Akhôrahil

I've been making some initial attempts at a more advanced stead-based economy for my campaign, but it's tricky, trickier still since it has to feel like proper RQ (rather than the highly abstracted HQ community system), and on top of everything there's some pretty advanced domain knowledge, both about farming and history, required.

And also that the quality of the land doesn't matter. (In a more advanced system, this would be how Bless Crops would work - it would increase the quality of your land for the year, enabling better harvests. Creating a multiplier for your income rather than a bonus to your roll.)

It's better, but it's not a lot better, and a few additional Rune points outweigh a lifetime's experience.

That’s what happens when you have a game this complex, and (apparently) without some dedicated rules QA guy in the editing process.

The harvesting and especially the plowing supposedly takes skill, i.e. farming. Bless Crops means that this is pretty irrelevant.

Assuming they do any healing at all (which they normally would), likely including a herbal garden.

Another thing to keep in mind is that for a Free household, you need a very high skill level - around 80%, which is likely higher than the average - to ”break even” with regards to Free standard of living, and that’s before any penalties. Bless Crops is what makes the whole system work and produce any surplus. What’s annoying with it is how the bonus doesn’t really have any limits. Take any city-dweller or merchant who never touched a plow, with nothing but the base cultural skill, and slap a Bless Crops 3 on the farm, and they will do perfectly fine. It kinda depreciates the Farming skill when it’s that easy.

Because Rune Points are capped by Cha (per cult, but I imagine the Bloody Tusk doesn’t have too many friendly cults...).

And Tusk Riders are weaker than Trollkin in this regard?

At some point, you have to wonder why being sociable and having high magical potential is governed by the same stat. Is there any reason why Tusk Riders would be bad at magic, have low spirit combat damage, and so on? 1D6 for App makes every kind of sense, but for Cha, less so.

If they have a Cha of 1, there won’t be much Rune Magic coming from them... Edit: The solution would be having a decent allied spirit.

+200%, surely?

There are two really big impacts of Bless Crops. The first is that, just as with Worship, it means you don’t really need what would seem like an important skill, because it’s so easy to push it to 95% anyway. The second is that it trivializes penalties. Who cares if you received a -30% for being seriously raided - that’s small change in the equation!

It’s not stackable with other castings of itself, was my point.

This is correct, but at this point we're assuming that the PCs are nobles - otherwise, they have the one hide as per usual. And 10 RP really isn't a huge deal - cast on the day before a Holy Day, and you barely notice it. If you roll poorly, fill up on the next week's weekly holy day. Ernaldan Rune Point economy is crazy - several hundreds of rune points per year, easily

I think they absolutely can, and that the table does assumes no direct effects of magic. Return on Magical Investment rapidly drops off once you reach 95%, though, as now it just improves your chances of specials and crits. With weekly Holy Days, a single Ernaldan can spam her full Bless Crops many times per year. Getting included in one should be very doable, and for less than the really high prices for rune magic. Also, it would be a rare farmer household that doesn't already include an Ernalda initiate. This is a bit on the generous side, agree. A cottar has a whopping 68% of produce extracted, while I don't know of any historical society that had even 50%. This strikes me as a failure in economic world-building. Your math is off here - the productivity is 80L per hide. Cottars have to pay half. Then 20% is extracted to the temples of what remains. For a Free farmer, this means an income (on a regular success) of 64L net, and a household Standard of Living cost of 60L. This demonstrates how tenuous the Free standard of living is. I sure that "20L" must be read as the cost that an adventurer will have to pay for a Rune Point under the worst conditions. It's can't possibly be what you can expect to sell an RP worth of casting for - an Ernaldan can cast hundreds and hundreds of Rune Points worth of spell in a year with all the weekly holy days. Yes, and in some cases it might be provided by the temple. In my campaign, due to aging rules and a little experience, the farmwife Ernaldan has 10 rune points. Due to how Bless Crops is written, this means that she can hand out, say, +60% to income rolls to 8 full farms, per season or more if required. The main return on this is really good graces with the other families, the certainty of support if a crisis arrives, and a generally elevated social standing. They have also been receiving cottar families, and she's well on her way to a God-Talker position. A, but you have to achieve this in actual play. (Note that Bless Crops doesn't stack, though, so you only need the one per farm, or less.)

Does it have another turtleshell for the back, too?

It makes sense for the campaign to end in 1627, then. Especially if it's the kind where you start with new PCs - that way, the "normal" setting is available afterwards.

At least it’s also Chaosium’s official house rule (cf. Jason in the Core Rules Q thread).

Another question is how long (in-game) the sandbox is expected to run. If it’s years and years, it might be better to start it off earlier, just to allot the time for it to complete.

Samastina herself receives a Great Troll bodyguard in HQG, as well.

”You strike the first blow, but I will strike the last.”

Some examples I have seen: A Forgotten Realms campaign starting with how the PCs find Elminster crucified and dead. A Star Wars campaign starting with describing how Luke missed his Death Star shot.

”The old world is over”, as HeroWars told us again and again. I love those quotes, and how the game told us the future was wide open (as opposed to defined in metaplot). ”The old world is over, and we must become dragons to survive.” ”The old world is over, and the new world must be freed of its pain.” ”The old world is over. Harrek killed it!”

Even if Hero rules come out with the GM book, it’s hard to see how the game could support rules for actually-superhero PC levels. HQ can, but RQ surely breaks under the load long before that.