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, 22 Oct 1994, part 1
Sender: Henk.Langeveld@Holland.Sun.COM
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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
6694: niwe = (Nils Weinander)
- GoonQuest and proverbs
6695: joe = (Joerg Baumgartner)
- Dagori Inkarth hex map
6696: pyspas = (Paul Snow)
- Imitating the spirits? - Spirit magic in action
6697: ddunham = (David Dunham)
- spirits; Orlanthi & Lunars
6698: igorlick = (ian i. gorlick)
- Hockey and other custom in Bliss of Ignorance
6699: edo2877 = (Ott Edward D)
- unsubscribe
6700: erisie = (Sven *Erik Sievrin)
- Esrolia and spirits in good health....
6701: sandyp = (Sandy Petersen)
- Re: who knows?
6702: neurolab = (Peter Donald)
- Les Dieux Nomades
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From: niwe@ppvku.ericsson.se (Nils Weinander)
Subject: GoonQuest and proverbs
Message-ID: <9410210818.AA27095@ppvku.ericsson.se>
Date: 21 Oct 94 10:18:11 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6694
GoonQuest
Loren:
>If you really want to see GQ2 let me know and
>I'll try to coalesce my ideas and write them down.
Well, GQ1 seemed like an excellent idea after a quick perusal, so I
would like to see GQ2 too.
_____
Proverbs:
We had a really weird gaming session yesterday. The most memorable
happening was the coining of a new proverb: 'Diplomatic as a Humakti'.
To make a long and confusing story short and confusing:
Our GM likes multiverses and cross-overs, so we are embarked on a
really flipped out inter-world quest. Now, yesterday we found ourselves
having dinner with two guys in the dining room of a british WW2 warship
caught in the stomach of a huge fish. One of them was the ship's captain,
the other happened to be a vampire.
He wasn't a Gloranthan Vivamort cultist though, just a Rumanian prince
who had had the misfortune to romance the wrong lady. Apart from being
a vampire he was a very nice guy, and an excellent cook. Nobody would
have thought he could be a vampire unless we had used Detect Undead.
This caused a serious moral dilemma: Arkan {yes, he is named after the
Serbian bankrobber and war criminal}, the party's Humakt RL takes
his position very seriously. He couldn't just sit there having dinner
with an undead, so he says flat out: 'Sir, you are undead, so I am
pledged to kill you. I'm very good at it, so you won't have any pain.
Please straighten your neck'.
That's diplomatic as a Humakti.
In the end Arkan killed the vampire and we managed to resurrect him to
real life, but that's another story.
/Nils W
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From: joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner)
Subject: Dagori Inkarth hex map
Message-ID:
Date: 21 Oct 94 11:37:48 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6695
David Hall in X-RQ-ID: 6666
> Jerome also asks:
>>Do you know if it's possible to join the two boards in one game?
> Almost. They do just about match (though the hexes are slightly different
> sizes). But only about half of the edge of each map is common. We need a
> Dagori Inkarth map next.
I have done one, as ASCII map - remember the DP digests from November 93?
I used the map borders from Chaosium NG, DP and the hex-maps in Griffin
Mountain to get a frame of reference around the area of Shadows Dance
and then interpolated the approximate positions of the main features of
the land.
A nice side effect with these ASCII maps is that, printed out in PICA,
the hex size is a fairly good match to the DP hex size.
If you put together the maps of Elder Wilds, Balazar, Dragon Pass, Nomad
Gods, and round out the missing bits, you get a gaming surface about 5'*5',
almost too large to be handled. The main problem is that most of the land
to the north and the east is wilderness, with few points of interest and
less inhabitants to wage war against each other. Already Dagori Inkarth
with its fairly sizeable troll and elf population is hard to flesh out in
terms of DP units, unless you allow the "inpassable mountains" to harbour
lots of additional creatures - hollri, giants, dwarves (strays or outposts
from Greatway), wyverns and other dragonkind, spirits and elementals of all
sorts, giant insect herds or combat units.
A possible army listing soon to follow...
> I just noticed that the original Chaosium Dragon Pass map does match up
> with the RQ2 Trollpak map and with the Chaosium Nomad Gods map. However,
> the Dagori Inkarth map doesn't match the Nomad Gods map. Ho hum.
I found this out quite early, too. However by crossing lines etc one can
realign the locations of Dagori Inkarth.
What's more, the northeastern corner of the Dragon Pass map (and counter
collection) could do with extra work.
The Stinking forest and the Valley of Flowers are known aldryami
territory. Where are their counters?
The Valley of Flowers and most of the northeastern corner of the DP map
have much more vegetation on the Dagori Inkarth map than shown on the
DP board. I suggest to make the flower- and fungus-forests a new type of
terrain, largely the same as other forest, although movement through the
flowers would be less hindered than through forest, and sporewood travel
might require saving throws or such.
If you extend the northern edge of DP by say 8 hexes, you will
get the Rockwood Mountains and the southern woods of Balazar
into the game, with hordes of Greatway dwarves, aldryami and Votanki
hunter clans as additional independents.
If there is interest, I'll send my maps of Dagori Inkarth to Henk for
another digest issue.
--
-- Joerg Baumgartner joe@sartar.toppoint.de
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From: pyspas@bath.ac.uk (Paul Snow)
Subject: Imitating the spirits? - Spirit magic in action
Message-ID:
Date: 21 Oct 94 15:45:55 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6696
Ian Gorlick wrote:
-------------------
> I do like your image though and would like to keep some of it. Maybe what you
> describe is what the spirit would do if it were present. What a person learns
> from the spirit is how to cast out a bit of mana that will act in that fashion
> for a short time. So anyone looking with magical sight will see much what you
> have described.
Thanks for the helpful points. As we know that people put life force/mana
into spells and we know that it is posssible to see active spells at sunset
then there must be something to be seen. So, if knowledge of spirit magic
lets you know how to guide your lifeforce to create spirit emulators which
can operate on the mundane plane then that sounds good to me.
BTW. Another player in my group shared this view too. He was playing an
Orlanthi Pentian and after a combat in which he disrupted a broo he went to
look at the body. He declared that he could see the hoofprints where his
spirit had trampled the broo. It seemed too good not to be true.
Thanks again,
Paul Snow
---------------------
From: ddunham@radiomail.net (David Dunham)
Subject: spirits; Orlanthi & Lunars
Message-ID: <199410212025.AA26067@radiomail.net>
Date: 21 Oct 94 20:25:26 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6697
Simon Lipscomb talked about spirits, including:
>I'm sure the Uleria cult has a few Orgasm spirits in tow.
Not exactly an emotion. I suspect all of the Pendragon traits and passions
have spirits. Nasty would be to be possessed by a Chaste spirit...
>One might expect Honesty, Loyalty, Motivation, Jealousy etc. spirits.
Exactly. In my PenDragon Pass game, someone was once possessed by a
Meekness spirit.
Colin Watson pointed out
>wraiths have INT and CON as do ghoul spirits (IMO).
which leads me to remind everyone that such spirits cannot be bound. The
only way you can bind a spirit under RQ3 is to reduce it to 0 MP. Since
wraiths lack POW, they can't regain MP, so they are effectively destroyed
when you win the spirit combat.
Rob Nicholls asks
>Say I have a hypothetical
>Orlanthi clan in Sartar who enlist the help of the Lunars in pressing
>a land claim (or something more substantial) with threats, force of
>arms or whatever against an enemy clan.
>Can this clan still profess to be good Orlanth worshippers? Do they
>all become inactive? Do Orlanth's Wind Fists etc give them a good
>seeing to? What would happen during Orlanth worship ceremonies
>(especially at Sacred Time given the current interest in the Sacred
>Time and Chaos)?
I happen to be playing a very pragmatic Orlanthi from Aggar, trying to run
a stead in Riskland. He's made friends with a Telmori tribe, despite the
fact that consorting with chaos is technically one of the few capital
crimes. No question that he would attack anything obviously chaotic (he
helped kill some friendly trader broos), but in iffy situations he figures
Orlanth gave him the ability to choose, and in the long run it's better to
be friends with your neighbors and not worry about whether they're tainted.
As a GM I'd think much the same -- political and religious spheres are
separate. (After all, in Prax, the broos sometimes become temporary
allies.) You can have friends and reject their religion.
Of course, Lunar aid probably comes with the cost of being allowed to set
up a Seven Mothers shrine. Probably the clan chieftain would allow this,
figuring nobody would join. I suspect he'd be wrong, at least over the long
run. So in the long run, there might be troubles, but only indirectly
caused by Lunar political assistance.
---------------------
From: igorlick@bnr.ca (ian i. gorlick)
Subject: Hockey and other custom in Bliss of Ignorance
Message-ID: <_20064_Fri_Oct_21_16:24:36_1994_@bnr.ca>
Date: 21 Oct 94 12:11:00 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6698
Peter Metcalfe replied to Paul Snow:
>>The trolls, of course, transformed these into highly complex
>>gladiator games, and charged admission.
>
>You mean they play Ice Hockey in Bliss in Ignorance? }B-)
Next someone will suggest that the people of BoI all wear tocques, have an
immoderate fondness for beer and back-bacon, and end every sentence with 'eh',
eh? Their politics and culture are mostly dictated by a more powerful and
populous southern neighbour. They are far to the north with a climate that most
people consider uninhabitable. Hmm... maybe there are some parallels.
?????????????????????????????????????????
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From: edo2877@usl.edu (Ott Edward D)
Subject: unsubscribe
Message-ID: <199410212221.AA07635@c28.ucs.usl.edu>
Date: 21 Oct 94 12:21:15 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6699
unsubscribe
---------------------
From: erisie@utu.fi (Sven *Erik Sievrin)
Subject: Esrolia and spirits in good health....
Message-ID:
Date: 22 Oct 94 02:25:18 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6700
Ian I Gorlick:
I can see your reasoning, but I think it in another way: males are not
allowed to join the cult of Ernalda. They are not worthy of it. They can
only serve her by serving one of her many lovers, protectors and sons.
The lands of Esrolia are considered to be owned by no one but the spirits
of the land, who got them from Ernalda, their mother. Inheritance of land
is only inheritance of the right to work it. Any decision to change
anything about the land - say plant a grove of fig trees, or increase the
number of goats, or sell all areas west of the watering ditch to your
neighbour, must be approved by the Earth Temples. Furthermore, anyone who
works the land must pay a part of the profit to Ernalda through her
priestesshood. If they live in a city, it is even worse - the city wears
and tears heavily on the land, so the city dwellers pay part of their
produce to the Earth Temples. Do you not want to pay your tax? Go ahead,
make my day. The taxwomen are followers of Asrelia, and try to be as
shrewd and as big
misers as she can be, but can also be as generous - the wealth is divided
among the daughters' of Asrelia followers, although some is invested in
trade and large-scale manufacture a la Roman workshops. Which, by the way
causes Asrelias cult, which of course only allows women, to dominate
trade and commerce. Their husbands may be Issaries or Argan Argar, but
its the wifes who hold the purses. If the tax collectors do not get their
due and find out, they send the police on you. Yep, you have committed a
crime against an Earth Temple, so watch out for the Berserks of
Barbeester Gor. Your crime is not as bad as rape or slaying a woman or
anything like that, so if you is nice and gentle and give them what you
owe them, they'll only beat you till you're blue, and leave you well alone.
(Since Babs' cultists are avengers, I figure they will be better as
policemen - I mean policewomen - than as soldiers). And just as Orlanth
Rex is the subcult of the Orlanth chieftains, so the Ernalda cult in
Esrolia have the cult of Ernalda Regina - for the Queens, who rule the land.
So you see, the earth cults control the country's wealth, the police and
the big political offices - and they will only allow women.
I can very well imagine there being cult spirits punishing males who
break the system, but they do not come from Ernalda. Nay, all
husband-cults are separate from their varieties elsewhere in that the
most important thing of these gods here is that they have been nice to
Ernalda. A cultist is supposed to emulate his god. If you do not behave
as a male should, you are not being nice to "your" women, ie not being
nice to Ernalda, ie your god will be mad at you.
Colin Watson: Colin, you must have achieved what no one else on this net
has done. You have convinced an opponent of being wrong. I did not
subscribe to your idea of spirits of the dead having physical attributes
like STR, DEX and CON before, but after your second try at explanations I
can only agree. I have only a few notes:
1. The stats are still dependent on the body the dead inhabit. If the
body has deterioated, the spirit will not be able to make it work as good
as it did before.
2. To find the spirit in the underworld is still rather hard. The big
idea of being a shaman of Daka Fal is that A, you know the way, because
you have spoken to your ancestors who have wandered themselves B, Daka
Fal is easier to appease, which I think must be done if the spirit has
got as far as him. If it is very recently dead - say a few hours - it is
easier. You still have to find the way, however.
Cheers,
Erik
---------------------
From: sandyp@idcube.idsoftware.com (Sandy Petersen)
Subject: Re: who knows?
Message-ID: <9410212123.AA13302@idcube.idsoftware.com>
Date: 21 Oct 94 07:24:18 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6701
> I see these [Passion Spirits] as disembodied emotions waiting to
>happen. Although only a few negative ones are listed in the Monsters
>Book, I feel that there must be positive passion spirits out there
In my own campaign, our shaman has encountered (and even
bound) both Lust and Anger spirits.
Colin Watson:
>Ghosts only have INT and POW. But wraiths have INT and CON as do
>ghoul spirits
Why do ghoul spirits have CON?
>IMO the only "inherently physical" attribute is SIZ.
And even that stat is possessed by certain creatures that are
basically spirits, such as naiads and chonchons. Their SIZ can be
"discarded" as it were when they retreat to the spirit plane, but it
is always there.
Alex F.
>I feel that the purported advantage of the vessel system(s), of
>explaining sorcery in similar terms to divine magic and shamanism
I make no claims of this nature for my own version of the
vessel, which, of course, does NOT involve sacrificing any POW to
gain your vesse. and hence is quite different from the other magic
styles. In addition, the East Isles magic system that I and Nils W.
and Greg F. are working up is yet different again, plus the Kralori
mysticism magic that I with Nils worked on is yet a fifth different
type of magic.
I'm somewhat enamored of the idea, put forth by someone here,
that the old-time Doraddi didn't use regular Rune magic in the start,
but Something Else.
I said:
>FONRIT has its own array of solar and other gods. Equivalents
>of Yelm, Lodril, and Dayzatar are all worshiped here.
Dave Hall asks:
>'Equivalents of' Yelm, Lodril and Dayzatar? Cronisper would most
>probably be Dayzatar's equivalent.
Cronisper and other Pamalt pantheon deities are not much
respected or worshiped in Fonrit, except among the radical
"Doraddist" groups.
> Given Pamaltelean Lodril's >supremacy in Pamaltela, I wonder if
>the Fonritian Solars have the >opinion that Lodril is actually
>occupies the positon of head solar >dude and that Yelm functions
>little more than a messenger of >pyschopomp?
I'm sure this is the case in some places. Fonrit isn't really
very centralized, and there's a lot of different things believed
here. It's at least as screwed up mythologically as Safelster.
>You mean they play Ice Hockey in Bliss in Ignorance? }B-)
Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of British
football hooligans. Except the trolls watch the spectators, of
course, not the soccer players.
---------------------
From: neurolab@pavlov.psyc.queensu.ca (Peter Donald)
Subject: Les Dieux Nomades
Message-ID: <55119.neurolab@pavlov.psyc.queensu.ca>
Date: 21 Oct 94 11:18:30 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 6702
In message Thu, 20 Oct 94 09:15:32 +0100, David Hall writes:
> I wonder, does anybody know if Oriflam stuff gets over to shops in
> French-speaking Canada?
It does indeed. I'd recommend trying a shop in Montreal called Le Valet
d'Coeur (I'm not affiliated with 'em except as a sometime customer). Most
of the staff are fluently bilingual, and last time I checked they're happy
to do mail-order. The particulars are: 4532 rue St-Denis, Montreal, Que,
Canada, H2J 2L4. Tel: (514) 499-9970. FAX: (514) 499-1972. The imported
Oriflam stuff generally isn't cheap, but if you're ordering from the US
keep the incredibly favourable (to 'mericans) $US/$Can exchange rate in
mind.
--
"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the
black flag and begin slitting throats."---------H. L. Mencken
---------------------