Jeff

Dragon Pass is coldest in Dark Season, with most precipitation in Storm and Sea Seasons. Fire and Earth seasons are hot, Sea Season warm. Storm Season is warm one day, then cold the next. Then warm again. And like in any mountainous area, how wet or warm it is depends on what side of what mountain you are. Frex, west of Mount Rainier is a rain forest, but east gets quite dry.

1 minute ago, Jon Hunter said:

Jeff one question is the climate of Satar Mediterranean or more temperate?

Dragon Pass has a strongly varied climate. Boldhome is only about 120 miles from the Choralinthor Bay. 

Sea Season it gets warm wet winds from the south.

Fire Season, it gets warm winds blowing from the southwest.

Earth Season is dry with winds coming from the east.

Dark Season alternates very cold winds coming across Peloria (although not nearly as cold as they were before the Glowline) with dry winds from the east.

Storm Season has big thunderstorms coming across Peloria into the Pass.

Just now, Jeff said:

I'd certainly commission art that looks far less Northern European today.

But one thing I really want to emphasize is that the Orlanthi of Dragon Pass are NOT Vikings, Irish or British Celts, or La Tene spiky haired Celts, or ancient Germans. They have a very different background, context, and society. And so naturally they have different architecture, different clothing, and different appearance. 

50 minutes ago, Steve said:

Jeff, would you say that the following illustrations from Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes are still accurate or not so much? How about those diagrams of the towns of Jonstown, Swenstown, Wilmskirk etc?

 

I'd certainly commission art that looks far less Northern European today.

Pottery, at least in Dragon Pass, Kethaela, and Maniria, I think is associated with the Earth goddesses. A subcult of Ernalda/Asrelia (let's just call her the Pot Goddess), she is the secret of making and decorating wombs of clay that hold grain, wine, oil, the remains of the dead, and much more. She is old - a daughter of Asrelia and Lodril, or perhaps Ernalda and Lodril (Earth cults often treat them as the same goddess, just at different stages of their life)

16 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Sure - lay membership of Issaries (or Etyries, or whichever cult is running the market) is highly advisable, even as customer. The question is rather whether membership in one Trader cult doesn't automatically make you an associate initiate of the other, giving you a choice of ritual roles in the market.

No it doesn't. Look Issaries and Argan Argar have very different roles. Issaries is the god of the marketplace. He protects its neutrality, protects his worshipers from thieves and cheats, and is the god of a place where commerce can happen.

Argan Argar is the god of surface darkness. He's not a god of markets. He's a god that is the darkness on the surface world - he lets you walk in the darkness, he brings the shadows, suppresses the light, and bars passage into the deeper darkness. He's the friendliest of Darkness gods towards the Earth, and as a result is sometimes seen as a "trade god" - but that's actually not his mythic or magical role. His cult monopolizes peaceable communication between the Darkness (trolls) and the surface world, which is why if you want to trade with the trolls, you need to go through Argan Argar.

If you want to be part of the merchants' guild, be protected by Issaries' magic, and have the right to sell goods in the Issaries market, I suspect you need to be at least a lay member (if not an initiate) of Issaries. Heck, in many cities, the Issaries market is the Issaries temple. When the members of the temple acts in city affair, we often call it "the Merchants Guild". But we'd be just as accurate to say "the Issaries cult". 

3 hours ago, Pentallion said:

To each their own but I will always use the tick box system.  Rosen nailed it.  that character sheet tells you something.  butchery?  How did I learn that?  So many unique and memorable characters developed skills they'd have never gotten good at using the RQ 6 method. 

RQ uses the tick box system. We've added a little bit on "Experience Between Adventures" which Greg wrote back in 1981 as part of the Dragon Pass Campaign materials.

7 hours ago, Jon Hunter said:

I see Pavis as very different than Dragon pass, the main reasons being climate. 

Anyway our gloranthas may vary, so my dragon pass has square esrolian design, long houses and round houses which reflect the air and mobility runes.

New Pavis was built by Sartarites. The Sartarites know much about stonemasonry (more than most human cultures but not as much as the Flintnail cult), and it is safe to say that they regularly use stone (at least for the foundational walls) in their buildings. It is likely that widespread stone use comes in the wake of building Boldhome, but in the following century it is pretty standard for Sartarites. Add to that the ongoing influence from Esrolia (always important, but became even more important post-1492), and you have the Sartarite style. 

7 hours ago, Runeblogger said:

Oh, I liked better what you told us before about the opposite runes making it difficult for Death cultists to be strong in Fertility magic (like healing).

Big healing magic - like Heal Body or Regrow Limb or Restore Characteristic (not to mention Resurrection) requires Fertility or Harmony magic. But Heal Wound is a Rune spell with countless names, known by countless cults, with countless different operating assumptions. Like all common spells, the rules effects are the same (albeit with different Runes used by different cults) so all these different spells are lumped together under the rubric of Heal Wound.

And Glorantha is darned dangerous - and RuneQuest is lethal. Even with healing magic, characters will die. Without healing magic, characters would drop like flies.

42 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Nice, but unfortunately refuted by canon or at least deeply embedded and verbose tradition - rural Sartarite housing is single story, no chimneys, smoke-filled slanted roofs. Stone as building material outside of the cities?

 

The only piece of "canon" that contradicts this is Sartar Kingdom of Heroes' reference to log longhouses. Which I already amended in the Guide to state that:

"most Orlanthi reside in sturdy, all-purpose wood, stone, or half-timbered houses (called a "hall" or a "longhouse") appropriate for the weather and resources in the region. A typical stead includes a couple of longhouses, each housing one or more nuclear families and often their livestock; villages typically have more. Other buildings include sheds for animals, hay, and other storage, workshops, and other outbuildings." Given that said description covers everything from Esrolia to Fronela, it hardly seems to restrict me.

So just to restate: most steads in Sartar and Heortland consist of a group of buildings arranged in an Earth Rune formation around a courtyard. They typically have stone foundations, and then are build of wood, stone, or half-timber, depending on the local resources. 

The difference between Inner and Outer Hearth is who is permitted within. You entertain guests in the Outer Hearth, family in the Inner.

26 minutes ago, Jon Hunter said:

Should guilds of the ancient world be organised round trades, or important tradesmen?

As in i belong to the guild of Arras the Redsmith, rather than I belong to the redsmiths guild.

You likely belong to the cult of Gustbran the Bonesmith, or the Bonesmith Brotherhood, or the Smith Street Association, or Flaming Hand Family. But we'll call it the Redsmiths Guild for our own sanity.

I should have looked at the new Runequest for the boxed text I had:

Guilds

By "guild" we mean quasi-kinship groups organized around a craft or occupation. Traditionally, one is "adopted" into a guild, offers regular sacrifices to their patron spirit or founder, and usually has some sort collective liability to outsiders (but also internally handles disputes between its members). Within many cities, you need to belong to a guild to have the right to practice a trade. In many cases, the guild membership is synonymous to belonging to a cult or subcult. Examples include

• the "Merchants Guild" and the Issaries cult;
• "Redsmiths" and Gustbran; 
• Boatsmen and the local River or Sea cult);
• Potters and "the Potter Goddess" (an Ernalda Asrelia sub-cult); and
• Brewers and Minlister.

9 minutes ago, Paid a bod yn dwp said:

Does this affect the material on Orlanthi steads in the OP RQ3 supplement Doraster, or does that still stand as is?

The steads in Dorastor are frontier steads of the Talastari in the Skanthi style. Given the proximity to Dorastor, those steads are fairly hastily bullt (like the sod homestead in the Cherokee Outlet my grandmother was born in). The settlements in Dragon Pass are older (more than a century old) and their rulers far wealthier and cosmopolitan than those of the Bilini (not to mention the Skanthi). 

4 minutes ago, Joerg said:

I guess having spent at least one winter north of the arctic circle does change one's outlook...

Spending every winter in the Alps changes one's outlook in a different direction. In much of the Italian alps you get plenty of precipitation but still have a lot of mediterranean style architecture (alongside typical Bavarian or Tiroler style buildings). Given that the Heortlings are from Kethaela, I strongly suspect that their buildings look more Esrolian than folk give credit.

2 minutes ago, Iskallor said:

We posted at the same time. I have exactly the same problems. It would suit a drier climate.

Drainage and snow is just going destroy that place.

For style, look at old houses built around a courtyard in the Vinschgau or other parts of Alto-Adige (I took plenty of pictures of stone and timber houses some 4 or 5 centuries old built around a courtyard in the Vinschgau). Although the western slopes get as much as 175cm of precipitation, the eastern slopes and protected valleys get closer to 75 cm. Roof is slanted and covered with wood, thatch, stone tiles or terracotta tiles.

14 hours ago, Joerg said:

The Heortling stead IMG usually consists of a main longhouse in the back of the enclosed stead court, and two shorter rectangular buildings along the enclosure, with lesser cottages as semi-dug in roundhouses for workshops. This pattern appears to have been in use in Anglia (on the Cimbrian peninsula) for centuries, and may have been taken over to the Anglias in Britain, too.

A longhouse interior (especially the is chief's dais) shown in the Guide on page 34/35.

The normal stead in Dragon Pass looks like this:

17 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Possibly. I'm not sure it I like the fact that warrior types are going to suck at healing magic because of runic affinities. I'm hoping there might be something like Pendragon;s Directed Traits to provide a slight work around to keep the old allied cult functionality. 

Won't make any difference for spirit magic spells like Healing 1+. Heal Wound is a common spell and has every Runic variation (yes even Death cults have spells that allows one to shrug off mere corporeal damage).

I had a much more limited art budget back then!

The Esvularing are viewed by other Orlanthi as people who follow a strange school of thought and have strange traditions. They are not heretics (Theyalan polytheism doesn't really have the concept of heresy or orthodoxy since every temple tends to have a different subcult, a different associated god, etc - there's a awful lot of diversity there). Of course, they are clannish about their magic secrets - as are most other Orlanthi. 

18 POW, 5 Rune Points. Its good to be a Rune Lord.

55 minutes ago, Joerg said:

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.

I suspect the ONLY Thanatari heads that can replenish Rune points are those of Thanatar cultists. Doesn't matter if they are living or breathing - I don't think you can bring a head into an Orlanth ceremony!

Thanatari heads work the same way as always. They can continue to cast Rune spells until they run out of Rune points (making effectively each spell one use), as they cannot replenish Rune Points.

BTW, Issaries Spell Trading still works and is very useful.

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

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.

Temple size does limit the range of spells you have access to. If you want to get the full range of special spells known in common by all variations of the cult, you need to go to a minor temple for at least one major holy day a year. If you want to get the full range of special spells, plus common magic, plus a subcult's special spell or an associate god's special spell, you need to go to a major temple for at least one major holy day a year (and identify which subcult you are participating in). And so on. This is really easy to do with cults like Orlanth and Ernalda, where every clan has a minor temple and every tribe a major temple (and great temples are plentiful). Much harder to do with smaller cults like Humakt or Storm Bull or Lhankor Mhy, where minor temples can be few and far between, and there may be only one great temple in all the world.