RQG Cults for Human Shamans

[Zit]

In Balazar, I can well imagine shamanism as central in Foundchild's worship. It wouldn't surprise me if Foundchild was considered as a kind of shaman ancestor. Any link with Blueface ? A new mystery of this wild country.

[Nick Brooke]

On 9/12/2020 at 4:53 AM, Beoferret said:

I'm starting to recruit folks for a game and don't want to overload them, though I'm pretty sure that one player is interested in a shaman-type character (either that or a Eurmal worshipper), so that's why I've been thinking about how to link shamans to the cults described in the core rulebook.

You don't actually have to do that. A shaman can be in a shamanic tradition that isn't a full-blown cult (e.g. Horned Man, Earth Witch, Kolat), instead picking up an unusual selection of Rune magic through casual ad hoc membership of spirit cults (see RQG p.377-9 for Spirit Cult rules, and p.292 for a few more Praxian spirit cults associated with Eiritha). If you want ideas for Spirit Cults, grab the Nomad Gods rules from Chaosium's website and see how the Praxians do it.

Also, in case it helps, here's some advice I shared earlier on discorporate shamanic scouting missions:

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The more interesting questions (IMO) are how you include a shamanic adventurer in a group: you don’t want them to turn into the cyberpunk deck-runner who’s playing their own side-game while everyone gets on with the main story. I’ve found my own answer, which usually revolves around discorporate scouting before the main action to get a different perspective on what’s coming next. Not “accurate reconnaissance” - more an otherworldly “what’s really going on here” version of events. YGWV.

Here’s a fun thing I’ve started doing as part of every shamanic reconnaissance. The way it works in my head: one Rune Point for Discorporation feels like a reasonable spend to get past one problem. So when the adventurers are getting lost in the Colymar Wilds looking for Tarndisi’s Grove, the shaman drops one POW and I’ll tell them he can see a route through the mazy forest, he understands the pattern into which it’s grown, and he can perceive all of the Aldryami — all sorts of Aldryami! — who’ve been shadowing them all through the outer glades. 

And then I make the offer: “That’s not all. You reckon if you went a bit deeper, stayed a bit longer, you’d understand even more.” And the thing is, I truly mean it: maybe they’ve worked out how to get through one obstacle, but if he took the bait I would absolutely for sure give him something else that’d be even more useful — maybe in a broader, more abstract way, maybe with a totally different insight, maybe about the Dragon or the Boar or the Dryad? — and all I’m asking is for him to spend another point of Rune power and go a little bit deeper into the Spirit World...

Every time, so far, he’s flunked out. But one of these days I’ll get him. And then, with any luck, it’ll become addictive. And he’ll be wanting to push further and further out, spending longer and longer on the Spirit Plane, becoming less and less interested in or involved with the mundane world, as I fill his perceptions with beautiful abstractions ...

It’s just beautiful, it really is. Stuff like this is why I love RuneQuest.

Cheers, Nick

[Beoferret]

Thanks for the advice, Nick. I love the idea of discorporate recon! Added fun for a shaman PC, but also a nice way to reinforce to all the players how RQG/Glorantha is really different than most other fantasy games and settings.