PhilHibbs

Unless it is "a free will" instead of "an observer". Since nymphs are otherworld entities, do they truly have free will? Or are they bound by myth in the same way that gods are, behaviour determined by magical law as the Malkioni believe them to be?

Absolutely. I should have said that monsters and evil magic are some of the factors that counterbalance abundant health magic, but you are right that there are others.

In my Glorantha, those factors exactly balance out the effect of healing and health improvement magic leaving the demographics more or less the same as a bronze age world except where explicitly described as different.

Sometimes the monsters bring the front line right in through the front door. Have you never played a scenario that begins with a ruined farmstead? Sure, in scenarios it's usually the plucky kid that survived, but that's because scenario writers are softies. Unless that tendency is revealing some deeper principle of Gloranthan reality... but there I go extrapolating Glorantha from RuneQuest...

If I hallucinate a cup, can I scoop up some water and drink it? I'd say yes. If I hallucinate a boat, can it displace water? By the same logic, yes. Of course this gets into trouble when I try to sail my hallucinatory boat right through someone swimming in the water. If it displaces the water, then does it a) knock the person aside, b) go right through them without affecting them, or c) bounce off them like a rock because it can't affect them in any way? These corner cases are inevitable with the selective reality of hallucinate. Personally I think it probably behaves differently each time, randomly, or at the capricious whim of the GM.

You're right, I'm falling into the same trap that I constantly bleat about there, talking about the tables as though they applied to the whole population.

Whilst I agree with your conclusion, I absolutely see the line of reasoning that leads to it not working. Does the hallucinatory boat displace water? If the answer is "yes", then everyone would see a hole in the water, a boat-shaped depression. If the answer is "no", then there are two possibilities: The water goes straight through the boat and so it sinks. The boat rests on top of the water, and immediately tilts over when the trickster jumps in, probably tipping him out into the water. I don't like either of the "no" options, so I'd go with "yes"... but do people see the depression? Or is the depression only real to the trickster, so everyone else just sees water, until the trickster jumps in and they see him scooting along seemingly half in the water? There are no perfect answers. I think this is inevitable with Hallucinate, like hallucinating cushions strapped to that troll maul that I'm about to get beaten up with. Do they pad the blow or not?

I don't think so. Glorantha is said to be a "bronze age" world, and I think that extends to life expectancy. Loads of healing? Sure, but loads of monsters and various magical perils too. These things roughly balance each other out.

An illusion of a light is interesting. If it would work as an Illusion spell, then it would work as a Hallucinate. And as illusions are temporary reality, an illusory lamp should work, so a hallucinated lamp should also work. And if they are blocking the wall of light, then they are also being illuminated by it.

Virtually everything in the rules is applicable only to adventurers. It's common to use the same skill and combat rules for NPCs, although I often simplify things for them to reduce my workload. Greg once famously said "remember, monsters get experience rolls too" or something like that, but personally I doubt that he was rolling dice for his NPCs during their downtime. This is one of the cultural changes that has taken place in RuneQuest since the '80s: the GM isn't expected to do quite as much work. Or to put it another way, the kind of work the GM is burdened with has changed - I don't have to roll as many dice, but I have to make that judgement call on how detailed the world simulation is, and occasionally I might have to justify that to my players if they think I'm cheating. Maybe calling it a cultural change is strong, because it was and still is not that explicit. If you're going to use the RuneQuest rules as an entire world simulator, such as for economics or demographics, then you're going to run into problems that were not anticipated by the designers.

I'm not interested in arguing the specifics. My point is, there can be in-world reasons that things that haven't been done are difficult. And if someone says "I want a spell that's like the one in the book, but better in every way" I'm probably going to say "no".

I disagree. There can be good reasons, if we want there to be good reasons. "We explored the nodes that were exploited to create the Protective Circle, but were unable to find a connection to the Movement Rune that could be used without dangerously destabilizing the circle. It turns out that the relevant nodes were all too close to a potent Stasis Rune node, and whilst the rune itself is not necessary to the casting of the spell, its presence in the area of the matrix meant that connecting to the Movement Rune created an unfortunate interaction." There you go. There's a world-building reason why a Protective Circle can't be moved. If you think about it, it's even logical because the dome shape looks like a Stasis Rune so it should have been obvious that moving it would be challenging! In general, I'm not a fan of creating a spell "just like this other spell, but with a really useful addition and no down side, or one so trivial that it makes the original spell obsolete". If there's a down side to a spell, then some Zzaburi would have probably tried to work around it already. Therefore it's perfectly justifiable to say that there is no easy workaround.

I don't think so. It's just not a skill roll so there is no such thing as "fail".

As with the "Childbirth" section: So on a normal augment success you roll the dice, add 20 to the roll, and check the table. Any successful augment therefore means that the child is guaranteed to survive. You could houserule that a 1-5 always gives the worst result, an "automatic success for the forces of evil". It is a bit messy, trying to shoehorn the augment rule onto a results table, but it doesn't bother me too much.

A 10-minute Protective Circle isn't going to be useful in many situations. If it's a quick skirmish then the casting time becomes a problem. Maybe if you have a well laid ambush it could work, but it is wasted if the enemy retreats. And I'm not sure about your logic on Reflection. It only reflects spells that fail to overcome the target's POW, and Protective Circle doesn't affect that at all.

I don't accept the assumption that absolutely everything is possible, or alternatively, easy enough to be worthwhile.

Also remember to take into account the casting time and MP cost of the spells that you lay onto the circle. Sure, if it's rune magic then that's pretty quick, but it requires you to have a mixed sorcery and rune magic group.

It used to be constrained a little by having to multispell the defensive spells with it, so that would chip away at the points of manipulation that you can muster. That's gone now because each spell is independently cast and can even be cast by a different person (the spell says nothing on whether the caster is the only one that can do that, so a straight reading would imply that they are not the only one).

v1.10.1 Beta 3: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iXn3LG-M8Y49Ax62YMSidzELWiqqn96aKwKgP90-3tw Added Adventurers from the Lunar Provinces content (ALP) to the JC extensions (needs to be enabled on the Rules tab). Changed the way that skills and runes are added up so that copying and pasting no longer breaks the formulae. Note that where a homeland gives more than one possible rune bonus, you will be given all of them. Delete the ones that are not appropriate.

v1.10.1 Beta 3: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iXn3LG-M8Y49Ax62YMSidzELWiqqn96aKwKgP90-3tw Added Adventurers from the Lunar Provinces content (ALP) to the JC extensions (needs to be enabled on the Rules tab). Changed the way that skills and runes are added up so that copying and pasting no longer breaks the formulae. Note that where a homeland gives more than one possible rune bonus, you will be given all of them. Delete the ones that are not appropriate.

I'll give them Aggar as their main Homeland Lore, and Lunar Provincial at the lower rate.

I don't think I will add the character background text. I just added extra entries for each year that is in your section, with one line for what happened and one line to record benefits.

In my experience maths teachers often have great musical taste.

I vaguely recognized the first, but not the second. Never heard of Magazine. I looked it up, and it's got a really good early Stranglers/Damned vibe. I'll have to check out more of their stuff. Oh, Buzzcocks/Banshees connections. That makes sense.

Slightly quirky at the low end, in that a 5% chance has double the chance of a success being a special success. 6 also has a significantly higher special rate than it should. Other than that, it's a really interesting idea. It's a lot for some people to remember - my brain works that way, but not everyone's does. On the other hand I've seen grown men literally reduced to tears over critical and special calculations.