Austin

Or opposed min-maxing "We have an army!" "We have a Rules Lawyer!" Or founding a wyter of their own, or summoning a big ol' feck-off spirit, etc. ... But yeah, rules as written it seems the best way to handle a wyter'd-up Rune Lord's retinue is with another wyter'd-up Rune Lord and retinue. Spirit Combat's still a weakness of that superarmored RL at least. And I figure in the actual setting most temple wyters won't have piles and piles of POW because they're using it here and there throughout the season for mundane stuff, or a disease outbreak, or whatever. So storming a rival clan's temple might still be possible. Just don't mess with a military wyter & co, because they'll definitely have the power to knock you down a peg. That temple of Barntar? Eh, maybe scary, but not nearly as bad as the Humakti warband.

I think of Esrolia as being similar to ancient Sumer and Babylon. Big stepped-pyramid temples, monumental "stacking up blocks" structures. Prax is described as all "chapparral," which according to the Google is a type of scrubby desert. I think of the Praxians as basically Great Plains Native Americans but in a desert instead, and describe it that way to my players. I think of the Lunars as basically Roman, though I've taken to calling some of their soldiers hoplites instead because I enjoy it. I feel like Homeric Greeks still does a good enough job to describe the basic look of any of these blokes dressed up in bronze plate. Or something like the Spartans in 300. But those are both contentious descriptions/claims on this forum, apparently. Likewise some of the Sartarite dress looks to me a bit like Iron Age Saxon and Celt stuff from Britain. It's all a hodgepodge of stolen materials, as most creative works are. There's something of a "but Orlanthi aren't (basically) vikings!" push going on, buuuuttt... yeah I feel like describing them as landlocked vikings is good enough. It gets you an idea what's going on. And then things like the tula, the fyrd, the clan structure, plowing a hide, it all feels rather Iron Age Britain to me, as I understand that culture. (I'm describing that from documentary background-watching, not actually saying I'm a professional archaeologist or historian--but neither was Stafford et al AFAIK.) I think of Tarsh kind of like Norman-invasion Britain. Not so much in how things visibly look, but in the mishmash of cultures. Roman invasion Britain would also work, and probably better. The Grazelanders are basically Mongols with different faces in my imagination. Or less barbaric Dothraki from Game of Thrones. Stuff north of Tarsh is, in my imagination, loosely like ancient Han China with its fixation on ranks and dress and precision. Of course there's bunches of rice paddies there too apparently, and that colors my imagination in a certain light. My mind's Lunar Empire feels kind of like China's aesthetic culture with actual access to stone for Roman-scale engineering. And of course Dara Happa sounds suspiciously like a muddling-together of "Mohenjo-Daro" and "Harappa" from Bronze Age India. If you want Indo-Aryan but want to avoid the Greeks, I'd take a look at some Hittite art. They're a "Storm King Pantheon" people of Indo-Aryan descent, around the same time as ancient Egypt (late Bronze age stuff) and the carving pictures I've seen look a lot like some of the stuff in the Glorantha Sourcebook to my eye. Plus the Hittites were super fighty and feudy, though I don't think they were in the clan sort of way Sartar's Orlanthi are described. So if you want somewhere else to look for your Orlanthi picture inspirations, maybe that's a place to go. Hittite frieze (I think that's the carving type?) for reference:

I'm not sure about the Rune Lord stuff, but why not use the Fetch as a sort of variant on RQ3's familiar? Make it a "Pure Mind" or "psychic construct" or whatever. IDK if I'd let a sorcerer ever get access to something like Spell Extension though... Maybe the "fetch" would give bonus Free INT, or be able to store spells like an Inscription, but you don't risk losing the bauble. Also, it seems to me that the thing behind finding additional entities is to get odder powers. Like, if you're a shaman of Waha and you want Spirit Affinity with fire spirits, you'd have to go find some being to help you--but if you want to get Spirit Affinity with animal spirits, gee, you'd just have to look around in your spirit world home place!

No, as far as I recall it's not in the book anywhere. Yes, it frustrates me too. Yes, I'm glad none of my players are full shamans wanting to run amok in the spirit world yet. My suggestion for now is to look at the script for the encounter with the Horned Man and Bad Man, and try making up something with a similar feel, but for the "Wind Man" or "Cow Woman" or whatever.

The minmax argument here is that wyters don't spend RP--the spend permanent points of POW, which doesn't come back anyway. However, if they have 500+ folks worshiping them, it shouldn't be too hard to find 20-50 willing to sac a point of POW each season to keep the wyter strong after it gives blessings. So technically the Rune Fix doesn't apply, since there aren't Rune points to be regained. Something else I'm looking at, in the Bestiary on p.185-6 are Thunder Brothers, which can be summoned using a 4-point Summon Cult Spirit from Orlanth Thunderous. So maybe the answer to enemy wyters is to summon a huge cult spirit and chuck it at them. The wyter's 6D6+6 POW is the same as a Thunder Brother's. Kaiju spirit fight anyone? Also on the Shield thing, you really don't wanna go over Shield 6 or 7 on a given person, I think, because if you get crit--ignoring armor--you're limited to natural healing. Anything that gets through is going to ruin your season. At 6 or 7 it's possible for a high-POW healer to dump enough MP to get a heal through, while still giving you some serious defenses. At Shield 10+, if you get crit you're probably losing a limb permanently. (I don't think the wyter would be able to dismiss the Shield spell at a whim? but can't claim I'm certain.)

For defensive spells a temple gets (1 point per 100 worshipers), what POW are those spells casting with? Assuming species max of 21? More? Whatever the wyter's happens to be? 200, since it's a piece of the deity itself defending itself? (p.288 in RQG Core is the Temple Defenses entry.) I'm inclined to go with 21 from a game balance perspective, since that means humans can at least potentially resist. Though, any Rune Lord who opposes would then always have a 50/50 to resist the defense.

Gotcha. I'm familiar with the wyter rules, but I wasn't sure how your points system interacted with that creature description. I'd been thinking each defense point is basically a point of POW invested in the temple. Thanks for the explanation.

How would you translate those points to wyters? 1pt=1D6 of characteristics/an ability? Also, what's the difference between regalia and magic items? Thanks for the help.

I don't know if moon rocks generate the effect of the moon (AFAIK the only description of them is in the Bestiary where you quoted), but summoning Lunes was the main purpose in my mind for placing rocks around the temple. Checking those pages, there's no price associated (just "expensive"), but a minimum of ENC 6 is required to summon a 1m Lune. One of the many, many things I feel like I don't know is how many resources would naturally be invested in a minor temple. How much POW should one assume has been spent building defenses, in addition to what the goddess provides? 10? 20? It hasn't been built that long after all (probably sometime after 1605/1610 if I'm guesstimating the timeline correctly).

I was gonna say they could use the Free Ghost Rune spell, but as far as I can tell that's actually only available to Daka Fal, soooo... I don't think it's supported by RAW, but you could perhaps rationalize allowing the use of the spirit magic spells Distraction, Summon (entity), or Control (entity).

I'm writing up a scenario for my RQG game where the adventurers are infiltrating a temple of the Seven Mothers in order to stop a magic ritual. The context is Fire Season 1625, during the campaign in which Argrath's horde of Praxians try to liberate Sartar, shortly before the Dragonrise. My current plan is that the adventurers are being led by a high-ranking (maybe Hero) Orlanthi Wind Lord (I've invited a friend who can't come regularly to sit in on a few sessions playing his old OP RQ3 character) while other forces battle a majority of the followers of the White Bull outside, using gifted Sandals of Darkness (boots with a Dark Walk + Extension 1 matrix) to sneak inside during the commotion. I really like the section in the core from p.283ff on temples and wyters, which gives advice on temple sizes, defenses, and some sample temple layouts in Glorantha. Is similar information out there for temples of the Seven Mothers? Do they basically have the layout of the Moon Rune? (Going off the sample images of Ernalda and Lhankor Mhy as Earth and Truth, respectively.) I'm planning for this to be a minor temple, with about 400 worshipers, so 4 points special Rune magic dedicated to defense. While I figure 2 castings of Mindblast on non-Lunar cycle worshipers who enter the sanctum makes sense, I'd love other suggestions for temple defenses. I figure the priests and sorcerers will still be inside the temple, or at least some of them, and maybe a token bodyguard? So far, ideas I have for the temple's enchantment defenses include Warding (of course), Red Moon rocks embedded in the walls at strategic points, and at least one binding enchantment holding a demon (with either a matrix nearby holding a Control Demon spirit magic spell, or with several priests/initiates having the spell learned). Finally, I anticipate that the adventurers will have to tackle the wyter while trying to stop the ritual. I'd love both some more suggestions for types of defenses, as well as ways to make these sorts of things feel especially "Lunar." I'm also not sure how physically large the temple should be, in addition to its basic layout. With 400 worshipers, does that mean such a temple is usually big enough to actually house that many people in one worship ceremony? I feel like that's not the case, but I'm unsure. Plot-wise, I expect the players to be smart enough to attack on Waterday or Clayday (they believe the ceremony will end on the following Wildday as the moon becomes full), but I'm currently thinking that I'll use the Crimson Bat to rout Argrath's army, and that its Glowspot and great winds will come into play during the scenario. (No, I don't expect my adventurers to actually fight the Bat; I'm mostly using it because it's the only big mythic monster from the setting they know well enough to recognize from implication.) So the twist is that Lunar magic jumps to full power and they can complete the ritual while the adventurers are present. I don't know if that would affect defenses in addition to "powering up" the guarding priests/initiates, etc. Other twists I'm thinking about are including a subcult of Irripi Ontor or Jakaleel, or maybe a Lunar College of Sorcery--my initial thought for the ritual is basically a group-cast Moonfire using ritual preparations and the Bat's Glowspot. If y'all have suggestions these ways, I'd love to hear them too. Thanks so much for the help!

I feel like I read somewhere that it was mostly Storm Gods who resulted in bronze bones (born of earth/copper and sky/tin), but I don't know where that was, or if it was even from something canon. I've got Borderlands & Beyond and there's nothing specified in the Godling Bones entry in Plunder (p.215). But from what I think I'm remembering you'd be right, most bones are of the proper metal. The most common bones are bronze bones because the storm gods/godlings/etc are fighty lil bastards and lots of 'em died.

No, not at all. It sounds to me like y'all went your pace, we went ours. My perspective on RQ since the beginning has generally been a pretty hack & slash, RP-lite one because that was our long-time GM's style. It didn't hurt that we were in RQ3 and so the Glorantha was especially lite. We still played in the setting, but didn't play actual material from it all that often. More just "Run and go do X to get paid Y" sorts of stuff. Very mercenary, very adventurer, very murder-hobo. And had a lot of fun with it. Both approaches are valid, I just thought such a variety of experiences with the Money Tree was interesting.

As for my own contribution, this is the cult I ended up writing for the spirit of the White Bull. It's the spirit of Praxian Unity discovered by Argrath (hence "Argrath White Bull"). Some portion of the mechanics and fluff was inspired by @soltakss in threads some time back (especially the "initiates see their and other mounts as pure white" feature). My thought process was basically Argrath heroquested, helped bring the White Bull spirit into existence in the Godtime, which was simultaneously his shaman awakening HQ. Consequently, this spirit is both attached to Argrath in my Glorantha, as well as having its own sort of existence. Following when Argrath summoned Jaldon Goldentooth the White Bull Society exploded into a larger cultic awareness, which I've tried formulating as a mashup of spirit cult mechanics and wyter mechanics. The White Bull is simultaneously Argrath's fetch, a spirit worshiped by a spirit cult, -and the wyter for his followers, which unifies them against the Red Moon. White Bull Spirit Cult.doc

To quote Kloster's comment to me, I like how you drive your stuff! That campaign sounds like a wild, crazy ride. All the Money Tree times (and yours in particular, Bill) are very interesting to me because IIRC I've played the adventure three times over about seven years now, and each time I believe we completed it in one session of about 4 hours (with maybe another hour or so on top for RQ3 random char-gen).

Cult Thoughts: Gelmollan: He reads a little like Storm Bull to me in the fluff, with the whole "his worshipers tend to congregate ... and then wander outwards searching for people to aid and corruption or horrors to put a stop to." Personally, I agree with others on the hound v. cat thing, but YGMV. If you're sticking with the hound, how does the cult of Gelmollan interact with the worshipers of Yinkin, and other Orlanthi for whom dogs are pseudo-taboo, to my understanding? This cult reads to me kind of like a vigilante; I'm getting a sort of Batman or Watchmen vibe, and I like it. That being said, the spell Thunder Strike feels odd to me, because it's explicitly unsubtle. I like where RHW's going with his suggestion that Gelmollan's more about wind than thunder, that he's blowing away illusion. Another way you could make him distinct from Lhankor Mhy is that LM cares about any knowledge, whereas Gelmollan's followers are concerned about human knowledge, info that helps on a day-to-day basis, discovering the truth of what's going on around them with less of that namby-pamby philosophizing junk. For martial arts-y combat spells, how about something like Truefist? Maybe even let that unarmed damage double again on rolls under martial arts (but only Gelmollan's martial arts!). Otherwise basically a variant of Truesword. If you wanted to power the spell up more, call it Truestrike and let it apply to all unarmed strikes. The "ignores all armor & magic" part of Thunder Strike is crazy strong. For context, Sunspear is 3 points, instant, one-use in most sub-cults of Yelm, doesn't allow POW resistance, and still allows (the thinnest) armor. A strong Gelmollian with the Strength spirit magic spell and Thunderstrike could be dealing 1D3+2D6, more with an Ironhand buff in addition. As I'm musing on it, one way you could handle the "blows away illusion" element, if you do decide to shift a bit windy, is that you could make the cult specialized in removing magic. Give them a cult-specific Dismiss Magic variant, or maybe something like Cure Chaos Wound but for dispelling spells cast by initiates of Chaos cults. I think the wind element works well with this in addition because your martial arts description notes that practitioners are "mystically attuned to the flow of air." On a smaller scale, I think "Unarmed" in Cult Skills should be replaced with Fist, Kick, Grapple. IIRC those are the actual skills on the character sheet. Likewise, should Orlanth provide Dismiss Air Elemental as well as Summon? Most extant cults don't just have one rendition. For special things for Rune Lords, maybe they can sacrifice (or DI?) for the shaman ability Spell Extension? I note that the cult has a bunch of spirit magic (although its quantity of Rune magic makes me think overall it's intended to be a sort of middle-importance cult) and that ability is great for that type of character. I'm not sure, but my gut says Gelmollan doesn't quite feel like a cult which permits shamanism itself to get the ability. Hrm. Maybe it could, but that would probably require a lot of re-imagining the cult... Shaman-Lords constantly covered in Protection and Ironhand, calling upon the spirits of the wind to hunt down kinslayers and oathbreakers? Avonmora: "Master" should be "Mistress of Ecstasy", IMO. I agree with others that elements fringe on Uleria, though I don't see the Dionysian elements in Uleria. (But I'm only really familiar with that cult from the Screen Pack.) Same dog comments as above. I like the notion of "most ridiculous festival"; it makes me think Trickster-ish-ly. How did the Mora Don and other followers of Avonmora manage to help push back the Lunars? I don't really feel like the actual spell list supports the fluff's claim. I don't have tons of fruitful thoughts on this cult, but maybe reskinning it as a sort of Trickster variant could help stir ideas? Reducing the psychopathy, the "is the Eurmali gonna kill me?" element, and increasing the whimsy. Ekkao: IIRC the Sleep spirit magic spell in canon is a cult secret of Chalana Arroy. It makes perfect sense as a spell in Ekkao's repertoire, but I feel like there should be some sort of CA cultic association--whether she was taught it by CA, or she herself taught it to CA's cult in your Glorantha, or something else. In the Sleeping Draught, I'd make the roll to wake that they need to fail a POTx5 roll or something similar; I don't believe an actual "roll to wake sleeping person" exists in the Game System chapter. Calmgrass "the user has a +30 bonus to resist with addicted." I'm not sure what this means, and suspect a typo. For Another Eye, I think it's basically gaining the Second Sight spell for duration, and I think you should state that in the text. Does Devil's Speed allow the user to split attacks even with skill under 100%? I think your intention is no, but I find the wording ambiguous. Godsblood's interesting. It reads like an "upper," but I'd think that a drug which increases Meditate is a "downer." This would be really strong, but maybe consider a bonus on rolls to overcome an opponent's POW with spells? That feels more like "raw mystical energy" to me than improved Meditate MP returns. Since you described basically how the cult's alchemy works, I feel like you may as well add in the cost to the initiate per point of POT to purchase (in the core it's 50L per point, and the initiate needs to make the Alchemy checks). The second sentence of Stall seems garbled to me. I'm not certain what the spell's supposed to do. I think RHW's +1SR/RP isn't enough back on your RP investment. Maybe something like "can only cast or make an attack on SR12" for 2RP (or even 3RP) would work? You should specify what a Samoyed is. As it stands, it reads kind of like a funky allied spirit, or maybe a fetch? Overall Thoughts: Honestly, as I think back on these cults I wonder if all three might work better as shamanistic cults. Something sort of grown out of the Thunder Brothers stuff as the children of Orlanth, or in the sense that children of Orlanth are often demigods/heroes/great spirits rather than gods on the level of the Lightbringers. This idea particularly comes to mind because of my comments above about Gelmollan, and additionally because Ekkao's dream world stuff feels very much, to me, like a variation on the spirit world. I feel like there's a strong connection between dreams and spirits in Glorantha (and other fantasy worlds), and that to tap into those elements might make your work stronger. For making these specialized shamanistic cults along the lines of Yinkin or Odayla, I would probably start with toning their Rune magic down a little (mostly in quantity rather than quality), and then thinking about what sort of spirits each specifically works with. Gelmollan with Air spirits and mortal ghosts, Avonmora with madness spirits, and Ekkao with spirits generally? spirits of transition? I feel like Illuminate secrets lurking within the mirror goddess makes sense, but I don't feel that will best serve what I see in the text. Or maybe Ekkao's spirits of the future. I acknowledge I'm not quite bringing the spirits/shamanistic end of things all the way through with Ekkao, but the cult as written, with the drugs to see beyond, the mirror stuff, the visions, it all feels very shaman-y to me. Anyway, I hope my thoughts have been helpful. Your starting point looks like a fun place to begin from

I agree with this, from what I recall written in the Core book. I feel it's important as well to remember that Man and Beast are not Powers, but Forms; I understand that to mean that they reflect the shapes beings take. But as I recall the distinction within an adventurer on the Man/Beast Rune ratings scale is broadly how sociable they are, how willing to be part of society, reflecting these civilizing tendencies. And so I find it really interesting in sort-of hindsight that I think Daka Fal's really the only cult in the Core which utilizes the Man Rune, considering it's a shamanistic cult. Again working on inference, my take is that followers of Daka Fal tend to be less "sophisticated" than our typical theists--like the Sartarites, Tarshites, etc., who go about building these big cities and whatnot. Whereas shamanism is much more common among the Praxian nomads, I believe.

On the one hand, historically my tabletop milieu has been pretty heavy on the murder-hobo thing, so that's to be expected. On the other, I am hoping to pull further into the community stuff, to the point that ideally this is "you have a week away from your occupational duties--what do you want to do to help X in New Pavis?" or something like that. I'm hoping to build setting-familiarity which will let me reduce the number of questgivers (which I feel the community-centric perspective increases, since you aren't adventuring for yourself but for someone else), and then move forward into "I care about X, so how can I further its goals?" For example, helping Argrath to conquer Sartar after the death of Kallyr.

I'm glad to see that some other GMs are thinking of their campaigns in terms of "story arcs." I do so as well, although we've not completed the first one yet. I intend to end the arc around the Fire Season 1625 defeat of Argrath's Praxian horde. Not sure how I'm going to do it yet; IIRC canon is Lunar madness spirits but I kind of want to use the Bat because my players are familiar with it and hopefully it'll inspire its well-deserved fear and terror. My long-term goal is to slowly shift into a freeform sandboxy thing set in Prax and the Big Rubble once my players have learned enough about the region through story stuff that I can go to them and say "Hey, what do your adventurers want to do?" without blank stares, without needing so much use of questgivers. What material have you been running? Old RQ2 stuff? Also, I feel like thus far the expected IRL time of an adventure is about one session. Does that feel accurate to other GMs? Remembering the length of the Broken Tower, Cattle Raid, Defending Apple Lane, etc. In my campaign that's very much not been the case, but I feel like my group's norms and the material I've chosen has been the cause, rather than a design expectation within RuneQuest.

I haven't done the full munchkinning yet, but do note that the Family Histories section is either roll or choose an event from the lists. In particular, this could get an adventurer's Battle skill up quickly if we're trying to figure out how close an adventurer can get to Rune Lord from the start of play.

@Sir_Godspeed's comment is where my mind was going with "Ultimate Power of Shaggy." It's a meme/internet joke which was going around about 3 months ago? Basically, Shaggy being stronger than Superman, Thanos, Goku, Saitama, Harrek, Jar-Eel, Bugs Bunny, etc as a gag. I'm not sure how to tie that into the sheep magics (although I really like @jajagappa's suggestions!) but maybe something you could homebrew for the Shaggy-trickster stuff would be based on Hallucinate, but combined with another Rune spell--or maybe phrased as a heroquest or other sub-cult secret--which lets his hallucinated reality become temporarily real for others. Basically letting your son pull the whole "unleashing my real power, but only a little" gag the joke's based in. For reference,

Okay wow, y'all must have really hauled ass then, cuz from what I recall of that module (I've skimmed/read it, but not played it) it's quite extensive. It sounds like your milieu is much better at staying focused and working through rooms than mine is . The biggest adventure I recall playing was an adaptation of the AD&D adventure Lost Shrine of Tamoachan, which I believe has a similar map-size to Snakepipe Hollow (but I don't have either module in front of me) and that took us like six weeks of 6-ish hour sessions. God, I wish we could get back to sessions like you describe. I loved them, but our group's having trouble finding a new schedule which works.

Careful what you wish for--in my game, I had a player panic some sheep and stampede them into their enemies. Fear the grass-chewers! Gnash thy teeth and despair!

One of my favorite lines from KoDP is "Their cow magic doesn't hold a candle to our cow magic!" It's become a bit of a meme in our group. The game does a really good job emphasizing how important cows and other Bronze Age stuff is in Glorantha, in conjunction with putting the weirdness (like ducks!) front and center.

This makes sense. Thanks for the initiative And made it through seven game years, wow. So that's close to a game year per month of IRL playtime, if you handle the numbers a bit roughly. My game's been going since about November and we're still in our second season of game time, Fire 1625 (I started a bit before the Dragonrise, right after Argrath conquered New Pavis). Our weekly game ought to go three hours, but usually plays closer to two between late players, random chitchat, catching up and so on. Aaaand I tend to let the adventures drag themselves out unnecessarily through split parties, excessive hijinks, sudden side-quest opportunities, and so on. So that's slowed the game down quite a bit as well. Still, I don't think I've ever played an RQ adventure in one session, even back in my old game where we'd play consistent 6-8, sometimes 10-hour sessions.