Malin

It is fun to sit down and write down an Ernalda initiation rite from the Sun County perspective. It made me realize how many faces the gods and goddesses have depending on which culture you are coming from.

Now to try to figure out how the hell I would do a Zola Fel one...

It makes sense why Dragon Pass is important then. Got to secure good wine for the Red Emperor's parties. He's breaking the bank as it is, might as well cut down on import costs by conquering the vineyards.

Also, the Lodrili as a beer-drinking culture makes so much sense...

Does this mean Peloria is IPA country? Do I have to picture Lunars as beer snobs, with so many varieties of beer, not just with hops, but with all the bitter herbs used in the days before hops became widespread? I mean with the current microbrewery culture I can 100% see them getting into that as much as ever the wine snob...

1 hour ago, Ageha said:

 Again, my interest is not specifically in 'Storm worshipers' against 'Sun worshipers', it is about Pelorian culture suffering. Thus, Pentan conquest of Peloria, the same as Malkioni and Orlanthi, are all part of what I am discussing. That is why I started this thread not by asking why 'Solars suck' but 'why do Pelorians suck'.

Dara Happa is not all, or even most, Solar Worship. I've explicitly said so now in this thread multiple times. Again, my point concerns Pelorian culture. Not Sun Worship. 

Again: I have specified I am only concerned with Pelorian culture. Non-Pelorian hegemons, such as the Celestial Empire of Sheng Seleris, is simply not applicable to my point.

Ah, now I get it! Thank you for clarifying.

I think one of the reasons for the discussions here (which you could not have been aware of beforehand since you were new) is that your subject touched on other controversial subjects about Sun vs Storm here on the forum; thus many (including me) might have made assumptions we shouldn't have and started talking about a larger scale than you had intended.

Also, I hope you don't feel personally attacked by what is discussed here; sometimes things can get heated, especially when it comes to sore spots, and and people looping back to similar arguments they have had in the past. Just look into some posts about Yelmalio vs Elmal, Yelmalio's uselessness as a cult, or anything about Argrath, and I think you'll see this isn't exactly a new thing here.

I really do hope you stick around and have another think, there might be things you disagree with in the setting (not even saying you're right or wrong), but one of the things I do love about Glorantha is the freedom to look at things (even from official sources) and go "this is clearly a biased viewpoint" and then run with that and not accept the base publications as the gospel truth. Your Glorantha Will Vary is such a strength to me.

5 hours ago, Darius West said:

 

I mean I do agree with you 100%! However some seem to differ. But such is life.

I find Argrath one of the most fascinating things in this setting!

4 hours ago, Geoff R Evil said:

Just one note, you say its possible to flee in the same round you do a knockback, but a knockback cannot happen until SR12, so here are no SR left for movement, so that suggested action is not possible.

Ah, we have divorced movement from the SR requirement/cost, so the movement happens in SR12 too, after the knockback is successful.

I have seen this loosely talked about in many threads, where it might have been tangential to the subject at hand but thought a thread of its own might be useful for everyone. This way, we can have a collection of discussions, house rules, tips, and tricks in one place rather than spread out everywhere. I know I at least love reading how other people do things and seeing if any of them can be used at our table.

So, in essence, this is Maximum Game Fun, Your Glorantha May Vary house rules. Feel free to share yours!

This is not a thread for critiquing others' rules; I just thought it would be interesting to see in what ways people hack the RQ rules to suit their particular table and if there are any common decisions.

I am attaching the "combat at a glance" handout I use for my campaigns in RQ; it's not a full explainer of rules, just some bullet points for the players to help them remember what they can do. Yes, we do use Roll20 (which helps), and we like granular combat with options, often with maps.

CombatRQ.docx

I don't have much to add to all the excellent commentary so far, but I do detect a whiff of "Why is Orlanth the clear author Mary Sue when I don't like them." A similar flavor of the criticism I've seen leveraged against Argrath on the forum. It feels like any argument about what exactly is going on and why with the Dara Happans is less interesting than what is going on with the Storm Dudes. Especially since Dara Happa is dealt with by the narrowest definition, while everything Theylan-touched is lumped in as Orlanth's personal fiefdom.

(Note: I'm a Sun County loyalist myself and hold no truck with those violent barbarians in Dragon Pass.)

(Note 2: The Orlathi focus has become inevitable with the progress of the Big Campaign, and I do not fault it the least! We are only reading one side of the story right now, not a factual truth. We have no King of Sartar from the Pelorian point of view.)

Y'all are making me have elf feelings now... 💚

1 hour ago, RandomNumber said:

In my idle moments I wonder if the runes are the 'characteristics' we need and that STR, CON, DEX etc could be abandoned.

In my idle moments I have wondered if I could do a hack inspired by Knights (french ttrpg) and use a combo of stats + runes to generate dice pools for rolling and skip skills. If only I didn't have too many projects already...

18 minutes ago, smiorgan said:

n other words, BRP degrades nicely

VERY true. I am running two groups now, both with newbies involved. I haven't removed many rules, mostly streamlined combat (strike ranks, movement, added good handouts for the players), but kept the complexity since everyone likes to fight. I've found that combat in RQ actually goes a lot faster than in DnD, sure there are more rolls involved in a single round, but there are a lot fewer rounds to go through.

Also, playing it online through Roll20 does a LOT of the heavy lifting when calculating criticals, specials, damage, and the like. I might have had to simplify more in a person-to-person setting to get the flow going.

I do like how robust the RQ system is to tampering and adjusting to suit the table.

7 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

If the GM is liberal in accepting "off" runes

I'm also pretty quick to say no to players. For climbing, for example, I would allow air on a windy cliffside where the wind is actually an issue. Or Earth, if that's the element of what they're climbing. Might allow darkness if they do it during the dead of night. Even movement if there's a race element involved and they need to do it fast and take big risks. Just... vibes at the moment. Not allowing the highest one just because.

Halfway through the book, how nice it is to finally have all this collected in one place, and filled out and updated and with new things I've never read before! 💚 (Also love this Enostar take)

9 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

I remember a White Bull episode where Jeff let's a PC use Air to augment their Climb to get over the walls of Pavis.  Isn't Water the proper Rune for that?

Yeah, that is the one rule that I have entirely disregarded. At my table, we augment depending on the vibes...

9 hours ago, RandomNumber said:

Back in the day, I adapted 2300AD to incorporate Phoenix Command but that's another story...

Just needed to handshake trying to incorporate Phoenix Command (into our cyberpunk/spacemaster for us) into anything...

4 hours ago, davecake said:

Let me heartily recommend the Lifethief by Beer With Teeth

I bought it (and other stuff of theirs) during the sale! Just haven't had time to catch up on my readings yet!

I now need to drag my players here.... this place is cool!

12 hours ago, Joerg said:

Fossilized water, aka salt

Cool! So the ferry is a mystical thing since there is no water there? I love this place now, only ever thought about it as "this place where magic doesn't work" but never really thought about how it would look or feel.

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

I have assumed that all cult initiates have some loyalty/allegiance to their cult

For me, I tend to think about it as acting as if you have loyalty/allegiance/devotion to your cult. Perform the sacrifices. Obey the traditions. Be a good citizen. But in your heart, you do that because it's the path of least resistance, you don't truly feel that kind of loyalty. So, if that would suddenly become troublesome you could easily adjust your stance to the new status quo. As long as you don't actively break cult strictures (generally looser than the cultural strictures surrounding the cult) I doubt even the gods would care as long as you perform the ceremonies and sacrifice the magic points. It's when you start advancing in the cult when that really starts to matter.

I never realized the dead place was filled with water! 🤡

Dead Place? The one with no magic? I thought it was Dead Bottom for a moment...

I've got a Yelmalio adulthood initiation rite, and I know there's an Orlanth and Ernalda one in Six seasons in Sartar.

And the fact that this discussion is prompted at all is the reason why I bloody love Glorantha!

All I am interested in is that this still leaves it all open for my future potato heroquest. There are some interesting darkness/earth tones in potato lore; they grow poisonous if exposed to sunlight. Surely that must mean something.

29 minutes ago, Martin said:

Some poetic irony in that the thread  on potatoes became "Hot"

I did not anticipate that, no, just shows what can happen when you start digging... 🥔