Lordabdul

FWIW, my understanding of the rules was consistent with what Jason Durall said. Regarding splitting attack/parry skills, it doesn't make much sense to me. I understand that there is real-world/simulationist reasons to do it, but it's not for me, and a game designer has to draw the line somewhere. I don't see anybody arguing for splitting Play Instrument, Orate, or Survival into more skills to better represent what kind of detailed things a character may be better or worse at in that given activity (and I think we could easily slice and dice those skills into a dozen more skills, especially for those of us with personal experience in these things). The level of abstraction vs crunch is what it is, decided according to how the game should feel, what the core activity of the game is, etc. And sure, if the core activity of your game is hyper detailed tactical combat and not much else, then go crazy with extra rules. If I were to add combat crunch, it wouldn't be there (it would be about adding optional maneuvers and movement in melee). If anything, I think the weapon skills are a bit too detailed for my tastes. I'm tempted to only use categories as skills (1H Sword, 2H Sword, 1H Axe, 2H Axe, etc.) as mentioned by Jason, or at least merge a couple skills (like Broadsword & Shortsword). I don't do it because I'm not sure it would change much in practice (except to make me feel better because I did a house rule ). The main thing that bothers me is that a swordmaster (say, 150% in Rapier) is as useless as any other newbie when picking up a dagger or a 2H sword. The rule about being able to use other weapons at half skills seems less effective than it should be because of the high number of weapon skills (which can be solved by either extending that rule, or reducing the number of weapon skills). As for the OPs (which, we should notice, haven't posted much since, maybe because the thread went on a big tangent right away... not super awesome), I had some similar questions when I did my first RQG characters. I agree that those bonuses, along with the character sheet, are quite confusing, but I really took the cultural weapon skill bonuses at their broadest. I figured, for example, that young Sartarites are exposed to all kinds of dagger techniques and one-handed spears, and that, as such, the listed bonuses applied to skill categories. Probably when they get a bit older they settle on a specific spear, for instance, and then spend their cult and personal points in that.

My understanding is that the spirit indeed takes a round of combat to become visible, leaving the PCs that round to realize what's happening (I assume it's to prevent very annoying and constant surprise attacks from all kinds of spirits). The next round, Spirit Combat begins (not on the same round the spirit materializes). It can still be quite annoying for the PCs since they will only have that one preparatory round to grab their weapons, cast their magic, etc... so there's still a fair element of surprise if they weren't prepared. The way I handle it is that the spirit is indeed visible for the entire combat until it chooses to retreat in the Spirit World. AFAICT the only way it could discorporate and keep fighting is if it fights someone that also discorporated (thus taking the combat fully into the Spirit World). I love cyberpunk so think about it this way: Shodan3, the evil AI, wants to ambush the PCs. As they explore the abandoned factory, it takes control of an assembly line robot arm and attacks the players. It takes one round for the AI to activate the robot shell, and as it lights up and starts whirring, the PCs have one round to turn around and brace for the attack. During the next few rounds, they attack the assembly line robot, only hurting its mechanical shell... they only really hurt Shodan3 when using electrical attacks and stuff. Later, Shodan3 leaves the beaten shell of the robot arm and prepares to activate more traps. The Netrunner in the party jacks into a nearby port and shows up in the cyberspace. "Hey Shoddy, let's dance" he says to the AI. They start fighting in the cyberspace while the rest of the party figures a way to take the entire factory off the grid, all the while making sure the Netrunner's body is safe. Replace all the cyberpunk stuff with bronze age fantasy equivalents. Of course it's a bit more fun with AIs, who can possess or otherwise materialize multiple times (based on their computing power), compared to a spirit who can only materialize once or possess one person or animal... but, well, I guess we could look into house rules to let spirits possess multiple people based on their CHA/INT? Village of the damned anyone? While someone is discorporated, I believe their body is totally inert, so the people guarding their body might not know what's up. If that person is a shaman, however, their fetch can guard the body and, since the fetch is in constant communication with the shaman, it might be able to tell the shaman's friends that things are going badly in the Spirit World.

Sure, if you want prisoners.... but you want slaves. They must still have their full strength and, arguably, most, if not all, of their intellectual faculties in order to accomplish all the labour you bought them for in the first place.

Thanks! We briefly talked about those in Episode 3 of Wind Words (during @Joerg's segment), and how Jeff has said recently that slave collars weren't a thing anymore as far as Chaosium's Glorantha is concerned. It's unclear what their replacement is, however. I could imagine an Orlanthi thrall to keep the little honour they have and naturally behave as is expected of their unfortunate position, but when talking about Lunars, I think all bets are off, and they probably have some way of make sure their slaves don't try to escape or rise up. Burning/scarring tattoos seems worse than slave collars, and doesn't even solve the slave holder's problem (I think that without a focus, you are merely slower at casting, unlike the collars which were supposed to dampen your magic).

p366: "Spirit combat may occur between two discorporate entities (entirely within the Spirit World) or between a discorporate entity and an embodied entity (such as a human being) in the Middle World." There's no need to discorporate to fight a spirit in Spirit Combat. So the malign spirit might engage in Spirit Combat with the shaman, or anybody for that matter, and it would then result in an embodied entity (the shaman) fighting a discorporate entity (the malign spirit). Spirit Combat then happens as per the rules. Now there are advantages to being a shaman. For instance, still p366: "If a spirit wishes to attack a corporeal being, the spirit makes itself visible in the Middle World the melee round prior to its first attack. Shamans can see the spirits at all times using Second Sight, and they would normally be aware of the spirit’s malign intention to attack before it becomes visible." So the shaman would probably be aware of the spirit approaching (although I might still make the shaman roll a bit if they're occupied with something else at that moment... I wonder if spirits have a Stealth skill...). Further more, p358: "If the shaman is not discorporate, and an attacking spirit comes solely from the Spirit World, the shaman can intercept it with their fetch, so the fetch fights instead." So the shaman doesn't need to discorporate because they can use their fetch to fight entirely in the Spirit World, effectively intercepting the malign spirit before they become visible and attack anybody.

Yeah, that's what I was asking.... I hadn't really thought about this until now, so yeah, good idea! I imagine the effect you describe might be more or less temporary, like someone quitting cigarettes or sugar and going through a difficult phase of readjustment. But in the long term, it's possible someone having lost their affinity to a Rune might recover and go back to being as "normal" as people who never had that Rune to begin with.

Thanks @Scotty! So it looks like @Psullie was correct!

But if you don't pick the Air Rune at character creation (and don't get any bonus on it from your homeland upbringing), wouldn't you have no affinity with that Rune to begin with? So a 0% score?

Thanks We amassed a surprising amount of notes by researching what looked like small details of the tale... and I now kinda want to run a spice-traders game!

Why not 100% and 0%?

I only know about half of the events on that list, and I'm supposed to be the co-host of a Gloranthan podcast... Unless you've been gaming/reading about Glorantha for more than 10 years, it's expected to not know a whole bunch of stuff. So no need to feel to bad about it! (or maybe we can both feel inadequate together!). On the one hand, I'm not sure that apotheosis is really what you want in your game, because, however awesome it is, I imagine it ends the campaign (it's not like you can play as a God in Glorantha? What do you even do all day? Are there any days? Is it like being quarantined? Is Orlanth wearing sweat pants all the time? Anyway...). On the other hand, you could possibly come up with mechanics for heroforming and other types of avatars and incarnations. I'm not sure how many games you can draw inspiration from, but one awesome one that I know of is Unknown Armies, where players can become Godwalkers for the Invisible Clergy's Archetypes of the World. The 3rd edition of the game has rules for becoming an increasingly better avatar of an Archetype, until you become its official Godwalker... but really, these rules look very similar to how the Runes already work. It's not quite spelled out in RQG, but if you act according to your God's personality and values, you will by definition improve in the Rune affinities of that God. As you approach 100% in the God's Runes, you probably start experiencing some seriously weird shit. Based on this, you can either narratively or mechanically figure out when the character can become a true avatar. If it's not mentioned in the RQG rulebook, or, maybe, RQG slipcase set, we can probably assume that a fair number of readers would not know about it, so adding references is always welcome in that case... we do want these forums to be friendly to people discovering Glorantha just now!

Sorry..... once per season You have a couple opportunities at least to get a POW gain roll per season though.

Which range has the best cold winter for muskoxen to thrive is a bit irrelevant since, in Glorantha (and especially your Glorantha), you can use whatever explanation you want to do anything... as long as you stick to it and keep your Glorantha consistent. So I frankly wouldn't be able to tell which of the 2 ranges is coldest, but I would surely rationalize whichever I like best by using Valid's Glacier, strange wind patterns carried out by Air Spirits, and other things that can affect weather... this in turns gives more opportunities for adventures since wherever there's magic and spirits, there's action, politics, warfare, and whatnot. Heck, maybe our tribe even has magic they maintain year-round to keep the weather unnaturally cold, and Pentans, trolls, and/or Pelorians have been trying to break this for decades in order to make these lands more inhabitable and invade them! As for who is raiding who, I originally expected muskox-riding people to be pretty slow, and more of the type of tribe that messes up anybody coming into their lands, but otherwise keeping to themselves... but it looks like muskoxen can reach speeds of 60km/h, which is frankly quite competitive with horses (I don't know about stamina and maneuverability though). So who knows... maybe they have special techniques, magic, or whatever that can actually let them raid event the Pentans. Especially if they have weather magic!

That's totally awesome but, errr, how much STR did that character have? Or did the character use a magic spell or something? It's OK if you are yourself using a dagger. But yeah, don't bring a dagger to a shield and spear fight. I think "dishonourable" fights are pretty easy to differentiate, especially when you have the whole narrative context around the fight. Players might object because they don't want to lose Honour, but frankly it's not necessarily up to them: it's up to the NPCs. At which point, my players would say "oh so the problem is witnesses, then?", and then proceed to debate for 10mins whether they should kill everybody or not, until someone goes "are we the baddies?" and then they just make up a fake name and run away awkwardly.... (I'm kinda joking but kinda not, sadly). Anyway, that's somewhat how I treat Honour -- and actually the PCs might have a couple bonuses/penalties to Honour in different regions depending on how news travel... although if the news reach a cult temple, or there's a good chance nearby spirits might have reported on the incident, I then assume the loss of Honour applies everywhere. I'm wondering however how it works in times of turmoil and war. For example, Harvar Ironfist crushing the Righteous Wind rebellion is probably OK (at least as far as him, his cult, and his allies are concerned) because he's fighting a bunch of Wind Lords on their home turf and beating them fair and square. But then he proceeds to ride onto the city of Alone and kills half the families there... does he lose Honour? Does he lose Honour only for Sartarite NPCs, but gain it for Lunars?

AFAICT it's based on CHA because it has to do with your ability to keep a connection with enough spirits that can lend you the energy and magical fairy dust that actually powers the spells. So it's not so much that you forgot it, it's that you're not in contact with the spirits that powered that spell anymore. It's as if the Spirit World's Facebook had a limit on the number of spirits your can friend... you gain a friend, you lose a friend. They probably should have not used terms like "memorize" and "forgetting" in the rules though... unless of course Jeff and Jason and company actually had some other rationalization in mind.

Interesting experiment indeed! Since I doubt I'll learn Finnish any time soon, would you care to give us a short written version of your conclusions? I'm wondering if it's inherently biased, though, as the players are bound to try different approaches in subsequent plays of the adventure, thus giving the wrong impression that the 2nd or 3rd systems "encourage more creative play" or something?

I love muskoxen! I wanted to have a few in the Far Place but I figured it might not be cold enough for that... nice to see someone giving them the attention they deserve. Aren't the two hypothetical ranges super big? I don't imagine muskoxen go very fast, so either your tribe is very big, or their nomadic patterns are spread over a long period? Frankly between the two ranges it really depends if you want the campaign to be about brushing up against Northern Pelorians (like the Jarasans and their Tall Bird mounts) and the Blue Moon Plateau Trolls, or if you want instead the harsher winters of Northern Pent, with various Trolls roaming the lands all the time, and Kralorela nearby. I feel like there's more stuff to do with Range 1, but it might be because I'm lacking ideas and information about what's interesting around Range 2 (and also it sounds to me like Range 2 is a lot less livable, but I may again be lacking information).

Huh, yeah, that makes sense. Thanks!

What's that, now?

Anybody who rolls dice once a week or more would benefit greatly from having been exposed at least once to one of Louis Zocchi's awesome diatribes about dice manufacturing... like in this video. You won't look at your dice the same way ever again!

Everything you say makes sense, but I think you misunderstood my point. Yes, spirit magic is not logical, you're effectively dealing with spirits and you might deal with different spirits than me when we cast a similar spell, because we learned it differently, etc... etc... but my point was that everything you're saying has to do with the Spirit World. Not the Gods. I don't know how your standing with spirits would change if your standing with the Gods change too... I guess it depends on what your explanation is, whether the spirits of the Spirit World are subservient to the Gods (in which case as you lose standing in your cult, they basically tell you "sorry, the boss says we can't deal with you anymore"), or whether the Spirit World is a separate thing from the Gods' Realm (I think that was one of the old origin stories of Glorantha, where it was created by the collision of 3 separate universes). I think that second explanation was abandoned a while ago though, so I guess it all makes sense.

What other narrative systems are you also familiar with, and how would they compare to HQ? (for the record, I think it's only the GM that has a simulationist or narrative approach... any system itself can be used either way... the main innovations of HQ are (1) to formalize and recommend a narrative approach in the first place, and (2) abandon the whole idea of action scenes' round-by-round resolution (although that wasn't new at the time, actually)) My main gripe with HQ by faaaar is the Mastery notation... It always trips me up. When I read "1W3", I always think "1 mastery plus 3", but of course it's the other way ("3 masteries plus 1"), which, errr, is weird to read? ("one plus masteries 3"?) I just can't get my brain to work.

The 3 scenarios take place in 1922, 1928 (with a prelude set in 1926), and 1932.

Or, rather, very much acknowledge its existence in the sense of "it's one of the tools in my big box of long term campaign planning". The fact that we have many possible upcoming disasters is actually great: the GM can pick the one(s) that better suit the themes, locations, and characters of their campaign, and build their big epic campaign around them. Actually, I would looooove to see Chaosium (or the Jonstown Compendium) release a book of "possible futures" for Glorantha, where each of these calamities is explored in a hypothetical way, with timelines, important NPCs and events, scenario seeds, etc... for those of you who have taken a look at the excellent FATE of Cthulhu and its different possible timelines of Mythos apocalypses, you can probably see what I mean.

Funny, I had been thinking about the exact same change. I haven't playtested it yet, but glad to hear it's working well. I'm not sure about this, but I would love to know how it goes in a playtest! It really sounds like a slightly improved version of what @Karl Frost was saying... only instead of switching between characters after every action, you switch only when one character catches up to an opponent (i.e. no need to switch when 2 PCs catch up, unless they're fighting each other). But it might get tricky when PC1 is chasing Cultist1 which is in turn chasing PC2 (it happens more often than you think!). You get this accordion thing where you might have to switch back and forth until everybody's out of actions, but that might be OK. Another possibility might be to resolve actions in farthest-to-closest order... that is, if you organize your characters on a linear track as recommended in the rules, with the chase going left to right, then you go in order from the right-most character to the left-most character. This way, when Character1 catches up to Character2, you know that Character2 has already spent all their actions, and you can never run into the "I got caught be never go to act" problem. It's not totally perfect but it might be a good balance between simplicity and fixing the problem at hand.