Jeff

For me, the most important thing is to ground beginners into the setting. That's what the Family Background, passions, and runes are intended to do (ideally all in combination). I find that people brand new to the setting get the idea of their Runes and their passions very quickly and use those as hooks to dive into gaming. Add the Family Background to it and they actually know most of the pertinent major figures and conflicts in the setting.

The Battle of Pennel Ford was in Fire Season of 1624. Argrath went to Jaldon's Rest in late Dark Season or early Storm Season 1624, raised Jaldon and mustered an army. He defeated the Lunar Army at Moonbroth in early Storm Season (about 40 km away) and then about two weeks later was outside of New Pavis. The city fell after a short siege when Argrath used magic to chew through the walls near the Old Gate. Here's how it took place in the Chaosium House Campaign: Argrath mustered several thousand Praxians from all tribes, Sartarites, and even Wolf Pirates to summon Jaldon Goldentooth. He did this on the border of Sartar and Prax, at a place called Jaldon’s Rest. As Argrath promised, the ancient hero Jaldon Goldtooth appeared. Jaldon Goldtooth was a hero who had lived in times so old that no one remembered when it was. He wore tattoos which no one could look at. His only armor was a helm, greaves, and gauntlets. No one ever saw anything like his three‑bladed sword, his oddly‑shaped throwing discs, or his lance which leapt out to reach its foe. His steed was not like any of the six great steeds of Prax, nor like any of the 21 lesser steeds. He said words that no one knew. All Praxian prophecies agreed that when Jaldon appeared, all of them would benefit to follow him. They did. Jaldon was cursed to not be able to enter sacred Prax, but Argrath showed him how to overcome that curse if he would serve the White Bull. And so he did and the Praxians rode with Argrath. Outside the oasis of Moonbroth, the Lunar Army tried to stop the Whitebull, but the Lunar Antelope Lancers were chased from the field. Some fled, but most were killed. The Oasis, with its geyser and hot springs, was a sacred place to the Lunars, but now claimed by Argrath. Some Praxians took Lunar slaves, others feasted upon their wine and claimed their goods. Two weeks later - the Army of the White Bull was outside the walls of New Pavis. 6:28

Both were a hybrid of HQG and Pendragon rules - but come from discussions Greg and I had going many many years back, that built off ideas that Greg had in his Dragon Pass Campaign and later in the Epic System.

Much of Pendragon's mechanics actually developed out of Greg's RQ Dragon Pass Campaign from about 1980-1981. Greg long wanted to report that back into RQ and Glorantha, and now we have. Given that we publish Pendragon as well as RuneQuest, I think it is inevitable that you will see even more cross-pollination.

This is not really a design question Jim.

The primary design goal on hero questing for RuneQuest is to bust out entirely from the rigid structure presented before, and let hero quests become more fluid and unscripted, while still exploring Glorantha's mythic realms. Chris Klug and I are really playing around with lots of narrative tools to give gamemasters and players methods that let them get around this.

The default homeland for RQG is Sartar and the default Sartarite tribe is the Colymar. So everything we do right now has an assumption that it should have some tie or connection with the Colymar Campaign.

The Crimson Bat roamed the world as a horrific demon in the late First Age. It devoured towns and cities without warning. However, Arkat defeated it and banished it from the mundane plane. I believe that happened in the later campaigns as Arkat neared Dorasor itself.

Not much of one once you are in melee. But beyond that, I have spoken.

Strike ranks tell you who goes first. I find them much better than normal initiative rolls (Roll D10 and add a DEX bonus), and they take into effect things like reach and weapon.

What it means in game is that characters cannot typically replenish their Rune points in the middle of a scenario. Characters can get their Rune points back if they go to their temple on a holy day, have enough cash to make sacrifices, and so on. It is easy to do (assuming you have the wealth) when you aren't pressed for time, but proves awfully stressful when players blow their Rune points at a battle, and then want to pursue the enemy the next day (which happened in our game). Big picture, what this does is strongly encourage the players to develop a relationship with their temples, offer far more than the usual 10% to their temple, and pay careful attention to the weekly and seasonal holy days of their cult - in short, it incentivizes them to use the rules to interact with the setting.

Depends on what you mean as "less appealing". Sorcerous characters are very different from folk who primarily use Rune magic. Sorcery requires years of learning and study (and thus is available to only a fraction of the population supported by the rest of society), and most sorcerers spend their entire life continuing to study sorcery. Sorcery is also much slower to cast than Rune magic, and certainly requires far more magic points. But sorcerers can create new spells, they can learn magic that would be inconceivably incompatible with Rune magic, and their magic is largely subject only to their own will.

This thread is exactly what it says - ask me a RuneQuest design-related question, and if I find it interesting, I'll answer it. If not, I'll either ignore it or explain why I don't find it interesting or useful to answer. This is a good place to ask about how the RuneQuest rules interact with the setting, why I decided to do things, etc. This is not a good thread to ask rules questions or to raise hypotheticals about Axe Trance and Extension.

This thread is exactly what it says - ask me a Glorantha Lore question, and if I find it interesting, I'll answer it. If not, I'll either ignore it or explain why I don't find it interesting or useful to answer.

Lemme, see - this might throw a spanner in the works: Glasswall is the center for the Princeros Tribe, where tribal ceremonies and assemblies take place. It is well fortified, with its fabled "walls of glass" dating back to before the Dragonkill.

But as for maintaining different languages, that's pretty normal. If you look at the lands around the Aegean Sea, they spoke four dialects of Greek (which could be thought of as analogous to Esrolian and Heartlander being dialects of Theyalan), as well as the non-Greek languages of Thracian, Carian, and Lydian, and whatever ancient Macedonian was (Greek dialect? separate Hellenic language?).

Writing is in the Theyalan script. So an Esrolian can read Sartarite, etc. The God Forgot are outliers and keep their Western script because of religious purposes.

From 1120 to 1320, the tribes around the Mirrorsea were greatly weakened and impoverished by the Closing and the Dragonkill War. The Esrolians and the Heortlings are basic the same people with different primary gods. The Caladralanders clustered around their volcanoes. The folk of God Forgot tried to re-establish a logical society, etc. Maybe they would have eventually had internal homogenisation, but Belintar came to power and he emphasised the unity of the land AND the elemental associations of the Sixths. The different nature of each Sixth was reinforced, while at the same time they were able to cooperate harmoniously through Belintar. For three centuries, the distinctive character of each Sixth was supported by Belintar, who alone embodied the Whole. The gods were invited to visit and bless their lands. I mean there is a reason the place is called the Holy Country!

And this really displays why I am tempted to give up answering questions on this forum. Do you really plan to publish something using BRP based on Dunsany's "Idle Days on the Yann"? Really? Or is this just an exercise trying to dance around boundaries you don't really have any interest in actually doing anything with at all? Meanwhile, I have already been asked about: Simplified BRP for kids with investigative fantasy (not horror but children's fantasy) Something based on Jules Verne's Mysterious Island Sci fi generation ship (as long as it is not based directly off Niven's Known Space stories or Jim Ward's Metamorphosis Alpha without his permission, great!) And an adaptation of an existing French RPGs to BRP by their publisher. These are all fine and great. I'd love to see them made. Who knows what will become of any of these, but their would-be creators can do what they want with them. Nobody had any concerns or questions about the license.

I just talked a few minutes ago with someone planning to do just that.

I do not believe that Seseine provides Reproduce or even Bless Pregnancy. Her magic is more along the lines of Charisma, Desire (like Command Human but done through lust), Erotocomotose Lucidity, and La Petite Mort (a variant of Erotocomotose Lucidity that allows an initiate to both exhaust the victim and drain magic points from them).

Canon has not changed. Originally Greg was undecided on when Kallyr's death should happen. Maybe 1626, maybe 1630. Originally, Greg had the Hero Wars last another century or more. By the time of the 2nd printing of KoS, the date was fixed. And since we both wanted people to be able to play out the Hero Wars, certain key events had to be fixed, at least in our heads.

If you do not feel that you can create content that is not substantially similar to material from Chaosium's past and current products - then this license is probably not for you. If you want to use BRP to create rules for your own unique settings, then this license should be easy to comply with.

*SPOILERS* In the canonical campaign, she's going to get killed in 1626. And stay dead. Heck, this is mentioned in the core RQG rule book.

Nick's point is that actually we know quite a lot about Argrath and you can expect to see that in forthcoming publications.