Cawdorthane

The player-characters are "heroes" so I generally declare for the monsters first to give the players an edge. If there is a major baddy present and something really turns on who goes first with their statement of intent, then I would go by inverse Dex SR (i.e. highest states first) and resolve any ties by a Battle skill roll off - but as that may slow things down, I would do it very rarely. Original RQ had a +5 SR charge for changing your statement of intent and I tend to house rule that as an option too... cheers Mark

It looks fabulous - if I foolishly (as it seems) ordered my PDF of RQG through DriveThruRPG is there a discount code for the hard copy by any chance [insert suitable cute whining sounds muffled by subdued sobs]....? cheers Mark

As another Australian, I found Mechashef's account of his experience simply appalling. I hope it is atypical even in the Antipodes, but I fear it reflects an increasingly commonplace, if absurd, proclivity for some people to seek out matters to be outraged by. How this complainant ever discovered what Mechashef was looking at on his lap-top, without unnecessarily trawling through all of his other co-workers' online activities, mystifies me! One might have hoped that the ethos of the East German Stasi was confined to the dust bin of history, but you would sadly be wrong... Fair enough, if something genuinely nasty was visible on a screen at work, but spying on your co-workers' rpg reading material, really...? More seriously, I for one love using evocative images in my gaming sessions. In this regard, the RQG imagery is quite magic, literally. Sure I can spend 5 minutes describing a person or a scene (and I often do), but showing the players a good picture usually draws every one in immediately and helps me cut to the chase. So please stay strong Chaosium, keep up the brilliant art work, and damn the Wowsers! cheers Mark

I received my RQG dice yesterday. Yes, the dodgy hit-location die was a let down, but I received a friendly and prompt email from the Q-Workshop people promising to send me a replacement one in due course. So happy ending on that front. Writing as someone who likes his dice, these were imho worth the money, being readily legible and good quality. Maybe using custom dice is very much a matter of personal style or interest, but as I have always felt that Glorantha was as much about the 'feel' as the mechanics, these dice fit in nicely. Thanks RQG & Q-Workshop! cheers Mark

If you are lucky enough to roll a 20 on the Random Boon table on page 40 you get: You have a spirit bound into an animal or item. It has a POW of 3D6 and a CHA of 2D6. See Binding Enchantment, page 49 When one of my players rolled this, I ruled that it was good enough as is and his bound spirit did not start with any known Spirit Magic. It seems to contrast with the entry for an awakened animal on the family Heirloom table. How have others played this? cheers Mark

Step 6 of character generation provides that your starting character gets the various benefits listed under the 'Notes' section of your cult. For Humakt on page 76, that merely refers to Gifts and Geases. Bladesharp is there listed as a variable spell for Cult Spirit Magic. But on page 296 under the detailed section for Humakt it is stated that Humakt initiates are taught Bladesharp 4 for free. My own take on this is that the Cult will teach initiates Bladesharp gradually during play (say a free point of Bladesharp due to worship on the high holy day of Storm Season, Death Week, Windsday), rather than automatically giving starting Humakt initiate characters an effective 9 points of Spirit Magic Spells. Is this broadly how others play it? cheers Mark

It would be great if Jason could respond to this issue. As written Fireblade can only effectively work at all if it is cast by a Bound Spirit, otherwise as soon you lift your arm to swing with your Firebladed weapon in anger, it goes out... even without the caster suffering any damage or any other break to his/her concentration (p.247): "...Spell casters trying to maintain an active spell are limited to a movement rate of 4 meters per melee round and they can do no fighting." Indeed, if so you would be an absolute mug (or a Duck) not to take Bladesharp IV.... cheers Mark Ps I do not think it would help to cast it through a Spell Matrix either, as there is no stated exception as to not having to maintain concentration for active spells so cast: see pp.265 and 344-345

Well done SimonH for offering a decent apology. That took real character in my view. Creativehum, I played a lot of Rune Quest back in the 1980's, and it is amazing how much memory I still retain as I wade through the dense text of RQG. But at times I am still bedazzled by the sheer volume of detail that there is to master as I prepare myself and my players for their first session of RQG (after a recent disappointing experience with RQ6 which I will not dwell on). But the best advice I can give is at first to focus your thoughts and reading on the handful of Gods that your players choose for their initial cults. Make their initial primary foe come from one cult that most of your players are hostile or neutral with. And then as you gradually introduce opponents with new cult affiliations, you can read and digest each new cult and its associated suite of rune spells one at a time. Similarly start off with a small set of foes/opponents/protagonists with similar armour/equipment/weapon styles - use them for a linked set of 3 or 4 introductory sessions but then start to add in one new type of foe/opponent/protagonist each session if you can. Also try to make three or four particular but different skills the key to each session, read them with care and thought, and then expand those key skills for each adventure as you go along from session to session. In this way, if you use each session as a progressive set of learning blocks, in no time you will start to acquire something close to an intuitive feel for an increasing pool of cults and combat styles as you work your way through. There is a real risk of information overload just with RQG as is, even before considering the in-print background material that you can still download/acquire in hard copy. So do not be overly ambitious in your first half dozen or so sessions and you will then find everything clicking a bit quicker, and the world of Glorantha and Dragon Pass coming into sharper focus. Information overload is your greatest enemy. Learn Glorantha and RQG via small bites. Do not get too hung up on particular rules mechanisms, we all have our own set of preconceived ideas about weapon styles etc - if the RAW still irritate you, then change them or discuss them with your players out of session to find out what you and most of your players enjoy. Hope this helps. I am now going to have to work hard to try and follow my own advice in my game and not just act like the fat-lad locked in the lolly-shop... cheers Mark

Thanks Jason, I could not agree more! Whatever enhances the roleplaying experience needs to be King, always remembering the delicate but essential balance between naughty and nice as GM... cheers Mark

Thanks for the lightning swift replies. For my part, I had no particular intention to abandon or depart from the Base Homeland Passions, but the rules as written just seemed a little unclear to me as to whether they were strictly mandatory or not. My group will shortly be generating RQG characters, most of us having played a lot of RQ2 back in the early-mid 1980's and a bit of the Avalon Hill RQ3 edition in the later 1980's, and so we are fairly well versed in Glorantha. But players being players, they will no doubt try to gently push the boundaries where they can. So I wanted to gain a feel for what other groups were doing. Having read the RQG rules, I am inclined to agree that the character generation system looks cleverly designed to place the PC's deep into the Dragon Pass milieu and so I intend as GM to tinker with things as little as possible. cheers Mark

Page 26 states under the heading 'Starting Passions': As a member of a Homeland, your adventurer starts with three Passions at 60%. Then on page 27 there is a box entitled "BASE HOMELAND PASSIONS'. listing three Passions for each of the main starting Homelands Must a pc's starting passions be taken from the box entitled "BASE HOMELAND PASSIONS'? So if I start with a Sartarite PC, I must take Love (Family) and Loyalty (Clan) & (Tribe) or can I chose other Passions as an alternative (noting that I will gain other Passions anyway as I work through the PC generation process)? cheers Mark