Jane

19 hours ago, prinz.slasar said:

Yes, If someone stays with the RQG-Line and the few still official HQG books [Red Cow Campaign; Guide To Glorantha] the matter is quite simple and not confusing.

With RQG, Chaosium did a very good job so far, to keep Glorantha simple and straight forward. Anyone who wants to mix different RQ/Glorantha versions does it at their own risk. Be aware!

Or to put it another way, and one rather more relevant to anyone but newbies, the three shelves or so of Gloranthan material on my shelves can all be used together, as later things (RQ3, HW, HQ) gradually built on and expanded others, with the few suggested horrible clashes (all female Wind Lords vanishing because Greg was an oblivious idiot) being firmly squashed at the time. The new RQG not only clashes, but apparently does so deliberately, so we won't even be getting errata to put things right as we used to (remember the people who repeatedly failed to read KoS and got the date of the Bat at Whitewall wrong?). So, choice between one new and rather expensive book, or the last twenty years of development? Shame it has to be a choice, but it is, and it's a no-brainer.

21 hours ago, MOB said:

Not at all! HQG can be easily adapted to RuneQuest - in fact, the RQG campaign I am playing in at the moment is using The Eleven Lights.

 

And I'd say that adapting RQ to HQ is even easier, since RQ needs lots of detailed stats, and HQ doesn't. HQG needs even fewer.

15 minutes ago, JonL said:

It's in the Dragon Pass section of the Guide to Glorantha. 

From the accompanying sidebar:

"Kallyr Starbrow: This heroic Orlanthi is a king in her own right, not by marriage. She is dressed similarly to Hofstaring, but wears a decorated bronze cuirass. Kallyr does not wear a helmet, but shows off her long red hair. On her brow is tattooed a large golden eight-pointed star, giving off its own light. The tattoo holds the magic of a star and is clearly the source of her power (and name)."

And is therefore wrong. She's got a crystal embedded in her forehead.

Incidentally she is most definitely female and proud of it, and if there's any doubt at all, in the Sky Ship scenario we get to meet her son. 

3 minutes ago, HeartQuintessence said:

And the Great MOB has graced my thread.

Man this is really making me want to take a look at Glorantha a LITTLE closer.

guess i am buying more The Coming Storm and Eleven lights, and maybe that new book that just came out for runquest.

Is it too weird to want to mix HQ and RQ together?

HQ and RQ are just rule systems. Tools to help simulate existing in Glorantha. I also use "Hordes of the Things" for battles, we've used "The Pool" in the past, there's 13th Age... All just tools. What matters is the setting, and the story.

Coming Storm is wonderful, and I still say Thunder Rebels would help you no end.

6 minutes ago, MOB said:

Would love to see that!

That's two specific requests. I'll see if I can find it. Once up, I'm sure people will look at and and suggest ways it can be expanded and improved.

25 minutes ago, AndreasDavour said:

The little phrase ""What my mother's sister told me", the female viewpoint on Sun County life" made me very curious, as I find Sun County a very cool place to have adventures. Do you have that text around @Jane or do someone else?

I'll have it somewhere. Not even sure if I ever finished it. I'll go hunting.

32 minutes ago, Eff said:

It would be fairly simple to interpret, on the basis that Sartar, an Issaries follower, was only a king due to being King of Dragon Pass and was Prince of the Quivini otherwise (and also on the slimmer basis that the Trader Princes of Maniria are also Issaries worshipers), that "king", "queen", "prince", (and other unattested titles) refer to formal representations of a particular god, with "king" or "warlord" referring to Orlanth, "prince" to Issaries, "queen" presumably to Ernalda, and so on down the traditional ruling ring. The ruler of Sartar being the Prince would thus be a political statement about their peaceful, amicable intent in ruling.

Oh, nice! I'd completely overlooked the "Trader Princes" connection. And of course, Sartar himself was very much a Hero of Issaries. His descendants, somewhat less so... though possibly the cult of Sartar could be seen as a sub-cult/hero-cult of Issaries? Specialists in road building, and in getting people to work together.... sort of. Just don't ask about Salinarg.

And now I think about it, there we are back on topic. Female values. Getting people to work together, and building non-warfare things, probably with earth magic.You get good enough at female values, you get to be top ruler, even if you do have the handicap of a penis.

6 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Sorry about the thread-jacking. Time to start another thread, probably better in the RQ forum.

RQ? Why? This isn't rules-specific in the slightest, and in fact the next thing I was going to quote was from Thunder Rebels - HW. I agree that we're drifting somewhat, though. It does look as if the main problems female rulers have isn't their gender, it's the Lunars, and possibly excessively loyal tribe members.

7 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Barbarian Adventures (and subsequent publications based on that) name her the Queen of the Kheldon in Exile. (That means, unlike Leika who lost her title as Queen of the Colymar when she was sent to Exile (by whom, btw?), the Kheldon have not replaced her or her claim to the office as chief priest of the Kheldon tribal temple and wyter.

CHDP has her as "queen of the Kheldon tribe council" in 1613 (odd phrase in itself, but then Denseros wasn't Sartarite) in contrast to "Hofstaring Treeleaper, king of the Culbrea Tribe". Then in 1625 "they forged a new ring of Sartar. Kallyr Starbrow was named queen and warlord". Which still isn't either Prince or King. And then "Kallyr was queen of the Kheldon tribe in her own right". I'm beginning to think he or his translator was picking titles at random
 

But yes, the Kheldon seem to have been very stubborn and refused to give her up. Leika, sadly, lost the backing of her tribe: Kallyr didn't. Which implies a whole load of fun adventures as she tries to sneak back in to keep the tribal magic going. I should think about that. After all, while she could use her standard team(s) for the purpose, she'd be better off with people who aren't known to be Kheldon, aren't on the Lunar Most Wanted list (yet) and aren't known to be her associates. Like, say, some group of PCs or other....

35 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Really. "Prince" here is a shorthand for "Orlanthi king (or queen) ruling a tribal confederation", and Queen Kallyr describes the queen of the Kheldon tribe, whereas Prince Kallyr describes Kallyr as Ruling Queen of Sartar (as in Orlanth Rex ruling, rather than "married to the ruling king").

Consider the alternative "Princess Kallyr". Would you associate this with a ruler and military leader?

Depends on how into Star Wars you are

Seriously, though, we're being misled by the limitations of the English language, normally used to describe a very different culture. "Prince" comes from "Princeps", first among equals. Which still isn't an accurate description of the role played by the House of Sartar in forming and leading the "kingdom", but English simply doesn't have the right word for the job. Welsh gets closer, but that doesn't help much. In fact, describing Kallyr as Queen of the Kheldon is odd in itself: the role she's usually described as filling is that of tribal King. Back in the "Sartar High Council" scenario in "Wyrms' Footprints", she's described as "Chieftain(ess) of the Kheldon, Priest of Orlanth Thunderous. .... appears to be the next in line for the kingship after the present king dies." So not only is she not yet the leader of the Kheldon tribe (in 1613), the title she may get is King, not Queen. I think we simply have to assume that titles are in Sartarite (obviously) and the various translations into English have varied in quality, and never have access to a word that really carries the required meaning.

It's rather like looking at the leaders in Britain in "Arthurian" times - "kings" of various tribes can be identified, and then we have to look at who was getting them to fight together under one leader. "Dux Bellorum", among other possibilities, but one thing we can be fairly sure of is that whatever title "Arthur" held, it wasn't "King".
(Insert detailed and very knowledgeable rant by Chris Gidlow, I expect, but as a rough analogy, I hope this works.) 

8 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Indeed. I always saw this as Ernalda being the one really in charge, pulling the strings... there's a reason Earth priestesses are known for being scheming masterminds. It strikes me as a clever move to keep the loud, reckless bearded guy in the front, taking all the hits for you, and getting all the attention away while you do some more scheming.

Yes. It reminds me of a "joke" (too potentially true to be really funny) about Afghanistan. Under theocracy rule, women were forced to walk behind their husbands. After they'd been freed, it was noticed that they still walked behind their husbands. Asked why, they said "Land mines".

5 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Please take that discussion to the Call of Cthulhu area...  🙂

As note by @Jane, its clear that FHQ / Ernalda really run Sartar / Glorantha, all this talk about a missing female voice somewhat confuses me.

 

It's because we let the children men imagine they're important, when they're really just expendable. They're happier that way
http://www.jane-williams.me.uk/glorantha/stories/elbq.cfm
Read the last paragraph.

9 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

well, in that case the tribe....

Yes. The tribe as a whole has done well, with built-in self-correcting mechanisms. If someone comes out with some daft brain fart like "only men can be Orlanth initiates" plenty of people can and do point to the existing female Wind Lords and Priestesses of Orlanth Thunderous, both PC and NPC.

Also, you may notice that when I was pointing at good sources for female-based material, I was recommending male authors. We have a lot of good blokes around here, much more so than in the average RPG community.

Reading through this lot, a few more thoughts occur. The ambition of many Princes of Sartar, and of Tarsh, and of a few other places, is to be King of Dragon Pass. How do you do that? By persuading the Feathered Horse Queen to marry you. How did Orlanth become King of the Gods? By persuading Ernalda to marry him - well, to accept him as one of her many husband-protectors. The idea of "Orlanth is the King, and he has his wife's permission to say so" is no joke, it's hard fact.

35 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Now you are beginning to see the the madness to my method, I was hoping Jane and a few of the other great old ones (hint, hint) would get involved to demonstrate that the Chaosium has been doing it right (well righter, anyways) for a long, long long time!

Cheers

They may well have been, but that's two very different things. I am not Chaosium, and they are not me. 

3 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

I can totally imagine a female point of view when telling a variety of Heortling stories -- but sadly very few such stories have been told so far. That's what I hope/expect from material coming from @HeartQuintessence or @Jane if they ever publish something (unless they'd rather go with Esorlian stories or something else). I'd love to see, for instance, more adventures centered around Earth priestess activities, and some one-shot scenarios where the PCs are a couple of Vingan or Babeester Gor or Maran Gor characters with their entourage, out on some cult-appropriate mission.

Um, I've got a website full of material, all free for everyone to use. I used to fund my "Tales of the Reaching Moon" habit, and my "Hearts in Glorantha" habit by making sure I got as many "free authors' copies" as I possibly could.  How much more "published" did you want?
Earth priestesses? I'll give it some thought, but apart from the randomish additions to the novel, the next story I ought to finish is a continuation of "The Widow's Tale", with three female protagonists (two of them healers), a female viewpoint, and one bloke looking a bit lost, not to mention oblivious to at least half of the plot. (The one I'm finding rather more interesting features Kallyr age 18, being about as mature and sensible as you might expect.) Hmm, I wonder what an Earth priestess' view of Kallyr might be? Not all that flattering, I expect. I'll give that some thought.

Scenarios - I don't really "do" scenarios, except for at conventions, with pre-gen PCs. Don't see the point: in a campaign, everything's driven by PC backstory or decisions. But I did say I'd try to get "In Pavis Fair City" written up, and that's investigative, driven by relationships and erm..... spoilers. Typically female skills, yes.  I'm pretty sure one of the PCs is an Earth priestess, or senior initiate.

6 hours ago, HeartQuintessence said:

I know I have aagriculture & hunting as starting points. (seems easiest to work with).

Though I like the idea that  these hm...  Horned Does (because yes mixing imagery for a horned female deer as their Wyter, is just visually cool).

But where to go with it.

A red doe is Vinga's sacred animal  Oh, and it's does that retain antlers in winter, not stags, so Santa's reindeer are all female. There, random Xmas fact for the day

Seriously, I know there's a lot to take in, but the more I mused about this overnight, the more I realised that if you think Glorantha is male-default, you and I aren't in the same universe. I don't know what starting point you're coming from, but it sounds like RQ2, and we've moved on twenty years since then.

Thunder Rebels, for the Ernalda writeup: or rather, the Ernaldan half of the book. It's dead cheap anyway, incredible value for money. If you want to look at the warrior women, and the healers, then Storm Tribe, for Vinga, Babs Gor and Chalana Arroy.

Is Pam Carlson around over here? I'd know where to find her on Facebook, but I don't know if she's on this forum thing.

If you want to build an entire tribe (ambitious!) or just run a clan, go and buy a game called "King of Dragon Pass". That has you running a small and weak clan at the start of  the reoccupation of what will become the Kingdom of Sartar, and gradually building up to possibly form a tribe and marry the FHQ. It'll give you a good idea of the real, important, business of the clan  (crops, herds, healing, babies, magic, trading. Warriors are an expendable resource, not as important as cows.)

Actually, in Sartar, you don't want to try to build your own tribe. All the tribes exist, and are documented, if not in great detail in some cases. Pick one that's barely been touched and develop that if you like, but you'll be reading up scraps of the Resettlement Sagas to find out how they fit in without clashes, and that's a lot of work. Dr Moose (who again, I don't know how to contact on this forum, or even if he's here) did that for the Balkoth, you could talk to him about what's involved. I keep thinking about doing something similar for the Kheldon, and not quite getting round to it.

I know we're drowning you in fiction, but for some quick snippets, come Christmas, treat yourself to a series of micro-fiction on my website. A few years back (um, 12 years back - how did that happen?), I did a challenge to write a story for each of the days of Xmas, starting with a Partridge in a Pear Tree and carrying on for all 12 days. Thinking through, I'm not sure even one of them is male-default. Some have protagonists who happen to be male, usually because I was using existing NPCs, but that's incidental to the story.  http://www.jane-williams.me.uk/glorantha/stories/index.cfm

Is there a copy of the scenario "The Peace Process" online anywhere? Very much the female side of things, there.

5 minutes ago, Eff said:

I also have a blog/website for Gloranthan material, of which https://eightarmsandthemask.blogspot.com/2019/12/what-reed-woman-told-me-excerpt.html?m=1 is probably the most immediately relevant in playing with gender and womanhood. I also have a Vinga story there but it focuses on some specific experiences of womanhood rather than more generic ones.

Ooh... I can see me losing an awful lot of time reading that!

1 minute ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Having spent a third of my working like in kitchens; as a dishpig line cook charcutier, saucier and sous chef, I would say a man can do a women’s work quite well...

Thankfully such distinctions are wending their way out the extinction doorway in my lifetime, Yay! 

And of course both can do both. I also like cooking, sewing, teddy bears...

But yes, there are a few very odd people who apparently haven't quite caught on to this yet. I remember once being told in all seriousness that obviously any woman in RL who was in a male-dominated industry was hated and feared by all her male colleagues and would have to be lesbian as a result. Yes, this was in a Gloranthan forum. Mad. Delusional, even.

Thinking through other very female HQs I've seen online, there's one by a certain @soltakss that's very much worth a look. http://www.soltakss.com/unicorn1.html

Excellent site for many things, well worth a look around it

Thanks for the tag, Bill.

Lots to answer here.... let's start with the question that's so obvious I'm surprised anyone's asking it. "Can you be a Woman and still do things that are traditionally masculine?" I'm a wargamer, former engineer, and as part of historical reenactment, used to hit people with swords, and "man" a cannon. Will have to get back to shooting that longbow again sometime, I can still do that without needing working legs. Main career was as a programmer, with the first 18 years of that being in military engineering. Am I a woman? I'll have to get my husband to check, but he was pretty convinced last time we looked. TLDR: yes, of course you can!

My website hasn't been updated for far too long, but let me point you at a few potentially useful bits.

Ernaldan (or rather, Earth Six) initiation: http://www.jane-williams.me.uk/glorantha/marshedge/earthinit.cfm

The Lifebringer's Quest http://www.jane-williams.me.uk/glorantha/stories/elbq.cfm

RQ3 Vinga cult writeup http://www.jane-williams.me.uk/glorantha/vinga/index.cfm

Here's the Stories page, and a lot of them are about Vingans, or specifically Kallyr. http://www.jane-williams.me.uk/glorantha/stories/index.cfm

(There's also about half a novel about Kallyr and her friends at Whitewall lurking on the hard drive. I keep adding bits, but it's nowhere near finished yet)

and one about a young Esrolian Humakti may be of interest in this context http://www.jane-williams.me.uk/glorantha/stories/duel.cfm

The Secret History of Sun County is up there, but I don't think "What my mother's sister told me", the female viewpoint on Sun County life, ever went on line. I'll have to see if I can find it.

The other place you definitely want to look to find out more about Vinga is John Hughes' take on the subject. He pretty much took over Vinga where I left off, developing the role of Vingans in clan life. Have a wander around here https://myth-o-logic.org/glorantha/

For active not passive women, you'll want to look at Babeester Gor, of course.

Also, do you have access to Thunder Rebels and the host of Ernaldan subcults in there? You want to. https://www.chaosium.com/thunder-rebels-pdf/

After that, go on to Storm Tribe to find out more about Vinga  https://www.chaosium.com/storm-tribe-pdf/

Just now, soltakss said:

I would say so, yes.

You can point to an illustration of a weapon and show Players what it looks like, rather than explaining it. Want to know what a dagger-axe looks like? No problem, go to Page 49. Want to compare spears? Page 55. Swords? Pages 56 and 57.

I'm glad I move in the circles I do. Between us, we can usually pick one  up, and say "it looks like this". And if we want to know if a fancy move will work, go out in the garden and try it. But no, this probably isn't normal
Don't think I know anyone with a dagger-axe, though. May have to look out at the next reenactors' fair.

2 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Hey folks, someone might see something as expensive where someone else sees it as reasonable or cheap.

It depends on where people are from, what their jobs are and how old they are, amongst other things.

I have to remind myself every time I buy something that hardcopies don't cost £9.99 nowadays and PDFs don't cost £1.99. They should, but that was when I started RPGing, which was closer to Old Money times than now.

£19 for a PDF is quite expensive, as I am sure that Martin would acknowledge. However, for me, it is worth it. I bought the PDF after I bought the hardcopy, mainly so I won't break the hardcopy by opening it.

Yes, it's two factors: what is the author's time, effort, and expertise worth? and what proportion of my disposable income this month do I need to pay to get it? Looking at the first, that looks like a fair price to me: hard copy of small print runs is expensive, and for PDF, yes, that's a LOT of skill and time that I don't have and am happy to pay for.

But as a proportion of my disposable income? Never mind disposable, that £60 would be considerably more than my entire earnings this week, and other than a few crafting commissions, I'm living on savings till January.

2 hours ago, Dissolv said:

I knew that there would be someone dinging me on this 😞   It isn't a matter of cheapskatedness.

Fact of the matter, the larger works are much harder to read and work with in PDF format.  Nearly impossible in a gaming setting, actually.   I almost always have to print them out and bind them anyway.  That means that I am spending a lot of $$$ over the PDF in the first place to get a substandard product, just so that I can carry it with me, and actually you know.....read it, much less use it dynamically as a storytelling tool.  Even if just to use the pictures to show players not versed in Glorantha, or even just Bronze Age cultures and imagery.  Which most are not.  😞

There wasn't an option for print on demand, but I would have immediately jabbed it, even at $80.  That would have been a better value in my opinion.  Not bagging on the work the author did in any way.  I haven't even read it yet.  But I am totally, 100%, into dead tree versions for anything over say, 50 pages.  As an option, I mean.  

Even if you gave me the hard-copy free, and even if I was primarily playing face-to-face, I still wouldn't want it. Too heavy! No ctrl-F! For this one it might make sense, because I'll be looking at (and for) pictures, and they're harder to search on, but even so, if I want to physically hand some players a picture, I'll print out that picture when I need it. As it is, I'm absolutely happy to request Santa to take £25 or so from my Xmas allowance and spend it on the PDF, because what I saw of previews was detailed, well-researched, and generally wonderful. But £60? Not going to happen. That would send Santa over budget.