Jeff

2 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Except... Orlanth is neutral to Yelm and Yelmalio... They should clearly "dislike" each other (there's NO way a person should be able to be in both cults - Orlanth and Yelmalio). Seven Mothers gets Hostility from Orlanth (given the Chaos connection, I find that a bit odd...rather than Enemy).

I would have put the Yelm/Orlanth relationship about halfway between N & H... Probably leaning towards H. Constant mistrust, suspicion, old rivalries easy to be remembered. There can be peace, but can easily be pushed to conflict.

Seven Mothers/Orlanth should be H-E, given the connection to Chaos. I can't think of a situation in which they'd ever work together for a mutual cause (without a lot of self-interest involved).  But, I'll accept the Hostile...

Stormbull, however, does have hostility towards Yelm & Yelmalio ... (granted, he's more prone that way 😛 )

 

Orlanth is neutral to Yelm and Yelmalio. And yes, it IS possible to be in both Orlanth and Yelmalio.

Seven Mothers is not Chaotic, and thus only hostile.

You may be surprised, but that Cult Relationship chart accurately reflects how Greg and I view the relationships between the cults. YGWV and all that, but that is how it works in OUR Glorantha.

On 6/16/2019 at 10:17 PM, Ian Absentia said:

Those rows of dice in the lower front-and-center are far too tidy.  You need to keep that trouble-maker busier.

!i!

We have big tubs of dice. Tubs of them. And somehow I always fail to have the appropriate dice handy and end up borrowing from someone else.

2 hours ago, Mugen said:

I don't think those are bad ideas in absolute, quite the opposite.

But the combination of both rules and the fact you can freely chose which hand you chose for parrying, produce very unfortunate results, such as the fact fighting with a shield is much more difficult than fighting with just one weapon.

And concerning "highest roll wins" in combat, I like how it worked in the last playtest version of MRQ (the one from Kenneth Hyte, I think), before Mongoose fumbled everything. In this version, a succesful parry with a roll inferior to the attacker's only blocked half the weapon's AP in damage.

How is fighting with a shield much more difficult? It is a separate skill, yes. But most folk start out with a decent skill at shield, and shields usually have more AP than weapons, cheaper to replace, and way more useful against missile weapons. 

2 hours ago, Kloster said:

In fact, the influences that I believe are giving a 'less' RuneQuest impressions are from Stormbringer and are (for me) the  Single skill for attack and parry (bad idea) and the Multiple Parry (bad idea).

For the rules coming from Pendragon, I feel some are good imports, some are bad imports and I have mixed feelings on some, but none are make me feel the game as 'less Runequest'.

The single skill for Attack and Parry comes from everyone - Greg, myself, Steve, Sandy, Jason - and everyone I know who has ever done martial training, and even my own limited experience in Chinese staff and straight sword training. 

Multiple Parry comes from Steve and Jason. I like the rule addition (or I wouldn't have included it), although in practice it is used as more of a desperation move.

11 minutes ago, Kloster said:

When (and if) you love Pendragon. If not, you don't automatically consider it a good idea (nor a bad, by the way), but I wish Pendragon and Stormbringer had less influence on Runequest, in order to stay more ... Runequest.

Pendragon came out of RuneQuest, and design-wise I find Pendragon to have very similar DNA to RQ2. The main reason Pendragon's opposed role system wasn't used in RQG is because we wanted to keep the dynamic of attack and parry for combat in RQ - and didn't want to introduce two very different "dice interpretation regimes."

19 hours ago, Puckohue said:

What were the reasons for her exile, more than "the lunars supported her rivals"? How did the tribe motivate the exile?

She was exiled because you don't stage a coup d'etat and let the previous ruler just stay around.

To make matters even worse, Kangharl was part of the Chan family, who held both the tribal kingship and the high priestess position. His father, mother, and surviving family members had been exiled, and he was a Lunar hostage. Like Theodoric the Great (who was a hostage of Constantinople in his youth) or Segestes of the Cherusci, Kangharl came to see that the Lunar Empire was victorious and that ultimately they were the true decision makes in Sartar. He made his peace with the Empire and was richly rewarded.

Until that day he got devoured by a True Dragon. Funny that. 

Since the last list was posted I've added a dozen or so cults, including Ygg, Voria, Yelorna, Horned Man, Barntar, and others.

On 6/8/2019 at 2:20 PM, PhilHibbs said:

Chase scenes are all about getting away, not just literal straight line speed. There are ways to get an advantage over a horse other than outrunning it.

Yes, that is what the Chase Rules for RQG emulate. 

3 hours ago, Gannd said:

But I think selling the game on the fact that players are adventuring for something and somebody. The players are not just there to kill monsters, to get more powerful so they can have better loot, so they can kill bigger and badder monsters so they can get more powerful, etc. Just by having the community be apart of character creation gives the players a stronger sense of community and that helped me, as a new player, get everyone in the “headspace” of the game...if you get me. 

This is to me the essence of the game and is the reason for the Family Background part of character generation. It is a playable crash course into the setting, your community,  your foes, and your allies. 

On 5/26/2019 at 10:27 PM, styopa said:

I'd say opposed rolls is a pretty good mechanic, and insofar as the RQ lineage is concerned, I'm pretty sure MRQ introduced it.  To say nothing of some clever ideas in RQ6 as well, which is functionally MRQ3.

I like a lot of the MRQ source stuff as interesting (particularly considering they filled vast spans that 'today's official sources' haven't covered) and I personally don't give the faintest hoot whether it's canonical or not.  If I find material interesting and engaging, I might use it.  Why care particularly about the source?  The idea that there's even a canon to be violated - and the tone by which apostates are admonished - approaches the worst of the Glorantha Digest days.

I REALLY don't see value in Bowdlerizing RQs publishing history. 

But then, I come from the ancient era where campaigns were expected to be wildly different from each other, there were far fewer resources,  and thus may be slightly more inoculated against one-true-worldisms. 

Opposed rolls come from Pendragon, not MRQ.

3 hours ago, Gannd said:

I’m new to RuneQuest and RQG is my entry point. I haven’t really played RPGs since in the mid 90’s. I talked my friends into playing by highlighting a few different things and considering the length of the topic my two cents may not be that helpful. 

I recommended they play King of Dragon Pass. That is what got me interested in RuneQuest and Glorantha. I think the video game does a great job of easing new players into the world and giving everyone a shared mono context of what game world we will be playing in. A couple of my other friends play RPGs and have played a lot of D&D. I sold them with the game by talking about the stuff I didn’t really ever understand about AD&D back in the day and D&D today. So for them I talked about the skill system and combat systems. 

You mentioned one of your friends is a storyteller. I think talking about the passion system, homeland, family history, and the Cults woulda get here interested. If you are looking for recommended reading, I think the setting material in the book and the Rune Cults chapter do a very good job of giving information about the world. I wish they had some novels or something to read but I think D&D is the only game with those things.

My group played through the RuneQuest starter adventure ‘The Broken Tower’ and we only used the QuickStart rules because I’m still very new at this and that made it simpler for everybody.  I’d recommend the GM pack because that had a lot of great content that you can use right away. The maps and the calendars are all very cool. If you have players interested in that sort of things I think you’ll find value just in those few things. We have played through ‘Defending Apple Lane’ and ‘Cattle Raid’ and we are currently playing through ‘The Dragon of Thunder Hills’ and I think all three adventures we have played and the fourth we are playing have given us a little bit more each time we play on the world. 

But I think selling the game on the fact that players are adventuring for something and somebody. The players are not just there to kill monsters, to get more powerful so they can have better loot, so they can kill bigger and badder monsters so they can get more powerful, etc. Just by having the community be apart of character creation gives the players a stronger sense of community and that helped me, as a new player, get everyone in the “headspace” of the game...if you get me. 

I didn’t bring up the Bronze Age aspect because I’m a stupid accountant and I don’t really know what that means. I love the old movies like Clash of the Titans and Jason and the Argonauts but I didn’t study the classics in school or read about Bronze Age culture, or if I did, I don’t remember. So if anybody has suggestions on some good books to read up to learn more about Bronze Age cultures, I’d love the suggestions. 

Hopefully my post is helpful. 

I'd suggest reading a nice version of the Iliad or the Odyssey or Gilgamesh to get the Bronze Age vibe. There's Eric Shanower's Age of Bronze, Rosemary Sutcliff's Black Ships Before Troy (with art by Alan Lee), or David Boyle and Viv Croot's Troy. Or Ludmila Zeman's Gilgamesh Trilogy. Or get Mary Renault's classics like the King Must Die. Think ancient world, when gods interacted with mortals.

5 hours ago, davecake said:

How does this reconcile with Illuminates seemingly being able to get away with it? 

Real question, it would be good to have some explanatory model. 

I don't think that the secrets of Illumination are needed for players and gamemasters to understand geases. Let's deal with that when you have an Illuminated player character.

1 minute ago, Imryn said:

This is true, but the god can't see the deed, he has to be told about it by a worshipper. A faithful worshipper would tell their god of their infraction at the first opportunity, failure to do so indicates a loss of faith which the god would be aware of.

"Thus, a deity will know what has happened to its Rune Masters and, to a lesser extent, its initiates." If the initiate breaks an oath sworn on the god, the god knows. Period.

1 minute ago, Imryn said:

Sorry if I sounded confrontational, but everyone, even @Jeff is bound by the written rules. He might have the power to say "OK that's not what we intended, this is how its supposed to work" but until he invokes that he has to play within the same limits as the rest of us.

The god has to know about an infraction in order to act. What the god can know and how they get that knowledge is pretty clearly laid down in the rules for divination on p271. If a geas is a special case it isn't in the rules (yet), which means we should follow the rules we do have to make it work.

Oaths are in the rules - we have the rune spell to look at. Beyond that the word oath has a definition:

"a solemn promise, often invoking a divine witness, regarding one's future action or behaviour."

From the definition of the word we can see that it cannot be imposed on someone, it is something that someone makes of their own free will. Even if the player did make an oath it wouldn't work in the same way as the oath rune spell. That spell works the way it does because the people that swear the oath donate power to fuel it.

Creative in-character reasons would be fine - I was talking about weaselly rules-lawyering - e.g. "OK we need to move fast. Someone knock me out and throw be over a horse and lets go!"

Smoking footprints I suppose.

Characters take geases on their own free will - you aren't FORCED to join the cult of Humakt. But if you do, you swear a powerful oath to the god - a geas - and get a gift from the god. All done voluntarily. Humakt (or whatever god you swore by) KNOWS when you broken the oath. And when you present it that way to the players, they tend to be far less rules-lawyering about it. "Sure you might not think that violates the geas, but ultimately Humakt decides whether or not you broke it, and there's no appeal from the God of Endings." You'd be amazed how concerned players get about not violating the oath when it is put that way!

59 minutes ago, Imryn said:

 

Sorry, you are both wrong. Humakt is the god of death and war - he just happens to be pretty keen about truth as well but doesn't have a portfolio for that (just had a marvel moment: "you are not the god of hammers")

A geas is not any type of oath. An oath is an agreement between two parties that is negotiated in advance, and once both parties agree they fuel the oath by putting magical power into it. A geas is a restriction that is imposed by the god with no negotiation and no magic power is put into it.

The limits on what a god does and does not know are pretty clear (RQG 271) :

"Secondly, initiates and Rune Masters are extensions of the deity, and can tell the deity many things through prayer. Thus, a deity will know what has happened to its Rune Masters and, to a lesser extent, its initiates. The god does not know what a Rune Master or initiate is thinking and cannot deduce motivations. A deity cannot invade anyone’s mind; though it knows when a worshiper has lost faith. Other knowledge given to a god by a worshiper must be volunteered through prayer."

Gods can't read minds, not even their worshippers minds, and have to be specifically told of events in prayers. I am now wondering what happens to gossipy worshippers who pass on information that they heard from a friend of a friend etc

Breaking an oath is an objective deed not mind-reading.

40 minutes ago, Bohemond said:

My general rule is that a god knows everything or nearly everything that his worshippers do. Although gods are not omniscient, initiation creates a strong bond with a god that allows Him/Her to be aware of the initiate and their actions. So in the case of breaking a geas, I think that the god knows automatically that it's been broken, even if the worshipper doesn't. 

A geas is very powerful oath. Humakt is the god of oaths. He knows when his initiates break their oaths.

1 hour ago, Dan Z said:

Ok, so I redrew the area map and made some modifications using some digital tools.  I think it turned out ok.  I'll need to create a style to use so it's still a bit rough but here it is.  Next up is redrawing the close in view of Two Sisters which I've started on with suggestions.

 

This came out very nice indeed. Agriculturally the flat lands are going to have a lot of pastureland (for horses), lots of hides of emmer, and orchards for fruit trees, etc. There are no doubt vineyards on the west and southern sides of those hills. It might not be as good as what is grown around Clearwine, but still!



For one of the sources of inspiration behind the Marsh, a good place is the Suisun Marsh in the Sacramento Delta. You can see the line of trees at the edge of the marsh (which here is strangely absent its customary vegetation of Blackthorn Oaks, willows, and cedars). 

3 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Huh, interesting. That's different from what we've heard before, I think.

It is now 1625. The fleet has gone around the world. 

12 minutes ago, metcalph said:

Windwalk has been a Gagarth runespell (Tales of the Reaching Moon #4 for instance).

Which shouldn't be surprising. Gagarth is a fellow Vadrudi.

11 minutes ago, Julian Lord said:

Meneure is an actual French word.

The grammar for -euse vs. -eure is a bit confusing, including because many of the words have been invented arbitrarily over the past 20-30 years. However, many of the decisions in the case of individual words have been made for reasons of euphony, and in this case, "meneuse" seems rather unattractive.

And : amateure, professeure, supérieure, etc ...

Not once since the 1970s have I ever heard a female GM referred to as a "meneuse de jeu" -- it just feels forced to me, as I said.

In football/soccer (about the women's section of the PSG) : "Si les Parisiennes ont autant mis en difficulté les Louves ce samedi, elles le doivent à leur meneure de jeu de poche. Shirley Cruz, qui avait cruellement manqué aux Bleu et Rouge face à l’Olymique Lyonnais en championnat"

If it's any help, -euse has a bit of a more verbal sense and -eure a more nominal one.

Well I for one am happy with the translation and it has MY full support. And if Game Mistress didn't sound like something from the BDSM scene, I'd use the phrase in English.

1 hour ago, Brootse said:

Thanks! How many Wolf Pirates are there? The quote from the Guide says:

No one knows how many Wolf Pirates there are, or how many ships. About two dozen Wolf Pirate ships left Loskalm, and although some have been sunk, others have been built, too. Furthermore, at least as many galleys and round ships have since joined the fleet. There may be as many as 30 to 60 ships in all, though they range all along the southern coast, and have so far never all been in one place at the same time.

Is that 30-60 the amount of the whole Wolf Pirate fleet, or only the Three Step Island's fleet. And how big was the circumnavigation fleet, a fifth of that, ie. 6-12?

There's currently some 60+ Wolf Pirate ships and some 3100+ Wolf Pirates operating out of Three Step Islands. I believe about 40+ ships followed Harrek, and the fleet lost many ships and many crew but the fleet numbered about 60 when it arrived in the Mirrorsea Bay in 1624 About 3000 Wolf Pirates fought at Pennel Ford. Many died, but the Wolf Pirates have more than replenished their losses. There are maybe only about 20 of the original Yggite ships left (which aren't based on Loskalmi ships btw).

1 hour ago, Brootse said:

The rules I've used for Ygg's cult is RQ3's Valind with no Cloud Call or Snow, and getting Summon Undine from Nelarrina and Snow from Valind, and getting access to Fanaticism and Berserk if you've undergone the Ygg's Fury (ruleswise indentical to Valind's Fury). And just undergoing the Fury doesn't make you a priest, you need to pass the normal requirements too. How close is that what you have in mind for Ygg's cult?

e: Is the Ygg's Islands' language a Theyalan language? In the previous edition it wasn't related to any other languages, though I houseruled it to be as close to Stormspeech as other Theyalan languages, ie. 1/10 of the skill.

Ygg has Increase Wind, Windwalk, Shield, and Summon Small and Medium Air Elemental. He gets Snow from Valind, some slave Water Elementals, and Summon Large Air Elemental from Orlanth.

During your initiation you learn secrets of the god and devote yourself to the deity. Leaving the cult is a form of oath-breaking and triggers the spirits of reprisal. In Humakt's case, you lose your magic and your gifts, you keep your geases, and you can never hold a sword.

Authoritatively, his runes are Air, Death, and Movement.

6 minutes ago, styopa said:

Pretty sure anyone in Orlanthi culture that violates a geas is forever after known as "Breaking Wind".

You think Orlanth sends mere impests against those who break their oaths? Flint Slingers and Bronze Fists at least.

Violating a geas is a terrible thing. A Humakti cultist who violates a geas is no longer an initiate or Sword of Humakt, lose all their gifts and keep their geases, and is cursed by the cult Spirit of Reprisal.