What is the Hero Soul?

[Nick Brooke]

1 minute ago, Jeff said:

Yes. What David is posting is Greg's first drawings of the chits. Originally Fate was going to have some meaning - I think Argrath and the Red Emperor both got it. Later he decided against it. Even later he got William Church to draw figures on the chits. But I am at a lake today, so can't look at the originals. 

Is it a starred/asterisked magic factor, meaning the hero can do offensive spirit magic? I'm not convinced it's meaningfully a Fate Rune...

[Jeff]

2 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

Is it a starred/asterisked magic factor, meaning the hero can do offensive spirit magic? I'm not convinced it's meaningfully a Fate Rune...

That's why I want to look at my originals. If I recall, that made it very obvious. 

[soltakss]

22 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

Is it a starred/asterisked magic factor, meaning the hero can do offensive spirit magic? I'm not convinced it's meaningfully a Fate Rune...

That is my interpretation. 

[French Desperate WindChild]

17 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Oui, SVP!

thanks to use a civilized language. At least I understand what you said !

[David Scott]

6 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Is it a starred/asterisked magic factor, meaning the hero can do offensive spirit magic? I'm not convinced it's meaningfully a Fate Rune...

6 hours ago, Jeff said:

That's why I want to look at my originals. If I recall, that made it very obvious. 

Looking at the sheets as a whole, they are asterisks, from WB / RM:

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in the CF. MgF, or MF, the asterisk indicates that the unit has a special ability or weakness in that factor.

On the counters the asterisk is six pointed (like the fate rune), in the rule book, the asterisk is a 5 pointed star! The asterisks are the same in Nomad Gods rulebook.

[Bill the barbarian]

1 hour ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

thanks to use a civilized language. At least I understand what you said !

Fer a change, eh?

[Ian Absentia]

1 hour ago, David Scott said:

On the counters the asterisk is six pointed (like the fate rune), in the rule book, the asterisk is a 5 pointed star! The asterisks are the same in Nomad Gods rulebook.

Yeah, but, when I draw an asterisk by hand, I always draw them six-pointed.* [Edit: Though the one shown looks like old school Chartpak lettering, not hand-drawn.  Can't speak to how many points are used in an asterisk in that font.]

Has anyone considered that "the Fate Rune" is another inside joke that just sort of made its way into canon?

!i!

[*And apparently I'm bucking convention by using only six.  Wikipedia informs me that a hand-written asterisk may feature up to eight points, while a sans-serif type font uses five and a serif font uses six.  My keyboard here shows six, but when I type it, the BRP Central screen displays only five.  Point being, therein lies the potential source of confusion and an early inside joke.]

Edited July 21, 2020 by Ian Absentia

[Lordabdul]

9 hours ago, Crel said:

Speculation, and spoilers for one of the adventures in TSR:

Well spotted, and very nice speculating sir!

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Basically, you either have a fetch, or you have a Hero Soul; mechanically it's one thing, not two things.

Mmmh I wonder if that means you can't be a shamanic hero? That seems weird...is there a precedent for shaman heroes in Glorantha's metaplot? I'm not super knowledgeable about the famous NPCs, but my understanding was that Argrath has a fetch?  It's also possible they are the same thing, but you need to move it between the Hero Plane and Spirit World, and you can't be aware of both at the same time... mmmh. We'll see.

I'm not clear on whether this "Results of Success" section on p187 is part of the Subsequent visits, or part of the main adventure? Do you get these things only several years later?! Or after the Night Fight? (RQG books have a tendency to completely screw up the headings' hierarchy, making it hard to know what belongs to what)

I'm not sure what really warrants the opportunity to store 1 POW in the God Time/Hero Plane (I wish those terms were better defined by the way), but I like the idea that to maintain your Hero Soul you need have other people sacrifice POW to you (probably representing devout loyalty to you). That would make it clear that any lucky murder-tourist could in theory get their foot in the door, so to speak, but they need to create a community around them otherwise the door slams shut again pretty quickly.

[Sir_Godspeed]

2 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

Yeah, but, when I draw an asterisk by hand, I always draw them six-pointed.* [Edit: Though the one shown looks like old school Chartpak lettering, not hand-drawn.  Can't speak to how many points are used in an asterisk in that font.]

Has anyone considered that "the Fate Rune" is another inside joke that just sort of made its way into canon?

!i!

[*And apparently I'm bucking convention by using only six.  Wikipedia informs me that a hand-written asterisk may feature up to eight points, while a sans-serif type font uses five and a serif font uses six.  My keyboard here shows six, but when I type it, the BRP Central screen displays only five.  Point being, therein lies the potential source of confusion and an early inside joke.]

Eight pointed star? 

CHAOS! GET THE PITCHFORKS!

[Qizilbashwoman]

52 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Eight pointed star? 

CHAOS! GET THE PITCHFORKS!

*Frowns in Muslim*

[Austin]

15 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Well spotted, and very nice speculating sir!

Thanks!

Quote

Mmmh I wonder if that means you can't be a shamanic hero? That seems weird...is there a precedent for shaman heroes in Glorantha's metaplot? I'm not super knowledgeable about the famous NPCs, but my understanding was that Argrath has a fetch?  It's also possible they are the same thing, but you need to move it between the Hero Plane and Spirit World, and you can't be aware of both at the same time...

My interpretation (of admittedly a half-remembered comment, lost somewhere on these forums...) is that the fetch & the Hero Soul, at least in RuneQuest game-mechanical terms, are basically synonymous. One piece of published evidence which kind of substantiates that is that the "Hero Soul" -like thing in TSR improves your effective POW against magic the same way a fetch does.

As an aside, I was trying to muddle out the mechanics of how Argrath is so OP a while back, and the conclusion I came to was: he is a shaman, he has a fetch, and his fetch is the White Bull. Which is a wyter. Which people sacrifice POW to. Basically feeding him full of magic for his bullshit.

Quote

I'm not clear on whether this "Results of Success" section on p187 is part of the Subsequent visits, or part of the main adventure? Do you get these things only several years later?! Or after the Night Fight? (RQG books have a tendency to completely screw up the headings' hierarchy, making it hard to know what belongs to what)

I'm not sure what really warrants the opportunity to store 1 POW in the God Time/Hero Plane

My reading is that the "Results of Success" is for completing the final episode. I'm not sure you'd actually need to have participated in all six episodes; it's plausible, but not explicitly stated as I recall. Plus surviving for six years of adventures isn't necessarily probable in RuneQuest . I think only the last episode gives Hero Soul opportunity because it's during Sacred Time, and is more explicitly dragged into the God Time to finish the elvish ritual.

I'm not sure what warrants that opportunity either. Doing an adventure in the God World, loosely, but I presume "this world" heroquests might qualify too?

Depending on how shaman/fetch mechanics and hero mechanics interact, I feel like either shamans are going to continue to be incredibly powerful as Heroes, or the storing of POW into a fetch and/or the acquiring of shamanic abilities is supposed to be less trivial than my reading of the rules makes it.

Quote

 I like the idea that to maintain your Hero Soul you need have other people sacrifice POW to you (probably representing devout loyalty to you). That would make it clear that any lucky murder-tourist could in theory get their foot in the door, so to speak, but they need to create a community around them otherwise the door slams shut again pretty quickly.

Thanks! I think it makes sense for Glorantha. Do want to note quick that I'm not drawing off my commentary memory there, but rather speculating toward what "feels right" to my intuition. For me, I think the point of a hero community should be part of a replenishing mechanic. You can hoard Hero Soul as a murderhobo, squirreled away for a rainy day, but if you expend it, it's gone unless people need you enough to replenish it through Worship.

[Qizilbashwoman]

On 7/21/2020 at 3:15 PM, Qizilbashwoman said:

*Frowns in Muslim*

(if my joke was unclear this is the sign of Muhammad, "seal of the prophets")

[Sir_Godspeed]

1 hour ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

(if my joke was unclear this is the sign of Muhammad, "seal of the prophets")

Yup, I got you!

[Joerg]

On 7/21/2020 at 10:16 AM, Nick Brooke said:

Is it a starred/asterisked magic factor, meaning the hero can do offensive spirit magic? I'm not convinced it's meaningfully a Fate Rune...

It is the starred magic factor, which means that the unit possesses exotic magic.  

Offensive spirit magic is indicated by a range factor (lower right corner) greater than zero. The backside of a superhero has that, and loses the infinity rune in the magic factor, meaning that it can be killed by spirit magic if all your spirit magicians attack and roll high.

In the expansion of the rules, there are also magical leaders receiving an exclamation mark in the magic factor (IIRC Wyrm's Footnotes 3). Applies one extra Magic Factor to each unit stacked with them. No clear idea how this projects to spirits sent elsewhere, though.

 

The Sartar faction hero with an exotic ability is Argrath. (Actually several exotic abilities - he can nullify the glowline or glowspot, he can call up the dragontooth runners, and he can tame giants)

The Sartar faction hero without an exotic ability is Gunda the Guilty.

The superhero is of course our bear-coat wearing Rathori friend Harrek.

Edited August 9, 2020 by Joerg