Alex

I'm now getting visions of roleplayers ending up like darts players, and being super-proficient when subtracting two-digits numbers in multiples of five, but if asked to perform other arithmetic calculations, are suddenly stumped! (OK, doesn't quite work for RQ3 players, as they need to need to know how that works with 1-4, 6-9, 11-14 and 16-19 too...)

Or as a plot twist/change of pace from these various other public methods, the court issues an immensely detailed judgement of how it'll be carried out, then publishes an more meticulous and lengthy report about it afterwards. No doubt including what fates in the afterlife their various soul-parts are being assigned to.

There's an obvious 'air' trope here, given that short-drop hanging is essentially asphyxiation. So it might be an Orlanthi thing for the most horrific offences that are formally 'capital crimes' -- consorting with chaos, spreading disease, etc -- as opposed to the 'outlawry with intent to kill' or modifications of that method. (i.e. if there's no "head start" involved or the outlaw makes no attempt to use one, then it's the 'weaponthane and a sword' (or axe, spear, or maul, YEMV) method, give or take variable activity levels on the part of the condemned. You could, at a push, see long-drop hanging as a variation on the "throwing off a cliff" method, with a bit of insurance as to reliability thrown in. Or conversely it might be seen as too horrific, by the same logic. Curiously the Orlanthi seem to regard cremation and even immolation by fire as an especially noble means of disposal. Not that it'd be ruled out for disease and chaos, either!

Or at least, formally change to demands to talk to your line manager about the quality of your Lunar-slaughtering and neighbour-menacing work!

Oooo. Hot news! https://youtu.be/6TNMlTBsqC4?t=479 to take the liberty of time-indexing to the Gods set chase! Though lots of juicy facts about the other upcoming material too. I should have guessed that "slimmer" would be a very moot concept for any part of the new GoG! 😄

To be fair, I'm fairly confident Jörg was saying it's "unnatural" for adults generally, not women specifically. As in, in the opinion of the several-hundred older relatives you live with giving you "advice" to that effect. Unasked. Unrelentingly. Unswervingly. "When are you going to settle down and marry a person of your preferred sex/gender combo, and give the clan numerous vigorous children, whether natural-born or adopted, within the family model of two parents and a village, according to the famously god-blessed sworn bond?" Different questions with different answers in the first instance. The -local clause in the marriage vow and the local customs that predispose your clan to one or the other determines where you live. You remain a member of those own clan, though with a pretty clearly defined place in the new one, possibly to be consolidated as actual membership when you choose to assert that as your primary permanent identity (one of the things that's never really been spelled as, as observed up-thread). Sartar trends patrilocal, Esrolia matrilocal, but all Theyalan cultures that we know of have a suite of options, that the couple and the two clans have available to them.

I have no idea what Chaosium's thinking about the format is -- but Rick did say in another post that project might be either two volumes or three. So that might be due to sheer pagecount, or the thought of splitting the two things. But as for the terminological implications, in the old Gods of Glorantha boxset, the Cults Book was one volume, and the Prosopaedia another, much slimmer one. And of course the earlier RQ2 Cults books, which were very largely longform cult writeups, bookended by some other material. So if they exactly followed that pattern, you might expect three volumes, with Cults split for length, and the 'pedia split for for conceptual separateness.

I don't, and don't even immediately get the reference, but I'm going to throw out a possibly vaguely related idea I had a while ago. As Everyone Knows, lo-metal (alumin(i)um) has an enchantable rune metal, which is also possible to magically transform into sa-metal, an apparently entirely different (but also enchantable, rune) metal. Different colours, different states of matter, different supposed elemental associations. That's a lot of magical possibilities already, but what if you could sculpt or forge an item in solid form, and further enchant it such that when transformed to its liquid state, it retained a "memory" of that shape, and would instantly revert to it if changed back again? That could be artistic applications (like statues as "installations" with funky and surprise behaviours), or practical ones. (Plot twist, I have an aluminium sword in my waterskin, in liquid form!) Assuming, of course, that the change of form is a conveniently quick and triggerable one, or more plausibly, by the use of Yet More Magic Still, can be made that way. MCU fans will no doubt recognise certain items with this behaviour -- yes, it's true Agents of SHIELD nicked this idea out of my brain! 😄 (Where my brain stole it from in the first place is sadly not recorded.)

To quote the Great Man himself, "the most mundane aspect of magic"! Or to try to join the dots a little between the two... Jar-Eel is reputedly the Harmony "superhero", a one-off demigod embodying that particular Rune at eye-watering power levels. Maybe her actions bring about a situation on these lines. Maybe on their own account. Or in the context of the Lunar We Are All Us philosophy, and craftily redefining "Us" on the fly -- one take on a "Temple of the Reaching Moon", at least! Or a sneaky wee side-deal with the Brown Dragon, or due to the Total Perspective Vortex having been dropped in from a great height... So perhaps that doesn't entirely preclude violence, but maybe makes it more difficult, and more immediate counter-productive, and self-and mutually destructive? If it hurts and it's clearly zero sum, people will stop doing it. Or do it less, at least! You might want to have at least a "tasting menu" in mind as to how it might, mind you! You likely don't want players to spend the game in general confusion, or to feel there's no particular urgency to do anything much at all. Is the diplomacy a single strand of negotiating peace with the "enemy" as a block? Is there scope to pick different factions apart with a view to realigning new common interests? Is third-party diplomacy an option? Are there any workable options that aren't diplomacy at all? Even if it's heroquesting to reverse the original premise, that might be something that's potentially interesting to explore the outworkings of, and isn't violence per se. I wondered while reading this who the PCs actually were -- by implication it's the Sartarite side (or its allies). If part of your frustration is with the Orlanthi... freeform approach to violence, might the Lunars work better? OK, they're violent too (and imperialists to boot), but at least a) have a plan regarding that, and b) might plan to have a different plan. Or if you're feeling especially ambitious, a mix of the two? And what sort of 'level' of character had you in mind? Are they movers and shakers in this, or are they exploring the edges of the consequences of it?

Or none? <shocked gasps> Yeah, it does look a little like a wish to avoid unpacking the details of how the patrilocal (or conversely matrilocal) thing works in any detail, or to avoid the possible 'look' if we have a sudden swathe of semi-detached-seeming women (N)PCs. Mind you, the sample character are adventurers. That's a) a state far more "unnatural" than any of the aforementioned, and b) the unmarried kinda tends to go with that territory!

Or somebody sofa-surfing or sub-renting (in a contractually questionable manner?), to look at it another way! I don't think it's a common, large-scale or economically significant thing. Once it becomes such, we're edging towards another social system entirely. (Mind you, western Maniria or Ralios, who knows? Might well be the sort of mechanism we see where one thing starts to shade into the other.) I was imagining it happening among relatively low-status people having some mild-to-moderate personal disaster and being generally a temporary thing. Eventually someone gets the gumption to formalise (or terminate) the arrangement. If it's some high-status or notably culturally or individually outlandish person, or a large number of people (On Jorri sitch!), then someone repeats the Greeting ritual on them to 'escalate' matters. At which point they're invited with high honour and elaborate courtesy/peremptorily dragged to see the chief to bring matters to a head. I can imagine it being particularly fuzzy (pun intended, wait for it!) in some areas. If some herders and especially hunters dwell in remote locations according to their occupation rather than being on-site "renters" of the steadholding classes, then who really knows what they're up to? Never mind counting sheep, it might be more like herding cats. "Wait, did we used to have this many Yinkini cottars?" Ultimately it'll be completely clear-cut as and when it needs to be.

Iunno. Lots of people have 12 points of Confirmation Bias Enchanted Iron Plate, in my experience. 🙂 Hit locations I could go either way -- "11, ow -- right in the Feels!" Sure, there's no (for example) hit points in persuasion, but nor are there in combat. We just tend to forget that after 45 years of convention otherwise. They're abstractions, the question is whether they're useful, fun, or evocative ones. Depending on what type of persuasion it is, you could maybe attempt to break it down by points at issue. For example the stereotypical gruelling politics negotiation and horsetrading exercise. That could even turn it into several separate contests -- but you might want to frame it as a single conflict, in a "nothing's agree until it's all agreed" sort of way.

If it's Bibidos, that's interestingly suggestive of a possible segue into another myth... (Don't worry all, I'm not about to try to do a Godtimeline reconciliation of the King List and the mythology...)

Eurmal's Frankie Howerd aspect. "I must save the village!" <comedic beat, turns to another camera, lowers voice and scowls lecherously and/or avariciously> "... for meself!"

I think all manner of people will have their political or prophetic hot-take on who fits the bill for what future job. Kallyr liberated Old Sartar, nice, the White Bull liberated Farpoint and gave the Lunars their latest hiding [update according to current chronology], handy thanks, but eaten bread's soon forgot. What about turfing them out of Tarsh, and any other given Theyalan homeland? What about tearing down the Red Moon? Who's the right person for doing that? What's even the right thing to do? There will be inevitable conflicts between the "doesn't go far enough" and the "goes too far" tendencies, among others. (It's none of our business. The cure might be worse than the disease. Dragonfriend right, that always ends well.) Whether or not that's all settled by this point, not everyone is going to get the memo on that.

Somewhat less-used even in the guide, and often the two in one breath. Which is more of a mouthful than I'd want to be be bothering with often. I don't even think there was a "both" in The Former System -- as clunkily and cheesily (for my tastes) it did the Three Worlds thing, that guy with the sore head, horns, and chaos-killing magic was a very clearly specified exception in both cases. "Hrm, he gets a -20 penalty for doing that..." "Do you want to tell him?" "I think I might let it go." It wasn't even just a "game system" thing; I wasn't all that thrilled about the way it's namechecked in The Book of Heortling Mythology. IMG it's his name in Sartar if you're talking about him mythologically between old-school Hardcore Orlanthi Theist Dudes(TM), and "the Storm Bull" is a commonly used and universally recognised title. Possibly the balance between the two is slightly different elsewhere -- less Praxian berserkers turning up at short notice to share their thoughts on the matter -- but by the same token he's less important in most other places anyway. Doubtless there are secondary cult centres around I don't think Gloranthans in general or Orlanthi in particular are the least bit confused by things having more than one name. OTOH, gamers are a simple people, so no harm in streamlining references!

Could be said of Orlanth + [any given entity than Ernalda] and Ernalda + [any given non-Orlanth], come to that!

I wanted to complain how "recent" that was in comparison to the intended reference... ... and yet, it was first published a quarter of a century ago. 😱

Praise indeed, you're most welcome! Iunno, above my pay grade -- which to be 100% clear is €0 for these purposes -- perhaps a Chaosium person can clarify. But my understanding is that they don't do sweeping-vista publication plans, so they may not wish to get into the weeds of that. It was originally mooted in the HQ line context, so lots of time for plans to have changed radically in the meantime, as well as the start-date having been advanced. I'd have presumed if you were doing the whole timeline in one book, you'd want to do it partly in hindsight, and after advancing the 'start date' with all the immediate long-form adventures you immediately planned for the that period, then loop back to do each season in shortform. But that might be a model based on an entirely false analogy. Hard to say in generalities. Do what works for you! (There, that was the most general of all possible generalities.) If you have particular concerns about which scenarios dovetail with which others, or about the compatibility of background material, you should feel free to be as specific as you like about that. The main risk is that it might be like Yelm's punishment for bigamy -- you might ask and get more answers than you wanted! Moves the problem from editing the material to sifting through the opinions, but sometimes even someone terrible take can clarify what you what you don't want to do... But to give two equal-but-possibly opposite suggestions:- Don't get too far sucked into "I paid for this material, I'm going to use it somehow!" or the like. As a recovering Calvinist I can relate to that, but if something doesn't fit and doesn't feel right, don't force. There will be other games some day, if we're all spared. Don't sweat the canon thing more than you have to. YGWVLION, so good to get philosophically resigned to (or excited about!) the concept early, and if you see merit in making a bold edit, grasp the nettle and do it sooner rather than regret it later. We'll all be making running repairs at some point, if we're not already. (LION being Like It Or Not. I doubt it'll catch on, but the YGWV thing bears repeating so much I feel I have to, but also obliged to break up the monotony of doing so.) That certainly sounds to be like a relatively light edit (and one it anticipates and sets up to do some of the editing for you). The author is active on a number of the forums and has his own blog, so you also have the option of asking if he has any additional thoughts on this. I'm not guaranteeing this is any sort of after-sales policy on his part, just to be clear! I think basically ask yourself:- What sort of age and experience of characters would work best for your table? Do you have a particular "scale" of game in mind? Clan, tribal, rootless mix-and-match wanderers, epic lozenge-trotting, transitioning between one of those to another? Are there particular events you find would make especially good elements to incorporate? How does available material impedance match to how fast you anticipate working through it? On the one hand, if you backdate too far, will you ever 'catch up' to the present day? Or conversely, do you worry about overshooting it, and having to vamp too much without "official arc" updates? Are 'hard edits' a good option? If you want to cover some Epic Background Event, but not commit to following directly on from it, is a TPK/graceful character retirement something that'd work for your group? Likewise if you wanted to use different tribal backgrounds -- though then you're no longer doing "Relative's History Table" in detail, you're essentially doing a campaign reboot/splice.

To put it in very broad strokes, RQG has changed the preferred terminology in some cases, but in many has gone the route of if there were half a dozen different obscure names for something before, it's going consistently with the simplest and best-known one. I think it's pretty straightforward to pick the approach you prefer -- "cool, bonus, more exotic names for things!" or "thank heavens, my players can actually follow this now" -- and adapt accordingly in either direction. Bear in mind that Sartar's a fairly varied landscape. Clan differs from clan, tribe from tribe, and the backwoods are very different from the cities. (That last one I feel to my very core, as someone living in a relatively small city, where every other political debate involves Dublin and "rural Ireland" yelling at each other.) I think you can use both (nay, multiple) sets of material if you like both, and are happy to wield a firm editorial hand in deciding what works together, and works for your table, and what doesn't. I did see a comment somewhere that there were now three different non-canonical but prominent published versions of the Battle of Dangerford -- the Battle of Freedom if you like variant titles! -- so certainly at some point it does tip over into You Can't Have Everything. (Where would you put it?) I haven't read ALM's campaign books, but I've glanced at the preview freebies, and seen some reviews (which range from "positive" to "rave"), and they seem to do the very sensible thing of making their starting assumptions explicit (initiands in one case, forming a new warband on the other), and to offer advice for how to use the material in different ways. orders, etc. Oh the face of it it seems to dovetail well if you wanted to use either or both of those in conjunction with significant chunks of Official, by way of a light change to the start date. To use them with the HW material sounds like it needs more editing -- some or all of SSiS first I'd assume, then the Iceland arc, then some less timeline-critical stuff in the middle, then segue into 1625+ workflow? You could very reasonably take the "Argraths all the way down" approach. Kallyr's ship has sailed as a candidate (well, she did liberate Sartar! -- and then got liberated from further liberation duties) if you go with the official product line. But should you "plot protect" White Bull if you want a high-stakes adventure to protect him? Or if your PCs decide they'd like the job instead? "How's he going to be The One if he's dead... Ohyeahresurrection, silly me." I think you have to play that by ear. As you mention KAP... There was at one point the idea to produce a GPC-style book in for Sartar. Apparently not at the top of the pile now, but maybe some decade in Glorantha... I'd assume that'd -- wildly hypothetically -- cover the period in question, season-by-season. I wouldn't put your life on hold waiting for it, mind. Sure, but as the timeline advances some of the possibilities will inevitably get precluded (or become crystalised). We find out who's Prince when (short of civil wars), who does which deed against the Lunars (short of conspiracy theories), who goes on what heroquest (mind you, timey-wimey and mythic subjectivity!), etc. I don't think the Official Timeline has too much scope to do that, unless it simply stops, or confines itself to just prophecy and future history stuff beyond a certain point.

Top Storm Tarumath-umps! How many storm gods can you worship in one cult before the Gift Carriers and/or Vargast turn up and... advice a different course of action. Could be the next euro-style Gloranthan boardgame, if not a foray into Buckaroo territory. 😄 I took the comment to mean that the implied in-game 'etymology' was 'primal bovid', but punning on the word "aurochs" in the process. Well, kinda punning, I wouldn't pronounce them the same, they do worse on a weekly basis on UK quiz shows. (Yes, Victoria Coren, I was about to write and complain that "Berne" and "burn" being homonyms... they're not! 😄) Which must be about my level, as I rather like it. As far as I can tell from my google-grade research you're right about the etymology. None of this is at all surprising, though -- the weird derivation, the uncertain etymology (I think lexicographers have a macro for that), nor the contradictory wikipedia edits (I've a source, you've a source, we can't be arsed trying to reconcile or properly sum up). I think you could call that a "reduplicated doublet", or something along those lines -- though that makes it sound like cowcowcowcowcowcowcowcow, rather than just cowcow. Guy Deutscher has a whole series of hilarious examples, like the phrase "up above", which already is bordering on tautology, but if you unpack the etymology of "above", actually derives ultimately from "up on by on up". People use a common noun, but the senses drift. So people take it as a proper name, then compound it with another element with the same meaning, and you end up with "River Avon", "Torpenhow", and such shenanigans. Or reinterpret it as meaning something else -- conceivably the case here with the "ur-" element, in a way "merging" the two derivations.

He did, literally in mid-paragraph in the first instance, and more permanently subsequently in a way I still haven't fully processed. But I think the best answer we'll get is in his work. Californian hippy Arkati Trickster shamans and ambiguity? I'm shocked, shocked! </Claude Rains> And the many Gloranthan examples! Which isn't to say that more yet aren't helpful, and indeed needed. But the precedents are there, just do it until, and adapt as needed.

Language-family quibble, wouldn't that be Northern-Theyalan-speaking? Though certainly granting they were in Peloria when they were talking! 🙂 I like @soltakss's patch of this, which is that (IIRC, to boil it down doubtless a little too glibly) they have rather similar myths and consequently heroquests, but that relationship with Orlanth is very different. So in the HoG, they don't fight, they trade shields. Presumably the fire powers ones are myths that are entirely missing or essentially unrecognisable, and vice versa for the "hoplitey" and "pals around with Yelm" stuff, and so on. Then again, I'm unlikely to need a longform Elmal RQ cult writeup anytime soon, so I can't say I've done into the details of this -- but commend those that do! Personally I think changing significant such details is pretty key, though! Now of course, you can validly see them as different variants, as there are in all myths, which just happen to cluster around "am extremely loyal to Orlanth" and "meh, not so much", according to social and political distribution.

But the more on-the-nose question here is more whether gender-role behaviours are "hardwired", per Greg's (brief and likely needing context) comment to that effect. My best guess would be that he wasn't saying "they're genetically determined" (transpose to whatever the Gloranthan equivalent of "genetics" might be), but that "they're strongly culturally predisposed". Which I realize is tantamount to suggesting he was rather like one of those people who says things like "our organisational DNA", at whom I generally want to shout infuriatedly. So I may well be unfairly representing him one way, in an attempt to avoid unfairly representing him another -- apply caveats lavishly as needed!

You're combining and apparently conflating three entirely different things there. Common-or-garden killings, secret murder, and kinslaying. Two of those are chaos-festering capital crimes; the other ain't. (Start a feud, continue a feud, pay wergeld, deduct it from your local or personal mental tally of what those people had coming to them, etc.) Or those warriors show up in response and give pursuit, which is so situation-normal that the aforementioned post-canonical supplement includes a contest for it happening every single time. I think we're some distance away from the original point, which was "conflict with another tribe, but all the leaders are part of the same cult", which I exemplified with "Sartarite cattle raids: Orlanth-on-Orlanth crime". If that doesn't routinely describe the situation in Sartar (and pretty much everywhere else Theyalan), our G's have V'ied rather a lot. Even just starting with the "armed robbery" part itself, indeed, whether or not we ever get to the "actual bodily harm", and whether or not that involves whatever degree of homicide in whatever circumstances.