Roko Joko

How many cows do you have to sacrifice for a one-POW blessing?

I feel like with a modest set of sources, you can get a playable view of Lunar philosophy.  Mythology less so.
* HeroQuest Voices
* Prince of Sartar
* HQG or Pavis: Gateway (or RQG I guess) on the Seven Mothers
* later this year, RQG on illumination and the Red Goddess cult
Modest, but still scattered and not beginner-friendly.

And myself, I would still like to know more about the heartland: New Lunar, Lodrili, and Yelmic gods, with enough information that I could make up reasonable cults for one as a variation on an existing cult writeup; and most of all the Pelorian custom of not initiating.  Culturally, who does initiate and to what gods, and what are the roles and relations of initiates and non-initiates?  Mechanically, do Pelorian non-initiates just "suck"?

Yeah, you should reach for magical explanations as soon as any other.

But you might also want to know things like who can and can't build domes and why.

It doesn't mean anything and the people knocking on your door definitely aren't Krarsht assassins.

About windmills, www.glorantha.com/docs/devil/ mentions Zzabur using them in the ice age but that could just be mythical.

About compound pulleys, they're magical to me, so I don't have much of a credibility problem saying they're magical in Glorantha.

9_9

3 hours ago, g33k said:

@Jeff -- d'you think it'd be possible to get a "source art" page...

He posted a lot of these while the Guide was being written.  More as "behind the scenes" kinds of things than formal go-to references.  I think he has done so from time to time since then, too - such as with the armor above.

I thought it was a wind lord mainly because gods have so rarely been depicted directly, but MOB asserted it was Orlanth in a post here last June.  But you know, with heroquesting and heroforming - whatever.

1 hour ago, g33k said:

I've been loving the homage pieces to the old cover, and an emotional bit off me wishes it had continued.

But I this is a strong cover, and I expect it will attract eyes & new customers; and none of the grognards will skip it just because there's no female-fighter facing a rock-lizard / slarge / etc.

They said the person on Orlanth's left is her.

"Note from MOB: [part 23] is the final "Designing the New RuneQuest" column (hey, it's designed!). But we'll be back very soon with a new regular feature what's happening with RQG."

I don't know that elves necessarily need to have a direct correspondence to particular types of trees.  Green elves could be like conifers, etc.

One way to reconcile different in-world art styles is to say they're from different eras.  For example it's easy to imagine that the Icelandic aprons in King of Dragon Pass were worn at the time, but have gone out of fashion 400 years later.

On 2/21/2018 at 1:40 PM, Grievous said:

To be honest I don't really remember a place where Orlanth was consistently and definitely depicted, but I'm talking about a general feel for his appearance I've picked up from Hero Wars/Heroquest era material (and also some Runequest stuff I've seen). Basically, I remember him as a bare-chested ur-Orlanthi, not much different from the Orlanthi you might otherwise see or maybe even from a generalized vision of Thor. I guess he could've been blue back then as well, but I only remember black and white pictures.

OK, well *I* remember zero pictures in which Orlanth is depicted directly, rather than as something like a statue or a fresco, except for in the HeroQuest stills in King of Dragon Pass.

If you can't remember any either, your impression might not be a true memory.

16 hours ago, Grievous said:

this certainly wasn't how Orlanth was portrayed as I remember it

You remember it from where?

A lot of the new art in these books is excellent and some of it is outstanding and inspirational.  Good job.

Link?

(never mind)

No need for bronze mail IMG, especially with the current bronze age styling.  There can still be bronze scale armor.  But if you can make mail out of aluminum or lead, say, that's another reason to wear those other metals.

I'll wait for the boxed set.

@MOB Do you want to create a new forum for 13G the game? 

14 minutes ago, boztakang said:

powerful underworld demons are never going to be terribly docile or predictable. After all, even the most friendly and well-meaning ancestors from the god time may not properly realize that YOU are mortal, and that killing and eating you is not just harmless fun anymore, like it would have been in wonderhome.

🤘

13 hours ago, MOB said:

Hazia was a recurring plot element in the RuneQuest Club Campaign at our university RPG club in the mid-1980s

Yes, although to elaborate on that, Jar-Eel is both the prime demigod of the Red Goddess and (according to some speculative lore from Sandy I think?) the one true Harmony rune avatar.  So certainly devoted to Harmony... just in a Lunar way.  Maybe a Disorder rune champion rises after Harrek kills her.  Not that Harrek isn't disorderly and he dies with her in a way (a balance rather than a cycle), but that same avatar lore say's he's the Death avatar, so.

It's kind of like tarot cards or astrology, you can interpret the symbols different ways.

Yeah, with runes it's always tricky to draw a clear line between flavor and cosmological fact.

I will be interested to see what they do in RQG with runes that are pretty core, like Communication, but are not on the character sheet. Looking at the quickstart I see they did the Harmony + Movement shoehorn for Issaries, but that's an easy one.  In general it will be interesting to see if and how they shoehorn everything.

harmony is associated with music, healing, and peace, with the heortling story of umath using harmony as a weapon as a prominent exception.  I think you you could interpret all three associations in terms of balance.

moon balance is associated with cycles and is more destructive, like with the lunar goddess whose body has black and white halves, or the idea of the red moon's destruction being expected and desired.