Akhôrahil

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.

Same here. Otherwise you can’t even improve them with Occupational Experience, which strikes me as ridiculous.

[Your mercenary or volunteer unit] finds itself left behind in [far into enemy territory] when [the war] ends, and you have to fight, negotiate and survive your way back home. (This is obviously the Anabasis, but also the story of the Czech Legion in World War I, the Chain of Dogs in The Malazan Book of the Fallen and the campaign premise of the Band of Blades rpg.)

Agree about Animal Lore.

I really enjoyed the idea that the Lunars are trying to introduce a crappy ersatz thunder god, and absolutely no-one is impressed but the quislings make a show of playing along for political reasons.

Oh, you're moving that from Yelmalio to Elmal? Intriguing... I'm also really interested in what "normal" Elmal and/or Yelmalio worship in Biliniland would look like. My line so far is that while there is clear and definitive traditional Yelmalio worship down in the lowlands (Endeel and the Lingsting Sun Dome), the Orlanthi clans usually aren't even fully clear on what the difference is supposed to be - one clan might worship Elmal but under the name Yelmalio, and so on.

I was similarly interested in pre-Theyalan Talastari gods, and thought gods like Hagodereth, Hethana and Varnaval seemed intriguing.

This became an enormous headache in the original World of Darkness, where most published campaigns turned into "the PCs get to stand around watching the fan-favorite NPCs do the important stuff". I was involved on the sidelines for V5, and a major piece of the design was "we have to avoid that, and make the game about the PCs again". We'll see how the Argrath Campaign handles things, but unless handled deftly, there's a huge risk that the timeline of the future gets nailed down in detail, that the PCs can't do anything about it, and that the important people (i.e. not the PCs) get all the plot focus. I liked how KoS/HW/HQ did its very best to avoid that, with its multiple-choice Argraths. I think Exalted had the best idea - essentially "the game starts here, and while we will fill out the setting, there is no metaplot for the future".