GAZZA

Well, one of us is misreading the table. I see Daka Fal as Hostile to Argan Argar, Babeester Gor, Ernalda, Eurmal, Humakt, Issaries, Llankhor Mhy, Maran Gor, Orlanth, Storm Bull, and Waha. They are merely neutral towards Eiritha, Seven Mothers, Yelm, Yelmalio. I'm fine with PCs of different cults getting along; I'm specifically interested in whether a single individual can initiate to certain cults. I concede Storm Bull and (e.g.) Seven Mothers was always going to be a stretch, but the rules for it (i.e. that the cults have to be, presumably, not hostile to each other) do suggest that Orlanth + Daka Fal is only OK if you joined Daka Fal first, since Orlanth apparently is neutral towards Daka Fal, but Daka Fal is hostile to Orlanth; I presume this is because Orlanth slew Grandfather Mortal, and as such I'm not questioning the table, except to note that KoDP and other sources have tended to support the idea of Orlanthi ancestor worship in the past and Daka Fal is currently the only ancestor worship cult. (RQ3 Gods of Glorantha didn't even have Daka Fal, it called the cult Ancestor Worship - but I'm not saying that was the right approach, merely that we currently lack an ancestor worship deity that is not hostile to Orlanth). Which is a roundabout way of saying that while I'm fine with Storm Bull cultists not joining Lunar cults (I am of course excluding illuminates), the "cults can't be hostile" to each other is perhaps not an entirely satisfactory way in practice of saying that because I kind of have no issue with Daka Fal/Orlanth combinations. Perhaps I should have?

Err... nowhere, but I never mentioned anything about failing to maintain a POW of 18, and in fact I was explicitly talking about apostates. However as that has somewhat derailed the original question I think it's appropriate that I terminate further discussion here.

When it says that you can get Rune magic from an associated cult, does that refer to any of the special Rune magic for an associated cult? Page 313 of RQG seems to imply it does, however the actual cult write ups still have the old "X grants Y" type of thing. Specifically, Orlanth and Odayla are associated cults, and Odayla provides Bear's Strength to Orlanth Thunderous. So, presumably, that means that the only Rune spell that Orlanth initiates can get from Odayla is Bear's Strength (and only for the Thunderous subcult). Let's say that's true. Odayla and Orlanth pretty much share the same Holy Days (their High Holy Days are different); could an initiate of both gods worship both of them in a single day, regaining Rune Points for both?

The main issue I have with that is that Daka Fal is hostile to pretty much everyone, but they are also the ancestor worship cult and certainly (from sources like KoDP, for example) ancestor worship isn't alien to Orlanthi. That said I'm on a lot shakier ground with Storm Bull and Chaos, for sure.

Could an initiate of Storm Bull join, say, Yanafil Tarnils or another Seven Mothers cult? My immediate reaction would be, "keep those Chaos loving scum away from me" but Storm Bull is a popular god in Prax, and the Sable Riders presumably had plenty of Bulls amongst them when they decided to support the Lunars. (Or did all of their Bull initiates fight on the other side?) Not all Lunar cults embrace Chaos, after all.

We're using the RQG character sheet that comes with Roll 20 (which is fine, but not ideal - especially as a GM as I'm constantly having to tell it to use the NPC sheet), but I am just keeping track of hit points, magic points, and so on for NPCs in an Excel spreadsheet rather than try to force Roll 20 to look after it for me. It works OK for PCs though. One of my players recently donated so that I now have the ad-free version and "rollable tables", which I haven't had a chance to look at yet. I was a bit short on time for prep on Saturday; when I needed an impala for my hunting table, I just grabbed the first result on the web search, which turned out to be the car. My players were amused.

Po-tay-to, po-tah-to...

To the extent that this is true, it is not particularly useful. For example, it mentions the spirits of reprisal attack you twice, but since we don't have the full cult write ups we don't actually know what that means. It does however explictly say that you get to keep your rune points (though they become one use), so therefore the god doesn't immediately take everything; I have no problem per se with ruling that without that connection to your god you can't teach spirit magic spells, but it does seem slightly strange that (e.g.) Humakt has no problem with letting you keep Sever Spirit but damn you if he'll let you teach someone Bladesharp 1 any more. And it's even weirder that Chalana Arroy would let you keep Resurrection but not let you teach Heal, because you would have thought that Chalana Arroy would be pretty cool with as many people knowing Heal as possible. The previous edition it was a lot clearer - if you'd sacrificed for Spellteaching (and you probably should have, if you were a Priest), you could keep it but it would become one use. In a practical sense there's very little difference between "can use one more time" and "can't use at all", and it looks to me like yet another casualty of the "anything RQ3 did differently to RQ2 will be looked at with extreme prejudice" syndrome that appears to be a guiding principle behind RQG. Of course I imagine once the gods book is out we'll have the details on the spirits of reprisal, and from a personal perspective I can use my old material to wing the details - I'd also freely admit that leaving a cult, especially once you are Rune level, is probably pretty rare. Shamans are a different matter, since as you point out the fetch, once awakened, can never be "put back to sleep" (as it were). Which means that, in principle, a shaman could say "bugger the community" and keep all his cool shamanic powers. Once again - I'm not saying that happens very often, and of course as a GM you are free to say that such a PC becomes an NPC (seems a bit heavy handed to me, but I do appreciate the sentiment). Where it gets especially interesting is with sorcerers, but I presume that the only sorcerers we're supposed to be playing at this point are Lunars or Llankhor Mhy cultists, although I do note that strictly speaking only initiate status is required (so you could be an arbitrarily powerful Llankhor Mhy sorcerer and still only be an initiate with a mere 10% tithe/time requirement). Sorcerers don't really suffer anything from "quitting" (no more familiars, even), though indeed this is not a new problem. Mind you I've never really been terribly concerned with enforcing the time restrictions for Rune/Shaman/Sorcerer stuff anyway. Tithing is one thing, but telling your players that they can't play their Shaman on the same adventure as their friend's Sword Lord because they're too busy making fetishes for their community, and having to the do the equivalent of checking each other's calendars, is not my idea of MGF.

Right, but that's not relevant to "do I forget how to teach spirit magic", and Illumination takes care of all of that. I'm not saying there are no downsides to quitting Rune status - I'm just saying it's clearly possible and tying game mechanics to that status based on "we only teach this to Rune levels" opens up this sort of question. In RQ3, there was a Spell Teaching divine spell that was used to teach cult spirit magic, and if you stopped being a Rune level all your reusable spells became one use: in other words, this was a solved problem in previous editions. I'm not actually aware of a way to stop being a Shaman, but again it's possible implicitly - just stop giving your time and income to the community. Presumably your fetch leaves at some point. We really could do with a few "what happens if you don't meet these obligations" rules; sure, 99% of Gloranthans would never dream of not meeting them, but PCs often fall into the 1% of at least asking.

I don't really know why they got rid of spell spirits; it essentially answers these questions better (IMO) than RQG does. For example, what happens if I decide "nah bugger it, I don't want to be a Runelord any more". Do I forget the spell teaching ritual? Is it possible to bribe/threaten/torture a Rune level or Shaman to force them to teach me how to do it?

Honestly metaplots are a weird idea, no matter whether by the comparatively juvenile "cooler than thou" blokes at White Wolf or the comparatively better written stuff by Greg and Chaosium. RPGs are an interactive medium; you can't tell me what's going to happen in my game next week, let alone in 25 years, because it's not up to you; I don't even have to follow the rules let alone all elements of the setting. In and of itself that doesn't make metaplots bad exactly. There are plenty of GMs that never create their own adventures and just run published material; a metaplot can serve as an overarcing plot for such GMs. Other GMs can use them as a sort of guide to "what might have happened" or even "what will happen if the PCs do nothing", and they can be useful there too. But I wish there was a lot more history and useful game material (like HeroQuests, the perpetually "out next year" feature for RuneQuest) and a lot less metaplot personally.

Nomads are fine - my Storm Bull player is in fact a bison rider. (I have a Bison Rider Storm Bull, a Sartarite Humakti, an Old Tarshite Odayalan, and a Grazelander Yelmite - language is currently a problem ). I didn't realise there were nomadic shrines, but that makes sense - and since they are currently travelling by boat along the Zola Fel there shouldn't be any problem with fertile ground. All of you have been invaluable, cheers guys! I am still unfortunately a Gloranthan novice and I find these sorts of "daily life" questions hard to find answers for in the sourcebooks.

Cheers guys! And yeah, I meant Pavis, not Prax - I suspect I've made that particular typo more than once.

Obviously I am free to scatter shrines wherever I like IMG, but are there are any canonically reasonably important shrines or temples to Storm Bull within, say, half a day or so from Corflu, heading up the Zola Fel towards Prax? That's a pretty specific question GAZ. Right. Thing is, I'm playing through the River of Cradles game, and one of my players is a Storm Bull. They are, roughly, at Corflu, about to head up to Prax, and I'm pretty sure (since the Storm Bull High Holy Day is "today") that he'll want to (or, by some interpretations, pretty much have to) go visit somewhere to do the whole worship the Bull thing. On a somewhat related question, do initiates of hunter gods participate in the Great Hunt? (Assuming they are not eligible for priest hood). As described it looks as if the three weeks before Sacred Time are at least minor holy days for Odayla/Foundchild/Yinkin, and I'm wondering how (if that's the case) since all priests are off hunting, who is running the worship ceremonies? (To say nothing of the implicit "worship ceremonies take several hours/most of the day" bit, which would seem to leave the poor hunter priests very little time to actually hunt).

I honestly don't think lack of "deadly things" is a problem RuneQuest has ever really suffered from; I'm sure plenty of veteran players have RuneLords that were killed by a critical trollkin slingshot roll. (Though I believe @soltakss had players with contingencies for that sort of thing, or just the ability to treat death as a minor inconvenience). If I recall correctly at least one version of RQ - possibly from the Mongoose line - treated poison as damage to the abdomen. That seems like a perfectly reasonable alternative; it's not as if general hit points reflects anything real after all, it's just a game mechanic.

Never thought of that - that's an excellent idea as well, cheers.

That's really useful. Just one question - are the percentages there intended to be actual percentages, or percentages of the PC's corresponding skills? (I'm guessing the former, which is fine - if I want 245% dudes running around they are probably fine to stat up properly).

Thanks for all the help guys! I must confess that I cheat a lot with NPCs; I don't really have the time or inclination to work out what Runic Inspirations or Passions might be invoked for Random Trollkin #13. RQG could use a simplified mechanic for NPCs, perhaps this is something that could be considered for the campaign book?

I just started a new campaign using River of Cradles for RQ3, it's fairly compatible. But definitely need more HeroQuests, and I'll be checking this one out very soon.

We use Roll20 and Skype. Nothing at all against discord, just we all happened to have Skype so might as well use it. The RQG character sheet works OK (though it is a bit annoying if you set things up on the minimal sheet and expect it to come through the main one), and as a GM I find an Excel spreadsheet is an easier way to keep track of monster location hit points, magic points, and the like, but it does do a decent job especially if you're fighting humanoid opponents. (Mud sharks, not so much ).

So I'm in the process of converting River of Cradles for RQG, and I'm having to make a few judgement calls. In RQ3, APP was basically irrelevant for non-PCs to the point that many published characters don't even have one (e.g. the baboons in RoC's first encounter). Since CHA in RQG now takes many of the responsibilities of INT as far as spirit magic is concerned, I am basically setting CHA of such characters to whatever their INT is. Fetches in RQG, assuming an average roll to awaken, have only 2D6 CHA (as opposed to RQ3's 3D6 INT), so I'm reducing Fetch CHA to 2/3 of the RQ3 INT. I'm really not sure what to do about Runes, so for the moment I'm just going to assume that Shamans and Rune Lord status have a base 100% chance to cast their Rune Magic (as they would have in RQ3); hopefully that's all I'll need for disposable characters at least. Similarly I'm going to basically ignore passions. Anyone have any other tips for such conversions? (Or, especially, if you have better ideas for the way I'm handling it).

So I'm about to start my first RQG game in about 9 hours from now. I've decided to use a start date of 1615 (thank you to the Early History creators!) and I'm going to kick off with River of Cradles. Character creation was last week; I have a Grazeland Healer worshipping Yelm, a Noble Praxian Bison Rider Storm Bull, a Sartarite Humakti Warrior, and an Odayalan Old Tarshite Hunter. I've given them all a bit of background that gets them to one of the banks of the Zola Fel river, and if you know RoC you know that's pretty much when the fun starts. Anyway we are of course social distancing so I'm about to stick the basic maps I'll need into Roll 20, and I noticed the scale: 1" = 12 meters. I had to laugh - who uses both of those units? I'm an Aussie, so metres is fine (though note what I would consider "correct" spelling ), and obviously nearing four decades of gaming supplements largely from the US I'm well familiar with what an inch is, but I do have to wonder why RQ - almost uniquely out of fantasy RPGs, certainly at the time it was created - decided on metres instead of yards, and yet still uses inches as a scale. Is there some history there?

Champions used to have "built in powers" to a certain extent. Firstly you had Figured Characteristics (that were based on your Primary Characteristics, for example your Endurance was based on twice your Consitution, though it could be increased separately). Secondly, you could jump further based on extra Strength. The latest edition dispenses with both, for much the reason you supply. The old days, Colossus wouldn't have been a leaper because he'd have bought most of his extra strength as Density Increase (which increases mass as well as strength, so your ability to leap didn't increase), but newer editions have abandoned the idea of buying "always on" height or weight as powers, so the change was necessary. A surprising number of supers games do not have any easy way to increase the number of attacks you get per round, but in fairness if you actually could move as fast as the Flash then it would become very difficult to play out "properly": OK, Superfast Dude, it's your go. Roll your twenty thousand attacks. That's the reason most suggest simulating it with something like Autofire or just flat out pretending it is equivalent to single attack of higher magnitude.

I'm not sure too many RW bronze age cultures had much separation of church and state either to be honest - divine right of kings and all that. (I'm sure there are exceptions - I'm not a historian, anthropologist, archaeologist, or any other professional with actual expertise).

Modern Supes? Sure. But back when he was leaping 1/8 of a mile (which is a weirdly specific number - I'm an Aussie, is 1/8 of a mile some special number of yards or something?) most of his foes were corrupt businessmen and the like IIRC. I'm far from an expert but I don't think he faced too many actual powered supervillains until the Silver Age.