Lordabdul

AFAICT, in the Bestiary, it's all the Elder races that are playable as PCs, with some info on how to go about filling up your character sheet on p.6 or so (it even says you wouldn't get a race-appropriate family background, but that it's coming in future supplements.... ). Everything else in the Bestiary seems to be NPC only (monsters, chaos creatures, and animals). On the subject of the Bestiary (and, in general, the RQG line) being focused on Dragon Pass, I'm also happy with that choice. I'd rather have focused/in-depth books that are useful now (and expanded later with other books focusing on other regions), rather than broad, vague books that cover the entire world but are half-useless because my players won't be travelling all across the world any time soon, if ever.

To be clear in case I wasn't: I don't either. In fact, my players do that, although I do encourage them to add a little bit a flavour, just as I encourage them to describe what cool thing they're doing on their combat turn in a short sentence or two, instead of just saying "I roll to hit with my Shortsword" because that's dull after a while. I was mostly talking about the diagetic stuff: stuff NPCs say, or stuff they might read on a sign, for instance. So in my mind there's no such thing as a "1d8+2 damage sword" in the game world... this means you wouldn't see a sign on the blacksmith's shop that says "1d8+2 swords for sale! 10% off today!" (unless I'm running some kind of comedy fantasy game). Similarly, I wouldn't make NPCs talk in terms of "Bladesharp 5" either for spells, although the term "Bladesharp" (along with other fairly common terms like "Lightning" or "Bless the crops") might make it into the NPCs' vernacular (without the number prefixes and other gameplay bits). But hey, that's what I'd do in my game -- no judgment on other games if the players are having fun!

Of course, in practice, you can't go all in with the in-game talk... you still need table talk and stuff: Player (smashing her fist on the table): "I summon Orlanth's wrath to smite my enemies from above!!!!" GM: "....errr ok, yeah, awesome, but, so....??" Player: "well, I cast Lightning" Everybody: "right, of course, yeah! Whoohooo" But still, it would feel like an extremely weird and artificial world to me if rule terms were what players and NPCs were using all the time exclusively (and, in CoC's case at least, actually detrimental to the whole atmosphere). So in practice there's a bit of both, especially when gaining powers: NPC: "Here is the Sword of Jaelik, the Troll Slayer, the Path Finder!" Player: "cool! so what do I write on my character sheet?" GM: "It's a Broadsword, +2 damage against trolls, shines in the dark if you brush your finger against the hilt" (Note: in the case above, unless they actually learn what the sword does, I might not even make them write what it does yet... they'd have to try it to see! and so they would know it's +2 or whatever only after they actually fought their first troll with it! So that’s one advantage of this type of gameplay for me) Maybe this should go in a new topic

That's borderline God Learnerism! You know what happens to those people... but yes, maybe. Maybe there's different categorisations out there, too. Some of them might have the same terms as in the RQG book, some might not... Good points, although these measures are most likely in other units in the game world -- like "stones" for weight, or "cubit" for sizes.

IIRC the only comment we ever got was that splitting attacks doesn't happen enough to warrant extra rules to solve this, and that the authors implicitly encourage GMs and players to bend the rules when it would make more sense.

Nice. But yes, I'm always leaning towards "Incomplete Modelling" too, even though, as you say, it sometimes does have some "in-game-world side effects" and so, in effect, there are multiple subtly different Gloranthas for different systems (hence Jeff's comment). But when it comes to playing, if a player says "I'm casting Bladesharp 3", I consider that game-talk -- there's no such thing as "Bladesharp 3" in my Glorantha the same way there's no such thing as "DEX 12" (imagine an NPC saying "oh, you seem to have DEX 12, right?"... preposterous!). It's the same with other games, too... for instance, Call of Cthulhu has always encouraged Keepers to use creative names for spells. It's very lame if you tell your players that they just learned "Shrivelling" or "Summon Byakhee" when you could tell them they learned "The Withering Blast Of Death" or "Call Forth The Winged Messenger From The Cold Of Night", and to that effect, the CoC books often give 2 or 3 alternate names for each spell. So yeah, I'd definitely encourage players to say "I touch the Air rune on the hilt of my sword and ask Orlanth to guide my hand" instead of "I activate Bladesharp". Even in RQG, if you read Vasana's Saga, it's often told that way, like when Yanioth summons an elemental, or when Vasana casts Lighting. I wonder if the upcoming RQG GM book will give some guidance and practical examples for this. There was someone on the forums (can't remember who exactly) who mentioned they had a game where some Sartarite clans were getting readied for battle by casting various spells, but it was described as all the warriors chanting and yelling "until their voices sounded like Orlanth's thunder" or something to that effect, I thought that was pretty cool.

I think we discussed this in some other threads but yeah that's the core issue -- and definitely one of the top problems with RQG for me. I'm going to house-rule the hell out of it, but I'm a bit disappointed that the book was published without at least something addressing the situation (although to be honest, there's a few other situations that are not fully or satisfyingly addressed by the rules either). Thanks for the house-rules @g33k! My tentative/work-in-progress house rules are a bit similar but I was considering adding a new "bulk" stat to weapons, which would make the distinction between low-SR-but-slow weapons (like 2H swords), high-SR-and-slow (like a mace), high-SR-but-fast (like daggers), etc. Then this new stat defines the SR interval between attacks. I need to playtest it though.

Here are my tips for people looking for a game: Instead of looking for one, start one! What you're technically looking for are players You can advertise your game on many existing forums like RPG.net, ENWorld, SJGames, etc. Whichever have LFG/LFP threads. Other places have such threads too, like RPGGeek for instance, which even shows you other gamers on a map if they have entered their ZIP code. Check on Craigslist, look up any local gaming Meetup groups, or just do a web search. Sometimes, whatever your local game community uses to get together is something you just don't know is there -- and whatever technology they use will depend widely on who started it, and in what decade they did so! Finally, of course, check with your FLGS, they should know everything. That said, yeah it would be good to have LFG/LFP threads here for BRP games specifically.

Don't we expect the RuneQuest Starter Set before the end of the year?

Yeah the Critical Role fan community is completely mindblowing when it comes to fan art. Every episode of their main D&D campaign they showcase at least a few dozens of art pieces, many referencing things that happened in the previous episodes.

Ah right, good idea!

Yeah after I started inking the drawing I realized the problem -- although I would have fixed it the other way, i.e. by giving the duck longer arms. As it is, I'm pretty sure the arms are too short to even put and remove the helmet 😂 A longer sword might be a problem depending on where the sheath is... it might be ok if they keep the weapon on their back, since, when you consider non-upright ducks, their backs suddenly become a much more useful place to carry things. Another thing of note is that since most ducks have fairly long and thin necks, I figured maybe those are spots worth protecting, hence my little experiment with a trio of armored necklaces hanging from strings from the helmet. Not sure if that's practical or even useful -- what would other types of neck protection look like?

Today is a stat holiday in Canada so I had some free time... here's something! There's a bunch of problems with it that I'm sure the old grognards will tear into 😅 but basically I wanted to see a Duck that's not standing upright as much. In the future I want to further explore the idea that the feathers stop at the wrist and the hands are the same bone/skin texture as the feet. I hope you like it a bit!

True. I knowingly used "rape" to drive home the point that if someone wanted to translate this to their Glorantha's Durulz, that would pretty much be what it is. But yes, it's iffy. Maybe the proximity with Delecti is making the ducks... iffy indeed. Are they? (checks GtG) Oh my I totally missed that. Indeed, so they can't be culturally too far off then yeah, my bad. I'll have to find other ways to make them look weird then, since I still don't like the idea of them being basically cartoonish versions of the PCs.

Haha yeah exactly 😂 But really, as silly as these facts sound, they help (along with other less ridiculous facts about ducks) build a more original vision of Durulz. As @Shiningbrow says, it's easy to anthropomorphize these types of creatures too much. That's why we like the Gloranthan take on elves and dwarves, because they feel like entirely different species instead of "like humans, but with this and that". That's what I want for the ducks in my Glorantha, especially since I know several players at my table would smirk and go "ducks? really?", so I definitely want to introduce ducks that makes them go "holy fuck! ducks!" instead.

For those who are going with the interpretation of actual ducks being cursed during the God War, you can look at some simple facts about the difference between male and female ducks, which indicates, for instance, that common species of ducks have males with flashy or bright colours while females have dull/brownish/greyish colours. For some races, the males only have those bright colours during mating season... how that translates to Gloranthan ducks, I'll leave it to interpretation. IMHO it would be cool for Durulz to have feathers changing colours, and have big fertility/mating festivals during which other species (especially humans) would be totally banned from approaching their lands. The most fascinating fact about ducks however is (bear with me here) how their penises work. To be honest, only a very small percentage of ducks have penises (most ducks do like most other birds do, and fertilize the female through a "cloacal kiss"), but the very few that do, especially the Muscovy duck, here, have really fucked up penises. That's because those ducks basically rape the females, and so the females evolved vaginas shaped like corkscrews to prevent penetration, and the males had to evolve something that could navigate that, in some kind of "genital arms race". If you have a table of players who really hate the idea of sentient ducks in their fantasy world, you can make the Durulz descended from a species like that one, and that would make for a really fucked up, disgusting and repelling bunch of NPCs.

Congratulations! It's entirely deserved IMO. Ever since the "return of the Great Old Ones" a few years ago, a LOT of your new products have been absolutely stellar. And that's saying something, given that the industry is getting so exciting again, with the return of Delta Green, the rise of Monte Cook/Pelgrane Pres/Modiphius/Free League/etc, the explosion of weird/indie RPGs, etc... the last few years have been very good for being a tabletop gamer (the hardest part is reading time and budgeting 😅), but Chaosium has recaptured the top spot in my heart. Keep going, and we promise we won't ask too much about release dates!

Ah right yeah, I've seen that too. On the contrary, I imagine there will be a non negligible part that extends parts of Glorantha -- new Sartarite tribes, previously un/under-developed parts of Dragon Pass or farther, new sub-cults, details on ducks or trolls or whatever, etc. Basically, all the stuff we see here on the forums.

I like the one that says "Hands Off" 😂 What's in it?

I voted "no" mostly because: 1) The (excellent) Cradle Of Heroes website is about creating and managing PCs and NPCs. I wouldn't want to muddy that up with other unrelated stuff, so if anything, such a repository should appear somewhere else. 2) I believe Chaosium is still working on the RQ equivalent to the Miskatonic Repository? In that case I imagine that people writing Gloranthan material will publish it there to reach the community?

It hasn't changed that much from what I can tell. The concept of the "Orlanthi All" dates quite far back, with "one in seven or so" Orlanthi not conforming to societal norms, including gender roles (HeroWars had the Thunder Rebels and Storm Tribe supplements to detail people from, respectively, the majority and minority). But yes, I agree that the rune cult requirements don't have any mention of non-binary genders so that does look like it's missing an edit pass to match with the rest. As for the OP, I think it's not only up to your (varying) Glorantha, but (in traditional Gloranthan fashion) it can also vary and contradict itself depending on which NPC you ask. It varies a lot in the real world depending on which religious person you talk to. So maybe most of the Esrolia high priestesses in Nochet are a bunch of TERFs but the ones in Sartar or elsewhere might "bend the rules" a bit (or a lot), or maybe none of them care about gender and only look for sex, or whatever. I wouldn't be surprised if a cult like Babeester Gor wasn't too demanding about their requirements, and that you could somewhat commonly find different sexes and genders in their initiates, the same way you clearly didn't find only cis-men on pirate ships in the Caribbean in the late 17th century despite ship contracts commonly prohibiting women on board. I wonder if Jeff will suddenly add a 6 months delay to the Gods and Goddesses of Glorantha book to go over all the cults again and address this Also note that the "4 sexes and 6 genders" thing only applies to Orlanthi culture IIRC, so, again, some cults may have different traditions in practice between different parts of the continent.

My 2 cents, as a recent beginner myself: You already have RQG, which is good -- I found it to be a very good introduction to Glorantha. Take a look at the King of Dragon Pass game, the Prince of Sartar webcomic (not the book... yet), and the Glorantha Sourcebook. Get the RQG GM pack, which contains additional information on Sartar's Colymar tribe (if you're playing in that context). Or, if you're OK with PDFs, and with potentially converting from a different system (HeroQuest), get the Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes PDF from Chaosium, which contains LOTS of Sartarite info. If you're more interested in Pavis than Sartar (and you're still OK with PDFs), get the Pavis: Gateway to Adventure PDF.

The cover is fine, I don't see why it's becoming a big deal. Interestingly enough, however, I went back to check the previous CoC product covers and the number of covers featuring investigators (or any other kind of "normal character type") is incredibly low -- most covers only feature places, unspeakable monsters, or, at best, some humanoid monster. I wonder if that's what looks off to some people. The Dreamland art detail is totally awesome, thanks for sharing!

Thanks for the feedback! I indeed started pitching RQG to my table and after initially trying to convey my enthusiasm for the setting, I also started getting a sense of a little push back, so I pivoted to just pitching a game where they play as part of tribe, instead of being murder hobos, and so they would have a community, some traditions, and they'll choose whether they want to lead that group to glory (or death! or both!) in the upcoming turmoils, or, instead, keep a low profile or even (gasp!) collaborate with the invaders. Basically, pitching them what they are going to do instead of pitching them something they can't relate to yet. And if I was to pitch them, say, a Pavis campaign instead of a Sartar/Kallyr Starbrow one, I would also now probably talk in terms of "core activity", and I might not even mention Glorantha more than a couple times before we start rolling.

The Glorantha Sourcebook says that Monrogh Lantern (whoever that is 😅) "revealed" that Elmal was another name for Yelmalio, so I guess you could just give Elmalis similar benefits, including a one-use Sunspear for Rune Priests. On the other hand, it may be appropriate (given Elmal's history) to nerf its sun-powers in favour of Lightbringers-related benefits. It might even be one or the other depending on when your campaign takes places (before or after the "revelation"). Where do you get this? I don't find any mention of Elmal cults in the new material except for that bit above from GS.