Bell Digest v940919p1

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, Mon, 19 Sep 1994, part 1
Sender: Henk.Langeveld@Holland.Sun.COM
Content-Return: Prohibited
Precedence: junk

X-RQ-ID: Intro

This is the RuneQuest Daily Bulletin, a mailing list on
the subjects of Avalon Hill's RPG and Greg Stafford's 
world of Glorantha.  It is sent out once per day in digest
format.

More details on the RuneQuest Daily and Digest can be found
after the last message in this digest.

X-RQ-ID: index

6262:  = 
 - Truestone: Tunnels in Time... Re: Wimpstones?
6263:  = 
 - Bloggom Marshes
6264:  = 
 - Tim the GodLearner's Theory of Disease

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From: henkl@aft-ms (Henk Langeveld - Sun Nederland)
Subject: Truestone: Tunnels in Time... Re: Wimpstones?
Message-ID: <9409180759.AA15539@yelm.Holland.Sun.COM>
Date: 18 Sep 94 08:59:50 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6262

Jonas Schiott gives a very good model of the 
effect of Truestone on divine magic:

>As I've implied before, I want Truestones to just 'freeze' cast spells,
>keep them in Stasis (closely related to Law) if you will, until they are
>called for. This would mean that the person filling the stone _has_ cast
>the spell (and can thus regain it as normal), it just hasn't taken effect
>yet. This modification makes truestone really fearsome, some might even say
>'gross', but I would also make it much more scarce than some people seem to
>be assuming. I mean, I would never let a _player_character_ get his/her
>grubby hands on something like this!

Now,  this suggests as if Truestone/Law can actually ignore
the compromise in some way, or in other words,  links back
directly into Godtime.  Sounds interesting.  It sort of "fits".

Sudden surge of insight: The Truestone acts as a portal in time
between the original caster and the eventual user of the spell.

I think it can still be debated whether the spell actually 
"has been cast" or is still in the process of "being cast",
the outcome deciding on whether the spell can be regained or not.

Now originally, I resided in the latter camp,  but I think
Jonas' model is so good that I'm tempted to switch.

-- 
Henk	|	Henk.Langeveld@Sun.COM - Disclaimer: I don't speak for Sun.
oK[]	|	RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM
	|	x15338		-- ask me about /etc/rc2.d/S80lpconfig

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From: DevinC@aol.com
Subject: Bloggom Marshes
Message-ID: <9409181528.tn93912@aol.com>
Date: 18 Sep 94 19:28:54 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6263

Devin here:

Thanks to Nick for the description of Moon Spear. Of course it should be
cyclical, that's what gives the Lunar Empire its fun :-)

Now another question for you all. I just ran Queen Ozgag's Hall (TOTRM
12)...quick ain't I (I needed an interlude advanture and this one was easy to
place into a campaign. Also, I had been wanting to return a certain lost Iron
Sword with Lightning 2 matrix to the party after they had lost it a while
ago.........)?

Now, the players have ascended through the lefthand door and are in the
Bloggom Marshes. Great. But where ARE the Bloggom Marshes exactly? Yes, I
know they are to the far west, but a quick perusal of my maps showed the only
marshes in the far west to be in Pamaltela, just east of the Sea of Worms.
There is no mention of Bloggom Marshes or Purple Marshes however. Are these
marshes off of the map entirely? If so, how far West of Slon are they and how
far north of Slon?

Help!

Devin


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From: tsl@cs.mu.OZ.AU (Tim Leask)
Subject: Tim the GodLearner's Theory of Disease
Message-ID: <9409190054.26076@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU>
Date: 19 Sep 94 20:54:20 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6264

A while ago someone asked if all Gloranthan disease is caused by spirits
and if so how do broo spread disease and contaminate items. Well
I was contemplating this on the weekend and came up with the following
theory.

All diseases are caused by disease spirits. That is anyone exhibiting
symptoms of infection is covertly possessed by ONE or MORE disease spirits.
Malia is the one and only source of disease spirits.
The terms mild, chronic, acute and terminal actually refer to the number
of spirits covertly possessing a patient suffering a disease.

Disease spirits need a "marker" on the mundane plane to manifest themselves.
There are several ways this "marker" can be created. Broos can easily "mark"
objects in the disgusting ways outlined elsewhere. A object or place
contaminated in this way becomes a beacon for disease spirits. It allows
them to "see" the object. Sometimes a disease spirit will inhabit a
contaminated object othertimes the spirits will just hang around the
contaminated item waiting for victims.

Disease spirits inhabiting a body will sometimes summon another disease
spirit. A spirit thus summoned will either attack the patient or
more likely attack a new victim near by. Some disease spirits can automatically
"mark" objects that the possessed touches and thus attract and spread
more disease.

Other maladies such as madness are caused soley by passion spirits,
but that is the topic for another article.

The actual game mechanics I leave upto individual GMs, but here are some
suggestions.

Spirit combat with disease spirits should be slow, resolve once a day
or week. Lose one point from a statistic per spirit inhabiting body,
each day or week. Patient can only actively combat one spirit at a time.
This means that a typical recovery from a chronic level of infection
would be to go from chronic to mild to cured as successive spirits were 
defeated. Healing spirits can be used to aid a patient by combating
the spirits. Several healing spirits can assist one patient.
Healing spirits can see the contamination "markers" and remove them.

There are as many different types of spirits as there are disease, not all
cause statistic loss, e.g. sniffles. More powerful spirits could
cause stronger effects.

Tim "GodLearner" Leask
================================================================================
Department of Computer Science    /*\__/\      "Anyone can hold the helm when 
University of Melbourne          <       \       the sea is calm."
Parkville, Vic., 3052, AUSTRALIA  \  _  _/      -- Publilius Syrus  
Phone: +61 3 344 7877              \| --
e-mail: tsl@cs.mu.oz.au
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