David Scott

Not in RQG and upcoming GoG. (And not in RQ3 GoG or RoC writeups)

If you are a normal person, then I don’t think you have any control over this, you have no shamanic skills. However if your cult is animistic, yinkin, Basmol, Storm Bull, then maybe. If you’ve any transform magic then yes I’d have that come into play with a beast rune of at least 80%. In real world animism/shamanism shape changing is an experience thing. Just because you have a totem/helper/guardian spirit doesn’t mean you can take its form. But some can with experience. I’d rather have non-shamanic adventurers be “fish out of water” in the spirit world than give them stuff that shamanic characters have to earn.

I think it’s more about getting your head around a Bronze Age bartering economy. You should already have a sword, you are part of the militia. But suspect It runs more like this. young roger - I’m thinking of goin’ adventuring with some of my mates uncle bert - sounds good, but I’d sort out that crappy sword you use at the fyrd young roger - yeah, I’ve seen a nice one down at mo the blacksmiths uncle bert - take two of those young bullocks down to him along with your crappy sword and get that one, better still take haggler John with you, you might get a helm thrown in. (2x20L + 10 for the old sword, 50 for a broadsword, 10 for an open helm) young roger - you say john can get the helm too? uncle Bert - he’s not called haggler John for nothing later mother - that’s a hat and nice sword. young roger - yeah, haggler John sorted it out for me with mo, only cost two bullocks. mother - well done, can’t be having you die because of a crappy sword. Young roger - do you think I could get some metal armour? mother - we’re not made of cows, you can have leather like everyone else, better still get some while your off adventuring.

This is also based on real world shamanism, you can see maps often on drums, but also in Dreamtime paintings and other media.. I also teach a course in this called shamanic landscapes where participants explore their own shamanic landscape and make a map, often in the form of collage or painting. Praxian shaman have two types of maps, the personal one seen here, and another “landscape” form. The landscape one covers the Middle World and is in the form of string maps with carved fetishes tied into it. I’ll see if I can find them. That was actually my problem with this, it was a soloquest. Currently the RQG shamanism rules don’t allow for this - discorporatation is a “self” only spell. However this is easily remidied by new shamanic abilities. The ones in the rules aren’t concise, and there’s scope for more.

Lots of cults don’t have rune lords, Ernalda, Eiritha, chalana arroy to name but a few. It’s not a new concept. Rune lords are the martial aspect of a cult, if your not martial you likely don’t have them.

Vishi Dunn is going to travel to the Sky World to contact the Twinstars to follow up on some troubling information. The obvious place to begin his journey would be in the Monkey Ruins, where the Fireground is close by. This would mean setting up a camp in baboon territory and hoping that the group is either not spotted and if so can hold off an attack. This is very risky, so he plans to do it from within his home camp. Before sunrise on Fireday, his assistants prepare the sacred ground by casting Sanctify 4 and building a huge fire in the centre. Everyone takes their place around it. Beginning a day long Worship ceremony to Waha, there is much chanting and dancing. At the height of the ceremony Vishi spends 5 magic points, collapsing into sleep he discorporates and appears inside the Great Herd at his Power Place. Surrounding those are thousands of the favorite herd beast, all contented and healthy, milling about with calves and bulls among them. Meanwhile at the ceremony his huge high llama fetch appears and stands over his body. The dancing slows and the crowd begins to settle down into a different dance, high llama stalking, the men mimic a male high llama's lookout stance in the herd, whilst the women (who are lay members) continue to dance and drum just outside the edge of the sanctified circle. Vishi's player has already stated that this is an extended discorporation and rolls a D6 to find out how long his discorporation lasts and rolls 2 hours. His spirit high llama Attuk (a specific 4-legged high llama ancestor ) is waiting, he mounts up and sets off through the herd. Eiritha in the centre of the herd quickly fades and the edge of the herd approaches and he enters the Wide Plains. From the Wide Plains he makes a Scan roll and sees the Fireground in the distance. It takes a hour of travel to reach the Fireground, so he must make an encounter roll. He rolls POWx3 and gets 82, failing so gets a hostile encounter. Rolling a 4, the spirit has 1D6, POW, 4 points. Spirit combat starts and the weak spirit is quickly dispatched. Finally he reaches the edge of the Fireground. This is a different region, so to enter it he must make a Spirit travel roll, it's one step removed from the Inner realm so -10%, he rolls 38, succeeding. Now inside the burning Fireground to find his way to the Star Steps that lead to the Skyworld. Almost immediately the Fire Guardians appear. These are a pair of humanoid shaped burning forms, each holding a burning spear. They lunge, Vishi knows this is very dangerous, they are 6D6+6 POW & 3D6+6 CHA: POW 24, CHA 14, spirit combat 96%, 1D6+3 damage POW 26, CHA 21, spirit combat 104%, 2D6+3 damage So he rolls his Dance to augment his Spirit Dance rolling 14, a success, adding 20% on to his Spirit Dance of 90%, so 115% - 50 for the spirits magic points, 65%. he rolls a 03, a critical, avoiding the encounter and staying in the Spirit World. His 2 hours are up, he's had 1 spirit travel roll and one planned encounter. He now spends 1 magic point to extend his declared extended Discorporation and rolls a D6, for 5 extra hours. His next spirit travel roll is to find the Star Steps into the Sky World. He augments his Spirit Travel with his Spirit lore, rolls 30, succeeding, bringing his spirit travel to 120%, leaving this region is -20 as it's 2 steps removed from the inner realm so 100%. He searches amongst the burning land, taking an hour to locate the steps. The edge of the sky dome now rises up in front of him. His high llama jumps onto it and fails his jump roll with 97. Vishi is thrown off and the Llama disappears back to his Power Place. As planned, Vishi now begins an hour long ritual to Summon Lucky Star, an important patron of the Blue Llama clan. Spending 20 of his stored magic points, a tiny blue floating stars appear and he asks them to lead him to the Twin Stars. Following the stars he begins to traverse the edge of the Sky Dome. After an hour a POW x1 roll is needed to avoid an encounter in this outer region, rolling 98, a fumble! A hostile spirit encounter, I've added 25% to the roll to reflect the fumble, 68+25=93, 5D6+6 POW & 3D6+6 APP POW 24, CHA 17, spirit combat 120%, 2D6+3 damage. Clearly a Sky Guardian (place Gods War Phoenix figure on table). Vishi is currently POW 18, CHA 15, spirit combat 95%, 1D6+3 +3 (shaman) +6 (Spirit Mastery 2) = 1D6+12 damage. Vishi augments his spirit combat with his Death rune rolling 88, just a success, 90+20=110. Round 1 Guardian 54, success, Vishi 32, success, tie. Round 2 Guardian 47, success, Vishi 95, success, tie. Round 3 Guardian 73, success, Vishi 85, success, tie. Round 5 Guardian 67, success, Vishi 37, success, tie. Round 6 Guardian 68, success, Vishi 40, success, tie. Round 7 Guardian 09, special, Vishi 78, success, Guardian wins, 5 special doubled +3= 13, Vishi has 5 mp left. (not corporeal so no extra damage) Round 8 Guardian 00, fumble, Vishi 78, success, Vishi wins, 3+12= 15, Guardian has 3 mp left. Fumble roll, Combatant’s energies become unfocused; lose 1D6 magic points = 6. Guardian has 0 mp left. Vishi forces it to teach a sky based spirit magic and asks for a new sky spirit magic spell (to be determined later) Another hour passes. Vishi has spent 5 hours in the spirit world. He's got an hour left to find the Twinstars or has to make a POW x 4 (90%) to avoid a d6 hit points loss, he's also down to 5 mp and they don't regenerate. He decides to return and reach the Sky World another way, using Lucky Star to reach the Sky World directly. He attempts his Spirit Dance to return to his body, succeeding on a 38. He stands up slightly disorientated next to the still roaring fire. A rain of arrows falls around him. A Sable attack is in progress. Clearly he was on to something. (all rolls are random)

There are lots of different character types that Charisma 18 supports. However, the rune levels of the cult are the leaders, even if reluctant. Their actions alone will increase their charisma (page 420, which implies that you can have a cha of 17 and become a rune level”. A Humakt rune lord needs charisma 18 to say follow me into battle and die by my side, it will be a glorious death. Other cults need it too, fagin is a classic high charisma crim.

These are the ritual Practices. Increase your rune as well and you can augment better with it.

I'll try and do one later using some of the regions I've defined.

Because RQG just provides the bare bones of the spirit world, there's not actually much detail. For example the Inner World of the Praxians encompasses nearly all of their spirit world Geography (currently about 25 regions with 4 or so frontier and 6 or so outer, 5 beyond in the heroplane, and 1 on the edge of the Primal Plasma). A praxian shaman wanting to travel outside, for example from the Fireground (middle world monkey ruins) to the sky realm, would have to deal with the hostile spirits in this frontier region, then find the vortex to the sky realm. spirit travel would be needed to get into the fireground, then through the portal. The same would for the Stormgate (the raging storm), and the pathway to the Greener that leads to the Green Age Spike. You'd also need to roll to get back. All of these regions have their own encounters too, many are specific. The fireground has the Fire Guardians, Stormgate has the Storm Warriors, the Greener has the Changer folk, all of these spirits are dangerous, i'd say starting at 4D6 POW and hostile unless somehow affiliated - an Orlanthi shaman can likely pass Stormgate with little effort. The whole praxian spirit world is a map that overlays some of the real world. Here for example is the spirit skin of a newly initiated Waha Bison Shaman. He has painted Eiritha at the centre of the his Great Herd (Inner World, animal spirits), within that lies his Clan Hearth (Inner World) with Bison-Eiritha at their Campfire (Mahome). Around the campfire are the clan ancestors (Summon Ancestor, Summon Specific Ancestor). Just outside the Great Herd is the Herd Guard (Inner World) where Waha patrols. In the distance he has seen the Spike (heroplane) but not the route to it. As he progresses and get more experienced, more will be filled in. He knows the other areas exist just not how they fit into his spirit world.

This might help with the pilgrimages: https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/7893-cant-find-any-info-on-these-new-shaman-pilgrimages/?tab=comments#comment-111376 Travel times will take place within the confines of a ceremony, so dusk 'till dawn on relevant holy days. I'd cast discorporate on the party and take them along (as per HeroQuest Glorantha). You can vary the time if needed.

Mastering runes for sorcery doesn’t require training, or teaching. you just have to achieve Union with your philosophy (make a dice roll and spend POW) see page 364. The implication is that you need to be taught your first rune and technique, but there after you do it on your own. If you’ve enough PoW you can do it every season!

If it's the one on pages 134 &135, there's a chance it will be included in the GM Screen pack, however there is no announced contents list at the moment. Edit: I've just had a go at printing this out at A3 using a PDF editor (PDF Expert) Looks good! Roughly 12 x 17 inches, but I realise you are wanting A2.

So in light of this discussion I'vegone through the latest Gods of Glorantha draft to see if this throws any light this thread. Lay members - no sorcery taught. Apprentices/students aged between 6-15. Initiates: It then lists the spells from RQ. The Lhankor Mhy cult teaches a limited number of sorcery spells from a collection of documents called the Torvald Fragments. Looking at the actual spells for insight: Normal MP cost - Can be cast with Truth & Command Reveal Rune (Truth/Command) Solace of the Logical Mind (Truth/Command) x2 MP cost Logician (Truth/Summon) Total Recall (Truth/Summon) x4 MP cost Logical Clarity (Illusion/Dispel) Not available (missing mastery) Enhance INT (Fire/Summon) Identify Otherworld Entity (Truth/Spirit/Command) Geomancy (Truth/Earth/Summon) Speak to Mind (Truth/Man/Command) --- So any LM occupation can learn sorcery. It's likely that as a lay member they'd know spirit magic.IMHO scribes could have 3 spells and philosophers 6. There are actually only 5 spells actually cast-able by a starting character. It would seem that the next rune that a PC would master is Fire, so they can cast Enhance INT. The minor runes of Fire are Earth and Water, so that would get access to Geomancy as well. The last two would mean mastering Man and Spirit. There are also the INT limits, a LM with full access to all the Torvald Fragments spells would have an minimum INT of 16 (with a free INT of 7).

It’s purely mechanical. Personally I’d not want to invest the time in fiddling with it, however if you’ve the time go for it.

Just comparing opinions based on what’s happened in my game. The game changer for LM is that they get rune magic as well as sorcery if they choose the philosopher path. And that’s how we played it with the Lunars too. From a book keeping perspective in game our socerers only used sorcery, heal body and enchantments.

While true, in gameplay it was more likely that the POW would be spent on sorcery enchantments or magic point matrices. Likewise you need to know the enchantment.

There are three occupational paths for lhankor Mhy, scribe, philosopher and priest. Only philosophers get to master one rune and technique. If you are a sorcerer, you don’t want any spirit magic as it subtracts from your Free Int as do sorcery spells. the more Free Int the more manipulation. My sorcery player picked up on that very quick. Six spells from your Int if it’s 18 only leaves 12. If you want to get your damage to 3d6, duration to a week and range to 2.5km, you know no spirit magic.

No, page 384 Page 76 The rune you master and the technique received are predefined. Otherwise you will start better than other sorcerers.

HQ1 has 4 good scenarios; High Pressure front, Chasing Kites (a favourite of mine), Fish Rain, and Heavy Earth. I’ve run them all as part of the same campaign.

Not (currentlyj RQG compatible and it overlaps with family history. If your group is from all over Dragon Pass, it’s not relevant for everyone (in my game of 6 players, 2 are Sartarites).

It also has a good dose of Blavatsky-esque weirdness associated with it along with its mainstream theosophy roots. Did Theosophy translate to German?

They don’t have to be ducks, there’s lots of types of waterfowl. Just south of the trickster temple suggests loons, even hell divers to me https://hotcakencyclopedia.com/ho.TrickstersAnusGuardsDucks.html perhaps @Quackatoa would care to comment

I think it should be treated as a proper noun so you can find something more interesting in another language rather than a direct translation. In English, god learner doesn’t really mean much, it just has some association weight to it rather than those that learnt about gods. For example in someplaces in Glorantha, they might be called. The sorcerers of contempt, the wizards of moral nil, manipulators of worldly doom, etc. I’d encourage you to find you own words.

Epithets such as this one are given by others and may not reflect the truth, just sounding cool. "One night me and Porscriptor drank so much, he threatened to eat me. I said just you try, so he bit me, he's a right cannibal that one..." Did Richard the Lionheart have a lion's heart..."