Lordabdul

Still, refusing a Prince's call is generally bad for your image. See how well the Maboder did after pulling the same kind of stunt. Worst case, you could frame it as the Elmali rebranding themselves as Yelmalio worshippers as a way to escape the social stigma of their decisions. I suppose it's not eliminated because there's still the Runegate people keeping its cult alive, and there are probably a handful of people in each tribe clinging to it all around Sartar. "Eliminated" would mean there's exactly zero Elmali left, which we know isn't true. As for Elmali murdering the Prince, it's a bit of "conveniently filling the blanks" in King of Sartar. Prince Jarosar is said to have been "killed by Lunar spirits" on p154, but poisoned "from a friend's hand" on p30. We know that KoS is being vague and contradictory on purpose, so you can go with whichever option you want, I guess, but we know Jeff goes with the second option. And we know that he attributes this "friend's hand" to a treacherous Elmali: I don't know if there's any other published source that favoured option 1, or any published source that had already attributed the "friend's hand" to someone else. Whether this is "tying up loose ends nicely" or "egregious retcon'ing" is an intellectual exercise to the reader. As far as I'm concerned, I'm happy that it gives me a good historical framework to work with for my Glorantha. KoS 2e p115 says he "gratified the Elmal worshipers by seizing new territory", but that they formed a "new tribe" called Sun Dome Temple there. On p169, it says Tarkalor promised rewards to the "disgruntled Elmali", and that when he rewarded them with new lands, the Sun Dome Temple was begun. So this all happens around the time of the shift, but it's clear he called onto the Elmali for help. The Guide however seems to be written, ahem... "pre-retcon" (let's say it just "simplifies things") and indeed says Tarkalor asked his "Yelmalio allies" for help. KoS has a full write-up of the "Elmal-is-Yelmalio" story. And remember that KoS is a "collection of in-world documents" and as such, you get these sweeping lists of things with questionable "authenticity". For instance, that list of deities (p39-42) that has Elmal and Yelmalio listed separately also has Heort and Geo and Autero/Goldentongue and so on -- all heroes and minor gods that are modelled as sub-cults in RQG. So Elmal being modelled as a sub-cult of Yelmalio in RQG doesn't seem out of place.

I don't have any opinion on the Elmal/Yelmalio thing (I came to the lozenge through GtG, GS, and RQG), but I had often wondered about the quick turnaround from one worship to another. So FWIW, these are the exact bits that made it click for me (emphasis mine): What I had previously vaguely understood as "Monrogh showed up and asked the Elmali to update their rituals to Elmal 2.0" seems to be, in fact, "Monrogh got the Elmali out of a bad spiraling situation by showing them a win-win solution out of it". No wonder everybody rushed to the Sun Dome...

Maybe it's a quick way to "cure" an adventurer who has fallen to Despair or Runic Turmoil after a fumbled Passion or Rune augment roll?

Apologies, I didn't mean "slippery slope" in a pejorative way. I meant it only as "once you start moving that way, you can't really stop at just a few new rules, you have to keep going until you have a new tactical combat system". I actually love and enjoy a couple combat systems that are as tactical and crunchy (maybe even more!) than RQ3. As for the OP, I'm actually tempted by a couple RQ3 rules such as special attack knockback and weapon reach (closing on long weapons) but I think I would tinker with the rules enough that it would qualify more as "house rules" than anything. I've also once run an RQ chase using CoC 7e chase rules. Those are very easy to port over, and they're easy enough that they almost feel like the GM is ruling on the fly.

Nice summary (if we can call 2 pages of text that! 🙂 ) of the situation, thanks! Regarding sacrificing POW for more Rune Points, my reading of p313 ("The sacrifice requires a full week of prayer and meditation in the temple.") is that "temple" here is the generic term, so it includes shrines and sites, as per p284. This would NOT include a Sanctified area, IMHO, but who knows (and that's why some RPGs use italicized or bold gameplay terms, folks!). As such, the "need" of a priest or god-talker is sort of implied, as @Baron Wulfraed said, since you get bonuses and access to more Rune Spells by going to a bigger temple (one that is staffed by more priests). I think that in your "reopening case", assuming it's a shrine (site is too small, minor temple is a whole different business), I would let the player pick the Rune spell being offered, based on a spell their Adventurer often uses, or based on what the Adventurer did to re-open the shrine (either some badassery against the Chaos creatures who had overrun the shrine, or something that happened in the heroquest that re-opened the shrine). Shrines are "usually staffed only by a god-talker" so I would promote the Adventurer to god-talker (if they're just an initiate) after some audience with the nearest High Priest, and require of course that they indeed take care of the shrine as expected (time, resources, etc).

The Journal of Runic Studies 8 is out! Some God Learner found document, Gen Con Online, Jeff's pronunciation, RPG-a-day posts, some French RPGs, and a stupid digression into the Wizard of Oz await you in this issue!

Even RQG is arguably a bit too "Strike Ranky" for me. I'm tempted to use SRs just as "initiative", and ignore all (or relegate to "optional") the other stuff that invariably puts everybody on the "slippery slope to action economy systems" (which is where RQ3 ended up). AFAIK, that's actually more or less how the designers use SRs in their own games, even though they kept all the RQ2 rules when they wrote the new book. But that's mostly "house rules" and not "rules from other editions".

THIS YES

Sure, but that's still where I fail to see how Rune Magic is more accessible than Spirit Magic? If you don't populate your Glorantha with many open-minded or capitalist shamans, then either way the Adventurers have to find a shrine or temple to their cult, or to a friendly cult. Once there, they can either sacrifice 1 POW for Rune Magic, or spend money for Spirit Magic. So the accessibility is the same, no? But that's still presuming that Rune and Spirit Magic are equivalent and interchangeable anyway. To me they're not : Befuddle, many of the Detect spells, Dullblade, Multimissile, Speedart, and Spirit Screen are all examples of super useful spells that have not much Rune Magic equivalent AFAIK.

You need them to maintain those big temples that give you Worship bonuses 🙂 You also need them to teach you spirit magic, make enchantments for you, let you ally a spirit, initiate into a cult, etc. You don't need a priest to pray and worship on your own. But you don't get a Worship bonus. Ah interesting, I didn't think about the accessibility part. But I'm not sure about it? RQG p313 says: "The sacrifice requires a full week of prayer and meditation in the temple." I assume that "temple" here can also be substituted for "shrine" since p284 mentions that a shrine typically gets you access to one Rune spell special to the cult. Either way, it means that accessibility to Rune Magic is limited to shrines and temples. In comparison, Spirit Magic is accessible from any wandering shaman or God Talker tending to a site, in addition to the same shrines and temples as Rune Magic... so my reading is that new Spirit Magic is more accessible than new Rune Magic if you're out in the wilderness (in addition to Spirit Magic obviously replenishing way faster). Did I miss something?

And in fact the topic was clarified in the Q&A pages (scroll down to "Worship"). Simple initiates can indeed do their own worship and replenish their Rune Points.

Interesting. During play, what was that fixed INT stat used for?

Well..... YES.

See the previous page: I'm not clear whether these rules actually make it easier or not to recover Rune Points, however, so who knows whether that affected the attractiveness of Rune vs Spirit magic, and whether my point is valid or not. Another potentially important point is that, IIRC, Godlearner's game has been going on for decades? I think they half-upgraded to RQG from RQ3, so it's also possible that the characters all have more than 15 Rune Points each? And that's another important thing to mention, I'd say. And I would be totally open to believe that some things starts to break down with high-powered characters.

Yep, very well said. Same thing for me -- there's a lot of arguably bad gaming I did as a GM when I was younger, but I now understand, especially in a game like RuneQuest, that the Adventurers are heroes and they should be doing heroic stuff... not waste a day to setup a ritual that goes "pprrrtf" because they have a different reading of the rules than me. The Adventurers know what works and what doesn't with the Warding spell, so if the players don't, I tell them. Now, there are still ways to mess with the players... I mean, during these hours setting up the ritual, do they spot the enemy's scouts, who are taking note of what they're doing and where they're setting up their ward wands? Or even try to stealthily replace one of them with a similar looking stick?

Yes but that's the thing for me: scarcity of Rune Points is one of the factors that makes Spirit Magic a desirable thing to use. Change the mechanics of Rune Point replenishing, and that affects the balance.

It is indeed starting to look like "we are using custom cults, with custom magic rules, in a custom campaign -- did you ever notice a problem with the original rules?" 😄 Even if Godlearner had the best intentions in the OP, I doubt that any of our experiences and replies will have much applicable value...

Oooooooooooh yay thanks so much! Now if only there was an easy way to find my downloads and/or updated orders on the Chaosium website 😉

Was that "should" as in "the rules don't enable this but I wish they did", or "should" as in "if you use Sanctify right, you can get by"? AFAICT you can indeed get by with Sanctify, although it's of course not as nice as with a temple. I'm also curious what your problem was with the holy days -- was it the problem of always having to check the calendar to keep track of them?

Hey Scotty, it doesn't look like this ever happened? (I was mostly interested in the NPC form-fillable sheet)

Did we ever do the most obvious dumb theory about Jar-Eel? That she's really... just... an eel in a jar? Ok so eels are kinda serpentine thingies right? They're obviously draconic in nature. Which means they have powerful dreams. The aforementioned eel in a jar is dreaming of living life out there as Xena Warrior Princess (maybe her jar is sitting on the table near a TV set in the 90s). That's such a powerful dream (I myself had very powerful dreams about Lucy Lawless in my youth) that it becomes reality, just like Dream Dragons. So... there you have it. If you go to the Red Emperor's kitchen and knock over the jar, you can turn around the whole Hero Wars.

Depends why the Warding fails. In many cases I've read about in this thread, the reason for the failure or inadequacy is something the Adventurer would know about. For example, if Warding only works with convex shapes, that's something the GM can tell the player out of character (and potentially start a whole debate that will bore everybody else at the table 😄 ), and so the player can just do something else, as nothing really "happened" in the game yet.

Oops, sorry, I figured that by now anybody interested would have subscribed by email or RSS 😄 Thanks @Brian Duguid for keeping the thread going!

Agreed... although my understanding is that it's not so much that @Godlearner's players never use Spirit Magic, but that they look into Spirit Magic only as a secondary thing. IIRC, their campaign has been going on for many many years so if they have now 20 Rune Points or some crazy thing like that, and if they play more or less seasonally, then they can blow 10 RPs per adventure without blinking. Or even a lot more if they minimaxed with votive images all across Dragon Pass's temples. Still, while some Spirit Magic overlaps with Rune Magic (see: healing or weapon buffs), there's a lot in Spirit Magic that just has no Rune Magic equivalent, so maybe the players are also too used to solving problems the same way, or having the same kind of problems thrown at them.

For more kamehameha logic, you could go full on with 1 MP = +X% to the Resistance Roll (with X somewhere between 1 and 5).