Runeblogger

I talked with Topi about his theories about RQ shamanism at The Kraken 2016. This was after attending a talk by Jeff Richard about the new RQ shamanism. I summed it all up in a post in my runeblog. You can read it here (after a somewhat long introduction). The only handicap is that it's written in Spanish! However, you will find a useful translation gadget on the right margin. I also have written a report of my experience in The Kraken in three posts, full with a summary of upcoming Chaosium books and board games. Yes, it's also in Spanish, so you may need to use the translation gadget again: The automatic translation is decent enough, and at times it provides funny sentences!

At last! This is great news! The adventuring chapter looks extremely and surprisingly detailed. I guess this is aimed basically to unexperienced GMs and players? I think I love the Conflicts mechanic and the examples you provide. Are any of them from your personal experience?

Hi MJ Sadique: this looks like you ran a campaign in medieval Japan. Is that so? If yes, I'm interested in knowing more, since I'm also currently running such a campaign with RuneQuest. Please send me a pm! ;-)

Please keep us posted once you start the campaign.

Urvanyar? Who built the palace for him? What stopped the dragonewts to go there and kill him?

Corvantir, check this other thread from some days ago: Baelor has changed a couple of things in his Glorantha, as everyone does sooner or later.

I don't like the effect of a special success with a blunt weapon, because it makes maces a poor choice for some warriors, while spears and swords are OK for everyone. That doesn't make much sense. IMO, crushing weapons should be good for any warrior, not only for the very strong. If impaling and slashing weapons do double damage plus an additional effect, crushing weapons ought to do double damage too, plus an additional effect. For example, stunning the target or bypassing half the points of every kind of armour. I also don't like that slashing weapons incapacitate the enemy like that. It's far too powerful an effect in my opinion, and it makes slashing weapons far superior to the other types as they stand. I think swords and axes are already popular choices among players, and this particular effect will make them even more popular, to the point where very few players will choose another type of weapon for their characters. But maybe it's just me. :-) Besides, I can't come up with a good special effect with a slashing weapon that's not unbalancing or tiresome to play with.

Polaris' Jewel Description: A fist-sized white jewel that looks like a polished diamond shaped like an eight-pointed star if you look at it from above, or like a lotus if you look at it from the side. It twinkles with inner light. It weighs 4 ENC. Cults: Polaris, Yelorna, Pole Star. Friendly: Yelmalio, Yelm. Enemy: Xentha, Argan Argar. Knowledge: Cult secret (Few). History: Some of this jewels are centuries old and are usually passed from one Star Lady to her successor. They represent the alliance bewteen Yelorna and the Star Captains, mainly Polaris/Pole Star. Some of them were gifted to friendly cults such as Yelmalio. And some of them ended in the treasure vaults of Yelorna's enemies, mainly trolls. Procedure: This jewel can only be obtained through a Yelornan heroquest. The initiate follows the mythic path of Yelorna as she fought the children of Xentha and Argan Argar, and then travelled to the upper sky to fetch the help of the Star Captains and bring them to the surface to aid in the fight, although she had to receive Dayzatar's blessing first. Alternatively, a shaman following the path of Pole Star could also bring one of these back from the spiritual plane. Powers: The Jewel provides 4 points of Polaris rune magic to any initiate of Yelorna or Polaris. A Praxian shaman can contact Pole Star through the Jewel. The jewel sheds a permanent dim light that lights the surroundings like a torch, although its light can always be seen from a 1000 km radius and it is specially visible at night. Shades will avoid getting less than 10 m close to the jewel, and trollkins are demoralized if they get closer to it than that. Value: 10,000 silver coins, although it is invaluable to any Polaris or Yelorna cultists.

In my campaign, I had the PCs be bought as slaves by Duke Raus. Now they even like him. However, they also killed two barges-full of Lunar soldiers and hid the corpses... That is going to cause them huge problems at some point in the near future, perhaps. Anyway, I love it that you managed to get your players to the grantlands THEIR way. I'm very interested in knowing a bit more about your sandbox campaign. Would you mind writing a short summary?

In my Gloranthan campaign with RQ3, the player with the agimori shaman was striving to recover his lost POW after creating his fetch during character creation. So he had around 10 POW and his fetch 7 or 8. After every adventure doing his shamanic things, he only had his POW check and a couple more skill checks. So while his friends happily rolled their 7-9 skill increase rolls, he was praying for success in his vital POW check, on which so much depended. But he had such bad luck, that at least once I let him gain +1 POW just like that. One day he started whacking his enemies heads with a mace he found in the Rubble, and he had fun doing that partly because after the adventure he would then have some more skills to increase. I started disliking the rules for shamans in RQ3 because of that. And we were using Sandy Petersen's rules for shamanism which were far better than the original ones. So I'm really hoping shamans are very different in RQ Glorantha. I also hope shamanic cults are improved, because in RQ3 they were just like runic cults.

Does that mean that there can be a "Summon Fire Elemental" that does not include Command so the elemental can go wild once summoned? And, how many sorcery spells will be included in the rulebook? Will you include examples of spells with all the runes?

I have reread this example that I like a lot. But I have one question: is it OK that Damalstan hasn't mastered the runes/techniques of the spell Summon Fire Elemental when he knows Summon and Fire? Did you mean perhaps Summon Air Elemental? Or what are the runes/techniques involved in Summon Fire Elemental?

Now that we know how sorcery is looking, I'm looking forward to how animism is going to be portrayed. I hope they do a good job with spirit cults such as Waha, Aldrya, Kyger Litor, Basmol, Telmor, etc. In RQ3 they were just like divine cults but with shamans as priests, meh. But this of course belongs in a forthcoming thread, so I'd rather wait.

Perhaps we should open a new topic to talk about skill checks in general.

In order to make skill level more relevant to the effects of the spell, you could decide that some points of FREE-INT are granted to the character at certain skill levels. For example: 1-50% skill gives you nothing, 51-60% gives you +1 Free-INT, 61-70 gives you +2, 71-80% +3, and so on. This way, William the Magus with 110% skill in his favourite spell would certainly be more threatening than Billy the starting Wizard with his 40%. It would also be interesting for skill level and casting time to be linked, so starting sorcerers take a long time to cast a spell, while high magus can cast the same spell in two seconds because they are so used to do it. Just a couple of ideas.

I'm looking forward to this

I also think these rules can be cool in play. They remind me a bit of the sorcery rules in RQ3 but specially of the rules in the Gloranthan Adventures draft for RQ6, but of course, those were also based on the Gloranthan sorcery rules as explained in the Guide to Glorantha. I'm happy the Free INT is not the same as in RQ3, and I'm happy sorcery does not seem as overpowered as in RQ6. However, I'd like to know for example how many spells can a starting character be proficient in (with around 60%) and how do all those spells will work mechanically. Also: Will there be magic point matrixes? If yes, can a sorcerer cast Boon of Kargan Tor and spend as many magic points from these sources as he wishes? As for the +1D10%, I would houserule that the player can either add +5% or roll the dice. Regarding the grimoires, you could say the character carries as many grimoires as runes he knows. For the record, in the Gloranthan campaigns I run or play, we always use the calendar to keep track of the days. It is also useful for example if you want to know how much moonlight there is at any given night (with unclouded sky, of course), to better know how far can you see in the wilderness.

I'm so excited about this focus on scenarios and campaigns. Please tell us more! A while ago, you and Jeff did a podcast about Esrolia and the Holy Country. It looked like you were writing a book about it. I loved the ideas you commented about Casino Town, for example. A friend of mine even wrote a scenario set in Casino Town after that, which was a bit like Ocean's Eleven, really fun. So any news in this regard...?

A campaign next to the background would be perfect, like in S:KoH. Specially if the PCs get to shake the status quo. I guess the easiest way to do it is for the PCs in this sort of campaign to be from the same tribe.

I'm totally in for this game. The miniatures look stunning. The representations of the gods are interesting. Only a quibble: the troll units look like gorillas. I think I'll go for the core game plus Elder Races.

Cool! I'm so looking forward to the next Design notes... I'm specially happy with the 3rd book including not one, but a bunch of scenarios! In the meantime, could you please tell us which are those 6 non-human races that are provided with rules to make adventurers with? My guess: uz, aldryami, broken dwarves, durulz, centaurs, and... newtlings? My current Gloranthan campaign in the Valley of Cradles (with RQ3) includes: a Vingan adventurer, a Humakti, an orlanthi hunter, a caladralander mercenary, a Praxian shaman and an Aldryami warrior from The Garden. So I'll be very happy if the Bestiary book includes rules to make aldryami characters.

I really hope this will get published in an all-duck scenario both for HeroQuest and RuneQuest.

I like the interior layout and art very much (although Buthur looks a bit ridiculous there). - How hard is it to run this campaign if you started with the Colymar campaign and your PC belong to the Orlmarth clan? - Will Chaosium offer RQ-stats so people can run this campaign easily with the new RuneQuest rules?

I'm really excited about this. And I second the opinions of pachristian as well. He's spot on about the praxian beasts! When can we know more about the rules? And what if you could combine these miniatures with the ones in the boardgame The Gods War? The smaller ones, at least.

I guess you mean they breathe air. According to canon, only the gnydron breathe water. The "air bubble" idea is cool, but I think I once read somewhere, that Deeper is highly magical in the sense that merfolk can still swim all through the city, while land-dwellers can walk normally, both groups breathing air normally. Right, that makes sense. So I guess that means any underwater cities will be relatively close to the shores.