Austin

Well this has taken me much too long (and in all odds, will continue requiring more time than I'm happy with), but I've uploaded the first text from Part Two of To Hunt a God. This is a "beta" release, still awaiting final edits, then graphic design + artwork. https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/382256/To-Hunt-a-God?affiliate_id=546342 The update is 15 pages, and includes 13 short encounters. It is, as promised, free to everyone who has already purchased To Hunt a God. You should find the additional PDF in your DriveThruRPG library. While written for this adventure, several of these encounters are also, hopefully, worth stealing for use elsewhere during your campaigns. 😉 Material ranges from stern Aldryami to wily tricksters, moral choices to monster mayhem. Hopefully, a little something for everyone in the Glorantha community. ❤️

I've only skimmed through the new PDF, but so far I'm impressed. I agree with Godlearner - this is a wonderful update to a good product.

Hey all, I've finally got some news to share about my next publication on the Jonstown Compendium, Part Two of To Hunt a God. You can learn more over on my site, but I'll give the short version here. Basically, my work's been delayed due to a mix of personal stressor, encouraging writer's block. But I've FINALLY finished the manuscript, and we're now entering editing and production. I'm hoping to release a quick-and-dirty layout of one chapter soon (about a third of Part Two). To everyone who has already picked up To Hunt a God, thank you, so much. I appreciate your patience. If you haven't snagged it yet, this year's Christmas in July is probably the cheapest you'll ever see this book. The price is going up once I start publishing Part Two material. (Reminder, Part Two is entirely free to anyone who buys now.) Finally, enjoy this piece of art by Yulia Zhuchkova! But if you're curious what it depicts, you'll have to click the blog link. 😉

It's Christmas in July on DriveThruRPG! Treat yourself to a buffet of Glorantha's happy little monsters. 😇 This bundle collects all twelve issues from Volume One of Monster of the Month. Beasties include: Cannibal Clowns! Zombie Ducks! Covetous Spirits! And of course, the terrifying Quacken!! At the low, low price of $14, this bundle nets a whopping 142 pages of content for your RuneQuest game (including a complete adventure).

Glorantha Book Club — 4/13/22 I recently learned about an unfamiliar complete Roman epic from a footnote, Statius's Thebaid, or "Song of Thebes." The translation I found by Jane Wilson Joyce was a brilliantly fun read. (Well, I'll admit "fun" might be qualified by "fun for a certain type of reader.") The Thebaid is a Latin retelling of the war between Argos & Thebes driven by the sons of Oedipus, Eteocles & Polynices. While before & after the Thebaid are fairly well known from the plays of Sophocles (Oedipus Rex, Antigone), the story of the Seven Against Thebes itself isn't one I was familiar with from standard lit/Classics readings. The book is filled with heroics and melodrama; super-human heroes overwhelmed by rages and passions, as the gods drive warriors on both sides to frenzy. There are few moral heroes here, and for me that was part of the attraction. A gory war story which views the war as a horrible evil, not as embodying martial honor. I think there's a lot of Glorantha and RuneQuest in this book. Maybe even moreso than the Iliad or Mahabharata! Well, for my Glorantha, anyway. On a trivial level, the combats feel somewhat RuneQuesty; there are many, many severed limbs, at any rate! 😄 But also the way Statius frames each hero's spotlight feels to me like "ah, yes, this is when they've cast Shield, or True Weapon..." and then you can also tell when the spell has run out. One hero is swallowed whole by the earth (Create Fissure), another wrestles with the local river-god after polluting him with corpses. Book VI, a series of funeral games at the epic's mid-point, could be grabbed nearly whole and used as a game session to honor a fallen character. Throughout, the humans feel, to me, especially human. I think it's because most of the heroes don't feel idolized. They're lamented. Like most epics, the gods are omnipresent even (or especially) when the humans reject them. They feel more active than Glorantha's gods, but throughout the tale their actions feel like the type of thing we'd expect in Glorantha when adventurers break social taboos. In particular, the Thebaid very much emphasizes treating slain enemies as people, not carrion (something I now plan to remember for my own players). A lot of the stories in Glorantha have a basically positive "spin." Sartar's pacifism, Lunar equality, Orlanth's honor & heroism, Ernalda's generosity. But we're entering the Hero Wars, and that means a lot of people are going to die. That thought was in my head through much of the piece. It's a brutal, sorrowful, unnecessary war, and it's a war which spawns more war, and yet more still in the following generation. The Hero Wars can be seen this way. An adventurer from 1625 ST might, by the end, feel very much like Nestor in Homer's Illiad; an old man who has seen terrible conflicts for his whole life, and yearns hopelessly for more level heads to prevail. The Seven Against Thebes was just one of many such conflicts for Nestor. I imagine the Dragonrise, or the Battle of Heroes (1628 ST), might be looked back on as the opening salvo in a similar way.

Sounds like that's the source of the confusion, then. Because the Prosopaedia was highlighted and identified as a full-length hardcover, the announcement made it seem like the Prosopaedia was getting an independent release prior to the full Cults of Glorantha.

To be fair, I didn't say it was a good choice - just that my players did it. 😉

I've played some RQ3/RQ3-ish (lotsa house rules), and more recently RQG (with varying levels of house-ruling; currently attempting to play "Rules as Intended" for good or ill). Some things are genre/setting/GM expectations. That's the whole "can you kill Gunda/Harrek/Rurik Runespear?" debate. Personally, I'm soundly in the "Yep, take the fight to 'em" camp. Doesn't mean it'll be easy. I generally tell my players, "the meta-plot of King of Sartar is going to happen, unless YOU do something about it." I don't see much point playing a game where you can't impact the world - and one way players like to impact the world is by being utter bastards. For the most part, I'm interested in keeping skill%s under 200. Without magic mods, anyway. I think you can do lots of cool SuperRuneQuest stuff without them, and also without saying God Plane/Hero World is "skill / 5" or whatever. I think the big factors in getting skills that high, from what I've read in this thread, are: How often are you playing? an 8 hour session once per week gets a hell of a lot more done than a 4 hour session once a month. How many experience checks can be gained at once? How often do you roll experience checks? Sometimes, it's relevant to have an "intermission" in the plot where the adventurers have a few days of rest, because they've all gained experience in their relevant skills. This incentivizes them to go out and do more risky things to gain experience, instead of trying to resolve the adventure in a "safe" way. My games have gone from low to mid-power. Our previous RQG campaign ended around mid-power. I have a friend who has played a very long RQ3-ish campaign, still ongoing, which is definitely a high-power game. RQ combat is fun when it requires tactics and/or strategy. Tactics being in-the-moment decisions using what magic you have on hand, and strategy being how you and the other players make broader choices about skills & magic learned in order to keep yourself alive. The more magic you have, the more fun RQ combat is. Magic is what gives you a variety of things to do. High-level combat is fun because you have a lot of choices you can make, giving you many ways to tackle dangerous situations. Getting an attack percentage into the hundreds temporarily is hard, but not impossible. Easiest way is to borrow the entire party's POW Storing crystals/Magic Point Enchantments, and cast one huge Sword Trance. In my last campaign, the Humakti broke 1000% this way - over 100 MPs spent. I described it as being roughly like "grinding up the Death God and snorting him like coke." It was a life-changing experience, but very very effective. A way to defeat or survive high-POW entities is by augmenting the POW v. POW resistance table roll. My players defeated Gloomwillow (TPP) that way, with a special augment using one of their Runes when she cast a big spell at them (exact spell excised because spoilers). If you're POW 18 against POW 30, a successful augment effectively increases your POW by 4 points (+20%). A crit, by +10 points. This isn't a sure-fire guarantee, but it's another tip which helps mid-game adventurers start reaching their late-game options (like frequent DI, heroquest boons, and so on). Don't underestimate Earth Shield. Earth Shield is huge, especially against Kaiju-type enemies. 15D6 dinosaur attack bonus? Bonk. Sorry, I cast Earth Shield this morning. I'm not sure what RQG's rules are, but in our RQ3-ish game, big foes could still deal damage through Earth Shield via knockback - basically, no damage goes through, but you're still knocked around like a bowling ball because that giant was really, really big. My friend basically went questing for a heroquest boon just to be immune to knockback, because it was one of his few weaknesses. The attrition game becomes more fun when the players have partial control. Time to recover magic points, to rest up, needs to have consequences. What happens during the adventure while the adventurers are recovering from their most recent ordeal? What happens to the McGuffin, for example. The players need to know their choices have consequences. The attrition game also becomes fun when roleplaying is added to it. Getting that feeling of being worn down, out of resources, trapped, scared, and desperate. Of course, that's true for any RPG. I think it's worth reiterating here, because at all levels of RQ combat resource attrition is relevant. If you want to test-drive mid-game combat, I suggest running a one-shot (BWT's Stone and Bone would actually be great for this, it has a combat I think would work well) with "old" new RQG adventurers. There's a sidebar where new adventurers start with additional skills and - importantly - Rune points. Testing it out is a good way to get a feel for how the game plays. Elementals are super scary, especially for weak opponents. A medium or large air or earth elemental typically one-shots non-Rune Master opponents (and can definitely give them a run for their money). Large earth elemental deals a ton of damage to all of a normal human's hit locations, simultaneously. And if they survive that, they start suffocating underground. Fun stuff. If you're an aspiring Rune Master, get your elemental into a Binding Enchantment or POW Storing crystal as soon as possible. It significantly reduces the Rune point cost to summon it. Plus, elementals are a decent source of MPs, because when summoned they don't really use the magic points. Trouble with a big elemental with big POW? Summon it, then ask your local priest (POW 18) to use Command Cult Spirit to stick it in the binding. 2-point spell, 40 L. The priest can use an hour or so of ritual practices to add +30-+50 to their roll, without all that much time increase. This is something every single player I've had, who has access to elementals, has prioritized. At most levels, RQ combat is really swingy. The attrition especially comes in from multiple combats, not really as often from long fights. Experience players are paranoid. Fuck with them, strange sounds, illusions, being purposefully vague, etc. Encourage paranoia - it keeps players alive. The "Teleports behind you" tactic is popular in my milieu. My friend has a special ability to do so I believe 1/day, and reserves it to open boss fights. Stack your spells, then ambush and try to erase someone. Preferably multiple someones. I've used a Multimissile'd Javelin exactly once, and whoo boy, that was fun. Absolutely obliterated my target. Felt bad for my GM. Spirit magic buffs are hard in RQG compared to RQ3, because they last 2 minutes (10 rounds) instead of 5 minutes. When I played RQ3-ish, my character was a Knight-Sorcerer. During combat, I thought about who the strongest opponent was, who I had to prioritize. We spent a lot of time thinking about movement, thinking about flanking. Ganging up on someone, while seeing who could hold off others. Sorcery buffs cast beforehand helped a lot. In RQG, Boon of Kargan Tor fills this roll, as Hresht mentioned. Disrupt and Befuddle are very cheap, and very important. Demoralize too. Pretty much everyone in groups I GM gets their hands on one of the above. Often Disruption + one of the others. Befuddle takes someone out of the fight. Disruption's important because that's how you bypass heavily armored foes. Lots of little pings, if you don't want to wait for a crit or call down some Rune magic. You have to think about what you can do, and what your friends can do. A shaman with Distraction is really helpful, because spirit combat is a reliable way to get rid of many warrior-types. As a front-line warrior, I focused on killing the dude in front of me, and calling out how I needed support. Sometimes that was healing my broken leg; other times, that was telling the Yelmalion to stop shooting me in the goddamn back. An important strategic aspect of mid-to-high level RQ is how you spend your POW. POW is a resource, and if possible, you want to stay relatively low so you can earn it more easily. 13's the sweet spot in RQG, because then you get +5% to a bunch of skill categories, and a 40% chance to improve your POW on a POW Gain check (if I'm not screwing up the math - I'm getting pretty sleepy haha). Early on, spend it on Rune points. Rune points are your "awesomeness pool." It's important that each adventurer has a spirit magic spell which lets them try to fish for a POW Gain check, even if they're not a super magical character. Enchantments after, if you're buddies with a priest willing to cast them. It's a big bonus in RQG that someone else can offer a lot of the POW, and that not all the POW needs to be sacrificed at once. Linked enchantments help flexibility. Linked enchantment + Multispell lets you put that short-term spirit magic on the whole party, easing up your buff-and-charge time. By the by, the types of stuff my friend's group plays through now is usually D&D/AD&D long adventures. Some highlights include Tomb of Horrors and Tomb of Annihilation; they're starting Storm King's Thunder soon. When he GM'd our RQ3-ish game, we ran a lot of similar stuff. Dungeon-crawls in RuneQuest are a blast. They aren't the gameplay style currently being pushed by Chaosium's publications, but I think people should try it. Really fun stuff, scary and dangerous, but that's what makes the game exciting. I suggest browsing the D&D 5E collection Tales from the Yawning Portal. It's got a lot of good stuff, and I've survived several of those adventures in RQ. Starting point for conversions is Modifier × 5 = percentage. Some house rules we've used, which I think are cool and honestly we really struggle to play without: Multiple experience checks: You get checks based on your highest success during an adventure: 1 for normal, 2 for special, 3 for a crit. I haven't been playing with this rule (and I think it's offset somewhat by how huge an RQG skill category modifier can get compared to RQ3), but my players constantly ask for it back. I think I'll re-introduce it during the next campaign year. Or, perhaps during heroquests as a treat. This is multiple experience checks during the same adventure. Hero Points: Basically, extra lives. You get less and less, the more skilled the adventurer becomes. This was helpful with RQ3-ish, but I haven't really felt the need for them in RQG. They were nice in RQ3 because the starting point was much lower. Currently, I've decided to give my group as a whole (rather than each adventurer individually) a small number of hero points, because the adventure I'm playing has some Phippian (parallel to Lovecraftian) tier stuff. Magic Point replenishment: You recover 1 MP per hour, instead of your POW over 24 hours. Just a quality-of-life improvement, really. I don't know that it impacts the game that desperately, just makes MP replenishment less fiddly.

I just finished reading The Making of the Ancient Greek Economy by Alain Bresson, and I want to babble about how that might relate to Glorantha & the Hero Wars. So I'm gonna do that, and none of you can stop me. 😛 I found the book interesting, but I would only tentatively recommend it to folks who are similarly over-the-top nerdy about the ancient world (such as Jeff, Martin, Ludo - looking at you, Mr. Spreadsheets - Joerg, and myself). It is, after all, a book making an academic argument about the role of market economics within the ancient world (esp. the Athenian Empire, and the Hellenistic period). Beware - Here Be Mathematics! Fairly readable, but not something I'd recommend to a broad audience. But screw all that, going into detail's probably not helpful or interesting. I'd rather muse on Glorantha while staring at the book's reflection. What are some of my takeaways? As I've generally suspected, Archaic/Hellenistic Greece doesn't seem like a good cultural model for Esrolia or the Choralinthor region. A major factor is climate. Esrolia's harvests are much more stable than, in particular, the harvests in Attica, which drove development of the Aegean World. Problems demand solutions. The silver from the mines at Laurion was more important than I anticipated. Now, a military historian is going to see history as battles, and an economic historian as economics; but the thesis that Athens's mines at Laurion were the "engine" which developed the Aegean region makes sense to me. Transitioning from the ancient world to the mythic world, this makes me wonder "Where's the silver come from in Glorantha?" A mission to wreck the Red Emperor's silver mines - ruining Lunar trade - feels like the seed of secret missions. Or, establishing a new source of value for any faction. This takes on a mythic cast when I remember that metal is the leftovers of gods. How do poets talk about silver, and it's celestial associations? (In RQG, Moon; personally, I see it as the "celestial feminine.") Heroquest to kill a Star Maiden, and establish a new silver mine? Or, find the mine (her corpse), then quest to ally with her and have access to the mine? Free her from dwarves living in her left shin? It seems like Nochet and Esrolia have an analogous relationship to Athens and the Black Sea. Grain goes into the big city, and the big city creates stuff to trade back to the farms. The challenge is that Athens has Laurion, whereas I'm not sure what Nochet has. It's not clear to me how the cycle of trade got started in Nochet. In 1625, the engine keeps chugging because that's just where you go. But what started that process? What began the magnetism in Dormal's day? Given Esrolia's general uber-prosperity, the Great Winter must have hit even harder than I've generally felt. I might explore this with a flashback adventure sometime. Or, just exploring Esrolia strategies and experiences more deeply during that time. It feels to me like the notion of "A failed Esrolian wheat harvest" is colloquial for "the impossible happened." My brain wanders in this direction because in ancient Greece, strategies for scarcity/famine drove a huge amount of economic activity, and also regulation (Ex: in many city-states, it was illegal to export grain). Perhaps the general "flow" of economics is silver from the north (more dead celestial deities in that area?) down south for goods created by artisans living off Esrolia's grain surpluses. Goods go north, silver does Stuff. Maybe people come from the west to trade for said silver? And Dormal just made it easier. This could lead to another economic element in the Hero Wars - the Red Emperor goes a-conquering because of a massive trade deficit in silver. What I'm thinking of here as a terrestrial parallel is the economic pressures/silver deficit which contributed to British colonialism in India. I suspect the Esrolian grain surplus is locally productive, not internationally productive. This is because central Genertela is not the Aegean ocean (shocker, eh?). Transport of meaningful quantities of grain is slow and cumbersome, mostly overland. Possible exceptions for the other former Sixths, along Choralinthor Bay. I don't see Esrolia feeding Sartar, Tarsh, Maniria, etc. That's all at the moment. If more thoughts burble to the surface, I'll post 'em. What have y'all been reading?

Two artists I work with frequently on the JC are Ludovic Chabant (@lordabdul) and Kristi Herbert (I don't think she's on BRP Central? But her Beer With Teeth conspirator @Diana Probst is). Katrin Dirim also does great work, although I haven't worked with her personally (yet, I hope!). No clue if Katrin's on here, either. Finally, I've also had a good experience working with Alexandre Gauthier (also unsure if he's summonable). I don't know what any of the above's art schedule currently looks like. Over on the JC Creator's group on Facebook, there's a "creators helping creators" resource spreadsheet, which could be worth checking out too.

Assuming a city god is basically a big wyter, I think this text from page 286 of RQG is interesting and probably relevant: So I imagine some sort of magico-logical Rube Goldberg machine kept running off the locals' magic points feels on-theme. Maybe the hoi polloi give the thing a "name," but its engineers know better.

Just throwing my voice in to concur with everything Nick has said; his numbers are spot-on for my own experience. I aim a little higher on my price-per-page (at the $0.20 mark on my longer stuff, like Treasures of Glorantha), but that's also because I like pretty pictures and want to fill the pages with them. I suggest budgeting based on 100 sales, and then everything after is just gravy to slather onto the art budget of your next volume. On the topic of art, budgeting, etc., the most important cost is a good cover. Good covers sell books.

I enjoyed my 1-on-1 games of RQG testing To Hunt a God, but it was really fun having a full house in my session yesterday. I've missed it. I'm rebooting my Esrolia game with Chaosium's "The Smoking Ruin," and plan to expand the "dungeon" portion with John Lawson's Secrets of Korolstead. My group loves a classic 80's/90's dungeoncrawl. I'll post notes on traveling from Esrolia to the Smoking Ruin after my players have done the trek themselves, but TLDR the distance is a little longer, but most of the encounters en route still fit in well. We've got a few players who are new to Glorantha, which is also a lot of fun. One expressed he felt intimidated by both the setting and the game's complexity. He's playing a Lhankoring scribe from Lunar Tarsh, so kind of jumping in the deep end. His core concept is "cryptozoologist." I love it. During the opening scene of TSR, the performer Treya seeks someone from the crowd to help complete her performance. I told my player he knew the story, but a different version of it. Then, I invited him to tell the table what that version was -- whatever he said, would be true. I think it helped.

As far as I know, this is accurate. The PDF of Moon Design's "Glorantha Classics" series is available, but the most accessible physical copies are the "RuneQuest Classics" softcovers. That's the editions I have on my own shelf.

That's how I think about it. It's "Great Ernalda" in her innumerable, multifaceted expressions. The way I play it, few Esrolians worship Ernalda directly; rather, they worship one of her expressions - mechanically, this is a subcult of the Great Ernalda cult - based on what facet of the great Jewel of Ezel shines most brightly in the worshiper's vision. The only temple in the world which can possibly encompass Great Ernalda is Ezel, where the boundaries between the Middle World and the Land of Myth become so blurry even Lhankor Mhy needs to find new spectacles. Even Nochet isn't sufficient. I'm pretty sure that, in my Glorantha, this is a question in the category of "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" Not 100% sure that's the case, but my gut says Yes. (Any claims that this way of viewing transcendent, splendiferous Ernalda is analogous to how the Aeolians worship the Invisible God through his/its lesser manifestations is, of course, ludicrious.)

They might have a personal record somewhere, but I don't think so. I've heard a number of stories, but I think it's mostly oral. There's no public description of the game, as far as I know.

I don't know for sure, but I have a friend who has been playing in the same game for about 15 years. His father started GMing this campaign with my friend, his brother, and a few friends when they were starting high school. Same characters, too.

😄 Very accurate. It's useful for justifying "this weird thing breaks the rules," hah.

Speaking only for my Esrolia, she's one of the few Lunar deities who have continued to be worshiped after the Red Earth Alliance was given the boot. After the Siege of Nochet there was a wave of civil unrest, which mostly led to Lunar icons being torn down, and citizens of the Red Empire being thrown out of the cities. In the city I've been playing in/writing in, there was a one-year ban of foreign worship of the Lunar gods, to purify the community of the strife stirred up by the Red Earth Alliance. A few nobles got knives in the back, someone got eaten by elementals, and there was both physical and economic prejudice toward those who continued to venerate the new gods. An important distinction between Esrolia & Sartar, in my Glorantha, is that the Red Goddess's claim to the Middle Air is not inimical to the local religion; it merely seeks to supplant one of several husband-protectors. And some of the Grandmothers like the idea of Doburdun - the "obedient storm" (I think?) - being identified with Barntar, the Loyal Son. Though, no one has yet successfully proved this identification in a major ritual. One significant exception to the general mistrust of the new gods is Etyries, for reasons similar to what you've mentioned. I don't think of her much as the "daughter of Issaries," but I do feel that because of the matriarchal supremacy in the region, there's a tendency toward liking the Red Trader. She's the only Lunar goddess who was accepted into my city's pantheon of "city gods," and her worshipers weren't subject to religious persecution (although the common folk probably didn't make a distinction between worshipers of Etyries, the Seven Mothers, Yanafal Tarnils, etc.). Issaries is still the more powerful cult - in particular due to the massive Issaries market in Nochet. In my Esrolia, Etyries was pretty much unknown until the Lunars conquered Sartar. I haven't explored what Etyries worship really looks like yet, in my city. I know that Issaries is worshiped by the local merchant guild, the Fat Women. It's led by a female Rune Priest, and I assume somewhere between 60% and 70% of the local worshipers are women. It's a small cult, focused more on internal trade, and providing support for the traders and caravans which come through the area. Most trade is between the Esrolian city-states, not international (that goes out of Nochet or Rhigos). I imagine that in a hundred years, the Etyries and Issaries cult in my area will have synthesized. Probably adopting the name of Etyries, but with a system of worship which looks like Issaries. The daughter story will get played up, and emphasized within Ernaldan traditions. After all, a major part of Ernalda's claim to sovereignty is that she is Asrelia's daughter. A similar myth can be developed here, to explain how Etyries is the true master/mistress of trade, who was taught by her devoted father, and then exceeded him. I don't know if this hypothetical Etyries of the future is still associated with Moon worship. (And of course, that assumes there's still a moon around to worship!)

Thanks so much for the kind words! I have fun with words sometimes. 😄 Thanks for summoning me, Bill! 🙂 This idiosyncracy is due to Liberator's Illuminate ability, Freedom from Truth and Lies. Since you asked, I'll let y'all in on a secret which I couldn't figure out how to make publishable quickly enough to fit into the issue's deadline:

Off the cuff, I think the more interesting bit would probably be how the hell Trickster got his hands on the damn thing in the first place. Cuz let's be honest, if anyone is gonna start that chain of events, of course it's gonna be the Trickster. Where would the One True Shield come from? Why are gods fighting over it? In what ways is it, like Death, an omnipotent, terrible divine force? Dammit, Ludo! Rabbit holes unto rabbit holes!

I concur with most other commentators in this thread that shamanism isn't inherently opposed to urbanism. I think it might also be worth making a distinction between shamanism (the magical practice where holy people awaken a spirit half, the fetch) and animism (the belief that the world is basically alive, and made of many spirits). There's a lot of "squishy" overlap here, and also between animism and theism. I basically see the difference between animism and theism as the answer to the question, "Why does the wind blow?" Theism: The wind is Orlanth's breath. Animism: The wind is one of Orlanth/Kolat's children, an independent spirit. Note that these perspectives don't necessarily contradict one another. And more importantly, they don't exclude the alternative. It's always living-air-stuff involved. I tend to conflate and blend a lot of animism/theism in how I think about Glorantha, and that might not necessarily be consistent with Chaosium's presentation of the setting. Fair warning. In my Esrolian experimentation, I've created a very rough divide between animism and theism through "class" boundaries. This divide is explicitly artificial. Basically, the way I see it is that the "sophisticated" urban elite of my city look down their noses at folks who run around everywhere talking to spirits, unable to accept that 1) those spirits are just smaller manifestations of Great Ernalda/one of her Husband-Protectors/etc., and 2) those who can talk to the Great Deities are those with the right to rule. This extends to ancestor worship, because if Ernalda is one of your ancestors, that's a reason why you have the "right" to rule her lands. (Of course, Ernalda is many, many peoples ancestor, so local authorities usually pick a more recent ancestor to justify their claim.) I see animism where I write as being rural not because of "untamed, natural landscapes" but rather "less centralized magical authority." Esrolia is densely populated, even in its "rural" countryside. Animism is useful to people in that area, because it has a greater focus on the here-and-now, the spirits of my farm, my grandparents. Shamans are useful because they aren't necessarily tied to a temple; they can actually come around and heal my child on her sickbed. They don't appear as obsessed with urban politics and wealth (this is false, but widely believed by my rural tenant/semi-free farmers). I also tend to see spirit cults and shamans as being more individualistic and iconoclastic; this perspective is likely at odds with "canon" Glorantha. I see shamans that way because I experience shamanism as a sort of "build your own cult." The shaman negotiates with various spirits, based on what magic they need. This then translates into the community supporting the shaman's spirit cults based on what the community needs, and what the shaman can provide. I do believe that some shamans maintain spirit cults which are mostly selfish, by using other magics and powers to provide to the community. The "cost" for, say, using Cure Disease might not be in silver, bread, or beer, but rather in magic points and attending ceremonies on the shaman's behalf. Worshiping some strange spirit once a week isn't a bad trade-off for getting your children healed when they're ill! Especially since IMO most gods don't really care about spirit worship so long as it doesn't directly interfere/oppose the god's domain. These concepts and ideas are all very much a work-in-progress. Especially in their most important expression: how to meaningfully integrate them into my RuneQuest game! 😅

Multiverse Isekai Glorantha Battle Royale it is, then. 😉

😄 The more Glorantha I write, the more I find myself telling "canon" to go fuck itself. It's generally been a comfortable feeling, and I'd encourage the same from other authors. I don't know, off the top of my head, of any major JC internal retcons. The nearest thing I can think of is the Sandheart remaster - but as that implies, it didn't change any "facts," was more a polish and expansion of material. My own To Hunt a God shouldn't retcon Part One as published, but I already know that Part One will need polishing and tweaking to weave it together with Part Two. Just sort of the nature of the beast. I try to be internally consistent, consistent with the Guide, and then nibble away for inspiration from anywhere else. TBH as much as I bluster, I do spend a fair bit of energy trying to be consistent with what Chaosium publishes, but I do have a few sneaky ideas in mind - which will see daylight eventually - that probably don't fit with the current presentation. No one will stop you from updating and changing your product. Anyone who had access to a prior version, will continue to have access to that version of the book(s). If you published a retcon in, say, four years, I would suggest not taking down the prior edition, but having both versions of the digital file available for customers to choose which they find most useful. I would also suggest not creating a Print-on-Demand (POD) edition until you're confident you won't want to revise the text. POD's a chore, and trust me, you won't want to do it multiple times. That sounds weird and cool as hell. I definitely think you should just go ahead. Don't worry about Chaosium's schedule, or you'll be waiting forever.

Lookie what just showed up in today's mail... 😄 https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/380469/Tomb-of-Palu?affiliate_id=546342