Spirit Rune

[Aprewett]

Hello. Beginner question. And spoilers for Six Seasons.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The RAW state that this rune is not available at game start.

My question is can I make this so?

Context. So close to starting Six Seasons, but with only one character. I want to create a drive or connection to the temple and the Rainbow Wyrm choosing the player. Via the spirit rune. There is next to no information on the rune in the core book. But I was thinking it worked differently for the living. Something like strength of the soul or even destiny. Just spitballing.

Further to this if it does not break canon too much to allow it, and the official meaning meshes.

I am mashing up Valley of Plenty with SSs to work through some younger years (and just riffing of Questworlds for keywords while young). But I need a greater understanding of the Spirit Rune to plant the seed, in game of how it could manifest in the characters personality. Situations that would have it fire up.

I understand it’s my game and all but willing to stay in the spirit of the canon if possible.

Thanks. 

[Richard S.]

IMG, having a Fetch is the equivalent of having a rating in the Spirit Rune. "This Rune describes disembodied entities existing in the Spirit World." (RQG 15) - by definition it does not apply to embodied, living beings. Among mortals, only shamans can exist in both the physical and spiritual planes at the same time. I haven't read Six Seasons yet, but if you want a player to start with a strong connection to the spirit world then they might be an assistant shaman or even an involuntary full shaman, their Fetch awakened in youth by the Horned Man. Or they could just have a high aptitude in abilities that deal with that world, like Spirit Combat, Spirit Travel, CHA, POW, etc. - the sort of stuff that might make for a good shaman in the future.

I think if somehow a human did have a percentage rating in the Spirit Rune, it would mean they exist in a kind of half-state very unlike that of a shaman, unable to fully partake in either world. The more of a spirit you are, the less of a man, beast, plant, or whatever you become; a wraith with only the shape of a living being. In this model, gaining a Fetch would allow you to "offload" your spirit rating into a place where it doesn't conflict with your physical self, allowing full participation in both halves of existence.

Edited September 9 by Richard S.

[Aprewett]

Awesome, grist to chew on, thanks. I am going to search for Fetch in the core book, and get a better understanding.

I was trying to keep my first toe dip in Glorantha, as basic as possible. 
We are both beginners, so we discussed going easy, but with two characters; male warrior and female healer. Orlanth and Ernalda.

I am looking to run the adventure sequence similar to the authors blog posts. So the first adventure is pre-initiation. When they first encounter the Wyrm.

[French Desperate WindChild]

I did not think about @Richard S. answer (a great answer) but for me, as said, spirit rune is for spirit, in the same way that plant rune is for plant, not for human (well... not transformed adopted human)

However I imagine 2 ways to your connection :

- if you want a stat: moon rune = magic = a way to spirit, maybe you can see other runes that allow a way.

- but for me, stat is not mandatory for that .. roleplay is enough* : you don't need to have x%  in any rune or other. The connection is (or will be, but the potential is) and once it is time, it is time.

Will this time be the discovering of a fetch ?  (aka a shaman detects it and teach you, a dream or other "force" you to meet a shama, you involuntary starts the shaman process - without enough skill... good luck - )

Will this time be some affinity with (all or some) spirits, for example a bonus like a windchild has on sylphs

Will this time be a kind of discorporation power (you don't have a fetch but you can visit the spirit world... but you don't have a part of your soul, no fetch, protecting your body). Is this discorporation voluntary or triggered by some event...

 

* by the way roleplay is enough, but sometimes it is fine to roll, then I could use passion, not the standard lust / love /loyalty / etc... but something specific. For example if you choose some unvoluntary discorporation (let's say the night of full moon... some connection with Telmor maybe ?) you may have "call of the wild ancestors" as a passion :

 

a) you want/have to protect some wild beasts (maybe all maybe just wolves, etc...) if you don't try you lose passion %, but if you try you can use this passion as an augment source. 

b)of course every full moon night, if you detect that you are discorporating (POW x 3 **) and want to "stay" you may roll this passion (aka if you succeed you are learning a part of yourself)

c) once you know and understand enough, you may roll your passion to try to discorporate, even if it is not the full moon night

** POW x 3 at the beginning but this kind of affinity can lead a character to discover something about him/herself. Maybe during the campain the pc will "meet" a great spirit or a hunshen shaman explaining something -> POW x 4 now, maybe the pc will drink something (blood of the ennemy  of the wild or partipating of the great hunt -as a prey or as a hunter or as both) -> POW x 5... etc

 

*** a "free" discorporation power may break the balance (if there is any balance in rq 😛 ) so that could be interesting to consider that, at the end of the discorporation the pc has only 1 mp (at the end to allow the pc to do something in the spirit world). In this quest of understanding, you may start with the pc has no idea of what happend during the night but has just 1 mp the morning. So of course there is an issue to solve. A pain for a gain

 

**** this power may be transformed by a lof of pc choices (becoming a shaman - you still have one taboo btw - , hunshen adoption / initiation to the right wild spirit, exorcism, etc...)

 

[Alex]

On 9/9/2024 at 4:57 AM, Richard S. said:

I think if somehow a human did have a percentage rating in the Spirit Rune, it would mean they exist in a kind of half-state very unlike that of a shaman, unable to fully partake in either world. The more of a spirit you are, the less of a man, beast, plant, or whatever you become; a wraith with only the shape of a living being. In this model, gaining a Fetch would allow you to "offload" your spirit rating into a place where it doesn't conflict with your physical self, allowing full participation in both halves of existence.

That's an interesting idea!  I'd caveat it by pointing out that RQG does have a lot of 'loose change' ratings in runes -- in way that it doesn't for Passions, notably -- not just 60-80% range ones.  So for a lesser such rating, i don't think it would be debilitating beyond the occasional cheese dream and "my meditations became disturbed."  Good source of plot hooks!

[PhilHibbs]

The Spirit Rune is not something that is intended for adventurers, or indeed NPCs. Not for any creature in the middle world that isn't a spirit. It has been clarified quite emphatically that this is intended in the RQ rules.

You can, of course, expand on the RuneQuest rules in any way you like, and use the Spirit Rune if you think you've got a fun game mechanic that you can use it for.

Should be pretty safe against any future RuneQuest publications, as they are unlikely to row back on that and start using a Spirit Rune rating for something else.

Edited September 10 by PhilHibbs

[Alex]

i suppose if one is going to angst about The Law in the Letter, one could use the operationally near-identical idea of making it a Passion.  "Spirit-Touched" or something like that.

[g33k]

On 9/8/2024 at 5:23 PM, Aprewett said:

... is not available at game start.

My question is can I make this so? ...

It's your Glorantha at your table, so you can do what you want.

But in RQG "official canon," the "Spirit Rune" is specifically the Rune of beings without any body:  Spirits (not humans).
Arguably, you're trying to create a PC who's a ghost...   🤔   🥸    That's the "canonical" result of a Human with the Spirit Rune where their Man Rune "should" be.
 

I think @Richard S. has excellent suggestions:

On 9/8/2024 at 8:57 PM, Richard S. said:

... a high aptitude in abilities that deal with that world, like Spirit Combat, Spirit Travel, CHA, POW, etc. - the sort of stuff that might make for a good shaman in the future ...

Remember that in RQG character-generation, you can disregard a roll in family-history and select a particular result; this means you could emphasize the elements that will make you strong in Spirit-World stuff (a strong Moon Rune gives you high POW; any rune iirc can boost CHA instead of the linked characteristic...?).

 

@Alex also has a really excellent suggestion:

3 hours ago, Alex said:

... one could use the operationally near-identical idea of making it a Passion.  "Spirit-Touched" or something like that.

Note that many strong emotions are valid Passions -- Love, Hate, Fear, &c.

How about "Obsessed: Dragons" or the like?

 

[Alex]

22 minutes ago, g33k said:

But in RQG "official canon," the "Spirit Rune" is specifically the Rune of beings without any body:  Spirits (not humans).
Arguably, you're trying to create a PC who's a ghost...   🤔   🥸    That's the "canonical" result of a Human with the Spirit Rune where their Man Rune "should" be.

The trad RQ definition revolved around "incomplete creatures" -- e.g. lacking SIZ, STR, etc -- which personally I'd say makes a little more sense, if you really need a rule-based taxonomy of entities.  "Having" a rune isn't really a mechanically apt description, as runes are rated quantitatively, while "is a disembodied spirit" in very much a binary predicate.  I'm not at all clear what a Spirit-rune percentage score would or could mean for a spirit!  I'd simply read the RQG as saying it's outside of the scope of that book's character generation procedure, not that it's fundamentally incompatible with being a human or other such adventurer.  I might be blissfully unaware of other Chaosium statements on this, of course.

22 minutes ago, g33k said:

Note that many strong emotions are valid Passions -- Love, Hate, Fear, &c.

How about "Obsessed: Dragons" or the like?

Arguably much the same thing!  A Canon pub gives an NPC a "love" Passion, but then glosses it that their "adulation [...] has since turned
to obsession".  Your approach has IMO the advantage of greater descriptive clarity, however.  Nor do the rules assert that the listed Passions are exhaustive -- in fact it rather implies the reverse.

[mfbrandi]

14 hours ago, g33k said:

Human with the Spirit Rune where their Man Rune “should” be

So for someone “away with the ghosties”, put it where usually sits? They are on a different magico-personality spectrum? If you don’t have to be a beast to have some “beastly” traits, then why would you have to be a ghost to have a nonzero spirit score?

Spoiler

You might say that the whole opposed rune thing is a bit of an awkward Pendragon bolt-on, but I couldn’t possibly comment.

• Step 3: Rune Affinities. Choose your adventurer’s Runes. These quantify your adventurer’s connection to specific Runes and drive personality and social impulses.
  — RQG (PDF, p. 23)

• The following Form Runes are associated primarily with entities other than humans … [ / / / ] … Starting human adventurers do not begin with any affinity in these Form … Runes, but they can be learned later.
  — RQG (PDF, p. 50; emphasis mine)

So there doesn’t seem to be any in principle reason why an adventurer shouldn’t start with a nonzero spirit rune score. More a game-design choice — give everyone the same starting polarities and don’t try to model every possible thing for starting characters (which seems fair enough) — than a world-building one?

[PhilHibbs]

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

So there doesn’t seem to be any in principle reason why an adventurer shouldn’t start with a nonzero spirit rune score. More a game-design choice — give everyone the same starting polarities and don’t try to model every possible thing for starting characters (which seems fair enough) — than a world-building one?

Yes absolutely, rune ratings are a game mechanic. RuneQuest uses a much simpler model of runes than Gloranthan Reality™. It only uses Elemental, Power, and Form runes, therefore Stasis replaces Law for Lhankor Mhy, etc.

[Alex]

5 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

So for someone “away with the ghosties”, put it where usually sits?

Works for me.  Or if you insist on a 'ratings for everything' approach, have Man, Beast and Spirit sum to 100 between them, in a ternary diagram way!  (Which ironically itself looks rather like the Beast rune...)

5 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

  Reveal hidden contents

You might say that the whole opposed rune thing is a bit of an awkward Pendragon bolt-on, but I couldn’t possibly comment.

Pretty sure the opposed pairs of the Power runes were Glore long before Pendragon was ever thought of!  And for sure Greg's allowed to plagiarise himself...  the Man/Beast thing might have the slight whiff of a game-mechanical attack I'll grant you.

Edited September 11 by Alex

[Ian Absentia]

1 hour ago, Alex said:

Pretty sure the opposed pairs of the Power runes were Glore long before Pendragon was ever thought of!  Ad for sure Greg's allowed to plagiarise himself...  the Man/Beast thing might have the slight whiff of a game-mechanical attack I'll grant you.

Yes and no, depending on which way you're looking at it.  Opposed pairs of Traits appeared in the Thieves' World boxed set (1981) and later in Wyrm's Footnotes No.14 (1982) before they were adapted for in Pendragon (1985).  But you're right in that the concept of Runic dichotomies, whether or not they had a mechanic tied to them, went back at least to the origin of RuneQuest, and likely prior to that.

!i!

[SDLeary]

1 hour ago, Alex said:

Pretty sure the opposed pairs of the Power runes were Glore long before Pendragon was ever thought of!  Ad for sure Greg's allowed to plagiarise himself...  the Man/Beast thing might have the slight whiff of a game-mechanical attack I'll grant you.

I don't think this was the case. A recollection from the deep dark past (so make of it what you will), was that runes modified the Traits. And modified Traits standing in for characteristics in heroquests. So more of a logical evolution, thought I prefer modified traits myself.

As to the spirit rune (and given my preference for them modifying aspects of the character), it should be fully on the table. In fact, I would say that it should be required for those that become shamans; sort of the equivalent of The Sight, or being "touched". That being said, perhaps not as a rune choice, but something from the background table, an addition to the character after a traumatic event. 

SDLeary

[mfbrandi]

4 hours ago, Alex said:

Greg’s allowed to plagiarise himself

Sure, but Pendragon — version 1 (I don’t know the later versions) — simplified other things. We wouldn’t want to cram every good idea into every game! 😉

[jajagappa]

3 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

Opposed pairs of Traits appeared in the Thieves' World boxed set (1981) and later in Wyrm's Footnotes No.14 (1982) before they were adapted for in Pendragon (1985).

As well as for NPC's in Griffin Mountain. 

[Joerg]

David Scott, Ludo and I dug a little into this in the third episode of the God Learners podcast:

https://godlearners.com/episode-3-passions-in-runequest/

[soltakss]

On 9/9/2024 at 1:23 AM, Aprewett said:

My question is can I make this so?

Yes, it's your game so uses your rules.

On 9/9/2024 at 1:23 AM, Aprewett said:

Context. So close to starting Six Seasons, but with only one character. I want to create a drive or connection to the temple and the Rainbow Wyrm choosing the player. Via the spirit rune. There is next to no information on the rune in the core book. But I was thinking it worked differently for the living. Something like strength of the soul or even destiny. Just spitballing.

That could work.

On 9/9/2024 at 1:23 AM, Aprewett said:

I am mashing up Valley of Plenty with SSs to work through some younger years (and just riffing of Questworlds for keywords while young). But I need a greater understanding of the Spirit Rune to plant the seed, in game of how it could manifest in the characters personality. Situations that would have it fire up.

The Spirit Rune is for ... Spirits.

Some people say that only Spirits can have the Spirit Rune, but that is boring and no fun at all.

In my Glorantha, if you have the Spirit Rune then you have some affinity with Spirits. Maybe you can learn Spiritspeech, or can use the Spirit Rune as a bonus to bind spirits, or whatever. It doesn't make you a Shaman, but you might be able to learn the Discorporation spell if you can find, and join, a cult that teaches it.

On 9/9/2024 at 1:23 AM, Aprewett said:

I understand it’s my game and all but willing to stay in the spirit of the canon if possible.

Canon is that only Spirits can have the Spirit Rune. Ignore canon as it is boring and no fun.

[soltakss]

On 9/11/2024 at 5:19 PM, Alex said:

Pretty sure the opposed pairs of the Power runes were Glore long before Pendragon was ever thought of! 

Yes, RuneQuest 2 had it in the late 1970s and early 1980s, p54 of the RQ2 Rulebook that I have. Pendragon was produced in 1985, according to Wikipedia, so the idea of pairs of Runes was around some 7 years before Pendragon.

 

[PhilHibbs]

4 hours ago, soltakss said:

Canon is that only Spirits can have the Spirit Rune.

It's not really "canon", that refers to the Glorantha world itself. This is about game mechanics, so canon doesn't even apply. You can have a Spirit Rune ability in HeroWorldQuestWars™ and use it for spirit related feats.

[Alex]

1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

It's not really "canon", that refers to the Glorantha world itself. This is about game mechanics, so canon doesn't even apply. You can have a Spirit Rune ability in HeroWorldQuestWars™ and use it for spirit related feats.

Except of course there is no QW take on Glorantha -- yet -- and the HW and HQ ones are out of print, out of IP, and infamously wrong about everything!  There's something of a trend back to regarding RQ as 'defining', so I can see the thinking behind regarding this as "canon".

HQ runic abilities are also broader in the sense that they potentially cover both "rune affinities" and "rune mastery".  Whether and how Gloranthans lump or split those isn't entirely clear.

6 hours ago, soltakss said:

Some people say that only Spirits can have the Spirit Rune, but that is boring and no fun at all.

Again, what would it even mean for spirits to have a rating in the Spirit rune?  Would it measure its power or abilities in some way?  Seems unlikely, there's other stats that do that.  Notably, well, POW, and others on a case-by-case basis for other types.  Unless we attach some WoD-style eschatological or spirit-lifestyle-choice meaning to it, it seems much more predicative.

[soltakss]

7 hours ago, Alex said:

Again, what would it even mean for spirits to have a rating in the Spirit rune?  Would it measure its power or abilities in some way?  Seems unlikely, there's other stats that do that.  Notably, well, POW, and others on a case-by-case basis for other types.  Unless we attach some WoD-style eschatological or spirit-lifestyle-choice meaning to it, it seems much more predicative.

Exactly, even Spirits having the Spirit Rune makes no sense.