Joerg

In Glorantha, the term "Heroic Feats" would lead to the assumption that this was an ability gained by heroquesting. But then, few Gloranthan characters would think of any ability as unrelated to magic. Things like the ki-skills in RQ3 Land of Ninja would be little else but a peculiar form of sorcery using the perfect execution of a mundane ability instead of a spoken spell. The body of maneuvers of a martial arts school may be regarded as a grimoire. The art of carving a beast-shaped figurehead for a pirate ship may be a form of sorcery. Many a craft may contain elements of sorcery - knowledge applied to achieve a certain result. But then, many a craft may call an appropriate spirit to inhabit the object.

Ok, so my rune priest has 18 POW and 12 rune points, and rolls a 7 on DI. What does he have afterwards? 18 POW no rune points? 18 POW 5 rune points?

in RuneQuest, POW is the only stat with a check box. You aren't expected to raise INT or SIZ, and raising STR or CON is time- (and gold) consuming. POW on the other hand is supposed to be an elevator stat, expected to go up and down as more and more permanent magic is created (in case of Rune Magic this is enchanting your magical link to the cult entity ever stronger). Personally, I think there have to be more occasions to earn POW checks than just overcoming a passive POW on the resistance table with your active (temporary) POW. That only happens when you use offensive magic (basically, this is limited to Demoralize, Befuddle and Disrupt) or initiate spirit combat (which you can't unless you're a discorporate shaman). Taking an active role in a holy day worship was suggested as another way to gain a check, or simply participating (sacrificing all temporary POW but one) in a High Holy Day rite. For the POW gain, you used to need to roll with percentile dice above 100% minus five times the difference between your current and your (species, or species plus priest bonus) max. I think this win once, lose once result requirement is supposed to keep the chance of getting an experience check plus getting the ability raise out of it about constant.

Ok. At least the author claims that he started thinking of writing a Tolkien pastiche already during his study years (before 1966), according to Wikipedia. I am not criticizing fantasy settings which have humans, elves and dwarves in them - real world myths had those, too, and Tolkien got his concept from blending norse myth with catholic ideas about angels. I was going on about mixed species parties as a standard trope.

I guess you couldn't. But that's a good reason to take Lunar heads, they are so much more forgiving towards Chaos.

@TRose I rather have a problem with how long you get to keep spell knowledge you brought back from a Great Temple (or whatever) when you're back at your local shrine. You can regain your rune points at your shrine. Does this allow you to regain rune points you spent for a spell that you got at a Great Temple? I would say yes. But: As long as you have enough rune points left, there is no reason why you couldn't cast that spell from the great temple again (and again and again), unless we are back to sacrificing for a certain number of uses of a spell. So say your spell knowledge has a "best before" date. Does this mean that the spell becomes one-use after this date, until you return to the Great Temple for spell renewal? Or do you lose the knowledge without ever having cast that spell? We're talking about a whole bunch of spells here, though - so maybe after the "best before" date you get to use one out of these spells, and lose access to all of them afterwards? I am inclined to fudge temple size, too. Let's say you have a shrine (or a consecrated ground) to Babs, and you manage to bring together a huge crowd of initiates and associate cult worshippers beefing up attendance to that of a minor temple. Will this allow you to renew all the spells available to a minor temple? If your doing this on a high holy day, will that change the range of available spells?

I never got my eyes on a complete set of the novels, and all I read started in medias res with a fully grown and mightily angry barbarian. To be honest, Conan isn't my favorite R.E.Howard preincarnation, ranking rather low alongside Kull. I found Bran Mak Morn a little more to my taste, and I absolutely liked Cormac MacArt and his anachronisms (they did publish a complete series of that in German, which may have helped). So, what is the Conan canon for his youth? How does it color his motivations? I won't retract his blaspheming by Crom. If not in Howard stories, then maybe in onces written by Sprague de Camp, Jordan, Anderson, Wagner... I lost count how many authors sat down to add stories to the Conan saga.

Are you talking about Vivamorti here, Jeff? Last I looked Thanatari were living and breathing, although bad people. Their problem is with the rune points their greater heads may have known, and possibly been able to regain. Basically granting the tradee access to one of the spells known by the trader. Does the trader lose the ability to cast that spell (if it is an Issaries one that he could normally cast reusably)? Say Biturian had four uses of Path Watch in RQ 2 and traded off one of those. He still would have had three uses left and be able to regain those three if he used them, but he wouldn't have been able to regain a fourth use of Path Watch until the tradee had used it up. Now, does the trader lose the ability to regain the Rune points worth of spell knowledge traded until the tradee used the spell? The trader still has the spell he traded for one use (or for as many uses/rune points as he traded for), which the tradee cannot regain until the trader used the spell.

Given the Malkioni magics to dominate even deities to do their bidding, I think that there will be some wizards employing magical slaves, or temporarily indentured otherworld creatures. Whether these magical slaves will be familiars or rather "bound spirits" remains to be seen. Much will depend on the denomination of the wizards. I expect henotheists to employ familiars similar to those of the related theists. Boristi will capture and then tap Chaos creatures, possibly including spirits in "energy prisons" (matrices). Vadeli are likely to have all manner of RQ3 familiars, they love enslaving others. Fonritians are their ambitious imitators. (A bit like Pan Tang aping Melnibone.) Rokari and New Idealist Hrestoli wizards may shun the practice in public, and may breach it in secret (at least in secret from the muggles). As the conflict with the Kingdom of War escalates, I expect a general adoption of combat-oriented familiars/enslaved magical entities among the Loskalmi wizards, carried into the public. Waertagi wizards might have water elemental familiars, or at least allies. I don't think that Glorantha wizards should approach the amount of familiars as in Jim Butcher's Alera setting, though (which resulted from a bet whether a cool fantasy setting could be created from two lame ideas combined - Butcher said yes, and got "Lost Legion" and "Pokemon" to work with).

Given all the work Jeff has already put into the Gods compendium as companion work to the Guide, we might find ourselves with a book of rune spells rules that happen to match the names for the deities' magics in that book. I expect an extensive but far from exhaustive list of rune spells in the rules, and companion books in the future of RQG giving more detail on cults, more spells, and magic for deities not yet mentioned in the rulesbook.

Given that I just wrote something along a very similar line here, I can say that I am quite happy with this turn of the rules. But does this mean that the temple size requirements to get access to special spells in RQ3 have been dropped? I liked the incentive to make a pilgrimage to a greater congregation to acquire the (counterintuitively named) "common" rune spells (which were uncommon as a result of these restrictions, though held in common by many cults) as well as exotic specialty ones from subcults or allied cults. Basically: do I get access to all the spells of Orlanth anywhere on Glorantha, or do I get access to a subset defined by my local temple (often synonymous with my clan wyter)? Are the subcults back as add-on-options for exotic rune spells, possibly as a one-time expenditure of an extra point of POW? So the opposed traits add up to 100%. Is that still true for illuminated characters? I could imagine that Lunar illuminates following e.g. Hon-eel's ways would be able to raise both their fertility and death ratings, while draconic mystics might aim at creating a grey, passionless middle ground to avoid entanglement. A similar effect could result from a sorcerer tapping one of those runes or other such detrimental encounters (vampires, wraiths, diseases, undeath).

Taking Paolo's math onward - a duel between two 120% opponents plays much like a duel between two 30% opponents. Disregarding the off chance that a non-special hit causes damage, only special successes vs. non-special parries connect. The difference towards the beginners' duel is that when the masters connect, they do so spectacularly.

Gloranthan magic always stressed the notion of cults as the source of magic, although the RQ2 rules offered an alternative source of magic in the guilds (that were never specified, but mentioned whenever things like poison or potions were mentioned), and in the shamans who catered battle magic to people without asking about cult allegiances (explicitely in RQ3, but nobody protested against that when RQ3 was released as successor for RQ2 - most complaints were directed against sorcery or against changing the convenient common rune magics). There was no thieves' guild in RQ, though. Sensibly not, since Leiber's genius idea to make crime so organized that it supported a guild structure was a hyperbole swallowed hook, line, sinker and even fishing pole by the authors of the Thief class for D&D, taking all the hyberbole and satire out of it. It took patient groundwork of Terry Pratchett to straighten this out in the common perception of the fantasy audience, but I guess for 50% or more of all roleplayers organized guilds still are regarded as the natural habitat of thieves. No, RQ offered the (extremely minor) cult of Lanbril instead. A cult so minor that it would cater to non-cultists friendly enough to the gang. (Yes, acting like a "guild" where RQ2 alchemy was concerned, if you look at Snakefang in the Pavis book.) Funnily enough, the Thieves Guilds and Assassins Guilds in D&D are good equivalents to social organisations as presented in RuneQuest. Advancement in RQ is completely independent of any guild, cult, or trainers if you are content to rise just through skill check increases. For uncheckable skills, you need to find a trainer/teacher, which requires some form of social interaction (if only a bribe to get the attention of said teacher). If you are a member of any kind of organisation, that initial bribe stuff can be skipped if the organisation has the resources. The D&Dism of playing a cleric without any attachment to the deity or its organisation isn't a model to be proud of. You can play hobo murderers in RQ. They play better if they are hobo murderers with a past in some kind of organisation. And if you look closely, that's what Fafhrd and the Mouser are. Conan has his bleeding hearts backstory of enslavement as a kid, years on the treadmill, broke his chains and lives for revenge, slowly discovering that life can offer pleasures, and can I have all of them pretty please or I kill you? He still swears (or rather blasphemes) by Crom, more so than your average D&D cleric who theoretically receives his magic from that entity. But then, D20 has mandatory organisations too - classes and alignment. Your characters cannot escape either. These are heavy shackles on your character development. Conan, Fafhrd and the Mouser can escape these restrictions, and do all the time in their adventures. Conan can climb, swim, ... the Mouser can even use magic in a limited way. RQ/BRP liberates you from the shackles of alignment and class. It offers membership in the cults or other organisations like newer dialects of D20 offer prestige classes. You can elect not to take these prestige classes in RQ. I guess you could in D20, too - and you can complain about not getting the benefits when all the other characters who chose the prestige classes get theirs. Whenever I started a fantasy campaign, I started with the characters belonging to a common "organisation" - if only coming from the same city and having the same pub as their regular hangout. Each character always had his own organisation or contacts in the setting, and a set of memorable NPC allies integrated into the party of regular pub hangers helped root them in the setting, and providing adventure hooks when there were no player-chosen quests (facing unfortunate twists by my GMing). If a party suffered losses along the way far away from home, replacement characters would have to integrate themselves into this heroband, recruited from locals or other travelers encountered on the way. None of my player groups ever gave up on their roots. These roots gave them identity, motivation, and benefits. Benefits they missed sorely when traveling far from their roots. All of this applies to Fafhrd and the Mouser. Even Conan yearns back to his dim childhood memories of the idyllic life of Cimmerian barbarian warrior farmers. They feel the lack of this, even when hanging out in other peoples' harems, or with their favorite females in states of advanced undress lollygagging in their laps while sipping ale from huge tankards. I have to mention that my fantasy games usually play in single race (i.e. human) settings, with the occasional semi-human attached. Compare this to Mouser, his depilated female other, Fafhrd and his transparent humanoid lover, sitting in a tavern in an entirely human metropolis except for a fraction of a percentil exotics like Fafhrd's lover. Compare this to Conan, whose interactions with non-humans (like e.g. snake folk) are across a blade wielded in anger, never as companions. The mixed race party put together by a meddling wizard was pioneered by Tolkien, using impending fate as a strong motivator, and then copycatted by Terry Brooks in Shannara and other authors before the publication of D&D. D&D jumped onto that trope and tossed into the same mixer that had Conan and Fafhrd/Mouser stirred in, and the (unusual in fantasy literature up to that time) magic system of spells that get forgotten by Jack Vance. In less than three years from the publication of D&D, this became the default definition of fantasy, spawning settings that dealt with this approaching a consistent logic like Abrams' and Feist's Midkemia, or those applying gamist logic like Greyhawk. That despite other offerings, like e.g. Tekumel. And then RQ with its Gloranthan setting. The D&D approach of tossing together these unrelated literary precursors and stirring them into a standard without internal consistency then dominated fantasy writings. You had to have elves and dwarves as viewpoint characters in your stories, not always naming them such, if you wrote mainstream fantasy. TSR recognized the strength of consistent settings already with their second rpg (Empire of the Petal Throne, using Tekumel), and developed more consistent D&D settings dominated by the gamist restrictions (as alignment or class), like Ravenloft or Dragonlance. Or the Forgotten Realms, parts of which have as much backstory as well-written novels, and which have a minimum credibility for interaction between regions with different cultures despite being a huge patchwork setting. Fantasy settings like Willow or Tad Williams' Memory and Thorn used the same group dynamic tropes, naming their dwarf/halfling/elf equivalents differently but following the generic mixed stewpot approach of D&D and other rpgs. Adding their unique twists and a towering backstory worthy to become heroic against, unlike most PC parties' campaign logs that read more like the business report of an incasso agency. Struggling to avoid the label "generic", sometimes the cultural bonding gets more emphasis in the rules for player characters than for the sample characters in the rule books. Even in Glorantha: Especially when Hero Wars was published, there was the notion that all personal magic of the characters was received through the clan wyter. If you were cut of from the wyter, your magic suffered. Flickered out when the exile slacked off in his duties to his clan. There was a weak alternative in Hero Wars (and HQ1): the heroband. Of which a permanent outlaw gang was an example, and Thunder Rebels gave a magical outlaw band among the Orlanthi sample characters (none of whom was specifically tied to a clan...) Looking back to RQ2 days: Among the Orlanthi (where initiation into a cult is the norm) there has always been the way of the outlaws who somehow keep having their magic despite officially being denied to participate in their clans' rites, or failure to provide their own regular worship among their numbers. Mercenary bands seem to manage, too, even with widely different personal cult magic. It may be said that outlaws or homeless (like mercenaries) rely on the Orlanthi cities and their temples (or major temples with all but independence from the adjacent clans, like Entarios' Greenwing earth temple in Malani lands) for their access to cult magic. Coming as anonymous travellers or pilgrims they create a temporary relation to the temple, enough to receive or renew their magic when they participate in some of the holidays, welcome extra heads to increase the magic available to that temple. In official RQ, initiates only get one-use rune magic. There appear to have been campaigns where the players regularly raised their POW so that spending permanent POW on rune magic wasn't a big deal. I haven't ever played in such games, though, nor did my GMing RuneQuest or playing other BRP games (Elric/Stormbringer/Cthulhu) ever see any significant use of that. In 10 years of active RQ GMing I saw maybe half a dozen successful POW gain rolls. (Given that this included one-shots on conventions where the tick checks weren't my business, there might have been more.) RQ3 de Luxe had the cult write-up of Ernalda with its acolyte status, and that acolyte status was what people who wanted to play users of rune magic in my games aimed for. Preferably during character generation. When reusable rune magic for initiates was discussed in the mailing lists of the nineties, I was all for it. Tying it to the active participation in holy days was the rules mechanic to enforce and reward role-appropriate behavior of cult members. Carrot and stick in one.

HeroQuest 1 offers a strange square rune as personal rune for Ygg which doesn't look like much. His affinity runes are Storm and Sea, the elements of his male and female ancestors. In HeroQuest Glorantha the combination of just two elemental runes might be a bit problematic. The cult magics outlined in HQ1 still ought to apply, though. (At least sea deities are the most likely source for Vadrudi wives.) Ygg's correct genealogy is mentioned as crucial in the Argrath Saga on the Westfaring, but given the time Argrath spent in Wolf Pirate company on the circumnavigation, that knowledge isn't surprising. I wonder though whether it included the mothers of Valind and Ygg. The Vadrudi (deities, most of them descendants of Vadrus, but fairly inclusive to cousins meeting their standards of violence) as a rule don't marry, and they take a failure to escape as consent. Think of Orlanth (who flew with the Vadrudi when he was young) as a Vadrudi with a very sheltered and loving upbringing. The male offspring of Vadrudi matings tends to leave their maternal homes as soon as possible and join a (or the) band of storm raiders. I guess admitting this will pain most Orlanthi, but for a significant portion of the Storm Age Vadrus was the leader of the Storm Tribe - the raid leader with his host of unruly wild hunters. Glorantha is littered with former followers of Vadrus seduced to civilization of one sort or another - Orlanth as the most powerful thanks to being chosen by the most powerful wife, but also Aerlit as ancestor of the Malkioni, Kahar in the Gloranthan East, the storm ancestor of the Triolini in the oceans, and the sons of Storm Bull in Genert's lands. It seems that few of the Vadrudi can name their fathers, although there are a number of acknowledged children of Vadrus (Valind, Gagarth, Molanni) and Valind (Thryk, Ygg). We don't have any such information on Aerlit, the Triolini storm fathers, Kahar, Desero and Baraku (the failed storm invaders of Pamaltela). If you look closely at the Thunder Brothers, Orlanth's paternity for them cannot be proven in many cases. We have sort of proof for Barntar. There is counter-proof for Odayla. A lot of the subcultitis faces of the Thunder Brothers in Thunder Rebels/Heortling Mythology assume Orlanth as father even when the myths are about Orlanth taking on a name (Niskis, Desemborth), although there are exceptions like Orstan. Durev is a can of worms. For a storm god, Ygg's ancestry is quite well documented. For a descendant of Vadrus, it is flawless. I would mitigate Peter @metcalph's statement that Ygg is a face of Valind a bit. Ygg's epithet Seastorm really says it all, and his worship seems to thrive in Gothalos, Ginorth and on the Threestep Isles. The problems of Thunder Brother identities apply to Ygg in his relation to Vadrus and Valind, too. Ygg's winds are chill storms along the western coast of Genertela (Guide p.665), bringing in cold and occasional ice bergs from the sea adjacent to the glacier. Some of this chill (though hardly any of the ice bergs) may still be felt in northern Jrustela, and will feature regularly in dark and storm season on Gothalos in the Pasos Isles. This list shows that there are four potential homelands for Yggite characters (though there will be few adult Yggites born on the Threestep Isles, yet.) All of them have grandfathers and great-grandfathers who were held captive by the Syndics' Ban on their rocky islands (and presumably peninsulas) off the Winterwood coast. I am not sure about worship of Ygg's paternal kin among the Yggites. Valind yes. Gagarth or Molanni? Not quite. Brastalos might figure. Ancestor worship probably takes up a lot of prominence in roles dedicated to lesser gods among the Heortlings. Nelarinna and their Niiadic kin do receive worship among the Yggites, as nourishers from the Yggite activities of fishing, whaling and seal-hunting. They will probably worship a beast mother for their woolly goats, too. And at least the "stay-at-home" Yggites on Ygg's Islands can worship Frona for her aid in growing grain (rather than let it spoil or eaten by vermin in their stabburs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%B3rreo#H.C3.B3rreo-like_granaries_in_Europe is what English language Wikipedia makes out of the search term stabbur, to see what I mean check the pictures in the Norwegian version of the article: https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stabbur). Aldrya as provider of lumber receives some worship and tribute. Yggite lumber-cutting in the coastal forests is tolerated by the green elves of Winterwood, in exchange for an unspecified tribute. The Loskalmi have no such arrangement, which explains their role as suppressors in the islands to make the Yggites provide them with that lumber from Winterwood. With the Thawing along the Janube, the forests of Rathorela offered an alternative for a while, but since the expansion of the Kingdom of War reached Perfe and control of the Janube, the aldryami forests bracketing Loskalm in the north and the south have returned to their role as main lumber reserve for the kingdom that depleted its own forests during the Ban and which carefully avoids reforestation of its depleted forests fearing (justifiedly) that that could invite hostile aldryami presence. Yggites are master wood workers and ship builders. They ought to have a deity for that, possibly a face of Ygg, or alternatively a school of sorcery providing that magic. Yes, you read correctly. The chances are high that the Yggites have a native tradition of sorcery for ship-building. The creation of the wolf pirate ships involves sorcery, and while the Yggites were duped into calling the Vadeli allies, I doubt that they had Vadeli present when building the fleet. There is a high likelihood that the Vadeli made them a gift of sorceries stolen from the Waertagi as a corrupting gift. If so, the rough and disorderly Yggite ways proved to be a good security buffer against any such corruption. Sort of. Floki from the TV series Vikings probably fits in right there in the Yggite shipwright industry.

@threedeesix: RuneQuest has a few spell-casting professions. Like Fighter, Thief, or Priest. RQ2 doesn't have the wizard, though, instead there is a shaman. @pachristian: Fafhrd is an exile from his clan, and the Mouser is an exiled member of the Guild. They have powerful patrons belonging to a secret organisation of magicians in Ningauble and Sheelba, and manage to maintain some independence from the organized groups inside the city. If you play with an ordinary party size as self-willed reluctant minions of these sorcerers, you create something like a cultural group among them - not much different from the mercenaries at Raus Fort in Borderlands. You can run a Sartarite or Praxian games based on the exile concept (in fact a lot of the stuff in Pavis and Big Rubble work well with characters exiled from their birth communities). The cults as presented in RuneQuest 2 are quite cosmopolitan, whereas most worship in the current vision of Glorantha are clan based. In case of speciality deities, worshipers from neighboring clans are very welcome, but in case of Orlanth and Ernalda (or among Praxians, Waha and Eiritha) participants from outside the clan are rare. At the great temples, the clan background of a worshipper doesn't matter much even for these primary deities, though.

This might get interesting when you have a mixed party of Praxians making the discovery, but maybe it is the Eiritha priestess who provides the shape matrix. Personally, I prefer the idea of an alien herd beast - maybe even resembling Jaldon's steed.

This scan of the counters has it in the section "Trèsors" in the top right corner of the left block. (Identified through a digest post in which Stephen said that he might have used the image of an elephant instead.) (And I misremembered the author of the Dragon Pass rules - that was Robert Corbett.)

It is one of the spirits added to Nomad Gods when Stephen Martin adapted the old Chaosium boardgame to the rules of Wulf Corbett for the French edition. The translation guide places it among the Great Magic units alongside Genert's Eye, the Unsleeping Dog, the War Arrows Medicine Bundle and the Portable Oasis. While these units don't appear to have much in common, I recall discussing a "Reconstructing Genert" scenario at the time.

Ok... I was working under the assumption that ghouls are necrophagous undead that feed on corpses that can be fairly ripe. Your comment makes them rather a type of classical cannibals or ogres that herd captive humans for consumption. So: Are we talking about live human abductees kept and fed in byres, or are we talking about abducted corpses (which may or may not have been alive at the time of abduction) stacked away in byres while they ripen to perfection?

Adding to @soltakss' list: Orlanthi cremations: The ashes are collected in Earthware urns and interred in burial fields, burial mounds or crypts, alongside their earth-worshipping wives. According to Thunder Rebels, this practice is overseen by Torabran, a Lowfire husband of Keva, an Ernaldan handmaiden or the first person to be cremated (or both), indicating Fire Tribe origin for the practice, and possibly shared by some of the Solars. There appear to be other forms of body burials in practise, too - occasional outbreaks of undead don't appear to have much trouble with their raw material. I suppose there will be a significant number of wraith-form undead rising from cremations, similar to the smoke-wraiths of the Orlanthi dead marching along their mummified Ernaldan dead on certain festivals in Nochet. Ernaldan burials can be in burial fields, catacombs, burial mounds (artificial caves) or caves. The degree of body preservation for the burial may vary - mummification might play a significant role, not necessarily wrapped in linen or cotton bandages, other forms of curing might apply as well (salt, e.g. from the Dead Place in Prax, resins, smoke, or temporary burial in bogs). Ochre might play a role here, too. Interred bodies left for decomposition of the icky soft parts might be unearthed after a given period of rest and transported to a bone house The Grazers practice some form of mummification looking similar to exposure to carrion birds (source: the burial site of Saraskos Tarkalorsson in King of Sartar, p.31) Exposure to carrion birds and subsequent interring in bone houses should be practiced somewhere in Peloria. Rinliddi sounds like a good place to look for bird-related burial practices, but Darjiin is another possibility. As are Sun Dome Temples (which are highly unlikely to use cremation). Feeding other sacred carrion eaters probably features in a number of cults/cultures, too (starting with the uz who skip the middlemen and have a burial feast replacing the actual burial). I wonder if the Telmori do something like this (possibly involuntarily on wilddays)? The predecessor of Ostling Four-Wolf apparently had a bier of sorts (at least according to the nice illustration in the King of Dragon Pass game). On the topic of necrophagy - there appears to be a niche for ghouls in Dragon Pass. This seems to indicate a certain amount of unburied or at least sloppily buried dead in the region - victims of robberies or raids left unattended or only provisionally interred, victims of accidents. The threat of undead attacks would make a certain care for the remains of slain foes a survival strategy. This doesn't necessarily mean treating them with the respect or the rites of their own, but a form of secure disposal that prevents them from rising against their killers. Such as taking their heads, or giving them earth burials with rocks rammed into their mouths, limbs crushed and/or bound in unnatural postures, stakes through their hearts, or boulders rolled onto their torso, or having a mass pyre and crushing any remaining bones to dust. I wonder how secure the use of the death rune would be in case of crucifications, or how the site of a mass impaling would be secured against undead rising? These forms of execution (along with gallows and exposure in cages etc.) are intended as object lessons to a suppressed population, and the oppressors seek to keep the rotting remains in full view of the potential accomplices as a deterring example. Separated heads on spikes are comparatively safe, although they might be the focus for hauntings by ghosts.

The Guide provides a hexagonal relationship map for the form runes (p.148) which provides unspecified relationships between the six runes on the scheme (clockwise, from the top: Man, Plant, Chaos, Dragonewt, Spirit, Beast). The two internal triangles suggest (to me, at least) that this is a projection of an octahedron with the six form runes on its corners. (Or alternatively a cube with the six form runes on its sides.) Discussing the nature and arrangement of these connections/positions probably fills centuries of Wizard and God Learner research papers.

Most runes don't have a single opposite - plant is one of the form runes. Placing beast as opposite of the man rune in the personality traits may have created the impression that there was a dualism in the forms, but that is no more true than relations between the elements. For most humans, plant has little relevance as a personal rune, and most plant magic is subsumed into the Fertility/Life rune.

I have come to a stance where I think that skills often become limiters to what a character can do rather than enablers. With every area of activities you specify a skill for you declare that all characters lacking this skill will be condemned to inactivity or at least gross incompetence. Maybe it is my experience playing HeroQuest, but I wonder whether one should keep the amount of skills at the level of RQ skill categories and allow specialisations within these fields.

My assumpption always was that this was a nod towards the iconic partial armor showing off biceps, decolletes, belly buttons or six-packs (or both) featuring strongly in the iconography for the sword and sorcery genre, whether Conan or Elric or Fafhrd and the Mouser (not to mention heroines). A hit could get blocked by a lucky scrap of protection, or bypass most of the ornamental metal or leather covering unstrategic parts of the body surface.

Which one, pray tell?