Heortland landscape

[davecake]

FWIW while you clearly need to map the deities etc from Sanctuary to Gloranthan equivalents, I don't think there is a strong reason not to otherwise use Sanctuary as a basis for Refuge. Lunar Empire for Rankan Empire (noting that Lunar Empire often really means the Lunar provinces, not the heartland), and Ilsig as the Heortlings, etc. 

I like the Order of the Blue Star as a small group of Blue Moon associated sorcerers - mostly because the we could do with a bit of interesting background for God Forgot generally, a very underdeveloped area compared to most of its numbers, and a Blue Moon connection makes sense.

[Jeff]

24 minutes ago, davecake said:

FWIW while you clearly need to map the deities etc from Sanctuary to Gloranthan equivalents, I don't think there is a strong reason not to otherwise use Sanctuary as a basis for Refuge. Lunar Empire for Rankan Empire (noting that Lunar Empire often really means the Lunar provinces, not the heartland), and Ilsig as the Heortlings, etc. 

I like the Order of the Blue Star as a small group of Blue Moon associated sorcerers - mostly because the we could do with a bit of interesting background for God Forgot generally, a very underdeveloped area compared to most of its numbers, and a Blue Moon connection makes sense.

Sanctuary is not going to be treated as the source material for Refuge in any Chaosium publication. Nor should it be. You can try to shoe-horn a 30+ year old out of print product which Chaosium long ago lost the license to, or you can come up with material that actually really fits the setting. And can actually be published.

[Jeff]

Just now, Jeff said:

Sanctuary is not going to be treated as the source material for Refuge in any Chaosium publication. Nor should it be. You can try to shoe-horn a 30+ year old out of print product which Chaosium long ago lost the license to, or you can come up with material that actually really fits the setting. And can actually be published.

Same thing with Midkemia's Carse. That is Raymond Feist's IP. We respect it as his, and don't try to shoe-horn it into Glorantha. You can do what you want in your games, but aren't going to publish material on Karse based on Carse. They are two very different cities with a very similar name. Like Babylon Mesopotamia and Babylon Egypt. Or any number of Alexandrias.

[davecake]

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

Sanctuary is not going to be treated as the source material for Refuge in any Chaosium publication. Nor should it be. You can try to shoe-horn a 30+ year old out of print product which Chaosium long ago lost the license to, or you can come up with material that actually really fits the setting. And can actually be published.

OR I could pick any of the many hundreds of locations which has only a paragraph in the guide. and choose to focus work on them, and leave areas with a fairly interesting and inspiring back story as a source of inspiration. There are many dozens of areas in the guide that are obvious allusions to literary sources. Why single out Sanctuary {and Karse) as being problematic because they are linked to gaming material in addition to literary?

[metcalph]

55 minutes ago, davecake said:

OR I could pick any of the many hundreds of locations which has only a paragraph in the guide. and choose to focus work on them, and leave areas with a fairly interesting and inspiring back story as a source of inspiration. There are many dozens of areas in the guide that are obvious allusions to literary sources. Why single out Sanctuary {and Karse) as being problematic because they are linked to gaming material in addition to literary?

Because Karse and Refuge are places within the core area of Dragon Pass, the Holy Country and the Wastelands.  It makes little commercial sense for those places which Chaosium probably intends to focus on to be defined by products that are no longer Chaosium's Intellectual Property.

FWIW I had had smile for a bit at the suggestion of respecting Feist's IP.

[Jeff]

1 hour ago, davecake said:

OR I could pick any of the many hundreds of locations which has only a paragraph in the guide. and choose to focus work on them, and leave areas with a fairly interesting and inspiring back story as a source of inspiration. There are many dozens of areas in the guide that are obvious allusions to literary sources. Why single out Sanctuary {and Karse) as being problematic because they are linked to gaming material in addition to literary?

For the simple reason that we don't have any right to do that. Any more than we have the right to use a map of King's Landing for Nochet.

[Joerg]

4 hours ago, Jeff said:

Same thing with Midkemia's Carse. That is Raymond Feist's IP.

Actually, that's Midkemia Press' IP, maintained by Steven Abrams. I contacted him a decade or two ago about use of that IP. While Raymond Feist is the author of City of Carse, there appears to have been a swap of IP allowing Feist to use Midkemia for his novels in exchange for Midkemia Press keeping the revenues on the Carse license (e.g. from the German translation/adaptation by VF&SF, who kept it in print through at least two editions, under the name of Corrinis).

 

4 hours ago, Jeff said:

We [...] don't try to shoe-horn it into Glorantha. You can do what you want in your games, but aren't going to publish material on Karse based on Carse.

Are you going to publish any material on Karse on a city-map or even house-to-house level? With Nochet and possibly Seapolis, you have two bigger fish to fry and in the queue.

I am not the only one with some extensive notes on Karse. Martin Hawley used Karse as the anchor point for his (unpublished) naval campaign for HeroQuest 1 (a hint of which is in Men of the Sea).

The basic concept of a citadel with an adjunct walled city is basically a slightly larger version of the new (RQG) Clearwine- (Which is a very different town of the same name compared to that in the HeroQuest material. And the cities of Sartar are likely to undergo a similar upgrade, only Pavis is likely to remain unchanged except by warfare.)

The main difference to Clearwine is that Karse is a seaport on the river estuary, and that it is the second city by that name, after the original citadel city slightly further upriver on the opposite bank had lost access for sea-going ships. (It isn't clear when exactly, and whether the Closing or the redirection of the Creek-Stream-River were instrumental in this relocation.)

 

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

For the simple reason that we don't have any right to do that. Any more than we have the right to use a map of King's Landing for Nochet.

There is a difference, though - no King's Landing map has ever played a role as inspiration for the Glorantha campaigns, and I doubt that there is a map even approaching the Nochet map in the level of detail.

[Jeff]

On 10/1/2019 at 1:05 PM, Joerg said:

Actually, that's Midkemia Press' IP, maintained by Steven Abrams. I contacted him a decade or two ago about use of that IP. While Raymond Feist is the author of City of Carse, there appears to have been a swap of IP allowing Feist to use Midkemia for his novels in exchange for Midkemia Press keeping the revenues on the Carse license (e.g. from the German translation/adaptation by VF&SF, who kept it in print through at least two editions, under the name of Corrinis).

 

Are you going to publish any material on Karse on a city-map or even house-to-house level? With Nochet and possibly Seapolis, you have two bigger fish to fry and in the queue.

I am not the only one with some extensive notes on Karse. Martin Hawley used Karse as the anchor point for his (unpublished) naval campaign for HeroQuest 1 (a hint of which is in Men of the Sea).

The basic concept of a citadel with an adjunct walled city is basically a slightly larger version of the new (RQG) Clearwine- (Which is a very different town of the same name compared to that in the HeroQuest material. And the cities of Sartar are likely to undergo a similar upgrade, only Pavis is likely to remain unchanged except by warfare.)

The main difference to Clearwine is that Karse is a seaport on the river estuary, and that it is the second city by that name, after the original citadel city slightly further upriver on the opposite bank had lost access for sea-going ships. (It isn't clear when exactly, and whether the Closing or the redirection of the Creek-Stream-River were instrumental in this relocation.)

 

There is a difference, though - no King's Landing map has ever played a role as inspiration for the Glorantha campaigns, and I doubt that there is a map even approaching the Nochet map in the level of detail.

The point is that we are not going to publish anything that bases Karse on Midkemia Press' Carse or Refuge on Thieves World's Sanctuary. Those are other people's IP and we will start fresh.

You are of course welcome to do whatever you want with Karse in *your* games. But if you want any of that material incorporated in any future publication, it can't be derived from "Carse".

[Jeff]

On 10/1/2019 at 1:05 PM, Joerg said:

There is a difference, though - no King's Landing map has ever played a role as inspiration for the Glorantha campaigns, and I doubt that there is a map even approaching the Nochet map in the level of detail.

Legally that is no difference.

[Joerg]

2 minutes ago, Jeff said:

The point is that we are not going to publish anything that bases Karse on Midkemia Press' Carse or Refuge on Thieves World's Sanctuary. Those are other people's IP and we will start fresh.

Yes, that is clear, and it is the only sensible course of action as a business. Otherwise you might end up on the other side of the muddle with copyright on Cthulhu mythos lore where quite a bit has originated from Chaosium sources and other companies might just take a licences to avoid problems, and nobody wants such a muddle for Glorantha.

You didn't address my main concern: Will Chaosium produce a detailed description of Karse and/or Refuge in the foreseeable future?

Or is it possible to leave any future product vague enough so that features of the City of Carse supplement don't contradict the new setting?

2 minutes ago, Jeff said:

You are of course welcome to do whatever you want with Karse in *your* games. But if you want any of that material incorporated in any future publication, it can't be derived from "Carse".

Sure. I don't expect that a reprint of City of Carse with a Glorantha conversion guide licensed by MoonDesign is feasible, either, even if one had the license from Midkema Press. Those system-agnostic and setting-light products from the eighties were highly acclaimed at the time, and I still rate them very high in my personal list of best rpg supplements ever, and while there has been an OSR hype (that may have influenced maybe 10-15% of the customers in the hobby)

 

What is the official stance on the description of Karse in Men of the Sea?

On closer scrutiny, there are some references to establishments of City of Carse, mainly NPC names, that need to be done over.

Using the layout of Caernarfon is not protected by any copyright laws - e.g. the Palladium Book of Weapons and Castles has Caernarfon city and castle with a street map almost identical to City of Carse. Because that's the documented extent of the city in the 1500s... (when that copperplate engraving of the city that Feist based his work on was produced).

 

On a related subject, what's the deal with the Issaries priest Goldgotti from Nochet, scion of one of the Manirian Merchant Princes (as per Sourcebook p.44, and also Sartar Kingdom of Heroes p.159) and Gold Gotti the Wolf Pirate who participated in the Battle of Pennel Ford?

[10baseT]

Looking at these pictures of the Heortland coastal plain, below the cliffs... Salt Point to Vulari peninsula area. Would it support cattle, sheep and/or goats? I'm guessing it's pretty grassy because of the moisture (fog and low clouds not getting over the cliffs).

[Joerg]

28 minutes ago, 10baseT said:

Looking at these pictures of the Heortland coastal plain, below the cliffs... Salt Point to Vulari peninsula area. Would it support cattle, sheep and/or goats? I'm guessing it's pretty grassy because of the moisture (fog and low clouds not getting over the cliffs).

It would be quite well suited for sheep and goats, providing salt licks where tidal waters meet salt-tolerant weeds. Cattle would probably be kept close to the major settlements deeper in the estuaries, as coastal raiders might carry them off easily. No idea whether anyone in Heortland actually keeps goats - the God Forgotten in the south might. (The Wolf Pirates on Three Step Isles definitely do.)

In my game, the coastal flats are mainly inhabited by Pelaskite fisherfolk sworn to the Hendriki kings, who entered the region in the first and second century after the Dawn and never left. They share many cults with their Heortling neighbors but retain a lot of their ancestral identity and ways. There are occasional intermarriages with the riverine clans. While they may own some cattle and even have a little bit of land under the plow, most of their primary production comes from the sea and the sea shore.

[jajagappa]

2 hours ago, 10baseT said:

Salt Point to EsVulari peninsula area. Would it support cattle, sheep and/or goats? I'm guessing it's pretty grassy because of the moisture (fog and low clouds not getting over the cliffs).

Yes, should support all three. I've generally played that the Esvulari herd goats (one of the reasons that those in Nochet live outside the city walls - don't want Heortlings rioting over that!).

There will be some stands of coastal pines as well (particularly shore pine, aka lodgepole or twisted pine) above the tidal flats providing some amount of firewood.