Nick Brooke

If you want Chaos cults early, pick up “Cults of Terror.”

Updated again: Draconic Enlightenment, by Leon Kirshtein and Simon Phipp. A grab-bag of suggestions for running Draconic Enlightenment as an alternative version of Nysalor Illumination, plus new plunder items (dragonewt eggs, jade dreamstones) and bestiary entries (cursed serpents, pseudo dragons), followed by a lengthy recap of dragonewt personalities and magic, and three scenario outlines (Serpent’s Schemes, Shipwrecked, Rituals of Cleansing). (32 pages for $4.00) Lost & Found, by Paul Davies. A collection of Plunder! items in the classic format, several charmingly quirky, and most including adventure seeds suggesting how a game master could use them in their campaign. There are seven small illustrations plus a scrappy map (unlabelled) and some misc. scribbles. (28 pages for $11.37 - unusually, this product is priced in UK pounds (£9.00), and the stated price may wobble as the exchange rate changes) Best-seller charts have been updated to show the best-selling products in both Q4 2023 and Q1 2024, as well as details for the last three months.

Speak for yourself. As She sings in the final act of Sedenya! The Musical: “And as for the Empire And as for fame I never invited them in Though it seemed to the world they were all I desired. They are Illusion, they’re not the solutions they promised to be The answer was here all the time I love you, and hope you love me...” 🎶

“There is a crack, a crack, in everything: That’s how the light gets in.” — Leonard Cohen

I understand Darius was impressed by something he read in The Book of Drastic Resolutions: Volume Chaos. It's nice that somebody was. Let's leave it at that.

I don’t think it’s my original idea. The Pol-Joni are Sartar’s allies, and form a buffer against raiders from the Plains: it would seem weird if the Kingdom of Sartar or the Pol-Joni Tribe were happy for its merchants to arm their enemies. That breaks down after 1602, when the Kingdom stops functioning and the Lunars play divide-and-rule, and is pretty much in the trash-can after 1610, when the Lunars start shipping Provincial Army surplus kit to their Sable Nation auxiliaries and the Pol-Joni are driven out of the Good Place. There are related complications when the Lunars crack down on Sartarites posessing any military-grade weapons and armour (cf. Starbrow’s Rebellion), and of course a ban on “sales” wouldn’t prevent an enterprising merchant or tribal leader from gift exchanges (e.g. giving a Praxian Khan some fancy bronze or iron armour in exchange for favours or services), even if it probably should. With no Prince (or a weak puppet) on the throne, the Kingdom is hardly functioning properly. Come the RQG timeline, this is all moot. Argrath has loads of Praxian allies, arms them to the teeth, and doesn’t care about any treaties his predecessors might have entered into with the Pol-Joni tribe or anyone else.

See my Manifesto, pages 113-114.

It’s something that happened after the fall of Sartar. The first Lunar invasion of Prax was (in part) to head off a pan-tribal confederation forming under Waha leadership and driving the Pol-Joni from those great grazing lands. From King of Sartar: Before Sartar fell, the Kingdom propped up the Pol-Joni (remember, they were the only Praxian tribe it’s legal for Sartarite merchants to sell metal weapons and armour to). Afterwards, they were kinda cut loose, and the threat from the Plaines tribes loomed large.

The Pol Joni don't want to "ease relations with Praxian tribes." They want to ride horses and herd cattle.

I hope it doesn't, because Chaosium hasn't approved that.

Index updated: The unproduced script of a 1989 adaptation by hack author Preston Shrader of the rediscovered Greek tragedy Boldhome (which bears a remarkable similarity to a RuneQuest scenario: go figure!). Name-dropping asides throughout the supporting material give new insights into the history of 20th century dramas (theatrical, filmed and televisual) inspired by Gloranthan sources found in the Vatican Apostolic Archive and elsewhere. The original stage play concerns a reunion and doomed romance between two members of the Orlanthi resistance; this adaptation is a police procedural focusing instead on the bungling Boldhome City Guard. The critics say: "Makes Six Seasons in Sartar look like an epic." (70 pages for $5.95) And I’ll hide this bit behind a spoiler warning, so please don’t read it unless you’re already thinking of buying the scenario as it’ll take away some of the joy of discovery through play: Cheers, Nick

Here in the UK, retail prices have increased by about 160% since Sun County came out back in 1992. It was $18.95 back then, so it'd probably set you back $50 or so nowadays, and that's before any premium for scarcity value. Just putting things in context. There is no need for anyone to "helm a project" or "organise people to do layout." The Chaosium moves at its own ineluctable speed.

Updated again: Boldhome Blues: The Scripts of Preston Shrader, by Roy Duffy. The unproduced script of a 1989 adaptation by hack author Preston Shrader of the rediscovered Greek tragedy Boldhome (which bears a remarkable similarity to a RuneQuest scenario: go figure!). Name-dropping asides throughout the supporting material give new insights into the history of 20th century dramas (theatrical, filmed and televisual) inspired by Gloranthan sources found in the Vatican Apostolic Archive and elsewhere. The original stage play concerns a reunion and doomed romance between two members of the Orlanthi resistance; this adaptation is a police procedural focusing instead on the bungling Boldhome City Guard. The critics say: "Makes Six Seasons in Sartar look like an epic." (70 pages for $5.95)

Or, of course, this handy little thing: Tables of Contents - Pavis, Big Rubble & River of Cradles

Here are the Jonstown Compendium “Pavis & Big Rubble Companion” books to date: New Pavis - City on the Edge of Forever Old Pavis - The City that Time Forgot Pavis County & Beyond - Secrets of the Borderlands Old Pavis II - The Good, the Bad and the Rowdy They are all available in hardcover print-on-demand and digital formats. I understand the imminent next release is a “Strangers in Prax Companion”, and @Ian A. Thomson has talked about various future planned volumes inc. stuff set back in the Second Age, further up the Zola Fel river, advancing the big Plot, etc.

Let’s ask @blackyinkin, eh? It’s his store…

We’re heading way off the reservation, lads: please start a new thread if you want to gawp at boobies.

Updated again with news of two new print releases: Harald Smith’s Nochet: Adventurer’s Guide and Ian Thomson’s Pavis & Big Rubble Companion, Volume 4: The Good, the Bad and the Rowdy. Plus a bunch of other recent stuff, inc. Vrok Eye Views 2, Skeletons, The Bully Bird and more. The best-seller charts at the back have been updated to cover the last three months’ sales figures, from 16 December 2023 to 15 March 2024.

I’ll share my Boldhome map tips after Chaosium Con…

Example:

So in case anyone’s interested, I made the individual map sections by adding a dozen or so opaque white masking layers on top of the original map in Photoshop, naming each for a quarter of the city (or whatever), and having only one of them set to be visible (at less than 100% opacity, so the map below shows through) at any time. Each section was then made by “erasing” the white bits from part of a layer, letting selected bits of the map underneath show through. At the edge of the mask, limited use of transparency meant the map edges “faded away” onto the page. When each layer was done, I cranked its opacity back up to 100%. It was pretty obvious, worked well, and meant Simon could make late changes to the underlying map without me needing to redraw all of the extracts every time (because the shapes of the masks stayed the same: it’s just some of the details showing through them that might change).

Artists, man.

@Crel is correct: the poster maps of Furthest and Tarsh came first, and the book followed after because -- as @blackyinkin is well aware -- maps don't sell. So, unsurprisingly, we would recommend GMs invest in the Poster Maps from Simon Bray's Redbubble store before running a campaign set in Furthest or Lunar Tarsh. If that's not an option (because you play on a VTT?), the digital edition comes bundled with a 300 DPI high-resolution PDF map pack that you can download and zoom in on to your heart's content, or print out at home (perhaps tiled?) at absurd sizes. If you're after a poster print, do note that versions available from RedBubble will be better quality: the original map they're created from is crazy big, over half a gigabyte and 7,156 x 10,120 pixels! The Furthest Map Pack contains the maps of Furthest and its Sewers, Tarsh and its Districts & Clans, the New Market, and the sample city block, and weighs in at 54 MB (the book itself is 83 MB). Tech specs: the digital edition is produced at the standard digital resolution, 144 DPI; the print edition is 300 DPI throughout, inc. back cover map (one page, always premium quality) and the two-page spreads inside the book (which could be printed in standard or premium colour, depending which version you bought). Premium colour print is, unsurprisingly, crisper than (cheap) standard colour, but standard colour is perfectly serviceable. There isn't likely to be a future edition (or large format / easy reading reprint), so I suggest you keep your magnifying glass handy, buy a poster map, or pick up the digital edition as a companion. The POD editions of some Chaosium RuneQuest Classics have the same "issue" in spades (the poster maps from the boxed sets have been reduced to fit onto US Letter pages; you can buy separate poster prints from RedBubble if you want more legible, attractive versions). So I think we're in good company.

And there are RQ stats for Jar-eel plus a memorable encounter in Drew Montgomery's The Seven Tailed Wolf. Highly recommended, and currently 20% off in the GM's Day Sale at DriveThruRPG!

She's a playable character in Crimson King, just putting that out there.