Nick Brooke

The beautiful cover artwork is by Dario Corallo and Julie Hudson. Authors include Chris Gidlow, Mike Hagen, Michael O'Brien, Jeff Richard & yours truly. Foreword by Jeff Richard, interior art by Dario, Julie, Simon Bray, Antonia Doncheva, BA Wayne and Daniel Barker. Cartography by Mike Hagen, Julie Hudson, Colin Driver and Phil Anderson. Layout by moi.

The beautiful cover artwork is by Dario Corallo and Julie Hudson. Authors include Chris Gidlow, Mike Hagen, Michael O'Brien, Jeff Richard & yours truly. Foreword by Jeff Richard, interior art by Dario, Julie, Simon Bray, Antonia Doncheva, BA Wayne and Dan Barker. Cartography by Mike Hagen, Julie Hudson, Colin Driver and Phil Anderson. Layout by moi.

Now available from the Chaosium’s Jonstown Compendium webstore: the revised and expanded Rough Guide to Glamour. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/309765/A-Rough-Guide-to-Glamour?affiliate_id=392988 PRINT ON DEMAND is now available (premium colour hardcover): $29.95, includes the digital version. A Rough Guide to Glamour is your indispensible companion for any visit to the capital city of the greatest empire the world of Glorantha has ever known! This book contains: • A comprehensive map, gazetteer and guidebook detailing the capital of the Lunar Empire; • Portraits and descriptions of eleven Very Important People who can be encountered there, including Moonson, the Red Emperor, and the Lunar hero Jar-eel the Razoress; • A description and map of the Sultanate of the Silver Shadow, the throbbing heart of the Lunar Empire; • Sweeping overviews of the geography and history of the Lunar Empire; • RuneQuest writeups for the cults of the Red Emperor, immortal wizard-ruler of the Lunar Empire, and the goddess Glamour, the humble nymph who became the First Inspiration of Moonson; • Insights into the secrets of Kalikos Icebreaker, the Lunar College of Magic and the Imperial Monopolies of the Etyries cult; • Never republished supporting material from the legendary fanzine Tales of the Reaching Moon; • Rumours, fiction, poetry, and more besides! This is a thoroughly revised and expanded edition of the original Rough Guide to Glamour, written by Chris Gidlow, Mike Hagen, Nick Brooke, Michael O’Brien, Jeff Richard, Greg Stafford and friends, lavishly illustrated by Dario Corallo, Simon Bray, Julie Hudson and other artists. Foreword by Jeff Richard, Chair and Creative Director of Chaosium Inc. A Rough Guide to Glamour was first published as a players’ background book supporting Reaching Moon Megacorp’s Life of Moonson, a 50-player live-action role-playing game that debuted in 1997 and ran in the United States, Europe and Australia.

Available now from the Chaosium’s Jonstown Compendium webstore: the revised and expanded Rough Guide to Glamour. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/309765/A-Rough-Guide-to-Glamour?affiliate_id=392988 PRINT ON DEMAND: now available in premium and standard colour hardcover A Rough Guide to Glamour is your indispensable companion for any visit to the capital city of the greatest empire the world of Glorantha has ever known! This book contains: • A comprehensive map, gazetteer and guidebook detailing the capital of the Lunar Empire; • Portraits and descriptions of eleven Very Important People who can be encountered there, including Moonson, the Red Emperor, and the Lunar hero Jar-eel the Razoress; • A description and map of the Sultanate of the Silver Shadow, the throbbing heart of the Lunar Empire; • Sweeping overviews of the geography and history of the Lunar Empire; • RuneQuest writeups for the cults of the Red Emperor, immortal wizard-ruler of the Lunar Empire, and the goddess Glamour, the humble nymph who became the First Inspiration of Moonson; • Insights into the secrets of Kalikos Icebreaker, the Lunar College of Magic and the Imperial Monopolies of the Etyries cult; • Never republished supporting material from the legendary fanzine Tales of the Reaching Moon; • Rumours, fiction, poetry, and more besides! This is a thoroughly revised and expanded edition of the original Rough Guide to Glamour, written by Chris Gidlow, Mike Hagen, Nick Brooke, Michael O’Brien, Jeff Richard, Greg Stafford and friends, lavishly illustrated by Dario Corallo, Simon Bray, Julie Hudson and other artists. Foreword by Jeff Richard, Chair and Creative Director of Chaosium Inc. A Rough Guide to Glamour was first published as a players’ background book supporting Reaching Moon Megacorp’s Life of Moonson, a 50-player live-action role-playing game that debuted in 1997 and ran in the United States, Europe and Australia.

No, that prettied-up version existed in the mid-nineties. I still have my copy.

Decades ago, we used to chat about the 7MQ and the RGQ (Seven Mothers’ Quest; Red Goddess’s Quest) on various RuneQuest and Chaosium Dailies and Digests: those might be useful search terms. My good friend Chris Gidlow ran a freeform called “The Hunt for Red Storm Season” back in the nineties, which was ostensibly about the military-industrial complex’s version of the Kalikos Icebreaker HeroQuest (you can see the amateur version in that gorgeous Guide illustration). The player characters were the rulers of the Lunar Empire. And our 50-player freeform “Reaching Moon Megacorp’s Life of Moonson” was all about the Lunar New Year Ritual and/or the heroquest undertaken by each Red Emperor, depending on your perspective. Loads more on my website, link in profile (I hope).

Related: Chris Gidlow's Prophecy of the Dark Emperor, also from Life of Moonson (by way of Argrath's Saga). This was at the heart of a hunt-the-baby plot which involved several of the freeform's characters including Yolanela and Jar-eel. (Us freeform authors believed that Nurture > Nature when it comes to raising Antichrists, but were willing to go with the flow if the players came up with anything sufficiently hilarious) Cheers, Nick

That's a brilliant double-entendre. Congratulations!

When I had Yolanela musing, "And not the first time a spurned lover has found her husband in the North. I wonder how Moonson will greet my children, when they come to claim their birthright..." I was actually thinking of Thed and Ragnaglar, whose child was Wakboth the Devil. "The Greater Darkness" myth in King of Sartar reads (p.66 of the current edition): While I'm thinking about her, here's Yolanela's character sheet from Life of Moonson - it's as cheesy as anything, but you might like her sidebar on the Witch Cult of Spol. http://etyries.albionsoft.com/etyries.com/moonson/yolanela.html (One of my career highlights as a website owner was when someone complained, "You've published the wrong character sheet: that's not Yolanela.") Cheers, Nick

BTW, the Oronin Valley writeup in Tales #16 should be pretty much identical to this version from my website: http://etyries.albionsoft.com/etyries.com/carmania/oronin.html Cheers, Nick

"The Fall of Whitewall" is a reference to issue #4 of John Castellucci's RuneQuest Adventures fanzine.

Oh, it would probably make sense to attach Ian Thomson's scenario as well. Here's the version he made freely available via his ancient website: I don't own the Pavis Companions any more (they found a good home!), so I can't compare against the printed version. Cheers, Nick glamour.rtf

In the scenario, Duke Raus is travelling to Prax House: But to get there, he starts by filling in paperwork at the Temple of Intriplicatos: The main public areas he'll have to pass through are: That should cover the essentials. Ian either describes other locations in detail or else includes them as throwaway references that aren't key to the scenario. All these descriptions were by Mike Hagen and Chris Gidlow from the "Gazeteer of Glamour," a nine-page article at the heart of the Rough Guide to Glamour, our 40-page background booklet for players in Reaching Moon Megacorp's fifty-player freeform, Life of Moonson. Cheers, Nick

Some text is referenced in Ian's scenario. Here's the first two paragraphs on p.3 of the Rough Guide to Glamour, by Chris Gidlow, from his article Glamour: The First Inspiration of Moonson: Here's the left-hand column from p.4: And here is the whole description of the City of Dreams, from p.5:

Here are the Map and View of Glamour by Julie Hudson Gidlow, scanned from our Rough Guide to Glamour. The location numbers on Ian's scenario should match up. These days, Jeff and I think the City of Dreams is more likely to be a circular area within the city of Glamour, rather than the "other half" of a circular Moon Rune: see crude attached sketch. (IP = Imperial Palace; CoD = City of Dreams; HW = Citadel of Halfway; OG = Outer Glamour; 4B = Gate of Four Beasts)

Hi, Puckohue: I can't help with copies (try eBay?), but is there anything else you'd like to know about the "Rough Guide to Glamour"? Cheers, Nick

Typo: my original submitted text read “... and big nets hanging up everywhere.” Cheers, Nick

“Glimpses”? ITYM “careful parsing.” Greg shared his early Mss. with me. I used whatever I could.

If you're interested in the shift from gold to silver coinage between Constantine and Charlemagne, you could check out Henri Pirenne, "Mohammed and Charlemagne" (1935). Pirenne makes a pretty solid case that following the collapse of the Western Empire and the rise of Islam, gold supplies dried up, gold stocks languished in royal and church treasuries, and the introduction of reliable minted silver coinage under Charlemagne was what kickstarted the mediaeval economy: these were coins everyday folk could actually use, rather than massive economic status-symbols mostly used for transfers between treasuries. An economy based on silver coinage that's in circulation is healthier than an economy based on stagnant, scarce gold. (Recovering Dark Age historian, apologies for the non-Gloranthan content)

I've posted quite a long personal note on Facebook: I hope this link works for you.

Collaborating with Greg was always a crazy creative fermentation process. You'd think you had something nailed down, and then "whoosh!" something you didn't predict would come fizzing up where you least expected it. But the flavours! Oh, boy, they made the whole painful process worth while. He was generous to a fault, and I will miss him more than I can say. Shamans tell us stories about what happens in other worlds, and - through sympathetic knowledge, and perhaps a little sleight of hand - they help to cure us of our ills. Greg was a true Shaman.

I'd suggest adding Rune Fixes (or any more up to date FAQ/errata document) and a one-page printable version of the Apple Lane map on p.70-71 of the Adventure Book as separate downloads in this bundle.

Clearwine Map (separate download): a typo corrected in the book is still present in the downloaded version ("17. Hero's Trial" s/be "Trail"), and the numbering is wrong in both versions.

Adventure Book, page 41: now you've personalised the boss's mount's name, you should call the mounts on this page "Demi-bird One" & "Demi-bird Two," to match their riders "Beaked Dragonewt One" & "Beaked Dragonewt Two". (They are currently numbered "Two" and "Three").

Adventure Book, map of Clearwine p.32-33: the numbering scheme doesn't match the text on pages 34-36, which is very confusing. Either rearrange the text or else renumber the map, please. If you'd like me to set out in detail what's wrong, please advise.