Martin Dick

Our two Orlanthi (me and another character) are carrying on with spirit magic, the GM ruled that I could still use my 1 point of Kolati rune magic. We're also frantically looking for ways to end it, while doing what we can to preserve the Red Cow Clan. The Odaylan and Yinkini in the party are pretty cock-a-hoop at the moment with their rune magic untouched and letting us Orlanthi know about. I'm not planning to change, but that may change depending on how long the GM lets it last.

I've always understood that the Cosmic Compromise precludes innovation and free will for gods, not mortals and clearly from Gloranthan history, we see mortals innovating and demonstrating free will all over the place. Though I've always had a sneaking suspicion that some of the gods may have a little wiggle room (looking at you Midwife of Time)

Yes, getting to 100% in our RQ2 and RQ3 campaigns was a dream as opposed to a reality, but RQG has taken a different view and PCs are considerably more heroic, my Orlanthi has a natural broadsword skill of 137% after starting with 90% (lots of good XP rolls) and combined with a passion roll and his Bladesharp 6 (doubled with a crystal), means he can easily get 200%+, and that's not talking about the Humakti/Babeester Gors with their Trance rune spells going. Personally I like RQG in lots of ways and I don't have a problem with new parry system as it makes the PCs more heroic but YGWV and your RQWV too.

Sure, if you want to move the level of discussion from the completely unartificial strategy of using weaker attackers to distract the opponent so that the lead attacker is going to find it easier to hit them to the fact that the Strike Rank/Melee Round mechanic is not an accurate reflection of the real-world, then you go you! I don't disagree, the RQ combat system for me is a nice balance between reality, ease of use, crunch and fun, but as Phil points out, others will differ. I think Steve Perrin and co did an inspired job back in the day. Personally, I would probably prefer a continuous battle flow with no rounds and just characters just keep acting when they expend the relevant strike ranks, but others will have their own preferences. P.S. Andrew Bean you can't use this completely artificial strategy against Arkast, okay! 🤪

I think, deciding to attack after the trollkin have gone in and distracted the opponent is hardly rocket science and not artificial at all and probably even fine for a Great Troll with their average intelligence of 9 and as JustAnotherVingan pointed out, holding your action to later in the round is RAW

Seems pretty reasonable to me, the Great Troll sending in the expendable trollkin to wear down the enemy's defences and distract them. That's sort of the point with trollkin in battle (and of course the occasional critical), though maybe the average Great Troll doesn't think that deeply, but a Dark troll would for sure.

Yep, she's got them all fooled 😄 Krarsht is bad bad news

I wasn't really suggesting that as a way to go for a homebrew RQG as I would go with 1 for the great majority of Gloranthan campaigns too, I prefer my Glorantha to be nitty-gritty and semi-realistic in style, and pulling new skills out of the air (at a cost) doesn't really fit that style, but it's a stylistic choice and RQG can handle many different styles.

I don't find that a problem in my L5R campaign, for three reasons. Firstly, none of my players are like that, not that they don't min-max, some are pretty damn good at that, but they always focus on the character and the character's goals and have them develop as a part of society. Secondly, the nature of my L5R campaign is Imperial magistrates investigating crime and enforcing Imperial law in a city controlled by a clan, if they decide that everything looks like a nail, then many of the nails will turn and bite them back and they know it. One of their long-term enemies could've been easily killed by them, but it would've ended up with them executed for murder if they did it, so in the end they came up with a complex plot to get rid of him via continual audit (the Eliot Ness/Al Capone method). Basically, if you run a campaign where you need lots of different tools to succeed, the players will develop lots of different tools as opposed to carrying the one really big tool. Thirdly, in L5R as in RQ (and I really think John Wick was influenced by Glorantha when designing the game), combat is pretty lethal, regardless of how good you are, there's always someone else who can get lucky or is just stronger than you and just like the sword-tranced Humakti with a 200% Greatsword, there's lots of ways to take them down (can't parry arrows 😈).

Yes, that's a pretty common method which I think RQ was sort of the first to use and I think a good restriction for games where you want to be a bit realistic. DragonQuest had the same rule that you could only increase skills that you had used in the sessions since you had last done experience, which they probably copied from RQ. It does mean of course that the GM has to be willing to provide opportunities to use all of your skills on a regular basis and not just your combat skills. But for games that want to be a bit looser, it can be fun to relax that. In the L5R campaign I run, I let players use their XP at anytime to raise any skill. All samurai are masters of riding you see, so it's perfectly natural, if all of a sudden, Mirumoto Sukune can ride. It's in tune with the manga/Hong Kong Action theatre style of story.

Wow, I must be a bit of a masochist! I started playing RuneQuest in 1981 and have played it on and off since then and not nearly as much as I would've liked to. I've run RuneQuest and HeroQuest tournaments at conventions and helped run GloranthaCon DownUnder. I must really hate RuneQuest and Glorantha! The fact that I have some problems with one small part of the system, makes it seem to you that I dislike the system at a fundamental level. Perhaps you should head to Reddit, where its the status quo to make wild assumptions and attack people. Here's what I said initially: "it is a reasonable system overall, and of course it is far far better than original D&D's level system of experience where only killing and looting helped develop a character and where levels were so generic." How does that indicate a fundamental dislike of the RQG system?

Ahh, now I see, attempts at sarcasm. To make it clear, putting them to one side as we've been discussing the tick-based experience system and the whole discussion has no relevance to the research and training methods of improving skills, i.e. no need for a successful use, no need to roll etc.

I don't get what you are trying to say here, perhaps you were trying to be mocking or sarcastic? Perhaps you might actually reply to the content?

No, because training is massively inefficient compared to ticks.

Well, they are more effort than the tick system, which is one of the advantages of them. And the D&D method of gaining experience points by killing monsters is a relic, I agree, but it is far from the only way of using them, e.g. DragonQuest, where the XP awarded is based on time played or even the milestone method option in 5e D&D.

Yes, I don't get this at all either. If I never succeed at a skill, then I never get the chance to improve it in the current system (putting aside research and training) . As it says a checked box means "This means that the adventurer has successfully used that ability in a time of crisis and may, at a future time, learn from the experience." As well, it's not a skill roll, but an experience roll and it is run completely differently to a skill roll, so it's not really a failed skill roll

It's still my favourite system, had the right mix of crunch for me and was nicely modular to extend. I ran a campaign for over ten years from the early 80s into the 90s, but it can be hard to keep up when there is very little in the way of support. WoTC/Hasbro owns the IP, so that will never be used again and of course, it's far too small for them to bother about selling it. It did have one of the great sandboxes ever in The Enchanted Forest by Jennell Jaquays.

And that's great if you like that, I had a proto-Issaries Desert Tracker who ended up with a Swim of 80% as he started with 15% and everyone else started with 10% and who made every swimming experience roll he ever did and nearly always rolled 5 or 6, of course the party made him do the swimming every time we had to. Quirky, yes, sort of fun, yes, but it really didn't advance the character's story. My current character has a Broadsword of 137% because he has made at least 50% of his experience rolls despite it starting at 90%, yet he has made almost none of his Battle experience rolls, despite it starting at 20%, meaning that I've had to change the character conception/story to align with the facts of his skills. That's fine, still having lots of fun, but I prefer more control over my character's destiny which is why I like XP systems despite their extra effort.

I've never really liked the RQ/BRP experience system from the beginning, it works okay in terms of regulating the progression of characters and it is a reasonable system overall, and of course it is far far better than original D&D's level system of experience where only killing and looting helped develop a character and where levels were so generic. But there are some aspects that have always irked me: It's way too random for my taste, weird things happen when you rely only on the dice and that takes agency away from the player. Each character has a story and as a GM and a player, I want the player to be the dominant (but not the only) factor driving the character's story. The RQ experience system doesn't allow the player to determine the growth of their character which impacts on the player's ability to drive their story. Now, of course, a bit of randomness in the process can be good, some people love rolling up their character's stats with the dice and just living with the consequences and that can be fun, but if I really want to play a cunning Machiavellian schemer, it doesn't really work if I roll an INT of 4 and similarly for experience, if I can never make my Intrigue roll even though my character has engaged in Intrigue in many sessions. I think the current system gets the balance on this wrong. Of course, experience is not the only (or even most important) factor in a character's story, but it is a significant factor in my opinion. The whole 'you only learn from success' is just wrong as far as learning goes. All skills being equally easy to learn is also not really correct The rolling over the current skill level, while it makes sense on its own, doesn't make sense in the context of the system (though I know it means we don't have to do a subtraction) - but Jason Durall specifically said that he didn't have high roll win in ties, because he didn't want to add a one-off mechanic where a high roll was good in RQG and where in nearly every other circumstance a high roll is bad, which makes sense, but also indicates that the high roll being good in experience is also not a good design decision (probably kept because of ancient precedent I guess) It can be easily abused with the whole skill ticking mania that afflicts some players (and it can be hard to not fall into this as a player, speaking from personal experience🤪) and while I as a GM can control this by not allowing the tick, it adds a level of unnecessary GM control and/or conflict with the players to the game It also privileges combat skills over most other skills, as they are far easier to get ticks on in most campaigns than the other skills The need to have a separate experience system for characteristics adds complexity that's not really needed as well I much prefer the DragonQuest system which is equally skill based but can be used by the player to drive the character's story much more easily and solves some of the other problems. On the other hand, it does have the plus of requiring a lot less book work than nearly any other system and with electronic character sheets, it means you don't end up rubbing a hole in your character sheet for skills that go up often. And of course I like the whole gambling nature of rolling the dice to see if I go up in my skills (at the time). It's always a buzz when you manage to get a 90% plus skill to go up (and a subsequent downer when you roll 1 to take your skill from 90% to 91%).

Gencon Preview edition of Gods of Glorantha Page 332 in the Nysalor/Gbaji writeup. The third power is Embrace Runic Opposites - "An Illuminate's opposed Runes (such as Death and Life, or Beast and Man) no longer need to add up to 100%."

We know that's not necessarily true for Illuminates, so there are almost certainly other ways to break the nexus between them

RQ2 was available in Australia by at latest 1982, I don't remember seeing a copy of RQ1 though

I would think that the go-to person for handling ghosts in an Orlanthi clan would probably be the nearest Ty Kora Tek priestess (or initiate if you don't know a priestess) given that they have the Rune spells of Command Ghost, Summon Dead and Turn Undead and her role is Goddess of the Dead. I'm pretty sure there are a lot more Ty Kora Tek initiates and priestesses that Daka Fal Shamans in Sartar. Probably less than Humakti initiates and worshippers, but maybe you don't want the ghost of old Uncle Alf destroyed, maybe you just want him to rest in peace in the Underworld. But for a Sartarite clan, "Who you gonna call?" well, you gonna call whoever is the nearest available GhostBuster whether that is Daka Fal or Humakt or Ty Kora Tek or someone else, it's not like there's a GhostBuster Guild 🙂 As for Undead, sure, Humakt would probably be your first choice

How many Sartarites have been killed by the Dragons since 1300 when the Colymar returned to Dragon Pass? Very few by True Dragons, a relatively small number by Dream Dragons and the like. How long has it been since the DragonKill? 500 Years. How many times has the Crimson Bat come through Sartar since 1602? If I was a Sartarite and I'd seen the Crimson Bat, then I would be looking for anything that could help me fight the Lunar Empire. Would I be particularly worried about an ancient event that happened 500 years ago and actually didn't happen to my ancestors? I can tell you that our PCs were terrified when they saw the Crimson Bat and we're looking for anything that can help our clan survive the Great Winter. And if and when we do, vengeance upon the Lunars is going to be pretty high on the agenda, so making our peace with draconic powers to use them against the Lunars is hardly a stretch. No Greg rune necessary at all. But YGMV if you want to do it differently.

I agree, but I also think the House of Sartar had been heading down this road since Sartar had arrived in Dragon Pass and had laid the foundation for the return to Orlanthi acceptance of change.