Squaredeal Sten

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.

Impressive stuff. Will the first 1,000 be signed, numbered copies? I await the book (s).

I have not personally experienced a good role-play of Sacred Time, and this is probably a challenge to most GMs. So I'm definitely not speaking from authority here, but- It seems to me that how deep your players get into the Sacred time ceremonies depends on (1) How "realistic" [true to the Gloranthan background] you want to be, and (2) their status in the community. If you really want to treat them as junior members of the community then they are not going to take the role of Orlanth. That's for a rune level. The player's first Sacred Times as an initiate, they are likely to be spectators who contribute magic points. But they might guard their own cult's ceremony - or might guard another cult's ceremony. In later Sacred Times they may get to be supporting characters. Also think about what supporting initiate functions might be: Can they be stagehands for the play in the temple? Not all Initiates get to be performers. It might be a step up when the priest taps them to build the fire for the sacrifice, a minor worship task, or to grill the meat and pass out skewers. And they get a worship roll, and if they do it right then they gain because it's a stressful situation for a newbie. This is NOT going to engage your players for a whole play session, but why should it? Your players mostly came to your table wanting to make their POW gain rolls for the year. If they fumble the worship roll they get some of the blame for whatever bad thing happens afterward - so have a bad thing in mind in case someone fumbles - maybe they are told "you broke it, you fix it" and that's an adventure hook. Still later in their careers, as senior initiates, they may actually get to help reenact the myth. Maybe they are in a short-handed place, a little town like Apple Lane. Not enough rune levels, so an initiate gets to step up and be, I don't know, Issaries while the local Wind Lord NPC is Orlanth. This is an honor they get if they are on good terms with the priest, so their roleplaying interactions with that NPC over the past few adventures can result in a reward, maybe in game terms an extra Worship roll and a Reputation gain. (Hm, I wonder what the Sacred Time ceremony for Uleria would be like. Just a thought.) In any of these steps there is a chance of disaster, the Summons of Evil just happens to bring in your real chaos creature. Or the neighboring troll tribe decides to weaken the humans' magic for next year. But don't make that a certainty the first time around, else your players will know that every Sacred Time they are going into a fight and it will get boring. Just my thoughts. And much different from actually writing the adventure.

Congratulations on going hard copy!

I don't claim to know which is the "correct" way to handle it, but i will tell you that recently in play option 2 was what I did because 2 seemed the obvious way to handle it. Both the fear and the rune got ordinary successes, seemed roughly in balance, and so my character fought with a projectile weapon but did not move forward until someone else led the way, an event which I interpreted as an additional motivation. And then threw a javelin, did not charge to melee but instead received the attack.

that would seem to require invention of an anhinga saddle or collar - as i don't see attachment points for anything on this sleek looking bird.

Wooden axles! It was good enough for the Egyptians, so it should be good enough for the Ducks. As for reinforcement - at most, some rivets. " Tires were of leather": https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2015/11/02/egyptian-chariot-warfare/ Of course some inentiveness and adaptation would be necessary to make an amphibious chariot.

The frog pictured above looks capable of pulling a small amphibious chariot. I have doubts about a two- or more frog chariot though, because training your frogs to pull as a team would challenge an amphibian's low INT. And duck cavalry (froggelry?) mounted on frogs that big should be capable of some tremendous jumps. This opens up a whole new realm of cavalry tactics: When confronted by a phalanx, they jump over it and take it in the rear.

Have you considered selling frameable copies / posters of some of this art? Just a thought. Anyway, these new items are hereby budgeted on my end.

This should tell everyone that security is important. Post guards so you don't have zero warning. Companies should have a picket line to get minutes' warning. Armies have a covering force so they get a half hour's warning, enough to form up. How realistic!

Since the planned Gamemaster's guide / Gamemaster sourcebook is not yet published - what have you found works most satisfactorily as "minimum characteristics" methods for adventurer characteristics / adventurer generation? Or do you just have your players roll 3D6 and suck it up if they roll a 3? Pros and cons of that method? Context: The sidebar on p.53 of Runequest-Roleplaying in Glorantha: " ...Therefore it is Perfectly All Right to: Reroll any die result of 1... "

Ah well. Perhaps for a future publication.

So does this include family history timeline, cultural skills, and likely occupations for a character originating from Glamour?

Page 23, ship characteristics: Speed is listed as a characteristic, but none of the vessel types has a speed stat in the table on that page. I know this is a complex issue, because speed for galleys will depend on the rowers' stamina, and speed for sailing ships will depend on the speed and direction of the wind. Galleys with a sail set is a further complexity. Just a thought for a second edition.

And now that the Red Book of Magic is published (December 2020), Crel is proven correct: Sanctify is Duration (special) and " When the ceremonies cease, the spell effects expire. " So it's good for a ceremony of any length. But unless your ceremony is continuous it will expire some time. So it won't create a Temple. We need that wyter.

It strikes me that a letter on parchment would be a two step process: In step 1 the scribe takes dictation by writing with a stylus on a board covered with wax. (This is documented for the Romans, it was their equivalent of a notebook, there are even archaeological finds - but there is no reason to think this particular technology is not pre-Roman.) Any drafting and editing is done in this step. Erasures are done by smoothing the wax, cheap and easy. Alternatively this can be done on wet clay, but that makes your notebook less portable. In step 2 the scribe puts ink on the parchment. This is copying from the wax so there should not be many erasures.

I haven't paged through its 110 pages trying to compare every paragraph with the Guide to Glorantha. And I don't have the GTG memorized. Anyway this predates GTG, copyright 2007 vs. 2016. It's certainly got more material than the page and a fraction on Aldryami in Glorantha Sourcebook, and I haven't even verified that the mythology section matches the Sourcebook in every detail. My memory for pre-Time Gloranthan gods is pretty leaky. Anyway- A LOT of discussion and extrapolation of the psychology of a mobile, intelligent plant. Elf lifesense as a mental link to the forest which includes [but is not limited to] other Aldryami of all sorts from runners to dryads. The idea that over time lifesense allows a forest to reach consensus, and therefore elves don't usually make quick decisions. And most elves will not be familiar with economic concepts like ownership, purchase, and money - but instead live in vegetable communism. An elf communities section with four communities / villages. Enough to build on, not runnable adventures. A big section on Playing the Aldyami, but this doesn't necessarily match RQG stat generation, nor would I expect it to do so across editions. Aldryami professions, including "good leaf" = 'ambassador' which may not mean what you expect it to mean at first reading. A short list of plant poisons. A section on Actions & Emotions. I am sure that this section is not canon and I would not bet that character generation done with it will match any eventual Chaosium RQG Aldryami book, which as far as I know is NOT on the list of future publications. But it does have a touch of RQG's more extensive background generation compared with, say, RQ2. If you want your characters to have roots then Aldryami will be your ideal, since these elves can root and photosynthesize in a starvation situation. It would take a pretty dedicated roleplayer to do these Aldryami the way they are written up. A section on Aldryami religion which starts with canon but extrapolates - or was done with access to more Gloranthan references than I am familiar with. (Which would not be hard.) There is enough here to bear considerable re reading.

Thanks, Runeblogger. It took me a few months but this week I finally got a reasonably priced copy of that book. It is good stuff on Aldryami motivations and behavior, though not canon. Now if only Chaosium would find an author to expand on it with ready to play scenarios to bring its observations to life, as Trollpack does for trolls.

For some time I have wondered why that mask line doesn't include common cults like Issaries; and has "air runes" but not a mask with all of Orlanth's runes; but does have an unlikely combination like Xiola Umbar. I suppose it's a matter of an artist taking an interest.

Yes, interesting. So the shield skill is a later thought, after an initial intent to just make shield parry % the same as weapon parry %. Perhaps a result of later playtesting after the initial design notes? Personally i live well with the shield parry rules as they are. It doesn't rub me the wrong way. And when i learned to fence it was foil fencing, no shield, so it's "obvious" to me that shield parry skill is NOT always linked to weapon parry skill.

Congratulations to Jaye on the new job. Did Chaosium not have a dedicated art director before?

I don't understand the assumption that the elemental will turn on you. I was under the impression that it would follow its own preferences,"acts in accordance with its nature" but those might be to wander off rather than to fight. The Bestiary p.177 says "fire elementals burn flammable materials within reach, earth elementals sink into the soil, darkness elementals flee light, and air elementals breeze around." also p.176 inset, "An elemental will not move unless told to do so. However, an elemental automatically attacks anything caught within or on top of it." Therefore it seems to me that if you don't summon it on top of yourself you should be fairly safe.

Real World, for what it's worth - I get the impression that a scale mail hauberk was a one- size -fits- most item. Probably +/- more than two SIZ points. It's essentially a metal reinforced overcoat. Think large - average- or small. Helmets would be worn with a leather or cloth cap or liner, to cushion the head when someone actually hits the helmet. Adjust the thickness of your liner and you have re-sized the helmet. Helmets were actually mass produced at least once in historical but still ancient times (Roman empire, production in Gaul) and I doubt they had exact sizes like modern hats.

It might be in order to do a Divination first, asking whether the uncle is alive or dead. How to do that would depend on what cult the uncle is in, since Divination can only tell you what is known to your god. I would assume that a god would know whether one of his own cultists was alive. Perhaps this would be the shaman's professional advice. Kind of a "You need to consult a specialist" answer. If the uncle is dead then the shaman could search for the uncle's spirit to question it, if someone wanted to know when, where, or how the uncle died. If alive of course that would be a fruitless search, and how would the shaman know when to call the search off? I would say it's the GM's call how difficult the shaman sees a search for a specific spirit being. Me, I've never personally searched for any spirit.