womble

Apart from the difficulty of training two spears on the same target with the body of the pilot and bulk of the steed in the way of the second spear, the only target they could both aim at is the one that doesn't need any extra killing, because it's directly in front of a rampaging Rhino... I think the pillion would be best armed with a bow or javelins. And maybe even sat facing the rear...

It only goes as far as the seasonal Holy Days (of all the Gods in the Core book, plus a few). I agree that it's a player-facing aid. I've printed 'em at A3 size to use as calendar/diaries for my game.

In my reading, whenever your characters are Inspired by their God's Runes, or a Devotion, they are 'Heroforming', to some degree. This degree is magnified, IMG, in Worship ceremonies, with the effects ramping up as the significance of the Day increases, reaching a maximum during the Sacred Time rituals.

Now that looks real nice. Not casting any doubt: I haven't seen a reference to a pillion Llama rider... where's that from? Is it the default arrangement, or a 'special case'?

[shrug] Adventurers are dilettantes who have quit (or been shorn of) their societal obligations, leaving them free to pursue their own goals, which largely involve drinking the proceeds of their last sojourn into The Rubble while sniffing around for some clues as to their next visit. Maybe they have the coin to pay this month's trainer's fees, maybe they don't. Maybe they can be bothered to get out of bed before noon, maybe they can't. The non-adventuring life is a combination of boring and dangerous hard work, whereas the life of an adventurer has moments of adrenaline-fuelled excitement and is also dangerous, and has boring interstices. But at least there's some excitement. Focus is absolutely not a requirement to become an adventurer. Sure, like any 'trade' someone who's focused will be better at it (and probably survive longer), but it's no requirement.

Starting with 'new adults' in '16 won't really give enough headroom for children of those characters by '25... Even if you start as 'established parent 21-y-o' in 16, your children won't be of an age to be tangling with the antagonists so far offered, 9 years later. You could jigger the dates of those episodes later I guess; how much later would depend on how fast your first generation got with the procreating... A perennial issue in Pendragon games is the 'first generation' struggling to find wives and get heirs in time for their retirement at a convenient age for the second generation to be active 'when it's meant to be' in the Grand Campaign. An additional issue that you might encounter in RQ (if there are any Earth Goddess Initiates about) is the sheer superiority of their children... with lots of Rune Points, Bless Pregnancy can generate pretty capable stat sets, and the cap on RP means there may be a glut of spare POW gains looking for homes in Enchantments.

Personally, I'd run the Red Cow Saga first, if I wanted to have the complete thing. In a lot of ways, it's good for newbies, because it starts very focused on the Clan (and therefore a narrow set of Cults and Culture to try and introduce to Glorantha-newbs. I think this approach would render a lot of the 1625 material somewhat unchallenging, since the characters would be a good way down the road to Herodom by the time the 'default' RQG start date rolls around. But I don't think Red Cow as a 'prequel' works, for similar reasons: it starts too early, reaching its peak just before the point where RQG PCs start by default, and if you play with 'fresh out of chargen' characters through the Quickstart, Apple Lane, Cattle Raid etc, your players will be wondering, by the time they get back there after Dangerford, why they had such troubles...

Ah yep. Forgot about having to use the 'right' RP... So a Consume Mind would (to be useful) have to provide both the RP and the 'access' to the Rune Spells, and since the Consumed Mind can no longer Worship their God(s), the Rune Points would be one-use, and once all the Rune Points were used up, the knowledge of that God's Special Rune Spells would be useless until some more relevant Rune Points could be Consumed. Indeed, it might expire, if there are no relevant RP there; that would have to be defined by the spell. However, it might be that once an Atyari has Consumed one Ernaldan with "Gnome to Gargoyle", they'd be able to use that spell with the Rune Points from any subsequent Consumed Ernaldan Mind, since it's the Rune Points which are permanently burned when one-use spells are cast, not the knowledge (so in a more straightforward example, an Ernaldan with 9 Rune Points could cast "Seal Soul" 3 times without having to sacrifice any more POW to regain the knowledge). It totally depends on the definition of the spell... 'prior experience' of rulesets isn't very helpful, I feel, given the different mechanics involved in this rule set.

TCS has a chunk of the background and personalities involved, both friends and foes of the protagonists. I'd say it's pretty much necessary to have to support Eleven Lights, though there's not so much to actually 'run'.

And very shortly after the Bestiary, the slipcase set(s)! Since all three components of that will be ready at that point

Depends whose Rune Points they use. If the Consumed Mind is providing the 'knowledge of how to do it', the Atyar cultist can use their own Rune Points that they get back from Worship (Atyar). They can even cast 'one-use' Rune Spells repeatedly; they'd just be burning their own Rune Points unreplenishably to do so. Assuming Atyar is in a position where its Worshippers can replenish their own Rune Points, natch. Not sure of the Cosmological status of that particular horror...

No they aren't. You learn a spell when you sac for a Rune Point, but after that, they're totally divorced. You can burn all your RP on one-use magic, and still have all the Rune Spells you ever learned. You can learn all the Special magic available to your Cultic affiliation, and still have room in your CHA cap for more so you learn RP without getting a spell. You can learn a 3 point spell while saccing a single POW for a single RP. You can spend the RP you got when you learned a point of Shield to (help) cast any Rune Spell you like. You could say the drain takes the last-learned Spell knowledge and 'one' RP (which doesn't matter whether it's the last-learned or not; they are fungible). Saying they're 'attached' suggests that some link remains beyond the coincidental one of getting a spell along with a point. Edit: There is also a possible route to receiving the use of Special Rune Spells without sacrificing POW. The bit about acquiring spells mentions they can be granted for special circumstances, and there's something about it in, I think, the conversion guide appendix.

It's a damn long stalk on chapparal. And they have to have the Ostrich come out from whatever defilade they were hiding in for the time it took to get among the target herd to spirit the successful raider(s) and their putative load(s) of "choice [speed-butchered] cuts" before any of the other more competent tribes catch the dismounted pygmies and take them prisoner. Operating dismounted robs them of their speed advantage.

I read 'choice' in your 'disable choice herd animals' to read 'prime', aka, the 'pride of the herd'. Same meaning you've assigned to the butchery product above. I would have thought it would be unusual for no herd guardians to remain to look after the 'mysteriously unexcited' non-stampede-participants, meaning they would need to be overcome. Obviously, this would be easier since most of the guards are off trying to get the herd majority under control, but hardly beneath anyone's notice. How good is ostrich night vision compared to other herd beasts? Cos trying to sneak up in the daylight to get into blowpipe range isn't going to be practicable very often on such a tall bird.

Erm... so they disable the pride of the herd, then start a stampede and when the herd guardians dither about protecting the fleeing majority or protecting the prize bull and cow, they make off with the 'second best'... Cos if you disable the ones you actually want, you're not getting away with them any time soon, with only an ostrich's load capacity to carry the staggering prize...

More so than the bow? When you're riding an Ostrich? Stealthy, as in "You wouldn't even know you'd been hit if it hit your clothes"? Fiddling poisoned darts into a blowgun while at the run doesn't seem a very good idea, either.

I find the irony of Lingua Franca to be that it refers to a 'language so widely used as to be universal', in a language that is more widely used and universal. I think the monks were 'avin' a little joke at Charlemagne's expense... And the plural of Moose is obviously Mooses. Meese is the diminuitive plural of meeces, meaning many miceicles. And in an only loosely-related point: Man, I love me a neologism. Also, even if you take the native English speakers here (and I'm being generous... ) there are both left- and rightpondians, so 'correct' structure and especially spelling is going to be difficult to pin down.

It also has one or two wee errors...

They are. See the Cult descriptions in the Rune Cults chapter. If you want to be 'precise'.

It's similar, but has more Cults' Holy Days included. And has pretty pictures.

The Runes don't make him more violent, they're a reflection of the violence inherent in his system. Getting more violent should generally be accompanied by an increase in the Storm/Disorder Runes; getting less violent would often merit a decrease. However, all these things are interrelated and it's perhaps difficult to separate cause and effect sometimes. If the game's systems notch those stormy, disorderly Runes higher, the character is becoming more attuned to those Runes, and the Cosmology tends to suggest that the characteristics of those Runes would become more vividly expressed in the personality: the 'rules' reflect the 'world', and make it at the same time. It's entirely likely that you're playing with people who actually just do what the world would naturally have them do, because they're good, experienced, competent Roleplayers, but if your Storm Bully starts making friends rather than killing enemies and calming down or talking their way out of fights, the rules give you a mechanic to reflect that: their Storm and or Disorder Runes can go down and calling on the magic of their fractious God becomes harder. And it's never really an issue if they don't want high Rune scores that are 'meant', RAW, to constrain their behaviour in some way. Runes and Passions are similar mechanics: if you, the player, want the advantage of being able to reliably get some Inspiration out of one of them, the 'downside' of the 'free' character advantage is that there are some limitations on your behaviour: freedom is given up for power, as a Priest gives up their time and money for their status in Society and with their God.

Even professional athletes and soldiers-in-training (assisted by modern science for recovery and nutrition) don't, and can't train "strength" for 8 hours a day. They'll do different things over the course of a day's training: agility or endurance (DEX or CON) training, or just skull or skill work, or drill or classroom work. And that sort of training regimen requires a monomanaiacal focus that's pretty much alien to the 'adventurer' mind set (and still doesn't get you 56 hours training a week in one thing. Spend 8 hours in one day hitting the weights, and you'll need a rest the next day, or possibly for the next two or three days, if, indeed you've not done yourself a mischief that lays you up for a month with no possibility of Strength training. But one of the 'USPs' of RQG is that your adventurer is presumed to have a life outside of adventuring or training for adventuring. Their community and/or job needs attention too.

They can? I didn't read it that way. There's an entry in the Worship modifier table for 'not even in a shrine', but... [goes away and has another read]... Oh my! I read that wrong. Minor Holy days give +10 to Worship, so it's not unreasonable to assume 'not Holy days at all' just don't give a bonus... But then again, nowhere does it mention how many Rune Points you'd get back on a less-than-Minor Holy day... You could assume it's 1d6 (d6+1 for Runemasters), but wouldn't it be less than that? Worth pointing out that most minor Cults are Associated with a Major Cults, and Major Cults often have Minor Holy Days every week that you can glom onto and get a d6 RP back, even if you can't rustle up a Sanctify spell of your own. Edit: On reading further in the thread, seems I was right that not mentioning how many points you get on a not-a-holy-day meant it was zero. Cool. Point about Associated Cults still stands though.

You can either ignore it (because, RAW, there is no provision for using a Long Spear 1-handed) or make up/adopt some minimum stats for 1H-Longspear (I went for Str-11, Dex-7). Further to that, you can either ignore the absolutism of the language of the second quoted passage, and allow too-weak/too-clumsy adventurers to use the weapon at the appropriate penalty, or just rule that because it's a 'substitute default base skill', it only applies if the character is fully physically up to scratch. I'd go for the first option, there.

They just have to get the harpoon in the right place and they can fly ride round the Llama and tangle its legs up!