Nick Brooke

FYI @mfbrandi, the QW SRD was "pulled as a JC target" because bad actors coached people in ways they could abuse the clear intent of the Jonstown Compendium's rules by creating retroclones of unsupported games. ("You can publish material for Hero Wars and 1e HeroQuest on the JC, even though Chaosium told you not to do that, if you reimplement those rulesets using the QW SRD" -- bad idea.)

QW community content sales are low, and there are hardly any QW products on the store, despite the lack of barriers to entry and the relative ease of writing statless scenarios. (I hate writing statblocks, but I publish for RuneQuest because that's where all the customers are.) Only one of them has made it to Electrum best-seller (the wonderful Valley of Plenty, once again available as a digital edition after a lengthy hiatus). This is how the market tells you that suppliers and customers aren't interested.

If I were you, I wouldn't expect a HQG retrofit genre pack any time soon.

I ran Chris Gidlow's freeform scenario Young Thrax (a Tarsh War prequel) for the first time in quite a while. The blurb:

Quote

Join newly-promoted General Livius Thrax on his first independent command, a top-secret mission against enemies of the Empire. Can his "Sordid Seven" plumb the depths of the Sewers of Furthest? Or will renewed Proxy Wars belch forth from the Cloaca Maxima?

I didn't warn the players that it was also a Singalong, but they rose magnificently to the occasion.

I sadly couldn't make it to Harald's seminar on Nochet, as I was setting up the community content store at the time.

And I played as Prince Temertain in Home of the Bold, but since it's going to be run again in the UK and Australia I don't want to post any spoilers. The cast was energetic, the costumes were magnificent, the pace was hectic, and I was happy with my personal outcome. Ludo Chabant's stuffed hawk gave me the idea of turning my scholarly beard into a detachable Allied Spirit, which made for good puppeteering fun.

Updated again:

• A Rough Guide to Boldhome, by David Hall, Jeff Richard, Greg Stafford and Friends. 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. (81 pages for $9.95 in PDF or $15.95 standard colour softcover print-on-demand)
  
  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. The 81-page book contains (inter alia) 26 pages by Greg Stafford (the Boldhome Documents, etc.), 18 pages by Jeff Richard (Sartar Book previews), and 7 pages of front matter.

I think you're referring to the picture of one of Argrath's Headhunters from page 145 of @M Helsdon's magisterial tome The Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass. He's a Sartarite warrior from the Culbrea tribe, according to Martin's account of the Headhunters (p.324), riding on a Sable Antelope (note that it's not unusual for Sartarites to be mounted on "Praxian" riding animals, cf. poster-girl Vasana on her mighty bison). You can tell from his armour (a scale hauberk) that he's a heavy cavalryman, so RuneQuest character generation is straightforward. Stats for Sable Antelopes are in the Bestiary.

Obviously you would be much better off playing as a Sable Rider from Prax, or even as an Antelope Lancer from the Hungry Plateau, because the Praxian Sable Tribe is universally acknowledged to be the most intelligent, handsome and forward-thinking tribe of Prax (by Sable Riders and their honest allies, at least), while the Hungry Plateau Antelope Lancers are an offshoot who greatly benefited from their principled conversion to the Lunar Way in the First Wane. (Other people call this the "Great Sable Betrayal," but they really ought to be more specific since it turns out the Sables have a tendency to betray their allies a lot, cf. Second Moonbroth).

On 4/23/2024 at 10:50 AM, David Scott said:

Ephemeris works fine - here it is a few minutes ago running with CheerpJ plugin in Chrome. See The Movable Ephemeris and the Gloranthan Sky (1997).

"My god, it's full of stars..."

If I can run this, anybody can. (NB: David forgot to mention that you need to change a default CheerpJ plugin setting to get the CheerpJ icon added to your toolbar.) 

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.