Austin

September's MOTM—from Diana Probst of Beer With Teeth infamy—is now available on the JC! Years ago, a Lunar Hero and a Wind Lord of Orlanth fought a terrific battle which led to their mutual demise. Buried together in a single grave, the mingled remains wove their souls together. Now this tormented ghost haunts the dreaded Valley of the Blight, in the lands of the Cinsina Tribe. In this issue's "mini-adventure," your adventurers will get to: Fight or heal the wounded souls of two Heroes Discover the secrets of their fatal duel Strive to restore the Valley's Fertility—returning its spirits to Ernalda's bosom! This short adventure is intended to provide one gamemaster, and four to six adventurers, with an evening of play. 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.

GAH!! Thanks for the sharp eye! 🙂 And thanks for summoning me, @Bill the barbarian. I'm sure it cost a few magic points! Looks like I did indeedy miss one. Hitting up Chaosium is your best bet right now to get a correction implemented, as they've got the files and the servers and all that fancy stuff.

August's issue of #MOTM is now available on the Jonstown Compendium! What’s the worst that can happen when you fumble the spell Summon Cult Spirit? This issue of MOTM answers that question with a species of Orlanth's disease-riddled relatives. The Bad Winds are umbroli deceived and corrupted by the goddess of disease, Mallia. They wield her magic to bully mortals across Glorantha into "loving" them with propitiatory sacrifices. About this Series: Monster of the Month is a series of bestiary entries for Chaosium's RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. In addition to statblocks and behavior, most issues include supplemental detail and advice for gamemasters and/or new adventurer options for players.

There's another new playtest blog up over on my website - I totally spaced and forgot to share it here for the BRP crowd. My bad! 😄 It looks like I've missed one or two previous posts, as well. I'm collecting all the Sylthi/Esrolia stuff I share on one webpage here, for ease of access. We recently finished our second adventure, set in Earth 1625, in which the adventurers traveled to a fair attended by the elves of the Old Woods (a part of the Arstola Forest - MOTM #17, Ehnval Tallspear, presents a little of my vision for the location), and multiple other cities in the Twin Rivers area. The elves aren't very happy about some recent decisions in Sylthi's internal politics, and the players have to resolve it by helping them out by hunting an unknown critter.

This month's issue of Monster of the Month is now available on the Jonstown Compendium! In this month's issue of MOTM, our attention returns to the smaller scale of Glorantha. Petty spirits provide unusual explanations for in-world phenomena: Bookwyrms plunder libraries, Children of Daga cause liquids to evaporate, and Child's Fortune presents mischievous imaginary friends to children. Each of these spirits provide texture to the mythic world of Glorantha by both subverting, and supporting, our terrestrial "common sense." They're suitable for use by both gamemasters and player adventurers alike. About this Series: Monster of the Month is a series of bestiary entries for Chaosium's RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. In addition to statblocks and behavior, most issues include supplemental detail and advice for gamemasters and/or new adventurer options for players. Bookwyrm illustration by Laura Galli

It's been a while since I've skimmed my copy of Hamilton's Mythology, but I'd reckon Burkert's more dense, not less. It's a book of history, not mythology. There's loads of good stuff, but like I said above, I wouldn't call it "accessible." Maybe a good translation of Hesiod? (And if someone has a verse translation you'd recommend, could you let me know? 😄)

Nonfiction this time, which to be fair is most of what I read nowadays. If sharing my reading list seems interesting, I'll continue doing it - if not, I probably won't bother. I recently finished re-reading Walter Burkert's Greek Religion. To my understanding, this is one of the "core texts" for the study of Classical religion. When I was in college I mostly studied language and philosophy - I didn't get to Classical culture and history until I began reading on my own - but I think Burkert was the text assigned for the Greek Religion course. Why the Greeks? Isn't Glorantha "Bronze Age?" Well, nominally. Beyond my personal fascination with the Classical period, I feel Greek Religion is relevant for Glorantha nerds because the most important element of Gloranthan religion remains present: the omnipresence of the divine. Further, I find studying the Greeks helpful because we just know so much more about them. More texts survived, than from the "proper" Bronze Age religions of the Near East. For me, the most useful takeaway of this re-read was the notion of "civic religion" in the Classical period. Burkert does a good job emphasizing how varied the typical Greek's worship was. It's a polytheistic nuance which I think is often skipped over in Glorantha, because our roleplaying characters generally have fierce dedication to one or two deities. Refusing to worship the city's gods - refusing to be a lay member, basically - wasn't just a religious matter. It was a political matter, too. Currently, I've been working on the city-cult of my Esrolia project, and I found thinking about "civic religion" this way helpful. Creating a distinction between "city gods" and "foreign gods," and then exploring how they interact. I like using Greek elements in Esrolia because I see them both as feeling like sophisticated urban cultures, with the city at the heart of life. Of course, this parallel also works for the ancient cities along the Tigris and Euphrates, with their tutelary city-gods, and constant squabbling amongst one another for dominance. I'm not sure I can recommend Burkert to the average Glorantha fan. I find the plethora of details in his book inspiring, because it excites my mind's generation of Glorantha details. How are sacrifices made, and why? What do city festivals look like? How does traditional ritual and current myth/belief intersect? And so on. But, if you're not somewhat familiar with Classical literature already, I think this book would be more confusing than helpful. Burkert makes pretty regular reference to the historians, the philosophers, and the playwrights, without necessarily using supporting summary. The book's accessible for the history enthusiast, but I bet it'd be a frustrating read if you're not familiar with the works of Herodotus or Plato. TLDR: Greek Religion is useful for My Glorantha, because it provides accessible details of actual ancient religious practices which often aren't available for older civilizations.

Awfully risky of you, giving away your True Name to God Learners like that...

I've finished the sequel, The Wall of Storms, and it's also good. If you like the first, I think you'll like the second too. For Glorantha fans in particular, it continues to play with some cool stuff in the setting's mythology. I don't want to spoil too much (although it's not really a major plot element), but basically exploring the relationship between the gods and their worshipers, and how each impacts and perceives one another. There's some potential God Learner takeaways.

So far, I'm enjoying it. Liu's continued use of summarization to focus on the broad strokes of years, rather than moment-by-moment details, drives a quick pace.

A novel I read recently, which other Glorantha fans may enjoy: The Grace of Kings, by Ken Liu. It's a secondary world fantasy set in the archipelago of Dara, inspired by tales from the Han Dynasty of China, with additional elements from Polynesia/Oceania. The story is a sprawling epic focused on a warrior and a trickster. It's fairly low-magic, especially compared to Glorantha. The term "silkpunk" has been used; wuxia warriors, grand airships, and Imperial bureaucracies make it a good fit. I think the book's focus on the importance of stories, and how the gods subtly (or sometimes not-so-subtly) shape the world of Dara, will make Glorantha fans feel right at home. I've recently started the sequel, The Wall of Storms. An early myth in the book, about how the years got their totem animals, is what inspired me to share the series. Oh, and there's straight-up a heroquest at one point. I won't say more, for fear of spoilers.

NEWS: I'm really proud of the quality of these Rune Master issues of MOTM, but they take a lot of energy to produce. They're a big piece of why you haven't yet seen a volume 2 of Treasures of Glorantha! After a lot of thought, I've chosen to scale back the next few issues of MOTM, hopefully so I can create other Glorantha stuff. While I'll probably end the year with another long-ish issue (like The Quacken, last year), at the moment I'm not sure I'll continue MOTM into 2022.

You want a monster? I've got a monster! June's #MOTM is available now, featuring one of the most badass lady trolls I've had the pleasure to know. You can meet her over on the Jonstown Compendium. Plus a magic item inspired by Zorak Zoran's version of the Hill of Gold, a mantis-obsessed teenage troll, a new subcult of Gorakiki the Insect Mother, adventure seeds, and mook stats for Grungnak's minions!

Treasures of Glorantha was released a year ago today! To celebrate, both PDF and Print editions are on sale for the next week. With the rise in premium color Print on Demand on DriveThruRPG coming July 1st, this is the cheapest Treasures will be for a while. If you've been waiting to pick ANYTHING up on the Jonstown Compendium, now's the time!

Seconded? Thirded? In either case, I'm also excited to see more products like The Pegasus Plateau & Other Stories from Chaosium. That's a good book of adventures, and I hope a similar book centered on Jonstown will do well for y'all.

AFAIK @AndreJarosch is correct. I believe all spells in the core are reprinted in the RBM. I haven't verified this personally. I considered trying to make a Master Index to Rune spells, including the JC, but not including anything older than RQG, with notes for what spells can be found where. I ultimately decided not to, because I don't want to commit to Nick's Sisyphean effort to follow up on every new JC publication.

I've finished putting together a set of reference charts for the Rune spells published in The Red Book of Magic. This play aid is free, but was kind of a pain in the neck to produce. If you find it useful, I'd appreciate if you toss something in the "tip jar," or consider picking up another product from Akhelas. Includes B&W tables of all the RBM's Rune spells organized by each Rune, and also a total alphabetical list. You can get the charts here.

And now Ehnval's up! I've edited the OP with the link. 🙂

Edit: Ehnval Tallspear is now available on the Jonstown Compendium! Coming this weekend, on the Jonstown Compendium... (or maybe Monday, if I get lazy)

How much overlap in usefulness is there with @soltakss's Secrets of Dorastor? I've actually got both (managed to find my RQ3 Dorastor copy for somewhere in the 60 range, I think? Around a year ago) but I haven't taken the time yet to read each comprehensively. If the JC title covers similar ground, maybe that's simpler for Chaosium than to go through the process of making a reprint?

Author here, happy to hear it looks helpful! FWIW I'm working on a follow-up detailing generic Praxians in the same style, hopefully for sometime later this year. It probably won't be quite so price-friendly because 1) these are a bigger pain to produce than I expected when I started Heortlings, and 2) I didn't anticipate such a strong positive response to "bundle of statblocks." But it'll still be cheap, because I want it to remain accessible. My long-term goal is to create a similar product for each of the RQG core Homelands. "Regular people spirit magic" is interesting to think about when I've worked on generic NPCs. I find both Ignite and Extinguish come up a lot, because of the importance of firestarting in pre-industrial settings (especially among Praxians), and the dangers of fire when you cook on open flame in flammable houses. Likewise Vigor + Spell Extension for shamans is a cheap way to help someone recover from disease. For Rune magic, I typically assume almost everyone with access knows Bless Crops, Bless Animals, or similar livelihood spells to help offset a poor harvest.

Ah, but "points of POW" don't have a cost in the "casting spells" section of that chapter! (I'm not trying to sincerely, genuinely argue that's how anyone should play the game - just point out an amusing weirdness in the text since enchantments aren't actually one-use spells.)

Agreed. I'm hoping the GM's Guide or the Equipment book will have guidance, but TBH I'm not holding my breath. This is the starting point I use when pricing magic items, too. The 200 L per POW point comes about because casting Rune spells costs 20 L (RQG 406) and a one-use spell - in effect, costing permanent points of POW in the shape of RP - costs ten times that. Fun fact, technically most Rune enchantments only cost 20 L per RP to cast by Rules As Written, because the spells aren't one-use - you sacrifice POW to create them, but don't lose the Rune points used to cast the spell. Yes, yes, RQG doesn't have "rules," it has "guidelines," that doesn't actually happen in Glorantha, yadda yadda - I know. I just thought it was amusing.

The (hopefully!) final version of Wenkarleos is now uploaded - additions include printable versions of each NPC, general polishing, and a simple sketch of a Philigos Medallion by yours truly.

Yeah, the last week has been... interesting. I'm not done-done, but I'm glad it's out there and I'm not flailing at the deadline. Well, since you asked so nicely... For those who don't know, Bill's the editor on MOTM, and does amazing work polishing these up for your eyeballs. Y'all owe him gratitude beers if we can ever do conventions again.