Ian Absentia

Maybe it's a matter of contractual liability? I mean, seriously, because if the geas is supposed to mean "Moderately hostile towards..." or "Situationally bigoted towards.." then just say so. So perhaps it boils down to "Reject commerce with..." or "Unable to enter contract with..." !i!

Each of us is All. !i!

I think this is some of that "tribal" bickering some were embracing up-thread. ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️!!! !i!

That's not necessarily true, and even demonstrably false in some instances (but I was referring to the real world advertisement itself - slavery is an odd selling point, even for 1978). But shine on! And let me know how those stirrups are working out. !i!

Speaking of which - and I intend this in all sincerity, so I apologise for the digression - does anyone here recall purchasing this book from me anywhere between 10 and 15 years ago? I loved that book, and for the life of me I can't find it in my collection now, though all other books remain. Just...let me know it's in a good home. 😿 !i!

As we regularly remind ourselves, Glorantha is not the real world and does not map to the real world in either cultural or technological development. An important thing to love about Glorantha! Enjoy your stirrups, sir! This, more than anything. I've read the suggestion of using a chess clock or sand glass, but never seen it employed in play. Often, there's a savant or volunteer at the table with modifiers memorised, pages indexed and tabbed, and a demeanor that few wish to cross who'll bark out target numbers in an effort to move things along. Long story short, knowing the rules and not dithering will keep play moving. !i!

Tut-tut on the glorification of the slave trade, but remarkably forward-thinking in 1978 to assume that players would aspire to become high priestesses. I think I may have seen the second generation of this advertisement in 1979, possibly alongside an ad for Empire of the Petal Throne. The two were intertwined in my early RPG memories. !i!

I have this vision of us all as these multi-dimensional beings that say the same things in many different dimensions simultaneously, though not all of us occupy exactly the same dimensional spaces. Sometimes it seems like people are talking directly to us. Sometimes they seem to be carrying on half of an otherwise unheard conversation with someone just past our shoulder. Sometimes we find echoes of things they've said previously, sometimes many times previously, heard from different angles and in different tones. We comprise multitudes. !i!

I was recently taken to task for the unconformity of my responses in another thread on this very topic...so let me link you to that discussion! Play the rules at first, see how Passions and Runes and religious Cults let your characters interact with the world in ways that Alignment just doesn't cut it in other games, then course-correct your characters onto the setting as you learn it in more detail (or course-correct the setting to your characters, because it's your game!). There's a HUGE amount of beautiful, weird, intricate stuff about Glorantha, most of which you and your players may comfortably never encounter, so don't worry about it. !i!

Arguably (or rather, demonstrably), Western occult traditions don't involve direct zapping, either. They tend to involve intricate processes of finding the secret names of angels or demons, inviting them into a ritual space for the evening, then negotiating said zapping services that the angel/demon later manifests in the form of a bad case of gout or getting kicked by a mule. If the Western magician is really ambitious and forward-thinking, he'll negotiate guidance and passage to higher spiritual realms and emanations that have absolutely nothing to do with the hashish/belladonna/laudanum that's been mixed in with the ceremonial wine and incense. All of which would still be incredibly cool in a roleplaying game! !i!

I just added the note about Fatigue (which remains a sticking point for many about RQ3). There's a lot to be learned and borrowed from old Westerns (though The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is set in the 1920s, showing the timelessness of the setting). Hauling multiple weapons and armor around is one problem -- packing out your treasure is another entirely. I have a jar here with about 2,500 US pennies, and that alone is nothing to sneeze at. CBK's comments about being out of keeping with the local economy are right on the nose, too. Who's going to produce goods and services for the local community when you can sell them to the rich interlopers at grossly inflated prices that no one else can afford? (C.f., The ripple effect of tech company employees driving up local real estate prices.) I'm much happier with the cattle economy described in the current edition of RQ, and losing my shit over finding a bag of 50 L, a half-dozen gemstones, and a fist-sized chunk of iron. !i!

Because someone was watching The Treasure of the Sierra Madre on a TV matinee one Saturday afternoon and thought, "THAT would make a great scenario!" Then they forgot to include the notes on ENC and Fatigue until the 3rd Ed. !i!

Easy there, cowboy. It's a bit of a moving target. Snead has modeled in game terms how magic is practiced among some members of the contemporary occult; Bonewits, for all his contempt for Establishment Science, has created a model of parapsychological effects that are triggered by occult practices. Somewhere in the backwaters of another hard drive, I have the incipient notes for a game model that employs all of the various magical laws (e.g., Law of Similarity, Law of Contagion, etc.), and the more correspondences to the laws the magician can check off a list, the more likely it is that a magical effect will take place. The catch is that all magical effects appear entirely coincidental, and the magician has to convince himself that there's a genuine cause-and-effect at play to make them real. I envisage a sliding scale between Rationality at one end and Superstition at the other -- employing magic is a sweet spot lying somewhere between the two. Maybe it was just coincidence. Maybe you're just crazy. Maybe it really was magic. As has been observed by Robert Anton Wilson, the easiest possible magic is to just walk up to someone and bop 'em in the nose. Thought-Action-Result. !i!

Don't sell the site short. For the amount of effort involved, they don't need much of a response for it to pay off. Purge with fire. !i!

Or professional wrestling! Or film theory, or lit-crit. Or even cooking. My son and I will dive deep into the critique of how a new recipe turned out, while my daughter will chafe at the fact that we're not just enjoying the meal. Separating critique from play is a very real concern for many. !i!

Forward it on up to any and all site moderators. The spam folder of my email account is growing too active with similar offers, and I'm seeing too many friends' accounts getting wormed by impostors. The climate is right to capitalise on desperation. 😢 !i!

Ah, okay, so your elves aren't born (hu)Man-like from a womb, but from trees. Digging out my copy of the Glorantha Bestiary, I see the conventional mode of elf gestation and birth is described on p.17, though the text clarifies that this is from the point of view of human belief. Female elves (and presumably pregnant dryads) give birth to coconut-sized seeds, which are then planted and tended, and which later produce a stalk and fruit. Fertilisation to ripening occurs over a period of roughly two years. But, no, discussion of dryads is surprisingly scant, given the role they occupy in Aldryami society. !i!

I approve of this statement. But, if I may be indelicate, where do the seeds come from? Are they, er, laid like an egg from a dryad or female elf? I'm getting an odd sense of déjà vu, like this elf-seed/egg-thing has been discussed many times before. Cheers to dryads piloting mobile trees! Though I have to assume that going to war in them would be reserved for only the most desperate of circumstances. !i!

I think the fairer answer is that any grove of trees might host a dryad. That's sort of the problem that the Aldryami have been facing since the Gbaji Wars and the Second Age. As-yet undisclosed Rune Magic, almost certainly. If you have the Glorantha Bestiary, look to the Shamans of Aldrya or the Gardener subcult and the Rune spells Create War Tree and Animate War Tree for a sense of the nature of the magic involved in generating a dryad, though not nearly the scale. As with so many things in RQ these days (and rightly so), I have to imagine that gestating and awakening a dryad involves a heroquest or shamanic journey, actually finding an appropriate spirit willing to be reborn into a specially-prepared seedling or sapling, then tended with Rune magics and conventional sacrifice for years (c.f. Elf Bows). You know that imminent expansion of the elf forests have been prophesied for the Hero Wars, right? !i!

Dude! James Cameron''s The Abyss! !i!

Short answer: Via propagation of "elf forests". Longer answer: Trees still propagate in conventional manner, through seed and shoots. A carefully tended and endowed new tree can eventually give rise to a new dryad. You're right, that it takes much longer to generate a dryad from a tree than an elf from the womb of another elf or dryad (though I can't think, off hand, of how long the gestational period for a baby elf is). But they form the stable core of Growing society, and thus the importance of maintaining them and, hopefully, expanding them again. !i!

Ouch! But, yeah, adversarial games of GM vs The Players need to be agreed upon in advance. I think the OP is sort of getting at the conundrum of Apocalypse Now vs Hearts of Darkness., the former being the theatrical film, the latter the documentary about the cluster-cuss of making that movie (not the Joseph Conrad novel). Do you enjoy remaining immersed in the story, or do you also enjoy watching how the sausage is made? For many, witnessing the process dispels the illusion of story. My general advice: Encourage the players to believe that they are the masters of the emerging story. Often as not, they are. !i!

Ever the apologist (and the glacial/coastal geologist), I'll point out that there are significantly deep submerged coastal shelves in some places resulting from changes in eustatic sea level. But, yeah, most near-shore shelves may not be up to supporting the bulk of Great Cthulhu's body. ...unless Cthulhu is actually made of water. !i!

Ditto here, though I'll add that I almost always regret it when I discuss what players missed. Almost always there's a sense of deflation when you tell them that they did something wrong. It's a little more positive when they're clearly discouraged from a frustrating session, and you're trying to work through what did and didn't work mechanically, as opposed to according to desires and expectations. It's also worth noting that often as not, when a session doesn't work out it's because the players weren't acting according to my expectations as a GM, not that they were doing anything wrong. So there's talking about unresolved plot threads, which I think is kind of a no-no, then there's work-shopping a better game among a play group. Double-plus good. There are many ways of rewarding entertaining play, but simply hooting appreciation may be the most effective. Situations like that sometimes deserve a peek behind the curtain after the session is over. !i!

I edited my earlier edit at about the same time you posted your response. I think we're in agreement. 😃 Which still isn't to say that there weren't some oversights in the generational translation of stats from one edition to the next and the unintended consequences of how they interact with the rules. Sometimes it works out, though. !i!