Richard S.

Does Dara Happa acknowledge/have the Golden Bow subcult of Yelm?

Hykim & Mikyh / Korgatsu is the big shaman cult for the various animal peoples of Glorantha - the Hsunchen - but there aren't too many of them in the Dragon Pass save the Telmori, and I don't know how many shamans they have. Actually, I'm not sure if shamans worship Korgatsu directly or if they join the animal totem cults like the rest of their tribe. In any case, that'd probably be the best for a "nature shaman", though it really only focuses on beasts. If you want a plant shaman, Aldrya is pretty much the choice, yeah, but as you noted it's difficult for humans to be more than lay members. The other one option, of course, is having a shaman of a regular large shaman cult like DF or Waha and just have them join spirit cults for nature-y spells.

Hi all. Over the course of Runequest's history, as I'm sure you all know, there's been a distinct lack of official Heroquesting rules. Hopefully that problem will soon be rectified, but in the meantime I'd like to get an idea of what all the community has come up with in the nearly 50 years since RQ1 came out. What homebrew systems were out there? Who made them and what were they like? Which ones, if any, did you use? And, if possible, where can they be found? I know we've recently been blessed with an excellent set of HQing rules via the Jonstown Compendium, but I'm just curious as to what else is or was out there.

22 minutes ago, Loïc said:

In Storm Tribe, p 203 :

OK, Storm Tribe is a HeroWars book, but then it's still Glorantha and one of Greg Stafford's essential books (IMHO). And Rykemasters' link is an extract from Storm Tribe. ☺️

However, none of the HW or HQ1 stuff is considered canon, so I'd take that link with a grain of salt until we see the cult in the GaGoG

16 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

If anyone's planning a heroquest to swap Simon with Jeff, please reconsider: Jeff's art direction is phenomenal.

No no that's not proper God-learner-ism. We perform a heroquest to prove they're the same and combine them, y'see! Then we get both phenomenal art direction and already-released Heroquesting rules!

2 hours ago, EricW said:

Remember trolls actually are evil, except for the occasional individual

What?

11 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

It's an interesting idea, but theEC multiverse and Glorantha are so different that a lot of SB stuff would be hard to adapt. For example, a sorcerer going around with bound demons is not going to be all that popular in the Dragon Pass region, and probably hunted down by the various anti-Chaos cults.. Rogue Mistress might adapt to Glorantha better than most Stormbringer adventures, as it isn't tied to the Young Kingdoms or Tragic Millennium Earth.

A sorcerer with bound demons just sounds like a powerful shaman or Gloranthan sorcerer to me. Just do some reflavoring and maybe a little restatting of the "demons" and you're good to go.

Argan Argar is a husband of Esrola, Ernalda's sister/fertile aspect. I'm not sure whether that qualifies him as a husband protector, but I think it might.

I would say that, as individuals, sure an elf and troll could be allies or even friends. It may be a little harder and could alienate them in the eyes of most of their peers, but the idea that enemies can cooperate was proven in the Unity Battle, where all races put aside their hostility to fight chaos. For a Troll to be considered an elf-friend in general though would take tremendous effort and probably some great heroquest, perhaps to right a perceived wrong the trolls had committed against the elves. You could have Tarndisi give your player something like a special flower to signify the help he gave, maybe even something growing out of them, but elves may still act hostile and distrust him even if they're slightly less likely to kill. There's also the question of how his fellow trolls would feel about it.

41 minutes ago, Jeff said:

That being said, I am not sure that knowledge of sorcery is block for Orlanth. In fact, I am pretty sure it is not.

Considering the number of henotheistic Orlanthi I'd expect sorcery would play just fine with him.

Y'all just take it to PMs or something

I think there's either something wrong with the search function or some data just got deleted. I was trying to search "Aeolian" and only got two results, both from within the last few days. I know for a fact there should be more hits for that word.

On 8/21/2020 at 1:48 AM, Jeff said:

And who can forget this depiction of Prince Argrath from the RuneQuest Companion. Looks very German-Celt to me.
 

 

That was supposed to be Argrath? I saw it outside the context of the Companion, tbf, but I thought it was a Grazer priest of some sort, probably because of the elaborate headgear and stars. Honestly though, looking it as Argrath, I could see that being some old ceremonial EWF armor he uses to enhance his dragon powers.

1 minute ago, Humakt said:

Hi! Anyone can tell me if Kolat is on the description in the coming books?

thanks

Kolat is going to be a spirit cult.

30 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

They aren't canonical...

Maybe not officially, but they're so well done and in depth compared to what we had that they might as well be! My future campaigns will probably use your material heavily as a resource.

41 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

When a lay person gets initiated and sacrifices their first point of POW, do they suddenly know how to cast all Common Rune Spells? Or do.they need a week to lean each?

Personally, I'd say they can just use them. Common spells are the most basic powers that any god can give, you don't need a deep understanding of a myth or much practice to use them.

43 minutes ago, g33k said:

Question though, for Richard -- where did you hit on the info that RBoM may be in a "box" or other set with GGG?

I forget where I saw it, but I heard that GGG would be a multi-book set, and RBoM may come with it since it's a pretty natural supplement for a book of magical organizations.

The Red Book of Magic is a compilation of all published Rune and Spirit magic spells for RQG up to Gods & Goddesses of Glorantha (or whatever the name is right now). It will be released along with the GGG, possibly in the same box, and will not deal with sorcery at all AFAIK. Sorcery will be better covered in a future supplement focused on western Genertela, which I think is sadly no more than some notes at the moment.

Martin, I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time to put together these amazing, informative books with such excellent and detailed art. I personally cannot wait for MotW to hit shelves.

1 hour ago, Rick Meints said:

Yes, the Roots of Glorantha series of books are one of the rarer and least known about items on the list of Gloranthan Publications. Published in 2007 and 2015, they only contain very early Gloranthan lore, both in terms of when they were written (1966-1976) and the eras of Glorantha they document (early, early stuff). Most of the maps related to these writings ended up in the Greganth Atlas, another very rare item, although not technically one of the Roots of Glorantha series. Each of the 6 RoG books is about 256 pages. The Atlas is about 100 pages. As for the 2007 "Rainbow" version, the contents are basically the same, although I thought we added a bit to Volume VI in the 2015 set that wasn't in the 2007 version. I've added a picture so you can better understand why the 2007 set is called "rainbow". Greg used the standard paper colors available at his local copy shop. 

Just to be up front about it, Greg originally sold these in 2007 to a very small handful of super scholar-collectors for big $$$. This was at a time when Greg's income was quite low. That's the main reason we did likewise when we offered them as part of the Guide to Glorantha Kickstarter. Greg didn't want us to significantly lower the price he had charged previously.

Is there any chance they could be made available to the public again? Even if they still have a hefty pricetag, I'd love at least a chance to get my hands on them.

16 minutes ago, Roko Joko said:

I don't understand why you think they would have had to engage in the debate.

"We'll discuss the price of my horses after you're finished with your sorcery."

"I'll debate you all night long as soon as you're ready to address the question on its merits rather than rely on that magic to turn our heads.  So what's it going to be?"

"Get the hell out of my temple."

Magic is a part of day-to-day life in Glorantha. People probably expect it to be used in all situations, it'd be odder for someone to not try and magically gain an advantage. Also keep in mind that Rune augments can be considered a form of magic too, so even if there's no overt spellcasting going on people will still be pulling on the cosmos to help them out.

23 minutes ago, Crel said:

"Heroquesting next year!" ?

That's not a joke, that's just a reality

38 minutes ago, redmoongoddess said:

At this rate I wonder if we're ever going to see books not set in Dragon Pass...

They're already in development I believe, but keep in mind that Chaosium only has like 3 or 4 people (I think) who can dedicate themselves solely to Glorantha, and they're trying to set it up so that new players will have a good foundation to play on.

42 minutes ago, dumuzid said:

P.S.: Does anybody have any idea what a Zaranistangi loper beast actually looked like?  And are there any Zaranistangi left in the Middle World in the late Third Age?

Loper in the Bestiary

6 minutes ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

and the small fraction of that who are both adults and likely to ever heroquest (basically rune levels, maybe 0.1% to 1%  of the population - but have we ever even got a straight answer about the proportion of initiates in the population?),

Depends on which kind of Heroquest it is. Pretty much every worship ceremony can be considered a heroquest of sorts, especially for the initiates, and during a this-world heroquest for the benefit of a community you may have the entire group be pulled in as supporters/other characters somehow, intentionally or not. If you play KoDP (non-canon but hits the mark on a lot of things still) you may heroquest about 1-2 times a year outside of sacred time, and the entire clan will be involved in some way.

On the proportion of initiates, I believe the only number we've gotten is that about 70-80% of Orlanthi are initiates, which is noted to be abnormally high (sometimes said to be a result of them being a "heroic culture"). I'd expect on average you'd have 30-40% of a population to be initiated in places like Peloria, maybe up to 50% in some places.