Alex

A striking thing about the Wikipedia article is how big the error-bars on the estimated death tolls are. I know that wikipedia gonna wikipedia, but it does look like they have pretty genuine and pretty up-to-standard sources on this. Of course, a mere factor of six between 17m and 100m is as nothing to the extent of the "inaccuracies" some people seem to think are involved in the Covid-19 numbers. After all, some hospitals got grants for treating patients affected by the pandemic, so obviously, absent the slightest evidence of the career and criminal-penalty consequences of anyone being on the fiddle for that for no actual personal gain, let's just assume they're multiple orders of magnitude wrong. See also "election fraud", I suppose.

Not sure I want to get too deep in the trenches on this one, but in the spirit of "pointing out a couple of things"... Uh-oh. I strongly suspect that's not a propositional-logically correct statement, parsed literally (as to verify we'd need to compare the doctrinal, or even the average congregant's, stance of an entire church with the most antisemitic neo-Nazi anywhere in the US. Which is quite the prospect. Even read loosely, it's pretty iffy. But more significantly, I think, this very much conflates structural racism with ad hoc prejudice. As is very popular to do, especially in the Old Conservative narrative! As you were going for "especially concerning India", maybe good to get the distinction between South Asian Muslims and Arabs straight. Also handy when it comes to Iran, and... well, lots of places, actually!

Yeah, that's a very common one. And it kinda started with "it's just the common cold", then "it's comparable to seasonal flu", and now they're clinging up by their fingertips that it's not closed in on the 1918 H1N1 total fatalities -- though it's certainly an appreciable fraction already, anywhere between a tenth and a quarter. If it did kill 50m they'd still have the Black Death to comfort themselves with!

I do hope that's not a still-more-damning guilt by association than the Hero Wars one! 🙂 But yes, I think there's been a few descriptions that work a lot like that. For example, the KoDP one, where you can be either Lost in the God Time, or you can be dumped back out on yer arse. For a "stationary" or "vertical" heroquest other-side quest, I think that works logically enough. You're back in the ritual circle, which in a sense was the same place as the Hero Plane for the duration of the quest, and where you were all along. For a "mundane world" or "practice" quest, it checks out too. The Hero Light in your eyes dims... for now! You take off your myth-goggles, and go back to perceiving things again as having their normal appearance and significance, rather than everything being hugely freighted with mythic meaning. Materially, nothing dramatically changes -- you're still in the physical place you were anyway. Now if you've gone Full Lightbringer, bodily locked behind the Gates of Dusk and that whole palaver, and you're Alone in Hell when the ritual goes irretrievably wrong... Oops. Wait until the rescue squad show up, with an even bigger and -- necessarily! -- better one?

My main reason is that I don't think I've seen my copy (either of them, I think I have two?) for about a decade, so I'd have to find them first, and no doubt eliminate a hazardous amount of dust... So with the huge caveat that I might be misremembering wildly, as I recall the starter-motor issues there were... Firstly, that they were couching things in terms of the intended difficulty of "full" Otherworld quests. So if that takes a whole clan, the associated magical regalia, on a holy site, on a propitious day and time, preparation, duration, as well and multiple high-ability celebrants and questers, or reasonable equivalents, that sounds about sensible. Secondly, anything magic-resistance-related in HW ended up being a huge last-minute bodge job, where what back in those more innocent days we called a "narrativist" core set of rules had some very old-school thinking "simulationist" numbers grafted far-from-seamlessly onto it. While a couple of Chaosium have a track record of a philosophy of, "don't bother with a number unless it's a big one", suddenly we're getting out of bed unless there were three Masteries involved. So if those two things ever actually met at any point, I suspect it was more blind luck and stopped clocks...

Could be. "But where's the proof?!?" Which is an instance of the popular human pastime of goalpost-shifting and confirmation bias. If I want it to be true, a theory or a surmise will suffice. If I don't want it to be true, it requires a seven-sigma beyond even an unreasonable doubt mathematical theorem, and anything short of that can be instantly dismissed as "no evidence". The XKCD toon springs to mind. "Science" is shown in positions 3.5 to 5. Medicine and maths straddle it from opposite sides. https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/purity.png But mostly, I think it's people being people. Throw enough compartmentalisation and cognitive biases -- omission/commission is a big one here, I think -- at something and people can believe any combination of things.

Femme Yelmalio is a red -- as it were -- flag for Yelornan Niche Protection, I feel!

o.O Oh no! It's the Ritual of the Reverse Canonisation!

Looks like CoG is going to be doing to be doing a lot of Lumping on a number of fronts. That might be partly for space; might be because it's the final word in the theistic object-identity problem; might be a a bit of both. Until we get One True Land: Why Did You Even Bother With Other, Necessarily Lesser Homelands? (AKA a doorstep-sized Dara Happa book) I'll hold out hope there's more detail and nuance to come out on that.

I'm very hopeful we'll see significantly more on Esrolia soon -- or at least sooner than that many of the 'eventual projects'. It'll still be a Theyalan culture though, so not a huge step away from the Earth-female/Air-male model. With a very large rebalancing of the two, and a ton of extra local detail, of course. Actually, in a "runic" way, it might do almost the opposite of what you say you want here. Ernalda is "forced" to always be Earth, but the various Husband-Protectors get an even bigger menu of Air/Darkness/Water options! (And Moon as an option for both, but that's really gonna split the room.) Have you looked at the Entekosiad? It's not Dara Happa, but it's... DH-adjacent. Its a confusing and frustrating read, but IMO a wonderful one. Of the many things Greg wrote I found personally meaningful, I think this is perhaps the one that's the most so. Of course, also perhaps the one with the largest "... now how do I go about gaming this?" distance. Might be either the best or the worst $10 you've spent on a "RPG" product. I know you said you were setting it aside but inevitably this gets us back to "Orlanthi All". Too soon, sorry! Girls and boys are both told lots of things by their interfering busybody elder relatives, but No-One Can Make You Do Anything. An initiand to adulthood is able to insist on spending a year in a role of their own choice, which is their opportunity to prove their annoy aunties and uncles wrong. Obviously you're free to ignore any degree of gender-normativity if it's just plain annoying. Or you could approach it as an in-game theme: the hicks around here keep telling me that 6/7 is perfect gender equality, I've done the maths, it ain't. Or any point in between. I think we're talking at cross-purposes here. I was referring to a very different critique from a very different discussion. Specifically, someone on another forum seeking to characterise the "clan setting" background as oppressive anthropowanking, and evidently wanting a supposed "return" to crunchy D&D pseudo-medievalism of forty years ago, or more accurately, that never actually existed at all. Apologies if I've caused needless confusion -- some confusion is needful, ask any Trickster, they'd never Lie to you -- by doing so. It is indeed a cool idea, but it's not a huge distance outside of the "traditional female Earth cult role" box. Sheep being sheep, presumably Earth with a side of Air and Water, but still largely in that pattern. I'm inferring here, of course, as TR doesn't give us a "full subcult" writeup -- many would say mercifully, it already sliced its salami veeeerrry thin. IMO this is "standard" Ernalda functionality, but in the form of a specialised local form of worship (and indeed, heroquesting). In much the same way that many of the "dozens of male deities", the Thunder Brothers, are Orlanth in a funny hat or a Groucho Marx mustache.

Some ships are sufficiently big they can only get so far away from Minnesota! MV Paul R. Tregurtha (In Duluth, MN at time of typing.) (I knew the term "Pananamax", but didn't realize until a small googlefest a moment ago there was also a Neopananamax standard... and Suezmax, Handymax, Malaccamax, Q-Max, and -- the one at least minimally relevant to this thread -- Seawaymax.) I feel this is the cue for a song, but it's Gordon Lightfoot's night off... https://youtu.be/8njFyDCdM_c Warning, mathrock. May cause uncontrollable chin-stroking and thoughtful nodding.

Bear in mind that Dendara is a Fire-pantheon deity -- or her myths are Dara Happan accounts of a particular Mask, if you prefer -- and the Solars are hellaciously hierarchical. The Orlanthi likely see the same myths as oppressive and illustrative of Yelm's tyranny. (Lots of hierarchy in Orlanthi society too, mind you, but likely less overall.) Those are -- apparently -- rarer among the Orlanthi, but that certainly aren't a Glorantha-wide stereotype. Yelorna. Nyanka. Xiola Umbar (not exclusively an Uz deity, there's the likes of the Kitori too). More lunar goddesses than you can shake a fist at. I think I quoted someone else as saying that, but my sense is that their query -- or rhetorical point -- was in complaint about "too much cults, clans, and society stuff these days!", rather than a gendery one. Had she ever troubled to get initiated, in runic terms she'd seem very Vingan with a large side of Sandals of Darkness to me. (If the latter is canonical these days, or is in the future.)

Band breakups can be notoriously difficult at the best of times. Do you want to be the manager that has to tell Batty "we've got a new drummer that doesn't eat the souls of so many groupies -- you're fired"? I'd very largely agree with this, though I'd put it in less exceptionalist/Great Man Theory of History terms. Though in Glorantha a Man -- or Woman, or Non-binary, in the most time-honoured of sources! -- can have a CF of ((20!!)). Which is pretty darn Great! The Lunar Empire is large, and contain factional multitudes. The Tatius take here obviously has a certain logic to it: grind out an Imperial expansion with a combination of a barbarian-killing ground game, and a Middle Air War that copper-fastens those gains. Perhaps just about sufficiently for them to secure their much-desired Warm Water Port by way of another Glowline-backed thrust deeper into Heortland. OTOH, it's not a great way to win friends, influence people, and convert the whole world to the peaceful Lunar Way, is it? Babeester Gor initiation rates in Esrolia quadruple, dire oaths of vengeance sworn, even unto death and beyond. So arguably Fazzur's the one more faithfully discharging the big picture strategy, as opposed to a monomaniacal Dara Happan and his obsession to leaf-by-niggle his own particular pet project.

As a (recovering) Bears fan and intermittent Uroxi symp, this identity makes a lot of sense to me. Maintain a strong D-fence against Chaos!

Only barely. I once started struggling through The Dark Lord of Derkholm, and it really was no laughing matter.

So Winterfell's stunt-double is actually Bandallon, deep in House Tyrell territory! (AKA Castle Ward, Co. Down, Nrn Irn.)

Good question. I notice that they explicitly allow you to "create your own versions of our character sheets, including web-based character sheets that autofill or calculate numerical values." This isn't that, but it's somewhat that-adjacent. OTOH, they also say "Software or apps, including any item a user would download, install, and/or run, are not included in the Fan Material policy." I'd maybe suggest contacting @Ian Cooper in the first instance as a courtesy, he being the QW honcho -- he doesn't seem recently active here, so you may need to seek out his preferred contact method. He should be able to advise you on whether this is permissible, desirable, any specific boilerplate needed (though there's a template for that at https://www.chaosium.com/fan-material-policy/ in the "Requirements" section), and anyone else he might need to refer you to in Chaosium. Or message or @ other staffers here for assistance, use the webform at the bottom of the fan-material page, or see https://www.chaosium.com/contact-us/ Typo in "stre(t)ch". 🙂

"But the Moon Trolls are still there! And now they're invisible!" A notorious incident! Trust no-one. And no-place. *taps the walls of apartment suspiciously*

I can't speak for anyone else -- much less the forum mods for what's Best Practice locally -- bu I'd say in practice no-one is likely to object to you covering any campaign-related matters here. Can't really be accused of "hijacking" your own thread. OTOH it might be in your interests to post clearly separate topics in new threads, on the basis that someone that became double-glazed-over at a "Backford" thread wouldn't bother with followups to it, but may instantly perk up and chime in on a different topic. "Ah, Free INT, my specialist subject!!" For example. Good questions. To rules-lawyer the first part, "Release Intelligence", as in the RQ3 rune magic, would cover this... but its RQG equivalent, "Alter Creature", expressly does not. Horses aren't part of the Praxian Survival Covenant, and Praxians will loudly and emphatically tell you this at any desired length, and more. (Until they start getting violent on the point, at least.) Two logical candidates for cultures that might have a similar magic that's horse-applicable are the Pol Joni and the Grazers. But I doubt they have it as rune magic, as it'd surely have been described as such by this point. Mind you, there's no accounting for rare and obscure sub-cults! The answer "can it be done in a heroquest?" is for me pretty much always "yes, but now we're haggling about the difficulty". Which could be anywhere between "a tad more difficult and expensive than rune magic" and "take the world apart and put it back together again". On the lower end of that scale here, I think, given the similar precedents. For the Pol Joni this would be a pretty big deal if they could do it, as it would in effect forcefully elbow their way even deeper into Praxian culture, in a way the (other) Praxian tribes are, as noted, extremely resistant to. So plus side, you'd have ready support for trying to do this... on the minus, even more opposition. I'm not aware of the Grazers having any parallel myth to the Praxian one, but it seems a dead cert they have a practical and magical interest in ever-more-shiny-and-nifty horses generally. Whether this looks like a short ritual or a multi-generational breeding programme is something you might have to decide for yourself. All of the above are Fire creatures, so if the process were bespoke to horses, but worked analogously to the Praxian one, I imagine they'd immediately be able to communicate in Firespeech. Especially if the HQ/bigger and better rune magic were Grazer in origin.

Me neither, but on the same basis, just to flesh that out a little until an Initiate of Chaos says definitively: Seven months ago on reddit the Chaosium account said: "$29.99. Price includes PDF if purchased from Chaosium.com or an FLGS that takes part in the Bits & Mortar program." No word that I know of if there will be a separate PDF-only purchasing option. (That's a heckuva wasted unboxing option, but I do know some that would prefer this.) But there is for the Call of Cthulhu starter box, so my guess is they're likely to do this at some point. Some sellers are offering it as a pre-order, but my understanding is that the timeline's ticked from "release later this year" to "it's shipping to the warehouses right now and has already arrived at some". So my expectation is that the next step is an actual physical release, to be sent out as soon as flesh, blood, and logistics companies can manage.

Unspecified other country: "Hold our Miller Lite."

I agree you don't simply want to stonewall the players, and very especially not at the first hurdle. No fun them not even being able to get themselves into trouble in the first place. And clearly there are considerations about how to stage the evening's entertainments and torments, as you suggest. Ideally, have a backup plan, or a plan to deal with a situation you probably can't really plan for. However, with heroquests you have more flexibility with how to use the material than just "junk the scenario" if the players and their rolls conspire relentlessly at either actual success or even token failing forward. They can also be done in walking the-coastline-weekend-at-a-time mode -- either deliberately, serendipitously, or at the most inconvenient time possible. Doing the stages... in stages, as it were. If they get "stuck" at a particular point, they may keep getting drawn back to it. Most obviously at the next Sacred Time or other point they self-consciously enter the heroplane, but potentially any time they interact with whatever themes relate to that quest, and to that point in it. (I'm thinking here mostly of Practice/Mundane quests, with all apologies to the OP, but it potentially applies to both.) If you don't interact with mythology it'll interact with you, getting hit over the head by your mythic opponents "at random" edition. Indeed. Stop, Sunstop danger!

If it were safe, it's be rune magic, or on a Big Table of Gifts/Geases, etc.

D'oh. That feeling when you think you're cunningly compensating for US state abbreviations being dropped in out of clear blue sky, and you're actually forgetting about the context from the previous line of the post...

This is a good point. There are locations that are naturally favourable to Other Side rituals -- Thin Places, as it were, where the distance to some portion of the otherworld is shorter, the barriers lower. This is great if you're doing a worship ritual there. Boni all 'round! But conversely you might find yourself crossing over there unintentionally, especially if there are other affine factors: strong runic or cultist associations with the place, having encountered or crossed the corresponding myth in the heroplane before, etc.