Bren

Yes does seem like the better answer.

The displacement argument also applies to the raft. If it does not displace water, than it sits on top of the water and unless the trickster manages to successfully jump really well, they will step or land too far from the center of mass of the raft and it will tip or skip out from under them (since their is no resistance from the undisplaced water) dropping them into the drink.

What you suggest doesn't seem unreasonable for the general population. But the question is, does that societal rate apply to the PCs? Given that the PCs are likely to have access through direct power or favors to more magic than the average Gloranthan at their standard of living, I would say it probably should not.

9 hours ago, whitelaughter said:

Pointless creating a boat, as the water ignore it, giving you a swamped boat. But a raft, or bridge, or horse, or hippogriff, no problems.

Why would a boat be different from a raft? They seem that same to me.

Also, I would definitely allow a bridge to work based on the principle of Coyote vs. Roadrunner style physics.

8 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Virtually everything in the rules is applicable only to adventurers.

Exactly. I would think that this rule is only intended only to apply to adventurers.

For adventurers, few of their children will die in any given year since a Free income only requires 60L. How many adventurers won't have the funds to spend 60L on their upkeep? The penalties for the Poor and Destitute income classes for PCs provides an in-game, negative consequence for players whose PCs are too miserly to spend their loot to maintain a reasonable level of upkeep and/or an incentive to go get more loot to maintain a good standard of living.

Granted, a 5% chance of child mortality isn't a lot for a single year. However, a series of 15 rolls* to reach age 15, results in only a cumulative 46% chance of survival for a child. That seems too high given the level of healing magic that is likely to be available to PCs. 

My understanding is that infants and young children have a higher mortality rate than older children. I'd be inclined to decrease the % chance of death in the Child Survival table for older children.

I also agree with those who have suggested that a risk of death (or sickness) based on the die roll is likely to be more fun or interesting than a simple "sorry your child died this year" result. YGWV and all that.

* The rules seem to imply that a roll on the Child Survival table is made for the first year of a child's life. Personally I'd be inclined to skip that roll as the Childbirth table already includes a chance for infants that don't survive. This increases the cumulative survival rate to 49%. On the other hand, including the roll for the first year does provide a higher rate of infant mortality which seems to align with the ancient world on earth.

Is the table intended to be applicable to the population as a whole or is this aimed only at births connected to a player character?

20 hours ago, svensson said:

Anybody seeing Sun County in these?

Yes, all the domes. 

3 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

Unfortunately, Buddhists are just like the rest of us, too.

And not a recent thing. Japanese warrior monks could be quite violent and date back to the Heian period.

On 3/23/2023 at 7:54 AM, Akhôrahil said:

I would strongly urge everyone to ditch this rule and just round in the standard way (closest integer, up if .5) for everyone. Otherwise you get senseless outcomes like enemy D4 / 2 (typical DB for thrown weapons) being different from player D4 / 2, and as you suggest, crit/special/fumble calculations become even more tricky.

We just use a D2. No rounding required.

13 hours ago, svensson said:

Some of the photos from my illustrations folder

 

I have those same two pictures in my folder of Minoan images. Here are two others from my folders. The second one seems like a nice look for ladies in Nochet.

Gotcha. Thanks. 😀

5 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

I vacilate between 16 and 18 as a default, but the minmax choice is 17.)

Why is age 17 better for minmax? (Asking for a friend.)

1 hour ago, radmonger said:

To quote RQ;G: an initiate may partake only of rituals in their own cult, or its associated and friendly cults. Humakt, of course, has no associated or friendly cults.

The Cult Compatibility chart in RQiG lists Humkat as being friendly to both Orlanth and Yinkin.

(Argan Argar and Issaries are friendly to Humakt, but Humakt does not return the feeling.)

Do you mean that the Salamander that Naimless summoned should have been banned or that Sword Trance should be banned?

6 hours ago, Runeblogger said:

But I have to ask: when a Telmori and another human have a child, is the child always a cursed Telmori?

What does Argrath do on a full moon?

I suspect getting facts is one of the common usages. Divination is not a spell I've seen used much. The only usage by a PC that I can recall, the GM provided a vision. This avoided the word limit and allowed for vagueness in the answer. The PC priestess consulted Ernalda and received a vision related to things on (touching) or under the Earth and saw a location in Nochet. For NPCs, we were trying to find out what happened to a missing NPC. The clan Ernalda priestess were able to tell us that the person was not in the ground, i.e., not buried.

If the answer was a short statement and a failed POWx5 roll, I'd try to provided something cryptic, like the oracle at Delphi.

Personally, if as a GM I'm interested in including Divination in play, I'd be inclined to do Divination as oneiromancy, prophetic divination from dreams. The caster would need to sleep in a site holy to the deity providing the Divination Rune spell. They'd need to successfully cast the Rune spell, failure would probably mean no meaningful dreams that night. Then I'd make the POWx5 roll with a failed roll providing a misleading or bizarre dream. For a successful dream I'd try providing something appropriately dream like, but requiring some additional interpretation by the players to understand it.

If I'm not interested in playing out Divination, I'd probably go with simple factual statements (true or false based on the POWx5 roll) and skip the color.

So c'est impossible is wrong. Freshman French fails me again...or perhaps the other way round?

6 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

If we were to look at the RQ2 Divination spell description …

I only see a three word difference between the RQ2 and the RQG spell descriptions. What are you seeing that I am not?

9 hours ago, David Scott said:

Here are a few of articles that may help explain Argrath's and the house of Sartar's relationship to the Telmori:

• Telmori Chaos Taint
• The Telmori
• The House of Sartar, Feathered Horse Queens, and Werewolves
• Sartar Telmori
• Defunct Sartar Tribes

Very helpful. Thanks!

On 3/12/2023 at 9:00 AM, soltakss said:

Our equivalent was "popping out to get some Rothmans". Being a non-smoker, it took me a year to realise what Rothmans were.

Learn something new every day. I'd heard of Player's and Dunhill, but had never heard of Rothmans.

3 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

The Wolf runner chit from WBRM, whatever it's confusing history or much debated use, doesn't have very high numbers on it.

Actually it does have some high numbers. It's combat factor varies with the phase of the Red Moon ranging from a low of 3 to a high of 7 [3-4-5-7-6-5-3]. The average combat factor for other units in the Sartar Free Army is 3 and the maximum is 6. On 5 out of 7 days the Wolfrunners have an above average combat factor and on 2 out of 7 days their combat factor is at or above the maximum. Within the Glowline their combat factor is always 7, the highest combat factor of any unit (other than Harrek) in the entire Kingdom of Sartar.

For comparison, the unit representing the Colymar tribe, the largest tribe in Sartar, has a combat factor of 3.

On 3/13/2023 at 3:24 PM, g33k said:

No, they'd just be wandering around where they started, interacting with people & buildings &c that nobody else could see.  They'd be much like a demented mime.

Any answer that results in an Eurmali acting like demented mime, must be the correct answer.

Regarding the timing of any demise of the Telmori, King of Sartar has a couple of relevant passages.

First, under the writeup for the Battle of Heroes:

Quote

 

  King Argrath would not tolerate the wolfmen’s attacks. He worked with all the priests and holy men who could do it, and they sniffed out their foes in the night and through dreams. They guided their men into battle, and sought the wolves through the most impossible lands.

  The fight against the wolfmen was arduous, and many good men died. But in the end Argrath was victorious. Afterwards, the tribe of the Wolf People was dispersed, and only bands of them were found anyplace, and then were hunted down. The human victors of Argrath’s battles against the wolfmen were called the Wolfskins, for they wore the pelts of their victims, and they were a very highly honored band of warriors wherever they were recognized.

 

Note that the battle is dated to 1628 and the discussion on the Telmori appears after the description of the battle and just before a marriage of King Argrath and the Feathered Horse Queen.

Second, the Events of My Life by Minaryth Blue has the following entry for the year 1629:

Quote

1629    Argrath marries Feathered Horse Queen and I get gifts from High King. We kill Dinacoli. Telmori promise revenge, quarrel with Argrath.

So any Argrath Telmori pogram would seem to occur after the Battle of Heroes, possibly in 1629.

I had always thought that the Wolf Runners unit in the Dragon Pass board game were the Telmori. But looking at the scenarios, that unit does not appear in scenario [18.3] ARGRATH'S RETURN or the two scenarios before it. The Wolf Runners are only available in three scenarios: [18.7] THE FULL GAME, [18.8] THE RISING OF TARSH, and [18.9] THE MARATHON GAME. It looks to me like the Wolf Runners probably are wearing werewolf cloaks from skinned Telmori.

Enkala is in the White Bull campaign.

On 3/5/2023 at 10:37 AM, Jeff said:

Humakt is in general neutral towards most deities, except those that misuse Death or sanctify betrayal. He's friendly only to Orlanth and Ty Kora Tek. 

According to the Cult Compatibility chart in RQiG, Humakt is also friendly to Yinkin.

Yep. And those Ray Haryhausen movies.