Eric Christian Berg

Fire mares! Fire mares can travel a thousand leagues in a day!

I do wonder why the material of the shield doesn't effect its HP. There doesn't seem to be any reason to spend the money for a wood shield when the much cheaper wicker one has exactly the same stats.

Is there a rough ETA on when the heroquesting rules will be available? I recall hearing they were going to be in the GM book but the last reference I can find is already almost a year old.

I've been biding my time, collecting the coupons for my PDF purchases. Soon, it will be nigh!

pg 63, Brightflower's Rune Points are listed as dedicated to Issaries, but she's only a lay member and her Rune Spells match Ernalda, who she is an intiaite of, so I assume this is a mistake and her Rune Points are for Ernalda. The same is true of Gooseberry, on the next page. His spells match Eurmal, whom he is an Initiate of, though his Rune Points are listed as Issaries.

Everything is beautiful and top-notch so far as I'm going through it, my only gripe is that the Dragon Pass map is hard to read. I wish it were in the same style as the South Peloria Map (which I think is the same as the Dragon Pass map in the Glorantha Sourcebook).

I think it is because the drop to 100% isn't considered a modifier.

Is there a natural rate of recovery for points of characteristics lost due to disease or attacks like the bloodbird's blood drain, or can these only be recovered via a Recover Health spell?

The core book gives a general sense of whether each type of poison is usually slow or fast-acting, but it would really help if the poisonous creatures in the Bestiary specified for each creature whether their poison is fast or slow-acting. Also, giving the category it falls into would be helpful in terms of adjudicating antidotes quickly. As it is, all it says for each that it is a "systemic poison", which doesn't really need saying because all beast-delivered poisons are. What would be more useful for wyvern (page 129), instead of: "The sting injects a systemic poison of a POT equal to the CON of the wyvern." make it: "The sting injects fast-acting wyvern venom of a POT equal to the CON of the wyvern."

On pg. 126, the end of the first paragraph ends with "they will obey only a virgin female." would read better as "they will only obey a virgin female."

On page 115 in Triceratopses, "liveta in herds" should be "live in herds". Also, the Average for INT and POW are swapped (or the characteristics are swapped).

There are several references to acid, giving it a POT, but I see nothing in the core rules or the bestiary speaking to how this is applied. Is it just done like poison, as a resistance roll using CON to determine if it is full or half damage?

There are several references to "25 melee rounds" (pages 97, 106, 107). This is a "full turn", as defined in the core book, so I don't understand why that term wouldn't be used instead?

On page 99, when describing Gorp attacks, it doesn't really make it clear if the entire victim is engulfed on a failed DEXx5 roll or just one hit location.

The Zorak Zoran spell "Create Zombie" on page 82 should say "This spell creates a zombie (see page 129)" instead of "This spell creates a revenant (see page 123)".

p.48 It says that Men-and-a-Half "needs no more than a liter of liquid water to survive" but doesn't indicate what the time span is. One liter a week? A lifetime?

Huh, "leaf fat" is the pork equivalent of suet. I wonder if that is what is being referred to?

I gotta ask, what is a "Fatleaf Hotpot" (under Food)?

The table on p 64 (Friends, Allies, and Enemies) doesn't seem to work. For one thing, it doesn't account for War or Peace tribes. Second, it seems to be swapped, so war-like tribes have more friends and peaceful tribes have more enemies. Finally, the example Varmandi tribe (a War tribe with 15W War and no Peace rating) is said to have "1 friend, 2 allies, and 4 enemies", which on the table seems to be the result for 12 War and 12W Peace. Am I reading it wrong, or has a fixed version ever been presented?

Same here. I'm in Buffalo, NY.

The one riding the bison, of course!

A bit late, but here's my post-mortem. I ran the quickstart for three absolute newbies to RuneQuest. The closest any of them had come was playing Call of Cthulhu. This is the same boat I am in. Two were experienced gamers and one was still pretty new to it (12 years old, gaming regularly for only a year or so). I went over the character sheet with them, covered the basic mechanics, and introduced the augment rules. Didn't go over the skills or spells in depth, since they had their own copies to reference and I told them I'd cover other stuff as they became relevant in play. The introduction to the setting from the book went well and I spent some time answering questions. I had gone over the Dragon Pass timeline in my copy of HeroQuest Glorantha ahead of time, to refresh myself on the details of the various conflicts in their biographies and this proved to be a good call. They chose Vasana, Vostor, and Sorana. They had no issue getting into the game and picked up the mechanics immediately. I was particularly surprised at how easily they incorporated augments. The first combat ran pretty smoothly, though I had a little trouble keeping track of things as it was my first time running it. The main slowdowns were referencing the chart constantly to determine whether a hit was a critical or a special, and determining and keeping track of strike ranks. Also, the rock lizards having a 25% attack seemed weak. They didn't land a hit in the whole combat (part of that, though, was that only the bison rider rushed up to engage, the others hung back and threw ranged weapons). It was pretty cool, though. Vasana charged up with her bison and impaled one rock lizard with her lance while her bison crushed the skull of another who had fallen after a leg wound from a javelin. Everyone seemed pleased. While Vasana blew her Herd roll to calm the steer down, Vostor's player hit on the idea of singing to it and rolled a critical success. The role play with Carthalo was great. Vasana rode him down with her bison but they quickly gained his trust with their concern for the body of the dead Grey Dog (they had already started trying to prepare her corpse, even without the requisite skills). The ritual was awesome. Vostor assisted with dance and augmented with a critical success, allowing Carthalo to get a special success in the ghost summoning. They weathered the night with him afterwards, insisting he take all the provisions they could spare and vowing to either get him an assistant to come stay with him and help out (while learning his wisdom) or take him home and insisting the village take him in. They didn't ask him to come along (on account of his near blindness) but he wished them well and told them all be knew of the Stone Woman. (I did run into the aforementioned issue where one part of the text indicates he has no idea what she is and another gives a big info dump of what he knows which is considerable). On arrival at the ruined tower, they spotted Varanik and successfully ferreted him out with Detect Life. A called shot to the leg was successful in keeping him from escaping, but Sorala was able to calm him down with a critical Oratory roll (augmented by Harmony). He wasn't much help, of course, being half-mad, but they restrained him so they could take him home for ransom. On entering the tower, Sorala threw a Dispel Magic at Danakos, reducing him to a sobbing wreck of guilt, and then they turned their attention to the Stone Woman. They chose to fight, but after Vasana was grabbed both Vostor and Sorana rolled critical hits and decimated the ancient Earth goddess (the first hit even, coincidentally, struck the arm holding Vasana). Vostor summoned a fire elemental to destroy her remains and the tower the best it could, then they collected up the remaining cattle, their two prisoners, and (on the way back) Carthalo and returned home to much renown. Overall, everyone seemed very pleased with the game. As I said previously, the main trouble spots for me were the Strike Ranks and the special/critical roll calculation. I wish more d% systems would use Unknown Armies' take on criticals and special successes: 01 is a crit, 00 is a fumble, and matched dice are either a special success or failure. It scales well and requires no math or chart-referencing during the game. As for Strike Ranks, I find them too fiddly (as much as I appreciate what they are trying to accomplish). I prefer Aquelarre's approach, honestly, of all the BRP variants I've seen. I really dug the augment system, particularly with Runes and Passions. It makes the character's personality and motivations really count. As I said, the players took to them like fish to water.

It is explicitly mentioned that you can make multiple attacks with a ranged weapon if you can squeeze it in the 12 strike ranks and no mention is made of needing a high skill. I don't recall anywhere that it said you could make multiple attacks with a melee weapon with high skill.

Was there clarification on this that I missed? Does it mean you can only roll to parry missile attacks that hit one of the blocked locations?

This is addressed. If they wait out the storm, they have to actually make a Track roll at double the normal chance to find it. They can try a second time if they fail, taking another hour. And after that it says they eventually find it after a few hours of searching.