Grievous

p. 34: "They hate owls and kill them on site."

I've posted this before on this topic, but I always thought this was a great comic on this issue.

This is interesting when considering two clans/tribes at war over territory, as really they're fighting over a lease on Ernalda's land. Sure, it seems this can be resolved by just the clan/tribal rings coming to a conclusion on who gets to administer it, but it also seems likely that the Ernalda temples would get involved, especially if the fighting effects the administering and bounty of the land (however it's not like they're wholly removed from the politics). Kinda puts an interesting spin on the idea of women's peace weaving between clans/tribes.

First edition HQ brought me in too, so there's some nostalgia. That said, it is pretty easy to convert things for Heroquest (and much more laborous other way around), so in a way Runequest supplements do more bang for the buck. But yeah, there are issues to being split between systems (three, in fact!).

1 hour ago, Puckohue said:

The GM Screen Pack p. 21 shows Beneva Chan (Asrelia) having five children with King Kallai (dead). Two of them are the sisters Ereneva (high priestess of Ernalda) and Erannina Chan (Babeester Gor).

It also shows Queen Leika is their 2nd cousin.

The Smoking Ruins p. 44 now says that Ereneva is Beneva's and Kallai's neice (sic!). I chose to ignore this change.

TSR p. 43 says that Daravala Chan is the niece of Ereneva (and so, of Erannina). But she's not on the family tree in the GM Screen Pack, and as others have pointed out there is the question of their ages. I chose to interpret this as "niece of Beneva Chan". So: Beneva had a sibling who is/was the parent of Daravala.

This makes Daravala the (first) cousin of Ereneva (and Erannina), which fits the story.

Leika is related to Ereneva and Erannina (through Kallai), but not to Daravala. That's why Ereneva was appointed High priestess, and not Daravala.

Edit: and one sister of Beneva is... Hareva the Weaver! Is she the mother of Daravala? Of course she is!

 

Whoooh, and yeah, that family tree in the GM Screen Pack is also out of funk with Sartar:Kingdom of Heroes. I'm not sure which way the wind blows, but I'd appreciate if this bloodline could be nailed down somewhat definitely. I know I perhaps put a lot more emphasis on family trees than most folks running games in the setting, but for me families are the root of many, many plots, and since I also focus on politics a lot, the families of those in powerful cliques are especially relevant.

As always, great review, if one can call it that, as Andrew's reviews tend to veer more into the realm of proper art critique (and I use that term in the best sense here). They do justice to the product and they tell you something much more, too.

17 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

but how a "common" sartarite without any idea of what is sorcery can be sure that the guy in front of him use sorcery and not some unknown spirit magic ?

Is there any obvious proof of sorcery ?

 

I would say that, for a sartarite, any unknown  effect  (from any kind of magic) is seen as "bad magic" except if the magician is LM / well known / under king protection. Am I wrong ?

I actually think that's very much part of the thing. People don't know what sorcery looks like and are going to be suspicious whenever something that could be sorcery pops up. "Is this some of that God Learner business? We don't want none of that on our lands."

9 hours ago, coffeemancer said:

New lore question: what is the sartarite opinion on sorcerers and sorcery? and what is the common view of Lhankor My sorceries?

Yeah, I feel as the other guys have said. Most times sorcery has been involved (outside of LM), things have gone mostly horribly wrong: Arkat and the God Learners to name the usual culprits. Not that the normal Orlanthi will know much about them, but they'll know enough to think they're bad.

You know, I'm thinking of just tossing the combat system entirely and bolting on Pendragon's combat. Not a fan really and I'm not sure I want to go the extensive tweaking route. Utilizing parts of Mythras might work, but but. Pendragon is fine, though. There's a few issues to resolve because Pendragon uses d20s. That said, I might toss the d100 and go even more Pendragony... but that's beyond the scope of just combat.

With Gold-Gotti now having a revised role, I wonder what (if anything) will take his place as a business magnate in Wilmskirk and what happens to the Two-Penny network? It seems unlikely they would survive the transition, but there's certainly room for a merchant prince type in Sartar/Wilmskirk.

39 minutes ago, coffeemancer said:

Unrelated, but why are everyone in sartar so ready to unify behind Argrath but refuse to give Leika the time of day? is it just because Argrath has relation to Sartar, the person?

Argrath is descended from Sartar (or at least has the done the appropriate steps to effectively prove he is) - Leika isn't. That's one thing.

50 minutes ago, coffeemancer said:

Runequest. I dont know what edition, current? it has that blue guy on the cover.

Yeah, I used models for all of them. Valond's model is a friend of mine.

I was gonna say that the clan ring looked like a group of right bastards, but now that I know they're friends of your's maybe I shouldn't go so far! 🤣

"I am so excited" is both a great song and an adequate description of my current emotional state.

1 hour ago, Charles said:

More explicitly, I’m of the opinion that most Illuminates are Heroes (not all), however most Heroes are not Illuminates. In particular, the upper hierarchies you mention are mostly Heroes or equivalent, in addition to being Illuminated.

I'd think there's loads of Illuminates in the Lunar Empire for example and I doubt a significant percentage of them are Heroes.

10 minutes ago, TrippyHippy said:

So now we are going to have a wonderful series of arguments about rule changes and pet peeves with the game. Let’s even change the name of the game too.  Joy of joys. 

You’ve just changed the goalposts on the Chirurgy rules. Yes, unhealthy characters get Deteriation, but the Chirurgy roll itself merely stops Natural Healing if you fail - as per the original game- as stated. 

You said DEX isn’t used, but it is used for every athletic movement - Pendragon doesn’t use skills for these things as other versions of BRP does, and depending on game circumstances, Knights don’t always wear armour anyway.
 

Im not going to itemise every other complaint, but just say that this very line of argument is why a new edition, at this stage, is such a turn off. 

Well we can argue about the rules on the forums until we're blue in the face (and people probably will), but ultimately it's gonna be done by Chaosium, the way they want to do it. We can then vote with our wallets. And since you seem to just want things to stay the same (pardon me if I'm wrong about that), it's not like you're losing out on anything since all the old stuff will still continue to exist. But you're not (easily, absent some weird new evidence) going to say Chaosium is somehow ruining Greg's legacy here. That is stretching it, and indeed seems contrary to the truth.

Things getting clarified and made uniform across the main rules and the many, many supplements with optional/contradictory rules would be very helpful.

Well, it can, but it doesn't have to. The Lunars would term that Occlusion. And because Illuminated beings will quite easily display behaviour patterns that are very different from cultural norms, they will often be called crazy and evil even when they are not. They will not obey the limits of accepted society, but that can go in many different directions. Thus the term Occlusion also could become a weapon to wielded against any Illuminate that you don't agree with.

I also think the topic discussed in the book Zen at War is quite relevant here.

10 hours ago, Glorion said:

Hm. Yes, you are correct, I overlooked that. So yes, with that in the rules every farmwife will want to be an initiate of Ernalda or the land goddess, be crazy not to. Which throws my argument right into a cocked hat. Presumably something similar has to be true in the Lunar Empire for farmers, who no doubt have access both to Bless Crops from the land goddess and even better stuff, Hon-eel and maize and so forth, so the same should be true in the Lunar Empire as well. I still don't think it makes that much sense for every male to be a cult initiate, as if you are a farmer not a warrior you don't spend your whole life fighting. It's mostly the warriors on all those raids and counterraids. Actually, to my taste it really ought to be that all lay members get all the benefits from Ernalda's blessings and that actual Ernalda initiates should pay extra, but such is life. The economy system for farmers in the book is not consistent with the concept that only some 10% of Sartarite women are lay members.

For Pelorians, it may be enough that some headman on the farm is Initiated and can do the Bless Crops bit, ie. I think the specialization bit mentioned earlier in this thread is probably relevant (and also fels pretty appropriate for say Lodril - though not sure if he gets Bless Crops). Basically, a farm doesn't need unlimited Bless Crops, but just enough to cover their allotment.
 

10 hours ago, Glorion said:

As has been pointed out, it's the richer tribe that will win, not necessarily the one with more initiates. The richer tribe will have better weaponry, and can buy more magic, spirit matrices etc., and quite simply will be larger, with more spear carrying farmers. And even more importantly, more capable of having large numbers of warriors and nobles living off the farmers and herders. Now, Ernaldan crops magic is the exception, as the tribe with the most casters of Bless Crops will automatically be richer. And as for marriage, you have it backwards. Which women consistently attract and can keep the most desirable males, i.e. the ones with the most cows? The most prosperous ones, who can bring the most and best land into the marriage.

Yeah, but pretty soon (a year, definitely a generation) the tribe that is stronger in magic will be richer... there's really no avoiding it.
 

17 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

Also how much resources you commit to priests and temples, the strength of your magical treasures, how good your Wyter is, the mood of your ancestors, this year's omens, and so on.

The Community Resources system in HQ is very useful, and RQ has nothing like it. I've been trying to create community rules, but it's not easy to both get it right and have it feel like RQ.

A system like that would be great, at least for most the types of games I intend to run in Glorantha. I've been planning on using the HQ system and just slotting it in somehow and developing it from there (but since I'm not close to running those campaigns, I haven't really done much work on this). Now thinking about that, a KoDP type allotment of Magic to specific slots might tell you which spells clan NPCs have available when you meet them. Oddly, I haven't really heard anything heading this way in Runequest. Maybe that's an area that could use a sourcebook of its own.. 

12 minutes ago, Thaz said:

This is an important point I think people missed. Honestly I dont think it's a major issue. Combined with David Scott's excellent point about _cost_ of spells your average Orlanthi (culture not cult) is going to have 2-5 RP and only a handful of non common spells. 

Didn't we just learn in another thread that Orlanth gets a holyday every week? Feels somewhat significant, considering the typical play area. Can't remember where, but it was somewhere over here.

1 hour ago, Akhôrahil said:

It's not just the holy place itself - you need someone to officiate the worship. If you're in a cult like Yinkin or Odayla, you may well not have even one God-Talker in the clan.

Ahh right, that's indeed a/the hurdle. 

However, and revising my point from above a little, we're still looking at a two-tiered system: for the major cults that have weekly holy days and which are well represented by priests in the clan, there's gonna be quite plentiful replenishing (as long as you're not too far from the temple *1); for the lesser cults, you're still relegated to the "useful mostly once per season" caste (in a magical sense, obviously you're not suddenly entirely useless to the clan). Another thing for adventuring types to keep in mind is that the community might be relying on your magic to function and if you spend it chasing treasure in far-off parts of the land, your loose spending of the magics is going to be looked at askance. 

*1 This would also greatly influence settlement and temple placement patterns. Also, the settlements and folks farther away are just going be less well off purely based on this. One more thing that this causes (and I'm writing this down for my plot notes) is that lobbying for temples/shrines and the priests to staff them is going to be a factor in clan and tribal politics for those who do mostly without them. 

Access to temples/shrines shouldn't really be a problem. I think people are blowing that a little out of proportion. It makes sense for these to be within reach, at least when on your own clan's tula. Sure, when travelling or in a specific tight spot this is an issue that should come up, but outside of that, probably not so much. Clan tulas are not that huge for relatively quick travel in a situation where you've run out of points so you make it a point to go replenish at the first opportunity, either. So anyone with a weekly holy day is going to be readily topped off.  That's a huge gulf in effectiveness between the cults that have them and the cults that don't which is definitely felt in the game world. That really creates a class of two kinds of magical experts: those who can be relied on once a season to provide magical support and those who can be relied all the time (which is admittedly a little bit of head scratcher).

I think there's a bit of a gulf in the discussion here between those who see a magical economy inevitably developing because of the Rune Point mechanics and those who override those with fiat (and handwave the fact that the rules become inconsistent with the fictional setting). I am firmly in the first camp as I do think that rules (should and do) matter, so this is an interesting topic.

2 minutes ago, Darius West said:

Kallyr exiled Orlaront Dragonfriend after the Dragonrise (KoS p127).

Orlaront: "OOPS" THAT WENT BETTER THAN EXPECTED
Kallyr: 🤬

3 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Just wait until a real Gold Wheel Dancer shows up though demanding the return of the "hearts" of his kin!

Actually, in regards to this, as I'm woefully clueless re: the Gold Wheel Dancers... were they all turned into Wheels, or rather are all Wheels Gold Wheel Dancers or just some of them? And, I'm almost afraid to ask, but why? 🧐

58 minutes ago, smiorgan said:

My humble take. Chaos is like porn: you recognize it when you see it.

 

You recognize it when the Storm Bull sees it. 😀

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

In the Tale of the Arganauts, our last Gloranthan Campaign, the PCs were working to resurrect Genert. One of the steps was to sacrifice 1,000 people, making a 10x10x10 cube of their bodies. They took it in their stride and it became a logistics exercise about how to source 1,000 people to sacrifice, not whether it was OK to sacrifice them.

Murder-hobos taken to another level: murder-engineers.