Jeff

We initially tried this and boy there was strong pushback from the players who wanted an intuitive and exciting combat system more than they worried about whether something perfectly modelled "realistic" combat. And make no mistake, the former greatly outnumbers the latter. So as in all things, a balance was struck.

Dude, I have no idea what you are talking about.

It greatly precedes Pete for us. Combining attack and parry into a single skill for me goes back to the mid-90s, with Pendragon Pass and having the incongruity of separate skills for attack and parry being hammered home by Mike Gibson. Players react well to it and it grasp the idea pretty intuitively. Combining weapons into another skill OTOH gets a surprising amount of player pushback - especially from players who aren't OCD about "realism" but just want exciting combat with fairly intuitive mechanics (I strike, you parry, damage gets done), but who dislike the abstract attritional combat systems derived from D&D.

There are pros and cons to being part of my gaming group.

Of course BRP is alive. It is the engine behind Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest Glorantha, RuneQuest Fantasy Earth, and three other games in development. What we are not doing is trying to make a one-book fits all version of BRP, but instead tailor the engine to the setting and genre. Cthulhu and RuneQuest deal with different things, have different types of characters, and have different versions of BRP. But both are BRP games.

Magic is ONLY POW and CHA, not INT. Much, perhaps most, Gloranthan magic has nothing to do with one's ability to deal with abstractions and memorisation, but has everything to do with the power of one's soul and the strength of your personality.

I did NOT want to have the cover of RQG be another homage to RQ2 - I wanted it to be its own thing (just as the RQ3 cover was not an homage to RQ2). And I rejected having Skill Categories to be stat+stat for lots of design reasons that I really don't think I need to go into here. There will be a form-fillable version of the character sheet.

Probably has something to do with the fact that a sword does 1D8+1 damage and can slash or impale, while a shield only does 1D6 damage and can only crush. With only a 1D4 damage bonus, crush is far less interesting than impale or slash.

Agree fully!

Christine wanted to have her scribe be able to fight as well (her idea was to create a "Gloranthan Lara Croft"). Having the adventurers start at a solid proficiency with their chosen specialties does is open up options at the start of play. Combat is still deadly and challenging, but now the players can at least execute a well-planned ambush. The adventurers feel competent, not particularly powerful (and they are still a good dozen adventures away from any becoming Rune Masters - we've had over twenty adventures with them and only one has made Rune Master).

Actually, the word demigod comes from the Greek "hemitheoi", which meant "half-god" and didn't necessarily imply that one's had a divine parent. You could become a hemitheoi upon death. Demigod works perfectly fine for me. And since I am writing the rules, that's going to be the word I use.

What makes a hero a Demi-god? I suspect those words (or their Gloranthan equivalents) have a lot of overlap. Both have cults dedicated to them (usually connected with another cult). A Demi-god tends to be more broadly acknowledged than a mere hero (but not always), tends to have more of a divine presence (ie a bigger Hero Aspect), etc. But the definition and distinctions are not going to be very precise.

I use the terms hero and demigod. Although the terms certainly overlap, they are refreshingly free of the costumed connotations of superhero. WBRM merely needed two terms because Harrek, Jar-eel, and Androgeus needed some additional rules above and beyond those for Argrath, the Red Emperor, Ethilrist, etc. Having "hero" and "demigod" serves the same purpose. I suppose we could use "hero" and "greater hero" or "lesser hero" and "greater hero" - but "demigod" has better connotations.

The Clearwine style of architecture is pretty common in Dragon Pass (especially the areas settled from Esrolia and Hendrikiland). It is modelled on the hill villages of Southern France, Italy or the Balkans (the artist actually lives in a hill village of about 1000 people) - and actually is appropriate for a city with about 1500 residents, that is also a significant religious/political center.

Yes.

And in the conversion notes.

ALL prices have been recalculated. Old RQ2 (and even worse was RQ3) adventurers had to carry around a Kings Ransom just to buy training or a spell. The new RQ prices are now oriented towards 1 cow = 20 L as in HQ, but refined a lot further.

And that was the norm in many cultures. Then again, I can't hike barefoot without reducing my feet to bleeding stumps, but that was also the norm in many cultures.

Whichever one your character has a better skill at is best, of course.

Which gets reflected in RuneQuest, in that in most cases, one's ability to do stuff while mounted gets capped at your Ride skill. What we have found is that for Grazers or Praxians that is not much of a limit, as their Ride tends to be higher than their best weapon skill. But for settled folk, that is a significant limitation.

Encountering things on the Spirit World that you have no training or aptitude in dealing with.

You are correct. High Llamas don't start with great skills with Composite Bow as it is not used in ordinary life, but plenty of High Llama Riders know how to use composite bows. Especially those who serve as full-time warriors.

Hazia, as described in the RuneQuest rules, is far more potent that marijuana. When smoked or inhaled, it allows the soul to discorporate from the body, just like the Rune spell or shamanic ability. Worryingly, this effect lasts 1D6 hours! This is Glorantha, so it REALLY does that. And it is addictive as hell. That being said, we have one character who routinely abuses hazia in order to discorporate, deal with spiritual entities, and even engage in Spirit Combat.

I'm the creative director and editor-in-chief on this, which means I have to dig into each cult, make sure that they are integrated with each other, write the new myths, etc. Jason is there to make sure I do a good job at it. Although Greg had volunteers to help with the old RQ2 material, he ended up rewriting almost every submission. Very substantially in some cases.

Hence the reason it is going to be Gods of Glorantha. It is about the same number of cults as the RQ3 Gods of Glorantha, but all done long-form, with myths, history, more information, more spells, and the lot.