Squaredeal Sten

What happens if you play it straight? The hippogriff riders being a non canon resource will make the battle slightly different. If the players think of it they could do aerial reconnaissance, and what they learn will depend on Scan and Battle skill rolls. Then they have to get that info back to the commander. Who may or may not change plans. The hippogriff riders can throw down javelins, or even rocks, which probably get a plus to damage from falling from a height; and cast spells, which they could have done on foot anyway. Then they and their mounts are subject to be hit with all kinds of magic from Disrupt on up. This is a battle after all, so large troop units. And these riders are clearly visible in the sky, unless they say they intend to fly nap of the earth. What happens when the Hippogriff rider is seen by 100 enemy, of whom 10 have Disrupt, and who cast it in the same round? Assume 50% target the mount, 50% the rider. What happens if someone on the ground casts Befuddle and succeeds? Now the hippogriff is essentially unguided to follow his or her own wishes, which may not be to participate in a battle. What happens if ... Darkwall (do they fly on instruments?) , Demoralize, Firearrow, Multimissile... now go though the list of rune spells. The possibilities!

Helmet beetle stats - Bestiary guard beetle stats say 6 point chitin. It doesn't give stats for helmet beetles. The beetle types in general take stats from guard beetles, though ham beetles are listed and given 2 point chitin. However most are larger than the helmet beetle description. Trollpack - it's actually "Helmet weevils", in a list of insects but no stats on that page: " HELMET WEEVIL These beetles are raised in heaps of large nuts in the Kingdom of Night. Their armor is tough enough to withstand a sword thrust, and the trolls use their shells for head plates. " It is not in the "industrial Insects" list. So - if halved, the 3 pts or equivalant to a composite helm? On the other hand if not halved, - many of the trolls with stats have heavier armor then 3, plenty of 6s= 7 with troll skin. Nor is there an indication of how to calculate ENC for beetle shell items.

How can they tell who is illuminated? divination?

Just reading Trollpack, and the question occurred to me: How tough is a helmet beetle shell helmet? How heavy? Or is it dependent on workmanship, that is its hit absorption could go anywhere from 2 to 6 depending on the crafter? RQG p. 235 helmet classes depend both on the material (leather or plate) and the coverage of the helmet. Material design Absorbs ENC Leather hood or hat 1 0,5 Leather cap 2 0.5 Plate composite helm 3 0.5 Plate open helm 4 1 Plate Closed helm 5 1 Plate Full helm 6 2

Entertainer on RQG p.66 has +30% for all of dance, sing, and play instrument. This seems to me to correspond to a video of a Turkish epic poem being performed that I saw a long time ago. The editorial that came with it included the opinion that Homeric poetry was originally performed the same way. In which case memory would indeed be an important item for the performer. Wish I could find a link for that video - it was probably pre- personal computer. Well here is a link to a similar performance, Manas: And a second link to a scholarly beckground video. If the model is Bronze Age - then writing poems down may not have occurred to anyone so early. As far as i know the available RW examples are early iron age, even though the original compositions were bronze age. This earliest fragment of Gilgamesh is from the Turkish museum, dated to about 800BC, and Bronze Age is evidently regarded as ending 1200Bc in the Near East.. And given the widespread illiteracy of the Gloranthan background, most poetry would be memorized and not in books. So Monty Lovering seems most reasonable to me.

I believe the elemental runes start at 60%, 40%, and 20%, you choose which rune get which %. Look at RQG page 45, Step 3 Rune Affinities, / elemental runes / Choosing your elemental runes, 2nd sentence of the first paragraph. Then you get to add in cultural rune bonuses. And maybe some from your family and individual history. For any runes besides those three you can gain them in play, when the GM says you can take 10% in Plant rune that's it.

That's a nice catalog of sub-adventure hooks. The decision for a party to attempt long distance trade is one thing, but you have listed the daily or seasonal obstacles and exercises of ingenuity which are the subject of play, in other words adventure hooks for each session. This is good advice, and thank you.

I love your story, Styopa! That's why the great big matrix approach is a dead end. Not because it won't work, but because we all have something better to do than make that world sized matrix. Like actually play and have a life. So make the players, not the GM, worry about whether a given trade route will actually pay. They can discover that step by step, while if we discuss it to a conclusion the GM can employ a page worth of simple rules and not build the world machine matrix. (Is the Mostali problem with fixing the world machine something similar?) Your story makes me think of the time back in about 1971 when I decided that with access to a computer that actually had a hard drive, I would write a brute-force redistricting program for a term project for a Poli Sci class. In Fortran IV, which might as well be ancient Sumerian cuneiform today. What I learned was that's not a workable approach. Which is actually valuable knowledge. I found another more conventional term project. Yes, in 1971 there were hard drives.

Skill roll - supplemented by observation. That is, if the player or party roleplays going there, then the GM who operates the world should decide what they may see and evaluate as valuable back home. With a bias toward spotting something and perhaps more things the more exotic the environment. On the other hand if the player wants to ask some other merchant who goes there to bring something back - that's a Lore roll to know about it. Iron sword? Rare and valuable anywhere, but more available and slightly less rare near dwarves who produce iron. So moving the iron sword from Pamltela to Peloria should not guarantee a price increase because it's not a particular export-import combination for the areas, iron is not more plentiful in either place. It is only well chosen imports that will get a price increase over distance. War dog or war horse - the horse's value is actually in RQG, the dog's will have to depend on the GM's imagination and concept of the area. But horses are rare (and therefore more valuable) in Pamaltela, so should be more expensive there, might be a well chosen export-import pair. My suggestion is +12.5% per season of travel plus a risk premium set by the GM. Clearwine - a unique product already defined as desirable and given a Sartar price in Chaosium canon material. My suggestion is +12.5% per season of travel plus a risk premium set by the GM, plus some additional arbitrary premium as a unique product, potentially a monopoly if you are the only merchant bringing it into a place where it has not been available before. However this last premium may evaporate when a second, third etc. importer appears. Coconut - Evaluate roll to recognize whether or not it will sell. if the Evaluate roll is a success and IF the GM conceives of it as actually a popular import (a well chosen export-import), then the GM will set a base price based on its status as a common foodstuff in the place of origin. +12.5% per season of travel plus a risk premium set by the GM, plus some additional arbitrary premium if the GM defines it as a unique product in his or her Glorantha. I have not seen a canon reference to coconuts. In all cases the risk premium is part risk of banditry and encounters with Walktapi, and must be set by the GM because only the GM produces Walktapi. It strikes me that we should have an evaluation of the difficulty of transport to an area, but that's not part of the market price formula: Transport by ship over the ocean is easier and faster than transport by manpacking the item overland over mountains: The ship moves more volume over more kilometers per man-day, so the GM must ensure that this overhead cost is reflected in the campaign. You have to pay and feed the crew, you have to own and maintain the ship. You can have a lot of capital tied up in a ship, they don't grow on trees unless you are very specialized Aldryami. It may be that a given item will sell well, but the potential price premium won't pay for the transport overhead cost. That's why people import spices from Asia to Europe, but don't import bricks over the same route even though they may be exotic bricks. If your players insist on importing bricks from Pamaltela to Peloria they should lose money. Perhaps some as ballast? OK, that's one solution to the logistical issue but it will limit quantity.

Oh, I had no problem roleplaying it. But the GM just couldn't stand it and found it a distraction from what he wanted to do, got angry. It wasn't a "solve though roleplaying" issue. I'm no longer in that campaign.

I have recently noticed that in Volume II of Guide to Glorantha, page 470, there is a table of "Important trade goods' by region (imports and exports). This is at the end of the "The oceans" chapter. It is at the level of "Dragon Pass", "Holy country", "Lunar Empire", "Teshnos", so is pretty macro. It is an inset in a larger section that has paragraphs discussing various trade goods. So it's not as if there is NO canon attention to trade. I applaud Ian_W's opening post, which does point to " Campaigns where merchanting is a thing ". He's not trying to force it on you if you don't like that in your campaign. But I tell you it's hard to run an Issaries in a hack and slash campaign. And I like the suggestion about skill rolls to discover tradeable goods. However I have misgivings about using rolls against Homeland Lore on both ends, because that would indicate that a really long distance trade route is almost impossible to set up. Why? How can the merchant from thousands of miles away have any Lore % for a place he has never been before? Wouldn't it make sense to rule that the more exotic the goods are, the easier it is to recognize something that will sell back home? Lore is a hard item to increase, you evidently have to be taught, though I'd think that every season you spend in a new environment you will learn a little more about it unless you have a very low INT. Why not run the recognition on the far and as an INT roll? Or as Jajagappa suggested a couple of months ago, test against Evaluate skill. Let's talk about this. My own thoughts in another thread don't contradict this approach, did not discuss the mechanics of identifying tradeable goods. Perhaps we can flesh out an adequate, un-complicated method for GMing trade. I also like Joerg's idea that " Finding routes and establishing them as trade routes are a form of Issaries quest, IMO"

Thinking about that- In the context of the Recent Unpleasantness (Lunar conquest through Dragonrise) many young women might reach initiation age with revenge on their minds. Conquering armies often commit atrocities, you've just come off the destruction of Whitewall, the Lunars got as far south as Nochet - I can see this as a situation likely to produce child soldiers in the Real World definition. Their first choice in those years just might be Babeester Gor. Then gods help you if you run into them. They've not been lectured on the law of war.

It's a matter of taste, I suppose: Each heroquest or even heroquest "station" as its own rune spell. It's hard to add to your stock of rune spells, as I understand it this generally happens when you sacrifice POW, which is slow to get and even slower when you are at the high levels who will survive heroquesting. So it seems to me this channels the character into being a specialist in one particular cult legend or even slice of legend, and steers them to repeating one quest. I had thought of my characters' goals as including expanding their cult lore in general, as part of their general goal to be a better _[insert cult] ___, as explained long ago by my first Runequest GM. This just runs counter to that. Is it a big objection? No. The book presents a menu of heroquesting rules for the GM to use, rather than saying this is the way you MUST do it. It's full of good ideas, and I appreciate the lessons of GMing experience being written out. As an example of the very good ideas, the 'cross over' rune spell makes a lot of sense and fills a general-use gap, and gives a specific mechanic that matches the general concept that I already accepted.

Sent my email reply Sept, 2d, Jajagappa.

I am up for that new game. Yes, PM me. guidance on character generation, or premade?

I like it. Don't feel comfortable with some of it, love many other pieces, but it is presented as a buffet you can choose from, and has copious references in its bibliography.

I will commit. This does not look like a highly demanding commitment. I don't see anything that would get in the way.

Play by post as in e-mail? Or text on Discord? Sure, I'd like to try it. We may all learn something. What schedule would you run it on? Nightly or weekly or every three days ..... How will you handle die rolls?

The existing generic on-line "looking for game" sites are not easy places to look for or to find Runequest games. Why? First. because of D&D's market dominance, looking for "Runequest' or "Glorantha" on those sites is like looking for a needle in a haystack. And as I posted yesterday, on Reddit (r/lfg), there isn't even a Runequest tag to search for, so Runequest would be buried in the "other" tags. Many other minority share role playing systems have tags, but not Runequest. And note that looking for a game or for players is forbidden on the Runequest Reddit, it's all theoretically pushed to r/lfg, so I don't think I was looking in the wrong place. Second, there just aren't many needles in that haystack. From examining Reddit and Discord I get the feeling that Runequest players and GMs seldom thought of on-line games until COVID-19 had been around for months. I may be wrong about that. Chaosium may be gathering actual quantitative research on this for all I know, and that would be better than my feelings. But I do know that when I looked for recent posts even mentioning Runequest in those fora I saw very few. I was encouraged when Chaosium produced this new page on their web site: https://www.chaosium.com/runequest-online-play/ but it's only a good start in adapting Chaosium's marketing to the COVID-19 conditions. So I hope there is more to follow.

It's going to be rough finding a RQG game on redddit: r/lfg doesn't even have Runequest in their list of games. As this shows: https://www.reddit.com/r/lfg/wiki/index/formatting#wiki_game_tags

Not bad-ass at all, I did it for work many times and got paid for it. But how did I do it this time? Note that when I put a pencil to it my numbers did change, but not by an order of magnitude. And i estimate in round numbers, so as not to give a false impression of exactness. I started by going to Guide to Glorantha and adding up the population figures for the eight human cultures (they total 53,095,000)and the four major elder Races (they total 13.766,000). Merfolk and the lesser elder races are not enumerated but they ought not to be more numerous than those who are enumerated. So total enumerated = 66,861,000. And those intelligent entities are about 4:1 human. Next I needed an estimate of what percentage of that population is going to be heroquesting. Exclude children. Exclude lay members. Here's one big assumption: Heroquesters, at least those in leading roles of other-world heroquests, are either rune level or suicidal. I recalled, but can't now reference, a statement that about 15% of the (adult?) are initiates, and that the percentage is higher in Sartar. Then a second big assumption: 10% of the initiates are rune level. That's probably generous: In your games all the players are initiates but how many are rune level? On the other hand published material will show several rune levels in a town or small city of 500-2000 population, and why assume those who are named are all there are? There is room to differ on this estimate. But my own estimate is 1/3 children in the population, which leaves about 44 million adults, of whom about 6 million are initiates. At most. World wide total, in all cults, all species. Then how many heroquests will the average rune level do in a lifetime? I understand they are rare. Many don't do any in a lifetime. Characters are spoken of if they have completed one or two. They get reputation for it. I concluded that many rune levels never heroquest and the average do one. Folks who have heroquested five or ten times are rare, perhaps because the pot that goes to the well too often gets broken. And how many years of heroquesting do you get in a lifetime? Look at RQG on aging, people start losing capability at age 40: The annual chance of losing about 1 or 2 characteristic points in any year past 40 is about half. Figure adulthood at 16, initiation at 20-21, and level at age 25 -30 is faster than I would expect. So 10-15 years in your rune level prime, then you begin to slow down and it's best to leave the heroquesting to younger folks. Life expectancy once you are adult may only be to age 50. Glorantha is a violent world and many adults don't make it to 50. The population age pyramid will be a pyramid, fewer ages 30-40 than ages 16-30. Maybe 1/4 of the adults are ages 30+, but not age 50+. So - 6 million initiates on the Gloranthan lozenge, about 1/4 of whom are in the prime heroquesting years = 1.5 million. Of these about 150,000 are rune level. 150,000 rune levels doing 1 heroquest in an active rune level lifetime of maybe 15 years, means 1/15th = 10,000 heroquesters per year. They tend to do to this in parties so the count in leading roles is lower. Let's say (assumption) 1/4 th or 2,500 heroquesters a year in leading roles. Of whom 4/5ths are human so 500 are non human. Spread out over two continents and some islands. That's my horseback estimate. And yes there are at least three major points of uncertainty.

Good point about the immanence of Gloranthan deities. This is something the GM would do well to briefly describe, to add flavor and background. It seems much better than "y'all get yer rune points refilled.". Check your Oratory, jajagappa! And I can see that there is room for someone to publish a "Temple Events" supplement that includes descriptions of these, differentiating in similar poetic terms between the four levels of weekly service, the seasonal holy day at which the initiates expect to gain rune points and maybe a POW roll, describing the events of Sacred time, and a heroquest (which might be included in the Sacred time sequence or not.). Maybe other levels if you think of them: For instance someone casts Sanctify on the road, I would consider that a different level of worship ceremony deserving a 5th description.

Yes, if we use that definition of heroquest then things change a lot. But I had understood that the average worship ceremony on the average minor holy day is a pretty low risk event in which the average initiate does not expect to fight for his or her life. I do await the projected publication of official RQG heroquest material. I'd like to see a model for this idea of a range of heroquest difficulty to match all adventurers. It does seem to me that the initiate attending the usual worship need not expect to get a tremendous divine reward other than the replenishment of rune points.

Just my take on it, which means little, but - Even if you consider that a lot of heroquesting activity takes place during Sacred Time, so there is a definite season for this sport, the odds still seem small. Considering -the relatively small population of Glorantha (millions, not billions of intelligent entities), -and the small fraction of that who are both adults and likely to ever heroquest (basically rune levels, maybe 0.1% to 1% of the population - but have we ever even got a straight answer about the proportion of initiates in the population?), - and the extreme un-likelihood that most of these do so more than a couple of times in their lives, while many will never do do - I estimate that in a given year's Sacred Time 200-1000 individuals are going to have a leading part in a heroquest. And they will be distributed over all localities on two continents, all races, all cults, and all possible quests. Your estimate will vary from mine. I may page through Guide to Glorantha and sharpen up my total world population estimate. My horseback estimate is that the chance of any particular opponent just happening to heroquest when you do seems pretty small. Maybe YOU are heroquesting for the 2nd time this Sacred Time, but I expect that Gorzak the Uz Zorak Zoran rune lord who swings his mace left handed, and has a scar over his right eye and is missing the last joint of his right little finger, who you encountered last time on the hero plane, is not doing it at all this year, let alone Other World heroquesting.. The chances of some troll heroquesting are naturally much better. So if the matching spec is "troll heroquester" and not "Gorzak" then that is easier to fulfill. I would expect that the only way to make these events coincide is that you are right, time means little in the God Time and what's a few days or a week or even a year? Maybe you are encountering a troll who lived 100 years ago in the mundane world. I might also suspect that the incidents of repeatedly encountering the same individual are either reported widely and remembered because they are exceptional anecdotes, or there is indeed some mystical bond that causes two heroquesters - and their choices to heroquest - to synchronize. In which case we kiss free will goodbye and all odds are irrelevant, and we all get to transition from logic to mysticism or illumination.

I looked at it. He is accurate when he says " It is extraordinarily complex and often overwhelms me. To explain this system to others would be difficult...... " I didn't really want to start building a trade matrix in such detail as this: " This is then compared by the total number of times I have found 'gold' associated with places and geographical regions in my source material (an encyclopedia, examined page by page): the number of gold references being 236. " And that's just one step out of seven. Why not? Because while I'm up for reading through the canon Gloranthan material, I don't want to have to do all that reading beginning with the two volumes of The Guide to Glorantha in detail and build that world-size matrix before I can even start play. And I think very few other people will want to play along in that. Do you think it's simple enough and yet has enough realistic feel, to run on these four rules? 1. For every season’s travel, / travel to a neighboring region properly chosen goods should get an increase in price of 12.5% (one-eighth). If you travel two seasons / two regions you get an increase of 25%, three gives 37.5%, and so on. 2. The GM should reward role-played effort to find specific goods that will be in demand. 3. The GM should also allow further price increases for places that can only be reached with unusual danger. This can only be scaled by the GM, who controls the riskiness of the campaign. 4. The GM should also reward monopolies and special access. and then let the players discover ( or generate by rectal extraction ) the particular regions' import and export goods, (that's what I mean by properly chosen goods) with the GM making brief tables in the style of jajagappa's May 24, 2016 table in my third referenced link, https://basicroleplaying.org/topic/4624-trade-and-markets-in-glorantha/ and then recording such a table for the GM's future reference. Just list the starting and ending region for the trip being played, and half a dozen of each region's major exports and major imports. To me, the beauty of this is that the adventurers only operate between two areas at a time, so at any one time the clerical task of making the table is small: Sartar and neighboring regions can fit on a page and most of that page doesn't have to be filled in until your adventurers go to each region. And some of the work has already been thought through in the linked discussions. I wouldn't object to someone writing a labor saving booklet of such tables, especially if they had a reasonable rationale. But it wouldn't be necessary to play. And on the other hand your Glorantha may vary. Who is to say it's wrong when your Pamaltela exports chile peppers and mine exports cardamom instead?