Richard S.

On 2/25/2020 at 10:40 AM, Akhôrahil said:

One thing about Wyters and Rune Magic - they make no difference between one-use and re-useable Rune Magic, paying permanent POW equally for both. If your clan is willing to pay up a mere 10 POW, it could (if it knows the spell) resurrect 36 people after a battle or disaster (and if nothing else, those people should be willing to bear the POW cost!).

This opens up the question of whether the spirits of deceased members are still considered members of the community.

Honestly I'm at the point of saying that the only benefit larger skills get is increased special and critical chances. To hell with reducing people's skills and stuff like that, I don't see the point.

30 minutes ago, Rick Meints said:

I spoke with Greg about it on a few occasions, and also with others involved in the project. I'd prefer to not open up that can of worms. Suffice it to say there were a number of factors that influenced his decision, for good and bad, but in the end it was his call and he chose not to let Avalon Hill publish it. The one factor that I will share is that Greg and AH had totally fallen out with each other and it was almost inconceivable to Greg that he could work with AH in the future, especially having them publish a new edition of a Glorantha based RQ.

One last question: what's Chaosium's stance on the versions of the playtest rules floating around the internet?

32 minutes ago, Rick Meints said:

In 1994 Greg did not approve the manuscript for publication. Thus, AH could not publish RQ:AiG, even if they wanted to.

Do you know why he didn't approve it?

3 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

I wonder if some creatures have some kind of "inherent worship", or whether Orlanth-worshiping Umbroli actually have to drop in at temple worship regularly to replenish Rune Points. The latter is really cool, so I would be inclined towards it, but I'm not sure how much sense it makes. 

In the case of spirits like Umbroli they could appear during myths as minor storm gods or something like that. You're already bringing the other side to the middle world during worship, O don't think it'd be that hard for some spirits to join in.

Wyrms apparently worship Orlanth on occasion. I wonder if they have their own temples or if you have the occasional wyrm dropping into services.

28 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Better still, having a day off. We like to think of the Middle Ages as unending drudgery, but they had more days off than a lot of people in the modern world.

Yeah, you might not spend the whole day at the church, but you'd spend it feasting, watching performances, and enjoying the day. There's a lot more to religious activity than just going to the temple or church and engaging in sermons or prayer or the like, even today.

4 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

I'm thinking 60-80% for average Storm worshipers.

I think I'm in the 50-60% boat. If adventurers, aka heroes-to-be, only get 60% to start (disregarding bonus points, which I doubt your average farmer would have), then the regular joes of the world would have an even weaker connection to the divine imo. Also, 80% could be problematic for farmers, despite my post above, since that's the level at which you basically have to act according to it (and extreme independence, violence, and "I'm the best"-ness could be an issue).

16 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

Except... Runic Affinity should affect your personality. Being "stormy" is not a good trait for a farmer.

I don't think farming is really something that depends much on personality.  And hey, air could just inspire you to plow the best fields you can so you can flex on everyone else with your superior crop. Pride and boasting.

From what I've heard, there was another edition of Runequest under development while RQ3 was still in sway, called Runequest: Adventures in Glorantha. I've also heard there's still some copies of the playtest rules floating around the web, though I'm not sure of Chaosium's stance on it. To anyone who either was actually a playtester for this early "RQ4" or who has read it through some other means, what were your impressions of it? Were there any major changes from RQ3, any improvements or steps back? From the title, I'm assuming it was an attempt to return the game to Glorantha, but how well did it succeed? Are there any elements that showed up in later editions, up to and especially RQG?

If we could please steer the current variance to a different thread...

I don't think there's anything canonical, but I think it makes total sense that the biggest male fertility (well, Earth, but same difference) power in prehistory would have a few girls (and guys) on the side besides Gata.

50 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

I've often heard this thing about Sartar supposedly being an outlier in the number of people with Rune magic but I'm not sure where it comes from? AFAIK, Esrolia, the Holy Country, Hendrikiland, and Prax, all have also people with equal religious devotion as Sartarites. I'm not sure about Lunar provinces but I have no reason to think otherwise... I get the feeling that, because the books often say that Sartarites are violent, ruthless bad-asses, this automatically translates to "they have magic", when really it could just mean, they are training hard all day and they are not afraid of fighting with pointy things?

I'm pretty sure that Jeff has said that Orlanthi tend to have a much more personal relationship with their deities, and thus a much larger proportion of people personally dedicated to one (aka initiated). Pelorians like the Lodrili, by contrast, have a more practical view of religion and worship whoever meets their needs. Thus, up north, you have a small but powerful magical elite who lead the masses in worship of whichever gods they need at the moment. I think most of the Dara Happan nobles are probably initiated, but they make up a rather small percentage of the population.

45 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

I've not had a problem with either "too much Rune magic" or issues with Rune spells in the 2.5 years I've been running an RQG game, but that could just be game style too. I definitely like it better than RQ3's take on Rune magic/spells (which I ran for 10 years).

What was RQ3's take on rune magic? I was under the impression that it was similar to RQ2's.

5 minutes ago, Glorion said:

My knowledge of HQ, a game I never cared for, is rusty. If there is some status below devotee and above initiate in HQ, that's a better equivalent to RQG initiate.

Well, HQG initiates are honestly on about the same if not a higher power level than RQG initiates imo. Being an initiate lets you buy breakout abilities to do supernatural things with your runes, like lightning spears or opening holes in the earth. All lay members can do is augment with their runes, they can't have magical breakouts from them (at least from their cult, you could have a piece of personal magic as a breakout I guess).

28 minutes ago, Glorion said:

"Initiated into" as lay members. And initiation means *in game terms* something so different in HQ from what it is in RQG that whereas Thunder Rebels is very useful for understanding the general world of Orlanthi, on technical stuff like who is an initiate and how many, I don't think any HQ publication is relevant. For that matter, given the extreme deity and aspect profusion in HQ, I am not sure that "initiated into" doesn't translate into lay membership in RQG terms. Maybe the real equivalent of RQG initiate status is HQ being a devotee.

You seem to be making a pretty big assumption that "initiation" in this context means lay membership. Iirc, lay membership is the equivalent of what pantheon worship was in HQ1.

Thinking back on it, I'm pretty sure the 10% you keep citing was actually used in reference to Pelorians, who have been said to have a pretty low number of initiates, with makes sense considering their habit of dropping the worship of less effective gods (something you can't do easily if a lot of people are dedicated to them). I do remember hearing that among the Orlanthi there is a very unusually large number of initiates compared to pretty much every other culture.

Sorry to drag you into this @Jeff, but I think we're all operating on assumptions and half-remembered things for this question. Can you give us some sort of estimate as to what proportion of Orlanthi would be initiated as full initiates?

Glorion, where are you getting the "10%" rule from?

I was pretty sure in Sartar that around 70-80% of the population were initiates. In other regions, especially Peloria, the practice is less common, but I believe it's been a thing that Orlanthi have had an unusually high number of initiates for a while now.

I solve the problem by playing RQ2 instead of RQG, and just plundering the latter for ideas and lore 😛

13 minutes ago, davecake said:

Its kind of annoyingly ambiguous, but I assume that almost every Odaylan that is a professional Hunter is also a member of Foundchild if they want to be, and people don't even think of it as being a separate cult much (Foundchild is very vague on general cult organisation). Same for Yinkin. It's how I (admittedly very generously) interpret that 'can participate in the Great Hunt' wording. I also think they (as described in the Sartar Companion for HeroQuest) generally get access to spirit magic Binding Enchantment for animal spirits if they find a shaman to teach them. Odayla gets a raw deal. 

Back in RQ2 I think Odayla and Foundchild used the exact same cult, just under different names. I wonder why they changed that.

3 minutes ago, davecake said:

Morale is so powerful I find it a big issue - but then, other cults can accomplish similar things with wyters and such, and Humakt is (in the Gods Book draft, anyway) no longer the only cult that has it.

Can you tell us who has it? (Please be Yelmalio please be Yelmalio)

4 hours ago, dumuzid said:

Hachrat Blowhard?  I see he's mentioned in the Guide as having destroyed an EWF library in the 10th century, around the same time Alakoring slew the Diamond Storm Dragon, but that single line of description seems to be the only mention of him in either volume.  Do you know where a more detailed version can be found?

1 hour ago, metcalph said:

There's no further published detail as far as I known.

From WF#14:

"HACHRAT BLOWHARD
A famous troll hero of the early Second Age. Hachrat was inspired by the winds and sought to study in Molorios, which was still a center of interspecies studies. As a famous warrior he led the assault which stormed his alma mater and razed it years later. Although most trolls distrust Orlanth Lightbringer , Hachrat gained a huge following during the Second Age Wars and his cult is still popular in the Yolp Mountains .

24 minutes ago, seneschal said:

So, Storm Bull cultists automatically head to the nearest Walmart?  🤨

What better chaos nests are there?

It depends entirely on your Glorantha. I'm 99.99999% sure that there's more magic out there to discover, from all disciplines.

5 hours ago, Darius West said:

Nope.  Not a bit.  The God Learners were largely illuminated and so are the Lunars.  The illuminates are the ones who inevitably think they need to build a god outside the Compromise in order to destroy the Compromise, because while the don't detect as Chaos, illuminates ARE the agents of universal destruction in Glorantha.  Nysalor was a chaos deity, so was Zistor, and so is the Red Goddess.  Chaos isn't neutral, chaos is a path to destruction of the world, and the siren song of illumination is there to lead everyone down the primrose path to the moral relativism that can see an upside in destroying the world.

Source for the God Learners being mostly Illuminates? And for Zistor being a chaos deity? And for Illuminates and chaos only being agents for destruction (you do realize that the chaos being released into the world through the Chaosium is necessary for its survival, right)? I agree with Ali, this sounds very absolutist and also very much like just your opinion, which is well and good for your Glorantha but not when we're discussing canon.