Austin

Congratulations!

To Hunt a God has been out for a few days now. That means there's some folks able to drop a rating or review, who haven't done so. Shame! Wicked little Glorantha fans who don't share their thoughts get haunted by Sesmanché the Traitor, y'know. (That's Hrunda's spirit of reprisal.) But seriously, feedback's super helpful, if you can spare a few minutes. I try my best to look at what people like, and what they don't, when planning how to spend my writer time. I want to make content you'll love! 🐒

It's a monster of a "small monthly supplement," for sure. Thanks for trucking it out with me! I'm really, really proud of this release. I hope it helps folks do lots of Glorantha gaming in the new year.

To Hunt a God is now available! Many thanks to everyone who has supported Monster of the Month over the last two years. Your support is deeply appreciated. You can get the final issue here.

@Bill the barbarian and I have been burning the late-night oil on layout and revisions for To Hunt a God. Final stretch! 😄 Take a peek at the ToC—I promised that this issue would be 'monstrous' even though it includes just Part One of the adventure, and I think I'll be keeping that oath… Total pagecount is looking to be somewhere over 60 pages, I just don't have the final counts locked down quite yet for the ToC. Maybe a bit more than the comfy guess of 30 I had upthread. Which, by the by, would still have been my longest issue.

I hope everyone's having a good Sacred Time with their families! It's Friday, so I have another preview to share from To Hunt a God. This week, it's the cover! Illustrated by the delightfully deranged @lordabdul, the cover depicts the great monkey god Hrunda, confronting a band of imperiled adventurers deep within the magical Old Woods north of Esrolia. My co-conspirators and I are still chugging away, finalizing the text of Part One. It's exciting as always to finally be putting text into layout, discovering how it meshes with the book's artwork. We look to remain on pace for Part One To Hunt a God to be available on December 31st, with Part Two releasing as a free update sometime in 2022. (Sorry, but I'm not willing to commit to a date just yet 😉.) Even as a partial release, Part One's looking to be over thirty pages! So never fear, this month's release is plenty monstrous.

Calling on Chalana Arroy to do a little thread resurrection, because I've been reading another book I feel other Glorantha folks may enjoy… I'm currently working my way through We, the Navigators: the Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific by David Lewis. It's a fairly readable description of how Pacific Islanders continued to navigate from island to island, beyond sight of land, during the 20th century. The book cautiously extrapolates how thorough the navigating arts may have been in the past (especially around the point of European contact) based on what survived into the 1960's, when the author interviewed and sailed with indigenous navigators to study their traditions. This puts the oceans of Glorantha into my mind, due to the book's connection with the pre-industrial world. How would the Wolf Pirates make their circumnavigation? How do the peoples of the East Isles navigate their archipelago? And so on. The detailed use of stars to map their way across the waves, the sensitivity to the swell patterns of waves, and so on, all help my brain slowly imagine a worldview with fewer Western abstractions. The methods of the navigators aren't just about getting from island to island; they present a cohesive cosmological view of their world. Even outside of a context like the East Isles, I feel the description of celestial navigation could still be relevant for games around Dragon Pass. How does one know when to turn landward toward Corflu? Which star does one follow to cross the Mirrorsea to Karse? And so on. We, the Navigators also helps remind me of how important the heavens are to many ancient cultures. It plays an important role in how people experience time. I think we sometimes skim past this as a way of experiencing the world, because we interact with it through abstractions like the Theyalan calendar, whereas our adventurers might know when holy days approach from when a constellation crosses behind Kero Fin. I feel the sky or heavens are sometimes dismissed as "a Solar thing," but the celestial clockwork is an important part of everyone's life, even if they worship the Storm or the Earth as the supreme deity.

One element I'm loving about the production process behind To Hunt a God is getting to justify a real art budget again. Most issues of MOTM are too short for me to commission art—this month's is not. It's been an absolute joy working once again with several artists I admire. This illustration depicts Pelnor Lackheart, a merchant-turned-adventurer of House Delargara who seeks to reverse his clan's ill fortunes. Pelnor is one of several non-player characters who answer the Call to Adventure alongside the players in the titular adventure of this finale mega-issue. I can't wait to share it with you all. "Pelnor Lackheart" is by Laura Galli. You should check out more of her work here.

For those who are interested, The Tomb of Palu is now out from Menagerie Press. It's available on PDF from DriveThruRPG, and I'm told should have a softcover coming out in the near future. (For those who want way-too-much insight into the horrors of Print on Demand, go skim Nick Brooke's JC thread over in the RuneQuest forum 😄.) https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/380469/Tomb-of-Palu?affiliate_id=546342

I'm tracking notes from my own read-through in a Google doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TNoroK03aPKqpUi0VMJno_VQytvy77UOeqVKeMQEIHk/edit?usp=sharing I'll mention in a new comment when I make significant updates. I've currently reached "Pottery" in the A Bronze Age World chapter.

It's Friday, which means I've got another preview from MOTM's final issue, To Hunt a God. This illustration by Armazém Fantastico depicts a monkey spirit, one of the cult spirits of Hrunda, God of Bluepaw Monkeys. A longform description of that animist religion is included in MOTM #24. Suitable for adventurers and non-player characters alike, this Beast and Illusion Rune deity is worshiped by the talking bluepaws which inhabit the Old Woods, and monkey-souled Esrolians. Hrunda's magic lets his human-shaped worshipers transform into monkeys, and lets his monkey-shaped worshipers communicate with their ancestors. He is a Friend of Aldrya, and a Mischievous Thief. You can learn more when To Hunt a God releases on December 31st.

To Hunt a God is now available IN PRINT on the Jonstown Compendium! Issue #24 of Monster of the Month will be the final issue of this series. This issue's going to be monster-sized to give the series a proper send-off—similar to last year's finale, The Quacken—including the longform cult of a monkey god, a description of the mysterious Temple of the Bones in the Old Woods north of Esrolia, and finally the full-length adventure from which the issue takes its name: To Hunt a God. This month, I'm going to post a peek inside each Friday to whet your appetites! Currently, I plan to initially release To Hunt a God on December 31st. We're hard at work revising and playtesting the manuscript, and I've received wonderful rough drafts of both cover and interior art which I can't wait to share with you in the coming weeks. Upon the wise advice of my editor, December's release will be Part One of the adventure, with Part Two coming in 2022 after additional revision. Part Two will be a free update for everyone who purchases the initial release. First, you hear drums. Their hypnotic rhythm is carried through the canopy of the Old Woods by the dancing winds. You and your companions have walked many hours from the forest's edge. The musty smell of ancient loam fills every breath. As you near the temple, you notice every animal seems to travel the same way. A white mound stretches to the sky, reaching the height of the forest canopy. As you draw near, you see it is built from bones—bone after bone, after bone, a record of centuries of sacrifices to the spirits. The charnal remains from generations of sacrifice are piled nearly to the branches of the canopy. This is it, your destination; the famous Temple of the Bones, where Beast and Man together worship their theriomorphic gods. Some, like Yinkin and Odayla, are familiar, friendly entities—but, according to rumor, powers feral and untamed are worshiped here as well. Celebrants drum in rhythm with bears stamping their paws, as a choir of shadowcats yowl their melody. And hundreds of monkeys chatter in the trees. Watching your arrival with their large black eyes. The Temple of the Bones is an important holy site, which serves as a major temple for several animist religions in the region. It sets the stage for Part One of To Hunt a God, the Festival of the Monkey King. Adventurers might venture into the Old Woods seeking a shaman to teach them magic or exorcise a possession, or they might seek the Temple in order to make starlit sacrifices to the spirits of nature. Some entities worshiped here include Hykim & Mikyh, the Horned God, Odayla Bear-father, and Grandmother Earth. It's protected by an old, grumpy Bear-Person shaman, and the ancient wyrm which serves as its wyter, whose body is built of ten thousand bones.

November's issue of #MOTM is now available! Maybe check it out if you're taking advantage of Black Friday discounts? 🤔 Burning Engines are a rare and dangerous protector of dwarven catacombs. Mostali technicians bind spirits of fire within lifeless hulks of metal, creating immortal guardians capable of roasting pesky adventurers. This RuneQuest supplement describes three "species" of burning engine, new sorcery spells for Lhankor Mhy adventurers to command a burning engine of their own, and an adventure seed which pits players against a fallen star driven mad by The Dwarf with the pain of its binding. About this Series: Monster of the Month is a series of new bestiary entries for Chaosium's RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. In addition to statblocks and behavior, most entries will include supplemental detail and advice for gamemasters and/or new adventurer options for players. This one's a little on the lighter side, because my co-conspirators and I are hard at work on producing an extra-large series finale next month. It's gonna include a longform cult, the description of the Temple of the Bones within the Old Woods north of Esrolia, and a full-length adventure using that setting. I plan to share more - and hopefully some art, too! - next Friday.

I hope you enjoy. ❤️

Currently, I've got somewhere around 50-80k words of random notes, but not really anything I'd call 'playable' 😛 Apologies! Concepts I've been working with include: Attending a faire with the Aldryami (I've played this & enjoyed it) hunting magical stuff in the Old Woods (this December's MOTM finale will use this theme, btw) angry tenant farmers foistering a tax rebellion raiding those upstart Longsiland EXPLETIVES. murder mystery revolving around lost HeroQuesting secrets (I attempted to playtest this one, and my players ruined it by casting Resurrect 😞) Secret cults, etc. Perhaps the adventure An ancestor worship festival where elders are possessed by ghosts, and the adventurers have to stop their grandparents bodies from getting killed in a centuries-old feud. Drama festivals, where the play the adventurers are participating in transforms into a heroquest (don't mess up, or the whole community will laugh at you) The water under the city has gone foul, and the adventurers have to venture into the Undercity to find out why. The adventurers have to find a hidden cult of Eurmal the Thief whose robberies of foreign merchants are embarrassing the city Grandmothers. Follow-up: the adventurers have to persuade the cult's spirit that no, they don't want to worship it (no matter how cleverly it blackmails them). Off the top of my head from the Jonstown Compendium, I believe The Pendulum & the Pit is set in "any urban environment" but especially with Nochet in mind. I don't know if it's of a length appropriate to one-shots or con-style scenarios. I know that's not "largely ready to play" scenarios, but I hope the lump of ideas might be helpful nonetheless. 🙂

I've got the full series on my shelf, and they're great. Definitely recommended, if you're considering POD stuff to pick up.

Mm, I might need to bump this up on my reading stack, then. 🙂 I've got a copy of the RQ Classics reprint on my shelf, but haven't got around to reading it yet (nor Pavis: Threshold to Danger). As someone who doesn't have nostalgia-glasses for the 80's, I was pleasantly surprised at how well Trollpak held up to its hype. It says a lot to me that someone who likes that era, but never ended up playing Griffin Mountain, is impressed with it.

In one of my old games, it was my sorcerer comrade's goal. He planned to use the silver halo of soul stealing to turn a well-statted slave into a soulless automaton, slap a create familiar on the handsome, brain-dead hunk, then cling to his back like a horrible twisted gremlin. Never quite reached that point, but we did have a few soul-zapped rock lizard pets when the game unfortunately stopped. Or same create familiar idea, but with a herd man bought from traders returned from exotic Prax. We were using a few house rules.

Thank you! 😄

I am so excited to share that a D&D adventure I wrote is being published by Menagerie Press! It's currently live on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter, where you can back and help fund the book. The Tomb of Palu is a mythic adventure where 1st-level adventurers explore the tomb of a forgotten god. It's low level, but high stakes—your actions can change the cosmos! If you like my Jonstown Compendium stuff for RuneQuest, I bet you'll like The Tomb of Palu too. My basic pitch to the publisher was that I'd write them an adventure with RQ's themes, using the 5E system.

I may have made this same joke before, but the idea wasn't mine.

I haven't had too many unusual non-human species played in my campaigns, yet. I've had one player play a trollkin, twice. The first time I let him pick his caste, and he chose to be a food trollkin (he liked the idea that food trollkin would be "no specialness" mode). After that one died, he rolled up another, and I told him he had to roll his caste—food again. Both of these characters were among my favorites because the trollkin were just awful little gremlins that screwed everything up. Also, the first had like 5 CON, and max SIZ, so we declared that it had been being fattened, like veal. And that was morbidly funny when the players bumped into trolls in the Big Rubble for the first time... An important point to remember for making trollkins fit into a group of human adventurers is that their lot is almost always better with humans than with trolls. After all, most humans aren't too keen on eating a scrawny, foul-smelling little monster. This "No, I won't eat you" promise can earn you the trollkin's loyalty for the rest of its (short) life. We also had a morokanth, once. He was entertaining because the player decided that his Hate (newtlings) Passion was fixated on how tasty they are. So he was smacking his lips alot, and kept teasing the trollkin about being dinner.

If you're interested in learning a bit about how The Salt Man came into being, I wrote a blog post about exactly that. It also includes some bonus material which was cut from the original version of this issue, including a rough map of the Dead Place, and the 1st draft's Treasures of a Forgotten Time table.

October's issue of Monster of the Month is now available on the JC! The Salt Man is a creature which should be impossible. It is the birth of a barren womb. It is the seed of an impotent sire. It is dryness and drought, a walking extinction which pretends to live. This issue of MOTM describes a Praxian horror, its legends, the rites performed to appease it. About this Series: Monster of the Month is a series of new bestiary entries for Chaosium's RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. In addition to statblocks and behavior, most entries will include supplemental detail and advice for gamemasters and/or new adventurer options for players.

I'm delighted to share that September's issue of #MOTM, Jallupel Goodwind, has earned its Copper medal over on DriveThruRPG! As a small way of saying thanks, here's a glimpse at October's issue: The Salt Man. I'm aiming for an earlier release than usual, so it'll be available for Halloween weekend games. 🙂