Lordabdul

Hugs to @Jeff.... take your time and please stay on the forums (do you feel more positive about the Facebook groups? It seems you post more stuff over there)

Yeah exactly -- I don't think that, say, the typical GM who flirts with the female players would use the X-Card system anyway. Only reasonable adults would use X-Cards, and reasonable adults don't need X-Cards, apart from (like I said before) the easy way to signal that, yes, they're reasonable adults, which might be incredibly valuable for people who did have big issues in the past, and want an easy way to know if a gaming group is ok to join. The existence of X-Cards however boosted the awareness of a problem that wasn't discussed much in a past, so that's valuable too.

I don't think we really know what's up. If I am to believe the RPGGeek information, 2019 was indeed a pretty empty year (it only saw the GM pack and the Rattling Wind preview), but that could be due to a whole bunch of other factors. For example, a whole bunch of stuff happened in 2019, from John Wick (and the 7th Sea franchise) joining Chaosium, the Critical Role CoC one-shot making the US fulfillment center explode, and generally speaking Chaosium staff getting more involved in social media/streaming/conventions than I've seen in the past (although that might be totally subjective). Another bunch of things also happened in the background, like working with Chris Spivey on a several projects, and ending up canceling a couple things (including Chris' sci-fi project) because Chaosium was stretched too thin. All of this might mean Jeff's output is fine, but playtesting/editing/production resources are thin. And I'm not even talking about art production, which is notoriously more complicated and lengthy when it comes to Glorantha material. You might also forget the biggest thing to affect 2019's RQ schedule: the passing of Greg Stafford just a couple months before the start of 2019. So yeah, let's give Chaosium a pass for that year.

Given that RQG is currently focused on Dragon Pass and its immediate surroundings, it wouldn't make sense to release something that gives detailed timelines on some areas that were not even mentioned. If it was a system-agnostic GtG-type book, yeah, but in this case I think it will be an RQG book.

Yeah, the RQG Bestiary version has a very similar text to the what's in the older books, but there's still a bunch of stuff left out, like the finer details about Broo birth, or the distinction between Feral and Wild Broos. Yeah I have it, plus the PDFs of the original 2 cult splatbooks. I'm considering getting the actual originals (ahem cough cough). Oh right you were talking about Broos keeping a herd of their own. And yeah, one of the sources I caught up with (can't remember which book) indicates that it's not uncommon for Wild Broos to do that. Yeah good point. I think maybe the "2 seasons + 1d8" is for a batch of larvae, as opposed to each larva independently? But yeah, adult Broos who might want to get the larvae into their clan would need to know when they would hatch. Maybe they have some magic to do that, but if it requires coming back to the herd to cast it, they might be spotted, or leave traces behind. I'm sure that, as soon as they get a whiff of Broo activity around their herd, any farmer would try and get the local shaman/priest to inspect the animals. So maybe that's part of their weekly or monthly routine perimeter checks. It might make a good intro adventure for young Sartarites. Yeah, but, again, the Broo pregnancy itself (lasting ~2.5 seasons) would need to be equally unnoticeable in enough cases to make it worthwhile for the Broos (if the animals get preemptively slaughtered in 99.5% of cases, it's not going to sustain the Broo population). I was more thinking about how you might have stolen that sacred object only last week, just for that purpose The talks with the Broos might be very tense but hey, you can swear that you only got those items from someone else. Yeah that works too. Not as fun, but makes more sense

Ah yeah nice, I have Borderlands & Beyond but didn't think to check in there -- I have mostly kept it untouched on my shelves so far.... so much to read!

Where can I find info on Ralzakark and his Broos? Allosaurus, yeah. Unconfirmed sightings, though, according to GtG. That's a super interesting idea, thanks. What's the reference for this? Or is that in your Glorantha?

I don't really see the Broos as having much of a problem with allying with other Chaos creatures. They might hate everything and everyone, but Scorpionmen for example belong to a friendly cult, and they benefit from helping each other with disease control spells and warrior troops. Plus, re-reading the Bagog chapter in Cults Compendium, I realized there's such a thing as a Scorpion-Broo, which is terrifying (every time I pick up CC, I find some cool nugget... I'm really looking forward to GaGoG!). Ah thanks I had missed that, having only looked in the 1st volume. I'm still having trouble putting together the "Broos as agents of pure Chaos" and "Broos as volatile-but possible-to-bargain with faction". I guess there are just different Broos with different pack leaders. Yep I did, but it just made me ask more questions. For instance: That's where they say Broos prefer to impregnate herd animals because wild carnivorous animals are trickier to get hold on. But doing it on herd animals would likely trigger human retaliation, so in in the end is sounds like fighting a bear might actually be less trouble... ...unless, like I said, "stealth fucking a herd" is a viable option. GtG mentions that they do that, and that "many weeks later the surviving animals give birth en masse, producing dozen or even hundreds of slimy infant broos". That surely is a totally horrifying sight for any sane herder, but it does make me wonder how come nobody noticed that the pregnant sheep/goats/etc didn't look right at all. That's why I was wondering if it was hard to tell between a normal pregnancy and a Broo pregnancy... If it is, then surely not many Broo larvae would make it, as the animal gets slaughtered half-way through the gestation period. If it isn't, then I assume herders would more or less frequently (based on spell economy) call the local shaman/priest to check any pregnant animals for Chaotic influence. Surely, if a farmer realizes that a dozen of his cows got pregnant at the same time, that raises a big red flag. The flag is blindingly bright if the male animals are pregnant! So that raises questions about the viability of impregnating herd animals, and I can't think (so far) of any other explanation besides "Broo pregnancy is virtually invisible until the last couple days or hours". Maybe the larvae grows inside the animal (i.e. there's no visible "belly bump"), taking over some of the animals organs or bones or something, and has only a minimal observable effect on the animal's appearance and behaviour. Basically a parasitic relationship where the larve replaces something as opposed to grafting onto something (my all time favourite such parasite is the infamous Cymothoa exigua, a parasite that eats and replaces a fish's tongue, and then just takes its cut from everything the fish is eating... the fish apparently lives the rest of its life as usual). This is not purely to have fun with gross parasitic systems, but also, mainly, to figure out what would be the common precautions that Dragon Pass farmers would take, how it generally affects daily clan life. Thanks, I'll check that out! I'm not worried about the survival of the larvae after it hatches. Sure, it slithers its way out to the woods and then it's probably fine. I'm wondering about its survival rate while it's still gestating. Ooooh wait... are you talking about a farmer who knows that a couple of his cows have Broo larvae in them, but decides to let them hatch and then adopts the larvae and tries to turn the resulting Broos into, errr, pets? MY GOD, JOERG. The way I understood it was that if the host animal isn't pregnant, the Broo larvae has a 100% chance of hatching (if undisturbed), but that if the host animal is pregnant, it's more of a 50/50% chance or whatever odds you want. So for Wild Broos, they might fight for you in exchange of some Mallia/Thed sacred object you happen to own, for example...

So I'm thinking about various interesting ways to get broos involved in a RQG/HQG adventure aside for the usual "Chaos monster at the end of the book", and I'm having trouble figuring out a whole bunch of things about how they fit in Glorantha. Basic motivations: Broos are mostly worshippers of Mallia and Thed, and it looks like they really just want to (1) multiply, (2) spread disease, (3) fuck Chaos-haters up. Is there anything else they want in life? Associations with humans: apparently the Lunar Empire was notorious for having some occasional "agreements" with Broos during the occupation of Dragon Pass. What was the gist of the agreement? Just "we don't kill you if you only kill or infect Sartarites/Tarshites"? They could apparently be rarely seen in Lunar market towns trading stuff. What could they have been trading? Impregnation: in order to multiply ("Broo Imperative #1"), they need to impregnate big enough animals. I think they mostly go with cattle-like animals (wild or domesticated) because they're just easier to, ahem, "work on" than, say, bears and wolves and humans? Are there enough wild deer/cows/etc. available for this in heavily settled areas like Dragon Pass? Or is there not, and that's why they have to go through the trouble of taking from human herds? The Bestiary and Cult Compendium aren't clear if they would more often capture the animal for the gestation period (~2.5 seasons), or more often just leave the impregnated animal to roam freely. I would assume the former? (it requires them to stay put for a longer time, or drag their pregnant herd around, but it greatly increases the survival of the larvae I think) Do humans bother "curing" impregnated animals? Or do they just kill the animal? (I don't imagine anybody would want to drink milk from a goat who had a Broo larvae in it, no matter what the local healer says!) Can you actually tell that an animal is impregnated, before it's too late? Would Broos just stealth-fuck the herd at night, and leave the people to figure it out later? Even if that's only a 5% success rate, it might be easy enough to be the Broos' favourite method? Would Broos actually seek particular animals to impregnate in order to get specific features? Like, is selective breeding a thing with Broos? Would impregnating a human lead to a Broo that could almost "pass" as a human, which could be very valuable? Disease spreading: ("Broo Imperative #2"): Broos are basically just murder-hobo-types that roam the land, fuck shit up, and cast disease inducing spells to as many things/people as possible? They're still supposed to be intelligent creatures, though. How elaborate could they get to infect more people... like, infecting fields or water supplies? Can you replace or corrupt a minor river spirit with a disease spirit for instance? Can you think of other evil plans? Unlike impregnation, I assume people would try and heal animals that got a disease from a Broo raid? Thanks!

The GM has a choice -- there's no X-Card police that will put them in jail. However, they would indeed be assholes to say they abide by the X-Card etiquette, without doing it. But then again, the whole thing is that if a player goes out of their way to tell the GM "I have a spider phobia, can you replace them with snakes or something?", the GM would be equally an asshole to reply "no, suck it up". I mean, it's not rocket science, it's just a game, I'm sure 2 people can be functioning adults and sort things out. If the player is abusing the X-Card, they're as much of an asshole as the GM who doesn't want to replace spider with snakes. There's a lot of assholes out there, on either side of the screen. I'm pretty sure the whole point of the X-Card etiquette is to announce "I'm not too much of an asshole" first and foremost. Feel free to distribute an X-Card to the GM also, so they can also tell that a player is out of line if necessary.

Can’t unsee......

Errr no. The X-Card is the "ask the GM to change things".

Also, remember that things like X-cards mostly came from convention/meetup-style games, where people typically get together with unknown gamers. It evolved from an actual need -- there are so many horror stories out there. For a regular game, I've never found it to be needed. You would probably know if one of you friends had a particular phobia, or if they had recent life events that would make anything in a game un-fun for them, so you can generally adjust the adventure proactively (I did that a couple times).

I'm confused -- in one case, the player who's uncomfortable with something in the game can only suck it up, or leave the table. In the other case, they can suck it up, ask the GM to change the game, or leave the table. Seems to me like the second option is better. It can be an X-card, it can be the GM saying "feel free to interrupt the game and talk to me at any time", or whatever other mechanism you want.

I meant CoC7 yes (fun fact: IIRC CoC5 has no rounding at all because there are no divisions anywhere except for coming up with Hit Points at character creation, and yes they changed it from "round up" to "round down" over time). But I think there's no point trying to find a common ground among BRP-based RPGs, as, at least between RQ and CoC, there has always been wide differences. BRP games are an unofficial family -- I don't think RQ or CoC ever mentioned being "BRP powered", so they were never supposed to fit a base rule set, and indeed they often had different implementations of skill rolls, resistance tables, and many other things. Well I do like it better -- it grabbed my attention, when all the previous editions didn't (mind you, back then I was young and busy playing Vampire and Rolemaster and CoC 5e, and in the 2000s I was busy with Delta Green, mostly). And yes there are reasons to like the new Resistance Table better, too. But obviously you don't like RQG, so let's not bog down the thread with rules minutiae debating that will go nowhere, especially when you seem very passionate about rules while I'm more of a "meh, this is fine, maybe I'll throw in a couple house rules to fix this and that" kinda guy. Sure they can! Sorry I originally was curious about the history of some rules and lost track of the thread topic, I shoudn't have posted that last "my 2 cents" paragraph in my first post.

RQG is always "round in favour of players" (I would probably replace that with "always round up", it's easier for me). Call of Cthulhu, because it's got the whole bleak cosmic horror thing, is "always round down". I don't think it's very important either way There was a thread about that yeah, and since then I learned to make sure ties in opposed rolls lead to attrition of some resource/stat. It actually ended up being quite satisfying because it can lead to a situation where 2 somewhat evenly matched opponents might have one of them back down even after a couple ties just because they realize the other one will tire them out. But if you want things to be resolved in a single roll, you might want to look at HQG, which resolves around that. Odd indeed. In the full RQG book you get numbers past that, going over 100. So probably either a mistake, or something they fixed by the time the rulebook came out but they forgot to fix the Quickstart Rules. Not necessarily (is it abandoned? replaced by a new edition?). But that's a different situation. I said I don't care much about RQ3 rules (apart from a purely game design history aspect) because I came on board the Gloranthan train only last year. Naturally, I picked the latest edition. It doesn't make much sense for me to start with the 1984 version, nor would learning more or caring about it bring me any value except for getting even more confused about rules edge cases But like I said, I totally understand running old games from your library. Your situation is different -- you used to play RQ3, and, I imagine, you just never upgraded (MRQ/MRQ2 or RQG) because you're happy with RQ3. There's plenty of people who still play D&D 3.x and are happy too, that's not unusual. It gets even more complicated (and justified) with RQ because of its infamously convoluted history, where, from one version to the next, it can almost be a totally different game. But like I said I'm a RQ newbie so I avoided all that stuff by arriving late to the party. And besides I'm not particularly picky about rules... there's only a couple games I'm aware of that I wouldn't GM because of the rules. Otherwise, I'm fine (with a house rule here and there), and I've never regretted upgrading to a newer edition in any game. True! Sorry about the derailing.

I don't really see how, because Rune magic and Spirit magic are 2 different things, it necessarily means that Gods and Spirits must also be different things belonging to different worlds. In many RPG systems, melee and ranged combat have different rules, but it doesn't mean that guns and swords come from different universes.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean, but it doesn't seem to me RQG really makes much of a distinction between spirits and deities rules-wise. IIRC RQG just describes spirit cults as the same way it describes Rune cults (although they say it would often be considered a sub-cult).

What do you mean here? I checked RQ3 and critical/special successes are like in RQG, at 1/20th and 1/5th of the base chance. Am I missing something? @Atgxtg can you elaborate about what you think Pendragon does better? From what I can tell, the system is pretty much similar (albeit being D20 instead of RQG's D100), and the main differences are that the bonuses/penalties seem to be bigger in Pendragon (I think they're just right in RQG), and Pendragon has more stuff, like the really cool secondary states like Shock (when you fail something you were Inspired for), or Melancholic/Maddened. I think these extra rules in Pendragon really fit the setting well (as Knights tend to be very moody and dramatic), but I probably wouldn't want those in RQG since I'm pretty sure 80% of people play RQG as a more standard FRPG rather than an emulation of epic tales (there's HQG for that). That's from @soltakss -- hasn't the Resistance Table been virtually the same in all versions of BRP games? What changed? My 2 cents on the general topic is that I never played RQ3 so I have zero nostalgia or affection for it, but I remember checking it out a couple years ago for my general education on RPG systems, and I disliked many aspects: the split of attack/parry skills, the super harsh magic rules (one-use spells that you had to sacrifice stuff for? come on!), the weird opposed roll rules, and the seemingly poor ability to scale up to expert (>100%) levels. Of course, that's only based on my reading of the rules so I may very well be missing some stuff, but I really don't care since that system is dead anyway. I totally understand the desire to run it for people who have run it in the old days though! I similarly get a fuzzy feeling thinking about running a game with The Dark Eye rules (although that one is surprisingly not dead, go figure). All in all, I'm very happy with RQG compared to the previous editions I was able to read through. As mentioned before by various people, it's gorgeous, finally lives up to the "Rune" in "RuneQuest", I love how the system feels integrated with the setting, I love the Runes & Passions system, the character background creation, etc... But yes, I agree that it has a few rough edges on the purely mechanical & wording side of things, and that it would be reaaaaally nice if Chaosium was more proactive releasing errata and corrections in a timely and, more importantly, well advertised manner (there are resources here and here and more importantly here that I'm sure only a few forum regulars know about).

Yep, in French, "bois" ("wood") is the opposite: it denotes a small forest ("forêt"). These days, in Europe, the term "forest" seems to be standardized around a surface of at least half an hectare, with a tree coverage of at least 20%. In Canada, it seems to be any area with a tree crown density of at least 10% (and that can be a big area... under this definition, almost half of Canada as a whole is covered in forests).

The Red Cow campaign books (especially the 2nd one, The Eleven Lights) also have more detailed versions of some of those events (they cover things from 1618 to 1625). Generally speaking, as someone said already, it's the problem with meta-plots, as seen in many other well-known RPGs before, and has been dividing gamers since at least the late 1980s. Many WoD gamers just completely ignored the meta-plot for instance.

Spirits are often single minded and obsessive, yeah, but they can still be negotiated with, so it means they do change their mind a bit (regarding the fine details of the agreement, mostly), even if they wouldn't obviously do a complete 180 turn-around. Gods, however, seem to be a completely different beast to me. They're eternal and exist in this vastly different plane of existence that's quite harder to reach than the Spirit World. More importantly, you never really talk to them, and they never really agree to anything (except maybe for Divine Intervention). The only thing that happens is that, through worship, you gain access to stuff that would happen regardless in the God Plane. Whether you did all the ceremonies and worships to learn and cast Summon Earth Elemental or not, Ernalda's mythic primordial casting of that spell will still exist, and will still always happen. You don't get Ernalda to agree to let you do it, you instead take part in her doing it. At least that's my understanding. As such, you don't communicate with Gods any more than you communicate with a tree from which you want to take a fruit -- you're just making sure you built the ladder tall enough to reach it.

Thanks @Joerg and @Akhôrahil , I didn't know about these changes between HQ1 and HQ2. I had occasionally noticed terminology problems before while skimming through HQ books, but I just filed in under "HQ is a narrative system and so they take a poetic license in describing things because there are no hard rules". Didn't know either about this Four Worlds Collision thing, thanks. And I agree it does make Arachne Solara's action more epic. I think it might also make the Great Compromise potentially even greater: just as entities coming from the God Plane had to agree to specific terms in order to keep existing eternally, entities coming from the Spirit Plane would also have had to agree to their own terms -- namely that they can exist alongside the Mundane World, act in Time, have limited interaction with mortals while staying separate, etc. It might open a can of worms, though, since you'd have to wonder why the Gods didn't take the same deal as the Spirits... I like that, it's catchy. But I think it's still just one of the consequences of the more fundamental difference that Spirits exist in Time while Gods don't -- you can't negotiate with something that can't change its mind.

Thanks! The Kolat cult is in Sartar Companion and there's this bit in the description: "The Orlanthi predominantly worship gods and rely upon them for most of their magic. However, there are many powerful spirits in Dragon Pass and the gods have no power over them." It occurs to me that Gods are beings that only exist in the God Time, and therefore are mostly bound to only the things they did "back then". Spirits, however, exist in Time, no? That's why they can interact directly with mortals, and, well, do stuff. So the difference might be, primarily that? And Kolat is a spirit because he refused to be bound by the Great Compromise? That's an awesome idea. Not only I'm imagining spirits who organized themselves into a group with far-spanning agendas (and potentially hiring the PCs to carry on missions), I also can't stop thinking now about a one-shot adventure where the players are a band of spirits who have adventures in the spirit world, and have to deal with shamans to do their bidding in the material world -- basically a mirror version of a classic RQ shamanic adventure.

In RQG p275 (in the section about Rune Cult Initiates), it says that "In many cults, initiates may not become shamans or sorcerers", so it does indeed sound like shamans are not in Rune Cults most of the time (with a few exceptions, see below). Later, on p.377, you have the section on Spirit Cults, with a bit of information on spirit cult shamans, and a couple of examples. As for Rune Cult shamans, like you said, Daka Fal has shamans (RQG p291, the Daka Fal cult gives details about shaman membership). Waha and Yelm also have shamans. Eurmal has many trickster spirits, with respective shamans and spirit cults. Re-reading this, I actually find it confusing that spirits can teach Rune spells to initiates. Does that mean you have a pool of Rune points dedicated to that spirit? I thought that was only for Gods. Are spirits essentially lesser Gods then? And potentially, an ambitious spirit might want to see their cult grow enough to the point that it can become a new God? That might be an interesting hook for an adventure...