The good folks at Chaosium have now organized three “Impromptu Conventions”, nicknamed “ImpCon”, where they get online on Discord and Zoom and chat in a totally informal way with their gamer community. The idea is that it’s a virtual “after-con” experience, comprised of liquor drinking and chatting, entirely skipping the “moderated panels and game slots” step.
In lieu of games and formal panels, ImpCon has (virtual) lobbies, where people can chat about whatever comes to mind, with all of Chaosium’s game designers dropping by to partake in the socialization. The schedule is made up of thematic video chats for all of Chaosium’s present games (Call of Cthulhu, RuneQuest, QuestWorlds, 7th Sea, and even BRP itself!) and future games (Rivers of London, Lords of the Middle Sea). It also involves fun activities such as John Wick’s “watch along” parties where he provides live commentary on movies like Pirates of the Caribbean or Princess Bride.
The much awaited Cults of Glorantha book is still in production, as artists such as Loic Muzy, Agathe Pitie, and Katrin Dirim are hard at work on the many, many illustrations needed for the two-and-a-half book set. By Chaosium’s request, we can’t share the exclusive previews that were shared during ImpCon3, but we can definitely repost other previews that Chaosium has shared publicly shortly before or after.
I’m sure that Agathe Pitie’s giant monomyth painting will be analyzed by fans for quite a long time! I wonder if Waldo’s in there?
We learned a few things about the Sartar Homeland Set, such as the contents of the box: a Player Guide, a Sartar Gazetteer, a Boldhome booklet, an Encounters booklet, some posters, and the much teased big map of Sartar.
Player Guide will feature a new customized character creation in which, for instance, players decide if their character is from the countryside or from a city. This should affect starting skills such as Farm and Herd vs Tradetalk, for instance.
A tattoo guide would also be included in the Player Guide. We hope that it comes with a “blank” sheet like in HeroQuest’s Sartar book, where players could draw their character’s tattoos.
Last, some household management mechanics inspired from Pendragon’s Book of Manor will appear in the Player Guide, probably expanding on the Sacred Time mechanics which were already taken from Pendragon’s Winter Phase.
The Sartar Gazetteer will present the Orlanthi kingdom as a much less “cattle herding hillbillies” region, and a more “urbanized silk road” setting. As often with Gloranthan lore, things evolve and change with time, which is bound to frustrate as much as it excites. I’m definitely looking forward to gaming in Bronze Age cities which, as I educate myself on the topic, seem full of surprises in terms of density, scale, social layers, and much more.
Further down the road Chaosium is working with various authors on settings and adventures books for Pavis, the Big Rubble, Nochet, the Upland Marsh, Talastar & Dorastor, Sun County (the one in Sartar!), and more. To round this up, the Dragon Pass Campaign book, pitched as “The Boy King campaign in Glorantha”, is still being written, and the Gamemaster Guide, Heroquesting Guide, and Weapons & Equipment Guide are at various stages of completion.
Of course we want to thank again all the people at Chaosium for organizing this and for their willingness to open up in front of an ever demanding crowd of grognards. We’ll see you all again for ImpCon 4!
You may have noticed that things are changing around here, starting with the domain name and title which have been taken over by the venerable sages of Jrustela known as the God Learners (for more information, listen to our “Interlude” episode). This realignment ritual will occur for a week, as the wizard caste gathers the necessary magical energies.
In the meantime, please continue your caste-appropriate activities. A wizard will contact you if your magical essence is required for extraction.
In this short interlude, Joerg and Ludovic announce their return to Gloranthan podcasting with a new name!
Shortly after this airs, all of our website and social media presence will migrate to a new place. Visit the God Learners for more information… if you get the “Coming Soon” page, it means we are still heroquesting deep into the bowels of the internet!
Episode 8 airs with a few weeks delay compared to our usual rhythm, as we wanted to feature our Glorantha Has Talent?-contest in this episode. We found the wait worth the while, and so did our judges.
Herald’s Podium
While we have moved the complete coverage of news about Glorantha to our Wind Whispers newsletter, we still pick a few items for our voice reporting.
Glorantha Fan Awards 2019 and 2020
In memory of Greg Stafford passing away in October 2018, Chaosium announced the laureates for Gloranthan fan activity for last year and this year, Congratulations to Martin Helsdon and Nick Brooke!
RuneQuest Classic (second edition) titles available as Print-on-Demand
The titles from the Crowd-funding for the Gloranthan Classics edition are finally available as print-on-demand hardcovers from lulu.com.
Art Packs: Gloranthan Stock Art for Creators on the Jonstown Compendium
Martin Helsdon started an experiment offering three packages of illustrations from his works “Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass” and “Men of the West” as illustrations for creators – Orlanthi, Lunars, and Hsunchen, Nomads and Beasts.
Dario Corallo followed suit with the character art he provided for Gianni Vacca’s Last Faction Hero.
The Pendulum and the Pit
A new free 48 pages product on Jonstown Compendium, a slightly horror scenario for Sacred Season and thus probably fit for a Halloween game.
Glorantha Games 2020 Experience
Ludo reports about his gaming on Pookie’s online convention and leaks tidbits from the Kralorela RQG project under development by David Millians.
Kraken 2020 as a hybrid convention
While we were recording this, a much reduced face to face convention in one of the remotest corners of Brandenburg reached out to the internet. We’ll try to get feedback from the organizer and attendants. There is a little digression about the history of Glorantha-themed conventions in Germany.
RuneQuest Glorantha German Edition Crowdfunding
Jörg reports about the success of the German Crowdfunding and his experience on German language platforms during the CF. We compare international editions, extras to be had, and errata to be included.
Glorantha Has Talent!
The first of our main sections, wherein we are joined by our three judges to listen to the entries, get their feedback on the submissions and announce the prizes and their ranking.
We talk about the rules for contestants and judges, and present our team of three:
For the whole list of contestants, entries and individual recordings (some in the original stereo) as well as some of the splendid supplemental material we received, follow this link. We don’t want to spoil the results just yet.
Heartfelt thanks to everybody who contributed to the contest, whether as judges, sponsors, or participants!
Artistic Contests in Glorantha
After enjoying the fruits of the contest, Bill, Jörg and Ludo plough onward to discuss how such contests can find their way into your games. We digress a lot, as usual:
The Garhound Contest – the growth of a myth out of a scenario
Bill shares his admiration for Michael O’Brien’s main scenario of the RQ3 Renaissance book Sun County, the Garhound Contest and Melisande’s Hand, and speculates how a contest which might have once been a way to keep the youngster’s energy away from trouble becomes a myth or gets caught up by myth.
Singing for the Ludoch – a Choralinthor Bay Myth becoming a ritual contest
Jörg presents another story about the Choralinthor Bay Ludoch and Fisherfolk and tries to provide artistic expression as another way to solve conflicts. (Transcripts of both these stories will be made linked as text soonish.) We also touch upon the uncanny attention that use of the term Ludoch creates for one of us….
A Look at Donandar
Ludo explores the cult of Donandar and its role in the world. We discuss Illusions, stage craft, and a Marvel heroine in the course of this.
The Glorantha Has Talent? has come to a close and we can officially say that, indeed, Glorantha Has Talent! You can listen to Episode 8 of our podcast to hear the judges discuss and comment on the submissions we’ve received.
If, however, you’re the kind of person who reads a Lhankor Mhy grimoire starting from the last page, then here are the winners and honourable mentions, with links to listen to each individually! This is also where you can listen to some of them in stereo, as the podcast is produced in mono.
Before we get to it, we want to thank all our contestants for their hard work, all our sponsors for generously offering prizes, and all our judges for their wisdom and their immense patience as they realized that we have no idea how to record a podcast…. but now, without further ado…
Prince of Entertainment: Now That’s What I Call Illumination!
Our winner is “Now That’s What I Call Illumination!”, by Chris Killey, Leah Owen, Liesl Rowe, and Tim Hunt (full credits below).
Greetings Initiate, Welcome to your first guided illumination session. Our priestesses are here to walk with you every step of the way towards Her blessing and secrets. We would advise listening to these sessions with headphones on and in a darkened room, with only Her, and You and Us. May your illumination in Her light bring you wonders initiate. All Hail the Reaching Moon.
You can play this relaxing performance in its glorious original stereo… headphones recommended!
The full credits are as follow:
Produced and Directed by Chris Killey
Written by Leah Owen and Chris Killey
Performed by Leah Owen and Liesl Rowe
Original Music by Tim Hunt
Fire sound effect courtesy of the BBC Sound Studio Library
Cover Art by Leah Owen
Chieftain of Entertainment: Crestfallen Carl
The second place goes to “Crestfallen Carl”, by Tony Davis.
No other documents were submitted, except for some “apologies to but without copyright violations towards Tom Waits”!
Thane of Entertainment: The Eye of Yinkin
And the third place goes to “The Eye of Yinkin”, by Stephen Lucek.
The lyrics, for those who want to sing along, are provided:
Through Thunderous Hills, Yinkin prowls, he hunts by the light of a diamond strewn sky. In the Starfire Peaks, by chasm and fall, and the pool of regret, stand trees proud and tall. ‘Neath their roots a lost kingdom, haunted by glories past, where the eye of Yinkin burns bright and cold.
Dragon stir, heroes arise, and a queen grimly sits on a throne seized by blood. A star on her brow, she broods on her loss; a kingdom hard won, by the death of her kin. Her foes now march, revenge in their hearts, so arise and take sword, to die for your queen.
Honourable Mentions
These other submissions didn’t win, but they’re well worth listening to!
Andrin the Brave
Andrin the Brave, by Alex Jones.
I was just a boy When the red moon rose in the sky Prayed all day Chalana Arroy Heal that scar in the heavens on high
I’m fighting to free my homeland From Lunar conquest that destroyed my tribe I’m fighting to avenge the fallen Against chaos magics that wreak destruction
My father taught me well To serve Orlanth the King of the Gods Live wild and free, your own path you must seek Travel Glorantha to Kero Fins peak
I raise my sword shouting triumphantly As I stand over a defeated foe The battle rages around me, bronze clashing against bronze Lances breaking on shield walls
I remember my first pilgrimage Climbing that steep spike to the sky Birthplace of Orlanth, Wintertop Fearing the storm that I might die
Then I see fear in my comrades eyes He’s seen his death and I wonder why Then a terrible roar born of ten thousand dead or more As a great dark shadow is cast from above
My father said do not be afeared Because death is just part of life in this world Now pick up your sword, there’s adventures ahead This great mythic world must be explored
The colossal Crimson Bats wings block the stars Its terrible eyes staring hungrily through my soul I scream my last war cry, praying to Orlanth for strength As I charge sword first into its great bloody maw
Andrin the brave they called me And I fought to see Sartar free My part in the struggle is over But yours has just begun
A Joke
Jeremy Wong graced us with a simple but effective joke that got the judges talking for long time on the podcast!
A Glorantha’s Bard Tale
A Glorantha’s Bard Tale, by Michael Hammons.
Leika’s Eulogy for Kallyr
Leika’s Eulogy for Kally, by Morgan Conrad.
“Six score and eleven years ago, our father Sartar brought forth, in Dragon Pass,a new kingdom, conceived in unity, and dedicated to the worship of Orlanth and Ernalda.
Now we are engaged in a great war, testing whether our kingdom, or any kingdom so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.We have come to commemorate a great hero, to honor and remember she who gave her life, that our kingdom might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this hero.Kallyr Starbrow, while living and dead, who struggled for us, consecrated herself far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what The Starbrow has done.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which Kallyr Starbrow has thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from her honored death we take increased devotion to that cause for which she gave the last full measure of devotion that we here highly resolve that the Queen of Sartar shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under Orlanth, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that a kingdom of the Father, of the Mother, for their people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Hello and welcome to another issue of Wind Whispers. As always, if you’re reading this in a web browser, you can register by email to receive your Gloranthan fix directly in your inbox.
Last week-end we saw the Glorantha Games 2020 and AlbaCon 2020 online conventions, with lots of opportunities to play on our favourite Bronze Age fantasy lozenge. Do you have anecdotes to share? Summaries and play reports posted on your blog or social media? Share them with us!
James Chambers, a.k.a. JamesCORP from the Chambers of Roleplay YouTube channel (which features a couple of Gloranthan actual plays), is organizing the appropriately named “Convention of Roleplay” on December 19th and 20th. As is tradition these days, this is a fully online convention, so you can attend from wherever and whenever you are in the mundane spacetime.
There is no schedule available yet as the convention was only just announced, and they’re just calling on GMs to register games. If you have ever wanted to run a convention game, now is a good opportunity to do so! All the information you need is on the convention’s Warhorn page.
Chaosium
Casting a wide net on The Pegasus Plateau writers
On the Chaosium blog, MOB writes about how Jason Durall, line editor for RuneQuest, has “cast a wide net” when it came to putting together the adventures and settings of The Pegasus Plateau. You may also be interested in this older interview of Kalin Kadiev, art director on The Pegasus Plateau.
Which RuneQuest logo do you like?
Speaking of the Pegasus Plateau, some eagle-eyed (griffin-eyed?) community members pointed out that the RuneQuest logo typography had changed between The Smoking Ruin and The Pegasus Plateau. Here are the two covers:
The French artist is still hard at work on the many, many illustrations of the Cults of Glorantha book (or whatever it’s called these days), but he took some time to share his take on the Trolls’ War God with us! What do you think?
Chaosium shared this cartographic work-in-progress by Matt Ryan (who worked on some of the cartography in The Pegasus Plateau)… this is looking really nice and very readable:
Wait, did we say this was the map? No! This is only about 20% of the map!
Jonstown Compendium
Children of Melikaphkaz
Austin Conrad’s “Monster of the Month” series continues with “Children of Melikaphkaz“, which doubles as a preview of some other upcoming Jonstown Compendium entry called “Melikaphkaz: the O-God of Traps”.
Melikaphkaz is a Darkness god worshiped by those who build traps and defenses to create shelter in a hostile world.
This includes a new short-form cult, two new Rune spells, and, of course, some baddies to throw at your players: the titular children of Melikaphkaz and his immortal troll wife.
Elsewhere on Solara’s Web
Printed Glorantha Minis on HeroForge
The good people of the (unofficial) Chaosium Discord have been playing with HeroForge, a miniatures 3d printing service, trying to make designs for Gloranthan characters… check out what user Mirza was able to come up with: Jar-Eel, Harrek, and Gbaji!
Do you have HeroForge designs you’d like to share?
Tales from the Black Alynx
Neil Gibson, from The RuneQuest Project actual play podcast, is starting a new series called “Tales from the Black Alynx” in which he will talk to a variety of Jonstown Compendium authors. In the first episode he’s talking to Andrew Logan Montgomery, author of the very popular “Six Seasons in Sartar”. We’re glad to hear more Gloranthan authors interviews out there!
Both setting and system deliver on everything they promised. The backstories go deep into the core of the adventures, the challenges are unique, the flavour is one-of-a-kind, the colours are vibrant, and the smells are breathtaking. It has a few warts (it could have helped the GM much more than it currently does), yet this doesn’t change anything. Buy, prepare, and play immediately; do not let it linger on your bookshelf.
Eric Vanel’s sculptures
Have you seen Eric Vanel’s sculpture of Jar-Eel before? Even if you have you can take a new look at it on Eric’s new website, which shows a few pictures of his creation process!
Meanwhile, on Earth
Heler isn’t happy about you
Check out this “wet micro burst” timelapse…. where in Glorantha is that?
A ‘tsunami from heaven' over Lake Millstatt in Austria.
Welcome to the 10th issue of Wind Whispers! If you’re reading this in a web browser, you can subscribe via email and get your Gloranthan fix directly in your inbox.
You might remember that we previously advertised Pookie‘s “Glorantha Games 2020“, a one-day, online convention dedicated to… well, exactly what you’d expect given the name. Sign-up for games is now open but be warned that spots are filling in quickly! There are slightly more attendees than available spots so the organizers have limited everybody to only one game for now… choose wisely!
Organizers are also making another call for Gamemasters to add more sessions, so now is the time to finally run that all-Eurmal adventure or mischief and mayhem you always wanted to!
Chaosium
Moon Design Publications transfers ownership of the HeroQuest trademark to Hasbro
The decades-old confusion between “HeroQuest” (the classic boardgame), “HeroQuest” (the roleplaying-game), and “heroquest” (the Gloranthan activity of mythic re-enactment) is about to get a lot simpler! As you may remember from the last Wind Whispers, Hasbro was recently teasing a revival of the beloved 80’s boardgame. The countdown has finished and the game has been announced: without much surprise, this is a reboot of the original game, but with modern production values and a somewhat “Wizards of Coast”-esque art direction.
Note that the game is being crowdfunded on Habro’s own Kickstarter-esque platform “Hasbro Pulse”. You may be put off by the estimated shipping fees if you live out of the USA, however.
The latest adventure book for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, “The Pegasus Plateau & Other Stories“, is out in hardback. The awesome adventures within feature festivals, griffins, haunted woods, troll caravans, and much more! Plus: a Greg Stafford cameo!
While some of us in the Great North or the Upside-Down are waiting for this book to show up in our local Chaosium warehouse, those of you in the USA and Europe can grab it right away!
As always with Chaosium’s generous PDF policy, if you bought this in PDF, you should have received a coupon for the physical book. Just remember to ask Chaosium for a combined coupon if you are doing a bulk purchase, as their online shop doesn’t support multiple coupons.
The Whispering Ruins
The Whispering Ruins is a short adventure seed originally published in the convention booklet (there used to be such things) for Dragonmeet 2019. Chaosium has made it available as a free PDF on their itch.io storefront.
Joerg’s eagle eye spotted something interesting in the marketing material at the end of the PDF, however: an announcement for “Gods of Glorantha”, mentioning about (only) 50 cults, rather than the 100 that Jeff originally announced. We’re not sure yet what this means, although we have a few ideas… do you want to speculate with us? Send us your theories!
Jonstown Compendium
Kingdom of the Flamesword
Did you like the medieval take on the Genertelan West featured in the HeroQuest sourcebook “The Book of Glorious Joy“? If so, Jamie Revell is back with the “Kingdom of the Flamesword“, which presents Seshnela as a “land of knights and wizards, humble peasants and demure damsels”. By the admission of the author, this is a non-canonical take on Glorantha, but that’s what the Jonstown Compendium is here for!
In a Merry Green Vale
Viven Prigent has been working on French material for the Lysang clan for a long while, so we’re delighted to see all this work translated to English and available for the masses in this system-less sourcebook! “In A Merry Green Vale” presents the original settlers of the Arfritha Vale, and closes the gap between the Colymar tribe (presented in Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes and the RuneQuest Gamemaster Adventures) and the Cinsina tribe (presented in The Coming Storm). Everything you need to run a Lysang clan game is provided: the history and deities of the clan, the wyter and other clan secrets, the clan ring and political situation, a gazeteer of the vale, etc.
The book uses a clever premise to resolve the difference between character knowledge and player knowledge, which is a common problem with Gloranthan campaigns. As Nick Brooke puts it in his capsule review:
The adventurers are the children of exiles, returning under an amnesty to a homeland they’ve never known, so the players can discover details of the setting alongside their characters.
The author promises an upcoming scenario pack for the Lysang clan. We can’t wait!
Around Solara’s Web
Thomas Rey’s portfolio
Thomas is the cartographer for the French version of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha (which we mentioned in the past as it was being successfully crowdfunded). His online portfolio includes Greebrass and Swenstown, so here’s your chance for a sneak peek at them!
Timeline of Gloranthan fanzines
The ever busy Nick Brooke has been making a Timeline of Gloranthan Fanzines, which he posted on the RuneQuest Facebook group. Here’s what it looks like:
It really helps puts in perspective how these different fanzine runs built upon each other! The 90s and early 2000s were really a busy time for the Gloranthan community… big thanks to all those grognards who participated in it!
This may not quite be an appropriate weapon for Glorantha, unless you apply an alchemical switch between Quicksilver and Aluminum, or some sorcery to an aluminum blade (the incorrect spelling of aluminium is intentional, here…), but under MGF (“Maximum Game Fun”), anything is possible, really!
Why not steel or bronze? Steel is a dwarven concept, and we don’t see any mostali using this. In addition, the eastern Babadi are Octamonists typically refuse to deal with the Death Metal. Bronze simply doesn’t behave like this. Water on the other hand has the whip as one of its elemental weapons, so something could be done there…
Do you have any ideas to incorporate flexible weapons to Glorantha? Let’s hear them!
Blue People, for Real
Whether you are a fan of the smurfs, or a fan of the various Gloranthan people with equally blue skin, you might be interested in this article on “blue people” in Kentucky (even though the photograph is evidently a colorized monochrome image).
Legion is the silver best-selling Broo NPC supplement for GMs running RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha games.
Broo are a prolific and varied adversary. This supplement provides 94 pre-rolled Chaos enemies from the aspirant lay members to deadly Rune Lord / Priests as well as new deadly diseases that will challenge even the most dedicated Chalana Arroy priestess. Includes 4 beautiful, full colour, full page Broo portraits.
After checking with our existing participants, we have decided to extend the submission deadline for Glorantha Has Talent?. We would like to see a few more folks sign up for a chance at our great prizes written and lovingly illustrated by ever so many wonderful people! The fine and grand titles we bestow and of course, the accolades love and adoration of glorantha-philes everywhere are just those little extras, special treats. So, to our great contestants, we hope you will all be okay with this delay and in the spirit of sportsmanship allow us to ramp up the competition a bit more. We talked among ourselves and unanimously (Podcast crew, Judges and our wonderful Sponsors) have decided we would extend Glorantha Has Talent?’s deadline by two weeks to get a bit more interest and beyond interest… ENTRIES!
Glorantha Has Talent?’s new and final deadline will be October the 5th at 12:00 AM or 2400 hours PDT (Pacific Daylight Savings Time) or about 2 weeks from now.
I am taking a bit of a chance here putting this forward without my partners—but I would be willing to say we can have the Prince of Entertainment (our first place winner) appear on the Wind Words podcast to tell us about their fantastic winning work. Woohoo. Heck, maybe even ask Joerg about lore…
Welcome to another issue of Wind Whispers. If you’re reading this in a web browser, you can subscribe via email and receive every new issue directly in your inbox.
For the past 30 years or so, one would have had to find them on the second-hand markets, often featuring damaged box corners and margin annotations. These new POD versions won’t have the boxes and loose papers, but they will be much more affordable and annotation-free!
Most of the RQ2 books never had any handouts. Large poster maps are already available on redbubble.com.
What few handouts there are for Borderlands and such can all be easily printed from the PDF. None of those were ever in color, nor did they go to the edges of the page.
All of the red bubble maps for RQ2 are EXACTLY like the original map. We didn’t remove ANYTHING from them. We specifically set them up to go with these books, not as some “piece of art” devoid of game useful details. If you take a look at any of them you will see they have a legend on them.
We don’t need a license to do the Avalon Hill era RQ3 supplements. Chaosium retained the copyright, especially on all the Gloranthan supplements. Greg got all that as his part of the split of Chaosium’s assets when he left the company in 1998, and Moon Design bought it all from him in 2013. Many of the RQ3 supplements that were RQ2 updates, like Apple Lane, Snake Pipe Hollow, the Gloranthan Bestiary, and TrollPak aren’t worth reprinting (at least beyond the TrollPak map). They aren’t different enough. The Monster Coliseum and Griffin Island boxed sets, RQ Cities are too generic. Daughters of Darkness and Eldarad are a hard pass. Not much point in reprinting Gods of Glorantha, Troll Gods, Elder Secrets, or the Genertela boxed sets as that range of info is already in print in a more comprehensive fashion, or soon will be. Reprinting Vikings and Land of Ninja are tempting, but they are not a priority. That just leaves Sun County, Strangers in Prax, Shadows on the Borderland, Dorastor, and Lords of Terror. We might reprint the first three, and maybe do the last two as a combo reprint, but I haven’t spent any time thinking about that. I would like to get the Troubled Waters scenario from River of Cradles reprinted, but I wouldn’t reprint the rest of the book since Pavis and Big Rubble are both available again.
Rick Meints
Let’s look at Rick’s shelves, featuring the new POD books (above), while we wait for a potential POD version of Wyrms Footnotes or, even, maybe, Tales of the Reaching Moon…
Chaosium at PAX Online
PAX 2020 Online is now finished and Chaosium has posted a summary of their events from last week. Following are a few highlights, but, most importantly, remember that Chaosium is running a 10% off sale at their website until the end of the month, using the “PAXONLINE2020” coupon code! It was supposed to only run during the duration of the convention, but it looks like they extended it by a week!
RuneQuest Live
Chaosium’s Todd Gardiner led a group of well-tattooed players through their first RuneQuest adventure…. finally, a game that features an Eurmali trickster!
Myth and Fantasy Gaming Panel
Glorantha’s Jeff Richard and Pendragon’s David Larkins are joined by video-game narrative designer Merry Borys-Piątkowska to talk about bringing mythic themes in gaming experiences.
Tips for writing in the RPG industry
Are you a Jonstown Compendium author, or are you thinking of becoming one? Community programs like these (including the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu and Explorer’s Society for 7th Sea) are great ways of getting started. Chaosium’s Michal O’Brien (MOB) talks about it as part of a PAX Online panel on getting started on the RPG industry.
Jeff Richard interview on Niezwykłe Przygody
Polish RPG YouTube channel “Niezwykłe Przygody” (Google Translate tells me it means “Unusual Adventures”) has an English interview of Jeff Richard. It doesn’t contain much new information but, as always, there might be new details and anecdotes you haven’t heard before. In any case, I’m sure giving a thumbs up to a RuneQuest video is never a bad idea!
Gloranthan Maps at RedBubble
This will become more relevant as the aforementioned classic RQ2 print-on-demand books become available: many Gloranthan maps are available on Chaosium’s RedBubble store as posters, canvas, pouches, and even blankets! Among the most recently added items we have a remastered Sun County map, featured in the picture above.
Jonstown Compendium news
Since the Jonstown Compendium is hosted on DriveThruRPG, you might be interested to know that an optical and organizational change is upcoming. You can test the new look and feel on their “preview” website. There doesn’t seem to be any broad “community content” link on the front page anymore, but you can still get to the Jonstown Compendium via Chaosium’s publisher page. Our own Joerg likes the useful filter options on top, and Ludo appreciates the prettier and less cluttered layout that features bigger covers. What do you think?
Legion
Neil Gibson gives us a huge collection of Broo NPCs to stink up your games with danger and disease! The book has beautiful illustrations, various levels of detail between various NPCs, and new deadly diseases to challenge even the most dedicated Chalana Arroy healer. And, in case Broos make you go “ewww”, there is no mention of their breeding practices, so you can use this book to bring pure heavy metal goat-headed monsters to your table, without any of the problematic stuff!
War Elephants of Fonrit
After producing the impressive Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass and Men of the West, Martin Helsdon doesn’t seem to be able to stop: apparently, his idea of “taking a break” is “producing a smaller book”. We’re not going to complain! His latest work is a small booklet titled War Elephants of Fonrit, which should pretty much tell you what it’s about.
Across Solara’s web
Rollenspiel in Glorantha
Our German correspondent reports that the German translation of “RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha” managed the basic funding in less than 90 minutes, which means that there will be German language rules. Now we are looking at how big it can become. Half of the stretch-goals are waiting: mainly digital excerpts from the GM Screen package, and the Colymar tribal and clan lands maps also in printed form, translated where necessary.
Sandy Petersen, of Glorantha and Call of Cthulhu fame (among many others), has a video channel mainly focused on Mythos related topics. However, his recent dive into the lifespans of various lifeforms, including alien ones, is full of ideas also appropriate for fantasy roleplaying (including a small jab at D&D!). What do you think the lifespans of various Gloranthan species is? Does the Man Rune dictate the life-spans of Gloranthan humanoids?
HeroQuest (the other one) is coming back?
The Avalon Hill website is featuring a countdown for something related to the old and legendary HeroQuest board game. The trademark had been abandoned some time in 2001 and Greg Stafford acquired it, making it possible to rename the then recent “HeroWars” into the “HeroQuest” we know and love. Last year, the trademark saw a bit of paperwork movement, seemingly letting Hasbro own it for board games, while Moon Design (and therefore Chaosium) retains it for roleplaying games. GeekNative has a bit more context… what do you think it is? Well, we won’t have much longer to find out.
Nick Brooke in Black Gate magazine
The previously mentioned Black Gate online magazine recently featured an article by Nick Brooke. As you might expect, Nick writes about A Rough Guide to Glamour, the Jonstown Compendium, Tales of the Reaching Moon, and other Brookian topics.
RuneQuest combat example
If you have a bit of trouble wrapping your head around the crunchy combat system of RuneQuest (we’re not going to blame you on that), playing an example combat might help. BRP forum member Trotsky took it a step further and wrote down his experience, along with nice screenshots of his Roll20 setup. Later, Runeblogger got the permission to post the whole thing on his blog for posterity. Check it out! Can you spot any mistakes? Did you learn something?
Meanwhile, on Earth
Longhouses aren’t just for Vikings
This short video shows us that some inspiration for Orlanthi culture doesn’t necessarily come from the Vikings. Linear Band Ceramic (LBK) culture brought agriculture, long houses, and a social segregation into carls and cottars during the neolithic period. The video is full of story seeds, even if some of the presented material is speculation. Our hobby is a speculative one, so who cares?
LBK is one of the first “Hill Barbarian”-like cultures in Europe, even though they spread along river valleys, whereas Gloranthan rivers invaded pre-existing agricultural lands. But that is a potential topic for a podcast episode.
Some suggested reading comes in the video description, so if you have access to a university library or another academic outlet, hunt these up!
Exploring Roman cities
The always fascinating Digital Maps of the Ancient World has a compilation of Roman cities you can explore as a superimposition of points of interests on Google Maps. You might get some good scenario or NPC ideas after clicking on a few buildings!
And now, for something completely different
We know that many Gloranthan gamemasters play an incredibly diverse and, sometimes, ahem, “original” musical selection during their games. So what about, say, a cover of a Nirvana song in classical Latin? (Joerg is guessing that it might be titled “Olet de anima decennialorum”)
There are quite a few other “anachronistic” covers around on the tube, which some people call “bardcore” with a tongue firmly planted in the cheek. Check out some medieval ACDC or Metallica, for instance, or maybe even some Deep Purple!
