Jeff

OK, let's take Damalstan the sorcerer. He's got an INT of 17 and POW of 16. He's got a 5 point magic crystal and a bound spirit with 13 magic points - that gives him 34 in total. Damalstan knows the following Runes: Fire, Truth, and Movement, and he knows two Techniques - Summon and Tap. He's already nearly maxed on the Runes and Techniques he can master. He can know up to 17 spells, but right now he only knows 6 - Conflaguration 65%, Steal Warmth 50%, Enhance INT 35%, Memorize 40%, Reveal Rune 35%, and Summon Fire Elemental 30%. Conflaguration, Steal Warmth, Enhance INT, and Memorize are all at the normal magic point cost - but Reveal Rune and Summon Fire Elemental have double magic point costs (he hasn't mastered all the Runes/Techniques of the spell, but can rely on knowledge from related Runes/Techniques). Damalstan always carries around a lit lamp (to give him a bonus on his Fire Rune spells, and a "Y" shaped staff to help him on his Truth spells. When his friends are attacked by broo, Damalstan decides to cast a powerful Conflaguration - a 2 point spell - on the toughest looking of the broos. He decides to add 11 magic points to the strength of the spell. That means Damalstan will spend two full rounds casting the spell, and it will go off on round three. Hopefully, his friends can hold them that long. Round three happens, and Damalstan rolls to cast his spell - he has a base of 65% plus 6% for the silly lamp he always carries around (he rolled a 6). Damalstan rolls a 23 - a success. He marks off 13 magic points and a fire hot enough to melt lead is summoned on the broo leader - and it does 3D6 damage to a hit location. No magic resistance roll is necessary - this is a real fire! It does 13 points of damage - and if the broo does not move away, he'll take damage next round! However, Damalstan is now down to 21 magic points and needs to be careful about trying to do this again!

The "effectiveness" of RQ3 sorcery is not why it was broken - in truth RQ3 sorcerers, particularly once they had high skills, a familiar and spell matrixes, spirits, etc, were absurdly overpowered. Let's not look at munchkin monstrosities like Arlaten or Aziok - even Maculus the Monitor was just a nightmare to manage as a NPC. It was over-powered, soulless, and made little sense within the overall setting. The new RQ sorceryis the least effective per magic point of the three systems, but unlike spirit magic you can put 15 additional magic points to bump up the strength of your spell to impressive levels.

Yep. Most cultures consider Tapping to be evil. However, knowledge of Tapping is inherent in every technique and Tapping goes a long way to solving the biggest in-game problem sorcerers have - a ready supply of magic points. Thus there is a constant moral dilemma - do I learn a forbidden and evil spell (which solves a major in-game impediment) or not? And these sorts of moral dilemmas are always worth giving players, as they create roleplaying possibilities.

I think that is inevitable anytime you translate something into another medium (like from book to film or film to tv series). Different rules systems are very different media and deal with very different things. What matters is keeping the essential elements (and deciding what are the essential elements). Jeff

Although this is not in the book, the Brithini practice a many tier system. For every caste restriction they maintain, they get a bonus to their Free Int. Each time they violate one, they forever lose one point. And forever is a very long time for the Brithini. The Rokari are trying to recreate the Brithini system by adopting their restrictions and thus gaining additional Free INT. But again, violate the taboo, and you forever lose the bonus.

Tap transforms a Rune into energy (ie magic points). It is a fantastically useful way to recharge your magic points or even temporarily give you more magic points than your POW permits. So frex, if you Steal Breath (Tep+Air), you convert 3 cubic meters of air into 1D6 magic points per round. For each 2 points of strength added to the spell, another 3 cubic meters of air is converted into 1D6 more magic points. And yes, you can potentially asphyxiate someone with this, while gaining magic points. Separate removes one Rune from another. One healing spell temporarily separates Death from Man and restores a damaged body to its original condition.

Yes. But it is also deliberately not being tested using people who have strong preconceived notions what they want or don't want to see in a sorcery rules (or any other rules). Just people who want to play with it and give me objective feedback (such as "hey we found that the sorcerer's ability to cause damage in combat was way greater/way less than anyone else in the party - even though she specialized in combat magic").

If you are playing a Lunar you need to know the day of the week. For initiates of a cult, you need to know when your next holy day is. Greg, David, and myself - we've always kept a game calendar. Heck, why do you think calendars are present in so many Gloranthan supplements? I for one don't mind a rolling dice to have some variable bonuses.

Sorcerers tend to cast spells they have just learned very slowly, using the ceremony and time/location/component bonuses to improve their chances of spell casting. For folk wanting to cast "combat spells" those time/location/component bonuses are going to matter tremendously. Damastol the Fire Sorcerer will be much better at casting Conflaguration on Fire Day in Fire Season than on Waterday of Sea Season. He'll probably insist on carrying around a lit lantern or carry a magical fire crystal. So Damastol, who starts with Conflaguration at 60% (starting at 20%, plus putting one of his four 25% options in the spell, plus his Magic bonus), is pretty good with the spell. He gets to add +D10% for having his torch or lantern handy. f he personally has the Fire Rune, he might try to augment with that Rune. He's going to have a good chance of summoning a big fire at a place within the range of the spell. I But if Damastol then tries to learn Reveal Rune and starts at 20% (1D6+ Magic bonus), he's going to almost always want to augment using ceremonial magic. So he might perform long lengthy rituals to identify a particular Rune. Or go out of his way to cast the spell on Truth Week, while carrying a "Y" shaped staff.

A grimoire is a "book" thematically tied to a Rune that contains various formulae that function as spells to overcome obstacles. It is very abstract, as befits the HeroQuest system - just as Rune magic in HQ lets you use one of your personal runes "to do stuff like your god does".

Grimoires work just fine for narrating sorcery in HQ. HQG sorcery characters and RQ sorcery characters "feel" intellectual and philosophical who are trying to logically understand and code magic. The mechanics for it vary greatly depending on the system - just as how a sword fight gets handled in HQ is completely different from how it gets handled in RQ.

All spells themselves are noun+verb (Rune(s)+Technique(s). However, you can't cast impromptu magic in RQ. You can create new spells, but that takes time. As for how you master a Rune or Technique for purposes of sorcery, originally each was going to be a skill, but in play that was tedious and added nothing to the experience. Now you just need to spend a season and try to make your INT+POWx1 (potentially modified by ceremony, which can add a lot of additional time. The number of Runes and Techniques you can master is limited by your INT. You need to have an INT of 13 to master one Rune and one Technique. For each additional point of INT, a sorcerer can know one more. Thus to master all the Techniques, you need to have an INT of at least 18 (and you will have mastered only one Rune). So in practice, sorcerers tend to have very high INT, master two or three Techniques (either Tap or Command as a base), and two or three Runes maximum. This gives them very flexible magic, but also requires that they "specialize" in types of spells. If Damastol (INT 17) masters Command, Tap, Dispel, Truth, and Fire, we can have a pretty good idea of the spells he can do cost-effectively. But he also might want to learn a few spells that are more magic point expensive, but really useful for him.

Expecting sorcery mechanics in RQ to match how we narrate stuff in HQG or 13G or KoDP is IMO silly. Basically in HQ, you know a book and can use the formulas in that book to overcome obstacles. Nothing needs to be scaled in HQ because everything is essentially the same mechanic. RQ has a LOT more moving pieces, uses resource depletion (hit points, magic points, and rune points - as well as Lunars, potions, etc.) in order to generate tension and force choices.

Let's see in RQ3, a sorcerer needed four separate skills to manipulate spells (as well as the skill for the spell itself), spells had no connection with the core magical themes of the setting, sorcerers used familiars to get around the sorcery rules, there was no guidance for how to create new spells (as a result, new spells were rarely created), and most importantly, the effects of sorcery at high intensity, duration, or range thoroughly overpowered Rune magic or spirit magic. As a result, an RQ3 sorcerer was a book-keeping mess and a power-gaming nightmare. In RQ4, sorcerers need to specialize in a few Runes and Techniques and then learn spells accordingly. Or learn spells that rely on a related technique (which is why the best two Techniques to learn are Command or Tap - everything other Technique can be inferred from either of those). They need plenty of magic points. They also want to use the natural Runic ecology in order to increase their chance of casting a spell - and will tend to use ceremonial magic that takes much longer to cast, but can dramatically increase the chance of success.

The core book of the new RuneQuest covers pretty much everything that was in RQ2 - we removed the bestiary into a different book because I wanted to include more information about monsters, make more monsters truly playable, and illustrate it. The third book contains stuff that was pretty much not in the RQ2 rules at all - rules on heroquesting, battles, becoming a hero, Dragon Pass encounters (with actual statted information), and scenarios. So I don't think of that as a fair comparison in the slightest.

Bronze Age. Like this:

Joy is not the same as Illumination. Joy is a transcendent moment of unity with the Invisible God - with the ineffable moral reason behind everything. Illumination is a transcendent moment where one is liberated from the illusion that there is law, reason, or indeed anything.

We are putting together a combination of both. Frex, the Gamemaster book will have several stand-alone adventures, but we already are putting together the first campaign pack, which will be one of the first subsequent publications.

New scenarios are a top priority for us.

Have no doubts about it, the Avalon Hill period very nearly killed RuneQuest. Three basic reasons: 1. Too little, too late. Although Avalon Hill ultimately ended up printing 19 supplements for RuneQuest, let's look at that a bit more carefully. I don't have my MiG handy, but these included: Character sheet boxed sets. Enough said. Trollpack, Into the Troll Lands, Haunted Ruins, Apple Lane, and Snakepipe Hollow - reprints of RQ2 material (with new RQ3 stats and sometimes strangely edited). Daughters of Darkness and Elderad - two of the worst supplements ever. Monster Colosseum - an incomplete product that combined a pretty cool set of encounters, with a badly flawed attempt to reskin Circus Maximus. Griffin Island - Griffin Mountain with the soul and internal logic torn out. Although I did like Soldier Port. So that's nine out of the seventeen. The nine remaining were golden - Gods of Glorantha, Genertela, Vikings, Ninja, Sun County, River of Cradles, Shadows on the Borderlands, Strangers in Prax, and Dorastor. But the new playable Gloranthan material was all from 1992-1994, after which Avalon Hill simply gave up on the line and the rights returned to Chaosium. RQ3 probably would have done a lot better had Vikings and Ninja been product lines, with multiple books. Or had Mythic Earth actually been used in anything other than the examples. But for most of the market, the rules remained anchored to Glorantha, and there was no new scenario material until 1992. 2. Terrible relationship with the Chaosium creative team. Avalon Hill was purely a publisher, and contracted with Chaosium to create its product - the few times it did not were terrible disasters. You can ask Greg how well that relationship worked. And by 1988, Greg was trying to write something more "Gloranthan" than RQ3. 3. No real interest in the underlying product. Avalon Hill didn't have any personal love (or likely even interest) in RuneQuest beyond it being something that could keep their printers running. The pre-Ken Rolston era product shows that. Once Chaosium got RQ back in the mid-1990s, there was no real interest by Greg in doing much with RQ. Several projects were started to create what would be "RQ4," but Greg ultimately rejected all of them (Oliver's draft RQ4 was just one of several proposals out there). Greg was writing Glorantha material (heck that is one of his most prolific periods, with GRoY, FS, Harmast's Saga and lots more getting drafted), but Chaosium was not publishing RQ. And wouldn't until 2016 - over twenty years after AH lost the license. Now it is interesting that if you ask Greg, Ken, Steve, etc., which version of RQ they thought was better designed, you'll almost always get a quick response, "RQ 2". If you ask other game designers - Frank Mentzer, Mark Rein-Hagen, Rob Heinsoo, Jonathan Tweet, Robin Laws, etc., you'll usually get the same answer. There's flaws in RQ2 (which we hopefully have fixed with the new RQ), but it fundamentally was better built than RQ3.

Entru is a husband/son of Ketha and mother of Entruli. He's worshiped by the Haradlaro of Longsi Land. He's a son of Orlanth.

A few followup things on the "Harandings", Helerites, and Handra. 1. In the Dawn Age the Harandings were Orlanth-worshiping folk who rode upon tuskers and served the elves of the Arstola Forest. They may even have had some connection with the Aramites of the Ivory Plinth. Harand was a Storm Age king who quarreled with Jarani, allied with Argan Argar and his trolls, and died after breaking his oath to Orlanth (this is the Haranding version of the story) - much like Hrolf Kraki lost his luck in war after he offended Odin. In the Second Age, the Haradlaro raised pigs but no longer rode upon them. They were within the orbit of the EWF, but likely maintained traditional worship of Orlanth, Ernalda, Mralota, Ketha, and Ezkankekko/Argan Argar. In the Third Age, the Haradlaro acknowledge the suzerainty of the Queendom of Esrolia (who is also queen of Nochet since around 1450 or so). 2. Lots of Manirians claims Heler as an ancestor. But keep in mind - a Third Age Manirian claiming Heler as an ancestor is a lot like an Ptolemaic Egyptian claiming Narmer as an ancestor. 3. Handra bears little resemblance to its Tradetalk writeup. Its founders were refugees from Ralios seeking to fulfill a prophecy and survivors from sunken Slontos. It was little more than a collection of fishing villages in the mouth of the Noshain until the Opening, when it rapidly transformed itself into a commercial frenemy of Nochet. I tend to think its cultural is largely purchased/copied from Esrolia, although sorcerers (especially sorcerers fleeing from Safelster or Nolos and Pithdarans) are much more common. The temple of Handra Liv, the city's patron goddess, sponsors many mercantile adventures.

OK, the source for all canonical discussions is the Guide to Glorantha. YGMV, but it may also get contradicted in official publications. Blood Over Gold and Tradetalk are wildly non-canonical and not even recommended reading for writers. 1. The Esrolians call them the Western Barbarians (because although their language is Theyalan, it is not mutually intelligible with Esrolian - in RQ terms you can speak Western Barbarian tongues at 1/5th your Esrolian. In comparison, you can speak Heortling at 1/2 your Esrolian.). Lhankor Mhy types call the eastern tribes Wenelians, and the western tribes Manirians, or sometimes call them all Manirians. The Orlanthi pantheon of Orlanth, Ernalda, and Esrola are the primary gods, with the Esrolian Ernalda cult particularly influential. Issaries is also broadly worshiped, especially by the Trader Princes. Heler is an ancestor and fertility god. Veskarthan (Lodril) and his children are also worshiped by many of the tribes. The Solanthi and Ditali are pretty mainstream Orlanthi. Kero Fin is the home of Orlanth (although Arrowmound is their local sacred mountain (although the northern Solanthi also have an Orlanth cult centered on Ramor Mountain). Orlanth is less predominant among the Manirians, although in Nimistor, the Orlanth cult centered on Sylor Mountain is very important. The speculation on the Harandings in Blood Over Gold and Tradetalk is wildly unofficial. The Haradlaro worship Orlanth and Heler, but their king, Longsi, allied with the Grandmothers against the Hendrikings during Aranda's War and received the city of Kosh in return. The locals have a deserved reputation for being troublemakers and bandits. Their current (c 1627) rulers are Queen Nevaleen of Kosh and Velentru the Wild Man. The Haradlaro don't resemble the writeups given in Blood Over Gold or Tradetalk - and heck, they are in Esrolia, not Maniria or Wenelia. 2. Malkioni from the Silver Empire likely came to Ramalia circa 145 in the entourage of Veakmal and his sorceress wife. In 758, the city states of Slontos allied with the Middle Sea Alliance to expel the Loper People, which reached its culmination with the utter defeat of the Loper People by Emperor Svagad. Svagad incorporated Slontos into the Middle Sea Empire. 3. Ramor mountain is a sacred peak of Orlanth and the center of a local cult influential among the Solanthi. A pass through the Mislari mountains would enable direct communication between the Orlanthi kingdoms of East Ralios (settled in the First Age and still known in songs and stories) and Esrolia and Dragon Pass. In the Second Age, fliers used to connect East Ralios to the Kingdom of Dragon Pass and later EWF, but that magic is now lost.

Ducks do not ride. Not ostriches, not donkeys, not ponies.

One thing worth mentioning - use of Praxian beasts as mounts by non-Praxians is fairly common in Dragon Pass.