Nick Brooke

Here's the thing: Chaosium's default expectation is that your player character party will be led by Sartarites and based out of Sartar. Sure, you can recruit some foreign hangers-on from other homelands (cf. Vasana & Co.), but the default expectation is that adventurers will mostly be kicking around Jonstown and Clearwine, doing jobs for the local Sartarite leaders. At this point, if you want to run a Praxian, Tarshite (either flavour), Grazelander or Esrolian campaign, you've only got the RQG homeland writeups and whatever you can glean from forums and older sources to build on. It is what it is.

Updated on 18 April 2023: Caravan Alley, another Praxian sandbox from Jamie Revell, which details two oases along the route that begins at Day's Rest: Tourney Altar (Humakti!) and Biggle Stone (Fungi!). Nobody is ever going to mistake a Humakti for a Fun Guy, just saying. (37 pages for $4.50.); The long-awaited final release of To Hunt A God, Austin Conrad's Esrolian monkeyquest (139 gorgeously-illustrated pages for $19.95); A photo-report showing the print-on-demand community content pop-up stores at Chaosium Con 2; Charts showing the best-selling products and new medals awarded in the first quarter of 2023; and... Crimson King's just been awarded its Electrum best-seller medal, w00t!, while Dangerford is teetering on the brink of Platinum!

Whyever not? You don’t want your nice house to be stepped on by a Giant, do you?

Also, don’t miss this excellent review and commentary from @skulldixon: RuneQuest Adventure Review: The Smoking Ruins

It took my two RuneQuest groups maybe two and a half six-hour sessions each. First session, after using half of the time for character creation as a group (inc. family history), we jumped straight into the Clearwine scenes, mission briefing and research (up to Hastur Speculates, in my notes). Second session was for travel across Dragon Pass via Duck Point to reach the Smoking Ruin, plus initial encounters on site (ending with Hombadaka Boko / Down in Acapulco / Trolls are Going Loco). Third session for archaeological explorations, treasure-hunting, the boss fight at the Ruin, the return journey and a big festival finish. If you already have characters, you’ll have more room to breathe, but sixteen hours’ play sounds about right to me.

Pick up The Company of the Dragon, it has a playable version of the Windstop for RQG.

Spiked roofs, too. (See “A Village Near Alone.”)

I have an answer in my Manifesto, but I don’t think you’ll like it.

Now in its rightful home, at last.

Because their culture hero is Arim the Pauper, while the Kingdom of Sartar that annexed them is a phenomenally wealthy mercantile caravan-kingdom, Tarshites (inc. the East Tarshites we're talking about today) have a reputation for being miserly penny-pinchers, however undeserved, which can play out in much the same way Yorkshiremen or Scotsmen are seen in (Southern) English popular culture.

Yes. Chaosium has warehouses in the US, UK, Europe (Poland) and Australia, so once the books arrive and go on sale you’ll be able to order a copy shipped from Poland to Hungary at reasonable rates. And the Chaosium store will be selling physical books long before they’re in any FLGSs (distributors have to get them from our warehouses, just like customers who order direct from Chaosium).

You only ever get a coupon when you buy the PDF direct from Chaosium’s website store. You never get a coupon when you buy the PDF from DriveThruRPG.

I did everything I could in my scenario to tell you it ignored the canonical timeline and mashed two different events together to let your players do something original and awesome instead of following the script, but I’m sorry if you were confused.

Hi, Ron: As always, that deal only applies when you buy the digital edition directly from Chaosium's store at chaosium.com.

See the "Letter from a Monopolist" at the back of A Rough Guide to Glamour.

Well, if you're looking at the big picture, would anything stop King Argrath of Pavis (or, for example, his wicked vizier who runs the local hazia racket) from trying to set up a high-stakes heroquest involving the Aldryami of the Garden to enchant Pavis County, the way the Red Count did for Sun County at his inauguration, back in the day? Which could lead to hilarious heroquesting shenanigans, blowback and unforeseen side-effects. 10/10, would recommend.

The latter, I'm afraid. Some folk -- including me -- prepare "print-ready" versions of their books in the first place, making it easier to hit the print spec when the time comes; that isn't always an option. Chaosium is happy to help first-time print creators through the process, and smooth the way for subsequent releases: just get in touch.

I’m a Lismelder, and I can authoritatively tell you that all Malani are assholes.

It grows better in Sun County, and has done ever since the Summer of Love. The only comparable hazia crop in Prax comes from the Aldryami Garden in the Big Rubble, and that’s much harder to access.

Here’s the Spoiler tool:

Facebook thread, back in May 2021:

An "upwards-pointing chevron" is also, of course, the Spartan "Lambda" (as seen in "300"), and the most distinctive element of the planetary Rune for the solar war-god Shargash/Tolat. Just putting that out there.

Ok, you do you. Have fun oppressing the natives!

As you point out, either relocation or expulsion would have been thematically-appropriate Bronze Age options, which @svensson passes over for some reason ("We have to enslave them or massacre them, there is no conceivable third way!"). Personally, I think making the Sun Dome Templars in Dragon Pass reliant on an enslaved helot population is unnecessarily problematic for modern readers, and am glad this element has been retconned. Getting rid of the somehow-extant Elmal cult of Sartar at the same time brings us much closer to the Dragon Pass we know from the boardgame, the RuneQuest Classics and the Stafford Library, so basically (once again) it seems that everything is moving in a sensible direction, with occasional weird twitches. The Dragon Pass Sun Dome Temple is proudly independent of the Kingdom of Sartar. Its champions are delighted to contest with Orlanthi for ritual purposes, and sometimes they even win and get the girl. They became wealthy in the Lunar Occupation by serving as mercenaries for friendly Governors-General, and they'll get rich again in the Hero Wars by hiring themselves out to anybody looking for security in these increasingly-troubled times, especially the Count's good friend Prince Argrath of Sartar. Their ancient traditions were written, revised or rediscovered by Tarkalor's companion Monrogh some fifty to seventy years ago, after he'd visited the Sun Dome Temple in Prax and learned how things were meant to work. He also innovated, informed by his heroquesting experiences in Teshnos, Land of Fire: his "Vision of the Many Suns" was what brought the Elmali into the Sun Dome Temple, while freeing Yelmalio from the at times overbearing presence of Father Yelm. It seems their population is mostly made up of Elmali converts from various tribes of Sartar and East Tarsh, plus a few oppressed remnants of the Kitori around the edges: the latter, of course, are not Sun Domers, and there aren't enough of them for the Sun Domers to go "Full Spartan". Also, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find cultists who were brought up in other Sun Dome Temples relocating to the temple in Dragon Pass, either when it was founded or subsequently. That's what Rurik does, after all!

Oh, and I only did the layout for Sandheart, and wrote that family history appendix, and a hauntingly familiar Praxian ritual song in Book 4. The books are by Jon Webb and MOB.