Lordabdul

So to be clear: The wyter is, in addition to being a spirit, an initiate of Orlanth Rex itself, so it has its own Rune Points pool for that cult. A wyter can cast spells known by the priest by spending POW, but an initiate can cast spells it has acquired from its cult by spending RPs... in this case, the priest is also, by definition, an Orlanth Rex initiate, so those 3 Orlanth Rex spells can be cast either through the priest (spending POW) or by the wyter itself (spending RPs), depending on what's best in a given situation? (most likely RPs, since POW is precious) This opens up a couple more questions: Can the wyter sacrifice POW to gain more Rune Points in whatever cult(s) it belongs to? Or even initiate into new cults? I'm not sure how we could handle the wyter regaining such POW through POW XP rolls so I assume that's not possible -- possibly, the wyter only has "fixed" cult membership and RP pools, set to whatever it had when it was alive (if a clan hero/ancestor) or when it was created/summoned?

Answering the 2nd question myself, and based on this, I think it is totally intended, actually:

I've got two questions regarding wyters and magic: The RQG rulebook (p286) says that wyters don't have Rune Points: they spend POW when casting Rune Magic. Good enough. But the RQ Bestiary says the same (p174) while at the same time giving an example wyter that has Rune Points separate (and different) from its POW. The RQ Gamemaster Adventures provides stats for the Colymar tribal wyter and it too gives separate Rune Points (although it ties those to Orlanth Rex specifically). So do wyters have Rune Points or not? If they do, what spells are they good for? AFAICT wyters can also cast spirit magic. Their MPs seem standard (equal to POW) but as the wyter casts Rune Magic, if their POW goes down, their chances of casting spirit magic goes down... is that intended? (big communities' wyters probably rarely go down in POW enough to go below 95%, but it can matter for small wyters). Thanks!

How did he acquire his RPs if he hasn't met anybody from the same (or similar) cult yet? Also, how does he replenish RPs?

I don't know because I keep also reading other people on these forums say that Chaosium "should" prioritize the cult book more because "obviously" you can't run games with only the rulebook's cult, and how Chaosium "should" prioritize the Sartar Homeland book more because "obviously" you can't force people to go and use the older HeroQuest Sartar book, and how Chaosium "should" prioritize the books on Nochet or the West or Kralorela or whatever because "obviously" you can't ask fans to play "yet again" in the same Sartar+Prax sandbox that they've had for 40 years and "obviously" they should change things. Only not change things like advance the timeline to 1625, for some reason... so yeah I think there will be people complaining either way 🙂

I like how you guys (1) assume that she cuts penises at their base to make sure you don't feel "inadequate" when she tells people who's penis is which, (2) somehow know how a penis that bled out and dried up compares to a normal penis or to severed hands, and (3) that you're still arguing about this and started measuring stuff on the image. I actually find it hilarious 😄 Good job David 😉

Not quite.... when you sacrifice a point of POW to Orlanth, you get to get 1 new Rune Point and 1 new Rune spell. Then you can spend the Rune Point on any spell you obtained from Orlanth. That is, any spell you acquired with your previous POW sacrifices to Orlanth. If you have sacrificed POW to Issaries, you have a separate Rune Point pool to spend on whatever spells you got there. These are magic points you can spend to do stuff Orlanth or Issaries did. I imagine the Hero Soul has just another magic point pool dedicated to what you did in the God Plane. When you sacrifice POW to get Hero Soul points, they go in a pool dedicated to you, the same as a Rune Point would go to a pool dedicated to Orlanth or Issaries or whoever. And then you can spend these points only to cast spells from that deity ("you" being another deity in that sense). Because the players are doing their first sacrifice, they don't have any pre-existing pool of magic points, and they don't have any pre-existing list of spells. They get their first Hero Soul pool point and spell. That's why, in that case, the points you get are only for the one spell you get. It would be the same with Rune Magic if there wasn't a list of "common spells". If the players do another heroquest, I imagine they'll be able to grow their Hero magic pool, and then they can use whatever points they have to cast any of the spells in that pool. Of course this is all conjecture on my part but if this ends up working like this, then I really like it because we get new mechanics that build upon existing mechanics. If the Hero Soul works like that, there is virtually no new rule actually introduced. Well, except maybe some table or something to figure out how you regain your Hero Soul points through being worshipped. But anyway, I'm all for reusable mechanics. Yeah I kind of agree -- your only reward is the "opportunity" to spend POW. And if you did something awesome, you may get the "opportunity" to get a more expensive spell or ability, which means potentially having to sacrifice more POW (at least until your pool gets big enough). Maybe a better way to handle it would be that the cost is fixed (everybody sacrifices 1 POW) but depending on your exploits, that maps to 1 or 2 or 3 ability points or something.

I think this is the key element that ties everything together : sure, players are free to act the way they want below 80%, but that opens them up to later decrease their Passions, which means they become less useful for augmenting stuff. Passions are both guidelines and tools.... if you don't follow the guidelines, you don't get to use the tool. Note that the XP check needs to specify which way the Passion will go! (it could either decrease because they acted against it, or increase because they got inspired by it!) When faced with similar mechanics in other game systems, my players are generally happy to roll themselves without me even asking (a mix of option 1 and 2). I think this is because they like rolling dice, they like using everything that's written on their character sheet (especially if that gives them an XP check, which a successful Passion/Rune inspiration roll gives you), and they don't like having to make decisions for themselves By the way, I'm curious how people use Fear Inspiration in game? OTOH I would: Use Fear (Dragons) to help flee from a Dragon (Jump/Climb/CONx5/etc.), hide from a Dragon (Hide/Move Quietly/etc.), maybe protect someone from a Dragon (any combat skill used for defending that person), and generally speaking getting away from the Dragon. Use Fear (Dragons) to fight the dragon once all other avenues of escape have been tried and failed. Basically, flight or fight, in this order. This is how I'd say it differs from Hate (Dragons), which is almost the opposite, as it would be used to do nothing else than attack and exterminate the Dragon (attacking, jumping on top of it, climbing to reach it at the top of the cliff, etc.)

Correct, I was still confused at the time It's actually more subtly complicated than I thought back then, I had to re-read the rules a few times: Augmenting is different from becoming Inspired. You can Augment any ability with any other ability. You can augment a skill with a Passion, augment a Passion with a Rune, augment a Rune with a skill, etc. This only lasts for that ability's next roll and the scale is +50/+30/+20/-20/-50 Becoming Inspired can be done only with Passions and Runes You specify what ability you want to augment (yay for reusing game terms to mean something else!), most probably some weapon skill or Orate or whatever. This will last the whole scene. You can't be inspired by more than one Rune or Passion in a scene... so you can't augment your Broadsword skill with Hate(Chaos) while augmenting your Shield skill with Love(Family) to defend your family from broos. Pick one, attack or defense, and augment that. The scale is different from augmenting, and different between Passions and Runes Runes have a scale of +50/+30/+20/-20*/special* The -20 is applied to rolls using that Rune, not to rolls for the ability you tried to augment! The "special" result is psychic turmoil... no penalty to the ability, but loss of Rune affinity and a recommendation to roleplay accordingly. Passions have a scale of +50/+30/+20/-10*/special* The -10 is applied to all rolls during the scene, not just rolls for the ability you tried to augment! The "special" result is negative thoughts and despair... no penalty to the ability, but loss of Passion score and a recommendation to have the character run away or hide and be generally lethargic. Can anybody spot any mistakes here? (I may still have missed a few details) Yep, this is how you run a romantic comedy in RQG

By the way, my conclusions so far are that: Up to age 15 or 16 (adulthood), kids may get increasing access to magic via magical items and friendly spirits (ancestors, already-bound spirits, etc.). They do not cast magic themselves however. After adulthood, they learn their first Spirit Magic, as they start apprenticeship in whatever occupation they fancy. A year or two later, after having been lay-member of a cult, they initiate into the cult and learn their first Rune Magic. This lets me introduce magic types one by one (instead of learning Spirit *and* Rune magic at the same time, which would be very busy and confusing for a young adult!), while also preserving the "kids don't do magic" trope.

That wouldn't be possible with Runes since non-adults haven't had the Runes "awoken" yet AFAIK. They do have Passions though, and I also am mulling over a "Personality Traits" house rule that represents, basically, "proto-Rune affinities" (i.e. stats that let you augment like Runes, but that lack the spiritual/magical aspect of Runes... they then would transfer over to Rune scores at adulthood). Even *after* age 10 I think they continue helping out, no? They probably help their parents/family/immediate community until age 15 or 16 when they become adults and move on to being apprentices of someone to learn an occupation, all the while keeping an eye out for a cult to initiate into. After some thinking and some ideas provided by people over on the Facebook group, I think that kids and teenagers may not *learn* Spirit Magic, but may *use* it. For instance, their parents might give them enchanted items and charms that contain these useful spells (healing, repair, speedart, etc.). Possibly their own old items, kinda like when you give your old cellphone to your teenager after a lengthy speech about responsibility and taking care of your stuff. That still sounds like custom rules for "kids' Spirit Magic" Even if it's only a couple rules, I'd like to avoid that altogether -- we have already way enough magic rules in RQG! I agree that adding a bit of "narrative magic" in the game is a fun thing and help sell the setting as overly magical. However I don't think I would mix mechanical effects with non-mechanical effects. If you spend 1 MP (mechanical effect), it should give you a mechanical effect (+10% in Charm, or whatever). This is effectively a spell. If the outcome is only narrative, the expenditure should also be narrative (i.e. no MP spend).

I'm considering how, in my Glorantha, young people in some cultures (like Sartarites and Praxians) might learn Spirit Magic a few years before becoming adults and going into a cult. Kinda like learning to drive you parents' car when you're 16, basically. Is there any precedent for this in published material? Can anybody foresee any problems? Can anybody think of cool things coming from it? Thanks

Oooh boy, watch out, this is a hotly debated topic. My superficial understanding of this is that Dragon Pass and Prax have a high percentage of initiates, with lower percentages elsewhere. Note that it's common for adults to be initiates to one cult while being lay members of another cult or two. Also note that some adults are initiates of two cults.... something to keep in mind when looking at numbers. For more info, check out the cult population numbers of Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes (available in PDF while we wait for the RuneQuest Sartar Homeland book), this other topic here on BRP (warning: it's long), and this old answer from Jeff Richard on older forums (although he was mostly talking about the HeroQuest concept of initiates, not RuneQuest, if that makes a difference): This other article (from Greg Stafford), looking at Humakt initiates in particular, may also give some clues. Warning: this, and the quote above, are somewhat old, and sometimes the designers have changed their mind since... so take it with a grain of salt As always, make your Glorantha your own, go with what feels right.

This is actually a good example of what I mean in my previous post: IMG a house guardian spirit may almost never be seen, but the people in the house would regularly leave food or other offerings out for it, and these offerings may disappear overnight. The people may also do other various related rituals.... the point being that the magical element is more implied than visible, so to speak. The folk traditions are what's visible (leaving food out on Godsday, saying a prayer before cleaning under the bed, whatever). Occasionally, they may get a glimpse of the spirit, when it chooses to become visible or audible for some reason (maybe it's that one time where it actually does defend the house against something!) but it would exceptional... maybe your mother tells you about the one time she saw it when she was a kid, and that's how you know the spirit looks like a blue racoon with feathered ears. Or maybe grampa is a shaman and talks to it all the time, but nobody else in the family does. Of course, I'm also a big fan of Hilda so if you want to have a nisse show up every morning for a sandwich and help with some chores, I'll also approve

Sounds good! Just be careful to not turn this into a bad Harry Potter-esque world where some things are done with magic even if doesn't make sense. There's a difference between immersing the world in weird/semi-magical folk traditions (Vaesen is very good for this in terms of 19th century Scandinavian stuff) and actually featuring magic in every day situations all the time. I'm more interested in the former.

I went to look for something in King of Sartar and while I was there I figured I would once again measure the distance from Clearwine to Boldhome. It ended up being somewhere between AAA/GtG (~45km) and the RQ/HQ books (~62km) (as far as the "assumed correct" scale goes, see previous post). Fun stuff.

I see, thanks. I would personally do it in an HQG game because it's easy for the players to see something and say "oh that's cool, can I do that?". The freeform system makes is not only possible but desirable. In an RQG game however it's trickier, you end up describing magic that the players may or may not be able to perform... it depends on your playstyle and how creative you get with the rules. I have a thread on that very topic actually. So IMHO yes if the players can do it (assuming they're in the appropriate cult, etc.), no otherwise.

Haha that's awesome Frankly I don't know if it's necessarily a bug. It could be one of those animals who just keep growing and growing until they're killed. Several animals like crocodiles were thought to be like this IIRC. I like this a lot because it basically looks like the Resistance Table formula, no? So you just try to beat the average stat on the Resistance Table to improve? (IMHO RQG needs to remove a lot of "custom" mechanics and do a lot more "reusing" of mechanics from one place to the next... so I tentatively approve this)

Yep, I already had all those corrections in a "more recent" PDF of the "first printing". The only difference I can spot is the new (indeed very welcome!) versioning information on the credits page.

One possible interpretation is that the 5d6+30 has less variance (35~60), while the 10d6 has more variance (3~60). With more variance come more opportunities for outliers, which means the possibility of the odd individual with up to 70 in that stat.

As Trotsky says, the Pairing Stones is, I think, the only official one. There is an upcoming book on Pavis and the Big Rubble, but it's still in production and will probably be released in 2022. Over on the Jonstown Compendium (Chaosium's community content program on DriveThruRPG), @Nick Brooke has a PDF that lists all of the other Jonstown Compendium PDFs, and that includes a map to help you spot where things are set. The "Rubble Runners" and "Rubble Runners Redux" books offer some NPCs with adventure hooks in the area, but the one you really want is the Sandheart trilogy (volume 1 is here). Here's Nick's blurb on it: A detailed sandbox setting (ha!) for police procedurals on the fringes of Sun County, Prax, including a straightforward drug- bust scenario vs. hazia-smugglers. Ten militia pregens can be used as adventurers or NPC backup. The remastered edition is lavishly illustrated and now includes four new pregens, new tasks for the militia and 19 pages of family history for Sun County. Volumes 2 and 3 have more great mysteries and police shenanigans. Disclaimer: Nick is one of the authors, and I did a couple illustrations and maps.

I agree with your general point, but I'm confused about your examples. How are these things magical? I suppose the seeds sparkle from a Bless Crop spell (I would describe it indeed, the same way I describe a glowing sword if it had Bladesharp cast on it), but I'm not sure what these other examples point at?

Recently I was reading some old HeroWars/HeroQuest-era cult write-ups and realized that the Rune abilities there can be used for a wide variety of situations. In many cases, they let your character accomplish magical or semi-magical feats that an equivalent RQ character can't. IMHO HQ's Glorantha is arguably a more magical place than RQ's Glorantha, but I was wondering about bringing some of that magic back to RQ... so for instance do you allow Rune rolls or Rune augments to accomplish non-mundane ("semi-magical") actions? What about allowing a Rune roll with a Rune Point spend to do something that is appropriate for your deity but isn't a Rune Spell per se? ("improvised divine magic")

For some reason this reminds me of this thing I see popping up again now and then

By the way I had to measure a distance recently so I figured I would join in this fun exercise. My conclusions are close to the OP but with the following remarks: I don't see a difference between AAA and the Guide beyond simple measuring error. The AAA/Guide maps can be made roughly consistent with the RQG maps by treating hexes as ~11km. I noticed that S:KoH and S:C have a lot of different maps... so I measured a few of them, instead of picking just one. Of the four maps I measured in S:KoH, two are consistent with the RQG maps (p232 and p237), and two are somehow using a different scale (p283 and p285). I'll assume that the latter are wrong, and that the S:C map suffers from the same wrong scale.