Nick Brooke

Are the God Learners still running Kareeshtu…? There’s your answer.

Real-world example: the Panarion of St Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis. He quotes heretical scriptures extensively in order to debunk them, and is therefore one of our best surviving sources for early Christian heresies (some of which are only known from his work). A panarion is a medicine-cupboard, essentially: this is the book with cures for whatever ails the Church.

Final update for the Jonstown Compendium Index 2021: To Hunt a God, a bumper-sized 70-page Monster of the Month from Austin Conrad & Co., comprising a full-length cult writeup, temple description and part one of a scenario. It's currently $9.95 for 70 pages: the creator says that if you buy it now, you'll get part two of the scenario as a free update (while latecomers face a price-hike). More maps from Mikael Mansen: First Blessed ($13.50) and a generic Village ($5.50). And I've added two sales charts to the bundled downloads, showing the sales history for all major Jonstown Compendium titles updated through the end of December 2021. I'll update the JC spreadsheet after breakfast, and then we're done. I plan to produce a new index for 2022, leveraging my Jonstown Compendium Catalogue and detailing new releases not covered in that book. (There may be other organisational changes, e.g. a section for shorter works to replace the Monsters of the Month / Dario Corallo / Davide Quatrini / Everything Else categories).

Updated again, with three new maps from Mikael Mansen (Kanthor's Islands, Elf Sea, Eastern Rockwoods), a follow-up to Krampuslauf (Joulupukki), and a general refresh of ratings, medals and print availability (speaking of which, A History of Malkionism and Secrets of HeroQuesting are out now in print, with a second bonus content drop for the Malkioni art).

“Don’t think. Thinking is dangerous. If someone tries to trick you into thinking for yourself, kill them immediately.”

“Bled.” Heh.

Excerpt: “They’re the ancient and rightful rulers of Seshneg. They’re the Old Gods, sleeping, who must not be awakened. They’re the Witch Cult, the lamias and succubi and Eves and Liliths who haunt the dreams of the virtuous. Their treasures are real (piles of gold) and spiritual (a bite of the Apple of Knowledge) and sacral (rightful rule over the Land, in a way not recognised by the Church but which everyone knows is older and more true). They’re the Old Ones, the Fair Folk, and we meet them in liminal times and places, at graveyards and crossroads and twilight moors and battlefields where the barrriers are thin. And their followers are the Old Folk, the satyrs and fauns and centaurs of the Isles, and the Old Families, those village wise-women and gifted youths and councils of druidical elders who meet under the trees for unsanctioned rites condemned by Holy Church…”

Silver bonus content drop: Illuminating the History of Malkionism is now 26 pages of emails, sketches, line art and group chat logs, covering the creation of the first dozen illustrations (four each: Malkion's Kingdom, Dawn Age Seshneg and Arkat's Crusade against Chaos). This is free bonus content with the digital edition: you can download it from your DriveThruRPG library when you're logged in. If you only bought the print edition, just email me your receipt and I'll send you the file.

Now available in print: $14.95 for a 48-page premium colour softcover 6”x9” booklet with three additional illustrations: gorgeous icons of the Prophets Malkion and Hrestol, and the traitor knight Sir Arkat.

Updated again, with two new Holiday Dorastor releases from Leon Kirshtein and Simon Phipp: Holiday Glorantha: Seven Hills details a notorious haunt of (and holiday destination for) ogres, and a centre of the Cacodemon Cult. Each hill is home to a clan of remarkably hospitable ogres, enjoying the freedom Dorastor grants to express their true selves, liberated from the oppressive expectations of human society. Eight scenarios range from pandering fetch quests, via a traditional ogre carnival, to major military pushes by the Hellwood elves and the Lunar Empire. The location is presented as a sandbox, with eight scenarios the GM can mix and match to create a campaign, plus scenario hooks, random encounter tables, and advice on travelling through the Land of Doom. $15.00 for 130 pages (12 cents per page of content). Holiday Glorantha: Krampuslauf is a novelty seasonal supplement presenting a Gloranthan version of the Krampus, a demon who punishes bad children at Sacred Time. Cult spells include “Sense Naughty and Nice,” and the cult magic item is a “Naughty Whip.” Ho ho ho. $1.00 for 5 pages (33 cents per page of content).

This. All of it. We don’t know who’s playing in your game, @EricW, so none of us is particularly well-placed to advise you. But Rodney has nailed the only thing that matters. Your Glorantha Will Vary.

Updated again, with two new entries: Hsunchen of the East by Paul Baker provides playable background material for two hsunchen peoples of the East: the fierce man-eating Hsa Tiger Folk of the jungles, and the sturdy nomadic Lo Fak Yak Folk of the mountains. These complement the author’s previous works on Kralorela and Teshnos (these hsunchen tribes are found in both lands). $7.32 for 48 pages, PDF. The Broken Tower Cardboards Set from Dario Corallo is another set of printable stand-up cardboard figures, this time for the scenario in the RuneQuest QuickStart.

Just out: the Jonstown Compendium Catalogue - 2021 Edition. $7.50 in print (144-page colour paperback, 6x9 inches), or $2.50 PDF. This book details every supplement published in the first two years of Chaosium's community content programme for RuneQuest and Glorantha. It combines the 2020 & 2021 versions of my Jonstown Compendium Index: a new layout presents every release up to the end of November 2021, divided into categories. Titles in the main categories are ranked by sales tier (best-seller medals) and customer ratings. The seven categories used are RuneQuest (scenarios), Glorantha (sourcebooks), QuestWorlds, Monsters of the Month, Zenith Counters, Adventure Outlines and Everything Else. Detailed listings analyse content (pages split between scenario, stats, maps, etc.), price per page of content (excluding front matter, blank pages, etc.), and the intended adventurers, setting and complexity for each scenario. Two “Where in the World?” maps show every product's location (if it can be pinned down). There are notes on when each scenario and campaign is set (by year and season, inc. all Chaosium RQG scenarios). Appendices include notes for creators, sales charts, and handy reference versions of the Jonstown Compendium Community Content Agreement, Content Guidelines and FAQ. If you own last year's Jonstown Compendium Scenarios & Sourcebooks (2020) and this year's Jonstown Compendium Index (2021), read Chaosium's blog and pay attention to online resources, you will have all this information already. Unlike those products, this title won't be updated: it's a year-end snapshot (and a printed book). I plan to bring out a new, regularly updated Index starting in January 2022, with a new print Catalogue in 12 months' time if it seems worthwhile. I will keep updating this year’s Index until 31 December, as always.

Just out: the Jonstown Compendium Catalogue - 2021 Edition. $7.50 in print (144-page colour paperback, 6x9 inches), or $2.50 PDF. This book details every supplement published in the first two years of Chaosium's community content programme for RuneQuest and Glorantha. It combines the 2020 & 2021 versions of my Jonstown Compendium Index: a new layout presents every release up to the end of November 2021, divided into categories. Titles in the main categories are ranked by sales tier (best-seller medals) and customer ratings. The seven categories used are RuneQuest (scenarios), Glorantha (sourcebooks), QuestWorlds, Monsters of the Month, Zenith Counters, Adventure Outlines and Everything Else. Detailed listings analyse content (pages split between scenario, stats, maps, etc.), price per page of content (excluding front matter, blank pages, etc.), and the intended adventurers, setting and complexity for each scenario. Two “Where in the World?” maps show every product's location (if it can be pinned down). There are notes on when each scenario and campaign is set (by year and season, inc. all Chaosium RQG scenarios). Appendices include notes for creators, sales charts, and handy reference versions of the Jonstown Compendium Community Content Agreement, Content Guidelines and FAQ. If you own last year's Jonstown Compendium Scenarios & Sourcebooks (2020) and this year's Jonstown Compendium Index (2021), read Chaosium's blog and pay attention to online resources, you will have all this information already. Unlike those products, this title won't be updated: it's a year-end snapshot (and a printed book). I plan to bring out a new, regularly updated Index starting in January 2022, with a new print Catalogue in 12 months' time if it seems worthwhile.

Each of the first three Sandheart books sold about thirty print copies in the first week after release, rising to fifty in the first month. They're all over 160 now. Don't give up yet! But I agree, those noisy Pod People are like the "settings outside Dragon Pass & Prax" fans - a (very) vocal minority, who it turns out can't punch their weight in the sales / reviews / ratings charts, the only place their voices would actually matter. If you're only interested in print, you can filter DriveThru to show print format only. My regularly-updated Index flags up new print titles (front page, item details, back page, and sometimes a splash advertisement if it's been a while coming). I got an email alert from DriveThruRPG to tell me about the print release of Secrets of Heroquesting, but possibly not everyone signs up for those. (I think it's a "Follow your Favourites" option)

Fascinating. But how does this help Jonstown Compendium authors and customers? It would cost creators time and money to bring out “cheap Toyota editions” of our books, and speaking for myself I’m not particularly strongly motivated to do that. If I did, I’d most likely bump up the price of the cheap format to cover some of the IMO unnecessary cost of setting it up. Customers who prefer print will still see PDF editions going on sale weeks or months earlier (and being snapped up by the hundreds of customers who prefer digital); customers who prefer cheap editions will still have to wait until creators supply them (which has only happened once, so far, in response to a printing cost hike). To date, no JC titles have come out in the cheapest available format (B&W softcover), probably because none of us wants to make them; we all used to bring our books out in premium colour print (back when that was only a marginal price increase), so this is hardly surprising.

Not just "heard about." Argrath, fresh from his victory against the Heartland Corps, is now leading his forces on a victory lap through Sartar: the Barbarian Horde of Praxians and Pol-Joni (many of them members of the apocalyptic White Bull cult who are personally devoted to him as their Prophet), reinforced by a throat-slitting medley of Pavic "Freedom Fighters" (most notably the bandits of the Pavis Royal Guard, but don't forget all those extremists exiled from Sartar after the Lunar conquest and various failed rebellions) and the pan-Gloranthan flotsam and jetsam of the Wolf Pirate Nation, and backed up by his cadre of weird-ass Warlocks. When he turns up, vacancies are filled. Some of them may not have existed until he turned up...

Updated again on 14-Dec-21: now contains 715 titles.

Apologies for the misattribution: I find life is too short to read Joerg's posts in any detail.

@Darius West keeps writing about “taking the Paps.” YGWV, but none of the sources describe it that way. Sor-eel manages to make it to the neutral ground around the Paps of the Goddess, and his people somehow cut a deal with the Eiritha and Old Earth cult leaders there: one that inter alia recognises the neutrality of the Oases and prevents the rise of Waha. (In my headcanon this is also what kicks off the Second Sable Conversion, when a handsome Antelope Lancer officer from the Hungry Plateau encounters the Queen of the Sables under the serious moonlight, but that’s just me. For more details, see Sitzmag Redmoon’s character sheet in Life of Moonson, Book One: The Characters)

Updated again, with the print edition of Simon Phipp's Secrets of HeroQuesting ($20, standard colour hardcover), and a new release from Dario Corallo: a set of printable cardboard stand-up counters for The Rainbow Mounds (€2.00 for 16 tokens). There has also been a Copper bonus content drop for our art book A History of Malkionism: a dozen pages of emails, group chat transcripts, sketches and line art showing how the first four illustrations were created. I'll share similar notes for the next four pics (Prince Hrestol & The Serpent Kings) as soon as we hit Silver. If you want to see more art books from Katrin and me, please consider leaving ratings and reviews for this one at DriveThruRPG: if it can pay for itself, we'd both love to make more stuff like this for other parts of Glorantha!

To be clear: if you post your corrections in the wrong thread, they probably won’t be seen, so don’t bother doing that. It’s a waste of time.

Please also take another look at my previous feedback re: shield combat rules in the soloquest.

Next instalment at Silver (101 sales), and more drops after that until we hit Electrum. If you help me sell my book (by posting ratings, reviews and happy feedback), we'll get there even quicker!

OK, I'll run some numbers for you. This is ball-park stuff from when we were pricing up A Rough Guide to Glamour: the details changed last July (with expensive premium and cheap standard formats), but the principles are still the same. Let's say it costs about $15 to print a 120-page book. So we price our PDF at $15, and our printed book at $30. Chaosium customers are used to the idea that digital cost is half physical, and those numbers look sensible alongside other RPG books in the marketplace. We sell a PDF for $15, we earn $15. Half of that goes to our platform (DriveThruRPG: 30% share) and publisher (Chaosium: 20% share). Split the $7.50 that's left between the authors and artists who get a share of royalties: in this case I get about 30% of the creators' share. Let's say $2.25. We sell a printed book for $30 plus shipping, the printers take $15 because that's what it costs to print (inc. their margin), and they also take all the shipping costs because they're the ones paying to package and post it. We have $15 left in the kitty, exactly as intended: it all gets divvied up the same way. (There is some wobble room because of differential US & UK printing costs: I tend to average those when working things out). When Chaosium prints thousands of books the same size, you can guarantee they did not cost $15 each to print. Big print runs mean small print costs per unit. Ergo, their margin on a print sale is higher than their margin on digital. So they have the leeway to offer an "incentive" discount to get customers to buy printed books from the company store, as the company gets more income that way than they would if the customer bought the printed book from a FLGS after the distributor takes their cut. (Customers also have an incentive to buy from FLGSs in the Bits and Mortar scheme, because everyone likes supporting friendly local game stores. Customers who don't care about that stuff can buy PDF-only from DriveThru, or physical-only from online sellers: they have choices, all with their pro's and con's). Selling through DriveThruRPG, we don't have that leeway or that incentive, and you don't have those choices: there's only one storefront, with no distributors or FLGSs in the picture. Also, the way I do it, we don't get a bigger margin on print sales than we do on digital. (Other creators can do it differently: I'm talking about my pricing model here) But your suggestion means someone loses income -- it won't be the printers, and I don't see DriveThruRPG or Chaosium volunteering to take smaller shares to implement a print discount, so at the end of the day it's me (and my co-authors and artists). I suppose I could always increase my cover prices (say: PDF is $20, print is $40, so now my margin on a print sale is $25 not $20 and I can start to get clever...), but that hurts my sales. And I know that only 10% of my customers have bought Glamour separately in both formats, so at the end of the day it's a pretty small problem. After all: this is a luxury product I'm selling here (a book for a silly elf game), nobody needs to buy it, our prices in both formats are reasonable, and any money I make from community content gets reinvested to buy art for my next books. So all in all, I feel pretty good about the way things are working today. (But I'm an accountant: I would say that, wouldn't I?) If you can see a flaw in this (other than the hardy perennial, "we asked your customers, and they want better products for free"), please let me know. I've been doing this less than two years, it's quite possible I've missed something, and maybe the smart answer is to jack up all my prices/margins and then get cute with the differential between PDF and print. But that makes work for me, and hurts my customers, and I don't really want to do it: I'd rather just sell great books, in PDF and print formats, at reasonable prices.