Nick Brooke

Whenever I've ordered posters from RedBubble, they've come in sturdy poster tubes. (I usually go for big maps; if you're getting poky little art posters that could be different.)

In our 1994 freeform How the West was One, Richard the Tiger-hearted turns up in 1625 among the imperial Lunar delegation sent to liberate Malkionism via the Seventh Ecclesiastical Council in Sog City, because we like putting these loose ends to work. (Sir Gerard de Montampein was another character from that freeform, whose details and indeed spelling elude me for the moment, but from memory he may have been doing a Blondel for his lost King to tie our Heortland/Aeolian, Seshnegi/Rokari and Lunar/Carmanian threads together). Tradetalk #5 came out in 1998. This is, of course, part of a massive body of non-canonical works exploring the mediæval Malkioni West that long predates the Guide to Glorantha.

Proper celebration when my copy of Furthest turns up. It still feels premature until that has happened.

The best way to find new art in Chaosium's RedBubble store is to visit the store, click Explore designs, and make sure the drop-down filter for sort order is set to Newest. You'll find some lovely Prosopaedia internal art by Katrin Dirim at the top of the list, and if you scroll down you'll find the book's cover art. (There are various "Collections" used to organise material, which you'll find in the Filters section to the left of the Shop products display, but I wouldn't bet on anything you're looking for landing up exactly where you'd expect it to be. We're not the Orderium, after all...)

The poster maps (etc.) from the Furthest book are sold via Simon Bray's personal RedBubble store, by special arrangement with Chaosium (he's a former Moon Design art director and a longstanding friend of the Chaosium principals): Map of the City of Furthest Map of the Kingdom of Tarsh I suggested to Rick Meints last month that it would make sense for Chaosium to sell the cover art from the new Cults of RuneQuest books via RedBubble, not least for the benefit of Premium Leatherette customers who wouldn't otherwise get to drool over it, and Julia Rawcliffe got the Prosopaedia cover up shortly thereafter; with any luck we'll see the Lightbringers, Earth Goddesses and the rest in the fullness of time.

Simon Bray, Mark Galeotti, Chris Gidlow and myself are all long-time Moon Design / Chaosium / Issaries insiders, Chaosium VP Michael O’Brien has a short story in the book, and this is my 100th print-on-demand title so I’m kinda trusted to create viable print files at this point. It was generous of MOB to reach out and approve an early print edition, but he’s a generous man and can recognise a beautiful book when he sees one. (And he’ll be looking at one in print, any week now.)

Now available in print-on-demand! $49.95 premium colour hardcover. $35.95 cheap colour hardcover. $19.95 digital (PDF).

Yes. But it would seem reasonable for Chaosium to devote most of its efforts to the platform(s) where our most engaged fans are active, even if some people have chosen not to use it (for doubtless excellent reasons of their own). Just as we send out marketing emails/videos and not postal circulars, even though we know some people don’t have email addresses or internet connectivity.

The pink book from the old Orange Box attempted to implement Malkionism for RQ3 in an extremely small space. It was a brave attempt. There’s been nothing comparable since from Chaosium. Sandy Petersen’s variant Sorcery rules for RQ3 are well worth a look. They’ll still be around online, somewhere. We’re very proud of issue #13 of Tales of the Reaching Moon magazine, it’s worth hunting down that back issue if you can. Full RQ3 sect writeups for the Rokari and Hrestoli Churches. I honestly think the illuminated History of Malkionism is one of the best things I’ve created. And I hope you’ll enjoy its dozens of pages of bonus content: there’s lots of stuff conducive to enjoyable Western shenanigans in there, including the cyclically recurring stasis dungeons of ancient Seshneg.

So: 100% of the BRP Central audience sees my post, and it gets 20 reactions. 10% of the Facebook audience sees my post, and it gets 200 reactions. What should I conclude from that?

Updated again on 10 September 2023: The King-who-Walks, by Vivien Prigent @Minlister, is a grim survival-horror scenario, set in the dead of winter, as nightmarish creatures out of legend besiege a snowed-in stead. Following on from that scenario, Forging the Quested Beast is a superb example of creative heroquesting at its wildest, complete with a synoptic table of competing myth-variants and obscure clues etched onto ancient Dara Happan tablets in cuneiform. Although written for the RuneQuest Classic / HeroQuestWorldWars Lunar Occupation period, the scenario’s introduction provides everything you need to run it in the run-up to the post-Dragonrise Battle of Dangerford*, while the situation leads to epic highjinks and potentially awesome moments of cinematic heroism. Although described as a sequel, the scenario stands alone and does not require Vivien Prigent’s earlier works (In a Merry Green Vale and A Vale Ablaze) : it would work perfectly well for Vasana & Co. An appendix describes the author's WASP system (giving NPCs short-form ratings in Warrior, Adventurer, Sage and Politician), intended for people who found Challenge Ratings (Six Seasons in Sartar) too crude. ($7.50 for 67 pages) * and we know from the Dragon Pass boardgame that there will always be more post-Dragonrise Battles at Dangerford, so don’t worry if your campaign’s moved past the first one – another one will come along in a minute; cf. The Duel at Dangerford.

I proof-read this one, and it’s a dead good scenario and heroquest. Same setting as @Minlister’s earlier books, but it’s not a sequel and you certainly don’t need them to run it.

That's the "dumb theory," right?

I can give you an update on that controlled trial. My teaser post for Furthest: Crown Jewel of Lunar Tarsh got 190 👍❤️😮 reactions and more than 30 happy, positive, on-topic comments on the Facebook RuneQuest group; it got 20 reactions and spurred a digression about stock art portfolios and forum signatures here on BRP Central. (I didn’t bother posting to Reddit: that place is a graveyard, with moderation policies that are actively hostile to community content creators.)

We seem to be in violent agreement, which will disappoint the rubberneckers.

I agree, except that GMing should always be done with serious care for your players.

This also explains why Zorak Zorani like really spicy food. It’s a religious experience.

One of the best lessons for gamemasters preparing for sessions of Dogs in the Vineyard is the suggestion that you should watch carefully to see what your players are apparently OK with (based on their in-character actions and decisions in previous sessions), and then twist the knife. For example, "You think it's fine and dandy when your Wind Lord sleeps around with Sweet Green Women, so let's see what happens when he gets home after a seasonal adventure and catches Asborn Thriceborn, painted blue, in bed with his wife."

Updated again on 6 September 2023: Ships & Shores of Southern Genertela, by Martin Helsdon: @M Helsdon's first book The Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass became the keystone of the Jonstown Compendium as one of its launch titles: no mere RuneQuest scenario or sourcebook, his magisterial tome packed with scholarship and artwork gave insights into countless aspects of military life in the imagined fantasy Bronze Age world of Glorantha. And now he’s only gone and done it again, except with out-of-this-world production values for the same low price. Ships & Shores contains everything you could possibly want to know about sword-and-sandal seafaring. Between its thematic chapters are a roster of nautical RuneQuest characters (with glorious full-page group illustrations by Mark Smylie) and seven chapters of the travelogue, A Periplus of Southern Genertela, which knock Biturian Varosh’s travels into a cocked hat. Katrin Dirim’s art is perfect, as always, from full-page mythological views of port cities to cheeky marginalia and the Dormal’s Saga sequence. An appendix includes RuneQuest statistics for ships, expanded seafaring rules based on those in Magic World (themselves a lift-and-drop from RQ3), and notes on sailors’ professional skills. This is a work-in-progress digital release; a few illustrations are still line-art sketches, and once these have been completed the final book will be loaded to all customers’ libraries and we can begin work on the inevitable, already-approved print edition. (IOW, "POD Then.") ($24.95 for 393 pages).

(Everybody: read more books by James Branch Cabell! You can thank me later.)

And what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander...

If you thought I was talking about your IRL wife, and not about the wife of the adventurer with an arguably blasé attitude to marital vows from our bleating friend's OP, then I am sorry to have confused you. In fairness, it was late at night. If your married adventurer thinks it's OK to have sex with goddesses, priestesses, etc. whenever opportunity presents itself, maybe your GM can consider whether that adventurer's fictional wife and her kin are on the same page, or whether there is opportunity for mischief. Because in my experience, good GMs like to make mischief.

I’m fine, thanks. Someone thought my roleplay-enabling answer to a question was “off-topic,“ and I thought they deserved a longer answer. Perhaps I was wrong. People bringing their personal fantasies into Glorantha is not new. Greg used to say that Gloranthan drugs were vastly better than RW drugs: that mattered to him. (Some folk have exciting fantasies about authentic Bronze Age genocide: apparently that matters to them). I’m cool with all of that (mostly; I draw the line at the casual use of eliminationist language), because it doesn’t all have to matter to me. YGWV, remember.

Sorry if I hit a sore spot. As you surely know, what’s socially acceptable, and what you personally think is acceptable behaviour (for you), and what your partner thinks is acceptable behaviour (for you), are hardly ever going to be three overlapping circles: they’re a Venn diagram. And the non-overlapping bits are where drama happens, and the games we play are all about dramatic events. That said, I am genuinely glad that you have found space to enjoy your fantasies in our shared world. I feel the same way about the excellent The Six Paths supplement on the JC: it’s not my / my players’ cup of tea, it’s dealing with subject matter we tend not to worry about, but I’m delighted it exists for people to whom it matters. And if it matters to you that all Gloranthans are happily polyamorous, then I’m sure they are, and jealousy need never rear its ugly head in your game. So what if your husband is fucking goddesses all the time? He always comes home to you.

Tell your wife that it was a religious obligation and didn’t mean anything to you. See how that works out.