Worship and Rune Point Replenishment Question (rant)

[svensson]

On 9/14/2024 at 9:02 AM, Ali the Helering said:

So explain to me how the service I officiate at Sunday by Sunday isn't a stylised cannibal feast at a human sacrifice......

There are Arabic and Byzantine writings discussing Christians trying to mission among the Norse and Pechenegs and both societies had a hard time wrapping their heads around the idea that Mass called for 'consuming' the Body and Blood of The Christ. On the one hand the priests would say 'it's just symbolic, see... it's just a piece of bread and wine!' but fifteen minutes later the same priest would say 'consecrating the Eucharist made the bread literally the body of Our Lord and the wine His blood'.

The Norse in particular took great objection to the idea of sacred cannibalism, however symbolic.

There is some evidence in bog mummies that druidic practitioners MAY have consumed small parts of their human sacrifices, but the jury is still very much out on that one. And it should be noted that druidism and Wicca are related but definitely NOT the same faith... much as some of the nuttier 'naked-at-Stonehenge' types would wish otherwise.

Let me also say that my faith accepts that my officiating priest consecrates the wafer and wine into become the Body and Blood of The Christ, but the reasoning humanist in me also realizes that the wafer comes from Nabisco and the wine from a nice winery in Yakima WA.

Edited Monday at 11:42 AM by svensson

[Rodney Dangerduck]

Under RAW there is no bonus for a Special or Crit, therefore no reason to get your modified Worship Skill above 95%.  In our group we seldom bother to roll the skill.  Just the D6s.

If a Crit mattered, and if a special sacrifice of armor or horse was worth much much more than a +20%, there might be occasion for them.

[Diadochoi]

I am with zebraman1 on this. You have the worshiper at a temple on seasonal holy day with a good sacrifice and the security to pump MPs in, it should be an auto success (baring fumbles).

Have the same tepid worshiper (only 25% worship skill) out in the wilderness in a running fight with broo. The party pauses long enough at an old shrine to worship on a weekly holy day to try to replenish much needed rune points. No big holy day bonus, nothing to sacrifice (unless they want to sacrifice their armour) and they dont want to burn MP as they may need them at any time. Now they wish they had invested a bit more in worship.

Or they are in the town described in the first post, but it is under siege. There was an assault last night and you used both rune and magic points to help withstand it. You fear there will be another assault soon, there are no animals left in the town for anyone to sacrifice and you cant afford to pump in MPs as you will need them. Again maybe you start to wish you were a bit more connected with your deity.

Or same town, but you were delayed getting back. You missed the seasonal holy day and it is only weekly holy day and as soon as the worship is over you need to set out again on what might be a dangerous time-dependent task (you cant delay another day). Do you risk using MPs to get the much needed rune points back and hope you dont need them on the road or do you settle for max 55% chance (25 worship + 20% sacrifice + 10% minor temple)?

How "generous" or not the rules for regaining rune points are depend on how you play the game. YGMV

(my house rule is +5% per extra MP, no max limit. This still means if you worship in a temple on a holy day with security to pump MPs in you still have an auto-success baring fumbles, but it makes the trickier choices a bit more trickier)

Edited Monday at 06:18 AM by Diadochoi
(missed one word)

[svensson]

I tell my players that Magic Points are recovered with rest. Use them liberally, but don't go under 1 MP. Rune Points, OTOH, should be carefully rationed because they're harder to get back... But if you need them USE THEM. If a Cure Wounds backed by all-but-one of the MP the healer has will get your party's tank back in the fight, DO THAT. It could be the difference between a tough fight and a TPK.

Recovering Rune Points is a variable thing in my campaigns. If the officiant is just an initiate who temporarily consecrated a clearing in the woods, then yeah, the PCs want to pull out all the stops to get those RP back. If they're safe at their temple during the High Holy Day and all they have to do is pay attention to the sermon, then it's much easier.

[Aurelius]

On 9/14/2024 at 7:10 PM, Rodney Dangerduck said:

True.  I agree that devotion should cost the PC real effort.

Which is why the ritual mechanics are broken.  Because a measly trivial 2 MP gives the same effect as sacrificing your horse.

Also, if you spend half-a-day in your rites, you'll replenish those 2 MP before you are done for the day anyway. My PC is usually happy to sacrifice all but one, both in worship and in battle ... and casting some handy sorcery spell for two weeks. 

I kinda find that 2 MP oddly specific in a context where Runequest doesn't really tell us what happens in those rites anyway. 

I'd rather add flavor and color, cult by cult. Instead of sacrificing MPs, Humakti should run a risk of getting wounded in their rites, Orlanthi should be required to bring all sorts of odd folks to their rites to enact the roles of his million friends and foes, and Yanafali should get the bonus for having stood extra watch the previous week. The Babeesteri should literally get balls to sacrifice, if not from their enemies, at least from rams and bulls. The joint rites of the Moonson and his inspirations could be great fun for Moonson worshippers who come home with all sorts of gifts, but the inspirations hate them because they have to come up with gifts to the people embodying the emperor. In my Glorantha (although not Jeff's) Yelmic rites done without appropriate ritual purification and unintuitive acts of asceticism should get big minuses.

I can invent a lot of this color myself, but not nearly as well as someone like @Andrew Logan Montgomery -- so I wish the cult descriptions served it to me on a platter. The way RQG core book truncates this all into a single format is very monomyth for me. 

And it should be super unfair and capricious, as long as that is powerfully reflected in the world material. If Orlanth has a holy day every week and, say, Humakt does not, then Orlanthi should be known for the fact that they use more magic than the Humakti. And Moonson worship might be a quick path to riches, as the ceremonial gifts you'd receive might easily overcome whatever tithes you have to pay -- and that might be a reason for many folks to try to reach him with their worship. 

The idea of sacrificing cattle to Voria or Lhankor Mhy feels just odd... but then again I also wasn't super excited when animal sacrifice became a key part of Orlanth worship. (For me it happened through King of the Dragon Pass.)

[Jose-san]

I house ruled 1 MP = +1%. I could go the easy route, say it's automatic, and forget about it. But I like the players worrying about spending RP and the tension of the worship rolls when they know they can fail and go on the next adventure without rune magic.

[Squaredeal Sten]

On 9/13/2024 at 2:57 PM, Tiný said:

.....He goes to the temple on a normal seasonal holy day and wants to replenish his rune points . ......WAIT whats this 300 lunars of goods gives  only +20 % but that cow gave the same and only cost max ....

The point being, why is the animal sacrifice so cheap compared to the object sacrifice.......

Animal sacrifices are very bronze age.  The point of sacrificing the cow is that it is a living thing.  The god gets more out of the spirit of a living thing.  Its cash value in the market is not important to the god.   

The god doesn't spend money unless it is Issaries, and doesn't quite get the equivalence of 20 Lunars worth of basketry = one cow.

The temple may attempt some arbitrage there. but that's because the priest is a human who likes money.

As for why is Worship so easy at a temple: A temple is built and maintained to be ideal conditions for Worship.  If it did not help Worship, why would anyone go to the trouble of building temples?  That would be a much different world, not very Bronze Age either.

The current mechanics serve to get the player characters ("Adventurers") to do bronze age. Gloranthan. acts.

[svensson]

1 hour ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Animal sacrifices are very bronze age.  The point of sacrificing the cow is that it is a living thing.  The god gets more out of the spirit of a living thing.  Its cash value in the market is not important to the god.   

The god doesn't spend money unless it is Issaries, and doesn't quite get the equivalence of 20 Lunars worth of basketry = one cow.

 

I agree with you generally, but I'm more inclined to think that the gods get more out of devotion than a piece of the spirit of the animal or the monetary value of an item.

The point of sacrifice in ritual is to sacrifice... to deprive yourself of something of actual worth for the sake of gods. It is the devotional saving and scrimping of a poor man whose sacrifice might be a bit of bronze jewelry or one of his pigs because he has no cows of his own... trivial in terms of monetary value but huge to the man and his family. It is in the generous gifts of a rich man, who gives luxurious spices and rare items... but it costs him the same percentage of his gross income.

From the Bible [KJV] Mark 12:14 "And they gave of their abundance [note: meaning surplus], but she, even in her poverty, gave all that she had, even her livelihood."

The gods certainly have preferences in what is sacrificed to them. Orlanth loves songs and incense and the smoke of sacrificial animals, while Ernalda loves grains and flowers and birthing blood. But ALL gods love devotional acts and sacrifices that come from a wellspring of devotion and not because of social expectations. There is a difference between real devotion and devotion for appearance's sake and the gods know which is which.

[svensson]

2 hours ago, Jose-san said:

I house ruled 1 MP = +1%. I could go the easy route, say it's automatic, and forget about it. But I like the players worrying about spending RP and the tension of the worship rolls when they know they can fail and go on the next adventure without rune magic.

That's a pretty good mechanic, but I might alter it just a bit. It's harder to reach one's gods in an impromptu ceremony on temporarily consecrated ground than in a temple on holy day. It's easier to reach one's gods with an ordained officiant than with a mere initiate [who isn't as well trained and may get the ceremony wrong].

Accepting that this is case, I might give full value of the MP sacrifice under optimal conditions and use your 1 MP = 1% rule out 'in the field' so to speak.

But I DO like the idea of a lower MP sacrificial value.

[Beoferret]

As has already been noted, the rules are easily shaped for your table. I personally like the idea of 1 MP sacrificed = +1% (maybe +2%, if a GM is generous) to a Worship roll. And this could work in conjunction with tying MP sacrifice to object and/or animal sacrifice in some way - say, for example, 1 MP has to be spent for every +5% from a sacrifice, in order for the sacrifice to have value. There are other ways to make the spending of MP for worship more impactful; e.g., enforce some sort of fatigue on PCs after they've spent at least half theirs. Maybe they have to make a CONx3 or CONx5 roll after using half or more of their MP, or they need to spend an extra 12-24 hours recovering from the sacred energy expenditure (even if they still regenerate the magic points normally), potentially messing with any planned schedule the characters have.

Regarding the lack of differentiation between crit, special, and normal successes, again I think this is easily taken care of in a way consistent with RAW. For example, make a special success = +1 RP regained, with a critical resulting in full RP regained. Maybe a special and/or critical success with a Worship roll also allows for a POW gain roll even if this wouldn't normally be allowed by the normal rules for POW gain through Worship rituals (RQG, pg 418). Maybe a special and/or critical success provides a small bonus to the character's next divine intervention roll. And maybe a critical success with a Worship roll - if witnessed by others - provides +1 or 2 points of reputation (Orlanth was so impressed by your devotion that he sent a lightning bolt to consume the sacrifices or otherwise mark the occasion, leaving the PC completely unharmed.)

Finally, I'd at least occasionally make elaborate preparations for a Worship ritual an excuse for role playing. In other words, the ceremony and the preparations for it become a good part of that session's adventure in their own right. While potentially easy to overdo, if used judiciously the "worship ritual prep and fulfillment as the adventure" could really serve to immerse the players in the game.  

[Rodney Dangerduck]

34 minutes ago, Beoferret said:

As has already been noted, the rules are easily shaped for your table

Though I much like your suggestions, I'd hesitate to call them "shaping" the rules.  You make large changes to almost all aspects.  Some changes are literally by an order of magnitude.  🙂

[Akhôrahil]

On 9/16/2024 at 8:50 PM, Squaredeal Sten said:

Animal sacrifices are very bronze age. 

They are, but so is throwing your sword in the lake.

[Joerg]

4 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

They are, but so is throwing your sword in the lake.

That's very Iron Age, too. Up here in northern central Europe, most bronze finds outside of grave goods are hoard finds, while most sacrificial places with swords (and boats) are from the (Roman) Iron Age, like Hjortspring and Nydam. The same goes for La Tene, the sacrificial site that gave its name to the contental Celtic-speaking culture that spread all the way to Anatolia, with a brief but memorable visit to Republican Rome.

Animal and human sacrifices went on in a similar way. In old Norse, the word for sacrifice is "blot", a cognate of "blood". Germanic and Slavic pagan rites were similar and went on into the Carolingian era, and longer in Scandinavia and the eastern Baltic.

What happens with the sacrifices may vary greatly. On Java, people sacrifice food by throwing it into volcanic calderas, but don't mind the local poor catching enough of those sacrifices to keep them fed. The old Greeks had taboo sacred precincts which required a change of clothing resembling modern quarantined areas, with stuff that was brought in becoming sacred and not to be taken out except as sacred objects to be stored and revered accordingly. Theyalan animal sacrifices seem to share the pragmatism of the Old Norse blot, with (some of) the blood used in ways similar to the holy water in Catholic rites, and the sacrificial meat eaten in the temple feasts. Not sure whether the temples or its butchers actually trade the meat of sacrificial animals as the Romans seem to have done (if you interprete the letters of St. Paul regarding sacrificial meat that way).

Temple and shrine sacrifices are fed to the congregation, who in turn provide personal magic that keeps the shrine etc. operating as a magical anchor for the cult entity.

Claudia Loroff had quite a bit to say about Ernalda feeding her congregation (and that of allied cults) in the God Learners podcast episode 16, aptly named "Blood, Sex and Rock'n Roll".