Ultor

My players are in the process of unifying the Rubble to provide the basis for the expulsion of the Lunars. The newly-crowned Queen has appointed a Ring and Seal that includes her loyalists (including half the Pavis priesthood), the Survivors/Royal Guard, Orlanthi like Garrath, the Flintnail Dwarves, and representatives of the enclaves, and is in the process of securing delegates from The Garden and the Troll clans. Keeping them from squabbling and the whole effort from falling apart is going to be fun.

I've been tending towards something like this. I suspect that it'll involve something like an En Garde order sheet for activities like training and research as well.

I'll be frank - I've found that there's a major tension between the calendar and the "one adventure per season" framing. If we assume that everyone has full Rune Points and so on at the start of the adventure, there's no real need to consult the calendar (unless that's part of the adventure or you enjoy stopping an adventure half way through and heading back home for a few rolls.) If we assume you have to use the calendar, timing any adventure that involves more than a few different PC cults becomes difficult if you want to ensure everyone starts with a full battery. We did use universal coordinated Minor Holy Days to try to obviate this problem, but it wasn't satisfactory and felt forced and non-Gloranthan. I'd love to know how others have handled this at their table.

Monkey has already been mentioned, but Stephen Chow's Journey to the West is a nice film-length take of the beginning of that story. Kurosawa's Throne of Blood is a reworking of Macbeth, but there's nothing wrong with that - as an examination of the consequences of kin-slaying and breaches of hospitality.

A lot of this looks to me like Special Effects for Runic Inspiration or Passions or even skill augmentation. I'd say the Orlanthi poetry is accompanied by an Air Rune check (or other as appropriate). The verse against Chaos would go with a Hate Chaos passion roll. A customs roll for the sort of thing @soltakss suggests would give you an augment on your communications skills (or a negative if you fail and forget to take the cloak off). Hand signs against the evil eye and the like could be defensive augments to POW v POW rolls. I agree that traditional curses are difficult - I haven't seen any RPG handle them well. My thought is that the really nasty ones would require a Divine Intervention roll. They'd require a similar level of commitment to shake off - a Heroquest at least. KODP, I'll note, is full of bad omens and terrible things happening because a ritual wasn't done properly. There's lots of inspiration for this sort of thing there.

I've now used the Simple rule in two sessions, and it worked extremely well.

My PCs have several skills well above 100% and have been taking every advantage of RAW. I'll be using the Simple Rule in my game tonight to see how it goes.

Hasn't come up. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. As I say, it's a glaring absence from the rules. I hope there'll be official guidelines as this is clearly a case where people are having to make up their own systems and they vary wildly.

I’ve played it as spirit combat, working out the skills and damage as normal (double POW to substitute for CHA). I give disadvantages of 20% according to the rune wheel. It is a glaring omission for higher level play, when combatants are going to be hurling elementals at each other.

I've found the same problem. I have been trying to move the players from continuous play to one-adventure-per-season and the Holy Days screw that up. Not to mention the Shaman musing about things he could be doing in the spirit world during the weeks not adventuring, all of which would require some form of roleplaying. I'm contemplating having some sort of "seasonal activity sheet" where the players can "schedule" downtime activities including worship and spirit quests, but it's hard to see what that will look like.

A long time ago I had an idea for "The Bull Hunt of Murharzarm" that was meant to be a riff on the Calydonian Boar Hunt and involve a lot of demigods and heroes. The idea was that some Great Bull had gone on a rampage, slaying the local goddess of the land and destroying so much else he created the Elder Wilds. The Emperor therefore sent out a call for heroes to stop it. I never worked it up, however.

SP 90. I have a copy - they may have had to pull it. ETA: Sorry, just saw the question was already answered.

There was also that issue of Signs & Portents that had the MRQ2 write-ups for Blueface and Muriah that they weren't supposed to use...

There was an issue of Heroes that had a fully worked-up RQ3 shaman. I remember thinking that really wasn't what I expected. Of course, RQ3 shamans had all sorts of rules-derived spirits like INT and POW spirits that aren't reflected in the current rules (thank goodness). It'd be really helpful to see a powerful RQG shaman (and sorcerer, for that matter).

Definitely part of the soloquest "Adventure Path" for me, along with the Maze of Shaxry Oborok from the Companion. There were a couple of solos in magazines I never saw, I think.