Agentorange

Even with glasses...... I'm looking at the Guide to Glorantha p448 map of the wastelands. near the bottom of the page, just south of the Boathouse Ruins and west of the Roundlake Mountains there are a couple of little lakes. they're labelled but I just can't make out writing can anybody tell me ? . back to the opticians........

Now, I've been given much to think about....I'm not sure I'm any less confused than I was to start 😁. In fact possibly more.....

So, I have been reading about these and remain somewhat confused. the rules tell us that subcults have no existence out side of the main deity they are subordinate to. hero cults and associate cults don't have this restriction ? In the following example which of the above am I dealing with. Imagine an earth deity, lets call him Ditch Digging Boy. ( DDB) he is an ancient hero of the earth pantheon In Esrolia DDB is widely worshipped, there are independent shrines to him all over the place, and he is worshipped by all sorts of people - not just earth worshippers. However by the time you get to Sartar his worship is very confined. His shrines are only to be found inside Ernalda temples and nowhere else. Indeed only Ernaldan cultists bother to worship him and his worship only take place within the Ernaldan temples. is he a subcult, an associate cult, a hero cult....some of the above, all of the above ?

I always took it to mean it was cast on the missile itself. You could cast it on the bow to make it a hand to hand weapom ala Legolas I suppose.......

Carrying spares and some sort of fashioning kit would make perfect sense.

The Summon River Horse aspect seems to have vanished entirely - leaving only the Ride River Horse. I wonder why they went that route...likewise with Frog Woman. Still as you say YGMV and all that. well MGMV 😆. I like what Jeff had to say further up the thread about spirit cults having tremendous flexibility, I do think you can play around a bit with the number of spells, theres a comment on p377 about " gain what few spells " which suggests more than one. But I do tend to the position that the default setting should be: keep it simple, keep it small. As I said most my spirit cult ideas only had 1 spell.

Most the Spirit Cults i've used in my game follow exactly that format - 1 Rune spell or Spirit Magic spell. The irony is that the two examples provided in the RQG rulebook don't follow that format 😆 Oakfed gives 2 Rune spells Blackfang gives 3 Rune spells I'm not counting the common Rune spells for either. Just had a quick look at Borderlands and both Frog Woman and River Horse give 2 Rune spells there. But I reckon these might be the exceptions rather than the rule. possibly it's like the Oakfed rule that the 2nd spell can only be accessed on a special sucess roll.

I certainly wouldn't be expecting them to have loads of magic - far from it. But I don't think the amount of magic available would be a function of how many worshippers the spirit had. Either the spirit knows the magic or it doesn't. I do think that's more about the shamans relationship with the spirit, how well he knows the spirit, it's mythical background etc etc. But I wouldn't expect Sprit Cults to have a whole array of spells in the way a major religion does... but a unique spirit magic spell ? that seems plausable.

You realise I'm going to have to buy it now just to find out.......

I remember these.. ! Did anybody ever do a spirit cult of the Great Newt ? Surely they must have done.....

Ah, now I must admit i tend to look at it through the other end of the telescope. I think Rune magic is quite common for Spirit Cults. I suspect that may be because that's how they've been presented in the game though. Most of the spirit cults in RQ2,3 and RQG did have an associated Rune spell so that's how I tend to perceive them. But you're right, there's no reason is has to be that way. And unusual Spirit Magic spells or access to unusual spirits would be just as fun and just as interesting. Given that spirit cults are often shaman led they may actually be more fitting as well. Certainly in my homebrew world spirit cults gave spirit magic spells.

I think that's part of it, but also I think that Spirit Cults are often very much tied into specific places, so perhaps have more unique flavour than the major cults.

Thanks for that. in many ways I find Spirit Cults to be more interesting than the major deities. Not sure why, I just do. Out of curiousity I took a look at the Gods of Glorantha preview over at the Well of Daliath. It was nice to see that there were a fair few spirit cults in the mix for publication, thats certainly part of the book I'll be keen to read. 👍

I think for me it's very much about the 'feel' of something. so some kinds of magic feel like spirit magic rather than Rune magic even if their length might seem more like Rune magic. That's rather a woolly nebulous concept I'll grant you but there you go. Call it rustic, call it down home, call it primitive if you like but often the feel of a spell comes from the Tradition it comes from - if you see what I mean. I think in RQ3 ceremonial magic wasn't just a spell enhancing thing , but a form of magic in it's own right. so you could have ceremonial Spirit magic , ceremonial Rune magic etc and the lengths were a little more elastic with the ceremonial styles. that said it's been a good while since I looked at the RQ3 magic book.

having read all the responses here i find myself torn in 2 directions..... On the one hand I like the notion of a Sacred life, lots of little crafting magics and secrets. To me that feels very gloranthan, it adds flavour and richness. On the other hand from a actual practical gameplay point of view can it be accurately portrayed or gamed without everything literally grinding to a halt...... I suspect the answer is that it is there in the background merrily doing it's thing but is unlikely to be defined in game terms except on very specific occasions.

Well, there you go then. I shall wander around feeling smug about my insight for the next 5 minutes or so until I go and cook some sausages for my tea. mmmm.......Heat Sausages....there's a spell in there somewhere. 😄

It occurred to me that perhaps the crafting magic already exists but that we think of it in a different context. Consider Bladesharp - that staple of adventurers. Plus 5% to skill , + 1 to damage. But your carpenter may know Sawsharp + 5 % to craft carpentry, maybe the +1 damage allows the saw to move through the wood a little easier or some such . Just as the adventurer casts bladesharp when he needs it, maybe the carpenter only casts Sawsharp when they need to finesse a difficult piece of work. it is essentially the same spell, but the context is different. Possibly Bludgeon works in the same way for any job involving hitting things with hammers. heal 1 would be dead handy for those occasions when you ding your thumb with a hammer or get a fish hook stuck in your hand......

Yeah, I tend to the view that they are as long as they are just because that's how long they are. But you know sometimes you think " have I missed something here ? "

It does feel a bit odd, but maybe that just a quirk of the spirit world. It's meant to be a strange, unusual and wonderful place after all.

Looks like a cracking deal. I know some of these also have a POD version as well. if I bought the PDF and later decided I fancied the POD would the discount be factored into the POD pirchase. Or would I be better off just going for the PDF/POD combo to start with ?

I was looking at spirit magic spells in the Red Book of magic ( RBOM ) and obviously most of them stick to one of the two most common lengths either: instant or temporal - 2 minutes long.There are a few that do break out of this mould, and I guess when the Gods book comes out we might see others Cool, variable, 4 hours Preserve Herbs , 1 point, special 1 season Sneeze 2 points, 1d10 SR Solace 3 points, 24 hours Summon Entity 1 point ritual variable I was trying to work out if there was a theme or common underlying property that made them different lengths to standard spirit magic spells . But i can't seem to find one: they're different lengths, different MP costs, different deities. So is the answer that they are the length they are.......because thats the length they are !

Well, such wasn't my intention at all. Not all of us know the JC and the rules surrounding it as well as you - or how to interpret said items. So what better place to ask about something than here wheres there's loads of knowledgable people who'll be able to fill in the gaps ? I think you've seen malice or mischief where there was simply misunderstanding or miscomprehension. If I strayed over a line all be it inadvertently I apologise. With that said I have read your entire response from start to finish and have taken on board everything you've said.

Thanks for everybodies responses. pretty much cleared up all my questions and given me lots of food for thought as well !

That's kind of harsh Nick. My original question was genuine. if you go back to my first post I even said that I felt that on balance what I was curious about wasn't possible due to copyright issues IP ownership and so on. So I sort of answered my own question. I haven't set out to waste anybodies time - lets face it nobody has been obliged to participate in this thread, they could just simply ignore it and move on. And I have have read with interest everybodies responses - yours included. The thread grew a bit from a specific question about HQ stuff to a more general discussion of source material and how to approach it which I found interesting and useful. Brians comments especially helped clarify things for me. I can't help but feel you've got a negative impression of my intentions here thats slightly unwarranted . Now that may be down to me not expressing myself particularly well to start with - after all the thread title is " clarification sought " So I apologise I've come across the wrong way. That said "If anyone spots a genuine question or concern in the rest of this thread, let me know" comes across rather snide as a response.

Now, in a way you have sort of got to the heart of what I've been trying to articulate with this. Durev is part of the old HQ approach to things. To be honest until the facebook post I'd never heard of him. I just used him as an example because he popped up in the conversation. Now as I suspected and Nick confirmed you can't just write up the Thunder Rebels version of him slap it into the JC and expect to get away with it. Quite apart from the legality of it it would feel ( to me anyway ) like plagiarism - like nicking someones work. Having said that he does seem to have a life outside of HQ, you've referred to the BHM ( which I don't have - another one to add to the list 😆 ). So....what makes one source acceptable to use.....but not another. If I were seeking inspiration for the sartarite crafts book you suggested ( and I have no intention of writing such a thing - I wouldn't have a clue where to start ) what would make the BHM an acceptable source, but not the TR from HQ ? if you see what I mean