Rodney Dangerduck

I agree that the actual ritual is hard to find.  Here is a slightly shortened example from our campaign:

http://gloranthagame.pbworks.com/w/page/149524881/Earth Season 1627 Session 2#AStrangeCaravan

At some point, the guests formally accept by saying  ""We will not steal from you, nor bear arms, and tell always of your generosity".  Or similar - I decided that Tarshite speakers had a strong Northumbrian / Scots dialect.

1 hour ago, Akhôrahil said:

And what's the collective noun? A prudishness of Yelmalians?

A "Light".

5 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

i continue to insist that we don't understand Gloranthan gender (not sex, necessarily) because their gender is [Element Rune].

Now that runes are used for game mechanics in addition to personality, I think it unfair to conflate gender and element, especially Air / Earth.  For example, a Heler worshipping PC might have a high Air rune because, during character creation, they liked the Flight spell, and the PC uses a sword and wants the ability to augment it.  Not because they see their PC as "manly".

2 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Adventurers going to the Spike, and the choices they make while they're there, become part of the reason for it blowing up. Leave perfection to the gods: mortals can't hack it.

Don't forget to hack away a few chunks of Truestone for your character.  What's the worst that could happen?  🙂

Not updated in a while, but my quick site, mainly to quickly generate a mid-level NPC.

https://github.com/MorganConrad/rqg-character-generator

Demo here:

https://morganconrad.github.io/rqg-character-generator/

On 10/14/2023 at 2:23 AM, soltakss said:

Broadsword might be Air and Death, Axe is Earth and Death, Climb is Movement, Lores are Knowledge and so on

One reason I dislike some of the rune stuff is everybody twisting them to favor the runes of typical Heortling PCs.  Players who pick offbeat runes get penalized.

For example, Climb is, by the rules, very clearly Water.  Movement is reasonable.  But most GMs, even Jeff, allow Air.  Because that's what their PC will have and try.

Two of our group of PCs had a high Loyalty Kallyr, and helped her on the Short Lightbringer's Quest.  In a short "spin-off" episode".  The others were Leika loyalists and stayed home.

Links to a summary and a song (I think this is one of my better song efforts, excerpt below):

"And I dreamed I saw the dragons
Orlanth's Ring up in the sky
And Bats were turning into butterflies
Above our nation
She is Starbrow
Queen of Sartar and Kheldon
She is golden
Caught in the Spider's bargain
And we've got to get ourselves
To our Queen's garden"

http://gloranthagame.pbworks.com/w/page/139626948/Sea Season 1626 Kallyr's Quest

http://gloranthagame.pbworks.com/w/page/139408647/Woodstock

28 minutes ago, svensson said:

Membership in multiple cults isn't all that common anymore

Are there any statistics to support this?  And what is the intent of the game designers?

I don't have a dog in the fight, but I'm wondering how things are in other playing groups, and how they are "supposed to be".  In my limited and anecdotal experience, initiation into multiple cults is  more common in RQG (roughly 1/3 of our current PCs) than back in RQ2 days, where, in our group, it was rare.

Our Rune Lord wannabees have been stuck on either Devotion or an actual Rune at 90%.  Since these "increase" rolls have no bonus at all, it's a flat ~15% to increase.

Runes already might increase your experience gain rolls, if your highest rune increased your relevant stat to 13 or 17.

I like the concept that characters might be better at learning certain skills, because that seems to match reality, but I don't have very good ideas for mechanics.

1 minute ago, Joerg said:

Playing a baboon, gorilla or minotaur might limit your enjoyment of adventures of urban intrigue.

My minotaur PCs never survived a session, yet they were always a hoot to play!  But point noted.

How do you handle this for a Brown Elf PC?  They just miss a few adventures every Gloranthan year?

Or does everybody just run Green Elves?  🙂

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

Well Greg and I decided to not use most of this stuff. So for us it wasn't there to use.

O.K., I can accept this, with some disappointment.

But, the distinct centerpiece of the cover art is Vinga, as noted, and praised, by @Wheel Shield and others.  It is strange to feature Her so prominently on the cover, and ignore Her within.

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

Vinga as a goddess doesn't have much

Not much? At a cursory glance...

1. Throwing javelins and protecting Mahome and leaping on treetops and running on snow to defeat Valind?
2. Many other tales of her Defending Storm defending the Stead (often along with Elmal)?  Where she "inspires the seemingly defenseless to defend themselves."
3. Vestantes, “the Fightin’est Woman,” who defeated every male challenger in the land
4. How her hair turned red?
5. Throwing her javelin exactly one mile to help measure fields
6. Being "present at difficult childbirths" 
7. Wearing a knee-length skirt worn over men’s trousers.
8. "Every childless widow among the Kheldon Tribe dyed her hair red that winter"
9. How she joined the Storm Brothers (though I know Greg didn't like this tale)

There was a lot.  I agree that there was subcultitis.  I never actually played Hero Wars, but it seems a shame to totally drop so much good or interesting material as "non-canonical".  Especially as many of the important NPCs are prominent members of the Vinga cult.  In the standard Colymar campaign Leika is the Queen of the PCs.  Might be nice to have more information about her cult.

2 hours ago, Wheel Shield said:

I love the cover. I especially love Vinga. I don’t spend a lot of time studying corporate personnel staff pages or corporate trade magazines, so now that I am aware of such things, I am promptly forgetting them.

To me, Vinga looks to be an optimistic and confident warrior, perfect for Orlanthi. I’d be glad to have her in my warband.

Agreed.  She also has a nice picture in the recent Cults book. 

What she doesn't have is much content.  She is "subsumed into another cult".  Disappointing.  There's only a little in the Cults book.  I realize that space and time are limited, and hopefully some Vinga content will appear later.

2 hours ago, Richard S. said:

I think I'm going to wait for the errata before getting my hardcover this time though

Do they reprint the books with corrections?

6 minutes ago, g33k said:

someone who is attacked by the spirit can always use Spirit Combat to defend themselves.

They can also always use their weapon.

7 minutes ago, ChrisWentWhere said:

That double damaging Humakti Greatsword Gift is the bane of my GMing life.  

We let the spirit use their Spirit Combat skill to attempt to Dodge.  Not sure if that is correct, but otherwise they have no chance.

47 minutes ago, David Scott said:

It follows the same rules as illumination in CoT, so to answer a riddle you use the corresponding skill, if you succeed it increases your illumination ability.

Understood.  So, (ignoring Magical bonus) to get to, say, 70% Illumination, you succeeded in 70 different skills.  Given a very very rough 50% average skill level, (probably a high estimate!) that's 140 riddles.  If we assume the PC started at 21 and is now 28 years old, that's 20 riddles a year, roughly one every two weeks.  The math will vary depending on your campaigns.

1 hour ago, David Scott said:

One a year is not unreasonable assuming their illumination ability (magical skill category) is high enough.

This begs the question of just how many riddlers are there?  In our campaigns, riddlers are extremely rare, and those few PCs who have a Illumination ability have it in the single digits.  (not counting magical bonus)

Maybe we are wrong, cause I've seen much other material, including from Andrew, where the Illumination ability is well above 50%.  Given that you have to make the skill to "answer" the riddle, this implies that those PCs have heard, very roughly order of magnitude, a hundred riddles in their life.  That seems a lot???

21 hours ago, Scotty said:

Always use the Core Rules Rune Lords section (page 278), unless contradicted or changed by the cult writeup. The same goes for other cult ranks.

(added to Q&A)

If Chaosium ever reprints the Cults books, this should be added to them in a preface or intro - benefits, requirements and restrictions follow the Core Rules unless noted.  Personally, I'd also add a short summary of those core rules.

3 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

You’re the one who called players “abusive munchkins.”

No.  If you are going to quote me, please do so correctly.  The quote was "abusable by munchkins".

3 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Maybe you need a competent GM to rein you in?

The group as a whole is reining themselves in.  We looked at the Spell Trading rules and agreed to change them - the rune points traded, other than for the Spell Trading spell itself, are not regainable.  Likewise, we reined in the new very generous Rune Lord D.I. rules, at least as far as stat increases.

10 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

hit them with troll raiders just before their next holy day lets them replenish

Between associate cults and minor holy days, many PCs can easily recover 5 rune points a week.

More importantly, why force GMs to "hammer" players and "hit them" to teach them a "lesson"?  Write better rules.  Write rules that require less GM thought, less need for them to punish players who abuse them, and, on the other side, less need to wave hands to help the players with many other rules (e.g. 90% tithes) against them.

14 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

If you traded a Rune spell to somebody else, you don't have to wait until the recipient casts it to replenish your Rune points for that spell.

I'm 99% sure this is correct, though the text is slightly unclear and I can argue myself the other way once ins a while.  🙂

However, this is so clearly broken and abusable by munchkins that no GM should allow this.  Otherwise PCs sit around trading spells for a season or so and they will all end up with access to dozens and dozens of extra rune spells.

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

Harmast's Zebras combine rather high status import beasts

which aren't trained for riding - basically pack beasts.  Less relevant to much of this discussion.

I think it is a MGF change to allow more Praxian riding animals for Sartarite adventurers.  But, it is a change. 

For example, if you look through Smoking Ruins and Pegasus Plateau, there is no mention of riding bison, rhinos, or llamas, other than in the Pairing Stones scenario, which takes place in Prax.