Lordabdul

What stats did you use for the hawk? The ones that comes closest in the RQG Bestiary (assuming you're using RQG) are the stats from the Vrok Hawks (p161), with 3D6 CON, 2D3 SIZ, and an average of 9 HP. But it says it's a "powerful" bird of prey, so maybe other species of hawks have only around 2D6 CON or less, vastly lowering their HPs.

Funny enough, I had the opposite realizations. I originally thought that the Praxian nomads were, well, in Prax. I mean, it's in the name. Later I read a bit in the Guide To Glorantha: With the disaster at Moonbroth, all opposition to the Lunars ceased. The Impalas and Bisons were driven over the River; the Morokanth and High Llama withdrew beyond the Paps; and the Sable Riders were supreme between the Paps and the River, and occupied all the choice parts of the Good Place. So my understanding was that: The Impala and Bison tribe were mostly in the Wastes during the Lunar occupation of Prax... most notably, there are several Bison-named grasslands there, and the Guide mentions they fight occasionally with the Pentans. The Sable tribe was freely roaming the Eiritha Hills region and farther, between The Paps and the Zola Fel. The Morokanth and High Llama were.... errr, I'm not sure what direction "beyond the Paps" was supposed to be in the text, but since the Sable were to the east, then the Morokanth and High Llama must have been stuck to the west, between the Devil's Marsh/Dead Place, and the Pol-Joni March. ...but of course someone pointed out that, when you look at the population numbers in the Guide, that would make for an awfully crowded desert. And in the introduction to the Wastelands chapter, the Guide says the following anyway: The great majority of the Animal Nomads of Prax actually live in the Wastes, rather than the region of Prax itself. So I've got no idea what that first piece of text I quoted is really about. Now, as for RQG describing Praxian nomads as living in Prax, I imagine it's a mix of: The advanced timeline: RQG happens a few years later than the Guide, and we know the upcoming Pavis/Big Rubble book features a liberated Pavis, so it's possible that a whole bunch of nomads are flooding back into Prax from the Wastes (which raises again the question of how all these people are going to fit in the region). In fact, it kinda says that on p119 about the Bison tribe, and p120 about the Impala tribe. By the way, p119 also says the High Llama just "stayed out of the way of the invading Lunars and continued in their ancient, isolated ways", so that seems to confirm they stuck around Prax during the occupation? Simplification: the maps in RQG don't cover the Wastes, sticking instead to the classic "Dragon Pass & Prax" area. It might have been deemed simpler to say that Praxian characters are from Prax, so the players can see their homeland on the map.

I agree... getting Shield from an associated cult is nice, but I feel like the in-world importance of the Yelmalio cult is not quite matched with the mechanics to explain/support it. And while adding more special cult spells is always fun, it could be interesting to make Yelmalio stand out more mechanically, to reflect how his cult also stands out culturally in the world. I would actually like to see a couple more non-magic advantages, similar to the existing advantage of knowing how to use a 2H spear with a shield. OTOH I can think of: Unshakeable Will: Yelmalio cultists can use augments from the same ability multiple times per session, and even maybe accumulate bonuses with subsequent rolls (although maybe there would be cumulative penalties or something, I don't know). Just like their God, they can summon an impressive amount of willpower that let them survive incredible ordeals. Pain Resistance: Yelmalio cultists are not incapacitated when taking huge amounts of damage (such as a maimed limb). Instead they can keep fighting (yes, just like the Black Knight in Holy Grail!), although maybe that requires on CON or POW roll.

Ok so yeah that's what I thought you were talking about, but since I could not find Zzabur's Sigil (the "wheel thing" I mentioned) in RQG, I didn't know how people who only have the rulebook would know about it... I had forgotten that it was explained simply in text in the introduction. So yeah, thumbs up to your proposals -- using an elemental Rune that is known to overcome the elemental's nature fits perfectly.

The GM is free (and encouraged!) to makes any rulings or house rules for any situation based on actual experience or common sense or (mis)conceptions... and as a GM who loves simulationist systems, I would totally support using custom rules like "you only get half your MOV if you do something else while moving, a quarter if you move backwards" or whatever. But as far as RAW is concerned, my interpretation is that: You can't shoot while moving, but you can draw an arrow while moving. You can shoot an arrow before and after moving if you have enough SRs. Therefore, the OP's interpretation sounds correct to me: with a previously ready bow and arrow, the PC fires the arrow at SR 2, moves and draws a new arrow until SR 7, and shoots again at SR 9. In fact, the example in RQG p195 is almost similar: Vasana fires a spell, then moves and draws an arrow, and then can't attack because she ran out of SRs. I don't see any problem replacing the spell casting with arrow shooting. The combined "move+draw arrow" is the same as in the OP. And since the example mentions that she can't shoot because there are no more SRs, I assume that she would be able to shoot if there were SRs.... therefore, you can shoot, move+draw, and shoot again. As the OP mentioned, it's dangerous to do since you might be caught by a quickly advancing melee fighter who gets a free swipe at you. The shooter should ideally (if possible) get in position on top of a big rock or small cliff or other place where nobody can easily come at them in a straight line, and instead have to run around something, giving the shooter time to switch weapons.

Jeff might have already answered this in another thread: ....and actually it was in reply to one of my comments! ...and a bit more slightly down the same thread:

The what? Where's that? Are you talking about the Elements "wheel" diagram? (which doesn't have any "directions" that I can tell?)

That's always how I pictured it... I mean, is it written anywhere that you have to attend every worship? Very few people do that in the real-world. And probably most people don't even need the Rune points unless they're really doing a lot of adventuring or important clan/temple business at that point in time If you want you can give penalties to the Worship roll if you spend less time than you think is necessary. And then the PC can make up for it by spending more MPs. Well, you can make your Glorantha vary one way or another... it seems easier to me to make holy days (especially the minor ones) more or less optional, rather than moving them around. It's not like missing a Worship ceremony would kick you out of the cult? I mean, you could miss one (even a major one) for any good reason. And I don't believe minor holy days would have fancy feasts with elaborate animal sacrifices and hours-long roasts -- that's for major holy days IMHO (one feast a week sounds overkill!). But again, YGWV.

I picture minor holy days as a "less than an hour's worship" kinda thing. Otherwise, indeed, it's totally counter-productive if it takes half a day or more. Even for a 30min worship you still have to potentially travel 1hour roundtrip or something (depending on where you live), but I imagine most people would make the most of it, running other errands near the temple. It's a reinforcing dynamic where people come together for a short worship, so they also do other social or commercial things before/after. But it's also possible that the minor holy days are mainly attended to by people living near the temple, while people in farther away steads either have their own shrine for this, or just skip it, only showing up for bigger holy days (something that did happen in the real world at my grandparents' village, by the way).

But that would have been determined by looking at the size of your stead and roughly estimating what one tenth represents no? Like, the neighbouring stead that's twice larger needs to give n*2 bushels of rye and four swine? And that's renegotiated every year or two? Or do you picture this working differently? Yes exactly (hence my suggestion of making loot and gifts into more unique objects with an attached history). But to be clear, in my example of the clan leader giving an armband to the PCs, in my mind, this was in a situation where the PCs are acting as representatives of their own clan, and the whole affair is a negotiation between the 2 clans. So while the clan leader might give specific items to specific PCs (in which case I assume they just keep it, otherwise they might offend the leader later), I wasn't quite clear in that the armband was supposed to be part of a big pile of valuables, as payment to the PCs' clan. As in: "here's one chest full of silver and gold, a bundle of fine blades, and half a dozen cows... tell your elders we accept blah blah blah".... so when the PCs bring that back, would their clan elders let them take a little bit of it? Or would they give the PCs their own gifts to thank them for a successful diplomatic mission? Or would they just not get anything (except for whatever the other clan leader gave them specifically) ? And in the first 2 cases, would they have to give part of that to their temples? (assuming their temples' priests are not their clan elders)

Yes, good point... but shamans would still know what they're doing... they would know if they can capture a spirit and suck it dry, implanting its spell bits into a dozen students, or if they would have to capture twelve different spirits for the class. They would know if they need to release it and wait a bit before recapturing it. And so on... The why of this may be an ongoing debate within the shamanic circles, or maybe it's well understood. I don't see a problem with shamans having a good understanding of the Spirit World, vs shamans having different schools of thought and arguments about why spirits and magic behave the way they do.... it's all narrative opportunities for me either way. The other important thing to me is that the mechanics reflect the world as best as possible (within gameplay and usability limits). If "learning" a spirit magic spell from a spirit means it "removes" the spell from that spirit, then it's reasonable to think that there should be some rule where you can't "pass the spirit around" like a joint to give that spell to everybody in the party. And again, when players ask why the rules are restricting it, you can, if you want, hand wave it: "shamans are pretty secretive about this...", or "there are different schools of thought on the topic...". Hey, even the rulebook itself might be vague about it.... but it's still important. Like I said, Scotty's explanations have been helpful to me: it makes a LOT more sense to me why the rules are what they are regarding spell limits and forgetting spells ("how can you instantly forget anything?!" was my initial reaction to the rules). I actually really think the whole vocabulary around "learning" and "forgetting" spells is a mistake, and it should explicitly talk about "integrating spell spirits" and "taking them out" or something. Especially since, it seems (based on what Scotty said), that's actually how shamans see it in-world anyway.

Oh yeah definitely. I GM'ed this for my group, as their first exposure to RQ and Glorantha (except for some of them having played Khan of Khans ). When they reached the old ruins, they managed to drive Danakos out of hiding after a little bit of cat-and-mouse ambushes, and Vasana's player trampled him with her bison. There was much cheering from the other players, who had never really played any game where "I trampled the bad guy with a bison" was even a thing you could say. Then, Idrima came out of the tower, and they got super freaked out... but the Yanioth's player remembered my little Earth priestess primer at the beginning of the adventure, and stepped forth to start negotiating. The adventure ended after they agreed to start a Spirit Cult of the Stone Woman, with Yanioth as the priestess maintaining the shrine there... in exchange for worship, Idrima would teach some old spirit magic spells to the PCs, and tentatively let the clan expand their lands this way, which would give them a strategic point to keep an eye on the Grey Dogs... so yes, a couple nice adventure seeds to continue with!

I really second The Broken Tower as an inexpensive way to dip a group's toe in RQG. If they don't like it, you haven't spent a lot of money (or even no money if you used the free PDF version), and it doesn't take space on the shelves... You may just potentially want to get the rulebook if you'd rather they made their own character instead of using the pre-gens... but otherwise, it's such a great scenario: it's short, it establishes a bunch of basic tropes and lore about RQ Glorantha, features spirits and magic prominently to really show that this is not like another stereotypical fantasy setting, and last but not least has what everyone loves: cows!

Yes, but it's all made complicated by the fact the PCs can be anybody from anywhere. In terms of NPC population in Sartar, sure, statistically speaking most men are initiates of Orlanth and most women are initiates of Ernalda, and their spiritual leaders are most likely also the political leaders. That makes all the tithing and taxation and otherwise disposal of loot a lot simpler. But a typical group of PCs has people from a variety of cults and homelands (and not necessarily all adopted into the same base clan), with various allegiances and cults that might not even have a local priest... IMHO that's an opportunity for drama and political tension, especially if the GM likes to complement the impersonal loot (6d10L, two POW crystals, etc.) with some more specific stuff (a sword with markings of your rival clan, a crystal with a metallic case whose design reminds you of the necklace around your chieftain's wife's neck, etc.). Suddenly, who takes what and who gives what to whom get a lot more fun!

Of course, one could completely change all the Runic associations randomly, and still come up with seemingly profoundly mythical reasons that they make sense And now that I wrote that, I'm wondering if we could make that into a little game next time we interview someone on Wind Words.... mmmmh

Do you remember where that is? Based on the Random Ancestor Spirit table that GAZZA was going from, even the weakest spirit has a min POW of 7, which means it can very well carry a Bladesharp 6.... unless I've misunderstood how that works... (and that table is not meant for general use anyway). Thanks! Is there some Stafford Library book (or other book) with more on this topic? I can't find many hits for "spell spirit" in the usual suspects. Yep -- it's totally fair that a shaman player would want to know more about what a shaman does, and how that can either open up adventuring or business opportunities. I don't care much about the lack of mechanics (house rules are easy and fun to make), but I'm definitely fascinated by the under-explored in-world ramifications of spirit magic. Reading back on RQG p374 ("Runes and the Spirit World", and "Finding Spirits"), I find new meaning and insight into this bit of text, thanks to what you've told us so far. @GAZZA in particular might be interested in adding a simple RQ3-inspired house rule on top of the "Spirit Rarity" table (even though RQG of course recommends that it's up to the GM's discretion) to explain spell costs. Of note, p374 is the only mention of a "spell spirit" in the book. I would love to see all this spirit world stuff expanded in a future book!

Think about it this way: what if one of your PCs wanted to be a weapon-smith? They would "go find the stuff they need" (leather, bronze, whatever) and then they roll their Craft skill. It makes sense that a big sword is more expensive than a dagger, and a bronze armour is more expensive than a leather one.... yet there are no mechanics for how hard it is to find or acquire bronze vs finding or acquiring leather. Both the GM and player would agree on this price difference because they both have a basic grasp of what's involved in the production of bronze vs leather. Not so much about the production of spirit spells though... so if anything, what you're missing is mostly Gloranthan lore, not mechanics. So make up something: more powerful spirits are less common than less powerful ones, or this or that spell being less common than this or that other one... go crazy and infer the world from the cost table if that helps.

I think the flaw in your reasoning is this: There is a random spirit encounter table in RQ3... ...therefore all spirits encountered by a shaman are modelled by this table. There's a 1% chance of rolling a spirit that knows Bladesharp on the random encounter table... ...therefore there's a 1% chance for a shaman to find a Bladesharp-knowing spirit out in the Spirit World. This is the equivalent of saying: There is a random encounter table for Sartar in <some hyptothetical rulebook> ...therefore all individuals encountered by a traveller are modelled by this table. The table has a 1% entry that says "you encounter a tribal leader", and a sub-table for tribal leaders where Queen Leika is on a roll of 20-29. ...therefore if you're looking for Queen Leika, you have a 0.1% chance of finding her. But, of course, if you're looking for Queen Leika, you're not going to wander randomly across the entirety of Sartar, hoping to find her by pure dumb luck. You're going to ask around, learn that she lives most of the time in Clearwine Fort, and go to her temple. Say there's a 30% chance she's out of town on some business, and you have a 70% chance of finding her. Same thing with the spirits. I assume that a shaman knows where certain kinds of spirits hang around, the same way a botanist knows where to find a certain mushroom, or a hunter knows where to find a certain animal. The random encounter table is just a tool for the GM that helps quickly come up with something when she's out of ideas. So as such, the RQ3 rules don't really tell you anything about whether a Bladesharp 1 spirit is harder to find than a Bladesharp 6 spirit, or even if a Dispel Magic spirit (roll 29-31) is easier to find than a Farsee spirit (roll 39). At best, they only tell you how often you run into them. That's different from finding them. You can find Queen Leika pretty easily, but you won't likely run into her randomly. I think that's what PhilHibbs was trying to say on the topic of inferring the world from the rules (even though more generally speaking I tend to partially disagree with him on that topic).

I don't think so? The way I read RQG's text is that you roll each stat one after the other. You get what you get (and you don't get upset!). But that kind of old-school method hasn't made much sense for the past 20 years. CoC offers alternative methods, and I would be disappointed if the upcoming RQG GM Guide wasn't also offering alternatives. On the other hand, we know sorcerers always grow up to be cheating munchkins, so it would make sense that they all found a way to increase their CHA! I'd say Man or Spirit.

Where does it say in RQ3 that a higher-POW spirit takes longer to find than a lower-POW spirit? I'm just skimming the RQ3 rules (so I might have missed something) but it looks like in both RQ3 and RQG you can show up at the temple, or at your local shaman's hut, and they teach you the spell (no spirit hunting required). The only difference that I can see is that in RQ3 you have to play out the spirit combat (Gods of Glorantha, Cults Book, p18), while in RQG it "just happens", although it's easy in both cases to either skip the combat, or play it out. I like the RQ3 approach where the Cult Priest invokes a spirit for you, and sends it to fight you (and dismisses it if you lose, so you don't get possessed). It better shows how magic in Glorantha is different from more common fantasy settings. It kinda sucks though because that's potentially a lot of rolling that other players have to wait through, and a potential big disappointment when the player doesn't get the spell after all. It's slightly better (if possible) to have the Priest do the fighting, and then shove the spell spirit inside you for you... I mean, you're paying for getting a new spell, so you might not want to have to work for it I guess that's what RQG is effectively doing, here, but I wish RQG would have retained a similar wording to RQ3, at least as "fluff", so that it would be clearer what's going on (which I'm just learning now thanks to @David Scott!) Yep makes sense to me.... although RQG doesn't really exclude this either. There's just zero mention of which spirit can provide which spell (for instance p357 just says "speak with the relevant spirit"), so it seems it's a bit up to the GM to figure it out. There may be a strong rule (like in RQ3) that the spirit's POW is exactly correlated to the spells they can provide, or it could be more or less variable (depending on how nice or hardcore the RQG GM is). And also I like that RQG opens up the possibility of acquiring the spell through other means than spirit violence. I guess in that case people would get Bladesharp at whichever is the highest level they can afford based on the other spells they want, and how much CHA they have. So not automatically Bladesharp 6. Cool, thanks. All of a sudden a bunch of RQG rules make a lot more sense: Using CHA as the limit for spell holding: I previously understood it as your ability to unconsciously "negotiate" with "ambient spirits", but it actually makes more sense if it's your ability to hold spirits inside you. Forgetting spells: that was always a bit weird to me but I chalked it up as a "D&D-inspired gamism". But it's actually removing the spell spirit from you and replacing it with another. That makes a lot more sense. Does that mean the spirit loses the ability to cast that spell then? Until it re-acquires it from another spirit? (which means that spells are a limited resource in the world!) Or until it "regrows" that part of its essence on its own? (which then makes you wonder how come some spirits have a given spell and some don't?) Or is that part of the spirit duplicated into you instead, and the spirit doesn't "lose" anything? (Yes I'm overthinking this, but that's how I roll!)

Thanks everyone... I see RQ2 is a firmly American game, as you start your life with a student loan It's not a big deal since this character will only be used for SoloQuest...

Ah right. FWIW, I use the screen sharing feature of the video chat we use (Zoom, Google Hangouts, or Skype, depending on the group), and temporarily share my screen, showing the PDF open in my PDF reader, zoomed on whatever thing I want to show them (which is kind of the equivalent of showing them the book directly when I'm at the table... only it's easier to hide the parts of the page I don't want them to see ). If I need them to have access to a page individually (for instance some character advancement table while they're all spending their XP), I might quickly do a screen capture of the PDF and upload that in the handouts of Roll20. Again, I just do it "live on air", as needed, since it takes only a couple clicks. This means there's no need to convert the PDF to a Word document... and actually even if you wanted to extract the artwork and maps directly instead of screenshot'ing them (so you have them at their max resolution and without writing over them), you should be able to, in 98% of cases, just right-click on the image in the PDF viewer and copy/save the image directly. That might save you a few steps. Stat'ing up the NPCs and creatures does take a lot of time yeah, so I don't have any tips here except.... don't do it? At the table, I would look at the stats on the book's page and just roll, right? So I do the same in roll20: I roll "basic" ("naked") rolls, i.e. just "/roll d100" in the chat window, or whatever dice roll it is, and do the work myself (as opposed to copying the stats in a proper roll20 character sheet and using the character sheet's rolling features). If I'm feeling cheeky, or if it's the kind of game where I don't roll openly in front of the players, I might not even use roll20 at all and roll my real dice on my real table (which I consider would be the equivalent of rolling behind the GM screen). I still need the tokens to place on the map, but I just create a bunch of "placeholder" tokens that don't have any character sheet, and the only thing to differentiate them are their name and/or colour (just a few clicks to change), which would be the equivalent of using dice or poker chips on the battlemap as mooks/thugs/etc. If I'm brave, I might have prepared a picture for a few major NPCs, so they get a proper image on their token (but still no character sheet in roll20... only in the real world for me). I hope this helps!

Remember that, AFAIK, a Sartarite farmer is not like most farmers in other cultures: the Sartarite farmer is also a trained warrior (just not a professional warrior) and will routinely take part in raids during raid season (I think it's Fire Season?), in addition to getting in a couple fights here and there during the rest of the year. So sure, their Axe and Shield skills might not be their highest ones, but they're no amateurs either. And there can be another focus than combat in many scenarios too. You're right that they wouldn't stay farmers for longer than a couple years after the start of the campaign though... most likely they rise into the clan ring or get promoted within their cult, at which point they might not tend to their fields themselves anymore, and have started delegating to others. But that's the same with many other character archetypes: the assistant shaman eventually isn't an assistant anymore, etc. Still, in Vikings, Ragnar Lothbrok likes to remind everyone that, at heart, he's still a farmer!

This week-end I figured I would try and play one of the old SoloQuest adventures, but first I had to create a new character. I had only skimmed the RuneQuest 2nd edition rules before, so it was my first proper reading of the first couple rules chapters. It's kind of charming how barebones and wargamey things were back in the late 70s... Anyway, I have a few questions: As far as I can tell, there's pretty much nothing to character creation besides rolling stats, calculating skill category bonuses and secondary stats, and getting your starting gear? I mean, I got a whooping 79L (I rolled a townsman), a belt knife, and all my skills at their default score? (25% in Knife! Yay!) Am I missing something, or was gaming in 1980 super hardcore? Luckily enough, I tried getting initiated into Orlanth's cult right away (with a <40% chance) and managed to pass... but even with the half-price discount from the temple, skill training is too expensive. Does cult membership give any immediate free benefits that I might have missed? Do sample adventurers in FANGS, p9, already have some experience under the belt? They obviously all have higher-than-average abilities.

That I can understand -- sorry if I generalized too much. I've seen (well.. not seen ) people who live in the same city as me, and with proper internet access AFAICT, just use voice chat and a map.