Joerg

In the original PC/Apple version of King of Dragon Pass, assigning the harvest could be an important step in the spring activities, balancing wheat, rye and barley. It also made you track your herds of swine and sheep more closely than the current version. Pork (and poultry) appears to be commonly used throughout the year, while beef and horse meat gets consumed in sacrifices or in feasts. Dairy wasn't measured, but is the way to feed from the herds without slaughtering.

While that game missed the importance of the hay harvest and autumnal slaughter, I think that the basic foods for the agricultural Orlanthi are pretty much covered by this.

I am a bit un-decided about the relation between bread consumption to porridge consumption to dairy soup consumption (like the butter soup I read about that appears to have been the staple of heroic Age Ireland). The Pater Noster emphasizes daily bread as the staple food for any (but possibly the richtest) status, but then wheat was the main source of protein (!) in the Roman Empire during which this prayer was created.

All storm-descended cultures (Orlanthi, Praxians, Malkioni) appear to be lactose-tolerant. The Doraddi rely on the Tanuku milk antelope, too. The East Isles might not, and have fishing for their source of animal nourishment. Not sure about the rice farming cultures (Peloria, Kralorela, Teshnos). Plowing implies the use of cattle or water buffaloes, both of which are sources for dairy. But then, as noted above, dairy consumption can be about butter (which is pretty poor in lactose or other carbohydrates) or cheese (another staple in a carbohydrate-free diet). Someone will consume the milk sugar products, though, whether whey or butter milk, and I don't think that they went into feeding cattle or pigs. They might go into feeding the children.

Strange stray thought - could adulthood initiation have been defined by the point when the children in lactose-intolerant herding cultures had to go away from lactose-based child feeding?

What to travelers eat? For the most part, whatever their hosts offer them whenever accepting hospitality, supplemented by bread or cheese or pemmican or dried fruits if the hospitality is restricted to use of water. Cooking porridge with earthware vessels is a 24 hour job (according to the people in the Danish experimental archaeology sites I talked to) which cannot be done on a journey. From yesterday's production of pea soup, the same goes for legume from the dried (transportable) stuff, unless you grind it up. Grinding requires stone implements like the quern, or possibly an earth ware mortar, neither of which are the most comfortable travel utensils.

Hunting and gathering takes up valuable daylight time that could be used for traveling. So does foraging.

How do marching armies cope with the problem of having a porridge after a day's march? IMO most likely by having a fresh porridge from a metal cauldron the morning before the march, and cold and stale leftover porridge from the morning with some more savory addition like meat in the evening after the march. The train is essential for warfare, without it, you cannot move armies away from their bases. Water logistics are incredibly important here, too - preparing a meal out of grain, lentils or similar transportable staple stuff requires a lot of water.

Making bread requires an oven, unless you count stick bread or flatbread prepared on heated stones. For a marching army, that would mean that bread produced by their train would require a camp of two or three days (at least) to get the ovens into operation,

How to pitch probably depends on who to pitch for.

Basically, you want to play the classical game in the classical setting. What's the harder sell, game system or setting?

System: No fire-ball tossing wizards or greater wishes, but devout priests and holy people calling down the aid or the wrath of their gods, and your characters able to do so on a smaller scale, too. No classes but backgrounds that define your skills and cults that define your magic.

I would collect the other stuff in three handouts for character creation - urban, nomad, occupation soldier (on leave? Dismissed?), and probably add the sturdy Pavis County/Sun Dome County farmer as another option. Perhaps even the "exotic refugee" type, origin at GM's discretion - showing that there is a rich background by asking leading questions and then providing a suitable background, although RQ2 pretty much excludes standard western chararacters with sorcery.

15 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Whereas Dragonewts rode Demi-Birds, that were effectively feathered dinosaurs.

I am not sure that the dinosaur connection was intended back then. As late as Anaxial's Roster, demibirds are listed alongside augners and ostriches as running birds.

Next thing we will have to decide is whether dragons have just scales or also some downs or even plumage (while retaining their chiropteroid wings), and how much plumage we have for the Earth Shaker or gazzam dinosaurs, and how much for the degenerate dragonewts.

The triceratops in the dragonewt picture and the Slon T Rex in the Guide are depicted as classical scaled reptiles.

Actually, the sources are quite unclear about this.

A typical clan has between 500 to 1000 members. The (nowadays moblle) computer game King of Dragon Pass (which managed to make me form a habit now on my 90 minute long bus rides) makes a number of assumptions which are mostly in keeping with what we find in Sartar - Kingdom of Heroes, Thunder Rebels, Sun County (the Garhound contest) and the Report on the Orlanthi in King of Sartar.

There appears to be a central village, usually around the chieftain's hall and the local temples and shrines not situated at isolated landmarks.

It isn't clear whether that hall is held by the chieftain's extended family and gets promoted to chieftain's hall when he is elected (in that case, owning/holding a suitable hall in a suitable location would be a prerequisite for being elected as chieftain), or whether it is a clan-owned drinking hall with living quarters for the current chieftain and his followers, away from his family stead. Knowing the Orlanthi, either statement is true. Special buildings like the silver-roofed Balmyr tribal king's hall in Halfort doubtlessly are of the latter type.

Property in an Orlanthi clan is difficult to describe, too. No individual person owns any land or stead, but usually the household head(s) of a family of appropriate status are assigned holdership of a stead. A steadholder household is at least of carl status. The stead may have more than carl household on its premises - each of these will have a modest longhouse which is half stable area for the kine, and half living and working area for the kin plus the hall where the steadholder holds his table. In addition, there are likely several lesser houses (cottages) of cottar families sharing that stead, probably slightly more than one per longhouse. These are similar in design to the longhouse, but a lot shorter lacking the hall portion and providing shelter for just a handful of cattle. Before construction of these houses, the future stead was assigned to the households. Erecting and maintaining the buildings falls to the households, who basically hold it on unlimited lease but may be ordered out by a powerful chieftain and/or a unified clan ring, depending on how strong the chieftain is and whether the steadholder or other resident households have earned special pleasure or displeasure.

A small stead will consist of a longhouse and maybe a cottage or three. A large (noble's) stead could resemble Apple Lane (aka Gringlestead), although usually with a lot less special/unusual buildings. The central village may or may not be addressed as a stead, and will house a number of noble and carl households, and a greater number of cottages. The central village of the Orlmarth clan is shown in Sartar - Kingdom of Heroes.

There may also be isolated or paired cottages, often belonging to hunters or crafters with unusual demands on location.

Another workshop-style building was the roundhouse, resembling a teepee above a hole in the ground with some low side walls.

More on special buildings later.

Overall, these arrangements resemble middle European settlement patterns which didn't change much between the neolithic farming communities and the post-Roman Iron Age. While there were regional variations in building style etc., these patterns appear to have been shared by Scandinavians, Germanic, continental Celtic and sedentary Danubian tribes. Only the mediterranean and the distand island Celts had somewhat different building types.

43 minutes ago, Iskallor said:

I interpreted the serpents pulling Ronance's chariot as being seasonal rivers which fertilised the wastes.

A myth comes to mind - Ronance, the lover of the many oasis spirits, who can make them gush forth...

The artwork that was used as the basis for Daniel Fahey's model of Ronance's chariot, IIRC featuring a Ken doll as the rider. I don't have my NG rules scanned in yet, so I cannot look those up, but knowing Daniel Fahey wearing his hat as a Praxian shaman this is based on good source evidence.

I would prefer something Jurassic rather than Cretaceous. And I imagined them to have much mor musculous upper thighs on their hind legs.

Ronance and movement: His connection to the magical roads is well documented. He doesn't cause fertility, but helps find it in the Wastes. His chariot wheels are movement runes.

More thoughts on the bola:

It attacks by attacking the mobility of the target. I suppose that magical bolas would be able to capture a target's movement and transfer it to the rider. Maybe a standard Mobility charm among the Bola riders.

1 minute ago, David Scott said:

That's correct, the Bolo Lizard Founder is unknown to me at the moment, but undoubtedly the source of their movement rune. It's clearly the "Lizard God".

The bola is the physical manifestation of the movement rune.

Do you think that the Bolo Riders have a special connection to Ronance (after all a god with reptilian associations and the movement rune)?

If you want to adapt more recent dinosaur lore for the bolos, please keep in mind these "design" restrictions based on the Nomad Gods boardgame:

- they are herbivores

- when running (on two legs, ostrich-like) they extend their heads on their long necks horizontally to the front and their tails horizontally to the rear, allowing their riders maximum freedom to whirl their bolas about.

I'd make their tribal element earth and refrain from giving them downy feathers. The beasts aren't supposed to be intelligent, that's what they have their riders for.

Like the ostrich riders, bolo riders are rather territorial for Praxians since they have to guard their nesting sites. Bolo lizard eggs ought to resemble dragonewt eggs more than ostrich eggs, with quite leathery, not very chalcic shells. The used shells might be a good material for Praxian armor.

I don't think that they have any relation to Storm Bull other than through the Waha chieftain lineages that probably married into the tribe at the time of the Covenant.

IMO the lizards are beasts of the Covenant and can be ridden by Impala Riders, Ostrich Riders and not too large Sable Riders, or by children or midgets of other tribes. Bulls/cocks are ridden or slaughtered, while cows/hens are kept for laying eggs.

Zebra riders are tolerated - Olgkarth, the zebra chief who accompanied Dorasar to Pavis, lived among the Pol Joni with his tribe.

Given the reliance of the Zebra riders on horse mares to breed their cavalry zebras, I would expect a small permanent presence of Zebra riders among the Pol Joni.

There is a way around the marriage rites. A lot of the fertility festivals include a period of divine licence even for married couples, not necessarily restricted to the re-enactors of the rites. A good marriage will use these opportunities to make children within wedlock, an infertile marriage (including homosexual relations) will take this as an opportunity to overcome their biological restrictions.

In Orlanthi society there are no (non-ritual) marriages within a clan, except for widows (who are from another clan in most cases) remarrying in order to stay with their children. The person who joins the marriage partner's clan will bring a dowry which is used by the pair while the marriage lasts, and when it ends the person from outside of the clan will be re-imbursed this dowry from the host clan. It doesn't really matter which sex the mobile partner of the marriage had, or which sex the clan member had.

Whenever a household (formed by marriage) is dissolved, the household property is distributed according to the dowry, the (few) personal belongings of the involved clan member, and the hosting clan, whose council might re-distribute the accumulated wealth to other households in the clan. While a former carl is unlikely to become a stickpicker due to a divorce or widowing, massive loss of available wealth might be a consequence of a separation.

True old timer - not quite. While I read about RQ when I started roleplaying around 1984, it wasn't before the Games Workshop edition of RQ3 that I got my hands on the system (around 1989), which led me to translate it to German. Then I met Lutz Reimers who had already finished his translation at STARD convention in Hamburg, which led to me attending part of the first German RuneQuest convention 1990 in Cologne, and after my return from a year working in Norway (1991-1992) joining the Deutsche RuneQuest-Gesellschaft and taking over their magazine Free INT for 6 issues.

In 1993 I was still a newcomer to Glorantha, with about three years of reading and a bit of Gloranthan gaming (mostly Dragon Pass and very few Gloranthan convention games) and the tentative beginnings of my Glorantha index (started in the solitude of northern Norway to reconcile the RQ3 Genertela Box data with the Pavis info, then including data from King of Sartar) under my belt when I joined the RQ Daily. That means I missed 15 years of RuneQuest/Glorantha activity... I do admit to having been one of the most prolific writers in the early years of daily mailing lists, but RQ2 and all its supplements were mythic tomes back then, unavailable in provincial Germany.

In a way, this late entry (compared to the RQ2 clan who are the real old timers) into the Glorantha tribe may have sharpened my awareness about how difficult it can be to start with Glorantha. Back in the early 1990ies, things looked rosy for Glorantha, with the RQ3 Renaissance, King of Sartar and an active community on the internet, a number of Glorantha-themed conventions all around the world (Leicester, Baltimore, Melbourne, Germany). In fact, 2016 may be the first year since the mid nineties which offers more specialized convention activity than those years.

Some things have changed. In those early days of the Digest, we felt that we could still shape the official Glorantha with our ideas, and I guess that we managed to influence some of those bits. Now we have this huge body of canonical Glorantha in the shape of the Guide to Glorantha, which I personally think of as "a good start". We also have a huge backlog of not so canonical any more Gloranthan publications with great ideas still worth using in your campaigns. Now we no longer try to fit material into a temporarily static 1618-1621 setting (or harkening back into historical periods) but we can take the info from the Guide, warp it with events vaguely described in the prophecies, and produce heavily altered settings for gaming in the era that we first visited with the battles in the Dragon Pass (or even White Bear and Red Moon) boardgame.

In my advice I forgot one component for getting familiar with Glorantha which helped me a lot - exchanging GM info with other GMs in adjacent areas. I was involved in several such cooperations, such as the Wilmskirk Tribal Federation info exchange which had campaigns for all four tribes putting together their data, or the Whitewall Wiki. As a narrator I felt a lot more secure about presenting a living world by getting feedback from the other campaigns in the neighborhood, discussing scenario ideas and outcomes.

So if you want to have a review board of other Gloranthan GMs, go networking. One of the most recent technologies are private G+ groups where GMs invite interested people to have a look at their campaign and current scenarios. Even if you should get no new input to improve your campaign (an unlikely case), presenting your plans before actually playing them out will make you focus, formulate and fine-tune your ideas. You don't have to be a GM with 20 years of Glorantha experience. Some of the people who comment or listen in are bound to be, make use of their experience.

12 hours ago, stefoid said:

Would it be too far from canon to have a clan that was historically against female warriors and against homosexual relationships?  I ask because it could be a nice source of friction within the a clan.  Not as the main focus, but as one of the things going on that could come to a head over time.

Use a clan which includes fairly orthodox Yelmalians - in the Yelmalio cult these things are pretty much a controversial issue, up to having geasa specifically prohibiting such activities.

1 hour ago, David Scott said:

I spent a bit of time justing this as I wrote it over three years ago and stuff changes. It doesn't include the explanation section. However note that in Cults of Prax there were no Storm Bulls in the Sables (or Humakti). The lack of them was often put down to the Sables Lunar collaboration, however that's not the case. The Mythical genealogy of the Sables is different. Storm Bull is not the Father of their founders, it's the Twinstars themselves.

 This is a Big Change to conceived knowledge. Do the other Praxian myths (like descent from the Spike, following Storm Bull) still apply?

Or will we find similar revelations about the other Founders?

Quote

The Younger and the Elder produced the Twin Founders of the Sables with Eiritha. They in turn produced the Seven Sable Daughters with the Sable Protectress, who in turn married Waha's Khan dynasties and produced the Sable phratries. There were actually an unknown number of Sable Daughters, but since the Lunar connection was revealed, it's become seven - 5 in the Wastes, the Hungry Plateau Sables and the lost one. This family tree change modifies the chart found in Cults of Prax for the Sables only. Storm Bull exists in his chaos killer form in small numbers only

So the Storm Bull descent comes only indirectly through the Waha Khan dynasties (which make sense as such, given that the majority of the Sable Riders started out without Storm Bull as ancestor. Nowadays one can expect every Sable Rider to have some Waha Khan as an ancestor, but at a guess 2/3 of them not through a direct male line. (Compare the genetic evidence for direct male line Cohanim descent in the Jewish population, as cited in one of the Science of Diskworld books.)

How did the female appearance of the Twinstars at the gates of Glamour come across? Shamanic gender uncertainty (vaguely remembered from another thread on the Hungry Plateau Sables)?

And what is the chance that the Twinstars are offspring of Storm Bull?

1 hour ago, David Scott said:

The Earth Guardians xet. Pelora ex and Gerendetho et. Accepts both men and women. Has a shaman path.

 

x: Fertility Rune

e: Earth Rune

t: Death Rune

Correct?

The Orlanthi have several somewhat accepted roles for non-standard sexual behavior. Vinga is of course the butch daughter of Orlanth, protector and fighter, the role for women in the Orlanth cult. Heterosexuality isn't necessary in this role. Then there is Nandan, the role for males in Ernalda roles. Heler stands for sexual mutability, up to physical gender changes as the mood demands (in especially magical people), but any kind of sexual orientation can be found in this cult. Yinkin is known for rampant sexuality, not necessarily about crossing gender borders, but almost anything goes. Humakt accepts anyone, regardless of gender, so do the Lightbringer cults Issaries, Lhankor Mhy and Chalana Arroy.

Note that it might be considered "straight" to interact with some of these above in their adopted sexual role even if the person bearing that role doesn't have the gender for it.

Overall, the Orlanthi care about marriage, but not so much about sexual activities as long as they don't contradict marriage (e.g. sexual activity in cultic activities doesn't count against marital vows, but many such are forms of the lightest form of Orlanthi marriage.)

The MP spent definitely add to the strike rank - just like boosting the spell (in order to bypass Countermagic) or similar extra MP expenditures do. It is still better than Heal - you can do a Heal Wound 10 to restore a leg, chest or abdomen wound from -5 to +5.

How much is water/thirst an issue for a troll or trollkin presence in the wastes? I am still thinking about a heroic rebel trollkin civilization somewhere remote if a troll society should decide to get rid of those weaklings.

The compromise isn't about friendship, but about grudging toleration. The Solars don't have to like the fact that the sun isn't in the night sky, and the uz don't need to be happy about either being tormented by the unbearable brightness of Yelm or knowing that he keeps devastating their former paradise every night.

Kyger Litor's honor (as far as that is relevant to uz society, as opposed to her hunger or her fertility) demands revenge on the Bright One who damaged her womb, reducing her fertility once more - the first such damage was when dead Brightface caused the Mistress race to give birth to the stunted uzko.

Uzko doesn't translate as dark troll, but as hurt troll or burnt troll. And referring to a thread in the Glorantha group over on G+, maybe part of the hurt was the loss of all shape adjustment for the males, and much of it for the females of the uzko: https://plus.google.com/u/0/108824867722453475707

Luckily the previous experience of Zorak Zoran with Aether inside Gata's womb gave them a viable though somewhat hurtful template to reform. There was no such template when D'Wargon invaded the Black Eater, resulting in the parody of uzness that the enlo are.

Might some uz greet sunrise as the sun fleeing from Wonderhome? Sunset is when it invades Wonderhome again (and again and again).

Not sure my google-fu is stronger, but try this:

https://www.google.de/search?q=map+%22zola+fel%22&biw=1431&bih=715&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiqk4Lc2avKAhVEtg8KHWkYBowQsAQIXw

I happen to own an extra shrink-wrapped copy of MOB's Avalon Hill book Sun County I'd be willing to part with (sale or swap), if you're interested. Location is Germany.

The maps from Borderlands/River of Cradles probably still are the gold standard for the region.

I know that the gang I played RQ with enjoyed their gritty combat since it gave them tactical options (and spotlight) even while I tried to play through stories.

About killing someone with a tea cup - that's not weapon use, that's death magic, range touch. Can be done in any simulationist game.

Weapon porn or skill porn is part of the "roleplaying" experience for a considerable subset of the gamers, even outside of munchkinism.

For many players, roleplaying is about the personal experience, about shared memories in overcoming obstacles or achieving goals. These get embedded similar to personal memories if the gaming experience was good, regardless whether it was a narrativist game or a game of crunchy simulationism.

So: the initiative to identify the enjoyable parts of the rules you are using is fine. The selections may be subject to personal bias, though, and only the compromise as per gaming group will result in increased enjoyability. My bogeyman could be my fellow gamer's holy grail.

Getting an antelope lancer to go native with the Sable riders probably would require contact with other phratries (or what are those sub-tribes with their own queens called) than the two currently allied with the Empire. The relations between the Hungry Plateau sable riders and those Praxians are best caught in the old joke "What has six legs and an asshole on its back?" - this is told by the Lancers about their arrogant Praxian allies. Not vice versa.

Of course, there is always cherchez la femme as a good reason to go native. I even applied that to my Storm Bull NPC Hrut the Thirsty who had the hots for a Paps priestess. And the Paps would be the most likely place to encounter sable riders from those other sub-tribes, especially female ones.

The guide names the powers of the Twin Stars as Eloquence with Barbarians and Deadly Distraction in Crisis. Neither are really useful for soldiers in the Antelope Lancers, and I would expect them to be a women's cult rather than a male cult on the Hungry Plateau.

I don't see the importance in letting the Antelope Lancers have Lunar magics over conventional (probably spirit charm) ones. As a non-magical cavalry unit (according to their stats in the Dragon Pass boardgame), their business magics are likely to pertain to fighting with their lance and for dealing with their steeds, plus protection for steed and rider. The magic of sharing the same ancestor is useful on a regimental level, but not on an individual level unless you carry one or more along in your charms.

If Gerendetho displaces Waha as the everyman's patron on the Hungry Plateau, then I guess Gerendetho would be the default rank-and-file denomination. Spears and antelopes seem to fit his portfolio.

6 minutes ago, charlesvajr said:

YGMV but I still see no reason not to give a Spirit of Fire, fire. Yelmalio may have lost his flame, but not all the lesser powers of Fire did. Firshala, for instance, still retains a lesser elemental for use along with a connection to minor (Battle) magical fire.

FWIW IMG Sun Hawk is the Praxian version of Yelmalio. The full fiery glory of the sun may have rested with Splendid Yamsur, but Sun Hawk never was the Golden Age sun, only its perception.