Squaredeal Sten

As i understand it that is usual for magic roads. It's magic!

So it is not unreasonable that the full shaman gets the priest's POW gain bonus. And of course a shamans's daily work is overcoming spirits so he should expect a POW check every season.

I don't see anything in the background that suggests Backford is a port. Karse seems to be the closest significant port. Perhaps the Syphon delta is shallow, so ships can't get upstream.... and the Ford suggests the Syphon is not navigable. The Lunars besiege Karse because it is a port so a strategic objective. Not so with Backford. Of course there are advantages to not being besieged and assaulted, Backford should be less damaged by the Lunar invasion.

Waha priests are shamans. RQiG p.306 "Requirements: The Waha cult has shamans instead of Rune Priests. Any Waha initiate who becomes a shaman qualifies for this status. See the Shaman in the Spirit World chapter for more information." "NOTE: Shamans serve as priests for the Waha cult and in exchange for four shamanic abities they must take the following four taboos;"..... Khans (Waha rune lords) are also priests, same page reference. Maybe the forthcoming gods book will give us more detail or more hairs to split. But for now as I read RQiG it doesn't say Khans have to have POW18, only (p.280) the standard rune lord requirement of CHA18 - which, interesting enough, is not repeated on p.306. I will say that it is ambiguous whether they must also satisfy the priest requirements p.277, but a straightforward reading of p.306 suggests not. Luckily no one in my Praxian campaign has CHA18 so khan status is not an immediate issue for me. However all this shaman stuff is an issue, as we have an assistant shaman with ambition. But anyway, re. 180% of time to the cult - no, IMG 90% as usual. And Waha is not the only cult with rune lord-priests, see Humakt who has no priests per se, only rune lords who will perform the function of priests. (RQiG p.297)

That is another reason why Waha is a superior path if you want a shaman character. The other reason is that Waha gives more shaman abilities. But I think that we have demonstrated why you won'tgain by either the fetch or shaman having POW 1.

it wouldn't be the first time that players didn't internalize and fiercely role-play the family history generated in character creation. Nevertheless, all players in the campaign deciding their characters are orphans would indicate this GM has a track record of using family history ties as adventure hooks too often for the players' taste. Perhaps it would be better to let the players befriend, marry, or father NPCs in-play and then kill those NPCs? 😉

That would be a good question for an Esrolian campaign. As i understand it this procession of the dead is not their physical corpses, but instead is their spirits manifesting. But my understanding may be wrong. All I have to go on is Esrolia, the land of Ten Thousand Goddesses. What was Greg Stafford's concept? Now as for the Humakti, maybe it's time to split hairs; These are not undead in my understanding, though that term seems not to be defined in RQ references. As I understand it undead = animated corpse. And they are not ghosts, which are "always tied to a specific site or object" (RQB p.170) and are classified as genius loci!. They seem to just be the dead on annual holiday.

I can'tpossibly take it that way. It would contradict too much of the rules as written. What's the point of writing the book then?

Re. any other down sides of giving all but 1 POW to the fetch: For the shaman to get a chance to roll for POW gain, at least before the free chance at Sacred Time, that shaman would actually have to succeed in a POW vs. POW contest. Presumably using some spirit magic spell or in spirit combat. Magic points is a function of PO. 1:1 as i recall, so he has 1 MP. Of course his fetch's POW will be counted for POW vs. POW - But his chance of casting the spell in the first place gets a -10% modifier at POW 1-4, too. [RQiG p.59] If he gets into spirit combat the damage will come off his own 1 MP, not from the fetch. Also, his spirit combat damage will probably be 1D3 (+3 for being a shaman, RQiG p. 358) unless he has a really good CHA. At 0 MP he is going to fall unconscious after casting, isn't he? [RQiG p.54]. And per the same page he will regain MPs at the rate of 1/4 of current POW every 6 hours, so if you don't round up he will be unconscioous for 24 hours. All this is not good for a magic specialist whose forte is supposedly dealing with spirits. We can expect to see him possessed. Next problem: Look at RQiG p.358, Spirit Pacts; if the shaman approaches spirits in the spirit world, a hostile spirit will be able to see the shaman's extremely low POW and will attack. That's not good for a shaman with 1 POW and the matching low spirit combat damage. Next problem; The fetch is created during stage 3 of the shamanic initiation / summoning of the fetch. (RQiG pp. 354-366). Stage 5 is the Reward, which gives an opportunity to sacrifice characteristic points for shamanic abilities. At 1 POW he's not going to be sacrificing POW so he will be sacrificing something harder to increase, like SIZ or INT. This only opens up hard choices. Why does he want hard choices? One more disadvantage: The shaman's Divine Intervention roll is based on his own POW, without counting the fetch's. [RQiG p. 356, last sentence of What the Fetch Provides to the Shaman] How low would I go? Well let's say the aspiring shaman has a POW of 20. He gives 8 POW in his Stage Two sacrifice / to make the fetch. If he plans to sacrifice POW for 4 shamanic abilities then he will end with POW 8 and an 8-POW fetch. Spirit magic casting chance will be 35% (40%-5% modifier), so try not to get into any one on one magic duels. At that POW level (8+8) he will be successful in a lot of POW check situations, and his POW gain rolls will be (21-8}x5= 65% chances. He has some ability to take spirit combat damage, and his magic skills category modifier is -5 while his spirit combat damage will likely be 1D6 (+3 for shamanhood}, not great but acceptable to me. Several other skill modifiers for POW will be -5% but his first POW gain roll will bring those up to 0%. So life will be rough until his first successful POW gain roll, but will improve thereafter. Considering my own bad die luck that is about as low as I have the risk tolerance for. Your own risk tolerance may vary.

Since the dead (or their spirits) return from the necropolis in an annual procession to Nochet, I would expect that a lot of Nochet houses are closer to their ancestors than most foreigners. But evidently from the counts given Daka Fal is much less popular as individuals' primary cult to Worship than he might be in Prax or Peloria. Ernalda or Esrola seems to be a strong #1. Seems to be a cultural thing.

Perhaps a good way to structure a shamanism and spirit cult book would be to consciously imitate Cults of Prax, with a series of short-story adventures illustrating aspects of shamanism and shamanic magic.

I include all income when it's time to calculate tithes. After all adventuring income can dwarf farming or crafting income. How would the cult look at is if the character with one hide of land starts wearing silks and bronze armor and jewels but only tithes 12 lunars of ag income? When he comes in to the temple to buy 6 point spell training? There is obviously a lot of unreported income. Why assume that the priest is stupid? I do allow deduction of expenses vs non ag income. And in my Glorantha there is barteras well as trade so payment of tithes in kind is ordinary. In fact it is expected in the case of ag income. A while ago I drafted up Gloraznthan Form 1040. This may be of interest to the tax lawyer referenced above.

Personally, I am more attracted by investigating flat Glorantha mechanics than by finding some way to justify making Gorantha look round but still really not be round. Haze will limit visibility enough for me. Note that in or near the Wastes there will be a lot of dust in the air. This will limit visibility more. So I doubt anyone in Prax will have a good view of Kero Fin. I am attached to the idea that from Genertela's south shores you may see the looming mass of Pamaltela even though you won't see detail. No Gloranthan Columbus is needed to find the other continent.

All the sundial- clockwise speculation is based on a design for a round earth. But for a flat Glorantha wouldn't it be more practical to have a square surface with a horizontal north-south bar above it and make the hour graduations north-south lines? That way no matter whether you are north or south of Yelm's path, all you do to read the time is look at which hour line the bar's shadow crossed last.

Double post. Sorry. Please remove.

To me the key is that noble or priestly family during character generation just gets you a good start: higher social skills and more expensive gear. But thereafter occupation is maintained, achieved, or lost during play. So when you grow up as a noble but go join the rebels your occupation and income at sacred time change to bandit / rebel. If you join a caravan it becomes warrior for guards, merchant for merchants. If you stay home and live in the chief's household it continues as noble, because although you don't have five hides of land you still share the standard of living. And if your character is an assistant priest and just hangs around the temple then he or she does not get into the stressful situations that increase POW, so it may be a long time before becoming eligible for full priest with its high disposable income and benefits.

Oh, the map fragment? I always thought it was a piece of artful misdirection, to give confidence or maybe over confidence. But it does really match the ruins map, it is just incomplete , and there is no deception in it being labeled a map fragment. And the aerial view in the book is an aerial view. The fragment is unlabeled too, and the book even says Daravala's advice on it will be wrong. Your players need to do their own recon and that is no accident, clear in the scenario and I have no heartburn about it.

Unfortunately Runequest was not developed as a set of miniature rules and is not at the state of the art of skirmish scale minis rules. Any more than D&D is even though it was developed using the Chainmsil rules. I suggest that you will need a set of house rules to account for weapon length, zone of action, and also the shielswall option in the RQiG rules. I say this regardless of what the scale you use. And if you use a meter or two meter scale then what will you do when someone wants to use a shield wayll, in which the soldiers would be shoulder to shoulder?

Waha even gives bonuses when the chacter is promoted to full shaman. So Waha shamans are better than other shamans of similar experience and they are also ex officio rune priests. Of course getting there is a development challenge for the player, but how to get to rune level is the core chalkenge for every RQ character.. Ignoring the shaman path for Waha is like ignoring the warrior path for Humakt. It's bound to lead to frustration. But don't expect sympathy when you complain that Humakt cultists really suck at negotiation and their ambushing skills are negligible, and Eurmalis are much better at deception.

Having just last week (May 2022) run about 80% of the The Smoking Ruin (TSR), I'd say this thread you are looking at is dead accurate, as is this related one: https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/12205-smoking-ruin-questions-spoilers/#comment-187710 It could stand a GMing-friendly second edition: I agree about needing Treya's story in a clear form. In general I would have benefited from some NPCs' key speeches being clearly written out, rather than implied. TSR has a lot of instances where the GM needs to skip back and forth in the book, which is very inconvenient to do during play. Any of us who actually run it will have had to make substantial notes with page references ... and it's not a bad idea to buy the PDF so as to copy and paste items into your notes in a handier format. For examples, I would rather have had the NPC stats on their own pages rather than mixed into the surrounding text, because it's hard mechanically to flop between p.93 and 94 for Thinala, or p.94-96-97 for Vamargic. What I really think The Smoking Ruin needs most is a set of flow charts. Yes there is an overview, pp.35-48, but it didn't prepare me for the following issues: There are several sets of contingencies written out, but they require reference to previous Acts of the adventure on other pages, and things that appear minor on first reading can have a major effect on the contingencies, so without aid it's easy for the GM to drop the ball. items important to the contingencies in later acts begin in Act 1 not only with Treya and Daravala Chan, but also in interactions with other members of Leika's court and even the adventurers' choice of inns. Act 3 has a major contingency, :"Agents of Leika" that depends on these and the three bullet points on p.68 should be important to the flow chart. This data needs to be kept, because this flow chart links to Act 5. The choice of routes from Duck Point, keyed to the p.63 map, has unclear text: p.62 "the adventurers could go one of three ways; a) through Dragon pass...." but never does have routes b) and c) identified as such. I did puzzle it out, because I do do GM prep - but this could have been organized so as not to waste my time, by clearly and briefly listing the three routes and THEN detailing them, instead of detailing (a) before even giving a brief description of b) and c). Another part which could stand a GM-friendly edit in later editions is the approach, "Approaching the East side" and "approaching the West side". There are if-thens on p.80 that I take as another opportunity to flowchart. And the advice to the GM to ensure that the party encounters One-Eye no matter where they enter should be extremely prominent, should be the first sentence in "encountering One Eye Bugleg" and IMHO should be repeated both in the overview and in the approach section. Why? Because One-Eye is key to the sense of wonder that this adventure can deliver, not only to her own but also to Treya's pieces. Entry to the ruins could really stand to be flow charted. Several of the locations have items of description that are important to contingencies, and IMHO they need to be bolded, indicating "read this out loud!". One-Eye's lengthy sequence has contingencies that link to Vamargic and also to Treya's fate. Besides this, wherever the party enters it will have an effect on the Vamargic part. The Vamargic part has two important bullet pointed lists of prior contingencies on pp. 94 and 95. Right now there is no handy reference to these nested contingencies, and you don't want the GM to accidentally or naively blow past any of them. Well, on to Act 5 next week. At this point I am sad that I was not fully aware of the events in Act 1 that can or will affect contingencies in Act 5, and did not give enough emphasis to those events and NPCs. Act 5 will go all right, but I wish I had been fully aware of those potentially interesting details in the interactions with Leika's court. Despite all my gripes, WITH enough GM prep it's a good adventure. But what's "enough"? There are too many opportunities to fumble its subtleties as it is currently written. If I run it a second and third time I may do better.

I am seeing Waha as a cult that tends toward the shaman path. If you go with the flow and eventually go for shaman then you get Waha's benefits to shamans: four bonus shamanic powers jump you from newbie to powerful. But this does require a GM who provides the opportunities.

If you run on the principle that the gods like the odor of the burning fat and also like incense, Then the poor man 's version of this is barbecuing pork ribs (the fat drips into the fire) and putting some rosemary twigs on the fire before you put the meat on. Smells pretty good. And you know how people anthropomorphize their gods.

Because it ( the cow ) is living and so has a spirit. When you sacrifice the cow presumably some portion of its MPs or POW feeds the god. When your character sacrifices MPs or POW that feeds the god.

There will be social benefits from sacrificing an edible animal. Most people don't get much meat any other way, see the income level notes. Let's say a trader is new in town, sells his goods and goes to the local shrine to worship and recharge MPs. If he wants to get on the right side of people he hardly knows, bring a sacrificial pig for a barbecue plus an amphora if beer. But this needs to be role played and GM'd. Hard to write down the social benefits as a rule.

Personally, with no unusual insight into what Jeff is actually producing, I would hope to see these things and estimate a decent likelihood that my hopes may come true: - We have already seen the pencil draft Sartar tribal and clan maps, so I expect to see cleaner versions of those either in the Gazetteer or the Sartar book(s). - Detail on all the tribes of Sartar, and some information about all the clans and their larger villages. Explaining some history, leading personalities, temples and cult membership (which Jeff often comments on), adventure hooks, specialties. - Detail (to the standard already published about Clearwine & Jonstown) not only on Boldhome but also on other cities not previously covered: Wilmskirk, Swenstown, Duck Point. Runegate... explaining some history, leading personalities, temples, markets, available services & commodities, a few adventure hooks, layouts of the cities. - Information not only on the human areas, but also on the elder races: Aldyami and Uz areas. Even a little on the Mostali: Dwarf Clifis in on the map, and a couple more places were mentioned in the Heroquest/Questworlds books. And detail on the Dragonewt areas in Sartar: I'm personally not sure whether Dragon's Eye is included in Sartar (it's on the Northern Sartar map, but I doubt Sartar's writ ever ran there), but High Wyrm is. And the Telmori - either as a tribe or an elder race, they are there. A few notes on the Creekstream River system newtlings would be nice. - Information about non-urban places of religious and magical importance, like Larnste's table, Hill of Orlanth Victorious, 3-Emerald Temple. - Some information on trade & commodities, roads, and inns would be appreciated. There are all those inns on the Northern Sartar map, which looks like a sign that something will be published on them. What I doubt will be included, although the Northern Sartar map in the starter set shows them, is areas not under Sartarite political control as of 1626ST: Far Point, Alone, Upland Marsh, the Bush Ranges. And that map is "Northern Sartar" - so what would be on a Southern Sartar map? Sun Dome County which is right on the edge? Whitewall? Exactly where does Southern Sartar become Heortland and take us into the Holy Country book(s)?