Arcadiagt5

By my reading of the adventure, completing the Atonement spell releases half of the Troll Spirits, and makes it possible for the other half to be released. That possibility comes down to Atonement by Vamargic. Which, for dramatic purposes means defeating him (if possible).

I would rule that defeating Vamargic before the Atonement has no real effect - he would simply reform and continue to haunt the ruins. But afterwards? Assuming he can be defeated, that will also release the various spirits he has bound. 

In a sense I’m not the target group you’re looking for because I mostly came from Pendragon, so the Passions were part of what drew me to RuneQuest. Arthurian mythology is still my mythos in many ways, but when I reached the point of not being able to tolerate the baked in gender roles of the setting anymore … RQ:RiG was right there with so much of the game that I loved without that baggage. 

Great video & review, thanks for sharing. I’ve shared it to the discord servers for both of my regular games.

5 hours ago, Frp said:

I see why the Starter Set is going to published as print and PDF and simultaneously, but I hope future books to come out as PDF's first. 

I’m a little more nuanced on that. If the product is just a book, sure, PDF first and print when available is logical. Especially if it allows a final round of typo corrections before final print.

But if the product is primarily physical in terms of having large maps, handouts, etc, etc, then I’m OK with waiting to get the product in the manner that it’s intended to be used. (Yes, yes, even if I can’t play FTF because COVID, the physical products are still better for my OWN reference purposes in these cases). 

16 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

I would object to egregious weapons-caddying (that is, swapping weapons in combat against an inferior foe for no other reason than to grub up skill checks)

I’d probably object to that too but I haven’t really seen it happening in my games.

Now, “oh shit my best weapon broke what the hell else do I have? The dagger I’ve never used before. Better than nothing I guess.”?

That I’ve seen and I certainly didn’t object to that experience check. 🙂

I don’t have a problem with characters getting checks, and I’ll hand them out as bonuses whenever players “bring the fun”.

Is there a whisper option for the main sheet? I have a couple of NPCs that are complex enough that I use the main sheet for them so that I can more easily find a relevant skill.

Oh by the way @dvdmacateer? I ran a session with the updated character sheet on Thursday night and all of my players in that game wanted to pass on their thanks for the work you've done on the character sheet. 

14 minutes ago, dvdmacateer said:

I should be able to put a button in there.  Accept an issue with making this a  button is  what happens with  common spells and others that are marked with an R.  Also what about a spell that has more than one rune attached like healing trance which has fertility and harmony? 

Brute force it. Standard text drop down containing every rune all the time, button matches the rune selected in the drop down, it’s up to the players to pick the right rune when they set up the spell. You can’t be expected to automate everything.

20 minutes ago, dvdmacateer said:

Something like this. But if you are wanting to click the  rune and have drop down with  graphics that's a different story.

So I'm guessing you select the rune in the text drop-down, then the Rune changes to match the selection, and clicking on the Rune rolls the Rune?

That’s really elegant. Anyone who wants to complain about the text drop down can go build their own sheet IMO. 

Not that I’m admitting to have done this to my players, of course not, perish the thought, but should a spirit have telekinesis capable of throwing things for say 1d3 damage per 3 points of SIZ thrown & there’s nothing else handy in the room, the spirit can always throw one adventurer at another adventurer…. 

Looks at the JC MotM series.. I might allow that to temporarily suppress the effects of a Madness Spirit. 

42 minutes ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

As far as I understand it, the rune points are expended when a rune spell is cast -  where do you find the cannot-recover rule?

Rune Fixes 2 - available here.

Quote

Rune points stacked in Extension and the affected spell cannot be regained until the spell expires.

I haven’t checked Red Book of Magic to see if the updated Extension has that text in it, but I would be surprised if it wasn’t.

The thing is, if the Sanctify spell is still active during worship ceremonies (acknowledging that Extension is not required), I would still argue that the Sanctify rune point(s) are still in use and not fully expended until after the ceremonies are completed, and thus cannot be recovered by those ceremonies.

I think there’s an unspoken limitation on Sanctify that's similar to the clarification on Extension in the Rune Fixes. (There’s something similar with Warding as well)

Specifically: if you have a Rune Spell continuing past a holy day with Extension, you cannot recover the rune points for either the base spell or the Extension. The spell has to finish before worship can be conducted to regain those rune points (ditto for a warding where you don’t collect the wands to break the warding, it remains in perpetuity otherwise & those points also can’t be recovered).

So, how do you create a Sanctified roadside location? With a Rune Spell.

Is the spell still running when you use the sanctified spot for worship? I'll have to check, but I think so.

So can you recover the Rune Points used to cast the Sanctify? Again I'll have to check, but I don’t think so. 

3 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

OK, so the consensus seems to be that the non-rectangular or oversized warding area will fail, the characters should know in advance that it will fail, and the GM should simply tell the players "Your character knows that smartass munchkin idea won't work" or words to that effect.

 

Agreed. So long as the area is within the limits, I'm prepared (to get back to the original question) to allow the long thin rectangular "tripwires" but not any of the other versions discussed in the thread. And, yes, I should as GM be telling the players when something just won't work. 

I’ve been testing the Magic tab (except for the latest changes just posted, I'll test those probably on Monday night), and I'm really excited by what the next version of the character sheet will give us.

So, can I get a round of applause for @dvdmacateer for all of his great work? 

2 hours ago, Godlearner said:

For the initial sacrifice, but once you have it, getting it back is simple (no matter the method you use). Getting Spirit Magic away from 'home' is not easy. Good luck finding a shaman or God-talker willing to teach someone who is not an initiate or a tribe member 

Getting it back is simple if you're allowing automatic recovery of one or two points a week.

Which I don’t. I prefer the feel of the game where the players have to plan for when and where they will worship to restore their connection to their god. 

This is also part of what makes Spirit Magic useful: it does come back automatically, and even if the adventurer has to recharge storage crystals and then recover again, we're still talking days independent of temples and calendar, rather than potentially weeks to get the timing right and find a temple with a priest.

EDIT: I think this comes down to play style and preferred rules. But I think most of the posters who are playing close to RQG RAW don’t feel that there’s an imbalance between Spirit Magic and Rune Magic. In RAW each has its place and role, and the variations in acquisition/recovery help put them into those roles.

To add to some of the recent comments: the system, and most importantly timing, for rune point replenishment is an essential part of the game. It makes players plan for when they head out on journeys, and creates nervousness after a big fight if there’s weeks before the next holy day and they're tapped out. 

Sure, as GM I have to be aware of this too and maybe adjust threat levels to match anticipated capabilities, but that’s not a huge deal.

The sense of connection to the god, of being vulnerable when that connection weakens, is (or should be) intrinsic to RuneQuest imo. 

10 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Personally I feel that the very idea of the adventurer finding out, during play, that the spell won't work in a certain way is a throwback to the old-school assumption that the characters are incompetent idiots. First level fighters can't hit for toffee, first level mages can cast one spell and then they're done, starting RuneQuest adventurers don't have a single skill over 40, Traveller characters can die during character creation. It's also somewhat reminiscent of some really bad GMs that I have known who loved to revel in the incompetence of the characters, and the disconnect between what the players know about the world and what a person born and brought up in that world would know, and punish the players/characters mercilessly for it. I may even have been that guy when I was a teenager. I try not to be now.

Yeah, definitely not my style. I had an “oh shit” moment last session when a Broo criticaled and somehow the Babeester Gor initiate with Earth Shield up & a Large Shield skill in the 80s missed her parry. I was seriously going “please let it be a leg, please let it be a leg” as I was rolling the hit location… 

10 hours ago, Joerg said:

Why not have these companions take their riders along on that trip south? The calderas of Caladraland are said to be nice in Dark Season, or do they regularly fly further south?

Or do they fly south-east, to Teshnos, or even beyond? Have a nice typhoon season in the East Isles?

To be honest? I'm not really ready to venture outside of Dragon Pass just yet. 

I'm increasingly going to be running fewer adventures in Dark and Storm season, and when I do run them the cold rules from The Throat of Winter will be coming out to play. Certain players will find that their companions, used to flying south for the winter, may be, ah, very unwilling to stray from nice heated stables during these seasons. 

So characters will have less adventuring, more time for cult, ritual, training, etc. 

(And in one campaign the adventurers have been doing things that make a Weaponmaster think kindly of them. Of course a Weaponmaster thinking kindly enough of you to pay you a visit for a couple of seasons of free training is nice in principle but does it really have to come with so many bruises attached?) 

5 hours ago, dvdmacateer said:

I have been thinking about adding a separate parry modifier and parry button

That sounds great. Would the parry modifier also apply to dodge? I do sometimes see players shift between various weapons and/or dodge and the modifier is based on the total number of defensive actions previously taken, regardless of which type of action it was.

To be honest this part of the conversation is interesting but not something I'm going to make relevant to my games. The bendy shape just doesn’t feel, well, gloranthan to me so I won’t be allowing it. The most variation I'd probably allow would be to require four straight edges, at least two of which must be parallel. 

For cults with circular runes - Fire, Darkness, Moon - I'd almost be tempted to allow using string attached to the wands to create a circle but only because it would make the spell resemble the source rune. Or have a version with 5 wands - one at the centre, the others at cardinal points. But again, I'm only considering this because it kind of feels right. As an extension to that concept I'm almost tempted, and for the same reasons, to enforce wardings cast by Earth runes to be perfect squares.

Because the universe is made of the runes, and the magic reflects the runes. 

10 hours ago, dvdmacateer said:

Regarding weapon skills over 100% one thing that has come to mind is there  a lot swapping in and out of modifiers when one character is using a single weapon skill for attack and parry against someone who has an a lower skill in their attacking weapon and a higher skill in their parrying weapon skill?

RQG characters tend to the powerful side anyway. I often have players with skills above 100%, especially when Weapon Trance is in play, but NPCs generally tend to lower skills in published material. So the modifiers usually tend to be on one side, and usually fairly consistent.

In terms of needing to make constant modifiers, repeated parries/dodges is more of an issue for me. Is that the 3rd parry (at -40) or the 4th (at -60)? And have I reached the point where the reduction is “all but 5%” yet? 

40 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

I wonder how Gustbran (and potentially other crafter cults) affect this, since his initiates are able to cast enchantments.

Something of a concern for me in at least one game given that I've already created a home brew version of Gustbran for a Redsmith character.