Yelm's Light

Given the quality of the Quickstart, I expect great things.

Prax, however, isn't the Holy Country. The Zola Fel valley would have to be near the top of the list of flood areas, although the relative flatness of the plains above the level of the valley might mitigate the depth of flooding beyond that. I still don't see any way that the Sun Dome Temple or the Big Rubble wouldn't be swamped, or access severely limited for non-aquatic races.

So long Sun County and Pavis, welcome to the Big Muddle... I suppose I'll stick with a 1625-ish game, then.

I knew something about the business side in those days, and shall we say I was less than impressed with the Boys from Baltimore as regards RQ. They knew wargames, but not RPG's. They basically followed the same format they'd used for their boardgames and, as mentioned, the character sheet packs were a dumb idea to begin with. They did, however, do a good job with Dragon Pass, but I attribute that to its being a traditional war game and hence in their wheelhouse.

Yeah, I'm noticing the paucity of RQ stuff that's around. RQG would be nice to have by Xmas, at least. Hint hint. I could also very much deal with a reissue of Trollpak.

Seems like a rather inefficient and wasteful design to me. All those steps have no point; the same purpose could be served by having one set of steps at each corner (or even a single set of steps) to access the terraces.

Nice shades, man.

Gods save us from the Attack of the Killer Post-Its! (Now, thanks to myself, I have a bad movie playing through my head where a bunch of wild stickies jump up and cover their hapless victim in gummy paper...) The mango curry looks interesting, though I'm a strict omnivore.

To attempt to answer the original question: Most battle magic (or what you neophytes () call Spirit Magic) is oriented toward just that, battle, as in melee. However, a little imagination can go a long way. Offensively, Firearrow or Ignite could be used to set flammables afire, Fanaticism could be used to push raiders to be more, umm, fanatical in a sally, Invisibility and/or Silence (or the Rune magic spell Concealment) to hide them, Demoralize to work on individual defenders who are in line of sight, etc. Defensively, Countermagic, Dispel Magic, Extinguish, and Repair could all have their uses depending on the application, Warding (Rune magic) could protect areas from intrusion, and the above-named offensive spells could be used by the defenders. There are also a number of informational spells that might apply for either side: various Detects, Detection Blank to try to counter them, Farsee, Mindspeech/Mind Link, and Vision (the last two being Rune magic). Cult-specific Rune or Battle magic could also apply, but the spells are far too numerous to deal with individually, and this is by no means an exhaustive list anyway. As for access, that depends primarily on the people and cults involved. (Given the time usually involved in a siege, enterprising defenders might even have time to teach appropriate spells to their allies in the interim.)

The DMG was $15. I'm not sure how much RQ3 was originally, since the copy that I have came in a mass buy I did from EBay, and was the 1993 edition anyway.

Logistical issues aside, if you don't see how a 12-point, mobile area-effect Disruption is game-breaking, you must have a really high-powered game.

I would have absolutely no compunction about enemies of the PC's soon discovering their tactic and using it against them. Not a good idea for a player to try to blow up game balance. But then, as stated above, I'd never let it get that far.

No, but I slept in a Holiday Inn last night. I do very much think like one, though. Losing you on the chemistry analogy. I took a year plus a year of bio in college...and a more mnemonic class I've never run into, except possibly for anatomy. I'd've thought there are a lot more than 40 basic compounds, though...unless you mean classes, for instance, chlorides, oxides, etc. Quantum mechanics isn't a good analogy. Atoms are still the fundamental unit, regardless of how many subparticles they're parsed into. Eh, string theory, maybe. Leaving matter aside, I can think of a couple of very specific examples of the application of the scientific method in Glorantha. But I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader...

Not much physics, actually, mostly logic and mathematics. How do you explain properties at the event horizon? So, in other words, nothing is impossible and there's no need for explanation. It's all 'just magic.' Very convenient, but not satisfying in the slightest.

You may call them atoms, but what you're describing is elements, and the 'aggregate state' is molecules or compounds. I don't think you've thought through the effects of having 40+ fundamental particles. Never mind the numerous combinations that those 40 particles could make, ignoring the tempers; a single one of those, two atoms, means 800 elements. (Half of 40^2, because of duplications.) There are currently 90 naturally-occurring elements in the RW, based on one fundamental particle. There simply isn't that much basic variation in Glorantha compared to Earth. And that's just the simplest combination. One law being different does not imply that all laws are different. Action/reaction being an obvious one. Spirits don't necessarily have the monopoly on causing disease. Again, there are implications. For instance, broos. Do they just happen to be surrounded by a number of disease spirits?

Just because those laws may not be exactly the same (gravitation being one particularly glaring one) doesn't mean that there isn't a natural logic to it...and I mean something other than Runes as elements, a theory which I've made clear before I consider ludicrous. (What are the physical properties of a Death Rune? What is its charge? Mass?) Nor does it preclude some of those laws from being exactly the same. Conservation of energy/momentum, for example.

When I figured it out (which took a while), my initial reaction was "No, you can't have the Hula Hoop of Death." Instead, I'd just rule that, as I'd always assumed (and may even have absorbed from somewhere in my wide reading of things RQ), Warding is stationary, i.e. the stakes must be set into the ground. (Probably from the Issaries "Create Market" spells, come to think of it.)

So do some of the scientific ones today. As for physicians, the Egyptians provably had advanced medicine in the third millennium BCE, along with their own impressive feats of architecture and engineering. The Greeks systematized logic and the scientific method and had a fairly accurate atomic theory three millennia before Bohr. And astrology led to the modern science of astronomy. The laws of science didn't change in those three thousand-plus years.

Because the Mostali don't regularly commit feats of engineering. It's odd to me how people espouse this, then turn around and try to use logic to explain their theories of, for instance, why the sea is salt. It's also funny how there's a 'correct' way of viewing something in a YGMV universe. Btw, those Bronze Age civilizations that Gloranthans are supposed to most resemble had science as well, because there were people who didn't buy into the idea that everything in life was the result of some godlet waking up with a hangover.

Bah. RQ3 is to all extents and purposes absent from RQG. In RQ2, you learn a Battle Magic spell and can then cast it as many times as you have the POW available for. It's a formula, and nothing more.

Something you're missing there...the ubiquitousness of cult membership, which is an access point for most members. And how many farmers do you think are going to have a great deal of time on their hands in order to learn a bunch of spells? Even in post-harvest times there are maintenance, caring for animals, going to market with surpluses, etc. Your average villager isn't going on broo hunts or plumbing the depths of abandoned temples. (Soldiers maybe, grumblingly, and most wealth that they find and can't pilfer passes to their military organization, clan, or tribe.) Once again, you're viewing the 'prices' listed as being for a product. But most receive training in return for service to the cult or as a tactical necessity in order to serve fellow soldiers, not paying actual money for it. (If they want something uncommon, then they might have to do so, but I've never seen training as being bought and paid for very much.)

Hardly. Chaosium has the right to defend its intellectual property, including from dilution of demand, whatever the extent. It's not like they served Vile with a legal demand anyway; they made a request. The 'influence' that you claim they have because of the forums is irrelevant.

The values were originally used to calculate training time, and are oriented towards adventurers who, as noted above, are generally wealthier than the average run of civilian. That doesn't preclude some community-minded individuals from training neighbors in order to improve the general welfare of their villages. Repair alone is a highly useful and versatile spell for anyone who uses tools in their work. Of course, a majority of spells won't be available in this way, only those most applicable to everyday life and limited to the knowledge of the trainer. Nor does an injury generally prevent someone from going to their local healer for aid instead of having to learn a spell, at much more affordable rates.

Yep, Hargrave's a crank. So what? Welcome to the wonderful world of copyright law.

Since when? I owned the AG trilogy way back when. It's nothing but a not even very thinly-veiled expansion of original D&D, which is hardly a fit for Glorantha. As a matter of fact, Greg stated it explicitly himself in the intro to those character stats; there was no way AG was ever going to be the rules system for Glorantha because of the copyright issues that he saw inevitably occurring with TSR.