Alex

Those two are definitely "separate". There, solved that for those. 🙂 But you're exactly right, wherever you put the line, it's inevitably going to be a little blurry. I personally think the Official line that Thunderous and Adventurous is the same for these purposes seems a little off, and I don't think I'd play it like that. Or for those that would, what about the Thunder Brothers, who explicitly flip in different mythic tellings between being attributes of Orlanth, and his offspring? Which may or may not be reflected directly in varying cult structures, but you wouldn't want to rule that out entirely. Or Mastakos, who is very much like an Orlanth subcult in a lot of places and for a lot of purposes, but gets counted separately for tax purposes because he gets his own CoG writeup? I think for me the rule of thumb would be, are the special rune magics of the two "substantially" different. Y(Elmal)io need not apply. Different names, yes, different cults, most definitely, with different likes, dislikes, and associations, and don't even like each other... But much the same magic (I presume), and the same for common initiation, heroquesting proof and identification purposes. Works for me as Gloranthacentric Consciousness; works for me for game-mechanical purposes, as it stops too much "double-dipping" on the same magic. In fact I might go further and require a particular rune magic to be associated with only one cult, and hence only one RPP, where there's overlap. Or that's my hot take, at least.

I think it's very much in the realm of your game-group will very much vary! If you munch through a season's adventure in a single session, have a lavish supply of Lun-- ahem, guilders for POW training, and it's your regular game for a sustained period of time then -- give or take trollkin critical hits and the like -- then this will happen, and won;t necessarily take an infeasible amount of either your character's or your own life to do it. OTOH, a more intermittent, digressive, or TPK-rich game... I'm much less hung up on that, and I'm happy to say the rules are a player-facing approximation to the SimLozenge. Play more than one ruleset in a Gloranthan setting and see if you don't experience at some sort of Arkati or Crowleyesque moment of enlightenment on those lines! 🙂 Though if I actually statted up an NPC that broke the rule, I'd want to have at least an outline rationale as to how and why that worked, and how in principle PCs could do the same thing. The season "limit" will generally make reaching that point quicker for the players, albeit much slower for the characters. ("Some of whom are very old...") Of course, it's also pretty soft as limits go, especially given that there are explicit rules covering the case where you just ignore it.

It's a great question, and one of interesting even to we grognards (RQ and otherwise) that wonder how our interest is surviving its Aging Rolls. On the other hand, you might be asking in exactly the wrong place! Mind you, it may be that the real "outreach" reaction will happen as physical copies hit mailboxes, and even moreso as they hit gamestore shelves. If it gets good word-of-mouth, and I have every hope it will. You very generous person/sly pusher, you. 😄 Any early signs if they're falling on the "too... much... information..." side, or more in the direction of "this is great, only the lack of chariot rules and character generation is a real deal-breaker for me"?

Fair point and good spot, but again somewhat different from the original context, which is whether "gaining a passion" per RQG p236, and by extrapolation increasing one, should ever be without the "agreement" of the player. "This feels like a case where you need to have some sort of new or increased Passion!" "What about Hate GM at 60%?"

Yes, I prefer greatly "house rule". 🙂 It's a pet peeve of mine when authors and publishers do the "not the droids you're looking for" thing by "clarifying" new rules out of whole cloth, or worse do the "obviously" thing from the old maths lecturer joke. Better not to do likewise! It's a doubling of the total, but of course their second "pool" will be less effective overall if they're Runies in the first cult, and only initiates in the second. Great for building ablative overpowered NPCs, of course. "Yeah, that guy was an Initiate in nine different Chaos cults, . Totally built by the book!" "Whaaaaaaaa..." I think it'd be a weird corner case to be an Initiate/Initiate -- or Initiate/Initiate/Initiate, or Initiate/Initiate/Initiate/Initiate... -- instead of a Rune-level. More likely they're both, though granted the current core book doesn't explicitly address this case, it seems we have sample characters that do this, and it seems highly likely this is possible on some sort of basis. I think it's a pretty safe bet that Argrath isn't "only" a multiple initiate, and Harrek isn't "only" a Rune Lord. To put it mildly! We're a looooong way from a RQ writeup that covers (4!)/10 and (20!!)/ characters, even give or take some "and their companions!" wiggle-room. If anything if we were closer in the HW days, but that's not saying very much. 🙂

That entirely depends how frequently, and whether directed decreases and being balanced out by frequent experience ticks, or indeed by (semi-)directed or "agreed" increases, as the rules do provide some (admittedly indirect) support for doing. But I think the trouble is we're discussing this without any clarity for what "this" actually is, and if it even relates to the published rules for rolling against them for deliberate attempts to gain Inspiration. Just that "plenty of examples" exist, but none of them are to be "called out". D'oh! For the avoidance of continuing to fail to nail jello to the wall, let's actually say what the potentially problematic cases are. To be clear, I was talking about something else there: the idea of "mandatory" Passion increases, over the player's protests they don't want them. Players will not infrequently be somewhat unhappy with "you took away my stuff!" types of development, but that's par for the course in RQ-style games. What some may be a good deal less happy still with is having something added to their character, especially if it's a "telling me how I'm allowed to play my character" one.

I don't think there's any "canonical" -- or even post-canonical -- statement anywhere that it does or it doesn't. Hence the well-known "deuterocanonical" MOB theory as to why it does, the alternative "bezelled top" idea someone else once floated, and the perhaps most common position that it doesn't, obvs, because flat. So this might turn into another "it might be in yours but it's not in mine!" subthread, which is probably better in a post by itself, rather than twisting in and out of this one. IMO, your forum will vary, etc.

Naturally, understood, same goes for my thought of the topic. Should go without saying, but rarely hurts to say it! OK, noted. As written the rules do seem to differ between the two cases; I'm not sure if that's a very self-conscious design decision, or just an incidental. It might be the case that in chargen, the player always implicitly has the "I don't want to play this character, this feature is a deal-breaker" option, whereas for "mandatory" raises in play, there's arguably more of a "pot committed" angle to the player's investment in the character. Personally I think I'd be inclined to not treat either as strictly compulsory, but indeed I'd want an "ifnotwhynot" rationale (or perhaps alternative) in either case. I agree, if you go a little off-piste in which Passions you allow this is easier to do. "OK, you're not Hate-filled, you're not Fearful... [your emotion go here]." Ultimately of course what happens at your table is key, and down to you (and your table). Certainly no harm in giving a player some pushback and there being back-and-forth -- indeed that's kinda implied by the whole "discuss" part. I think the most obvious line of passion-abuse is to take all the increments going, but then just not to trouble to RP any of them. If someone's eschewing the potential bonus in the first place, I'd be inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, unless it clearly abusive, or just too whimsical to stand. I may be being unduly pedantic about this -- pedanticker than usual, even! -- but I am just a bit wary of some players being somewhat touchy on this sort of thing with Passions. Groups should obviously play it the way they feel it -- of course! -- but ideally it's the sort of "house rule" I'd think would be worth flagging up in advance, lest it get even more pushback from coming up in play than it might otherwise.

They do say there's no successful heroquest without a Trickster element... this one has it pre-supplied!

Can't speak to the Starter Set PDFs, but I've played around with post-processing the Guide PDFs to try to get a quicker-loading reference version. Pretty easy to halve the file size by switching to a "screen" quality, and much smaller if you "downsample" the image quality to "can I please have some more pixels?" or duplo-brick scale. About 3Mb in the extreme case. Exactly what the sweetspot for loading and scrolling latency is hard to quantify. Another variable is linearisation, AKA Fast Web View, which might help with some viewers, but is apparently completely ignored by others, so YMMV on that too. Dunno about indexing and bookmarks as I haven't stumbled across the right editing tool to remove those as yet.

As a self-confessed High Person, trust me, I've heard far graver and insultinger!

No, as I said, p236 expressly says "should agree" and "should agree", which doesn't seem consistent to me with a "you must have one thing or another" approach. Are you referring here to Passions obtained in character creation?

Foolish Tricksters... desperate Tricksters... Film at 11!

I think the dynamic is that he sees rising and setting as a less than ideal state of affairs, but he can't neg it too much as Yelm is now slumming it to do this. Likewise he wants to criticise Sedenya (and the numerous other Moony names) for starting that, but is loath to admit that Yelm's ended up following her example. I think "supposed to" is rather relative. Dara Happan mythology reads like a series of sighs of disappointment and sad resignation to new, diminished state of things. Still looking down their noses at other people, mind! It'd certainly gel with old Greggly idea that "the Dayzatari are mystical materialists", and of an eternal, unchanging sky, which you could mash together with the other mystical idea of mythology as states of consciousness. I dunno if this idea has much in the way of currency, but if you can rub together two worshippers that might say this we can call it a tradition!

Welcome to the forum! Yeah, I was struck by how quickly the corrections thread filled up, but I suspect that's less to do with the error density, than the fact that lots of eager bunnies bought it, downloaded the PDF, and instantly inhaled the whole thing...

That's definitely going beyond the RAW, and you get definitely get pushback from some players who're especially resistant to the "mind-controlling ma character!!" worry. RQG doesn't have the same range of passions, traits, and such as other games with those concepts, so you don't have the option of "hrm, that's very Forgiving of you -- increase that instead, then!", or such like, unless it's something that happens to map onto a Runic personality trope. Or a religious Passion, or one directed against the individuals involved... Actually just noticed that RQG p29 says +10%, and looking though the examples the general pattern is start at 60%::+10%, but start at 70%::+20%. Not familiar with the cases you allude to, but perhaps these are supposed to be particular crunch "use it or lose it" sitches, as opposed to "standard" passions rolls, as when you attempt Inspiration with them? Heaven forfend it might be scenario writers not familiar with the base rules... 🙂

That's an excellent example, and sets an interesting bar for "incontrovertible evidence". "But-but-but... it has a horizon!" "Bendy light." "Oh. Huh. And the sky dome and planets show no measurable parallax!" "Listen, it's pretty big, an we're working with Bronze Age astrolabes here." "Hrrrrm. I dunno, I've seen the maps, it seems like I should able to detect some sort of--" "Listen, if Yelm dun wanna be measured, he ain't gonna be measured!"

Removes a lot of stead too, mind you. But yes, I'd treat this as the silent partner of the "Gaining a Passion" section, p236. Either may "suggest", both should "agree". And if we reason by analogy with the way Passions are treated in chargen, if it's as big and significant as a "gain a new Passion at 60% or greater" event, then +20% would be the analogous increment. For very high Passion levels, or for less slam-dunk "gee, can I increase/maybe you should increase" things, a smaller increment or just a tick might be better.

This is exactly how you start a Hate [Diet] passion.

I think you maybe undersold the off-topicness there -- your just covered about three other entire sub-forums there! -- but the topic's been more off the topic than on it for a while! 🙂 Or Vormain maybe, depending on how you care to slice and dice your Gloranthan orientalism...

This surely explains why the Orlanthi are "Mediterranean"-looking in some art, and pasty Celts/Germanics in other pieces! 😄

I can confirm this part as very true, at least. Shown: normie RPGer meeting Glorantha for the first time.

You're welcome, I'm sure it was way worse for some tastes, but glad to be of any situational help. Explanations are tricky things. Easy to make them either too terse, or too long-winded. And Your Reader Will Vary! Some people like a definition by parts, some people will pitch a fit at the sight. 😄 And examples can be tricky too, as sometimes they really clarify, and sometimes they add confusion by way of actual or apparent inconsistency with the other.

AKA a Trickster! And potentially a rapidly retreating one if they've lived this long on the basis of doing such things... Or with Group Laughter used the following round. Top bants, by magical force majeure! Yes. I think the existing wording is pretty clear actually, though the "full melee round" text in the example makes it slightly less so. Pretty tricky to invoke a divination between SR <N> of one round and SR <N> of the next as it's itself a Ritual magic, with a minimum duration of an hour. Unless you really panic and use a DI to do it! So personally I would, with the benefit of wisdom after the fact, have omitted that clause. But if you want to flip it around, think if as having a two-case duration:- If proven false: lasts a melee round from casting (unless already past that time); If not proven false: indefinite.

Absolutely! Having a rich tradition of oral myth means that whatever happens, you can always be wise after the effect either way. 🙂 So presumably whatever happens after the Dragonkill is seen as recapitulating and confirming the experience and moral lessons from their mythic past. We fought with/got et by/made a wary peace with/befriended them in the God Time, so we did the same thing in the Resettlement, and we'll do the same thing in future. Hungry. eh? Sounds very Black Dragon. Also good for the fire-rune-heads, potentially! Could still be the First Evil -- Orlanthi aren't short of judgy moral opinions, are dragons get strong opinions. Until recently trending heavily negative, but doubtless with born-again popularity. Plus you still have the whole "EWF vs dragonewts vs some other draconic take" angle.