Sumath

The implications of being a shaman's eyes and ears are that the spirit is a) ever watchful and b) in communication with the shaman at all times. So I'd guess that the shaman does not need to go and find them. Perhaps they are like a spiritual guard dog, providing warning and deterrent against aggressors. It would not be in a shaman's interests to weaken an active guardian, so magic point usage might be a last resort. Or perhaps if a shaman has several such spirits he can allot each of them different duties at different times: lookout, defender, magic point resource. That way, a spirit whose magic points are used is kept out of harm's way.

All things being equal this might be true. But I'm sure you can imagine plenty of battlefield scenarios where a lack of encumbrance might provide a distinct advantage too. Besides, all things aren't equal when using the Battle skill. What if the naked warrior's phalanx never actually gets to engage in melee? What if the armoured warrior's phalanx gets flanked? In a standard RQG melee, a player makes second-by-second decisions as to what their character does in combat. In battles, combatants fight as part of a large force under someone's command - warriors go and do what they are instructed to do, so they have limited autonomy over where they stand in relation to the enemy, whether they can retreat, what weapons they bring to bear etc. The other thing about Battle is that it is summarising all the environmental factors, decisions, actions and dice rolls that would happen if you were mad enough to try to play out an entire battle with melee skill rolls and individual decision-making by hundreds of combatants. It isn't just about rolling to see how well you fought or defended (or what bounced off your armour), but how fortunate you were, how cunning, how tactically adept, how much attention you were given by the enemy, whether you ended up at a split second in the path of that runaway chariot etc. A battle can be a free-for-all. You might go into a battle with the best armour, the most potent magic and the greatest skill of any warrior on the field, but then get singled out by the enemy as a threat and overwhelmed by vast numbers. It's a distinct possibility. For me, the Battle skill represents your nous to survive a battlefield, negotiate its challenges and take advantage of its opportunities. Armour is not really a big factor.

Battle is an abstraction of melee, so the damage you take using the Battle skill is also an abstraction (otherwise, why not use your melee skills?). It's not supposed to perfectly align with the Runequest combat system, but to approximate what happened to you in a large-scale battle. Now, that's something that is as much about luck and chance as it is about how much armour you are wearing. For example, your location on a battlefield will be much more decisive in how much damage you take than what armour you're wearing. An unarmoured peltast at the side of the battlefield may never come under fire or be engaged in melee. An armoured swordsman may be put into the thick of the fight where they are unlikely to escape unscathed. What's more, wearing heavy armour on a muddy battlefield amidst a throng of moving bodies, horses, chariots etc can be as much of a liability as an advantage - it makes you slower and more easily fatigued even whilst it affords you protection. Those with less armour have less protection but will generally be more mobile and will more quickly recover their energy levels than their armoured counterparts. RQIII used to track things like fatigue and RQG still imposes penalties to Dodge etc from ENC, but in general RQG combat doesn't overly concern itself with these things because most melees are too short to bother with it. Battles, on the other hand, can last hours or days.

There are six new RGQ adventures being run at GenCon and there were already others (Darkness at Runegate etc) that were run at other conventions that haven't been released, so I'm guessing there's enough content for them to release something within the next few months. I would assume they are waiting upon artwork and final tweaking before they go to layout.

This is precisely why I said that free will lies in the tension between opposing Runes. Go too far one way or another and you are in danger of becoming zealous and predictable. Remember that the Man Rune also sits in opposition to the Beast Rune. If you have too high an affinity with the Man Rune you might become fastidious, elitist, and inflexible with regards to how you view the uncivilised world and its denizens. Power Runes (and those two Form Runes) start at 50/50 in character generation, which seems to be a healthy balance.

Good question. The entries for elementals are not clear on this except for Moon elementals. Both Lunes and Selenes have attacks that take place on SR 12 (Bestiary p.181-182 - Lunes also have a madness attack taking place 'on the SR that the victim is touched'). I'd apply SR12 to the other types of elemental as well. It also fits with standard fire damage which takes place 'at the end of each melee round' (p.157, RQG). I would assume that asphyxiation damage takes place at the end of a melee round as well.

I'm currently reading Mahabharata: A Modern Retelling by Carole Satyamurti. Many of the themes of the Mahabharata are quintessentially Bronze Age and/or Gloranthan. Kinstrife is a key theme: it's a story of two sets of cousins (the Pandavas and the Kauravas) forming rival clans, who are driven to war by one of them (Duryodhana) fostering a hatred of the Pandavas due to childhood bullying and an envy of his cousins' achievements. Duty, in the form of dharma, is also a key factor in the behaviour of the protagonists. Discussions of fate and right action surround Duryodhana's blind father, Dhritarashtra, an indulgent parent who is convinced he is powerless (despite being the king!) to prevent his son's actions. Many of the heroes are semi-divine, being the offspring of unions between mortals and spirits, gods and demi-gods. Instantaneous conceptions and births occur on several occasions, and the birth of the Kauravas is monstrous. There is also a period of exile for the Pandavas (13 years!), a heroquest (Arjuna travels to the Himalayas to seek celestial superweapons from the gods, and spends time in the heavenly realms), a cattle raid and counter-raid, a battle with celestial beings (Ghandarvas), divine guidance from Krishna on numerous occasions, sacrifice (the burning of an entire forest of animals as tribute to a fire god, whilst the storm god, Indra, tries to prevent it - think Oakfed versus Orlanth), interventions by local spirits (river spirits, rakshasas, yakshas etc) and spiritual counsel from holy/wise men (Brahmins). Magical weapons, such as the bow Gandiva, and never-ending quivers, are matched by the supernatural martial skills of warriors such as Arjuna, Bhima and Karna, firing so quickly that they can build structures in the air out of arrows. There are also descriptions of divine manifestation by Krishna, the apocalyptic scale of the battle at Kurukshetra (eleven Kaurava armies versus seven Panadava armies) etc. I'm about half way through so far and although it feels very tangential at the beginning, once the many characters are established it's a very good read. I was hesitant in starting on the Mahabharata but Satyamurti's blank verse is as easy to read as modern prose and, whilst the numerous characters and lengthy names can be initially confusing, there is a useful glossary of characters and terminology at the back.

All you've done here is prove how little difference there is in POW requirements. No. Case 1 does provide a direct link to god. The question is: is your god listening to you or not? If you're a Rune Lord, then yes your god is probably listening (which is why DI is so much more likely), if you're an Initiate, then your god is only listening on a good day. A geas is a point of interest, about which your god is always listening. And as I said before, there are more types of sacrifice than just POW sacrifice.

Thanks for the answers everyone. The consensus appears to be that free will can be expressed through aspects of various Runes, or that it is better described as the absence of the (Runic) constraints placed upon gods. I'd actually say that that axiom arises out of the tension between Movement & Stasis. And perhaps that's where free will arises from generally - somewhere within the tension between opposing Power or conflicting Element Runes. I suppose if I'd just looked at the character generation system in RQG the answer was staring me in the face... 😀

As per my edit above, it could be the behavioural sacrifice that the geas-holder provides. In Vedic and other belief systems, austerities are just as great a sacrifice as immolating cattle or destroying valuable goods for the gods. The Mahabharata has lots of characters appeasing the gods by not eating for days, giving up material luxuries, undergoing deliberate hardships etc.

I already answered this in an earlier post: Initiates will swear generic oaths to their god - to observe holy days etc. If they stop doing these things then the god is going to know about that through the connection made by the initial POW sacrifice. The POW isn't wasted - it spiritually connects the worshipper to their god and allows the god to know that they remain a faithful initiate. Thinking about it, gifts are granted in return for the geas - so in cost/benefit terms it's arguably a zero sum game: perhaps no POW sacrifice is needed, since the initiate is already suffering austerities instead.

The reason I'm asking this is because of the Statement of Magic (by Hepherones, I think) in the Glorantha Sourcebook, which describes the source of magic as being from the 'friction' between the world of the gods, which is defined by fate and immortality, and the world of men, which is defined by free will and mortality. I'm trying to understand how the source of magic in Glorantha can be missing a major piece of its own puzzle. We have Runes for Fate, Life and Death. So why not Free Will? Why is that essential component of the Middle World not represented amongst the Runes?

Maybe there's an aspect of all of those things in free will, but it's certainly not any one of them. And if it's something that differentiates gods from mortals (as well as life and death), and enables magic to exist, then I don't understand why it shouldn't have a Rune.

I don't think so, but I think it would be something that the gods were no longer able to possess or be tied to. If Chaos can have a Rune then anything can.

Then Movement would sit in opposition to Fate as well as Stasis, surely? I know that Movement represents change and evolution as much as it does spatial progression, but you can still have evolution and change predicted by a prophecy. So, is Movement enough to embody free will? Various gods possess the Movement Rune, but they're still stuck within the confines of Destiny. Surely, free will should be something that the gods can no longer own?

The oath can only provide more information if it's relevant to the geas. If it's not, then it can't. That is the nature of the oath - it is specific and all the more powerful because of it. There is an implied limited intelligence behind most Gloranthan (and indeed, TTRPG) magic. Just look at the spells in the RQG book or the 5E players handbook - many of them arguably require preternatural knowledge about the world in order to function.

Because beyond their initiates' cult duties and the restrictions of a geas, the god has no way of knowing any more. If they were able to freely intervene in the world then they might be able to. But they have shut themselves off from mortality and free will as part of the Great Compromise.

As Jeff said further up the thread, a geas is just a very powerful oath. Initiates will swear generic oaths to their god - to observe holy days etc. If they stop doing these things then the god is going to know about that through the connection made by the initial POW sacrifice.

If you and I enter into a bet - say, about whether a team will score a goal at the weekend or not - the only things that are relevant to that bet are the circumstances surrounding that football match, and each others ability to meet the terms of the bet. My favourite colour, your brother-in-law's middle name, the type of cat your sister owns and your preferred options on the local Chinese takeaway menu are all irrelevant. In much the same way, an oath will provide all the information to the god that is needed to police that oath, nothing more and nothing less.

Because that's what Gloranthan gods are: limited. The geas is a specific oath between god and worshipper. If the worshipper breaks the oath, the god will know. But the geas does not give the god any other information about the worshipper. Why would it?

And it would not necessarily work completely differently either - the point is that the POW that the initiate sacrifices would be enough to let the god know as soon as the geas/oath was broken.

I can't help feeling that you're just making things up here to support your argument. You don't know how an oath works, so how can you say it doesn't work the same way as the spell? The worshipper donates power at the moment they become an initiate, which would be enough to power an oath. And even if that weren't the case, gods tend to be pretty powerful themselves.

Well, yes, but does it not imply that everyone (with Free Will) is touched by Chaos?

Is Chaos the source of Free Will in Glorantha?

If magic arises from the tension between Immortal Destiny on the God plane and Mortal Free Will in the Middle World, why is there no Rune for Free Will? There's a Rune for Life, Death and Fate after all.