Rick Meints

When I was writing my Upland Marsh articles for Tales of the Reaching Moon magazine my main sources of info were King of Sartar and an ongoing Q&A discussion with Greg Stafford. Back then that was pretty much it for source material to pull from. Fortunately, Greg had a fairly well detailed map of the marsh, with all sorts of named locations in it, based on his RQ2 campaign of the late 1970s.

Actually, I suspect you may have misinterpreted what I was trying to describe. I was trying to say that Joh Mith doesn't really use his Bargaining skill to achieve the "buy at half cost" results. When he is talking to hunters and such for pelts it's more a simple "take it or leave it" situation, and there are plenty of hunters willing to take the deal. That aspect of economics is pretty universal. In our world, game stores, for example, basically pay half price for the games they usually sell to customers at retail price. It's not down to any special bargaining power. It's the same in glorantha. Joh has a high bargaining skill, but that mainly gets deployed on big, high value transactions like buying a magic item, not his "here's a Lunar for that stack of pelts" deals. It reminds me of most episodes of the tv show "pawn stars" and the interesting deals made in their pawn shop. Lots of people come in and say "I want $1000 for this watch because it's worth $1000". The store staff politely point out that they mainly buy stuff to resell it. Thus, they can't pay $1000 for a $1000 item since there is no profit in that. They then offer maybe $500 and usually make the deal. If the seller wants way more, they usually end up with no deal. It's obvious some of the staff are quite good at "bargaining", but they still pretty much follow the half price rule most of the time and don't rely on their bargaining skill to talk down the price. I wholly support regional price differences. After all, I quoted them as existing for Balazar, where non-local goods are usually 2 or 3 times the prices they would be elsewhere, like in Dragon Pass, Tarsh, or the Lunar Empire. The rule of thumb I would adopt for any distinct region is to simply make a short list of which goods categories are plentiful (and thus cheaper) and which are rare (and thus more expensive) for that region. Joh Mith figured it out for Balazar. I'm sure Biturian did as well for Prax and Dragon Pass. I'd be tempted to just let any player character merchants do likewise.

I see that one person reacted to the above statement with the "confused" emoji. Moon Design Publications owns all of the RuneQuest/Heroquest/Gloranthan trademarks and related copyrights. Chaosium publishes all of those things for Moon Design via a license agreement. Neither Chaosium, nor Moon Design have any licensing deals or any business agreements with Restoration Games.

That is very likely, but ultimately it comes down to when the writing is finished and we have a complete manuscript in hand.

Here are my thoughts on Joh Mith specifically, and Issaries merchant caravans in general. While some care was taken to have Joh Mith's caravans make basic economic sense, Joh Mith, Zix Porub, Xigxag, and the rest of his crew were mostly written up to be interesting. They mainly provide opportunities for player characters to travel around Balazar and encounter lots of interesting things while working for Joh. My character for the Griffin Mountain campaign is called Ruhklar. He and his fellow adventurer friends worked for Joh Mith and ultimately travelled with him to Gonn Orta's castle before journeying on to Pavis. Joh travels once per year from Trilus (home base) to Dykene, which is a 75 mile journey each way. He covers that 75 miles in 4 days. Joh also travels from Trilus to Dykene, which is a 120 mile journey he makes in 6 days. Joh hires a group of 6 tribespeople and pays them the princely sum of 1L per day for the whole group. The best hunter in that group is usually the leader, and they hunt to feed their group while the other 5 carry bundles of trade goods or supplies. Joh mainly buys and sells goods that are not common amongst the people he is dealing with. He sells Balazaring goods like pelts, spices and feathers to his Lunar and Dragon Pass customers, and he sells imported goods the Balazarings can't make for themselves. Most of what he sells has three qualities: light, useful, and scarce. He generally only buys at half price, so when he sells something he usually doubles his money. Of course that is BEFORE taking into account his skill in Bargaining, which is 105%. He has a very good chance of buying low and selling high. In short, most Issaries merchants like Joh plan on doubling their money before costs. To cover his staff costs on his 8 days of travel time to/from Elkoi he needs to bring in 6L of profit, which is what he would make selling one bear skin or a couple of Sable pelts. His twelve days of staff costs for his Dykene trip can be covered with the profit from the sale of one Dwarven weapon. I also wouldn't be surprised if Joh makes money buying mules in Dragon Pass and selling them in Balazar, where the price is doubled. In general, I believe most merchant caravans work with that same basic "at least double your money" principle. Life on the merchant path is dangerous. SIDE NOTE: Mules in the RQ2 edition of Griffin Mountain cost 700L. Balazar, being rather remote, the prices of most things are doubled, or even tripled. When I played an adventuring Issaries merchant back in the day I had several additional beneficial sources of trade goods. If we killed people/creatures I was the one who would sell off their armor and weapons and such, often beating the prices in the rulebook. The same went for any creatures we killed if they had an exotic pelt. I'd love to analyze the economics of Biturian Varosh's caravan some day, but I don't want to ruin the magic that was Greg's wonderful storytelling. SIDE NOTE: A lot of the prices of certain goods and services in RuneQuest are intentionally high to help adventurers spend their loot.

What's Gloranthia? 🙂

Yes, there are a number of Pendragon things, old and new, in the works.

RQ1 debuted in June of 1978 and was totally out of print by some time in May of 1979. In all, according to company records, they printed 4000 copies of it at most. That means that less than 4000 GMs and their gaming groups played it for less than a year before RQ2 debuted in October of 1979. That was over 40 years ago. RQ2 really took the gaming world by storm in comparison. It outsold RQ1 within a year, especially when the boxed RQ2 set came out in October of 1980. RQ2 sold tens of thousands of units between 1979 and 1984 went it officially went out of print. I have only anecdotal evidence, but it is safe to say that the vast majority of people who stuck with the game they started playing in 1978 switched to playing RQ2 in 1979 or 1980. I have personally been to dozens of Gloranthan and Runequest themed conventions on 3 continents over the last 25 years. The only person I have ever met or even heard of that still plays RQ1, especially on any sort of basis beyond a nostalgic "one-off", is Frank Filz. Frank, I officially declare, as President of the Chaosium, that you are the "iron-man champion of RQ1".

What to submit solely depends on how much work on the stats has been done thus far. If only a few stats blocks have been done as some sort of test, then that could be submitted, along with a plan/outline for how to handle the rest of the work. If the whole lot has been done, then that could be submitted at the start. Regardless, we are absolutely not asking anyone to do a great deal of work before getting any sort of agreement or understanding as to how we should proceed.

Having such a stats book is possible, but no one at Chaosium has the bandwidth to write it, especially when such work is, as you say, "tedious". If a volunteer submitted it to us we could possibly make it available as an official PDF.

No need to speculate when I'm on these threads fairly actively, and usually respond when asked. 🙂 I have said this on other threads, but there is no rights issue with the vast majority of RQ3 material. If you look at the credits page of almost ANY RQ3 supplement your will see that it is copyrighted by Chaosium and not by Avalon Hill. Greg made very sure that they retained the copyright, and when he left Chaosium his part of the split was taking all of those copyrights with him. Moon Design Publications owns all the rights to RuneQuest and Glorantha, both in terms of trademarks and IP. So why haven't we reprinted more RQ3 product? It's just down to time and resources. We do not have electronic copies of any RQ3 material in a laid out form. Those layouts were all done as cut and paste until late in the life cycle of RQ3, and Avalon Hill deleted the layout files for whatever they had for the last books in the RQ3 line several decades ago. That said, a few RQ3 books may get released as "Classics", but they haven't even been started yet. To be fair, getting a copy of Dorastor, Sun County, and similar isn't that hard on eBay, and you probably wouldn't have to pay more than $30-$40 for any of them if you have a bit of patience. I know a few sellers have copies listed for far more than that, but those don't sell. If you are based in the US, feel free to send me your want list of RQ3 items you are looking for.

We are close to changing that situation for the Sartar/Sartar Comp/Pavis HQ books and the RuneQuest Classics line via POD.

While we did purchase Pendragon/Paladin and Prince valiant related IP/Copyrights from Nocturnal media, we did not purchase Aquelarre or any of their other properties. Our involvement with their other games is focused on order fulfillment only.

FULL Disclosure: I am hopelessly biased. This is not the first, nor the last time, I have responded to a question like this, and I am all too happy to provide my answer. It makes me recall a favorite movie quote of mine. Right near the end of the movie Almost Famous, musician Russell Hammond is asked “What do you love about music”, to which he replied “To begin with, everything.” That is how I would answer “I really want love Glorantha, please help”, and why I want to provide some help. Here is what I love about Glorantha...I was introduced to Glorantha in the late 70s, not long after the RQ2 rulebook came out. I mainly played D&D before that, usually in Greyhawk. I loved the poster maps in the World of Greyhawk supplement, but the world itself seemed rather two dimensional to me. It had lots of empires, gods, and heroes, but they were lists of names or places. They all were a convenience for the game and its mechanics, not anything you were tempted to explain or explore. Glorantha can be seen that way as well, but somewhere along the way there’s a subtle mental switch you are encouraged to flip that changes all of that. As you start to read more of Glorantha’s background, almost any aspect of it, it’s similar to what happens in the movie The Wizard of Oz. Everything switches from black and white to color. In Glorantha’s case, very colorful indeed.The world is more about history, myths, religions, societies, cultures and magic than it is about mechanics and statistics. A large number of games encourage players to write their personal back story, but Glorantha tends to inspire people to write about the world itself. The more that has been written about any Gloranthan topic, the more you can see, appreciate and enjoy its many facets. Empires can be seen as both good and evil. History created winners that also lost, and losers that also won. The creatures often have their own societies, desires, powers and limitations. For example, most Dragons are so powerful that even their dreams create reality. They don’t just sit in a small room (shown on a graph paper map) on top of a pile of treasure. The last time real dragons awoke, their hunger was sated by devouring the largest army ever assembled. Another example is the Trolls. They live in a barely functional society that has been cursed several times by mythical beings, yet they still live to eat, fight amongst themselves, wish to bring back the Greater Darkness, have quirky merchants, motherly priestesses, and berserk warriors. They don’t just wear scale armor and have big axes. Immortal Giants keep growing, and over the centuries they become so set in their ways and slow down to the point that they eventually choose to just sit down and become a mountain. Unable to care for their lively children, they place them in giant cradles and send them down a great river that flows to the ocean, eventually leading them to a great whirlpool that drains into the Underworld. The most prominent moon in the sky, the Red Moon, is there because an almost forgotten goddess was brought back to greatness by Seven Mothers, who fought against the existing deities that ruled the world. When the Red Goddess won, she clutched a great body of land and rose into the sky, forming a Moon that reminds us all that myths make reality if we believe in them enough.I’ve never played in any other game world that inspires such a large and diverse range of people to write such a vast, and often conflicting, body of work. Over the last 40+ years, the sheer volume of stories, songs, freeforms, scenarios, magazines, websites, discussion groups, and such that have been created to explore and expand it provide an almost overwhelming testament to the creativity and passion Glorantha inspires. The latest burst of creativity on the Jonstown Compendium only strengthens my belief, renewed as it is in this latest generation of newcomers (and some grognards) who share their thoughts and stories with the world.In the end, the most important question asked, and often asked, is "how to peel back all those layers?. My answer is not meant to be trite, dismissive, or anything other than liberating. Nobody knows all there is about Glorantha, and no one ever will. It is full of contradictions on purpose, sometimes to entice, and sometimes simply to remind us that such is the way of all things. We read and enjoy it via what we take from it. Nothing need be set in stone. The players and those wonderful GMs weave their own stories. The rest is just, well, the rest. That's Glorantha to me. Don't sweat the details. Use what you feel you and your players will enjoy in your game. Everything else has no purpose. Sure, it's possible that someone online might debate with you on how you "play in Glorantha". Chances are, at your table, unless one of the remaining dozen canonical grognards lives within 10 miles of you, no grief comes your way. To be fair, even those grognards are a mighty fun bunch, bless em. I've been a part of this wonderful community for 40 years. I look forward to the next 40, and more after that.

Canadian postage costs are not low, even within Canada, unless you are shipping from Ontario to somewhere else in Ontario. That sucks, but there's not much we can do about that. Canada doesn't have a wonderful media mail rate like the USPS does. I have no doubt that Amazon would charge far less, but Chaosium is not Amazon.

Yes, I have a few copies of the original in my collection. Chaosium reprinted it in their house magazine, Starry Wisdom, in the mid 90s as well. It's a cute little game.

I believe William Church is still alive, and I did sort of track him down, but haven't been in contact with him. I have tracked down a lot of other people to talk to them to gather stories before they are lost to the ages. I'm happy to share what I know.

I have uploaded the updated map to DTRPG. It will also be on Chaosium.com shortly.

I am working on updating the quality of that map. I have an original of it, and have scanned it in at 600 DPI.I'm just doing a bit of cleanup on it today.

I'm more of an Elder Thing than an Old One... The Chaosium has lots of books in the works, updated versions of classics, wholly brand new ones, etc. We hesitate to say much about many things in the works because of disappointing people who want it all "very soon" as opposed to "when we can get to it". For example, saying we're working on an updated Gaslight book inevitably leads to "when will it be done?".

I posted this a year or so ago. Please feel free to add to it. In the early days of RuneQuest, around 1975 and 1978, Greg put the names of a number of the WB&RM contributors and RQ playtesters as the names of cities and towns on the William Church maps of the Dragon pass and Prax boardgames. They include such places as Pimper's Block (Jeff Pimper), Wilm's Church (William Church), Jonstown (Bill Johnson), Tada's High Tumulus (Tadashi Ehara), Biggle Stone (Clint Bigglestone), Swenstown (Steve Swenston), Tourney Altar (Art and Ray Turney), Cam's Well (Cam Stafford), Hender's Ruins (Steve Henderson), Hendriki (Hendrik Pfeifer), and of course Duck Point. Duck Point was named by Greg's co-publisher of Wyrd magazine, Brian Crist. Brian was a huge fan of Carl Barks, author/artist of Donald Duck comics from 1942 to 1966, and inventor of most of the characters in the strip. ("I'm a big Barks fan too," said Greg, "Want me to list the characters he invented?") Brian wanted Duckburg, from the comics, but since the Air Pirates had just been successfully sued by Disney Greg was worried about the same thing happening, and changed it to Duck Point for copyright reasons, which was OK with Brian. Laca, "the city of brown air" derives from Los Angeles (LA), California (CA). It looks better shown in all caps, like on the Church map. LACA Naming stuff in honor of key players and contributors continued on other maps, like the wonderful map of the Holy Country found in the RQ Companion. Kenstone island (Ken Kaufer) for example. Nochet City got its name when Rudy Kraft asked Greg if he had named that unlabelled city on the map and he said "not yet".

Welcome to the forums CBK. Thank you for the wonderful information. Tadashi Ehara is an acquaintance of mine. He has largely retired from gaming, but he is still very active on FaceBook. He was the editor of Different Worlds magazine, but he was not involved with Tales of the Reaching Moon magazine, which was done in the UK. I'd love to hear more gaming stories from back in the day. I didn't really get connected into the Gloranthan/RuneQuest fan network until the early 90s, although I first played RQ back in 1979.

The Voluminous Pavis & Big Rubble companions probably exist in PDF format, but there are a number of things that would need to happen if they are to be available for sale again. Without trying to be pessimistic or negative, it's a bit more involved than Ian Thomson giving the green light. While these books were mainly written by Ian Thomson, he set up these projects as volunteer efforts. Almost all of the work, be it writing, editing, layout, and art were all done for "the love of the game" and were handshake deals. I doubt Ian can reuse the art and articles written by other people without their permission. Many of them would probably happily give such permission, but they still have to be formally asked.

There are no legally available searchable PDFs for White Dwarf magazine. There probably never will be. Alas, clear ownership of most of material is uncertain, and probably lies with the authors and artists of much of the material, and not with Games Workshop. That said, GW did try to produce an omnibus collection of the first 10 years of WD (1977-1987) and intended to make it available on CD-ROM. They pulled the product for legal reasons. It is similar to what happened with the Dragon Magazine #1-#250 set which was sold for a while and also pulled for legal reasons. Many years ago I was lucky enough to get a hold of the White Dwarf CD-ROM collection which had a limited release in Australia before being pulled from the shelves. It may be a pre-release promo.

Here's a list of RQ/Gloranthan related articles that were in Dragon magazine: Dragon #40, August 1980. Artifacts of Dragon Pass, Jon Mattson, page 26. RuneQuest artifacts. Dragon #51, July 1981. The Worshippers of Ratar, Eric Robinson, pgs 28-29. A Lhankor Mhy subcult with the rune spell Magic Resistance. Dragon #129, December 1987. A Sorceror’s Supplement, Michael DeWolfe, pgs 46-47. Twelve new sorcery spells for RQ3. Dragon #132, March 1988. Resourceful Sorcery, Michael DeWolfe. Power-gaming tips on how to use spells more effectively. Dragon #144, April 1989. When Gods Walk the Earth, Paul Jaquays, pgs 46-50, 55. A good article on the summoning of greater spirits and avatars. It is gateway in nature, although the tables for avatar powers, statistics, and weaknesses are good. Dragon #172, August 1991. Into the Spirit of Things, Michael DeWolfe, pgs 66-68. A collection of spirit spells and Divine magics. Dragon #206, June 1994. The Dragon Project, Sandy Petersen, pgs 16-18, 20. The background and history on a unique NPC dragon.