olskool's "rune" post, re-threaded

[g33k]

Quote

A lot of you guys seem to have issues with "crunch."  I'm looking for a gritty, more "real world" gaming experience than I recently experienced as a player in an RQ6 game.  Way too cinematic for my tastes and not even remotely realistic with regards to combat. I have been GMing a Twilight2000/Twilight 2013 game that uses Margins of Error and Margins of Success on the skill rolls with 4 players for a year now and "crunch" is easy to deal with as long as you have players willing to help (like by doing calculations on their phones as you resolve the action with the player involved). 

I need to do something to help out my Sorcerers.  The currently proposed "rebuild" is still very "POW heavy" for Sorcery.   I am incredibly "stingy" with both magic (as you can see from the fact that I make people sacrifice POW for Spirit Magic and don't let them have more than 1 Intensity Level without attuning a Magic Rune) and magic items.  Controlling magic keeps the characters from completely dominating the environment at higher levels.  I don't, however, want to handicap a Sorcerer at higher levels by limiting his casting power due to limited POW availability.  I do let Sorcerers attune Spirit Runes (and I was doing this LONG BEFORE MRQ1 put it in print) which increases their MAX POW from 25 (my species maximum for humans) to 50.  Spirit Runes are scarce though, and Shamans are often actively hunting them (because they are the key to a Shaman's powers).  

I may keep my old system where a Shaman (or anyone else) had to find a Magic Rune to cast Spirit/Battle Magic at higher than 1 point.  However, these Runes are actively hunted by prospective Sorcerers (who need a Magic Rune just to cast Sorcery in the first place).

Regardless of what I decide to do, I will be giving the Rune Tree some serious thought.  

I'm honestly not clear on everything you're saying here.  You're using some terms in ways that make me think you mean something other than what I mean...

At first, I thought we were missing on "crunch" -- RQ6/Mythras is usually taken to be the "crunchiest" of the BRP/d100 family; I didn't think you wanted more crunch than that!  But when I see you've got your players whipping out the calculators for every action in-combat, I guess we're aligned on what "crunch" is.     FWIW, that's more "crunch" than I'm interested in handling in my RPGs ... a LOT more.

Then I got to "runes."  Maybe I'm missing something else, but you talk about "attuning a Magic Rune" and say "Spirit Runes are scarce" and "a Shaman had to find a Magic Rune," and "Runes are actively hunted."   I have never taken RQ-style "Runes" to be physical objects to be found, nor for there to be multiple instances of any given Rune (like magic-items or crystals); but the way you talk about Runes, it seems like you DO seem them more like magic items.  Am I missing something again?  Or are you playing "Runes" as physical objects?

 

Edited April 18, 2017 by g33k
clarified topic / title

[olskool]

19 minutes ago, g33k said:

I'm honestly not clear on everything you're saying here.  You're using some terms in ways that make me think you mean something other than what I mean...

At first, I thought we were missing on "crunch" -- RQ6/Mythras is usually taken to be the "crunchiest" of the BRP/d100 family; I didn't think you wanted more crunch than that!  But when I see you've got your players whipping out the calculators for every action in-combat, I guess we're aligned on what "crunch" is.     FWIW, that's more "crunch" than I'm interested in handling in my RPGs ... a LOT more.

Then I got to "runes."  Maybe I'm missing something else, but you talk about "attuning a Magic Rune" and say "Spirit Runes are scarce" and "a Shaman had to find a Magic Rune," and "Runes are actively hunted."   I have never taken RQ-style "Runes" to be physical objects to be found, nor for there to be multiple instances of any given Rune (like magic-items or crystals); but the way you talk about Runes, it seems like you DO seem them more like magic items.  Am I missing something again?  Or are you playing "Runes" as physical objects?

 

 

MRQ1 had runes as being physical items (like POW crystals) that had to be "attuned."  I also evolved this similar idea in the early 90's.  I wanted a way to control magic in my game so everyone and his brother wouldn't load up a Counter Magic 3 and Protection 4.  I saw this as RuneQuest's equivalent of giving fighters in AD&D Plate Armor at second level.  I, therefore, ruled that you had to sacrifice POW to gain Spirit Magic just like Rune Magic.  The whole process went like this; You would pay a Shaman the money for a spell.  He would summon a Spirit who would impart the magic to you and teach you the spell's incantation and how to properly draw the spell's focus.  You would roll your POW X 5 or lower to learn this.  If the roll was successful, you now "owed" the spirit for that "knowledge."  Payment came in the loss of a POW point BUT learning the spell entitled you to a POW gain check.  You could only cast that spell at 1 Level of Intensity (I adjusted all the Spells to mirror this).

A Shaman (or anyone who found a Magic Rune) could choose to use a Magic Rune that he "attuned" (just like attuning a crystal but with a rune having 2D6 +12 POW) to "up" the power of spirit magic (so could Rune Priests who used Cult Spirit Spells).  He got the multiple levels that the basic game added to normal users (for every spell) but had to sacrifice POW for each new level.  There was a bit of a power issue here.  Sorcerers and Rune Priests gained the power to make really powerful magic using Rituals and Ceremony Skills.  I decided that since a Shaman was adept in all things "Spirit Based," that he should, by virtue of being a Shaman, be able to "manipulate" spirit magic the way a Sorcerer could manipulate his spells (ie change range, area of effect, number of targets and duration).  Intensity was still bound by the number of points of the spell he memorized.  This power was EXCLUSIVE to the Shaman (for game balance) but manipulating spells required massive amounts of POW to succeed.  The Rune Tree has given me a way to balance the need to have a POW requirement (to prevent game-breaking magical displays) with the desire to provide higher skilled magic users with more impressive magics.  I can use the Rune Tree and its ratings to limit the input of POW into larger magics.  By allowing the player to initially favor one Rune Affiliation over another.  I think I will allow the Player to "Influence" his Rune Affiliations by up to his POW.  If two opposed Runes start at 50% EACH (in balance) the player with a 12 POW could make one Rune 62% while the other becomes 38%.  MRQ1 already listed Rune Affiliations for Spirit Magic Spells so I can use those to reduce the effectiveness of the Shaman casting spells where his Rune Affiliation % is low and give him a boost if the Affiliation is high.  This will allow some magic to be powerful but other magic must suffer (because Rune Affiliations are "inverse"), that's "built in balance."

Now what's "good for the goose, is good for the gander."   I can give Sorcerers the same boost based on Rune Affiliation.  I long since dropped the "Free INT" restriction as being too limiting on Sorcerers.  I needed another way to limit them.  I used POW expended in casting to do this.  Sorcerers can get around this using TAP or through the creation of POW Matrixes though.  The Rune Tree gives me the tool for limiting Sorcerers by using Rune Affiliations to limit the amount of POW they can put into a spell as well as allowing weaker Sorcerers to live to become powerful by providing them a boost to their manipulation.  This boost comes by expending Magic Points to generate "phantom POW/Magic Points" from the Affiliation.  For each point of POW (actually Magic Points) a Sorcerer expends, he gets a number of POW/MP to "manipulate" his spell.  This number is determined by the Spell he is casting's Rune Affiliation (percentage).  The same Rune Affiliation LIMITS the number of POW/MP the caster can invest to create those MPs he uses manipulating the spell (the built in "buffer" to prevent spells that destroy whole towns).

For example,  A mage has a Magic Rune Affiliation of 65% and his SPELL (each spell has its own affiliation) has a Power Rune Affiliation of 50%.  He can invest up to 7 MPs (for the Magic Affiliation) to manipulate the spell.  The Spell's MAXIMUM Intensity (the number of damage dice it does, STR of an illusion, etc...) is based on the DIFFERENCE between his actual Spell Casting SKILL and his roll (ie a Resist Damage spell that is 40% under the needed roll would resist 4 points of damage).  Intensity costs 1 MP (leaving him 6) and he can "bump" intensity by expending more POW (ie 2 POW nets 8 points of damage resistance).  Now he wants to manipulate the spell.  Each MP he invests generates a number of "Manipulation MPs" equal to the Affiliations Rating/10 (50%/10=5).  Thus if he spent 2 MP on Intensity, he would have 5 left to manipulate the spell.  He is limited in his manipulations by either his Magic Affiliation (7 max MP) or his Rune Affiliation (5 max MP) BUT he MULTIPLIES his remaining 5 MP by the Rune Affiliation (5) to determine the TOTAL NUMBER OF POW POINTS he can manipulate the spell by.  If he put all 5 MP into manipulations (25 total POW to use for 5 MP) he can spread them among Duration, Range, Targets, and Magnitude (spell resistance) as he sees fit.  He just cannot put more than 5 points into any SINGLE Manipulation.  Of course, at 7 MP expended, this would be an expensive spell to cast.  He could cast the spell with just 2 POW expended.  In this case, he would use 1 POW to get the Spell's Intensity and the other point could be used to manipulate the Spell.  In this case, that 1 POW would give 5 MP worth of "manipulation points" to spend.

I know this sounds complicated, but it is actually faster than RQ3's Sorcery was.

                     

[Pentallion]

Orlanth is the embodiment of the Air Rune.  If you emulate Orlanth and become as near to being an avatar of Orlanth, you're said to have mastered his rune(s).  That's the Quest in RuneQuest.  Not some physcal rune.  The writers for MRQ1 didn't have a (expleted deleted) clue what the (expleted deleted) they were talking about.

Edited April 25, 2017 by Pentallion

[olskool]

On 4/24/2017 at 10:27 PM, Pentallion said:

Orlanth is the embodiment of the Air Rune.  If you emulate Orlanth and become as near to being an avatar of Orlanth, you're said to have mastered his rune(s).  That's the Quest in RuneQuest.  Not some physcal rune.  The writers for MRQ1 didn't have a (expleted deleted) clue what the (expleted deleted) they were talking about.

 

Keep in mind that Runes (or more accurately Rune-fragments in my game) weren't ONLY physical.  Runelords and Runepriests gained rune powers (like increased POW) in my game by being Ordained in a Consecration/Ordination Ritual.  They had no physical Rune for their powers.  They could lose their powers if they were Excommunicated for some reason.  The Runes were really for those who didn't want to follow an organized religion (Sorcerors and Shamen) in order to gain Rune Powers.  

In my game, these Runes were brought to Glorantha when the Block pinned the devil under it.  They rained down on Glorantha like a shower of gravel and are about as common as Crystals.  These Rune-Fragments are still "connected" to the Rune Power that spawned them on the god plane.  Not all Runes can be used when found, though.  Some are aligned to specific gods.  Some are tainted with Chaos.  All must be "attuned" like a Crystal (and I require the loss of a POW point for ANY attunement of any magic item).  These Runes are no different than the Items one finds in the Plunder book.  Also, keep in mind that I DO NOT require characters to possess a Rune to use any magic OTHER than Sorcery.  You can buy Spirit Magic without a Rune (although a Shaman needs a Magic Rune to "manipulate" spirit magic like a Sorcerer does).  Runes could also provide "special powers" if the holder had them attuned and was willing to sacrifice permanent POW for the ability (and temporary Mp to use it).  This is how I dealt with Mystics before RQ6 did it.  In this case, a Rune could have "varying aspects," meaning one person could use a Rune to "develope" one power, while another could use an IDENTICAL Rune to develope another power.  I kept Rune Abilities deliberately "vague" in order to tailor Runes to a player's concept for his character.  Runes could also be used to create and POWER magic items.  I created many Relics (powerful Artifacts, many religious) powered by Runes.  All of this is easily done now using the Rune Tree and Rune Affiliations.  This is one reason why I love this new idea for RQG.      

This is just how I incorporated and limited Magic in my RQ2/3 Game in the 1990's.  It worked well by the way.   

[g33k]

On 4/28/2017 at 5:59 PM, olskool said:

This is just how I incorporated and limited Magic in my RQ2/3 Game in the 1990's.  It worked well by the way.   

Everyones' Glorantha Will Vary.

This sounds more-variant than some... but cool!  And the basic rule is:  if you were having fun, you were Doing It Right.

 

[styopa]

On 4/24/2017 at 9:27 PM, Pentallion said:

Orlanth is the embodiment of the Air Rune.  If you emulate Orlanth and become as near to being an avatar of Orlanth, you're said to have mastered his rune(s). 

When I have beer and burritos, a couple of hours later I'm nearly an avatar of Orlanth.

Because there's a lot of ... air... involved.  I think I'll tell my wife that: "sorry honey blame Orlanth, I'm just embodying the Air rune right now."

[g33k]

1 hour ago, styopa said:

When I have beer and burritos, a couple of hours later I'm nearly an avatar of Orlanth.

Any drink that has bubbles magically-present in it -- just *APPEARING* inside the liquid -- is clearly a brew sacred to Orlanth!

 

[Yelm's Light]

3 hours ago, styopa said:

When I have beer and burritos, a couple of hours later I'm nearly an avatar of Orlanth.

Because there's a lot of ... air... involved.  I think I'll tell my wife that: "sorry honey blame Orlanth, I'm just embodying the Air rune right now."

Sounds more like Storm Bull to me...

[olskool]

On 5/1/2017 at 0:44 PM, Yelm's Light said:

Sounds more like Storm Bull to me...

And probably smells like a defeated Chaos monster too...

[Joerg]

On ‎25‎.‎04‎.‎2017 at 4:27 AM, Pentallion said:

Orlanth is the embodiment of the Air Rune.  If you emulate Orlanth and become as near to being an avatar of Orlanth, you're said to have mastered his rune(s).  That's the Quest in RuneQuest.  Not some physcal rune.  The writers for MRQ1 didn't have a (expleted deleted) clue what the (expleted deleted) they were talking about.

"You say that Orlanth is the embodiment of the Air Rune. This is how the Jrusteli-taught wizards approached this, and this is how they failed, because this statement is only part of the truth.

 

The embodiment of the Air Rune is Orlanth. This statement is a lot better. There still are lesser embodiments of the Air Rune, but they all reach through Orlanth into the Ultimate.

 

But other things are Orlanth, too – the King of the Storm Tribe, the Lightbringer, the Adventurer, even the Vadrudi Raider, and the Heir of Change. By approaching this Burta with the methods applied to an Erasanchula or even a Srvuali, you are missing much, and whoever you face will be able to take what you were missing and use it against your hold on the god or its manifestation.

 

Even supposed Srvuali like his spouse Ernalda or her daughters, the Land Goddesses, don’t correspond to their inherited Rune as their whole identities. Even if you choose a myth supposedly free of later Storm Age corruption to interact with the deity, be sure to respect the other aspects of the deity.

Just as Orlanth is the heir of Larnste, Ernalda is the heir of Uleria. Life flows through her in ways you won’t understand by just understanding the Earth Rune.

 

So, now you will say, why not use that nifty system assigning three runes to a major deity, and use that? Sure, the results from this approach are a lot more reliable. But they still fail whenever the deity in question contaminated itself by an Godtime aspect undergoing a transformation, bringing some other runic property to importance, and the local aspect you are dealing with is drawing upon that Godtime aspect.

 

If you have to learn all those irrelevant little secrets of a cult, why not just join it and overcome its servility to the entity? This has been done successfully, by a few extremely powerful or desperate wizards. Whether successful in breaking the servility or not, these wizards were changed by the experience. This is one of the roots of Henotheism."

 

 

[soltakss]

Personally, I think that a deity's Runes are only part of the deity's makeup. Sometimes a major part, sometimes a minor part.

So, Orlanth is Mastery/Storm/Movement and some of his spells reflect that, but some don't.

Two deities with the same runes might have very different skills/spells, due to the nature of the deity and what happened in God Time.

[Richard S.]

The "core" runes are like the Guide. A view from a thousand feet away. Trying to understand a god simply by their core runes is like trying to understand someone by the fact that they're an American. You may get a general idea, but in the end there are parts you will never understand by that model and things which are not true. For instance, looking at Urox through his runes could lead to the conclusion that he is a god of rain and storms, yet if you then attempt to control him with that understanding, you will be trampled beneath the hooves of his desert sandstorms.

[olskool]

On 5/6/2017 at 1:44 PM, Richard S. said:

The "core" runes are like the Guide. A view from a thousand feet away. Trying to understand a god simply by their core runes is like trying to understand someone by the fact that they're an American. You may get a general idea, but in the end there are parts you will never understand by that model and things which are not true. For instance, looking at Urox through his runes could lead to the conclusion that he is a god of rain and storms, yet if you then attempt to control him with that understanding, you will be trampled beneath the hooves of his desert sandstorms.

 

This is one of the reasons I kept Runes "vague" in my game.  So you could "mold" its power to help your own "World View."  I also stayed with RQ2's Runes after MRQ came out because MRQ's Runes were a bit too specific (the Communication Rune?) to be "molded" in multiple ways.   This did lead to me making some changes to the Runes, though.  I moved both the Spirit and Chaos Runes OUT of the Forms section and into the Condition Runes section (with Infinity, Magic, and Mastery).  This is because Chaos can "bind" with any other Rune (not just the Form Runes) and "contaminate" it with Chaos (often causing mutation in the other Rune).  This trait speaks more of a Condition Rune than a Form Rune (since Chaos can routinely "mutate" the environment or even Magic).  The Spirit Rune is also more of a Condition Rune to me.  The typical spirit lacks an actual form and spirits can be made from Elements (gnomes or sylphs) or even Powers (Death Spirits, Chaos Spirits).  Additionally, a specific Form (like man) can bind a Spirit Rune and become a Form with an "expanded consciousness" (Shamen or Priests) so I viewed Spirit as more of a Condition than a Form.  Therefore, I moved it to the Conditions List as well.

Looking at the Rune Tree put forth in the initial Designer's Notes, I would have to make one addition.  As I have already posted in another thread, I see the Beast Rune at the bottom of the Tree and the Man Rune at the top of the Tree as representing "Intelligent Being from Beast" (Man also translating as "Intelligent Being").  Thus a Man Rune with a Plant Rune at the bottom of the tree would represent "Intelligent Being from Plant" (Elves) and Man with the Dragonewt Rune would represent not only Dragonewts but also Newtlings, Slargers, and Magisaurs.  One race is not represented by the existing Form Runes... The Mostali.  I would add a Dwarf Rune because they do not cleanly just using the Earth Rune.  I think I'm going to take the Earth Rune and put a Triangle inside it (for the Spire of Law/Great Mountain from GodTime) to represent the Form of the Mostali.   

I know this expands the list to 21 Runes but I see Chaos as an "interloper" that "infected" the Runic System and it is, in my opinion, the renegade 21st Rune. 

[Richard S.]

57 minutes ago, olskool said:

One race is not represented by the existing Form Runes... The Mostali.  I would add a Dwarf Rune because they do not cleanly just using the Earth Rune.  I think I'm going to take the Earth Rune and put a Triangle inside it (for the Spire of Law/Great Mountain from GodTime) to represent the Form of the Mostali.

I would suggest using the Mineral rune from HW/HQ1. I actually liked that rune set.

[olskool]

On 5/9/2017 at 9:29 PM, Richard S. said:

I would suggest using the Mineral rune from HW/HQ1. I actually liked that rune set.

I'm not familiar with HW/HQ1 or their Runes.  If they are anything like RQ2's, I'd use them gladly.

[Richard S.]

22 minutes ago, olskool said:

I'm not familiar with HW/HQ1 or their Runes.  If they are anything like RQ2's, I'd use them gladly.

Well they share very little in reality, so I would suggest just stealing some runes of you're missing some (a la mineral).

Here y' go if you want to read about them, straight from the old Issaries site (thank you Wayback):

15.runes.pdf

[styopa]

7 minutes ago, Richard S. said:

Well they share very little in reality, so I would suggest just stealing some runes of you're missing some (a la mineral).

Here y' go if you want to read about them, straight from the old Issaries site (thank you Wayback):

15.runes.pdf

This is one place where a little one-true-world Gloranthan whip cracking might be in order...would it be possible to maybe reconcile the lists of runes between the two games?  So "Glorantha" has one primary set of runes?

[Richard S.]

3 hours ago, styopa said:

This is one place where a little one-true-world Gloranthan whip cracking might be in order...would it be possible to maybe reconcile the lists of runes between the two games?  So "Glorantha" has one primary set of runes?

I'm pretty sure the HQ:G list is the official "core" set, though it can and has been modified or added to by different cultures. Do keep in mind that the core set is a God Learner construction, and thus open to very broad interpretation, and some cultures may have an entirely different set of runes. In the end, the shapes don't matter, as they are merely the method through which we perceive the infinite principles that shape the world. The concepts behind the runes, the primal energies, are unchanging, despite the changes in the runes. So both the HW and modern systems may be equally valid, they simply are different ways of viewing and attempting to comprehend the infinite that we can never truly understand.

[Steve]

13 hours ago, Richard S. said:

Here y' go if you want to read about them, straight from the old Issaries site (thank you Wayback):

15.runes.pdf

Link doesn't work for me.

[Richard S.]

23 minutes ago, Steve said:

Link doesn't work for me.

It's a download link, but here's another:

15.runes.pdf

[Steve]

1 hour ago, Richard S. said:

It's a download link, but here's another:

15.runes.pdf

Sorry, I think something's up with my browser/PC and download links. I'll sort it out. Thanks.