Martin Dick

My copy of Mythology just arrived, ordered on the 15th, so 8 days to get to Melbourne from Sydney, so plenty of time for Xmas 🎄🎁

It will let me order the hardcopy, but will only ship it from the US 😔 and at AUD$70.00 shipping, it will have to wait

Just wait until we qet the heroquesting rules, then the egregious munchkinery will know no bounds and make illumination just another storm in a teacup, but yes, I agree illumination does allow for some prime egregious munchkinery, but personally I don't think it's a problem either in terms of illumination or heroquesting. Firstly, because Glorantha has never been balanced and in a world that includes characters like Jar-eel, Harrek, Ethilrist, Argrath, Arkat, the Only Old One, Cwim, Belintar, Ralzakark, the Red Emperor, the Crimson Bat etc. etc. etc., I don't think a bit of access to multiple spell rosters is going to be disastrous. Secondly, because egregious munchkinery in any game system is easily controlled, as the GM I can just say 'No' or more softly, as has been discussed before in this thread, there's a number of different ways of controlling egregious illumination via the societal rules and powers that exist.

If an illuminated initiate goes around openly or even covertly flouting cult strictures, sooner or later they're going to get caught and doubly so for PCs and while for normal cults they might work on three strikes and you're out, chaos cults are going to kill you on the first try normally, enjoy your life as a head hanging from the belt of the Thanatari High Priest. As for who is going to discipline you, well sounds like a perfect job for a bunch of murder-hobo PCs or a couple of Orlanthi/Humakti rune priests and rune lords. The illuminant hasn't hijacked the cult magic,they just now share it and it doesn't make them a superhero (well except Arkat) or even a hero, so a party of equivalent levels is highly likely to be able to discipline one illuminant.

Well, there maybe no supernatural retribution, but there is plenty of Cube level retribution and suffering for initiates who break cult strictures

IMO, the rule doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. RQG defines it as: So why should this be reduced automatically by 10 when dealing with other species? It doesn't make sense that when the SIZ 20 Dark Troll is trying to intimidate (a Comunication skill) a non-troll that there is a penalty instead of a bonus. And if the Dark Troll tries to inspire with Orate the group of mercenaries it has been working with for the last three years and who shares a common Loyalty passion and who has a developed a reasonable Insight (Human), why would there be any need for a penalty? Now a penalty based on circumstances for social/communication rolls because there is a different species involved and your insight in to that race is low or non-existent is perfectly sensible. Adding on the fact that modifying stats on the fly and then determining the changes to relevant skills is a complete pain, it's a rule that could happily be replaced (YRQGWV) with something like "Communication skills have a default penalty of 25% when dealing with other species unless an Insight (relevant race) roll is made. The GM should modify the penalty or even turn it in to a bonus depending upon the circumstances". You could even make it more complex (if you really want to 🤨) by having a nice grid for all the common races and putting -50% in the Dragonnewt column!

I think the difference between Glorantha and the story and the musical piece, is that Glorantha is a shared ongoing creation, while your examples are about either a single creator or a group creation that has a singular instance and which has no impact on the other pieces that they play. The single creator can vary as much as they want (and Greg did - hello Elmal, goodbye Elmal) and its their choice and in the case of stories, if they are inconsistent, then it doesn't affect anyone else and similarly for a singular musical performance, if the performers vary the perfomance, it need not have any impact on what they do the next time they play that piece. But if you are creating material and there are many different creators and they are creating over many products over a lengthy period of time in that shared creation and many of their consumers expect that those products are broadly consistent, then a canon is a very useful tool to achieve that expectation. Personally, I like knowing the canon, so that I can knowingly ignore/break it and because is satisfies the packrat tendency in my brain. But maybe it's not necessary? Do you have an example of a shared ongoing creation which is satisfying but where canon is not used? Maybe the Lovecraftian shared world which has long deviated in many ways from Lovecraft's initial vision?

Hasn't this been already done for Strangers in Prax by Ian Thomson and co? ( )

Having watched it, I'm convinced that the Barbies are all Brithini, with original Barbie being Hrestol

100% agree with this, I've been waiting for HeroQuest rules for around 40 years and I'm hoping I'll live to see them but it's clearly a very hard task to get it right. Greg Stafford, one of the most gifted TTRPG designers we've seen, was never able to get them to a place he was happy with. I got to play with an early version and while clearly a lot of thought and effort had gone in to them, they just weren't right. Maybe Mongoose got it right, but Greg clearly didn't think so. And while the current Chaosium has to take responsibility since 2015, they took over a company that was on its last legs, brought it back from the dead and got out a high-quality brand new edition of the game in 3 years. Obviously we all would be happier with more publications, but we've also had a world-wide pandemic that has massively disrupted supply chains and made running any international business much much harder. Overall, given the circumstances, they've done a very good job of giving us a Gloranthan rpg.

Chalana Arroy isn't part of the Earth Pantheon and Babeester Gor is not a Lightbringer, so if a few healers are collateral damage, it's far less worrying for a Babeester Gor than most other Sartarites. And so what if they are banned from Chalana Arroy's healing, they probably would rather have their Mother do the healing anyway. Besides, berserkers aren't particular known for their selective application of force, so even members of Associate let alone Friendly cults may be attacked.

I think this is another occasion in the RAW where the Call of Cthulhu Hard Success (50% of skill) would be useful. I think the current Critical/Special/Normal/Fail/Fumble often results in way too many ties and having a Critical/Special/Hard/Normal/Fail/Fumble would alleviate this issue. I know that Jason in previous discussions about ties has discussed ways to make ties interesting as opposed to a pause in the contest and I can see how that works fine for him, but it does require a level of creativity from the GM on a very ad-hoc basis and if there is a tie 3 or 4 times in a row, it becomes a bit of a drain on the GM (maybe not for others) PS. The shaman in our party rolled 3 criticals in her fight against the Bad Man, so it's not always a problem 😁

Whether he's authoritarian or not, he's fundamentally an ugly piece of work. While I think there is room to debate the merits and/or otherwise of Jar-Eel or Argrath or many of the participants in the Hero Wars, Harrek seems to have few if any redeeming features and I can't really see where he has had a positive impact on a society (though I guess you could argue making the Wolf Pirates better killers is positive for Wolf Pirate society).

So, if I had 4 XP, I could use all of them on the one skill and make 4 rolls? Or can I only use a maximum of 1 XP per skill per scenario?

Putting on my evil-GM hat, that's just begging for the GM to unleash havoc on the timeline.