Rodney Dangerduck

Somewhat OT, but a few months ago Jeff posted a list of Major and Minor gods. Every single member of our long timer RQ gaming group was shocked that Arachne Solara made neither list. Hopefully there was a typo or misunderstanding somewhere.

To be fair to, and to say something nice, about Chaosium, their focus on the major, common cults, such as Orlanth, Ernalda, and Humakt, and "subsuming" some of the lesser cults into them as subcults, greatly simplifies things for newer players. Which I think is a good thing, to bring in new Runequest players. Just a little disappointing to us old timers who want to learn more about the minor cults, and have them play a meaningful role in our games.

Agree completely. Yelmalio may be a "weak" cult, but at least it has a niche. Cults like Heler and Odalya, if they can be readily accessed as subcults of Orlanth, seem to have little reason to exist as independent cults.

Completely true. The authors' complete disdain of "play balance", which in practice is more like deliberately blowing huge holes in game balance, leads to most cults being highly discouraged for a thinking player.

If an existing Orlanth Adventurous PC is joining another subcult, even Odayla, wouldn't they already be "familiar"? Or, they spend a little time, money, and buy free drinks to become familiar. A very gamey way of initiating into Odayla or Yinkin without any need to hunt or fight a scary bear or live in those cold, wet boonies for a year. We have wondered is a candidate with no Earth Rune and 10% Fertility could basically bribe the Ernaldan Priestess to become "familiar" and let them join.

IMO, "Honor" is, in some cases, left deliberately open to interpretation. And different cultures or cults think differently. Humakti Honor is different than Orlanthi. In those cases, it's best to talk with the player and have them express, from their character's POV, why they think an action is honorable or dishonorable. Maybe make minor adjustments. But a GM trying to impose a global honor code is likely to cause blowback. Let the players decide, within reason. Then hold them to that for the future.

I agree completely with the rest of your post, and I could accept that there is something that might prohibit Elementals from dodging, but not just intelligence. Animals can dodge, yet have no INT. It's an interesting question.

It's possibly non-standard, but I usually give Elementals a modest skill at Dodge. Also, the summoners (e.g. trolls) are able to cast protective spells on them, such as Shield or Protection. Well worth it on a large elemental.

Thanks for the link, though, when I click on it, it doesn't take be to https://support.drivethrurpg.com/..., it takes me to the top of this BRP thread. Please correct... BTW, I am familiar with the JC stuff, but providing the link may answer OP's question simpler than a lot of back and forth discussion.

Nick, I think it might help some of us if you added to this thread a link or source which more fully describes the JC guidelines. Thanks.

Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass, by Martin Helsdon covers Lunars, Sartar, and some "independents" https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/296535/The-Armies-and-Enemies-of-Dragon-Pass

I can't figure out how to delete my reply, so just edited to this.

Sorry, no, a wanton misreading of the rules. OTOH, I strongly agree with your comments that Yelmalio is good at fighting trolls.

Fire Elementals are tough to come by for "typical" Sartarite adventurers. Though I suspect our group may start looking for them!

Hmm, maybe one issue is that shades are typically encountered in caves or enclosed spaces. We've done ok with missile weapons vs most other elementals. Good advice overall.

Our RQG group has been in a few battles involving shades. Once it was on our side, the other times, as an opponent. They have been awesome and effective. I wonder if we have been playing them wrong, or what counters can be used. Here is how we have been playing, which is possibly wrong (?). They engulf you. The victim cannot can dodge or parry. They attack POW vs CON. Most characters have CON around 14 or so (?). CON is not something that gets boosted by POW resisting crystals, being a Rune Lord, etc. Nor do Shield or Countermagic protect. So even a small Shade has a reasonable chance to succeed, and a Medium a good chance (> 50%). Victim rolls on the Fear Shock Table, and prays to roll higher than 05. But a typical roll has them collapsed, and very likely out of action for several rounds. This cannot be dispelled. The Vinga Cult Special spell Fearless is a perfect counter. Berserker helps a lot, but that is another rare spell, and with some serious downsides. Vigor helps some. SunBright can kill them. Another fairly rare spell - a nice plus for Yelmalio. Are we missing another counter? Note: Clever baddies will put Mobility and Protection on the Shade. But, the one time we used one, even a raw Small Shade (who rolled lucky on POW vs CON attacks) temporarily took out most of a Lunar Squad, at least giving our attacking Orlanthi time to land and get organized.

Thanks for the link! I'm intrigued by this line: "The rules of honor do not apply to animals, monsters, undead things unless they are capable of communicating or otherwise demonstrating that they do follow the rules of honor." Maybe I'm a softie, but I definitely think that honor should apply to animals. One should not ambush and kill and entire group / family of deer or wolves. Kill what you need for food, or to scare away the predator, but don't slaughter them all. There is no exception for chaotics. So, Humakti must show honor to Broo, Ogres, etc. The Bat is given as an exception, which makes sense, but proves that "relatively normal" chaos is still subject to the rules of Honor.

I'm going to differ here. True, Argrath suffered. But so did thousands of other Sartarites. As I've mentioned before, most of our PCs are orphans. With some parents destroyed by the Bat. Same for lots of NPC Sartarites. We choose not to be psychopaths. Well, one PC has a very high Hate Lunars, but he's no Argrath Destroyer of Worlds. Argrath's actions, for good or evil, cannot be justified by "Lunars killed his parents, boo hoo". There's a far deeper reason, whether mystical (e.g., he's the Shadow) or psychological (e.g. he's a psycho David Bowie).

Perhaps should be "was the most obvious."? 🙂 If the one male nature spirit we can cite was killed in the God Time, that seems to answer OP's question.

I find it humorous that, at the same time, this thread is praising Passions, while another thread Negative Passions During Character Creation) points out flaws or confusions in the implementation. I agree with both.

Since a real world friend is having a "significant" birthday, it begs this exceptionally nerdy and geeky question: In Glorantha, do most cultures use base 10 for their counting and math? Base 12 like some ancients? Or something else? (Thumbless Morokanth?)

Special hits all doing slightly different things, some of which are scattered over different pages, are a freaking nightmare and waste of time paging through the rules at the game table. Luckily, most of our players use swords so there is less to remember. Though we always forget the "shock" rules. (added) The rules bias towards slashing weapons is an expression of the general rules bias towards Humakt and Orlanth.

Arguing with myself, I do realize that replacing two feuding flawed leaders, Kallyr and Leika, with one awesome heroic leader, Argrath, makes Chaosium's task of writing and publishing The Great Campaign a lot easier.

Mainly, because Loyalty Leika is also useless (or nearly so) upon the arrival of Argrath. Whoever you "bet on", you lost. What's even worse, some PCs used metagame knowledge and just backed Argrath from the get go.

I found the Kallyr - Leika rivalry very interesting to role play for our PCs. Especially as both protagonists have great flaws to go with their many strengths. IMO, too bad that they both "go away". Also, we put in considerable thought into which PCs would get Loyalty checks for Leika / Kallyr as they battled for our loyalty. A shrewd PC could (slightly) play them off against each other. And it brought out your PC's attitude - are they "smart and pragmatic" (Leika) or more "bold and heroic" (Kallyr) Maybe you'd learn to respect both sides. Fun. And, in retrospect, a complete waste of time.