(Message rqd:9) Return-Path:Date: Sat, 8 May 93 17:15:17 +0200 Message-Id: <9305081515.AA09797@glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM> From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RQ Digest Maintainer) To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest) Reply-To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RuneQuest Daily) Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Sat, 08 May 1993, part 1 Precedence: junk Status: OR This is the automated Daily RuneQuest Digest. Send submissions only to "RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM", they will automatically be included in a next issue. Try to change the Subject: line from the default Re: RuneQuest Daily... on replying. Selected articles may also appear in a regular Digest. If you want to submit articles to the Digest only, contact the editor at RuneQuest-Digest-Editor@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM. -Henk Langeveld -- Send Submissions to: Enquiries to: The RuneQuest Daily is a spin-off of the RuneQuest Digest and deals with the subjects of Avalon Hill's RPG and Greg Stafford's world of Glorantha. Maintainer: Henk.Langeveld@Sun.COM --------------------- From: paul@phyast.pitt.edu Subject: Re: Crunchy Magic with Extra Flavor Message-ID: <9305071542.AA07105@bondi.phyast.pitt.edu> Date: 7 May 93 15:42:46 GMT Sometimes when playing RQ we find that magic, represented mechanically in the game system, has los something of its 'mystic' flavor. When describing a scene involving magic, I'd like to have a little more 'atmosphere'. But we don't to write a Whole New Magic System - the current mechanics work, and the current system is more-or-less locked in by the expenditure Avalon Hill, Chaosium, and the players have put into their current set of books. That being said, I'd like to propose some optional ideas for enhancing the 'atmosphere' when describing a scene with magic. I invite comments. I think that these provide more 'flavor' to the magic system without necessitating the headache of a Big Rules Change: Laws of Magic There are many Laws of Magic (see P.E.I. Bonewitz, Fraser, etc.) but I will discuss only a few here: Similarity: Things which share properties (such as appearance) are magically "connected" and magic which affects one may affect the other. Examples: portraits, dolls representing the person, a scale from a dragon. Contagion: Things once in contact remain (magically) in contact. Clothes, personal possesions, etc. Best targetting aids are parts of the target, which use both Similarity and Contagion. Names: Names have power over the entities they represent. Entities (according to most magicians) have True Names which are intrinsic to them. Runic Concordances: The Runes channel the power of the primal forces represented by them. Many sorcerors consider this merely a special case of the Law of Names, but these Names (of the Celestial Court powers) are so important in Gloranthan sorcery that it is worth quoting it as a separate Law. Evocation & Invocation Again, these are sometimes lumped under Names - basically calling on Beings to change either the environment (Evocation) or yourself (Invocation). Obviously used by divine magicians, but also by shamans and (perhaps surprisingly to the uninitiated) sorcerors, who often call on the Saints. Using the Laws in the Game. These Laws are used in spell design (esp. Runic Concordances) and casting but are most obvious in Ritual Magic. Each type of magician emphasizes different Laws - some primitives, for example, almost never use the Runes. If someone wants to work out a system of bonuses for various Laws, they could. I'd suggest instead that we assume that the magician's Ritual skills are based on the effects of various Laws: then all this is subsumed in the game system by use of the ritual skills (Ceremony, Enchant and Summon) . Use of this skill would include having handy things you are likely to need, such as a ritual dagger or the shrunken heads of your ancestors or enemies. One might give a special bonus for various special items - such as the body of the person whose Ghost you want to Summon. Items normally available to the magician (names of spirit species - needed to Summon (Species) at all, materials for spell diagrams or simple fetishes, etc.) are assumed to be necessary for normal functioning of the skills. Magicians trapped away from their usual materials will receive a substantial penalty on trying to use ritual skills. Examples: Ceremony: While preparing for a spell, caster uses the Laws. Examples: A primitive hunter prepares for a difficult shot on a bird by casting Sureshot. Since he really wants this to work, he ups his chances by several rounds of Ceremony. He selects an arrow fletched with feathers of the same type of bird (Similarity), kisses it, asks Rathor or whoever to make his shot work (Evocation), whispers the name of the type of Bird to the arrow (Names - this guy is an animist, so he believes the arrow itself has a spirit). Summon: A priestess of Chalana Arroy prepares to attempt to Resurrect a fallen warrior loyal to Orlanth. This involves Ceremony to prepare for the resurrection and the ritual itself involves Summoning his Spirit. She heals the warrior and bathes him (i.e. removing the blood & body wastes to make him more Similar to his living self.) Resurrection is a difficult magic, so the head start on Similarity and Contagion from having his body there is necessary just to do the spell at all. The priestess covers his body with appropriate Runes, including some representing his name and the names of the Gods involved in his healing. This would include not only Chalana the Healer and the warrior's god (Orlanth) but also Issaries (the Orlanthi psychopomp) and Ty Kora Tek (haglike Queen of the Dead, who will resist this guy being pulled from her clutches unless properly appeased. She will surround the body with things he lived with, and things representing Life - flowers, etc. If his friends or relatives could be there it might help. They will be instructed to remember him as boisterously alive, perhaps each telling a story. Mentioning his death in this session would be VERY BAD LUCK and might queer the ritual - lowering the chances of the Resurrection. In a game, PCs could get to Orate about their dead friend, with successes perhaps adding a few percent to the ritual's chances and fumbles subtracting. (Similarity, Contagion, Names, Evocation, Invocation, Runes) To Summon an elemental - have that element handy, use the Elemental Runes, etc. Summon a Ghost: Ideally, have the body of the deceased present for maximum connectivity - otherwise, write the name on a paper, use a portrait, etc. Enchant: Pretty obvious how to use this - a Detect Water matrix made from the root of a water-seeking tree, etc. Spirit Magic foci should be fashioned as objects appropriate to their peculiar magic, etc. I would say that Primitives might well 'enchant' things by finding them. Good examples of this are the oppossum rib cage and the pouch of eyeballs mentioned in the Rathori sections of Players Book: Genertela. More on this later - I will try to do an article sometime on Primitive Magic after I re-read "The Way of the Shaman" and various Joseph Campbell books. I also offer a sorcery spell that I am working on. I designed it to inject more of the 'classic' magical ideas into RuneQuest - e.g., don't let your enemies get ahold of your nail parings, etc.! Note that I expect people to be using the decription of Multispell from the RQ Errata that was posted a while back - if you don't have this, let me know & I will send it to the list. Coming Soon: New Sorcery Spell using these Laws - Sympathetic Targetting, or How Do You Do that Voodoo that You Do So Well? - Paul Reilly --------------------- From: jason@insignia.co.uk (Jason Proctor) Subject: Re: Glorantha mimics Earth Message-ID: <22258.9305071642@piglet.insignia.co.uk> Date: 7 May 93 09:53:21 GMT Subject: Time:5:45 pm OFFICE MEMO Re>Glorantha mimics Earth Date:7/5/93 > do any armies march skyclad (stark staring naked) into combat? In nice warm Prax, perhaps, but as for Dagori Inkarth or Balazar, well, it's enough to chip the ends off your pointy bits... --------------------- From: 100270.337@CompuServe.COM (Nick Brooke) Subject: Elf Reproduction Message-ID: <930507182252_100270.337_BHB60-2@CompuServe.COM> Date: 7 May 93 18:22:53 GMT Extract from the RuneQuest Daily, Thu 06 May 1993: > From: awr0@aberystwyth.ac.uk > Subject: huh? >> From: ade@insignia.co.uk (Adrian Brownlow) >> Subject: Elf Reproduction >> How do elves reproduce? > I thought it had something to do with one elf casting a divine > spell of some kind on a female elf. Y'know, that's how the elves think *we* reproduce! Don't anybody tell them otherwise... Nick PS: Three cheers to Arganth for the best contribution on this topic to date! --------------------- From: awr0@aberystwyth.ac.uk Subject: Release dates... Message-ID: <9305071637.AA03990@deca.aber.ac.uk> Date: 7 May 93 18:37:22 GMT When is Shadows comming out in Britain? I have mine on order and still haven't got my copy yet......sigh.(Or do I have a crap supplier?) --------------------- From: 100270.337@CompuServe.COM (Nick Brooke) Subject: Loskalm: Idealistic Isolationists Message-ID: <930508094532_100270.337_BHB26-1@CompuServe.COM> Date: 8 May 93 09:45:32 GMT __________________ for Mark Sabalauskas: Hey, this IS good! Dismissing my suggestions (perhaps somewhat cavalierly), you've picked another model for Loskalm that I have no trouble agreeing with: the United States of the Fifties! Doesn't grate with me at all. Sure, I'd not deny that Americans in that period were "generally nice people"; that the country was "a nice place". It was very clean and tidy too, young people were polite to their parents, the music was jolly nice, birds sang in the mornings, everyone smiled a lot more than they do today, and there certainly weren't any Godless Jonatings under the beds. But what was going on behind the scenes? _That's_ what campaigns in Loskalm would be discovering. "Adventures in Paradise" don't work very well, while Crusades go better if you have to fight messy wars against Real People rather than genocidal campaigns against a bunch of cardboard cut-outs. As always in RuneQuest, your players should face the gap between ideology and reality, and work out what they really stand for. Hrestoli progressive idealism is like pre-Nixon Democracy. As the police force here in the UK keep saying, "It only takes one rotten apple to spoil the barrel" (though they seem to have rather more...). Y'know, I'm knocking the Hrestoli in order to save their souls: I can think of nothing more dispiriting than a totalitarian ideology, accepted by all, which denies the possibility of natural human behaviour. Too much like the Nazis' "Strength through Joy," or whatever: all those blond, blue-eyed Loskalmi peasants striving in the towns and fields towards the common good of all... The hunt for the "Nameless Man" and his baneful influence becomes like the McCarthy era Commie-baiting ("are you now, or have you ever been, possessed by the Evil One?") -- taking that "witch hunt" metaphor back to its roots. Anybody here expecting the Hrestoli Inquisition? And, sure, Meriatan would be right at home in SAC: try Jack D. Ripper for size. Remember that one effect of the Ban is that Loskalmi can't really identify with or understand people who live differently any more. ("Relative cultural isolation tends to do that to you..." -- William C Robertson, RQD 6 May 93: no offence meant, but your quote was too apposite to miss!). So he directs his Crusade against people he doesn't understand, killing them to save their souls (their "essence"?) from the pollution of War. If you can read the Meriatan quote in the Genertela Book without retching, you have a stronger stomach than I do. OK, have I convinced you that we have a common frame of reference and can continue to communicate, yet? (Though a breakdown of communication in Fronela would have an apposite feel to it...). As I said to Carl the other day, there's nothing wrong with believing the propaganda of any Gloranthan faction: if your pro-Hrestoli feelings help you run a Hrestoli campaign, good on you! ____________ for Paul Reilly: May you eternally bask in the light of the Red Moon! (That's a blessing, not a curse). When I've met you, I'll write a Cheng in your praise. The "Orlanthi god of Smiths" is Gustbran the Bonesmith, one of the three Lowfires (Lodril's sprogs). He's called Workfire or Bonfire, and was mentioned in WF 6 p.26, WF 10 p.25, and WF 13 p.4. Not a family member, though: he just does odd jobs for Orlanth and any other god who visits his Forge. Presumably he's a cripple like Hephaestus and Weyland: apparently the proportion of arsenic in early Bronze mixes would have done for the smiths' health, even if the rulers didn't have them hamstrung... Cheers, Nick Brooke. "Better White Than Red" (attributed to Argrath, first of the White Emperors) --------------------- From: awr0@aberystwyth.ac.uk Subject: Greetings Message-ID: <9305081037.AA27311@deca.aber.ac.uk> Date: 8 May 93 12:37:06 GMT What would be AH's view on producing my own little wee adventure packs? By this I mean, if I went and put some stuff together. Printed it out on a quality laser printer, added maps etc, and then advertised through say the classified ads within a roleplay magazine and described it as a Runequest orientated adventure. Would AH mind?Or is all I have to do is not mention Runequest? Has anybody done anything like this before? In particular, I want to put together a booklet full of random adventures that can be transportable to any pplace within Glorantha with a little bit of alteration. Adam --------------------- From: MOBTOTRM@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au Subject: Soldiers of the Red Moon Message-ID: <01GXY5KT8P6291XXWR@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au> Date: 9 May 93 09:19:59 GMT RE: Graeme Lindsell " Re: Yarnafil Tarnils and Humakt: I thought I saw a comment in an older digest that MOB was working on a package called "Soldiers of the Red Moon", that would contain an expanded Seven Mothers write-up with emphasis on Yarnafil Tarnils. Could MOB comment? Yes, I am working on a scenario pack for Ah by this name (it was originally called "Somewhere in Sartar" and began life as a RQ II tournament long, long ago). The work will feature a write-up of YT, and Lunar regimental magic (when we say the Lunar regiments have espirit de corps we really mean it literally!). SoRM will also feature detail on the Lunar army. Expect it on your gamestore shelves sometime before the turn of the century, but hopefully a lot earlier! On the topic of SoRM, I intend to feature in it a short section called "Lunar Tunes", a selection of Lunar Army marching songs. Already got one that is a real beaut, but I'm always looking for more? Anyone interested? They can be rip offs of real songs, but should be serious, not parodies (eg. I'm not looking for "By the Light of the Silvery (Reddy) Moon" type songs, but something along the lines of "Men of Storm Bull" in ToTRM #8, which was based on "Men of Harlech". --------------------- From: MOBTOTRM@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au Subject: Man on the Moon Message-ID: <01GXY5U14DV491XXWR@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au> Date: 9 May 93 09:23:56 GMT Mark S. " As an aside, the Pentians must have the most advanced technology in Glorantha. After all, if they can put a man on the moon... :-) Very droll. I'd like to use this in the "Rumours" of ToTRM #11. Ok? --------------------- From: MOBTOTRM@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au Subject: An ad about RQ in a White Wolf mag Message-ID: <01GXY600UQW691XXWR@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au> Date: 9 May 93 09:31:31 GMT G'day all, On a rare trip into the city the other day (I was actually on strike, marching in a protest rally against our new "fascist" state government, but that's another newsgroup... :-( and I took the opportunity to duck into a gamestore. Couple of copies of King of Sartar (at A$30 a throw), and one HAUNTED RUINS, but no other RQ at all - no RoC, not even a Sun County dammit! If they ain;t in the shops, no ones gonna buy it! Anyway, what I'm sending in about is in a copy of White Wolf (number 30-something) I saw an ad for some sort of RQ source-pack.) It wasn;t official AH, I don;t know what it was. I didn't buy the mag (hey, I was on strike) so I couldn;t get the details. Anyone know what this is all about? Anyone bought it? Heck, did anyone out there write it?