PhilHibbs

Chaos is technically a Form Rune... but is it really like the other forms? It doesn't inherently change your shape or makeup, although it can, if you get a chaos feature. I think it has traces of all the rune types. It's also listed as a Condition Rune in the Codex Ivesti. It's a Form, because it can change your body pattern. It's a Power, because it opposes Law. It's an Element, because it can create substance, and people talk about "raw chaos" as a thing.

That's an interesting way to handle it (and, of course, individual groups are welcome to roll their own interpretations). Replicating defensive spells over all the friendlies inside, that's pretty powerful. But the alternative interpretation where it would replicate a single offensive spell against everyone entering? Well I guess Warding does that, so there is a precedent. What this version does miss from the original is the Damage Resistance effect, where anyone trying to enter would have to overcome the Damage Resistance with their STR or be unable to enter. Ward Against Weapons is essentially identical to Damage Resistance so it would be easy to patch that behaviour back in if desired. And remember, you have to be within the circle to cast spells on the circle.

So we have a Q&A ruling now - offensive spells cast on a Protective Circle only trigger on a single target entering and then they're gone. This implies that the distinction as to whether a spell is a defensive or protective spell is determined when the spell is cast - this Shield is a protective spell that affects everyone inside and does NOT trigger on enemies entering, this Fanaticism is an offensive spell that will affect the first target to come in (and has to be cast five times to affect the first five targets to come in).

@Peter Hart I'm going to add this content to my character creation sheet if you don't mind (just the runes and skill percentage numbers for homelands). I would also like to add the character background entries. Would you object to me adding summary text such as "Attended the funeral of Phargentes and beheld the Red Emperor", "Witnessed Moirades’ coronation", "Attended both Phargentes’ funeral and Moirades’ coronation" as pickable options? I asked Chaosium for permission to add this level of detail so I feel I should ask you as well. I didn't do that for DuckPak though. I just put in some blank boxes for years that had events in DuckPak family history. I'm in two minds whether I should put the events in as pickable text for JC publications, or just blank boxes for years like 1579. I need a short prefix for all this content - all JC stuff gets a prefix to distinguish it from any other content that might have the same name, so I have "COH Basmoli" for Children of Hykim's Basmoli, "DP Durulz" for DuckPak, etc. What would you like me to use for this - "ALP" for Adventurers from the Lunar Provinces? "HY" or "HYD" for Hydra, in case there is more Hydra-related character creation content to come? I think I only have one question about the numbers... Should Aggar really have a lower Customs skill than the normal base (20 instead of 25), and Holay a higher base (35)?

Okay I'm done... v1.10.1 Beta 2: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TOTPT3xOP6FLSXHwfUmvdahwrjPcy0YJenrp4-_mIYQ Added Children of Hykim character creation content. Changed the Man and Beast calculations to take into account other form runes. If your Dragonewt rune goes up by 10, your Man Rune will go down by 10. If you want to lose the points off Beast instead, then put a +10 in Man or -10 in Beast, or 5 to split the change.

v1.10.1 Beta 2: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TOTPT3xOP6FLSXHwfUmvdahwrjPcy0YJenrp4-_mIYQ Added Children of Hykim character creation content. Changed the Man and Beast calculations to take into account other form runes. If your Dragonewt rune goes up by 10, your Man Rune will go down by 10. If you want to lose the points off Beast instead, then put a +10 in Man or -10 in Beast, or 5 to split the change.

Okay it's looking good, just a few more minor details to fill in. Plus a lot of testing to do! When they get "Insight (totem beast)", is that in addition to the normal "Insight (own species)" that everyone usually gets? Or is "Insight (gopher)" applicable both to gophers and to Gord-un folk? And if it's in addition, do you think they should get "Insight (Human)" or "Insight (Hsunchen)" or "Insight (Akkari)" etc.? Likewise, Customs (...), Human? Hsunchen? Akkari? Homeland Lore, I'm going to put the main homeland sections such as Ralios for Alekki, Caroni, Damali. Basmoli will get Prax, Pent for Gord-un, and Puma... I'll leave it blank, the player can fill it in. Anyone can change what gets put in automatically anyway. Anywhere that says "Bow" I've given Self Bow, and "1H Spear" I've given "1H Short Spear". The user can change any of these values after they've been filled in.

Everything from the JC that I'm adding is "optional extra", has to be merged in by clicking a button, and is prefixed with an acronym for the publication, so yours will always be "COH Rathori", "COH Mraloti", and the official ones will just be "Rathori", "Mraloti" etc. so the two sets of numbers can live side by side. The only complication is if a weapon added in JC clashes name with a new core book weapon as I haven't prefixed those. Maybe I should, such as "COH Quill". I've gone with "Quill Contact" and "Quill Dart" so that would be "COH Quill Contact" and "COH Quill Dart". Those probably won't clash, but "Katana" from Pirates of the East Isles might.

Thanks, that's saved me a ton of time. I could... but that's quite long, and there is limited space in the sheet layout. Can you clarify something other things as well please: Do Rathori get Transform Self? Do Uncolings get Extension? I'm very close to finishing now... just need to do everything for the Gord-Un, as I was working from the older PDF until today...

No, killing in a duel isn't secret murder. I think there's some rule that you can't pass more than two houses before approaching one of them to inform them that you just killed someone, and then it's not secret murder, not that it was murder anyway. So you should be able avoid the dead person's closest and most vengeful kin if you're worried that they will just kill you in revenge. Maybe that was a Viking rule, I might be muddling that up. The key point is "secret". If you murder someone, you don't have to announce it to the community beforehand. You just have to admit it as soon as you can afterwards. It's still murder, so you're open to some form of comeuppance, but not secret murder.

Just the one point, I'd say. In RQG now you can pump extra MP in to protect a spell from being dismissed, so that might be a good idea if you're investing 20MP in a spell, maybe put 5 of them in to prevent dismissal and live with 15 points of boost. I'm not a fan of being able to boost a spell to prevent dismissal. If you want that, cast Shield on yourself. Also it takes a long time to cast that Sword Trance. Do you allow unlimited time before the duel to charge up your buffs?

I'm making headway into entering the character creation details into my online character generator. I'm a bit stuck on what to enter for "Worship (...)" and "Cult Lore (...)" for some of them though! Many are obvious, such as references to Akkar in the text on the Akkari, Telmor is obvious for the Telmori, but some are not. Does anyone fancy having a go at making a list of what the cult name would be for the various hsunchen peoples detailed in the book? Akkari Flari Hogari Kloisari Lotari Rathori Rinkoni Sabadari Uncoling Zonati Alekki Caroni Damali Falani Galanini Telmori Didelfi Mraloti Pralori Basmoli Puma

Or you dismiss the other person's Sword Trance.

It's always dangerous to accuse a trickster of being a trickster.

I doubt it, there's a chance that the training data might have stumbled across pirate pdfs but it won't have been by design. And GPT doesn't contain any of this text, it isn't doing that when being queried. It's all blended into a neural net which constructs an entirely new prose that satisfies its word probability pattern. It's more like a brain than a library.

The roadblock ahead for these tools is, what content will future versions be trained on? They aren't good enough to generate new content of the calibre of the content that they were fed, impressive though it may be the output is inferior to the input. There's a spark missing from the magic at the moment, it needs fresh input and that currently can only come from humans. Sure, it can produce working Python code, but when a new language is developed, how will it know how to write that? It might be able to infer a lot of it from the documentation (which will be written by humans, including code snippets). Same for new fiction, new roleplaying scenarios, new art. There's something that humans are doing to create genuinely amazing and engaging art and prose, and for now we have a monopoly on that. But it can create a decent ASCII art of Cthulhu: ,#####, #_ _# |a ` ` a| | | )\ ^ /( / /_ /\ (__ | | __) | | |_V/| | | | | |`---'| | | / / / \ \ _/ | | _/ | | | | | | | | | |

GPT is usually pretty good at being consistent within itself, often calling back to things mentioned back at the very beginning of a response, but being unable to keep the numbers consistent with the text is an interesting failure. I think dismissing it as "just plagiarism" is not accurate. In that sense, me answering a question about Glorantha or RuneQuest is plagiarism. I read it, converted it into an internal representation, and generated something that matches the pattern. Sure, there are issues, but they aren't simple ones. GPT style "AI" is a good parallel for the old "short worlds" that Greg was talking about in the '90s. A limited otherworld that has no connection to the infinite and as such will shrivel and collapse when exhausted.

A good opening move if you are jumped by someone would probably be to cast a chunk of Dismiss Magic on SR 1.

Sure, but you know who just happened to be on the other side of that door? A paranoid priest who panics and immediately dismisses the Hallucinate spell.

Sure, if you want to go with rules literalism, if that works for your group, then great. Other approaches to gaming in Glorantha are available. I agree, I'd never ask a player to make two rolls to cast a spell with Extension. It kind of goes against the "rules literalism" philosophy, but no approach should be driven by blinkered absolutism. Entirely reasonable. Same conclusion as "rules literalism" but different reasoning to get there. Sorcery is something you learn. Spirit magic is something you have. Rune magic is something that you are. You become the deity, you become a manifestation of that entity in the middle world. Can you be two things at once? Maybe. That could be an illumination power. Or it could be something that you heroquest to be able to do, find or follow a myth where the two deities worked together to achieve something. I'd say it isn't available to starting characters, but that's a choice, and is getting into Gloranthan cosmology rather than the more simple RuneQuest rules mechanics. It is entirely reasonable to take a rules literal approach and just play the game.

I wouldn't say that they could hallucinate having been teleported, any more than they could hallucinate being healed, becoming illuminated, or having Flight or Bear's Strength or Become Giant cast on them. It's not a Wish spell. Just think how many points of illusion you would need to truly hallucinate being in a different city. The entire city within your eyesight and earshot would have to be illusionary, that's millions of points of spell. Maybe if you did have Hallucinate 1,000,000 then that would be powerful enough to warp reality so far that the universe decides that it's just easier to pop the caster over there than to run all that simulation. If you want to try it, start saving up those Rune Points and tell me how it went!

To a certain extent... but I would say that they can inadvertently experience things. They may have seen acid, but not know what it does, so if they hallucinate it then they can find out that it burns. Of course it's impossible, but we're talking about tricksters here. Doing the impossible is part of their job. I'd say it's a coin toss whether it's real or not, and they test it beforehand then they don't really believe it so it isn't real. They have to run at that hole full tilt to find out. And yes, I know belief isn't relevant to illusions, but comedy is relevant to trickster magic so that trumps the ruling.

They might believe it worked... They might believe the spirit spell was cast... Of course a spirit might just appear totally coincidentally to the casting of the spell. And it might not be entirely helpful... They'd just see the city around themselves for the duration. Maybe if they didn't intend to teleport then they might get teleported, if it's funny. I love the idea of hallucinating a pillow strapped to the troll's club though. The inevitable argument with the GM is the best bit, "It's not real for the troll so it can't feel the softening of the blow therefore it isn't softened", "But it's real for me so it has to be softened..." Damned munchkins, don't you just hate 'em!

Okay, fair point, it could happen, my point was it's not the only way that such a myth could exist in Glorantha. I have seen it argued that "this myth doesn't exist, because it isn't in any of Greg's writings, therefore someone in 1600s Glorantha would have to invent/discover it". I assumed that that was what was happening here.

All my replies are based entirely on the current wording of the spell, except where otherwise indicated. Maybe that's right. Going back to the RQ3 spell for inspiration, it would be clear that if this iteration is simply an attempt to recreate that within the new mechanics, i.e. there is no Multispell, then you have to allow the caster to put the protective spells on afterwards. Was it intentional to open this up to anyone casting spells on it? Maybe not. It clearly was intentional to open it up to attack spells, using the Damage Resistance model from the original. Should that also open up ambiguous is-it-attack-or-isn't-it spells like Fanaticism? Should touch spells like healing be allowed? Particularly, could you send in your shock troops who get cut down by the defenders, then Heal Body on the defenders' Protective Circle to get all your guys back into the fight? I'm really not sure that that is what the spell is supposed to be for!