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Date: Thu, 17 Jun 93 17:15:22 +0200
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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, Thu, 17 Jun 1993, part 1
Precedence: junk
Status: OR

The RuneQuest Daily and RuneQuest Digest deal with the subjects of
Avalon Hill's RPG and Greg Stafford's world of Glorantha.

Send submissions and followup 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 
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Send enquiries and Subscription Requests to the editor:

RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Henk Langeveld)

---------------------

From: rog@insignia.co.uk (Rog)
Subject: Curry
Message-ID: <1037.9306161524@cube.insignia.co.uk>
Date: 16 Jun 93 17:24:17 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1086



Ade says, 

> Ive just had a curry

Where do the best curries in Glorantha come from? I assume that the  
UZ could make you a fairly leatal Elf vindaloo, but I doubt the lager  
you got at troll tandoori house would kill the pain...

Rog

---------------------

From: paul@phyast.pitt.edu
Subject: Re: RuneQuest Daily, Wed, 16 Jun 1993, part 2
Message-ID: <9306161712.AA01042@bondi.phyast.pitt.edu>
Date: 16 Jun 93 17:12:46 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1087


  Reply to Curtis:

On ogres:
>But I think it came out sounding much too scientific

  I agree, as we said we hadn't finished Glorantha-izing it.  The original
stuff was written back around the time Vikings came out and Alternate
Earth was the thing.  We wrote it for Alternate Earth complete with evolution
and biochemistry (bile salts, etc.) and never completely adapted it to 
Glorantha.  Some stuff like this crept in, sorry.  Pay us $10 an hour and
we'll get rid of all editing errors.

  Good suggestion about Daka Fal, some might do this but it doesn't seem
to fit in with the big city ogres.  Maybe, have to think about it.
I think that strength being bred in is better.  Summoning ancestors and
'eating' them might be a way to gain Chaos power, though.

Sorcery:

>one or two sample sorcery using
>cultures. I'd suggest the Malkioni and the Mostali

  Good idea, but I'd be a lot more specific and use examples like Carmanian
sorcerors and Openhandist Tin Mostali.  The general examples you mention
are a bit like Lunar Pantheon or Pamalt Pantheon, with too much material
to get to interesting detail.  Malkionism could be a book in itself.

MOB:
> Sorcery (yawn!)

  It's just the hot topic at the moment.  Why not throw out some good
Gloranthan background ideas and see if anyone bites.   I think eliminating
sorcery from the basic RQ4 rules would be a mistake, this is like taking
a car to the shop which has a cracked engine block and some scratches and
dents - then they do the body work but leave the cracked engine block in.
The big change should fix what is most broken.
___________

  Reply to Nick's stuff:
 
>Mark S. said:
...
>>the Rokari/Hrestoli
>> split as a continuation of the first age Seshnelan conflict
>> between the Linealists and Idealists, as opposed to the result
>> of an early third age "heresy/reformation

  Look at the history of Christian heresies: heretical doctrines that were 
'completely wiped out' seem to resurface centuries later.  Look at 
Manicheeism for example and compare the Catharist heresy, centuries later.
Was there a surviving underground tradition or is this just a parallel
development?  No one knows.

  Similarly,  Malkionism produces very similar variants centuries apart.
Did the Linealists (e.g., the Serpent Kings) somehow survive underground 
until Rokar, a secret Linealist, brought out the old doctrines?  Or did
he rediscover the same basic truths (or falsehoods) that had been lost for
the better part of a millenium?

  Horrible idea:  Rokar was a great sorceror in the First Age who travelled 
to the Dara Happan Empire and brought them Western concepts such as coined
money and wheeled vehicles.  He was even worshipped along with Ehilm as a
False God.   Centuries later he realized the error of his
ways and returned to Seshnela to beg forgiveness  and enter a monastery
of the True Religion.  When he got there he found that the True Religion
had been extinguished and a twisted Idealism had taken root.  He led a
reformation back to the old ways and then retired to monastic life.
(The first age Dara Happans had trouble with initial "R's" and used L instead,
also added -nos as a suffix to the names of important people like Ehilm's
councilors...)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
NOT A SERIOUS SUGGESTION, FOLKS

____________

 Responding to Joerg again, he quotes Oliver:

>> With respect to the origin of humanity according to the
>> Brithini, what I've heard is that the Brithini claim
>> that they are the only true humans, other races of
>> humanity are degenerates that interbred with beasts
>> or the descendants of beasts that tried to assume human 
>> form (the Hsunchen).
 >That's what I heard, too
  This originated with me, NOT FROM AN OFFICIAL SOURCE.  I'd be delighted
if it turned official but years after I wrote it up David Hall told me
that 'mud men' were the official Brithini line on humans.  I figured Ogres
could believe that Brithini believe in mud men or animal men, an animal
origin for most humans fits in so well with the Hsunchen and Beast Men.
In this theory Beast Men are stuck in a half-form, Praxians used to be
Hsunchen types matching their herd beasts (and half of each tribe got
stuck with each form), Orlanthi were sheep or cattle Hsunchen, Orlanthi
Storm Bulls are often throwbacks to the pure cattle strain, etc.  Many
crossbreeds now exist.  THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL THEORY AS FAR AS I KNOW.
It comes from me.  You are welcome to use it in your campaign but unless
confirmed from Above don't spread it around as official Gloranthan.  It
was a lot of fun in our campaign, the Brithini had a spell to make people
revert to their orginal type, this could get pretty ugly if you were a 
crossbreed.

  Oh, Dara Happans may have been horse and falcon Hsunchen with a good
admixture of True Human blood, after all Yelm/Ehilm was a renegade Brithini
who founded the royal lines...

  Joerg quoting Oliver again:
>>Umathelan sorcery was Rokari 
>> dominated, correct?

>It seemed so in the Umathela description Greg published

  Now I'm really confused.  Wasn't the Rokari Reformation AFTER the Closing?
Maybe they are Linealist refugees from first age Seshnela, or a parallel
development?
____________________-

"DO9EA00" suggests:
>Sorceres pit their all (and
>indeed their very existance) against the chance of manipulating the
>universe into giving the effect they require

  Good description here - this requires a lot of Life Force, hence the
"Vows" of Rokari and the special foods of Kingtroll sorcerors - fuel
for the efforts described above.

[Stuff about secrecy]
>In gloranthan terms different schools of sorcery may be as far apart as
>two contenants in which case information transfer would be very very slow.

  Agreed.  Cultural divergence may however be slower than on Earth,
especially if the heads of the schools have extended lives.  Old scientists
don't accept new theories, they just die off.  Old sorcerors don't accept
new ways of doing magic, AND they don't necessarily die off.

>Perhaps of course people out their feel that sorceres live in a post
>enlightenment world, with international journals of sorcery and a
>royal society etc...  In that case all they need to do is publish papers

  This was the God Learner era, I think.

 - Paul


---------------------

From: STEVEG@ARC.UG.EDS.COM (Entropy needs no maintenance)
Subject: Sorcery
Message-ID: <01GZFVXXU9QQ004VLI@UG.EDS.COM>
Date: 16 Jun 93 02:20:02 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1088

Carl Fink writes
>  It is once more suggested that we leave sorcery out of the basic
>rules.  This violates the First Commandment we set up when we started
>out:  Thou Shalt Not Ruin Existing Characters.  That is, it would become
>impossible to keep running existing sorcerors.

Surely if the characters already exist, the players have access to RQ3, which 
they can continue to use until the refit comes out.  If the players don't have 
RQ3, then they don't have any sorcerers to be ruined.

The new sorcery rules shouldn't be made to suffer from the "never time to do 
it properly, always time to do it over" approach.

---------------------

From: carlf@Panix.Com (Carl Fink)
Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Wed, 16
Message-ID: <199306161833.AA01576@sun.Panix.Com>
Date: 16 Jun 93 10:33:22 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1089

To: runequest@glorantha.holland.sun.com
Subject: Ethilrist

joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner) writes:

He said:

R>>>...The closest Brithini
 >>>settlements are on the God Forgot Isles, Refuge and Casino Town are
 >>>especially mentioned.

Then I said:

R>>   Yes, but remember Ethilrist entered Hell in one place and left in
 >> another.

Then he said:

R>What do you mean by that answer?

 I mean that the proximity of Brithini settlements is not relevant,
because Ethilrist didn't come from anywhere near Muse Roost. He *exited*
Hell there, but he entered somewhere else - Jrustela for all I know.
                              

---------------------

From: gadbois@cs.utexas.edu (David Gadbois)
Subject: Fire and Ice [Was: Re: RuneQuest Daily, Tue, Sorcery, and little else]
Message-ID: <19930616200911.4.GADBOIS@CLIO.MCC.COM>
Date: 16 Jun 93 10:09:00 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1090

    From: joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner)
    Date: 16 Jun 93 08:59:41 GMT
    X-RQ-ID: 1083

    [...] And David Hall gave me some hints that the fiery desert in
    southern Pamaltela may be in part a recent phenomenon.

Recent mythologically speaking.  The story I heard (from Petersen, I
think) is that Chaos entered Glorantha during the Greater Darkness by
lifting up the world in the north and entering from the hole created
there, thus causing the south to dip lower.  That's why the north of
Genertela is icy and the south of Pameltela is fiery, and why there is
such an abundance of small chaos critters in Genertela and just a few
big ones in Pameltela -- only the toughest made their way south.

--David Gadbois

---------------------

From: maf1@crux2.cit.cornell.edu
Subject: RuneQuest Daily
Message-ID: <9306170408.AA05245@crux3.cit.cornell.edu>
Date: 16 Jun 93 20:08:51 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1091

I've just recently joined RQ daily and am following the debate on RQIV
sorcery rules. Can someone fill me in on why the RQIII rules are 
deemed too powerful or ill-fitting? You can e-mail me if you don't
want to take up bandwidth rehashing what you all already know.
Thanks, Mark Foster
P.S. Is there anyone else in upstate New York on this net? Nobody
at Cornell plays RQ as far as I know.

---------------------

From: wadsley@chipmunk.cita.utoronto.ca
Subject: Sorcery
Message-ID: <9306170449.AA24042@hawk.cita.utoronto.ca>
Date: 17 Jun 93 04:49:07 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1092

Regarding previous comments about sorcery:

I don't like the ideas of free-INT, twins or vows and restrictions.
I always used the idea that the maximum manipulation allowed
was 1/5 skill. 

Eg. Sorcery Range 72% => Maximum 14 points in range.

Also, total manipulation is restricted by INT. I take this to
mean that the total magic points are less than or equal to
INT. Thus a 10 intensity, 8 duration ( roughly 1 day I think )
spell is at the limit. Rather than having a hard and fast
limit like this, I experimented with having a risk associated
with the amount of magic points involved. INT is still the
measure of capacity and the risk was something like this:

Spell mp are:       Risk:             Example for 18 INT:
-------------       -----             -------------------
up to 1/2 INT       None	      1 intensity, 8 duration
                                      = no risk
1/2 INT to INT      (mp-INT/2)%       3 intensity, 8 duration 
                                      = 2% risk
more than INT       10%+(mp-INT)x5%   15 intensity, 8 duration
                                      = 35% risk

If the risk roll goes the wrong way then anything from loss of POW,
temporary or permanent (!) INT loss to demon appearances may
result. A table of such things is easy to generate. You can also
make the "damage" worse if the risk is greater:

Roll       Result to be applied IF roll is less or equal than risk %
----       ---------------------------------------------------------
 01        Lose 1d4 INT for 1 day ( migraine )
02-09      Lose 1 POW permanently
 10        Attract random spirit ( from Spirit Plane Encounter table )
11-19      Lose 1d4 POW permanently
 20        Attract Outer Region Spirit
21-29      Lose 1 INT permanently 
 30        Attract Inner Region Spirit
31-39      Lose 1d4 INT permanently 
 40+       Something nastier than any of the above
 
This would prevent sorcerors doling out all but the smallest ( less
than 9 mp ) spells unreservedly. One aspect of this sort of thing
is that the risk could have a different connotation depending upon
the culture. The table could be modified accordingly. For worshippers
of Malkion, it might indicate Holy wrath and avenging angels
might appear. The angels may instruct that a pilgrimage,
massive donation to the church or other penitence is required.
If the spell was performed for a righteous cause, then the character
might be considered blessed and chosen... to go on a pilgrimage,
raise funds for the church, to never again raise a sword or to have
a vision and be struck blind.

One thing I like about this approach is that it fits in well with 
standard sorcerous mythology but is easily tailored to fit a
Gloranthan setting. It also provides spotaneous plot devices for the
GM.










---------------------

From: f6ri@midway.uchicago.edu (charles gregory fried)
Subject: Howdy!
Message-ID: 
Date: 17 Jun 93 10:20:52 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1093

Greg Fried here

Just returned from a week away, and found about three hours worth of RQ in my
email! Thanks to all those who responded to me in the Daily or personally.

For the on-going census on PC party make-up and location:
Well, my campaign resides in the East Isles.  Almost all the PCs are cousins
from one small clan of one tribe on a place called Aldin Island.  Most of
them worship ancestors and spirit cults.  They are paleo/neolithic in
culture. A couple of the PCs come from a much more advanced bronze age
civilization and worship a deity of my invention: Maraben, god of scholars,
administrators and politicians!
---------
Peter Michaels:
Thanks for your input on designing a quest for a PC to recover a lost
ancestor. LEt me give you some more detail now.  The shark worshipers who
once ruled Aldin Island were (and are!) basically hsunchen, but their gods is
more powerful than the typical hsunchen deities outlined in Cults Book. 
Beyond being able to sprout shark fins, body, skin, and head, Ratuk (the
shark god) also grants the sharkies additional divine magic, such as Frenzy,
which resembles Beserker and requires human blood.  With the aid of this
god, the sharkies ruled a not inconsiderable (though primitive) empire.  The
Aldin Island locals are not fish hsunchen, but rather fisher people who
worship ancestors, Triolina, Ela Hin (son of Triolina -- a hunter god for
fisher people) and other minor deities.  In conquering the various tribes of
Aldin, the sharkies performed a ritual in which each of the tribes' founding
ancestor was fed to the shark god, and dismembered, but not annihilated. 
This ritual allowed the overlords to maintain the local people's basci social
structure, but reducing them to demoralized vassals.  They do remember their
founders' names, but that is all.  And the names cannot summon the ancestor
if s/he is dismembered and dispersed.  Finally, the last relevant detail to
Aldin's history is that about two generations ago, the sharkies were expelled
from the island, but not by the local tribespeople.  Rather, the sharkies
overreached their power and attacked an isolated, but highly organized bronze
age culture.  These people crushed the sharkies and rolled back their
conquests, liberating Aldin Island.  However, they are quite isolationist,
leaving only a protective garrison on Aldin and restoring the ancient tribes
to their freedom.  It is in this context that one PC wishes to restore his
founding ancestor (and you now know more than he!).  Perhaps as you say, not
a hero/visionquest is in order, but rather an elaborate mundane quest to
recover the dispersed pieces of the ancestor.  Or must that be done on the
heroplane?
-----------
Confession:
I lied.  My campaign is not in the East Isles. But for purposes of
communicating with a broader RQ world, I choose to locate it there.  I wonder
if other GMs out there have this problem: I love the Gloranthan lore, borrow
from it heavily, but want to run a campaign where very significant aspects of
the cosmos are different from Glorantha.  But if I wish to share my scenarios
and cults with y'all, I need to Gloranthanize.  Where do we heretics locate
in Glorantha, if we want to publish in the Daily, or TotRM?!  Some of you
complain about how some areas are very sparsely described.  But I think
that's good!  If all Glorantha gets 'filled in', even with very broad
strokes, we pick 'n' choosers will get strangled.  I like placing my campaign
in the East Isles, a region of great size and variety.  Please do not ordain
that EVERYONE there has access to divine magic, but no spirit magic (only
sorcery), or that EVERYONE there was subject to and molded by this or that
empire!  If you look at the map of east Glorantha, there must be tens of
thousands of islands (like on Earthsea!) and some areas must be VERY remote. 
Tell me there's room there for my Northwest Amerind-type fishers, my
polynesian style sharkies, some of the standard Earth and Sea cults, and even
a Lodril volcano or two, and I'll be mollified.  Then I might tell you about
some more of the cults out there, but not in so long a format as Uralog!

GF out.