Yelm's Light

Well, sort of. It's an Optional Rule (found in the Appendices) in RQ2. However, nowhere is there any mention of the amount of damage done by a bash attack. Since it's primarily meant to displace and imbalance an opponent, in my game I assign it 1D4 damage and the chance of a short-range 'throw' (similar to the result of a successful grappling attack). And if a player came back and said, "Well, I saw Brad Pitt do it in Troy!", first I'd say "You're not Achilles," and then he/she would get a diatribe on how a warrior jumping around like Pitt does would soon end up on the business end of a pike or spear.

My takeaway from that is that you can make 4 attacks only in the second case (2 foes twice at 1/2 percentage each), SR allowing.

But not workable if you plan on maintaining a naval presence for the long term. Of course, there are security issues either way...

Seems to be a code that major publishers have cracked. I have hundreds of hardcovers, from f/sf books I really liked to classics, histories, textbooks, and biographies, many of them 30-50 years old, and I can think of perhaps two of them that have had physical issues with age. Granted, they don't get used nearly as much as a rulebook generally would, but I go through occasional bouts of rereading favorites and haven't run into any trouble. (The older paperbacks, on the other hand, vary more, especially things like my old Analog and IASFM collections.) Yeah, I know, I'm digressing again...

Oddly enough, one of my few surviving old books is the original WRPG hardback. It captured the medieval flavor perfectly, and had a further-developed background system. Unfortunately, though I loved the game, nobody else I knew here in the States had much interest in playing it; RQ2 still ruled the roost. As for the best-laid plans of mice and men when it comes to printers, there is one way: own them yourself. But that's a step beyond.

Bah. Down with the Lunar invaders!

"I'm not clear on the whole good/bad thing, Egon..." I have a great deal of trouble seeing what difference this makes to a game, certainly to my game. I don't see it troubling players' suspension of disbelief, nor would I expect the view of death to be consistent in all cultures in the melting-pot that is Glorantha, much like the real world. It seems to me to be a matter of semantics. Death is a Mystery with a capital M. While cults might have a stake in defining it one way or the other, or in discovering the 'true state' of things (some sort of immutable law of physics as applied to metaphysics, already a contradiction in terms), I look at it as similar to the Godtime vs. Time conundrum, at least as applied to players and PC's. Even if they were to ask the right questions of the right being(s), they wouldn't understand the answers anyway. As far as practical application to my game, this is as close to immutable as it gets: If you die you die, and once a week has passed nothing short of a Heroquest generally beyond the level of the players is necessary to bring the dead back. Granted, my game has mostly been below the level of Heroquesting anyway, so more powerful PC's might be more likely to try to abrogate a prized character's death. As for the corollary of Heroquesters entering the Underworld, it's still a symbolic reproduction of the resurrection myth, whether or not you think they're officially dead when they go there. What matters is what the Heroquesters did, not how others defined it.

OK, then I prefer the original CoP cover. I never noticed the rare female broo on the CoT back cover before.

I doubt the original covers were still available when I got mine, but I prefer those from the second printing as well. Biturian and Norayeep make for a more interesting cover than a map. I note that both of the second printing covers show signs of use. You can't ask much more from any book.

Dragonewts live primarily in Dragon Pass, not Prax, and there are forests nearby. Gaining access to that wood, though, is another matter entirely. (ETA: Not sure why, but the forum software seems to be padding quotes with several blank, undeletable lines. And edits. And, every time I go back to re-edit, the return I've inserted between the first and second sentences here keeps getting stripped.)

I seem also to recall that True Dragons are immortal (Dragonewts are functionally but not technically immortal, since they are only reborn if the Eye is held). Of course, they spend most of their time sleeping and/or dreaming, and the extent and form of Dragon knowledge is a mystery anyway.

Nevermind, already covered.

Yep, the Bolosaurids were theoreticallly not much larger than normal lizards, but that doesn't mean the Gloranthan equivalent couldn't have been named after them because it looked like them. Imagine the Gloranthan bolo-lizard as a gila monster on steroids.

In Byll's reference it is. Bolo is military slang for a large hunting knife/machete in service in the US Army from the late 19th century through the end of WWI, used by soldiers to clear their fields of fire of shrubbery and other obstacles. But the reference for the lizard is likely to the prehistoric reptile genus Bolosaurus.

Those lizards are darn near unteachable!

Yeah, missile weapons are entirely different. They're definitely an acquired skill. I should've been clearer that I was referring to melee weapons. On (yet) another side note, anybody notice that the Glorantha and RQ forums got promoted above CoC? Not that I'm complaining, I'm fine with it.

Bolo bola, bolo bola, bolo bola... Watch out, watch out! (with apologies to Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs...)

It's a kind of negative scale. The weapon has a certain inherent speed, and a lot of people picking it up for the first time will be clumsy with it and slow that down. But others that are untrained will be able to pick it up, test the balance for a few seconds, and use it at nearly the optimum speed. Training doesn't make the weapon any faster; it only makes you faster with the weapon, up to the point where everyone is pretty much the same speed with it, not taking into account personal (physical) speed. I guess you could base some kind of DEX modifier on that, but I don't see how it jibes much with reality or adds anything other than an extra step in the calculation.

There are only three basic rune spells that are stackable beyond four points in RQ2: Discorporation, Matrix Creation, and Mind Link. Shield is explicitly limited to four points stacking. (And no, I'm not going to check the other hundred or so rune spells.)

That's mortals trying to impose order on what they can only describe based on their own preconceptions (i.e., within Time). The God Time is without any such order, because there was no Time. All events occurring in the God Time may as well be simultaneous as far as mortals are concerned.

I envisioned something a little more like the Mafia, with Lanbril as capo di tutti capi, as in Stephen Brust's Jhereg series, not so much professional advancement as based on personal loyalty and ability.

The Magic Book sounds like RQ3. In RQ2 it's explicitly only for rune spells defined as stackable, and not for battle magic spells at all.

Night Troll ball! Eh, not quite so impressive when you have night vision...

I cold easily see something like The Dream of the Red Chamber being written by some enterprising Kralorelan, especially with its many mystical references. I think the issue would be more in terms of reproduction, enough for it to be more than a curiosity occupying shelf space in a Lankhor Mhy library or that of a friend of the author.

Chaos represents every possibility; Order is simply a special case. (In other words, Chaos is an infinite set and a specific Order is a finite subset of Chaos.)