Lordabdul

I sent Martin a PM, we'll try to figure this out...

In other news, the Journal of Runic Studies #13 is out, with more commentary on the Battle of Queens in Chaosium's actual play, many "Jeff Notes", Thirsty Sword Vingans, French #RuneQuest, real-world Rainbow Mounds, cheating merchants, and more!

6 hours ago, Byll said:

First, grow your bananas...

An Eurmal shrine disguised as a banana stand... now that's a thing I'd like to see 😉

The interesting thing to me is that, since the Eurmali is disguised as an Issaries, they would have to tap into some kind of a secret network of tricksters to advertise their new Holy Site.

I'm not sure how one makes a new site/shrine/temple, but I assume they would need some "core regalia" or notable spirit or other important "thing" that makes that place good for worship (it's not scalable to have to cast Sanctify every time someone comes by). So I suppose the Eurmali would have to complete some adventure (possibly a heroquest but not necessarily) to acquire such a "thing".

On 9/8/2021 at 10:20 AM, skulldixon said:

One of my players was asking what kind of spirits their Humakti Sword could summon using the common Rune Spell.

I would go with:

• Raven spirits, who are possibly the ones watching the line between the living and the dead, and are keeping an eye on any dead things in the living world, making sure they stay dead.
• Wolves, eagles, and other scavengers are also spirits of Humakt. Any animal that would pick off the dead left on the battlefield.
• Spirits of honour, loyalty, oaths, truth (in the sense of "not a lie", not in the sense of "knowledge" that LM would have) and/or fighting morale, who have no well defined appearance, and manifest inside pieces of armour and weapons. These are probably very annoying spirits 🙂
• Spirits of former Humakti heroes, who typically line up the road to the Underworld and are ready for any upcoming apocalypse in which the dead may rise.

By the way, the one that leads the spirits of the recently dead to the Underworld is actually Issaries, according to the Glorantha Sourcebook. Sadly there isn't much gaming material for that responsibility of his, and he's lacking a Rune spell or two for that. Humakt is just the guy who draws and enforces the line that separates the dead and the living, so Issaries basically drops the spirits off in front of Humakt.

1 hour ago, Beoferret said:

1) Could a Chalana Arroy healer (without fear of divine retribution) still pick up a shield - or a staff, say - to protect an injured person, using the item in a solely defensive manner to only parry blows directed at that person? [...] And either way seems like a pretty dramatic moment in a combat situation!

If it sounds fun to you and your players, then MGF: do it!  Plus, I doubt that there will be a CA priest anywhere nearby to say "hey, you! you're not supposed to do that!". Worst case, if you find that kind of stuff dramatic, make a Passion roll or two to see what kind of impulse(s) the character give in to in that situation. And if that sounds like an interesting conflict, have some CA priests indeed get angry when they learn about it.

1 hour ago, Beoferret said:

2) While the CA cult does not teach weapon skills (understandably), wouldn't most people have learned at least a taste of the fighting arts as a kid, i.e., before they've realized their calling as a healer? And, more to the point, is it possible for someone who starts out as a warrior to eventually find themselves drawn to Chalana Arroy?

Yes to the first point. That's why you get cultural skill bonuses to things like shield and shortsword or whatever in the character creation. And, again, if the second point sounds fun to you and your players, then MGF: do it!  Sounds like a cool character concept. Note that it would be an outlier in the cult, and PCs are generally exceptions anyway, so that's fine. Good for a memorable NPC too.  They wouldn't be able to use their sword skill in any direct way, but I would allow using it to, say, augment Dodge (when faced with sword-wielding enemies), and other indirect uses like this.

6 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

CMIIW but you don't use RP to cast a spell with a matrix. The matrix has the spell stored in it, you roll POWx5 to cast it, and that empties the matrix (you may be able to use part of the capacity).

That's my understanding yes. So basically, a Rune-spell matrix is like a one-time-use Spirit-spell matrix, more or less.

The third episode of our Gloranthan podcast is now out, and it features the amazing @David Scott as our guest! And although the main topic is about personality mechanics in RuneQuest specifically, there is a lot of discussions, examples, and gameplay tips that I think are very applicable to other systems. Plus: some wonderful game design history that will be of interest to any Gloranthaphile or Greg Stafford historian!

If you're already subscribed to the God Learners in your podcast app of choice, you will most probably already have the episode on there by the time you see this. If not, how about subscribing today? 🙂

It's out!

Episode 3: Passions in RuneQuest should show up in your podcast app of choice soon, if it's not there already.

Thanks to everybody who pitched in!  The episode is now recorded and in the final steps of audio editing. I'm sure I can speak for both @Joerg and I when I say we're pretty excited about this episode, we had an amazing guest, and there are a few interesting things we'll be sharing in the show notes (which Joerg started typing today). Stay tuned!

34 minutes ago, Jeff said:

If this seems harsh = it is. The worship of the goddess Chalana Arroy is an extremely harsh and prohibitive one in many respects, and especially in the nature of their self-defense. In fact, the cult expressly prohibits the use of any weapons or magic which may damage a part of the world. The worship of a passive deity is a luxury which few can afford. Not many wish to throw themselves at the mercy of the world when times are troubled. Thus, worship of her has been restricted to the most devout individuals or the most advanced civilizations.

Thanks for the clarifications!

Since Chalana Arroy is a playable cult in the rulebook, I wonder what was the expectation for it in terms of game design? Do you have examples from playtest sessions of interesting challenges to a CA adventurer's faith and vows, and how these were handled?

On 8/23/2021 at 1:14 AM, Darius West said:

The way you avoid checkmark farming is by telling the players that they get ticks only when the GM says they are in a stress situation i.e. only when the GM says so.  The corollary is that this means that the GM now has to pay a lot more attention to remembering to hand out skill checks, which can break the narrative flow a bit.

How about working with exceptions -- you get a checkmark on a success unless the GM says you don't. You don't get a checkmark on a failure unless the GM says you do. So the GM only has to think about it when it matters. That's what I do. I intervened in that way only a couple times so far, and both times it was because the situation was so exceptional that it was hard to miss.

Gotta love how @French Desperate WindChild said "....and if there is no other less deadly option" and yet here you all are, coming up with other less deadly options 😉

Anyway, for me, Chalana Arroy is one of those cults where I would be running with whatever the player wants to play with, whatever attracted them to this rather peculiar cult (gaming-wise). IMG, not every cultist is going to act the same way in the same situation, and not every cultist will have the same interpretation of how "acting properly" would look like. Compare the character's Devotion and Cult Lore passions with their actions. Have their interpretation of CA's doctrine clash with some NPC priest. Go with the flow. Challenge the character's faith. Make a cool story. Gloranthan people are not a logical machine hive mind devoid of flaws.

To answer a few other questions:

18 hours ago, Dirk Le Daring said:

There seems to be, from a certain perspective, quite a difference between the two books.... Which is it to be ?

My guess is that the somewhat "relaxed" statement in RQG is to make CA playable. Seriously, it's just a simple vow of pacifism. Don't think too much about it beyond that, and start playing. Interesting things will happen. Whether the character steps on an ant or not is not going to be one of them IMHO, and the whole thing about sweeping the floor of insects before treading would be, IMG, only for temple-bound extreme priests, not for adventuring healers (otherwise they would take forever to get anywhere!). Again: it's OK to have various people having different interpretations of a doctrine. Happens all the time. These people typically fight, too. Which can be funny for a non-violent cult 🙂

18 hours ago, Dirk Le Daring said:

Also, was the decision of Chalana Arroy to cease being passive the reason that she became able to cure disease, and heal wounds ? I would assume that is the reason, but.... Curiosity. I am thinking the passive nature that Arroin urged her to mantain was that of not interfering in any way with the world (Not violence / non-violence), thus taking action gave her the position of primary healer ?????

My understanding of the Sourcebook is that she was already able to heal people and gods... until she found the first dead guy (Grandfather Mortal). There, she figured "damn, shit's going down, yo" (yes she sounds like that in private), and started being proactive to (1) figure out what this Death thing is all about, and arguably come up with the Resurrection Rune Spell, and (2) realize that taking care of sick or wounded people doesn't fix the broader issue of the *world* being broken and wounded. So she became proactive because she wanted to heal the world, which she did as part of the Lightbringers.

Note that Arroin did not urge her to maintain her passive nature. He urged her to maintain her *purity*. Which I assume she did by vowing non-violence. Like "them fuckers with them swords and shit broke the world, man, ah ain't gonna do that shit, no sonny, ah gonna be all pure and shit, no swords no hitting no nothin', ah don't need that kind of stress in my life you know what I mean?".

The Journal of Runic Studies #11 is out! This is a short one, but still features some Runic Rants, NPC stat blocks, Babylonian math, and, of course, ducks!

Aw thanks @Runeblogger 🙂 

We discussed this earlier today on the unofficial Chaosium Discord server, and as is often the case, RB has some relevant existing blog posts from several years ago 😄   If you're interested in going further with so-called "extended contests" (scene with multiple opposed rolls), check these two articles out:

• Non-violent conflicts in RuneQuest and other D100 games
• Social Combat in RuneQuest 6 and Mythras

Use the "translate" button at the top unless you want to practice your Spanish 😜

Yeah, I mean they showed up out of nowhere, defended the town against an attack, and then got a whole pile of expensive loot.... then they were given a hut nearby, and who knows what they've been doing since then. Sounds fishy. Were they in league with the Tusk Riders but then double-crossed them? Are they preparing something? The local community might come and visit to see what they're made of, what their intentions are, and so on... and while all this is happening, the PCs are just sitting on expensive silverware and necklaces, but not getting any money from it yet, so it's just worthless shiny junk in practice. If they don't hide it from the visitors, people are going to ask questions. Or maybe they're seen coming and going to the nearest town, selling that stuff. Oh my. More questions.

This is all gaming gold by the way as far as I'm concerned 😄

On 8/21/2021 at 12:33 AM, JohannesH said:

Not going to allow them the whole Tusk Rider treasure hoard, though. I calculated that with it they'd live like princes for rest of their life.

That loot is indeed surprisingly huge, to the point where I wonder what the designers had in mind here.

But remember that the Adventurers' loyalties to their community(ies) and the fact that these communities support them in return mean that this isn't some D&D "grab the loot and go" kind of thing. This loot isn't theirs to take, it's for the tribe. I may ask for some Loyalty rolls before they can keep any of it without showing it to their tribal king (Leika in this instance, probably).  This tribal king might give them dibs on one item each that they would have good use for, but otherwise she will put all of this to better use than them (well, unless the king is an evil NPC in your campaign, which is always fun). As an alternative, the king might offer them a good horse, some cool iron armour, spell matrix, or other reward that will definitely be more immediately interesting to players than some fancy kitchenware.

Also, remember that all these items from the Tusk Riders' loot are not cashable immediately for Lunars, except for the, well, the Lunars... of which there's a giant pile already, I'll grant you that. But all the other items are virtually adventures in waiting. You have to find someone to appraise it, find someone to trade it, and they might trade, say, some golden pendant for some other jewellery, two slaves, and a dozen cows. Whooopdidoo, now it's even worse, at least the golden pendant was easily transportable! It might be better to track down the original owners of these things, and get obligations from them, including being able to say "no, I don't want cows, I want that pretty spear behind you". Also, who knows which items are cursed or magical, which ones will lead you to resolve feuds ("We thought the people from over the hill stole that stuff but it was the Tusk Riders! Thank you for returning it! You can call upon our clan any time and we'll repay our debt!"), and so on.

And if the players are still in D&D-murder-tourist-mode, make sure that all those people missing their stuff are hearing about the Tusk Riders having been defeated, and are now coming to Clearwine to ask Leika for their stuff back. This is bound to get interesting...

4 hours ago, Arcadiagt5 said:

In a sense I’m not the target group you’re looking for because I mostly came from Pendragon, so the Passions were part of what drew me to RuneQuest.

You're not necessarily in the target group for the podcast episode itself (although you might learn a thing or two if we do our job well! 🙂 ) but you're definitely in the target group for this thread. Indeed, because Passions in RQG are very close to the mechanics of Pendragon, any mistakes and lessons you got from decades of Pendragon games would be beneficial for an RQG player! And any cool uses of Passions you've seen over the years (in Pendragon or RQG) would also be interesting to read!

The Journal of Runic Studies #10 is out! Steve Perrin eulogies, ENNIES, Orlanthi poetry, Sartarite clans and military, and more!

22 hours ago, JohannesH said:

One of the characters is a Shaman of Waha. What is his position in the society and how could he support it? And what kind of difficulties there could be. They are outsiders who can speak tolerable Heortling but have very little knowledge of the culture.

IMHO the answer is really "whatever you want":

• You may want to play a story arc in which the PCs are trying to find a new home (why did they leave Prax?) and have to fight the prejudice of the locals and get accepted by them...
• Or you may want to play a story arc in which the PCs are "stuck in Sartar" and miss all the good things about Prax, but the local are in desperate need of warriors and shamans to protect them and solve their problems, and so they are going to do whatever they can to make the PCs feel welcome, especially after the new thane shows up and proves to be a giant incompetent asshole.
• Or one or two of your PCs could show a genuine desire to get adopted into the Colymar tribe, and after proving their loyalty to Leika and the locals, they could actually be appointed thane of Apple Lane.

At this point, I don't think it matters much whether one of the characters is a Shaman of Waha or not -- he's an outsider who falls into those 3 categories I outlined above, or some other category you make up. Everybody needs a shaman. They're weird, but they're useful, and that's why a community always supports their shaman.

6 hours ago, pachristian said:

For the experienced RQ:Glorantha GM's. How many checkmarks, on the average, do you expect a player-character to get each adventure? Each play session?

With sessions between 2 and 3 hours, I think on average my players get a handful of ticks. More if the dice are in their favour. Less if they were unlucky or if the session didn't involve much rolling. Note that this includes not just skills but also Passions and Runes and POW. With augments, it's not uncommon to get 2 ticks in one go (I let them get a check on a successful augment, not just on the "main" roll). And with adventures that can last anything between a couple sessions and a dozen sessions, the number of checkmarks at then end of the adventure can vary wildly. Of course, the latter sessions might not see many new ticks because so many common skills have already been ticked.

6 hours ago, pachristian said:

Do you keep a running count? 

Nope. Players tick the boxes, that's enough tracking.

6 hours ago, pachristian said:

Finally, how do you prevent "Checkmark farming" where players request to gratuitously roll on skills to get checkmarks, whether or not they have a bearing on the current adventure?

I never noticed such thing. If they are finding new creative ways to solve problems, then that's good. If they are doing silly things just to get a checkmark, then that's less good. But remember that getting a check isn't necessarily happening always and only on a success. Look at RQG p415 -- it's clear that the rules give the gamemaster some wiggle room. So you can award a checkmark to a failed roll if it was warranted, and you can refuse a checkmark on a successful roll if you don't think it deserved it. So if they try something silly and succeed, you can make it, narratively speaking, be a "success at a cost", and refuse them a checkmark because you think it was so silly that the characters can't have learned anything valuable from the experience (or whatever other reason you give the players).

1 hour ago, jajagappa said:

A: Yes, Lokamayadon.  He's not really a "priest of Nysalor" though.

Thanks for all the answers jaja! About this though, like I said, I know nothing of this guy, but the full quote from the Guide is: "The Heortlings were broken and enslaved, and Nysalor’s priest Lokamayadon even usurped Orlanth’s place in their temples."  So "Nysalor's priest" here means "an Orlanthi priest who was a close subject of Nysalor"? (as opposed to "a priest who worshipped Nysalor"?)

The Journal of Runic Studies #9 is out! RIP Steve Perrin, international shipping woes, Chaosium community content at the Ennies, Yelmalio, Saird, and a bunch of other rants, videos, and links await you in this issue.

4 hours ago, SDLeary said:

Its not the magical issues that cause pause. Its the cultural. So even if Elmal IS Yelmalio, and a subcult thereof, I hope that there is more than the somewhat simple entries that we have become used to.

Right.... so yeah I guess that's where you need to find a way to work into your Glorantha that the Elmali of Dragon Pass were increasingly at odds with the rest of the Orlanthi anyway, and it came down to some near-civil-war-spiraling-shit under Tarkalor's reign. Even if Elmal is Orlanth's buddy in the myths, his worshippers had been getting cozier and cozier with Dara Happan Yelmite cults (GS p26) over the past centuries. That's bound to drive a wedge between them and the good ol' storm boys. My interpretation is that the Elmali had morphed over that time into some almost-separate ethnic group in the Orlanthi, so that the prospect of getting their own land as a sun-worshipping tribe of Sartar was welcomed with "yes, finally, that's what we wanted without realizing it!". That's why I was talking about a "win-win solution" earlier: not only do they get access to the "full version" of their god (instead of the more limited version with the moustache and plaid shirt), they also get their own lands, freedom to go full-on sun-worshipping without upsetting the neighbours, but regain good relationship with the Princes.

Culturally speaking, sure, a whole bunch of Elmali might have said "but we like the moustache and plaid shirts! my father and my father's father had moustaches and plaid shirts", and would have stayed. But let's say there were 2000 Elmali in Sartar proper back then (so not including Alda-Chur or the not-yet-founded Alone). That's probably high (it's about 2% of all adults by my count) but whatever. Let's say there was a 40/60 split between those who wanted to stay in the awkward situation of living around the other Orlanthi, and those who would go to the new Sun Dome (so 800 staying, 1200 going). Over the next generations, the Elmali mostly gathered around Runegate to stick together, but lost young people who prefered to initiate in other cults, or to go wear some shiny gold armour. Their numbers drop from 800 to 500. That's the Minor Temple in Runegate now. Sounds plausible to me. Tweak numbers as needed. Maybe add a shrine or two around Sartar if you want more Elmali around.

By the way, to muddy the waters some more, GS p26 says that Monrogh Lantern came back with Yelmalio, "a god neither Yelm nor Elmal" 🙂 to be fair, later on p118 it says "Monrogh Lantern revealed their god to be another name for Yelmalio". So frankly, just ignore half the texts and find a story that works for you  😄 

43 minutes ago, SDLeary said:

In the Gloranthan example, its Monrogh telling you that A is B, without any physical reinforcement.

Magical reinforcement is just as good, maybe even better, than physical reinforcement. As @Leingod mentioned, you can go and virtually talk to your gods. You can walk up to Clark and say “hey, is that red and blue spandex under your shirt? Are you really Superman?”. Go back to what Jeff said about Monrogh SHOWING the Elmali how to go deeper in their magical worship rituals, revealing stuff they didn’t know before. Or what Jeff said in another thread about magical challenges and how they’re used to prove your claims when they relate to gods and cults and stuff, and that’s an accepted path to the truth in Glorantha,

Regardless of the specifics, Monrogh proved A is B as surely as anything can be proven in Glorantha. If your worldbuilding sensibilities aren’t convinced by heroquesting and magical proofs, just find some other backstory for Monrogh that works for you. Maybe finding some ancient artifacts or something?