Glorion

58 minutes ago, Puckohue said:

Why's the Pegaus Plateau not called Hippogriff Plateau?

My theory: it's where ZZ ripped off the wings of the pegasi, turning them into horses. Presumably there are still a few pegasi somewhere, but only a truly heroic pegasus would want to go there of all places!

On 7/2/2020 at 10:38 PM, Stephen L said:

For the Pegasus Plateau adventure, aren't all the pictures of Griffins, not Hippogriffs?  In particular Pages 23 and 25?

My error - I thought Hippogriffs were winged horses!

Pegasi are winged horses, true rarities. I think you practically have to go on a Splendid Yamsur Heroquest to meet one, though there likely are some somewhere or other, and I figure that Zorak Zoran ripped off Gamara's wings at Pegasus Plateau in the Godtime, that's why the name. (Or a ZZ Heroquest come to think of it, if you want to quest to destroy the only surviving pegasi somewhere or other). Hippogriffs are more complete than Pegasi, they still have beaks and front claws, though not fangs. If you have the whole set, it's a king hippogriph, rarest beast of all.

9 hours ago, David Scott said:

The key point about the ritual of becoming a shaman is not the discorporation aspect, but meeting your fetch. The Horned Man's initiation caused by the Great Darkness caused his other self to awaken as his timeless other mirror. The fetch is in the spirit world, the shaman on the other. Moving between the two worlds is a side effect of having a fetch. It's possible to become a shaman without learning to discorporate or learning spirit travel. In real world shamanism, spontaneous initiation is a thing, you normally need to be struct by lightning or have a near death experience (in glorantha this would trigger the creation of your fetch and the encounter with the Bad Man). At this point you either seek help (training from another shaman), become self taught, or go mad.

HeroQuest Glorantha has the best example of this:

There was a bit edited out:

 

This is all true. Figuring out how to discorporate is a very minor part of becoming a full shaman, merely the first small step on the path. Nonetheless, in RQG you need to follow the explanations laid out in detail in the book about how to become a shaman, probably quite different in HQ I assume. And there is a gaping hole in them as to how to discorporate so as to meet the Horned Man. I think my suggestion is the one that works best, and is best in the spirit, if not the letter, of the rules as written.

On 6/19/2020 at 12:23 AM, titussterne said:

Apologies if I'm missing something but

p.18 states that Joreen, "makes it to the top with her ally, Kana"; and also that Kana is "allied/tied with Joreen and arrives with her"

doesn't this contradict information at p.14, Joreen "her hatred for the Lunar people blinds her—she immediately suspects any Lunar of maliciousness, and actively resents Kana’s inclusion in the Bonding Ceremony.", and p.9 describes how Joreen's "hatred against Lunars combined with the humiliation of losing sees her commit Sabotage... against Kana later that night"

Maybe change p.18 to "makes it to the top just after her rival, Kana"?

 

 

Indeed! A big problem. I'm running it this weekend, and my fix is that Kana allies with Nerestina, the merchant's daughter from Esrolia with the high Moon Rune to get there at 3, and Joreen arrives right after at 2.

22 hours ago, jajagappa said:

I'll disagree with that one on the grounds that it isn't MGF.  It's very dangerous for those untrained, but sometimes a shaman has got to have help and not even their assistant (if around and not off on some other task) is enough.  

Ah. Now, that's another solution that actually works. In fact, that has to be the case, or how could the shaman teach the Assistant things like Spirit Travel and Spirit Dance? If the official rules state otherwise, then they should be fixed, or simply ignored by sensible GMs, YGMV you know. However, I don't think that's right for the ritual to become a shaman, because the apprentice is supposed to achieve that on his/her own. I think it is more appropriate that self-discorporation is the very first step on the path to shamanhood, only achievable by a shaman's apprentice who has studied at least a year and is deemed ready by the shaman, and then only after days of fasting, meditation and prayer. Not easy and automatic as it is for a full shaman.

7 hours ago, MJ Sadique said:

 

Exactly, The problem do not exist in the first so why arguing about it ? 😵

And as the rules state about the summoning to become a shaman (RQ-G CHA4028, p354) : "The applicant must then Discorporate and the Horned Man escorts their spirit along the Great Path." And As jajagappa  clearly spot it precisely... it's "the spell Discorporate (capital 'D')". DURA LEX ES LEX.

"End of the Story" Glorion

 

You certainly havem't made yourself clear! You wrote: " I think the spell is NOT made for spirit travel but Mundane plane travel," in other words that the Discorporate spell doesn't do the trick. And in fact, since it only lasts 15 minutes, it doesn't do the trick! Jajagappa forgot that. The Discorporation spell, despite being divine and not spirit so inappropriate and downright impossible for a shaman who doesn't have a divine cult, just plain doesn't work. I don't care how many people claim that it does, Jeff, anybody. It's useless for the shaman ritual, you had it right the first time actually. It's a hole in the RQG rules as written.

I think my solution, namely that those days of fasting and meditation and prayer that are required are what enables someone to discorporate who has studied under a shaman for at least a year and seen as ready by the shaman--is the only one that makes any sense and feels right. It means the apprentice is actually *doing* something important in his time in the cave.

If you don't like it, then hazia or something similar is a requirement for becoming a shaman. That may actually be what Greg intended, he was not an opponent of unauthorized pharmaceuticals according to rumor. Argrath is notoriously into hazia. Still, though a better crutch for a hole in the rules, still a crutch.

4 hours ago, MJ Sadique said:

 

MJ: unless you can discorporate, you can't face the Horned Man in the first place! The RQQ rules make that quite clear. The encounter with the Horned Man takes place on the spirit plane, and can't possibly take place anywhere else. So if you can't discorporate, you cannot become a shaman, it's that simple. End of story. I think doing it with hazia and so forth is a crutch, and the rune spell Discorporate an even more dubious crutch, since a true shaman isn't initiated into any divine cult at all. I think the solution is that starting on the path to shamanhood by days and days of fasting and meditation when you are ready, enabling you to discorporate yourself without artificial aids, is the only solution that makes any sense.

What's more, shamans (shamen?) can't discorporate anyone else, but they *have* to be able to discorporate their carefully chosen and bonded assistants, as otherwise, there is no way to train them in Spirit Travel, and very difficult to train them in Spirit Dance. Spirit Combat, I suppose the shaman can train the assistant by flinging spirits at him, school of hard knocks way. Spirit Dance, I'm not sure you can even do that if you are not on the spirit plane. Spirit Travel, no way jose.

4 hours ago, MJ Sadique said:

 

4 hours ago, MJ Sadique said:

Nope, the way to access spirit world is to face the Horned Man : the First Shaman is the One who Will Judge you ! You cannot teach or learn how to "walk". One must acquire/found his fetch through the ritual of awaking to be able to discorporate and travel to the spirit world. The Shaman teach you the rites, how to fight spirits, flew from them (dance) and the "Geography" of the spirit world. But a Shaman cannot discorporate someone else and the runespell is SELF use ONLY !!

 

11 hours ago, GAZZA said:

Free INT was still in Sandy's system, it was perhaps a little less important, but it was still there. However, it wasn't used as a limit on manipulation, which is the point in question; those limits were based on your skill level with the particular spell. You could likely have used INT instead of Free INT for Sandy's system without any real loss of precision. (Personally I have never really been convinced that Sandy's system was better than the core system - but it certainly was no worse; for the record, though, I really never got the hate for RQ3's sorcery system, it certainly wasn't anything to do with Free INT).

RQG sorcery pretty much is RQ3's sorcery's system - the alterations with Runes and so on are not significant to what everyone complained about (which seemed to be mostly about the Duration manipulation, and that's absolutely still there). I have no particular problem with RQG's sorcery system but it's funny to see it get a pass when it is so very similar to the RQ3 version - it certainly has more in common with RQ3 than Sandy's system.

As far as CHA making more sense than INT for spirit magic - eh, fair enough. I mean, you couldn't have based it on CHA in RQ3, since CHA wasn't a thing (and APP -> CHA is not a mere name change, though unfortunately that seems to have been overlooked for Tusk Riders... but that is an argument that I seem to be alone in). INT has turned out to be basically a "dump stat" in RQ3 unless you're a sorcerer (and as you point out, right now very few PCs will be) as other than a couple of skill modifiers it doesn't really affect much, whereas the CHA 18 requirement for Rune Lord status along with it being the limit for both spirit magic and Rune Points makes CHA something that all PCs should aspire to have a high value in. (Although of course CHA can be increased and INT cannot).

If I were in the mood to make a suggestion, I might suggest that having INT as the maximum number of sorcery spells you could know (excluding matrices and similar) and the manipulation limit based on your skill level / 10 (or / 5 for specialists - the same as it was for Sandy's system) might work, though Sandy's system could ignore Duration while RQG sorcery cannot, so perhaps some other adjustment is better. That would have the result that beginning sorcerers with 18 INT and one spell at 5% couldn't cast it at intensity 17 1 in 20 times, but there are plenty of people that would argue that denying that possibility would make the system worse (and I'm not even sure I would disagree with them). That's why I say I don't have the answers - I just note that Free INT seems like a very strange mechanic.

Free INT as a limit on manipulation was the whole problem with the RQ3 system, so as far as I'm concerned if Free INT is used for something else, might be OK. The problem hasn't gone away in RQG, but the very simple fix I use that I gather you are interested in also, namely that you can know sorcery spells, unlike spirit magic, up to your INT, pretty much solves the problem as far as I'm concerned, making INT not Free INT the limitation. Unless your sorceror is foolish enough to learn spirit magic, a crime that bears its own punishment and properly so. Except for the Lunars, with their fondness for combining everything. I suggested in my system that Free INT might actually play a role in Lunar sorcery, though not as written in RQ3, as otherwise Lunar sorcerors would be crippled, which they definitely are not. The *other* big problem is the whole unmagical feel of the system. Bringing in the Runes as the building blocks solves that problem, in way that is actually even better than in my system, where lore knowledge is the controller. I think my system could be better for "Runequest Earth" or some such. BTW, I for one never had a problem with Duration manipulation.

14 hours ago, GAZZA said:

Well, prior to RQG, spirit magic was INT based as well (which seems fair to point out in a thread about RQ3). Published sorcerers for RQ3 almost never had any spells memorised - for example, the dude in Strangers in Prax, the one in Griffin Island (not strictly speaking Gloranthan but easily convertable)... and you can see why. You are literally making your spells less powerful if you keep them in memory (which is still the case in RQG).

I'm not suggesting I have the answers. But it is a pretty weird and unique mechanic that I'm honestly not sure reflects anything "in world" very well. YGMV.

Having spirit magic based on INT was a dumb idea, CHA makes far more sense. RQ3 sorcery was the downfall of the system, it's single worst feature. I gather Sandy got rid of Free INT in his system, smart man. RQG sorcery would be a fine system if they just got rid of the idea that knowing sorcery spells makes you a worse sorceror. Except that as it stands a beginning sorceror is pretty worthless unless he/she is LM, but hey, this is all based in Sartar at the moment, so that sorta works. Sorcerors are evil, don't you know? The God Forgot sorcerors, the only *low level* ones other than maybe Lunars you are liable to encounter or want to run, can be powerful even at low levels provided they have Tap and use it freely and eagerly. 

16 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Yep I agree with the first half. As for the second half (learning & forgetting), I think the "memory palace" technique is well suited for explaining it. I'm not sure why you think it's not hard enough to swap your spell slots though: 3 hours and a Meditate roll that you could fail? That's pretty harsh IMHO, and it requires the whole party of PCs to effectively come to a stop. In practice, it's not very far for the usual trope of having to pick your spells for the day every morning.

....which is why (1) sorcerers should be older characters (and not "zeroes" or beginners) and (2) a true sorcerer-centric campaign should, IMHO, explore things like the "troupe play" approach of Ars Magica, or other uncommon things (one game a year instead of one game a season?). You really can't have it both: either sorcerers are recluses who spend 80% of their time researching and improving their magic... or.... they don't. But I'm not interested in a 3rd magic system that would be kinda like the other 2 but with fancy customization... a truly different system means different gameplay too.

I think being able to unproblematically pick your spells every morning is too damn easy. The idea that you can change spells right in the middle of actual game sessions I don't care for at all, even with the Meditate role and having to be out of it for three hours (why would the other players have to come to a dead stop?). Basically, I think changing sorcery spells should take a week, and be as difficult a process as learning a spirit spell, though not requiring rolls. BTW, the gains from aging are so paltry in the RQG system that starting your sorceror at age 60 and making stat loss rolls every year is probably the way to go. As for one game a year, then you have to change characters too often. Something should be done about that, and hopefully it will be when the Western pak comes out. LM sorcerors are another matter, as to do their stuff, they really don't have to be very powerful, as they essentially are scholars.

16 hours ago, DreadDomain said:

Correct. These editions were legit. RuneQuest 6, now Mythras, is a beautiful game and the company, the Design Mechanism (not Mongoose Design), is under the helm of stellar game designers Lawrence "Loz" Whittaker and Pete Nash. These guys are professionals and no piracy was involved.

I said they were authorized, didn't I? Legally, no piracy involved. Still, as far as I'm concerned, piracy. Some things are more important than legality.

On 5/10/2019 at 2:36 PM, jajagappa said:

Providing paths to Discorporate, so that you can travel with the shaman and learn is not the same as "free access".  The shaman will have many cautionary tales about stupid pupils who thought they were ready too soon, and are now gone from this world.

 

Yes, that's how the shaman teaches Spirit Travel and so forth. I think the Assistant Shaman bond is strong enough so that, even without hazia, a shaman can discorporate an assistant for teaching purposes and bring him onto the spirit plane. But for him/her to do that except under supervision of the master does require hazia or some such, and definitely is not advised.

But that is not how the assistant shaman can Discorporate for the test, the assistant shaman has to do that on his/her own. How? If the shaman is worthy, which the master can tell (can be abstracted by that POW+CHA roll) then after 1D6+1 days of fasting, prayer and meditation, the assistant will have learned how to Discorporate, and is on the first step of the path to becoming a full shaman.

20 hours ago, lordabdul said:

 

Yeah I think either way you need some kind of limit -- whether it's INT, or INT-minus-spirit-magic, or INT-minus-spirit-magic-and-sorcery depends on how out-of-the-box powerful you want sorcerers to be. Me, I like my sorcerers to be like alchemists and scientists, travelling with scrolls and trinkets in their pockets, rings on their fingers, etc... all with inscribed spells that took years to grow and grow in their labs and fancy towers, until now they can blast you away by touching one of their necklaces. A smaller Free INT gives an incentive to do that, although what sucks is that it costs POW and so far there aren't a lot of ways to get a POW gain roll when you're a pure sorcerer (it's OK for Lankhor Mhy sorcerers though since they get normal worship... but we don't have rules yet for the Invisible God and other stuff like that).

 

I like INT minus spirit magic because spirit magic and sorcery do interfere with each other, and should. Good sorcerors despise spirit magic, and this gives a rules reason to do so. Sorcery should not interfere with sorcery mentally. But limiting your knowledge of sorcery spells by your INT just makes too much intuitive sense not to be used. OTOH, I can visualise the learning & forgetting thing as a legit way for sorcerors to deal with spells beyond their INT, but the process ought to be a whole lot harder than it is now, not something you can do through a little casual meditation. 

As for sorcerors getting by with all sort of weird inscribed spells and whatnot, what that means is either the GM hands it all to the players on a silver platter, or there is essentially no way for a sorceror to be of any use until around about two years of time, not game time but real time unless you game twice a week. Hard enough to develop a sorceror from scratch even without the one sorcery spell at a time silliness.

On 7/12/2020 at 8:40 AM, MJ Sadique said:

No man, you are very far from the count, NOW we are at RuneQuest 7 ... SEVEN, officially named RQ-G because it's a fork from RQ2 as much as RQ3.

Yeah,

Having spirits limiting your spells numbers and Sorcery max intensity is a big bother enough, no need to cumulate it with your sorcery spell list. And moreover the to spell augment INT act as a patch to just counter this whole limitations -contradictions, contradictions...-

If my memory is not failing me the mechanic, based on The concept of Palace of Memory technique, was one of Sandy's ideas where sorcerers could know more spells than what their INT permits. It also permit to store spells and knowledge (like skills, runes and sorcery techniques) without the need to permanently lose the ability to cast the spell (which was also one of RQ3 limitations); the concept in itself is good because you could know more spell than your INT as ritual and long duration spell don't need to be actively memorized !!!

We are in no way at any RQ7, as the other 4, 5 and 6 were more or less authorized pirate productions that do not deserve numbers and are of no interest. The RQ4 which at one point Chaosium was actually planning to produce, deserve the number because, even though it was cancelled when the main author got his jail sentence, was for real. RQG doesn't have a number, it's a free man!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner

On 7/10/2020 at 2:08 PM, Crel said:

I don't know who was behind the RQ3 sorcery rules as published by Avalon Hill. Sandy published a set of Western Sorcery rules which riffed off those (kinda). I consider his Western rules to be the "core" doc for what we ended up playing about twenty years later. Sandy's sorcery is, I think, hosted on Phil Hibb's site that he linked above, if you want to check it out.

Well, now we're in RQ5, and RQ3 is pretty much ancient history, "RQ4" even more so. Glad to know that Sandy was dissatisfied with the RQ3 sorcery rules too. Did he do something about Free INT? In our house campaign, we play with the RQ5 sorcery rules, in theory at least, as none of my players think that an RQ5 sorceror is any good until after 5-6 years of training, and none of them are that patient. One mod, namely that in my book, you can know as many sorcery spells as your INT minus spirit spells without cutting down on "free INT," which I've never liked much anyway. Though it ain't quite as annoying in RQG as in RQ3. The whole business of learning and forgetting sorcery spells to make RQG sorcery work strikes me as a silly crutch to make a foolish rule work.

My impression at the time, back when I was playtesting RQ3, was that the IMHO dreadful RQ3 sorcery rules were Charlie Krank's idea not Sandy's. Could be wrong. During the long forgotten early '90s "RQ4" Chaosium project, which I am one of the few people who actually ran an RQ4 campaign out of, I wrote up my own suggested new sorcery rules, which I sent to those in charge of said long forgotten project. Though the basic idea is different, as my version bases sorcery on knowledge of the world in a rather "earth" sense, whereas RQG sorcery is based on the building blocks of Glorantha instead, namely the runes, I see the basic idea as parallel to mine. Anyway, here it is.SORCERY for RQ4.pdf

10 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

One of the things that makes Heortling society interesting is that it does have an answer to how a society works without a police force. Wergild and other fines, outlawry, vengeance, blood feud, and even just regular social pressure keeps things functional, although the blood feuds and kinstrife might well be considered the failure modes of the solution.

I like to shock newcomers by telling them that murder isn't illegal, and then unpack the statement.

Which is pretty much how feudal society in Europe worked too. Wergild is a word in the English language, not a foreign import.

11 hours ago, Puckohue said:

I have to say I find it peculiar to equate "a society without a modern police force" with "a society without law". There were plenty of laws in ancient Rome. But maybe it was just lazy typing.

That puzzled me, as I didn't say that. That was Jajagappa I guess? The Romans most certainly had law and all the paraphernalia of a modern state other than anything much resembling a modern police force. Indeed in Europe law is largely based on Roman law, whereas Americans live under a modernized version of English common law, a bit different. Actually there have been plenty of societies that functioned very nicely on the basis of custom not law, Native American societies for example. The classic example being the Iroquois, who not only had no police, no laws, no jails, no courts, no judges or juries, and no private property beyond the clothes on their back and suchlike, living communally in the longhouses, but nonetheless had an extremely successful empire, often telling the French and English colonists what to do instead of the other way around, and dominating and exploiting other tribes. Evildoers were judged and punished in community meetings, the highest punishment being exile, seen by your average Iroquois brave as being a punishment worse than death.

1 minute ago, Akhôrahil said:

Proper investigative police yes, various city watchmen no. "Riot police" armed with clubs of some kind seems to be a historical universal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigiles

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police#Ancient_policing

Well, there always had to be somebody or other to maintain law and order somehow, but except in France, you had nothing resembling a modern police force till the 1830s, with professional training, payscales, uniforms and all that. Describing any of the order keepers before then in many different societies as "police" is misleading. The Romans used their legions for that, in medieval times the knights on horseback did it themselves in the countryside. Urban order in Europe and the American colonies was traditionally maintained by unpaid volunteer or drafted watch patrols drawn from the citizenry. Actually, investigators is what you did have, that was the job of the sheriff, to investigate, and to deputize citizens to make actual arrests. The first actual American police force, in New York City, was formed as that wasn't enough, with gangs running rampant. So the biggest, toughest gang was given uniforms and badges, and thus the NYPD was born. Some think it hasn't changed that much from its origins, certainly Serpico thought so.

On 8/19/2018 at 4:53 AM, jajagappa said:

Thanks for noting the original Rome references.  I particularly liked this note: "would examine how a society could function without law. He chose ancient Rome as it managed to function as an imperial capital without a standing police force."  That's Nochet in a nutshell.

Police forces are a modern invention. The British Bobbies of the 1820s or thereabouts were the first. The Bobby thing with nightsticks was the original American model too. Except in the "Wild West," for much of the 19th century, the cops in cities were sometimes the only people who "didn't" have guns.

17 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Somewhat dumb question, inspired by watching the first couple episodes of "Warrior Nun".

Can the Starbrow be transferred to somebody else?  I assume no, since it's never mentioned afterwards.  Seems a bit of a shame 

She acquired it on a Heroquest, and it's part of her forehead, so even if it was possible, I'm sure the populace would have risen up in arms led by Mayor Thom if Leika had tried to cut it out before burning the body.

5 hours ago, Thaz said:

I was around back then and still have all my old stuff from then and the signed copy of the old copy of King of Sartar. 🙂   ( I was even on the mailing list/digest) as was one of my co-gms. So yes...we're running with that

The Kallyr Underground emerges! Luvvit. I go back a ways too. Was one of the original playtesters for RQ3, my name is on Elder Secrets, though I only just wrote one or two things, the Black Elf writeup mostly.

6 hours ago, Thaz said:

In 'our' version (aka the Beer With Teeth series of linked games) Players were able to break the block Lunar Special Forces types had created stopping her resurrection and She's back baby! Of course this leaves Lekia in a interesting spot as she had a good go at burning the body.  However this is very much our games varying due to player interference. 😄 

Thereby giving Argrath a Big Problem. Back in the '90s and into the Oughties there was a profileration of Kallyr Starbrow apocrypha on Glorantha blogs, arguing that the heroquest was a success not a failure, it was Kallyr not Argrath who lit Sartar's flame, and Argrath got the princedom by having her assassinated. Rejected as heresy by our Chaosium elders, and now gone underground. YGMV, you could go that way, but my suspicion is that is not where you are going.

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

The official version is that Kallyr is dead at the end of the Battle of Queens and Resurrect spells all fail. Her corpse is brought to Boldhome where it lays in state. It does not decay, so her followers hope she might just get up, even though the seven days pass. But Kallyr does not return and even her supporters cannot contact her spirit. Eventually her body is burned, although it causes a near riot between tribes. None of the other tribal leaders are acceptable to the others, and none are strong enough to force the others to accept them, and so the Interregnum begins.

Which is also the version I did, I just filled in a lot of details and got my players involved. Jeff, did you read it? I tried to base the session in our campaign on the official version in the Glorantha Sourcebook word for word, and I think I succeeded. Jeff, do you agree? BTW, I did include the bit about her body not decaying, which I attributed to the efforts of the healers. Didn't make the summary.

7 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

To balance both sides of the pond, next time will be "we shall fight (The Bat) with growing confidence and growing strength in the air". 🙂

 

And while we're at it, I may as well post the link to two members of our party's participation in Kallyr's quest, no spoilers. A handy prequel.

http://gloranthagame.pbworks.com/w/page/139626948/Sea%20Season%201626%20Kallyr's%20Quest