Akhôrahil

It seems like they combine guerilla operations with being incredibly good once per week, hard to hurt and with incredible mobility - the Maboder extermination was a blitzkrieg. They run into problems when the opposition knows what they’re doing and can bring magic. Even just Bladesharp/Speedart gives the opposition a shot, and Fireblade and enchanted weapons negate it completely. Tribes used to fighting them will do their best to stack up on such tools. Telmori likely can’t win in any extended war - both economy and demographics are against them. Lots of information in Red Cow on these wars.

Possibly more about making PCs special. I have no problems believing 10-30% of Orlanthi population might be too disinterested, too non-spiritual to qualify, or just too poor, to initiate. But I do think the archetypical carl is an initiate. While questionable as canon, wasn’t basically everyone in old scenarios an initiate? It just didn’t matter much, without reusable rune magic.

Humakt (and also Daka Fal) pulled a heavy load by separating the dead from the living packing them off into the underworld. Not glamorous, but someone's gotta do it!

The 1982 blue box? That's worth quite a bit by now, over €300. The system with a D20 had Special confirmation on 2-5 (which increases the chance), and not special on failed crit confirm. One fun feature it had was that some weapons had increased Fumble range, so that you needed to confirm for Fumble on 18-20 if you used a flail.

Humakt's story is becoming Death - after that, his story is mostly done. If you think he's uninteresting now, imagine him back before that when it seems he was just an unusually martial and possibly unusually honorable Umathson!

Speaking of, it's probably fair to conclude from published adventures that typical initiates have 3 Rune Points, possibly 2 if they're new or a bit crap.

IIRC, Jeff gave us the numbers that will be in some future publication (Sartar set?), and I think (but don't quote me!) it was something like 60-70% initiates (out of adult population) in the Dragon Pass area. Which makes sense to me. Wish I could find that post again.

This is a big part of it. For unclear reasons, the BRP games in Sweden mostly moved to a 1-20 skill system (like in Pendragon), and that simplifies matters as now the scale is the same. It does have the downside that you have to do a "roll to confirm" for crits, specials, and fumbles as 1-20 isn't granular enough otherwise. The latest version of Call of Cthulhu took it in the other direction, and made characteristics into a 1-100 range. A recent streamlined BRP variant (Expert Nova) by Swedish RQ edition lead Anders Blixt had a very pretty and simple rolling system: abilities of 1-20, apply penalty if needed, roll equal or under, level of success depends on the delta (modified ability - roll). If opposed and both succeed, highest delta wins. And Pendragon's "roll under, but highest" is just awesome, of course.

One of the oddball things about RQ - which comes from being such an old design - is the proliferation of resolution mechanics. Most modern game have one or two, either a standardized system (like HQ) or (maybe the most common) one against static difficulty and one against active opposition. Meanwhile, RQ has (depending on exactly how you count): Skill (or passion/rune/reputation, but this is basically the same thing) vs. static difficulty. Can involve subtraction from (or sometimes addition too) skill (due to difficulty), or division (or sometimes, multiplication) of skill due to difficulty Skill vs. opposition (combat)(possibly involving both subtraction and division) - you need a success while the opponent fails Skill vs. opposition (dodge, non-combat and Spirit Combat) - you need a better success than the opponent (or in some cases, an equal success) Characteristic x5% vs. static difficulty (sometimes involving other multipliers due to difficulty) Characteristic vs difficulty on Resistance table No-one would build a system like this today, unless to retain such a legacy design. Even D&D 3.5 uses a simple two-part [Roll + Characteristic, Skill or Attack] versus [static difficulty or opposition Roll + Modifier]. Part of GM:ing is deciding - perhaps implicitly - which mechanics you prefer.

This was the point I was trying to make as well. There's nothing wrong with skis in the setting - the tech is more than period - but it's probably only people who need to ski who make the investment. I could easily see it being universal among Uncolings (Glorantha's version of the Sami, after all).

Yours.

This seems like it would work, if you think it's worth the effort. It will get weird if you try to apply it to non-humanoids, though, but you could just use simple "regular" size for a wolf or a brontosaurus

Check out the campaign Albion’s Ransom for The Esoterrorists, though!

Maybe Snow Trolls are biologically adapted, with large feet to spread the weight, similar to bears?

I think it could be great if an editing push for clarity and consistency is made for the Starter Set, which is after all targeted at new players who can't lean on old editions and decades of play for their understanding. Then those improvements could get folded back into future printings/editions of the main rules.

That's what I said, wasn't it? But you don't get skiing unless it's cold and snowy enough to warrant the investment and practice, while snowshoes are simple and can be used by anyone.

Skis and skiing is pretty high-tech (period, but specialised), so I would expect them to be less common. Uncolings might ski? Maybe northern Hill Orlanthi? Snow-shoes I would expect all over the place. Rathori canonically use snow-shoes. While we’re at it, skating might pop up in places with cold weather and extended water systems - there’s a 50-mile race in Sweden in the Lake Mälaren system when the weather allows.

From what I gathered, it’s its own game, driven by Rune ratings and much more narrative than RQ.

I’m not sure it’s the same - in the North, you wind up in Altinela after a while.

Agree. Of course you make the traditional invocation over the sourdough - how else would the magic happen?

John Wick's Super Simple Glorantha Game, as discussed in the impromptu con.

I also like the idea of "Folk Magic", like tiny rituals that have specific effects. Bind these seven flowers into your hair to dream of your husband-to-be. Transfer your warts to a toad using this conjuration. Wield fennel at night against the forces of darkness.

From what I understood of JWSSGG, it's very strongly based on the runes. For RQ, it's a little trickier - the concept of improvising from runes don't mesh easily with the strict definitional approach to the rules that RQ does. I think you can go wild with augmenting, but you need to be playing a pretty fluid and improvisational style of RQ to be able to use runes to straightforwardly accomplish task - for one thing, most runes cover several skills' worth of ground, so you have to avoid making the skills obsolete. One thing I would allow is improvisational use of spirit magic, like sharpening your pen using Bladesharp and so on. Actually, using Runes for minor tasks for flavor purposes should typically be fine as well.

This is kinda the case even with just standard Species Maximum. 2D6+6 and 3D6 has the same Species Maximum, but 2D6+6 means you (on average) start closer to it, having rolled higher.

Pendragon is a miracle of game design, and when I heard about the new edition, my first thought was "what are they even going to change?"