Mark Mohrfield

11 hours ago, Ian Cooper said:

Here is my canonical example of a HeroQuest contest. The Viper vs. The Mountain.

Now this would seem to be a fight to the death, but actually the prize is a little different. The Mountain has a prize of: prove Tyrion's guilt. The Viper has a prize of: Force a confession that the Mountain raped and killed his sister. The GM declares that these are graduated goals. He tells the Viper's player that any victory will free Tyrion but only a Major Defeat or better will force the confession.

The Viper beats the Mountain, but its only a Minor Victory. To get a better Victory, and win the confession, the Viper tries a Parting Shot against his falling opponent. He fails, gives RPs to the Mountain, who then turns the tables and kills the Viper.

The Mountain gets the prize, Tyrion is found guilty.

The Viper is dead too, but that was incidental to the prize (though not to the Viper...) 

I have to point out that the Mountain also dies.

A player playing a Kolati shaman in my Pavis based campaign wants to have a Lightning charm. Can Kolati access the Spirit Society Lightning Boy belongs to?

How is work on the physical Glorantha Sourcebook going?

6 hours ago, Ian Cooper said:

4) A Holy Land sourcebook 

The Holy Land is huge. I think we would need to focus on  a place in the Holy Land where we wanted to tell some interesting stories. 

Repeating my earlier request for info on the Nochet sourcebook. Jajagappa recently posted a sample question for Esrolian House generation in another thread, so you can blame him for my curiosity.

Is there any news on the Nochet source book?

I think the story goes that Greg Stafford meant "not yet", but pronounced it something like "notch yet", thus the player's confusion.

20 hours ago, jeffjerwin said:

Recall also that the Bad Emperor is associated with the sky and fire, but is not identified as the Sun by traditionalist Orlanthi.

 This may have been true for the Dawn Age, but i think that it is more likely that modern Orlanthi identify the sun as whatever deity plays that role in the particular myth rather than always identifying it with one particular god. Mythology is often contradictory.

1 hour ago, g33k said:

In this regard, Tekumel beats Glorantha -- Barker's linguistic foundations make these sorts of questions easier to address than Stafford's mythological ones.

/heresy

And yet I still don't know how to pronounce "Tekumel".

28 minutes ago, Ian Cooper said:

Brass outside dwarf tunnels is I think problematic too, as its a later invention, around 500BC. I think its a secret of the mostali.

But it is possible that Gloranthan brass occurs naturally as does Gloranthan bronze. Even if it is a Mostali only product, it's probably cheaper than iron.

For whatever it's worth, a quick google search turns up several examples of brass-bound barrels. Personally, I'm an amphora fan, at least for Esrolia. It reinforces the Earth connection.

I prefer the lower roll to win as presented in HQ 2 to the higher roll wins method of HQ:G as the former favors the underdog.

I liked the fact that HQ 2 presented optional rules, such as stake points and the death spiral, even if I don't use them myself.

There seems to be consensus that the cargo would be unloaded/unloaded manually. Any idea how long that would take? 

Some more questions:

How was cargo loaded and unloaded on ancient ships? Were cranes used, or was it all simply moved by people lifting it? How long would it take to load and unload?

How many common river boats would it take to carry the cargo of one these ships?

Would a Kyrenia-style ship be able to navigate up rivers, or would it be necessary to transfer the cargo to river boats at Corflu?

11 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

Its name of Little Vanntar suggests a very close link with the relatively new Yelmalion statelet in Sartar.

Maybe it should be named "Littler Vanntar":)

57 minutes ago, metcalph said:

Esrolia: the Land of Ten Thousand Goddesses

That passage doesn't seem to be in my copy. Was it revised at some date?

1 hour ago, M Helsdon said:

The Noble Brothers

What is the source for this?

I notice from the map that there is a Yelmalio temple in Nochet. I presume that his cult is far less patriarchal than it is in Sartar or Prax, and wondered just how that worked.

Could anyone give me the size, speed, crew numbers and cargo capacity and other relevant specifications of these ships? 

I've found a website for a replica of a phoenician ship: http://www.phoenicia.org.uk/

It doesn't appear to be flat-bottomed, but I figure that the Esrolians may have some for deep-sea trading, perhaps either purchased from or copied from foreign sources.

50 minutes ago, Jeff said:

The most popular merchant ship as described in the Guide is a flat-bottomed tub with square sails.

Do these resemble any historical ships?

I am finally about to start my Glorantha: HeroQuest campaign which in which the PCs will be the entourage of a young Esrolian noblewoman sent to Pavis to oversee her House's trading interests there as a test of her leadership abilities. They'll get to Corflu by ship, and I want to know what sort of merchant ships the Esrolians use.

The Rune section on pages 191-193 does not list the law rune, though it does appear in the following illustrations.

On 3/3/2018 at 5:36 AM, David Scott said:

There are a couple of other assumptions you need to be aware of as well. Firstly when working with population numbers we assume that 50% are children, 25% are Men and 25% are women (unless like the Newtlings they are all one gender). So just using that on the 10K PJ, we get 2500 men and using the 6% number from CoP we get 150.

There's where I started to go wrong; I assumed that the percentage would refer to the tribe as a whole, as the percentage for Storm Bull cultists above did.

Quote

The Pol-joni do have Yelmalions is their tribe, but it's not the only option for those with the fire rune. Along with Yelmalio there is the Sky Gazers spirit society (led by Pole Star) and the Burners society (led by Oakfed). The 5% with the fire rune is split between those 3 giving 5/3/100*2500 men = about 42.

This is about giving rough figures to give a feel of the tribes. You don't have to use them, but I've found it very useful when writing about them. Feel free to adjust/ignore/make your own numbers up.

As a side comment, I suggested taking any Elmali out of the Yemalio total as they are effectively the same god (!) however splitting them evenly would give 5/4/100*2500 men = about 31 each in each of the 4 cults available which actually looks good as well and fits in with the Empty %

Yeah, that's too few worshipers of the Orlanthi horse god among Orlanthi horse riders for my taste, so my Glorantha will vary on that. I'll increase the percentage of those with the Fire rune at the expense of the other elemental runes on the theory that those with it would be drawn to a horse-riding tribe more than those without it. Let's see, reduce the Storm rune to 70%, and the other four by half to 2.5% for a total of 20% with the Fire Rune, for a total of 500. Of those, make 40% Elmal worshipers, 30% Yelmalio worshipers and  divide 30% among the other cults. That gives 200 Elmal worshipers, plus a few female worshipers. That should work for my purposes while still not altering them too far from the official version.

51 minutes ago, David Scott said:

Given that there are about 42 Yelmalions in the Tribe, I’d say none or as many as you like. Given that Yelmalio in the Wastes was effectively formed from a splinter of the sky gazer spirit society who knew him as Sun Daughter. When the Sun Domers arrived  it was a only a short step to realise they were the same. Polestar is the dominant spirit of that society and so I don’t think between Him and the knowledge of Sun daughter there is any storm equivalent. It does however make me wonder if the Orlanthi identify Ourania (IIRC) with Elmal. 

Your statement has me completely confused, as Appendix C states that 6% of the Pol Joni follow Yelmalio. Doesn't that come out to 300 total? And wouldn't the original Pol Joni simply have brought the cult of the Orlanthi horse god with them from Sartar?

Of course Appendix C can't tell us about cults that aren't in Cults of Prax, other than placing them under the "other" category. Which leads to my quetion: what percentage of the Pol-Joni follow Elmal?