Akhôrahil

Yes. There are at least four Gloranthas going by different canons. Guide to Glorantha canon. This is the minimalistic (as much as anything that big can be minimalistic) canon. It’s probably the most official one. Much of the Stafford Library is almost-canon here. RuneQuest canon. This makes some changes to Guide canon, perhaps most noticeably with regards to the runes. It likes to completely ignore HeroQuest material. Rules effects on the world are significant. HeroQuest canon. This differs a lot from RuneQuest canon, especially with regards to cults and magic, and its Orlanthi are more Celto-Germanic. The system, being free-form and narrative, pushes unusually few rules effects on the world. 13th Age canon. This one is pretty bonkers, has a setting that does not easily map to any other known HeroWars future, and is unusually ”loose”.

How does name “the Battle of the Queens” work under this pattern, as supposedly the point of the name in-world was that it involved queens (or female kings)? Is there some feminine grammatical version of “Rex” (or other grammatical explanation) in the Sartarite language that explains the name? Or alternatively, would the Sartarite name for it not truly map to a loose English-language translation, and the actual name for it in Sartarite was something different?

Yes, that’s the balancing meta-game reason, I get that, but what’s the reason people in Glorantha produce for explaining this incredibly weird property of the glue?

Although Tusk-Riders are essentially orcs. On porks.

Oh, it can spend super easily! But due to the cost, it probably only should in emergencies or when it has some unique power. Let the Ernalda priestesses handle various fertility blessings, they have reusable Rune Magic and ridiculously fast Rune Point regain, so each priestess should be able to cast hundreds of points of Rune Magic yearly. Your clan will be stronger for not wasting POW unnecessarily. There are admittedly some really cool Wyter tricks, like mass Resurrections for a limited cost or the emergency giant multi-target Shield casting you mention.

Be the stasis you want to see in the world!

Did I misunderstand Richard S.? He wrote "I'd imagine that over the course of a year it'd use enough magic that most adults would need to give it 1-2 points". Doesn't that mean upwards of 1000 points of POW, where the only reason to pass them to the Wyter is if it has dipped below its baseline POW, which will typically only happen from its spellcasting?

I think this has a reasonable outcome. Let's say they gain one per five years, and use half for Rune Magic (the other half goes to wyter, enchantments, the occasional one-use Rune Magic, or merely an increased POW score) - this will tend to result in the default 3 Rune Points for generic typical adults that we see all across published scenarios. What I kinda dislike is that this means that PCs go by separate rules from NPCs, something that I think is less than ideal in a simulationist game. But since things will be downright weird if NPCs gain one POW per year, it's probably the preferable solution.

Don't make an adventure hinge on a skill that they do possess either. 🙂 You can always fail the roll. Combat is also going to be extremely dangerous, and it will often make sense to have them bring some warm bodies along to help with fighting.

Agree, you could just say "you can buy your freedom for X points of POW, and I will even set you up a starting fund". Or if not slaves, then beggars. One point of POW versus starvation isn't exactly a hard choice.

Careful, I got a post removed from the Facebook group for arguing along these lines...

Also, such empires might not make it entirely voluntary whether to provide your POW to the national coffers.

I could, in the Lunar Empire. Institutionalized POW selling seems like a natural outgrowth of the whole thing.

That’s one part of it, but another is that If we think that these rules actually describe how the world works, then it stands to reason that selling POW would be something that happens. The large supply (but unclear demand) makes me think you should be able to buy POW spends at well under 200 L per point.

Anyone can contribute POW to an enchantment. This is by far the easiest way to spend your POW for someone else.

One intriguing thing here is that a point of POW is worth as much no matter who it comes from, and 200L can maintain a family at Poor standard of living for well over a decade or Free for more than three years. I’m still completely unsure what POW gain looks like for NPCs, but even if they only receive a point or two per decade, if it could be “sold” for 200 L, that would be a huge chunk of income (and yes, you can contribute the POW to someone else’s enchantment). No-one should ever have to beg in the streets if they have POW to spare. It’s like selling a kidney, except it’s safe, painless, and it grows back.

The Emperor electrocuting you seems worse than either, yet no-one claims that frying an enemy with Lightning is particularly evil.

You think the Wyter is spending maybe 1000 Rune Points per year? That seems... dramatically high. Especially since this would be a very real drain on a community that could otherwise use their POW for more sustainable things, like actual Rune points, enchantments, and so on. What is it even casting, that the priesthood can't support instead? Now, there is emergency stuff where it might be called for, and it might have some unique powers, but hundreds and hundreds of Rune Points worth of one-use magic, routinely, annually?

Are the PCs expected to? That's not something the game mentions.

So is this finally an official clarification that NPCs don't get at least two POW gain rolls per year from their cults (HHD + Sacred Time) the way PCs do? This has always been one of the most unclear things about the game to me. Because if they do gain these rolls, then they most certainly have the POW to spare. Most everyone would get at least one POW biannually. Either adults should have really high POW, or they will have used it for something. The game often seems to assume some kind of MP economy? It has often been noted that with a decent amount of storage, MP costs get completely trivialized, and you can cast your +1000% Sword Trances, unlimited healing, undispellable Extended Rune Magic, and the like.

Completely different question - what's the in-game reason for why the glue doesn't work on living targets? How does this even make sense? It's not exactly how actual glue works... what kind of glue works on corpses but not the living? You can most certainly superglue yourself, as many modellers will attest. It feels incredibly "gamey".

Yeah, this is clearly wrong - it produces 200 L, 40 per hide. I don't think nobles typically keep an armed retinue though - that's something for the chief. No, this isn't the case - you have an income, and then you have cost of living, and the difference is the surplus you get (after typical costs). I would imagine that one is parchment from "proper" animals (donkey, sheep, cattle), while High Llama, Bison, Impala (or heavens help us, Herd-Man) parchment is kinda crap. This is just a guess, though.

A large and illustrated book in the Middle Ages could cost a herd of cattle. But this would not be your average book. However, I'm not so sure about the calculation - the wage costs listed can't possible scale for longer jobs, as it wouldn't even remotely match Crafter and Scribe incomes of about 60-120L per year instead of several hundreds. So I think you could get away with half or less. Even 1L per day for the scribe would lead to a dramatically higher income that usual for that year. Cost listed is probably what we should assume for when PCs buy a quick service, not for a long job or full employment. However, there could be an argument that there's material costs for the scribe, like ink and pens, that are included in the service cost but not the yearly income. Did you refer to the parchment cost in the rulebook, of 3 C per 60 cm per sheet (unknown width, but supposedly typical scroll-width)? Going by that, you could probably get four full A4/Letter pages out of one such sheet of parchment (if we assume it's 30-40 cm wide, and naturally double-sided), or a total cost of a mere 11 L for the parchment for the book. Also note that the rulebook has a coarser Hide Parchment for just a third of the cost of the normal kind, so material has to be relevant one way or the other. While perhaps not the most expensive part, don't forget about the book binder if you're making a codex! So here's another calculation: Parchment, 11L Scribal services for half a year, 60L Book binding: No idea, let's say it tales several days and has a material cost, perhaps 10L at most? Material costs for the scribe, like ink and pens: Not sure, some but not a ton? Let's say 10L? So in this case, we would land at maybe 90 L for the book, let's round it to 100. By comparison, something like the Codex Gigas has 310 sheets of size 92 x 50 cm (donkey, in this case - two sheets per donkey), or 620 pages. Here, the material cost alone would be 180 L going by the rulebook (possibly more of sheets this large are harder to acquire), upper-tier scribal quality might mean three years of work at 200L per year, and then add illumination (including gold leaf) and various extra costs. Perhaps some more, as National Geographic tried to estimate the time and put it at 5 years of intense labor (these are large pages!). At this point, we're easily up to 1000 L, or a serious herd of cattle.

If you want to see how one system handles this, Ars Magica goes into unbelievable detail about papyrus, parchment, and different kinds and qualities of ink. And that's before we get to magical properties.

The Old Testament rules on slavery should probably be read in a similar manner - "well obviously there will be slavery, but there's gotta be rules!"