Rodney Dangerduck

When one of our PCs became Thane of Apple Lane, two of us, my rowdy Vingan who is his sister, and an even rowdier Storm Bull, did some "looking for marriage candidates". Our priorities were a good skill at "Manage Household", and large, er, "tracts of land". 🙂

Maybe this belongs in a topic of it's own, but Glorantha History has a theme of Some group tries to "improve" the world and man's understanding and control of it Things go wrong A great hero or cataclysm sets the world back. Does anybody know this: was Greg a big fan of the classic post-apocalyptic sci-fi novel A Canticle for Leibowitz?

Having recently watched Good Omens, I came up with a similar concept.

Greg sometimes said that there are no "good guys" or "bad guys" in this struggle. As @jajagappa said. "We are all us".

A good compromise is to use the full SIZ + DEX + size of weapon for the first round of combat, then fall back on just DEX for all subsequent rounds.

Once you are engaged in combat swinging your weapon it's too late to think. However, planning ahead "if those two guys attack me, I will do XXX..." applies. Arguably, one could penalize high INT characters in combat.

Hmm, probably not a big help! One reason I've noticed the trend is that my Vingan is looking for reasonable, preferably warrior-like single men to bed. The pickings from the scenarios we have run so far (haven't done "The Pack Train" yet) are extremely slim, close to non-existent. By contrast, our randy Storm Bull has no shortage of good female options. :-(

I gotta say I'm getting a bit tired of "every significant (human) warrior you meet is a woman" theme. And I'm running a Vingan! Does make me think about some of the classics, like Conan and LotR where much was reversed.

This campaign would be suitable for players from most any culture, though Esrolian, Sartar, or Lunar makes the most sense. When Harrek the Berserk sacked the City of Wonders, the "official" line is that his pirates killed everybody. Later, others performed a hero quest to resurrect everybody. (Sorry, don't have the references handy, but I believe this is canon) But, some young, soft-hearted PC (mine) who was there in her RQG background, was shocked by the slaughter, and saved one woman and child, later smuggling them out of the city. She killed one pirate, who was probably about to do something unforgivable, while doing this. Somehow, this act of mercy has corrupted the hero quest, (or maybe the dead pirate's soul did?) and the something "ain't right". To make things right, some heroes must find and kill that woman and child. Or, if you prefer, your heroes must protect her from those who seek her death...

In our extremely non-canonical Lunar focused campaign, one of my PCs became a Yanafal hero. She was originally from Talastar, just outside Dorastor. She hated chaos : it had destroyed her family and village, driving her onto her eventual path. She also knew of Hospitality and some of the Storm Tribe myths and customs. There was a very testy negotiation / meeting between her and Kallyr, that only went peacefully because of the Code of Hospitality, aided by a Chalana Arroy claiming protection over Kallyr. (Kallyr had overextended herself as usual and gotten captured). I don't see why Tarshites will have forgotten their past traditions so quickly. Whether they keep to them is another question.

That's a false legend. The real names were Monogamy, Duplicity, and Menagery. 🙂

An interesting twist to RQG, which I don't remember from RQ2, is that if a character takes damage, spell casting is aborted. It makes SR matter, and adds tactics. E.g. Bad guy is pumping up their Befuddle to get through your Shield, do you cast Bladesharp and delay your attack, or do you swing early and try to interrupt their spell casting? Whether these tactics are worth the added detail and complexity may vary from group to group.

As for PCs lack of agency compared to the big heroes, yes, that is a potential problem. Various scenario writers (thanks Nick!) are doing their best to help this. IMO, which I doubt Chaosium will follow, the best approach would be for Lunar Assassins to finally succeed and kill Argrath. "Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to"

They eventually performed rituals to replace Humakt with a "new" one. And the new one could have been a troll, dwarf, Yanafali, or something chaotic, which would have had great repercussions. Turned out he was replaced with one of our overly-powerful-time-to-retire Humakt (female) PCs.

Many of our great campaigns involved Lunar PCs, and were inspired by TV or Movies or Current Events. Which, IMO, often do fit in better with the more "modern" feel of the Lunar Empire compared to Sartar. They typically involved fixing the bad deeds of various Lunar conspiracies. Yolanela featured prominently! Some goody two shoes had killed Humakt to "free the world from Death". See Torchwood, Miracle Day. Corrupt Power-grubbing Danfive Chancellor had taken over the government and had killed / imprisoned the two main candidates for Emperor. A mix of Putin and Richard III. A "Rune Chef" competition for a powerful ancient artifact, mixed with a nasty "Anister - Tark" Dart War. Military duty patrolling the Dorastor Marches. A mix of combat, scouting, and dealing with inept or corrupt Lunar Bureaucracy and jealous rivals.

and using Associate cult rune spells supports rune vagary: RQG 283 (my emphasis) I'd let them use their Earth rune. It, in effect, does say what runes would be required. Orlanthi would cast Shield with Air or Movement, would they not? While a Humakti would use Death or Truth, etc... When an Ernaldan goes to cast the Orlanth provided Shield spell, they must use Air or Movement, which is indeed "different from the Runes of the (Ernaldan) initiate's primary god". If Babs Gor provided Shield, I agree with you, that would be cast with Earth (or Death). But she doesn't. That said, a nice GM wanting to help out the Ernaldan might allow Earth. No big objection. But why not give her a reason to work on some other Runes? IMO, bending the rules to allow characters to always use their primary runes (or Passions) just makes for more one dimensional, more boring characters. YGMV.

Also note that casting the Husband's spells may require using his Runes. That Shield spell from Orlanth requires using Air or Movement.

I disagree that 80% is "twice as good as" 40%. Is a .400 baseball hitter "twice as good as" a .200 hitter? Absolutely not. The .400 hitter is a priceless top tier Hall of Famer, the .200 is crap at the infamous "Mendoza Line".

Hot trolls! You mean like in the ZZ Troll hit, "Sharp dressed troll"? 🙂

Be sure to constantly hit them up for tithes and their presence at worship ceremonies.

I ran a naval campaign focused on the Sweet Sea, which, in our timeline, had recently opened. The PCs were Lunars sailing out of Harandash on "fisheries patrol", while also discovering new islands and fending off mysterious rivals from Charg. Naval Flags in specific never came up, but we had Vexilla. I assume the ships would have flags of the Goddess in our case. Maybe this? Ships had Wyters. We had a Sorcery Spell called "Firerain" that would quickly destroy any ship without. (Haven't read the RQG Sorcery Rules but I bet they have something similar) I could see 50 people on shore, the shipwrights, commanders, land forces, clerks, contributing to the wyter even if the crew is much less than 50. We had fun. The most fun was when the players got totally bored with "fisheries patrol" (as was intended) and started stirring up trouble. Certain boats were known as being faster, stealthier, tougher, or, on the downside, slower or crappier.

Very good question! I would tend to say no, because Arrow Trance (if I recall correctly) does not let you use attack with your bow in melee. No melee at all, you must **shoot** arrows. Nor does it give you +lotso% with your Bow attack and parry. Therefore, by analogy, Axe and Sword Trance force you to attack in melee with your weapon. No missile fire. And no +lotso% to your thrown weapons.

Just had an idea for combats. IMO, too many Big Dramatic Combats are decided too quickly by a lucky Crit. Just happened to our group, the Big Bad Lunar RuneLord went down in one round. Fire and Sword had a spell called "Cushion Impact" that kind of gave you one extra chance, took some of the luck (good and bad) out of it. In any "Extended Duel" type of thing, I might go with a special rule that the first crit against each participant is downgraded to a normal hit.

Yes. Our GM noticed, and occasionally just hands out increases based on experiences. "You visited an ancient Ernalda temple, everybody gets +5% Ernalda Lore". Otherwise it's pretty hopeless for scholars.

Also, in a work this long, please put in useful PDF Bookmarks for easier navigation. Thanks!