womble

I came across it on the "Playing Runequest" page: https://www.chaosium.com/playing-runequest/. Played it through once. Personally, I think it has the potential to put people off as much as it will excite them. A final fight (for the path I took) that went 8 rounds before anyone took any damage, and an unparried slash didn't decide it, the fumbled CON roll a round later did. Woo. Also, there are errors in its adaptation. At one point, in one branch at least, you have to roll against Vasana's Reputation, but that stat has been elided from the truncated character sheets provided with the web-experience. Being other-than-a-newbie, I knew I could look to the free downloads of the starter set character sheets to find it, but total neophytes probably wouldn't have that knowledge. There remain references in the web text to looking things up in a Starter Set book, which not everyone has. It's entirely likely that Vasana's combat skills go over 100, and there's no mention of how to deal with that; including the mechanic would have the potential to shorten the critical fight to a non-tedious length. Why does Vostor "always parry with his Kopis", when he's better with his shield, which has more HP, and won't deprive him of his primary means of attack if it is broken? If it's because it's all hacked about from a previous fight, it should say so, and how badly, in order that when his weapon arm is maimed he doesn't get better at defending himself. (I mean "as good at defending himself as he always orter've been"). And, as ever, when writers get too "purple", the numbers don't match the flavour text. Honour is by no means Vasana's best weapon; it's her third best Passion and equal-fourth with a load of other things in general. Her best weapons are her sword and her religious Devotion, and the text should reflect that, since Passions are a reflection of the character's attitudes. But someone came up with a story involving an Honourable Duel, so Honour had to get attention. Could do better.

If you're going to expend magic to improve your ploughing capacity, it's probably more cost-effective to yoke a few Talosi. Dem Earth Elementals can plow gud!

Issaries doesn't need to give His worshippers Shield: they have Spell Trading to get it (one use...) from their friends...

The pregen characters have some pretty handy stat rolls, but otherwise aren't very exceptional. It's not that easy to produce a Rune Master level character at start: the first hurdle to Rune Priest level is the 18 POW plus 5 Rune Points (meaning you have to generate a 20POW character and sac 2 points for RP). You have to get lucky if your GM wants any randomness in stat rolls. Rune Lords are pretty hard. 5 relevant skills at 90 is, I think, pretty much impossible at-start and then you have to have CHA 18 as well. And for most cults you have to have been an Initiate for more years than your character has been an Initiate at game-start. You can get very close, though, and the starting level for PCs in RQG is much more like 'acolyte' level in RQ3, intentionally: the Hero Wars are upon us, after all, and the intent is for the PCs to be Hero-candidates, at least.

Whatever. Yes. Cheat. You see the poor rules that make no sense and use them to make otherwise unexceptional foes dangerous. Exploiting poorly designed rules isn't big or clever. How does it make any sense that a 100% grapple vs 100% weapon parry skill the usual result will be the grappler succeeding in seizing the limb of the parrying weapon without being harmed? That's not making an abstraction for ease, that's just cobblers. Exactly. However, it is no less 'realistic' to run a game where nobody grapples than it is to run a game where grappling is so much more potent than it ought to be against weapons. Probably a much better approach than the RAW of RQG.

That's exactly how I'd see them, too. And the Tuskers of the half-trolls would pretty uniformly be war-trained mounts.

I'd reckon the presence of Alchemy as a craft/art/knowledge increases the probability of 'proof liquor' being a commodity in Glorantha. Whether Dwarven or from the humans who know the techniques... I don't see why they wouldn't exist... There's a decent (and increased, I imagine, after the Opening) trade around the world. All the nightshade-relatives have a place, I reckon, and would have been propagated widely. "Don't drink plain water! That stuff'll kill ya!" Even if the yeast wasn't strong enough to sterilise water itself, dirty water often won't support yeasty brewing, so it's a test for potability (and the brewers would seek out clean-enough water, so brews would be largely safe). Teas and other boiled beverages serve a similar hygienic purpose.

It's in the thoroughly inadequate "Runequest Core Rules Questions" thread. I think. It came up out of a looooong thread about Countermagic. Believe me or not. I could care very little less. If you're an Examining Priest, checking whether someone is fit to join the Cult, you absoulutely would, since your allotment of divine spells is greater than 'tiny', you can get them back pretty often and you may well not know Detect Enemies, no matter how economical. If you knew DetEn, sure, you'd consider using that instead, since it does the same thing. Magic is visible, not just the casting of it. If you cast a Countermagic or Shield, expect to glow or shimmer, or something. There's a thread about that going on somewhere today, I believe. You're defining 'personal' the wrong way. What the spell detects is Enemies who wish you harm. That's why it's personal. It doesn't detect them if they only wish harm to the person next to you, or to your Uncle or to the Tribal King to whom you are loyal. You don't even have to know they exist if they wish you harm (for whatever reason, which might include reasons that mean they don't need to know of your specific existence yet). It's personal from that direction. If you're being ambushed, it'd be a particularly focused ambusher who could close down the 'want to harm' list to only the people at whom they're actually aiming; the vast majority of participants in most ambushes will wish general harm to the whole party ambushed. Even an assassin aiming to strike down a specific person in a group will wish harm to those who impede them, or might impede them; it's probably a talent of successful assassins to be able to contain their ill-will so that a bodyguard's Det En won't ping them (which is why a good bodyguard might use an Extended Find Enemy cast on the principal).

I really wouldn't encourage the use of grapple rules. Not in any RPG I've ever played. The problem is, grappling against weapons isn't easy, or simple, and requires fine judgement of something that most combat rulesets for RPGs don't handle in any detail, if at all: fighting distance. As a result, grappling rules are largely oversimplified and hence... lacking in verisimilitude. For example, in the RQG RAW on grapples, "...a parry with a weapon means the weapon arm was caught instead..."; similarly with shield parry. So the only defense is Dodge, or hope the grappler misses (or you roll a 'better level of success') . Which vastly overstates the ease of grappling someone armed: if they succeed with their parry, the grapple should at least fail to grasp (though probably, for consistency, not invoke damage to the grappler), in the same way that an ordinary weapon hit countered by a successful parry will often cause no effective damage to the target; call it being kept at distance. But yes, the grapple rules, flawed as they are, are excellent ways to cheat your players of their hard-earned superiority. Or to encourage WWE-esque grappler builds.

Given the presence of both, I'm a bit surprised by the absence of Zola Fel, given her Cult has an extant deep writeup (and impact on the player experience) in 'the canon'.

Ah. It was RQ2 that had Multispell as a Divine spell, and that was what I was remembering: the only way to combine Spirit Magic casts 'on the fly'.

On an Enchantment, yes I think it should be read that way. But Multispells are not an Enchantment. Nor are their 'payloads'. As I remember RQ3's Multispell, it specifically treated Disruption as separate spells with separate rolls for location affected, which makes the difference explicitly stated in RQG that multispelled Disruptions stack their damage into one location a significant one.

Can you tease some more on the Scenario book and the Starter box's content? Pretty please? With sprinkles on top?

Given that d3 average 2 per die, and 6 points is most human locations taken out, you need to worry about Multispell-2, which is within the reach of all starting characters, and any Initiate NPC with 2 Rune Points or more. Of course, Countermagic-3 or Shield-1 will stop an un-boosted volley and be there to interfere with the next one. The buff sequence for Korgo was at least 7 rounds of casting in RHW's post. But sure, most actual fights don't last 7 rounds. You aren't going to be doing much 'buff-then-sneak' maneuvering in those few moments, though. That's how I read RQG's multispell, too. I wouldn't consider the spells so simultaneous that a Countermagic-1 would stop them all, though. The first one would be stopped by it and blow it down for succeeding Disruptions. Also, I'd say each Disruption would be a separate wound for First Aid purposes.

Just in case that's an export from the chapters list of the manuscript, thought I'd point out the typo... But more great news, Jeff. Thanks.