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I'd be quite happy with that. Even though he is an initiate he is still a powerful Humakt. The issue with unlucky players is still an issue for things like increasing skills. I had a PC who had half INT for non-swords and double INT for swords, but he kept missing his sword experience rolls, probably 20 times in a row. Unlucky players will have reduced skills, but we don't have a mechanism for that (Well, I do, I houserule that even a failed improvement roll gets 1 and rolling a 1 gets 2).

This is one of the things that I allow in my games. You get Water Margin-style combat where a master can cut an opponent open with a flurry of blows.

Exactly, that's how I play it. Thanatar has ripped the magic from the god and a Thanatar cultist can repray stolen spells at a Thanatar temple. Imagine the spell itself as being a matrix of some kind, all you are doing is refiling the matrix with divine power, once the matrix has been set it can just be refilled. So, a Thanatar Head with Flight, for example, has, by virtue of the original enchantment, taken the Flight divine/runespell matrix and fixed it to Thanatar, so the Flight spell can be reprayed at a Thanatar temple. It makes Thanatar priests very powerful and versatile.

That's what shrines are for. If you have a Babeester Gor worshipper then the local Ernalda Temple will have a Babeester Gor shrine that provides some basic spells. For more specialised magic you need to go to a shrine for a specific subcult/aspect or to a larger temple. A good-sized Orlanth tremple will have a shrine to Heler and Vinga, even smaller ones have a Shrine to the Thunder Brothers that gives access to some of their spells. It made no sense for me that all Orlanth temples gave you access to all Orlanth spells. Breaking down by Aspect makes it more manageable, so Orlanth Thunderous temples don't give access to Orlanth Adventurous spells, for example.

I'm not sure of the official position, but I wouldn't have a problem with Malkioni familiars. Each Malkioni sect might have views on what is/is not acceptable as a familiar, though. Zombies might be OK if they were covered up, perhaps in full armour or behind a veil. Herd Men are OK if they appear to be human, but mating with humans could produce Herd Men offspring. Having a sorcerous familiar as a mount is a bit odd, so horses, herd beasts and dinosaurs would be rare. Familiars are often used as scouts, spies and for fine manipulation, so birds and monkeys would be quite normal.

Generally, PCs who belong to cults get access to extra support, magic and skills. PCs who don't belong to these organisations don't get access to these benefits. So, it can be an advantage to belong to a cult. However, it is not compulsory and character advancement does not depend on belonging to a cult. You can increase skills, gain Heroic Abilities and so on without belonging to a cult. Not belonging to a cult actually has some benefits. You don't have any tithes to pay, needn't follow cult restrictions, don't have any cult enemies or cult obligations and NPCs don't react to you in a certain way because of your cult. If you are happy to not get cult special magic and don't want the structure of a cult then not belonging to one is fine.

Wasn't there an emperor of Yelm who was so pure that a ray of sunlight consumed him rather than burning on the pyre?

Purely from memory, it varies. Orlanthi used to be burned on pyres, so their spirit can fly the winds. Earth cultists are buried within the earth, normally in catacombs. I'm not sure about Solars, though. That's where my memory runs out, so not much there really.

Yeah, the Form Runes don't have opposites, nor do the elemental runes. Only the Power Runes have opposites and they are naturally arranged in pairs.

I would just use the RQ3 values - They are nice and easy to calculate. The RQ2 values are a bit fiddly, as General Hit Points are not easy to calculate. Hit Points per location are very close together, so you get hulking giants with two points different between arm and chest.

Seconded. With the new 13th Age in Glorantha concentrating on mythic adventuring, it would be good to see more HeroQuests in RQ, It is the Hero Wars, after all, when HeroQuestors change/break/fix the world.

There's a very similar statue of Pan and a goat, but I probably can't post it here - Good job you didn't use Pan as the base of the name.

It looks even better with the Mithras logo, less in your face than the RuneQuest logo.

Snappy name, I like it. Let's hope you can carry on producing more quality supplements.

The players in our game allocate spells to whichever rune suits them. So, Heal might go against Earth or Life/Fertility, Fireblade usually goes against Fire/Sky, Bladesharp could go against Death or Air/Storm or Fire/Sky, depending on where the spell comes from. I don't really mind, as long as the player makes a good case.

Games Mechanics to a certain extent, so the PCs have to roll beneath their Rune skill in order to do something. The Runepower (Number of Runes) held has an effect on what the PC can do, but it is very fast and loose - they can affect things on/near themselves fairly easily, can affect larger things depending on how large their Runeower is. We also have Cult Presence, which is effectively generic Divine Magic, so they sacrifice POW to the deity that can be used to fuel the Divine Magic they possess (Orlanth Presence 6 and Teleport can be used to cast Teleport twice using Presence and then the spell can be cast as normal) and I play that Cult Presence can be used to boost Runepower for the cult's runes. So, Orlanth Presence could add to Storm, Movement and Mastery. Opposed rolls are easy - two Masters of a particular rune both roll under their Runeskill and a critical beats a special beats a normal beats a failure beats a fumble, The victor gets the desired effect, a tie means the effect was watered down or countered. They enjoy opening pits beneath people, blasting flyers out of the air with jets of water, floating boats across dry land, using a puddle of water they keep moving beneath the boat, using Air to deflect missiles and so on. The Master of Storm / Master of Death pumped all his Death/Storm Runes and Storm Bull/Humakt Presence into a ginormous lightning bolt that killed a group of Lunar Enchanters quite memorably.

Apparently also peppery.

That's what spears are for - Stick it in the giant and get an impale, the giant can't regenerate damage while impaled, so keep on pressing it in until the giant falls over. Then cut his head off just in case.

In the gunpowder example, they'd have to make an Alchemy roll to be able to find the ingredients. I like the INT characteristic as it allows me to ask for an INTxn% roll, where n depends on what is asked. If they fail then they don;t know in game. If they succeed they've had a flash of inspiration.

We use a fast and loose version of the Runes from MRQ, which works well in our campaign. PCs can acquire and attune a rune, giving a Rune Skill, extra copies of the rune can be attuned giving a RunePower value, spells are stored against the rune. The Rune skill gives you the chance of casting a spell stored against that Rune. RunePower can be used to bolster the effects of the spell. The Master of (Rune) Heroic Ability allows the PC to directly manipulate the Rune, with a higher RunePower allowing more to be done with the Rune. So, someone with Master of Water could call a wave or drain a lake, a Master of Fire could set something alight, dismiss a Salamander or hold a burning rod without getting burnt and a Master of Harmony could calm a berserker, bring peace to two warring factions or cause zombies to sit down and contemplate the universe, It works pretty well in our campaign and allows the PCs to do more heroic stuff than they would normally be able to do.

RQ3 for me, too. It works better than most and acts as a good base.

I would guess that this means Personality Traits.

I would guess that Urox sits in his storm and blows Valind/Vadrus away. In my Glorantha, I run the Winterfall HeroQuest, where the forces of Winter (Valind, Inora, Himile, various minor Storm Gods) come down from the Rockwoods to the north and invade Prax, but are fought off by a variety of people (Urox, Little Brother, Yelmalio, Lodril, various minor Praxian Heroes). In my current campaign, the Lunars took Little Brother's place as Orlanth was Dead, so the PCs stood in Little Brother's place, but on the Winter's side, bringing winter to Prax. They rationalised it by saying that Orlanth blows hot and cold. You could find out why Prax/Pavis is warm and then counter that specifically. If there was a Goddess of Summer who keeps the ground warm then Valind could kidnap her and take her away (this is what Valind loves doing). If Pavis did a HeroQuest, way back when, to make Pavis warmer, the PC could counter that HeroQuest, or HeroQuest against him. The PC could gain a boon from Urox, perhaps promising to go and kill some vast Chaos thing, in return for Urox staying away from the HeroQuest, or the PC could point Urox to a particularly nasty Chaos foe in the HeroQuest and let Urox fight the Chaos instead of Winter (particularly good fun if the PC summons the Chaos Monster himself). ike this

Thanks. I am working on a Legend version, which will contain all the updates. Those rules were for MRQ1, which is long dead, hopefully a Legend version will last longer.

in Sartar you have Geo's, which is a chain of inns and a cult honouring Sartar's Chamberlain. I see them having a big pot of stew bubbling away all day, with flatbreads and ale, almost like Baltis were supposed to be but not as spicy.