Interesting Use of Common Rune Spells - Grove of Green Rock & Pegasus Plateau Spoilers

[French Desperate WindChild]

9 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

It’s not completely clear how it works - does the alarm sound from the point of breaching (in which case you could tell direction with just one warding), or from the warding as a whole (in which case you couldn’t)?

from my perspective the alarm sounds in your head so I think @Kloster is a good temple's security expert (at least in my glorantha :p)

[Kloster]

17 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

I am guessing the sounds of the wounded coming from the front or the back... Ears do work in stereo for that reason, no? Again just a guess, is this right @Kloster?

Yes, just my read of the spell.

[Kloster]

9 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

from my perspective the alarm sounds in your head so I think @Kloster is a good temple's security expert (at least in my glorantha :p)

Thanks for the comment.

[Jeff]

On 7/13/2021 at 3:04 PM, Arcadiagt5 said:

OK, I stand corrected. Slightly boggled, but corrected.Measuring the area to assess RP cost would be a little more complicated though.

As an aside, the moment someone who doesn't belong to a cult or occupation that would deal with geometry (so let's be kind and say Lhankor Mhy, Flintnail, Sartar the Builder, philosopher, etc), then it is perfectly ok to say that the character knows less geometry than the player. So start by asking "how does your character calculate that?". I kind GM might say INTx4, a cruel GM might require a more specific Lore or Crafting skill. And then how do you measure this out?

There's a reason why geometry largely developed to meet some practical need in surveying, construction, astronomy, and various crafts. Most Gloranthans have no training in it what so ever, and are just going by approximation and innate spatial awareness.

[Squaredeal Sten]

On 7/14/2021 at 2:26 PM, PhilHibbs said:

It's this idea of treating magic like a computer graphics program that bothers me. The Gloranthan universe is not a calculator that can tell you the area of your weird shape.

I believe that is the wrong way to frame the question.  It's not necessary for the universe to consciously calculate area or to tell you in words if you ask.

I have a counter-example for you to consider:  Buoyancy.  How much weight can you put into a boat or on a raft before it sinks?

it is possible to compute volume and weight, calculate density, and answer the question.  But the universe is not doing that.    Density is a human concept, invented so that humans can predict what the universe actually does. 

We can have a rule on buoyancy that gives a density formula.  We might have such a rule in RQG if the issue came up much.  But in the absence of such a rule I wouldn't allow a player to load a canoe to the gunwales with lead and float down the river standing on it. 

(The issue of how much cargo - does come up:  it came up a few days ago in a RQG game i am in, how much cargo can I get into one wagon and on two pack animals, or do I need two wagons?  The GM told me it looks like I need two wagons.)

In the case of Warding or Market, we do have a rule that says there is a limit to the spell's area of effect and here is how to calculate that limit.  That's just saying there is a magical-natural limit,and  it's knowable for game purposes.    It's not saying that the universe is consciously doing a calculation and will give you an answer in words. 

The canoe either floats or sinks, the warding either works or it doesn't.  The universe will be consistent in both cases.  It is possible to calculate the result in both  cases.  But before people could calculate buoyancy, the boat still sank or floated.

 

Edited July 31, 2021 by Squaredeal Sten
spelling; and computer restart

[Arcadiagt5]

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. 

[Joerg]

7 hours ago, Arcadiagt5 said:

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. 

That is all well and fine with Darkness, Earth, and Fire, but how would you treat the open line figures of Sea and Storm?

Thunder Rebels turned the Storm Rune into Aedin's Wall, a spiral with a relatively open entrance.

 

There is the third dimension of the Warding, too - flying or burrowing creatures (or swimmers if underwater) can easily reach the top or the bottom of the warded area, and intrude from there.

 

Other cans of worms: Can two separate Wardings intersect, to cover the same area? Would their effects add up, or cancel out, or simply the stronger warding take effect? 

If you are a target of a warding's alarm and Disrupt, will you still benefit from being inside (the Countermagic effect)?

[PhilHibbs]

There is also an implication in the description that you have to be inside the warding in order to get the warning.

[Squaredeal Sten]

On 7/14/2021 at 3:08 PM, Arcadiagt5 said:

Agreed. After reading the general reactions of this thread I'm happy with the use of long, thin, rectangular wardings as “ tripwires” but that angled shape just doesn’t feel Gloranthan to me. I'm not going to allow those.

Now here is a question for everybody:  let's grant for a minute that the Warding area won't work.  Either you don't like the shape, or the players did the math wrong and it's really a 120 sq. meter box.   Or a 1000 sq. meter box.

How are you going to GM that Warding spell's failure?  I can see a couple of different ways;

Will you allow them to put up the corner markers, spend the rune point - and it doesn't  warn or protect them?

Will you tell them the rune spell failed, rune point not spent?  (if so, will you give them a hint as to why?)

 

 

 

Edited August 2, 2021 by Squaredeal Sten
spelling, my nemesis.

[Lordabdul]

18 minutes ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

How are you going to GM that Warding spell's failure?

Depends why the Warding fails. In many cases I've read about in this thread, the reason for the failure or inadequacy is something the Adventurer would know about. For example, if Warding only works with convex shapes, that's something the GM can tell the player out of character (and potentially start a whole debate that will bore everybody else at the table 😄 ), and so the player can just do something else, as nothing really "happened" in the game yet.

 

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

How are you going to GM that Warding spell's failure?  I can see a couple of different ways;

Will you allow them to put up the corner markers, spend the rune point - and it doesn't  warn or protect them?

Will you tell them the rune spell failed, rune point not spent?  (if so, will you give them a hint as to why?)

The wards shatter, burn up, turn to dust, liquefy, or blow away in the wind.  Clearly either their god was displeased that you failed to invoke them correctly or that you didn't prepare properly; or your god's enemy interfered with the casting.

Or, if you want something more minimal, you expect to see the "laser light" effect of your magic connecting the four wards together briefly before fading.... and you don't.

[Bill the barbarian]

50 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Or, if you want something more minimal, you expect to see the "laser light" effect of your magic connecting the four wards together briefly before fading.... and you don't.

Sweet! That imagery is priceless!

[PhilHibbs]

10 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

How are you going to GM that Warding spell's failure?  I can see a couple of different ways;

The character knows it won't work. They learned that when they learned the myths that the spell is based on, and from having been told stories of people who tried it.

[David Scott]

11 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

How are you going to GM that Warding spell's failure?

Given that warding is a ritual, so it's an hour to cast per point (RBM, page 9), and that:

Quote

A framework of motion, invocation, and power expenditure created by an adventurer to establish the conditions necessary for summoning, enchanting, or enhancing the skill with which spells are cast. Rituals are notably time-consuming and/or power-consuming to construct. RQG, page 247

• A kind GM might say you realise that the setup for the ritual is not going to work within the conditions you were taught for the spell.
• A mean GM might say after four hours performing the ritual, you realise this isn't going to work as you've clearly not set something up properly. And just disallow their rune roll.

I'd go with the former.

Rituals are effectively something you know (a repeatable series of procedures that produce a known result). 

[Hteph]

oh, to me it is very simple, the protection rune is a aquare, so ofcurce this need to be as squarish as possible, and in the ritual to set up there will be steps* that guarantees it. If you get it from a "round rune" etc cult doesne't matter, they probably was gifted, or stole it, or something, from the earth to start with.

 

*So there are probaly a need of walking the perimeter, and then crossing the diagonal in a certain amount of steps, where the length step has been defined in learning process. Some twaking are probably possible, but too much and the ritual starts to fall apart.

[PhilHibbs]

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.

[Arcadiagt5]

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… 

[Lordabdul]

On 8/3/2021 at 3:16 AM, PhilHibbs said:

I try not to be now.

Yep, very well said. Same thing for me -- there's a lot of arguably bad gaming I did as a GM when I was younger, but I now understand, especially in a game like RuneQuest, that the Adventurers are heroes and they should be doing heroic stuff... not waste a day to setup a ritual that goes "pprrrtf" because they have a different reading of the rules than me. The Adventurers know what works and what doesn't with the Warding spell, so if the players don't, I tell them.

Now, there are still ways to mess with the players... I mean, during these hours setting up the ritual, do they spot the enemy's scouts, who are taking note of what they're doing and where they're setting up their ward wands? Or even try to stealthily replace one of them with a similar looking stick?

[PhilHibbs]

Oh, and the door is closed on V-shaped wardings by the new writeup in RBOM:

Quote

 

Edited August 5, 2021 by PhilHibbs

[Akhôrahil]

3 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

Oh, and the door is closed on V-shaped wardings by the new writeup in RBOM:

Probably sensible. No restriction on the severely elongated ones, though?

[PhilHibbs]

4 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Probably sensible. No restriction on the severely elongated ones, though?

No, other than the "That's not a rectangle, it's a line!" objection. 

     

[Shiningbrow]

On 8/3/2021 at 5:43 AM, Squaredeal Sten said:

Now here is a question for everybody:  let's grant for a minute that the Warding area won't work.  Either you don't like the shape, or the players did the math wrong and it's really a 120 sq. meter box.   Or a 1000 sq. meter box.

How are you going to GM that Warding spell's failure?  I can see a couple of different ways;

Will you allow them to put up the corner markers, spend the rune point - and it doesn't  warn or protect them?

Will you tell them the rune spell failed, rune point not spent?  (if so, will you give them a hint as to why?)

 

 

 

Simple - the casting and effects of Rune Magic always (barring the rare exceptions) have various manifestations - lights, sounds, feelings, etc. Thus, a failed casting would be blatantly obvious. You would *know* your deity hasn't shown up!

As for the GM advising before getting to that point - if the characters already have 3 RPs, and high skills, it could be presumed they've already tried it (is similar) before, and the GM could just "remind" them that it's not possible.

Of course, the player could deny this latter, and then they could waste all that time for the spell to fail... 

[Squaredeal Sten]

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.

 

Edited August 8, 2021 by Squaredeal Sten
emphasis

[Arcadiagt5]

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.