Monty Lovering

I like the idea of Praxian's having untrained camp dogs that alert them to strangers as that is what dogs do, but the dogs are essentially scavengers and playthings for children plus occasional food; the animals that the Praxians are fixated on are their herd animals. This makes Balazar different, as they have no herd beasts but a closer relationship with dogs who are well trained and valued. Nice contrast. And it makes me think that the Lunars have adopted the use of trained guard dogs originally from Balazar that are regarded as scavengers by Praxians and appositional to alynxes by Sartarites and Heortlanders.

Oh, I realise it's a trope, e.g. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett. But I likes it. I want religions and followers to be fallible and god's largely disinterested and capricious. I want ambitheism to be a valid life choice - obviously you can't go around being an atheist as everyone in Glorantha knows gods exist, but just not being that bothered by the fact they exist whilst cognisent of the dangers of pissing them off. "everything I do has a French accent because I'm French" is the best laugh I've had all day. I'm actually thinking that Russian accents are better for Lunars. Hard to make Dutch accents menacing unless you go full-blown Afrikaans and then it becomes comically overblown. And yeah, my enjoyment of Lunar occupied Dragon Pass was curtailed by leaving school. Now jhbdijhbaijh years later I want to play the stuff I never got around to, and I'm less than enamoured of powered-up characters and Heroquesting. To video-gamey for me. Am thinking of running a Roll20 game soon, and then a IRL one in the summer when the GM in the group I play Pathfinder with takes a break from Going so he can play a character.

When I do something in 1625 I will have a Elmal resurgency as a plot strand. Having vanquished the Lunars it seems right that the foreign apostasiation of Elmal, Yelmalio, be in opposition to an ascendent Lightbringer pantheon incorporating Elmal.

Yeah pretty much. They or their spirits are not reading your mind or watching your every action all the time, possibly never unless your name starts cropping up a lot in other prayers or by very powerful worshippers, or by use of the specific Rune Spells for the purpose of enforcing orthodoxy. And even wirh the spells the orthodoxy being imposed is the priest’s opinion. A human or other intelligent being who becomes an immensely powerful sorcerer and attracts worshipers is basically a god. And some gods were once humans or other entities. So in my Glorantha no one is an atheist as the existence of gods is easy to prove. But some people realise the true nature of them. Just because someone is a god doesn’t mean you have to worship them. You can use them for magic just like they use worshippers for power. My next RQ campaign the players know none of this, LOL. And I’m adding ‘Illumination’ as a trait starting at 5% + their INT bonus for a Knowledge skill. If they do anything that in their character’s belief would result in punishment for unorthodoxy or see such actions happen and don’t get to see resultant punishment OR they witness something that is impossible according to their beliefs, they get the chance to roll and increase their trait - although they won’t know this until they succeed the first time with me rolling for them and I inform them they have Ilumination x percent but don’t tell them why they now have that. So a corrupt yet unpunished Priest can plant the seeds of doubt as much as a Humakti acting dishonourably but not getting found out. Eventually a character will realise when they are being asked to roll and getting increases and start to figure it out. They might deliberately do stuff as an experiment. When they attain Mastery they are Illuminated and there is a reveal if this is needed by then. It’s quite possible no character will ever question things to an extent they become Illuminated. It, like the fact my Glorantha is a globe even though people commonly believe it is flat is just buried brain candy for my amusement that may never enter play.

POW is used to quantify magical power or the strength of someone’s spirit or soul. It can be used to drive a normal spell or an act of worship and you regenerate it the next day. Or given away permanently for a greater magic. It is as much an abstraction as skill percentages but in conventional RQ POW is used to measure acts of worship, so to speak. Thus my idea that gods need it and wane in power if they don’t get it.

Thank you! I know it’s a very personal Glorantha. Additional differences: 6/ Gods are quite indifferent to their worshipers and are not omniscient or omnipresent, nor are their spirits of reprisal. This corruption and non-orthodox behaviour doesn’t come to their attention unless worshippers tell them, and even then it’s all about the value of the offended worshipers worship versus that of the offender. So Gloranthan religions are just as messy chaotic and open to corruption as Earthly ones. And often it’s the guilt of a worshiper that causes bad things to happen if they stray from the path. 7/ Illumination is realising this and being freed of slavish devotion to gods, and realising that you can get what you want out of a god by giving them what they really want (POW) rather than devotion and orthodox worship. This is why Illuminates are feared. They run a coach and horses through society even if they are nice people. 8/ Technology is basically steam punk Bronze Age. Basically Bronze-ish but iron is well known even if the way to make decent weapons and armour isn’t, and weird ‘advanced’ technology appears either from Dwarves who have steam power, or old ruins (The Clanking Ruins were a society of Illuminate sorcerers who had steam power). Wind and water power is well known. Clockwork mechanisms too, but are vastly expensive. 9/ Cult weapons and metals have symbolic significance and are used ritually and carried to show alligance and as secondary weapons, but everyone uses spears as the primary battlefield weapon just like they did in our history because they work really well, and if you’re facing heavily armoured foe you’ll want a war hammer or mace, an axe at a push as, just like in real life, as swords are great side-arms and very adaptable but are not good against heavy armour. Iron is used by all species and cults by those who can suppress its magic dampening qualities. Trolls and elves use iron armour covered in fabric or leather. They don’t take extra damage from iron but do have an allergic reaction to being touched by it, as do Telimori and silver. But the allergic reaction is susceptible to magical and herbal amelioration.

1/ Gods are just powerful beings that were as mortal as the mortal races before they became powerful. They need POW sacrificed to them by believers to provide the magics that their worshipers expect. If their worship wanes so does their power. Some gods are worshipped in quite differents ways in different places. The gods are indifferent to the details, but worshipers of the same entity under a different name can go as far as regarding each other as apostates and enemies. The myths may just be myths as distinct from actual events. 2/ Apart from gods, the world may just be interpreted as it was in our Bronze Age. Almost everyone says it’s flat. But who knows... The river Syphon does indeed flow upstream, but maybe it’s more to do with Larnste’s footprint being below the sea level of Mirrorsea Bay... 3/ Magic is real. Places have power and spirits that can become embodied. Intelligent beings can learn to shape reality with their own power, get magic from gods, or learn how to manipulate reality using runes which are simply ways to shape reality by drawing power from around them. 4/ Heortlanders regard Sartarites as rustic and uncouth. They speak unaccented English (I’m English) Sartarites think Heortlanders are effete and soft and speak with a Scottish accent. Esrolian is English with a French accent. Praxian is Hungarian but with a simple letter substitution to make it sound totally different and has clicks in it. Lunars speak Dutch. 5/ I’m still more enamoured with a Lunar-occupied Dragon Pass and lower ability starting characters than a post-Lunar defeat and higher ability RQG style characters. I’ll add more later but need to sleep now...

Pike vs long spear with a really good view of the strap holding the shield to the pikeman.

Great feedback, thank you. Special attack roll: Good idea to roll the separate special table into the main table. Totally not necessary. And if the enemy with the cool loot goes flying down a cliff, rock on. That's exactly the sort of shit that happens. Weapon damage: I'm trying to model pointy and crushy things being better against hard armour than cut things. The bonus is only against 'hard' armour, although that term is a place holder and it might become 'medium or heavier'. SO not 1 point or 2 point leather or 2 point padding, but everything else, with the GM ruling what a creature's skin counts as. Strike Ranks: Oh I'll happily discuss the house rules with players but I'm currently developing for RQ newbies I play Pathfinder with. So they don't know better. I think they will like the crunch and the skill-based progression system. Combat in Pathfinder is superficially simpler due to there being one roll but there are so many exceptions as to what bonus you get when it actual is more complex. Parry multipliers: Yeah I'll totally be making or modifying a Char sheet. I have Adobe Pro so it's a synch.

Yes I looked at Mithras after someone suggested it when I posted the above elsewhere. Not what I am looking for really, but I can see why you would suggest it.

Oh I love playing around with rules, and indeed, many never see the light of day, or rather than test of play. 🙂

I'm playing around with some home-brew rules for combat. They kinda work in any system. Basically, combat is too linear, all weapons are as good against someone wearing armour, weapon SRs lump too many things together in the same SR, and some weapons are just not as good as others at parrying. So, one thing I am looking at doing is: Make special results more varied; so for example, a second roll would determine if it resulted in a second attack with the weapon, a second attack with the hilt, haft or shaft of the weapon, a follow up attempt to knockback, a follow up attempt to grapple, an attempt to disarm an opportunity to choose hit location or a special attack varied by weapon type; spear impale, axes get a second attack that can't be parried after hooking the parrying object aside (which is what aves do very well in real life). Making most "full-size" one-handed weapons 1d8 damage, and most two-handed weapons 1d10, and giving the weapons that are better against armour +1 or +2, only against armour (axes, spear, maces +1, war hammers +2). So for example, Medium-sized weapons would be 1d6, small 1d4. So a spear one handed would be 1d8+1, two handed 1d10+1, a broadsword would be 1d8, etc.. Increasing the SR range of weapons to 0 to 5 to better reflect speed as well as length. So for example, a broadsword is 3, a rapier 2 and a mace 4. Give each weapon a multiple for its parry; as in RQG there would be only one skill for a weapon. So for example, a broadsword would have a parry multiple of 1 (so the same as the attack skill) while a one-handed mace would have a parry multiple of 0.5. This would make weapon choice far more meaningful; swords would be good all-round weapons, spears would be very fast and better against armour than sword, axes slower than swords and not as handy to parry with, but better against armour and with a potential devastating special attack. And combat would have more randomness in it; punches, grapples, disarms, knockbacks. Oh, and secondary weapons would be more important with disarms knockbacks and grapples rendering primary weapons potentially out of use. Obviously it's a bit more complicated with an extra roll if there's a special but I like combat to be more realistic so I think it's worth it. What do people think?

Fascinating discussion. IMG, which is "quite" divergent, gods really exist but are more removed. Myths may be myths, rather than histories, and may be as accurate in 3,645 S.T. as the myths of 1AD are today in 2020. And the gods need power to be sacrificed to them. They need LOTS of power to 'god' with, what with all the stuff they are asked to do in return for worship. The precise details of the worship - that's for the local hierarchy to determine. The POW sacrificed to a sun god in one place ends up with the same entity as the power sacrificed to a sun god with a different name and theology in another place. Yup, it gets messy sometimes with worshipers of the same entity killing each other and calling upon the same entity for magic. But the entity gets what they need out of the bargain. Power. Illumination, God Learning, etc., is the realisation of this. Gods are just immensely powerful entities who give out to individuals for what they get from multitudes. Mortal beings can become gods. A god is not up in the business of each worshiper. If a bunch of powerful worshipers grass up a co-worshiper, then the god will go with the majority (or the magic that has been sacrificed for), but it's not like Yelmalio know when someone breaks a geas unless someone tells him, and if they're not as big a deal as the one breaking the geas then it's not likely to result in action. So Elmal and Yelmalio are the same entity. In my Dragon Pass, with the Orlanthi pantheon resurgent after 1625, it is going to get pretty uncomfortable for Yelmalions as they will increasingly be seen as apostates of the true Elmal. The actual entity doesn't care. The power it gets is just as good from a Yelmalion as from an Elmalion. It's just humans being beastly to each other in the name of a god, which is historically supported.

That must have been a very lucky hit as the bad guys (avoiding spoilers) are not very crunchy. Anything but. I was expecting the second encounter with the big bad to get a little sticky for the PCs, but one of them had figured out the non-combat resolution. The villagers arguably have nothing to atone for as Sartarites having a go at Loonies is actually encouraged behaviour. It was only kept on the down low at the time because of the power balance, and maybe hushed up a little since then as the new power balance is not stable, and maybe there was a grey area about the rules of hospitality. I felt their shiftiness was a little unlikely. Like some French villager being embarrassed they killed an SS Officers when they were in the resistance,

As we all know, a Gloranthan year is an enviably slim 294 days compared to the relatively fuller-figured Terran year of 365 days. So a Gloranthan year is 80% and shrapnel of a Terran year. Does this mean that a Gloranthan 21 year old is as mentally/physically mature as someone approaching their seventeenth birthday on Earth? Let's ignore the fact people in primative societies are normally more experientially mature, I'm talking biological development. Or does time just go quicker because of (waves hands around) all the magic and stuff? Or that Gloranthan humans just age faster? Or that Gloranthan minutes are 74.49 Terran seconds long? Definitely overthinking things I know but *shrug*

Yeah I could have totally destroyed the party when I did a one-off. Partially as they were newbies, but also because even if they had had experience it would be impressive to come up with a good strategy to knock it out. I was impressed one used a Fire Elemental, but that moved way too slow to inflict anything other than damage on a single pass through it. But one came up with the other way to neutralise it (avoiding spoilers) which was cool.

Magic Points is what I’d use.

You are now shifting the goal posts. You said: This is a straw man argument. No one said suggested this. And shifting the goal posts is another logical fallacy. No one is bending over backwards. Here we go - you average GM's face when a player want to play a warrior woman: 🙂 No sweat, no strain, no bother - no bending over backwards. As numerous comments have illustrated, it doesn't upend things or send society into population decline, only your hyperbole made this appear possible. The only person thinking it's a big deal is you. Relax. 🙂

This is actually a very good and sensitive point. Asking a woman who has had nine miscarriages and three failed rounds of IVF is her character is going to have children would be awfully painful for them. I say this as the husband of such a woman.

Hell yeah! Remove Nausea, 1 pt; Tear Not 2 pt; Soothe Colic 1 pt. I also think Comfort Song should be a spirit magic spell; you can reattach severed limbs with Heal, but not soothe labour pains? Clean (var), Dry (var), Deflect (2pt) (a screen good for midges, snow, sand and rain), Heat (var), Hear (1pt), Scent (1pt) and Tune (1pt) are just some other handy 'missing' ones.

Elmal! Elmal! Throw down the Sun Dome! I have a thing about Elmal resurgent as a true Orlanthi god displacing Yelmalio just as he was once displaced being a plot line for post 1625. Can't stand them. At least you can have a laugh and a drink with a Cacodaemon worshiper before he tries to eat your brains, Yelmalions are all "can I interest you in this informative pamphlet about the great god Yelmalio" if you ask them what o'clock it is.

I'm actually developing Marcher County as an answer to this. The idea is that after Silkinster the Thunderer completed the conquest of the Esulvari and captured Refuge, he instituted Marcher County as a buffer zone, given to those who could have and hold sicut regal (as kings) but still owning fealty to him and his successors. It's ripped off how the actual March was run between Wales and England. Apart from the Count, whom he appointed and would hold Knight's Fort, it was allowed for anyone to claim land, and if they could keep it provided they defended Heortland against raiders from the east. After Belintar's rise, he kept the arrangement, as it was a convenient means of defence and an escape valve for those less suited to the more sedate life that depended upon Heortland as a sixth (and those Esulvari who were unaccepted by Heorlings but tired of caste restrictions after seeing their neighbours live without them). Now it's an area of petty Barons with tenants (and the occasional bloody change of Baron) and freesteaders beholden to no lord unless summoned for the fyrd. There are Bandori Esulvari following traditional Aeolian ways, Heortlings as traditional in their worship as your average Sartarite, Peskalite tribes people, even some Praxians who stayed after their employ as mercenaries. But there are also communities where there has been intermarriage and where some families have blended ways, and where those who've not nevertheless get along well with others. Thus PCs from there can be a wide mix of backgrounds, and coming from a very diverse and granular society where people of three of more clans may regard their allegiance to a Baron before their differences or before blood ties to others owing allegiance to another lord. Being a murder hobo would be very risky though. Just because it's not as structured and hidebound (oh boy, I just figured out the etymology of that word) doesn't mean there are o consequences for acting like an outlaw. But it gives much scope to adventures within the March and for adventuring beyond the March (for example, to classic scenario packs). I'm intending it to be set in 1610 but be usable in 1625 too.

I thought it was obvious I was talking about RuneQuest @Atgxtg. You brought up Pendragon, which proved my point re. the existential dullness playing peasants doing what peasants actually did when there were actually peasants. Literally no one said this. As has been pointed out by @Qizilbashwoman, it is a logical fallacy. What like Heal, Comfort Song, Heal Body, Healing Trance? 🙂 Also, given Gloranthas vary, I find the canonical spells lacking. Where's the 'Clean' spell? Like Glue (but larger areas) cleaned like POOF. And I am pretty sure that Uleria devotees could exercise reproductive control better than Terran courtesans. YGMV. And fertility goddess worth the POW should have magic that makes perineums far stretchier than they actually are. So Barnilisa the Axe is basically able to do everything she does normally for six months of pregnancy, take it increasingly easy for three, has a month to recover fully, and then the temple looks after the child and she's back doing what all Babeester Gor love best, chopping up chaos beings and men who annoy her. Well, anything that annoys her but those two being her favourites. She should actually get a +1 CON for three months or so (the Soviet and allied state's athletics programmes discovered pregnancy boosted endurance, but had to get the athletes to have abortions to take advantage of this; with healing magics available to heal the body after childbirth, then the same benefits could be accrued without abortion). Without being funny, all your reasons for objecting to female adventurers due to 'realism' don't stand up. So there would be cultures with certain biases of genders to roles, and these would vary just like Esrolia and Sartar vary. But in all except the cultures in which its hard to imagine any role-play taking place (e.g. Brithini), any woman who didn't;t want a conventional role would be able to pursue it, just as men would be able to pursue non-traditional roles (with the exception of those requiring specific genitalia or uteruses to do them). And of course Yelmalio doesn't have a female incarnation. He's a Dara Happa apostasy worshipped by inadequates whose idea of battle is imitating hedgehogs.

@Atgxtg Just because they've rolled a bunch of skills up into farming doesn't mean a farmer growing grapes would know which young rams to let tup and which to make wethers, or that a shepherd could make decent wine. Granted, there would not be specialisation like today, but already there was. So, yeah, there's a animal husbandry skill and a brewing skills and a vinification skill, etc.. But as most people don't want to be bothered with all that (arguably as it is a classic roll play vs role play thing), it's 'farming'.

Why is it necessary to defend minimal dimorphism but not five-mile long dragons? I mean if you want, one could posit reduced maternal and infant mortality in a magic-using culture would free women from a life of childbirth and care as they have in a science-using world. Add in extended families providing child care and it becomes easy to countenance a woman taking a warrior path passing a child to a mother, aunt or sister to wet nurse and returning to that path after less than a year “off” (not that childbirth or pregnancy is a cosy sabbatical) just professional female athletes can do today without wet nurses. And Pendragon proves my point. It’s dull role-playing peasants unless you make them anachronistic peasants in an anachronistic society. Nothing to do with ‘snubbing the poor’, rolling a critical on animal husbandry is just not what most people want in a session of role play. its like in the sci-fi RPG, it’s quite possible to run it as a trading game but then it becomes roll-play to determine the success of your trading rather than role play.