Nick Brooke

5 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

I would really like to see a canon explanation of Gloranthan astronomy in general.  This is not the first time I have said that.

I understand Jeff had someone talented redraw the Sky Dome diagrams from pages 67-71 of my free Manifesto for the Solar Cults book. They should help you with back-and-forth motions, different day lengths and the like. I had to look very carefully at this sort of thing when I programmed my old Ephemeris, but that was a quarter-century ago and only @David Scott knows if it's possible to find a working version these days.

4 hours ago, stadi said:

Sorry, I was not specific enough. I've meant the print release.

This is a digital and print-on-demand pre-release of the Rivers of London case file Going Underground. At some point (“next year,” I’m told) it will be included in a collection of Rivers of London case files (etc.) which will be released as a normal Chaosium printed book through the usual distribution channels. HTH.

The article’s authors thought it wasn’t (a) up to scratch, (b) worth rewriting or (c) possible to salvage anything from it. We might add it as a bonus download in a bit, but you’re not missing anything. I just wanted to be up-front about it before some annoying completist who started their collection last century made people think they were missing out. You’re really not.

Photo by David Hall.

Out now on the Jonstown Compendium in print and digital format: A Rough Guide to Boldhome, by David Hall, Jeff Richard, Greg Stafford and Friends. This is the sourcebook for 1992's freeform live action role-playing game Home of the Bold, reissued to support its Chaosium Con 2024 "Director's Cut." As with A Rough Guide to Glamour, the original 28-page player booklet (which contained Greg Stafford's description of the city and recent Sartarite history: the Boldhome Documents) has been massively enhanced, with glorious new full-colour artwork and maps, fiction, a songbook, plus 19 pages of preview material from Chaosium's forthcoming Sartar Book, making this an essential resource for any RuneQuest campaign set in Sartar.

COLLECTOR'S NOTE: two items from previous editions are not in this version: Dan Barker's black and white cover art, and the short Rough Guide article by David Hall & Kevin Jacklin. Yurek Chodak's one-page map of Dragon Pass has been replaced with a two- page map detailing Dragon Pass & Prax by Colin Driver, the cartographer of the Guide to Glorantha and Argan Argar Atlas, who also provides new maps of Genertela and the Tribes of Sartar. Walter Moore's view of Boldhome, map of Boldhome and map of Geo's Inns have been colourised, and the city description is revised and expanded.

Blasphemy! Idolatry! A grotesque misrepresentation!

Read up on Greg’s old idea of heroforming, that’ll get you part of the way. A Khan of Khans is acting as Waha’s agent in the world: his actions can be attributed to Waha. The Masks of Moonson nowadays are mortals heroforming the original Red Emperor. And so on.

And when new gods are active in the middle world (e.g. Nysalor when he wounded Kyger Litor, or Sedenya when she liberated Peloria from the Carmanian yoke), they aren’t yet bound by the Great Compromise and have more freedom of original action… but the Old Gods can still react when prodded, as the God Learners discovered. (Hence Castle Blue, and her final triumph and ascension.)

In this context, let me quickly plug my notes on Sedenya as “Mistress of the Three Worlds” (mundane, divine and mystical), on page 89 of my free Manifesto. They set down some consequences of ideas Greg was playing with when he conceptualised the Lunar Way: part of the uniqueness of the Red Goddess is that she combines and understands all three: she is simultaneously a goddess, and mortal, and a mystic.

59 minutes ago, svensson said:

Please let me know when you're done re-proofing. I'd like to order the POD version, but there's no sense in ordering if it needs to be corrected.

There isn't a POD version yet. Once Martin and his helpers have finished this final round of proof-reading, we'll start print preparation.

US law uses four tests to determine if something is “fair use” of an existing copyrighted work: tech-bro evangelists routinely ignore tests 1 & 4, because building plagiarism engines trained on copyrighted works and selling their output destroys the market for human-created, copyrightable art.

In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:

1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

I have some notes on how Wolf Pirate crews and adventurer parties might interact in Act III of Black Spear. You might find them useful; they were solidly founded on Martin’s excellent account from Armies & Enemies.

“By bull” is also an acceptable translation. (The four asterisks are unspoken.)

In my Glorantha, the Pol-Joni have both types of music…

On 4/12/2024 at 1:33 PM, Ynneadwraith said:

Also, there are many things I find no issue with suspending my disbelief around in Glorantha, but for some reason 'using cats to herd animals' is where the line is drawn!

I concur: see the tale of Yinkin the Shepherd. (Video.)

I ran a PDF comparison and found just ten "significant" textual edits in the first forty or so pages. One was a new typo, one was an odd edit, two changed name-forms, and six reordered or tightened-up existing wording.

tl/dr: nothing to write home about. I doubt I'll bother doing any more of this, but you're welcome to try.

Updated again:

• An Unofficial Buyer's Guide to RuneQuest & Glorantha, by Brian Duguid. Designed to plug the gap between Rick’s Meints Index to Glorantha III and my own Jonstown Compendium Catalogue, Brian Duguid’s Buyer’s Guide details all the material available for RuneQuest and Glorantha that’s still available from its publishers or manufacturers, including obscure magazines (and indexes), history books, miniatures, dice, coins, print-on-demand merch and online tools. The Buyer’s Guide is lavishly illustrated throughout, festooned with hyperlinks, and comes bundled with discount vouchers for Brian’s earlier works (The Children of Hykim and The Voralans), saving you twice the cost of purchase. Finally, if the Buyer’s Guide sells well, the author says he plans to keep updating it throughout 2024. Welcome to the treadmill, Brian! (61 pages for $2.49)
   
• [Japanese] Money Tree Thrives Again, by Steve Perrin, Greg Stafford & Ken Rolston, translated by Ashinoha. By special agreement with Chaosium, a Japanese translation of RQ3’s starter scenario The Money Tree set in Glorantha has been published via the community content programme. (The Jonstown Compendium’s launch title Yozarian’s Bandit Ducks, which is a sequel of sorts, already existed in Japanese translation, and Frog Games’ new Japanese edition of RuneQuest deserves our support.) Even if you don’t read Japanese, this translation includes gorgeous manga-style artwork by professional  illustrator Akitoki Satou depicting RQG pregens Vasana & Co. (on the cover and one internal full-page piece), plus setting art from Hirotsugu Kaga of Clark & Co. (whose work was previously seen in The Duel at Dangerford). (30 pages for $3.30)

After my group completed The Smoking Ruin and gave the mirror to the ambitious

I like the classics.

Simplest explanation: the Lanbril cult steals already-sanctified holy places that belonged to other gods.

2 minutes ago, radmonger said:

it is better it be made clear now, rather than after someone has spent hundreds of hours writing something in contravention of it.

Or, indeed, millions.

42 minutes ago, Tatterdemalion Fox said:

Wasn’t Valley of Plenty pulled from sale and then republished specifically to change it from HQG to QuestWorlds?

No, it was not.

Valley of Plenty was pulled from sale when the authors decided they wouldn’t be bringing out any of the sequels they’d mentioned. They republished it when they decided that they might do that after all. They then pulled the print edition when people had weird expectations about getting updated pages mailed to them for free. This was entirely a Troupe Games initiative.

2 hours ago, David Scott said:

Baboons worship Grandfather Baboon (a mask of Daka Fal).

Risible misinformation: we fling poo in your general direction. Daka Fal is, of course, a mask worn by Grandfather Baboon: ask any baboon! All human religion was learned from baboons in the Dark.

OK, I’ll see if we can delete all mention of the SRD from both the Guidelines and the FAQ. Thanks for your input.

If you’re writing an Umathelan campaign setting sourcebook for the rule system previously known as HeroQuest Glorantha that includes lots of playable material, scenarios, episodes, campaign outlines, bestiary, characters, a starter village (or whatever), etc., and you want to include some short new rules for Umathelan magic keywords that are compatible with HeroQuest Glorantha, knock yourself out: they support playable material, and we’re happy for you to do that.

I’ll warn you that two categories of material that sell particularly poorly on the Jonstown Compendium are exotic settings and QuestWorlds releases. But hopefully you knew that already.

The naming confusion is partly because Chaosium has sold the HeroQuest trade mark. That probably makes the guidance more confusing than it needs to be, but since hardly anybody is writing for that system, it doesn’t matter much. And as you can see, some people like to be confused.