styopa

*VERY* different but thematically consistent (IMO). H&M in RQ3 GoG are MUCH narrower, ie the Basmoli can get Rune Spells to transform their head, body, limbs (separate spells) into their Lion totem animal. Sofals can turn piecemeal into turtles, etc. But these are solely Hsunchen - ie primitive - cultures, focused on a single totem animal. My write up doesn't deep dive into it, but mentions "...barbarian cultures have continued to worship the Animal Father and Mother in a more general, ritualistic, and organized fashion offering their Shamans an alternative path of development....", so presupposing a more sophisticated, polyanimalistic, utilitarian approach by larger Barbarian communities that might consist of many tribes. Edit; more of a meta comment would be that this is meant to be a fairly-exclusive PATH for a shaman; we have been using something close to RQG's shaman pick-your-ability method for probably 5+ years, it's pretty much a direct copy of Sandy Petersen's Shaman Rules. From that my players gleaned there were really three paths for a shaman who wanted to be the most effective, and to be the best at each would require a fair amount of exclusivity and focus in ability selection: 1) a buff shaman, using all sorts of sustained STR, Coordination, etc spells to become practically superheroic 2) a spell-shotgun shaman with the shaman ability to cast waves of disrupts simultaneously 3) a spirit-shaman (what we laughingly refer to as a poke-ball shaman - "Disease Spirit, I choose you!") that focuses on capturing and employing pets ...to this we simply add a 4th option where the shaman still has the rudimentary functions common to all shamans (they still have a fetch, for instance) but the available additional abilities basically preclude getting any of the other "good ones" available.

Ha ha, thanks. Yeah, RQG had really put me in a bind. I was aware that our rules set was in practical terms unavailable to anyone outside our group. That's why I had such high hopes for RQG to be the "new" core, living rule set for which I could write a new set of houserules. Then people who enjoy it could get it. After consideration, I'm not going to bother. It's either: spend a large amount of time rewriting the fairly large amount of stuff I'm not happy about in RQG (to basically get the game back to what we play today, with perhaps some changes)...and then with each RQG adventure/setting, have to then still put in a lot of work adapting it to our game. Or... Just keep playing our current game, and then with each RQG adventure/setting, put in a lot of work adapting it to our game. I'm not conceited enough to believe that our way is particularly better, it just works well for what we want out of the game. So I think if anyone's interested in RQ generally, we DO have RQG to point them at and say "there's your new beautiful rule set, make it your own'.

Sure, here's a few (keeping them locally as I update frequently) RQ Roller https://drive.google.com/open?id=1j0pMay1q0rJlLgu6R0arvYy2S5XtmHHS RQ Roller FAQ: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1KRzS3SbDPwUf0a0zx-A-xRbcQL_4A3Ij (how to use/modify it) RQ Roller creates creatures in generally RQ3 format; Tabs Refsheets 1-2-3 are references for armors and for weapons, attacks, all sorts of details. Tab Charsheet is a RQ3 character sheet (not integrated with anything, just handy), Chaos Features is just that again not integrated with anyhting, Tab Places is random place name generator. Training minigame https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B018uRj3WEzoS1o3UmtrYVIweUk makes downtime interesting. Training has broader variability (it can be rushed or careful), costs, and potential for injury/risk if intrinsically dangerous. Game Notes and Houserules https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mTuyPgn-gDJkA8j2_JS5r7Lc2kTBTjRg basically, the way we play. Enjoy; these are mostly for my reference so they might be occasionally cryptic - feel free to ask any questions, or comment if you think something's particularly stupid.

Thanks Phil, that's a good idea.

Why settle for plagiarizing; after all Sandy WROTE *actual* RQ Tekumel rules. We in fact use them (somewhat reskinned) for Malkionism. http://www.tekumel.com/downloads/RQtekumel.pdf While I'd agree with you in a strictly canonical Glorantha concept, we've back-rationalized rootless Elfs and broken Dwarfs, I'd imagine it wouldn't take too much rationalizing to figure out a way / reason that they're stuck with each other, and that literally going after each other could be made...unappealing.

Of course you mean "Sept cent vingt neuf" thanks. Yes, that's google translate, which is STILL better than my nonexistent French.

While the primitive Hsunchen tribes of Glorantha are the primary worshippers of Hykim & Mikyh, their focus is solely through their one totemic animal. However, some barbarian cultures have continued to worship the Animal Father and Mother in a more general, ritualistic, and organized fashion offering their Shamans an alternative path of development. The Beast Cult of Hykim & Mikyh is a variant path for worshippers who have reached the level of Shaman. Upon completing the normal requirements to become a Hykim & Mikyh Shaman, if the candidate also knows Craft (Butcher) at 50% and the Spirit Magic Spell Peaceful Cut, they may choose to become a Beast Shaman (instead of the usual Spirit Shaman). As explained in more detail in the attachment, it's not immediately an exclusive choice. An existing Shaman may choose to walk the path of the Beast, or a shaman who formerly chose the Beast way may choose to abandon it to become a more canonical 'standard' Spirit Shaman. This "respeccing" then becomes exclusive - the character only gets to change their mind once. Once a shaman has actually turned away from either the path of Spirit or the path of Beast, they cannot go back to it. Comments and notes: We had a player that wanted the possibility of a character that could change forms, and while we'd actually first tried to script sorcerous rules for it, it just neither worked (requiring silly amounts of mp available) nor felt right thematically. So this is version 2 and it worked astonishingly well. Characters start out with limited forms and the limited uses/long transform time lowers the early-game utility substantially. However, with frequent use (I limit the amount of form-changing to 8 hours total a day in down time) accumulated familiarity mitigates a lot of the early-form constraints. Ultimately while the changes, frequency, and duration of forms can pretty much go away as constraints, the ultimate limiting factor is that at their toughest, they're still mundane animals. By the time (likely) their party helps them kill something massive and scary like a Triceratops - the other party members themselves will probably be of a comparable power level and in any case there's a question of "how many contexts - really - is it useful to be a Triceratops"? A bar brawl? Not really. In a tomb? Nope. On a ship? Ha ha ha. Now, again with familiarity buildup they can keep getting re-rolls of the 'version' of the beast form they inhabit (we have a rq3 monster generator in excel, so rerolling and printing a half-dozen new bear forms takes about that many seconds). Coupled with some strategic enhancements/spells like STR, they can be comparable to other 'seasoned' Rune Lords. In our play experience now of several months, I think everyone at the table - from me as a GM, to other non-shaman players, to the player who's using this now - we all feel it's rather surprisingly well balanced, with a pretty interesting set of choices for the player in terms of ongoing character development. He enjoys it a lot, and the other players don't feel it's OP...so for me as the GM it's a success. Note: this was designed and written in the context of our heavily houseruled RQ3 game; I was holding this back in case we'd decided to shift straight over to RQG but since we've decided to stick with our own rules for now, there's no reason not to put it out there. In any case it should be trivial to correct to/for any other RQ/BRP variant including RQG. Enjoy. Questions or comments to Styopa1(at)gmail.com In BRP downloads at Also at https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nvLbhyvijknnUKvU-Jvepx8XvWDf-t6R Note to Chaosium, really, the "downloads" section is sort of a mess. It's hard to find anything, there isn't even (as far as I could see) an RQG section for files, etc.

Which, let's be honest, is asking a crapton of anyone who's just learning the game. To the other hand, however, I'd submit that while Glorantha's lack of guard rails seems to invite customization, it's in fact fairly touchy about fooling around like this. One could easily overpower a campaign trying to customize cults without a fair experience of how stuff works in practice. It's sort of Linux of RPGs...you are welcome to roll your own to personal preference (to mix metaphors) but no guarantees it's going to not-screw-other-stuff-up unless you take a fair amount of time learning what you're doing FIRST.

I'd submit, however, that any Necromantic approach - no matter how soft-sell it is - will have "issues" (either or greater or lesser, up to you) with Humakt "Dead things should stay that way" cultists, as well as probably the majority of ancestor-worshiping Hsunchen. I mean, that revenant you animate may have been Uncle George, or the spirit you use to animate that corpse may have been Aunt Georgina who didn't have a chance to safely "pass on" before some Necromancer grabbed her.

Here's something I did that converted many of the World of Warcraft Death Knight abilities to RQ format; I'd later used them in a scenario where Delecti had sent 3 Knights to seek out the PCs, giving each one a set of either blood, ice, or plague abilities. (I'd think if you started letting them have more than one it could be really overpowered.) It was fun. A lot to keep track of as a DM, but for a player it's probably fun to have a lot to keep track of. https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B018uRj3WEzodzNOXzQwRGRpV1k (Actually there are both WoW Druid and WoW DK abilities there.)

IMO do what suits you. Some people feel obligated to stick with canon, but while RQ3's GoG more or less presented a multitudinous catalog of Gloranthan theism, it didn't even purport to represent every single local or regional cult. In short, even if you did make a local necromantic cult, you'd STILL be within canon.

Given the other discussion on Humakti *ahem* in the other thread, I'd be almost afraid to ask for your reaction.

It's a boy! one of the six possible genders of Orlanthi!

Maybe the humakti sword rune should point upward?

A few threads here have mentioned or at least alluded to magical contraception in Glorantha. Is that a thing? Iirc I've never seen actual mention of such a spell, but one presumes that it might not even be magical, it might be herbal, etc. And if so, is it widely available? The implication is that it is...but if so, doesn't that make broo substantially less fearsome?

I would guess/hope there's going to be a consolidated errata PDF of "changes we've caught since the finalized version went to the printer" so we can hand-correct to bring the print book to the current PDF version.

Amusingly, it was shipped from Brainerd (2 hours north of me) to Des Moines 3.5 hours south.

We've always used the max+min, which I think was canonical in RQ3. It makes races whose stats are intrinsically magical (2d6+6 POW for example) still have only-slightly-better than average 'common' stats, but allows me as a DM to have exceptionally powerful leaders. In short, I find it reasonable that a race with 2d6+6 POW should, at the top-end, have significantly better POW than humans, for example.

I think it's considering my pdf as "part" of the purchase, even though it was weeks ago. I hope?

Oddly "partially shipped"? Hopefully I'l have it soon, Brainerd's only a 2 hour drive.

Old school rules, ie un-updated.

It doesn't ALWAYS have to be unloaded. I mean, the Head of Vecna is a thing, and it's hilarious.

I feel for ya, but today is literally "the next business day" only....

I'd imagine the "what proportion of hc vs leather do we print" wasn't an easy decision in the first place. Glad to see the demand is strong!