Jeff

I'm going to be a contradictory voice in this. I think the folder should remain RQ, as a quick scan shows plenty of discussion of RQ2 and RQ3, as well as discussion of ALL editions. And I suspect there will be plenty of rules discussions for the new version of RuneQuest later this year.

I'd recommend that the new Design Mechanism game should get its own folder under its own name.

FWIW, this is the canon on Orlanthi sexual mores:

Sex and Marriage
“Sex is easy. Marriage is hard, and the Gods bless the sworn bond.”
Heort’s Laws

Orlanthi religion celebrates sexuality as the cup of life. Ernalda is the goddess of women and of sex, and has many lovers and husbands among the gods, although Orlanth is first among them. Orlanth and his half-brother Yinkin had many amatory adventures with countless goddesses and several gods. The fertilizing rain that makes agriculture possible is thought of as the corporeal love of Orlanth and Ernalda. Orlanth even has a female incarnation, Vinga, who is worshiped by women who wield Orlanth’s magic. Heort’s Laws recognize four sexes (female, male, neuter, and hermaphrodite) and at least six genders (female, male, vingan, nandan, helering, and none).  Unmarried sex between adults is not frowned upon regardless of the sex or gender of the parties.   
Because sexuality is so open, the marriage oath is significant. Marriage among the Orlanthi is a mutual bond between participants and their clans. The class of the marriage and its terms are carefully negotiated between the parties and their families. Since marriage is sanctified by divine oath, violating that oath is dangerous. 

I have LONG wanted to write a campaign set in the time of the 30 Year War, which lets us have Rosicrucians and the Invisible College (why might they permit/be responsible for/be unable to stop the horrible endless war?), Athanasius Kircher's strange Egyptology, Wallenstein's astrologers (including Johannes Kepler), the Three Musketeers and schools of dueling, gambling, mercenary companies of all nations and sects trying to survive by fighting for whoever pays (and otherwise "making war pay for war"), all against the backdrop of the Four Horsemen despoiling the center of Europe. 

9 minutes ago, smiorgan said:

Jeff you just made my day. This is very important to me.

Obviously what you say of RQ2-RQ7 ...ehr RQ4 applies also to the RQ3 stat block. The relatively important differences in the stat block viz previous editions is one of the few things I did not like of RQ6. For instance, at a given moment I wanted to use the RQ3 Dorastor book with RQ6 - it's full of beasties and each requires detailed conversion. Yes, there is the wonderful online RQ6 generator but it's not like picking up a book and just use it. You could do it between RQ2 and RQ3 and I'd be delighted to find that you can do it also with RQ7 ...erh RQ4...

Obviously the magic will be different to better reflect Glorantha, but there are many things, such as the damage of weapons, the damage bonus progression, the number of hit points per location etc. that now do not have much reason to be slightly different as they were in the Mongoose RQ lineage.   

 

I totally agree. The goal is to be able to take something like Dorastor or Snake Pipe Hollow and use it for RQ4 with minimum work - I've been using Dorastor's Riskland campaign for playtesting RQ4 for what it is worth. We will be keepings things like hit points per location, damage bonus progression, weapons damage, etc the same as in RQ2/3. The only dilemma comes with AP (since RQ2 and RQ3 differed on AP and ENC) - and here we are inclined to hew towards RQ2 (for reasons too lengthy to go into here). 

Our design goal is to be able to take the RQ Classic adventures and use them with you RQ4 characters with fairly minimal work on the part of the GM - even if the RQ4 characters use different operating mechanics, the RQ Classic stat blocks should be 90%-95% compatible and much more compatible than with RQ6.

In RQ2 and RQ3, the rules are quite explicit that the skill must be used successfully in conditions of stress. Jumping over a stream or climbing a tree simply to get a check shouldn't cut it. Pendragon went a step further and made it clear that the GM tells the player when they can check for experience, a salutary reform in my opinion.

The various Orlanthi people speak numerous related languages (although often mutually unintelligible beyond Stormspeech), and range in social organization from hunter-gatherers (as in parts of Fronela, East Ralios, or Umathela) to literate inhabitants of a megacity like Nochet. We'd likely get a much better feel for their diversity if I didn't just use English words for king, clan, tribe, etc, (just as rex, roi, könig, basileus, and voivode all give a better feel for the diversity within Europe), and if I used local names for Orlanth and Ernalda instead of just "Orlanth" and "Ernalda". But some concessions to practicality need to be made! 

Religiously they all include the worship of Orlanth and Ernalda (hence the name), but beyond that include plenty of local and regional gods and heroes, as well as local and regional subcults of Orlanth and Ernalda (the split of Orlanth into Adventurous, Thunderous, and Rex is not universal). 

Sandy's take on them is spot on. The Outer Atomic Explorers sought to explore "beyond" the Cosmos and into the void beyond. The "atoms" are the irreducible components of existence - but based on Gloranthan logic, not modern physics. Their atoms bore no resemblance to those of Dalton, et al.   

I can't really say any more at this time without giving away the show.

The new edition of RuneQuest is built around the unique requirements of the setting and the hint is in the name.

7 minutes ago, hkokko said:

The scenarios were good (then) but we must be able to create SUPERIOR scenario books and campaigns for late 2010's not 1980's or early 1990's. We have incredibly rich background world but where are the scenarios... The scenarios are the ones that can draw new people in and give us grognards new things to think about. 

 

I agree and that is part of what we have been working on is making sure that the new scenario books not only let us explore Glorantha using the new rules, but also serve the pedagogical purpose of understanding the rules and introducing Gloranthan themes. What we consider a touchstone is Pendragon's "Grey Knight" - which fully immerses the players and GM in both the setting and the rules possibilities.

13 minutes ago, smiorgan said:

> We are big believers in starting from first principles whenever we do a book, -> So, can we call it RQ7 now?

FWIW, we call it internally RQ4, as it is the 4th version of RQ that will carry the Chaosium logo. 

I have to say, a lot of the "news" regarding what I said in my presentation was a surprise to me! 

Hey all - just a few quick comments before I head to the airport to head home:

We are big believers in starting from first principles whenever we do a book, and in the case of RuneQuest, RQ2 is that foundational document. We are then building up from RQ2, incorporating concepts learned from RQ3, RQ6, Pendragon Pass, Call of Cthulhu, Ringworld, the Epic System, and the RQ Dragon Pass campaign (what? haven't heard of the last two? That's because they were never published!). Sandy Petersen and Ken Rolston are both involved with this project, as is the entire Moon Design team, and as with the Guide to Glorantha, we are working with twenty years of Greg's design notes.
RuneQuest incorporates many elements of RQ6 (combined Attack & Parry skills, opposed rolls, combat styles such as Sword and Shield, hit locations instead of general hit points, 100%+ scalability, actions, adding two characteristics to determine the starting values of skills, etc) while keeping the rhythm of RQ2 combat. Because RuneQuest is NOT generic, we avoid many elements of RQ3 that its own writers considered to be significant design flaws.
Finally, an important design goal for us is that the rules system needs to be integrated with the setting and should reinforce and reward the player's interaction with the setting.
We'll be sharing design aspects of the new RuneQuest in due course - but you are going to need to have a little faith in the ability of the Moon Design team (with lots of input from Ken, Sandy, and others) to finish writing the new RuneQuest.

With Orlanthi characters I've used relatively Lightbringer-neutral cults like Lodril or Daka Fal.

On December 1, 2015 at 3:10:23 AM, jajagappa said:

I know that the dead arrive in different forms in Nochet on those days of the Ancestors.  You'll see: walking corpses, ghosts, parades of seemingly living people - a mix of all three (and more).  So, yes expect mummified bodies, skeletons, and smoky ghosts of Orlanthi to arrive. 

Will the dead of foreigners come?  I haven't discussed with Jeff or MOB yet, but I'm inclined to say 'yes'!  Seems like a MGF type of thing - very unexpected the first time, very shocking for newcomers, etc.  And would suggest some very odd behavior by those dead as well.  E.g. the Kralori ancestors complaining that they are separated from their kin, and demanding to be brought back to Kralorela. 

As for the Malkioni, I think they employ their zzaburi on these days to ward Meldektown from the incursions of the dead and send them back to their graves.  Picturing something like All Hallow's Eve or Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain with the dead flooding out of the Antones Estate and the fearful meldeks offering their prayers to the zzaburi to ward the area and drive them back, perhaps with ringing of bells, lighting torches, turning prayer wheels, etc.

Of course the foreign dead march along as well. Do you really think Necropolis is the city of only the Esrolian dead?

But also remember, most Gloranthans know we all have more than one soul. There is the body, the breath, the spark, and the lower souls (which are typically one, two, or three in number), and sometimes even a Lunar soul. Using the proper rituals, the relevant soul will rejoin the gods, but the other souls go elsewhere. So an Orlanthi whose breath-soul was released to the Air through cremation resides in Orlanth's Hall until it is returned to the material world to breathe life into something else, but his lower souls might be in Ty Kora Tek's cavern and his spark might reside in the Sky World.

And four and a half hours later, we've funded!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/224590870/runequest-classic-edition/description

That's all true. But it also worth keeping in mind that all of these discussions of Gloranthan mythology have been essentially God Learner discussions.

Last I checked, Köln, München, and Sachsen are normally translated into English as Cologne, Munich, and Saxony.

Actually we regularly do translate people's names. You know Karl der Gross as Charlemagne, for example. 

RuneQuest 2 was THE roleplaying game for me. Previously my friends and I had played AD&D, Gamma World, and Metamorphosis Alpha - but we also loved this trippy war game called White Bear & Red Moon. When we learned that there was a roleplaying game set in that universe, we snatched it up and spent the next fifteen years or so playing RQ and its progeny. When anyone says Old School Gaming, I don't think of AD&D - I think of RuneQuest 2. That's my Old School.

Meddling is often the wrong word. When the God Learners discovered that different peoples far removed from each other shared many of the same myths and magic, they began assembling the mono-myth. The worshipers of Aurelian - looking for his long lost volcano Twin - discovered that the worshipers of Caladra shared the same story from the perspective of the lost Twin. The stories of different land goddess were discovered to nearly identical. The rivalry of the storm god and the sun god appeared over and over and over again. Once seen, these connections are very hard to unsee!

Most people hate God Learnerism. But most educated peoples in Glorantha have adopted their conclusions, albeit usually unknowingly. Certainly everyone on this list has.

1 hour ago, M Helsdon said:

The God Learners messed with almost every culture on or near a coastline, and many of their manipulations are still present if not widely recognized in many cultures and cults - probably to a degree members of those cultures and cults would find distressing and disturbing. The end of the Second Age marked a significant change in Glorantha. The only regions they didn't meddle in would probably be Peloria in Genertela and the south of Pamaltela.

Let's make a distinction between the God Learners' magical manipulations and their basic analysis of various religions and deities. The Middle Sea Empire ruled many different peoples who worshiped often very similar gods, with different names and different stories, but who were the God Learners discovered were for all practical purposes the same god. The Mythical Synthesis Movement proved incredibly influential even outside of the God Learners - so much so that even the Old Way Traditionalists largely adopted its conclusions. 

Or you could make the case that the gods (however they are later understood and experienced) predate the mortal cultures that worship them.