Lordabdul

Nah, Spartacus was Kirk Douglas. Past that, I only paid attention to the insane Cecil B. DeMille-type large scale crowds of extras, or to Jean Simmons

So for anybody who still cares, with 95% Worship, the average person would get to POW 16 at 10 years (with only 3 RPs... POW 15 with 5 RPs), but struggle to ever get to POW 18 (which is fine, not everybody wants to be a Rune Lord/Priest). The typical Colymar militia (3 RPs, POW 12) would have 3 to 5 years of experience under this model (I used a more opportunities for POW gain than the average person). Both are interesting to me. I'm still going to stat NPCs with my gut, as always, but knowing whether that's below/on par/above what the rules "dictate" provides some interesting insights... when I look at this kind of thread and ignore the "rules-as-written must be obeyed no matter what!" posts, I can still often find a few little nuggets of world-building that make NPCs feel more alive, because reconciling the world with the system often leads to some creative thinking. As for heroes, Leika Black Spear might be in her 15th to 20th year as an adult according to my spreadsheet, assuming the maximum amount of Worship and POW gain rolls per year (since she's adventuring like crazy) and depending on how she sacrificed to get her big pile of RPs and what was her original POW at birth (I gave her 16). That seems consistent with her timeline (she was exiled in 1613 after Starbrow's rebellion, which means back then she was already "big enough" to be causing trouble). You could make her a couple years older if she sacrificed POW for other things in her lifetime (which she probably did, such as establishing a link with the wyter). One thing occurs to me looking at my spreadsheet's progression for adventuring PCs and NPCs like Leika: with the diminishing chances of increasing POW when POW gets higher, you have to spend about a year without doing any sacrifices at all in order to get to 18 and reach Rune Level. Then you need to wait another year to get to 19 so you can start sacrificing again without going under the threshold. Something to keep in mind for players who get to Rune Levels... although I'm curious to hear about some practical experiences instead of my theoretical spreadsheet. Volunteering POW for enchanted items for the clan comes to mind. We had a big thread about this not too long ago, but I was reminded of it by reading the example in RQG p251 where Yanioth has to limit her enchantment because she can't find any volunteers to help her at the time. But I don't think it happens enough to make a significant dent in the general population's POW. I imagine it's like being called for jury duty: it may happen to you once in a lifetime. A more common one may be sacrificing POW for the clan's wyter (RQG p287). If I make the average person sacrifice for RPs once every 3 years, and for the wyter also once every 3 years (on different years), they only get to POW 14 after 10 years. I'd love to hear about other things average people do on a regular basis for the clan!

Oh I missed those, thanks!

If I increase the Worship score to, say, 75% (spending of 5 MPs), they get an average of 14~15 POW after 10 years (depending on their sacrificing). They get to 17 after 19 years. This however taps into how different GMs interpret MP spending, how "religious" vs "traditionalist" their Heortlings are, and so on. I'll leave this up to individual GMs to figure out, and therefore whether they need to alter their Glorantha, their NPC rules, or both.

If we were to apply the RQG advancement rules to NPCs (I agree that RQ is a simulationist system and that this should therefore be possible, but I'm sure other people would disagree with this very premise), then NPCs may get a POW gain roll on High Holy Day and Sacred Time... but, IMPORTANTLY: they only get it if they succeed their Worship roll! By default, they will have 25% in their Worship roll... most people just dance and drink and eat and don't really commune with their deity on a profound enough level! (they may spend some MPs to increase their chance, granted, but they would not sacrifice much else I think... YGWV) So they only get an effective POW gain roll from that once ever two years! They also might get a POW gain roll in Fire Season after a raid or two during which they successfully cast some magic. So let's say they get 1.5 POW gain rolls per year. And let's say they start at POW 10 (just below the average of 10.5). And let's say they sacrifice one POW every 3 years to get one new Rune Spell, or for some other reason. Then, assuming my math is correct: after 10 years they have a POW of 13 on average, and only 3 RPs. After 20 years they have a POW of 15 and 6 RPs. If they sacrificed POW more aggressively to get 3 RPs in their earlier years (and then sacrificing every 3 years), after 10 years they have POW 12 and 5 RPs, and after 20 years they have 14~15 and 8 RPs. Sounds ok to me. I can make my spreadsheet available if people doubt my math, or if they want to play with different Worship skill scores or sacrificing schedules. Or they can request me to punch some specific numbers and I'll share the results.

North-east of Alone, nestled against the Indigo Mountains, is a place called "Deadwood" (not to be confused with the "Woods of the Dead", also near Alone!!). I've got some questions for the tribe: Is there any relation with the "Deadwood" of the God Learners map in the Sourcebook? (p122) I guess not, I think that one is a predecessor to the Aldryami forests of Fronela? The old HW Dragon Pass gazeteer mentions that the trees there sacrificed their life essence to allow the passage of the local Dragonewt king upon his death (p20). I have no idea how that makes sense... what's the relationship between trees and dragons here? (I might change the origin story anyway) I have something in my notes (can't remember where I got it from) that this Deadwood has zombie Aldryami tending to their dead groves. What would be the elves' opinion(s) on undead? Thanks for any ideas/references/etc!

Agreed for the players. I didn't know what the hell a Thracian or Scythian was until 6 months ago. But for me the usefulness of having references (historical, geographical, cinematographic, comics, whatever) is mainly for the GM. As I said on Facebook, I'm a fairly new Gloranthan GM (I starting GMing in the setting less than 2 years ago), and getting a good mental picture of what this or that piece of Glorantha looks like was my biggest problem. I think that's what people mean when they say that Glorantha is "difficult to get into" or "intimidating". The available game material gives a decent overview which is totally functional and lets us get the job done, but some of us GMs like to have some guidance for adding some extra colour and detail, or things to read/watch to find ideas for NPCs or stories or whatever. That's where references are useful. My players don't need to know what a Thracian is. But I can find out and make good use of it as a GM for my games. I assume this kind of knowledge is useful for the authors when they write the books we buy. So it can also be useful to me when I write my own adventures.

I'm surprised that the maps of the AAA would differ from the maps in the Guide.... aren't they exactly the same? Like, the AAA was a compilation of the Guide's maps?

Yes. This is now canon

I think the PDF version of the AAA (available for free as part of the Jonstown Compendium) also has this key as an extra page.

I just checked the new version and yes the text is the same. And good point from @Shiningbrow that "autumn" should be replaced with "Earth season". VERSION NUMBERS! THANK YOU THANK YOU! Given the lack of update notification or even information for purchases on Chaosium.com, I can't tell you how much of a big deal this is

It's worth noting that astrophysicists make the difference between "infinite" and "limitless". For instance, the surface of a balloon is limitless but not infinite. So if you want to get trippy with it, you could also decide that once you sail past the Gates of Dawn or Dusk and across the stormy/moving parts of Sramak's River, the surface of the water transforms into a 3 or 4 dimensional membrane that wraps around Glorantha and you can sail across space and time, into the God Time and whatever is after the End of the World, into the Underworld or to the Sky Realms, and wherever/whenever else you like. In fact, maybe the big storm and currents and Sky Dome actually protect Glorantha from dissolving into this higher dimensional space, forming this little bubble for things to live inside.... which, I guess, would make this higher dimensional space Chaos, effectively. So yeah, let's say you can sail on Pure Chaos. Sounds fun!

I think the example for Healing Plants on p72 needs fixing? The first roll, a 1d10 on the "usefulness" table, yields a 5 which means the plant is useful against the Creeping Chills. Then the example says that the character looks closely at the second plant, which I would expect means rolling another 1d10 on the same table. But the example says she rolls a 6, which means "other". That's a different die on a different table! She should roll another d10 first, and then move one to rolling 1d6 twice to see if she's lucky enough to have a magical plant among the two plants she has... or maybe the two tables should be switched, and the d6s are rolled first, the d10s second. Whichever works. As a slightly nitpicky aside, at the top of that same column of text: It might make more sense to just say "A result of 'Other' on the seasonal potency table denotes a special type of plant....". The term "Categories" doesn't relate to anything else called "Categories" on the page.

It's available in PDF and POD on DriveThruRPG. Besides Chaosium's aforementioned "Ripples from Carcosa" and "Tatters of the King", John Wick has written a few scenarios collected in The Curse of the Yellow Sign, but I have never read those, and I think they were published before he joined Chaosium so they qualify as 3rd party (but licensed for CoC). In Delta Green, the freebie scenario "Night Floors" is I believe currently being expanded by Dennis Detwiller into a giant King in Yellow related campaign called "Impossible Landscapes", which should be released later this year. Some preview/pre-editing PDF of the contents is available on Dennis' Patreon. For non-Chaosium games, there is the King in Yellow RPG which offers a uniquely tailored campaign experience.

Yep, same. Plus, some references that God Learners used Tapping techniques extensively to drain energy from the God Time, "extinguishing" a few things on the way (things that were supposed to be eternal, mind you, since they were part of the Gods Realm). Given what happened to the God Learners, it sounds like many people don't want to go down that slope, although a few (like the aforementioned Borists, plus a few other ones) think it's OK to use in select situations. Note that, from what I understand from the Guide, casting Tap-based spells isn't immoral or evil per se. It looks to me like what the majority of Malkioni schools are doing is purposefully limiting their Tapping powers by not learning the Tapping technique itself. But they can still cast Tap-based spells by deriving Tapping knowledge from the other techqniques.... GtG v1 p48: "However, the principle is inherent in Malkioni philosophy and is easily derived from the logical techniques the Malkioni use to summon, command, or combine Runes." In effect (and in terms of RQG rules), they are limiting themselves to twice the casting time and twice the MP spend, so as to not get power-hungry and be tempted by the dark side, so to speak. On the same page, the example Debaldan School of Water Sorcery seems to teach Tap Water to its sorcerers, but without teaching the Tapping technique itself: they probably teach Tap Water through using, say, the Command technique or whatever, at double cost. In comparison, I get the feeling that the Boristi and Galvosti (p151) do teach Tapping itself (since these schools are "Tappers" and specifically referred to as "heresies of Malkionism") but I'm not sure...

I haven't found any source linking Tapping to Chaos? It's considered immoral and evil, sure, but not Chaotic AFAICT.

If only there had been a recent holiday for which you could have made heavy-handed nudges that your loved ones buy you one of these things as a gift (but yes, they're not overpriced when you consider the amount of content in there, but they're definitely expensive)

Ah I see, sorry I had missed that. So yeah in that case you may only have to do some research for the grand-parents' era, and a lot of the Praxian stuff would apply. Yeah I think that line about monsters' experience is what cemented the very symmetrical and simulationist take that many old RQ players have. Other mainly took from it that "monsters are people too". But as for mook NPCs, I would consider the rules to be different if you consider, say, not tracking separate injuries, not playing with hit locations for the little guys (or hand-waving them narratively), and so on.

Sure but at least you can get the Guide's PDFs. Nobody can get RQ3 books except via (sometimes expensive) second hand market. My point is merely that we should remember to keep these forums friendly to newcomers. The RQ2/3 grognardia and discussions that exclude newer players is one of the reasons that some of the authors don't come here too often.

Nobody should go looking for RQ3 rules unless they used to play that game and have the boxes around the house. A lot of people (like myself) are new to RQ as of RQG. And @PhilHibbs is right anyway that this is a setting/cultural thing, not a rules thing. So my reference for this is the Guide to Glorantha: p48: "Most Malkioni, except the Brithini, Vadeli, and Waertagi, consider Tapping to be immoral and evil. However, the principle is inherent in Malkioni philosophy and is easily derived from the logical techniques the Malkioni use to summon, command, or combine Runes." From this I understand most Malkioni schools forbid learning the Tapping technique directly, but they occasionally use it for "approved situtations" at double cost using the other techniques they know. p48: just below the above quote is a sample sorcery school focused on Water, and which actually allows learning Tapping directly. p151: a sample list of Malkioni schools, some of which allow Tapping with certain conditions. On p53 there's a little bit more detail on one of them, the Galvosti. p212: Central Fronela uses Tapping as a form of state punishment in some cases. .... and so on. As far as I'm concerned, that's the proper way to handle this particular issue.

As with many other things in my gaming life, Call of Cthulhu was the game that taught me this kind of stuff a long time ago. In CoC monsters and magic are, intentionally, mysterious. Therefore, the Keeper (GM) is encouraged to handwave a lot of stuff, at least for those who value mood and horror above mechanics (which should frankly be the case for any CoC Keeper). So it's common for my evil Mythos sorcerers to have partially defined powers that just sound cool and are roughly in the ballpark of how powerful that sorcerer should be... (virtually all such NPCs in published scenario have a list of abilities that includes "...plus whatever the Keeper thinks is appropriate"!). But of course, it happens sometimes that the PCs defeat the evil sorcerer and gain access to their magic items and grimoires and so on, and suddenly I need to somewhat formalize those previously handwaved powers because the players can now use them too.... (but not formalize too much because, hey, remember, magic is supposed to be mysterious and frightening and corrupting). So I guess what I'm saying is: More people should play Call of Cthulhu! Seriously, 90% of "problems" and "solutions" I read or hear about on FRPG blogs/podcasts/forums are things that were figured out by CoC designers and players a long time ago. There are two axes of gameplay in your argument, and they're only loosely correlated: The people who consider the rulebook to be the exhaustive model of the setting vs those who understand it as a subset of a much broader model. Obviously very few people will think the RQG rules are "complete" (we don't have illumination rules or heroquesting for instance) but some people may think that whatever's there (like, say, worshiping or sorcery rules) are "complete" (they would be mistaken ). The people who handle NPCs using different rules than the PCs, vs those who unify the two. Obviously, a special Chaotic ability granted by a Thanatar heroquest is going to be hard to get for a PC, but "unification" in this case still means "sure you can try... you may not like who you become, though!" (i.e.: the option is available, even if undesirable). Meanwhile, people who handle NPCs with different rules have many different (often good) reasons and methods for this. I assume that a common one is using simplified mook stats and damage rules to speed up large combat, for instance (asymmetric systems that bake this into the rules include Savage Worlds or Numenera... I wish RQG had some official support for it, and I strongly think that the published adventures showing full NPC stat blocks is a huge mistake and a bad example). These kinds of asymmetrical rules can't be applied to the PCs as per point 1, but others kind of special NPC rules can: special weapon stats, unique magic items, heroquest gifts, house rules for new schools of magic, etc. As for the OP, one thing to make a good custom Family History for character creation is to just grab a few PDFs (the Guide, the Sourcebook, and Wyrm Footnotes are a good start), and do searches for both the culture and places, and a long batch of searches for each year in the time span that should be covered by the tables. Half the time you'll find important events that are already covered by the RQG rulebook, but the other half of the time you'll find some smaller, localized events or ideas that will help you spice things up for that character. Culturally speaking, I think the Carmanians have been around for so long, with so much mixing with Dara Happans and Lunars and so on, that you have a rather broad range of options between belonging to some kind of "pure, traditionalist" family (Pelandan?), and belonging to a family with a mixed background and an equally mixed tradition. If you want to avoid bringing sorcery rules in the game, your player's character could be a Humakti-worshipping romanak ("landless warrior") who has a Carmanian twist on his cult, such as a complement of Invisible God worship, slightly different Rune Magic and iconography, and so on. Having a roaming warrior with an Orlanthi-ish culture like this also makes it easier, maybe, to introduce him to the rest of the party! (I'm genuinely curious how you're going to bring a Carmanian into your game, assuming it's set in good ol' Sartar/Prax as per the rulebook default). Plus, as a Carmanian, he will show up with the finest bronze gear in the party, with fancy strange-looking (to the other PCs) designs on them!

Ah interesting, that's what I was wondering. Thanks! (we can now resume our regularly scheduled magical item discussion)

I didn't mean it as "how do you find the pieces on the battleground?", but more as "how does the loser even get back to the battleground, given that they probably retreated, and the battleground is most likely now under the control of the winner?".

It's also simply possible that RQG allows to pick any weapon because different clans have different "traditional" weapons.... and that if you're into roleplaying clan traditions, you would establish that this or that clan is more into axes or into spears, and then choose accordingly (although of course you could make an outlier). It may actually be a circular requirement... as in: you get a vote if you have warrior gear. And you have warrior gear if you were given it by the chieftain (because you're not a thrall, not out of favour, and so on). So maybe that requirement is an easier way to gather up multiple other requirements? Of course, that would mean that an unpopular but wealthy clan member would get a vote by buying his own gear even if the chieftain confiscated his clan-issued gear... although I'm not even sure if chieftains are known to confiscate gear... that is clearly off-topic for this thread... That would go under the "shittier javelins" I mentioned before, where you don't have a metal point (or a bad quality one), for a bit less damage, for example. Thankfully, you can still enchant them. I wonder how much you can recover from a battle -- the winner may be able to recover most of it, and the loser adds the loss of projectile weapons to their long list of losses? Another off-topic thing... maybe we should make a new thread on missile weapons...

Well if you want, you can make your baboon be part of the Sartarite culture, having grown up in the same tribe as the other PCs for some reason or other. Culture is different from race/species.