GAZZA

Presumably in RQG that "handed down for centuries" knowledge is what the Spirit Travel skill represents. As far as being materialistic and linear is concerned - well, RAW, shamans charge people to teach them spells. They don't necessarily charge them in coins, but that's not really the point - the point is that it's not "free as air", and they're specifically charging more for some spells than others. I realise we're dealing with abstractions here - certainly there's no reason to believe there's some sort of overarching Shaman's Guild that sets the prices, or that every shaman charges exactly the same price for Bladesharp 1 and Healing 1. Variable point spirit magic is presumably an abstraction too - it's unlikely that Argrath really tells his followers to make sure they cast Bladesharp 3, for example. All I'm suggesting is that this difference in cost to the buyer might reasonably represent some difference in cost (whether that be actual coins, time, danger, or whatever equivalent you like) to the seller as well. Now whether it would be useful for that to be an actual mechanic of some kind depends on whether PC shamans want to start teaching people spells cheaply or not - at that point it becomes useful to know what sorts of costs (again, not literally money) are involved in the process. I don't imagine it's important for most games though.

Fair enough, but I'll point out that RQ3 includes specific rules for a shaman to modify the random encounter roll based on their Fetch's POW, so I would argue it is not entirely unreasonable to suggest that the mechanics of finding a specific spirit use that table. What you propose is more or less the same trouble I've always had generating Hunting mechanics - the rules for random encounters aren't really the same as what you'd use if you are specifically looking for something, but they are not entirely different either (a hunter isn't looking for a particular type of animal, she's looking for any animal within a certain class, depending on whether she's hungry, is attempting to find a new horse, wants skins, etc. - much like a shaman in RQ3 is often not necessarily looking for a particular type of spirit so much as she is an "interesting" one). In any case RQG's mechanics for finding spirits are a lot better - state what you're looking for, roll to see if you can find it. So if "behind the scenes" the process of teaching spirit magic spells in RQG is similar to RQ (i.e. beat up the spirit in spirit combat, force it to teach you its spell) it's not unreasonable to say that spirits that know Bladesharp 6 are rarer than spirits that know Bladesharp 1, and can account for a difference in cost that way (as they are literally harder to find). I may use some unholy fusion of RQ3 and RQG's mechanics here IMG.

I took it as meaning he was using a point buy of some kind (which is what I do - 32 points, using D&D3's point buy costs). I'll play one shots or whatever with randomly generated ability scores, but I won't play in campaigns that start that way. Call it a personal taste.

I don't think I was attempting to do that though? I was saying that the differences in cost were (somewhat; @lordabdul notes the imperfection even in RQ3) mechanically reflected in RQ3 but are not in RQG. That is not attempting to infer Glorantha from RuneQuest, it is rather noting that mechanically it is no harder to teach Bladesharp 6 than Bladesharp 1 in RQG whereas it was (again, to some extent) in RQ3. Since PC shamans and Rune Priests exist, it's not unreasonable to wonder why they bother teaching Bladesharp 1 instead of just teaching Bladesharp 6 as it doesn't seem that there is a rational reason for the difference in price. Note that I'm not saying that they therefore should change the rules - I'm merely wondering what a GM would say to a PC shaman that decided to teach Bladesharp 6 to all comers that could only pay for Bladesharp 1. The monetary cost clearly isn't part of the "Glorantha reality" restriction - spirits have no use for money - but it might be that the spell teaching process requires some sort of sacrifices or herbs or whatever that cost more for more powerful spells, such that the economics make sense. One would presume in any case that shamans teaching spells to their communities, or Rune Priests teaching them to initiates, do it "at cost", so there must be something like that going on.

It seems that, in RQ3, any spell spirit has a POW of 3d6, so it's no harder for a shaman to subdue a Bladesharp 6 than a Bladesharp 1 (I had misremembered that). However, shamans locate spirits via random encounters. If we use Gods of Glorantha (again, from RQ3) Ancestral Spirits as a guide, then any given random spell spirit might have 2d6-5 points of a variable spell, so if you need at least Bladesharp 6 you'd need to roll 11 or 12 on each random Bladesharp bearing spell spirit (itself only 1% of all spell spirits, if we use the Ancestral Spirits table in GoG) as opposed to a Bladesharp 1 which any roll on the 2d6-5 will yield at least 1. Therefore organically it will take a shaman, on average, 1200 spell spirit encounters to find a Bladesharp 6+ spirit, or only 100 for a Bladesharp 1+. (Of course this can't be considered canonical - I couldn't find a table for what spells a spell spirit might have, or how many points it has, but I don't see any particular reason that the Ancestral Spirit table is not appropriate for this purpose personally). There's a decent reason why you would want to play out the spirit combat in RQ3 - you get a POW gain roll if you are successful. (Although I suppose a GM may decide to skip the process and give you a POW gain roll anyway).

"Before"? Doesn't that concept require Time, which is something the gods don't understand? Serious question - I didn't think it was possible for prophets to exist in Glorantha for that reason. Although that would make most Divination pretty pointless - "who is in Snakepipe Hollow" implicitly means "now", not "two hundred years ago", for example. I guess this whole "before Time" thing is more metaphorical than actual. But yes, of course the general concept you (and @Joerg) suggest are certainly fine - that's what I was referring to when I said 'I realise that what the PCs do and what "really happens" aren't necessarily the same thing'. It would nice, however, if this were reflected mechanically - if PCs that had just participated in a Worship ceremony really did have some sort of supercharged magical abilities, knowledge of impending attacks, or whatever - mechanically, all they get is their Rune Points back. Which is hardly without value, of course, but presumably that happens at the end of the Worship ceremony, after they've already blown all-but-one magic point to boost their chance of success... and so, mechanically, an enemy religion that attacked during the ceremony would face a group of worshippers that are: Likely low on Rune Points. (Use 'em or lose 'em, especially for a High Holy Day, so most rational individuals would use any remaining Rune Points just prior to the Worship ceremony). Likely low on magic points. Quite possibly distracted by the confusion of the Hero and Mundane planes that is presumably invoked during the ceremony. For many participants - perhaps not Rune Lords or heroic (small h) types - they are quite possibly dressed in their "Sunday best" rather than fully armed and armoured. The last two points are certainly debatable (I'd assume that Humakt worship ceremonies probably specify battle-readiness as appropriate temple attire) but the first two not so much. I'm not saying this breaks the game, just that it looks like what TV Tropes would call "Gameplay and Story Segregation" - where the intended "story effect" (a bunch of pumped up worshippers glowing with the power of their god) doesn't match the "gameplay effect" (basically at the lowest ebb of their magical abilities) - and that's a little unfortunate. Clearly it can't really work this way or else enemy cults would always time their attacks in such a fashion - but mechanically it looks like it happens that way, which could be problematic if your PCs ever decided that, based on the gameplay mechanics, the best time to pick on a Yanafil Tarnils Rune Lord was on the High Holy Day for YT.

It's a shame that, mechanically, this isn't really well reflected. Typically (from my experience) everyone blows all their magic points in the Worship ceremony, so in fact it would be an ideal time to attack them. I realise that what the PCs do and what "really happens" aren't necessarily the same thing, but still.

This is pretty much what I do as well. I'm not sure how to export stuff from Roll 20, but if somebody does know then I have a few maps from River of Cradles and Borderlands I would be more than happy to share.

Certainly in RQ3 those were both valid points; a Bladesharp 6 Spell Spirit would have a higher POW than a Bladesharp 1, and it could well mean that it took longer to find. However, RQG doesn't require the shaman to discorporate and find a spell spirit at all - just to take a week out of her time and teach (possibly to multiple students). And honestly "finding and subduing a spell spirit" as far as I'm concerned is "the stuff of adventures" (to quote @David Scott above), so the fact that the spell teaching process has now been abstracted, to me, suggested that finding and subduing a spell spirit is no longer part of the process ("backed up" by the lack of such a spirit in the bestiary, though of course absence of evidence is not evidence of absence). I'm sorely tempted IMG to just keep RQ3 style spirits, including spell spirits, as I honestly think they were a fun part of the game rather than the bestiary default that essentially just makes all bound spirits the same. But in RQG, it does indeed seem that the only reason Bladesharp 6 costs more is because the shaman (or priestess) can charge more for it - there is no mechanics to support any greater scarcity or risk. (Which of course raises the question, in a world where Bladesharp 6 could cost as much as Bladesharp 1, why anyone would ever bother learning Bladesharp 1 - but most RPG economics have their weak point). Of course you can accept that the spell teaching process is "uninteresting" and just hand wave it; the fact that there's no mechanics for spell teaching doesn't mean that behind the scenes the same tracking down/subduing process isn't taking place - it just means that it's not considered important/interesting enough to play through. (And that's obviously a very subjective statement).

I'm not a huge fan of tactical maps for tactics, as such, but I do find that having something visual helps players imagine the environment they're in; as such, I usually make at least a crude approximation of maps in Roll 20 or whatever (e.g. with the Frog Grog Shoppe from last night's game). Scales are useful for that sort of thing (the FGS doesn't have one, so I winged it - would have been nice to know how big it was supposed to be though).

Though I do recall there was once a mention somewhere of "Invisible Orlanth"...

I recall several such sets of rules. I think Steve Maurer's were imitated a lot; essentially, it extended the concept of criticals and specials to super criticals (1/100 of your score or less), hyper criticals (1/400 of your score), super hyper criticals (1/2000 of your score), and so on (divide by 4, then 5, repeating - much like specials divide by 5, then criticals divide your special by 4, and so forth). There was a chart that essentially cancelled higher levels of criticals down in a fashion not dissimilar to how masteries cancelled in Hero Wars (and presumably Hero Quest/Quest Worlds, I own the former but haven't read it, haven't read the latter). Essentially the conceit was that on the Hero Plane, merely succeeding at your skill wasn't usually very impressive, you had to special to achieve results similar to what success could yield on the mundane plane. And more powerful versions of hero quests pushed that concept higher still. The flip side was that if you succeeded regardless (i.e. got a special) you got a 5d6 experience improvement, if you trained on the Hero Plane you got 5d6-10 as a bonus to your skill, and so on. There was another system that I believe was called YAHQS ("Yet Another Hero Quest System"); Nils Weinhander was the author I believe. I can't track these down even via the Internet Archive, but from memory the idea was that you would get abilities abstracted up to their category modifiers (if you had several Agility skills at 100+, you'd have Agility 1; 200+ Agility 2, and so on) and you could sort of wager them to overcome foes that may have greater or lesser values. I thought it was really interesting, but it seems I never snagged a copy (does anyone have one? I don't suppose Nils is still around somewhere?). Even Hero Wars (and again, presumably the sequel systems) more or less continued this; it may have switched from simulation to narrative, but the mastery system is more or less just Super RuneQuest as Steve Maurer envisioned it. The only real "objection" I have to the Super RuneQuest approach is the implicit "you must be this tall to start HeroQuesting" restriction, which seems to mean that HeroQuests should be more or less the equivalent of "high level play"; my understanding is that current thoughts suggest HeroQuests are less about a more powerful type of adventure and more a different type of adventure (correct me if I'm wrong - HeroQuests are one of those things I find really interesting but don't really understand very well).

I haven't actually gotten to the Hero Quests part, so hopefully that will be of some use, but my feeling so far with all the talk of different breadths of deity, how many lower and higher runes you have, the continuing (and often contradictory) descriptions of the Hero/God/Spirit planes, and constant references to saints/gods/Malkioni heresies (I assume, I have no context) is essentially a combination of "what does this actually even mean" with a large portion of "what am I supposed to do with this?" As long as this isn't a reasonable preview of what we can expect for the RQG Hero Quest rules, is all I'm saying - because I'll have to go play something simpler if it is.

Having recently acquired Arcane Lore ... with all due respect to the great man, this is virtually impenetrable. I feel like you'd need a PhD in comparative mythology and theology to even grasp at some of it, it's very stream of consciousness, and the bits that are rules related are all over the place with respect to system details. So, a plea for sanity - please don't just reprint this for the Hero Quest section of the Gamemaster's Guide.

@Redmoongodess Yeah I'm familiar with the Samuel Haight stuff. I'm not a fan of metaplots in general, but they're not innately bad, and as I've noted before at some point you have to pick a starting time. Would you raise the same objection to the God Learners and the EWF? To Arkat and Gbaji? Presumably not because they're in the past, right? Well, if you go with the new 1625+ timeline for RQG then so is the liberation of Sartar - and honestly, I don't think that's innately awful. (The main reason I set my campaign to start in 1615 was because I think The Cradle is an awesome scenario and I want to run my players through it). Plus, Argrath/Kallyr/Harrek are far more interesting and well rounded NPCs than Samuel Haight ever was. I mean don't get me wrong, I'd love to see supplements that supported a game set in the West (I suspect sorcery will need to be a lot more fleshed out than RQG has at the moment for that to be feasible), or with PC Lunars. I presume that as long as RQG proves reasonably profitable we'll eventually get that, and in the interim I assume @Nick Brooke and others will continue to produce quality work on their web sites - fan material, sure, but that's no bad thing if it's high quality. I don't see Chaosium moving in a "Argrath and His Amazing Friends" direction, personally - YGMV has been around for a long time, after all.

Forgotten Realms is doing fine with Elminster and Driz'zt though. The fact that a character is important to the story doesn't mean they'll assume that importance in game - I am one of the bigger "if it's important, I want the PCs doing it" types and I still plan on Argrath existing - just not letting him do all the cool stuff while the PCs are bystanders. Perhaps they'll help him. Perhaps they'll oppose him. Perhaps they'll kill him and feed his soul to the Bat.

ARGH! That has caused me existential angst now. Seriously that looks great, but I've just now realised how much I'm missing - none of the Pavis & Big Rubble Companion stuff, and it doesn't seem to be available anywhere. (I do have the Pavis Trade Talk issues, surprisingly, but the only Ye Booke of Tentacles I have is the 2nd one). I suppose one can't have everything.

Cheers!

Isn't all metal in Glorantha the blood or bones of gods that were injured/killed in the Godtime, or is that no longer the case?

lol. "Again", you say. I don't even know what that is!

Looks good, cheers!

Actually, side note - I don't see "Urox" referenced anywhere in RQG. Do Orlanthi just call him Storm Bull now?

(shrug) I'm just here for the one liners.

I'm interested too. Even though Champions is one of my all time favourite RPGs I've often thought that if any genre could be best realised with a sort of narrative/HeroQuest type mechanics, it would be superheroes. (Capes is a decent example, but that gets a bit distracted with the whole competition aspect and I haven't really done anything I'd call a campaign with it).

Good, bad, they're the guys with the Bat. (With apologies to Bruce Campell).