icebrand

Yes, so much this. Like, some people do them to free int/cha or to pass around the spell. I'm shocked they spend 5+ pow (some even spent 10+?) For a spirit matrix... Imho no spirit spell is worth POW; my players always used spirits or just picked their spells more carefully If they didn't have access to.

Hi guys, i have a question: Has any of your PCs, ever, spent pow in making a spirit magic matrix? If so, why? Also, I'd like to hear about your PCs self-made enchants, please share!

We used that rules back in the 90s (for rune levels only) but i must admit it was a totally murder hobo campaign and we glossed over cult time requirements. Heck the group didnt even have a community until the campaign was like 10 years on. Cult stuff happened offscreen and maybe there was a ceremony roll or something. Still had the fun of my life btw. Anyway, you just changed the way i play Runequest!! 💕 Thank thee *so friggin much* i guess I'll scrap the travels and just let them train and do social stuff at the fort while i come up with some duck stuff and foreshadow the kidnapping and maybe the broos

The humakti is going to tourney altar because daine (who is a full runelord not former) is going and it's taking the groups Humakti with him. In the future ceremonies may me narrated/abstracted but this is the first one and gods/ceremonies/cult and community stuff is more important than killing some random ducks noone mentioned before. Also the duke is an (evil) orlanthi petty king that totally gave up his god for a piece of worthless land in nowhere, prax and allying the ducks in some way is totally something i see happening. And the yerlornan needs to attend the seasonal worship ceremony to remain initiated. Also gives me the chance to show her unicorn again (she saw an unicorn drinking water at the easy ford but 🦄 ran away when she tried to approach. She'll see Ricardo 🦄 (working name, but i think I'm keeping it) wandering in the long dry or something)

It's the seasonal holy day and initiates need to do initiate stuff, like recover rune magic and actually interact with other cultists. Both places are quite close afaik, why wouldn't they go?

So, this is the deal: after the next session the group should finish "scouting the land" from borderlands & beyond, and both the Humakti and Yerlornan will have 6 days until their holy day (fire season/death week/fire day). So I'll have to split the party (fml) and they will have to head to tourney altar and the big rubble respectively. I plan on rolling random encounters for their journey (maybe i finally get to kill someone for butchering my deinonychii); after that i need to actually do the festivities. Any ideas are welcomed. For the Humakti I'm thinking ritual duel (I'll let him pick a 50, 75 or a 90% opponent with some trinket if he wins -im open to suggestions). For the yerlornan I'm clueless; I'll read the raid on yelornans scenario again (it's been a while) to see if there's something there, but I'd appreciate the help! After that Ill give them 2 weeks of R&R before Outlaw Hunt so they can roll their xp checks and stuff. Anyway that's it for now, thanks in advance! 🙏

Tell that to the enemy that just sent your brain flying out the newly made crack in your skull because you had -20 extra to parry 😁

I started running borderlands yesterday and... MAN WHAT A GREAT SESSION!!! The adventurers are a Yerlornan from the unicorn people, a Humakti berserker from (somewhere in dragon pass) and a Lhankor Mhy from Pavis. The 4th player couldn't make it this week sadly. Players were new to Glorantha and Runequest, with only DnD experience. I just pulled the OG map of Prax and started telling them how it was the holy land and a paradise, but then the storm god murdered the sun and... Well you guys know how the story goes. The players got hooked instantly and I couldn't have been happier! I mean they literally asked me to keep GMing while we were eating pizza 😮 First session didn't have any combat (except that one time the Humakti 1-hit a caravan worker with a gut punch with 7 out of 7 possible damage btw) the PCs just did stuff in horns gate and went to the secret orlanth altar nearby that the chalanas are helping hide. There they got hired by the duke (which is orlanthi and evil in my version). Daine provided a metric ton of roleplaying; the yerlornan figured he was a psycho killer (which... He totally is now) and everyone was super wary of the orlanthi; they only got to that point because the (pc) Humakti kinda figured out these guys wouldn't go through all this trouble to kill some random nobody adventurers they have no beef with. The Amazon was *this* close of using shooting star on Daine, anyway she ended using soul sight on the Duke, Daine and the priest (which is a priestess now) and confirmed they were who they said they were, very magically powerful and very evil 🙂 They gladly accepted the mercenary contract because *food and board* haha and so next time they'll start scouting the land for real (but they are going with the priestess instead of Daine; she's way weirder and they'll regret it when all their fears turn out to be... maybe be true? (Let's see what they come up with). Anyway i didn't want sword guy with the group since they already have a sword guy of their own. So far it's a horror campaign and i plan to keep it that way; maybe I'll add a chaos "random" encounter to make things creepier? A gorp approaching the camp at night sounds just what I need to turn the horror up to 11, it will probably eat a horse or something?

I'm skipping gringle's (griswold's 🤣 whoosh). I don't like that scenario; I'll just run rainbow mounds from horns gate and call it a day. The PC s are the surviving members of a mercenary company that will be looking for work at horns gate. Then bam! Rainbow mounds.

I'm worried about the first scenario being pretty weak for a new group and second kinda horrible too (ducks don't work as your first ever opposition, and they are awesome at shaking things up, change my mind) I should open with rainbow mounds. It will make scouting the land 100x better. And i can run gringle's pawnshop 2nd session... Dammit icebrand, you are pulling a reverse apple lane again... I hate myself sometimes 😞

Griffin mountain? I think you misspelled snake pipe hollow 🤣

Yes, thank you!

Players are (almost) complete newbies to RPGs (but they are getting 2d6+6 all stats and RQG rules, not Classic). I think most played very few DnD. If i run borderlands they are a band of adventurers the duke recruits at horns gate. I'll start with them negotiating the contract with the duke. Maybe make them run rainbow mounds as 1st adventure (and maaaaaaybe griswalds pawnshop as 2nd)? If i run Land of Doom... I never ran it before 😕 but the first spider encounter seems amazing and the second one with the scorpion men is to die for!

IMHO the sorcery rules on RQ:G are a straight downgrade from RQ3, and those were not very good to start with. I use RQ3 raw for sorcery, with whatever handwaving i need to make the encounters deadlier (since sorcerers in that ruleset are not very deadly compared to other magic users), unless you like your sorcerers to be guys with high stats that hits for high damage, then all you need is MP crystals and high base INT, % casting is irrelevant. Of course I don't allow sorcery for my PCs because, quoting me from the last time they asked "the magic system f***ing sucks and i would need to nerf the few useful broken spells so you would have a s***ty character overall".

uzko: Casts darkwall and laughs at the pathetic humans; further actions determined by cult. The food trollkin rain stones on the party to create suppressing fire. Superior trollkin will peek and cast extinguish on the group light sources. That would be my 1st statement of intent in a situation like this.

The "counter" to sorcery is disrupting the caster, since spells take 2+ round. If you let the sorcerer cast, it's already over; you had 2 rounds to make them fail concentration or disabling them. Looking for a "counter" at this stage is like looking to a counter for the weapon that just hit you. You just trust your armor/pow keeps you alive and if not maybe your friends can take you to a temple to get resurrected. If you let the enemy spellcaster free, you give them a pass to unleash all their potential. It's the same why you shoot at archers, not melee fighters. Unengaged characters should naturally go for the spellcaster / ranged attacker (but there they have the chance to join a melee where the archer can't reliably hit them. Unless they are animals or dumb creatures of course.

I'm like you but with RQ2. I actually started with RQ3 in 1997, but I always dreamt of playing rq2 in the early 2000s; every single bit on every fansite i adored and preferred over rq3. Finally I got hold of rq2 in the 2010s. We have ported several rules from brp: Intx10 skill points, 1/2 cha cult battle magic for beginner characters. Initiates recover all/half magic every season (powx5), priests always get it back. Further parries are at -30%. I also added dodge as Dex x5 (works like rq3 dodge, but you can't attack if you dodge). One session is one season. You usually do social stuff at your clan, then something happens, and you get to use skills and stuff. Then there's a BIG FIGHT with a battlemat and printed minis and I play each and every NPC as if they were a PC of mine. Combat is hard and bloody and limbs go off and people gets murdered horribly while their scream. I also try to get a different gimmick or mechanic each fight scene. Rewards are plenty IF you survive, and most times you will get ressed if the group beats the encounter. Oh, and then there's always the dreaded random encounter roll when they come back home. They don't want to fight so hard it warms my heart. Then they can spend their riches training and paying their priests to get spirits and buying gear, rinse/repeat. Sessions are usually 120-150 minutes long, and many times people go back home heartbroken because their initiate was so close to being runelord and got thrown to their death by a condor. In return I'm super chill with the roleplay phase and they have it easy (chax5 / oratory / skill unopposed) to make "changes" to their homeland.

Yeah when I Instituted this rule back in my rq3 campaign (that anyone can supply pow for an enchant) one of my PCs, an orlanthi petty king tried to Institute a yearly "pow tax". He got shot down by threat of uprising, and quickly learnt his political power was pretty weak.

Wait, you *don't* pick on the PCs?!? He would feel what? Just kill them so they learn the lesson. You shouldn't hold back against PC, unless you are one of those people that fudges rolls etc. I mean, if there are trollkin slingers with a troll master, surely the troll trained them to shoot at a called target. Why do you make your NPC soft-suicide?

Hi there, im a Classic GM (been gming since 1997). I could tell you why classic is the best and why *all day*... It's a beautiful game really, but just buy RQG + Bestiary (bestiary is kind of a must buy to play).

An appropriate ammount of blunt force trauma works wonders as a hard counter to sorcery. Have 3 trollkin slinging stones at them, or simply use your maul (downward strike or a sweep both do it). In a pinch sever spirit is good too, but it kind of ruins the meat. Source: Death Lord

And still they have the best system in Glorantha, unless you like licking the boots of the emperor or being an ignorant savage. Clearly Hrestol revealed the true way; yes, social mobility may be low, but this is only because only the best rise. And hear me, we don't rise to any level of (in)competence, but to the level of mastery. True, many bright young men are taken from us at an early age, but that clearly means Malkion took them to solace in order to better serve the invisible god! And with contempt i tell thee, if the outdated Seshnelan way were any better, they would be able to beat us in battle, which I don't see ever happening. 😂

We also have black horse county keyword from HW, where sorcery is not slower -nor weaker- than any counterpart, but i didn't bring those much because game systems are very dissimilar. According to HW they use sorcery (they even have grimoires) not "creative heroquesting" / rune magics like proposed earlier in this thread, and mechanically they are not disadvantaged in "normal playing scenarios" as sorcery appears to be in RQG (though they can be more "specific"). At least they don't fail at combat, which is a core part of fantasy RPG. Also, you seem to imply the very little RQ3 material is going to be retconned, or maybe i misinterpreted you?

> Sorcerers are scientists, philosophers and alchemists, unequivocally I'm sorry but sorcerers can be a lot of things. Several Gloranthan societies use sorcery as their one and only magic system. Saying this is akin to saying theists are warriors. It is not correct with the setting as published (at least pre-rqg) > He likes order, and archiving things, and is secretly a bit intimidated by field work and its risks. > The upshot of this is that sorcerers fear going into danger I'm sorry I don't see gerlant flamesword or sir meriathan or ethilrist as "liking to archive" or "intimidated by fieldwork" or "fearing danger". > It is also hard to become a successful sorcerer. > Another thing it is worth really making an issue of is that sorcery stacks with other magic. Moot point. Becoming a runelord is also hard and their magic also stacks. I understand YGWV and gregging, but the loskalmi zzaburi are called grand knights (wizard knights by outsiders) and have combat skills on par with a runelord. Having them cast buffs on soldiers and knights is akin to using your death lord to cast buffs on trollkin an initiates. This is not how loskalmi worked. Afaik rules for casting changed, making sorcery less viable for direct confrontation, so the whole west needs to be gregged.

For a spirit? Instantly. Same as burning fish heads(worship? In any case, spirits hate fish heads too). Same when a runepriest of jesus tries to exorcise a demon from Linda blair. He doesn't need several rounds of prayers before the combat, otherwise the skill would be kinda useless wouldn't it? What does needing minutes or whatever the rules say in order to boost spirit combat with dancing, singing, playing the guitar (because why not have a blues duel spirit combat with the cacodemon?) worship or whatever actually do? If you enforce RAW, you lose the opportunity to have skills like dance, sing, play instrument, oratory, and whatever odd skill to be used in (spirit?) Combat. This makes the game... Less rich imho. Also, from a mechanical point this gives value to those less important skills (because, let's face it, sing does not have the same weight as 1h sword skill for 99.9% of groups).