womble

Sartar: King, Chieftain, Thane, Carl, Cottar. Thane is the lowest 'noble' rank. Lunar: use whatever takes your fancy. Esrolia: Queen, Grandmother, Priestess.

I don't think Glorantha is at a stage of military science development where such terminology will be either particularly well-developed, or consistent, even within what passes for the armed forces of the most organised nations. For example, Sartar doesn't have an army. It has Kings and chieftains who maintain small bodies of 'professional' warriors (they're not soldiers) supplemented by different levels of levy from the general 'warrior-minded' populace. The force fielded is composed of numerous warbands of different sizes. A given warband (if large enough) might have some designated 'sub-leaders', but they'll just be assignments from the war leader: "Snorri, you take the South Hamlet levy and make sure they stay in line". The forces of the Lunar Empire are so diverse as to almost defy categorisation, even the formations which could be described as being composed of 'soldiers' (rather than warriors). The ranks used by one regiment may well differ radically from those used by the one next to them in the battle line, even if they're similar troop types. Some might maintain a distinction between what we'd consider 'warrant' or 'non-commissioned' ranks, and the (generally drawn from the Nobility/upper classes) ranks we'd term 'commissioned'; others might just have a smooth 'progression'. In general, though, the smallest subunit of a mass, muscle-powered unit will be much larger than our 'modern' TOs would call for. Troops operate over a much more restricted separation, and larger 'squads' are more resilient to losses than smaller ones. The equivalent of the modern (30-ish troops) 'platoon' would be an 80-man Century from the Romans, with few subofficers between the Centurion and the Legionaries. Tiro, Milites, Optio, Centurion, first spear, [appointed office holders] Just five ranks, really, in a 5000 trooper Legion, below the political appointments. Cavalry squads are smaller, but so are the units. But there's a fellow on here, M Helsdon, who's worked up a huge book describing (so far, his non-canonical take on) the militaries of Central Genertela; maybe that book gets published as Canon one day. I'd certainly like to see it. It's mentioned in https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/5540-swords-of-central-genertela/

Will there (in the fullness of time, natch) be Tusk riders?

I believe you're correct that the example is inaccurate.

If you want to play in the default RQG setting, the 'Apple Lane 1625' information, with changes of personnel, a potted history of recent events, a nice iso drawing and some local maps are published with 'modern' production values in the Gamemaster Screen Pack. The major elements that will be missing from RQ2 and 3-era material are Rune affiliations (needed for the characters to cast Rune Spells - you have to roll under a relevant Rune score to cast a Rune Spell), Passions, and the reusable Rune Magic of Initiates. In earlier versions, Initiates only got one casting of a Rune Spell per sacrifice for it, so it wasn't uncommon to come across Initiates with no Rune Spells, or only one or two, in case of emergencies. Now every Initiate under RQG rules will have at least one Rune Point and access to the Common Spells and one of the Special spells available to their Cult. There's the chance they might already have some unreplenished Points, naturally, but having all your antagonists 'running on empty' will ring a bit false after a while... The Appendix in the core rules deals with how you can approach modifying the stats between editions. It's pretty straightforward.

That's what they're doing, yes. The percent chance of a fumble in your example is 4%, which four chances in your d100 roll are 00, 99, 98, 97. So if you roll 97 or more you've fumbled, which is what the table says. Personally, I just round all numbers mathematically. Which is actually what the table does (ignoring page 7 which is a stupid and inconsistent rule, IMO). 5% of 81 is 4.05, which is greater than 4, so if you "always round in favour", the chance of a crit should be 5% at 81. It actually changes at 90%, when the chance, unrounded would be 4.5%, which means they have rounded mathematically. If you always round in favour of the players, monsters' chances of crits and specials will be lower than players' for the same chance to hit, and the reverse applies for chances to fumble. It's just nonsense.

I'd read "more" as including all previous elements of that step, so would preclude adding 10 to a skill that has had 25 added to it.

I believe it's exactly equivalent to a Kopis, referenced in the weapons table.

For me, the caster's cultic associations don't necessarily have anything to do with the way their Spirit Magic manifests. An Orlanthi could pay a Humakt priest to teach them Bladesharp, or a Praxian Shaman to find and bring hither a spirit that knows 'enough' Bladesharp. It'd be where the spell is learned from, if anywhere, which would determine its 'special effects'. Rune Magic, on the other hand, is so closely tied to Cult and Rune that there should definitely be influence from both on how the spell manifests itself when cast. I have seen differing opinions on which of Rune and Spirit Magic is the 'showier', and haven't been able to find a definitive assessment in the core rules of RQG. How showy any given magic is has implications on your game: if (for example) Truesword is subtle, no one knows to dispel it with a couple of MP until someone starts coming apart at the seams. If it's showy, and recognisable, it becomes an obvious target for a point of Dismiss Magic.

Those 6 weapon skills are not about them 'learning to fight from the day they were born', IMO; Homeland skills alone do not a fighter make. They're to represent the weapons that the children of that culture would be 'most' familiar with. If a culture wasn't exposed to weapons, they just wouldn't get any 'variant' weapon base skills. There's no concept of 'balance' in the character generation system. Bonuses are assigned in the skills that 'everyone' in the culture could readily be expected to have some knowledge in, to provide some differentiation in cultural biases and backgrounds. A Sartarite orphan of Chalana Arroy would still have seen (and probably played with) more of the weapons that Sartar Homeland gets bonuses in than 'other weapons' (like sickle swords....), so the bonuses wouldn't adjust, IMO. Cultures that are 'supposed' to be non-fighters will still have weapons. Every 'disarmed' peasant caste in History has taken up axe, spear, cleaver and cudgel in self-defense, and many have developed potent methodologies for using them; I don't see why Glorantha would be different. Which ones a particular culture gets bennies in, depends on the location. The character generation system, as well as being heedless of 'balance considerations', also needs considerable massaging by GMs to meet the demands of players, sometimes. If a player wants to have a character who's been cloistered in a pacifistic House of Healing (which is an extreme example of a C-A orphan who actually hasn't had any 'cultural exposure' to weapons) for 16-21 years of their life, then they aren't playing any of the backgrounds offered by the rules and you'd expect to have to jigger with their 'cultural skills' since they aren't actually Sartarite, they're 'Cloistered Monk - Pacifist'. Still, I wouldn't 'reward' such a background with moving weapon cultural bonuses into other skills.

You could say the standard times are the risk-free ones. If you want to hurry up the process, make your Mnemonics roll: Success shaves 10% off, Specials knock a quarter off the time and Crits halve it, say. Failure would mean you wasted the standard amount of time. And a fumble in either direction means the spell being operated upon is permanently irretrievable, or stuck in Free INT (maybe you can purge it with another Mnemoics roll; failure there forgets the wrong spell, or corrupts it if you fumble) if you really want to be nasty... Will players ever want to shave a couple of hours off a 'remember' operation at the risk of losing a spell?

It could just be selection: only the mothers who had small babies survived and bore live progeny, so Darwinian selection acting on Mendelian inheritance could produce the same result. Also, Magic. Their DNA was probably smaller; reckon that counts as a germ line mutation... Edit: can the midgets breed with normal sized humans?

I've been wondering whether there might be a "Mnemonics" skill for Sorcerors to govern the speed at which they can "shelve" and "reconstruct" their spell knowledges. Might be germane in a more Sorcery-focused setting.

I'd certainly rule it to be Sorcery only. But there's no limit on the number of spells; you just have to be able to cast them before the Circle runs out, and they can't be stronger than the Circle. So since you don't need to put Intensity into Duration or range for the spells, you can concentrate on your Circle Inscription, but that limits you to doing spells on a Circle if you want best effects, which is... tactically constraining...

Disregarding your players is a great way to have fewer players.

As a GM, I'd look at what the character has been doing and assign any profession-based income off of that assessment. Certainly, the acquisition of land would give the opportunity for the character to run their Hything* using their Manage Household, as a Noble, and that will produce income, but if they engage a steward to do it for them, they're free to do what they like for the year, and still collect their income (less the salary, if any, of the steward), so (assuming they don't spend too long off adventuring), they could attempt to make more money as a different profession. It would be easy to come up with reasons why a character couldn't use some skills: they probably would struggle to make an income if they set themselves up as a crafter with no tools or shop, or try and break into a field that already has competition (though that could be 'plot hooks'...), or which requires a grant of rights that they don't have by some Authority. * Hything: a term I thought I had seen used, specifically in terms of Saxon land organisation, to mean "A grouping of five hides", 5 being the number of families expected to be needed to support a properly equipped and prepared fighter in the field. I did have a squint at Google, but it didn't seem to have much recognition of the term, so it might be a product of some twist of memory, but if it is, I claim the neologism, and am going to use it in my own personal Gloranthan lexicon...

You're a Sorceror, in my book, if you have a Rune and a Technique. But all that changes is that you can't forget your Rune or Technique. It isn't "whether you're a sorceror" that determines if you can forget-and-remember, but the thing you're performing Memory Palace functions on, namely, the spell in question. Sorcery spells are structured in a way that you can forget them in a structured enough way to remember them. Spirit Magic spells are not. Rational constructs are more amenable to mnemonic techniques than non-rational ones. The mnemonic techniques are taught as part of the learning of the spell, I'd say. Edit: doesn't mean someone, somewhere, hasn't developed some way of 'shelving' a Spirit Magic spell and then 'getting it back out to use again'. It might even be a Hero Quest ability, but given the ready* availability of Spirits to know spells for you and Bindings to put them in, it's not as necessary. * if you're the kind of successful adventurer who's running out of CHA-slots for their Spirit Magic...

Apologies. I was too colloquial in my typing. "ex matrix and spirit storage" should have been "excluding matrix and spirit storage". We're saying the same thing! \o/

It has a cap on how many points you can know, total (ex matrix and spirit storage) but no cap on the magnitude of a given variable spell. It's just difficult to find a source for a really big variable... I'd almost wonder whether some geometric progression (squared, maybe) in the mix would be reasonable.

While they're polytheists, those who Initiate into multiple Cults are generally special cases. "Most" Initiates (with a capital I) will simply be contributing members of their culture's dominant religion for their gender. As you and your players are all newbs, I'd encourage you and them to restrict yourselves to one scoop of Initiate goodness per character to start with; the PCs can add another Initiation later if they want to and it suits their characters, as they get more au fait with the way the world works. The polytheism expresses itself in having a general respect, or even being a Lay Member of other Cults within a given Pantheon, but everyone (nearly, in Dragon Pass) is a Polytheist, because there' evidence all around of the existence of lots of different Gods...

I don't think that's the full measure of the price they'll charge. That 1L for supporting a Rune Spell includes the charge for knowing the spell (covered in the charge for the Rune Spell element). If you want someone to cast a sneaky Bladesharp lots on your rapier before a duel, you have to pay them for knowing Bladesharp lots, as part of the price, as well as the MP cast.

Magic points to support a Rune Spell are priced at a Lunar apiece. I'd say maybe 10% of the cost per point, for a Spirit Magic spell. More would be pretty much insisting that the recipient learned the spell instead of getting someone else to cast it.

Mastery is irrelevant. Spam it or take a day if you want to be parsimonious with your MP. You're completely ignoring that. So maybe I'm just going to make this my last post. This argument is productive for me, because it's making me find things: I retract my statement previously that implied that 'army sorcerors' had to be old and wizened. Army sorcerors need a Rune, a Technique and POW, and they can get 3 points of POW a year by organised POW training. Um? This, bud, is wilful disregard of facts: Rune and Spirit Magic don't even begin to 'scale' with numbers. Sorcery absolutely does. Sartar Magical Union-grade stuff is also available to Sorcerous Hero Bands. Wyter Abilities crimp your sorcery style not one whit. And, they're emphatically not Rune Magic or Spirit Magic. I've shied away from including them in the discussion because they're available to both and will, naturally, synergise with whatever magic style the Wyter's Initiates use. One possible Wyter Power: Multispell for Sorcerors. If they hadn't mastered the runes of their spell, they couldn't cast it at all. Or 14 for one point of POW into their Inscription. Three seasons training and they have a Rune, a Technique, a Spell, and an Inscription. They only have the spell(s) that match their Runes and Techniques: their buddies know different Runes, Techniques and cast the other spells. And reliability is moot. After the first year they're casting at season-plus-7 Intensity. A second year in the ranks and they're on +3d6 effect for a year. They don't even have to be able write beyond basics, as their spell skill cap is irrelevant. Maybe they take the three years to get that good, since the Wyter needs feeding. You are significantly underestimating the utility of Inscriptions. You also appear to be significantly overestimating the duration of spirit magic. If : to neutralise Sorcery (which actually doesn't help), how much easier is the job of the general opposing a Spirit or Rune Magic-fuelled force? Absolutely not the case. All your senior troopers (with average or better INT) will be able to pop something like that with season or better duration. At which point they can cast it on all their squadmates before heading out on campaign. A decades-trained War Wizard is an entirely other thing to a sorcery-organised army. The levels of buffing are dependent entirely on the rate of POW acquisition, which can be fast, not training in spells, which is slow. Your War Wizard is the one doing the flashy, obvious 'war magic'. The rest are just quietly getting on with their job. 7/12ths of the population are capable of getting to Strength 12 for a year at x1 casting cost with a single Rune-Technique combo inside 3 years given the proper environment.

Thus magic makes things easier and harder at the same time. And any poor mite afflicted with/by one of those things without the Mother's protection is going to be monstrous indeed, or unviable. Or both.

There's a limit to how much more powerful a Rune Priest can get: their CHA. Rules how many bound spirits they can have, how many Rune Points they have (which, in a campaign, is actually limited to d6+1 a week if they have a weekly Holy Day, and they'll soon enough be down to that), and how much Spirit Magic versatility they get. The Sorceror becomes more versatile by getting together with other Sorcerors and getting them to do their one trick on the same target the first Sorceror is. One body doesn't have to do everything. A team of one trick ponies can do quite a few tricks. A team of people who can all do lots of tricks (that don't stack and wear off in 15 minutes) worse, won't match them. Any organised society can ensure that their troopers all get a POW gain roll every season. That 500L price is for Adventurers, not scholar-phalangites. Repertoire, Schmepertoire. Yeah, from a freewheeling Adventurer's point of view, Sorcery sucks. Who wants to sit in a library for a season for a chance at a d6 in one spell? But why does the effective Sorceror Adventurer care about what they can, or can't, cast (for almost sure) in less than a day? It all lasts a year, anyway. Or you can go for a half-hour ceremony and try again if your spell doesn't work, or just spam it Unceremoniously until it works if you're that desperate. Casting effective Sorcery in actual combat is chancy at best, given the long cast times when you get down to Strike Ranks.