Joerg

AFAIK it was Howard rather than Daffy or Donald. Ducks have been part of published Glorantha since the beginning, as have manticores. I would see the manticore (at least as a beastman species) go before eliminating the ducks. I guess I like to loathe them (in Glorantha).

The formula is broken for high SIZ creatures (who often have high CON, too), but a modification of the formula for high SIZ critters would have been preferable to abandoning the formula for average SIZ critters. Players care about how HP are calculated for those big enemies...

River gods, explicitely mentioned on p.622 of the Guide. I wonder why they are mentioned specifically as Lascerdan river gods, though - I would have expected the local Orlanthi to have taken up some river worship, too, at least the fisherfolk and boating traders. If you can imagine a humanoid quadruped, go ahead... I thought that the "cross between the body of a crocodile and a seal" (will that give them some sort of tail, or hind limbs like flippers?) combined with "a strange head common to neither, with a protruding forehead, horns, and an alligator-like jaw" was somewhat similar to the synapsid image I linked. Manatees were mentioned by Peter as possible herd animals of these creatures, although I am fairly dubious about the sustainability of manatees as food-providing livestock, or feeding them with plants grown on slash-and-burn forest soil. I am inclined to give them a similar manual dexterity as Morocanth have, with their fore-limbs unencumbered by their weights while they are semi-submerged in the rivers (which would aid their dam-building), and a three-leg trot for their dry land activities that require manual activity.

Trickster has been eaten before, and will be again (and again, and no, it is not good for him). Take for instance the Hoolar story where Trickster is curious about a Hoolar's diet, and to find out he sneaks into Hoolar's home and turns into a stone. When Hoolar comes home, he sees the stone, and says "yum". (Hoolars are the most ancient - and most bizarre - attempt by Pamalt and Balumbasta to create intelligent life, and feature in many a Pamaltelan moralty tale.) Viewed from a Yelmalian/Elmali perspective, what Nysalor did was a replay of what Elmal did to the Father of Lies - letting himself be swallowed, destroying the Chaos foe from within. By projecting the Chaos part on the Black Eater and not being entirely wrong as Hell is as Chaos-adjacent as you can get other than the outer Sky, the curse gets planted.

At least frequently with sorcery, but also with huge castings of variable MP or hugely boosted spells it is possible to finish a spell in the next melee round. Does this prevent the character from casting a rune spell in that melee round?

PuneQuest again? Wasn't it rather Harvester, or Reaper? If you drop the first e, this looks like photovoltaic.

How about vice versa - does casting any spirit magic or sorcery first prevent an adventurer from casting Rune magic that same round? Asking because that's what my bunch of rules lawyers will ask me...

The Moon Winds are the Lunar friendly faction in the Red Cow clan, not a cult or otherworld being. Unless the Red Goddess gains a final victory over Orlanth in the upcoming Hero Wars, there is no way she will gain access to air elementals.

No need to get kinky...

Take half a page of complicated calculations, multiply by zero, add 100% - voila, your chance for catastrophic interference.

That's not how I would do this. I think that they have these three states tha they can toggle, no limit to duration. The rules aspect for toggling their shape shift might well be using rune points, or some similar form of "prepaid" magical energy collection (like taking in Shadow). (The rules for Hsunchen taking beast shape are similarly broken, at least for those Hsunchen who spend weeks at time in beast shape like Uncoling reindeer folk or the Pamaltelan milk antelope guys. Yes, RQG has Extension, but it takes about 9 rune points to make such a long lasting change, and you are stuck in the spell unless you dispel it.)

IMG, geases can be broken "accidentally" - after a warning. "Eat no meat of X on N-Days" will receive warnings, like "you are served a stew with various sorts of meat." This is a "may contain nuts" warning. As to the specific days, it is fair to assume that the character knows how much time has passed in most situations, and that he will err on the side of caution. On the other hand, when the GM starts to remind the player of such problems, the player should take that as a warning. A breach of contract is a breach of contract. "Nobody can make you do anything" (a Heortling tenet) means that you cannot put the blame on someone else. "Never participate in an ambush" can be avoided through inactivity in the ensuing fracas, but that course of inaction may clash with an Oath to protect and obey some individual. The Samson dilemma, and how it is solved, is such a case IMO. Has the character really done everything to avoid this? If the celibate Yelmalian is seduced after Elusu takes a seat in his lap, his failure to remove her from his lap before she gets the chance to seduce him can be regarded as having let down his guard. Getting seduced while carrying her out of a critical situation (for her lord, not necessarily for her) couldn't be blamed on the Yelmalian following orders. Yes, this is a case of victim blaming, but relaxing in the company of Elusu is a no-go for celbacy-geased folk. Agreed. That is definitely wrong. For a comparison, it is like a king divorcing his wife after you tired of her when you received her hand and half a kingdom as his reward earlier on. Neither apostasy nor illumination remove a geas - you have it as long as you return to life. That's similar to DI to get access to prohibited magic, IMO - tantamount to apostasy. Random rolls for gifts and geases are one reason why I (and my players) avoid such cults. inflicting such random fate is exactly what you have been accusing me of... On the other hand, if the assignment of the geases and the gift are based on the initiatory experience of the character, usefulness etc. don't even come into consideration. If it is something other than a random lot that creates both gift and geases, maintaining them should become sufficiently meaningful even for the player (and not just the character). Turning those randomly rolled gifts and geases into a story worth telling is a big bid, but IMO a much better way than the Rules As Written. A narrative mechanic similar to the clan generation sub-game of King of Dragon Pass and some of the HeroQuest supplements would do a better trick. But creating that for each initiatory experience is an amount of work that surpasses reasonable use of resources.

The Kitori as a species are the adopted descendants of the Only Old One. The Only Old One had a son who was the prototype of that species of darkness beings with the man rune. Re-reading Esrolia, Land of 10,000 Goddesses I think that this son was Kimantor, the protector that came to the aid of Queen Norinel‘s Nochet in the Darkness. Heortling Mythology p.117, during the Lightbringers‘ Quest descent: Kimantor had left Norinel with twins, a boy and a girl, but apparently these weren‘t (yet) of the Only Old One‘s demigod species. Varzor Kitor was the first adoptee who became a Kitori. He came from a tribe of Darkness-worshiping Theyalans and found the favor of Ezkankekko, presumably for his services in the Greater Darkness or the Silver Age. Once the species had been re-instated, adoptees included humans, but apparently also dark trolls and dehori were able to undergo the adoption and become a mortal version of Ezkankekko and/or Kimantor. IMO they are creatures of the man rune and darkness, mortal though magically powerful. From Darkness they draw their form fluidity that allows them to take on human, dark troll or dehori shape with all the physical properties of the target species. The adoption rites probably serve as the Kitori equivalent of initiation, too. In RQ3 Gods of Glorantha Argan Argar has the Shadow Rune, a sub-rune of Darkness that indicates the absence of Cold. Unlike Moorgarki (mitress race ancestress who had Cold ripped out by Pamalt) Argan Argar, son of Night and thereby of celestial as well as Darkness origin, possibly gave it up in his encounter of the Three Curious Spirits (which is so out of sequence of Godtime events that it looks to be a Godtime heroquest of these three Darkness entities to the Creation Age). Argan Argar obtained enough of the secrets of Fire that he was able to chain Veskarthan and take up the spear from him. I am making this detour to explain why I think that the Shadows that crowd the top of Shadow Plateau are a vital component in the Kitori adoption. The future Kitori enters the shadow in his unawakened state (comparable to the Ergeshy of Sun Dome County) and somehow makes part of it a portion of his self. Looking at the Ergeshi, the subdued former Kitori slave population of Sun Dome County, suggests that there are as many female Kitori as there are males. Unlike with the uz, the females aren’t obligatory dominant, although the Night Jumper story in King of Sartar tells us about the lovers of the Kitori Queen in a very uz-like set-up. At least when we encounter Kitori as Shadowlords, they appear to be predominantly male, or of unrevealed gender masked in the image of the (male) Only Old One. Why would a troll or a dehori choose to become a Kitori? It is common for uz worshipers of Argan Argar to be initiated to both Kyger Litor and Argan Argar, which means there is no principal exclusivity between those cults. But what about the under-privileged of troll society? Especially twin births of uzko (aka “superior trollkin”) are discriminated against. Leaving the uncaring umbrella of Kyger Litor for the brotherhood of Shadowlord equals sounds like an eminently reasonable step to me. What motivation could an effectively immortal dehori have to join the Kitori? The prize would be an existance as a physical being, and possibly the ability to escape the restrictions of the Other Side when it comes to owning the creative force of Free Will. This agency appears to be sufficient to entice spirits of all kinds to let themselves be bound to physical objects or beings. Could run-of-the-mill trollkin be adopted as Kitori? The description of the Troll Rebirth rites that were undergone by Arkat and his companions tells us that a trollkin undergoing this rite will have a chance at being reborn as a Dark Troll in body and spirit, but it is a chance with a fairly high probability of failure. Still, there is a magical way to escape the wretched state of trollkinhood. The same goes for cave trolls. (Though what happens to their inherited Chaos trait that manifests as their regeneration power? I would think that they lose the regeneration, but do they lose the Chaos taint as well? Can the Black Eater devour this ancient wrong in rebirth?) Any Kitori convert inherits shape fluidity. Other characteristics become somewhat fluid with the target species, too, so would a trollkin be able to join the Kitori, provided he or she found a sponsor? The trollkin of Shadow Plateau enjoy comparatively high privileges if they make it as spear-kin, the bulk of the army of the plateau. As trollkin units go, these spearkin are pretty elite. They are a far cry from the demigod abilities of a full Kitor, though. But then, both cave trolls and trollkin are usually chattle property of uz clans or individuals, and being the very symbol of Equal Exchange, there is a high probability that any form of ownership needs to be shed or rather equalized before becoming eligible as a Kitori. Not yet, really. Broyan's demise is hidden in the back-story of the sample characters, who escaped Broyan's fate mainly due to absence from that event, having moved back to Sartar independently of the Hendriki king. There were numerous old ideas, but at some point Greg finally gave some details about the Kitori. Basically, with the publication of "Esrolia - Land of 10,000 Goddesses", and with this follow-up information in the World of Glorantha yahoogroup. The ensuing discussion expands on that source and pretty much defines what we know about the Kitori. I am still very fond of my short mood pieces in the subsequent discussion. That's what the Ergeshi of Sun Dome County appear to be. But then, they don't appear to have mastered the Darkness that makes them full Kitori, the adoption/initiation rite. Ok, Kitori in other meanings than species: Citizens of the Kingdom of Night Trolls of the Troll Wood and the Lead Hills The darkness-worshiping human tribes of southeastern Dragon Pass, like the Torkani Arkati (there is this bit about Daramhy defeating the Arkatings on p.40 and p.72 in HotHP) Shadowlords collecting the tribute Human armies serving the Kingdom of Night (also Kimantorings) I think this is very similar to History of the Heortling People.p.106. Yes, that's an attempt to create a synthesis out of five years of debates on the digest, and given an editing another five years later. It does a good job summing up some of the old concepts that circulated the early years of the digest. I guess I should collect the stuff from the World of Glorantha group for a more up-to-date page...

That western "half" is actually just a small fraction of the vast Wastes beyond. Prax fits completely into the same area as Dragon Pass. The Elder Wilds extend twice as much east of Prax, and are only a fraction of the distance to the Shan Shan mountains. The remains of Genert's Palace (now surrounded by Chaos swamps) are near the halfway mark. The Tunneled Hills are in the eastern half. Prax itself has more extreme places than much of the Wastes - the Copper Sands are probably the most hostile to life in the Wastes, but the Dead Place is a sore on the Earth which is unparalleled, and in the Spirit Plane this is a gaping void. On the other hand, the Sacred Ground is a remainder of Godtime fertility, although minus the Redwood savannah features.

The most complete collection of Wooden Sword activities I am aware of was in Wyrm's Footprints. All of the action happened a decade before the arrival of the Internet, which means all of this material is dead trees stuff rather than digital.

The majority of written documents use parchment, at least in the rainy Theyalan habitat. The much dryer Dara Happa might use a variant of papyrus, or actual paper. Maps often are scrawled on pieces of rawhide, something an explorer will want to have around to seal containers against humidity or to patch up stuff. The handout maps in Griffin Mountain probably all use this rather than clay or wax tablets. Most Gloranthan scripts appear to be letters or syllabic, often runic or cursive in style. The writing material is likely to reflect those preferences.

That I am singling out Humakti over other cultists is your interpretation, without ever having played with me. Where there is mythical precedence for a catch 22 situation, I am likely to inflict it on a character, more so in heroquesty situations. I probably will have some sort of Plan B prepared, and a player smelling this kind of rat probably is well advised to ask me whether the character knows about an applicable myth, and to have a decent Cult Lore or similar skill to roll on. Magical identification of an opponent is a proven way to deal with things normal skills fail to deal with. Three rune points and a crystal full of MP give you +100% on attack and parry and double weapon damage. Not overpowered in the least? Not to mention that your friends and supporters can buff you up with more magic. Sword Trance is not transferable, True Weapon or Shield is. Chalana Arroy's Resurrection pales in numbers after a battle compared to the successful Divine Interventions against premature or pointless death on the battlefield by Humakti Swords. Said Sword may still die after his second DI has used up all available rune points, but he or she will have waded through the enemies thrice. Never testing a geas is pointless. Never giving a character who voluntarily embraced Death (his own, too) high drama is pointless, too. I am not talking about "He's dead, Jim" pointless plot-proving deaths, as per John Scalzi's excellent take on Redshirts. Recently, we had a thread that read something like "bummer, we have this character who joined Humakt to avenge a wrong, and now she did it and is still alive, and seeks a new purpose for this life." The player apparently was willing to go down with the nemesis. Again, let me point to Samson's desperate defense against the Philistines, his great gift, and the condition upon which it was granted, but also to his "one last time" after the condition for the gift had been broken. Don't you think this is an almost purpose-made Humakti plot line? The best RQ-ish source for the Sword Sages is the story "The Smell of a Rat" in the RQ2 Companion. Other than that, there is quite a bit on Hevduran in HeroQuest. Basically, look at Sorala for a the combat abilities of a Sword Sage. If you choose so. Spirit Magic is a valid option, too. You don't have to play sorcerers in the Lhankor Mhy cult. That's a fairly recent RQG addition to the arsenal of Sword Sages. The traditional Sword Sage has no rune magic to aid his combat, but the normal range of spirit magic. He has probably a high Battle skill. Carrying knowledge into combat, yes, that's what a Sword Sage is about. But does that beat specialist rune magic? Rather than putting all of his learning efforts into combat, the Sword Sage travels in the pursuit of knowledge. He is the field working Sage, the one to traipse into ruins and copy ancient inscriptions or art that cannot be carried back to the library. While not a front rank academic, he will need to be able to provide context to his finds. No Sword Trance or Shield, True Weapon or Sever Spirit. No Rune Lord Divine Intervention. Yes, overpowered, I see it clearly. I said it is my personal favorite fighter cult. Not that is the most effective combatant cult. That would be some form of Man of All or Horali with both personal rune and spirit magic (in case of sorcerous Men of All from bound spirits) and sorcerous augmentation in the umpteens for various magic parameters. Arkati... Humakti with sorcery and illuminated access to Resurrection or otherwise heroic backdoor from the halls of the dead. Possibly with Kitori shape changer abilities, allowing them to manifest as Dark Trolls, Dehori demons or humans at will. Using a spear rather than a sword, for those early strike rank kills. There might be a reason why Kitori who follow Black Arkat haven't seen any RQ write-up yet (or for that matter, neither any HQ write-up).

This is in some part a reaction to the "loveable munchkin antics" that went on with the Temple of the Wooden Sword. I am likely to call the mythic shenanigans of any cult when the situation warrants it. As a Humaktii, you serve Death, and accept Death in the course of your activities. If you want to play a Samson character, be prepared that some Delilah will give you a haircut sooner or later. If you are invulnerable except for the heel or the shoulder blade, expect to be hit there sooner or later. Orlanth's track record as a warleader against Chaos is about as bad as Jon Snow's track record as a war leader. He had one significant victory over the Sky Terror, and a meaningful one over the lesser Kajabori. The rest is lots of suckage, and that may afflict an Orlanthi leader sooner or later. On the Other Side, I like to shift myths at certain parallels, especially if the antagonists have been pushing in that direction from the start. Something like this may make a heroquest path a lot harder than expected, even if the original goal can be made. On the other hand, a harder quest may have a different outcome, but not usually a useless one. "What do you mean my character can die of this, and I don't get a save point?" If you take the bonus for playing a doomed character, not giving you a measure of doom is a failure by the GM. Like I said, I make this clear to potential players of this cult when starting a campaign, or when playing a convention one-shot. If the plan is to have a short campaign, I might play as hardball. If I show up as a guest GM with an existing group, I try to get a feeling for their dynamics, and I won't go George R.R. Martin on them. If you want to play a challenging and doomed concept, I am willing to accommodate you. If you want to play a loveable mass-murdering swordsman, go for Orlanth. If your Humakti concept is brooding teenage angst and violence, then my style of calling the challenge should be within narrative purpose. Going Humakti after re-life sickness, an ok concept, but the sickness remains as a plot hook, so expect to catch some plot with it. I am all for having adventures that address a player's concept for a character, which is why I am bad with published scenarios, and a friend of sandboxes. Yes, I do offer the players some high stakes dares at times, but those are hardly the only option to continue the campaign, and entail higher risk for possibly higher or more coveted rewards. They don't come for free.

True - if you are arguing from your opinion (which seems to be colored by your perspective as a modern Western person, and by rather recent church history, too) we are worlds apart. The intentions that you stated are not unique to the Christian church, they were inherited from the Torah, and from Roman laws. Neither were easy on the position of women, and the ancient Christians had to compete with the mystical movements of female deities (Ishtar, Isis, Hekate) which resulted in an antagonistic position to these practices. Yes, Demon Ex Machina is some of the worst railroading you can inflict on the characters. While an "in medias res" approach to get a scenario running is fine, I prefer the players to grit their teeth as one after another fails their resistance rolls over "shit happened, say good bye to your character concept/all of your equipment/your supporters" out of nothing. But if a player went for a high stakes gamble and lost, high stakes it may be. Depending on the characters actions that led to that situation, it may have been the character ignoring or challenging previous warnings which brought her (or him in case of "celibate" geased Yelmalians) into that situation. A character surviving capture by broos cannot expect to remain un-impregnated except with the castrati serving Ralzakark. The character wil have had the opportunity to avoid capture prior to her or his decision to go ahead anyway, in which case I feel I did my duty to warn off the player enough. The padded gloves don't stay on forever, big risks may have big consequences. Rape in Glorantha is not as common as it is in other (adult, including ficion rather than gaming) settings. Rapists risk to get adopted by Thed, which may have some visible side effects. When Beat Pot Aelwrin raped the high priestess who had enslaved him, this shocked even his allies among the rebeling slaves. On the other hand, enslaved characters may receive the lawful command to make themselves available for fornication in certain societies (e.g. Fonrit, but possibly others, too - the Outrigger folk originating from Thinobutu have quite a few customs that are considered offensive by Christian-acculturated modern people, and the Vadeli are notorious for offending). 50 ordinary bandits aren't that likely to commit a serial rape qua violent no-questions asked rape. There is a non-zero possibility that they might coerce her while wearing slave collar and bracelets, but I agree that this is not what roleplaying in Glorantha should normally be about. Not quite the same gifts - all that "double damage to X" stuff is fairly specific to Humakt. Raise a characteristic by one point, yes, up to species max. Effectively, a rune lord pays one permanent rune point and up to 9 regainable ones for this. Non-Rune Lords don't usually use DI that frivolously, as the rune point is permanently lost regardless of success, the chance for success is bad, and the cost can kill them or render them more or less unplayable. (One player had a fighter in my game ending up with 4 POW. He never recovered.) The purpose of these gifts is not to benefit the character growth by player design, but to make the character more like the deity he serves. In the case of Yelmalio this includes a LaMarckian inheritance of losing the armor at the Hill of Gold. Rune level is not required by each and every character.The old skill cap for everybody but rune lords has been done away with.

I would use player handout maps in the style of Griffin Mountain handout maps until the action moves there, then use the pretty ones as a way to demonstrate the available panorama. Providing they are free of spoilers....

I notice that this thread is about sorcery, but: consider that fish don't surface for breathing. If the recipient of that spell has the ability to breathe water or to hold their breath indeterminately, they may move through the water. If you are a nasty GM, by attempting to use lateral bending of the spine, arms and legs (like fish, serpents, alligators) rather than vertical (as marine mammals do).

I'd demand additional training time for especially untalented individuals before unlocking the skill. There may be other considerations to success in a skill, too - does a middling score in "Sing" suggest that the character can carry a tune, or that he sings louder than someone with lower skill? Many a Singalong taught me that there are many enthusiastic singers whose ability to carry a tune in anything but a closed container is rather low. There may also be singers perfectly in tune but lacking volume.

There are many types of map. A travelogue or a set of directions as generated by older WWW applications for offline situations is basically a linear map, a list of stations of a journey, with distances given e.g. as travel times. Area maps appear to be as ancient as writing, abstracting a bird's eye view of the lay of the land - there is a cuneiform tablet with something like a drawing of irrigation channels and plots of land and their relative sizes. There are perspective maps of settlements or coast lines, as viewed from some (at times imaginary) elevation. Without exact geodesy, maps are only estimates of the lay of the land, and may make little sense without direct experience of the environment (possibly at a certain season, or losing the experience if vegetation changed a lot since making that map). Map-Making is a craft, and it can only be as good as the data (or, if you have the crafter visit the places to be mapped, as good as the success of the map maker to capture reality on his model).

Putting 5 points into a skill may still be canceled out by negative talent (skill modifiers). IMO you need to have a positive total score to be able to use the skill, a negative stealth modifier can cause automatic fails if the modified skill is zero or less. Or, in other words, you need to be taught that skill more than once to cancel out that massive negative stealth modifier.

Sword skill has a basic ability percentage, everybody can figure out which end to grab and which end to move towards the target. Swimming on the other hand is a skill that needs to be learned, which not everybody does (even the dead man floating on the back position requires some training instruction, and while desperate dog paddling may keep an unencumbered person above the water for a while, it doesn't create enough propulsion to move the non-swimmer into the desired direction for more than a meter or so per melee round). Most children will have experienced riding on their parents, uncles/aunts, or elder siblings (the latter also on their knees, the former mostly on their shoulders), which may explain everyone possessing a basic percentage.