Squaredeal Sten

I've been seeing it too. i was wondering whether the problem was my own machine, or my ISP, but you've taken a load off my mind, Bill the Barbarian.

Nick Brooke, thanks for the link to the Masters thesis. I am reading it now - i also note that Rome was Iron Age, and the little I have read about Bronze Age economics indicates it was less monetized: more temple, village, and clan based, more emphasis on trade in favors than trade for cash. Even though the origin of banking is Bronze Age, and the origin of long distance trade is Stone Age. So when I think about Gloranthan economics, although I may calculate in money, I try to remember that money is a New Thing, and that giving a feast or a luxury or any other benefit to an individual or to the community may be - a display of, or in pursuit of, or maintenance of, social rank, or -a move to accumulate obligations, which may be called on later, and a lot of consumption may move through those channels rather than for cash. Remember, people kill and die for social rank, it's a Big Thing now, or a century ago, or ten thousand years ago; or on Glorantha. Now how to role-play that out ..... that's the challenge.

And I'm still learning to use those tricks, thank you Nick Brooke and Andrew L. Montgomery! Working in that direction, I drafted up this NPC worksheet, which may be handy - feel free to use or improve it. (attached PDF) short NPC sheet PDF2.pdf

Market fees: The Travels of Biturian Varosh reflects that a merchant (or anyone else) selling in an organized market must pay a fee for the privilege. (Cults of Prax p.39, "Having viewed the market, I went to its High Priest and bought a booth site. He grumbled about my payment with furs, but I didn't get to choose my location either. " and p.59 " merely demanding that he fulfill his traders' obligation and sell me a place upon which to display my goods. He did what he had to do. He gave me the worst spot, a soggy plot near the latrines.") GMs: Do you have a merchant(s) in your campaign? if so, do you set that market fee, and if so how? Or do you gloss over it? Biturian appears to have paid a fee - but no indication of what it actually was. It seems to me that such a fee is how the Issaries or Etyries temple / market is kept up: Someone probably has to pay for casting the Market rune spell - and at a fixed market / temple in a city, it's probably income for the priest who runs the market. Do you run it per-site, so many square meters? Does Biturian the rich merchant pay the same as a farmer selling carrots?

Or maybe that 20% doesn't have to be sorted out, the city leadership being essentially the same as leadership of the city god cult. The city also gets other revenue, likely taxing at the gate and probably form the market. Yes, that's a good idea, assuming 20% of the rent goes off the top in tithes - Which means that to make a net 60L a year you need a gross 75L in rental income. So at 10% return a landlord needs about 750L worth of building(s).

if you're considering structure - you might think about adding a column for King's Highway. As in p.92 of the Heroquest book Sartar Companion. (Obviously that book applies to the pre-Dragonrise time it's written for, as "Lunar patrol" should not be encountered in 1626 and later -)

That makes sense to me, though it doesn't deal with the question of what the landlord may owe in order to have use of the land that the housing stands on. This does suggest that a successful adventurer might invest in an apartment building. That's a useful thought, Akhorahil.

MM, no, I was asking about just a house, not a farm. The farm would seem to be a different and more restricted case, as it assumes the adventurer is a farmer.

I'm using my copy tonight - it's well worth it- but Errata: Where it says "Sakkars (RQB p. 143):" on p.9 of the PDF, that doesn't match RQB: Sakkars might better be labeled saber-toothed cats, and that is on p.158. It also says on the same page, "Pig dog (RQB p. 143)" but p.143 is crocodiles and deer, while pig dog is on p.152 of RQB.

So the modest house, - maybe not so modest because it has a chimney, which is an innovation - AFTER acquiring the right to build on the land, costs about 200L to construct. Then if capital gets a 10% rate of return it should rent for 20L per year. If the tenant handles maintenance. Plus whatever the land tenure cost is?

When the circumstances are right for Adventurers to want to get the use of a house, how do you price that - or handle it in other ways? We can limit the question to Sartar and surrounding lands if you want. I do note that in general land tenure is from the local Earth temple, probably through the clan or village, and not by sale and registering a deed at a county courthouse. I would expect that in cities it might be possible to sub-lease, though. In Heortling villages there may not be many vacant dwellings, since steads will have longhouses which are the dwellings of extended families, who will always need them; and cotters will have less impressive huts or cottages, but will need them to shelter themselves. The RQG book has no standard cost on renting a whole house, only costs for inns. (p.413) - but I would presume that rent on an average house would not be greater than a year's entire Free SOL of 60L which covers an entire household. Presumably this would also vary between rural and urban areas.

Re. "Your Merchant Will Vary": As a guideline, the merchant's % markup on price should vary with (A) Expected speed of turn-over of the item (B) Overhead cost of keeping the item, (C) The size of the market the merchant is in. Examples: (A) If the merchant is selling carrots in accord with French Desperate Windchild's example, I judge that he expects this stock to turn over in a week, probably on market day. (If it doesn't the carrots will be dried up and less saleable.) If he maintains a stock of all goods worth 600L, and is in local trade only (and not selling in Sacred Time), then each week to break even on a Free Standard of Living(60L) he only needs to make a profit of 1/40th of that or 15L, = 2.5%, without accounting for compounding on his rate of return. But If you account for compounding then a 0.3% margin will provide that. [1.003^40 = 1.127 so he actually needs a hair less margin, but let's deal in round numbers here.] That is AFTER and in addition to margin for overhead and risk. On the other hand if your merchant expects to have to keep the goods on hand for a year before it sells, then he needs a 10% margin to break even on a Free Standard of Living(60L). Our matrix will probably not sell as fast as carrots. If the merchant expects it to sit in his house for a year then the margin should be 10% before item (B), overhead. (B) Overhead cost: This is the fee for selling in a market, or the cost of maintaining a shop. Plus any guards, caravan animals etc. Clearly overhead can be significant if your goods need a guard or if you run a caravan. Bronze Age through Medieval Real world merchants' homes would also be their shops, YGMV, but applied to the merchant's assumed stock of 600L, a house would seem to be included in the Standard Of Living for a merchant operating in a fixed location. The book has no standard cost on renting a whole house, only costs for inns. (p.413) - but presumably rent on an average house would not be greater than a year's entire Free SOL of 60L which covers an entire household. Presumably this would also vary between rural and urban areas. This is worth its own discussion thread. A local merchant might keep an item as valuable as a matrix on his own body, so would not necessarily employ a guard for it. He might expect a return on use of the Rune spell "Lock", though, if he kept it in a strongbox. So the merchant's fee for selling in the local market would seem to be the significant cost here. YGMV for that fee. But the local Issaries priest expects fees to cover maintaining the market and to contribute to his own SOL. So market fee setting would seem to be a significant part of the merchant's mark-up. This is worth its own discussion thread. For a traveling merchant overhead cost is obviously higher. To the extent that he stays in inns or caravanserais, if the private-room rate of 5L per day applies (even if his whole group sleeps in that room), that will be a major increase in overhead. If the 'dormitory' rate of 3c applies then a whole caravan can sleep cheaper than that. And animal, wagons - those things don't last for ever, depreciate, and may be casualties of violence or accident on the road. (C) The size of the market: This is "place of transaction" that Shiningbrow refers to: Big cities have more customers, and more rich customers, and so will support a higher rate of turn-over of the merchant's stock. Given competition that should drive the merchant's margins down. In a distant village maybe only the Chief and Ring would be customers for our merchant's matrix, and if they don't buy it our matrix may sit for years, so the merchant should hang on to the matrix there only if he expects to soak an eventual buyer like an adventurer wandering through. Selling in the local market on market day provides more customers, because people come from the countryside and other villages and also traders roaming the roads. That is what makes it worth while to pay the market fee, it's a trade-off with rate of turn-over of the merchant's stock of goods. It's also a fee for entry to the area at all: In a distant village the ring might object to a merchant just setting up his own market on the edge of town. But in Nochet there may be a thousand potential customers, and our matrix may sell in a week or a season. So larger places give quicker turn-over and therefore the mark-up that a merchant needs will be less. Based on all this, I object to a single rule of thumb on mark-up in matrix sales and urge adjusting to circumstances based on expected rate of turnover, overhead, and the size of the market.

Probably not going to happen soon - I'll bet you a clack not - because Chaosium's explicit policy is that they don't begin talking about time until a book is laid out, and don't promise an in-store date for anything until the product is actually printed, and even then they are vague and don't give an exact date. They love to give dates, but have been burned by giving dates too quickly. Here, read this [Oct. 20 entry by Rick Meints], it's explanatory and also good for a chuckle: https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/4064-upcoming-glorantha-publications/page/13/?tab=comments#comment-202206 For current examples of how that policy works out: (1) The hard copy Red Book of Magic is announced for June, and as I recall it was printed in April and is in container ships headed for you and me now. See this thread for explanation of what I refer to. https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/13738-red-book-of-magicno-print-version/?tab=comments#comment-214467 (2) Art for the cults book is displayed, and makes me drool - but no date yet, the book hasn't even been laid out. https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/13704-art-in-the-cults-book/page/4/?tab=comments#comment-221823 (3) The proofs for the starter set were displayed this week, but no date given. https://www.chaosium.com/blogrunequest-starter-set-design-diary-7-printers-proofs-are-back/ Follow Rick Meints for his frequent and detailed explanations of why. But to summarize it, there is no upside for Chaosium: If they make the date there is no unusual reward, but if they don't make it then they get bad-mouthed. And there are a lot of opportunities to fall behind a production schedule.

I'm not convinced that most matrices will have conditions on them, because as I understand it that requires spending more POW on the matrix. I would judge that most matrices that are really powerful might have such conditions, but not your garden variety 2-point Bladesharp matrix, since a couple of conditions would double its POW cost. Now can I reference that? See page 250 of RQG, "There are six classes of enchantments. Each class costs 1 point of current POW to include, no matter how complex..."

How do you personally set a reference price for a spirit spell matrix? I don't see any advice in the RQG book about setting a price for a spirit magic spell matrix made with Spell Matrix Enchantment (p.265 of RQG). It's pretty clearly a GM judgment thing at least until the GM's book comes out. I request advice. There are prices on individual items in published material, but a lot of that is old RQ2 material, written before the RQG deflation. I will say the few prices on possible magic loot - one-of-a kind items -in the slipcase set's Gamemaster's Adventure seem low. You can say these things are not bought and sold often, because making one requires a piece of your soul (sacrifice of POW points) but that's just sidestepping the issue. Even if a matrix is acquired as loot, at some point an adventurer may have reason to sell one. Like needing cash, or trading up, or the matrix being redundant to one already owned. Or the matrix may be for a spell forbidden to your character's cult. Or the adventurer may be a merchant whose business it is to buy and re-sell one. Or an adventurer may need to set a value for division of loot. Or you as a GM may need to set a value on it in the course of bargaining in payment of a ransom or to judge payment or non-payment of tithes. (Assuming that tithes are on income in kind and not just hard coin, YGMV - but if in your Glorantha tithes are only on coin then your adventurers should bargain to be paid in cattle). If matrices are not on the market often then maybe it's a seller's market, but that doesn't produce a reference price. I have searched but have not found previous discussion of this on this forum, maybe i haven't guessed the right words. .

I'm thinking that such an elf would essentially be parentless, at worst like the Rumanian orphans under the Ceaucescu regime (but with more attention to the elf's survival - the dryad would be annoyed if her sprout was allowed to wither); at best like a child of royalty raised by the servants, or fostered out. That would tend to produce psychopathic humans, or humans attached to a foster parent, but who can tell what the result would be for an intelligent plant? Real world does not apply here.

As I understand it from the Bestiary, the answer is different for different kinds of Aldryami: "Yellow elves are all male. they mate with dryads...." Brown elves can either reproduce with dryads or each other, being male or female Green elves are male or female Humans believe the male-female pairs produce a seed which they plant and about two years later they harvest an elf child Therefore I would expect an elf born of a dryad to have one most influential parent, the dryad; and no significant grandparent. The dryad would cause the elf to be educated, presumably by other elves, but these would be more fosters and mentors than parents. The family history of such an elf would be the history of the particular forest or grove. Yes i can believe they would identify with an "initiate group" but is that a group of elves initiated in year 16xx, or a group initiated in a particular Aldrya subcult? Beats me, your thoughts when you used the phrase? But given the tie between the elf and the dryad, and the dryad and the forest, I would expect the dryad to be the significant person. And not much history outside of that particular forest's history. I'm not sure there would be many yearly events to roll. In contrast those green and brown elves harvested from sexual reproduction between elves [edit] will know their parents and grandparents. They could have a significant family history, though the forest's history would also be significant. I would treat the forest like a clan or tribe and do a human-like history, but only events in which the Aldryami participate.

sure enough/

If you put leaves on those bows and painted them green instead of mettaliic, you'd have acceptable Elf Bows. I hadn't been aware of that mins line. What are the other weapons you's have to swap out?

I just started an online game, session zero is next Friday evening. I will say there are at least three Runequest Facebook groups, and I got my players through them. I will also say Chaosium's "online games getting started" page https://www.chaosium.com/online-gaming-getting-started/ is nice but not sufficient: It would be good to also have a single rallying point to generate a critical mass of players.

Great summary!

I have found that in order to keep track of how I got to my final skill% result in character generation, It helped me to make a table (spreadsheet) for skills with these column headings: Skill Characteristic p.57 keep separate Base p.61 Cultural p.60-63 Occupa-tional History Cult (p.74) Personal (p.79) Total from base thru personal p.63-69 Having this record enabled me to (1) Take a break and come back to the task (2) recheck my work.

The priest should sacrifice to earn more rune points. However I agree with your next line, " What we also need are strong scenarios that play heavily into community life." For most cults the priest's adventures should be community oriented, because the priest owes 90% of his or her time to the cult and presumably the community. That does not necessarily mean the priest stays close to home, though.

Seems to me Thane is a rank. It's like Staff sergeant in the army. What do Staff Sergeants do? Sometimes they lead infantry squads, sometimes they may be platoon sergeants, sometimes lead platoons when the company is short on people. They may be tank commanders. They may lead survey parties. They may lead howitzer or missile firing sections, but they may also be Chief of Firing Battery if you have no SFC. Sometimes they are a supply sergeant, or a mess sergeant, or a motor sergeant. Staff sergeant is a rank, not an occupational specialty or a job description. Similarly, Thane is a rank not a job description. But yes, your list includes several Thane job descriptions. IMHO yes, several different people would normally do several different functions. The bodyguard / housecarl is not going to be overseeing the harvest or heading the craft guild. So when they take a Thane job. the functions and responsibilities need to be defined.