Sumath

In practice, you're right, it wasn't omniscience. But it came from Ceridwen's cauldron and IIRC when he sucked his thumb he knew everything there was to know (or something like that - it's been a long time since I read it).

Come to think of it, Taliesin means 'shining brow'...

Hilarious, but also fits well with mythology. Taliesin was gifted with omniscience and sentience from birth. Cu Chulainn was a boy (Setanta) who had immense strength and skill from an early age, and defeated armies without making it to adulthood.

18 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

Aren't we all on occasion?  Sympathy for the monkey.

!i!

Eddie Izzard used to do a stand-up routine about how cowardly characters in peril are actually so much more interesting and relatable than heroic ones. He cited Shaggy and Scooby Doo as examples of very reluctant protagonists, along with Falstaff... 

3 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

I think... that in a world where magic is so prevalent, and the gods are so often talking with you, that in that situation if you're hell bent on one course of action, and you're getting Ernalda "literally speaking through  her", then you'd be thinking,

 

"yeah, I know that trick... doesn't mean you're right though!"

But the effect of the magic is that you would think they're right. Just as it's easy to say you won't be swayed by a charismatic person in real life, but might find yourself being so when they are in front of you, charming your socks off with suddenly compelling arguments.

Of course, there's always CHA vs POW contests if you wanted to allow someone to resist such blandishments. 

I'd use 'Hide' for situations where the adventurer is static and avoiding detection, and 'Move Quietly' for situations where the adventurer is mobile and avoiding detection.

Yes, but how often is an adventurer going to try to move quietly and yet be perfectly happy to be seen? For MGF I'd assume Move Quietly means Move Stealthily. 

I'm really not convinced I would distinguish between 'sneaking' and 'moving quietly' for game purposes.

As Bill the barbarian says, I'd run them as is, apart from replacing old spells and adjusting HPs. The main issue is going to be that the standard RQG timeline is a generation later than RQ2 was, when the Lunars no longer occupy Dragon Pass. So you either have to base your RQG campaign earlier (which means handling CharGen backgrounds slightly differently) or try to update the old scenarios (which could be a lot of work).

You might be interested in these, which are some temple guardians for solar, earth and trickster cults that I created based upon Assyrian spirits of protection.

10 hours ago, Numtini said:

So many rolls in 5E are based on a stat roll plus proficiency if you have it in the skill.

That's my point - you're adding the modifier to the roll. You're not using the prime stat. So why not just generate the modifier to begin with?

28 minutes ago, Paid a bod yn dwp said:

Removing something as iconic as prime stats starts to dismantle the identity of the game

You'd still have scores called STR and DEX (they'd just be +2, -1 etc. instead). Ascending AC was introduced without affecting the identity of the game, so I can't see this being a big deal. Retaining unused 3d6 scores in CharGen just for nostalgia seems silly to me - isn't that what OSR rules are for?

29 minutes ago, Numtini said:

Now, after all the changes of 40 years, I find that 5E is a quite good game that I'm very happy to play, but RQ:G feels a little dated, a little over complicated, and also seems more a game people talk about than actually play. Part of that is also that the kind of storytelling that early Chaosium pioneered in the industry is now ubiquitous. If you look at a modern 5E scenario, it has far more in common with something like Borderlands or Griffon Mountain than it does to the 16 page folders of stats that made up TSR modules in the 80s.

That's a fair criticism, RQG is not especially innovative. But then for the most part it doesn't need to be. There are a few areas (e.g. strike ranks) that haven't aged well, but the chassis of the game is sound. It's mostly tweaking that's required. The introduction of Runes and Passions is the greatest improvement IMHO.

D&D 5E is also a missed opportunity - full of things that should no longer be there (e.g. prime stats, which aren't even used - modifiers are, so why not generate them directly?). WoTC also passed up the opportunity to solve many of D&D's shortcomings, particularly how lightweight combat is when that's supposed to be one of the three pillars of gameplay.

There are similarities between 5E scenarios and Chaosium's old campaigns, but even for some of WoTC products they seem to be similarities in style rather than substance. We're currently playing through Tomb of Annihilation and it has plot holes that you could ride a T Rex through! Looking back at Borderlands or Griffin Mountain, they were rooted in a consistent and well thought-out fantasy world, and that depth and consistency mean that you can still pick those products up now and run them pretty much as they are. ToA is a couple of years old and already looks hackneyed.

2 hours ago, Russ Massey said:

the lowliest trollkin can get lucky and impale a Wind Lord

I think they'd have to at least buy him dinner first though.

I ran a Griffin Island campaign when I was younger in which all my players used spirit magic or sorcery. It was fine, but as a party they were the least RuneQuesty (yeah, I know, just go with it) that I ever GMed for. No cult affiliations meant less integration into the world. More like a D&D party. However, Griffin Island was non-Gloranthan anyway, so that didn't help.

A captor could always ask a prisoner to take an oath that they would not attempt escape. Although given that the alternative could be to kill them I'm not sure how binding such an oath might be. But if it was freely given then that could be an option.

1 minute ago, Crel said:

Orlanthi sharing a similar sense of what battle and honor means living in Dragon Pass might be more inclined to be good captives than Lunars or Praxians.

Honour would be a good way of ensuring captives honoured their captivity. If you offer your ransom to save your skin then reneging on that could be seen as dishonourable.

14 minutes ago, Jeff said:

I think the mistake is assuming that Gloranthans have a better solution to the problem of captives than ancient world humans had.

Right, but magic-capable prisoners are a problem Gloranthans have that ancient world humans didn't have. If you take a lot of prisoners after a battle, for example, there could be some very potent magic capability there, not necessarily individually but amongst the troops as a whole. So you'd need to keep them apart as well until you can ransom them - no communal prisoner camps, unless they were well guarded enough or segregated enough to prevent the occupants combining their magic to punch a hole through their captors' walls.

And does this vary by cult?

Besides cult elemental affinities presumably dictating whether bodies are buried or cremated (are all sun cultists cremated?), what are the exceptions? 

For example, most Orlanthi get buried, but Kallyr Starbrow was put on a pyre. There would also be other exceptions, such as if a corpse had been ravaged by Chaos or disease.

Are there conventions of belief on this subject or is it more a matter of practicality?

1 minute ago, Jeff said:

I don't imagine that is particularly common. Honestly, the way most folk deal with captives is to ransom them or transport them a long way from their home. Or have them agree to work for you, in exchange for an agreement to protect, shelter, and feed them. 

Fair enough. I started to look for a poison or plant that would fit the bill, and couldn't find one that was really suitable anyway.

Magical options might include casting Extended Hallucinate or Fear spells on captives to keep them subdued. Or summon a spirit and have them possess the prisoner until ransom time.

2 hours ago, hkokko said:

How does Glorantha especially with RQ rules address imprisonment and capture of the enemies who have spells.

Earlier on I managed this by getting rid of tattoo runes and devices which were sigils  which I deemed were part of the spell or by manacling with slave bracelets or for short term things knocking the person unconscious.

Are there other ways to handle this for short term capture and long term prison sentences (hard labor,  isolation cells,  sheriff's simple cell, the traditional hole in the ground that locals might have dug up.

In the capturing situation: Prisoner might still have spells in memory (spirit magic, rune magic, spirits in tattoos for the shamans) and depending on spell type the magic points may replenish...

If the answer is slave bracelets - how common are these and how easy you have made them to put on - as these might become interesting weapons themselves if they are easy to use.

 

I'd imagine that drugs or poisons that render prisoners unconscious, docile or suggestible would be used for the duration of captivity. 

Shield is a very useful combat spell, but not having it is not the end of the world for a fighter. There's always spirit magic like Protection or Shimmer to fall back upon. 

The exclusive use of certain Rune spells is what gives Runequest that paper-scissors-rock balance to it. No single cult has access to all the best spells, so their followers can always be overcome with the right tactics. In my experience, uber spells make players lazy and less likely to come up with tactical solutions.

I think if certain cults were unstoppable in combat then there'd need to be some explanation as to why they weren't more dominant, and why Glorantha wasn't a less diverse place.

4 hours ago, Steve3742 said:

But if you're going to produce a culture pack for Fronela, you'd need to throw a campaign there as well, at least to start things off, something along the lines of Borderlands or even Pavis. And if it were successful , you'd have to keep producing stuff for it - alongside the Dragon Pass stuff. Can you do all this? Or would the development of Fronela come at the expense of Dragon Pass?

I don't think it's possible for Chaosium to do all this, which is why Jeff said in the Heinz Con video that they were deliberately focussing on Dragon Pass first before expanding to Kralorela etc. Creatively and commercially I think this is the right thing to do - as well as old-hands, they're bringing in a lot of new artists and content creators some of whom have never worked on Gloranthan material before, so getting them to work on a well-known area for which there are previous releases to refer to, makes things easier. But they are producing original content (Smoking Ruins, Pegasus Plateau) as well as revising old material like Pavis and Big Rubble, so this should appeal to veterans and newbies alike.

The sourcebooks outside of Dragon Pass will come later, and personally I'd rather wait for an excellent product than have Chaosium over-extend themselves on too many projects, or release something that later needs revision because of the way things panned out on other projects.

4 hours ago, Steve3742 said:

Game aids e.g. spell cards, miniatures, adventurers journal - useful enough and I might buy them, but not a priority.

I agree, I'd buy these but they're not a priority.

Having said that, one thing that would be really useful is a range of paper/cardstock miniatures for Gloranthan adventurers and monsters. Paper miniatures are colourful, cheap, portable and potentially easy to replace. But it's very difficult to find commercial quality paper miniatures that fit with a fantasy bronze age setting, and Gloranthan monster types are even harder to find. This is the sort of thing that Chaosium could licence out to a third party, like they have with their other miniatures.