Brian Duguid

I think there is something deeper here, which I'm exploring in the Hsunchen book I'm writing, but it's cultural rather than specific to the shamans that form part of that culture. Hsunchen don't practice agriculture, even seeing it as taboo; there's a sense that they are defending a palaelolithic or mesolithic culture against the progress that the neolithic era brought. And there could be sound Gloranthan reasons for that: agriculture and temples evolve together, along with a transition from an animist to a theist culture, and all that goes along with that (obedience to priests and landowners, longer working hours, poorer health). This transition in the real-world is seen in Glorantha in the form of cultural change from the Basmoli to the Pendali, the Mraloti to the Entruli etc. Hsunchen shamans are therefore uncivilized because the conservative tendency in their peoples see civilization as a trap, which will dilute their magical heritage and their very culture. Those Hsunchen tribes who did become civilized generally assimilated theist pantheons and culture behaviours. That's specific to the Hsunchen culture, but several other Gloranthan cultures with significant animist aspects are also non-agricultural (and therefore uncivilized): the Praxian Waha tradition, the Golden Bow tradition amongst the Grazelanders, etc. There's absolutely no reason why a shaman can't live in a city (as pointed out earlier in the thread, if there's something weird in the neighbourhood, who ya gonna call?) But where they are fulfilling a social role as part of a wider culture, it will come down to the extent to which a theist culture (obedient in magical matters to a priesthood) can coexist with animisim (magic based on direct one-to-one experience with spirits, possibly less hierarchical).

There's a contact form on Eric's website: https://www.ericvanel.com/ Contact details on his website: http://www.maranci.net/rq.htm (scroll to very bottom) Paging @Julian Lord. Paging @soltakss. Paging @Christoph Kohring.

Yes. Although there is also now an alternative format available here, with the same key information: https://www.chaosium.com/content/FreePDFs/RuneQuest/CHA4035 - RQ Starter Set/CHA4035 RQ Starter Set Blank Folio.pdf

I don't remember which version of HW/HQ Ian's Pavis books were written for, but I'd think that making them tie in with HQ:G would be the quickest option. Conversion notes here: https://www.chaosium.com/content/FreePDFs/HeroQuest/ISS2007-CONV - HeroQuest Conversion Guidelines.pdf

Possibly worth an offline discussion with JC community ambassador @Nick Brooke to see what would and would not be permitted in terms of stats for upgraded Pavis books. Completely re-statting them sounds like a ton of work!

It's as stated publicly in the other Illumination thread that I linked to, specifically this post.

Is there anything in the game to back that up? In Cults of Terror, the benefits of Illumination extend to having one's Chaotic nature be undetectable, but there's nothing to suggest that they are no longer tainted with Chaos - just that they have a choice about how to respond to it. I believe in Cults of Glorantha undetectability remains a possible benefit, but is no longer guaranteed. This thread says more on the rules for Illumination: And the new scenario A Short Detour on Jonstown Compendium has a (non-canonical) set of rules for being tainted by the Chaos Rune and resisting it, in a context which is directly relevant to the original question from @ChildOfEru.

Since the original posts in this thread, @soltakss has published Secrets of HeroQuesting on the Jonstown Compendium. It's far and away the most extensive treatment of the subject available while we wait for the Gamemaster's Sourcebook. It doesn't reflect the forthcoming Heroquesting rules, but still has lots of detail relevant to many of the questions discussed above.

I think the real question is why do they want to follow any kind of air or storm god at all? Any male in the Orlanthi culture can follow a different path, many of them more peaceful: Ernalda (as a Nandan initiate), Chalana Arroy, Lhankor Mhy, Issaries etc. Some of those make more sense for someone who leaves the clan and moves to the city.

It's not a sourcebook, but Men of the West on Jonstown Compendium has a lot more information than you might think on this area (and so far as I can see pretty much all compliant with "canon"), and I found the history in particular easier to follow and digest than what is in the Guide.

To make it available again, they need to replace the HQ branding with QW branding, and maybe address anywhere else the HQ brand is referenced. But I guess they may not want to encourage people to buy out-of-date product where much of the content will be available and in some cases amended/expanded in the forthcoming Sartar box set. Then again, note that MOB has just put something on the Chaosium website promising that 2022 will be the year of QuestWorlds, so making some old QW products available again may tie in with that 😉 @MOB promised there would be rebranded versions in May last year: Also confirmed on a couple of occasions by @Rick Meints: As with everything else, I guess it's just a matter of priority for their resources, and I'm sure Cults of Glorantha, Sartar Box Set are higher priority.

Admins - please just delete this post if it's not acceptable here! I've just picked up a copy of Würm - the Ice Age Roleplaying Game from Chaosium, it's currently on a massive discount along with various adventure booklets, scenario books etc. Why is it relevant here? Well, it's a game about the lives of paleolithic peoples (both homo sapiens and neanderthals), a labour of love by the author Emmanuel Roudier and filled with his beautiful artwork. There are spirits, magic, period-appropriate animals, fantastical creatures - even people who can shape-change, and who have totemic bonds with guardian animal spirits. Sound familiar? There are obvious similarities to some of the Hsunchen peoples in Glorantha, particularly the tribes of Fronela (Rathori, Uncolings, Hogari etc), and quite apart from its own merits as a game, this is a really useful sourcebook to understand the paleolithic/neolithic technology and culture of Gloranthan Hsunchen. I'm really pleased I bought it, and the current price is excellent value for money.

I think this is a bit that I'm struggling with. I'm happy that it's the same "sort" of thing (a transition to the Otherworld with some degree of interaction with myth), but something a Shaman may do daily doesn't seem to merit the Heroquest label. I think perhaps a useful point to make here is that the Heroquest label suggests something binary, black-and-white, but there are many shades of grey in how someone in the Mundane World interacts with the Other World. Indeed. I'm looking at giving examples of this. This is another one my brain is struggling with. I see spirits (at least those that are closest to the mundane world and which interact with it directly e.g. stream spirits) must exist within time as they can have memories that relate to what happens in the mundane world, lay plans that affect it, and so on; whether or not they are embodied in the mundane world. They deal with cause-and-effect in a sequential way, which is why a Ghost can be dismissed and maybe why Ancestor Spirits will retain memories of the last time you talked to them. They may be constrained by their nature (a nymph's gonna do what a nymph always does), but are not constrained against intervention in the mundane world, unlike the Gods. Time passes in the real world when a Shaman spends time in the spirit world, although no doubt differently. Again, a shades-of-grey explanation makes more sense to me: the extent to which spirits in the Spirit Plane are "within Time" would depend on how close to the Mundane World boundary they are: it would get more timey-wimey as you get further away from that. Thanks, those examples (and the whole threads) are incredibly helpful. Do any of the quotes come from any kind of forthcoming Prax publication? 🙂 Many thanks to you, and everyone else, for all the comments. I will resist trying to be too "mechanistic" about any of this, but I think there is a need to provide some explication for a society which is so dominated by animism.

I'm interested in any thoughts about animist Heroquesting, and how it is similar to or different from theist Heroquesting. This is for a book on the Hsunchen that I am writing, hopefully to be published on the Jonstown Compendium. This previous thread was helpful: As are pages 154-162 of Guide to Glorantha. The way I see things: the Spirit Plane exists within Time alongside the Middle World / Mundane Plane. The spirits that Animists deal with can be found either embodied in the Mundane Plane or the Spirit Plane. Dead animists may pass through a cycle of reincarnation (e.g. Hsunchen die, spirits drift off somewhere, come back again as fellow Hsunchen or totem beasts). Or they become Ancestor Spirits who can in some cases be summoned. Are these Ancestor Spirits sitting handily in the spirit world (i.e. within Time), or in the Underworld (having been judged by Daka Fal)? The great totem spirits of the Hsunchen people generally have a mythology that happened within the God Time, pre-Dawn, for example the myth that it was Telmor who ate the Sun and brought about the Great Winter/Darkness. The deeds of the immortal beings of the God Time provide the unchanging basis of the Gods World that, like the Spirit Plane, sits alongside the Mundane World within Time. If I'm understanding it right, the Hero Plane is where mortals go when they interact with myth i.e. with anything that happened pre-Dawn. This can happen within the Mundane World (for theists this is some kind of liminal space straddling the Mundane World and Gods World); or by leaving the Mundane World and entering the Gods World more fully; or by passing beyond the Mundane World into the Outer Worlds, Underworld, or Sky World. For animists, my sense of this is that there may be Spirit Quests where they enter the Spirit Plane, as a shaman or accompanying a shaman, or seek entities within the Mundane World who are embodied from the Spirit Plane (nymphs etc). There are not Heroquests if they do not interact with myth. There could be animist Heroquests where they interact with myth, and my sense is not to get hung up about whether "myth" is the Gods World, but that myth can be accessed through a liminal Hero Plane just like a theist. My only thought is that the animist could access myth through a Hero Plane straddling the Mundane and Gods World; or straddling the Spirit Plane and Gods World. For the Hsunchen, this gives a range of ways they can Heroquest, including pursuing paths through the Spirit Plane by contacting Ancestor Spirits, who eventually lead them to Ancestors who do not exist within Time, such as Telmor, Rathor etc. I'm interested in other thoughts. I'm also thinking: what *kind* of Heroquest would the Hsunchen want to undertake? It was a Heroquest when one of them killed the White Bear totem spirit Rathor (GtG p.229). Could a Heroquest be used to recover the White Bear spirit (noting there's some text somewhere about some of the Rathori believing the White Bear is asleep)? I'm also thinking that Hsunchen wishing to recover a more primal, better-integrated relationship with their totem spirit (and be able to take beast form for longer, or ultimately at will), could Heroquest to follow the myth where their totem became divided into two-legs and four-legs, and reenact it with a different outcome. What else might they want to do? Some kind of Serpent King revival in Ralios or Seshnela? Prevent the (many) death(s) of Basmol?

My reading of t11L was that the non-Telmori tribes are as violent as the Telmori, both having carried out or attempted genocidal massacres, and that it was more about how people act when racism gets entangled into a tribal blood feud. The reference to Sartar having softened the local Telmori curse seems to appear in S:KoH and nowhere else, so I'm happy to consider it might be in error. Has anyone played a game where the players are Telmori, and did the cursed/pure ones thing come up?

Now possibly deprecated, but in Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes pg 255, the 4-legged Telmori transform into 2-legged form every Wild Day; although this bit is written in Telmori voice so could presumably be misleading. Also relevant to another comment in this thread, S:KoH pg 256, Sartar softened their curse so the local Telmori "would not act like Chaotic monsters".

Weirdly, I am writing something about the Rinkoni for Jonstown Compendium and cracked my otherwise fine 20-year old Anaxial spine just yesterday while looking up this very same stuff. I'm including a myth which establishes Rinkona / Yinkin animosity, but associated with freedom vs domestication rather than Spirits vs Theism.

Quick question @Scotty - do you also supply B&M with updated PDFs in the same way as you supply those to customers who order via the Chaosium website? I've just downloaded my Starter Set PDFs via B&M and am wondering if they will be updated if/when any corrections/updates are made.

I was going to ask if there'd be an Exegisis for the art. Off to download that now!

I think any Eurmal the Guide capability would need to be unpredictable. And possibly only available as part of a Lightbringer group, so almost by definition this would be while HeroQuesting and therefore beyond the normal rules for Rune Magic etc. Suggestion in the incredibly unlikely event anyone ends up in this situation: the Eurmal the Guide player (or GM) draws a card from Oblique Strategies and has to use that creatively to solve the problem the LBQ group confronts. http://stoney.sb.org/eno/oblique.html

Weapons and Equipment release date - 10th December 2021 - ref:

Ha, not even sure if my Starter Set will have reached my game shop by then 🙂

Minor updates from @Jason D on Facebook group Glorantha Fans today: Upland Marsh - manuscript complete, waiting on art Troll and Elf packs - "somewhere in the process" Elder races - "we're doing a new version", so perhaps in the middle-grass rather than the long grass 😉 Duck pack - "this has been discussed" - but I wouldn't add that to anyone's list!

Website version of the soloquest: The main text refers to BRT (Battle Result Total). The text for the tool below that refers to BRT (Battle Rating Tracker).

This one, if you need the details for eBay etc: https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/catalogue/publishers/avalon-hill/ah8570-runequest-deluxe-edition-softback/