Mark Mohrfield

Trolls are not dirty and slovenly! It’s humans who are overly tidy and prissy.

I am disappointed that the charts are not broken down by gender, which surely must play a major factor in which cult one belongs to.

I suppose my real issue is the Pixies access to magic, but then I guess they can learn appropriate spirit magic from Aldrya Shamans. Which raises the question of how they pay for it. I can’t imagine Aldryami regularly using money, except with outsiders.

Just what is the status of Pixies in the Aldrya cult? The RuneQuest Glorantha Bestiary places them in the Elder Sister subcult, while Cults of Gorantha the Earth Goddesses states that they rarely progress beyond the Children of the Forest subcult.  The former seems to grant them too much magic(Animate War Tree), while the latter seems to grant them too little(no access to Befuddle). Perhaps there’s a Younger Sister subcult?

That being the case, what distinguishes the Henotheists from the other Malkioni sects?

3 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

I suspect allowing Malkioni with rune magic is a munchkin thing: sorcery is too slow and boring — give me something that goes bang now!

If true, this is the sort of thing that makes me wish that HeroQuest/QuestWolds had been more financially successful. Though even that system sometimes resorted to unnecessarily mechanically differentiating the magic types IMO.

At the risk of derailing this thread, since when have Seshnelans worshiped gods except for the Invisible God? I thought they were monotheists.

There are previous experience rules in Appendix H on pages 118-122. The apprentice rules are pretty convoluted, but the mercenary and barbarian rules, which presumably are what most PCs are interested in are fairly simple.

On 9/2/2023 at 8:56 AM, Joerg said:

Spirit magic has a very colonialist feel to it - you need to conquer the territory of the poor spell spirit some priest or shaman sends against you (against its own nature or inclination).

Land of Ninja (great supplement, lousy title) replaced this with “spirit communication” on pages 34-35.

One thing I liked was how elemental sizes gradually increased, with each extra cubic meter adding one extra characteristic level per cubic meter. Earth eementals, for instance, would gain 1d6+6 STR, 1d6 POW, and 2d6+6 per cubIc meter. That strikes me as much more logical than just dividing them into small, medium and large categories.

Page 38, Do Gardeners who started in the Great Sister subcult retain ability to use the Summon small and medium Earth Elementals they got from Ernalda?

pages 118-119: It is unclear whether the positions of Shaman and Chieftain correspond with initiate, god-talker, priest or Rune Lord. This seems to a problem with cults which have non-standard postions.

Hm. It seems I missed the rule on page 146 about usng augments to increase the chances on the resistance table. That does change things.

Given that medium Elementals have an average POW of 16-17 and large ones have an average POW of 20, and humans have a maximum POW of 21 ( and probably keep it lower so they can get POW gain rolls) the chance of failing a Command Cult Spirit spell is substantial. So would anyone actually try to summon them in the first place?

On 8/19/2023 at 1:11 PM, soltakss said:

We really need to move away from ideas that everything is either Animist, Theistic or Sorcerous, instead most things are a mixture of everything.

Seconded. One of my favorite bits of Glorantha art is the picture on page 162 of The Guide to Glorantha Vol.1 showing how the same are of Dragon Pass is viewed in each of three other worlds.

14 hours ago, Arcadiagt5 said:

I think my favourite bit so far was just the sheer theological pettiness of Storm Voices being required to eat an egg once a week to show contempt for Yelm. 🤪

That’s been there since RuneQuest 2nd edition.

O Pages 35-36: It seems unclear as to whether the Elder Sister subculture meant to correspond to the status of Initiate, God-Talker, or Rune Priest.

P.S. The same also applies to Shamans of Aldrya.

Page 37: the first sentence under Requirements for acceptance for Gardeners reads “Candidates for the Council of Gardeners may be an awakened tree, Elder Sister, or Wood Lord and must have served in that function for at least twenty years.” The last sentence in the same section reads “The candidate must be a known leader and able to pass an extremely difficult test, abstracted as POW+ number of years spent as an awakened tree, shaman, Elder Sister, or Wood Lord on D100.” Are shamans eligible to become Garderners, or are they not?

Page 37: “Special Notes: When checking for divine intervention, a Gardener rolls 1D10 instead of 1D100” should appear after the Requirements for Acceptance section, assuming this has not changed from the RQ Bestiary.

A quick web search turned up this

https://glorantha.steff.in/digests/GloranthaDigest/

Older editions of CoC mentioned an Ohio Jones in the automatic weapons rules example. He should be in the Classic edition reprint.

Can anyone at Gen Con confirm that the books are being sold there? And, if so, pretty please post some photos of them?

11 hours ago, kalidor said:

You could sell the pdf version now and deliver the physical copies on august 17 so you dont disappoint... again. 

The Upcoming Glorantha Publications thread has posting about 1/3ed of the way down about why Chaosium is releasing physical and pdf editions at the same time.

He has no points placed into the swim ability. The pistol,should be heavy rather than medium, IMO.

A 400 page sourcebook for playing Call of Cthulhu in 1920’s Japan.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/446091/Japan--Empire-of-Shadows-A-Call-of-Cthulhu-sourcebook-for-1920s-Imperial-Japan?src=hottest_filtered