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.
Conventions
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.
As many suspected, this means that Moon Design Publications (which is pretty much synonymous with Chaosium these days) has reached an agreement with Hasbro to transfer the “HeroQuest” trademark back to them. We hope they got a big lump of money out of the deal.
As far as our little niche is concerned, this means that all HeroQuest books will be “rebadged” as QuestWorlds, and Chaosium is selling off what will probably become collectors’ items in a few years. Grab these books while you can, especially since they have a pretty good discount!
The Pegasus Plateau is out in hardback!
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!
Meanwhile, on Earth
The World’s Deadliest Weapon
Our readers might be interested in this history of the urumi, a flexible sword from India.
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).