Nick Brooke

Specific advice: on the elemental succession wheel, Water is always expected to defeat Fire: a medium Water elemental should quench a medium Fire elemental. If they're different sizes, the larger elemental would probably win: a large Fire elemental should boil away a medium Water elemental. If your player chucks magic into buffing his Fire elemental or attacking the enemy Water elemental, or finds ways of healing his pet or hurting the enemy, that should certainly skew the results, but you can base this on the cost of the spells rather than on their specific defined effects in RuneQuest. That will give you an outcome that feels properly Gloranthan. Bear in mind that the difference in elemental size corresponds to one Rune point or two points of Spirit Magic, so you might arbitrarily rule that a medium Water elemental plus Protection 2 is equivalent in magic cost to (and therefore expected to beat) a large Fire elemental. (Or maybe you'd set the scales differently. I don't know how much magic is floating around in your games) Just putting that out there. I think you'll find it more fun and varied than adapting SCA duelling rules to the clash of primal elemental forces.

OK, here's where I'm coming from. I agree that the Elementals are quite badly served by RuneQuest, which sorta-kinda treats them (in my opinion) too much as physical creatures and not as weird animated amorphous stuff-of-creation. My personal GM'ing style is to treat the RuneQuest rules as binding on my poor players' characters - they define what anthropomorphic, roughly man-sized persons with normal equipment and normal magic can expect to achieve - but entirely optional for my own purposes: as long as the NPCs and the rest of the world act in a way that seems "reasonable for Glorantha," I don't feel the need to tie myself down with nuts-and-bolts details. And usually, that means RQ elementals and I get along just fine, because I can narrate whatever this crazy-ass creature made out of living water, or tunneling underneath you and reaching up to engulf you, or throbbing and pulsating with weird "colour out of space" lights that would drive you insane if you look at them (but if you don't, how can you fight it?), is getting up to, in some hopefully startling and terrifying way, and my players have to react to these intrusions without ever thinking to ask "what's its Strike Rank?" or "how many Armour Points does it have?" so all is well. But in the specific case where a PC can summon an elemental and use it as a combat pet vs. another elemental, I agree it would be better to have more guidance. My suggested rule of thumb would be that, all things being equal (ie: where two elementals of the same size are in conflict), the elemental dominance wheel on RQG p.8 applies absolutely: "The Elemental Runes are commonly conceived as being arranged on a wheel, where Fire/Sky is overcome by Water, Water by Air, Air by Earth, Earth by Darkness, and Darkness by Fire/Sky before the wheel cycles again." So a large undine would always be expected to overcome a large salamander, but would lose to a large sylph. Every type of elemental can battle every other type, because that is the nature of Gloranthan creation (and always has been): so waters quench fires, which burn away darkness, which engulfs the earth, which exhausts the wind, which suppresses the waters, and so it goes. Skewing that (by casting magic to buff your elemental or debuff the opposition) is the kind of thing GMs rule by fiat anyway - my starting point would be that 2 points of Spirit Magic equals one point of Rune Magic, common sense will tell you whether what you do is helpful / harmful, and detail is for the birds. Just describe an awesome combat between fundamental elements of creation, and you're golden. Expanding that for the secondary relationships (non-adjacent points of the wheel / pentagram / Zzabur's Sigil - see p.149 of the Guide to Glorantha) shouldn't be too hard. Deciding where the balancing Moon fits into the picture will be an exercise in hilarity and propaganda. Maybe I should sketch this out with my own nifty diagram and upload it, before Ultor beats me to it?

If you can't remember where you found it, it'll be in A Rough Guide to Glamour as part of the Red Emperor Cult writeup - they're one of his spirits of retribution. We mention various other demons in passing, as you would expect: the Bat Demons atop the Outer Wall, the Tax Demons in the Court of Sacred Largesse, the demons who dragged the first Imperial Warlord to perdition, the Ice Demons of Valind's Glacier....

Or just bits of you, excised with surgical precision. (A precise pound of flesh, if you will)

*cough* Jonstown Compendium supplement opportunity *cough*

They aren't, but their bosses are.

OMG, it's a small hobby isn't it? My little scenario is currently the #6th best seller of ALL THE THINGS on DriveThruRPG. Get in there!

And "The Duel at Dangerford" is still the #1 Hottest Community Content on DriveThruRPG more than 24 hours later. I must be doing something right...

Oh look: I got a nice gong from DriveThru for >100 sales. That's because all the cool kids are reading my scenario now. Don't miss out! And please don't forget to leave five-star ratings and rave reviews on the product page: it's greatly appreciated. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/307504/The-Duel-at-Dangerford?affiliate_id=392988

Could also be Lunes, Selenes, Madness Spirits (Jonstown Compendium)... I have a particularly nasty Lunar Demon in "The Duel at Dangerford," but that's really just a GW Demon Prince run through a Ray Harryhausen blender. "Demon" is just another name for "hostile otherworld entity," after all.

Well, that's gratifying.

If you picked up my new scenario yesterday, you should be able to leave a rating or review on DriveThruRPG today (there's a short pause built into the system, to make sure you've had time to read any new product before you review it). I'd really appreciate positive customer feedback, or constructive suggestions! https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/307504/The-Duel-at-Dangerford?affiliate_id=392988

Review! Jorthan's Rescue Redux - review.pdf

She lies. All affiliate link money is squandered on gin. It is known.

Yup. Check out Scotty's photos of the contents pages, upthread.

That nonsense always did made me laugh. I needed a Big Secret for the defector to leak, and now I spend my spare time wondering how long it'll be until our heroes infiltrate the sinister ghost palace on the Dark Side of the Moon to take down the shadowy necromancer-lord behind Lunar Tarsh.

(shrug) That's not how it happened in my campaign. I don't really have the bandwidth for hypotheticals.

First cult in the book, of course.

Wikimedia FTW. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Le_Brun,_Charles_-_Horatius_Cocles_defending_the_Bridge_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

I approve this plan. Keep one in the shrink, and use the other one for gaming.

Public domain artwork FTW! This is Horatius Cocles Defending the Bridge, painted by Charles Le Brun in 1642 (ish). It's kinda-sorta relevant to the scenario.

OK, I’ve just uploaded my new short RuneQuest scenario to the Jonstown Compendium: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/307504/The-Duel-at-Dangerford?affiliate_id=392988 It's called The Duel at Dangerford. The scenario itself is a couple of dozen pages long, and since only gamemasters and confirmed non-combatants are ever likely to pick it up, I thought it’d be a good place to share some colourful ideas I came up with for The Smoking Ruin and The Dragon of Thunder Hills as appendices. Rated the "Hottest Community Content" on DriveThruRPG! "This is wonderful. The absolute love for the setting hits you straight in the mouth." -- Michael Kirkbride, Concept Artist & Writer for Morrowind.

ERRATA: for “of Swing” read “of Sylila,” throughout. (Bloody autocorrect)

Sure. If you spot a typo after the book is released, let me know (a quick email to nick at etyries dot com is probably best) and we'll do a cleaned-up version. (PDFs are fun! Remember to check your DriveThruRPG library for updated PDFs) NB: "Sultan" is not a typo.

Download and install the font, then go to your Windows/Fonts directory and check out the Font settings (LH menu). You're looking for Font embeddability (bottom bar). Apologies if you're not a Windows user, but that's the place I know to look. (Your method works too - this is faster) Alternatively: right-click the installed font, go to Properties > Details and see what it says there. Cheers, Nick