JonL

The ancient sage Baaom Elf-Rank related the stations of the Heroquest in great detail. However, I believe that current lore demands that he be referred to as, "Ascended Master Claus"

The impression I got from reading about Waha and his net with Spider Grandmother was that it was happening in Prax concurrently with the gods in the Underworld and Arachne Solara's web, with all things being drawn up in the middle between them.

How/when did Waha die during the Great Darkness?

The God Learners would definitely say it was he same Raccoon God under another name. What I've seen of the Mongoose stuff has looked fun, and they managed to go deep on a lot of cool neglected bits of the setting. They had sufficient conviction to put out a Ducks book, for pete's sake. Like it or not, that deserves respect for courage alone. Sure, it's built on a lot of deprecated interpretations of the Malkioni and such, but it's no more worthy of derision than half the stuff in old fanzines that may or may not harmonize with the current lore. It's good to have the current canon actually defined as a common point of reference, but that doesn't make the various apocrypha worthless crap.

When the text talks about Waha battling Pavis & being wounded, I did wonder whether it was Waha personally present, Waha incarnate within a mortal (not unlike Sedenya and Jar-Eel), a follower heroforming Waha, or simply a great Praxian metaphorically referred to as Waha. The text in P:GtA just says "Waha" every time. Given Pavis's road to divinity, I'm inclined to believe it's one of the first two.

There's a WFRP genre pack over there too. It actually implements the career track concept.

Hmm. I'm now imagining a Lunar expedition to the siege of the Clanking City to help Zistor defeat Orlanth in hopes of gaining Ziztorite/anti-Orlanthi powers for their associated Lunar Immortal cult. Orlanthi trying to stop them would find themselves in the awkward position of taking on the roles of EWF demigods & heroes in order to oppose the Lunars playing Zirtorites.

Reading through Pavis: Gateway to Adventure, Waha sure seemed to get into a lot of tussles within Time during the 2nd Age. If the stories are to be taken literally, is that any different than when Orlanth steps into Time?. Surviving throughout the Great Darkness, Waha wasn't directly a party to the Great Compromise the way that that Yelm's Court and the Lightbringers were, though he somehow did team up with Arachne Solara/Grandmother Spider in drawing the world together in his-net/her-web (if that's not to much of a God-Learner syncreticism). Apart from putting the Waha vs Pavis conflict on the table for HeroQuesters, I see something of a parallel between Arkat's victory at the Tower of Dreams, Sedenya's at Castle Blue, and Pavis's at the Too-Tall Battle. The upstart overcomes the established deity incarnate within Time en route to apotheosis. Perhaps there is little or no ongoing Zistorite spiritual presence in part because Zistor failed to overcome Orlanth, and thus not establishing its rightful place among the divine peerage. (I will hide from the Gift Carriers now.)

Hmm. It strikes me that thanks to Orlanth having intervened (and thus overlapped God Time & Time) to strike down Zistor, the siege of The Clanking City would be a potential HeroQuest destination. God Learner magitech, anyone?

I came across references to the Inherently Difficult Magic scale from HQ1. While the mastery scaling is quite different between 1 & 2 and 1 has lots of fiddly bits have been dropped between editions, is the IDM list still worthwhile as a point of reference for things that might warrant higher vs lower resistance when representing the fiction?

This excites me. Those stories are great epic-adventure ideas, but some of the Sartar Rising adventures fell hard into the "Assist the NPCs in their Epic Meta-Plot deeds." trap. I'd love to see an iteration that more explicitly supports games where NPCs like Kallyr & Broyan sit tight and focus on ruling/leading/defending their people while dispatching the PCs to do the heavy-lifting heroics & epic quests. More like, "BROYAN: I cannot go to the Other Side to in hopes of reviving Orlanth & awakening Ernalda, the Summons of Evil that draws the enemy to our chosen ground will only be strong enough so long as the True King stands here in defiance. This quest falls to you. TheGreat Darkness is come again. You must fight, we must win." Yes, please. I started on a sketch for an Arkati Cult Questionaire parallel to the Sartarite Clan one earlier this year, but paused when I hit some gaps in my knowledge. I'd be happy to contribute such a thing when the time comes, should you be open to it.

Thank you for engaging with this, Ian. It is greatly appreciated.

Tabling typos, misspellings, and other minor matters until a followup printing makes sense, sure. However, things like the Auroch Hills play example contradicting the rules as written elsewhere in the book, or entire paragraphs stating the number of hero points you're supposed to be able to spend on a single roll contradicting each other in the space of three pages are not typos. Direct contradictions like that are blatant defects in the rules as written. I've obviously been able to work out my own solutions at the table, but that's not the point. I get that it can seem more compelling for the business to prioritize labor time towards shipping new product over fixing something people have already paid for, but seriously, in a year there isn't half a day here and there that could be devoted to patching the more glaring flaws? I gotta say, the prospect of waiting until a future print run is impending (which could be years away or never) before fixing a defective product is somewhat disheartening, and is a policy I'm going to have to weigh in the balance when considering future purchases.

Reading the "Western Culture" section of the Guide, I was struck by the fact that while most Westerners have skin tones that correspond to the castes.. ...when it comes to the Loksamli, it says "They tend to be pale of skin and fair of hair." Is that perhaps a physical expression of their transcendence? I wonder if a Rokarist were to embrace Hrestolism, would the convert's hereditary caste-tone fade as well? Interestingly, Meriatan's skin is described as "pale-reddish." Is his skin trending red (that is to say, Horali-colored) as he dedicates himself so completely to warfare?

Chris Flood posted a a Cthulhu HQ2 genre pack over at Board Game Geek. Given the popularity of things like Trail of Cthulhu, I'm surprised Chaosium hasn't placed their own offering in that system-space, though perhaps with Trail being produced under license from Chaosium that may cloud the matter.

Seriously, I know they've got a lot on their plate, but a year is more than enough time to make time to address this stuff. For comparison, Pinnacle has gotten a half-dozen updates to the Savage Worlds Rifts Players' Guide PDF to me in the time that this thread has been in existence. In particular, the inconsistencies in the rule examples seriously degrade its utility as a tool for learning how to play the game.. To again use Pinnacle as an example, they released the Savage Rifts PDFs to KS backers months before going to print, and then got this sort of stuff all sorted out based on customer feedback before going to press. I would rather wait a few weeks longer for a supplement to ship in order for some effort to be devoted to this, and am certainly not going to buy a hardcopy of HQ:G until this stuff gets addressed and/or corrected. I am an enthusiastic booster of this system to anyone who will listen, have run it at cons, etc, but these cracks in the foundation are getting harder to ignore the longer they go neglected.

Per the Guide, "Among the New Hrestoli, women enjoy the same status as men, and have risen to the highest offices in Loskalm." rather than being shut-out like they are in Seshnela or among the Brithini. The illustration for the of the "Man" of All is even a female. Apart from YGMV though (I liked The Book of Glorious Joy even if it's vision for Loksalm is deprecated), that might make for a slick idea to use on the Castle Coast.

Oh, it's still the same as everything else. Climbing a rock face might be Moderate resistance while climbing the same bluff in during a downpour would be Very Hard. So too casting "lower" vs "higher" level spells. That's not the only factor of course, as unless we're zooming in to extended actions we're still talking about overall conflict resolution rather than task-level, but it's part of the overall situation to be considered. More powerful yet spells in more advanced grimoires would definitely be a thing if I did this in a longer campaign. Xeross's second volume for example would have things like Fireball, Explosive Runes, and Wall of Fire, while the third would have things like Summon Elemental, Incendiary Cloud, and Meteor Swarm.

I might be running B2: Keep on the Borderlands in HQ next weekend, so I busted out the spell list from Unearthed Arcana and started thinking about how the magic might be grouped thematically. These are the result. They all contain mostly 1st & 2nd level spells with a few 3rds here and there. I figure the more powerful spells will face higher resistance to cast. A Prestidigitator's PrimerA classic reference tome collecting basic spells geared toward helping a journeyman magic-user survive the dangerous world outside his former master's protection.--Magic Missile--Shield--Light--Feather Fall--Protection from Evil--Shocking grasp--Mending--Jump--Scare--Locate Object--Web--Feign Death--Dispell magicEssences of of MotionA basic text on the application of magical power to force and movement.--Feather Fall--Jump--Push--Spider Climb--Run--Unseen Servant--Levitate--Shatter--Haste--Slow--Gust of Wind--FlyThe Fragile SelfA tretise on effecting the minds of others by the notorious seducer and manipulator, Gavarge.--Charm Person--Friends--Hold Person--Taunt--Message--Sleep--Forget--Scare--ESP--Tasha's Uncontrollable Hedeous Laughter--SuggestionThe Burning HandThe first (and most common) of three volumes on pyromancy by the ancient archmage Xeross, intended to be an introductory work.--Affect Normal Fires--Melt--Firewater--Burning Hands--Pyrotechnics--Flaming Sphere--Light--Flame Arrow--Stinking CloudThe Peerless BurglarA collection of spells for stealth and theft--Spider Climb--Fools Gold--Invisibility--Leomund's trap--Nystul's Magic Aura--Locate Object--Rope Trick--Knock--InfravisionOn the Malleability of the Three DimensionsAn examination of the magical principles that underlie distance, size, and space.--Tenser's Floating Disc--Message--Levitation--Enlarge--Item--Rope Trick--Mirror Image--Deeppockets--Blink--Clairaudience--Clairvoyance

Even if their golden era is behind them, even an 80% effective Egalitarian Meritocracy is still a better deal than what most folks get.

That was kind of Hrestol already, Loksalm is an actual Egalitarian Meritocracy. Now Seshnela, they could stand to feel the Bern.

When my group met Quackjohn last year, they immediately reacted, "We're not going to call him 'Quackjohn,' that's like 'N. Jim' in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. His name is 'John,' and he deserves our respect as Grimble's right-hand." Next Glorantha game we played was set in Pavis County, and a player made a Duck Initiate of Zola-Fel to fill the 'party ranger' role, and he made it awesome. (Of course, we are of an age to have enjoyed Duck Tales in our formative years, so make of that what you will. )

I can see goat-Broo being a common phenotype in Dragon Pass even without many domestic herds. Anyplace mountainous is likely to have a wild goat population in out-of-the-way areas too rugged for settlement, which would also be where Broos have the opportunity to fester. Is serial rapists gradually turning into Broo still a thing? Do they look goatish?

Also, more literally, Treason Island (GtGv1, p211): Could you elaborate on this, please? I'm reminded of situations IRL where out-caste sub-societies filled niches that were taboo for the in-group, such as property ownership restrictions and exemption from usury laws leading many European Jews into banking & commerce, or the relegation of leather production to Burakumin leading to their modern prominence the Japanese shoe industry.

Oh yeah, the nasty Broo + Unholy Trio connection is clear. It's just goats getting an undeserved bad rap. They might get used by somebody as a ritual correspondence for Thed or Ragnalar at some point, but that's hardly the scape goat's fault.