Lordabdul

And maybe also some opportunities for hilarious misunderstandings, like what happens with a couple dozen words between Parisian French and Quebecois French!

Oh yeah I didn't mean that it should be removed -- I was just suggesting a bit of a warning about it, or simply just sharing my own opinion. Both RQG and the Glorantha Sourcebook would benefit from a bit more disclaimers IMHO, as they take.... err... people with certain discerning tastes (they're definitely not your usual RPG book). Yeah I wanted to write something about it originally but couldn't really form my argumentation. Now I think it really boils down to: The GM has to pick, adapt, and/or design rules for worship, Cults, and 3 different types of magic. It seems rather hard to do if you don't know the setting yet. Most of the proposed systems are actually systems that were born out of RQ. These are the systems you pick after you've played RQ for a bit, or, maybe, CoC, and want a few tweaks here or there. In reality, Gloranthan newbies are, well, new to this RPG ecosystem, so I don't think they would even know about these things. But hey we're mostly nitpicking here -- again, great blog post! Thanks for the continued blogging over the years!

In a simplistic way, you basically roll whenever you want to see which way the story goes... did they manage to jump across or not? Did they break into the warehouse or got caught by the guards? Did they lockpick the door? Did they kill the 2 vampires inside? Etc... You resolve narrative beats instead of physical actions. The narrative beats can be as small or as large as you want, but of course if the beats are very large, you're going to end up 10 years later after only 2 hours of play, which may or may not be what you want (probably not).

Yep -- of course there could also be another level to that joke that I didn't get!

You may want to check the name of the person you replied to here, and then check the names on the cover of the Mythras rulebook

Not me. If they succeed, I tell them, and if I hadn't prepared anything because they're talking to an NPC that isn't supposed to matter much, I still make up something (which may link back to the main plot, or might lead to a new side-plot). I take a note of it and expand on whatever it is as necessary before the next session. As a GM, I try to make it vaguely reliable -- because it's already hard enough as it is for my players (especially since I tend to run investigation scenarios or open-worlds with a fair amount of intrigue). So I tell them something wrong only if they roll a fumble, usually. And depending on the campaign tone and on the players, I let them roll, instead of rolling it myself. It doesn't quite fit a, say, conspiracy-based spy thriller thing (like when I play Delta Green), but it does work with most genres, and my players are good enough to roleplay believably even though they know themselves that they're acting on the wrong information.

Unless your GM is extremely cruel, yes. I can't find any information on this but I would assume it's gone forever (but of course you can regain POW a couple times per season). If the spirit is bound to an animal, it's explicitly said the spirit is freed if the animal dies. It also says that the enchantment is destroyed if the inscribed symbols are destroyed, so damaging the object or location where the spirit is bound would do the trick, I think. Of course, you'd need to catch the spirit with a control spell, otherwise it would just escape into the Spirit World and would have to be hunted down.

Great stuff! That would have been good to have for our first episode of Wind Words Great intro to put the newbies at ease, too. I wouldn't have mentioned The Widow's Tale in the fiction section, since it's completely out of print and unavailable everywhere (not even in digital form AFAICT?). This may prove controversial but I don't think HeroQuest is good for GMs new to Glorantha. One problem I've seen for instance is at character creation: in RQG, a player picks, say, an Ernalda priestess, and they can pick their spells and skills from the list. Even better, they have their backstory (and therefore motivations) filled up thanks to the amazing family history. In HQG, however, it's, like "OK you're an Earth priestess, now spend some points in traits and magical abilities". And everybody around the table is, like, "errr I don't know? What kind of magic can you do in this world? What is Earth magic like? Is there a spell list?". Sure, the GM and players could invent their own Earth magic on the spot and make their Glorantha vary but if you're already doing that at character creation, you might as well play in your own homebrew world IMO. For this reason, I tend to recommend HQG only to GMs who either have prior knowledge of Glorantha, or at least have a couple other books on the subject that they're wiling to read. The free-form aspect of HQ is great for being able to do whatever you want, but it means you have nothing to guide your hand if you don't know your material. It totally agree with your conclusion -- that's pretty much what I would do too. Keep on blogging!

In RQG (and maybe in the system-less world of Glorantha), people have this conflict between the Human Rune and the Beast Rune. Are other species also conflicted between form Runes? Like, Dragonewts, Aldryami, and Spirits all have their form Rune, but do they have an "opposing Rune" too?

Is there any theory as to why this resulted in an additional sub-race, as opposed to, say, replace Trollkin births by Great Troll births?

When I wrote my previous post I tried to come up with proposals for who might provide tattoo removal services, but I couldn't come up with anything... I figured Lanbril cultists might be the middle-persons to put you in relation with someone actually providing the service, but Lanbril itself doesn't quite fit IMHO. I didn't think of Eurmal, but that might probably work -- although Eurmalis might conceal your tattoos instead of actually remove them. Krarsht is a lot more like what I had in mind, but I'm not very familiar with her cult so I'll have to read up on that. It looks like this is more like an "expand, entangle and stick" kind of substance, no? But yeah, I would probably introduce some kind of Chaos monster body fluid that would eat the flesh where the tattoo is, followed by some healing spells. It might never quite heal back correctly though, so the character would have to come up with something: "oh yeah I fought some Krarshtkids a few years ago... nasty little buggers. Now stop asking me about my past!".

Of course, people who are subscribed to the podcast using a podcast player app (as they should!) will have little choice in the matter and will receive the podcast on their mobile device whether they want it or not... but I guess they could always avoid pressing the "Play" button... The lovingly crafted show notes (by @Joerg as always) are here: https://windwords.fm/episode-3-the-travels-of-biturian-varosh-part-1/

You've got good eyes! Me, I was mostly surprised to not see any little village drawing/icon under "Amadhall". But then I was distracted by the awesome Sun-worshipping warrior painting and started thinking about looting that mask from his corpse.

An open license has never been about "anything goes". Some licenses are more or less restrictive (the WotC OGL also has a few restrictions for instance). The BRP one is what it is. So instead, how about this: if you have any doubts about your game idea, you have 2 options: You ask Chaosium directly about it (by showing them what you want to do, not in a roundabout way by talking about a dozen hypotheticals) You just go with another SRD and OGL to be safe... are you really that married to BRP? (as opposed to any D100 system?) But in reality, I think you are either (1) overthinking this, or (2) trying to sneak something past Chaosium. I don't imagine you're trying to do a reskinned Call of Cthulhu ("you investigate Eldritch-related mysteries, but on Mars! And you can play aliens!"), so I assume it's (1). If, for example, you're trying to do a "multiverse time cops" pulp adventure game and you want the option, in the future, to release an adventure book featuring Mythos monsters or King Arthur (it wouldn't be far fetched for a multiverse time cop thing), then talk to Chaosium directly about it. It would, like, literally take one sentence. However, if these elements are in your core game, just use another license.

Hah that's what I tried finding! I knew there must have been something on that wiki... the search feature really sucks there, it seems. Glad to see you succeeded where I have failed!

Because you probably already wrote and spent the brain power equivalent of 3 game pitches already on this thread Also, because the game pitch wouldn't be wasted: if Chaosium comes back and says "nope, that infringes on our IPs", you can still send the same pitch to Evil Hat or Design Mechanism or whatever, with minimal edits (since the game pitch wouldn't mention much mechanics, if any).

I think that's a key thing here. And that's why Tradetalk is a thing (like any other "common" language in 95% of all fictional settings). That is, unless you want to play in an Arrival-like or Captain-Blood-like (the old video game, not the book/film) campaign (which would be awesome). However, it's probably interesting to have a map that tells you which languages are related to which others in the entirety of Glorantha, so you can give appropriate bonuses to learning languages not referenced in RQG. I imagine this is one of the basic things to prepare if you run a long-distance Issaries trader game, for instance.

I actually think it's a good thing and not a problem, but that's another debate. But yes, you're right, it's focused on Dragon Pass, Peloria, and Prax. I'm surprised to not be able to find any page listing all Gloranthan languages on the Glorantha wiki (you'd think this is the kind of thing that this wiki would be good for). Like Joerg says, all languages are mentioned in the Guide, but scattered through each section. It's not too bad though: each major culture or Elder Race has a well identified "Language" section, and each geographical location also has a "Language" section.... so what I mean is: you're gonna be doing the job

Consider my appetite whetted! This is all absolutely gorgeous. I was also under the mistaken impression that all the adventures were taking place near Colymar lands... it's interesting to see the Woods of the Dead and Alone featured here... especially because that's where I'm basing my current Gloranthan work. Looking forward to it!

Shamans and their ability to go in the Spirit World introduce a very similar problem to the "netrunner problem" of the old 1990s Cyberpunk game, where you have one player going somewhere other players can't go, and that ends up splitting the party, or forcing most of the table to sit and wait while their friend has fun in the cyberspace/Spirit World. I wonder whether this problem weighed a lot (or not) on the design of spirit-related rules? For example, was the ability to attack spirits in physical combat with magically enhanced weapons done for narrative/world-building reasons, or for solving that "netrunner problem"?

There's also a neat "language tree" in the RuneQuest rulebook, showing the various main languages and how they relate to each other in one fancy (possibly too fancy) drawing. It's limited to the RuneQuest starting homelands though so there's no mention of languages outside of Central Genertela.

Oh well I tried to help with something actionable that may satisfy all parties, but alas... Enjoy your frustration, people.

No, you've come up with all kinds of hypothetical examples to try and figure out what the license covers. It's not very productive, and visibly frustrating to the Chaosium staff. What I'm saying is for you to send Chaosium the actual pitch of the actual game you actually want to work on and publish for real. Apparently some other authors already did that, as Jeff has anecdotally mentioned a few things he has been approach about. If you want to publish that multi-setting campaign of yours, write a 1 or 2 pages pitch and send that.

Ah yes sorry I was thinking of the round when you cast your last spell and then charge into melee. For that turn, the SOI is indeed probably "I cast Axe Trance and attack", but if the casting fails, the player would probably go "errr hold on" and lose some SR as they do something else. After being engaged with melee, though, yeah I think you can either cast spells and defend, or attack and defend.

Write us the pitch for your game and we'll tell you if you can use BRP or not... That will probably go much faster