Lordabdul

Like David said, only Rune Priests, Rune Lords, and shamans can teach Spirit Magic (check out the pages David gave). Since it takes a week to learn, you generally do that between adventures, or during some downtime. If the party has a Rune Priest, some spare time, and everybody gets along, there's no reason they can't teach spells to the others. Remember that, as mentioned in the rules, teaching spirit magic is a big source of revenue for temples, so it's generally not free. Check p257 for typical prices of spells. But p253 also says a temple typically gives a 50% discount to their initiates. The Rune Priest PC might still charge a bit of money from the other PCs... that's more money to tithe to their temple (and might offset the accounting so they can keep that fancy loot they got on the last adventure). Keep an eye on cult secrets and other cult-specific spirit magic... I'm not sure how your temple would feel about teaching that to anybody (they might need to at least be lay members). On the plus side, a character's temple would probably be OK teaching a few spells for free in between adventures, especially if the character did something cool that benefits that temple.

I think you have the general idea about Chaos. And yes, the main big difference in my opinion is that Chaos has nothing to do with magic in Glorantha, unlike Chaos in Warhammer. Glorantha has 3 kinds of magic: The rawest/most basic form of magic is directly manipulating the Runes that make up the universe. That's Sorcery. It's kind of Ars-Magica-esque in the sense that it's "free form" magic, and it's for nerdy wizards. You probably want to avoid it at first, it's not very powerful for beginner characters, it's not very common in the beginner homelands, and the rules are meant to be expanded in later sourcebooks. Instead of manipulating the Runes directly, you can let someone do that for you, namely the Gods (which are the impersonation of those Runes). In exchange for worship, they let you use their powers. That's Rune magic. That's the type of magic that is very much unique to Glorantha/RuneQuest (or at least unusual in the landscape of RPGs if you exclude RQ-like RPGs). It's the most powerful and flashy magic of all. Last you can just use the spirits, and the spirit world's energies, to do magic. Spirit magic is you regular "MP-powered spells" magic, but there are also shamans who can bargain with spirits and discorporeate to go in the spirit world, a bit like a netrunner goes into the cyberspace in a cyberpunk game. So magic just really comes from Runes (directly or via Gods) and Spirits. The page has moved, apparently. It's now here: https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/gloranthan-documents/cot-history/cot-cosmology/

I wish there had been some additional checkboxes or something on the character sheet to track skills/runes/passions that have been used for augments.

Yeah. I'm still not sure what the "attack is resolved normally" refers to... I understand it as "resolved normally as a melee attack" but it sounds like you understand it as "resolved normally as a Spirit Combat exchange".

Are you talking about the bolded statement on p142? That opposed rolls are not used to resolve melee combat? I don't think it contradicts it... I think it was meant to say that you don't resolve an entire combat scene with one opposed roll (like HeroQuest does), and instead you do a round by round thing with damage tracking and all that stuff. This is in comparison with other scenes like, say, a cooking competition, where you do it entirely with just one opposed roll (or a couple... but not a round-by-round thing). I could totally be wrong because it definitely isn't 100% clear in the rules, but I would just follow the usual rules for physical combat ("attack is resolved normally"), similar to Attack vs Dodge/Parry, but using Attack vs Spirit Combat skill, and applying special/critical damage appropriately as per the table on p199: Special/critical success damage for spirits are listed on p368 Special damage from a magic-enhanced sword doesn't change anything AFAICT since magical modifiers are only applied once, and when fighting a spirit that's all you get. Critical damage gets you max special damage and armour bypass. Fumbles are rolled or the Spirit Combat fumble table instead of the normal combat table. I think that non-combat PCs can take part in Spirit Combat (by spending a bunch of points on magic) to avoid the Netrunner problem of one player doing fun stuff while everybody else waits. Sure, you can keep the others busy while they protect the shaman/netrunner/whatever from outside forces, but sometimes the GM just can't justify that in a scene -- and besides, that still splits the party in 2 different scenes. It could get tweaked one way or other, but I think it comes from a sound game design decision.

I saw this too in my quick research and wondered if that might be the source of some people misremembering things... The source is also the Dragon Pass Gazeteer from HQ1, although it says the walls predate the Dragonkill, but they were vitrified during the Dragonkill by dragon fire. Both Glasswall and Aldachur could have a similar origin for having glass walls but that's a bit redundant in my opinion. IMG I would probably keep that story only for Glasswall, especially since there's also supposedly a bunch of glass statues littering the area around it (remains of an old army killed at the same time during the Dragonkill), and that's super cool.... so I would do something else for Aldachur (I'm still on my idea of "glass" here meaning "obsidian walls built by Dragonewts", because black mirror walls look cool in my head, but I'd love to hear/read other ideas!).

Ah nice... maybe if you play a campaign early enough in the metaplot, you can actually make the players feel guilty about the Lunar invasion

I was just curious about how many of these scenarios are based in Glorantha, and whether they have any cool premise or character or whatever.

...which was helpful for me because it listed a couple books I wasn't aware of! (Thanks!) I tracked one via eBay, and I'm now just missing one French Herowars book (the Anaxial Roster one) out of my French Herowars collection. It's kind of dear to my heart since these books were the very first Gloranthan books I ever bought, and upon reading their first chapters I went "what the fuck is this?" and proceeded to never touch them again for several years (I was young). I really like the cover of the German adventure book. Are there more details about the scenarios in it?

Yes! And since my usual sessions are actually 4 to 5 hours, I decreased my online ones to less than 3 hours. I also find it harder to have large groups, especially since it's harder to check if everybody's engaged.

That's what they do after they invaded your lands with their soldiers. I'm talking about doing that during peace time... basically more like religious warfare/cold war.

Maybe? I would probably not do that personally. Instead I would ask how the player plans to appear majestic... dressing well? Dancing down the streets? Loudly announcing their arrival? Or just acting like they're important (body language)? Ordering NPCs to spread the word of their feats? And then pick the skill for that. But that's one of the problems I have with BRP, actually. In games where skills are based upon stats, stat rolls (if they even exist) represent the skill default -- so the players are encouraged to describe how they do things and pick an appropriate skill, because that increases their chances. In BRP however most of the time a STATx5 roll will be better than half their skills, and the guidance for other multipliers is not super clear to me. Multiplying these scores is annoying anyway (which CoC solves by pre-calculating 2 of them and only sticking to that). Which is another reason I barely ever do stat rolls except for STR rolls to kick a door in, or other such common things where there's really no skill. Anyway -- my original question was "did I miss anything about this spell?" and it seems the answer is "no". Thanks everyone for the help and suggestions!

I wonder if that can be a plot where the PCs are trying to disrupt some local deity by expanding the realm of their own deity equivalent. Basically, instead of the heavy handed Lunar methods of conquest, you instead do some sneaky (but possibly coordinated!) cultural/religious overtaking of your neighbours.... I mean, if you offer very similar blessings as the other temple, but you also have free t-shirts and honey-glazed pork chops every Wildday, maybe people will switch over to your deity! Better keep some armed guards on retainer, though, because the other temple will sooner or later become very upset about it... Is there any precedent for this kind of stuff? I mean, when you create your own temple, I don't think there's many options besides: The old temple got destroyed, or the old priest got killed or went away, and you're the replacement. Under Lunar occupation, the old priest might have been anti-Lunar and you've got some agreement because you're a dirty Lunar collaborator. After the Dragonrise, the opposite might be true: the old priest was pro-Lunar but died in the Dragonrise, or got lynched by the local population. You were in the rebellion and people support you. Anything else could happen to the temple and/or priest otherwise (troll/tuskraiders/etc raid, accident, previous priest moving on up or dying of old age, etc.) You're going to a place where your cult doesn't exist yet, and there's no competing cult. Going to Balazar/Elder Wilds/some other mostly unpopulated place. You're going to a place where you cult doesn't exist yet, but there is a local competing cult. So yeah, free t-shirts! I imagine that a temple priest would indeed have some NPCs around to manage the day-to-day stuff... although given the correct PC party composition, that could be the party itself, and that's what they do between adventures.

These are all awesome ideas! I imagine pro-Lunar gamers would feel similarly about the Dragonrise... For all the problems created by playing a vastly diverging Glorantha (like a Glorantha where the Lunar PCs stop the Dragonrise and allow their people to continue occupying Sartar), it feels like playing in a Glorantha where the flood doesn't happen/happens differently/happens later is actually quite easy to do, since I don't think Chaosium will advance the published materials' dates to 1652 any time soon (judging by how slowly the "current date" has advanced in the last 40 years ). Heck, I can't even imagine reaching that date myself, as I'm more likely to end a campaign and start another one, rather than continuing the same one long enough. I find it interesting that there's an "impending flood" in the near future of the Gloranthan metaplot. I think most "Great Flood" events tend to be mythical events that happened in the distant past... are there any ancient cultures where floods are in the present/future instead? (it's also possible that this particular flood is less a product of mythical inspiration, and more a product of some Chaosium writer's super-long home campaign needing a big shake-up to keep the players on their toes?)

I'm not sure about this? There's the Princeros town of Glasswall that has around it the remains of glass army molten by dragon fire... but the glass walls of Alda-Chur don't seem to have a definite origin. The Gazeteer says it's from the ruins of a previous draconic city, indicating that they were built as glass from the start by the Dragonewts. And given that, when it comes to Dragonewts, Greg had a tendency to say "glass" when talking about obsidian, it's possible the walls are actually made of that. Either way, given the lack of solid info on the matter, one can probably safely do whatever looks the coolest in their game. Black reflective draconic walls sure look cool in my head.

You gotta hunt for the info a bit, especially since it's sometimes spelled "Aldachur", so you have to search for both spellings in your PDF collection. Wyrms Footnotes 15: "Taros Ridgeleaper from Tarsh established Aldachur in the ruins of the fortress of Baran Breakearth, a great hero from before the Dragonkill. Only a few bits of the old fortress remain, including the glass walls." There's a couple more bits in there, and generally speaking a lot of information on the Far Place, which you may want to read. A few things are incorrect or have been retcon'ed, but overall it's worth a look. The description of Alda-Chur from WF15 has been expanded upon a bit in the (also out of date) Dragon Pass Gazeteer, but the origin of the glass walls stays the same almost verbatim.

Is it hard to play in the Roman Empire, knowing it all comes crashing down later? Or in the last decades of feudal Japan? At least here you can change the way it goes. Heck, even if you play as a Centurion or a Samurai, you can technically change history and go into alternate histories. Sometimes it's even better. I didn't even know there was supposed to be a flood in 1652. I don't see it list in the 3rd age timeline of Dragon Pass... where is that coming from? (edit: found it, King of Sartar)

Several people here have created a blog on this site (go to the Blogs section and hit "Create a Blog") in order to post session reports and campaign diaries and so on. It's often super interesting to read... I'd love to read a diary of your Gloranthan murder investigation! It sounds awesome! You may find some help with us Call of Cthulhu players (which there are a lot of in a nearby sub-forum!), since CoC is, basically, all investigations -- and often the investigation starts with a murder or two! My advice is to basically know as well as possible who the various characters and factions are, what they want, what they would do next if the players don't do anything, and what they would do if the players interfere. This way you can manage pace fairly easily by improvising NPC actions and reactions, especially when players are stumped (and spend hours or days not doing anything) or try various random things to see what "sticks". Figuring out clues is obviously important too, but I find that it's possible to improvise clues as players ask questions I didn't think about because at least I know what happened and who was involved, so I just need to deduce things logically "forward", as opposed to improvising things "backwards" which is where you create loopholes and inconsistencies. As for Roll20, unless you're doing grid-based action scenes (probably not since you're using HeroQuest) then it's mostly useful for dice rolling, storing character sheets, and sharing handouts either via the Handouts library feature, or placing the handout pictures directly on the background (which is what I do for maps, for instance). I'm a Roll20 newbie though so people might have more info.

Besides all the good stuff already share here, one thing that stands out to me is that the players may not realize what they're in for? It's like saying that you want money and free meals, so you're going to open a restaurant... obviously, you're going to get money and free meals only after having worked your ass off actually, you know, managing and maintaining the restaurant (hiring cooks and waiters, managing permits, handling supplies, fending off mafia thugs, kicking out drunken people, establishing a rapport with the neighbourhood, etc.). Similarly, you don't just open a temple to get easy POW and Rune points and expect to not do some hard work. For this reason, I think the players and GM need to discuss this because it would logically refocus the campaign around that temple's affairs and agenda. Another thing is that I'm not sure a character would have enough traction to attract 150+ people to a new temple? Unless there was a big vacuum caused by the destruction of a previous temple? I might make it clear that it's easier to start with a Site and move on to a Shrine and then to a Minor Temple. Kinda like starting with a food truck or hole-in-the-wall place before moving on to a proper sit-down restaurant. And yes, I'm all about restaurants. I miss restaurants these days! Anyway... Last, remember that a site/shrine/temple can start with only lay members -- most likely people from a nearby community that the priest and their entourage will provide ongoing services to. You only need to accumulate actual initiates when you want free temple defenses I think?

It's one of those things where I'm always on the fence about rolling raw stats. For instance, a player casts Charisma and proceeds to charm someone. Me, the GM: "roll for Charm, you get a measly +15% from your spell". The player: "can I roll CHAx5 directly instead and get a whooping +70%?". Me, the GM: "Errr I don't know, you're trying to charm someone, and that's what the Charm skill is for". Repeat for any other situation like bargaining, bullshitting, intimidating, gossiping, etc. I'm not quite sure there's any social situation that warrants using raw CHA? I can't think of any right now. Sure, but a spell called "Charisma" would be weird if it was mainly used for increasing Spirit Damage. But yes, that's one of the only things I can see where it would be good. I'm not sure if you did consider it or not, but note that parts of those modifiers are already accounted for. If you have CHA 16, you already have +5% in Communication skills. Casting Charisma gets you to +25% in total, so that's +20% from what you were at before -- the spell gives you +20%. That's why I was saying it was on par with any Passion/Augment (and also probably similar in terms of chances of success, and doesn't cost a Rune point). That's why I was saying it was a "top-up", where doing both Passion and Charisma might give you +30% or +40%, which is non negligible, but as a player you probably start with the Augment. It's indeed more interesting if you're a super high-CHA character like a Rune Lord, but frankly at this point I'm more interested in beginner characters taking that spell at creation or after their first couple seasons of play, and whether it's worth it. Basically, the reason I find it weird and out of place is that many combat spells routinely let you double your combat skills, and I don't understand why non-combat magic isn't also giving you equivalent bonuses in non-combat spells... (like double skill percentages in non-confrontational communication skills). But anyway, I'm diverting the thread from its original intent, sorry about that.

Also: Farscape.

Speaking of Charisma -- am I correct that this spell is quite weak, and only vaguely useful for high-CHA characters? If you have CHA 10, it only gives you +10% in Communication skills. At CHA 16 it gives +20%. It's not too bad, but you can get an Augment instead for a similar increase, so Charisma is really just useful as a top-up? Or am I missing some better use for it?

Yep I agree.

Well, let's just say that when I ran the campaign using the original version, it was also hard and I missed a few clues here and there, forcing me to reintroduce them clumsily through some other way, or, on one occasion, ret-con it. The new edition looks like a good improvement, but of course it's not perfect. One good addition in the new version is the "Clue Diagrams" in each chapter. If you look at the "America Clue Diagram" on p102, you'll see that "Prospero House" points to "England". Of course, it doesn't tell you who in Prospero House points to who in the England chapter, but hey, at least you can see at a glance whether you're missing a whole connection to another chapter. They could have made the clue diagrams bigger with more details, but it might have ended up as a wall-sized conspiracy theorist's nightmare. Who knows... but hey, I feel you. It's a complicated campaign to run, and it's probably a complicated campaign to edit and revise. But it's worth it, and hopefully you're having fun!

In RQG moves are also per SR, spell casting has no duration in SR (since it's measured in minutes) but the time spent to summon is also measured in SR, etc... what's the difference? (AFAICT the difference is just that RQG waves its hands at characters not engaged in melee and says "no need to track SR too much for these people", whereas RQ3 says everyone should act in the SR order) But yes, I'm not super big on the muddy definition and role of SR in the game mechanics (it's a mix of different concepts like time, actions, and weapon range). As someone said, if SR was a good idea, it would have been stolen by other game systems by now. Heck, even the game designers don't actually use the SR rules as written (most Actual Play videos on YouTube don't use it, and I believe Steve Perrin said he only uses them for the first round of melee engagement to define who draws first blood), so I don't quite understand why it wasn't heavily modernized. That said, I had no problem introducing SR to new players, especially since using Infinity Engine's SR tracker stick makes it fun, visual, and easy.