Lordabdul

Episode 17 it out! We welcome Brian Duguid, author of the Children of Hykim and all-around expert on the Hsunchen. We chat about these stone age people of Glorantha, their totem animals, their culture and magic, how to include them in your games, and more!

The Journal of Runic Studies 73 is out! Caravanserais, dwarfs vs dwarves, a lunar eclipse, a weird-ass note from Greg, and a few other things!

The Journal of Runic Studies 72 is out! A QuestWorlds update, lists of canonical books, happy birthday to King of Dragon Pass, Tales of the Reaching Moon, some RuneQuest videos, a cool looking mask helmet, and more!

4 hours ago, metcalph said:

It's from the original Nomad Gods map.

Yep I figured... thankfully, adding another hex still fits in one day of riding given that the RQG map shows that there's a trail from Swenstown to Pimper's Block.

1 hour ago, David Scott said:

Going back to Nomad gods, it was 3 hexes, so 15miles / 24km (not as the crow flies)

Is that from an edition that includes the errata that says you need to move it down by one hex?

(yes, Gloranthan cartography is.... a whole thing)

6 hours ago, David Scott said:

it is based on Greg's detailed maps unavailable at the time the Guide was published

Nice, thanks for the behind-the-scenes info there. I was vaguely aware of this but I didn't expect it to affect long-standing landmarks like this.

Now I just need to wait for Matt to redo all the maps 😄

Last week's RuneQuest session raised a question: how far is Pimper's Block from Swenstown and the Dundealos tribal lands?  (my players are chasing after some Bison Tribe raiders who took some hostages, and their first hunch was that they might sell them at the slave market there...)

The RuneQuest Starter Set map shows it pretty close to Sartar (reachable in a day of riding, I'd say?) whereas the Guide to Glorantha and AAA map show it much farther away (probably requiring one night camping). See both maps below (I drew a triangle between Swenstown, Boldhome, and Wilmskirk to better show the difference)

Was Pimper's Block moved in RQG to solve some world-building problem? I assume the RQG map is the one to use?

Woops another gap in advertisement due to limited free time... Anyway, the Journal of Runic Studies 71 is out! Our latest "newbie interview" episode, books and scenarios on the East Isles, the Invisible God, Hindu castes, immortal sociopaths, whether Glorantha is a bronze age setting or not, Monty Python jokes, and more!

In episode 12 of our Glorantha Initiation Series we welcome Chris who went from RQ2 to RQG in just a few weeks! He doesn’t have an ongoing RuneQuest game yet but we talk about his sudden love for Glorantha, playing soloquests, "grounded" adventures, and his plans for a future Esrolian trading campaign.

On 10/9/2022 at 1:21 PM, Erol of Backford said:

Are there any mainstream 1600-1625 Eurmali that are adventurer types might travel with a PC group and not be an outcast or loner?

Narres Runepainter (Starter Set) is one of the RQ Starter Set pre-gens that you can play. They're a tattoo artist in addition to a trickster.

Darvy Blackfeather (Pegasus Plateau) is chieftain of Drakemere, a duck village.

Generally speaking, I think tricksters can have a much broader range of play than most people think. IMHO, John Oliver and most similar politically-inclined comedians are tricksters, "Howling Mad" Murdock from the A-Team is a trickster, David Bowie and Bjork are probably tricksters, at least one of Pippin and Merry is a trickster, Tyrion Lannister is a trickster, etc. There are more options to playing a trickster than a severe case of ADHD combined with antisocial crazy antics, so there are many options to integrate a trickster to an adventuring party.

On 10/9/2022 at 1:21 PM, Erol of Backford said:

Eurmal teaching men to speak to dragons- if so where and when?

Possibly this, from King of Sartar, page 78:

One day Eurmal found a new way to betray his master. He found a foolish man, and he split his tongue, the way that a bird’s tongue can be split to make it talk. And he also split the man’s brain, and his heart. That way the man would understand dragon speech.

(there's a few more paragraphs to the story...thanks to @jajagappa for pointing in the right direction). There's also some of this story in the Guide, page 132.

On 10/9/2022 at 1:21 PM, Erol of Backford said:

Eurmal Great Temple in Slontos - where is it or would it have been, has it been roughly located on any map?

AFAICT this is the same thing as the Trickster School of Thanor, which was located in Slontos, and which you mention later in your message. There's a map of second age Slontos in the Guide (page 351), and the equivalent "modern day" map too of course (page 357), in which Thanor is mostly under water, somewhere in the middle of the Wenelian Isles.

On 10/9/2022 at 1:21 PM, Erol of Backford said:

The God Learners had a Great Temple to Eurmal, where they collected every single RuneSpell that Eurmal taught and made them available to all the Eurmali in the Great Temple in Slontos. Where is there a cult write up besides in the Gods of Gloranth book and is there some source for the possible full list of spells?

I don't know that the God Learners were actually teaching all the trickster spells to everybody (that wouldn't be the first time they did something reckless and stupid) but they did "study the various incarnations of the trickster god", so it's safe to say that you had all the types of tricksters there, having kombucha together. I would simply start with all the spells described in RQG's Eurmal write-up. With more than 20 special Rune spells, that's more than enough as far as I'm concerned.

On 10/9/2022 at 1:21 PM, Erol of Backford said:

...which may have sunk under the weight of Trickster magical abuses, when they obtained access to the full range of Eurmal's divine spells. How deep is it below the surface, are there some spaces which still have air, who are the inhabitants? "Still populated by the descendants of the original Eurmali."

Where did you get this quote from? The Guide only says that it's mostly underwater, and populated by schools of fish and Ludoch.

8 hours ago, Beoferret said:

As an aside: may I recommend to all you culinary history geeks the Youtube channel "Tasting History" with Max Miller? Some good stuff, including Mesopotamian-derived recipes. 

You may! I had already linked to that channel in the Journal of Runic Studies once, for this ancient Babylonian lamb stew. If there's another particularly interesting recipe we should be looking at, feel free to post it, or ping me so I include it in the next newsletter!

9 hours ago, David Scott said:

I'm sure I remember a horse-headed scorpionman in a supplement, but can't find it. Anyone?

I would be very honoured if you remember it from my scenario "A Short Detour".... although it was a horse-headed broo, and not a scorpion-man (although there were a couple scorpion-men in the same squad of NPCs).

14 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

I know broo will resemble the creature they are born from. But do scorpionmen resemble the creature their queen ate alive?  Or does its chaotic-tainted spirit just reside in a generic scorpion man body?

RQ2 Cults of Terror has the "Ritual of Rebirth" special Rune spell for a Scorpion Queen to transform someone into one of her scorpion-men (I can't find it in the new RQG RBoM so I don't know what became of that spell?) FWIW, the queen eats the person, and what comes out of the egg is a scorpion with the torso of whatever it was before. So yes, you can have scorpion-ducks and scorpion-trolls and scorpion-beast-men and whatever else you want. I assume the subject had to be intelligent though so a scorpion-horse would be only in a rare case of an awakened horse turned to Chaos.

I assume that if one of the new scorpion-duck is female, she could leave the nest and become a queen of her own nest and voila, you have a tribe of scorpion-ducks.

In a completely unrelated subject, there may or may not be now a tribe of scorpion-ducks in my Glorantha, weirdly placed somewhere nearby wherever my players are headed to next. Funny how that happens.

14 hours ago, Agentorange said:

are there gases in Glorantha ?

I'm curious -- why do you ask?

The Journal of Runic Studies 68 is out! Blood sex and rock'n'roll, some really cool Jonstown Compendium teasers, the wetlands of Peloria, Oslira's magic, a big broo, some RuneQuest actual plays, and more!The Journal of Runic Studies 68 is out! Blood sex and rock'n'roll, some really cool Jonstown Compendium teasers, the wetlands of Peloria, Oslira's magic, a big broo, some RuneQuest actual plays, and more!

Episode 16 is about Earth pantheon cultists! Our guests are Episode 16 of the God Learners podcast is about playing Ernaldan cultists and other Earth pantheon initiates! We have Katrin Dirim and Claudia Loroff with us, who summarizes Ernaldan priestesses as "blood, sex, and rock'n'roll". We discuss Ernalda's role in Glorantha and in our games, how to play non-combative characters, what the best Earth magic is, orgies and pregnancies, and more! Plus: Gloranthan cooking!

A Short Detour is currently on sale for $5 (to celebrate Bog Struggles making it to Silver) so you can grab it for cheaper while it lasts!  It's got five 5-star ratings! It's got Chaos shenanigans!

In episode 11 of our Initiation Series, we chat with Juan Ochoa, an illustrator that fell in love with Glorantha with the most unlikely book you could ever start with! We also talk about gaming shops in Columbia, alternative systems for Glorantha, avoiding the metaplot, linguisitcs, and more!

Thanks! (sorry I'm catching back to replies only now because apparently Invision Board doesn't send notifications anymore for replies to your own topic...)

On 8/6/2022 at 12:38 AM, MHanretty said:

I know it's low-hanging fruit, but might we see similar episodes for Cults of Prax and Cults of Terror?

We very well might!  For Cults of Prax we've got the "Travels of Biturian Varosh" where we follow the boxed text throughout the book, and we will probably do the same with the boxed text in Cults of Terror. But no plans yet to cover the actual contents of those books. It's a good suggestions though!

On 8/6/2022 at 12:38 AM, MHanretty said:

It would be good to be able to place these books in their original historical context, i.e. have more insight into the setting's early days from a publisher standpoint (I know there's been a recent episode on how Glorantha was experienced by players back in the early days).

I do want to cover the 'early days of Glorantha' in more detail but we just need to do some research to find good guests (suggestions welcome!)

On 7/3/2022 at 8:30 PM, Darius West said:

I hope you covered logistics.

We did not, but we might do an episode on that once the mass battle rules for RuneQuest are out 🙂 

On 9/4/2022 at 2:41 AM, mfbrandi said:

In case anyone gets caught in a loop clicking on “Episode 15 is out!” (link probably fixed by the time you read this):

Somehow I missed this because I forgot to subscribe to replies to the topic (I thought it did that automatically) so it's been fixed only now 😄 Thanks!

Oh my I haven't updated this for a while -- it's been a busy few weeks.

2 hours ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Unfortunately, we originally treated "requires that the cults be compatible" as neutral or better, not friendly. 

It hasn't come up yet in my games, but that was my assumption too.

7 hours ago, Scotty said:

Tapping continues until either the spell stops and the tapping ends. If concentration breaks, the spell ends. Sensible sorcerers will have plenty of empty Magic Point Enchantments (remember you can move a mp / round into storage), or have prepared an ongoing ritual to use the mps.

So if I'm getting this right:

- While the spell is active, the sorcerer gets 1D6 MP/round (or more if additional strength has been paid for)
- The sorcerer can move 1 MP/round into a storage, but they won't be able to keep up. Assistants might be able to help keep up with the MPs if they cast Drain Soul (or some similar MP leeching spell) on the sorcerer to help moving MPs into storage.
- When the spell stops, any MPs in excess of the sorcerer's max are lost. They may or may not have to roll for concentration if they cast another spell using all this excess MP before they dissipate.
- The tapping can be cast during a Passive Ritual spell to feed more MPs into it. I assume that doing the tapping during an Active Ritual spell requires a concentration roll, although I don't know if it's needed once, or every round that both spells are active.

34 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

the player created the character without knowing that this would inevitably happen, which is a little unfair.

The GM should definitely clarify what the player character knows, and that the player might not. Sometimes this includes doing a bit of retcon'ing (including re-allocating a few points on the character sheet) and although I don't like doing it, it's occasionally necessary.  However, I personally don't think that "sucking mana out of the environment for free without repercussions" is ever something a player should take for granted. Especially in 2022 😑  Consequences for cutting trees or diverting water in order to make energy are obvious to anybody who has an ounce of environmental consideration, or watched a Ghibli movie for that matter. Thinking that "air" gets a pass because it's free and all around us is... short sighted. Someone needs to play a space horror/survival game. Or see how climate change has been affecting us in western Canada, where air quality regularly goes to shit in the summer because of the alarming number of forest fires now compared to 10 years ago.

Generally speaking, it touches upon gameplay styles. In my games, there is "no such thing as a free lunch". If a player thinks they've found a cool new thing (rules-wise or story-wise) and wonders why nobody else is doing it, well, there's definitely a reason why (even if I, the GM, don't know yet what it is... but I've got a week or two to find it!)  So no, I don't think it's unfair, and I'm lucky because I know my players would eagerly wait for the hammer to drop (some of them even do this kind of shit on purpose to see what kind of hammer it is, and because it's fun). YMMV of course... different play styles and all that.

3 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

This is my bait-and-switch concern. There is nothing in the Sorcery chapter that says that Tap is in any way frowned upon. It might be reasonable to expect someone to conclude that the Air-worshipping Orlanthi would have a big problem with it, but clearly nobody did in this case, neither player nor GM. I don't envy you this problem.

Yes this was my big concern about the societal aspects of the Tap technique. People would say "Tap is evil! Don't do it!" on forums or Facebook, but there is indeed no information on that in the rulebook (you need the Guide to know about it). In fact, the example sorcerer Damastol even learns the Tap technique! (RQG page 384)  The only hint that Tap may be bad is that Chalana Arroy forbids it (RQG page 290)

4 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Interesting... that implies that you can't ever use the MPs that you have gained, because as soon as you start to cast another spell, the Steal Breath drops and you lose the MPs.

The OP was saying that the sorcerer PC was keeping the spell active all day to leech massive amounts of MPs. So because it's an active spell, it means the PC can't do much (if at all) during that day.

The way I read it, I think the spell is intended to be used as "leech MPs and then use them right away for a big spell". If I'm in a nice mood as the GM, I would let the player roll to cast that one big spell (which uses the leeched MPs) with no penalty, just as Steal Breath ends. If I was a mean evil GM, I would make the player roll for concentration in order to cast that spell, otherwise all the leeched MPs are dissipated. This would be your classic montage where a character tries and tries again until they finally get it.

Of course, this means that the sorcerer can't rely much on using this stuff in the heat of an action scene -- and to me that's the whole point. Sorcery isn't good with that. Sorcery is good with spending weeks and months in research and experimentation and preparation. So the PC would cast that big spell into a grimoire or enchantment or whatever. And then they carry it around and can unleash it any time.

4 hours ago, Jose Luis said:

This is greatly unbalancing the games, so I do not know if he is using the spell "legally" and if he is correct, how can I compensate this situation.

The first thing that comes to mind is that the sorcerer is effectively creating a vaccum -- destroying air to turn it into MPs. This will, at the very least, create wind blowing straight in the direction of the PC. Let the player do that for a few days, and then have some Air spirits and Storm Voice priests show up to see what's up. One of the Air spirits complains that the PC killed its little Air elemental cousin. Hijinks ensue.

4 hours ago, Jose Luis said:

Also, in the description of "steal breath" it is stated that it can be used as an attack against a PERSON.  The player wants to use it against much bigger oponents (as a dream dragon, for instance).  Would it work the same?  How would it go?  Also, if the opponent simply moves away form the area where the vacuum has beed created, wouldn't that easily cancel any damage?

As mentioned by others, casting any spell (spirit, Rune, sorcery) against someone requires a POW vs POW roll unless that person is cooperative. A Dream Dragon usually has pretty high POW, so this is going to be tough. Also, ask yourself: does a Dream Dragon breathe?  (personally: I think not)