Dissolv

I like the concept -- having an awakened soul expanding your personal footprint on the God's Plane. The mechanics are a bit tricky. First there is the obvious backlog of PoW. Mechanically PoW is the ultimate resource for doing serious things, and it isn't just the Shaman that can get overtasked on that point. Second there is the chicken and the egg problem. Sure, Theseus may have shrines to him in ancient Greece. Got it. But he had to do the heroic deed in the first place to get that proprietary worship. So what good is the spiritual acclaim of the people? He was already heroic enough to tackle the Minotaur in his maze, found Athens, what have you. The PC's are presumably capable of doing whatever heroic deed that they have done before anyone sets up a shrine to them, so what's it for? Harrek is the obvous question mark to me here. How did he get so awesome as to be able to kill his own God and wear his skin around in the first place? Having done so, and added the Bear god's power to his, what can a couple of farmers sacrificing magic points to him at Sacred Time conceivably do for him, that he cannot do for himself? That comes back to the concept of the hero (as I see it). The hero is supposed to step outside society, do some great deed, and ideally bring the fruits of the labor back to the community. The community doesn't empower the hero like it does in the current, Heroquest-ish conception of Runequest. The Hero empowers the community. That's also how I have always experienced Runequest mechanics. The Players achieve some level of greatness -- previously this was Rune level, skill mastery, lots of stored power, spirits, items, etc., giving them the power to make a difference against the main problems facing the community. The community may help them along the way by training or spell teaching, or loaning them important clan treasures, but fundamentally the heroism was from the players doing something for the community that the community could not otherwise accomplish. As such, I would split up the means to heroic power into a couple of mechanisms. Someone trying to follow Yelm as faithfully as possible could, and maybe should have a different mechanism than a player looking to become independently powerful from the Gods. (See Harrek). At core, the big thing is that the players get a resource independent of the gods as it stands. Them needing to convince (or just have high enough reputation that it happens naturally) others to offer worship to them seems superfluous for a living hero. To bring them or their powers back from the other side -- sure, that makes sense. That's how Rune worship works. But when the hero himself is walking around, still doing his deeds, that seems like it's all him. He is generating the power that others might later tap into (ignore the term) by worship. Just my 2 cents.

Great news! I believe that I want to buy all of those things. 😁

Also of note, Runequest has always been a much friendlier system to those poor of stat than D&D. Many people have played the video games where they sit around and roll up characters until they get a perfect "18" in every important stat, and bring this mindset to the table. One of my Zoom players brought such a character to bear in my current campaign. He was surprised just how little his physical superiority gained him. Runequest is just different from D&D that way. First of all, you can increase your stats. Typically players will find the important breakpoints, like getting to a 1d4 damage bonus, aim for those, and then be done with stat training for a very long time. The big gains for skill category modifiers come from getting your POW to 17, which happens very naturally through play. +5% to everything except stealth! Heroquest rewards can come in the form of stat gains as well..... Second of all, lower than perfect 18's work just fine. Even later in campaigns, it is pretty uncommon for a player to have a non-magical 18 score in anything other than POW or CHA. A 21 is just extremely rare barring magical rewards. Getting perfect characteristics is sorta helpful, but not nearly to the extent that it is in other system. A fighter with a 15 strength in D&D is doomed to be sub-par, no matter what his level is. A 15 strength character in Runequest probably feels pretty good about himself in a bar fight. Although, skill matters here more than stats -- another huge difference in the systems. Third, the real power of the characters are through magic. The puny 9 strength character might lack a strength bonus, but he has a spirit keeping a Fireblade on his rapier, he is instantly capable of lethal attacks even through bronze plate. If he is a Humakti packing 12 Rune points, or a Shaman with a host of spirits at his command, then he may still be the most lethal person on the field. Physical stats matter. Skills matter more. Magic matters most of all. Or he might become an Issaries trader or Lhankhor Mhy devotee and make his impact felt in other ways than swordplay.

This definitely sets the tone of the campaign. If you want to run a "hard" campaign where the rules of the universe are unbending and tough, then make them keep what is rolled. One of the dominant characters from my RQ3 Griffin Island campaign was a minimum size Viking. A bad stat didn't hold him back at all, but he was very strong, so it wasn't a "bad" roll up, just a single bad stat on an otherwise fine character. If the character was a wall of "3's" and "5's" I would have allowed him a re-do. On the other hand, if you want your characters to be great right out of the chute, then I would recommend not rolling at all, and letting them assign a fixed value of points. Make that number very healthy. My general pattern is to start harsh, and then relax things as the campaign goes along. This allows later characters to start near the power levels necessary to perform as the more experienced original characters, and sort of represents the Hero War's progression, as the general competency of the extraordinary individuals starts to climb. Please note that a "by the book, the world is tough" setting is often very enjoyable and memorable -- so long as the players are forewarned what to expect, and they are able to rise to the challenge. Some of the best players I have GM'd have come out of these sorts of campaigns, and were experts at getting the most of anything they could get their hands on, be it spell, skill, RP possibility, etc. Other players are very "Pathfinder" conditioned though, and are used to passively doing things from their sheet when the appropriate game cues are triggered. These types of players often need time to get into the "active gaming" mindset that a tough universe can enforce -- particularly the dreaded trollkin critical. So un-heroic. So deadly.

I have an active Red Cow campaign, but with the twist that the players wound up only actually having one current Red Cow member in it. They hop from clan to clan, trying to build reputation with their deeds and influence the local politics. Their goal seems to be to unite and strengthen the clans, presumably to be ready to fight the Lunars "when the time is right". As such, an abbreviated list of the NPC's for each clan is used, rather than the full spectrum from one of them. For example with the Red Cow Chief Broddi is the main foil to the player's ambitions, as he just wants to maintain the status quo. Darna Longcoat is the counterweight, who likes to work against Broddi through the players, so long as they are working in a direction that she favors. Ashart the Orlanth priest is a source of endless requests for help for the oppressed Orlanthi of the region. Other Red Cow NPC's will drift around, but don't have a lot of screen time, compared to how the campaign was originally envisioned. On the other hand, multiple other clans and cities have frequent NPCs. The Two Pine clan for example has a similar interaction pattern with the PC's. Most of the play time interactions being with Chief Kulbrast, the clan Champion Darkat Strongthewed, and some lesser ranking NPC's. Tosti Runefriend and especially Minyarth Purple are frequent drive by's in the campaign. Minyarth in particular is presented as the primary architect, or influencer in chief, or prime mover of the rebellion. So much so that the player Lhankhor Mhy Priest (he recently earned his Rune level status) has spent time trying to research what exactly he is doing based on clues dropped from conversations with him, and observation of his activities around Jonstown Compendium. It has led the character down quite the cosmic rabbit hole with Draconic mysticism, immanent danger of illumination, and a grasp of just how desperate the Orlanthi are in 1620. Kallyr was once in the room next to the PC's, but they chose a different path and did not attempt to join her ring. King Broyan is mentioned roughly once every other meeting ("news from the south, Broyan has defeated the Crimson Bat! Whitewall still besieged"). The players were approached by the local rebels as potential recruits, but didn't fully commit to the Mudhens, let alone trek down to Hendrikiland to fight the Lunars in the open field. I am finding the "trick" is introduce a character through some small interaction -- a short conversation while waiting for sword practice with Darkot, or someone who approaches the players after getting rejected by Broddi. Given time, the various personalities virtually run themselves, once established. The initial inclination of the players was to always go directly to the tribal Chief, Jomes, Queen Ivartha, or whomever was the highest ranking NPC around. Now they are starting to "feel" the lay of the land and are approaching the lower ranking NPCs first with many things, rather than always go to the top (where they might not get the response that they want!)

Extremely helpful to my own campaign this is. We just hit 1620 and the players are very Cinsina focused.

It's not really an issue. However I do hold RQII to be pretty much the gold standard for clarity with rules. RQ:G is simply too long to possibly be as concise, plus they added in flavorful character generation, much more about Glorantha in general, etc. Like anything else, when you GM you use the mechanics that you need to tell the story and play the game. Everything else is nice to have.

Ah! I get it now. I misunderstood "who" was having the problem. Honestly your example does raise an interesting question. Why aren't the world mechanics being followed by the NPCs for the benefit of the NPC's? I just play it that the world is "semi-static". The pushy clan champion that you hated last year is the same, but you got better faster. The clan ring members are in even worse shape, as they have almost zero time to work in adventuring skills and such. My assumption has always been that the PC's are "favored by the gods" or similarly exceptional in some way. Or they just have more free time and inclination to pursue very dangerous, and often violent inclinations. I also GM that some NPCs are similarly blessed. These do increase in power, have the same stats as the PC's, and fight as intelligently as the PCs. Sometimes more so.

I think this is where we diverge. The way I run it, the players have to sacrifice to the community. Mainly with their blood, sweat, and time, but the community needs them to solve big problems. It doesn't exist to empower the players. A successful adventure does tend to leave the players in a better position than before. Maybe they had to quest for the Mcguffin of Might to deal with some threat or other. When the threat is dealt with, sometimes they wind up with Mcguffin for a good deal of time. Sometimes not. But the clans people my players are interacting with cannot be "magic taxed" by the PC's, nor do they give out clan treasures willy nilly. They may loan the players one for a specific purpose, but the items, power, and wealth are the clan's, not the players'. Pre-existing items, like the Black Spear, are things normally wielded by NPC's, or retired PC's willing to leave the adventuring life and act full time as the defender of the clan. This is a fine and fitting last chapter to a story. Which bring me to my other point. PC's should die. Yeah, I said it. Clearly not too often, as that ruins the story. But think about it from a story point of view. For all his might and his labors, Hercules dies in the end. Perseus has the one great adventure and then essentially retires to be king. Every Viking hero dies essentially, even the gods. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser get old -- the Grey Mouser loses a hand, and they settle down on Rime Island. Conan gets old and goes on "one last adventure" in Conan of the Isles. In a long running campaign, there should not be an endless acquisition of un-losable power like in a video game. Equipment should come and go -- even Arkat's unbreakable sword is destroyed. Heroquests may demand sacrifice, real sacrifice from our heroes, such as some of their strength, or their most favored weapon. True heroes rise to the occasion, usually in defense of their homes and communities. If you can get a good "feeling" of the community and the players really care about it, you may find them giving pow crystals and minor items away to up and coming NPC's that catch their eye. It isn't about building a more and more powerful character. The character becomes more powerful through acting in harmony with his role as a champion/philosopher/king/hero during the story. The less linear this is, the more real it feels, and the more you move away from D&D style leveling. Some adventures should wind up with your players making a net gain out of the deal. Others they should lose something. There should be risk of both, gradually tightening in around the players as the hero wars progresses. It may feel like fate, or a doom, but it really should be "you pay your money and you take your chances." No one made the players try that dangerous Heroquest. But if they choose to do so, there must be equivalent risk along with the potential for reward. How you manage that is very much up to your style of GMing. To help the players understand and manage the risk, I use a LOT of foreshadowing, storytelling within a story, and try to give them a chance to converse with many different NPCs. Clues to this adventure, and other snippets to be used later are liberally sprinkled around. Given 4-6 sessions, I can usually build to a pretty epic adventure where it all comes to a head and the players pull the trigger on their plan, and we see if it all comes together with the players standing tall at the end......or not. Quite a few times my players have "noped" their way from the main fray, and very often they try to resolve things without resorting to violence. But sometimes that werewolf pack just isn't taking no for an answer, and so they pick themselves up, stand in front of the farm steads, grit their teeth, and we see what we shall see.

Entirely depends on the campaign that you are running. My current one started very, very low powered. The character's relative power to the more storied members of their clans is a constant theme that drives the players as their relationships to the cast of NPCs (Red Cow region!) has been changing over the course of the adventures. The campaign has heavily followed the seasons to pace the lifestyle and culture of the hill people, and the players have consciously chose to burn multiple seasons in "training montages" rather than risk the options for more serious adventures. All are new to Glorantha and Runequest both, so they played it very cautiously at first. We meet once a week and I allow experience checks, and POW gain rolls if they meet the conditions at the end of every meeting, unless they are obviously in the middle of a gnarly adventure like their three week epic in Snakepipe Hollow. The very first character made Sage Lord just three weeks ago, and one character has become a thane in great stead for the Two Pine clan. This has taken nearly 30 sessions. (holy cow, has it been that long already?) The first set of adventures were designed around showcasing the world, the game mechanics, and setting up the characters and role playing possibilities. They players generally only took action when a leader-esqe NPC took them, and formed sort of an "out of luck" club, as their families were mostly all dead, and Chief Broddi was against raids and trouble-making of all sorts that allow the Orlanthi youth to make their mark. Gradually the lack of opportunities grated on the players, so they started taking matters into their own hands. One player famously stole Red cows from his own clan every adventure, and used them to bribe various powers around the region to distract the Lunars away from the Hill of Orlanth Victorious, so that he and other clansmen could worship. By the time their characters were significant threats, having gained full body armor, good magic, and significant skills (not just fighting -- they are great at communications in general each character has his own set of useful skills), they turned into significant regional power players as well. They boasted in the halls, took on dangerous quests, including bold forays into the Woods of the Dead and Snakepipe Hollow. They gained a great deal of reputation, and started fitting into leadership slots in their society. Recently this has culminated with a restoration of the Two Pine Battle magics, and a loose alliance with Red Cow. They have come out against Lunar occupation, but have held the rebel factions in check as "the time is not yet right". There was a game session where the players were invited to a significant planning session with the various factions of the rebellion. They could have gone to the East with Tosti Runefriend to learn eastern draconic magic, or gone south to aid King Broyan, or pledge service to Kallyr Starbrow herself. After weighing the options they decided that the East was too far with so many pressing demands at home (plus they lacked the Guided Teleport to return quickly), going to war in Hendrikiland would cause them to be just so much meat in the meatgrinder, and aiding Kallyr would reduce them right back to nameless torchbearers, but in a much higher level setting. Ultimately they chose to become regional power players and are working actively in clan and tribal politics, learning as they go that it isn't as easy as it seemed when they were mere youths... The power levels of the characters are held in check not by holding back POW and exp rolls, but powerful artifacts and opportunities to Heroquest for "gamebreaking" rewards. This is still in the prelude of the Hero Wars, after all. They are getting hints of power, but havn't had their shot yet. The plot is mainly story driven, and the characters' rise to power in their home region has been very rewarding for the players, even as they are forced to take more consequential decisions. About once ever five or six sessions I bust out a big epic adventure, and the players have opportunity to make serious gains then. However so far this has been things like: A PoW crystal. A necklace with a spell matrix on it. A chance to learn secrets of some lunar sorcerous practice. Soon, it being nearly 1620, all sorts of things are going to bust loose and I expect that one character will make Wind Lord status. If they can "master" the local political situation, then they can access the support and magics of two Clans -- the Red Cow and the Two Pine. From there they may stay with a political campaign, or choose to branch off on a more significant small party outing. (Perhaps Eleven lights!) At that point it may be possible that one or more items of significance, or heroic powers be earned. Judging by this, I think that my players might be ready to walk into the very start of one of @soltakss 's campaigns in around the 50 week mark!

Point of fact, I'm not clear that they didn't actually intend to kill all of the Rune Gate inhabitants at least. That's not "genocide" certainly, but it should at least be a war crime (I mean, if Glorantha had a UN or such. Frankly just using Chaos is already beyond the pale for just about all Glorantha societies as I understand it). I found this: But I have also read, but cannot currently find, that they promised all the survivors to Delecti as undead, but then fed everybody to the Bat, so Delecti got nothing.

And that remains my opinion. Everything that I have read and experienced has led me to the point of view that we are much more civilized than our ancestors, as a whole. If anything, we live in a near paradise of plenty, with our individual rights well defined and protected, our ability to speak out and discuss topics freely, criticize our leaders without fear of violent reprisal, etc. This is on average of course. There were plenty of peaceful societies discovered by anthropologists, but always small communities, and normally very isolated. There is of course wrong and evil around the world today. But you understand what I mean. If I criticize a world leader today, it just doesn't have same the consequences that criticizing a Persian King of Kings would have had. Or heaven help me....an Assyrian one. As a general rule, I lead an astonishingly comfortable life, with nearly zero life and death decisions made per lifetime, let alone year. Now let's look at Bronze age me. Suppose I rock the boat too much in a Celtic society. I very well may find myself at the end of a sword, or exiled from the community, or a slave. We don't have too much information on these guys prior to the Iron Age, but we do know that they build forts (not common in peaceful societies), engage in warfare quite a great deal, take slaves, and are feared by their neighbors. They romped through Thrace and Italy, founded Galatia, and sacked Rome, although this is now the iron age for those feats. What about civilized Greece? Surely I would fare better. Nope. Sparta is a straight up slave state, complete with secret police to keep the helots in line. Free men train for war. That's it. That's your job. Enslave the farmers and train for war. Athens? Not only do these guys vote someone off the island every year -- they would also ostracize (read: exile for 10 years) their best and brightest as well. This was done largely as a political weapon. Socrates was famously executed, but they also were very warlike and the vices of pure democracy are frequently cited when they ruthlessly dominated their neighbors and sparked the peloponnesian war. This famously started when they attacked their own ally, Samos. Oh yeah, also the slavery thing. None of those societies are known for tolerance of outsiders, or strong women's rights movements, or a bunch of abolitionists. Nor do they have recorded protests against winning a war and slaughtering, pillaging, and burning down cities of their opponents. It is quite the opposite -- they celebrate those things, and welcome the captured wealth and slaves as a great boon to themselves. Today being pro-slavery, anti-women's rights, and pro-invading other people's and taking their stuff does not even get you into the ground floor of being considered part of humanity. Yet our ancestors did and thought that way and did not consider themselves morally inferior for so thinking. I will not even get into what the Assyrians did as a matter of state policy. It is almost unbelievable. Listen to the Dan Carlin podcast. He is fantastic to listen to in general anyway. So yes, my idea of a bronze age world is much more "out there" and in greater need a hero than anything we live in today. Nor should the inhabitants think or act like modern day Westenders. For the second point was about human nature itself. This is extremely relevant for a game that purports to explore mythological archetypes. Proper Jungian study is far, far beyond any reasonable topic here. Seriously, the guy was a genius who realized that psychology of the day was insufficient, so turned to anthropology, theology, archeology, and mythology for his theories. He memorized the Koran to such a degree that he was mistaken for a religious leader while traveling the middle east (or Tunisia? I forget where, it has been a long time since school). The point is that to really dig into his theories requires a LOT of academic underpinning. Similar to Freud you risk missing important meanings, distinctions, or changes in directions if you rely on secondary sources. That said...... Jung about the Shadow The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge, and it therefore,. as a rule, meets with considerable resistance. Indeed, self-knowledge as a psychotherapeutic measure frequently requires much painstaking work extending over a long period. (From Aion: Phenomenology of the Self published in The Portable Jung, edited by Joseph Campbell, Penguin Books, 1976, p. 145.) The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 7 is where you are looking for the primary source. I would strongly recommend Freud's Civilization and its Discontents as well, although this is a different sort of work, and he wasn't into mythology or similar references. The bottom line is that people are not only capable of very bad things, they also hide from themselves the fact that they are so capable, or rationalize away what they have already done. And humans are very, very capable in this regard. The bad thing can range from taking your significant other for granted ("I left the toothpaste cap off again, oh well"), to very serious, world shaking crimes against humanity just to get personal power (fill in your atrocity of choice here, I will go with Alexander's sack and burning of Persepolis). The big catch is that everyone thinks that they are the hero of the story. They are the ones who will save Anne Frank, or bring the murderous factions of Rome into accord and thus avoid (yet another) civil war. The reality is that it is much, much, much, much harder to actually do than people ever imagine in their minds. It is in fact a highly unusual, even great act of moral courage to summon the strength, and the wisdom, to allow one's self to determine what is actually right, and act that way, despite the inevitable consequences. It is also always a highly individual act. Ghandi was heroic. Much of therapy is built around uncovering these buried aspects of one's self, and coming to terms with them. Both tasks are much more difficult that is ordinarily considered, and most people do not even try. Plenty decide, or even declare to friends that they are self actualized, however this is mere hubris. Please also note that even attaining improved states of self awareness doesn't mean a lack of violence. The Bhagavad Gita is famous for Arjuna seeing his teacher, and "100 cousins and friends" on the other side of the battlefield, and hesitating, not wanting to kill them. He charioteer, Krishna, councils doing his duty as the more righteous path, and Arjuna carries forward with his task, winning the battle, and slaughtering his kin. I think he becomes slightly more enlightened as well. Someone more knowledgeable about Indian mythology can dissect that one better than I, but that is the gist of it. Playing in Glorantha is way better than a Tolkien, or D&D based world. In D&D you fireball the Kobold village because they are Lawful Evil. That's it. Even if they haven't done anything that you know of, they are canonically evil, and you are doing good by getting rid of them. Tolkien's works are similarly simplistic. If it is an Ork, it just has to die, as it is a servant of true evil(tm) There is struggle in those types of games, but not true evil. Not the moral type that we recognize as real. Glorantha offers a much deeper experience. Runequest has not only a wide variety of points of view, and shades of grey, it also contains that wild element that lets us tap into our deeper impulses, in our imaginations, safely gathered around the dining room table (or Zoom session). Removing those elements, or softening the world cheapens the game in several ways, imo. There need to be choices, and they need to be consequential, impacting NPCs and world elements that the Players have developed emotional feelings towards. It cannot be an intellectual exercise such as "do we build the irrigation system this year or next year?" It needs to be elemental. Primal. The players should be hit where they feel it, deep down inside, and should agonize over making the correct decision. Then they have to live with it. Own it. Although there are many ways to GM, and YGMV, these are base line concepts for my games, even the sessions which are relatively tame. This was how the HBO Rome series was designed as well -- all the emotions and passions are much closer to the surface. I can GM different ways, but for Runequest -- my apparently low-literacy and poorly educated "mah Bronze Age authenticity" does matter. So does the existence of evil acts such as genocide. I have never, not in over thirty years doing this, had a player commit an act of genocide. This is what you seemed to be accusing me and my players of gleefully doing. The genocide (very loosely defined) is in the setting, and it was there when I picked it up in the 80's. It is a mature game setting and anyone who has ever read Cults of Terror should know this. So I use it to explore mature themes. NOT as "an atrocity simulator", but certainly not as a light or primarily comedic setting either. If anything, the moral realness that the game can produce makes it vastly superior to a D&D game where the violence is glossed over and cartoony. You may kill trolls in Runequest, but trolls have feelings. And you may wind up with feelings for having to fight them to, even if they wind up on the opposite side of the battlefield from you.

You clearly went off on my players and myself without reading, or really caring to fully read what I wrote. The players were new, we used the family history with random rolls, and holy cow did we get a weighted group of results. Warrior and farmer roll ups from a warrior society. Entire families killed by Lunars. Souls eaten by a chaos horror employed by men to dominate other men. Philosopher, family killed by Lunars too. Hmmm. Multiple characters with Hate Lunar passion during roll up. With no immediate families, it was obvious to us that this group of orphans teamed up as a band, likely while very young. (The Praxian is the only one whose family is fully intact, they are back home safe and sound.) This is far more dramatic a set up even than Conan's childhood from the 1st movie, and he spends nearly two hours trying to get revenge on Thulsa Doom. It is also the premise of about a hundred movies and stories where the parents/martial arts master/significant other get killed/kidnapped/wronged in some way. Heck, John Wick had the murdered puppy as the main driving point in the plot. Not only is this a straight forward and obvious trope, the players clearly understood it for what it was -- the character's core motivation. You are only one who started screeching "genocide, genocide, genocide". Then somehow torture and rape got involved. Awesome. Now that you have read my account of my campaign, do you still think that this is a "Greg Stafford atrocity simulator?" Are my players un-intelligent? Do they have violent and anti-social tendencies? Are they really bad people playing a bad style of game that you object to? Two important things that you didn't consider, and did not bother to ask about before you flipped out myself and on my friends. 1) Some people enjoy different levels of things, including mature themes. My campaigns happen to be generally PG-13 with the really bad things off camera, but they are alluded to and are present as facts in the world. In other words I don't go full Tarantino, as I find it gratuitous, but neither do I run a Marvel movie, where it all works out in the end (well, sometimes. I am a sucker for a well wrapped up set of plot lines.) The people who may prefer their Glorantha more graphic or horror-themed are not somehow bad people. 2) There are people, I daresay on this very forum, who read quite a great deal of history, mythology, and subjects I will term spiritualism. Sometimes their take on history, or even human nature itself, can be different than yours. That does not mean that they are wrong about it, or are "gaming wrong". Man's foibles and folly's are well known and predate Cain and Able. If working through serious history tomes is a chore, consider Dan Carlin's podcast series. It is immersive, well researched, and highly entertaining. I would suggest starting with his King of Kings for this particular topic -- re: why ancient societies can be seen as much more brutal than our current comfy one. https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-56-kings-kings/ I would also like to point out, and this may be quite relevant to this topic as well as this sub-discussion, that understanding one's dark side is a necessary part of any spiritual journey. Not only for what one might do one's self, but also what one might allow to happen because of fear, weakness, or pragmatism. This is the basic Jungian shadow principle and I believe part of the shamanic tradition as well. I trust an expert can assist with this concept as I come at it from a psychological perspective. Argrath clearly has fully integrated his shadow into his personality, from my point of view. Without difficult situations and hard choices, there is no room for character development or growth. That's why I found the one player panicking and running from the Lunars, leaving the queen (!) and the other PC's so significant. Will he feel shame? Will he start to get flighty when nasty looking chaos monsters come around? Will he overcompensate trying to earn redemption? Can they trust him again? These are themes that I now get to poke at with a stick. They cannot come up if the session had been a diplomatic one. (Also, how does that work when the bat is going to be fed 25 people, body and soul? Do the PC's get to try to justly decide on which members of society to sacrifice or something?) So here is my challenge. Knowing what you know about my player's characters and the campaign so far -- I have a relatively peaceful session coming up in nine days where the Lhankor Mhy philosopher will be called upon to debate a visiting Lunar Priestess. She will obviously be advocating deeper indoctrination into Lunar rule, but is mainly there to try to calm the area down. The Lunar military is off attacking Whitewall, and so this is a sort of "peace offensive" with no possibility of violence. It is a straight up debate and will happen in my campaign with or without forum input. You tell me what that Priestess should say in response to my player's obvious points and I will put those very words into her mouth as best as I can. Her goal is to create peace in the area (as it serves current Lunar interests, but let's ignore that for the moment, because she will). Help me make an argument that the sword should be laid down to my players, for a season, a year, for all time -- whatever case can be made. It will be assumed by all that the PC's are the visible face of the Mudhens, but this is really directed at any who will listen -- including and especially the PC's.

Hopefully this is back on track in some sort of a productive manner. Some of the comments that I have read were quite incredible. My players are presented with a fairly violent world with their way of life under siege. This isn't something that they demanded or that I made up. It is the setting. We play plenty of games that don't involve violence, such as Catan or Marrying Mr. Darcy. This, however, is a game of Heroic Fantasy, bronze age passions, and is a weird and savage place. Some game sessions are run as comedies, some as drama, some as a straight up action film. But the roots of any RQ session that I run are never far from R.E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Bulfinch, or Bernard Cornwell. As GM it my job to adjudicate the results, and act out NPC points of view. This being a mature environment, many NPCs have widely varying view points on different PC attempts and outcomes. This enriches the environment, and thus the gaming experience. Straight up black and white Tolkien is fine, but limiting. To (almost) no one's surprise, my players have universally attempted to save families, rescue children, and defend the weak. However this has led them in violent conflict with quite a few beings and agencies. 1) In character generation, the large majority of players were given fairly extreme reasons to hate the Lunar Empire, including an actual mechanical hate passion. The Bat was particularly brutal to my little crew's ancestors. 2) We are going through the timeline in The Coming Storm/The Eleven Lights. The Orlanth worshiping PC's were not pleased to discover that their God's worship was being suppressed, and their only priest had to be hidden and moved constantly. This was partly a role playing plot point, but also game mechanically impacted most of the PC's as they lost out on Holy day pow rolls, the ability to gain new Rune Magic, or even regain Rune Points. The paucity of Rune points and low POW stats on the Orlanthi is a running theme. Eventually they turned to a series of deals with unusual allies to distract the Lunars during times of ceremony, including the Telmori, the Sazdorf trolls, and surrounding tribes. Basically this was used as a means of giving the players (who are totally new to Glorantha) a tour of the various communities, as well as a means to have an adventure to gain a Holy day, and have made extra efforts to help the Maboder tribe in this way, once they learned of their plight in thralldom. 3) After a lengthy period of getting their feet under them with this new (to them) role playing system, and the very bizarre (to them) world of Glorantha, they started to both despise and understand the fence sitting of Chief Broddi. As a group, they lean strongly rebel, but have always worked hard to keep things under the necessary threshold that might provoke serious Lunar reprisals. They frequently oppose Broddi in council, and have wound up in dicey situations (read: Heroic) trying to square the circle of their position. This has led them to tackle very serious adventures such as venturing into the Woods of the Dead, Snakepipe Hollow, and the time in the Big Rubble. 4) The Lunars are generally presented as enjoying some of the benefits of ruling the land, but without actually doing all of the necessary work normally expected from the tribes. For example they are not supporting local efforts against the Telmori enough, tax and fine the Red Cows without just compensation (this is right from the book, btw.), and don't really help end feuds in a just fashion. Things took a major turn in 1618. The Lunars wiped out the entire Dundealos tribe -- killed, enslaved, or forced to feed. (Is this the genocide that has been so frequently referred to?) This did in fact deter the players from fully committing to the rebel cause, and by now they are acutely aware of just how serious the game world (and game mechanics can be). Straight up rebellion was considered hopeless, so instead of directly opposing the Lunars with their swords, the players have responded with an interesting gambit by ending the feud with the Two Pine, restoring that clan's magic in a series of adventures, and just accepting that the cost of this is to break a few eggs. For example multiple steads were sacked during a very serious raid when the PC's negotiation skills failed them, and a lengthy campaign against the Telmori was required as well. In the end, they had restored the Two Pine clan magics, forged a shaky alliance between the Red Cow and the Two Pine, but at the cost of goodwill with the Lorthing and Greenhaft clans, who were enjoying the period without tribute payment enough to choose to fight for it. Ironically the actions against the Telmori were welcomed and encouraged by the Lunar settlers in Wulfsland, but the point of doing this was to force justice against the Emerald Sword, who were using Lunar Imperial ties to unjustly harm the Red Cow. Broddi was opposed to all of this until the Lunars fined the clan 50 cows for their part in the Emerald Sword fued in 1618, an act considered unjust by all NPCs and PCs. In 1619 the Bat shows up on the Red Cow doorstop and the PC's desperately tried to save the clan from being fed to the bat. For once they supported Broddi in not wanting to feed anyone's "body and soul" to this Lovecraftian horror. Bad enough that the Bat even exists, but so much worse that people are using it as a weapon against other people to enforce their political will. The session started as a "who will sell out who to avoid getting fed to the bat" type plot, but wound up in a desperate delaying action at night with the PC's, Queen Ivartha, and some other NPC's desperately trying to hold off the Bat Cult, Dogeaters, and Arrowstone Cavalry while the Red Cow civilians fled for their very souls. This conflict was extraordinary in that it had the typically Runequest ebbs and flows. It started off as a Robin Hood style ambush, but turned into more of a Bunker Hill with the Imperial troops forming up and going right up the hill that the players were on, then a more heroic fantasy moment when Sunbright lit the hill for all to see (including the Mudhens rushing to the rescue). Finally the action was so hot that a player broke and fled. Not the character, mind you -- the player. So.....Argrath. He is not due to show up until 1624. At this rate I suspect that the players will be embattled enough as to welcome him like he is King Arthur. Beat up the Lunars? Light the Flame of Sartar? Awesome! Like most people under great stress, I don't expect them to question him too much, especially given the magical tests that he must pass. This is a common fantasy trope, and it would be a subversion of it to make Argrath a bad king somehow. But you can run the campaign in any number of ways. Frankly he isn't even part of my current arc, but I know how I would play him. He would be like Alexander the Great or Caesar. A larger than life figure who was master of his culture's skills, norms, and values. So much so that he is free to go beyond them. Also someone so determined to do something that he is nearly impossible to stop. But the evidence that we have is that he is a good ruler, but not a Chief Broddi type. He doesn't maintain the status quo -- he changes it to suit his vision. This sort of change is frightening to many. Even just the strength to potentially make the change is dangerous seeming, particularly to those who don't have it. Argrath will be polarizing. Both Great and Terrible at the same time. How will the players see this sort of figure? That's up to them.

Two players works fine. The main thing is to add more NPC interactions, especially for combat heavy scenes. One good trick for this is make combat either dueling/social situations, or large scale military conflict starting at clan vs. clan. That way the players are either spotlighted and showcased, or else they are influencing/driving a larger narrative of two clans/cultures/whatever clashing, and aren't expected to personally stab every enemy to death. The main thing is to avoid traditional dungeon style crawls where the PC's go off by themselves to do "something", focusing more on the players directing a village on how to defeat a chaos nest or such. A small group of PCs make great leaders for a community or even an army of disparate communities, but are very limited in what they can personally combat. In my current campaign they have only one true warrior out of three. On character is a philosopher who relies more on his wits, pre-combat skill checks and knowledge, and if forced to it a good parry skill. One is a Praxian who focuses heavily on archery, and was all but hopeless in melee. The warrior is a traditional Orlanthi, who has trended "heavy infantry", as many typical PC's will. He handles the difficult physical challenges, but is more likely to try to stealth solve anything he can. The players are new to the system, but have developed a heavy respect for the lethality of the system, which has led to a richer type of gaming, while still retaining the heroic fantasy theme.

I completely agree with this. It just isn't the nature of the world as presented, nor in line with what we know about our own ancestors. (Or, if we are honest, about our own deeper rooted, glossed over by civilization, urges.) Two out of my five Zoom players had their family eaten, body and soul, by the Crimson Bat during character generation. One was an exile and had to leave his home for five years. Another has no living family, they being mostly killed by Lunars. I had thought to squeeze in more "but what have the Lunars done for us?" type things, but there is no way that the players were having any of it. They are all in for extreme violence against the Lunars, and I am curious how they perceive events as they unfold. Right now they are in 1619, and going through the Eleven Lights scenarios. They have no idea what is coming. But their efforts saving the populace from the Bat, and the weirdo cultists trying to hunt down and sacrifice literally anyone they can get their hands on, has not endeared them to the side of the Goddess. Modern, overfed, couch-comfy morals aside, it is immersion breaking to not take up arms and fight like hell. I suspect that Argrath will get a warm welcome, and hope that the campaign goes long enough for the players to start to question when to stop the war. With major events coming up like the Windstop, I don't see that question hitting their thought process any time soon.

OP never said that his PC sorcerer was Orlanthi, did he? Maybe he is a Lunar, in which case, why would he care what the hillbilly barbarians think of his College of Magic trained powers?

This is very similar to the "what do I do when the Humakti is killing everybody" question. The answer is also very similar. If the word gets out that a PC has powerful magic and is using that to topple mighty foes, then unfairly targeting the character IS the logical NPC response. Obviously if he meets someone on the road and they fight for some reason the NPC(s) may not be aware of this powerful magic. On the other hand, if the player is making enemies, or even just a name for themselves, then divinations around "who killed Lord Hakon Slash"? by his friends and kin are going to happen and the NPCs will react accordingly once the word is out that the PC is a serious butt kicker. In Runequest there are a LOT of options other than just initiating a melee head first. Personally I find a javelin volley highly effective, as do my players (both giving and receiving). On top of concentration rolls from getting wounded that might interrupt sorcery, the average damage for a javelin is quite high. 10 is the average with speed dart, so it should only take 4 competent Orlanthi to hit 3 times and score an average damage of 15 points AFTER heavy scale armor is accounted for. If magical defenses are suspected, usually someone tasked with a strong dispel magic does the trick. Ambush is also a means to get damage home Most PC's can't take this much and will go down due to total hit point loss, even if three different locations were struck. Critical or special hits are a strong possibility, and magnify the impact. Poison on the javelins also magnifies the lethality, but might break honor, or traditions, or just seem under handed, depending on who is attacking. Hero's might be able to withstand that sort of impact, but anyone THAT awesome will demand an ever bigger response. If you take a shot at the King, don't miss! The NPC's who are aware of a PC that powerful will bring the house, and use whatever means that they have available. The main point is that the bigger the wave that the player is making, the bigger the hammer will be used on them by whomever is their enemy.

That it is one of the greatest treatment of a non-human species of all time in any RPG ever.

That looks........almost identical to the pig faced orcs I did up as Tusk Riders on Page 5. It is also totally how I envisioned orcs prior to the LoTR films.

After painting all of those miniatures, I wound up using straight up Zoom sessions. No one has found the other online options especially appealing, although part of that is simply the lack of support. I AM going to GM the Battle of Iceland using the armies that I have painted up and a camera (or two) when the party gets there in the timeline. That is intended as the big climax of this arc. But the week to week sessions haven't needed anything other than a shared Google Drive folder and a premium license for Zoom. The fillable PDF is fantastic, the players literally update the sheet after every session.

I generally make them find a buyer, which often involves travel. The main reasons for this are to: Increase immersion. It feels a lot more like a bronze age fantasy world when there aren't banks and strip malls for selling and buying everything. Some things of course, but this creates very motivating reasons to visit the major population centers. You need to know a guy. When the gem merchant is different than the shaman who is interested in draconic looking things, you wind up increasing you available NPC contacts massively, for little cost to the GM. Many of these one-off NPC's will come back as plot devices or patrons. As a plot device to control player wealth. Sure they found the crown of brilliance, but how are they going to make change for that? Will they pry gems off of it to pay for 100L training sessions here and there? Of course not! Sometimes the player just won't be able to get the full potential value from an item if they choose to sell it, rather than use or trade it.

Wouldn't the logical, and also the funnest option, be to require the trickster to trick the chieftain into breaking the bond himself?

Gratz!