Alex

8 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Because he is a Cat God and not a part of Orlanth. Orlanth is friendly with cats, but is not a cat and never depicted as such. 

Voriof on the other hand is Orlanth Adventurous as a young shepherd. 

Fair enough, though I'd probably have given a fairly similar answer (rightly or wrongly!) about Odayla, who seems to do a  degree of double-duty as an Orlanth sub-cult on the one paw, and as a separate cult on the other.

15 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

But, then why does Yinkin get his own cult, and not as a sub-cult of Orlanth? Yinkin is just as specialised. And between Yinkin and Voriof, which would have more followers? Are there more hunters or shepherds?

Probably more shepherds, but the shepherds are probably themselves less occupationally specialised.  As in, most of them will be generalist farmers of one permutation or another, rather than pure ovine pastoralists.  If your days are spent doing primarily shepherding, but also some horticulture, tending other animals, maybe labouring in the fields of your patron/landlord/other preferred term for some posher relative, tending to other animals too, you're probably more like an Orlanth the Farmer cultist than an entirely dedicated Voriof one.

Or if you'd prefer a meta-rationale:  Yinkin is a popular and antics-filled PC cult, hence gets more writeup attention!  Doesn't mean it's impossible that there's a temple of Voriof  somewhere (or of Varnaval maybe?) with a wider array of rune magic, and an actual dedicated priest, so much as we might be haggling how common it is.

7 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

but do not cry too much, some spiritual retreat, one or two pilgrinage to fight a cult's ennemy in spiritual fight, regain pow, sacrifice it,  be repentant, and you will regain your status after some seasons.

Of course if you want to be at the best place during the sacred time ceremony you should have a very great reason to have spent your RP

For me it is a very nice story to play, when it happens. not just follow rules, but add scenario, opposition and social challenge, danger to prove your PC's  faith, etc..

Good to have an Official answer on this, thanks Scotty.  But to burble on adjacently regardless...

I do agree there's potential Story reasons to play this otherwise.  There's the question of whether the use of the magic itself was selfish or impious, there's the social outworkings of being an initiate with no divine magic.  Or a god-talker or priest with reduced magic.  Or in the extreme case, if a GT/P does this multiple times, a priest with no magic -- which sounds odd, but because Worship is a skill not itself RM, doesn't have a bootstrapping problem as such.

But for me, I presumptively see any use of rune magic as an inherently devout thing to do.  It's the means by which you're incarnating and manifesting the deity in the world.  Yes, there's "what did the god know?" (and when did they know it!) questions one could ask about how that works at the margins.  And indeed we have, see threads passim!  But in the normal course of events, I don't think the right hand of the deity gives (do this magical thing with my hat on), and then immediately the left hand takes away (bad worshipper, repentance needed, spirits of reprisal, etc).  I think "bad use of rune magic, 15 yards, loss of down" only occurs if there's some gap between apparently pious use of magic, and some consequence that puts a different light on their actions.  I think often this will be mediated by other worshippers, whether by formal invocation of SoRs by someone higher up the hierarchy, or just by a collective perception those worshippers share that filters back to the god.

Maximum Game Fun vs Rules Help Control the Fun is also a consideration here.  Enthusiasts for crunchier systems like RuneQuest often want crisply defined answers to such questions;  practicality (and the express limits of the ambitions in that area of the authors) tends to work against that.

11 hours ago, Alex said:

The Glorantha year used to be 365(.22..) days long.  Then Chaos et 71 of 'em.

Full disclosure, I once wrote up a "serious" version of something on these lines (but starting at 400 days, #becausereasons).  Prolly works better as a YDT. (A lot shorter, for one thing.)

7 hours ago, David Scott said:

Nomad gods predates Sandy's involvement with Chaosium and I doubt it was cheese.

Ah!  I didn't think to check the timeline, my bad.  First thought on this sort of thing is "Sandy adding oddball biology again!"

31 minutes ago, Bren said:

That doesn't seem to fit with the magically powerful units in the board games or the exploits of the heroic NPCs.

Arguably it does.  No-one with their own counter in Dragon Pass or Nomad Gods is just a "CR50" (or whatever other number) generic worshipper of a single god, and nothing else.  Presumably they're using h4x0rs like initiation into Hero Cults -- some of which might closely relate to the magic of their main deity.  Or have mindboggling enhancements to their CHA,maybe itself related to having heroically large Reputation.  Or the usual standby explanations for everything, Illumination!

I'll grant you that's a bit schematic and generic as rationales go.  Hopefully we'll get more detail how this works out on the various waypoints on The Hero's Journey from CHA 20 to CF 20 as future publications cover that!

12 hours ago, Orlanthatemyhamster said:

Very few people are going to worship Satire as their primary god, all of the permanent residents of a city are going to worship the City God as, if not their primary god, a big secondary. 

People may celebrate Satire once a year, but that that's about it. 

I think this will often depend on how conflated "the city god" and "the local religion" are -- and just how local the local religion is.  For the Theyalans, I think the pattern we see in Sartar will be a common or even usual one:  there's a clan-tribe-ring-kingdom hierarchy, so it's all Your POW Points At Work from the same social and religious structure.  The city god will be a hero subcult of Orlanth (or of Ernalda) corresponding to the founder.  Pavis is a somewhat similar but different case of a city founder cult, but one that's much more divergent and much more regionalised as a religious practice.  So there's a bunch of people that primarily worship Pavis, but very few that primarily worship Sven or Wilm.  But there's prominent shrines to Wilm and to Sartar in the local temple, so the locals would be puzzled (and per Orlanthi tradition, likely angry and violent) if you were to suggest they were slackers in their piety to the founders.

1 hour ago, Sid Vicarious said:

Its celebrated once a year, but the celebration lasts 365 days.

I was gonna do the obvious Gloranthacentric Consciousness quibble over this, but instead I'll transpose to:  

The Glorantha year used to be 365(.22..) days long.  Then Chaos et 71 of 'em.

10 hours ago, Orlanthatemyhamster said:

What does it do for ordinary people? Does it do anything for anyone, except keep a few more Buserians in jobs? 

You say that like it's a small consideration.  The key rite for sages everywhere:  TenureQuest!

10 hours ago, Orlanthatemyhamster said:

Is it like Astrology in real life but true? If not why is so much effort put into it? 

The natural Glorantha-style answer to that would be "yes".  (Or out of passing regard to those that believe in RL astrology or other sorts of magic, "like real life, but in a clear-cut objectively verifiable way".)

One slight niggle with that is that the Gloranthan sky is a little too predictable, compared to the terrestrial one.  Stuff exactly repeats every day or every year;  some things (like eclipses, oddly) don't happen at all.  One doesn't really need to invent whole new disciplines of mathematics and huge cadres of highly trained full-time to deal with most of that.  I think there's a few possible saves for that:

• The published celestrial periods have some 'rounding errors', and things are a bit more complex than first appears, but still materially determinable;
• The Southpath does all the heavy lifting;  everything else is easy to predict, but where Shargash will be rampaging next?  Experts needed;
• In theory it's all pretty simple, but then... magic happens.  Variations from the predictable occur often enough that they're an important consideration, and you need not so much maths as a ton of mystical meditation and enough rune magic and sorcery to incinerate a hecatomb of oxen.  Which doesn't mean that it has to be very common;  a Dragonrise every century or so will concentrate minds enormously.

10 hours ago, Orlanthatemyhamster said:

Who has access to the information, can anyone go see a Star Seer? 

There's likely a hierarchy.  As with everything Solar!  If you're the Emperor, you'll have at your personal service to redundant banks of people permanently walled up in Star Towers.  You may not wish that information to be made generally freely available, either.  If you're a poor peasant, the village wise woman may have a few prize nuggets of Sky lore.  And any and every point in between.

Agree with all the answers thus far, and I think in most cases they're pretty clear-cut.  There's one I think might be argued either way:-

4 hours ago, Mechashef said:

What happens if casting a one-use Rune Spell would lower a Rune Priest's RPs below the required minimum (typically 5 RPs)?  Is it:

1. They can't, the spell won't be successfully cast (similar to not being able to voluntarily reduce their POW to less than 18)
2. The spell is cast and the Rune Priest's RPs are reduced to below the required minimum and the priest loses their Rune Priest benefits (similar to if their POW does go below 18)
3. The spell is cast and there are no issues.  Rune Priests are allowed to have less than 5RPs once they have successfully qualified as a Rune Priest

This one comes down I think to whether this is a magical, otherworldly requirement (need a five-POW bandwidth connection to the god!), or a social one (this person really takes this stuff seriously, we'll give them the Priest job!).  It'd make logical sense for it to be either, so if you have a feeling one way or the other, I'd say go with it.  Or if there's a particular story logic that suggests itself if/when then comes up.  But given that the requirements to be God-Talker are identical, that argues for it being a magical one, or at least a reasonable game-mechanical approximation of the in-world magical otherworldly sitch.

So my take is that they'd lose the game-mechanical benefits of being a priest/god-talker.  But they might keep the social position -- most obviously if no-one else is available to fill it immediately.

4 hours ago, Mechashef said:

In a similar way can an Initiate (or priest if option 3 above) go to 0 RPs and if so, what happens?

This seems in one way a much more clear-cut circumstance, as going to 0 PRP is a weird edge case.  As jaggy says, they've "endangered" their initiatory status, in that they're now in a position that no initiated-five-minutes-ago person would ever be in, so if this did happen, you'd logically lose some or all of the normal "benefits of being an initiate" until this was rectified.  On the other hand how to play that out is a little murkier, and I can see a case for different ways of doing it:-

• Not allowing it;  the connection to the deity won't operate in a self-negating manner;
• It happens, and the character immediately ceases to be an initiate entirely;
• It happens, but the character goes into a temporary (or potentially permanent?) state where they're an initiate with no rune magic;  maybe come the next seasonal holy day when they're obliged to worship, they have to either sack POW, or face the normal consequences of apostasy;
• Or you could avoid it arising by having it work like a "mini-DI", with the immediate loss of a point of POW to the RPP in order to have the magic work.

And just to hedge my own hedge, I think you could even argue that the choice between (some of) those options might be available to the character, to the player, or be determined by story considerations.

I think this came up in another recent discussion, so I'm sure there's already a number of comments saying why that's a terrible take. 🙂

1 minute ago, Shiningbrow said:

I don't get why people are suggesting a sub-cult of a sub-cult. Why not a stand alone sub-cult? (And, even then, it's not really a sub-cult anyway, but just a quicker and simpler way to worship a god within a pantheon, and not have to pay for a priest and paraphernalia...)

I think it's the "salami" thing again, fundamentally.  Do Voriof worshippers sack a point of POW to him specifically, and just get access to one special RM out of it?  Or indeed is there a wider cult with more rune magics?  Seems a little too niche to me.

If sub-sub-cult sounds slightly too turtles all the way down, think of it like this:  Voriof is an associated deity.  His "full" cult has a coupla SRMs, but has relatively few full initiates.  Thus most of his worship is at shrines (also accessible by Orlanth initiates), and especially at shrines within Orlanth temples (where Orlanth worshippers can (re)gain his magic).

Or the Trill in Deep Space Nine, perhaps even more analogously.  A symbiotic (at least in the broad sense of the word, biology fans -- may or may not be mutualistic!) being, one part of which is extremely long-lived, and transfers shared memories, etc, from one "host" to another.  Or the Goa'uld, if you're not a 'Trek fan.  (Or maybe more to the point, if you're not one of a Belintar).

Yeah, kills multiple birds -- but it's one heckuva stone!  And spoiler alert needed on anyone unfamiliar with the DP counter sheet. 🙂

1 hour ago, jajagappa said:

Argrath becomes Prince in 1627 and one of the first things he is tasked to deal with by the Heortlanders and Esrolians is to stop the Wolf Pirates.

Tasked is an interesting choice of words here!  Given he's not under any direct obligation to do so, and the apparently horrendous difficulty and danger of going so, others would have sprung to mind first...  ("Begged", "heavily bribed", "had his arm twisted"...)  Though no doubt by this point he has any numbers of favours owed elsewhere, and this might be two or three (or twenty) of them coming due at once.

Informative notes, and nice map, thanks!

6 hours ago, Jose said:

OK, finally it's going to be Voriof as a cult. 

Mehhhh! 🙂

As well as youfs, Voriof's other association is with the "Poor Farmer" segment of Orlanthi society.  Cattle are the prestige animal of the people with the better land, higher social position, who also grow grain on a large scale, etc.  Sheep are more associated with client/renter type farming the more marginal land.

Mr Scott's observation about OA is interesting, but I think I'd make Voriof a subcult of either OA (mainly post-initiation youngsters) or OT (mainly "career" herders).  Culticly that makes sense for me if you regard it as a "shrine in the clan Orlanth temple, gives one special rune magic" type of subcult.  If you want it to be a slightly more substantial and standalone thing, there's a little more detail in the old Hero Wars stuff, but frankly nothing profound or exciting.  I'd definitely go the "also has access to Orlanth special divine magic" theory, not the "its own salami-sliced silo" one.

Or a Sandy cheese-dream was involved at some point.

Maybe a bit of both?  This is Day 88, AKA Founder's Day.  It gets mentioned a couple of times in King of Sartar, for example when Argrath (re)relights the Flame of Sartar in 1627.  So definitely an auspicious day of (let's say) you want to be acclaimed Prince, write "Hail Harshax!" letters, etc.

Sartar wasn't on the list of 100 G&GoG cults, unless that's changed since.  Maybe more likely to be treated of in some form in the Sartar book/box?

30 minutes ago, Orlanthatemyhamster said:

Weird to have a hunting god without the Death Rune. I suppose he just hugs his prey to sleep? 

Air, Death; Death, Air.  Lots of people not really hearing the difference.

"In poor taste."  --Yelm.

57 minutes ago, Orlanthatemyhamster said:

God of bagpipes, is that like being the best living Sci Fi writer in Australia? 

Many Moons ago, Tales had a couple of Rumours related to this.  Paraphrasing from memory as best I can...

"The national instrument of Sartar is, unfortunately, the bagpipes."
"The national instrument of the Uz is, unfortunately, the trollkin."

Now I'm thinking of the assorted "damps" in mining...  fire-damp, white-damp, etc.   Obviously gusty-damp, damp-damp, and stinky-damp are various well-known Orlanthi deities to that particular Lodril subcult!

49 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

Orlanth is considered just another lowfire in the Lodril Belt.

That's a funny line, but is also pretty much orthodox Pelorian theology!

"Tell me, O Celestial Sage, of the strange 'air' powers of the hill barbarians!"

"Buncha Low Fires, and Uppity Earths."

32:  two options.  Two! 🙂

I'd vote for Comp Bow, but Ride Bison seems like a good choice too.

10 hours ago, Ladygolem said:

My guess: formally taboo and highly forbidden, in practice much more common than either side lets on and swept under the rug. The more rigid the rules of a society, the more common it is for people will break those rules...

And don't forget the MOB rubric:  the more rigid the rules, the stronger the evidence the prescribed antics were a problem in the first place!

(I mean the reasoning as famously set out by MOB.  Not that he's the one that's been breaking all the rules...)

58 minutes ago, Storm Khan said:

My objectives are various, but mostly, I am looking for an excuse to cut down on available magic.

You've come to the right place.  We have a whole team of "dog ate my homework" experts here! 🙂 

I don't think drastically limiting Rune percentages is a huge win here, as you still have the same descriptive complexity (what's this, what's it mean, what can I do with it?), they're just less effective.  Having fewer Passions than you by default get out of chargen might in that respect be good.  (Why am I Loyal to all these different groups and people?  There's story in this, which is good, but it's another thing to explain and sort out.)  But unless you're hand-crafting them yourself that'd be too annoying and fiddly to do with player-rolled characters.

One off-book thing you might consider is reducing the range of initially available Common Rune magic.  It's not RQG RAW (mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa!) but it's partly inspired by the pre-RPP versions, and is partly just an obvious "simplify choices" move.  You could readily come up with an in-world explanation for it ("actually new initiates gain knowledge of those progressively, and when you sacrifice and/or worship more the rest unlock quick").  Or just flat-out say it's a presentational thing, per the traditional "series of contradictory oversimplications" beloved of educational systems everywhere.  If you're limiting Rune Points anyway, and hence Special Rune magic, then it's not a huge loss as they'll mainly want to be casting their sexy, distinctive, cult-specific magic anyway.

Or not if it'd annoy you, or annoy your players, if it seems like undue bait-and-switch between that and the full rules.  Which I can see it might.

58 minutes ago, Storm Khan said:

I expect quite a few people new to RQ, and I don't want them overwhelmed. Me, too, btw. This will be my first effort at running RQ, so, wish me luck! At the same time, 16 year-olds are a pretty limited group.

Good luck, Mr Khan!  Or Storm if I may presume to be so familiar. 🙂

Another thing I might unsolicitedly suggest is using a one of the official scenarios first out, even if it's not something you you plan on doing otherwise.  That -- hopefully -- reduces the variables of things you have to worry about, and that done, you can ponder what did and what didn't work from there.  Don't baulk at starting with some relatively low-stakes interactions to showcase particular game mechanics, even if it involves over-simplifying a little from the full rules.  (But don't over-over-simplify, or make them no-stakes, as that risks getting a little dull.)