svensson

Please let me know when you're done re-proofing. I'd like to order the POD version, but there's no sense in ordering if it needs to be corrected.

**ring** "Godtime customer service. This is team member Solana speaking. Please be aware that this call may be recorded for quality assurance and canon ret-con purposes. May I have your name and the name of Heroquest you're calling about, please?" "Uh, I'm Bob and I wanna know about 'Mostal and the World Machine'." "Thank you, Bob. May I have your question." "Sure. How do magnets work?" "DAMMIT BOB! You may think you're funny but I have a job and..." **click** 😆😁🤣 [For those of you who don't know about this, the Mormon church has a program for those youngsters who cannot physically perform their required mission when they turn 18. These are the 'Elders' (and yeah, I'm not gonna an 18 y/o an 'elder' anything) are the ones who man the Q&A phones and on the LDS website. Their job is to put a positive face on the faith and direct the curious to their local temple. Given the LDS' stance on certain issues, there was a period of time where people would troll the kids on the website with off the wall questions that would be difficult to look up. 'How do magnets work' was the classic meme question. That question became so popular among the trolls that the kids manning the website have a cut-and-paste ready to go now]

Insofar as my reading tells me. YGMV and all, but I should think that if someone had encountered Wakboth and lived to tell about it that person would be famous somewhere. I've got a pretty extensive RQ2 and 3 collection and nothing I have says anything about the Devil after the Spike, well, 'spiked' him. There are references to parts of Wakboth [the Eye of Wakboth mostly], but nothing about Wakboth taking any actions of his own will and accord since Time began. I should probably also say that the RQ apocrypha continually surprises me. My collection isn't complete and the occasional 'Stafford-ism' pops up get me every now and again.

@M Helsdon I just want to THANK YOU for your efforts in 'Ships and Shores'. I'm running a 'faux Atlantis' campaign for my nieces and the work you've put into ancient ships, the effect of magic, and the practicalities of shipboard life in the Bronze Age has been a great help as well as a wonderful read. I bought the book as a pdf upon release and it is one of my absolute favorite RQ products by anybody, ever. It ranks just below Trollpak [both versions equally] for the way that it shows seagoing culture and the homogenizing process that life at sea has on those who leave the shore.

Responding to the top post... Since heroquesting has a temporal and Godtime components, those should be addressed separately. No living mortal [at least none that I've heard of] has encountered a portion of Wakboth the Devil and returned to tell the tale. That covers the temporal aspect. Insofar as the Godtime component is concerned, unless you're questing specifically to confront Evil Itself encountering Wakboth means that your plan has gone horribly horribly wrong. Your survival is seriously in question at that point, and even if you survive you may have to make a literal deal with the Devil and may end up tainted by Chaos for your trouble. You have been warned.

In many cults, including the two you mention, there aren't any Priests. Rune Lords provide the spiritual and magical support, as well as teaching skills, leading ceremonies, and acting as the political head of the cult. Smaller but widespread cults, the 'tier 2 cults' if you will, are always looking for a new Rune Lord. After all, there are VERY few clan chiefs who are Swords of Humakt or Master Hunters of Odayla. Such personalities rarely pose any political challenge to the clan and tribal leadership. A Wind Lord of Orlanth is another matter entirely. Such people have to be noteworthy and accomplished in most aspects of clan life, and if they're too popular they might be seen as an alternative to less popular leaders. People tend to gravitate to alternate leaders when they're unhappy with the current office-holders and sometimes that happens without any overt act or intention by the new Wind Lord himself.

So we got to talking about Alynxes, their size, and their comparison to dogs. Here is a short [15 min] vid from the Extinct Earth series that discusses some of that. I thought some of you might be interested.

Secret handshakes, embroidered aprons, tools that never get the dirty, and it can be used as a path to Illuminati... er, Illumination. Whatever. 😆

@Darius West @Malin OK, one of the premises of RQG is to break the murder hobo trope. But a generation and half of gamers have been indoctrinated into expecting that trope. Add to that the pithy complaint phrases ['We're not playing 'Farmers and Famines', man!]. There is resistance even in the RQ fan base about the 'community adventurer' premise. My idea of having a troop of apprentices was demonstrate that 'community' can have more than one meaning and 'cult' doesn't have to be temple building or even one specific location. As for player real estate, all your points are true but I also wonder if there isn't a certain anarchist 'I don't have to follow your rules!' attitude that goes with it. For one thing, most modern people have no idea of the implications of the standard oath of fealty, 'of life and limb and Earthly worship' etc. They just think, 'Kewl! I gitz ta build a kastle!', forgetting all the while that their liege lord will tax them, call them to duty in his army in prime adventuring season, make him get married to a difficult mate for reasons of state, 'visit' him all winter [remember, you must provide hospitality to your lord and his retinue when they visit] to ensure he doesn't have too much grain or money saved up, etc. And yes, while I'm describing this in a medieval context, this crap also occurred in Anglo-Saxon England, Celtic Gaul, and Viking Age Scandinavia. Clan chieftains are just as rapacious and jealous as any king-by-divine-right ever made, as any proper Scot will tell you.

I intended the 'hero band with apprentices and hangers-on' model to be sort of a middle ground between the 'always adventuring all the time' of RQ 2 and the 'stuck at the steading /temple /clan-hall for 7 weeks a Season' model of RQG. The idea is to keep the service to community theme of RQG while still allowing some resemblance of the 'Dat Freebootin' Lyfe' that players love. After all, if they wanted to be farmers, they wouldn't be adventurers. What I find funny about all this is how hard players work in some genres and milieux to get their own freehold or base. They'll bust their ass if you offer them land in Dorastor [or local equivalent], but give them a steading at the beginning of the game? Nah, they'll avoid that like a trip to the dentist. 😆

For an office vacancy, most likely that's a campaign decision by the referee. After all, every deity want as many devoted and skilled people following it as possible [within reason]. However some campaigns may include internal clan and/or temple politics, and we all know those can be every bit as vicious as racial or external politics. If there is drama within the church, it may NOT have room of a PC Rune Lord if that PC is gonna upset balance of power and authority. This is especially true in clans where the office of chief is inextricably tied to a church hierarchy like Orlanth or Ernalda. Every Orlanth Rune Lord or Ernalda Priestess is a possible rival for the clan chief position and that has to be taken into consideration.

No sarcasm intended, thanks for the support.

Sure. There's plenty of room on page 3 of the character sheet for ancestral names and information, at least to the grandparent generation. After that, post-it notes 😆

That's a whole BUNCH of Rune Points, man. Don't get me wrong here. I'm presuming that a shaman would know their ancestors back 100-150 years ago if there wasn't a major catastrophe or magical event that breaks the lineage descent. For example, the clans that founded Sartar literally broke from their ancestral Heortling clans, 'a new history was made', to quote KoDP. A Kolating shaman [who has tenuous ties to his clan anyway, shamans being almost-outcasts in Sartarite society] would have a helluva time getting past that magical rite.

But initiates are not ordained in the priesthood... they're committed worshipers only. Yes, they can worship without a priest/ess, but there are functions they can't do... My point in my first comment on the thread is that Shamans with no connection to deity cannot access the deity's magic. Initiates have a connection with the deity granting the powers and a place in a cult's hierarchy that shamans simply don't have. There are exceptions, of course, Kolatings sometimes have access to Orlanth-given Rune magic for one example. Shamans can Summon a Specific Ancestor to gain access to a deity's Rune magic if the shaman knows of the Specific Ancestor by name. A shaman would have summon his ancestor 'Bob, son of Joe', not 'I summon one of my ancestors who was a Barntar initiate'. I suppose we'd need a mechanic to sort out whether or not a given Shaman knows of a specific ancestor that was an initiate of a specific deity. Off the top of my head that would probably be a Customs [Own], Cult Lore, or Insight [Own] roll, probably requiring a Special or Crit success.