styopa

While we're at it, it would be nice if it was specified about what "Rune Lord" status *specifically* means across other contexts: for example, is an Adept sorcerer a "rune lord" equivalent? How about Blueface the Shaman? (It's relevant for things like the Peace spell.) Re Phil's point, the 18CHA requirement is fine if all you're talking about are a very narrow band of Orlanthi (and a few other) cults, but I agree that it's utterly out of place in say, Malia's cult. Pochango? I really believe the requirements for what is a Rune Lord are going to be as varied as the cults themselves.

Love the concept sketches as well.

I think Dobyski gets an unfair trashing. Yes, the art was terrible (better than I could draw, however), but he wasn't hired as an artist - I think he was maps and layout, and likely someone was like "we need art!" "well, real artists cost money" "crap, someone tell Dobyski he has to do it, he's on payroll already". Again, I'll agree, they were terrible pictures that left many scarred for life. But not entirely his fault. If someone's handing you a paycheck, you do what they're paying you for.

Edited.

Take the wonderful and informed comments here for what they're worth - just don't let it intimidate you or let "canon" get in the way of your game. There are people in the Gloranthaverse whose epeen is very clearly measured in the "amount of crap I know about an imaginary world made up by a college student in the 1960s" and who only speak in pedantry and condescension. Use their info where needed of course, but ignore them. Like any Holy Text, there's been...a bit ... of deviation over the decades in what is the official creed and what is apostasy at any given moment. Fortunately for us, we have a resource. Jeff's sort of played the role of Martin Luther in our current Gloranthan Reformation, except in his case it wasn't so much translating Latin holy texts into the vernacular, he dragged a multitude of obscure sometimes-contradictory sources together to produce the Guide which gives at least a consistent textual approach...with concomitant risking of One True Gloranthaism, but still very much a watershed for the game setting... Anyway, enjoy Glorantha.

I guess you seem to believe Tradetalk is somehow inherently magical? It seems a lot more like a pretty standard game-rationalized "Common Tongue" mechanic that was common to RPGs like D&D ala 1978. I'd be curious where you got that interpretation? And I'm not sure why we'd get all hung up on making sure first contact between peoples is difficult? The spells in-game let people fly, we let people heal wounds, we let people fight off diseases - one might get all meta and point out that pretty much the point of magic is (logically) to make normally-hard things easier. This is a common & hard thing. It would seem pretty arbitrary to say that THIS in particular "has to be done the hard way"... especially when there's specifically Gods for whom trade and contact is their metier?

? There are a LOT of times two (or more) people meet that don't speak each other's language and the need to communicate is either short term or too urgent to TEACH them trade talk. Why is it so inconceivable there's a Lingua Franca spell? You can't believe our current spell lists are in any way comprehensive?

I guess we must have houseruled that one, in that we let the archer have the shot at half skill; if they missed but otherwise would have hit due to the penalty, then it hit a random target in the melee. We'd roll a second 'dummy' attack to see if that strike was a special or crit. Happens fairly often in ours, as the main combatant is an Orlanthi Rune Lord with heavily-strengthening-enchanted armor and location hp's, such that he's not terribly afraid of anything but a crit. So he tells his archer party members to go ahead and fire away,

But then you're asserting a level of control of those missiles that was categorically denied earlier in this thread? If you can aim each one, just like a more-rapid firing missile weapon, that's something pretty different than the magical shotgun described above.

Hopefully the errata is at least provided in a consolidated fashion, so those that get the printed book can have a checklist of hand-edits to make?

Simple quick rule for 'spray and pray': you can spray multimissile to hit multiple targets. Take the number of targets, +1. Randomize the multimissile strikes across this number of targets (if it 'targets' the +1, then that missile misses everyone). Your to-hit for each missile is -20% but +5% per body, per the standard rules for firing into a crowd. Sort of the RQ3 'sweep attack' variation?

This one?

I'd assume they're all just one target as it's been described here, BUT...I guess I wouldn't be averse to figuring out if a player wanted to 'spray' a multimissle 4 or whatever like a tommy gun, sounds like a clever usage but it would be pretty wasteful and likely only useful in very narrow circumstances....

Honestly, that's how you SHOULD be playing the examples. It's good to keep reminding people that these are rules, not laws, and MGF is paramount.

I think that's going to be a recurrent theme between different GMs campaigns. There's *huge* room for interpretation. Some GMs are going to allow whatever you can rationalize as an augment to varying degrees of silliness. Some GMs are going to rule them extremely narrowly to the point of almost uselessness. Is it a big deal? Meh, I don't think a lot of people campaign-group hop that much so if the group is playing the way they want to, it works.

Sorry, but I hate that puerile response so bad. Do we have gravity? Do the characters need to breathe? Do big weapons generally do more damage than smaller ones? Why? Why do we bother? We have magic, we should just disregard physics entirely.

I'm going to opine that having a 16-wide, 24-wide, or even more-wide multi-ton wall of horseflesh galloping at them at 30+ kph is going to be the infantryman's FIRST concern. The guys on horseback are mainly a threat as it primarily signifies that horses likely won't veer away even if you do something like scream or wave a big pointed stick at them. Certainly his weapon is a concern, but failing an ability to gtfo left or right (as would be the case for a formation infantryman) that horse will - alive, or even if it's killed too late - run you over. You can't parry it and no amount of shield/armor is going to keep you from getting crushed. That's why cavalry are shock troops. Because humans are crush-averse.

+1

I'm in the logistics industry, if someone can provide a container number or even a vessel/voyage I can trace it. Hint: what ever eta the forwarder told you is usually optimistic, unrealistic, and particularly in today's widespread network trucking and intermodal shortages, a week or more wrong.

No disdain, I love ASL. But it is a archetypal example of a wargaming approach to rules, page count be damned. (PS to @Atgxtg "deluxe" only meant "large". The Deluxe ASL sets were simply boards with gigantic (3"?) hexes for more detail and more intricate city fights, as well as the use of microarmor minatures. AFAIK it was a failure.) ...and to drag this thread sort of back to relevancy, Avalon Hill's approach to writing such rules goes a long way toward explaining why those of our community (myself included) who were wargamers tended to strongly prefer the RQ3 (AH) iteration of the rules. In a very AH way they were more comprehensive, more robust, and more internally self-consistent - at the cost of adding perhaps-accurate-but-ultimately-excessively-fiddly-bits. The RQ2 devotees' impressions OTOH exactly reversed: they were offended by the fiddly bits and cared little/nothing for the mechanical 'wargamey' consistency and improvements. The latter paradigm is the guiding rudder behind the RQG edition.

I had that - deep in a dungeon, the player's like "my sword broke? OK I'll take out my pike then" "Wait, what?" "Yeah, my pike. I have it on my equipment list. It's been strapped to my back this whole time".

I don't think that's what he meant by stacking, that's more 'spreading'? I could be wrong but: 'Spreading' refers (generally) to applying a discount gained on one thing, to several things. ie "When you buy product A, you get a discount on product B." 'Spreading' would be to say that discount also applies to C, D, E and F. 'Stacking' refers (again generally) to applying multiple discounts to a product. ie "When you buy product A or B you get a discount of 10% on C." 'Stacking' would be to say that the discount you got from buying A and the discount you got from buying B would CUMULATIVELY apply to C, ie 10%+10%=20% discount.

I'd imagine there's a host of prosaic spirit magic (and divine) that aren't laid out in a set of game rules that tends to focus on combat- or adventuring-utility spells, or at least those applications.

Took a little searching, but FYI ~1000 pages. The *INDEX* is 34 pages. https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1301056/rules-how-much-it-there Chapter A, Basic Rules, 62 pagesChapter B, Terrain, 44 pagesChapter C, Ordnance, 26 pagesChapter D, Vehicles, 26 pagesChapter E, Miscellaneous, 28 pagesChapter F, North Africa, 18 pagesChapter G, Pacific, 50 pagesChapter H, Vehicle and ordnance notes, about 200 pagesChapter I, Campaign game - never publishedChapter J, Deluxe ASL, 2 pagesChapter K, Training manual, 44 pagesChapter L, Online ASL - never publishedChapter M, ASL Analysis - never publishedChapter N, Armory, over 150 pagesChapter O, Red Barricades, 24 pagesChapter P, Kampfgruppe Peiper, 24 pagesChapter Q, Pegasus Bridge, 18 pagesChapter R, A Bridge too Far, 22 pagesChapter S, Solitaire, 34 pagesChapter T, Tarawa, 22 pagesChapter V, Valor of the Guards, 36 pagesChapter Z, Other Campaigns, 86 pagesChapter FB, Festung Budapest, 54 pagesChapter dividers are 2-6 pages for each chapter