Rodney Dangerduck

1. Which version...? RQG 2. How long...? 2 Years 3. What time period? 1625, now entering 1627 4. Where in Glorantha did you start? Sartar What regions has your campaign covered since? Sartar & Prax 5. Where are your pcs from? Mainly Sartar-Colymar-Taraling, with fraternal twins (brother and sister) and a cousin. Two twin sisters from Boldhome. Plus the pregen Sorala 6. What products have you used? Which were particularly useful? Many, most of them. If forced to be more specific, I enjoyed Duel at Dangerford, and was least happy with Smoking Ruins. YMMV. 7. Is it a sandbox or more plot led campaign? More plot lead, but some sandbox. We want the PCs to have major "agency". 8. How much have you followed the arching events...? So far we have largely followed the official Hero Wars plotline, and, as emissaries from Leika, we travelled to Pavis to meet with Argrath. But I'm pretty sure that there will be significant deviations soon. Which, according to Greg and Jeff, is what you are supposed to do to spare Glorantha from the worst excesses of Argrath. Just for starters: Elusu is a scumbag. Jaldon is a barbarian tyrant apparently modeled on Pol Pot,. Some of us like our cities. Harrek ain't so great either... Not sure how we will feel about wiping out the Telmori There's chemistry between my PC and Annstad of Dunstop. And, er, blushes, some buns in the oven. Shockingly, none of our PCs are mentioned as great heroes in the source material. This must change! 9. How would you describe your campaign? Emphasis on roleplaying, puzzle solving, and wargaming. Not much storytelling. Or, where the GM does try storytelling, some of us doze off. 🙂 10. What advice would you give newbie gms to runequest and glorantha? You will absolutely have to make things up, either how the rules work or how Glorantha works. Get used to it, don't fret, and enjoy it.

Getting back to the original topic of Spirit Magic vs. Rune, one reason we do more rune magic recently is that it takes no time. You can still attack normally. Casting a spirit magic spell like Protection while in combat is problematic depending how strict you are on rules, and, in any case, should your opponents damage you while casting, it fails. Casting Shield just plain works. Also, many of our PCs have higher runes than POW*5, so the casting is slightly more reliable. If you are in Orlanth or Ernalda or most of their associates, recovering at least some of your rune points is usually not an issue.

We use Strength, Mobility, Bladesharp and Befuddle a lot. Also Shield, Earthshield, Charisma. I'd say about 50:50 overall.

So long as it is Bad Poetry. That's the traditional Orlanth skill. Good poetry? Somebody else... 🙂

We did a straight "assign 92 points", which ends up at 98, and it is easy to be +15%, and possible (if you take a small size and only a D4 damage bonus) to get +20%.

In our non-canonical campaign, just entering 1627, Gringle died in Nochet. Over Sacred Time the PCs quested and brought him back to serve as Wyter for Apple Lane.

Between violence and hatred to strangers, cities and horses, fairly routine (but pragmatic) wartime alliances with Broo, and general nastiness, I find little for Heortlings to "like" about Praxians. Not sure how Heortlings should react to Argrath's Army when it arrives in 1627, especially should anything go awry. Hoipefully they mainly stay north of The Creek. "Argrath's Army is here to stay Argrath's Army are on their way And I would rather be anywhere else Than here today"

We faced many conspiracies against the Lunar Empire, sometimes even all Glorantha, but our PCs eventually "fixed" them. A cabal heroquested so that instead of the Goddess defeating Gbaji, he defeated her. They then took over the Empire and had to be stopped, with unexpected aid from Gbaji's still-existing vampire wife and Arkat. Over-zealous Deezolans defeated and imprisoned Humakt so that nobody would die. (See Torchwood, "Miracle Day") A combination Putin/Richard III Danfive was "temporarily" put in charge of the Empire (the PCs did this while "fixing" another issue), imprisoned or killed all the prospective Emperors, and, using alliances with Delecti and Trolls, rules the Empire. Jar-Eel had been killed in the previous campaign and was replaced by "Jar-Uz"

Even the creative use as a "tripwire" goes against the spirit of the spell. The first line reads "This ritual spell creates an area of safety for those inside." Not people stationed well behind it. I'd probably allow it, but the bad guys can do the same.

Does Terris have Snow do barrel rolls after a successful encounter? I do. He's a show off you know! As is my PC - they are a perfect fit.

To somewhat followup on @redmoongoddess, I'm fine with Chaosium focusing their limited resources on a small area, Dragon Pass / Prax / Esrolia, concentrating on the Era of Argrath. But, we really need some source material on his opponents, the Lunars. Our campaign is heading into Sea Season 1627. There will be a battle at Alda Chur. Followed by many more. Our PCs will hopefully do some "special mission". (Most of us have hippogriffs). Our GM is doing a great job but he is struggling right now with the question of this: Just what should our Lunar Opposition have? What do they have that flies? There is all of one Lunar Cult written up in RQG, and Seven Mothers is the "nice", proselytizing branch. It's challenging to make a wide variety of good enemies out of them. Nobody would run the Epic Campaign of Lunar Expansion and feature Issaries as the primary Sartarite opposition. Now, we've played a Lunar campaign a long time, and will be able to make up various Yanafali, Jakaleeli, other opponents, and kind of wave our hands and say "Yanafal has something like Scimitar Trance" and "Jakaleeli can summon Large Lunes". But, down at the nitty gritty details, if you really care about it, you are still just guessing and making stuff up. And probably being less creative than some of the minds at Chaosium. I'm sure @Nick Brooke has great ideas for some way cooler Lunar spells and abilities in mind than Moon Shield and Scimitar Trance. In conclusion, given realistic limited resources, I could care less about Ralios or Kralorea or whatever, YMMV. But most campaigns need reasonable rules for Lunars, either as PCs or as opponents. I think something like "Foes" but focused on Lunars would be awesome.

They are ignorant fools. In the end, she wins. Dying heroically at the Battle of Queens, leaving behind a Free Sartar. "If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story"

True. And hardly anybody is going to get killed by Argrath. Or Harrek. Everybody will love them. (In case you can't tell, this is sarcastic)

We played Lunar characters many many years. None of the human earthly players really believed all the stuff about the Red Emperor being the True Dara Happan Emperor, that every enemy God "just happened" to be "proven" to be the same as some aspect of the Goddess, etc... But the characters didn't play that way: many were "true believers" in the Lunar Way, others focused on obeying the laws, avoiding The Bat, and ignored the religious intricacies. We are now playing Sartarites in 1627. All the human earthly players know that Argrath is abusing the dangerous powers of Illumination, "cheating" to defeat the Lunars (who themselves cheat). And things will end badly. But the characters, for now at least, have to act as if they don't know that.

If the oppositon sucessfully dispels the 2 point Bless Champion, all the "buff" spells go away?

Five? "To have a chance at improving a skill though training, an adventurer must train with an instructor for an entire season, and can do little else." "a skill" is singular. RAW are incredibly restrictive on training, and it's interesting to see a highly respected author and GM just blow holes in them.

Somewhere is a clarification that the Bad Man is 165% at Spirit Combat. The apprentice's skill will be reduced by 65%, and they are "supposed" to lose most of the rounds of combat.

My nearly a Rune Lord has been sitting at 85% Devotion for over a year real time. In RQG, the weapon skills shouldn't be a huge problem, since most PCs have a substantial Manipulation Bonus to help the increase rolls. But Passions or Runes have no bonuses. And, if you go by the strict rules, only rolling at the end of season and then rolling a d6 for how much you go up, the laws of probability say it should take a long time. Our group long ago changed from +d6% to +5%, and it still should take years at normal progression. That said, as @Martin Dicksuggested, I am sure that most groups and GMs use "fast-tracking" or essentially "cheat" like Argrath and the Lunars. Which is absolutely fine. If you look at Vasana's starting numbers, there's absolutely no way she made Rune Lord as quickly as she did without some GM fiat. So far, I'm actually kindof enjoying the waiting. At this point, our campaign just clicked over into 1627, and I'd actually prefer to wait a couple more Seasons to become Wind Lord so that Argrath has arrived in Sartar and can do the honors.

Since the question is specifically about the deliberate ritual of becoming a Shaman in RQG, and preparations and ramifications of said ritual, any talk of spontaneous bursting into shamanhood are interesting, but arguably irrelevant.

The Bad Man inflicts no damage in this special version of Spirit Combat. Only taboos.

It's not clear that doing the ritual that much beforehand works. There's several other rolls and events and days of time in between. If some Humakti said they will perform a 4 week ritual to boost "their next casting of Sever Spirit", I doubt any GM would allow that. As for whether any PC would patiently wait 5 years to get their POW and Spirit Dance way up there for an extra 10% chance of a Special, your PCs are way more patient than us!

We just ran this for a PC, and I agree that there are really no places to "fail" once the mentor approves. And it's a harsh GM who will hold a player to a failed roll. It's just how good the fetch will be. Our candidate also cast Charisma and Glamour for the fight with the Bad Man. Not clear if those spells should be o.k. or last long enough. As it turned out, the +30% to Spirit Combat never mattered. Our candidate won 1 out of 4 rounds which seems vaguely reasonable. One rules point: after giving up POW to the Fetch, most candidates will drop in their Magical skills (less category bonus from POW).

Yes, it celebrates the Ernaldan High Holy Week, so it should be an annual event. There should be at least as many bondable Hippogriffs as you have PCs.

This could make a chaotic character problematic.

Depends a lot on the other PCs. Are they particularly anti chaos? How well do they like the Humakti PC? Do they deal in higher level politics, or are they "under the radar"? This does give me a great idea for a scenario for other PCs, with the flavor of a TV crime show. Several Storm Bulls have turned up dead. All within a mile radius of the stead where a certain very strong Humakti lives...