Alex

City gods have been given "full" cult writeups in the past (Pavis, and the RQ3 generic "City God" template), so I'm going to give that question a decisive "maybe" answer. 🙂 The distinction is likely a somewhat fuzzy one in "real" Glorantha, and our game mechanics for this are necessarily approximations. Who wants to do factional POW-point accounting, and the like? But note that cults can always have non-standard requirements for, and benefits from, initiation. You probably want to choose an approximation that seems to best serve the needs of your story and your table. If they're part of the premise of a particular game, you don't want to apply game-mechanics taxes to choices you want the PCs to make, or to have already made. For example RQG assumes that PCs start as initiates, which in theory must have cost them a point of POW. But you don't get a "refund" if you don't, because it's intended to be part of the premise of the game. (And also you don't want to open the can of worms of, "if I'd sacrificed an extra point of POW five years ago, what're the chances I'd have regained it by one of series of marginally easier gain rolls in the meantime, huh, huhhuh?") So you certainly don't want to start "charging" PCs POW sacs to be parts of communities that are part of the backstory (especially as any such hypothetical sacrifices would have generally happened even longer ago.) If you do regard them as cults, they obviously have unusually lax "cult compatibility" attitudes. Clan "cults"/"wyters" are similar in that respect, only manifest in the form of 1,000 busybody relatives of yours, who'll certainly have -- and insist on sharing -- their opinions on such matters. Do they have time commitments? Of course, but they're indistinguishable from being a citizen in good standing/loyal clan member, in normal social terms. Do they provide rune magic? Maybe not. And maybe they do, but that "blends into" being seen as a subcult of the local Orlanth and Ernalda temples for clans (as FDWC says), and similarly for cities, it might be a subcult of the local religions with sufficiently large temples, instead of or as well as being a distinct entity. Do they provide other benefits like spirit magic and training? WiIl vary widely from case to case. The question obviously becomes more material if a PC has a "change of affiliation" in play. They leave or get outlawed from their original clan and join another, or they drift off from their clan being their primary affiliation and become more of a city-burgher type. But in Sartar in particular (which may or may not be a model for elsewhere) your associations "nest" -- your clan is a part of your tribe, is a part of your city (ring), is a part of the kingdom. So rather than regarding those are separate "cults", you might want to see them as all essentially the same thing, and track the distinction with Passions. Another what-happens-at-the-table distinction is how diverse the PCs are. Are they all (highly unfashionably) from the same clan, so this functions as a group-binding thing? Or are they from different clans, tribes, etc, so it's a point of difference -- added distinctive shtick for each character.

That's game mechanics, of course (and we're in the right place for those, but I'm going to waffle more generally anyway, all apologies), but certainly captures something about something about the underlying (fictional!) reality. I picture a community wyter as working like a small cult. Both (theistic-style) cults and most communities kick in somewhat around Dunbar's Number, so that's the sort of group I tend to think of a having such a thing. But you have to fudge that relative to commitment. You could argue that the stereotypical party of freebooting rootless adventurers spend 90% commitment on "cult" (i.e. party) "business", and have a multiplier effect. Conversely, if the Apple Township are neither Devoted, Loyal, or Loving to their quasi-community, so much as Moderately Fond of the Commercial Convenience (SV 40% "Passion"), they like each "count" for less than one member. It'd be like having a shrine to a minor deity where almost the entire "congregation" were slacker lay members, pitching in their MPs on some sporadic basis, but just about ending up as vaguely "equivalent" to a smaller number of observant initiates. (For actual divine cults they might not actually work that way, so this is a somewhat loose comparison.) So imagine that AL gets tepid levels of community support from large numbers of people from the two or three closest clans. That seems like something that might be magically feasible to work with. Can't argue with that!

It's the precise point I was replying to, thus mischaracterises nothing. Evidently we disagree wildly on the nature of "the problem", but I see little value in doing so in a heated or uncivil manner.

This'd be a very on-brand addition, certainly, but I find it hard to imagine it addressing any of the alleged problems or unacceptable uncertainties in it. Do we imagine that dodgy Orlanthi poetry will give us a tight definition of "harm", a detailed rationale for the distinction between plants and animals, or specific rulings on whether your Telmori neighbours are chaos monsters for these purposes? I'd guess it would be vaguer than what we currently have, if anything.

Interesting question! I'd have guessed that the hamlet in itself is too small to, but most such border communities have a significant 'hinterland' of people off-map connected with it. If they're involved/committed enough to Apple Lane (presumably as well as, rather than instead of their own clan, tribe, etc), might make sense.

"Kill for the Bills" also sounds like some sort of violent insurgent sportsball movement in Upstate (depending on your definition, don't hate on me, people from Albany!) New York... (As in the Buffalo NFL team, if that only made sense in my head.)

So kinda like the ability on similar lines in HQG, really! As with the "powers a la carte".

I very much agree. These questions come down to: what happens in the temporal cult structure if a question arises as to correct religious observance? And how does the deity 'act' (however personally or impersonally one sees that happening in terms of the nature of Glorantha and Compromise) in terms of withholding magic, sending SoR, speaking to the initiate in a divinatory manner, and so on. Essentially both coming down to, "roleplay it out". I think that's a much more apt approach than exhaustive and mechanistic rules. Which would be more evocative of in particular sorcery, though how extensively that's desirable or doable in an RPG is questionable, too.

My "working out" was rather more rudimentary: I just googled it for a couple of different countries. 🙂 No guarantee if those are the "peak" productivities for those countries, or even representative of anything at all really. But those are present-day practices. How much they differ from the Bronze Age I'm guessing wildly, but don't underestimate the effects those have had in agriculture generally. Personally, I hesitate to take RW figures (and certainly not modern RW) as baselines for Glorantha. Especially in case we're going to be adding lavish magical bonuses on top of that. But others will doubtless have different sweet-spots as regards verisimilitude/analogy vs desirable degree of high fantasy. Your Maize May Vary, as the old saw (scythe?) has it!

People will of course have their own, and often different sweetspots. But that's the trouble with "missing link" objections... You find the link (or in this case, infill the gap), and in the process you've literally created two more!

That depends a lot on the climate, and presumably also on growing practices. In these parts -- IRL the country (sorry, couldn't resist) and the UK -- for example, I think there's only one crop, it grows for about five months, and even then that's using plasticulture to raise soil temperatures and no doubt a metric ton of artificial fertilisers, pesticides, modern highly selectively bred varieties etc. OTOH in Brazil and the like, as you say three crops no bother. So my guess for Bronze-Age-analogue Peloria, a region that's has a rather northern location and distinctly Continental climate (even mitigated as that is by Kalikos Icebreaker), I'd go with something more like the suggestion offered elsewhere in the thread of one crop/year, two if blood sacrifice added until. But export it to the far southeast of Genertela or to Pamaltela and now we're really in (agri)business!

It's a less than clear natural-language distinction, but not an infeasible one. Given that "lay member" has the word "member" in it, that'd be an even trickier one to make. But lay membership is essentially a social status, not a metaphysical-status one: if you were to imagine a deity-eye-view, these are essentially non-existent -- other than to the extent they perceive generic people, and as an intermittent and unreliable source of MPs. All the same, be clearer if the text had said "initiate to" rather than "join".

Slight exaggeration. Rarely are we so precise! And by the time we reach 270 degrees OT, it'll be a lot like being only 90 degrees away again!

Top centrist-ruler cunning thinking. Arranging to have chaos monsters that have the good manners not to act like chaos monsters!

Is this because ragged-arsed hunters are now classed as non-free/semi-free in social terms, because of their lack of ready funds and groundrent? 🙂

Not everywhere need have been equally (un)civilised always! Though equally, not everywhere -- anywhere, likely! -- is telling the truth about it, either. Well of course it is true -- mythically true. Historical accuracy much less important; not to mention, much harder to determine... I notice the same thing with the "same god/different god" thing. There seems to be a default that the "true" account is that there was originally just one cult, and one name, and they all split and the current state is essentially the product of linguistic and cultural drift. But it might be just the opposite -- a synthesis of different deities that just happen to be able to "recip". (Or with some integration work, have been made to be able to.) Or something more complex -- look at the "ring species" cultic shenanigans with Dendara and Entekos in the Library material. I rather like the apparent discrepancies between the Eastern account and those from elsewhere. Even if it's self-serving nonsense, it's entertaining and evocative nonsense. And the implications if it is true are... interesting.

Well, the "incompatible runes" thing seems pretty pertinent to me, given that RQG has explicit "runes" rules for that to apply to, whereas back in the CoT day, RQ2 did not. And the a la carte observation you make yourself. So, ignore HQG, except for the main takeaways from HQG! (No doubt there are other differences, but I'm too lazy for that much textual analysis right now, especially if I can get someone else to do it for me.)

Aside from the Hon-Eel cult, there's a fair bit in the Book of Heortling Mythology about Ana Gor, describing hers as essentially an intermittent subcult of Humakt, Ty Kora Tek, Babeester Gor, Erantha Gor, and Esrola, noting that it's a chaotic practice outside of those cults and the "most special circumstances". So by definition, any time the Lunars do it, it's evidence of their irredeemable subservience to the powers of Chaos.

"So raise your hand if you think that was a Belintaran water tentacle!" I picture them looking less like swimmable air, and more like breathable water. (After all, for swimmable air we have an entire Sea of Fog -- at least if you're a Zabdamar, or someone in on the magical secret.) So on land, you'd get a shimmering or gurgling more-or-less vertical wall that looks like the surface of a river or a pool, such as you may be familiar with via various c.1990 SF movie SFX. Under the water, you'd see a similar-looking boundary, much as say underwater brine pools have a discernible "surface". Whether there's dramatic sequence where our hero Virgil the Carter, Son of Jaq, has to anxiously take in a lungful of this stuff, and then fall to his knees at the other end to cough it back up again, I think is a staging deal left to personal taste!

Or "obvious and natural extrapolation in the post", perhaps! Most obviously with more detailed animism rules.

YABWV!

My hazy memory might be conflating two different things. I'm fairly sure there was some sort of "how bobcat lost his tail" thing with Yinkin as the perp, but it might just have been a mailing-list post or the like. Certainly true, various different subspecies -- which distinction is hazy enough at the best of times, good luck ever pinning a biologist down on that -- Bergmann's rule, etc. But if you were giving a SIZ roll for Eurasian lynx, it'd be more like 1D3+2. A range of 1-6 is fairly bizarre, though the example of the domestic dog certainly shows, not impossible. (I'm not sure if that's at all to do with weird canine genetics, rather than the weirdness of the domestication process.)

Sounds very plausible. Actually those are probably rather different niches: Canada lynx and bobcat geographical ranges don't overlap a huge amount in the RW, and the size difference is significant. And as shadowcats have (or had, don't have the RQG Bestiary) the alarmingly large SIZ range of 1-6, that covers Canadas, bobs, and housecats, which is quite a lot of niche-width they potentially have covered (and maybe monopolised). Makes sense. That I do have, though putting my a hand on my copy might be a challenge. The Guide's statement is only about the prevalence of bobcat-people, so could certainly still have the animals the Peloria.

Or as snow leopards with bold facial-hair fashion-choices! (Or housecat-sized mini-maos, and all points in between, of course.) It's certain to be Post-Canonical (or never-was-canonical, not certain), Wrong, and no-doubt will get frowned at for even being mentioned mythlet about a rivalry between Bobcat and Yinkin. It makes a very big deal out of the Spirit vs God thing (this was from the height of the '-20 for being in the incorrect category' silliness), and it did specifically feature L. rufus losing his tail, and connecting that to their Four Methods/Three Worlds mutual disdain. Can't recall any specifics beyond that, nor if it was in a magazine, online, or then-official, and a hasty and half-hearted google doesn't help. I'm confident someone will crit a Lore roll and have the exact reference for you. So there might be something worth looting there, or ignoring, depending on taste, YGWV, etc. Actually on a more general google, now that I think of it, there's the Rinkoni, a Fronelan bobcat-hsunchen people, and those are in the Guide, and is very much in line with Jamie and Greg's old "Hsunchen Peoples of Genertela" document. So the bare background facts of the above are still good, it looks like. Also, a Happy Mew Year to everyone! 😾

Bitzor, it's the future!!!