Alex

2 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Also, it's very unclear whether certain cults, like Odalya or Yinkin, are "separate" cults or "subcults" of Orlanth.  Has major effects, both good and bad, either way.

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.

2 hours ago, buzz said:

Is this maybe an issue of something being possible on paper but improbable in actual play? Not only in terms of the in-game requirements for joining multiple cults (and maintaining those relationships), but also the amount of session time needed to reach such a state? In which case that might balance it out, i.e., it's hard to pull off.

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...

2 hours ago, Bren said:

In the current campaign, as far as the player characters go it's probably going to remain a theoretical rather than a practical concern. Personally I don't like treating the rules as only applying to the PCs, so I think about and am concerned with the effects on NPCs.

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.

2 hours ago, Bren said:

In past campaigns it would have been a very practical concern. There were characters who had more Rune Points than their CHA (or APP in RQ3 😉). One heavily played character, for example, had 28 Rune Points. A decades worth of weekly play sessions of 6-12 hours duration makes for a lot of play time and POW gain rolls occurred after each adventure, not limited to once per season.

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.

2 minutes ago, Beoferret said:

Hey everyone. Do any of you have a sense of whether a sizeable number of new gamers or younger gamers new to RuneQuest are getting their hands on the Starter Set or is it primarily (perhaps overwhelmingly) RQ grognards? What do the aforementioned new and/or younger gamers think of their intro to RuneQuest and Glorantha?

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.

2 minutes ago, Beoferret said:

* For my part, I bought a Starter Set for a co-worker/friend (mid-20's), who seems to like what they've seen so far from their as-of-yet partial read.

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"?

10 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

The rules seem clear that players don't need to roll checks.  So, it's fair for the GM to award a check, perhaps at the player's urging.  At the end of the Season (or whenever you do check resolution), it is the player's choice whether to roll.

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.

10 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

If my GM forced Passion increases, I'd probably just ignore that passion whenever he forced a mandatory >80% roll, and drop back down to 80%.

"This feels like a case where you need to have some sort of new or increased Passion!"
"What about Hate GM at 60%?"

1 hour ago, Bren said:

I like my interpretation* better.

1 hour ago, Bren said:

* My interpretation (or my house rule if you prefer) [...]

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!

1 hour ago, Bren said:

From a practical standpoint, for PCs it will be probably be some time before the issue arises, but from system design and world building standpoints I don't see a good reason to penalize characters who are initiates (or higher) of only one religion while highly rewarding those who join multiple cults. Joining multiple cults already provides a reward by increasing the number of special Rune Spells that a character can select. Doubling the total Rune Points that can be accumulated seems over-the-top.

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..."

1 hour ago, Bren said:

One world building consequence of restricting Rune Points to CHA per cult is that the most magically powerful theists are not necessarily priests and rune lord. Instead the most powerful will be those who join multiple cults so that they gain multiple Rune Point pools. That's a change from earlier versions of Runequest and its not a change for which I've seen a good explanation or rationale.

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.

1 hour ago, Bren said:

This runs counter to some of the oldest published Gloranthan examples of powerful characters. While Argrath seems like he is a good example of gaining power by joining multiple cults, Harrek seems to have adopted the opposite strategy. And Harrek is the Superhero counter in the White Bear, Red Moon / Dragonpass board game while Argrath is "only" a Hero.

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. 🙂

1 minute ago, Bren said:

In an ongoing campaign, I'd be extremely leery of doing this for two reasons. First, as you pointed out, doing it routinely (or even frequently) is mathematically broken.

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.

1 minute ago, Bren said:

Second, as Alex pointed out, doing it even infrequently is going to get strong push back from some (maybe most) players.

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.

9 minutes ago, svensson said:

As I understand canon, Glorantha doesn't have a horizon at all. Atmospheric haze and lack of visual acuity prevents anyone from standing on Defender's Shore and seeing Pamaltela.

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.

On 11/14/2021 at 6:00 PM, French Desperate WindChild said:

before everything, note that I m not saying anyone must follow what I say, and those who don't are bad people, that's my poor vision

Naturally, understood, same goes for my thought of the topic.  Should go without saying, but rarely hurts to say it!

On 11/14/2021 at 6:00 PM, French Desperate WindChild said:

I was talking about the character creation for the reference : a big event gives a passion. but m answer was also during the play.

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.

On 11/14/2021 at 6:00 PM, French Desperate WindChild said:

-if the event is not too hard, GM or player may propose a passion gain, and at the end of the day, the player decides if there is a gain or not and what type (hate, fear, loyalty, lust... etc.. I m not restricted by the list proposed by the rulles, by the way)

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]."

On 11/14/2021 at 6:00 PM, French Desperate WindChild said:

-if the event is really hard, I consider the personality must be altered, because passions describe the personality. then as a player, I take a passion, as a GM I strongly encourage to do it. At the end of the day, the player choose. Of course a player may explain that does not impact the character because [a good reason] and then it is not an issue for me.

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.

On 11/14/2021 at 6:00 PM, French Desperate WindChild said:

but if i see players using passion only for bonus and not following the story, "their story"... "our story" we are creating, I would be... disappointed

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.

10 hours ago, soltakss said:

Maybe the person swallowed might be able to HeroQuest their way back, if they are powerful enough HeroQuestors.

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

On 11/14/2021 at 3:44 PM, jajagappa said:

Yes.  The RQG Core Rules are always very slow to load; Bestiary is also slow to load.  I'm not sure if this is a function of artwork, indexing, bookmarks, or something else.

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.

15 minutes ago, Baron Wulfraed said:

The proper form of address to a chief of the High Llama peoples is "your highness". This can cause problems if using Tradetalk at lower levels of proficiency -- as an accidental substitution of "your mountainess" would be a grave insult.

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

16 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

that is exactly what the creation rules say, or I misundertand something 🙂

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?

9 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Not if they were desperate... Which I presume is why the minimum time is included.

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

3 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

There's a lot of variables working here. Celestial objects were starting to move around at least* as early as Umath's careening through the Sky, and that's not only pre-Time, that's pre-Storm Age too. By the time of the Storm Age, the sky was turning blue, the stars had come out, and various planets seem to have gotten their current trajectory (I think?) so what Plentonius' reference means depends on when it is supposedly set. 

Or, well, it depends on what purpose Plentonius has for slandering it as well, of course., but that goes without saying.

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.

3 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Working with Dara Happan ideas of suns and what they meant in the Golden Age, it seems plausible that Plentonius was referring to an object of celestial light that was "supposed" to be stationary above one of the city-states, but then wasn't. I don't recall if the cities are supposed to still have those things by the time he described Sedenya, so I can't comment further.

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!

3 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

(*There's the possibility of a cyclical Sky during the Green Age as well, but I don't think that's terribly relevant to Plentonius.)

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!

19 hours ago, OSRFan said:

I also ordered a copy.  Wasn't sure if I should wait after seeing the corrections thread but I like RQ quite a bit so I purchased it.  I do wish we'd get a free coupon code for DtRPG just to make it easier for knowing about updates.

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...

4 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

you see the Varmandi plundering your clan, do you want to get (or raise) hate or fear varmandi or nothing?

you see the Varmandi killing your so powerful and loved father , choose what you want to get (or raise) between hate or fear varmandi

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...

13 hours ago, Alex said:

then +20% would be the analogous increment.

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%.

On 11/11/2021 at 1:07 AM, Pentallion said:

I've noticed plenty of examples in the adventures released where if someone fails a passion roll, they lose 1D6 (or some appropriate amount based on the situation). 

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... 🙂

Just now, Darius West said:

Yeah, Trickster himself told people that Glorantha is a Lozenge, and it has never been refuted. 😉

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!"

7 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Not disagreeing in the effect desired.  But this really should be the player asking the GM, gee, can I increase my Hate Varmandi?

Having the GM burn down the stead and then forcibly assign an increase in a Passion removes a lot of player agency.

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.

On 11/11/2021 at 5:13 AM, Ryan Kent said:

Don’t go on a diet if you love banana pie.

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

17 minutes ago, Erol of Backford said:

Sorry this is still slightly off topic but includes women's rolls on the battlefield if not as knights:

[...]

Maybe a new topic/thread would be how to translate some of the Daimyo to Runequest, Land of Ninja anyone!? It would be like Game of Thrones but set in Kralorela. Did anyone see the movie Ran by Kurosawa... "Go East"

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...

On 11/11/2021 at 5:54 PM, AlHazred said:

Also, I just noticed that the link seems to refer to "were-greeks" which are lycanthropic Hellenes, I suppose? And they're scared of numbers? Man, history is such a fascinating subject!

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

On 11/9/2021 at 3:05 AM, Eff said:

the whole lozenge travels through a greater space that interacts only weakly with it, causing confusion as it passes. 

I can confirm this part as very true, at least.

Shown:  normie RPGer meeting Glorantha for the first time.

1 minute ago, buzz said:

Thank you, that's a great way to put it.

(Reminds me of how, in the Starter Set, they clearly explain Special/Critical hits in two lines. In RQG, it's two pages. 😄)

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.

9 hours ago, Scotty said:

Only a foolish caster would tell a lie that could be refuted so fast.

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!

31 minutes ago, buzz said:

Okay, then am I just reading this wrong? One round is just the minimum, so even if they see incontrovertible evidence within the round, they believe until the end of the round at least? Otherwise, they keep on believing until the evidence appears?

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.

8 hours ago, Stephen L said:

Whilst I had in mind first settlement, the exodus from the Spike.  However, I imagine the re-settlement post Dragon Kill, would mythically have called on the earlier tradition, and so I'd expect "mythic resonance" between the two.

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.

7 hours ago, Stephen L said:

However, having slept on it,  "The First x" for Dragon Pass, would would always be draconic.  Perhaps, beneath the Cinder Pit, is a dark, ancient, unknowable draconic hunger, woken from it's slumbers by the presumption of the Star Warriors and Humans at war.  Perhaps it's that insatiable hunger that is the ruin of any compact between Humans/ dragon kind.  It's that hunger that leads to greed, draws one away from the contemplation of the unknowable to the entanglement of the world and the desire for the worldly.  Not the first evil (it is neither good nor bad), but it could be the First Terror.  The third guest, an ancient crone, in black tattered robes, skin patchy and scale like, that comes to curse the event.

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.