Imryn

Personally I think the whole "bronze age" tag is a bit misleading. For starters the "bronze" metal isn't really bronze, its something similar but not the same. They could just have easily called it iron and called the stuff the Mostali dig up adamantium and it wouldn't have changed a thing - except they couldn't hang the "bronze age" tag on the game. To me it's all about it being set in an age of mythology, not about the level of technology. I'm not a historian - I've read the illiad and watched a bunch of movies about ancient Greek hero's, and none of it feels quite right for Glorantha. In the stories (and movies) the mythic elements all surround the hero of the story, and advance the plot, but in Glorantha the mythic elements are going on everywhere and often have nothing to do with the hero's. Its about density. I imagine all of the Greek myths happening simultaneously, plus a whole lot more. The bronze age setting is a bigger problem for me. The game background actually has some elements from the stone age (nomad tribes of hunter gatherers with no crafting technology at all) and some from the iron age (crossbows etc). Add in the factor that everyone has ready access to magic, which has got to cause a massive divergence, and I think it can't really be equated to any era in our history.

Removed, because it offered nothing new

you snipped too soon

Thank you @PhilHibbs and @Joerg for taking my Glorantha (and Runequest) education a stage further. I suppose on some level I was aware that the character was channeling the gods power when casting a rune spell, but had not considered that they might actually become the god for that split second. The descriptions of how the rituals for resurrection could be played out were equally interesting and insightful. This is the sort of play I want in my games, but this type of immersive roleplaying is built on a solid foundation of mechanistic rules. In a game session any time spent on discussing what rules mean, or imply, or suggest is time that is not available for roleplaying. I realise that for someone who is as immersed in the lore as you appear to be it is all second nature - I imagine that you could probably run a campaign without ever cracking a book, and that's great, but you aren't the target audience for a rule book. The target audience is people who are fairly new to the game . The more coherent the rules, the fewer special cases there are, the simpler it is for them to get past the mechanics and into the good stuff. Talking of the guide, I got that and am working my way through it slowly but surely. I may be weird but I like thick rule books, it tells me that the writers are serious about creating a detailed set of rules in a detailed world. Sometimes they are a mess, and I am disappointed, but sometimes it means they have taken the time to come up with something special.

I don't see how this could be a heroquest? Looking at the description of the resurrect rune spell it seems straight forward; fix up the corpse, cast the rune spell, engage in spirit combat to stuff the spirit back in the corpse, job done. Is there some other ritual you are talking about?

I think any fantasy world can be a game world; its just a matter of coming up with a suitable, consistent, rule system. If events in the worlds history cannot be reconciled with the rules then leave them as myths whose provenance and details are in doubt. As for GoT, there is little accessible magic in the world, and it is all countered by mundane methods so it would be quite easy to convert. If you wanted to make it really simple just have all the users of magic be NPC's.

I am not as familiar with shamanic magic, but; sacrificing attributes represents life force maybe? I believe the sacrifice is not made to a god, so maybe whatever the source they are sacrificing to wants life force not soul? Transitioning from initiate is quite easy (easier with these rules than with earlier ones I think) but, I think that additional points of POW sacrificed to gain RP is an unwritten part of the process. I can't imagine a Rune Lord with just 3 RP anyway. Some gods require RL's to take gifts and I would have those gifts cost 1 POW each. Additional restrictions are more mundane than magical, and those benefits that are magical are assumed to be granted with the extra responsibilities. Overall, I would say that having a minimum number of RP as a requirement would be an improvement, but not really necessary. As I've said, I think heroquesting falls outside the normal worshipper / god relationship. Edit: I was just trolling through the cult entries and noticed this under The Seven Mothers Rune Lord requirements: "Finally, the candidate must convince the examiners, a test simulated by a roll of POW×3 or less on D100, with +3% for every Rune point the candidate has." Most cults don't have this requirement, but I think it would be a pretty good idea if they did.

I think that the gaps that you are seeing are areas that don't need to be covered by mechanistic rules. The rules only need to cover interactions between player characters and their gods - interactions between the general mass of worshippers and the gods can be described separately and don't need specific rules as long as they don't contradict the rules for player character / god interactions. And there will be no contradictions if the rules are written correctly.

I think you misunderstand my intent. I don't like ruleplaying, I find it disrupts the roleplaying that is at the core of all enjoyable games. If a set of rules are internally consistent the number of "special rules" and "special exceptions" goes way down and reduces the need to refer to rule books. My perfect game rules would be so internally consistent that there would be no need to even bring the books to a game session. You can get the same effect when playing with a really good GM, but alas they are rare. I take your point about Humakti and Yelmalian players, and will be looking over my shoulder for some time I have to say though that even as a 16 year old playing a Humakti initiate running around in the rubble I thought that getting "free" gifts was OP.

This jumped out at me, because this thing is unlike the other things. This is where Glorantha differs from every other fantasy world. Heroquesting. It gets mentioned repeatedly in all of the source books, but the actual process is never described in game terms. The closest I have found is the description of the lightbringers quest in King of Sartar, but that description can be read as an almost literal recreation of the quest that the gods themselves undertook, or as a bad am-dram production. With fatalities! In the same vague way the rewards from heroquesting are left completely undefined. I assume this is all deliberate, to allow each GM and group of players to determine for themselves what is involved and what the rewards are. One thing is clear to me - heroquesting takes the player outside the normal interaction between a worshipper and a god, and into a relationship with the mythology of the world. Different relationship, different rules I guess, and perhaps one day we will be told what those rules are. Until then we each have to figure it out for ourselves. All of this is just applying "Glorantha" window dressing over the same framework I provided a mechanistic description of. Game rules that aren't based on internally consistent principles are flawed and open to abuse. Having rules that are internally consistent provides for a much more satisfying gaming experience. Gifts and Geasa: priceless 1 POW per gift

I imagine the all of the great philosophers throughout history who have debated whether god exists or not will be pretty shamefaced about now. If the rate of exchange differed significantly between gods it would affect the number of worshippers they attracted. I imagine that one god lowering his rates would be seen as a hostile act by the others. It could be seen as a prelude to a war between gods (as opposed to a war between worshippers that the gods get dragged into) In most mythology I am aware of the gods pre-exist their worshippers. I know there are some special cases, but in general they come first. That being true, I doubt they have much need for "validation" from the mayflies that worship them. "Loyalty" to the god is in fact the one thing that none of the cults require of their worshippers - they allow worshippers to worship as many different gods as they like. "Loyalty" to a principal? Yes they require that in some cases, but that's part of the cults advertising and is often part of the draw for the worshipper. All of the other junk that gets sacrificed is meaningless compared to the energy sacrifice. It might be required by the god or by the priests as a demonstration of commitment to the god or the cult, but it is meaningless in terms of the amount of the gods power that the worshipper is granted. Your question is meaningless. The number of worshippers has little or no bearing on a gods power. They were gods before worshippers even existed, and they each have so much power that they can give portions of it to thousands of worshippers without noticing the loss. If all their worshippers died they would not notice the loss.

I attempted to describe the relationship between the worshipper and the god in mechanistic terms because I was attempting to rationalise it in a way that could be codified in a set of rules for a game. You have, for the most part, restated my comments without the mechanistic terminology. Nothing in your reply contradicts my core point; to gain access to the gods power a worshipper must sacrifice POW (or whatever you want to call whatever it is that the gods want from worshippers). In mechanistic terms everything else is just window dressing. Re-affirmation of the cosmos? Worshippers sac MP (a very minor power source) to receive a very minor peaceful feeling. The cult officials (priests, lords, god talkers or anyone else who leads worship ceremonies) is a conduit and a teacher. Yes, they sit as intermediaries between the god and the worshipper but their role is to channel the gods power and to teach the worshippers to channel the power directly in the fullness of time. They have a very limited scope to mislead the worshippers but will be found out very quickly. In terms of producing internally consistent rules for a game the principal that the character must sacrifice POW to access the gods power is the only one that makes sense to me.

Its a better answer than the current one - A: "because I said so, despite explicitly saying he can't know elsewhere in the rules"

In the real world the interaction between worshippers and gods is massively varied and impossibly contradictory. This is partly caused by the intermediary "priesthood" that tells us what god (or the gods) wants us to do, and garners power and wealth through this monopoly on gods words, and partly because there is absolutely no way of proving that god exists. With no proof every method of interacting with god has an equal (zero) result, so there is no way to determine which is the "correct" method and which isn't. In Glorantha (or pretty much any fantasy game setting) this is not the case. The gods are real and they talk directly to us. There is no space between the god and the worshipper for a corrupt self serving priesthood to insert itself, and no room for contradictions in the interactions. For there to be any interactions at all the worshippers must have something that the god wants, and the god must have something that the worshippers want. Once that circumstance is met then an exchange can occur. In Glorantha the thing that worshippers have that the gods want is POW which is described as "a measure of an adventurers soul". What the gods have is, well pretty much everything you could ask for. Once we know what each side wants and each side has to offer, we need to determine a method and rate of exchange. That rate of exchange is set by balancing what the worshippers are willing to pay with what the gods are willing to offer. The method of exchange is something that can be absolutely nailed down through trial and error. Combine these two points and every worshipper can know exactly what their POW is worth and exactly how the exchange is made. The rate of exchange is going to be the same for all gods, under normal circumstances, and the method will be fixed so it is possible to document a comprehensive set of rules to govern this interaction quite quickly. There would be no possibility of uncertainty here - what works and what doesn't work will be self evident. When we talk about gods in our fantasy words we tend to use the same language that we use in the real world to describe our various religions. This is wrong, and a trap that leads us into false assumptions. All real world religions are based on faith, which can be defined as "belief without proof". In our fantasy worlds there is no such thing as "faith" because proof of the existence of the gods is absolute and pervasive. In our fantasy worlds there can be no "religions" in the way we all think of them because there can be no faith. The cults in Glorantha are not religions, as we think of religions, they can be thought of as market stalls that advertise what a god has to offer and what they require in return. All of the goods are clearly marked with a price, and the prices on all the different stalls are pretty similar. In general the cults are marketing tools for the gods. Each god has a sphere of influence, and a personality, and that is marketed through the cult. Worshippers are drawn to the cult whose marketing they like best, or the one which fits their ambitions best. When joining the cult the god may have trivial requirements that do not require an exchange between the god and the worshipper - don't wear blue hats in windday, or don't use silver knives etc, but anything that grants the worshipper access to the gods power must involve a transaction where POW is exchanged for the gods power. The simplest way to reconcile geases, based on what I have said above is to require a 1 pt POW sacrifice per gift taken, in addition to the 1 pt required to advance to initiate status. Thus a Humakti would have to sac a minimum of 2 pts of POW on initiation, and would have 1 rp as a result. The extra point of POW is spent on granting the worshipper access to the gift (and any/all associated geases) and in maintaining the gods awareness of any transgressions against the agreement.

No, we did that! What we didn't have was geases being broken by things completely outside the players control (i.e. they were unconscious at the time) Difficult decisions involving geases happened. The difficulty for the GM was providing enough content that included "geas involved" decisions and enough that didn't. Not all the players had geases and if they came up too often the players without them would start to feel as though they weren't the focus of the game - second class characters. Balancing that is up to the GM and the players and YGWV

We have two cases: 1. Initiate oath covers 1 billion and one things but NOT geas 2. Initiate oath covers 1 billion and one things PLUS geas Both require 1 POW. Case 2 provides direct instant link to god, Case 1 does not. Same POW sacrifice for each so what is the POW used for in Case 1.

But there is only 1 point of POW sacrificed no matter what optional oaths are sworn. If the 1 point can provide the power for the geas oath what is being used for if there is no geas oath?

A cultist sacs 1 point of POW when he rises from lay member to initiate. That is the same for every cult, whether they have special restrictions or not, whether they have gifts and geases or not. If that 1 point of POW can create a link with the god such that the god immediately knows if a geas is broken, why can that link not be used for other purposes? If the cult has no gifts and geases you still have to sac the POW so that link is just sitting there unused. If the cultist has to swear a different oath related to gifts and geases, where does the POW for that oath come from?

OK, my first off the cuff idea wasn't so good. How about this one: The gods don't see people and events the way we do. Where we would see two people speaking to each other, exchanging information in a linear fashion using words, the gods see things completely differently. The gods don't just see peoples physical appearance, they see a swirling tangle of a persons loyalties, devotions, runic associations, wants needs and intentions. They don't perceive a linear exchange of information using words, they experience a gestalt of the exchange of information that includes the emotions the persons involved experienced during the conversation. This makes interpreting a vision provided by divination very difficult.

Storm Bull, from RQG "The Storm Bull is the god of berserks. He is the Desert Wind, the raw power of righteous purifying rage. The primary purpose of the Storm Bull is to prevent the rise of the Devil, or any associated form of Chaos. Storm Bull is beloved by the Praxians and tolerated even in civilized Orlanthi lands because he is so skilled against the forces of Chaos. Where Chaos is active, Storm Bull is a popular cult." No mention of death anywhere there. He is associated with the death rune but that doesn't make him "The God or Death" or even "A God of Death" any more than his association with the beast rune makes him "The God of Beasts" or his association with the air rune makes him "The God of the Air". The way a pantheon of gods works in the real world is that for each of the spheres of influence that the worshippers thought were important - death, life, wealth, rulership, etc etc - there was a god who controlled that thing, and if you wanted something to do with that thing you prayed to that god. In the real world this was (IMHO) a scam perpetrated by priests to get power and wealth, but the principal is exactly the same as if the gods were real. If there were two gods of death then the worshippers could choose which one to pray to and this would cut into the profits of the priests of the other one. One group of scammers would kill off the other group and you are back to having one death god. In a fantasy world you can create a pantheon of gods that contains as many death gods as you like, but for that pantheon to have any internal consistency, and to be believable, there would have to be conflict between those gods that eventually resulted in just one. A pantheon literally doesn't work unless there is a clear demarcation of responsibilities.

This is good stuff! DI happens almost instantly (between the sword starting its swing and landing) for all gods, so there is a very fast communication channel for that. Is that powered by the sacrifice the character makes? A RL calling for DI (if he is lucky) can make a sacrifice smaller than the one required for initiate oaths but still gets an instant(ish) response. In theory that means that the smite could hit the moment after the character forms the intent to break a geas - certainly the god could be aware as soon as the intent is formed and smite in the same instant the characters butt hit the saddle (for the oft quoted riding geas). In the games i used to play geases were treated very gently. Characters were assumed to be obeying them at all times without constant input from the players, so we didn't have stuff like "do you serve non alcoholic drinks" and "does the pot pie contain vegetables" disrupting the flow of play constantly, and if the players proposed a course of action that would break a characters geas the GM would remind the player. Breaking a geas had to be a deliberate act by the player, it couldn't happen by accident. We also didn't have geases breaking involuntarily for actions that were out of the players control, but that might have been a bit too lenient.

You miss my point. The initiates oaths can provide the gods more information as evidenced by geases. Why don't they?

OK, but for the same expenditure of POW an oath can be created that does all of that and also gives the specific insight into the breaking of a geas. So why are gods limited to only knowing what their worshippers tell them?

Your analogy is terrible, but I think you are saying that the oath is specific to the geas(es) the worshipper has taken on. OK. Why do worshippers of gods who don't get geases have to swear oaths and donate POW?

Why wouldn't it? If it can give the god perfect insight into the act of breaking a geas; circumstances, motivations, other peoples actions etc, then why is the god limited to just what he is told at all other times?