Lordabdul

Same. My initial gut feeling is to rule that only sentient creatures (mortals, spirits, etc) can cast active spells. It's easy to overlook the "Active" keyword in the spell list, though, so I wouldn't be surprised if even people who agree with this have been playing with enchanted active spells for a few sessions before realizing the "mistake".

I don't think so. Check my recent Q&A questions, and David's answers (for example, this). Either way, the OP is about Spell Matrices. I think that one point of Spell Matrices is to free up CHA: you spend a POW or two to store a "secondary spell" so you free up space for getting bigger versions of your most often used spells. You don't even have to spend all the POW yourself, you can collaborate with other PCs or with some temple priest NPC with which you have a strong enough Loyalty or Devotion. Another point of Spell Matrices is what @Kloster mentioned: build up, over time or in one go, some commonly used "cocktail" of spells that you can cast more efficiently. You can regain POW fast enough that I don't see why some people don't find that a good investment -- my guess is that it's a combination of player psychology (some are more conservative than others) and actual rules used at the table (since many of the enchantment rules are not super clear).

Thanks for the info! What's the deal between this personal responsibility of paying ransoms/wergilds and the fact that AFAIK most Orlanthi don't actually own much? That is: their lands and their herd of cattle or sheep are assigned by the clan or tribe to them, so they're probably not theirs to use as payment? It seems like they don't have much to pay with besides whatever few weapons they have that probably got passed down from a few generations (and selling them might mean leaving the militia and losing voting rights in tribal assemblies and such). Maybe that's why there's incentive to participate in raids and battles? Because then they get a proper personal right of ownership to some of what was captured/plundered? Last, when I was talking about the various tributes tribes pay, I think these things are negotiated on a "from now on" basis and tribes probably don't plan for those until they happen -- these tribes are just wealthy enough or not to easily pay it or not. This includes of course the Lunars getting taxes from everybody from 1602 to 1625, Harvar Ironfist sucking the Far Place dry (especially the Alone confederation), the Torkani or Wulfsland having a "protection racket" tribute to deal with (respectively) Indigo Mountain trolls and Telmori, possibly the Dinacoli and/or the Bachad having the same kind of tribute for the Woods of the Dead (probably just the Dinacoli... nobody cares much if the ghouls go North), and something similar for the tribes along the border of the Upland Marsh or Snakepipe Hollow or whatever. I think there are a few tributes being paid directly to trolls, too, in a few places.

For serious enough inter-clan or inter-tribe feuds and conflicts, this is actually what would be negotiated, I think. There are multiple clans and tribes around Dragon Pass who get a regular tribute from somebody, and owe a tribute themselves to somebody else. A few years or couple generations later, someone will stand up and contest the tribute, and maybe the community gets out of it. Other times, someone tries to justify bringing back an old tribute from their grandparents' time. At least that's the impression I get from reading Dragon Pass history and HQG-era stuff... I'm not sure how much of this kind of stuff will remain in RQG. My problem with Ransom as explained in the RQG rulebook is that I get confused between two different things: p407 "Ransom" explains what you said, which is that people would have funds set aside somewhere to pay their ransom if they ever got captured. That's fine, and that's what players would want to know for their own character. p64 "What is Ransom?" however explains a different facet of ransoms. It talks about dealing with blood feuds and repayments of wrong-doings. I think that's the second option we're mostly talking about here? If clan A kills a thane or priest of clan B during a sanctioned raid, this will probably lead to some tension that could be resolved by paying a ransom. Who pays it then? I assume that, depending on the case, it could be the killer (or otherwise culprit) themselves, or their family, or whoever they can get in debt with personally... but maybe in other cases the clan or tribe would cover it, no?

Even if this "treasury" is less a room full of coins and jewels and spare magic items, and more a mix of a herds of cattle or sheep, a bunch of temple regalia and sacred artifacts, and other such things, there might still be a conscious decision on the chieftain and/or king's part to keep a certain amount of it in a "liquidity" state. For instance, they might make sure they can always sacrifice or give away, say, 10% of their herds at any given time for unforeseen circumstances, allocating heads of cattle accordingly. I imagine it all just depends on the past couple chieftains and kings, and their approach to resource management. Some clans and tribes may have a lot of buffer, while others are mismanaged or in a bad streak, and could be in trouble with the next feud or dispute.

Ah yes, the reverse of the first option from my OP. I have done that a couple times, good point, thanks!

To be clear: *I* wouldn't nominate a leader -- the players would (when it's an activity that justifies having a leader). Thanks for the suggestions! Even during the sneak I could see it happening: the "leader" is first and makes hand gestures and such to point out things to watch out for ("Oh shit, I didn't see that branch there, good thing you pointed it out"), coordinate segments of the path (make signs to the others for when it's appropriate to go from one cover to another, one by one), choosing the most optimal path (picking the right covers to begin with), etc. Ideally I want a good balance between "simple", "fair", and "not frustrating for the players". It's probably common for two players to have the lowest sneak skill for example, so now you gotta pick one of the two. Or you have one with 25% and one with 30%, and the one with 30% needs to wait until they're the lowest (when the other gets an XP roll) until they can roll. Lots of players love to roll their dice, especially if they might get an XP check, so I don't want to have a player frustrated because they don't get to roll. Most importantly, there's the problem of the player who plays a stealthy character, put lots of points in stealthy skills, and then ends up not being able to roll on the stuff they specifically advertised as "this is the type of stuff I'd love to do a lot of in the game!". They get to do stealthy things, but they don't get to roll. Some players will be OK with that, some will be a bit sad and will nervously play with their dice while waiting 😉 ...which is why I specifically said that I do not want to nitpick at the examples of sneaking past a guard, or noticing an ambush, or of cooking a meal at some holyday baking contest! Yet here we are nitpicking specific cases 😉 😜 I just wanted to know *if* anybody had come up with group roll mechanics in their games, and what they were.... I can then pick these mechanics and decide for myself when to use them depending on the situation. So far I think we've got: "make the highest skill roll", "make the lowest skill roll", "use the augment mechanics between one player and the others", and "use some success-bumping or success-counting house rule". And of course "no group rolls... everybody rolls". Did I forget anything?

Yep so that's my 1st option. Any feedback on how it plays in practice? Yeah but like I said, because of how RQ experience works, it means people who are good in a skill are the only ones getting a check in that skill. So the other people never learn from it -- unless you allow for check to anybody witnessing the "master at work" during that scene?

Hey there, I'm curious how y'all handle group rolls in RuneQuest? The Issue: I find that one common issue about asking for everyone to roll for Scan or Move Quietly means that, inevitably, someone will succeed with Scan (and will inform the others) and someone will fail Move Quietly (and will blow everyone's cover). Which means that things almost always get spotted, and stealth almost always fails. A typical thing in other RPGs is to just get one person in the group to roll (usually the one with the highest score) but RQ needs you to roll and succeed at a skill to get better at it, so you can't apply that here. Other RPGs have specific mechanics for group actions but RQ doesn't have that either. Caveats before people start nitpicking: In practice it's a bit more complicated, of course. For example, there will be an opposed roll with someone else's Listen/Scan/Move Quietly roll, so it can often lead to an "unresolved situation" anyway (success vs success or fail vs fail). Let's ignore that and focus on group rolls as a general feature/concept of the game system, and whether you have them or not. Maybe my players are signed up for a cooking contest on a holy day and need to co-prepare a meal or whatever! Current Thinking: My current thinking is to try one of these two house rules: Nominate a "leader". That player's roll is done first, and acts a skill augment for the other players' rolls. Simplest, doesn't introduce any mechanics, easy to run! Nominate a "leader". A success or better lets them bump the success level of two other players of two other players (fumble -> fail, fail -> success, etc.... like QW masteries, basically). A special lets them bump three players. A critical bumps five (the mnemonic here is that it mimics the +20/+30/+50 of augments). Note that both these idea rely on a "leader". The goal is to incentivize expertise and specialization in the group, or seek expertise from an NPC, while keeping everyone engaged in the action. For instance: go hunting with a hunter, go tracking with a tracker, go stealthing with a thief, go cooking with a chef, etc. Caveats: I might still use the "everybody rolls on their own" solution in some cases. For example, a group Scan roll doesn't necessarily have any "leader" coordinating things, while a group Cooking roll obviously does. So, how do you handle group rolls?

Way back in Wyrms Footnotes #5, there was information on how villages "near Alone" (and in the Far Place in general) would include big sharpened and poisonous tree trunks sticking out of buildings' rooftops (pictured below). The reason for that was supposedly that the Far Place is near the "Giants' Path", a route that Giants frequently take coming down from the mountains to go to Snakepipe Hollow. Giants would be less inclined to stomp on those houses. Here's the map of the area from Snakepipe Hollow.... the Giants' Path is the dotted line along the Vale of Flowers. As you can see, it's pretty far from Alone, but we can imagine that villages far enough up north (in the norther Tres or Amad tribes) may have this kind of defenses. Fast forward a few decades and the RQG Pegasus Plateau & Other Stories now tells us that this weaponized architecture exists in Alone itself! It's clear to me (because this is the "dumbest theory" thread after all) that something is up with the Far Point Roof-Sharpeners' Guild (which is mentioned in Wyrms Footnotes!). Obviously, they started a FUD campaign around the dangers of Giants wandering around, expanding their trade from a few isolated northern villages all the way to the Alone itself. Did they make fake Giant footprints way south of their usual path, making it looks like Giants were getting increasingly often lost down there? Did they put various types of bait to get real Giants to be spotted and validate their claims? Either way, they got the entire Alone area to order sharpened roof sticks, making their business boom over the last decade! However, they're getting desperate: now that most buildings have been equipped, they need *something* to drive up the maintenance costs of their clients, and they may be looking at *actually* getting Giants to come this way... unless they can find another threat to solve with roof-related counter measures. There's a lot of flying creatures in the mountains, after all, and any of them could warrant adding other differently sized spikes on everybody's roofs...

You mean: offset the failures by one? So fail = nothing happens, and fumble = -10% to all rolls (for a Passion) or -20% to the Rune (for Runic Inspiration) ? That's a possible house rule. My guess is that they modeled Runes/Passions on Pendragon, where inner turmoil and despair is both a mechanic and a trope of the genre. Whether this is a trope of Gloranthan stories (and therefore whether it should also be a mechanic) is up to interpretation.

....says the new boss.... 😄

Yeah I'm wondering that too. I could be wrong but this is not even their High Holy Day so there's not so much incentive to go to a truly sacred/important place. I think they could both go to New Pavis and find some shrines or temples for both their cults there.

Good to know, thanks! (I'm out of reactions for today so I can't just "like" your post 😉 )

That tends to be my view on this as well, but I can't speak for my players. Most of them do use augments pretty often like I said though so I guess they like it. Different people will have different tastes -- some will be more or less combative, some will be more or less often looking at diplomatic solutions, and some will be using more or less Passions. It's interesting that you're arguing for the case of (1) failing a Passion roll, followed by (2) a failed roll that fell inside the 10% margin that makes you regret having roll a Passion. The probability for that is pretty small, and it's actually close to (or sometimes smaller than) the probability of rolling a Fumble! And I don't see people avoiding rolling at all by fear of getting a Fumble. I understand that people tend to be very conservative (as @Manimati mentioned there's a lot of research on how our brains work against us, not just in economics but also in lots of behavioural psychology papers, and it's fascinating!) but I think I think it's not warranted. At least, it's not worth agonizing over, compared to the coolness factor of yelling some in-character taunt before attacking. 😄 But hey, there's nothing wrong with avoiding a game mechanic -- my same players avoid Call of Cthulhu magic like the plague! (although my guess is that it has more to do with how I shroud it in mystery and unknowns). And even if you avoid Passions, you can still roll skill augments and Runic Inspirations! That's still two-thirds of the game mechanic! 😉

AFAIK the intent of the mechanic in RQG is pretty similar to Pendragon. I agree that Passions are tracking behind the actions -- not leading them. When the player keeps acting in a way that aligns with their character's Passions, these Passions can go up. In return, the player gets to use these Passions to get bonuses in play, get support from their community, and have powerful NPCs helping them. On the other hand, players can always go in other directions, but after a while it will lead to the GM lowering some Passions, and the player losing some of the Passion's perks. It's all supposed to be fun and games, so those who don't find Passions fun are either misunderstanding the mechanic, or just enjoy playing characters who act rather randomly. On a more anecdotal level, a couple of my players often like rolling these kinds of stats (RQG Passions, GURPS Disadvantages, FATE or HQ/GW Flaws, etc.) just to see "what their character might do" when they can't be bothered to make a decision themselves 😄 That's the only time when the Passion may "lead" the action.

Ultimately, RQG's main advice is "use common sense, work with your GM, do what feels right". Determining and managing Passions is really more like alchemy than science, because they depend so much on situation. Only using them (augments/inspiration) is driven by rules. So for instance, losing a 60% Passion "naturally" takes a long time -- it's about growing apart from the other person, or from your community, and realizing that you don't care so much about them years later. Maybe you lose 2D6% every year if you haven't interacted with the Passion's target or something. Just make it up. On the other hand, if you have a Loyalty to Kallyr but suddenly she betrays you, or sacrifices you because she think you're expandable, you might lose 30% or 40% in that Passion in an instant. If you realize that she was really Lunar spy in disguise and that she was the one who killed your cat, the Passion might actually retain its score but suddenly morph into a Hate (Kallyr) Passion! "I would have died for you Kallyr! But you BETRAYED ME! And now I will AVENGE MY DEAR FLUFFYBALL!"

My understanding is that Passions start at zero. The thing about starting new Passions at 60% is mainly for the Family History and (more generally speaking) for character creation: you have Love (Family) or Loyalty (Tribe) at 60% because you literally spent most of your life loving or being part of this or that group. And you get Hate (Lunar Empire) at 60% when your grandpa got killed by their sorcerers because you literally heard that story (along with witnessing all the casual bigotry your family exhibits as a result) most of your life too. So I wouldn't expect a 2 weeks adventure to similarly propel you to an equally strong Passion. RQG p236/237 mentions that a new Passion's starting value should be discussed between the GM and player. The 60% in a recommendation (not a rule), and personally I would only use that value for special occasions such as taking on a new title or post, pleading allegiance to a new leader, being adopted in a clan or joining a community (such as a warband), etc. Depends how you play it I guess (YRQWV and all that) but that's not my interpretation. I see Passion rolls as an "actionable" thing. That is: you roll to see if you are motivated by your Loyalty, or if you can invoke your Loyalty. If you succeed the roll, it happens. If you fail, it doesn't happen -- which is different from the opposite happening! For instance, if you roll to repair a broken sword and you succeed, you fixed the weapon. If you fail, you didn't make it worse... you just didn't fix it, or not well, or it took way longer. It gets worse only on a Fumble -- a Fumble is generally the only type of roll result where something opposite to the player's wishes happen. That's important to keep in mind. So rolling for a Passion determines whether you succeed in the reason you rolled for, simple as that. A failed motivation roll just means that Leika's interests don't matter to you (not that you will suddenly actively act against Leika!), and a failed invocation roll means Leika won't lift much of a finger to help you (not that she will actively send thanes to get in your way!) So basically, a 10% Loyalty doesn't mean (to me) that you're Loyal 10% of the time and disloyal 90% of the time... it just means you're loyal 10% of the time, and 90% of the time it doesn't matter, and your actions are guided by other factors. Think about the alternative: would you, as a ruler, surround yourself with thanes with Loyalty (to you) at 80%, knowing they they will be disloyal to you 20% of the time? Probably not! 🙂 Even worse, consider a Hate Passion. If the "default" of everything was 50/50, does it mean everybody is being biased/bigoted/racist/sexist/etc against everybody else half the time?! That would suck big time. Although it would give the GM a lot of fun (roll 50% and roleplay that NPC being an asshole to the players!) I don't even want to think about what it means that, as a result, the opposite Passion (Love, Loyalty, etc.) would also start at 50%! Combined with the interpretation of failed rolls meaning acting against these Passions! Argh! Eternal internal turmoil! 😉 As such, to answer the original questions, IMHO: If you didn't have that Loyalty Passion before, you now have it at 30%. Or higher (talk to your GM) if the interactions with the NPC warrant it. Getting it at 80% or 90% all of sudden sounds completely wrong to me, especially since Passions at 80% or more get into "mandatory rolls" territory (RQG p237). It is indeed a two-way street. You roll under Loyalty (personage) to help (if you want or if the situation warrants it) with decisions impacting that person, but you also roll under it when appealing to that person for help, discounts, loans, etc. (RQG p234/235).

Technically, at best, the rules contradict each other : the "-10% to all actions" on p202 is contradicted by the chapter about Runes and Runic Inspiration, and by the GM screen's summary of augment rules. I agree with Phil here: @Scotty this should be maybe fixed in further printings, and/or clarified in the Well of Daliath?

Do they have any Passions higher than 60? (unless they were unlucky during Family History, they should have at least one or two at 70, no?). Did you let them improve their Passions after completing the first couple adventures? (especially if they did something for the clan/tribe, such as defending Apple Lane as per the GM Adventures booklet) What about Runes which, as per RAW, don't give a penalty (except to the Rune itself)? Or are they also afraid of getting into Runic Turmoil with a fumble? I agree with @French Desperate WindChild -- feel free to roleplay and rollplay NPCs using augments, and advertise the results as you do that. Don't forget to also do that during non-combat scenes. I think that once you've established that the players understand the rules (especially how Rune penalties don't affect their normal rolls, or how Passion penalties are only -10%), and once you've offered ways to improve Passions, there's just no way to force them into it, so you might just have fun by yourself with the NPCs. Sometimes it just happens: players don't "connect" with a particular mechanic and parts of the system fall down. I had this problem with Numenera and the Cypher System, for instance.

Hahaha, I love this 😄

Oh good find, I hadn't noticed that.

Yes -- I originally was on the fence about the augment rules because they seemed harsh in some places... but a more careful review of the rules shows that none of the 3 augment mechanics (skills, Runes, Passions) work the same! Argh! I really don't like that we need to internalize many more things than we should (it's a general problem with RQG), but it does mean that things aren't maybe as bad @claycle's players think? As @PhilHibbs says, it's not all bad: Augmenting with a skill is a simple, one-roll only, modifier on the scale of +50/+30/+20/-20/-50. Fire and forget. The rules say that you can augment anything with anything using these rules, but in practice I think this rule only applies to a skill augmenting something else... (unless you want to add even more complexity at the table where a player has to clearly specify if they are "augmenting" with a Rune or "getting inspired" by a Rune, because the two are different, but that just seems tedious to me). Runic inspiration, in theory, augments one ability only (pick a skill or a stat or something) with +50/+30/+20 for the whole scene (instead of just for one roll). However, on a failure, the -20 only applies to further rolls on that Rune! Only on a fumble do really bad things happen. A normal failure is only annoying if you wanted to cast Rune magic using that Rune a bit later in the same scene. So it's pretty safe in the end, I think. Cast your Rune Magic buffs first before getting inspired by that Rune if you must. In practice, because the positive bonuses last the whole scene, and many things could happen during the scene, I tend to be generous and say that the successful Runic Inspiration affects everything that the Rune can affect. So with a successful Darkness Inspiration, I give both bonuses to smashing things with a mace, and to stealth rolls, instead of (per RAW) only a specific ability (for example, by RAW, if the player used Runic Inspiration to augment a hammer skill, it doesn't work if they later swing a club or mace because those are different skills). Passions also augment one given ability (pick a skill or stat or something) with +50/+30/+20 to that ability for the duration of the scene. Unlike Runes, the penalty however applies to all rolls in the scene! It's -10 only: definitely annoying but not discouraging, IMHO. Thankfully, Passions tend to be quite high anyway. Just like Runic Inspiration, I tend to be more generous than RAW here. If the Passion is "Love (family)" and you're trying to protect a loved one, I'll give bonuses to whatever action directly fulfills that goal (hiding, running, convincing someone to not attack, etc.). If the Passion is "Hate (trolls)" and some trolls attack you, I give the bonus to whatever will hurt the trolls (both slashing with a sword or bashing with a shield). Per RAW, only one ability would get the bonus. So in order of risk/reward, I would say that, from best to less good, we have: Runic Inspiration, skill augments, Passions. I also think that my small modifications make augments/inspirations a bit more advantageous to use. This is where it looks to me like Passions need the most care from the GM, as in : make sure they go up every couple adventures if appropriate, and if the player wants to. It feel a lot safer to roll under a >75% Passion than a 60% Passion that hasn't moved since character creation. Remember, for instance, that the Loyalty Passion is a two-way street: when you do stuff for your clan or tribe, that Passion will probably go up. You can interpret it as the character becoming increasingly loyal to the people they serve, but you can also interpret it as these people being increasing indebted to the character, because this kind of Passion is also what you use to get support from your community! So it makes sense to augment it. It's kinda weird, at least at first, that it works both ways like this, but it kind of makes sense after a while. On an anecdotal level, though, most players I've played with enjoy rolling Passions and screaming "death to the Lunars!" or something equally appropriate. It gets them pumped up as much as it gets their character pumped up. Of course, sometimes it's quickly followed by an "oh shit...", but they still enjoy the mechanic's intent.

I'll add some other proposals that make your Glorantha vary a bit more: The Dundealos have completely collapsed years ago and are not coming back (or at least not in numbers big enough to make a clan, let alone a tribe)... so after the Dragonrise, when the occupiers on their lands are in disarray, it's all up for grabs. Pick a clan, any clan. Declare that they were a bit too cozy with the Lunars, and that after 1625 their neighbours attacked them and ran them out of their lands. Serves them right! Your refugees, on the other hand, have deals (old or recent) with someone in power (Kallyr, Leika, whoever) and get these lands as a gift... or have to work their way into them. The good thing is that it lets you pick almost any place you like in Dragon Pass. Tweak the date of the Maboder massacre, ignore Jomes Wulf and have your refugees be the ones who push the Telmori back! They're desperate, and that gives Passion bonuses for combat!

You don't think we have enough magic systems and rules already? 😅 I'd vastly prefer if Rightness was something that improved magical abilities within the existing rules. The most obvious (pointed out by others already) is that Rightness might add to Free INT, or reduce manipulation costs (which also kinda reduces Free INT in a workaround way), or something like that. It's simple, can work with different Malkioni societies (you might associate your pool of Rightness points to a specific school of thought, like Rokarism or Hrestolism), and still gives Malkioni a leg up over other sorcerers (more or less, depending on the power curve of the exact mechanics).