Richard S.

DRAGONEWT - as exotic as the race it represents, it is found only in the Dragon Pass area. Unlike most of the other Form Runes, it cannot be used with an Elemental Rune, though there are several Dragonewt Power cults, all modified by the Dragonewt Rune. Does anyone have any insight into or ideas about what these "Dragonewt Power cults" were? I doubt that they exist in the current Gloranthan canon, but I wonder how they fit into the RQ2 era. Were they remnants of EWF cults? Dragonewt racial cults? Kralori or other mystical groups? I know that, most likely, nothing was written about these besides the one throwaway sentence in the Rune's description, but this question's been bothering me for a while so I figured I might as well ask.

Ah, here we go. The Travels of Biturian Varosh: https://web.archive.org/web/20050928174316/http://www.glorantha.com/library/biturian.html

Jaldon is obviously just a trickster that got really good with the Swallow spell

Travels of Biturian Varosh can also be found on the internet with a little searching; I think it was on the old Issaries site if you're willing to use wayback. But yeah, it's a great resource and imo a better and more approachable one than Vasana's Saga, though of course that's just my opinion. CoP/the Cult Compendium are great resources for background lore too, as well as having more detailed cult information including worshipper duties and expectations. Even if they're a tad dated they're a good read if you don't want to wait for the upcoming cults book (which I'd hazard has up to a year or so left to go). I would recommend the Cult Compendium over CoP though, it includes information from several more books and is generally better presented compared; CoP is more something to buy for nostalgia's sake than for pure usefulness.

Just for fun, I made up a set of traditions for playing on the other side of the conflict, as some people are wont to do Priest Always dress richly. Divine Wrath - 3d6 close. Area near when outside. Divination - Discern the location of something or someone. Esoteric Mystic Never speak clearly. Abjuration - Gain +3 to resist magic. Third Eye - Detect and reveal all lies and illusions in the area. Elite Warrior-Noble Never retreat. Shield - Gain +1 armour, minimum 3 points, and +1 to resist magic. Truespear - A piercing weapon inflicts +1d6 damage for one battle. Witch Assassin Never reveal secrets. Concealment - Become undetectable by magical means and can only be clearly seen in full light. Mindblast - One enemy goes mad and acts randomly. War Wizard Never touch blood. Boon - Ally's weapon inflicts +1d6 for one battle. Curse - All attacks against one enemy inflict +2 for one battle. Imperial Agent The empire before all. Detection - Reveal the location and all pertinent information about someone or something nearby. Charisma - Gain +2 to influence people.

I really like this, good work!

So I've been reading some of Martin Helsdon's excellent book The Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass and would just like to present some of my assumptions on how things like unit wyters and standards and initiation work under the Runequest rules. Please confirm or deny these ideas as you see fit, I'm not an expert concerning either the world or game. An entire unit will be members of a specific subcult of their patron deity, often unique to the unit, which provides the unit with specialized Rune magic. A unit serves as a temple to their subcult, and members can replenish their Rune points through it. A unit wyter mostly functions like any other community wyter. The standard serves as the wyter's home, the unit leader serves as the wyter's priest, and the rest of the unit sacrifices MP and POW to the wyter to replenish it. Going by the rules, I suppose this means that members of established units have a loyalty passion specifically for their unit? I'm assuming that the wyter's main job is running interference against hostile spirits and casting the unit subcult's special Rune magic when it's needed, the soldiers don't do the casting themselves. Maybe only the commander is initiated to the subcult, so he gets the special magic which the wyter can then cast, and the rank and file are lay members? Vexillae allow members to use their unit's special magic even when not under the influence of their wyter. This seems to imply that the members of the vexillae have intiated to their respective subcults and learned their unique rune magic for themselves, so they don't have to rely on their wyter to cast it for them. The wording of the section on vexillae makes me doubt this is the case however. Magical units like warlocks or the lunar colleges follow most of these rules, but their wyter is able to act offensively and the magicians of the unit often discorporate and follow along with it into battle. The magicians protect their wyter from hostile spirits, while the wyter attacks their target's wyter. Mass Rune magic like the Sunspear used against Harrek works along similar principles to the old Mind Link spell: one person casts a spell using the resources of everyone else involved. Thus, while only one priest is casting Sunspear, it uses RP and MP from everyone in the ritual, creating a terrifyingly hugely stacked Sunspear. Sunspear isn't stackable RAW though, so maybe something in the ritual changed that rule? Please feel free to add your own thoughts or respond to mine.

I think that may mean it's selling really fast, even if not many have been bought yet. Congrats though! Who knows, maybe being on the front page of DTRPG will get some people interested in the setting

Ah, yeah, if that's the case then it should be. I'm no expert though.

Ah, yeah, if that's the case then it should be. I'm no expert though.

That's a book, right? I think you'd have to get permission from the author if you wanted to make money off of a BRP hack for playing in it.

I'd assume so, assuming that it works similarly to other OGLs.

Well, the "Just a reminder there is no OGL for BRP, RQ, or CoC" topic didn't exactly age well I guess

Just got it! I've been wanting a way to get this legally for a reasonable price for some time, so thanks for this @Rick Meints and @Ian Cooper!

What the old geezer isn't telling us is that he actually doesn't remember which one he contributed to, which is why he can't tell us

Nice to see we're getting a public release of Martin Helsdon's army book!

How does ZZ work as a trickster? Violent, raging hellbeast doesn't seem to quite fit that role, at least on a surface level.

I think I can offer my two, if arguably worthless due to inexperience, cents. If I'm reading this all right, the problem is that if the difficulty increases along with the players' capabilities, it makes advancement mostly worthless, and due to how difficulties work in HQ this means that a peasant mob will pose the same threat to a group of experienced adventures that it would a gang of beginners because the base difficulty will have increased. Is that right? I haven't been following the thread too closely so maybe I'm just reiterating a point someone else has made, but why not change what the opposition is along with the difficulty? For example, if the party is making an upset in town and the base difficulty is 13, send a peasant mob to oppose them. But if the difficulty is around 17 or even 1M, instead of using a peasant mob use a troop of guards. If the difficulty is higher, use elite weaponthanes or similar as the opposition. I've seen a few people mention the fixed difficulties that HQ1 had. How about using those as benchmarks for what to use as the opposition? So if you need to throw a magical encounter at your players, just cross reference the difficulty for the encounter with the given difficulties for different entities. Maybe this requires a bit too much improvisation and bookwork to actually work at the table, but it could be worth a shot. Sorry if this is confusing or badly worded, I'm not great at getting my thoughts onto paper.

I don't think I've even heard of it. What all makes it unique from the two other big D100 systems (BRP & Warhammer)?

Amazing! You did a fantastic job with this and it shows!

Question: I've seen a few people bring up problems with shields in this thread; what exactly are those? I haven't played using the straight BGB, and in my RQ campaigns no one used a shield, so I don't have any personal experience. Just from the quick read over I've done they seem to be alright on paper.

I remember back when I first started playing RQ2 one of my players wanted to play a Naga from WoW. The result was an incredible busted (statewise) earth/beast race of snake people.

You forgot to mention how it was made by this site's own @Cgeist7!

There are always exceptions, unusually circumstances, and just plain hand waves all throughout the lore. Nothing is completely off the table. Also, your ancestors do play a large part in what runes you get, especially in terms of elements, which is why Heortlings are generally attuned to Storm, Esrolians to Earth, Pelorians to Fire, etc. A kitori being the source of someone's darkness wouldn't be that strange.

Honestly this is probably a good way to come up with sorcery spells; taking rune magic of the same rune and reducing the effect. It's even thematically appropriate since one of the goals of many sorcerers has been to prove that the gods are worthless.