Minor holy days

[mikuel]

I've been looking at replenishing rune points and minor holy days are mentioned.  What are minor holy days?  

I get Sacred time, High holy days and seasonal holy days.  They are all mentioned in the Runequest calendar.  

I could not find minor holy days.  Would this be weekly for each god?  

[Leingod]

44 minutes ago, mikuel said:

I've been looking at replenishing rune points and minor holy days are mentioned.  What are minor holy days?  

I get Sacred time, High holy days and seasonal holy days.  They are all mentioned in the Runequest calendar.  

I could not find minor holy days.  Would this be weekly for each god?  

It's mentioned in the RQG book that every Clayday is a minor holy day for Ernalda. Other sources (I'm using Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes, but these and others are probably also stated elsewhere) state that every Windsday is a minor holy day of Orlanth, that every Wildday is a minor holy day for Chalanna Arroy, and Elmal (and thus Yelmalio) has every Fireday. Every day of Truth Week, on the other hand, seems to be a minor holy day for Lhankor Mhy (except for the last day of that week, which is the seasonal holy day), and Humakt does the same thing with Death Week.

Presumably, most gods will follow one of those two patterns (either one day each week or one week out of the season), and in the absence of a source you should probably just go with whatever you think would make sense.

[GAZZA]

I assume it's OK for most PCs to skip these, rather than have to haul their butts back to a temple every week?

[Leingod]

17 minutes ago, GAZZA said:

I assume it's OK for most PCs to skip these, rather than have to haul their butts back to a temple every week?

Unless one of them is a presiding Rune Priest or something, yeah, they don't need to be there on every single holy day.

Edited June 10, 2020 by Leingod

[Thaz]

27 minutes ago, Leingod said:

Unless one of them is a presiding Rune Priest or something, yeah, they don't need to be there on every single holy day.

Although their god will be fine with that your priest may not of you keep sloping off. 

If you're supposed to be strict church your pastor may raise an eyebrow of you start skipping church on Sundays. 

If you are doing stuff for the church not so much. If you are off doing something unapproved of..... 

[Leingod]

6 minutes ago, Thaz said:

Although their god will be fine with that your priest may not of you keep sloping off. 

If you're supposed to be strict church your pastor may raise an eyebrow of you start skipping church on Sundays. 

If you are doing stuff for the church not so much. If you are off doing something unapproved of..... 

Which is probably part of why the typical "adventuring season" is about 3 weeks tops. Being part of a community means having a lot of obligations you need to meet, and more-or-less regular attendance on holy days is just one more.

[Joerg]

I would expect weekly lesser sacrifices to be a lot less popular as the food is going to be a lot less, and less high quality, too.

People attending are likely to be the poor who will take the less quality "feast" still as an improvement over their own ration of gruel. Other attendants may come for specific sacrifices or blessings.

[Leingod]

43 minutes ago, Joerg said:

I would expect weekly lesser sacrifices to be a lot less popular as the food is going to be a lot less, and less high quality, too.

People attending are likely to be the poor who will take the less quality "feast" still as an improvement over their own ration of gruel. Other attendants may come for specific sacrifices or blessings.

In Sartar: King of Heroes, the way it's described is essentially that all the initiates who can will at least show up for a service, but only the priests and other devotees are going to actually make a whole day of it.

[Thaz]

42 minutes ago, Joerg said:

I would expect weekly lesser sacrifices to be a lot less popular as the food is going to be a lot less, and less high quality, too.

People attending are likely to be the poor who will take the less quality "feast" still as an improvement over their own ration of gruel. Other attendants may come for specific sacrifices or blessings.

Because attending church on Sunday was something believers just get bored with? Gods do actual miracles. Plus you get to dress up in your best and see all your neighbours and have a decent meal (cos sacrifices go somewhere). Not to mention you want to be thought of as a good person when you need something. 

It's going to be a highlight of the week. Along with market day 

[Akhôrahil]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

I would expect weekly lesser sacrifices to be a lot less popular as the food is going to be a lot less, and less high quality, too.

People attending are likely to be the poor who will take the less quality "feast" still as an improvement over their own ration of gruel. Other attendants may come for specific sacrifices or blessings.

I would love to see examples about level of attendance, size of sacrifices, time expenditures and so on various sizes of holy days have on a clan level. How many cows get sacrificed on the typical seasonal holy day, compared to a minor holy day?  

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, Thaz said:

Because attending church on Sunday was something believers just get bored with?

Because you don't drop your housework three days a week to go half a day to your clan temple, attend, and return late in the night. Ernalda has her weekly holy day on Clayday, Orlanth on Windsday, many others on Godsday. You may attract the initiates nearby to undergo an hour of ritual cleansing for entering the holy ground, then attending the sacrifice, afterwards cleaning your ritual robes of the animal blood only keeping the smears on your skin, and then participate in the meagre feast. That's more than half a day of attendance. Up to three days a week, every week?

It's not church on Sunday. It is ritual preparation every other day - you do that if you are following a priestly career, but you can't afford that if you need to feed a family from your work, after giving half of your proceeds to the temple anyway if you are a cottar.

As a rich person, you may hold a shorter sacrifice at your on-stead shrine or votive image. Your poor neighbors may join you.

 

2 hours ago, Thaz said:

Gods do actual miracles.

In exchange for sacrifices and other payment you bring. It is a quid pro quo.

 

2 hours ago, Thaz said:

Plus you get to dress up in your best

Ok, Orlanthi are vain. But that extends to other activities, too.

And if there is sprinkling of blood or similar forms of blessing, taking your wedding gown out may not be the best idea.

There may be birthday-suit iinvolved for receiving the blessings of the lifeblood of the sacrificial animal, or special sacred gear you only wear inside the hallowed ground, that mustn't be taken outside.

 

2 hours ago, Thaz said:

and see all your neighbours and have a decent meal (cos sacrifices go somewhere).

I did mention the culinary attraction, didn't I? How far will a piglet like the one sacrificed by Yanioth and Vasana in rulesbook p.268 the go for a congregation of 50 to 200? Just a morsel.

 

2 hours ago, Thaz said:

Not to mention you want to be thought of as a good person when you need something. 

If everybody does is weekly, there is no chance to shine, really.

It is a transaction. You want something from your cult, you go there, bring a votive offering, or just accept a general blessing.

When you need something from your cult, you bring gifts to your god-talker.

 

2 hours ago, Thaz said:

It's going to be a highlight of the week. Along with market day 

I wonder whether the Clayday meeting is more the time spent in the loomhouse, enduring your place in the pecking order of the few daughters of the tribe and the many wives taken in from other clans, politicking and brutal slandering at its worst while presenting a pleasant facade. Female office intrigue...

This is not something you can attend weekly if you have a farm to manage, children to raise and other duties to take care of.

Weekly highlights would be militia training with the rough ball game as warm-up or cool-down, the Minlister worship in the Thane's or Chief's hall, visiting the market in neighboring settlements (you don't want to limit your exposure to the other sex to your cousins, do you?), and possibly other such training events that bring social contact.  Possibly including the days when the communal bath house is heated up - Orlanthi are body-positive and have no hard nudity taboos. Even sex ed may come with observation, as privacy isn't anywhere what the readership expects. At least ritual / royal cohabitation is quite likely a spectator event (though not necessarily public).

If you are a herder or doing the dairy runs from the far herds back to the clan, there is no chance to attend such services regularly. But then, you might contact a meadow nymph or similar as your priestess.  If you are watching over a kiln or a similar long-term activity where a fire needs to be tended and heat needs to be regulated (if only by rotating the earthen pot with your gruel so that all sides get roughly the same heat over a day and a night), you'll quite likely have ot excuse yourself. When the hay is harvested (as soon as weather permits), there is no time for mass attendance at weekly services with enough magical oomph to regain rune points. Without winter fodder, you may freeze to death or starve.

You will seek to gain full participation at seasonal or high holy days, but even then there will always be some who need to maintain normal life. You can't park the herds without supervision, and I doubt there are many rites where the collective herds participate. (There are bound to be some. Herds do need blessings. But then, there is a likelihood that the rite goes to the far pastures rather than the herd coming to the temple, grazing on the meadows meant for hay-making.)

 

There are other ways to demonstrate devotion and piety. Lighting a candle, burning a lock of your hair, letting a kite fly, parading through prayer gates, carrying a bucket of water up the hill... These will be ingrained in daily life, probably unnoticed until exposed to strongly different cultures.

[mikuel]

Well, Joerg, you sure made things a lot more complicated.  🙂

[Lordabdul]

7 hours ago, Joerg said:

Because you don't drop your housework three days a week to go half a day to your clan temple, attend, and return late in the night. Ernalda has her weekly holy day on Clayday, Orlanth on Windsday, many others on Godsday. You may attract the initiates nearby to undergo an hour of ritual cleansing for entering the holy ground, then attending the sacrifice, afterwards cleaning your ritual robes of the animal blood only keeping the smears on your skin, and then participate in the meagre feast. That's more than half a day of attendance. Up to three days a week, every week?

I picture minor holy days as a "less than an hour's worship" kinda thing. Otherwise, indeed, it's totally counter-productive if it takes half a day or more. Even for a 30min worship you still have to potentially travel 1hour roundtrip or something (depending on where you live), but I imagine most people would make the most of it, running other errands near the temple. It's a reinforcing dynamic where people come together for a short worship, so they also do other social or commercial things before/after.  But it's also possible that the minor holy days are mainly attended to by people living near the temple, while people in farther away steads either have their own shrine for this, or just skip it, only showing up for bigger holy days (something that did happen in the real world at my grandparents' village, by the way).

Edited June 10, 2020 by lordabdul

[GAZZA]

My issue is that I view Glorantha primarily as a roleplaying game rather than an interactive reality. Many adventures take longer than a week - indeed, many adventures the travel time alone is more than a week. These become unreasonably complicated to schedule if, in a party of 4, there are 4 different minor holy days that have to be respected each week or risk invoking spirits of retribution.

I realise that a pat answer is that "Well, RQG isn't a game about adventurers, it's a game about members of a clan" which is fair enough, but there's plenty of published material that requires the PCs to travel and doesn't assume that the travel time will be interrupted several times per week for minor worship ceremonies (even assuming there are enough priests scattered en route to conduct them - which is itself pretty unlikely). And not all adventures can be "special exceptions because you're on temple business", especially with multiple PCs that have multiple temples to keep happy.

So at least IMG I'm going to rule that for initiates, you are required  to attend the High Holy Day and Sacred Time events, you are expected to attend Holy Day events, and you are merely welcome to attend minor holy day events. That seems fair to me, while still being reasonably playable.

[Joerg]

7 hours ago, lordabdul said:

I picture minor holy days as a "less than an hour's worship" kinda thing.

But then - is that sufficient to regain rune points? I don't think so. And it still leaves those living on steads a little further away to spend hours in commuting.

It is less of a hassle if all such weekly services would happen on the same day of the week, but that doesn't seem to be the case, unless you make Godsday the standard day of worship and elemental days be damned.

7 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Otherwise, indeed, it's totally counter-productive if it takes half a day or more. Even for a 30min worship you still have to potentially travel 1hour roundtrip or something (depending on where you live), but I imagine most people would make the most of it, running other errands near the temple.

And on Clayday that's for people wprshiping Ernalda, on Windsday the Orlanh worshipers are off and away, and who knows when the rest is having their weekly dose of ritual cleansing and communion with their worship group. And market days will vary, too.

7 hours ago, lordabdul said:

It's a reinforcing dynamic where people come together for a short worship, so they also do other social or commercial things before/after.  But it's also possible that the minor holy days are mainly attended to by people living near the temple, while people in farther away steads either have their own shrine for this, or just skip it, only showing up for bigger holy days (something that did happen in the real world at my grandparents' village, by the way).

And once you're going down this road, you get half-empty (or even less attended) services. Also, from cutting the throat of a sacrificial animal (which won't be the first thing in a rite) to having its meat ready for consumption, your cook will spend a few hours working, unless you have a barbecue where you lose quite a lot of the fat or sap. You don't have modern kitchen applications, so things take time to cease being raw.

 

[Lordabdul]

5 hours ago, GAZZA said:

So at least IMG I'm going to rule that for initiates, you are required  to attend the High Holy Day and Sacred Time events, you are expected to attend Holy Day events, and you are merely welcome to attend minor holy day events. That seems fair to me, while still being reasonably playable.

That's always how I pictured it... I mean, is it written anywhere that you have to attend every worship? Very few people do that in the real-world. And probably most people don't even need the Rune points unless they're really doing a lot of adventuring or important clan/temple business at that point in time

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

But then - is that sufficient to regain rune points? I don't think so.

If you want you can give penalties to the Worship roll if you spend less time than you think is necessary. And then the PC can make up for it by spending more MPs.

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

It is less of a hassle if all such weekly services would happen on the same day of the week, but that doesn't seem to be the case, unless you make Godsday the standard day of worship and elemental days be damned.

Well, you can make your Glorantha vary one way or another... it seems easier to me to make holy days (especially the minor ones) more or less optional, rather than moving them around. It's not like missing a Worship ceremony would kick you out of the cult? I mean, you could miss one (even a major one) for any good reason. And I don't believe minor holy days would have fancy feasts with elaborate animal sacrifices and hours-long roasts -- that's for major holy days IMHO (one feast a week sounds overkill!). But again, YGWV.

 

[soltakss]

18 hours ago, mikuel said:

Well, Joerg, you sure made things a lot more complicated.  🙂

It happens ... 😀

[Joerg]

6 hours ago, lordabdul said:

it seems easier to me to make holy days (especially the minor ones) more or less optional, rather than moving them around.

That was my original proposal, which I caught flak for:

On 6/10/2020 at 10:46 AM, Thaz said:

Because attending church on Sunday was something believers just get bored with? Gods do actual miracles.

And not enough with that...

5 minutes ago, soltakss said:

18 hours ago, mikuel said:

Well, Joerg, you sure made things a lot more complicated.  🙂

It happens ... 😀

We often gloss over stuff which may make our gaming experience more colourful. Orlanthi worship, or Ernaldan weekly sacrifices are a different thing from the Eucharism.

6 hours ago, lordabdul said:

It's not like missing a Worship ceremony would kick you out of the cult?

LIke I said, I think that the weekly rites are more or less optional. You go there if you want some meat you can't usually afford, or if you want a specific blessing, or if you want to support a specific blessing.

There are ways to display and enact your piety that don't require a priestly sacrifice.

6 hours ago, lordabdul said:

I mean, you could miss one (even a major one) for any good reason. And I don't believe minor holy days would have fancy feasts with elaborate animal sacrifices and hours-long roasts -- that's for major holy days IMHO (one feast a week sounds overkill!). But again, YGWV.

Let's say we take the piglet Vasana and Yanioth offer. (And look at Yanioth's choice of clothing, or lack thereof, for the bloody rite...)

After the ritual bleeding, you will want to let it hang a little longer, and then you may disembowel and spit it, apply some herbs and salt, and maybe roast it, or you chop it up and create a strong broth from it. Either way, this will take a while, so if you came here to get some better food, you'll have to endure some more service (unless you already volunteered for cooking service).

Likewise, the priesthood will have an idea how long it takes to transform a holy sacrifice into a palatable meal, and they will shrewdly have adjusted their ceremony to make the best out of that time.

A piglet for fifty will be no more than a few mouthful per person. A feast if all you can afford is thin gruel, but everyday food for a free household.

[Squaredeal Sten]

 

 

On 6/10/2020 at 3:46 AM, Thaz said:

Because attending church on Sunday was something believers just get bored with? Gods do actual miracles. Plus you get to dress up in your best and see all your neighbours and have a decent meal (cos sacrifices go somewhere). Not to mention you want to be thought of as a good person when you need something. 

It's going to be a highlight of the week. Along with market day 

For Issaries, away from major cities where markets are always open,  market day - (when possible market day should be Wildday of Movement week )- IS the minor holy day.  So, two birds with one stone!   Do well by doing good, that's the issaries way.

 

 

 

[Ultor]

I'll be frank - I've found that there's a major tension between the calendar and the "one adventure per season" framing. If we assume that everyone has full Rune Points and so on at the start of the adventure, there's no real need to consult the calendar (unless that's part of the adventure or you enjoy stopping an adventure half way through and heading back home for a few rolls.) If we assume you have to use the calendar, timing any adventure that involves more than a few different PC cults becomes difficult if you want to ensure everyone starts with a full battery.

We did use universal coordinated Minor Holy Days to try to obviate this problem, but it wasn't satisfactory and felt forced and non-Gloranthan.

I'd love to know how others have handled this at their table.

 

[jajagappa]

2 hours ago, Ultor said:

I'd love to know how others have handled this at their table.

I try to take advantage of associated and subcults so that characters can join those holy day celebrations and recover Rune Points as well.  It's not much of an issue for Orlanth/Ernalda, but without that it would be a real challenge for our Donandar skald.  It's still a challenge for our Yelmalion, where there are few temples in Sartar.  Even for the LM sage, it's a challenge as the main temple is in Jonstown.

[BlindPumpkin]

4 hours ago, Ultor said:

I'll be frank - I've found that there's a major tension between the calendar and the "one adventure per season" framing. If we assume that everyone has full Rune Points and so on at the start of the adventure, there's no real need to consult the calendar (unless that's part of the adventure or you enjoy stopping an adventure half way through and heading back home for a few rolls.) If we assume you have to use the calendar, timing any adventure that involves more than a few different PC cults becomes difficult if you want to ensure everyone starts with a full battery.

We did use universal coordinated Minor Holy Days to try to obviate this problem, but it wasn't satisfactory and felt forced and non-Gloranthan.

I'd love to know how others have handled this at their table.

 

I share your sentiment. I feel that in trying to give too much mechanical depth to the rune magic system they ended up making it all way too gamey. It is usually assumed that the game rules are there only for the players to interact with the world through their adventurers, and not that the whole world is running under those mechanics like a video game, but that is the impression that RQG gives me when I see rules for mundane worshiping being stated out like this. I preferred the more abstract handling in RQII, and also the lower incidence of rune magic in general in that edition, but that is a completely different matter.

A weird quirk related to minor holy days that I've noticed is that, if you can only effectively roll worship on holy days, then why does a minor holy day give you a bonus at all? If you'll always have at least the +10 bonus from a minor holy day then why not just bump worship to 15 base instead of 5 base? I feel minor holy days shouldn't have a bonus at all, that people pray every week precisely because of the lower odds.

Edited June 11, 2020 by BlindPumpkin

[Squaredeal Sten]

3 hours ago, BlindPumpkin said:

........
A weird quirk related to minor holy days that I've noticed is that, if you can only effectively roll worship on holy days, then why does a minor holy day give you a bonus at all? If you'll always have at least the +10 bonus from a minor holy day then why not just bump worship to 15 base instead of 5 base? I feel minor holy days shouldn't have a bonus at all, that people pray every week precisely because of the lower odds.

Perhaps because the worship roll mechanic is primarily intended for in-game events, which 

(A) may not occur on a holy day in a temple but on some random day in the back of nowhere or at a forgotten shrine, when the PCs are adventuring and need help from a god, 

(B) May be personalized to the PC, that is the PC is doing something in which there is a significant difference between the assistant priest who has been assiduously studying how to please the god and the unskilled lay member who has never conducted a ceremony.  This is where skills and specializations pay off and it's important because the designers wanted to design a game in shich skill matters.  They wanted such specializations in the game.  Like tracking, where you expect to call on the humter, not the city boy, to track.   Like riding, where the Prax nomad of the Bison tribe should have a definite advantage riding the bison over the PC who never rode a horse let alone a bison.

And  some of us players like the skills too, it's part of the appeal of Runequest over Brand X..

 

Edited June 12, 2020 by Squaredeal Sten

[GAZZA]

4 hours ago, BlindPumpkin said:

A weird quirk related to minor holy days that I've noticed is that, if you can only effectively roll worship on holy days, then why does a minor holy day give you a bonus at all? If you'll always have at least the +10 bonus from a minor holy day then why not just bump worship to 15 base instead of 5 base? I feel minor holy days shouldn't have a bonus at all, that people pray every week precisely because of the lower odds.

One can imagine other cases where you might want to make Worship rolls other than to regain Rune Points. For example, an avatar of Orlanth appears; roll Worship Orlanth successfully or get smitten by impests (or whatever). I suspect you could possibly better model that particular case with a Passion of some sort, but the general idea applies. The examples given under skill use are (I believe) not intended to be proscriptive.

An interesting side point: if I have Worship Orlanth 5, and via expenditure of magic points and sundry bonuses on a High Holy Day have an effective skill of 95+, I will likely succeed at my roll. Does this garner a skill check, even though if rolled say 45 (which would not otherwise have been a success)? RAW seems to suggest it is, and I allow it IMG, but it is a bit cheaty.

[Kloster]

11 hours ago, Ultor said:

I'd love to know how others have handled this at their table.

Remove the 1 adventure per season, and replace it by 3 weeks of extraordinary activities per season. This solve several problems: The one you noticed and the very short duration adventures. It also force players (and the GM) to plan the longer adventures.