Lordabdul

I don't think it's the same. God Learners are at their core a bunch of meta-NPCs whose sole purpose is to rationalize gaming material as "in-world" material. They were never supposed to win anything. In comparison, the Lunars are similarly ambitious people, but they're playing more within the rules of Glorantha -- they can only pull off so much, even with their awesome magic. In most cases they can only do one big awesome thing every wane. The other thing is that the Lunars would probably not survive the Hero Wars in the same shape and form as before it...otherwise, it's not very narratively satisfying: you're playing under Lunar rule in 1618, then there's the Hero Wars, and you're back under Lunar rule in 1630? Meh. It has to be something different. I have a few ideas, but I'm curious what Jeff and friends have in mind.

Orlanthi are "good" and Lunars are "bad" mostly because the vast majority of material was written from an Orlanthi perspective... Even King of Sartar's dual origin documents is very superficial in its differences of perspectives, so the Lunar version is just about adding negative adjectives here and there. One of the things I wished existed the most in any Glorantha product line-up was more Lunar-centric books, and especially books about a timeline where the Lunars win the HeroWars -- something that would definitely put the whole "metaplot or not?" debates to rest, and would propel Glorantha into very interesting and innovative places (I don't know of any game setting that acknowledges multiple possible timelines, except maybe Traveller?). Can anybody say "meta-meta-plot"?

My vision of it is that it is has very little social mobility. You're stuck in your family's stead for ever, following your parents' footsteps... unless you do something dangerous or stupid (or both) like joining a cult that will "take you away".

All good stuff, people! Even if Orlanthi respected their laws and traditions, that's still a shitty society to live in. As people before me mentioned, there's a whole bunch of stuff that's very "backwards" to modern sensibilities, but one thing that wasn't mentioned was the amount of social pressure: there are factions and families that may or may not be at odds, the importance of kin probably weight on you a lot, etc... in many ways, it feels like being in a US prison TV drama, where you really need to be careful who you're with and who you're against. I wanted to pick at this a bit specifically: the Orlanthi society may be inclusive in terms of gender and couple arrangements, but it's far from being liberal about it. Gender roles seem to be enforced to the point that even non-cis-genders are expected to take specific roles. Sure there are cults to accomodate everybody, but you still need to go in the little box that the Orlanthi has planned for you. The only inclusivity here is that they have more than 2 boxes, but they have boxes nonetheless. In comparison, I see the Lunars as being more "true" liberals, where they don't have really any boxes to begin with.

Totally agree. I find Odayla and Yinkin to be both strangely weak. I'm fine with them having poor magic, but it would be nice if the cult write-up made it up in the form of more skill points. I hadn't paid too much attention to the Hunter occupation but now that I have, yeah, I think it is ripe for an errata or correction. I also raised this concern a couple times on other threads. I think the authors are great world-builders and narrators, but they really need a "rules engineer" on staff, someone that can go deep in probabilities and Excel spreadsheets and triple checking rules wording and tables and so on. I've got a theory that this role was previously filled by people like Steve Perrin and Sandy Petersen, but in reality I have zero idea who does what exactly so the Chaosium staff might have to forgive me if I assign credit where it isn't due... One thing to remember however is that we're not supposed to have very high skill scores in most skills. A character would have a couple-to-a-handful skills at 70% or more, which represent their main occupation skills, but all the rest is probably below 50%. As such, I can generally get a decent starting character with the cult and personal skill points. Re-balancing homeland bonuses and fixing occupational skill lists (like the Hunter's) seem like a very good thing to crowdsource here on the forum (let's do that!), but listing all the skills a character "should" have and getting upset because they only have 15% in it at best is missing the point IMHO. These are skills a character can't use effectively in a stressful or challenging situation, because he has only a superficial knowledge. When the skill is used, it's probably in a "best conditions" scenario, where I generally don't ask for a roll, or give a +40% or more. A straight skill roll is only for "under pressure" somehow.

A plausible reason? Yes. A good reason? That's debatable. But yeah, I think Esrolians are typically more educated and sophisticated, so their education and upbringing is probably more effective than growing up in Tarsh or Sartar where you pick up cow dung and shut up when the Lunar soldier talks to you. This kind of character imbalance has always been a peculiarity of BRP. Call of Cthulhu also has vastly different skill point totals based on your stats and profession.

There's this: https://www.cradleofheroes.net/ By @Toferc is I'm not mistaken.

True but on the other hand the RQ rules emphasize the gritty and dangerous aspect of parrying blows by having tables and rolls for damaging (and potentially breaking) the opponent's weapon or shield. It feels inconsistent to me that it doesn't therefore have rules for having dinosaurs and giants break your shield faster than anybody else. It would fit the narrative tropes of the genre.

It seems we are running around in circles here, from contrived examples to "I'd make a ruling as a GM" to more subtle/less clear examples, to "how about this house rule?", to "I don't need rules when I can make a ruling" and back to a contrived example to show rulings are necessary sometimes (this circle just happened twice already). At this point I'm only interested in seeing these house rules (including mine) get playtested and hearing about some feedback.

Hello and welcome! What do you mean here? The Family History in the main RQG book, along with the "Early Family History" PDF from the Jonstown Compendium are both valid for anybody from around Dragon Pass... so not only Sartar but also Tarsh, Prax, Esrolia, etc (look under "Participating Homelands" for each year/event). Many of the events actually have bonuses/penalties for these different homelands. Or do you mean you find that there's not enough events specifically tailored for these homelands, and characters end up with a shorter and less detailed family history if they're not Sartarites? If that's the case then I'm not aware of any other ready-to-use resource. I would recommend getting the Guide To Glorantha and/or Glorantha Sourcebook in PDF and searching for each year, one by one, and writing down any interesting find, in order to complement family history with more stuff on your own. I'm not sure you'd find much more than what is already in the 2 other family histories, though.

If you are running a game in a world where you have prepared locations and NPCs, including what's going on at these locations, what are the NPCs' motivations and agendas, what they'll do next, etc... then in my opinion you have a metaplot. You know vaguely what will happen unless the PCs get in the way. That's what I meant by having "at least a paragraph or two in a notebook". For me "seat-of-your-pants" GMing is really coming up with the world/NPCs as you go, instead of having it prepared in any way. It seems like what you dislike is having a metaplot storyline beyond a certain level of certainty. You most likely have, in your world, something pre-written about, say, the King really being under the influence of one of his mistresses, who is a powerful mage in disguise working for the rival Empire of Rivalia, and she's making sure the King is weak enough to agree to become a vassal to the Emperor in some upcoming treaty negotiation, but at the same time, the King's General Ottavius is having suspicions, so the mistress is preparing to have him killed if he gets too close to the truth. You probably don't have it set in stone that she will kill Ottavius in winter 1243, with the King becoming a vassal of the emperor in spring 1244... but you know it will/might happen, and you probably have a couple notes about how (like maybe 2 or 3 ideas for how to kill General Ottavius in a cool and dramatic way). You have a metaplot. Just not a precise storyline like in King of Sartar. I'm curious what you would rather have Chaosium do? The only way to not have any kind of "set" metaplot storyline is to never bring the setting forward, i.e. keep Sartar locked in 1618 forever, and only release campaign books set in that state of affairs. Even a simple decision like "let's bring the timeline forward to 1625 for RQG" effectively "sets in stone" a certain metaplot storyline like Kallyr's rebellion and the Dragonrise, which has some grognards complains about because it didn't happen that way in their 25 years-old games.

Great, thanks for the explanation -- it's always fun to get a little glimpse behind the scenes. Thanks for your hard work! I personally love seeing the little quirks of old publication technology. For instance you can tell on some pages of WF1/2 that the 2 columns of text must have been typed separately on 2 different pieces of paper, cut, and then placed side by side on top of a white sheet before photocopying... as a result, you can see that the 2 columns are not perfectly parallel or even vertical. Yep it does!

We could start a "Wyrms Footnotes group read" thread, or use this thread for this purpose, but from my initial skimming of the first few PDFs, my highlights are: WF1 Editorial by Greg, with a very Greg-like story about the origins of WB&RM and Chaosium and all that. Greg doxxing his readers He's posting their full name and address with their questions. I wonder if Steve Perrin has moved in the last 50 years? Interesting how WF was originally a purely board-game magazine. I didn't look at the dates very closely at first so I thought it was started around the same time as RuneQuest, but it predates it by quite a bit. Still, it's fun to see that people were interested in learning more about a board game's universe! First mention of "Ab Chaos" in a Chaosium document? WF2 The Walktapus appears! WB&RM gets ready for its 2nd printing, and WF2 contains the entirety of the differences, so that owners of the 1st edition don't have to buy the 2nd edition to get the changes. D&D stats for Argrath, Harrek, and other WB&RM heroes! (well, not really D&D stats... see Greg's inimitable preface rambling) WF3 The Nomad Gods, Elric, and Troy board games get teased/advertsed! Chaosium is not just about WB&RM anymore! More classic Gloranthan stuff appearing and getting write-ups. Not gonna say which, you'll have to get the PDF After this, there's regularly more Gloranthan articles about familiar names and places, and less stuff about board game rules and optional missions. WF4 Funny dark troll drawing/strips (by William Church) show up, and seem to be gracing the pages of many WF issues after that. This kind of whimsical illustration is what definitely gives WF a late-70s gaming vibe! Many products get teased, many of which will never see the light of day. For example, "Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass" is announced here! It only got released more than 40 years later in PDF by a totally different author! Other board games are announced, like "Shadows Dance" and "Masters of Luck and Death". Seeing announcements for things that, to my knowledge, never got released is what warms my heart the most Of particular interest, RuneQuest gets teased, and, interestingly enough, is described as "a FRPG extension of WB&RM". There's a more complete write-up of what RQ is going to be further into the issue, and the shots at D&D are barely thinly veiled. You have to read it for yourself, it's glorious. There were so few FRPGs back then that they can actually just get away with mentioning "the previous systems". Btw, @Rick Meints, page 35 somehow repeats 2 or 3 of the pragraphs from page 34. Is that a weird error that featured in the originals? Review of "The Fantasy Trip: Melee"! Oh my. I'm too young to have known these things, but it's history, right there. Awesome. Gloranthan mythology intensifies (insert meme gif) WF5 Lynn Willis gets hired at Chaosium! Working on some games I've never heard of ("Lords of the Middle Sea"?) King Arthur stuff appears in the Chaosium product line-up! RQ Scenario Pack 0! (it was cut from the original book release) It's called "Geedunk Dungeon", and is very much in the style of Balastor's Barracks. More teasing of stuff that never gets released! Yay! RQ beginning characters. Oh my... beginning Mounted Barbarian? 30% in Broadsword... WTF? That's brutal! At least the Peasant Foot Mercenary has a respectable 55% in Short Sword and 50% in 1H Spear. That's better! WF6 "Rambling Runes" segment starts, with Q&A about RQ. Right away people are trying to abuse the POW gain roll rules That's it for now!

You don't have to grab the rules if you remember the rules (or if they're written on the inside of the GM screen). The point for me is to have a rule to rely on. For instance, the cumulative -20% to subsequent parries is a rule I know is useful in combat. Imagine if that rule didn't exist, and someone started a thread saying they got in a bit of a silly situation where a character successfully and easily fended off 12 enemies at once. I wouldn't say "oh well, this is a pretty rare occurrence, so I would just use common sense...after the 3rd or 4th enemy I would say they can't parry anymore, or they have -50%, or whatever". Fighting multiple enemies is very likely to happen again and again, and whatever spot ruling I made last time will be suddenly elevated to a house rule: "but, dear GM, 3 weeks ago when we fought those trollkins, you only applied -50% after the 4th attack!". I don't want to end up with house rules that were invented in a half-assed way in the heat of the battle. Such spot rulings are good (and necessary) for truly rare occurrences, like 2 characters fighting while being tied together, or an action scene in a grain pit, or whatever. Parrying multiple enemies, or fighting big enemies, isn't a "rare occurrence" IMHO, so it requires a rule of some kind (house or not)... especially when, like me, you have your campaign location squeezed between Chaos creatures, Giants, and all the crazy big stuff in Dagori Inkarth. Did you mean "let the players know in advance"? Because you let the players do their downtime shopping between sessions or something? Otherwise, if it's all done at the table, you can obviously keep an eye on it. But it's a very good point that, past a certain level of munchkinery, the GM needs to step in and say that if they want this, it will cost more than just money... gotta remember that more often! I think some of the old RQ supplements had indirect guidelines for this... maybe the Pavis box set? There was some stuff where it would give the probability of a merchant having this or that kind of goods. That was a great way to remind the GM that not everything in the rulebook's equipment/spell/etc. tables are always up for grabs. Especially when some things require you to, say, go see a Troll or Dwarf person instead of the friendly neighbourhood human merchant.

WF issues will most probably be available only via Print-On-Demand on Lulu and/or DTRPG as sadle-stiched single issues. Not only is this the simplest option for Chaosium, it also gives you the real "haptic experience" of reading the original issues Omnibus-type casewrap-bound volumes could be possible with POD, but I doubt Chaosium will bother re-doing 500 pages of layout, especially with the problem of figuring out what to do with page numbering, table of contents, and cross-referencing. There's virtually zero chance of a book slipcase since dual-book slipcases are not possible via POD.

Yep, AFAICT, John Wick's 7th Sea work these days is mostly about promotion and marketing -- which is a good thing given that the 7th Sea line is pretty sizable and well stocked IMHO, so focusing a bit on growing the audience is not a bad idea. Besides New Gamemaster Month, John has done stuff like a Geek & Sundry's Starter Kit series, for instance, which is pretty enjoyable. I assume he's also busy working on other Chaosium IPs.

Re: Lunar Empire gaming Based on the social media posts where Jeff is talking about his current campaign in Glamour, it seems like it's currently being written or, at least, explored. Re: Metaplot Ah, one of the oldest gaming debates is coming back! Yay. I think that players who are against it are vastly misunderstanding what's happening behind the GM screen. We GMs always have a metaplot, whether it's one from a publisher, or our very own. We always have a vague idea of what's going to happen next. Not only because we want the story to go this or that way because we think that's going to be interesting or entertaining, but also because in order to prepare stuff we need to have a vague idea of what to prepare. I very occasionally do pure sandboxed games, with "seat-of-your-pants-GMing" (as Dennis Detwiller describes it) but that's quite hard and stressful to do right, and so 90% of the time I do have at least a vague idea of the next arcs/chapters in the campaign, even if it's only one paragraph in my notebook. I'm sure most other GMs writing their own material do that too. A good GM makes it look completely transparent to the players, who then have no idea what was planned and what wasn't. It's actually a saying in impov theatre, that good improvisation requires good preparation. Now you can go about it in various ways. Me? I consider metaplots (mine or the publisher's) to be like history in a time-travel adventure. One interpretation (that, say, TimeWatch uses) is that history is a river -- if you throw rocks and tree branches at it, it will make a more or less big splash or ripple, but stabilize quickly. It takes a lot more work (like building a dam) to divert it or alter it significantly. So take the Battle of Queens for instance. Say at this point I'm still OK with the established timeline, and I'll have Leika drive back Pharandros while Kallyr gets killed. That's going to happen if the players are going in that direction (like helping Leika directly) or focused on other things (like providing support, hanging back to heal wounded fighters, etc.). If for some reason they are Kallyr's buddies and staying close to her, they will fight off the teleporting assassins. They may fail, and witness her death! How dramatic! However, they might succeed and she might live. That's awesome! This will create more political drama in Boldhome, as I figure out what to do with her, and the players might have to make a choice of allegiance. But the "river" will self correct unless the players keep building on it... so Kallyr might still die, only a bit later, and then I can still proceed with the material that I or Chaosium had prepared, with a few edits here or there... or, if the players seem to really like following Kallyr, I might have Leika be eliminated somehow instead, and then I can substitute Leika for Kallyr in the prepared material, with a few more adjustments to account for the fact that Kallyr is already crowned as Prince of Sartar. If the players are still super determined to support Kallyr a couple years later, I might simply also substitute Argrath for her and keep going with "the plan"... although by then all the piled up modifications will make the timeline vastly unrecognizable, as dates and locations and prominent figures are changed, but you can bet that, if you tilt your head sideways and squint hard, you'll be able to recognize a lot of familiar events.

The most fun thing in that editorial to me is to realize that "playtesting" was apparently not proper jargon back then, as Greg is twice referring to "test-playing".

Having the GM use common sense and make up penalties/rolls/whatever on the spot is of course always possible (and that seems to be very much the RQG authors' philosophy) but the problem for me is that it's not a black and white thing. Various characters will be facing various opponents of various sizes and shapes, especially when you consider dinosaurs/Chaos/Terrors/etc. I can make a spot ruling when someone throws a tree or a train at someone, but there's a whole gradient, from SIZ 15 all the way up to SIZ 500, and somewhere in the middle is where people might argue -- or worse, where I realize there's a logical problem but I'm unable as the GM to figure out what needs to be ruled because we're in the middle of a combat and I'm getting old. With such a world as Glorantha, it's weird to me that there aren't actual rules for this -- spot rulings are not enough IMHO. Which is why I'm making house rules in the absence of real ones, as that's something that's more dependable in the middle of an action scene.

They do, they are, and you are

Sure, but the difference is in how the change was brought into the world. Gloranthans would know if XYZ was "revealed" by (solution 1) this obscure person who just showed up one day and convinced the High Prest that this was true, or by (solution 2) a 10 year long campaign from a large faction of people who may or may not have acted in secret but, still, took 10 years to achieve this. I'm asking from world-building / adventure-writing point of view.

Is there a difference between "someone proves XYZ about the Gods" and "someones manages to change the Gods in order to make XYZ true"? Is the difference that the former can be achieved with a single sufficiently deep heroquest (or even without heroquest, by just intensely studying historical documents) while the latter can only be achieved through many many heroquests performed by many people?

I wrote a few thoughts about this earlier in the thread (see this post), including some house rule proposals. Note that I think that rules for fighting someone much bigger than you shouldn't have anything to do with whether your skill is above 100% or not -- it should be just a bunch of penalties and bonuses regardless of scores.

AWESOME! I wasn't expecting an announcement so soon about this but that's very nice to hear. I love how you say in MIG2 that "magazines are where collectors meet their downfall" I've been avoiding trying to collect these things on purpose, since I knew this was coming.... great news. That's one downfall avoided! I believe the Tales Of The Reaching Moon catalog is next in the "reviving old stuff".

To be clear, I was talking from an RQG gameplay point of view. My point is that it doesn't "bleed" much into the core rulebook and gameplay -- someone wants to play an Earth Priestess, they take Ernalda in RQG, even if they're picking Esrolia as their homeland, for instance. It keeps things simple for first-time players. It's a good thing. Of course I assume the upcoming Cults book is going to make all those other cults as available to the players, but that's OK since it's a big splatbook and that's what it's there for. ....or that the Elmal cult has been absorbed by the Yelmalio cult politically and culturally speaking, which is apparently what happened.