6 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

Thank you! Very useful.

I'm trying to gather all the (reasonably) canonical material I can about Gloranthan Warfare. So far this includes the Dragon Pass boardgame, Cults of Prax, Wyrms Footnotes, Guide to Glorantha, HeroQuest: Glorantha, Pavis:GtA, Sartar:KoH, The Coming Storm, the Moon Design website, and a couple of online essays by Sandy Petersen. Plus a few things of my own. About eighty pages so far.

So thank you, again.

The most important documents on Gloranthan warfare are the following:

• Dragon Pass wargame (old and new versions)
• Armies and Enemies of the Hero Wars (unpublished)
• Redline History of the Lunar Empire
• Wyrms Footnotes 15

32 minutes ago, g33k said:

It's also worth noting the ambiguity of the term "armor" -- sometimes, it really is *JUST* a costume (eek, do I sound hypocritical now???).  By that I mean:  made & worn to impress, and never intended (by maker or wearer) to perform the physically-protective function of armor.

And of course "primitive" (the gods will protect me) cultures will sometimes forgo armor, or wear "armor" that's more about showing <religious / tribal / etc>  <affiliation / superiority / potency / etc> (in short, a "costume") .   However "status" and "intimidation" can be very different things... if you are a "high status" target, you may be who everyone is after; but if you "intimidate" your foes (into uncertainty, or even fleeing outright), that may well provide as much or more protection / survival as metal armor between your body and their weapons (obviously, status and intimidation can sometimes overlap!)

But NONE of these considerations include the wearing of non-protective "armor" that shows NO personal power or status (rather the opposite), but instead displays being a decorative sex-object.  I am unaware of any cultures were eros was a relevant battlefield power to flaunt (though several mention its use as a distraction... and few if any would deny that it has been used in espionage, political dealings, and other "battlefield-relevant" arenas! ) .

 

I do recall a legend where a beautiful queen or a ruler's wife distracted/weakened the enemy by going nude into battle. The awestruck enemy forces were then mowed down by the queen's soldiers. And I always enjoyed Phryne's winning defense in her trial by the Areopagus. Both I could imagine occurring in Glorantha (and at least one of those stratagems has been used by my female players in our HeroQuest game). But again, both of these are not simple cheese-cake pictures. I'm unaware of any story where a female combatant gained an advantage by wearing a bikini and a vest (heck, if you are going to invoke Eros, you really have to go all in).

There's more than a fair amount of support that early armor is at least as much about status and intimidation as it is about practical protection (Jahrbuch des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums has some great articles on the subject - in the context of trying to refute the commonly held argument that the Dendra panoply was only for status and display). Now that can be described as "identifying rank and allegiance" but shaving your head and wearing a giant feathered banner on your back is at least as much as showing that you are mighty and to be feared ("I am a Shorn One - fear me!") as it is about organizational concerns. Next time you are in Berlin check out the Villenovan/Etruscan armor at the Altes Museum - those bronze disks were made for nobles who certainly could have had a full cuirass made (bronze cuirasses have been found in Central and Western Europe going back to at least 1000 BC).

That's not to say protection isn't a primarily purpose of armor, just that status and display is also a primary purpose. And sometimes armor might seem impractical - but that's because it is trying to do something else beyond merely protect its wearer.

59 minutes ago, g33k said:

On the other hand, people have spoken up about it as a style they prefer, and want to see; THAT needs addressing.

I'll say this much, I don't like that style and am not likely to use it in books I work on. I think the relationships between sex, costume, society, war, etc are all worth pondering when you depict fantasy, and should be thought through whenever you do a commission. "Draw me a sexy woman in sexy adventurer costume" is not something I'm interested in commissioning. Frex, I've relied a lot on Eastern Mediterranean/Near Eastern Bronze Age goddess/high status women depictions for Esrolia and the Ernalda cult - because those costumes emphasized the status of the women/goddess and breasts are displayed as accoutrements of the goddess. The female form is not covered up precisely because high-status women in that society or cult have more authority than high-status men.

In contrast, Dara Happan noblemen traditionally cover themselves up (with their loincloth of purity) and wear long robes to protect themselves from contamination from the impure Earth. But the Lodrilli lower classes wear tunics that do not cover up their genitalia. Or in Loskalm and parts of the Western, stylized physical perfection is emphasized. And so on.

As an aside, I think it is important to emphasize that ALL genders would wear armor designed to impress. Orlanthi men and women both wear feathers in their helmets, or paint themselves blue and fight in the nude. Impala men and women fight in the nude (or just wearing a loincloth), Lodrilli, Melib, or Caladralander spearmen might well wear something like a koteka tied into an upright position. And so on. 

57 minutes ago, g33k said:

RE appearing attractive/fashionable/powerful, and how Gloranthan warriors would approach the matter -- generally, I expect, by gilt and paint and other shallow decor atop FULLY FUNCTIONAL ARMOR (unless their culture forgoes armor, of course!), just as has always been done by warriors 'round the world, throughout history.  First, take care of the basics of survival/function/etc; THEN, worry about how it looks.  "Does this armor make my butt look too big" is *NEVER* a consideration.

 

I actually disagree with this to some extent. Armor - especially armor for the wealthy - was rarely a case of function over form. The trefoil disk or even single disk armor of pre-Roman Italy, or the common practice of wearing a bronze cuirass just high enough to deliberately expose one's genitalia (and not wear any protective gear over them) are good examples where the display value of armor was more important than its practicality. A muscle cuirass sacrifices some functionality in order to look more awesome. And so on.

So for example, in an ancient world with high-status women warriors and generals, you might find cuirasses sculpted to display bronze breasts and abdomen - that look much like the statues or icons of goddesses. The butt and upper legs might be just as exposed as they would be with armored male warriors, and so on. You might end up with headdresses that look every bit as dramatic (and impractical) as the garden pot helmets of the Sea Peoples. And so on. I may think that Henry VIII's armored codpiece is ridiculous but I am sure the king thought it looked awesome.

BUT (and this is the important point) - the idea is always to to make the warrior look impressive. If Maran Gor is depicted as black-skinned with painted red feet, but displays her vulva and breasts, then there might well be female warriors that paint their body black and their feet red and fight in the nude. Or even wear a belt and other accoutrements to exaggerate the effect. Just like there are plenty of male warriors who paint or tattoo themselves blue and fight in the nude to better emulate Orlanth. The purpose isn't to titilate - it is to draw upon the power of the deity while intimidating opponents.

I'm old enough to know that the Rust Monster, Bulette, and Owlbear all come from the same "Prehistoric Animals" playset. So I find them far more ridiculous than having Howard the Duck in a game. Heck, Howard at least knew Conan. 

3 minutes ago, g33k said:

Absolutely, Jeff -- you won't see my remarks above over at the "Prince of Sartar Webcomic" -- not even when they featured the fully-topless characters.

 

Ironically, I think that toplessness or even full nudity in art is usually less titivating than near-nudity done for purely gratuitous purposes. Like wearing a bikini to a battle.

18 minutes ago, g33k said:

No.

More than that, HELL NO.

 

I would have rejected the "cool picture" as a submission. It didn't show costuming (bikini with a sleeved three-quarters vest is not a costume, nor are the "bandages" or jeweled headband), didn't give any cultural details (like tattoos, jewelry, relevant sword, etc), nor does it even show background. It appears to be a preliminary sketch from a panel from a comic book. 

I'm not a fan of generic fantasy tropes - in any incarnation. That includes women wearing a bikini with a vest while carrying a stupid looking sword. Or female adventurers who are supposed to be warriors leaning forward just to show off their cleavage. Or any of the other cheesy tropes. 

That being said, the real world has been full of cultures that included female toplessness (for status or for climate), male or female nudity or near nudity, etc., and I have no trouble having Gloranthan cultures display that. I like Classical Hindu/Buddhist statuary, Classical Greek pottery and statuary, Mucha, Von Stuck, and plenty of other Art Nouveau, and so forth - and my art direction will of course reflect that. I don't have much of a taboo concerning nudity in art, just a cheesy art taboo.

1 hour ago, styopa said:

Yeah, not a great deal of attention really paid to the production value here.  Plus, obsess over ducks a little.  Glorantha's albatross, basically.  AD&D had a decent complement of stupid & silly creatures, but man, this one has stuck to Glorantha.

Agree fully. Plus they turned Tolkien's orcs into pig-people.

Yeah, I view the mosquitos of the Mosquito Marsh to be swarms of mosquitos that drive you to distraction with their constant bites (the worst is when you get bit on the eyelid!). Some - maybe even countless numbers - carry disease spirits, but even if none carried disease spirits, the Marsh would be avoided more studiously than a known Chaos haunt. 

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

Unlike @David Scott I don't think that the Beast Rider herds are the only pinpoint for surviving ecological niches in the Wastes. I don't think that e.g. Cacti are related to any beast herds.

Given that prickly pear cactus is used as cattle fodder in the Southwest (and is a major food source for many large herbivores), I suspect that cacti are used by many beast herds.

Mythology explains Gloranthan reality far better than poorly applied terrestrial physics. Glorantha is a cube of earth floating in a limitless river, with the Sky Dome above it and the Underworld beneath. The Sun really does travel across the sky and descends each dusk into the Gates of Dusk and then traverses the Underworld only to remerge from the Gates of Dawn. That's Gloranthan reality.

Gloranthan physics are the results of the events of the God Time - especially the Gods War. If you reason from that point, things make sense. Magic is simply the communication between the eternal God Time (which is endlessly present and eternally there) and our world of Time. The God Time is not subject to the Laws of Thermodynamics and when a magician manages to draw some manifestation of the eternal into the world of Time, that event is not subject to the same. 

12 minutes ago, TRose said:

 #2 might be a problem for me. At my age my minds tends to wander all over the place. Of course it tended to wander all over the place when I was younger too.

Hah! I know that feeling. That's why I used the word "hijacking" - if the thread is about the new household economic rules in RQ4, please don't hijack that thread to talk about your opinion of the Earned Income Tax Creditor or why growth in assessed value for purposes of ad valorum taxation should be capped. Meandering is fine, as long as it meanders back.

22 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

I can think of exceptions in both Nochet and Pavis/Big Rubble where dressed stone previously used by the rich becomes available for reuse by survivors of various devastation (e.g. Veskarthan's eruption and the subsequent tidal waves washing over Nochet and leaving it with great ruins and 5000 people; nomadic and troll invasions of Old Pavis).

I'd be inclined to add Boldhome to that list.

6 hours ago, Baron said:

Now, sorry Soltakss. Again, I still hadn't read your reply asking that you not be quoted. So I won't paste the body of the take-down letter you received from Jeff. I haven't even re-read it since years ago, just pasted the link and went to bed. Perhaps this is the “one time” you refer to that you were asked to take something down, I don't know and you don't have to reply. But it IS the specific letter that I remembered reading years ago, that made me find Rick and Jeff's responses so “bold.” (Again, I was using a polite word. Would be nice to get credit for civility around here.)

You don't need to post it, as it is on Simon's website. Here's how it reads:

New Pavis Map

Created On 13 July 2007
Last Updated On 13 July 2007
Copyright © 2014 Simon E. Phipp

Below ysed to be a map of New Pavis, taken from the map sections in River of Cradles.

I joined them together as best I can, corrected some mistakes and filled in some gaps.

There was an image map behind the map that allowed you to move your mouse over a building to get a description of what is in the building or allowed you to click on a building to go to the New Pavis Locations Page.

However, this map has now been taken fown, following instructions from Moon Design. If I have the time to make a new image map for the proposed image, then I might do so. However, this would take several days and would assume that the map is not removed. Given Moon Design's track record regarding removing files, this is not an assumption that I would like to make.

The email that I received is shown below. I make no judgement over the email, but have complied with its wishes.

 

From: Jeff Richard 
To: Simon Phipp  
Cc: Rick Meints ; Neil Robinson  
Sent: Friday, 7 March 2014, 16:48
Subject: New Pavis map

Simon -

Re: the New Pavis map you have up at: http://www.soltakss.com/newpavis.html

We've got a pretty laid back Fan Policy, but we do ask people to please comply with it:
You may reference the names of Glorantha things, institutions, places, people, deities, and concepts from our published products, provided you make it clear that these are our marks.
You may reference plots, storylines, language, and events from our published products in campaign journals, play-by-post or play-by-email games, internet discussion groups, or your own blog or website.
You may use text or artwork published on the Glorantha website at glorantha.com, unless a page specifically states that the text or artwork is not to be used. You may not use artwork, including maps, that have not been published on the website, although you may create your own interpretations of material presented in our artwork and maps (as long as these are original interpretations and not simple copies).
You may use those maps located at the Gloranthan Community Map Page. 
You may use the covers of any of our products. Product covers may not be cropped, color adjusted, edited, distorted, or modified.

Putting up the Pavis map from the RQ2 Pavis Book (the rights to which are owned by Moon Design) and then putting your copyright on it is not exactly complying with the spirit or the letter of the Fan Policy. 

Please take down the map you have up at http://www.soltakss.com/newpavis.html and instead use the map that we have put up on the website for just that purpose (along with a statement that the map is copyright of Moon Design):

http://www.glorantha.com/docs/map-of-new-pavis/

I know you put that up on your website a long time ago, but let's make this comply with the policy (especially since it is not very hard to do).

Thanks in advance -

Jeff

-- 
Jeffery A. Richard
Creative Director
Moon Design Publications

All information in this email transmission, including financial and numerical information, is strictly private and confidential, and subject to change, correction and completion. If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender and delete the email and all attachments immediately. This email (including any attachments) may contain confidential or privileged information or both. If you are not the intended recipient, any reliance on, use, disclosure, dissemination, distribution or copying of this email or attachments is strictly prohibited.
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3 hours ago, goldenwheeldancer said:

Back in the good old days people on BRP Central could babble on about whatever they liked without being asked (rather aggressively) to stop.

Is BRP Central now policed? 

As far as I am aware, to the extent that BRP Central is "policed" it basically boils down to:

1. Violating other people's intellectual property. For example, don't post unlicensed adaptations of a Hollywood studio notorious for litigation.

2. Hijacking threads to talk about unrelated subjects (please just start a new thread).

That's about it.

5 minutes ago, Baron said:

http://www.soltakss.com/fanpol01.html

OK, now I'm going to bed.

"Now that Glorantha is on a high, Issaries seems to be turning its back on Fan-based publications and seems to want more official material. Since I know of at least 4 people who have stopped producing non-Issaries material, I can see the wealth of material we have had in the past not being carried forward in the future. What will happen in five years when Issaries shoots itself in the foot, as has happened consistently in the past of Glorantha? Where will the fan communty be? Who will carry Glorantha when that happens? Somehow, I think the answer will be: Nobody. The fan community has carried Glorantha too many times and this Fan Policy may well be the thing that kills off all support for Issaries and Glorantha. In my opinion, it is a mistake."

That was from 11 years ago. And was a fan policy from Issaries (which no longer exists), not Moon Design, and not Chaosium. And a fan policy that Rick and I in fact were responsible for gutting and later ending.

On March 14, 2016 at 10:08 AM, M Helsdon said:

The activity of cattle raiding has a long tradition - it wasn't just practiced by the Old Irish, but appears in the Mahabharatha and in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes : 'Born with the dawning, at mid-day he played on the lyre, and in the evening he stole the cattle of far-shooting Apollo on the fourth day of the month; for on that day queenly Maia bare him.' Cattle as currency is similarly fairly universal, including in some modern cultures.

Whilst the term wergeld is Northern European, the concept is far older: many of the penalties for crime in the Law Codes of Hammurabi, for example, were fines (when it wasn't just death).

I fear you are seeing things as Northern European when they were far more universal activities - for that matter, some cultures continue to engage in cattle raiding, and they aren't Celts. Relatively recently a cattle-raid in east Africa left several hundred people dead.

For what it is worth raiding of cattle, sheep, and horses were common amongst the Navajos, Apaches, and Spanish (and later American) settlers in the US Southwest. This is hardly a Northern European thing.

Gang - I am going to delete messages that are completely off-thread. A discussion of RQ's Design Notes is not the place to discuss modern socio-political issues unrelated to the game rules.

18 minutes ago, Jon Hunter said:

So the differences between rome or venice and the mid alps would be good comparisons?

Yes. Or between Thessalonika and Sofia.

This is superb Martin. I love it.

24 minutes ago, Jon Hunter said:

The reason I asked was id always imagined a temperate climate, so visually a northern European look worked. If its closer to a mountainous Turkish climate or high altitude palestine the re positioning of visuals may make more sense to me.

The distance from Karse to Boldhome is pretty similar to the distance between Venice and Merano or Innsbruck. Nochet to Boldhome is pretty similar to the distance from Genoa to St. Moritz. And I view Esrolia as being humid sub-tropical like much of northern Italy, Sochi, or coastal Bulgaria (or Savannah, Charleston, or DC - but a LOT closer to real mountains). Dragon Pass is further inland and significantly higher (pretty much all of Dragon Pass is above 2000 feet). Thanks to the Rockwoods, it is where coastal Kethaela meets continental Peloria, but things get really screwed up by the dry and warm Urox winds from the east.

I also suspect that in Storm Season, we alternate from cold wet (snow) weather from the north, with dry warm weather from the east, with warm moist winds from the southwest. Making things a mess.

Dragon Pass is coldest in Dark Season, with most precipitation in Storm and Sea Seasons. Fire and Earth seasons are hot, Sea Season warm. Storm Season is warm one day, then cold the next. Then warm again. And like in any mountainous area, how wet or warm it is depends on what side of what mountain you are. Frex, west of Mount Rainier is a rain forest, but east gets quite dry.