failed the ordeal, or rejected the role it assigned you. So you have to take a true 'cult ordeal' initiation test, as your first experience of the God Plane. Which RAW is certainly not guaranteed to pass (succeed on 3 out of 5 skill rolls).

There are no consequences stated for failure, but presumably they exist, or there would be no point in rolling..

1 hour ago, Godlearner said:

f you have differnt Myths, how can you be the same God?

https://www.ranker.com/list/best-movies-about-abraham-lincoln/ranker-film

Lists 15 movies about one historical figure. In some of them he is president, in some a lawyer, in some a young man, in others a corpse. In one he is a vampire hunter, in another he battles zombies.

None of the movies are entirely true. But more than one contains enough elements of truth that if true movies gave rune magic for watching them, you could build up quite the rune pool.

Before the creation of Zistor the Machine God, deities were what the god learners thought them to be; passive runic archetypes with no sentience or initiative, except where controlled or embodied by a mortal

Zistor was the first deity ever to think and plan for itself. And what it planned was the propagation and dispersion of its algorithms across the mythic landscape. It did this by virally infecting all those who mindlessly reacted against it; the gods.

With that gift of sentience, the gods were able to coordinate a plot against the Middle Sea Empire, leading to it's sudden and dramatic downfall.

In short, the god learners were ultimately destroyed by the development of a rogue AI.

i

2 hours ago, metcalph said:

No, the Malkioni worship the Gods knowing full well that they actually are the Gods - they are not monotheists.  Case in point: the father of Malkio, Aerlit, is the son of Vadrus, the son of Umath, the son of Aether and Gata.

I'm have doubts of the accuracy and scope of any sentence that starts with 'the malkioni', let alone continues with 'worship'...

The Aeolians are the world experts on the storm deity links of Malkion the Prophet, so any details on that known to scribes in Nochet likely reflect their perspective.

As i understand it, the Aeolians have a tri-caste society, with:

- Zzaburi performing sorcery, and also acting as rune priests of lightbringer deities

- a combined farmer/warrior caste who are mostly initiates of lightbringer deities.

- a noble caste who are Rune Lord/shamans with ancestry tracing to Malkion and Aerlit.

Significantly, they hold this system to be the way things should be, not a pragmatic compromise due to the lack of available lifespan to fully train proper wizards. They regard both other Lightbringers, and also other Malkioni as  each having lost one half of the picture

IMG being an initiate requires two things; a magical connection to a deity, and a magical education.

There are two common systems by which this happens, corresponding to the two possible orders you can do this.

The adulthood initiation ordeal system forms the connection first. it dumps you on the god plane, where you meet and form a connection to a particular deity. Then you come back to the mundane world, a bunch of experts peer over the details of what you saw, and so assign you to a cult to be educated, under the sponsorship of your clan. Some people essentially fail this step, and so end up with no magic, which limits their prospects. This is mitigated by an increasingly wide selection of low-status fallback cults, including Foundchild, Eurmal and Gagarth, for those whose experiences don't fit the conventional definition of success. And then if none of those options apply, then perhaps you have been chosen by chaos, and need leave town right now.

A cult apprenticeship system does the education first. if you take to the education, you get to the point where forming the connection is natural and untraumatic. You just need to convince the examiners that that is so. This does tend to leave society with a rather larger number of people with no useful magic, but fewer ones with unwanted, harmful or inherently dangerous magic. 

In Sartar, the former is the traditional default, but apprenticeships were gradually increasing in popularity in urban areas under the lunar occupation.

Among the Pavis exiles, the clan system had almost  entirely broken down, with cult apprenticeship being the main way of learning magic. When Argrath took over, he reconstituted adulthood ordeals, but as effectively a state, not clan function, separating young men from their families for long periods in camps outside the city. This is the source of many of his most loyal followers

On 9/13/2023 at 11:54 AM, andyl said:

Barntar.

p.77 "Note that Barntar is worshiped using the Worship (Orlanth) skill."

p.78 Summary box (top left) says Initiates get "Worship (Barntar) +20%" (also "Cult Lore (Barntar) +15%" although I am not too fussed about that)

Relatedly, p77 also says 'often worshipped as a subcult of Orlanth Thunderous and/or as a subcult of Ernalda.

Presumably that should either be 'associate of Ernalda', or 'worshipped using either the Worship (Orlanth) or Worship (Ernalda) skills.'

In Sartarite tribal society, it would be quite normal for a warrior-noble to semi-retire and become a lawspeaker of Lhankhor Mhy, handing out free advice to the current rulers as to how things used to be done. if the PC is of this type, a Lhankhor Mhy temple would likely just need proof of either clan support, or notable individual talent.

Or perhaps the PC is more of a warrior, serving in an organised regiment like the sun dome mercenaries? Then every such group needs clerks, and training such clerks is more or less Lhankor Mhy's job[1]. Not, perhaps, one they are particularly enthusiastic about. But something has to bring in the wheels to pay for repairs to the library roof.  A demonstrated willingness and ability to pay the full going price for such cult skills will go a long way to speeding such an application.

i suspect it probably is a good idea to have the temple in question not be one that has much capability to train sorcery. Just because mechanically the process of learning sorcery from scratch as an adult is probably going to be a waste of time and effort for everyone involved. Both in and out of world.

but if the player understand the consequences, i don;t think there would be any actual rule forbidding such teaching.

[1] At least now the Irripi Ontor temple got burnt down.

41 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

Introduce maize? Doesn’t affect the previous grain goddess’s worship at all, except that farmers will gradually or rapidly swap over to the Fifth Wane Wonder Crop and the new, wholly bloodless* Blood Rites of Hon-eel.

The predictable result of such a change is that there would only be say 25,000 tons of the pre-maize grain grown, when previously there were 250,000.

This literally and physically reduces that grain godess to a tenth of her size. The effect, if you get it to stick, is the same as diverting the water source of a river.

A gloranthan river will generally resist such a thing, and my do something resembling active planning to stop it. you can certainly expect floods at at inconvenient times. on the other side of the same coin, a cult politically objecting to it's planned obsolescence will be minded to run the 'lets have a flood now' heroquest.

In Sartar, the cult of Orlanth certainly vigorously opposed plans to tame the region's storms. Only the Red Earth faction of Ernaldan's was persuaded by the argument of how that would improve crop yields. If it were not for the threat of the lunar potato doing the same to their power base, perhaps that faction would have been larger...

The characters in 6SiS are being actively supported and educated by their clan[1], so this should be an ideal case for using the training rules (RQ:G p416). Six seasons of training would give 6d6-6 points, or 0-30. Which seems a bit light, but is easily tweaked.

For example, 5% gain for a skill 0-25, 3% for 26-50. the current rule about taking 2% stays for skill higher than that, with skills over 75 still being untrainable.

Another option is to record the number of points of cult and occupation skills they would normally get. So long as that pool isn't empty, they may use up to 5 points from it instead of rolling for training or experience.

[1] note that the rules say 'cult', but for rules purposes, a clan is a type of cult. For the Haraborn, characters slightly older than the PCs who seem destined to become scribes or other specialists would commonly be sponsored for training at a temple in Clearwine, Boldhome, or elsewhere. This would normally come with an expectation of coming back to the clan afterwards, although alternative arrangements are possible.

I hadn't really considered that, but it does make sense that Nochet was, in the pre-time Golden Age, something very like another Dara Happan city, centralized around one male ruler. Everyone did their allocated tasks, and everyone got their just rewards. As the world was perfect, the books would naturally balance in a way that made things so. 

In the storm age, the world broke, and so one year was not like the next. In a good year,the farmers might need to labor twice as long as normal to produce enough food to store for next year, where there might be none. One year the priests would be required to perform great feats of magic they would need long preparation for. One year the soldiers might be off to war. Noone knew what the extent of their necessary work was, and there was grumbling.

Buserian became obsessed with trying to understand the pattern of changes, with only some success. But the disruption was only really mitigated when Lokarnos invented the wheel. This could be used to track when a group did more than their allocated task, and so bring their diligence to Yelm's attention. The magically enchanted gold wheels were like the dots on a motion capture suit; always visible to Yelm's sight, no matter how cloudy the skies got.

Hence why even to this day, a solar divination about the location and quantity of wheels will always receive a precise numeric answer, and not the usual metaphor, cryptic clue or vagueness. And so why they are the preferred store of value and medium of exchange at the guild or city level.

Excluded from this system was Ernalda, the weaving woman. She worked exceptionally hard and well, but it was other woman of Yelm's household, led by Dendara, who got the credit.

Orlanth did see what she was doing. So when he overthrew Yelm, he recognized her as the Earth Queen she had been in past ages. And, following the advice of his boon companion and steward Issaries, he introduced non-magical coinage, the first guilder, or 'gilder', made of unenchanted gold. This smaller denomination could be used to track individual, not just group, contributions and entitlement.

The Lunars, in recapitulating the lightbringer's quest, later brought this innovation to Dara Happa itself, in the form of the silver  lunar coin. The use of silver for guilders is now widespread in Sartar and Esrolia too.

On 12/3/2023 at 9:21 AM, Darius West said:

On the contrary, a great many ancient civilizations operated this way.

Many centralised hydraulic empires did. Not so many loose tribal confederations.

Coinage, and the Issaries cult in general, is not doubt an anachronistic god-learnerism. But it clearly does exist, and i very much doubt Sartar would be a place of large cities and rich trade without it.  It is structural, not just a decorative flourish.

That very much suggests things work by the kind of hybrid system where coinage is a symbolic representation of your rational entitlement at a household level. Just as gold wheels are at a higher level of community. Something like the Rex hands out the silver ration. Household heads have discretion to spend that on grain delivery for home baking, or hot pre-cooked food. Part of being relatively wealthy is  having the skills and infrastructure to live well on the ration.