Nick Brooke

I was sketching out a campaign premise -- the adventurers would be young kids coming to the big city from all parts of the Empire, and meeting up for the first time when they become roommates. As well as running errands as a group which take them to different parts of the city (exploring the Glamour map the same way David Scott suggests unpacking Apple Lane: a little at a time, in an episodic TV-series style), they'd also get embroiled in personal stories through their different day-jobs (e.g. the Esrolian political refugee could begin as a make-up artiste and theatrical understudy, only to end up taking a lead role when something happens to the star of the show; the tough Rathori kid starts out in fighting-pit security and clean-up, before achieving gladiatorial greatness); I'd sprinkle the Insula's adventure hooks around generously, and develop relationships with the other residents if players wanted to; there'd have been sundry Carmanian and even Arrolian machinations (because I'm me), but the game would start out very much at street level before the inevitable invitation to provide entertainment at the City of Dreams. For my game, I'd have treated that as like stepping into Faerie, or a heroquest -- visiting an incredibly dangerous party on the Other Side, among a glittering host of the great and good, with lasting, life-warping consequences if you accept any gifts or pleasures from the denizens. Proper Goblin Market stuff. That could then warp the second arc of the campaign, with visits to noble estates and ruined sorcerer's towers in the Horns of the City, political shenanigans in Halfway, the Senate and the Temple of Peace, and the cults of the Emperor and Glamour becoming ever more prominent. And some adventurers might be working towards secret goals (getting access to hard-to-reach people or places). But my lockdown players asked me to run Masks of Nyarlathotep instead, bless' em, which saved me a crap-tonne of work. Thanks, players!

Handout 4-5: A scribbled "to-do" list.

Handout 4-4:

Handout 4-3: This is gibberish.

Handout 4-2: This renders Handout 4-1 into more modern English phrases.

Handout 4-1: Note that some words are spelled unusually, usually with an extra -e, to make this look more Olde Worlde.

B5 fans are seeing YO as Zathras: “Not the One. Not the One…”

Mike Dawson's "New Moon Spears" remain a fertile source of inspiration, for those who remember. Why were the Lunars so interested in excavating the ruins on Yelmalio Hill?

One one reading, "Yelmalio" was created by Nysalor. He is the bright spear wielded to wound Kyger Litor at the Battle of Night and Day. Prior to that, nobody had heard of the Cult of the Cold Sun, or built Sun Dome Temples to honour him. Just putting that out there.

With a nod to Socrates' famous last words, can I suggest you might sacrifice a cock to Babeester Gor?

You understand that "the gates were opened to Argrath's army" isn't the same thing as "the city surrendered to Argrath's army," right?

My first published scenario was The Duel at Dangerford (2020), currently available at 30% off in digital format as part of the GM's Day Sale. So it's not me you're thinking of!

Sartar was a furriner, Rodney.

Updated on 1 March 2023 with the truly impressive Elkoi Expansion from Anders Tönnberg, a massive set of maps plus detailed descriptions expanding on the Lunar-occupied citadel in Balazar and its surrounds. This is a snip at 9 euros for 34 pages plus more than 60 maps (variants on 8 locations, from area maps to VTT interiors). Also! Recent art resources from Dario Corallo (Artpack #5, the Personalities of Dorastor collection) and Zed Nope (two watercolour Wind Lords: Cheerful Vingan & Thunder Caller); Drew Baker's first Rubble Redux book is now available in print, as is the new Spanish translation of Sandheart Volume One: Cuentos de la milicia del Condado Solar, translated by El Runeblogger. Also also! The GM's Day Sale just started, with 15-30% discounts on several Jonstown Compendium digital titles for the next fortnight.

The fate of Tarsh King Pharandros in your own campaign is surely up to you / your players / your dice. It's a perfect example of where you should invoke the RuneQuest Effect / YGWV principle, just like the Death of Darius in an Alexander campaign: it shouldn't happen off-stage or be left to NPCs, when there are so many ways to include the players in a great historical event. I will be disappointed if there are prescriptive canonical details; certainly, you could embellish or ignore those contradictory fragments in King of Sartar as a starting point. But whether he is slain by Vostor in honourable battle, gets offed by an adventurer with no Honour, gets imprisoned and then rescued by a Lunar Skorzeny squad, etc. is fertile ground for gamemasters everywhere. Don't constrain them! Potential spoiler for The Duel at Dangerford & Crimson King:

NB: the “Rune Master of the Month” releases (first half of 2022) include tactical notes for running their high-powered NPC parties.

(For a pious Malkioni overview of the Second Age, with pretty pictures, see A History of Malkionism).

They were Malkioni, yes. The Jrusteli defined the modern cult of the Invisible God when the Abiding Book was revealed to them. As Malkioni, they were able to treat with lesser deities in “appropriate” ways; members of their Sorcery-using caste were only meant to worship the Invisible God of Malkion, Hrestol and the Witnesses, but of course the God Learners were professional experts at logic-chopping and bending the rules, so make of that what you will.

You lost the last words of my quote, @EpicureanDM, doubtless in an unfortunate cut’n’paste accident (as I’m sure you’d hate to be disingenuous). They were: “That’s OK, they still get to play RuneQuest their way.” I see new GMs having difficulties because they think they need to apply all of the rules of the game precisely in every situation, delivering a watchmaker’s simulation of Glorantha that always runs exactly according to the RuneQuest rules, when that isn’t necessary or (in my opinion) particularly desirable. That’s why my advice to new GMs is not to worry about that. Your advice, apparently, is that they should worry, but that sadly there aren’t any resources to help them, and that in consequence no new GM can enjoy playing RuneQuest in Glorantha. I disagree, but I wish you luck in finding or creating the resources you think you need.

I’ve published guidance re: how I GM RuneQuest in my Gloranthan Manifesto, but maybe it doesn’t work for you? That’s fine, find something that works better for you and do it that way instead. Or wait for an official book, if that’s how you roll.

So the other thing that hasn’t been emphasised enough in this thread (IMO, I might have missed a nuance) is that the RQ elder races (intelligent non-humans) all have homelands, occupations and cults, and “level-up” in all three the same way player characters do. Your new adventurer may be battling grunt Trollkin, but a Rune Lord will be taking on a Dark Troll warrior who’s a Death Lord of Zorak Zoran, with the full panoply of Rune spells, enchanted lead armour, zombie and skeleton hordes, etc., and a clan or warband backing them up (with specialists, healers, trained battle-insects, allies, and the like). And they have their own mythology, which in RuneQuest means there are special rituals they can do to “power up” or thwart their enemies, entities from the Spirit World and God World they can bring into play as disconcertingly powerful allies or manifestations, holy days and sacred places and temples and artefacts that carry special meaning for them. All of which means that RuneQuest games don’t have the same need for “101 ways to spell Orc” that you found in older editions of D&D (NB: I got started between Original, Basic and Advanced, I know the terrain is somewhat different nowadays). Instead, our games can be driven by story and character and politics. It makes for a more immersive world. Check out Trollpak to see what I’m on about. (And if you want to proliferate monsters, think about how different litters of Trollkin could vary over time)

That’s how Chaosium’s own games ran, back in the late seventies / early eighties. And nowadays the creators encourage and expect every game set in Glorantha to do its own thing. Have you never heard the phrase, “Your Glorantha Will Vary”? Because you’re independently reinventing it.

Please come and visit the Jonstown Compendium, Chaosium’s community content programme: we have dozens of highly-regarded RuneQuest adventures waiting for you to discover them. If you want to know the best-selling and highest-rated stuff, pick up my cheap Catalogue, or just explore the store’s hottest/most popular lists. More than thirty of the most popular titles are available in print.

Yeah, the board game Shadows Dance would most likely have featured conflicts between Trolls and Elves. It’s a wonderful borderland region, and the occasional erratic movement of a spirit of Light between the Torch and the Vale of Flowers, disturbing the Shadows and making them Dance, can upset all sorts of balances.

There are confusing accounts of the defunct Karandoli Clan in King of Sartar - Argrath claimed to be descended from them, although everyone else thinks they were extinct. See in particular The Story of Ortossi and His Sons, KoS p.183ff. Shades of how The Jackal got his passport, perhaps? I malign Argrath's ancestry via the medium of an imaginary folk-horror first-person shooter video game in Act VII of Black Spear. Potential spoiler below.