Lordabdul

Your RPG planning is off the charts! We barely know what we'll be playing next month, most of the time!

Yes, exactly, thanks. And, conversely, if A (130%) gets attacked by B, C, and D (all 80%), then BA is 50% vs 100%, CA is 70% vs 100%, and DA is 80% vs 90% (as 130 becomes 110 becomes 90 with subsequent parries). I was under the impression that @Dragon was arguing for (respectively) 50% vs 100%, 80% vs 80%, 80% vs 60% (but I might have misunderstood it). Anyway, like I said, this has all been discussed in that thread I linked, so we can take it there -- discussions on >100% combat skills tend to get very long, and we don't want to hijack this thread.

I agree with @Akhôrahil's interpretation here -- the handling of >100% skills is per-opposed roll. If you have 4 different rolls to make in a round, each 4 rolls will have their own individual >100% normalization, based on the skills of both contestants. It doesn't carry over because, first, it does indeed open up to various abuses and weird situations and, second, it's just more tedious and annoying to run because (1) you need to remember what the previous rolls did, which means keeping more notes as you run the combat, and (2) players will start arguing at the table about the best order of attack to make sure they take advantage of this "cumulative" resolution mechanic, which slows down an already slow combat system. But hey, whatever works at your table. Either way, you should take this discussion over to the 100+ in combat skill thread, where a lot of this was already argued back and forth. Last, remember that splitting attacks is only possible if the natural skill (i.e. skill score before any magic boosting) is above 100%. Someone with a skill of 90% can't split attacks even with Weapon Trance or whatever. I'm not totally sure yet what the revised Weapon Trance rules will look like, actually. For Arrow Trance, it makes sense that the character uses their bow to shoot and shoot and shoot. For Axe/Sword Trance, however, it feels OK that they can parry with their weapon because that's part of the natural fighting activity with that weapon. I'm not sure what the rules will say about using a shield. It also feels natural to me for a fighter to use a shield if they have a shield equipped on their arm already. Dropping the shield and going "attack only" feels too close to Berserking to me -- I would allow parrying and blocking at my table.

Yep, exactly. But what I meant was that any spirit can become like Oakfed et al. It's like, err, politicians or priests. Anybody can become one. But that doesn't mean everybody will. So many spirits will not be interested in talking to PCs who want to sacrifice POW. Many spirits will actually behave in ways that are too alien to even be able to communicate. Yeah I'm not frankly sure which one of our two Gloranthas is the one "varying" (I'll have to re-read the spirit chapters in the rulebook) At first I figured that spirits are always in the spirit world, even when they materialize in the material world... the same way that a shaman doesn't disappear from the material world when they go in the spirit world (their body stays there, even though it's somewhat "empty" and requires allied PCs and spirits to protect it). I haven't given it much thought whether spirits do the exact same thing, i.e. they only leave an "empty husk" on the spirit plane when they materialize, or if they remain "conscious" on both planes. The first option might work if spirits have no reason to attack that "empty husk" while the spirit is materialized. The second option might work if the spirit doesn't wander too far, and stays where the spirit and material worlds match each other closely enough... which might nicely explain why materialized spirits tend to stay around the same place... (I believe spirits have to possess a person or animal in order to have more freedom of movement). But I guess treating it as the spirit completely moving from one world to another works too. I don't think I've had anything in my game yet that invalidates any of those theories so I guess I have time to figure out which one I prefer

What did you mean there? Aren't all spirits, like, by definition, in the spirit world? (some are materialized in the mundane world, either temporarily or more constantly, though) I think all spirits can be worshiped, but the vast majority of them have nothing to give a would-be worshiper, so they mostly ask for favours and other things. But technically, for any spirit cult, there must have been a first worshiper, so one can imagine players starting a new spirit cult with any arbitrary spirit that's up for it. The question is whether you get something back for that first POW sacrifice.

AFAICT it depends on the culture. For instance, kinstrife doesn't get a free pass in Orlanthi society, and the Guide explicitly says that it's one way to let Chaos into the world.

Given that it's a big ass table, we can't rule out that (1) I read the wrong line or (2) the authors typed the wrong letter.

IMHO you're reading a bit too much into the Storm Bull cult requirements -- it's a "you have to deal with it" kind of thing, not a "you can't go to sleep until it's dead" kind of thing. Any lay member of Storm Bull has to report any Chaotic activity, or rumour thereof. An initiate (or higher up) would show up and investigate themselves. If it's a small thing, that Storm Bull person will have to deal with it. It might take an hour (go there, kill the small Broo band, come back and have a drink), but it might take a few days or even a few weeks (scout the hills, spend a few days on and off exploring the caves and killing various things, send for reinforcements, etc.). Other "missions" might take years or be never-ending. I imagine that there are a couple of big Storm Bull temples around Snakepipe Hollow and it's their full time job to live there and deal with the problem. They might make progress over time, but they might not. They won't go away until that Chaos stench is gone, but they won't spend their whole days down there until they drop of fatigue or get killed either. They are very much aware that this is a "War Against Chaos" situation, and not a simple skirmish or battle. Some initiates might have been posted there for years, while other have come and gone, going to fight Chaos elsewhere as the cult moves resources here and there, or as they have some other leads they want to follow-up on. These people leaving Snakepipe Hollow are not violating their vows, since there are 20 other berserkers keeping watch. The Storm Bull cultists are just people who make a strong vow to fight Chaos and never flinch when faced against it. There's no vow about how fast you have to kill it, or whether it's OK to take a break and come back later. In some ways it's similar to someone who takes a vow of, say, fighting climate change or ending child hunger. They're not going to necessarily do it 24/7, they will use their organization's resources to move between hot zones and easier-to-deal-with areas, they will use long term tactics and ask for help, etc. Heck, maybe Storm Bullies even have conventions, with Powerpoint presentations about Broo-baiting tactics!

For those authors looking for illustrators, I have some stuff you can look at here on DeviantArt. I'd love to help make JC books look good! (assuming what I do does indeed look good)

Interesting, I was not aware of this. Looks like a whole bunch of files are here on the forums (Ray's old website seems mostly broken). I'll take a look! Regarding the OP and topic at hand, I think people on these forums often tend to treat Gloranthan cults a bit too much as a collection of fanatical people with completely rigid world views, when really they're all human beings, and human beings are complicated. If we only knew about Middle Earth from a few write-ups in a rulebook, and we read "elves and dwarves hate each other", we might also wonder how you can have both in a party without them trying to kill each other... in reality, probably 90% of all MERP groups had dwarves and elves because, first, they complement each other, and, second, it's fun to roleplay. The only reason we knew to do it is because the novels did it. The Cults Compendium's "Cult Compatibility" chart differentiates between "enemy" and "hostile". Only "enemy" says that there's no compromise possible. Humakt only has Vivamort and Black Fang as enemy -- everybody else, including Chaos cults, are merely hostile or neutral (Mallia is merely hostile, and, shockingly enough, Thed is neutral!), so working along a Zorak Zorani seems definitely possible. Zorak Zoran is the more picky cult here: besides Chaos cults being enemy cults, ZZ also has enemies in Aldrya, Seven Mothers, and Yelm. So the more interesting question to me is what would happen if 2 players want to play one of those.

Yeah the stop motion film is fun -- my main takeaway is discovering the band Sky and this wonderful cover of the Toccatta, though!

Do you have a reference for this? I'm not aware of that, and I can't find a mention of that in GS.

While I think we should be mindful of spoilers, I don't think what happened with the Bilal movie was a spoiler. What Qizilbashwoman did was merely mention that the movie was based on a historical figure (as opposed to being completely fictional), and cited the date of that figure's death to place his life as much later than the Bronze Age. It was the equivalent of someone watching the Spartacus movie while knowing absolutely nothing about the Romans, and someone telling them "oh you know Spartacus actually existed? He died in 71 BC". It doesn't spoil anything about the movie. And it's not even the equivalent anyway, because as I understand it, Bilal's death isn't even part of the movie (I could be wrong on that, I haven't seen it). Knowing that a historical figure dies shouldn't come as a shock -- humans tend to die after a while. What might be considered a spoiler (I wouldn't) might be the date, because then if, say, the movie mentions the year and it's that year, then you might know what's coming... but you might not know how. And even if you know how, is it a spoiler? Would people use spoiler tags in messages talking about how Jesus dies by crucifixion in his early thirties? Or that Caesar gets assassinated by his senators? Does knowing these things actually "spoil" any movie about Jesus or Caesar or any other well known historical figure? I guess not, otherwise they would stop making biopics, or even teaching history in class, for that matter. And it starts a dangerous trend of having to hide basically any historical event... should we use spoiler tags when talking about how D-Day's secret was kept by French rebels in case someone makes a movie about it? I don't think historical facts need spoiler tags. I don't think they should have spoiler tags. Spoilers are for entertainment media. But it's an interesting matter, because we are on a forum where people have a good chance of (re)discovering 40 year-old RQ/CoC/etc. adventures. I wouldn't blame anybody from spoiling old stuff like that by forgetting to add some spoiler tags. I personally think old RQ2, RQ2, and HeroWars adventures are well past their statute of limitation for spoiling, just as movies like Annie Hall, Shindler's List, Bravehart, or Lord of the Rings are also past theirs, but that's just me. I'm not sure about what others would think... At least, I think we might be able to all agree that, say, The Iliad doesn't need spoiler tags? So the limit is somewhere in the last 3000 years...

(Lordabdul quietly searches pictures of kiva, pit houses, and weaving houses... takes notes... nods, and is very thankful for this topic)

Maybe instead of treating that as a "problem", we could treat that as an opportunity for world-building and adventure seeds? Think about it: consider that Chaos is something that seeps into the world through societal taboos and cultural no-noes. This means that agents of Chaos will actually want to make sure more cultures around Glorantha become more "strict" and have more taboos, so that when people break them, this will give more chance for Chaos to come in. So agents of Chaos might be manipulating politics and cults to make societies more conservative and with less freedom, maybe even going so far as to make it all sound like these were divine laws to begin with (maybe heroquesting to that effect?). Although that's one aspect that does interestingly reflect modern real-world topics, there are other threads in this idea that end up in fairly awkward places, but I think with a bit of polish and care there's a potentially nice campaign theme somewhere there.

Ah yes 50 years is what I meant! Totally Typo's fault. That illustration made me chuckle.

Yeah that’s understandable... I think that given all the little gems one can find on various forums and mailing list archives (I recently found a great anecdote about Greg and Hargrave but it turns out Shannon had already compiled it in Designers & Dungeons), there’s probably enough material out there that there’s no need to find any new stories — the real work and value would be to edit it all together, find cool pictures and documents to scan, and make a big, coffee-table worthy book that would look as nice as any movie “behind the scenes” art book, something that we can get for a nerd’s birthday. And by that I mean something I would get myself for my own birthday. On the day it’s released, regardless of when my birthday is.... anyway yeah it’s just a dream (the market for this is fairly small, it might only be doable via Kickstarter), but hey, we can dream. And, ahem, the 30 year anniversary of Chaosium is not too far away... ahem...

Yeah maybe not "secret" so much as "behind the scenes", I guess.

Yay, another errata then. I hope someone at Chaosium is taking notes

Some day I'd love to see a book about the secret history of Gloranthan gaming (similar to Designers & Dungeons, but with lavish illustrations/photos similar to D&D's Art & Arcana). Hey, is Shannon Appelcline doing anything these days?

They don't. Here's the full text (emphasis mine): A victim of Befuddle may not attack, cast an offensive spell, sound the alarm, and so on. However, if attacked, they may parry and defend at full value. Beginning the next melee round, the affected victim assumes that who- or whatever attacked them is their enemy, and will extend that to the caster’s obvious allies. So if you get attacked, you assume those people are your enemy. But when you get attacked, you can only parry and defend anyway... I think the second sentence is meant to say: "However, if attacked, then may fight back at full value" ?

Lots of good stuff in this message : Forcing PCs to give a portion of their loot to their temple is a good way to limit MP crystals and such. However, I don't want the players to feel like it's a "GM tax", so I have to find ways to make it look like these donations don't just disappear. It's easier in a clan-based game because these items can re-appear a couple sessions later when they are temporarily given to raiders who accompany the PCs (so that instead of having heroes and a bunch of cannon-fodder Orlanthi NPCs, we have the heroes and a bunch of decently equipped Orlanthi NPCs). The temples can also mention how the items were put to good use, give some other benefits to the PCs in return, etc. I'd love to hear more ideas on that topic, actually. Making combat last more than 15min is a big one yeah, which I learned early on. The problem right now is that we either have detailed combat rules for short skirmishes, or fairly nonexistent rules for big battlefield encounters (although the upcoming GM guide is supposed to add rules for that...or is it the campaign book?). The battlefield rules don't have anything to figure out how much Rune magic the characters would spend, so you have to wing it. I haven't had to do it yet, but I might give bonuses to Battle rolls based on MP and RP expenditure. Making enemies retreat and wait for Sword Trance/whatever to pass is not an uncommon tactic (when they see limbs flying and swords glowing, that's the cue). Generally, I find that good enemy tactics, making better use of the terrain features (as opposed to just playing out the scene on a flat battlemat until one side is dead) has vastly improved my gaming, regardless of the RPG being played. In particular, ranged vs melee vs support vs tank tactics. Maybe I should have played more World of Warcraft in my youth. Medium term consequences: a favourite of mine, and, again, especially useful for clan-based campaigns. If the PCs spend a lot of RPs and MPs to obliterate some enemies, that will be heard of. They will gain some Reputation, but will also increase the chances of surviving enemies seeking vengeance (potentially allying themselves with a bigger faction), neighbouring clans using this opportunity to strike, etc.

Yeah that's how I pitch Lhankor Mhy to my players. And since most of us are big Call of Cthulhu nerds and I tend to put some investigating in my adventures, these kinds of characters end up useful. But even when playing glorified dungeon crawls and skirmish adventures, all of these knowledge/identification/detection spells are useful for planning an infiltration, or getting the tactical advantage.

It's limited by time -- you need time to replenish the RPs you traded, and over time you'll be spending those spells. It would take an extended period of peace to be able to build such an arsenal, but I guess it's possible. If it's a problem, I can suggest a house rule about the the Spell Trading roll to see if the spell fires in your hands: on a roll of 99 or 100, all your stored spells fire simultaneously! It would be allowed but the victim would have to know that they're Befuddled in the first place... which they don't. They can shake it off but until then, I don't think they can realize what's happening to them. Arguably someone could tell them, but they could still misinterpret it because, well, they're Befuddled. My problem with Befuddle is that I don't quite understand why it says "with deceit or clever misdirection, a Befuddled opponent might end up attacking their own party", when just before it said that a victim of Befuddle can't attack at all, even if attacked (they can only parry and defend). Am I missing something? Yep, but frankly I see no reason to ignore the obvious meaning of "trance", or the fact that it makes sense that all "<Weapon> Trance" spells behave similarly. So I'm playing that way too. I understand the reasoning, but I don't think it's practical or desirable. First, it's prone to in-world abuse... you could deplete an Issaries merchant from their RPs by "market ganging" them over the course of a few weeks/months, and making sure nobody uses the traded spells until that merchant's enemy has had a chance to ambush him. Issaries people would therefore have to be careful, only trading a couple RPs' worth of spells at a time... they wake up every market day, wondering "hey, do I have my RPs back?" before deciding if they can go sell more spells or not... and if not, they have to find another way to make money. That's way too unpredictable. Second, it's prone to out-of-game tension between GM and players. The PC trades a spell with an NPC, and has to wait for the magnanimous GM to declare that, somehow, somewhere, the NPC has indeed used the spell, and the RPs can be replenished. How does the GM even do that? Do they make up a random time table? I think it's way easier and makes more sense to rule that the RPs are spent while trading -- that's why there's a chance the spell fires off immediately. So in most cases you can replenish the RPs 15min after the trade, but if you traded a spell with an Extension, you can only replenish after the extended time. So basically like what @Crel said.

Holy fuck. Wow. Congrats to your players! I hope that, with this kind of power, they are up against the big names of Glorantha, shaping nations and kingdoms, and not doing dungeon crawls and killing trollkin anymore. Oh wow, I see, he's basically got an arsenal of traded spells that are ready to go and are completely free? That's a totally genius way of using Spell Trading, and I'm now vastly increasing the potential threat of Issaries priests! Thank you!