Date: Thu, 4 Feb 93 17:14:47 +0100 From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Digest Subscriptions) To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest) Subject: The RuneQuest Daily, Thu, 04 Feb 1993 This is an semi-automated digest, sent out once per day (if any messages are pending). Replies will be included in the next issue automatically. 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. -- 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: g.hoyle@genie.geis.com Subject: THE BLOCK Message-ID: <9302031758.AA12143@relay1.geis.com> Date: 3 Feb 93 16:47:00 GMT The Block, in Prax, is composed of Truestone. Truestone has the property of compelling those who touch it to cast all the rune magic they know into the stone, after which it becomes "set" and can no longer accept new magic. If the Block is "blank" (contains no magic), how has it avoided becoming set? If it's set, what and how many spells does it contain? --Guy (Mulborth) Hoyle --------------------- From: STEVEG@ARC.UG.EDS.COM (Entropy needs no maintenance) Subject: Sea GoSea Gods Message-ID: <01GU9SIWY3S2001BWR@UG.EDS.COM> Date: 2 Feb 93 20:14:19 GMT The following is summarised from Wyrms Footnotes 8, Gods & Godesses of Glorantha, meeting a request posted in RQdigest v8 #5 Zaramaka, the primal waters, begat Framanthe, goddess of the deep Sramake, Primal Ocean, One Water & Daliath, Keeper of the deep, lord of wisdom = = = = Framanthe and Sramak begat the Sea of Terror, the Western Ocean and the Homeward ocean; and from these are descended all seas, bays rivers and so forth. = = = = Sramak and Daliath begat Heler (rain), Triolina, and Nelat (the Purifier) Triolina and Nelat begat Mirintha (sea nymph) Triolina and Heler begat King Undine Triolina and Flamal begat Murthdrya Triolina and Hykim begat Tholaina, Queen of beasts Triolina and Grandfather Mortal begat Phargon Mirintha and King Undine begat the water nymphs King Undine gave rise to Island Gulper, Ship Beater and Tidal wave Tidal Wave gave rise to Sog, and thence the Undines Murthdrya gave rise to the Sea elves Mirintha and Phargon to the Mer tribes. Of this descent, Waertag was begotten by Malkion upon a Trioline spirit. Tholaina gave rise to all manner of sea beats with the elemental gods. = = = = Daliath and Framanthe begat Manthi, Natea and Magasta Manthi and Natea begat Sshorg, Prince of the Sea of terror, from whom are descended Dew maid and Fog Boy Manthi and Natea begat Banthe, Prince of Western Ocean, from whose line Rainbow girl arises. Manthi and Natea begat Lorian, Celestial Waters, who in turn gave rise to Lorian, the Fiery Waters. Magasta mated with a darkness demon to produce Wachaza, and with Brastalos to create the waterspouts. = = = = The lineage of the Blue Moon, the once mortal Dormal, and other water deities such as Nyanka do not seem to connect with the above. --------------------- From: MILLERL@WILMA.WHARTON.UPENN.EDU (Loren J. Miller) Subject: Helmets Message-ID: <9302031819.AA19241@noc1.dccs.upenn.edu> Date: 3 Feb 93 17:15:00 GMT For the helmet question, I don't think it should reduce your fighting skills, but I agree it should hurt perception skills, even for Trolls who use darksense and Dwarfs who use their remote sense. So should it put a cap on skill or penalize skill or penalize your roll? RQ4 adds the concept of a penalty to your roll which makes it easier to fumble a skill, in addition to the normal skill penalty which reduces your chance of success. How about partial and full helmets halving perception skills? That's a good, clean, easy to use ruling. Actually, full helms should probably quarter perception skills. It works for me. If a character doesn't take off a helmet when trying to scan or search they don't really want to find anything. And for armor and stealth, how about adding half the ENC of metal armor to your roll when trying to sneak? Rolls of 100+ are always fumbles. This makes it much easier to suddenly clank or jingle that armor when you're trying to sneak around. It also makes it nearly impossible to get special or critical successes. A simple failure to sneak just means that made SOME noise. A fumble means you made a LOT of noise, and even a deaf man tripping on ten kinds of psychedelics would hear something and recognise something was up. IMHO, this is the way armor should interact with the sneak skill. whoah, +++++++++++++++++++++++23 Loren Miller internet: MILLERL@wharton.upenn.edu Mediocrity is a hand rail. -- Baron de Montesquieu --------------------- From: carlf@Panix.Com (Carl Fink) Subject: Runequest Message-ID: <199302032112.AA14808@sun.Panix.Com> Date: 3 Feb 93 11:12:49 GMT Comments with ">" are by Alex, with ">>" by me. >> Well, remember that good PC shamans under RQ3 can easily defeat Monrogh! >Since shaman can't become Y. initiates, this is only a factor for >an Illuminated Yelmalion Shaman, a thought too horrible to contemplate. :-) I was thinking more of a friendly (to the apostate) shaman intervening and forcing Monrogh to retreat. In any case, the initiate who says "Fire!" would presumably run to a priest and be assigned penance before Monrogh attacks. >That's pretty weird. Being named after a God seems i) improbable; >ii) blasphemous; iii) problematic if only his name survives to the >present, and no other knowledge; and iv) confusing. Why not just >rename the Hero? You aren't familiar with the common Spanish name Jesus? I think that deals with i and ii. As for iv, it only confuses Glorantha experts like yourself. Carl --------------------- From: eco0kkn@cabell.vcu.edu (Kirsten K. Niemann) Subject: Re: Alex's points Message-ID: <9302032245.AA18219@cabell.vcu.edu> Date: 3 Feb 93 22:45:04 GMT Alex: I seem to remembet that around 0.5% of the population is a reasonable proportion of folks who spend their time doing religion. After all, in Glorantha, religion has a practical use! This would be the total number of cult officials who don't spend their time doing mundane work, so it includes altar boys, incense makers, guards, temple slaves, as well as the priests and what not. RE: Yamsur the variously identified. I agree that the whole thing is confusing. However, you only have to look to a hispanic country to run across many people named Jesus! And what about Arabic countries, where the tradition is to name the 1st born male child Mohammed? In fact, some families name all their boys Mohammed. I heard a story on the radio news today about a province in India (or amybe Pakistan) where people are routinely named after important characters in world history when the child is born. Thus, in current elections, local boys named Hitler, Stalin, King Albert and Truman are all running for government positions. No bull. Finally, during the 14-15th centuries, something like 75%+ of the males in england were named Richard, Henry, John, or William. Lots of nichnames back then. I do name some characters in my game after important mythic figures, though I usually do it to western characters. Thus, Archbishop Arkat Rishkin of Sentanos, leader of the Henotheist church for that land. Ultimately, the name Yamsur survived in the Sun County text because of overcautious, rushed editing. On the creation of the Yelmalio cult in the 16th century. King of Sartar explains the historical basis of the Yelmalio cult. There it is called Elmal or some such. It grew out of a cultural "contamination" by Dara Happa solar worshippers, coming in contact with the Orlanth pantheon Elmlio cult, the cult of the guardian of light for the storm gods. Elmlio stayed behind and guarded the stead while Orlanth took off on his quests. The contamination came by tempting the Elmlio cultists to expand out of their bounds as guardians, and guys that always got the snot beaten out of them in religious rituals, where they traditionally took the roles of the solar enemies of Orlanth. They got uppity, and they started to try an win, which can have serious repercussions to the well being of your festival. So, they became a separate cult, and set up their own way of life and such. Even so, they are more like Orlanthi than Sun worshippers. In redifining and creeating their own myth (which required heroquesting) they changed the nature of realty. Now, the myth of Yelmalio stands for them as we are all familiar with it. To them, Yelmalio really did walk in the DArkness, no frend to Orlanth, just as Jesus really did rise from the dead if you ask a christian. The power of faith and belief being rather stronger in Glorantha than here, reality changes to accomodate, and this includes the sudden emergence of cult records written before the (historical) founding of the cult, old buildings (like the Old Sun Dome) and so on. REvisionist history writeen across the past in stone and ink. ON Yelm the Elder: I think the various solar cults who enable Yelm status actually do the supporting necessary, without having to have a big local population. Clearly, the Yelm cult works differently than most, since it is inconceivable that enough population has mebership to support Great Temples, though obviously such exist. In Dara Happa, for example, I think the huge majority of solar worshippers are Lodrili, with a thin crust of Yelmists above them. Thus, you retire to Yelm the Elder, but you don't have to lead a congregattion or anything like that. Whew. Mike Dawson M >|< --------------------- From: trystro!rune@Think.COM (Peter Maranci) Subject: RQ: Settings and miscellaneous Message-ID: <9302040325.AA25380@Early-Bird.Think.COM> Date: 4 Feb 93 02:33:19 GMT > From: bell@cs.unc.edu (Andrew Bell) (In response to my suggestion that alternate systems of magic be released for alternate settings): AB> I'd definitely discourage the Chaosium/Glorantha folks from AB> doing anything along this line. Instead, if any group AB> decides to create non-Gloranthan RQ stuff, they should AB> include their own magic system if they want to use AB> "non-standard" magic. If AH/Chaosium can find a good group AB> to create a fair amount of high quality non-Gloranthan RQ AB> stuff, it might be worthwhile as a way to get people AB> interested in RQ who would find Glorantha too different to AB> get into easily. Gee, I've always run *all* my games with the Runequest system, and only about half of them are set in Glorantha. I'm not suggesting that Chaosium/AH should make any other setting to *rival* Glorantha -- after all, that wouldn't be possible. But since RQ is a system for more sophisticated gamers, why not supply them with more sophisticated game tools? I mean, I doubt that many RQ players play only in Glorantha. If I'm wrong about this, I'd like to hear about it. Plug: I might as well take the opportunity to mention that an old source for RQ material is still around, and is increasing the amount of RQ coverage. Those with the RQ2 book may remember "The Wild Hunt" APA from the "Sources" section. Greg Stafford hasn't contributed to TWH for years, but some old RuneQuesters still do. And I believe that back issues, possibly including some with old Stafford zines, are still available (though it might take Mark Swanson, the editor, a while to dig them up...8^>} In the interests of truth in advertising, I should admit that yours truly does contribute a zine to The WIld Hunt himself. For info, contact: Mark Swanson 40 Bow St. Arlington MA 02174 I only hope I'll be forgiven this shameless plug. 8^>} -->Pete ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Maranci trystro!rune@think.com or rune@trystro.uucp Does an Elf who wants to commit suicide have to cast Food Song on itself first? --------------------- From: SPB1@vms.bton.ac.uk (Ghost Dancer) Subject: Fatigue and the Glowline - Thoughts and questions Message-ID: <9302041107.AA23631@Sun.COM> Date: 4 Feb 93 10:28:00 GMT I read the responses to my fatigue suggestion with interest and I take the point about adventurers being at the peak of fitness. One thing that occurs to me though is what about non active adventurers or new players with previous experience that does not lend itself to physical exertion, examples that come to mind are Priests and scribes but you could probably also include Nobles and Shaman. Such character types would not have the oppertunities to keep fit and should not be able to actively participate in physical activities on the same level as a Soldier or Farmer. Are these differences worth bothering about, do we want a true to life system or a glossy abstract, I don't know, when does realism cease to be an advantage and become a hinderence??? Finaly a question about the Glowline. Is Sun Dome County included in the Gl Glowline (1621 ST), I can find no reference that mentions this but I may be looking in the wrong place. If it isn't already within the Glowline then what are the requirements for inclusion? The reason I ask is that I am writting a scenario set in Morning in Sun Dome County and would like to put a bit of pressure on the party by having them wake up one morning to find the Red Moon in the sky, they would then of course want to find out why and possibly stop it. What I am looking for is something subtle such as a hidden Seven Mothers temple being established, this scenario is intended to be an investagative type a bit like a Call of Cthulhu game so 200 Lunar troops descending on the village would not suit the plot. Any thoughts or help greatly appreciated. ._ /! \ Alternative /-!-/ Realities Jarec / ! \ Games Club e-mail: SPB1@VMS.BTON.AC.UK