Spirit Magic and Sorcery During Chargen

[Nevermet]

I should know the answer to this, but I've read the  HQG rulebook, and I'm not 100% sure.

 

Let's say I'm making a character that I want to specialize in spirit magic by joining a spirit society, or a character who has learned spells through a grimoire.  Is the only way to do this for the character to start with the Spirit or Law rune respectively, or can they somehow gain access to magic through their cultural keyword?

[Richard S.]

Depending on the tradition, you can be a part of a society without having the spirit rune - I believe Hsunchen can use beast and Kolati can use air - but generally the spirit rune is what allows you to access the spirit world and interact with spirits. You can still use charms and stuff without it, and many rune cultists and even some sorcerers use them, but you can't really progress towards shamanhood. Sorcery is easier to have without the Law rune, since you can take a Grimoire as a standalone or even breakout from another source, like a community or moon rune, but it's recommended to break them out from the law rune if you're specializing since any grimoire or spell that you get later can be hung off of it as well.

Edited May 13, 2020 by Richard S.

[Leingod]

I've actually wondered this myself, so just to make sure I'm clear on this: Essentially, if you just want to have some spirit magic or sorcery, you don't need the Spirit or Law Runes, there are ways to get access without them like being a Kolating who keys it off the Air Rune instead. But if you want to specialize in spirit magic or sorcery, then the Spirit Rune or Law Rune are effectively if not actually mandatory because it gives you way more options and makes picking up more than one source of that kind of magic easier and more powerful since you can hang it all off of a single Rune.

That sound about right?

[Joerg]

 

7 hours ago, Leingod said:

I've actually wondered this myself, so just to make sure I'm clear on this: Essentially, if you just want to have some spirit magic or sorcery, you don't need the Spirit or Law Runes, there are ways to get access without them like being a Kolating who keys it off the Air Rune instead. But if you want to specialize in spirit magic or sorcery, then the Spirit Rune or Law Rune are effectively if not actually mandatory because it gives you way more options and makes picking up more than one source of that kind of magic easier and more powerful since you can hang it all off of a single Rune.

That sound about right?

This does seem about right for single sorcerous rites like Dormal's Ritual of Opening, even under RQG if the forum posts by te designers may be trusted.

There does appear to be a way to have a singular ability from a different magic system as a stand-alone ability. You cannot hang it off another ability, which means it is getting more expensive to keep this ability on a level comparable to the rest of your capabilities.

That does remind me of the effect that the ugly phrasing of "Misapplied Worship" in the earlier versions of HeroQuest and Hero Wars brought.

[Nevermet]

15 hours ago, Joerg said:

That does remind me of the effect that the ugly phrasing of "Misapplied Worship" in the earlier versions of HeroQuest and Hero Wars brought.

Yeah, Misapplied worship was a bit of a nightmare, and I didn't fully appreciate how much until I realized RQ characters were used to mixing and matching the 3 types of magic.  I got into Glorantha through HQ1, and as a result thought the world was less.... magically jumbled than it often is.

[jajagappa]

On 5/16/2020 at 7:04 PM, Leingod said:

But if you want to specialize in spirit magic or sorcery, then the Spirit Rune or Law Rune are effectively if not actually mandatory

I approach "spirit magic" (as in RQ style) in one of three ways:

1) a breakout from a Rune (and that could be any Rune).  You want Darkwall, it's a breakout from the Darkness Rune.

2) a standalone ability/charm without any Rune association.  You want Lightwall, you get Lightwall 13.

3) an augment from a Rune.  You're trying to sneak past the troll guard.  Augment your Thief keyword with the Darkness Rune.

But you can also go through the Shamanic traditions as outlined, and that would fall under the Spirit Rune.  

Nice thing with HQG is that it is very flexible on these things.

[Lordabdul]

7 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Nice thing with HQG is that it is very flexible on these things.

How do you approach magic at character creation, especially for people who don't know Glorantha much, or at all?  One nice thing with HQG is that it is indeed very flexible, but one bad thing is that, as a result, there is no spell list to pick from, let alone a list of spells appropriate for their cult. The player will most probably go "errr, I don't know? Is there a Magic Missile in this game?". How do you deal with that? (short of spending an awful lot of time explaining what their deity can do)

I like the idea of using HQ for introducing new people to roleplaying games, using standard tropes or known settings ("FBI agents against monster of the week", or "wizarding school", or "superheroes" or whatever), but character creation is one of the things that makes me hesitate using HQG for introducing people to Glorantha -- or any setting they're not familiar with already.

Edited May 20, 2020 by lordabdul

[Leingod]

1 hour ago, lordabdul said:

How do you approach magic at character creation, especially for people who don't know Glorantha much, or at all?  One nice thing with HQG is that it is indeed very flexible, but one bad thing is that, as a result, there is no spell list to pick from, let alone a list of spells appropriate for their cult. The player will most probably go "errr, I don't know? Is there a Magic Missile in this game?". How do you deal with that? (short of spending an awful lot of time explaining what their deity can do)

I like the idea of using HQ for introducing new people to roleplaying games, using standard tropes or known settings ("FBI agents against monster of the week", or "wizarding school", or "superheroes" or whatever), but character creation is one of the things that makes me hesitate using HQG for introducing people to Glorantha -- or any setting they're not familiar with already.

Personally I'd say theistic magic, at least, is really easy for a new player to grasp (as someone who actually first approached Glorantha on the tabletop through reading HeroQuest rather than RuneQuest), so long as you provide that handy list of stuff that initiates of such-and-such god often use such-and-such Rune to do as a launching point.

"Err, I don't know, is there a Magic Missile in this game?"

"Well, if you join the cult of Orlanth Adventurous, you can use the Motion Rune to throw javelins and rocks super far and accurately, so yeah, you kind of get a literal 'Magic Missile' that you can specialize in if you put points in it."

Edited May 20, 2020 by Leingod

[Lordabdul]

18 minutes ago, Leingod said:

so long as you provide that handy list of stuff that initiates of such-and-such god often use such-and-such Rune to do as a launching point.

Is there an actual list of Rune magic spell suggestions that I missed? Or are you using RuneQuest for that, or making your own list?

[Leingod]

1 hour ago, lordabdul said:

Is there an actual list of Rune magic spell suggestions that I missed? Or are you using RuneQuest for that, or making your own list?

In the list of gods in Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes (with some more written up in the Sartar Companion), each of them has a list of stuff that initiates of that god use their Runes for. The write-up of Orlanth (starts on pg. 121), for instance:

Quote

Rune Affinities

Orlanth is the source of the Air and Movement Runes and is also strongly associated with the Mastery Rune. As such, Orlanth is one of the Great Gods of Glorantha, acknowledged even by many cultures that do not worship him.

g Air Affinity (Thunderer)

As the source of the Air Rune, initaites of Orlanth can make the broadest possible use of the powers of Air. A very incomplete list of the abilities Orlanth initiates have been known to use the Air Rune affinity for includes: bring rain; predict weather; change the weather; endure weather (snow, wind, rain, etc.); call down thunder and lightning; fight other elements; fly (carried by winds or upon their own breath); create a hailstorm; enchant silver; summon and command the winds; hear and speak at a great distance; summon and command lesser air gods; and even improve their sword fighting (the sword is the weapon of the Air Rune). The Air Rune aspect of Orlanth is called the Thunderer, and those powerful with this rune affinity are passionate, proud, unpredictable, and violent.

And so on for his Motion and Mastery Rune powers. You'll also find a few suggestions regarding common subcults (Barntar can give powers to wrestle foes and plow fields, Destor can let you fight with blinding speed, etc.).

If you want to give them suggestions for a god that isn't covered by these books you'll have to write your own, but generally there's plenty to go off of for a Sartarite or Pavisite character in HeroQuest already.

Edited May 20, 2020 by Leingod

[Lordabdul]

7 hours ago, Leingod said:

In the list of gods in Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes (with some more written up in the Sartar Companion), each of them has a list of stuff that initiates of that god use their Runes for.

Ah nice, I had missed that somehow... thanks!

[Joerg]

18 hours ago, lordabdul said:

How do you approach magic at character creation, especially for people who don't know Glorantha much, or at all?  One nice thing with HQG is that it is indeed very flexible, but one bad thing is that, as a result, there is no spell list to pick from, let alone a list of spells appropriate for their cult. The player will most probably go "errr, I don't know? Is there a Magic Missile in this game?". How do you deal with that? (short of spending an awful lot of time explaining what their deity can do)

You don't need a spell list. You do need a quite good idea what your god was up to in Godtime, as your magic is going to reflect an action or a feat of that deity.

The nice thing about HQG is that it is eminently fine, even encouraged, for the players and the narrator to come up with such stories defining the magic of both deity and character.

So  who would have "Magic Missile"? Let's look at the myths. When Umath invades the sky, he and Shargash exchange missiles as both go down in the north, Umath a tad harder than Shargash. Orlanth's use of missiles against Jagrekriand (the Orlanthi name for Shargash) is what created the name of the mountain Arrowmound, the highest peak in the Skyreach range

 

18 hours ago, lordabdul said:

I like the idea of using HQ for introducing new people to roleplaying games, using standard tropes or known settings ("FBI agents against monster of the week", or "wizarding school", or "superheroes" or whatever), but character creation is one of the things that makes me hesitate using HQG for introducing people to Glorantha -- or any setting they're not familiar with already.

Players do have a fair amount of agency in creating the character and his cultic details. As long as you don't want to play a puma person, most narrators will be fine with what you come up with after some initial exposure to Glorantha (say Prince of Sartar webcomic and King of Dragon Pass computer game, having completed a short game or two, ideally a long one as you have to do all the quests for that one).

I'm on the record for claiming that there are things that are usually done a certain way in Heortling society. When things are done differently, I often react by saying that out loud. At the same time, I am perfectly willing to look at the implications both of the rules how things are normally done, and on how it can be justified to go completely against the Orlanthi All way.

What advantages does a clan have from allowing, possibly even promoting endogamous marriages? How do the ancestors relate to that, how do the neighbors deal with a clan that won't regularly make marriage connections in order to create inter-connections and additional diplomatic channels into the marital beds of the clan leaders?

 

[Lordabdul]

19 minutes ago, Joerg said:

You don't need a spell list. You do need a quite good idea what your god was up to in Godtime, as your magic is going to reflect an action or a feat of that deity.

Exactly, but that's my problem: if the player is new to Glorantha, I don't want to spend 20 minutes doing a boring and half-assed explanation of what so and so did in the God time. I could (with some preparation) compress that to a 5 minute list of the most important stuff, but that's effectively an oral spell list, more or less.

Leingod's suggestion to look into S:KoH for such a list works perfectly for me at this point (it hadn't occurred to me to look at the Rune Affinities sections for this kind of information).

Now I'm mostly concerned about people picking up HQG as their first Gloranthan game. That is, if both the GM and the player are new to Glorantha. The information that the GM gets from the HQG rulebook is barely enough to make up something useful for anybody but the most confident and imaginative people. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm having flashbacks of when I picked the original HeroWars book (not knowing anything about Glorantha) and having absolutely no idea what to do with it (there was no KoDP or Prince of Sartar webcomic back then for a more user-friendly introduction to the setting...)

[Leingod]

1 hour ago, lordabdul said:

Exactly, but that's my problem: if the player is new to Glorantha, I don't want to spend 20 minutes doing a boring and half-assed explanation of what so and so did in the God time. I could (with some preparation) compress that to a 5 minute list of the most important stuff, but that's effectively an oral spell list, more or less.

Leingod's suggestion to look into S:KoH for such a list works perfectly for me at this point (it hadn't occurred to me to look at the Rune Affinities sections for this kind of information).

Now I'm mostly concerned about people picking up HQG as their first Gloranthan game. That is, if both the GM and the player are new to Glorantha. The information that the GM gets from the HQG rulebook is barely enough to make up something useful for anybody but the most confident and imaginative people. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm having flashbacks of when I picked the original HeroWars book (not knowing anything about Glorantha) and having absolutely no idea what to do with it (there was no KoDP or Prince of Sartar webcomic back then for a more user-friendly introduction to the setting...)

Well, looking at HeroQuest: Glorantha again, while it doesn't have all the gods written up in Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes, it does at least contain those same write-ups and lists of rune affinities and potential uses for Ernalda, Orlanth, Issaries, Humakt, Lhankor Mhy, the Seven Mothers, and surprisingly Waha, with some stuff written about the Praxian spirit tradition in general. It also lists several other gods commonly worshiped in Dragon Pass with a brief description and their Runes given, so there's at least that starting point for beginners who might be a bit lost on how to handle spirit magic or sorcery.

But yes, in general HeroQuest: Glorantha can feel a bit sparse on actual setting detail if it's the first/only book on Glorantha you have, and a beginner would probably want it supplemented with either the Sartar or Pavis book to get more ideas on where to put the heroes and what to throw at them and etc.

Edited May 21, 2020 by Leingod

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, lordabdul said:

now that I think about it, I'm having flashbacks of when I picked the original HeroWars book (not knowing anything about Glorantha) and having absolutely no idea what to do with it

Even those of us who were well immersed in Glorantha often had no idea what to do with Hero Wars!  I did not find either Hero Wars or HQ1 playable.  It wasn't until SKoH and HQ2 that I thought the system was streamlined enough to make playable.

1 hour ago, lordabdul said:

Now I'm mostly concerned about people picking up HQG as their first Gloranthan game. That is, if both the GM and the player are new to Glorantha.

That's what I liked about SKoH.  It got you into the setting, and gave you some immediately playable and understandable scenarios (that were also epic).

[Lordabdul]

5 hours ago, Leingod said:

Well, looking at HeroQuest: Glorantha again, while it doesn't have all the gods written up in Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes, it does at least contain those same write-ups and lists of rune affinities and potential uses

Gaaaah I'm twice blind and stupid!  Thanks in quadruple!  I shall hide away in shame.  Apparently I'm not clever or literate enough to play HQ.

Edited May 21, 2020 by lordabdul

[Joerg]

8 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Exactly, but that's my problem: if the player is new to Glorantha, I don't want to spend 20 minutes doing a boring and half-assed explanation of what so and so did in the God time. I could (with some preparation) compress that to a 5 minute list of the most important stuff, but that's effectively an oral spell list, more or less.

"Your deity is cool because it did X, Y and Z, and your magic allows you to attempt at least lesser versions of that. And now that you know that the deity did these three things, you might have an idea what else the deity may have done." All with the caveat of course that a Storm God has no earth powers, and vice versa, unless given these in recompensation for something or having conquered them.

There are plenty of Storm Brothers. There are plenty of Storm Deities who may occasionally be siblings of Orlanth rather than a generation later, e.g. Odayla. And Orlanth himself can be counted as a Storm Brother rather than the King of Gods in certain myths. So yes, this is where mythology can and will be confusing, Having a clear tree genealogy of deities or languages or species of pre-modern humans is usually a construct. Orlanth had four brothers, right? Their names are Kolat, Storm Bull, Vadrus, Humakt, and Ragnaglar. And Odayla. And Aerlit. And ... (And yes, I can count to four. Mythology doesn't bother.)

 

8 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Now I'm mostly concerned about people picking up HQG as their first Gloranthan game. That is, if both the GM and the player are new to Glorantha. The information that the GM gets from the HQG rulebook is barely enough to make up something useful for anybody but the most confident and imaginative people. Actually, now that I think about it, I'm having flashbacks of when I picked the original HeroWars book (not knowing anything about Glorantha) and having absolutely no idea what to do with it (there was no KoDP or Prince of Sartar webcomic back then for a more user-friendly introduction to the setting...)

Picking up Hero Wars or HeroQuest and being the narrator right away was and probably remains a daunting task. I was in the happy situation to visit conventions where games of Hero Wars and HeroQuest (any edition) were offered, and so I had at least an idea how a game could play out.

Starting a game in a typical "clan in occupied Sartar" setting was no longer a daunting task as I was a King of Sartar junkie, and heavily involved in discussing how to carry that monster of a bundle of in-world texts into my roleplaying experience already using RQ3 and the RQ:AiG playtest rules.

6 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Even those of us who were well immersed in Glorantha often had no idea what to do with Hero Wars!  I did not find either Hero Wars or HQ1 playable.  It wasn't until SKoH and HQ2 that I thought the system was streamlined enough to make playable.

Many of us who were well immersed in Glorantha usually were equally well immersed into the gritty  "here is what you can do" approach of RuneQuest and were daunted by the "so you say this describes your character. How could this description be used to solve the current problem in a way satisfying to you and fun to narrate?" approach of HW/HQ.

My experiences with narrating HW (using the German translation of the French translation, which had seen another editorial pass after the hasty job on the original edition) was a family game with a mother and her teenage children who had effectively no roleplaying experience and no idea what Glorantha was about. I wasn't prepared for some of the stuff that happened to me, like the Vingan's ability "Run Over Treetops" which inserted a fair amount of wuxia into the setting that I had not been aware of. Rule of cool, so I allowed it even though the character was not a devotee. That ability would be rather meaningless without active use. Same as flying... Don't give meaningless abilities to people's first roleplaying experiences. I still was in a quandary answering "so how do I get on top of the treetops?"

 

6 hours ago, jajagappa said:

That's what I liked about SKoH.  It got you into the setting, and gave you some immediately playable and understandable scenarios (that were also epic).

Getting into the epic stuff from the get go is fine if everybody is well aware of the setting. If you want to convey the setting, then Winter is Coming, but not immediately. At least I am happy to set up foreshadowing (a gizmo like allied dire wolves that could have seen more mythical deployment) before triggering the big bad nasty. Discovering the Wilder magic in the first books of Wheel of Time was a similar build-up, although the protagonist load on those characters is a bit more than I like in my casual and ongoing roleplaying, same with Belgariath. "You are the destined one" doesn't gel well with "Oh bugger, you died."

[jajagappa]

4 hours ago, Joerg said:

were daunted by the "so you say this describes your character. How could this description be used to solve the current problem in a way satisfying to you and fun to narrate?" approach of HW/HQ.

That actually wasn't my issue.  My issue was the whole Action Point/Bid process which made no sense to me then (or now).  I was very happy to see that gone in HQ2/HQG.  Unfortunately it has returned in the QW SRD.

[Joerg]

1 hour ago, jajagappa said:

That actually wasn't my issue.  My issue was the whole Action Point/Bid process which made no sense to me then (or now).  I was very happy to see that gone in HQ2/HQG.  Unfortunately it has returned in the QW SRD.

True, that's a rather gamist element, alongside the edges. I got by by ignoring them.

There is a (quite underused) opportunity to use the system for simulating an economy as the backdrop of a role-playing game where such gamist elements may come in handy, but in a normal adventure resolution situation I would avoid these.

In the end, the fact that these mechanisms were included in the rules at their first publication sort of proves the problems many people had with the paradigm shift, iincluding the editorial team.

[Lordabdul]

5 hours ago, jajagappa said:

That actually wasn't my issue.  My issue was the whole Action Point/Bid process which made no sense to me then (or now).  I was very happy to see that gone in HQ2/HQG.  Unfortunately it has returned in the QW SRD.

It feels very board-gamey for a narrative game, yes. AFAICT HQ2/HQG removed it and replaced it with a simpler counting of successes and failures?

It's not so much back in the QW SRD as much as it offered again as a rule.... I think QW-based games are free to include either the "Scored Contests" (HQ2 extended contests), "Extended Contexts" (HQ1 extended contests) and/or "Chained Contests" (new to the SRD? I'm not sure). I would argue that it would be overkill for a QW-based game to include all three, and instead the game should just pick the one that fits the genre better... but I could be wrong, I'm not familiar enough with HQ in general. But I guess it does mean the bid system might be back in some of the upcoming QW games, yeah, if that's what you mean.

9 hours ago, Joerg said:

I wasn't prepared for some of the stuff that happened to me, like the Vingan's ability "Run Over Treetops" which inserted a fair amount of wuxia into the setting that I had not been aware of. Rule of cool, so I allowed it even though the character was not a devotee. That ability would be rather meaningless without active use.

That's actually another thing I'm a bit worried about... and the reason I'm asking all those questions is because I may run my first HQG game this summer. Half the group I trust coming up with reasonable abilities, but I'm expecting a couple of the players to come up with outlandish or weird ability ideas. On the one hand I want to let them do what they want as much as possible, but on the other hand I don't want to get stuck with a power that breaks things or sends the game into a whole different genre. The whole point of systems like HQ or FATE is to let players' imaginations run wild, and out of the beaten path of most other systems (especially class/archetype-based systems). I'm familiar with systems like GURPS or HERO which similarly allow these crazy character concepts but using more-or-less strict mechanics to achieve that.... so because of the point-based character creation and genre sandboxing, there's a limit to what the players can choose. HQ relies solely on the GM and players' common sense, foresight, and understanding of the setting and genre tropes to limit what abilities can be chosen. It's... a bit intimidating to not have any guard rails.

Edited May 21, 2020 by lordabdul

[Richard S.]

41 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

That's actually another thing I'm a bit worried about... and the reason I'm asking all those questions is because I may run my first HQG game this summer. Half the group I trust coming up with reasonable abilities, but I'm expecting a couple of the players to come up with outlandish or weird ability ideas.

Why would something like "Run Over Treetops" be an outlandish or weird ability? Sounds like a perfect breakout from Movement to me.

[jajagappa]

35 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

That's actually another thing I'm a bit worried about... and the reason I'm asking all those questions is because I may run my first HQG game this summer. Half the group I trust coming up with reasonable abilities, but I'm expecting a couple of the players to come up with outlandish or weird ability ideas.

Well, I wasn't sure what to expect either when I started running HQG - so not an unexpected situation.

If you want an idea of what first-time GM/character creation can look like, you can browse my original HQG out-of-character thread here: HQG Orlmarth campaign - character creation

I probably tried to follow some basic guidance of avoiding abilities that were too broad (though I know some certainly were).  (Note that there are references to posts that you won't see due to unfortunate circumstances with players later in time.)  Overall, the players came up with a good mix of interesting abilities - don't think there were any that were too bizarre or outrageous.

Generally the important thing is to have abilities that can be used.  Descriptions can be nice (e.g. pale skin), but largely don't work as abilities and should be avoided.

[Lordabdul]

2 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

Why would something like "Run Over Treetops" be an outlandish or weird ability? Sounds like a perfect breakout from Movement to me.

I'm not saying it's outlandish or weird. Joerg however indicated that he "wasn't prepared for it" and that it put him in a "quandary". I suppose it depends on how the player is using it, what the campaign framework and genre was, etc. Generally speaking, I think you can probably agree that HQ character creation requires closer scrutiny than the more classic character creations where picking things from the Player's Handbook only requires minimal GM oversight? It's not a criticism... I'm just saying that I'm more anxious and suspicious of my own GM capabilities when it comes to HQ/FATE/etc. character creation than other more guided and/or restricted systems.

8 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

If you want an idea of what first-time GM/character creation can look like, you can browse my original HQG out-of-character thread here: HQG Orlmarth campaign - character creation

Thanks! That might indeed be very helpful.

[Nevermet]

On 5/21/2020 at 12:00 AM, lordabdul said:

Gaaaah I'm twice blind and stupid!  Thanks in quadruple!  I shall hide away in shame.  Apparently I'm not clever or literate enough to play HQ.

I truly sympathize with this.

[Shawn Carpenter]

Valley of Plenty, which is meant to be new HQ/QW GM/PC friendly, includes lists of "things your initiate of cult X can do" and "things your devotee of cult X can do." They're examples, not an exhaustive list. They're intended to help players get a feel for the sort of magic associated with each cult.

I might put together a free download that also gives some examples of charms and "battle magic."

It's pretty easy for those of us who played RQ1, 2, and 3 to come up with magic appropriate to a character belonging to a specific cult, but it's not as transparent to a player who's being exposed to the setting for the first time.

I strongly agree that a set "spell list" is not the way to go with HQ or QW, but I think a solid list of cult specific examples are very helpful, especially for new players and GMs.