Akhôrahil

This made me wonder about something else entirely - what's the speed of light in Glorantha? Does dawn rush over the lands from east to west in a way that could be seen from above, the terminator moving at a less than instantaneous speed?

It happens randomly to PC river travellers in an HQ adventure, so if we trust that, it can't be utterly rare.

I’m unclear on whether clan tattoos appear magically or have to be applied by a tattoo artist, but either way, the new members need to get them some way!

Looks fine from horseback, but on a high llama, you really have to reach down a lot further. I like the idea of a polo swing - a hit like that is going to be devastating.

And you probably need two hands to use it, even though you swing it with just one. Like when you raise it after an attack, or when you want to bring it to the other side of your mount. You won't be moving around a long pole with a heavy metal head much with just one hand at the end of it.

I love to hate the Mostali - they're just the worst.

One thing must surely be that unlike other herd beasts, Herd-men have to be trained. A bison just has to eat grass and go where you prod it (unless it's a riding bison, in which case things change a bit), but collecting tubers for your masters or carrying their palanquins is a decidedly non-natural activity. So I believe we need to consider a lot of Herd-man training going on, since all of them have to be trained.

The OED likes "shamans". https://www.lexico.com/definition/shaman (Edit: Oops 2017, oh well... 🙂 )

Same here. To me, it's what decides who will be a meat eater, so it doesn't matter if tapirs aren't naturally carnivorous. My jaw dropped the first time I heard about this change. I do like the palanquins, though, and they don't seem like they would be adept riders.

Apparently clowns can get shit done, at least some of the time - Jojo the Bobo and the Clown Army drove the Mad Sultanate out of Lakrene when no-on else could (D:LoD).

And Thunderstone, maybe even moreso.

"This monster exists because I have a model that fits" is very Gygaxian. 🙂

Bottom mid 🙂

But in that case, what's even the point? Why does it look like it has a pumpkin for a head?

Find a hideout, then find a better hideout Struggle with your ability to worship (do you have the people and places? does your god still tolerate you?) Someone falls in love with a member of your rival bandit gang Find women (in a hopefully less than awful way) Recruit cannon fodder additional gang members Get yourself a wyter

In this one, you clearly need to track how many people (0 to 11) who agree with you, and you succeed at 11. Since he starts at 0, he only has one shot to "switch" one of the other jurors (but this roll succeeds). Each roll corresponds to either a vote count or someone changing his mind.

Let's work with this. It's often been noted that Orlanth Adventurous and Orlanth Thunderous seem like two different cults that have been incompletely banged into one. Perhaps Larnste is the father of OA (the Movement Rune is big with OA, after all) and Umath of OT (the more Storm-centric one)?

It's also questionable whether it would have been good for the movie if the fight had randomly gone the other way. But the video clip is even an example of the thing we're discussing here - it's not just a fight, it's a three-part conflict consisting of a talk, a stare-down, and then the physical fight, but RQ puts vastly more rules effort into the last part. In QuestWorlds, they would be given equal weight. (In RQG, what happens seems like an opposed roll of Orate vs. Honor, where both sides roll a success - the duel is still on, but Toshiro Mifune manages to get a concession that no-one else will be harmed. Then both sides try to Augment using Intimidate. Finally, there's a failed attack (or if you prefer, a successful dodge), and a successful (probably Special) attack against a failed (or barely attempted) defensive roll.)

The thing is that outside of combat (including Spirit Combat) and chases, the system tells you how to resolve tasks, but not how to resolve conflicts. This is very common in more traditional RPGs. Sometimes Social Combat is introduced to make up for it, but Social Combat has a tendency of feeling a bit weird when tacked on to a more trad system (while it's completely integrated as just another kind of conflict in a game like HeroQuest/QuestWorlds). How to do more with it? One way is to look at Skill Challenges from D&D, a system that can easily be adapted to RQ (essentially, you need a certain number of successes before a certain number of failures in order to succeed, from a certain set of skills, but you could just as well say that it's a certain number of rolls and the number of successes determine the quality of the outcome). But Skill Challenges come with their own set of issues - for one thing, it can lessen the drama and the impact when you spread out the rolls like this, while having a single Orate roll decide whether you can avoid feud really pushes the impact factor. It's probably most useful for extended (sometimes very extended) activities where it's not one single thing at one point in time that will result in ultimate success, like building a temple or ending a feud. The influence system mentioned by @Squaredeal Sten above is essentially a kind of Skill Challenge as well.

Hell Roar (the SoR of the ZZ cult) or Crushing Noise, or are those the same?

One crucial part is that they're outlaws for a reason, and whatever that reason is, someone is likely to try to come to collect now that they're outlaws and can be killed freely. I think it could be a great structure to start off with this kind of thing and mere survival, and then they get a chance to transform themselves into bandit-rebels after the Lunars arrive. Also seeing if they try to maintain some moral threshold - introducing Gagarthi (probably more successful and powerful than the PCs!) and presenting them beyond the moral event horizon could be good here - "are you truly no better than those guys?" It's always good to have an opposition who is worse than the PCs - when watching Sons of Anarchy I reflected on how outsider law-enforcement is universally morally appalling there, because the unpleasant people in the club still have to be maintained as preferable to the people who oppose them.

I guess a lot will depend on the tone chosen. Is this a harsh and nasty struggle for survival in the face of a hostile world, or a more heroic campaign with bandits with at least their own brand of honour and stylishness? You get very different campaigns from the Dalton gang, Robin Hood, and the Brotherhood Without Banners (GoT). "Social Banditry" is also interesting in how it connects even outlaws to a community: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_banditry Hobsbawm: "The point about social bandits is that they are peasant outlaws whom the lord and state regard as criminals, but who remain within peasant society, and are considered by their people as heroes, as champions, avengers, fighters for justice, perhaps even leaders of liberation, and in any case as men to be admired, helped and supported. This relation between the ordinary peasant and the rebel, outlaw and robber is what makes social banditry interesting and significant ... Social banditry of this kind is one of the most universal social phenomena known to history."

Thanks for the input and assist, everyone - at least I feel like I'm at approximately the right level here, and that the unclear parts are legitimate game-design decisions where one can reasonably go either way.

I agree there's a baseline Theyalan set of customs, but that's probably more that every Theyalan culture gets some thing like 1/2 to 1/5 to any other rather than them sharing the same Customs skill. I think you can probably find hospitality in any other Theyalan culture if you can at all speak the language (which you likely can, since again it's all fundamentally Theyalan - even if it just comes out as "Hospitality? Will behave. Will thank. No hurt."). I'm thinking most Theyalan customs will relate to each other at 1/2 or at worst 1/5, while subsections within a Custom might be 1/2 until you get acquainted with them or unless you have the Homeland Lore skill for them. But you probably only need to roll when you're at risk of embarrassing yourself, risk getting yourself hurt, or trying to pass as a native. Everyone knows that strangers (as opposed to foreigners) are weird but can become friends - that's a nice part of Orlanthi culture. Meanwhile, you're going to get treated like an unwashed barbarian if you fail your Customs (Lunar Provincial) roll, and worse (potentially far worse if you're in Alkoth) if you fail a Customs (Dara Happan) roll, and you won't even have the skill in the first place unless you managed to pick it up somewhere.

I think with Customs, it's important to allow fairly good "related" skills, so that you can use, say, Customs (Alakorings) at 1/2 (or at worst, 1/5) for Customs (Talastarings). With this kind of overlap, it becomes less crucial exactly where the lines are drawn, and it makes no sense (to me, at least) to say that these cultures that have very significant similarities would run under completely unrelated skills. I do this for Homeland Lores as well - unless there's a reason against it, you will be able to use one Homeland Lore towards a neighboring Homeland at 1/2 or 1/5 skill - your area knowledge doesn't stop dead at the border! Homeland Lores might even be used to tell customs of sub-areas apart - if, for instance, I run one single Customs (Alakorings) skill, Homeland Lore (Aggar) might be able to tell you about the particular Aggarite practices that certainly exist even if I have this wide Customs skill division.