davecake

As I understand it from Jeff’s clarifications last night, for the Rokari: Zzaburi are specialist sorcery users. The general citizenry are expected to donate magic points at regular community rituals, which the Zzaburs can use for powerful community rituals. The Talars worship their ancestors. And their genealogies may include some beings that other cultures would treat as not only heroes, but gods. In particular, Issaries is an ancestor of many Western noble families (this story about Garzeen is in Cults of Prax), including the Trader Princes of the Manirian Coast. And of course the old Seshnelan Serpent Kings were descended from Seshna Likita. But also famous ancestors would be hero cults etc. Presumably they don’t practice Ancestor Worship in a very shamanic way. Horali Warriors typically get magic from war gods and the War societies. This is tolerated as long as they remain subservient to the Talars, and effective at fighting. I personally don’t think the War societies are practically very hsunchen like these days - I don’t think there is a big emphasis on shape changing, unarmed warfare, I don’t think they consider themselves animals in human form, etc and they are still very civilised in lifestyle - rather, they were hsunchen spirit cults ~1500 years ago and are now quite different - but they are not really Malkioni magic either. And the Dronars quietly worship the same sort of deities as farmers and workers elsewhere - largely Earth worship, crafter gods and gods associated with professions, but a few wilder religions as well - and as long as they continue turning up to the weekly community rituals, and obeying the Talars, no one really pays that much attention.

Not really the point I was making, but... if you think the Hero Wars isn’t basically ‘oh crap, here we go again’ on all that, you haven’t been paying attention....

I personally think the rules for heroquest rewards that they described in the White Bull campaign sound great. Flexible, not immediately unbalancing to a game but scales to high power effects, lots of potential for interesting customisations for particular campaign needs and ideas. So that is a great start for official rules I am going to like. Now, that is obviously incomplete - we know of heroquests that have different effects, such as powers for your wyter, resurrecting dead gods, etc. and they will hopefully be in fully developed heroquest rules in the future. But that is just more to look forward to. And already, Passions and Runes in the base rules help set things up nicely for the sort of things I'd like to see in heroquests better than previous editions of RuneQuest. Another thing I am liking is what isn't in them. I really dislike the 'Super RuneQuest' style of rules, and I'm glad that they will largely avoid this. I don't want all my hero PCs to be running around with 800% skills, it just doesn't seem very RuneQuesty to me, and cuts out a lot of interesting plots. That's my preference, and there are plenty of other sources if that's what you want. I want them to have a lot of cool magic that they can invoke though, and that looks like what we'll get. I've probably got enough ideas now about what is coming that I can improvise my own rules if I need to before they get published, and they'll be close enough to the official ones. But what I am definitely looking forward to is the same as @lordabdul - guidance for running HeroQuests that move away from the fairly rigid 'repeat the story' model (that is often confusing and offputting to people from outside the Glorantha world, and often awkward to run while giving the players enough agency to improvise and shape the story), to something more open and flexible. I want maps of the heroplanes so we can understand the interactions more, heroquest scripts that allow for flexibility and variation, rules for building up wyters and other resources - stuff that gradually fills the world of heroquesting, moving away from the model of dropping into a scripted 'choose your own adventure' sequence, and more like gradually moving you into a world in which sophisticated magicians contest against one another with elaborate rituals in the magical otherworlds - the world of the Hero Wars.

Rather than a hard and fast direct rule, it is a trend - usually, a more powerful spirit will be of higher POW, but not 100% of the time. And spell spirits (and the other very abstract types of spirit) no longer exist as such. If a GM wants to discourage very powerful spirit magic spells, then they should make them only possessed by very high POW spirits. If the GM is fine with very powerful spirit magic spells, then make spirits who can teach them more common, and then they only have themselves to complain to if it turns out that Bladesharp 10 upsets the balance of their game.

Yes - most societies in Glorantha have some sort of martial tradition, probably several. These martial traditions will not always include any unarmed component beyond the incidental (the RQ Martial Arts skill only applies to unarmed combat, though the term martial arts is now used more broadly by many), are not always a systematic integrated discipline, are not always linked to any philosophy or religion, and while it is common for fighting style and magic to be connected, this is usually indirect (emulating a warrior god, or using elemental magic to attack enemies etc) rather than the martial tradition being the magical practice itself. In other words, only a few places have the Martial Arts skill (and many of them are listed in the rulesbook - "Different schools of Martial Arts exist in the Lunar Heartland, Loskalm, Seshnela, Teshnos, and Kralorela."), only a few have a martial tradition that emphasises individual fighting disciplines integrated into a whole tradition including philosophy, only a small minority have what we might call Martial Arts Magic. I personally think that there are essentially few, or likely none, martial arts magical traditions outside the Eastern 'Sivolic' tradition described in Revealed Mythology, though other cultures have martial traditions, warrior cults and unarmed fighting traditions. I also think that the Western unarmed fighting styles are not part of the Sivolic tradition. Those in Kralorela and Teshnos probably are part of that Sivolic tradition - and probably the Lunar Heartland too. Most of the Lunar martial traditions aren't particularly martial arts like - the bulk of the Lunar army, for example, are trained in ways that emphasise discipline and collective action, not individual ability, as the armies of successful empires often are.

I think the Western understanding of martial arts is far more mundane than the Eastern - it's the application of Intellect to fighting, which seems sort of vaguely confusing to the Brithini and more traditional Rokari (yes, of course Intellect is applicable to warfare - mostly other peoples Intellect, you don't want to get the Warriors to try to think too hard themselves, is probably the underlying Zzaburi attitude - and the Rokari Talars think of martial arts as very suitable - for Talars. The warriors have weapons for a reason.). To the New Hrestoli it is a recommended practice - of course you want to keep your body in good shape and know how best to use it, even if you have other more important duties. Even good Loskalmi wizards go to the gym. But I think it's purpose is practical not magical, largely - if you want to fight in a magically enhanced way, there is plenty of sorcery (and alchemy, etc) to do that. The Loskalmi are somewhat obsessed with hygiene and good health, and don't really think of this as separate to sorcery. Charms and practices to ward of various diseases and ailments are a big part part of Loskalmi magical practice and daily life - and as those practices includes things like 'washing yourself' and 'getting some exercise', as well as 'having a sauna', as well as wards against disease spirits and such, they probably generally work pretty well. But this is a practical sort of stuff based on the essential idea that the mundane world is basically bad for you and interferes with the improvement of your mind - integrating your magic with the material world and your physical self is kind of the opposite of what is desirable, it would just be tying your intellect to the broken world. So I don't think this is mystic. Though it is my theory that Talorism eventually becomes mystic, I don't think that really happens until after Magus level, well after becoming a Man Of All.

Reducing what you want from a mystic magic system to, essentially, a particular list of superpowers would be seem to be a fairly clear indication that anything based, in any way, on actual mysticism will never meet your criteria.

I looked for Tarsh resources a lot, and the Unspoken Word books were the best source I found on Old Tarsh.

What you don’t see is not a very convincing argument. “Besides being asked Riddles, Illuminated beings may try to discover the answers to Riddles through meditation.” - Cults of Terror, pg 86 HeroQuest Glorantha “The exact process of Illuminating others varies accord to the teacher. It may take a season's study, long meditation, or a magical procedure. ” And the exact same text in Dorastor, the RQ3 cult writeup. And that is just the rules systems that don't include an explicit meditation game mechanic - of course, RQG does, and the draft Nysalor writeup for RQG includes both reference to meditation in the abstract, and multiple reference to the Meditation skill. So I think that is a reference to meditation in every Nysalor cult writeup or set of rules? And various references to Nysalor meditating (eg prosopaedia entry, the picture in CoT, the Guide, etc) and artwork depicting him meditating are so prevalent it would be pretty disingenuous to claim the cult was not associated with meditation anyway. In anticipating there will now be some goal post shifting and you will claim that a *mention* of meditation was not what you meant, what you meant was that meditation was an essential component - just, no. Thats universal for mysticism, and it's also an explicit denial of a lot of Gloranthan sources, long established canon, you just don't agree with. Please stop.

has anyone read the famous Arthur C. Clarke story The Nine Billion Names of God? I was thinking a bit like that.

I would avoid this kind of reasoning. It makes for messy and inconsistent asymmmetry of game design, that is confusing and relies on everyone agreeing to the same intuitive understanding of the elements. And the logic is shaky - if Water is intrinsically capricious and mutable, surely a more sensitive and mutable state of mind will be more appropriate for casting Water magic? If Storm is unpredictable, then surely you need to be in a more responsive state of mind? etc.

I agree. But a way to do so that means the magic remains valid. That is the same thing, really. And I suspect a bit Alethiometer - it's not a fully mechanical process, but one guided by the magic of Lhankor Mhy. Also the I Ching. Also, like actual geomatria, probably requires a lot of looking stuff up and comparing results from multiple sources to clarify. Elasa script is known to be pretty weird in this respect, with its own complex code system. I think not so brute forcy, and it is not quite an attack on the sorcerous code that underpins the Matrix observed reality, as an attack on the encoding algorithms of Western sorcery - the Alien Combination Machine appears to be for copying Western sorcery, not creating it from scratch. Now, those endlessly spinning sorcerous 'prayer wheels' the Zistorites are so fond of? Literally a brute force attack, hoping to unlock new sorcerous commands (among other things). And Gematria is absolutely on the right track for sorcery generally (and the ACM specifically), but (dropping into 'ceremonial magic nerd' mode for a minute) for inspiration for this Zistorite, heavily combinatoric kind of stuff, I find John Dee's magical system, Enochian, works really well, as it already has this combinatoric element in it - there is the idea that every single combination of certain sets of letters represents the name of a very specific angel, which can be enumerated into the thousands, for example. It's quite intricate.

The Pure Horse People worship Dendara as the spouse of Yu-Kargzant, probably under the name La-Ungariant, as a fairly direct equivalent to Ernalda, and worship the horse goddess under a different name (I'm not sure what). They also worship Hippoi, who is her daughter. Like among the Praxians, the Earth goddess role is understood and revered, but not of as much practical value to a non-agricultural people, and she is not connected to the Grain goddess(es) as she is in Peloria. The rest of the solar Pentans (the majority) I think don't worship her directly, probably for the same reasons of lineage that they don't worship Yu-Kargzant directly but worship Kargzant - their womens goddess is Eiritha and/or Hippoi, and the womens role is concerned with herds, not the Earth (or sovereignty). The Storm tribes of the Pentans probably much the same, just with different mens gods. I think the horse goddess/herd goddess still acknowledges the Earth Queen as an associated cult in ceremonies. At some point the Feathered Horse Queens must have essentially proved that Ernalda and Dendara are the same for the purposes of Grazer myth, and so the wife of Yu-Kargzant is the same as Ernalda is the same as the mother of Kero Fin. Which is impressive, if for other reason than the God Learners failed to prove that Ernalda and Dendara are the same.

Agreed. I think the Flintnail cult are definitely heterodox in their beliefs and magic, and don't observe Mostali Caste distinctions rigorously, and also mix it with human sorcery - in addition to being Openhandist and Individualist. Their Secrets of Stone grimoire is mostly Rock Dwarf magic (and Flintnail was probably a Rock dwarf), but seems to include some Tin Dwarf magic - dealing with Jolanti. I think most of their non-Mostali sorcery (and what little Rune Magic some of them use) is via their connection to the Pavis cult. I don't think the Flintnail cult know all the Jolanti magic, and can't create Jolanti from scratch. Part of the Jolanti ritual requires a Tin caste Diamondwarf to cast secret sorcery spells on a mass of rock - and I don't think the Flintnail cult have ever included a Tin Caste Diamondwarf, or know the spells (I think of this as basically 'wakening' the stone, or bringing it to life from dead stone). But that's just the first stage - then you carve it to add features (which is normally done by Rock dwarfs anyway), and then there are spells to control and strengthen it (which I think the Flintnail cult do know and use). They can't create Jolanti - but they do have access to a bunch of them that they captured after defeating Thog the giant in 875, and they seem fully capable of controlling them, which should be Tin Dwarf magic. This seems to involve some violation of caste boundaries - though nothing too outrageous for Individualist Dwarfs that already are open to violating them, given Tin and Rock dwarfs normally work closely together to create Jolanti. And the Flintnail cult (and Flintnail himself) shared this knowledge with Pavis (a clear Openhandist heretic act) and this allowed them to collaborate on creating the Pavis cult Master of the Faceless King grimoire, which uses the power of the Faceless Statue for a wide range of effects. Of course, all of this could get retconned when the new Pavis book comes out, but I sure hope it isn't - the Pavis:GTA reimagining of the Pavis and Flintnail cults was very cool and evocative IMO. As far as rules go, I'd basically let Flintnail cultists have access to all Rock Dwarf spells (there are a few in the Bestiary, and will be a few more in the Gods book), and probably any Tin Dwarf ones too. But they have access to few Jolanti, and are unlikely to be letting them out for adventuring purposes anyway. Then I'd let any Flintnail cultists also join Pavis, and learn any likely sorcery that way. Which gives them the bonus of having a little access to Rune magic as well - which is far more useful to player characters than most sorcery, and definitely than almost all Rock Dwarf magic (which is most only useful for building).

I think it's OK to have Runes aid sorcery casting. I rationalise it as representing a level of understanding beyond what they may have learnt formally - noticing small details, some intuitive sense that helps them avoid subtle mistakes, simply finding certain powers easier to channel. Even in highly intellectual areas, people find certain things easier or more pleasant to concentrate on. All the areas like meteorology vs geology might rationally be as difficult as each other - but different fields appeal to people for different reasons, and I think being truly enthusiastic or in tune with a particular area of study. In the end, Runic inspiration makes very little difference to how good someone is at something day to day, I don't think it's a mechanic we need to justify in a simulationist way - but It's also an important narrative mechanic that makes Rune values meaningful. I think they need to be meaningful even more for sorcerous characters who don't use Rune Magic, not make it an almost vestigial mechanic. If you want a Gloranthan magic justification, though, for Runes sometimes helping - the Xeotam dialogues tells us that a lineage connection to the deities can make magic more powerful, and we know that Rune percentages can be related to lineage. That's enough of a theory to me to justify it as a mechanic (with a fair bit of handwaving, lineage can be interpreted more symbolically than literally if need be, etc). And as for Passions? Eh, motivation matters, and can help you focus and avoid distractions. Again, it works well for the narrative, and the simulationist aspects can be justified if you want. I know that intellectual tasks, like writing or studying, are still helped by being strongly motivated.

Well, we got the main answer for unarmed martial arts long ago - the canonical answer is “Different schools of Martial Arts exist in the Lunar Heart-land, Loskalm, Seshnela, Teshnos, and Kralorela.” - and clearly also in the East Isles, Vormain, etc. And there is a bunch of stuff in Revealed Mythologies about the various Eastern traditions, and a few mentions of unarmed fighting in the West that clearly Joerg and I deeply disagree on. Lots of people have suggestions for additional possibilities of unarmed fighting traditions, which are totally fun variants or small traditions that can meet their campaign needs, of wildly varying plausibility to me. And literally almost everything past that, pretty much everything about traditions of armed combat, is half about how you define the term martial arts, which some people define broadly enough to include essentially every warrior tradition, and half what stuff you make up, because many Gloranthan sources will tell you that people fight, and what weapons they fight using, but almost none will get into the nitty gritty of how integrated their training is, how formal it is, whether it has ritual elements, etc - and even when we know a little, many people extrapolate strangely from a small amount of info (can bears learn kung fu? Can schoolyard bullying form the basis of a martial art?). How do we tell whether Humakt is a sword martial art tradition, or just an expert sword fighting tradition that is integrated into their religion? What would be the difference, and what would it mean in a game? The other question is who integrates their magic into their martial practice, and when is that forming martial arts magic or just martial magic? I personally think it’s best to keep the magic and mundane separate in all the Gloranthan rule systems, but there does seem to be a closer connection for the Eastern traditions - which opens up another entire box of worms (as this was typically connected to mysticism). Luckily, for the vast majority of games that aren’t in the East, this can be ignored. For Humakt, etc I think we already have a pretty good understanding of how they integrate their magic with their fighting, and I would suggest that further trying to tweak the rules to make a difference on how they do this based on the arbitrary line between between mere skilled sword fighting and sword martial arts is arbitrary, is needless over complication, and will probably lead you astray on the deeper magical implications too.

A ‘martial art’ even in this much broader sense still needs to be something more to be meaningful in most game rules (even HQ) than just ‘learning weapon skill’. I’d suggest something like ‘multiple fighting skills learned together as a system with some synergistic benefit’ - and then I’d give the concept another name to avoid confusion. And even then, I’m not sure it’s clear that all warriors learn fighting systematically in this way - and whether it would be worth including ideas as basic as ‘using a sword and shield together’ - is there a reason to treat it as anything but two separate skills that are somewhat complementary? What about ideas that really only apply to group, not individual, training (like forming a shield wall or phalanx)? A lot of ancient soldier training is like this. I think Renaissance fencing counts - but are there similar styles that aren’t anachronistic? and what would they do? Yes, but it’s clear to me that this isn’t Martial Arts in the RuneQuest rules sense, and and it's not clear if there would need to be any rules support for such a form? What sort of difference would it make if the weapon training was systemic and formal or not? Well, yes, but that doesn’t mean those specialised fighting styles are systematized or formal - quite the opposite, I would imagine, as you need to be able to do it while you have a somewhat animal mind too, in many hsunchen cultures in active cooperation with animals. Probably taught as animals do, by play and mock combat. It’s a much deeper thing than superficially resembling, or being inspired by, animals, like Shao Lin animal styles. There is a pretty strong case that the RQ concept of a Martial Art is far too narrow, and should perhaps be replaced with something far broader like the RQ6 concept of ‘fighting styles’, but the boat has sailed on that one for now. And what would we get from it that we wouldn’t get from just noting that ‘this group uses these skills and techniques together effectively’? What can you do by fighting, say, ‘Humakti style’ that isn’t the same as just being really good at the sword and shield skill?

Are you thinking of Land of Ninja Ki skills or something? Because that is not what the RQG Martial Arts skill does. Yes, for sure. The fancy Sivolic magical martial arts magic absolutely only represents particular ways of doing martial arts related magc. Yes. If you wanted to run a game with lots of martial arts in it, you'd want to distinguish between styles, and not just in associated magic and other skills. It wouldn't be hard to add some extra Grapple options for successful Martial Arts skill use. The Martial Arts skill was written about 30+ years ago and never updated. It could do with some expansion. Agreed on different styles and a few more options. I'm wary of adding more damage than it already does - within the RQ rules, anything too fancy, definitely your crazy wuxia stuff, is probably better represented as magic than a skill.

Do you have a different version of the rulesbook? What does that sentence on pg 181 say?

And I think that is just terminological confusion. Every culture knows how to fight. Most in some systematised way. But that is not necessarily anything we would consider a martial art, unless we just use the term martial art as a synonym for 'war of fighting', whether it is individual or only in formation, unarmed or armed, systematised or somewhat improvised, etc. though that supernatural element does not need to be anything more complex than 'and you can learn Ironhand/Strength/Protetion etc'.

Absolutely, because there is quite a lot written to suggest exactly that. The Kralorelans would appear to be their only real rivals. It is also pretty clear that Vithelan martial artists learn magical techniques as well as physical ones, and they have a cult specifically associated with martial arts (Darja Danad, also known as Long Leiji in Kralorela), and there is a fair bit of myth etc in Revealed Mythologies. It is absolutely under-explored, it would be great to see more.

OK, we seem to have a big failure of communication. While I acknowledge that learning a systematic weaponed fighting style is a martial art, on the RuneQuest rules martial arts is used specifically for systems of unarmed combat. While I think a supplement that got really into it would expand this a little, in general using the term martial arts to refer to armed fighting is just going to confuse the issue.

Boxing is systematic training, and if you want it to be Martial Arts skill, sure. But remember fist and kick skill are different skills to martial arts - learning to fight well enough unarmed that you can take on someone armed is hard in Glorantha, and hard in real life, compared to learning to hurt them with a weapon designed for the task. Martial arts isn't learning how to punch someone - it is learning how to punch them just right so you do double damage, by learning to strike weak points etc. It's more than one skill - and so fairly expensive. So, why would a professional army take a lot of their training time out to learn to be a bit more dangerous when unarmed, when they could spend that time, instead, learning how to be more dangerous with the weapons they already are carrying with them? Now, in the West it has a specific cultural significance, and also it seems to be largely a noble thing, who are not armed all the time like the soldier caste. In the East, it is associated with all sorts of cool fighting magic and warrior cults (and I suspect Lunar martial arts is a similar mystic friendly tradition ultimately from the East). But for most bronze age warriors, it doesn't exactly seem like something to spend a lot of your training tine on.

Because you think all dangerous bronze age warriors were martial artists? OK, novel point of view, and not one I'm going accept really. Well, put it this way - I can't think of a single word in the sources that suggests the Alkothi are particularly into unarmed combat. They seem to be heavily into the armed sort, and don't really seem to have a reason to take time out of their weapon training to learn unarmed skills that are of extremely marginal value in warfare or other armed combat (unlike the Western or Easterners we know who use martial arts who have cultural reasons). If you want the Alkothi to be into martial arts because you think everyone who is a savage murderous badass is into martial arts, you can do that in your Glorantha. In the RQ rules learning martial arts isn't even a particularly good way of learning to be good at winning a fist fight - like, you'd be better off training in fist skill than the martial arts skill. There has to be a better reason than wanting to hurt people.

With that logic, we would give every warrior god martial arts. Martial arts is a pretty rare thing, and harder to learn than just fist fighting. Martial arts also is about applying intellect and systematic tactics to fighting. Shagashi are berserkers.