Akhôrahil

I think this is sensible.

Agree - there are enough landless people that even a cottar job isn’t unattractive. By historical standards, 40% off of 80 acres isn’t terrible - Roman peasants might have 10-15 acres and making it up by labor for the landowner, although the level of rent+tax in the system we’re presented with is extremely high. If you have to go looking for cottars, there’s no telling who you will get, though. Trouble might easily arise. Herder might be - I think there are three kinds of herders: youngsters (like in the GM pack), pros (people doing it as a long-term profession), and ranchers (herders owning at least their own flock, which should qualify them for Free SoL). Also, I think the Cottars are subjected to less risk - they get provided their seed, they’re not fully on the hook for bad harvests (they have to pay half of what they get, not half of theoretical field yield), and so on. They’re poor, but their poverty might be less volatile. Free farmers must at the very least have access to cattle - that’s how they produce the oxen they need to qualify. I tell my players they need 8 cattle to keep this up (can’t remember where I read it).

BTW, I disagree about this - tenant farmers are a (semi)permanent underclass with families and kids, IMG.

60L is unlikely to be able to support a Free SoL post-taxes/tithes/failed income rolls, and Fishers and Herders are listed with Poor Standard of Living in their professions, which is what we use for this table. Free SoL starts with 80L income for the professions. Cottars are going to be a substantial minority of the clan, probably secondary only to Free farmers.

It might have been a more playable design if both this table and the random yearly event table generated a crisis rather than an outcome. The child will die unless. Raids cause an economic loss unless. And so on.

Smaller modifiers would do it, but then, modifiers of just a few percent feel tiny in a BRP context.

You can't extrapolate from wimpy Middle Men to Dúnedain or elves. They're just better than us. There's just no way elves accumulate minor aches and niggling injuries as the years go on until they're completely crippled.

Child mortality to 15 for poor people going by the table is 96%. This is like nothing in history. (For Free, it's around 50%, which is probably roughly historical.) Potentially, if you can't maintain your SoL.

BTW, the child survival table is really weird. If you're wealthy, survival is automatic. If you're poor, child mortality is absurdly high.

Lords of Terror: "...the actual person emerges as a member of the scorpion race. He retains all his former skills and spells..." (this is for the more advanced use of the spell)

So I used this in play last session. One Orlanth PC was looking for a God-Talker advancement, and wanted to found a shrine halfway up Thunder Mountain in Talastar. The party have already been there twice in This World-heroquests and met Vorios (even assisting him against a Gagarthi heroquester), so they felt like they had something to work with. Starting out with divinations, they were given a vision of Vorios slamming one hoof down on a slab of rock, leaving a deep scorched hoof-mark pressed into it. Doing their best to guess the location, they made their way up the mountain. A Kolat shaman in the party interrogated a wind and bribed it with magic points to get directions. Approaching it, they stumbled on Barstan Ram-Friend (Secrets of Dorastor) who gave them lavish hospitality out of various loot, and wasn't hard-pressed to be convinced that a Ram-related shrine was a good idea. They built a ceremonial cairn, sacrificed, and called a Storm Ram to the location, after which the would-be God-Talker was informed he would have to prove his worth, Rodeo style. Both Extended Bull's Strength and shaman-prolonged regular Strength was brought out, after which first a successful unarmed attack (to grapple it) and a series of three rolls on the Resistance table followed (they were very happy to discover how Storm Rams don't weigh as much as one would expect). The Storm Ram was hence convinced to act as a wyter (potentially not the most consistent one...) and the shrine was consecrated. Aside from the regular qualities, we decided that the shrine provides a good place to pick up a Storm Ram allied spirit, that any Storm Rams and Air Elementals Summoned there come with an Extension 2 pre-applied, and that it teaches a special Summon Huge Air Elemental spell (which is so far of doubtful utility as no-one even feels ready to try to control large ones yet). Solid product!

By the way, two sessions ago we finally saw one PC go all-in with his crap-ton of Rune Points in a Scorpionman fight, doing a full Odayla bear transformation, Protection 6, some Impede Chaos, and Berserk. That was quite a sight, and at least two heads were ripped clean off, along with any number of limbs (one of them his own foreleg)!

It says "the actual person", so I would assume everything is as intact as it can be, including in principle initiation status, rune levels, and so on. A lot of cults will likely be impossible to maintain, but in principle you could even snatch a god-talker, create lay members to the cult, and teach spirit magic that way. K'rana in Lords of Terror maintained her Humakt worship and teaches it (as best she can) to her tribe. Being dead and returning to life can't destroy your fetch, or self-resurrection would be impossible. The person's spirit is still there in the reborn Scorpionperson, after all, and your fetch is just your magical self.

The one you just grabbed, ate, and did the Ritual of Rebirth on? 🙂

This (at least the childbirth part, not the child survival roll) can also be handled by a mere two-point Bless Pregnancy, something PCs would often have access to (mine go all-in on the Bless Pregnancies, because as the campaign has gone from 1616 to 1621 already, they're open to the possibility that the kids may one day become PCs).

The Scorpionman Raid in the Dorastor book is very good, and I’m still mildly shocked my PCs got through it without any deaths - it provides every opportunity.

You probably could make the argument that the Lords of Chaos are not fundamentally evil, and merely driven mad by being forcibly incorporated into the physical world (this is much how the Z'bri work in the Tribe 8 RPG - while they are horrendously evil to the recipients of their vile actions, they are in fact merely spirits driven mad by the sensations of inhabiting flesh). This could mesh with how Chaos is both regarded as anti-existence and as a moral evil.

And also where Tom Bombadil banishes the Barrow-Wight. Lost and forgotten be, darker than the darkness, Where gates stand for ever shut, till the world is mended.

"Gothmog the lieutenant of Morgul had flung them into the fray; Easterlings with axes, and Variags of Khand, Southrons in scarlet, and out of Far Harad black men like half-trolls with white eyes and red tongues." It’s unclear whether they existed or were just a simile.

I would strongly urge everyone to ditch this rule and just round in the standard way (closest integer, up if .5) for everyone. Otherwise you get senseless outcomes like enemy D4 / 2 (typical DB for thrown weapons) being different from player D4 / 2, and as you suggest, crit/special/fumble calculations become even more tricky.

It means that if you start at the default 21 years of age (or any +5 increment of it, as per the rules for older characters), the next year will be a factor of five years since initiation, granting you a free point of Spirit Magic.

The minmax character design is to start the game without Bladesharp, and pick up your free 4-point Bladesharp ASAP. (Both for this and for your one per five years Spirit Magic, it matters at what age you were initiated. I vacilate between 16 and 18 as a default, but the minmax choice is 17.)

I count Lay Memberships as being 1% each for time and money, but rounded to the closest 10% step (so usually 0%). And I did indeed houserule the Training system to be very different as well as integrated with Seasonal experience (essentially, Research allows you to pick Seasonal Experience in a skill you otherwise couldn't have, and Training gives you a bonus, commonly the teacher's Communication bonus, to the experience roll for one or more seasonal experience checks on skills being trained).

I can see the argument for mercs, but not for your regular honorable sword-using Orlanth-initiated warrior. 10% of wealth per season is a shocking amount of money (well, assuming you have any wealth). At least if "current silver" means actual wealth and not merely actual current silver pennies (in which case you should get yourself jewelry, keep your wealth in Wheels & Clacks, or other similar silliness).

Given the extremely limited benefits from (a normally optional) Lay Membership, how are people motivated to pay a fairly substantial yearly 10% wealth tax? The benefits don't seem at all commensurate.