Jon Hunter

Lol i'm actually bummed that I missed the cattle raiding and tulas age.

The changes are more radical than that, moving to rune points system, with recovery based on rank and cult involvement. So recovering points at a major temple, in a ritual on high holy day is easy, at a shrine in the middle of nowhere, on your own, on a minor holy day is very hard. As well as solving the initiate to runepriest issues This means the religious life of you character becomes very important to game play, and pushes people to role playing there cult life and not using it as a character class and abstracting everything else. Its also the same mechanic working for both at different intervals which I like as a game design effect.

The rune magic system for initiates maybe wasn't as problematic as Jeff stated, but it was counter intuitive and the system worked against itself in that cult progression came from not acting like your God and just hoarding rune spells. Of all the new RQG stuff the Rune magic system is a great idea, rolled out well, with no apparent trade offs. From what i've seen it think it is perfect.

OK accepting that its not going to change, is of little import and does not significantly effect the overall quality of the products. For intellectual purposes only I will counter the arguments. If you have neutral stats, why should you get a bonus? Your stats set the base value of the skills which if average are average,low is low and high is high. Bonuses are built into to each skill individually and have gradients, rather than large 5% stepped jumps. Why two stats ? Because works well for game play, gives base skills in the 20 - 30% bracket, Is simple, allows the effects of different stats to be well balanced. In classic RQ Int & Dex 13 and Int 17 were remarkable important steps in min maxing characters, This system removes that temptation. (Note 30 years later i can still min max an RQ2 character by rote in my sleep) The obvious weaknesses of the MRQ II system is that some skills may need base skills lower or higher than the 20 - 30% which the two stats added gives, and if you start to play with that significantly to tweak you run the risk of undermining the nuanced simplicity of the system.

imho depends on the type of game you play, if its combat heavy its going to be to cumbersome. RQ combat is complex enough already. If your game has limited combat it could work, but your combats become longer( per turn), more dealy and less random.

I don't have as big as problem it first sounded. I just like MRQ2's way of adding two stats to create a base levels, is simpler, easier, a more gradual curve, balances that stats more and is more intuitive to my way of thinking. There were some good ideas involving the Runequest system between 1980 and 2015. But as i've said you wont please everyone so its my preference nothing else.

Maybe 'reaching out' to some of the the trolls of the elder wilds, That may explain that *****ing trollball team turning up all over Balazar.

Or maybe some one interesting and powerful in the empire, thus explaining this rather obscure posting

A pig tenders daughter ?

However I think some tricks were missed in rejecting everything from the subsequent rune quests, I think the skills lists, lack of skill bonuses(a big fat clunky faff), graded character starting levels that were in the systems were tweaks that could have been carried over.

I'd agree with that ... I managed it, but we didn't have high PC mortality, and i'm sure some teenage min maxing went on.

I'm not a HQ fan either, it doesn't work for me. Its not awful its just a style of gaming I personally don't like for Glorantha. But HQ is responsible for great Gloranthan background and material being produced and made available, which I can easily convert to my systems. It is also a style of more freeform gaming I do enjoy and has it place. To say that it is crap, and broke. Is rude to the people who love it, who designed it and put many hours into creating a Glorantha which would be much poorer without it. Your point on the rules giving freedom, breaking the system shows more about the lack of inflexibility of your thinking and your lack of understanding of alternative styles of gaming than anything else.

I'm after some help. My players have managed to get there hands on Halycon Von Enkorths ( Griffin Mountain Version ) journal and book keeping records going back 3 or 4 years. Apart from stuff from the campaign book does anyone want to suggest titbits of information, payments records and notes of past misdeeds I can include to flesh out the documents?

Cheers i'm not a HQ man so, that is useful info.

Hi Guys I have an idea ( which someone else may have had before me) for a type of low level Gloranthan magic item, tied into spirit magic and shamans. I call them spirit charms, it is where minor spirits are bound into breakable very mundane items ( rune carved sticks and bones, dreamcatchers, animal skulls, small medicine bags, vials of liquid) which reflect the nature of the spirit and the tradition which creates them. To use the them the owner simply breaks the item, release the spirits and manifests one use of the battle magic spell within. These are a relatively easy to make and common form of spirit magic used by shamans as they only require common minor spirits which would not usually be relevant to game play. Spirit charms are often gifts to clan members often before war parties or raiding. They are work like one use powered spirit magic matrixes, so no power is required to cast the spell, but once the spirit is released the item is broken and useless forever. For RQ the mechanic is simple, the charms just reflect battle magic spells, variable spells of a certain level, or similar level effects. In WOD Glorantha spirit charms work as powered battle magic as well, but are cast with the runes of the spirit not the character, thus all come with complete dice pools. I'm not as hot on HQ but low level one use words, which are quite tightly defined is how id would try to tackle it. Has this been done before and can anybody think why this isn't very Gloranthan?

and the duck looks like a rubber duck ..........

Its an area where i think which could be interesting, In the real world the near east had somes pretty standard temple layout with the Jews and the egyptians using the same temple layout it would not be weird to find the same hapepning in glorantha.

No Im meant that chaos broke into the world, in the darkness. The onset of chaos moved things from a lesser darkness to a greater darkness

I may be wrong but i thought shape reflected meaning, chaos came out of darkness thus the runes are similar. ( lol I cant quote source on that, but its in my brain somewhere ) I assumed the similarities in the shape of the runes and that a coherent case being possible for mastery to be the control and application of harmony the same applies. if i'm wrong i'm wrong, but that is where it came from.

She is usually, Esrolia excepted ( big exception) worshipped as a supporter of the ruler ( Queen supporting king not queen her own right), and thus the harmony rune suits, also note the harmony rune is associated with the mastery rune. Seeing as Glorantha is rarely completely consistent, I would suggest if she is worshipped as queen and ruler to substitute the harmony rune with the mastery rune.

However painting with a very broad brush RQ handles down and dirty very well. but never really scaled up well past Runelord level. HQ scales and handles mythic well, but I think its freeform manner lacks the definition of RQ and as such may not teach the game world in the same manner ( an odd view because the background is very good ).

Of course ... this is a balazar focused one, work really needs to be done to create for each homeland i may have some Lunar Provinces notes I used for my campaign stuck somewhere, want me to have a root round?

http://www.backtobalazar.com/significant-family-events/ This article pushes develops the idea, it came because the elder wilds doesn't have the same history dragon pass does, so to give a good range of significant life events we needed to come up with more generic events that created variation and interest. What i thought was interesting was we both developed the event and the personal interaction to the event as two different aspects.

I love the idea but it seems familiar

The point I would make is that possible advantages due to magic are just that possible advantages. Just because there is the magical potential it doesn't mean its used or that war, famine, bad leadership, political jiggery pokkery and general incompetence don't undermine or eliminate the magic advantages which exist. Also greater magical power can lead to greater possibility of magic fubar, or societal disaster if magic fails. This creates very interesting plot ideas and bring Glorantha magical society back to the game we love to play.