Thaz

Your assuming its just the PC's who scout. Light Cav/Recon is a fight all of and in itself 🙂 In my Campaign the Defense of Apple lane went very well because the players won the recon battle. However they didn't kill all of those Tusk Riders....and the next outing will be harder.

generally speaking your going to be able to pick out the dangerous professional warriors from their kit, runes and stance. Unless their faking (and trust me its something I teach, tired rank and file spearman is a look used by sharks) you can spot the dangerous ones a mile off. And if your using Spirit Sight....

_every single character in the book has face tats_ its the norm Plus great sword and charging is likely good enough.

They're pretty obvious from the game art. And hiding them? Oh I think thats an instant dishonourable action right there. And yes Harmast would be treated with extreme prejudice as well. Its a fairly easy scan roll

I don't think you did. Because its starts with a sword trance in hand to hand. And that shouldn't happen except in ambush. They have to cast and close and THAT gives time for counters. For a start anyone with a death rune and a great sword attempting to close gets a befuddle in my book

You've assumed the Party have been ambushed or it's a meeting engagement. Recon. Recon. Recon. RQ combat is dangerous. Whichever side gets an ambush in likely wins assuming similar power levels and even if not then gets a significant boost. As such if your party are just pootling about with the thumbs up their....er head in the clouds they will totally get their backsides handed to them. However at least in the games I play or GM then recon plays a significant part of the game. When my party played 'The Defending Apple Lane' they had mounted scouts out, they had someone in the Tower watching and they had magical recon to call in. They set ambushes and fall backs and they made damn sure to have the edge. And so they won fairly easily. In your example you assume the Humakti Sword Trance type gets to melee range without getting hit with a ton of offensive or dispels before the engagement. Remember that a Humakti CANNOT ambush. It's significant. If the opposition spots their opponents have dedicated warriors they will target them. Anyone with heavy armour and great weapons and sporting a Death Rune (Humakti, Storm Bulls, Babs, ZZ) are going to get a lot of fire. Especially as targeting healers is frowned on.

I would guess there isn't _one_ but many. Many Clans will maintain a shrine to their ancestors and quite likely a spirit cult will have formed around a particular Ancestral Hero or local river or mountain or whatever. So lots of little spirit cults scattered around.

Yes, currently my game is ambling around between Aldachur, Alone, Apple Lane and Clearwine and alternates between the politics of the Aldachur Ring, Lekia's Colymar and the Feathered Horse Queen following the Battle of Queens :- The other group are off in Prax hiding out from the fallout of managing to be on both sides of the Lekia/Kallyr fiasco

Mine would be totally up for it, except his best friend is a Humakti and would sulk. Didn't stop him sloping off and learning Fear (POW rolls dude)

Dammit. Not AGAIN.

Indeed. One of the reason SO many Re-enactors and SCA types play RQ is because the rules are a pretty good reflection of what happens without being so crunchy as to be inelegant. But then it was written by and for them. I spot a LOT of commonality between the group memberships between the FB RQ group and various Brit Re-enactor groups....

Using an axe in combat is utterly different to a mace. And in fact even the largest of actual combat axes (say the Dane Axe) isnt very heavy or massive. Its power comes from the leverage not the mass. The blades are light and thin. Dont get confused about felling axes and all that rubbish on schlock fantasy novels.

And your point is? The rules are there to deliberately model that crushing weapons become more and more effective with size and strength. Which seems fair to me. And I have a LOT of experience of being hit by blunt metal weapons while wearing heavy armour.

and in particular Trolls and up are hyper effective with crushing weapons (Strength and Bludgeon and Trolls and Lead Weapons = OUCH. Great Trolls in DOUBLE OUCH).

Hi folks. Just thought I'd kick off a topic for once. I'm really lucky to be a Co-GM rather than a sole GM. We currently have 2 groups of characters running every other Sunday (so there's a game running every Sunday but each group plays once a fortnight). There is around a 50% overlap with Players to group. This came about because we simply had too many players to comfortably contribute at the one table. I am the regular GM in one session and play in the other. The other session has a 'Main GM' but makes extensive use of 'Guest GM's' to run one off or episodic side events. We share our Glorantha and I've taken to calling it the Beer with Teeth shared Glorantha although it's documented http://journeyoftheheroes.wikidot.com/ as the journey of hero's 🙂 Does anyone else use the Ars Magica inspired Troope play with multiple GM's or groups impacting the same world? Or have they in the past? Or (I'd also add I have in no way contributed to the wonderful right ups and poetry on journey of hero's wiki and that's all down to the other very talented members of the group. I just sling dice behind the shield or rampage around as Rajar the Stormbull causing havoc and comedy in equal parts)

Not to mention 100 Trollkin with slingshots. Quantity has a Quality all of its own.

As a matter of fact you could argue that I actually _am_ a semi pro GM come to think of it. I'm certainly not earning a living from it. However I and my fellow GM's and Players at BwT write up the stuff we create for our in-house games, play test it some more and then either sell it to Chaosium or add our own art and layout and publish via Drive-thru on the Jonstown Compendium. This has funded purchase of rules books, other chaosium material and on at least one occasion for me groceries. If we valued our time at anywhere near minimum wage we'd not be making a profit on the deal but hey...

Interesting. I would normally treat the weapon as part of the target and shield covers both....however as allied spirits can be weapons for some cults...hmmmm.....or indeed spirits bound into them.

Depends on location. If your knocking around Clearwine (which has priests coming out of it's ears) then notsomuch. Your the _only_ Orlanthi religious figure in Apple Lane maintaining not only a shrine to himself but also the temple to all gods..... Not to mention I suspect God Talkers and junior Priests spend a lot of time on the road maintaining shrines. Doing the rounds making sure all the shrines are maintained on your route and people get a chance to worship. That accounts for the 50% time. It's also been quite a plot hook for me. So why exactly are the entire party in Apple Lane (or whereever). Well AL has a priest of Uleria and a Orlanthi God-talker. It's coming up to Dark Season and someone needs to take care of the other shrines and nobody really wants to haul out from Rune gate or Redbird and definitely not over the mountains from Clearwine.... so do your Cult a favour and take one for the team spending winter there huh?

I can see LM or certain Lunar's writing like that. And others having entirely different standards and the arguments going on for years. "Using the Longvale standard units of spell casting..."

YGMV but in my mind God Talker is pretty darn useful position and should be hard to maintain.

To the OP :- Take a look at Peaky Blinders. By becoming the social hub of the city and spending on good works the deeply shady and criminal family get huge influence. And it's set in the right period. As to circumventing your characters wealth. I'm with Seneschal :- That's mean. It's like rolling up a skilled surgeon and then being told you cant do anything medical. Take a look at Beyond the Mountains of Madness or Dark Continent. A multi-millionaire deciding to head to the Antartic or Bolivia is going to mount an expedition. Aircraft, Zepalins, ships, hundreds of people. It almost writes itself. Who knows who he's hired? Are they going to be managing it themselves? If not who is? Running a full expedition is a great opertunity for the keeper. I ran Spawn of Azathoth many years ago with a very wealthy character (a English Gentleman) and he hired ships, planes and porters. It actually was really useful for me as a Keeper. I found it rather hard to justify the continual globe trotting otherwise. If however you have a source of funding it starts to resemble the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen instead....of course remember wealth does not give immunity to the law or social expectations. Especially in more civilised parts of the world. So in the OP's case :- Well your new money gangster is going to be regarded with suspicion by the established high flyers in Arkham. Some of whom I would expect to be Cultists. Do the Deep ones have their fins involved in bootleging? Are they rivals? Anything too overt and there will be a scandal. State or Federal law enforcement or worse the Tax office may take an interest. And who are your minions, are they local? Do they have _other_loyalties?

Befuddle cast by someone with a decent POW and/or allied spirit/fetch

I must say Harn is the one world system I never really delved into. Playing ad&d and reading wd and imagine back in the 80s I really envied the deep world building of RQ Glorantha , Harn and Traveller. Irillian kind of scratched the itch but in the end I got to Glorantha. Oh Jorune was another.....