Lordabdul

I'm not sure why such new magic would turn up in an upcoming book. Odayla is right there in RQG, and it's supposed to be playable "as is". I think the authors thought that was all there was to do with it. Now that I think about it more, the thing that I find the most sad isn't that shapeshifting magic is lame per-se... it's that it's all there is to Odayla. In HQ, bear-shifting was reserved to Devotee level characters ("Master Hunter") so sure, make it super expensive so that only Rune Lord characters can access it. It would still be overpriced in my opinion, because AFAIK Master Hunters could stay in Bear form for a lot longer than 1 hour, but whatever. But in HQ Odayla also had all the Beast Charms that you could collect, which gave you various little animal powers here and there, like Animal-Man or some other cheesy 1990s super-hero. I don't know why we don't have this in RQG? Maybe because the authors felt Odayla was only about bears, and nothing else? So they instead offered the 3 spells to only take one aspect at a time? (even though 2 of those are not much worth their cost, and the 3rd is only good if you have high-enough stats). And when you combine that to the equally lame Hunter occupation, it's a very hard proposition for anybody to pick Odayla as their character's cult. I'm not sure I get your point. Shapeshifting magic is offered to players, so it should be good and satisfying to play, no? Like I said, if it was meant to be only for corrupted groups of people like the Telmori, or for mysterious NPCs like the hermit hunter that people only see once a year, then it would have been totally acceptable to keep those spells in the Bestiary or GM pack in order to preserve the narrative tropes of Gloranthan tales. But that isn't the case, these spells are in adventurer backgrounds in the rulebook.

Nice stuff in this thread! Heh, I'm not sure that even half of your points are actually "variations" I mean yeah, Sartarites are reckless troublemakers who can't agree on much, Lunars aren't that bad, most of the metaplot's "big NPCs" are terrible people at best, etc. I'm curious why you made the Agimori not come from Pamaltela? I have been thinking about things along those lines too (i.e. the relationship between Gods' powers and prominence, and the amount of worship they receive), as it's a common trope in fantasy settings. I haven't reached many conclusions yet -- for me the key is to figure out what are the mechanics behind the Windstop. AFAICT the published books only handwave it as "the Lunars did some very complicated magics, and the last requirement was to make Whitewall fall". I'd like my "variation" on the topic to neatly tie in to that. Heh, funny I do Esrolian with a French accent too. But then again, everything I do has a French accent because I'm French But seriously though, I do increase my French accent for Esorlians, to make them sound a bit more fancy and cultured. I use a (very badly performed) Scottish accent only for the northern parts of Sartar like the Far Place and Alda-Chur. As such, to be consistent, I would use a Scottish accent also for anybody speaking Tarshite. After that, I just run out of accents I can do, so everybody else has my normal voice I'm super curious about what other GMs use for accents though... please share! Me too, and I play during the occupation. But that's probably because it's my first time playing in Glorantha, so I don't have the "fatigue" that some old gamers might have, who would understandably want to move it along and try something else.

I'm happy to see a couple threads lately highlighting how shapeshifting magic sucks. I had a thread a while ago trying to fix it, but I was mostly unsuccessful (I tried to keep my house rules vaguely compatible with RAW but I don't think it's possible). Treating Transform Self as a standalone spell which requires knowing the other ones (as opposed casting them) might be a good avenue for playtesting. Important point, though: in terms of narrative, it's cool that, say, the Telmori are this mysterious band of werewolves who gather around their leader and wyter and go full beast before going raiding as a pack. In terms of gameplay, however, it sucks. Odayla and the shapeshifting spells are not just for NPCs, they're right there in the core book for players to pick. Even if the rules model the reality of Glorantha's tales, it doesn't mean it's good for a player-facing system in an RPG (see also: why wizards are never satisfying in an RPG adaptation of LotR). So IMHO either Glorantha needs better shapeshifters in order to me more playable, or shapeshifting should be reserved to NPCs the same way, say, elf or chaos magic is for NPCs... that said, it seemed HQ had more playable shapeshifting. As for Glue, the problem is that RQG has a fairly limited grimoire, in the sense that characters only have a few Rune spells. So players will be careful with what they pick, and they will try to get the most out of it. If my players pick Glue for a character, I know that they will abuse the shit out of it eventually... when you have Glue, every problem looks like, err, something that needs gluing. I know I'll have to be prepared as the GM because... you're kidding, but I'm pretty sure one of them would totally go for "I touch the ground to glue it to the boot". Seriously. I didn't realize that Illusion spells could actually create stuff, even though it's kind of explained in the rules (why did they call it "illusion"?!!!). Interesting... that does indeed open up a whole new world of fun and abuse...

??? It might not even be worth the bookkeeping trouble because these rolls tend to be for Listen or Scan or some commonly used enough skill that it would probably have gotten a "legitimate" check soon, or might have had a check already.

Like Bill said, it's about the size of the quote, not the size of what you're writing. Notice here I just quoted that one sentence, and not your whole message? That's the trick.

Yes, and that's as designed I think... although "just a few people" varies. Given the Colymar clans' populations, there's probably between 120 and 500 hides of land to take care of per clan. If the clan sustains an average of -30% penalty per year due to the usual raids and trolls and stuff, but you want +60% for the Harvest Time roll, that means you want 5 RPs for Bless Crops. That's between 600 and 2500 RPs. It's not clear if you can only bless crops during Sea Season (when the sowing is done), or if you can do it also during Fire Season and/or Earth Season or even any season. IMG I would probably only allow it during Sea season, while the seeds are planted (I could maybe allow blessing in Fire Season for half the bonus). Earth priestesses get ~3 RPs back every week if they do their Clayday worship, and ~7 RPs back during the Seasonal Holy Day, so that's 31 "free" RPs for sowing season. If the Earth priestesses don't deplete their Rune pools too much, there needs to be between 19 and 80 of them working on Blessing Crops. And you don't want them to spend too much because Fire Season is raiding season, where you need the healing magic... Anyway, I wouldn't qualify that as "just a few people". However, if you allow Blessing Crops during Fire and Earth season, that lowers the numbers considerably, of course. Even more so if you allow, for some reason, Blessing Crops year-round, since then you can really spread out your time and spending... in this case, yeah you can do it with "just a few people".... but then, if you do that, you end up with more unallocated people with more magic to spare... and this is the thread about dealing with, supposedly, "too much magic" in the world! So here, I humbly offer one element of the solution as making sure a whole bunch of Earth magic is busy with Blessing Crops, and then busy healing raiders, etc. POW is a long game thing, so it's possible some people sacrifice several points in one go because they expect something that will need the Rune Points. I could also be they were unlucky in their rolls. And if you want to get fancy you could also consider that, with the recent Windstop in Sartar, people missed out on a couple years of replenishing. Feeding the Wyter is very possible, although quite limited, as a Wyter maxes out at a dozen or so points IIRC. I don't think average people have access to warding and enchantments, so they wouldn't sacrifice for that... although I suppose it's interesting to think about the local shaman or priest offering discounted prices if you are the one sacrificing POW instead of them. In which case, yeah, it could be moderately common. Yes I'm pretty sure you're right, but I'm really just trying to help the OP here. Again, the thread is about supposedly having too much magic in Glorantha. I'm trying to offer optional views of Glorantha, and optional interpretations of the rules where there is, actually, not so much magic in the world after all, or at least that magic is reserved for seasonal things (like crops, above). That doesn't tell me if your farmers will have 1 spell each, or 5 spells each (well, I guess in your case, there's a 90% chance they don't have any spells, since you have a low ratio of initiates in your world). And obviously, yes, it might be the former in someone's Glorantha, and the latter in someone else's Glorantha. But I'm still saying it's a foundational question to answer. You must have seen different comments and read different books than me. Can you give some references? I'm not sure about DI (I don't envision it as something that happens very often in the average person's life). I'm not sure either about spell trading -- it's supposed to be one spell in exchange for another spell, not one spell in exchange for some raw POW. What do you mean here? I've often heard this thing about Sartar supposedly being an outlier in the number of people with Rune magic but I'm not sure where it comes from? AFAIK, Esrolia, the Holy Country, Hendrikiland, and Prax, all have also people with equal religious devotion as Sartarites. I'm not sure about Lunar provinces but I have no reason to think otherwise... I get the feeling that, because the books often say that Sartarites are violent, ruthless bad-asses, this automatically translates to "they have magic", when really it could just mean, they are training hard all day and they are not afraid of fighting with pointy things?

No. The adventurers go on adventures for the benefit of the community. Of course it depends on how you run your games, but the way I do it is that half of the adventures are actually on clan lands: they investigate some spirit activity, they deal with some old magical artifact found in the ground that is causing trouble, they push back an invasion of trolls, they prepare defenses against giants, etc. The other half of the adventures might be outside of the clan lands (or even tribal lands), but they are still benefiting the community: they're coming back with alliances with other clans, they're going on heroquests, they're going to Boldhome to influence politics in favour of their clan, they recover lost clan regalia, they hunt down cattle raiders or go on cattle raids themselves, etc. At the end of the season, most people in the clan will have done their job all day long, whether it's dealing with the crops, raising children, hunting and fishing, or doing crafts. At best they go on a raid or other expedition once or twice a year. In comparison, the PCs, well, don't do that. They do... like... stuff. Combat and investigations and politics and stuff. "Adventures". That's another possible explanation, yes. It does matter, because... well, let's ignore the rules for a moment. It matters because I don't really know if, when you go to any arbitrary Sartarite stead, you will meet with an owner who has a couple spells only and is pretty conservative about using them, or an owner who has half a dozen spells and can kick your ass. One might say that it's whatever I want, I'm the GM, I make the stories I want... but this has a snowball effect in terms of world-building that both me and my players are sensitive to. A world where an average farmer has 1 spell vs a world where an average farmer has 5 spells are two vastly different worlds. That's why many D&D settings are widely inconsistent, because many people assume you can just drop a whole pile of magic onto a medieval society and not expect it to change a lot, treating it just as an "extra thing" people do. But no, in reality it would change society quite a lot. So based on what society Glorantha is, or at least how I want my Glorantha to be, it means I must adjust the rules, and the NPC stats, appropriately. Knowing what kind of society Chaosium's Glorantha is is key to figuring out how much I need to change the rules, or not.

Like davecake said, I'm not sure what your point is here? Everybody gets magic -- that's, like, one of the taglines of Glorantha. There's no "warriors vs. magicians", everybody is both. No "all" but "some". Say you get raided once by the neighbours, get some monsters/critters/whatever to push back, and some spirit-related troubles, that's -30%. I imagine that's a typical year for an Orlanthi stead. Bless Crops gives +20% so you have to Stack it once to offset it to +10%. But that's only for one hide... most likely, the -30% is for the majority of the clan's lands, so your Earth priestesses have to dump some massive amounts of RPs to make sure the whole clan benefits. Were are talking of between 100 and 400 RPs, per year, here. Yes, I'd love to see some more proper "resource management" system in RQ for managing your stead and your clan. One of the pillars of Gloranthan gaming is that PCs belong to a community, and need to take care of it... pretty soon they'll be in charge somehow, so it would make sense to have some rules for that, at least for those who are interested in it (I suppose other people just want to hand-wave it and only play the raids and the political debates and the battles with nearby trolls). The "Between Adventures" rules in RQG hint at such rules, but don't go all the way. I'm crossing my fingers that the upcoming GM book will have such rules, but I'm frankly not sure it will. Ah yes, you're correct. Mmmh so that would give us "average" NPCs with 12 RPs at 30 year-old, and 22 RPs at 40 year-old... that makes a whole bunch of other NPCs have weird stats. For instance, Hastur the Lawspeaker (GM pack, p29) is 45 years-old but only has 12 RPs. Why did he stop sacrificing POW? One explication might be that he had actually average POW, and spent 10 years increasing it, explaining his POW 18. Now that I think about it, it might be a common long term tactic for people who want to have the best chance at resisting spells and what not. Strong-POWered clan-people means warriors who can resist enemy spells better during raids and battles.... so I guess I can halve my numbers back down and get back to where I was, while having a clan population whose average POW is higher than the human average (say, POW 12 or 13 on average). I guess one could say this might be part of the elders' management strategy of the clan... do you want all your people to get more RPs and spells, but have lower POW, or do you want to only have them pick only a few strategic spells, and keep their POW high? It's possible different clans fall on different sides on this matter... No, I think you may have missed what we were saying: On RQG p244, it mentions that Initiates can sacrifice POW to get more Rune Points (although not exactly... see below) On RQG p275, it mentions that Initiates do not get automatic access to a cult's special spells. They only get new special spells if they provide exceptional services to the temple, give a lot of money, or have other exceptional circumstances in their favour. On RQG p313/314, the wording is for "adventurers". Adventurers (as in : the PCs) get 1 Rune Spell for every point of sacrificed POW. So one interpretation of all this is that "adventurers" (PCs) get special cult Rune spells for every sacrificed point of POW because they qualify to the "exceptional services to the temple", by virtue of, you know, going on adventures. Bystander NPCs, however, do not go on adventures, so they only get RPs, but not new Rune spells. Another interpretation (due to the unclear wording on p244 mentioned in (1) above) would be that bystander NPCs only ever sacrifice 1 point of POW during initiation, and get only 1 special cult Rune spell. After that, they don't sacrifice any POW unless they qualify to the conditions on p244 (i.e. they do exceptional things, or pay money, or whatever). With the first interpretation, you have, like I said, an average population of people with decent pools of RPs, but few spells. With the second interpretation, you have an average population of people with only a couple RPs and spells, but at least they have as many RPs as spells. I'm not sure there's a third interpretation? I'm also not sure which interpretation matches better whatever we know, narratively speaking, about Glorantha? Good point yes, I'll have to include this too. But I don't think the average POW gain makes it "easy", especially when you consider the new insight above about potentially wanting your clan people to accumulate POW so they're better able to resist enemy magic during battles. I'm still working on and off on my Clan Resources Spreadsheet which tries to make sense of how magic works at large scale (clan scale). I've got a lot of stuff to add to it now... And to try and reassure @PhilHibbs that I am not trying to extrapolate the world from the game system , I want to be clear that the point of my questions/spreadsheet/etc. is to figure out how to represent Glorantha with the proper numbers, so to speak. That is: given a certain narrative vision of Glorantha, I want to know what stats to give to the NPCs that populate this world, so that it does indeed behave "as intended" when we start rolling.

Wow this thread blew up good... which is to be expected when there is talk of rules changes between RQG and RQ2 or 3, or when there's a return to the good old debate about how many initiates there are in Sartar... let alone a combination of both! Good job people! Anyway, my 2 cents here is that I don't see it as a problem than Rune Points replenish somewhat easily with all the holy days available. Nobody complained before that Magic Points (in RQ) or any other magical currency (in virtually every other RPG) replenishes in a matter of hours, or by the next day. Rune Points are still quite slow in comparison, and are still one of the main things that sets RQ apart from the majority of other FRPGs. And even with all the minor holy days, there's a limit (you only get 1D6 points back if you succeed your Worship roll). The more interesting aspect, to me, is how people gain the Rune Points in the first place. Sure, maybe your Glorantha features flying Orlanthi throwing lightning bolts at each other at the local bar brawl (because they know they can recharge that in a few weeks before raid season comes in), but were they able to acquire these spells to begin with? I agree with @David Scott's explanations here, but let's dive into it more. Most people get the 1 RP and spell on initiation. Once they have that, they need a POW gain roll or two before they can sacrifice some more, because on average they have POW 10 or 11 and going too low is risky. To get a POW experience check as mere initiates of a cult, they either need a special/critical success in Battle (it might happen after a good raid), or they need to wait for Sacred Time. They don't have the 500L needed for POW training. Once they get the POW experience check, they have, on average, around 50% to actually increase POW. So, again on average, they get an actual POW point every 2 years. If they sacrifice that right away, you have a curve where average people have, at best, a number of RPs roughly equal to, say, (Age - 16) / 2 (assuming 16 is adulthood). That's around 3 RPs at 21, 7 RPs at 30, 12 RPs at 40. But remember that sacrificing POW requires spending a whole week in prayers and meditation at the temple. Not everybody can afford to take that time off... maybe there's a queue system organized by the clan elders to make sure there are not too many people going away for a week all the time to sacrifice POW, so maybe you have to wait a bit more to get your turn. Then there's indeed the mention that initiates don't get automatic access to special Rune Magic. I agree that this information on p275 is easy to miss. Adventurers (as in : the PCs) do get access to it pretty much automatically because they probably qualify for the "exceptional service to the cult" clause... I mean, they do go on adventures and stuff, so by the end of the year, when they get a chance to gain POW and, therefore, a chance to sacrifice some, they probably did something to merit the new spells. That's probably why it's not mentioned in the Rune Magic chapter (where, one might notice, the text only ever talks about "adventurers" and not initiates). So the average Sartarite may have a steady increase in RPs, but, as they go about their day to day business, they might not accumulate many spells. A 35 year old Sartarite might have only a couple of cult special Rune spells, even though they might have as many as 8 Rune Points. They might use these 2 spells pretty liberally based on the fact that holy days are pretty frequent (assuming they have a bit of time to spare for worship), but it means that the local bar brawl actually looks more like one-trick drunkards throwing the same spell 2 or 3 times in a row before passing out, as opposed to big show of varied magics. Since minor holy days average to ~3 RPs recovered (accounting for the uncommon fail in Worship), it will take a month or more for that 35 year old to recover all their RPs. Their family will be pissed when something bad happens and they are 1 or 2 RPs too short. So these Sartarites better limit their "leisurely" use of Rune Magic to a couple points at a time, so they have a good stash on hand for emergencies. Most likely they use Spirit Magic more than anything anyway during bar brawls and petty disputes, that's just safer. The real problem for me so far is just that some Sartarite NPCs we have seen in the GM pack and Smoking Ruins are either (at worst) inconsistent, or (at best) lacking some commentary explaining the in-world circumstances that lead to their stats being the way they are. For instance, take Arndala in the GM pack (p105): she's a 35 year-old Ernalda initiate with only 3 Rune Points. Why hasn't she sacrificed for more by now? I think these "bystander" NPCs need more thought from the authors, so we know how Chaosium bridges the rules and the worldbuilding.

End of first paragraph in the Bestiary's entry on Broos: "Broos are immune to all poisons and diseases." (to be fair, I cheated and just searched "disease" in the PDF... digital FTW!) Also, they don't need it, but note that the "Carry Disease" spell makes you immune to the disease you're carrying.

Oh you're right -- well some other kind of opposed roll I guess.

Or you could roll Sense Chaos as an opposed roll on the Resistance Table against "100% minus Chaos Rune rating". So someone who committed only a few Chaotic acts so far would only have a few percents, so the Uroxi has to roll against, say, 97% on the Resistance Table. The question remains, however, which acts give you a Chaos Rune rating, and how fast do they increase that rating.

Yeah that's what I was saying... experienced gamers will do it, but maybe not newbies. I was basically questioning the worth of having spell rules rely on skill category modifiers in the first place, as opposed to simpler, more "direct" bonuses. I love tables when you roll on them. I don't like tables when you just look things up on them (especially those tables, which for some reason are slow for my brain to process... probably a mix of horizontal orientation, looking up numbers inside ranges, etc.)

Yeah but Lhankor Mhy doesn't need torture in the first place -- if anything, torturing wastes time, you can have the sage investigator just mind-read the prisoner or whatever right away. Some time in my mid-thirties I stopped letting my players use torture as a shortcut to the truth. First, because it's gross, and I'm not running a game set in a FOX Network TV show. Second, I like to mess with my players. So in a game with SAN rules (like CoC or DG) you definitely need the strength of will (or lack of humanity, or both) to actually proceed with the torture. In RQ it may take the form of some POW roll, and will definitely have consequences on your Rune alignments. Frequently, because the PCs aren't expert torturers, the prisoner dies, and that worsens the SAN/Runes consequences. And, yeah, like @Qizilbashwoman says, I will most of the time give incomplete or partially false information. If the prisoner happens to be a clever bastard, it might be 100% wrong information in a way that sends the PCs into danger.

In this thread when people say "make a skill roll", do you mean just the act of rolling, or do you mean getting a success in the roll? By RAW the experience check is generally only when you get a success, although things like Runes and Passions can get experience checks simply if you roleplay that Rune or Passion well. I just go by RAW mostly because if the players roll the dice and succeed, they always enthusiastically remind me that yes, they got a success, and yes, they're going to check the little box (there's generally an accompanying giggle). I don't get any time in between to even say "but...". If I told them that they don't get a check because the roll wasn't so important, they would revolt and question why they rolled in the first place if it was inconsequential For people who want a different take on it, some BRP variants go with an experience check when you fail a roll -- and then if I remember it well, you get the straight +1d6 or +1d10 at the end of the adventure (no additional roll to see if you improve). The argument being that you learn more from your mistakes than from your successes. I don't have any preference here but I figured it might be interesting to somebody.

I'm not totally sure it's RAW, but I think it's a good interpretation that probably makes it play better. It is "pretty good" if you're careful with character creation. For instance, Nathem (the pre-gen character), has STR 14 and SIZ 14. The sum is 28, which gives him +1D4 Damage Bonus. With Bear's Strength, the sum goes to 42 which, luckily, is just enough to get to +2D6, which is, indeed a nice bump. Allocate just one less point in either STR or SIZ and you only get bumped to +1D6 which is absolutely miserable and not worth the Rune Points. So make sure you not only coach your players accordingly if they want to play Odayla, but also consider not using the old-school pure-random stat roll, which makes it hard to get the "proper" stat scores in the first place. On a semi-related-and-off-topic note, I totally hate these spells and effects that change a stat and tell you "feel free to recompute all your skill category bonuses, and apply that to your skills for the next 15 minutes". This is super annoying (those tables are not exactly friendly to use, even during character creation, let alone during combat), and the rules don't even recommend pre-computing those bonuses in advance (which you should do, but it would have helped if the rules gave examples of this, with standardized 3-letter shorthand for skill categories). I would have preferred it if they just gave, like, a flat +15% or +20%, as it plays faster.

...of course it might also be 2 minutes with one Sever Spirit roll (in some way, that over-powered spell does bring more balance and lets other non-combatants shine in subsequent scenes!)

It's not about being a hero, it's about playing a fantasy. Glorantha has wolfbrothers and Odayla bearwalkers. That sounds like a pretty cool fantasy archetype to play... until you realize you can only transform with very expensive spells on a single day of the week for only an hour. It would be very hard for you to argue that this won't lead to disappointment with players -- I know it did disappoint me when I wanted to play an Odayla shapeshifter, and figured it's not worth it because I will very rarely shapeshift and it's not going to be very satisfying even when I do. This has nothing to do with "balance" or the existence of Humakti or whatever... but it does salt the wound a bit more when you do think about it. You're totally right, but I think a lot of people misunderstand what "balance" really is. It's not balance in terms of combat prowess, it's balance in terms of the subjective player feeling of being the star of a scene, making rolls to save the day, etc. The game is indeed not 100% combat, but a combat scene easily takes an hour with many many rolls, while the political scene at the Earth Temple might only take less than 20 minutes and require at most a couple rolls. In order to balance this, I try to have a few more rolls and a few extra political scenes, and I try to speed up combat so, hopefully, both take around 30 minutes and the Ernalda priestess feels as important as the Humakti. It's very easy to do in HeroQuest (one might say that it was designed to do this). It's not so easy to do in RuneQuest because it was mostly meant to model combat originally. But yeah, that's the way to do it. I'd love to hear more examples of tactics to use against Humakti (and other bad-asses), especially when it comes to making sure the GM isn't coming down to hard and ending up frustrating the Humakti player (one good tactic I've read, which was actually maybe from you, was to stretch out combat past the 15min mark, by having the NPCs retreat and hunker down in some other place where they have tactical advantage). I get the feeling that one alternative way to go is to let the players use all kinds of awesome/overpowered spells all they want, but to deal with short term repercussions like enemies seeking revenge soon enough that they don't have much time to recharge their Rune Points.

It's mind blowing that a Humakti can spend 3 RPs and kill any arbitrary big boss, while the poor Odayla initiate must spend a whooping 9 RPs just to be a bear for 15 minutes. Cults aren't supposed to be balanced, but that's something else!

That's still generous... it feels like being Rune Lord of multiple cults is a bit like a politician holding multiple positions -- they tend to do this out of greed and don't do a good job in most of these positions. While I might allow it if the players are very generous with all the temples, or otherwise manage to roleplay/convince/keep good standing with those temples, I might also start a background storyline where other Rune Lords or would-be Rune-level NPCs are trying to maneuver around the player to get them kicked out of the temple or something.

Oh wow, I had never paid attention to Sever Spirit before: The caster must make a successful POW vs. POW resistance roll. If successful, the target dies. What the fuck? Just like that? Wow.

I dare not even ask what kind of "XXX Trance" your character used to hit the demon (but I'm kind of curious)

I'm not sure why anybody would be of the opinion that any boosting works for piercing defenses, but only some boosting works to defend from piercing? That seems inconsistent? Yep I agree it's not RAW -- but it's a way to make spells less powerful if that's a problem (it's the theme of the thread after all). But hey, because the wording of rules in RQG isn't using strictly defined terms, if you tilt your head a bit to the side, you can actually consider it RAW -- for instance, "boosting" is originally defined explicitly as using "unallocated" MPs in order to increase a spell's strength with regards to defending/piercing, but the term is later (abusively?) used for other meanings. Don't @ me though I'm perfectly fine with this being considered a house rule

There are so many unclear points in the magic rules it's not even funny. We had endless discussions here already about these kinds of things (Stackable, boosting, etc.) Do you have a reference for Jeff's statement on this? Does this mean Jeff and Jason actually disagree about how to interpret RAW? FWIW I'm currently of the opinion (although that could change ) that extra MPs/RPs spent to increase or improve a spell's effect do not count against the spell's "strength" for the purposes of dispelling and protection -- you have to spend "unallocated" magic points that go specifically towards the spell's strength for that. The idea is to basically make it easier for opponents to cancel each other's magic... because otherwise, casting Axe Trance 10 not only gives you +100%, but it also is super hard to dispel. That's a bit of double dipping so to speak, and potentially part of why the OP is having problems with these spells. Using this (Jeff's?) interpretation means the caster will want to spare some MPs to go towards boosting, which means allocating these 10 MPs differently: they might end up casting Axe Trance +60% with 4 points of boosting. Boom, Axe Trance is suddenly less over-powered and potentially less of a problem because it's also easier to dispel.

Regarding Lunars and Dara-Happans: as my players currently only play Orlanthi, of course I'm painting the enemy as, well, the enemy. Everything they hear about the Lunars is terrible. Propaganda works! But I will definitely make my players also play Lunar Tarshites (or some other Lunar faction) in a future one-shot or campaign, and on that occasion I will depict the Lunars as the good, cultured and modern people of Genertela. In turn, I will start describing Orlanthi the way Lunars see them: as the violent, backwater conservative barbarians they are. I'm looking forward to see my players' faces when that happens, but frankly, they are very (self-)aware of the ways Orlanthi society sucks. The only reason people mostly play "Orlanthi = good, Lunars = bad" is because most of the published material is Orlanthi-centric. As for how my Glorantha varies? I think it doesn't vary much because I barely got started with it. I moved a few things around to make my Far Place-centered campaign work better (nudged a couple dates, changed a couple things regarding the local clans), but nothing of big consequence. The biggest variations are probably to be found with people who are already several years into a campaign, where compound changes have bigger consequences on the world, and the PCs have had time to change the course of the metaplot history.