Akhôrahil

True, but the shorter blades seem better for everything in those competitions, including chopping up wooden beams and boxes, plastic hoses, and so on. Meanwhile, longswords and katanas have not been nearly as impressive when people brought them, and worse, have a tendency to bend or break. Oversized Bowie to smallish Kopis seems to be the sweet spot for maximum destruction and cutting.

I think this is probably it. It can even be argued that it's questionable whether larger swords should do more damage - in modern cutting competitions, something like a large knife or a short sword (kopis in particular) tends to cut better than larger swords. Longswords and katanas do not perform well in something like Knife or Death.

But it’s not a lever - you poke people with it, not bash or slash them. It’s a good argument for halberds, though.

This I agree with, and it's already in the rules for spears (but not axes). But I was talking about a short 2H spear vs a long 2H spear.

I'm not sure that's true - if anything, you can't have as heavy a head on longer spears, because of issues with leverage (and nothing stops you from having a big head on a short spear anyway). I don't believe pike head were historically unusually large? Picture this: someone shows you a big block of ballistic gel, and tells you you need to puncture it as deeply as you can. What length of spear do you go for? I imagine a shorter one would be more effective, as it's easier to handle. I sure wouldn't poke it with a 4 meter pike.

I can see why one- or two-handed grip would matter, and potentially you might differentiate between different spearheads, and obviously a longer reach is an advantage in fights, but why does a spear in RQ do more damage just from being longer? Short spear 2H, 1d8+1. Long spear, 1d10+2. Pike, 2d6+1. Similar with 1H Short Spear and Lance.

I think that the argument is that the Illuminate has an open mind, and as such may be inclined to at least listen to and consider taboo, heretical or merely contra-culture notions that a non-Illuminate would simply reject out of hand. The average Vargast doesn't even have to come up with arguments against cannibalism or incest, while the Illuminate might go, "yes, why shouldn't I do that?" and if he or she can't come up with a reason... Or quoting another game: "An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded."

They may not use the concept, but I would assume that they’re concerned about ”bad Illuminates”. Surely they would think something went wrong with Sheng Seleris, and that he turned out spiritually defective? And Illuminates embracing Chaos seems to be a specifically Nysalorean thing - I don’t think we see it in Draconic Illumination (they accept dragons instead)?

Illumination: ”I am one with the Cosmos” Occlusion: ”The Cosmos is one with me”

I personally doubt this, although I do think the Lunar style of cheap expediated conveyor belt Illumination does significantly worse than other styles.

Importantly, Oddi was Illuminated by "tricksters", so there's something there, at least.

By the way, thanks for the map - I have seen it before, but it made me realize that Skanthiland is equidistant from Top of the World and Kero Fin, with Oxhead a fairly rare Storm temple that is within the circle of influence of both.

My interpretation is that the Glowline gets stopped by hills and mountains near the edges (why? no idea, but you can see it in several places), and that Tork is merely a gap where it swells out. Similarly, where the Glowline comes up against the Ban (in Charg), the Ban wins out.

I’m putting muskox populations - but not muskox people - up in the Rockwoods areas of Skanthiland and Aggar. I think it’s the right call of you to have muskox people - Glorantha already has its big tribe of Reindeer Hsunchen, and muskox (muskoxen?) are cool.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

One important difference between tricksterism and Illumination that I could see is this: To the Illuminate, the rules are ephemeral and don’t matter (you might decide to go with them anyway, but that’s your own personal, somewhat arbitrary, utterly subjective choice). To the Trickster though, the rules matter a lot - they need to be deliberately broken! If the rules don’t matter, then what’s even the point?

Yeah, it doesn't actually reduce tick-hunting, but it means that you can cover for skills you don't roll for so much (I mean, I try to allow for peaceful skill, but let's face it, PCs don't have to roll for Farming during adventures that often...)

That's a good way of covering for a skill you want to improve but haven't had a tick in from adventuring. Particularly useful for elevating skills you're very bad in to a level where you have an acceptable chance of earning the tick in the future.

Or, if it's not important that this is highly competitive, just let the PC shine. Players love that stuff!

I don't keep count, but when I see the players rolling for the season (including seasonal experience), it tends to be the their or so three core runes, two to three Passions, and maybe 10-15 skills, including 3-4 combat skills (note that I allow ticks for all skills, though). And 95% of the time, a POW gain roll. Just tell them they don't get the tick if you think a particular skill use is a pointless stretch that just wants the tick. This will quickly establish the norm. But even if a player's use of say Dance, Sing and Darktongue to impress some trolls is actually just intended to earn ticks, that's not a problem if the outcome for play is good.

To an extent, it can even be a good thing, if it means players creatively vary their skills.

It’s queued up for play in my campaign. I found it pretty easy to transpose into just some isolated valley elsewhere.

I imagine a significant part of Humakti human sacrifice will be human self-sacrifice?

That probably depends on the god. Some of them would receive regular human sacrifice. Some would not.