Steve3742

OK.... So, if I buy the Bestiary and GM Pack (using up my pdf coupons in the process) and buy an empty slipcase, how is this not a partial slipcase set? This isn't a hypothetical question. It's what I intended to do up until last week, when I was given the impression that I couldn't. I was resigned to having to buy a full slipcase and figured that I could find a good home for the old RQG Rules (Player's Handbook?), but now it seems I don't have to (and that the extra discount for having to buy a second Player's Handbook has also gone, which makes it a less attractive offer). But it does seem that you are selling partial slipcase sets - or, at least, that you'll sell an empty slipcase and two of the books that go in it, which is a partial slipcase in all but name, as far as I can see. This is kind of confusing. I guess I'll wait to see the order form (and prices) before I decide. On which subject... Any idea what the "special discounted price" for the empty slipcase will be? I have the other prices from a link somebody else provided.

Before anybody gets too worked up about this, I suggest they look at a calendar.

Well then, you've invented an entirely new process. Spears are normally fire-hardened or tipped with metal. You're saying do both. Lets see if that would work. These guys here tried making some fire hardened spears and found that it became rather soft. At any rate, even if they're hard and brittle, this means the spearpoint - which you've attached a bronze head to - is likely to snap off. This is probably why people don't do both - metal tipped spears are much more effective than fire-hardened ones and fire-hardening a spear and then attaching a metal head to it is worse than useless, as it actually weakens the area you've attached the head to, not something you want to do. My point about this spell is that it's like a continuous fire-hardening, weakening the area the metal is attached to continuously. Sure. But the metal frying pan starts to cool down the moment you take it off the stove. This bronze tip will be at full temperature all the time. And it might be below the melting point of bronze - 6D6 instead of 8D6 - but that's still 600 degrees Celsius. Enough to charcoal wood (if it's deprived of oxygen), enough to ignite wood if it's not (430 Celsius should ignite most wood in a minute or less) or even charcoal (which should start burning at 349 C.) Really can't see this working.

Too much stuff, eh? I'm tempted to say "First World Problems". Off hand, I'd say it shouldn't be a problem. Remember, you're getting it for free. If you really can't use it, you can: Give it to a friend, preferably one who's curious about RQ/Glorantha. Maybe you'll make another convert! Give it to an already RQ gaming friend who's been unfortunate enough not to have had the same problem as you. Sell it on E-bay or take it to a convention and sell it there for around half price. It's in near mint condition, right? You can use the money to buy something from Chaosium that you haven't got two copies of. Or some other way. Basically, you can give it away or sell it, both should be easy enough to do. And both should be productive. You'll have helped somebody else play RQ. Not everyone finds it that easy to blow $55 on a game, you could help one of these people out.

But they're not tipped with bronze. And, at any rate, charcoalisation is a process that continues when you get wood hot enough. The rest of the spear, not just the tip, would turn into charcoal over the course of weeks. Soft, coal-like charcoal, the stuff you put on your barbecue. And that's assuming you kept the spear deprived of oxygen. The temperatures we're talking about here are enough to ignite wood. My feeling is that this couldn't be done with a wooden-shafted spear.

My feeling exactly. I can't believe they're going to give all of us who've bought the PDF Bestiaries and GM Packs and a Hardcover Rules an extra set of rules for FREE. I do kind of like the idea, but... the product sells for $55. Assume the cost is about half of that and they're losing around $25-30 a sale. I'm thinking I've mis-read it and they're just going to give us the pdf discount on the rules again. Which means we'll get a second copy of the rules for $30, a bargain still, but hopefully one that doesn't lose Chaosium money (though they'd probably not make any on that.)

Any chance of a list of those documents? (the ones that have been published, anyway.)

Looking forward to it. IMHO, a lot of the sub-cults given in Thunder Rebels are to allow an Orlanth worshipper to take on some of the abilities of another God, which is particularly useful in a community too small to support another god's cult. So, for example, we have Andrin the Lawspeaker, who will be the Lawspeaker in a small village where they'd never be able to support the cult of Lankhor Mhy. But the need for a Lawspeaker is still there, hence Andrin. Likewise, Harst the Reeve took on Issaries' functions, and so on. Now the point I'm trying to make is that whereas Andrin or Harst are fine for a small village, once we get to larger communities we start seeing Lankhor Mhy and Issaries. And these should be better than Andrin or Harst, certainly at their speciality (Lawspeaking and Trade). In a similar vein, both Odalya and Yinkin should be better hunters than Ormalaya. (Although, in their case, it's not necessarily urban population growth that means their cult pops up, but a community that, for whatever reason, relies a lot on hunting. Every village has probably got a hunter or two and they'd likely be Ormalaya. But a frontier region with poor arable land would have a lot of hunters and here we'd see Odalya and Yinkin. Because the community needs better hunters and has enough hunters to support their cults.) Well, yes, the baboons. And the Pol Joni would have a lot of contact with the Praxians, so possibly there. But Kolating communities are still Orlanthi in culture and you'd figure they'd still tell tales of the brave hunting brothers, Odalya and Ormalaya, children of Orlanth and the Lady of the Wild, along with tales of Orlanth's brother, Yinkin the Shadowcat, son of Fralar, King of the Carnivores. But, as you say, YGMV.

Yeah. I disliked the idea of the Hsunchen originally because only Priests could shapechange. but, with the new Rune Magic rules, Initiates can shapechange too, albeit they need a massive 9 points (!) of Rune Magic to do so and they can only do so on Wilddays, and only for an hour. I'm still not keen on such restrictions on their shapechanging. My take on Hsunchen is that there's been a union between pack and tribe for as long back as the Tribal Shamans know of. Hsunchen think of their four legged compatriots as members of their tribe and this is reciprocated. There's probably a taboo about eating their tribal animal meat for this reason. And... how can I put this delicately? Shapechanging from man to wolf (say) allows a closer communication with the wolf, a closer empathy with the wolf, even if its only for an hour a week. Sometimes, things might get... intimate. They probably wouldn't view it as bestiality (though there might still be a taboo against it). Given the magical nature of Glorantha, children/cubs might result. I don't know whether they'd be wolf, human or a blend of the two. Possibly they'd be natural shapeshifters. But, after generations of this, the humans Hsunchen would start to take on wolf-like feature, longer canines, sharper senses, etc. And the wolf Hsunchen would start to take on human attributes, become more intelligent. So it's entirely natural that the Rathori would hibernate in winter - they have bear DNA. And Hsunchen should probably also have characteristics and abilities that vary from the human norm, just a bit, in the direction of their tribal animal. Who, in return, might gain a limited amount of intelligence (as the Telmori Dire Wolves have). And human Hsunchen would be able to communicate with their animals, albeit only to the limited amount that animals can communicate with each other. (Although, given that Telmori Dire Woles have INT and most Philosophies of Language or Knowledge say that sentient intelligence and Language go together, we are, perhaps, justified in giving Telmori Dire Wolves a language and allowing full communication between the two. The language need not be all vocal, though, a lot could be communicated with a sort of LSL (Lupine Sign Language) or USL for Bearwalkers. And Humans might have problems using their mouths to make the sounds.) So, not lycanthropes in the traditional sense. I'd personally like them to be able to shapechange more often for less cost (8-9 points of Rune Magic! And only on Wildday). Perhaps this is an ability that can be woken with a heroquest or something, but only for them as they have bear/wolf/tiger/whatever DNA

Which is kind of what I'd thought. But the were-stegasaurus in Dorastor? I suppose we can write that off as just one of Dorastor's chaotic oddities. The latter. A lot of the RQ II bestiary is like that, there's undead there that seem to follow D&D ideas, specifically Mummies, who don't really fin into Glorantha. Though, I believe, the Revenants of the Bestiary are basically mummies (and it's hinted that Zorak Zoran has a ritual for creating them - or at least some Troll god as the example given is a troll.) Mummies and werewolves were both in RQ III (only werewolves, no others), but the Genertela supplement introduced Hsunchen and, without actually saying so, gave the strong impression that these were what lycanthropes were now and that the Telmori were unusual in that they had a chaos curse which forced involuntary change once a week and made them invulnerable to normal weapons - traits that had previously belonged to all lycanthropes. None of this was helped by RQ III's attempt to be generic fantasy rules, making it hard sometimes to work out what applied to Glorantha and what didn't. Still, it's good to know the official position, which I'm assuming is Jeff's, above. Pity about the Sons of the Tiger cult, though, I kind of liked it. Maybe the Hsa Hsunchen have something similar.

Hiia Swordsman is mentioned in Storm Tribe where it says: Which never really made much sense -- why would the Pure Horse People adopt a Lightbriger God? Looks like it's been retroactively changed into being a vendref cult. That the vendref are allowed to join a warrior cult (and supply the FHQ's personal bodyguard) shows how much has changed since the FHQ took control.

Found my source. GtG, V1, p. 177: So, like I say, should we retroactively correct this to mean only Orlanth Rex?

Does anybody know what the deal is with lycanthropy in RQ? In RQ II, we had four different types of lycanthrope (Bearwalkers, Tiger Sons, Tusk Brothers and Wolfrunners) and a cult was even written up for one of them (Sons of the Tiger in some issue of Different Worlds). They seemed to be a separate class, tainted (slightly) by chaos, invulnerable to normal weapons and forced to change into beast shape one night a week. But by RQ III, we found that the Wolfrunners were Telmori Hsunchen, who could turn into wolves with rune magic, but had been cursed by Gbaji to turn involuntarily one day a week, in return for gaining invulnerability to non rune-metal attacks and suchlike. The implication (though it was never actually stated) was that the other lycanthropes seen in RQ II - Tusk Brothers, Bearwalkers, Tiger Sons - were now just Hsunchen, non-cursed, but able to assume beast shape via Rune Magic, but not gain any other lycanthropic traits, like invulnerability to normal weapons. Lycanthropy as such didn't seem to exist outside of the Telmori. But the supplement that gave most of this info - Dorastor - also had a were-stegasaurus in it. With invulnerability to normal weapons. So, are there any lycanthropes in Glorantha (outside the Telmori, that is)?

So, as I understand it, an Initiate of Orlanth Adventurous who chose Ormalaya as a subcult would have access to all the Orlanth Adventurous rune spells and also all of Ormalaya's. Which makes it a lot more attractive than Odalya or Yinkin (isn't Foundchild a Praxian Hunter God?) In Storm Tribe, this is offset somewhat by having sub-cults of Odalya and Yinkin, making them more powerful. I think you'd need to do this in order to balance things out. Otherwise, all the Hunter types will go for Ormalaya. The only advantages to Odalya and Yinkin I can see is the shape-shifting.

True, but not 250L. Maybe work out the cost of the spell and double it for the aggravation? How much does it cost to get Heal Body cast by the local Ernalda Priestess? Or a 6-pt Heal (which would reattach a limb)? OK, just looked that up. It'd be 60L+1L per HP healed for Heal Body. So, 125L - 1/4 of the weregeld - doesn't seem out of order, it's about equal to the cost of the spell, doubled for the aggravation. Note that Heal Body will reattach limbs (assuming the recipient bought it with him.) In cases of actual maiming (he didn't bring the limb with him, for example), there's Regrow Limb, which would cost only 40L Although the recipient will be out of action for an average of 5 weeks, so this should be added to the fine. Maybe still 125L, then. For minor wounds (which you could use Heal on), there's no price provided for casting spirit magic spells. Heal 6, though, should be expensive - who has 6 points in Heal? What is the real world cost of doing this? Less Protection? Less Bladesharp? So maybe 125L again. So... My feeling is that 500L for killing is about right. A quarter that (125L) for serious wounds, like limb loss. If the loss turns out to be permanent - which is hard in the magic rich environment of Glorantha, but not impossible - then double it to 250L. 200L (10 cows) is the price given in Thunder Rebels for maiming a carl, so maybe use that instead (although note that the maiming of a noble, chieftain or priestess carries a fine equal to half their weregeld. It's all done in cows and I think they blanched at asking for twelve and a half cows in the carl's case, so they rounded down.) Thunder Rebels also says that if the injury is minor then "no need for justice". I think this is contingent with everyone - the attacker, the victim, their families and their clans - agreeing to it. Some minorish fine might normally be paid anyway, but there's a risk of mockery of you demand compensation for a torn fingernail or a twisted ankle. You'd probably get the 10L or so compensation, but you'd be featured in the songs of all the skalds and your reputation would increase - but not in a good way. Note that in the magic-rich environment of Glorantha, taking a wound to the arm that leaves it intact (and healable with Heal), probably counts as a minor injury, unlike Viking and Saxon times. Like a twisted ankle, it'll be completely gone in a few days.

Hmmm... I was sure that I read somewhere that the vendref weren't allowed to worship Orlanth and so had taken up Barntar (and, in RQG, he and Issaries are mentioned as the main gods of the vendref, Orlanth isn't mentioned). Should this be retroactively corrected to not being able to worship Orlanth Rex? From various sources, there seems to be about the same number of vendref as Pure Horse People. But, I imagine it could be 52:48, and a few vendref worshipping a solar cult would make the proportion 58% Solar, 52% Lightbringer. From what I understand of the Pure Horse People, a member adopting a Lightbringer deity would be thrown out of the tribe. As pretty much all women of both peoples worship an Earth Goddess, that's not too unusual. Orlanth and Yelm are both Husband-Protectors, so it seems a little low if anything.

I don't see it that way. The vendref have power, certainly economic power but also political power (via the Feathered Horse Queen) and military power (via her elite guard and my hypothesised garrisons at the trading posts). The Oasis Folk have nothing like that. I see it as the vendref being the real power in Grazeland Society with the Pure Horse People only having the trappings of overlordship. The Pure Horse People know that if they try to exert their theoretical overlordship in ways the vendref don't like then, at the very least, all the imported goodies stop coming in. If, as Joerg says, they're now reliant on grain for their horse herds instead of pasture, this alone would cripple them. And worse could happen. The Feathered Horse Queen would stop things before they got that bad, of course, and is probably the reason the Pure Horse People still survive. Perhaps I've gone too far the other way. But I see huge differences between the Oasis people and the vendref.

I can't quote a source, but in games I was playing in in 1976-7, we had a natural 20 do double damage. I wasn't GMing the game and the GM had all sorts of stuff that was hard to get then in the UK (like the Strategic Review and issues 1-3 of the Dragon) and we all assumed (wrongly, it now seems) that he'd got it from one of those. RuneQuest wasn't around at the time so he didn't get it from there. Of course, prior to the printing of AD&D, there were far more house rules around - the original boxed set was so incomplete as to virtually require you to make house rules in order to be able to play at all. But I played in a few games around then and pretty much everyone used the natural 20 does double damage rule. No fumble, though - perhaps he was being nice to us.

Hmmm... As all magic is done by song, I'm inclined to assign it all to Harmony. After all, music without Harmony isn't music, it's just a noise. All the Illusion and Movement spells seem to be better suited to Harmony, even Weaving Dance - ever seen a dance without Harmony? It's not a pretty sight. Wind carries Song, admittedly, does seem to be an Air Rune. Bards and Skalds were often assigned Lawspeaker functions in Celtic and Viking society. They had to memorise the genealogy of the clan (and so recognise all the clan and know who their ancestors were and be able to say if a stranger who claims to be an eighth cousin once removed of the chieftain is telling the truth or not) and also the Laws and History of the clan. In Orlanthi culture, these seem to be the purview of Lankhor Mhy. But I see from a quick perusal of Storm Tribe and Thunder Rebels that neither Drogarsi, nor Donandar (or any of his subcults) have any connection with that. Just as well, it'd probably require another Rune (Truth)

Thanks for that. It basically confirms what I thought - that the vendref were the ones who exploited being on one of the biggest trade routes in the world, not the Pure Horse People. I'm guessing the Feathered Horse Queen came along at a time when these changes in vendref society were starting to make themselves felt and there was an attempt by the Pure Horse People to "turn back the clock", go back to the old ways. The vendref supported the Feathered Horse Queen and helped her win in her 15-year struggle with the Luminous Stallion King. In return they got to run the Trading Posts and get hugely rich. So we have essentially a mercantile culture where the vendref run the towns, probably fortify and garrison them and make huge amounts of money. They pass on some of this to the Pure Horse People, who believe that they run the place. But real power seems to have passed to the vendref, who supply the Feathered Horse Queen's elite guard and control all of the towns and trade routes and have most of the money. The vendref are content with letting the Pure Horse People play at ruling the country as long as they submit to the Feathered Horse Queen and don't try to interfere with the towns. The Pure Horse People are content with the trappings of power and to believe themselves superior to the vendref, but are careful not to put that to the test. Cognitive Dissonance at its best.

So, I note that the Feathered Horse Queen "speaks for the vendref" and, after a fifteen year struggle, overthrew the traditional leaders of the Grazelanders in 1470. And that this happened at the time when Dragon Pass had just opened up to trade, trade which, I'm now thinking, was almost entirely managed by vendref merchants. Who built trading posts and, almost certainly, fortified and garrisoned them. At a time when they weren't, strictly speaking, allowed to bear arms. A restriction that was lifted by the Feathered Horse Queen, after her victory, who now has an elite guard of vendref Humakti (a god who, you'd figure, would have been banned by the Grazelanders, just like Orlanth was.) All of this seems to point to some sort of vendref revolt between the years.1455 and 1470, a revolt in which the Feathered Horse Queen and the vendref were successful and changed Grazeland society from a Nomadic culture to a mercantile culture. The remaining Pure Horse People (probably very much outnumbered by the vendref) were kept on as theoretical overlords in a theoretically equal partnership with the Feathered Horse Queen but, in reality, are used to guard caravans, raid those who don't pay the tolls and hire out as mercenaries. The real power - certainly the money - seems to be with the vendref and the Feathered Horse Queen. One wonders how this plays out. How are Pure Horse People seen in the Trading Posts? I note the Trading Posts are all under the protection of the Feathered Horse Queen, what does this amount to? She has warriors in each town? Vendref warriors? It's easy to see how an incident could develop between a vendref garrison member and a Pure Horse Person visiting the town, full of his own self-importance and not willing to accept the authority of a vendref. And if that vendref happened to be one of the Queen's Humakti, they'd be touchy about honour too...

From what I can see, that's a vendref god or hero-cult, not anyone worshipped by the Grazelanders. I'm inclining to the idea that all trade in the Grazelands is done by the vendref, with the Grazelanders looking on disinterestedly (as long as the vendref keep giving them high-quality weapons, horses and luxuries). Kanestol One-Hand, I'm guessing, was probably the first vendref to convince the Grazelanders to allow them to set up trade posts and let merchant caravans travel through unmolested, in return for the aforementioned benefits. As he was probably a vendref, he's more likely to be Issaries than Lokarnos.

The amount for killing a free man seems to be 500L, 1,000L for their leader. Lets compare that with wergeld. The compensation for killing a free man under Alfred the Great's laws was 200 shillings according to the Book of Ancient Wisdom. Nobles varied from three times that amount to twelve times that amount. So, they're probably getting off lightly with only owing 1,000L for Deseros. Now, 500L is equivalent to approximately 25 cows at 20L a cow. A mediaeval English cow was worth around 6 shillings (according to this source), so 200 shillings is 33 cows. Not too different, and again, we can say they're getting off lightly. As for injury, well I can quote this examination of it: So, a quarter wergeld for the severing of a foot seems to indicate that they're trying it on by claiming half wergeld for an injury (soon healed by magic). Offer them a tenth,unless the damage was permanent.

So, I'm looking at the Grazelanders and note they worship solar gods, albeit under different names. Now, in RQ III a merchant occupation was clumsily shoe-horned into the Grazeland occupation table. It didn't work that well - the Grazelanders are Nomads and the merchant occupation was Civilised and didn't gel too well - but the fact that it was done shows that trade is important to the Grazelanders, as does the fact that all their towns seem to be trading posts (or the fact that nomads have towns at all). Now, my take on this was that a bunch of refugees from Pent had emigrated to Dragon Pass and took over the Grazelands, which nobody else particularly wanted. Then Dragon Pass opens up and suddenly they're sitting on top of one of the most profitable trading routes in the world. And, no doubt after a period of raiding, they take advantage of this, guarantee caravans protection (for a price), set up all the trading posts, etc. And this leads to the creation and growth of a merchant class. And probably corrupts their culture, making them soft. Assuming this to be true, the merchant class would probably worship Lokarnos, no doubt under another name. And I could foresee conflict between the worshippers of Yu-Kargzant, who want to uphold the old ways and resent not being able to raid all these foreigners who pass through and also resent the loss of influence that the warrior class has suffered, and those of Lokarnos, who are making a pile of money from having total control over one of the busiest trade routes on the continent and want that to carry on. In fact, I figured this might have played a role in the Feathered Horse Queen coup. But then I discovered the vendref and wondered if that's the way it went after all. The vendref are more used to the idea of trade and settled communities, so presumably they set up the trade posts, no doubt under the patronage of a Grazelander clan. And perhaps they form the bulk of the merchants, worshipping Issaries instead of Lokarnos. This would have gained the vendref considerable power (or at least money) and it's possible the Grazelanders wouldn't notice this. They'd leave all the technical stuff to the vendref in return for high-quality weapons, thoroughbred horse stock to replenish their herds, finely crafted goods and other luxuries. Their life becomes much easier (and softer) and the vendref accumulate money, power and influence. And, again, this probably played a part in the Feathered Horse Queen coup. So, what does everyone think? Is merchant activity in the Grazelands mainly a vendref occupation or is there a Grazelander merchant class also, presumably worshipping Lokarnos and probably finding out it has more in common with the vendref in the trading posts than it does with the old-school Grazelanders?

You both seem to be under the misapprehension that Mythic Iceland uses the Mythras system. It doesn't. It's an easy mistake to make - Mythic Britain, Mythic Rome, Mythic Constantinople all use the Mythras system. However, Mythic Iceland - which came out before any of them, I believe - uses BRP. And, to answer the OP's question, BRP is very compatible with RQ3, in fact it's pretty much the same system, though BRP has a few more options added on. So yes, RQ3 Vikings would be really easy to use for Mythic Iceland. To tell the truth, all the D100 games are very compatible with each other, requiring only a bit of work to convert. So if you wanted to run Mythic Iceland using Mythras, it'd be easy enough to convert. The difficult bit is in using the strengths of the system you're using to represent the milieu. The Icelandic Sagas have stories of warriors who caught spears and threw them back, who threw axes from both hands, who caught weapons in their shields and twisted them out f their owner's hands and lots of other stuff. You need to consider how to best represent this in Mythras, which will probably be using special effects. Or maybe having the skill as a gift from the Gods or something - after all, the people wrote about in the Icelandic sagas weren't average people. Magic... I've always thought you don't have to stick with one magic system. There's a tendency to do this, to have some sort of Unified Magic Theory, but we don't have to be that... scientific. RQ has three magic systems, BRP introduces some more and other systems that could be considered magical and there's no reason a Viking sorcerer has to use anything like the same mechanics as a Byzantine sorcerer (unless, of course, he'd studied in Constantinople, not impossible or even unlikely if he were a Swede.) So Rune Magic could be something unique to the Vikings (although Celtic Ogham seems to be similar in some ways) and unknown outside of Viking areas. I understand that Mythic Iceland is being rewritten to use RQG as its engine. Fair enough, and it'd be nice to see how they use RQG's Rune affinities for the Viking Futhark. But you could probably still use RQ3, copying the affinities over (myself, I like the Skill Category modifiers from RQ3, there's no hard border - in RQG, if you get your strength from 16 to 17, all your skills go up 5%. In RQ3, they go up 1%, as they do when your strength goes up from 15 to 16, an increase that gains you no benefit in RQG. RQ3 is better here, IMHO. A bit too much reverence for RQ2.)