Squaredeal Sten

It is my understanding that Gloranthan religion is firmly transactional in accord with Real World bronze age models. The habitual and scheduled MP sacrifice in worship is dues paid to the god so that the god can and will provide Rune magic on a much less frequent and maybe irregular basis. But expectations do include Earth God fertility for the fields and herds, Storm God rain - things that are provided annually through priests via listed rune spells. So I don't agree that the RQ rules lack these things. It just doesn't usually occur during worship in game. But there is nothing stopping a GM from having the fields fertilized in game for atmosphere. A model for this is in Six Seasons in Sartar. The plowing and harvest ceremonies. The priests as intermediaries thing is also bronze age though it has modern day remnants. Where RQiG differs is in opening some of this up to mere initiates.

At priest level you can do enchantments, and leading Worship ceremonies has POW gain payoff. So the presiding priest is essentially channeling MPs to the god. Taking a payoff in both personal POW gain and his or her ex officio ability to Enchant. Yes Enchant requires additional investment of POW, which does not change the principle. The enchanted item is a repository of small-p power that the priest can direct, either selling it for cash benefits, using it personally, trading it, or using it for the community. Benefit to the community should also be benefit to the individual if we take the community involvement part of RQG seriously and GM that way. The adventurer who casts Bless Crops gets gratitude from the community. So does the adventurer who casts Lightning and kills the Walktapus that was destroying the crops. Among other ways the individual benefits are by being allocated hides of land which translate to income. And using personal magic fior cult business is implicit in the book where we are told that at Rune level the adventurer must devote 90% of time to cult business. That really is compulsory by the book, even though the GM has to enact it. So we see both positive and negative incentives from the cult. The negatives are the compulsory part, sure. But the positive also act powerfully.

But will children know how to sacrifice POW? You may have to use trollkin adults, 200 bolgs and a roast rabbit. This reduces the profitability from "unheard of" to merely "unmatched in our current economic climate". How do I buy into this venture?

You really are channeling Milton Friedman! However they won't get 5-6 POW gain rolls a year unless they succeed with POW vs POW in a stress situation, and at 5 POW this is unlikely. One per year at Sacrwd Time is a better estimate. This reduces the productivity but does not change the general principle.

If you think about it. It is a standard thing for cults to require a proportion of members' magic points and ( on an irregular basis) a proportion of their POW. That's what is going on when members sacrifice MPs on holy days. That's what is going on when initiates sacrifice POW , though they do get rune points for it. And implicitly that is what is going on when clans or tribes or temples or military units have wyters to whom POW is sacrificed. The only issue, which Nick has pointed out, is: Under what circumstances do these requirements become so unreasonable as to be forbidden by the rules as written? But every cult is a gods POW farm. And maybe the high priest's POW farm.

For what it's worth - very recently in my campaign via Zoom. the adventurers captured five would be bandits. Who, unusually for bandits, cried ransom. They were members of a nearby clan who acknowledged them. Not having that amount of cash (see W&E about market size) the clan offered cattle. Not wanting to drive a large herd of cattle, the party bargained too. The compromise solution was the cash on hand plus two pair of walktapus hide gloves, plus POW for a high-end enchanted item. The five bandits were required to contribute 1 POW each. Yes there are degrees of "voluntary".

I like the idea. Certainly dryads should have individuality, because they are the dominant NPCs of their Grove or their part of a forest. There is plenty of room to expand on dryads just as there is room to expand on elves / Aldryami. (Pending an Elfpack.) So, following your lead: A redwood dryad would have an impressive SIZ and CON, and a very long term view? A cypress dryad would have a water rune affinity, a high CON, and control animals like alligators, fish, frogs? A fig tree dryad, now? Will dryads of cultivated trees be friendlier to humans? Shall we postulate that all cultivated trees originally came from Aldryami, as some kind of gift or trade item? Or perhaps a symbiosis, in which an orchard keeper prepares the Earth and takes the role that elves do in the wild woods, and should perhaps contract with elves for the development of a fruit tree dryad? Should orchard keepars try to join the cult of Aldrya? This opens an avenue for human NPC development.

Yes. Someone publshed the speculation that they were modeled on living individuals. It makes sense if the Emperor wanted to take his army with him.

I was thinking about (1) Secrets of Heroquesting, (2) the notes on heroquesting in ALM's Company of the Dragon, and (3) the fragments we see from the Chaosiumcon playtest. I have not read the Mongoose one, so that makes three and a fraction in my updated count. The discussion above does point out that there is a spectrum of possible benefits from a successful heroquest: While the Original Poster asked about the spectacular world altering variety such as killing Orlanth and causing the Windstop, Jeff has answered about the more accessible personal benefits to player character level questers. I suppose that getting a good harvest or obtaining a wyter or making peace should be ranked in the middle. But those should also be accessible in-game.

This implies the establishment of a raccoon spirit cult. An appropriate sacrifice to the raccoon spirit would be a day's garbage. How do i know this? Someone has been raiding our large brown 80-gallon city-owned garbage can. Which now has a concrete block on top of the lid. Evidently the method is to climb atop the blue recycle can (which used to be next to it) and pry up the lid from that position. Anyway, such a sacrifice would evidently be pleasing to such a recipient.

And i have recently read an article indicating, on the basis of archaeological evidence, that at least some of them ended up as the Philistines. Whose physical culture indicates a blending of several Mediterranean peoples with the previous inhabitants o the land. However the article also speculates that they may have originally been more pirates than migrating tribes.

It doesn't match the Bestiary description of an Earth Elemental. I could believe a Jolanti. Whatever it is, a combination of Slow and an Earth Elemental should grind it down. Maybe stacked Lightning would take it down too. Engaging it with a knife does not appeal, any more than grappling with a gorp does.

In Pavis for Lightbringers, and maybe - Humakt well at least a shrine. in Sun County for Yelmalio, major temple.. For Storm Bull and Waha try tribes' mobile temples. Else at the block for a najor SB temple. Eiritha at the paps? Or closer- acvording to Borderlands a sufficient collection of temples is to be found at Hiorn Gate west of Ronegarth. Detail to be hsndled by the G M as needed.. Chalana Arroy at the paps too. For the Red Goddess it is dependent on date.

I have been thinking about this for a few days and I feel called on to object that (1) "math" is not the source of most of the complexity in Runequest rules, (2) and also that it is not in children's interest to dumb things down by removing what is really simple math. I am afraid that removal would give a message that "math is too much for you" and removes a practical and personal use which ( if retained ) may subtly encourage them to not be innumerate. Occasionally my work in marketing research gave me reason to believe that innumeracy disadvantages people almost as often as illiteracy.

That last is a detail I had never seen before in reports of the terracotta army. I had thought the armor was molded into the clay figure. Thanks fir the report!

As I understand it, and my understanding is not authoritative nor complete: 1. Yes, and there are different levels of heroquest ranging from in- world to actually entering the godtime. The in world is the LARP while your adventurer will run considerably more risk in the hero plane, and actually entering the godtime is for either heroes or fools. 2. Yes as I understand it you can change the story. Or at least (and more typically) affect which is the currently dominant story. (See my opinion in 5 below.) Each quest deepens or strengthens the path the quester takes. The Lunar heroquest that "killed" Orlanth and Ernalda deleted them at least temporarily (triggering the Windstop and Great Winter) and they were brought back by counter questing. 3. The seven mothers heroquested to revive a "dead" goddess, killed before Time. Who was thereore not part of the Great Compromise and quested in her turn: one time was to get the Crimson Bat. I can't enumerate other times, not being an authority on Sedenya. 4. I believe that is so. The implications remind me of certain time travel story tropes popular in the 1950s and 60s. What if you go back in time and kill your own grandfather before he reaches puberty? Logical contradictions abound. 5. I am pretty sure that knowing the story is not the only limit. For one thing: Different versions of a story can be equally true simultaneously. Also there is a lot more power in the higher level quests than in the in world variety. I don't know how to express that power difference. But any heroquest is a step into myth. And at the GM's option, how big a step it is may vary unexpectedly. There are at least two and a fraction sets of heroquesting rules right now. Plus Greg Stafford's notes in Arcane Lore. Including reports of the playtest at Chaosium Con. They are useful and overlap but as you know there is currently no final authoritative set. So we are free to interpret as we please as long as we don't cross the line of suspended disbelief. I am just another Glorantha fan and GM and none of what I have written is official nor does it bind Chaosium . I am not trying to rock the boat, just trying to navigate.

Thanks, last week i named a clan chief & storm voice myself. But am still grateful for yours. Mine had fairly pacific reactions when the party met bandits north of Whitewall, caught five who cried ransom and were Olontongi. A deal was cut - the five each had to put in a point of POW to an enchanted item. Plus cash and two pair of Walktapus hide gloves. The party in question has proceeded to Smithstone - but will go through Whitewall again on the way back.

And finally about storage jars: the only jar type that W&E quotes is the amphora. A tall jar with a narrower neck, pointed bottom, and handles. The examples of this in our local art museum are all artistic creations for display, too pretty to get bumped around, not the larger shipping amphora which are retrieved from Bronze Age shipwrecks. Whose handles probably allowed use of a block and tackle to lift them into the ship's hull. But we tend to just call these "pottery" or 'jars". When people relied more on pottery for all kinds of uses, the various kinds of jars had names. For example this style of storage jar without handles is called a "Pithos". The one in the picture is Mycenaean, firmly in the bronze age. It was decorated, you can see traces - but it was never close to being as good artistically as the Athenian redware. So here is a look at an actual Bronze Age storage jar, about three feet tall:

Some Bronze Age things from this week's visit to the San Antonio museum of Art: A Yinkin image? From the Baboons' temple in Monkey Ruins: Check this out for high quality trade goods!

Per RBOM page 45 it is for "a time of mortal or existential peril". And allows drawing one POW plus 1d8 Magic Points. To me most times of mortal peril won't provide the leisure to pray her magic points back. And the single POW would not provide the 3 rune points she needs to immediately do it again. If she invokes Earthpower when she is not actually in peril she may expect no answer from the god.

In addition, something I was told decades ago: Don't proofread on a screen. Proofread in hard copy. You will find more of the errors. I don't know why that is true, some subtlety of the way humans work. But it does seem to be true. Got this from a training session at work. Not just someone's bull session.

[@Scotty] Think about writing that up and publishing via Jonstown Compendium, so that other people can benefit from what you have learned about adventures for very young players. You have revealed something that is not obvious.

Random Number is right: Once you begin seeing what you think is on the page, a new pair of eyes is needed.

Re. What happens if the image is not destroyed: Then the summoners have unleashed a magical monster in the community. This is not good. It might even get them % in the Chaos rune. As for exactly what is summoned, that is up to the Gamemaster (GM). If the summoner uses an effigy then the effigy should usually be animated. But on a fumble or if they use no effigy then it is the GM's option. Do you want to let them execute their plan? Or is there some reason you think it should go wrong? There is no particular die roll indicated for those decisions. Bear in mind that MGF does not indicate killing the whole party.

This article (my hardcopy magazine came today) reports finding an alpine rock crystal mine used for a period that at least ended in the bronze age. Though the tools found don't include any such high tech. We should think about Hsunchen also mining rock crystals. https://www.archaeology.org/issues/482-2209/digs/10770-digs-switzerland-mesolithic-tools