Nick Brooke

Updated on 21 August with DuckPac Book 3: Redfeather Dreaming, by Drew Baker & Neil Gibson. The third volume of DuckPac is a traditional solo adventure, a dreamquest for doom-seeking ducks. Gorgeously presented, and illustrated with evocative AI-created art (but no new duck pics, alas!), this classic SoloQuest has 326 numbered paragraphs, plus 33 pages of Upland Marsh encounters. There's an innovative Journey Tracker scoresheet, notes on adapting the adventure for 1:1 play, and you can pick up one of the pregenerated Duck characters from DuckPac 2 as your first adventurer. $15.99 for 138 pages. Chaosium has kindly allowed me to share more granular sales information. Each product's sales are now given in brackets of 50 up to Gold Best-Sellers, in brackets of 100 thereafter. For example, while all Silver best-sellers used to say "101+ sold," they are now listed in three tiers, as "over 100 / 150 / 200 sold." This detail is provided for those products released since 1 October 2021 and detailed in the Index, but because I think it's interesting, here's a round-up for all of the Jonstown Compendium's Platinum and Gold best-sellers: Six Seasons in Sartar has sold over 1,200 copies The Armies & Enemies of Dragon Pass over 1,000 A Rough Guide to Glamour over 900 The Duel at Dangerford over 800 The Company of the Dragon and Tales of the Sun County Militia over 700 and the store's five other Gold best-sellers have between 501-600 sales. And, finally, a skateboarding duck Mikael Mansen has mapped the Skyreach Mountains in close-up detail. $5.45 for three maps (labelled, unlabelled, close-up).

There are many paths to explore. There are many RuneQuest groups. There are many possible answers. Your Glorantha Will Vary. When someone says your method won’t work: prove them wrong.

Ahem. Gloranthan Manifesto, Vol. 1, page 51, Song of the Inspirations. Some Pelorian ladies would like to dispute that, and while most of them look perfectly pleasant, one of them looks permanently pissed off…

If monstrous Lunes (and even worse Lunar demons) don't spontaneously manifest in Whitewall on some unhallowed Full Moon nights, I'm a Dutchman. (And I'm not a Dutchman)

Geo's Bouncer is why Geo's is still standing. And it's not remotely surprising, to anyone who played Home of the Bold...

There’s a scenario about this from the Colymar perspective in The Seven Tailed Wolf, the concluding part of Andrew Logan Montgomery’s Haraborn trilogy.

Updated again on 18 August 2022, including many graduate pieces from the Storytelling Collective's "Write Your First Adventure" workshop. Now lists more than 890 titles.

Most likely in King of Sartar, and then the Glorantha Sourcebook.

Briefly addressing @Gary Norton's digression, Chaosium's community content on the Jonstown Compendium includes more than 50 RuneQuest adventures and campaigns. Twenty of them are Electrum+ Best-Sellers on DriveThruRPG. (The chart below is an extract from my regularly-updated JC Index, which also details everything marked with a 🔺 (new since Q4 2021); the JC Catalogue details everything released in the first two years. They have maps showing scenario locations, timelines of when they're set, etc.) There is no "release schedule," though: scenarios drop when their authors publish them. Several of those creators have gone on to write for Chaosium; some of the results have seen print. At this point, ignoring the Jonstown Compendium feels like refusing to pick up Tales of the Reaching Moon on principle. (Which is an opinion, to be sure, and I respect people's right to hold it)

The best published source for this stuff is The Company of the Dragon. Its author Andrew worked with Jeff on the town vs. country parts of the forthcoming Sartar Book, so his account is unlikely to grotesquely violate what will eventually become canon. For what that's worth.

(the Spartans were utterly defeated by them?)

I’m getting powerful Squirrel Girl vibes, as so often happens at these moments. It’s good to embrace your niche.

OK. In Black Spear, Argrath has kinda gotten lost in his shamanic venture to encompass everything (man). Your adventurers bring him back to reality, they ensure he fails his mystical aspiration, they re-focus him on his mission to fight the Hero Wars in Dragon Pass. I don’t mind whether they do it with a bed of nails, or a whip, or a spear, or a harsh talking-to. You’ve ended the scenario exactly as expected, and your adventurers have made themselves complicit in Argrath’s future misdeeds. I don’t honestly see how your Glorantha has varied. But YGWV.

We know. That's why we locked the thread.

The last thread was closed after bored people wandered way off the reservation and started posting Monty Python clips, random emojis, and recollections of their favourite Traveller campaigns. It got tedious for the mod team to clean it up, so we shuttered it. Like any good Chinese state censor, I've provided a link.

Sane Argrath is arguably more dangerous than wasted Argrath.

If there’s a loyalty they aren’t taking, that’s a source of support that won’t be available to them. Point that out, see if it changes any minds. Sure, you can burn your bridges with the clan leadership, but then they won’t help you out in a lawsuit.

RuneQuest Starter Set, Book Two, p.32: Guilds.

Exactly. The smith isn’t a member of the local Red Cow Guild (pop. one), he’s likely a journeyman member of the Jonstown Smiths’ Guild, and will travel there from time to time on business (inc. cult business). Just as the parish priest in a mediæval village is ultimately loyal to the Pope in Rome, not just to his village church and local Lord. And when those interests clash, we get story.

Six Seasons in Sartar.

Updated on 7 August with The Seven Tailed Wolf by Andrew Logan Montgomery. The sequel to Six Seasons in Sartar and The Company of the Dragon concludes the story of the Haraborn Clan. Its six chapters play through the tumultuous events of 1626 S.T., the year after the Dragonrise, to tell the tale of the Company’s resettlement of Black Stag Vale... and the vengeance that followed them home. $18.95 for 130 pages.

Updated on 6 August with DuckPac Book 2: Duck Adventurers, by Drew Baker & Neil Gibson. The second volume of DuckPac is dedicated to creating duck adventurers and a guide to the Durulz tribe. It includes new Family History events, the traditional voices (shaman and leader), notes on playing as a duck (e.g. cowardice, weapon and armour choices, how to function underwater), a detailed duck village with several fully-statted NPCs that could serve as a home base, and two in-character accounts of the surrounding lands. $10.99 for 93 pages, and gorgeously illustrated.

I'm glad I helped, but you should absolutely want your players to have multiple conflicting Loyalty passions on their character sheets. That's what RuneQuest is all about! Making it simple for adventurers to negotiate conflicts between their family, clan, tribe, temple etc. by wiping a bunch of them away does the setting a massive disservice.

And at Sacred Time, they could choose to participate in Jonstown's civic rituals (presided over by the City Ring's Priests and the City Rex), or head back to the countryside, for their native clan or tribal ceremonies (whether held on their home tula or at the tribe's ritual centre). And argue with their relatives, neighbours, guild masters, etc. either way, about their decision. Conflict reveals character, complexity weaves depth. This is all grist to the mill.

It's credible that their Loyalty is (at least in part) to Jonstown, rather than to a Clan and/or Tribe. Could be all three, could be just one or two. Chat to your players, see what they think about (a) the old folks back on the traditional farm and (b) the remote Tribal King, much less important in their day to day lives than the City Rex.