soltakss

Since this is the RQ written by Chaosium after being taken over by "others", I wonder how long it is before we get a new revised edition.

I'm not sure how much linguistics can be applied to made-up names. Some Gloranthan languages are intensely conservative, being religious languages. Firespeech is one such example. Some areas are equally as conservative, such as Dara Happa, so I would expect those languages to be essentially unchanged. New Pelorian was created as a magical/mythic language, based on what is now known as Old Pelorian, but that was a magical change not a normal linguistic one. I would expect that a lot of the names were made up, then someone saw some patterns and those patterns then drove other naming.

HeroQuest is a perfect match for this, as long as things are not too detailed.

What I tend to do is to have an Implied Package. So, I could have Hunter 17 and an Implied Package of " Archery or Throw Javelin, Butcher, Dodge, Hide, [Hunting Style], Keen Senses, Know Animals, Know Local Area, Retrace Path, Skirmish Combat, Track, Wilderness Survival", so I could use Hunter to do any of those things without any penalties. If I wanted to be a better Tracker than other people of my general ability, I would have a breakout, Hunter (Track + 3) 17, which allows me to Track as 20 but Retrace path at 17. It is quite simple and easy to use.

For the answer, I'd take it to the extreme. You have 2 Temporary POW left and cast a two-point spell as a last ever action, as you know that you are going to die by casting it (0 Temporary POW in RQ2= Death). Do you match 2 vs POW on the Resistance Table or 0 vs POW? Since 0 doesn't have an option, you should use 2. As the rules need to be consistent, if you use 2 in this extreme example, then you should use the starting Temporary POW Points in all examples.

Too right. Much better saying it will be out "Next year", at least we are on more comfortable ground then ...

I think the moral of the tale is "Grappling a Samurai armed with a katana is probably a mistake".

It just seemed natural. Once you become a Rune Lord Priest, or Rune Priest Lord, you get access to Rune Lord Divine Intervention, which means it is almost automatic but can trash POW. As Priests need 18 POW to remain priests, if the DI and lose a bunch of POW then they go below that. It seemed unfair that they permanently lost all their Runemagic, so we treated them as being temporarily inconvenienced. Our campaign was quite intense, with a lot of Divine Intervention, so most of us had POW reduced to below 18. I know that you can sacrifice for the Divine Intervention spell and Priests could use that instead, but we didn't really like that idea. We also played that RLPs could substitute points of Divine Intervention for POW lost through RL DI.

Sure, why not? Waha worship is the life of Prax, so every adult male "should" worship Waha. However, individuals could belong to a Sacred Society that has other modes of worship, or allows for the worship of minor Heroes or Demigods through Spirit Cults. One of these could be a Trickster deity. Alternatively, you could be a lone trickster, not tied to a Sacred Society, perhaps like the Contraries of the Great Plains tribes.

We had the Moon Daughter Society of northern Prax that defended against Pentians and occasionally raided Pentians. They allow Balls of Tails to be made from horse tails. They worship Yara Aranis in her Horse Eater aspect.

Permanent POW. We played that the Priest could cast Rune Magic but could not repray it until POW increased to 18 again. Our Rune Lord Priests quite often were in this state after a Divine Intervention.

As a GM, I would say "not recommended" rather than "not used". I absolutely hate the idea of some games designer (no offence meant, of course) dictating what players can and can't do with their PCs. Examples in the past have been "Cannot play chaotic characters", "Cannot play Rune Masters" / "Should retire once you become a Rune Master" or "Cannot have two elemental runes". Instead, I prefer the "Normally don't, but does in this case because ..." idea.

We always played that you rolled when the spell was cast, so roll to overcome, lose the Power Points. So, if I have 15 POW and cast Befuddle (2 points) against a broo with 13 POW then I have a 60% chance of overcoming POW (15 vs 13) and then lose 2 Power Points.

Since Yara Aranis is the Goddess of the Reaching Moon then horses might place a part, either as sacrifices or as captives. In my Glorantha, each Temple of the Reaching Moon contains an avatar/daughter of Yara Aranis, who incarnates the Goddess in certain rituals. She comes out of the temple and spreads a red net, weaving it like a spider. A red crystal allows the Moon's power to be captured and stored, becoming more powerful with each Full Moon, eventually it can stretch to the next Temple of the Reaching Moon, when the net covers the whole area. There could even be shrines to the Reaching Moon along the Glowline, with similar rituals designed to link the nearby shrines, perhaps sacrificing a horse at each.

Have you tried http://www.superherodb.com/characters/? It has pictures of SuperHeroes, which might help. Bedlam might be http://worldofblackheroes.com/2010/08/24/jesse-bedlam/ or http://www.writeups.org/bedlam-alpha-flight-marvel-comics/, neither of which seem to fit.

If you are greedy for power you don't stop to think about the consequences. Power now and damned later is very seductive. Most worshippers of such cults get sucked in deeper and deeper until there is no way out.

They are on my bookshelves! As far as I know, these are now out of print. They are non-canonical but have a lot of good ideas and a lot of scenarios. I have got some of the scenarios on PDF and am sure that they are available on the web, somewhere.

The Bashkorts of Russia have the Three Arrow trick, where their mounted archers pull three arrows at a time from the quiver, holding one in the hand and two in their mouth, thus reducing the time it takes to fire the other two arrows. In my RQ, I reduce the SR for reloading by 2 (in RQ2) and 1 (in RQ3), allowing a normal archer to fire three arrows per round. I am sure that other horse archers have similar ideas, but I know of the Bashkort one.

In my Glorantha, this is what I do. The Oasis Folk are supported by their Oases. They have water and all the food they can eat, just dropping from trees or living in the ground. So, they don't have to toil, they are lazy and spend their time contemplating the Oasis around them. When nomads come and demand tribute they sigh and give them something from the food stores and go back to resting. When Tada and Genert were killed, the psyche and myths of the Oasis People were shattered into thousands of fragments. Each oasis holds some of those fragments, especially the ones that relate to them. They also hold other fragments that make no sense to them. So the Spiky Nut Oasis might have a story of how basmol doesn't like the smell of the Brownberry, but there are no brownberries in the Spiky Nut Oasis, so it is just a story. The people of the Brownberry Oasis, however, are plagued by Basmoli and have no idea how to drive them out. I have myths encoded in stories, folk tales, dances, pictures, patterns in rugs and many other things. A HeroQuestor could do something like what Harmast did with the LBQ and visit all the Oases to gather the stories, patterns and so on, to reconstruct the overall myths of Genert and Tada. In fact, that's what an Oasis Folk NPC did in my current campaign, ably assisted by the PCs, he showed the Oasis Folk that they are all part of the same culture. The Oasis Folk are lazy, as mentioned before. partly this is because the Oases provide all they need, but it goes deeper than that. Just before Tada was killed, he bound the Oases Folk to him, for their safekeeping. He was buried in the Sleeping City and the Oasis Folk went to sleep, well not entirely, they still walk around and do something, but they seem dozy, half asleep, dullards. What happens when they wake up? They will see the stories around them mean something and will understand the stories from other Oases. There is a sickness in Prax that happens as part of the Hero Wars, this puts people to sleep, but doesn't affect the Oasis Folk. Coincidence? I don't think so.

I thought we had. It all comes down to opinions and interpretation really. When Dante went to Hell, was he dead? Perhaps, but he didn't suffer in Hell or Purgatory and wasn't rewarded in Heaven, so perhaps not. But, did he physically go to Hell or was it just a vision? In Glorantha there are barriers to going to Hell. One of those barriers is that you must be dead. Powerful HeroQuestors just punch through those barriers and carry on as if nothing had happened. However, if the barrier is "Nothing may pass unless it is dead" and you pass the barrier, then you must be dead. Another barrier is "Nothing may leave Hell if it is dead", so if a powerful HeroQuestor punches through that barrier, it proves he is not dead. So, dead one minute and not dead the next. That is a contradiction and I have no problem with that at all. The Only Old One proved himself to be both a troll and not a troll, how can both be true? A contradiction, due to his power and nature.

And get killed by Storm Bulls.

Chaosium always say that *Current Game* is better than *Old Game* as a simulation of Glorantha. So, RQ3 was a better simulation than RQ2, Hero Wars was better than RuneQuest and HeroQuest is better than Hero Wars. When RuneQuest comes out, that will be a better simulation than RQ2 or RQ3. I would expect that RuneQuest, HeroQuest and 13th Age Glorantha would be considered equally as good, especially as they have a lot of shared concepts.

Power. Evil cults promise power to their worshippers, either in this world or the next. Dominion over those who rule you.

We always played that Humakti Divine Intervention was at the moment between Life and Death, preventing the Humakti from dying, not bringing back once dead. That means that you cannot use DI to bring back a Humakti who has just died, but can use your own DI to prevent the head-chopping move from actually chopping off your head.