Darius West

But you get the effect within game of having +48rp per season. You just have to arrange your life around your curse to make best use of your Wild Days. Should we regard the Lunar cycle as a curse then? So the Telmori need to become good time managers? This is a minor inconvenience. For a start, the Telmori move in tribes and don't normally associate with non-Telmori much. The fact remains that a rope or a decent set of manacles is a nice transportable form of restraint for those times when the wolf is likely to become a problem, but the fact is, you're chaos tainted, and likely don't overly care who you hurt, much like an ogre. The Telmori seldom if ever have good relations with anyone. The Kingdom of Sartar is an exception. If you think that the Telmori don't trust their "cursed changers", that would be unlikely. So you have to tie these excellent warriors up one day of the week in peace time? That's a small price to pay for their ability to keep transforming every week during a war. That is entirely a matter of perspective. You might as easily say that they're a hero if they are responsible for tearing hell through your enemies like a cut-price Harrek. I doubt the Telmori hunt their cursed. Now if some unfortunate person from outside the Telmori happens to become a werewolf due to carrying the curse due to Telmori ancestry, that is another matter. People are a lot less tolerant of such behavior outside the Telmori... So if you are a werewolf, you would do well to seek out the Telmori and explain your problem to them.

If that is the case then it can barely be called a curse, and is if anything more of a blessing that gives you +48RP per season.

Hyenagrams... A nice name for it, but of course they don't have telegrams in Glorantha (or is that another thing those Godlearners pioneered?). Certainly, the idea of using scraps of hyena skin and time honored geases to send Garzeen and Etyries merchants into the wastes is amusing, and who knows? Maybe they will find the Growing Place and rebuild Genert eventually if this keeps up?

Behind you! It's behind you!

Sorry to be a fly in the ointment, but this is an interesting topic, and I have a question about this exact topic. What happens to cursed Telmori's rune points? I have generally played that they cannot lose or regain rune points in any meaningful way, as every week they transform, which means they gain many more rune points than they would otherwise receive in order to perform their full transformation (6 per week x 8 weeks per season is 48 RP) but they lose all control over their change. One might argue on this basis that Talor gave them a gift, not a curse, but one with a difficult associated geas that limited their combat value to one day per week. So my first question is, how do other GMs handle this issue? Another question... Are we now to suppose that the Telmori have no link to the Lunar cycle too? After all, there was no Lunar Cycle for Talor to link the Telmori to in the First Age... unless he used the Blue Moon to further remove their access to their powers?

If people want to avoid splitting hairs, there is every chance that the shuffling about of various food crop varieties across Glorantha is all a product of the God Learners. They went to distant reaches of the world and brought back exotic crops which they no doubt offended the gods by seeking to plant in areas that had never known them before. Has it occurred to no-one that this might be part of what the whole Goddess Swap experiment might have been about? The point being, that the Earth pantheon that supports plant life is quite prepared to support even foreign plant life, and it only becomes a problem when matters are taken too far, and reliable staple regional crops are replaced by interlopers. For my money, there is no doubt that there are potatoes in Genertela, and quite possibly across most of the known world as well. Remember that Glorantha is a world whose sentient populations suffer periodic apocalypses and much knowledge of things is lost during these events, and the surviving populations will have only myths to explain why the world is as it is thereafter.

In the initiation myths of the Sartarites it is mentioned that Orlanth, Urox, Humakt and another unnamed god were taken when young and initiated by hostile foreign gods. The unnamed god was taken to the Sex Pit and there he was driven mad. This deity was almost certainly Ragnaglar, who was listed as a son of Umath prior. Thed is mentioned as having wanted to seduce Orlanth. She came to his bed disguised as Ernalda, but Orlanth had foreseen the deception and disguised unmarried Urox in his own place. Urox wasn't gentle, and Thed staggered away vowing revenge, only to meet Urox's sex-mad brother Ragnaglar. It is possible that Malia was already with them as a disease of the mind at this stage. Obviously they form the Unholy Trio and taint the Primal Plasma releasing Chaos into the world. Anyhow, goats are tied to Chaos in Glorantha, but there was likely a period before the release of Chaos where Ragnaglar and Thed produced the Broos as a non-chaotic race, in the period before Thed and Ragnaglar conspired with Malia. During this time, Broos were probably akin to Satyrs (who are half-deer, not half-goat in Glorantha), and therefore like other beast folk could claim kinship with Grandfather Mortal as much as a Minotaur or Baboon and thus with Daka Fal after Grandfather Mortal's death. The point is, I suppose, that everybody has ancestors, even Broos whose reproductive cycle resembles that of a wasp more than that of a mammal.

The Starter Set is quite an achievement. While cunningly reminiscent of the Basic D&D boxed set, it brings so much more to the gaming table. My favorite piece is the Battle of Dangerford Solo Quest, drawing on the Solo Quests of RQ2 of old, but doing it even better. It really brings home how much the pencil and paper RPG hobby has grown and developed, and why any player or GM who hasn't "been to Glorantha" needs to acquaint themselves with it ASAP. I hope it stuffed a few stockings this Sacred Time.

Blessings of Sacred Time be upon ye all, and may the Curse of Malia be broken and rent of its power as the Yearly Cycle is reborn, clean and new.

So, remember that part in the Lightbringer Summons "The Hand has pawed me"? Is that the left or the right hand? They both live in Snakepipe Hollow. I think Snakepipe Hollow is a nicer place than Dorastor, but mainly because it just isn't as big. I also think the scenario as written is a bit low key in terms of threat. I think SPH is a very big place with many more caves, and it would be a hell of a lot worse if it weren't for its reputation as a place where adventurers can make it rich.

If you don't want the players to have to do this, why not give them the option of having the morokanth bounty hunter Bor-bor the Fat show ups and promise to take care of it for them for half of the Assistant Shaman's usual ransom (125L), and is willing to start for a down-payment of 25L ? They succeed and come back a few days later saying they have the Assistant shaman, and want the rest of their pay or they will sell the Assistant shaman into slavery to make up the difference, even offering to top up the other characters if they get over 100L in the deal, because they are honest business-morokanths.

I like Akhorahil's idea of Silence improving a Move Silently roll by one level of success. A fumble becomes a fail. A fail becomes a success. A success becomes a special, and a special becomes a crit. While not the official reading of the spell from RQG, it is a well thought out response to handling the spell imo, and as with Mechashef, I think the spell is unclear as to its effects within existing game mechanics. I also thought that Crel's point was valid, but I would treat the removal of armor penalties as merely an added bonus, because often IRL, all that would take is a few pennies and a trip to a tailor, but the rules don't accommodate such things. Want things to stop clanking or jingling? Add cloth. A silence spell is supposed to represent magic, and even though spirit magic is supposed to be minimalist, a silence spell should do more than the write-up says in order to justify its existence.

I think you need to properly grade the pedantry on a bell curve Bill. 😈

This sounds a bit like a classic example of Murphy's Rules in an RPG. I would suggest rolling separately for each Hide instead. Players like rolling dice I find.

Yes, except that it is perfectly feasible that if the characters have cash reserves to spend on their upkeep and are prepared to risk adventuring with reduced rune points, they can potentially knock over another adventure or two in a season. I have players who utterly hate the prospect of being limited to one adventure a season, and complain bitterly if they can't, and they have point imo. Yes. Players may even spend a whole season as downtime if they need to blow their rune points on something other than adventuring, and don't feel confident about heading into danger under-powered. Yes, these are pretty good rules imo. I like finding reasons for cutting into characters cash reserves, so players gasp and mutter about lost income and talk about selling their magical loot. It's the whole taking-time-off-work thing. Will you have a job to go back to? And the answer in Glorantha is yes, but ouch.

The reason I ask is that I once ran a Tovtari Campaign starting in 1595 where one of my female players wanted to play an Ernaldan, and rolled high nobility, so I made her a potential claimant to both Sorana Tor and FHQ through an ancient blood tie to the early settlers of Far Point. This meant I could run a lot of intrigue, and get the rest of the party pushing to help her succeed as a means of undercutting Lunar power in the region, post-invasion. It was a rollicking treach + murder fest, and definitely MGDV.

WARNING: Dorastor is the most horrible part of Glorantha, a cursed land full of terrors. Secrets of Dorastor deals with extreme horror, with topics including violence, cannibalism, seduction, forced matings, ritual sacrifice and the liberal use of acid (as a weapon, not a drug, but y'know...). Please do not purchase this if these themes might cause offense. Now that's a disclaimer that will make a seasoned Glorantha Grognard grin.

In short, you won't run into many pitfalls. While the game system has changed a bit over the years, any GM who is halfway competent will be able to look even at HQ material and be able to make a pretty fair fist of converting it to RQG. In terms of the older material, you will find that some of the lore has since been superseded, but most of the info will still stand up. RQG is different to RQ3 mainly in that it doesn't have a fatigue point system (which is a glaring omission from the RQG rules, and we all know how much a system of fatigue and encumbrance improved game play back in the day, and we all really cared about how every last coin weight measured up to our overall fatigue, and I am being intensely sarcastic), and of course the Skill Category Modifiers were calculated differently etc. The overall Basic Roleplaying Chaosium system hasn't changed too intensely from version to version, with HQ being the stand-out exception, bearing precious little resemblance to any of it, but it still comes with a conversion system attached in the errata sheet as far as I remember. Overall, don't get too hung up about differences. Your Glorantha WILL vary. You literally can't avoid it, so don't fret about it. It is great that you want to provide your players with the most lore-authentic experience you can, and kudos to you for wanting to do that, but even Greg Stafford used to contradict himself in the lore occasionally, sometimes intentionally to trickster-troll the overly lore devoted GMs I think, so avoid getting too anxious about it. If you are even asking this question, you are likely already a bit over-prepared, and your players are in safe hands. At the end of the day, what is important is that your players have fun, not that they get lore-dumped out of existence.

According to KoS, there is a point where the Lunars manage to completely roll back the Sartarites to Prax, even retaking New Pavis, but the Lunars still manage to lose the war. Of course, if someone had assassinated Garrath Sharpsword in New Pavis on 1616, well, Argrath means liberator, so was he the only one who could fill those shoes? As to what would happen to him, well, the Lunars would likely try to send him to a Lunar Hell, but Argrath had already liberated Sheng Seleris from such a place, and while I can't quite see Sheng returning the favor, there are others who had raided into the Lunar Hells by this point, so the HQ paths there were open.

These days characters get to increase their skills once per season (is that a mis-spelling of session? jk). Adventures may take a while, but it is generally assumed that once ended the characters get down-time for study, training, household management chores etc. It is therefore reasonable to assume that a character can devote the period of their season not spent adventuring on the matter of communing. Now this can be augmented, and I draw your attention to page 246 of the RQG book. If the character spends 1 week involved in 'intellectual union', they will get +60% to the roll. That's the augment, and it is a substantial bonus on the base INT + POW roll. If they devoted their whole season to the matter it would be +75%, but then they couldn't have adventured. It is up to the GM to determine how much time a character can devote to their pursuit of intellectual union. Technically there is no monetary requirement for performing this, but the character needs a source of upkeep during their downtime, and the liberty to take time off. Intellectual union is not discussed at any length in the write-up, but it is a ritual of sorts, just not like theistic or shamanistic rituals. Instead it involves a lot of conferring and poring over books (especially one's primary grimoire), consulting tables, astronomy and astrology, observance of sympathies and correspondences, taking measurements and perhaps dabbling in a test involving alchemical runic principles, and a general literature search on topics relevant to the technique they wish to master, or perhaps none of this occurs and the sorcerer simply sits very deep in thought for a very long time staring at a blank wax tablet while they gather their thoughts. Then they sit down with the evidence and begin the process of reasoning out how it works, and experimenting with getting it to do so. If successful, there is a moment of epiphany when the intellectual union is achieved, and the technique is understood in all its subtlety and glory. The 1 POW represents the opening of the mental channel that initiates the sorcerer into the technique, in much the same way that spending 1 POW allows a theist to form a connection with their deity. Sorcery Techniques are a rarified and abstruse, highly intellectualized sort of deity (if you will indulge the analogy). Imagine if you will, treating Calculus or Topology or one of the other forms of Higher mathematics as a deity. Instead of only numbers and signs however you are manipulating the runes, the very underlying system of Gloranthan reality. The techniques and runes make no particular demands on you, unlike most deities, and are utterly indifferent to your fate. You cannot call out to them for aid, for they have no intrinsic ego to appeal to, and likely no body, but they also don't inflict arbitrary cultural rules upon you, and nor do they demand your loyalty or obedience. Abstract principles are unusual gods, but don't assume they aren't real or powerful, or that they are intelligent. It is enough that they are intelligible, and once grasped, are completely indifferent to being used in a way that other pesky gods are not.

The Glowline is extended by the huge lumps of moon rock employed as the focus of the temples. If you replace these with sufficiently large Thunderstones, the effect on the Lunar Glowline is predictable and valuable when harnessed by Orlanthi. The first time this was done was in the Temple of the Reaching Moon in Tarsh after its capture, but it is posited that the Household of Death had always intended to do something similar back in 1602. The roll-back of the Glowline persisted throughout the rule of Argrath, and it seems likely that the moon itself declined in power with the decline of the Glowline's reach, or this may have been part of some sort of grand Wane cycle that reached its apogee just before the Dragonrise, and met its nadir with the dismemberment and fall of the moon, but will rise again. At least this is my take on it.

I am no fan of the Lunars, but they are a much more punishing and interesting enemy when they have full moon access within the glowline imo. You always know that the middle of the week is when they are going to move, but you can't always guess what they will do next. Without it, the Lunars are pretty nerfed imo, but the RQG rules specifically say on p303 that the moon is only Half-Full within the Glowline. It seems a bit daft, given that the rule purely existed to prevent an HQ rort, and we aren't playing HQ, but there you go... As to the Cyclical Characteristic Rune Spell, I can't agree with your player's complaint. The spell is for use outside the Glowline as you suggest imo. As to Madness being a 1 point spell, I just looked at Page 43 of Cults of Prax (1979 edition) and Madness was a 2 point spell. BTW I think your friend might be a bit of a power gamer.

So lemme guess, it's a True Dragon that got SIZ tapped by Zzabur? Or do some dragons just dream small? In terms of your question, much depends on how intelligent the dragon is imo. If the critter can talk, then it might improve its skills, but if it has a really long lifespan, it might not improve those skills once per season but once per year, once per decade or once per incarnation, I suppose. It sounds a bit too much like a D&D pseudo-dragon to me.

As an aside, has a FHQ ever become a Sorana Tor I wonder?

Well, Jar-Eel might have risen to prominence if she weren't born into the 'House of Eel', but let's face facts, she's a daughter of privilege. I say this to highlight the fact that a substantial portion of her power derives from the influence of her family and its connections. The Eel family brings a lot of political, military, magical and economic resources to the table; when Jar-Eel comes to negotiate, she is never coming to the table alone, even if she is technically physically alone.