CHA4028 RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha – Chapter 19 Adventurer Sheets Q&A

Official Answers by Chaosium

See also

RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha Quickstart – Q&A

RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha – Q&A by Chapter

RuneQuest Gamemaster Screen Pack – Q&A

RuneQuest Glorantha Bestiary – Q&A

The Red Book of Magic – Q&A

The Smoking Ruin & Other Stories – Q&A

Pegasus Plateau & Other Stories – Q&A

RuneQuest Starter Set – Q&A by Book

Weapons & Equipment – Q&A

Adventurer Sheets (page 428)

Elemental Rune Cycle

The rules on page 8 states the cycle of elemental runes. But the character sheet show a different relationship: Darkness, Water, Earth, Air, Fire/Sky. It does not correspond to the pentagram relation: darkness then water, then earth, then fire, then air. The only link I can make with the order on the character sheet is the first five days of the week. Is that the intent?

Use the description on page 8.

Knowledge skills and experience

Bureaucracy (00)

Bureaucracy should not have a check box per Base Skill Values page 61, it is not in bold

Customs (local 25/all others 00)

Customs (local 25/all others 00) should have a check box per Base Skill Values page 61, it is in bold

Read/Write (language) (00)

Read/Write (language) (00) should not have a check box per Base Skill Values page 61, it is not in bold

Skills listed on page 61 in bold and shown on the adventurer sheet with a box can be improved during play through experience, training, or research. Other skills can only be improved through training or research, or by extraordinary means.

Skill Base Chance, page 60

Mapping Weapons to Weapon skills

The melee weapons skills in character sheet mix weapons names and categories. For example:
– Skill: Kopis (specific weapon in category of 1H Sword).

The adventurer sheet entries were listed specifically to make it easy to list cultural weapons (pages 60-63). 

There’s only so much room on the adventurer sheet and we wanted to cover the cultural weapons as well as having some blank spaces for additional entries. 

No one, for example, has 1H Sword as a cultural weapon, but several homelands have either broadsword or kopis.

  • Skill: 1H Mace (a weapon category including 1H Hammer, Heavy Mace, Light Mace, Singlestick, and Wooden Club).
  • Skill: Javelin (Javelin is both weapon name and category. Which one does the skill on the character sheet refer to?).

When there’s only one type of weapon in the category, it is interchangeable.

The character sheet is also completely missing any skills for all 2H Maces and 2H Swords as well as Thrown Rock and Staff Sling. These could be easily implemented as custom skills, but as the skills on the character sheet mix categories and specific weapons, it becomes unclear whether the new skill should be named by weapon category or by specific weapon.

As single skills. 

No cultures have 2H Maces or 2H Swords as cultural weapons. 

For example: If a character decides to start training with a Greatsword, what skill should be used? Would the skill name be  Greatsword, or 2H Sword?

Greatsword. Use of the Rhomphia or Sickle-sword are different enough that they are distinct skills. 

Or as a GM you can decide you like categories better and let all 1H Swords be used with the same skill, all 1H Axes, etc. 

What would be the generalized rule for creating new weapons and weapon skills? By category or by specific weapon?

Following the letter of the rules, first define the weapon category, the skill. You can combine them if you want or if it makes more sense.

The Melee Weapon (All) skill description on page 186 states that “Each melee weapon has its own specific skill.” This seems like a very concrete rule, but the character sheet as it is now, is not following it. Based on this, I assume that character sheet is in error, but some official statement regarding this would be welcome.

See above for the rationale for the adventurer sheet being designed to facilitate listing of cultural weapon skills. 

Adventurer Sheets v1.0.1

  • Altered PARRY to SKILL on the Armour & Hit locations section
  • Added a check box to customs (local)
  • Updated the copyright date to from 2018 to 2020
  • Added v1.0.1 to the bottom of each sheet
  • Changed the filename from Character Sheet to Adventurer Sheets & added 1.0.1. Adventurer sheet is used throughout RQG and character sheet never.
RQG-Adventurer-Sheets-1.0.1Download

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