soltakss

Apparently the Lunar schools thought so. However, it seems equally likely that there are multiple "correct" answers. The way that I play it is that there isn't just one Nysalor Riddle for every skill, there are different riddles. Riddlers wander around and ask people the riddles they know, they might even teach other Illuminates their own riddles. Lunars, on the other hand, have an established core set of Riddles that they know work and which do not go against Lunar doctrine. these are the riddles that they ask when trying to Illuminate cult members. Don't forget that New Pelorian is a cult language that was designed to have mystical and magical properties, so it would be able to cope with Nysalor Riddles really well. In fact, I would think that phrasing a Nysalor Riddle in New Pelorian might add something to the riddle, perhaps extra depth or insight. waaait, so how is it different? Occlusion is the failure to really grasp what being Illuminated means. Sure, you are Illuminated, but you might see it as a means to an end, or just something that allows you to have Kewl Powerz, or to get around cult restrictions. True Illumination is deeper than that. At least, that is what the Lunars say and who wants to believe them?

Yes, that is included as well, but that isn't a way of becoming Illuminated, rather a consequence of becoming Illuminated.

Secrets of Dorastor has some examples. Here are some ideas: Answering Nysalor riddles Performing a certain act in a certain place (For example, touching the walls of the Puzzle Canal on the Big Rubble) Watching a sacred mystery play Listening to Nysalor preachers Learning from an Illuminated Master Being taught by Lunar Examiners Meeting an aspect of Gbaji/Nysalor/Rashoran on the Spirit Plane Performing an act that expands the mind (Staring into the Void, Contemplating the All)

Well, that's better than normal

I think that every scenario is different, but many follow the Hero's Path. Something happens, you investigate, you find some stuff, you go somewhere, things happen and you come back. However, that isn't really helpful. A good scenario, in my opinion, is open-ended with lots of options. It sets a scene rather than tells a story. The story happens when people play the scenario, so each time a scenario is played it tells a different story. Having NPCs in scenarios is good, as it fleshes the scenario out. having NPCs stats in a scenario is of limited use, as it restricts the scenario to PCs of certain ability levels. Having maps in scenarios is a good idea, but I am torn on them. Having really good scenarios makes me think that my maps are rubbish, but having rubbish maps isn't that useful. But, having sketch maps is OK for some areas. Scenarios that say "The adventurers need to do this now" are, for me, not that good, as that is generally not how I do things. I prefer to set a scene and let the Players work out how they do things. Those are the scenarios that I prefer. Needing the Adventurers to speak to someone or do something causes massive problems when they don;t do it and can derail a poorly-written scenario. The best scenarios, for me, are those that set scenes and get the Players to go with the scenes and the Adventurers can do things. The GM then just tells the Players what happens when they do those things.

Who can forget jizz-rock boy?

A lot of English words are French, or based on French. I had not heard of cuirboilli until I played RuneQuest and had to look it up. Cuirboillin just means boiled leather, but refers to armour made from the boiling and hardening of leather. Ringmail. Problem solved. Now, i am waiting for everyone to tell me that ringmail isn't really a thing. French, or rather Normal french, was massively important in England for centuries afterwards. The King of England held more lands in France than the King of France, for a while. So, if cuir is leather, does cuirass mean leather ass? Must be all that riding.

Once you say something, it is canon.

As I said, he didn't much care for them. In my opinion, he built traps into the Closing for them, so that when they said "Oh, we know how to deal with this", they encountered something that trashed them. It could be that Dormal found out what Zzabur called a Ship and cicumvented it, or that Zzabur built a time limit into the Closing.

We are using a version of Revolution D100 in our current Dark Age Prydain campaign and one Player described it as D100 HeroQuest, which I really liked.

I was thinking that people could use fingers if they were squeamish. If you like penis-necklaces, check out Norsemen on Netflix.

HeroQuest/QuestWorlds is a more narrative game, with far less crunch and detail. RuneQuest is far more detailed, but I run it more narratively, so that it feels more like HeroQuest/QuestWorlds in places. Depending how you configure HeroQuest/QuestWorlds, you can have it as a very abstract game or make it almost as simulationist as RuneQuest, so it if very flexible. I find that Heroquest focuses on what is important to the story, so if you meet a gang of trollkin you can bush them aside in one roll, but courting someone from a nearby clan could take a whole sequence of rolls, if it is important or could be covered by one roll if it is just a means to an end. Character sheets in HeroQuest/QuestWorlds could be done in a few lines and work well. The same in RuneQuest takes a whole page, if you are lucky.

Normally, Undead are immune to poison or disease, just as part of their makeup. However, you could have a poison that specifically works on Zombies, Vampires or Mummies.

All you need is 11 Hit Points in the abdomen to survive a 30 point blow. Don;t forget that taking double to the location disables it, but to smash it you need to take triple points, so an 11 point abdomen can survive a 30 point blow, as it needs 33 points for a fatal blow. Going to 0 General Hit Points might be an issue, but we normally play that 0 GHP does not mean you are dead, just very badly hurt. Which makes it more reasonable. However, with a good Protection and Shield on top of armour, 30 points without a Critical can be survivable.

and There was a satanic Panic in the 70s and 80s and it did concern a number of conservative Bible Belt Christians. That is a fact. However, it was by no means all Christians in the USA and certainly not all Christians everywhere. Personally, I think it is just another representation of the Book Burning mentality. "This is bad, this is evil, we need to stop it, burn some books". I know of some people who had a really bad time because of this and who have pretty much broken with their families. There is a chap from Brazil, I think, whose career was ruined because someone at his church found out that he played RPGs, so it was/is a serious issue for some people.

HeroQuesting can overcome the Closing on an individual basis, which is what I think happened there. In my Glorantha, various groups are Agents of the closing, so they were "hired" by Magasta and Zzabur to protect the Closing, or perhaps were mythically obliged to do so. So, monsters, winds, Doom Currents, merfolk, pirates and so on stop ships from crossing the seas. He was probably worshipped by his crew, to give him power for the voyages. he would certainly be worshipped by his crew after his First Voyage and by those he met on his Voyages. His Seventh Voyage was to the Otherworld, where he leads the Boat Planet, enabling everyone to sail the seas. Yes, absolutely, the God Learners weren't rubes. They had even invented a couple of sea gods of their own by that stage. As the story of the Last Ship shows, it was possible for the God Learners to brute force their way through the closing using their best equipment, but it would be badly damaged. The God Learners were smashed by the Closing. Zzabur didn't much care for the God Learners, after all they weren't Brithini, so I would guess that he made the Closing so that everything they tried failed, because it was a trick to trap them. Also, with the loss of Zistor, the rolling over of Slontos, avenging Orlanthi and the Closing, they had a lot of things to worry about. Agreed. But would this have been via a Countermagic effect, or an invisibility effect, or a detection block etc? Clearly the Closing spell was targeting ships, and clearly the Open Seas ritual allows a ship to bypass the effect. Maybe the First Voyage did "this is not a ship" trick and then Dormal approached some Agents of the Closing and said "Look, you know that you can't let ships through? Well I just sailed a ship across the sea, so you really suck at this. How about you let my ships through again and I won't tell Magasta how bad you suck?" That means you're only in trouble at night and when there's fog/mist and obstacles in line of sight, right? And that is one of the tricks that the Closing plays on you. Your ship is in sight of land, but it raises a fog bank between you and the land, trapping you in the Closing. I think that some people lit fires or beacons along the shore, so that ships could see land. What happens if someone puts those beacons out?

HeroQuestors get a rune pool that they can use to Invoke or use HeroQuests. They can also use their cult rune pool to do the same. Normally, people don't get stations as spells, they just use the main HeroQuest. But, if you specifically learned a Station as a HeroQuest then it should count as a spell, in my opinion. That is what gives powerful HeroQuestors flexibility. So, you could use the Eurmal Slips Through a Crack station in the Castle of Black Glass station of the Lightbringers' Quest to slip through a crack in a wall, without dragging out all of the baggage of the full HeroQuest. Thanks. I know, amazing isn't it? To be honest, I thought they all would take it, as they had just defeated a full incarnation of Cacodemon, complete with Vomiting Acid, but Mello Yello's Player took Vomit Acid, which was a bit of a surprise.

There are too many good points to quote. For me, Babeester Gor represents the difference between a normal worshipper and a fanatic. Most Babeester Gor cultists are happy to work as Temple Guards or to guard grain caravans. Sometimes they go off to hunt down raiders, bandits and so on. They are part of the Maiden/Mother/Crone trilogies of Voria/Ernalda/Asrelia or babeester Gor/Maran Gor/Ty Kora Tek. In fact, many Babeester Gori take a time in that cult and then join Ernalda to become mothers, putting down their axes. However, some are fanatics. They revel in the myth about being born from Ernalda's wound when Zorak Zoran chopped into her. They talk about chasing Zorak Zoran away, or killing the Healers of Healer Valley, of hunting down and mutilating rapists and despoilers of the earth, of hanging severed genitalia, hands and heads from their axes, of ritual scarification to make them look even scarier. There was a throwaway comment in one of the Wyrms Footnotes articles, I think, that Babeester Gor took lovers, for hers was too dreadful a path to take alone. I really liked that idea. It also said that Maran Gor was a virgin goddess and expected the same from her followers, as their path was too dreadful to be shared, or something like that. So, don't let anyone tell you the "right way" to play a Babeester Gor cultist. Play them however you want to. Sometimes as a temple guardian, sometimes as a defender of the earth, sometimes as a warrioress, sometimes as a seeker of vengeance, sometimes as a death-wielding berserker or a mutilator of the fallen. If you don't like the bloodthirsty parts then don't use them. If you see a big disconnect between the Guard aspect and the Avenger aspect then treat them as two different subcults, in the same way that Orlanth has Adventurous/Thunderous/Lightbringer.

We had a weekly games session at University and the GM ran a campaign. Then I joined another group after University and we had weekly sessions with multi-GMs and did not have a campaign but had a shared Glorantha with plot themes that ran in parallel, which is how I run my campaigns now. That spawned into a weekly/monthly campaign using some of the NPCs. My current group plays weekly as well and we have single GMs who run a campaign then hand over to someone else. The issue of buying supplements wasn't an issue, as the GM would ask us not to read certain supplements and would change the scenarios anyway. Our next RQ campaign has this, so I am banned from reading a lot of the new RQ/JC scenarios until we play them. In the UK, the scare about RPGs didn't really happen, at least not to the extent that it did in the USA. My parents didn't mind what I played, they were more pleased that I was making friends.

Not just you. Sometimes it matters and sometimes it doesn't. I don't think that is necessarily the case. Someone can perform the Orlanth Slays Yelm HeroQuest to get rid of a local ruler. He doesn't need to know that this represents clouds blocking the sun or that this is the last step in the Courting of Ernalda, that this proves Ernalda's power over Orlanth or that it shows how ernalda changes husbands at the drop of a hat. He uses it to get rid of a rival ruler. This is useful and adds depth, but it doesn't really matter. Sometimes, learning about the deeper mythic significance adds something to the HeroQuest and allows you to draw other abilities/spells/powers from the HeroQuest. Yes, I am going to try to do this in the HeroQuests that I write for Jonstown Compendium. Different people draw different conclusions from the same HeroQuest. In the example shown above, Orlanthi could say that Storm overcomes Fire/Sky, or that anyone can depose an unlawful ruler or tyrant, or that Orlanthi are not bound by Solar Law; Solars might draw the conclusion that Orlanth cheated in the duel by using Death, that Orlanth is a rebel against the Divine Order and that Ernalda is a scheming woman with no part in Yelm's Court; An Ernaldan might think that it is easy to change one husband for another, that Orlanth is a patsy and easy to control or that Earth is more powerful than Air/Storm or Fire/Sky; an Eurmali might think that Ernaldans and Orlanthi are easy to manipulate, that this death things is loads of fun and that Humakt is going to be really angry now. By the way, sorry for picking you post apart into different sections, as I know that some people don't like it when that is done, but it raised a lot of interesting points.

Yes

Mundane HeroQuests are, for me, the most common type of HeroQuesting. Many of the HeroQuests described are actually Mundane HeroQuests. For me, a HeroQuest is when you lay a Myth over a situation, that makes the situation like the Myth. A situation without a Myth is a scenario. A Myth without a situation is a story. So, by laying the Myth over the situation, you can draw on the power of the Myth and the power of the HeroQuest to do things that are not normally possible. Looking at your examples, what Myths are they using? Harry the Butcher might be using Yelm in the Underworld, so Yelm's Descent, then Yelm's Return, but he would need to take something as well. Hermione the Vingan could use the Sandals of Darkness to steal a magical item, as Vinga gets many Orlanth HeroQuests. I don't know a lot about sorcerous HeroQuests, to be honest. Someone raiding a troll clan needs to sneak in, get past the guards, find the inner sanctum or where the magic item is, take it and fight their way out again. However, someone on a HeroQuest such as the Sandals of Darkness finds that the encounters tend to fit the HeroQuest Myth, so it shortcuts the process and, to an extent, makes it easier. What this also means is that the opponents are also playing their part in the HeroQuest. the leader of the clan will be sleeping, as Kyger Litor was sleeping, the troll guards would be like Gore and Gash and so on. Harry the Butcher might be going in blazing like the Sun, burning any trolls who meets him, is captured and stays imprisoned as Maggotliege and needs someone to come and rescue him, then fights his way out. By doing the HeroQuest, he guarantees that he will be captured and not killed and that someone will come and rescue him. To a certain extent, you define the goals of the HeroQuest. If you want to steal a magic item then the goal is to steal the item. If you want to gain insights and powers, you gain insights and powers. Increasing Devotion is a good result, as it increasing Cult Lore. You could get a spell or magic item, or whatever.

In Secrets of HeroQuesting, you can gain stations, but don't have to. So, you could gain Hill of Gold by increasing your HeroQuesting Rune Pool, or you could gain the Orlanth and Yelmalio at the Hill of Gold Station for 1 POW and gaining 1 Rune Point. HeroQuestors are specialists, to a certain extent. You can wield the HeroQuests that you have performed, which I think is important. Also, you do not have to sacrifice for a HeroQuest to perform it, someone else can cast the HeroQuest. Repeating a HeroQuest givers you more powerful/deeper abilities. So, a Humakti might perform a HeroQuest to gain sword magic, gaining Bladesharp 4 the first time, Bladesharp 8 the second time, Truesword the 3rd time, a magical Sword of Sharpness the 4th time and so on. An Adventurer can increase Cult Lore anyway, which gives them more knowledge about cult myths and so on. Having a HeroQuest gives you more information about that HeroQuest and the ability to Invoke the HeroQuest, giving you powers based on the HeroQuest. I see it working in parallel with gaining cult knowledge.

Of course, I cannot let the chance to link to Secrets of HeroQuesting pass. These are the rules that I read before coming yup with my own rules: Steve Maurer's HeroQuest System YAHQS (Nils Weinander's HeroQuest System) David Dunham's PenDragon Pass Nikk Effingham's Excellent pages The links are probably dead, but you might be able to search for them on Google or on the Wayback Engine. It is good for ideas, though, even ideas that don't really work. Yes, there are good ideas there. In fact, I review the HeroQuesting rules from various official supplements in Secrets of HeroQuesting. Yes, my great preference is to use the rules that you currently use for Glorantha, but with extensions for HeroQuesting and just allowing more things to happen. It depends on what HeroQuest you are doing and where. If you raid a troll clan to steal a magical item and use the Sandals of Darkmess HeroQuest, you will meet the trolls in that clan, albeit juiced up as they are now on a HeroQuest. However, if you raid the Castle of Lead and steal the Most High Priestess of Kyger Litor then you will meet very powerful foes. If you go onto the God Plane and steal the Sandals of darkness from kyger Litor, then you will meet demigod or deity-level opponents. That is an excellent way of looking at it. HeroQuestors rarely encounter the actual deities, unless they are on the God Plane. Instead they meet other HeroQuestors. What powers does a Kyger Litor HeroQuestor have? Look at other trolls or the Kyger Litor writeup. They are both. Myths have hidden meanings, that are not mentioned in the myth. Myths also have practical applications and can be used as templates for HeroQuests.

Master Gollum has redone the layout for Secrets of Dorastor in Classic Mode, to look more like the original Dorastor Land of Doom and Lords of Terror formats. I have added this as a free download to Secrets of Dorastor, so you can access it by checking out your DTRPG library. Many thanks to Master Gollum for offering to do this.