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Bill the barbarian

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On 4/14/2020 at 10:50 AM, Bill the barbarian said:

So what are our intrepid explorers on the seas of imagination up to this fine day? What kind of mischief ferments in the realms of Imagination? What indeed, you might well ask! What indeed!

 

Are we to hear a new episode in the near future? What indeed!

-Voice of the Legion

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  • 2 weeks later...
Soaring on the Wings of Imagination, our intrepid explorers swoop down following the trail of one of the iconic explorers of Glorantha, an Issaries merchant from Dragon Pass or Kethaela braving the chaparral which is home to the Beast Riders of Waha's Covenant. 
Looking at some of the details of Hender's Ruins, the Block, and Day's Rest, our exploration meanders off to all manner of side issues, monkeying around, getting sweet, or discovering traces of Lewis and Clarke in Glorantha.
Before you get into this action, you will have to shove through the packed masses beneath the Herald's podium in blatant disregard to the social distancing rules and you might be led astray by rumours.
 
Edited by Joerg
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Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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2 minutes ago, Joerg said:

Enter at your own peril!

Of course, people who are subscribed to the podcast using a podcast player app (as they should!) will have little choice in the matter and will receive the podcast on their mobile device whether they want it or not... but I guess they could always avoid pressing the "Play" button...

The lovingly crafted show notes (by @Joerg as always) are here: https://windwords.fm/episode-3-the-travels-of-biturian-varosh-part-1/

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Ludovic aka Lordabdul -- read and listen to  The God Learners , the Gloranthan podcast, newsletter, & blog !

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Podcast news from the Finnish speaking world (and a challenge/idea for the English speaking podcasters out there). We recorder a bonus episode where we played the same session (same characters, same setup, almost the same story) in three different roleplaying systems: RuneQuest - Roleplaying in Glorantha, 13th Age Glorantha and HeroQuest Glorantha.

We took the three characters from RQ: Vasana, Harmast and Sorala (we recreated them for 13G and HQG). They entered to Notchet to find this local no-good Dark Wothkarl. Wothkarl was rumored to have access to the nobel leader of Esrolia's rebel forces against Lunars. In the games the heroes first had to find the bar where Wothkarl spends his time (Black Swan). The bar was a mix of troll and human customers. The dark troll bouncer was one of the obstacles in getting into the bar. In the bar the main obstacle was convincing Wothkarl to take them to the noble leader. Different tactics were used depending on the game.

This was an interesting tryout and I think we got the differences between the systems visible quite well. At least they sounded different.

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4 hours ago, jrutila said:

Podcast news from the Finnish speaking world (and a challenge/idea for the English speaking podcasters out there). We recorder a bonus episode where we played the same session (same characters, same setup, almost the same story) in three different roleplaying systems: RuneQuest - Roleplaying in Glorantha, 13th Age Glorantha and HeroQuest Glorantha.

We took the three characters from RQ: Vasana, Harmast and Sorala (we recreated them for 13G and HQG). They entered to Notchet to find this local no-good Dark Wothkarl. Wothkarl was rumored to have access to the nobel leader of Esrolia's rebel forces against Lunars. In the games the heroes first had to find the bar where Wothkarl spends his time (Black Swan). The bar was a mix of troll and human customers. The dark troll bouncer was one of the obstacles in getting into the bar. In the bar the main obstacle was convincing Wothkarl to take them to the noble leader. Different tactics were used depending on the game.

This was an interesting tryout and I think we got the differences between the systems visible quite well. At least they sounded different.

Interesting experiment. Could you share your adaptations of the characters to the other systems? Not that we have any immediate plans to do such an experiment in the near future, but to see how differently they would turn out.

Maybe that's stuff for the Jonstown Compendium.

Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Interesting experiment. Could you share your adaptations of the characters to the other systems? Not that we have any immediate plans to do such an experiment in the near future, but to see how differently they would turn out.

As requested:

13G characters: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15Pp27HwPCGQ6-2eZYDl6Oy9vCTSM-V6ulnCvve85Otw/edit?usp=sharing

HQG characters: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1o1rvoM0TzYUFGrFYudD434n66o0czGv4KO4aPNVIMUw/edit?usp=sharing

Warning, these were created "good enough" for our needs to make the recording so they may lack stuff and look ugly. We also had the idea of sharing these at some point and JC would be interesting place to re-create all the characters from RQG in other systems.

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21 hours ago, jrutila said:

This was an interesting tryout and I think we got the differences between the systems visible quite well. At least they sounded different.

Interesting experiment indeed! Since I doubt I'll learn Finnish any time soon, would you care to give us a short written version of your conclusions?

I'm wondering if it's inherently biased, though, as the players are bound to try different approaches in subsequent plays of the adventure, thus giving the wrong impression that the 2nd or 3rd systems "encourage more creative play" or something?

Ludovic aka Lordabdul -- read and listen to  The God Learners , the Gloranthan podcast, newsletter, & blog !

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2 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Since I doubt I'll learn Finnish any time soon, would you care to give us a short written version of your conclusions?

We had a 30 minutes analysis about the experiment in the end of the episode. We didn't try to find "best" system or anything like that. It was more of a discussion and interesting findings.

In RuneQuest we tried to bring the new mechanics to the table (augments, inspirations, runes) and the use of Rune Magic for grand magical effects. Achieving cool rune magic was incidentally something that only the NPC (Wothkarl) did. But hey, that's how RQ works, right? We discussed briefly about escalation dice and rune narration mechanics from 13G. Rune narration mechanic could be implemented in RQ also. 13th Age was declared to be quite tactical. One difference between RQ and HQ that was noted is that in RQ the GM can decide the "boundary conditions" for the situation. For example in RQ when Wothkarl gets angry there is no way for the players to use talking to calm him (we tried, though). On the other hand in HeroQuest GM should try to answer "yes" to players' suggestions. One note about character abilities was the freedom of choice. For example in HQ the player can come up with anything and in 13G and RQ the player's choices are more restricted but for example the One Unique Thing in 13G eases this a bit.

We compared the sessions. For example Lunars were only in active role in the 13th Age game because Vasana's player rolled Moon rune to be active in the beginning and narrated a Lunar patrol to appear (they actually helped us to bypass the troll bouncer). One common element in every session was Vasana drinking a troll beer (Mätäsuoli in Finnish, I didn't find the English word for it. Rotten gut or something like that). In RQ it was a CON check (failed a little, lost 1HP), 13G also CON check with a background and in HQ it was part of our extended contest in beating Wothkarl.

We shared some personal feelings. This was my first time ever playing any D20-style (or is it F20?) system. I am glad that my first one was 13th Age Glorantha. We ended the analysis with a brief discussion about GNS theory (I know, it is an old theory and all) as these games went quite nicely with that.

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On 4/30/2020 at 9:38 AM, Minlister said:

Especially liked the part on sugar! 

Thanks :D  We amassed a surprising amount of notes by researching what looked like small details of the tale... and I now kinda want to run a spice-traders game!

Edited by lordabdul
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Ludovic aka Lordabdul -- read and listen to  The God Learners , the Gloranthan podcast, newsletter, & blog !

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  • 2 weeks later...
Hey team. I originally tried to post this to your tribes@windwords.com address but it bounced. Don't know if there's a problem with that email.
 
I’m really enjoying the podcasts. Your knowledge of Glorantha and your enthusiasm are infectious. I played a lot of Runequest in my youth in the 80s and have only recently returned to Glorantha as a reader (although I’m flirting with running it again). Despite the wealth of information that is now available for Glorantha and the quality of the wonderful new material that is being created, Cults of Prax is still my favourite Gloranthan publication. A ground breaking work, so much richer, deeper and more mature than its contemporaries. It grabbed my attention, fired my imagination and made me a Glorantha convert. 
 
Above all, I loved the excerpts from the travels of Biturian Varosh. Beautifully written and utterly evocative, they informed my understanding of Glorantha in the way they married the mundane with the exotic, mystic and magical…..a world grounded in realism but infused with wonder. More than that, it gave me a template for my own far travelled and well loved character, an Issaries initiate who achieved her Desert Tracker status at the culmination of years of hard adventuring. Biturian’s revelation in dealing with a Lankhor Mhy associate was also a revelation to me, and still affected me deeply on rereading it recently…..but I’ll leave that there in case you get to that scene in a future episode :).  There’s no better introduction to the tone of Glorantha than Biturian’s story and I think you can’t go wrong in covering more entries from his journal.
 
My fandom aside, my first thought when you were discussing the possible origin of sugar in Genertela was sugar beets. In Australia we source our sugar from Queensland sugar cane and I’ve always believed it to be a tropical / sub-tropical crop. Being of Canadian heritage I’m also no stranger to maple syrup :). However, I understood that much of Europe’s and North America’s sugar is processed from sugar beets, which are more suited to temperate climates, like the Dragon Pass region. It’s a relatively modern commercial crop but I imagine it was developed from older wild variants. Maybe a readier source of that luxury commodity for a canny Issaries merchant and a sweet-toothed Storm Khan. :)
 
Keep up the good work.
 
Brent (Brigid Fairhand)

 
Edited by BrentS
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Ooh, sugar. I read a monograph on the history of sugar back in uni, and it's a fascinating topic relating to all sorts of sides of society. 

It would be neat, I think, to make Teshnos an exporter of cane sugar. Mostly because it roughly fits the RW location of where sugarcane is believed to have originated (somewhere in southeast Asia, iirc), but also because... eyh, more Teshnos is good, amirite?

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On 5/14/2020 at 12:31 AM, BrentS said:

Hey team. I originally tried to post this to your tribes@windwords.com address but it bounced. Don't know if there's a problem with that email.

Yep, the problem is that it's not the right one :)  The email is tribe@windwords.fm  ("tribe" singular.... we're not that big!  and .fm, not .com, because the .com domain is held by some investors who are asking way way too much for it)

Thanks a lot for your kind words (hey @Bill the barbarian, maybe that could be the name of our "Letters to the Editor" segment? "Kind Words"?). We're hoping of course to continue following Biturian's travels in later episodes.

On 5/14/2020 at 12:31 AM, BrentS said:

my first thought when you were discussing the possible origin of sugar in Genertela was sugar beets.

Oh my -- after being shamed by @Joerg when I originally forgot about maple syrup (even though I live in Canada), I'm now being shamed by you because I'm actually originally from Northern France where we have a special type of sugar that we share with the Belgians and a few others, called (at least in my hometown of Lille) "vergeoise" (called "cassonade" in other places but it's often not the same thing in reality). This type of sugar is often produced from beets indeed. So yes, it could happen that other types of sugar start being produced in temperate areas of Genertela.... that said, it still relies on crystallisation as far as I know, and so it would probably still be a rare and expensive delicacy, traded by Issaries merchants on the similar price points and volumes as the crystallized sugar from Kralorela. If crystals are a cult secret in Kralorela, it might be a cult secret too in Dragon Pass or Peloria (or a secret your players discover themselves in your game!). Still interesting to think about it... I wonder which cult would be the one to figure it out....?

Ludovic aka Lordabdul -- read and listen to  The God Learners , the Gloranthan podcast, newsletter, & blog !

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On 5/14/2020 at 5:10 AM, Sir_Godspeed said:

Ooh, sugar. I read a monograph on the history of sugar back in uni, and it's a fascinating topic relating to all sorts of sides of society.

Yeah, originally, the main topic for this episode was from Joerg, who pitched it as "obscure facts about Prax, through the travels of Biturian Varosh". I picked sugar totally at random from the chapter I was assigned, but after just 30 minutes of research on spice trade and the history of sugar, it became obvious to me that this was a lot bigger (and interesting!) than expected. Now I want to play a spice/sugar trading campaign!

Edited by lordabdul
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Ludovic aka Lordabdul -- read and listen to  The God Learners , the Gloranthan podcast, newsletter, & blog !

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48 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

Yeah, originally, the main topic for this episode was from Joerg, who pitched it as "obscure facts about Prax, through the travels of Biturian Varosh". I picked sugar totally at random from the chapter I was assigned, but after just 30 minutes of research on spice trade and the history of sugar, it became obvious to me that this was a lot bigger (and interesting!) than expected. Now I want to play a spice/sugar trading campaign!

If you can get your hand on Sweetness and Power by Sidney Mintz, the first few chapters might offer some really good insights into the pre-sugary Classical and Medieval world. 

The later chapters deal a lot with colonization and capitalism, but even there are some worthwhile points (sugar as a preservative and cheap calories in a plantation economy enabling increased work exploitation and stricter schedules might be of interest if you're dealing with slaver owners or feudal lords in a tropical region, like Fonrit or what have you.)

https://books.google.no/books/about/Sweetness_and_Power.html?id=_pefwak9cPAC&redir_esc=y 

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On 5/14/2020 at 1:31 AM, BrentS said:
I’m really enjoying the podcasts. Your knowledge of Glorantha and your enthusiasm are infectious. I played a lot of Runequest in my youth in the 80s and have only recently returned to Glorantha as a reader (although I’m flirting with running it again). Despite the wealth of information that is now available for Glorantha and the quality of the wonderful new material that is being created, Cults of Prax is still my favourite Gloranthan publication. A ground breaking work, so much richer, deeper and more mature than its contemporaries. It grabbed my attention, fired my imagination and made me a Glorantha convert. 
 

Ah what a great thing to say! Thank you! Hey BrentS, can we have yer permission to use this in out next podcast. Better yet can you record it and resend and we can possibly use it in our next podcast. 

6 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Oh my -- after being shamed by @Joerg when I originally forgot about maple syrup (even though I live in Canada), I'm now being shamed by you because I'm actually originally from Northern France where we have a special type of sugar that we share with the Belgians and a few others, called (at least in my hometown of Lille) "vergeoise" (called "cassonade" in other places but it's often not the same thing in reality). This type of sugar is often produced from beets indeed.

Oh, and many apologies @lordabdul good sir,  I do not want t shame you further but just one provinces to your east in our lovely home of the Maple Tree is found an industry based on sugar beets that is quite substantial. If you have a bag of Roger’s Sugar in your pantry it came from beets grown here.

Quote

The Canadian sugar industry produces more than 1.2 million tonnes of refined sugar annually with a value of shipments of over $1 billion dollars. The sugar industry directly employs 915 Canadians at refineries in Quebec, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia as well as hundreds of prairie sugar beet farmers. 

CANADIAN SUGAR INSTITUTE

6 hours ago, lordabdul said:

 originally, the main topic for this episode was from Joerg, who pitched it as "obscure facts about Prax, through the travels of Biturian Varosh".

Joerg has his moments of brilliance, no? Thankfully for us, they are much more than mere moments.

 

6 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Thanks a lot for your kind words (hey @Bill the barbarian, maybe that could be the name of our "Letters to the Editor" segment? "Kind Words"?). We're hoping of course to continue following Biturian's travels in later episodes.

Ah, I see where you are going with this lordabul, interesting thinking, and if Kind rhymed with Wind, it would be great. So what rhymes with Wind: binned, finned, ginned, pinned, sinned, tinned... hmm not so good with Words... I know, we could offer a gold plated, blessed by Stan "the Man Lee" unofficial No-Prize to the person who can come up with a name for our feedback section. I mean that could literally be worth about.;. well I will let you just imagine what that could be worth! 
NOT MUCH

So if you wish to send feedback to us; post here (if you post a note letting us know we can use it we might just put in on a podcast). Post to  tribe@windwords.fm, or PM one of us. Plus one the https://windwords.fm site there is a clickable link to send mail.  If you send it by text we will read it but if you send us audio, we can cut it in. Please note that all submissions are chosen by us and may be edited for brevity or cussing (sorry, we try to be PG) or... 

Hey @lordabdul how do they send  us audio files? (and while I am heaping praise about thanks for all the great tech work and making us sound much better then we actually do, lordabdul!

Cheers

Edited by Bill the barbarian
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... remember, with a TARDIS, one is never late for breakfast!

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37 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Hey @lordabdul how do they send  us audio files?

Sending us the file by email is good (if the file isn't too big and doesn't get rejected by our email providers). Otherwise, one easy way is to place the file in Dropbox or Google Drive or Microsoft One Drive or other similar service, and send us a link (all these services usually have a simple way to right-click on the file and create a link for other people to download that file).

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Ludovic aka Lordabdul -- read and listen to  The God Learners , the Gloranthan podcast, newsletter, & blog !

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7 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Ah what a great thing to say! Thank you! Hey BrentS, can we have yer permission to use this in out next podcast. Better yet can you record it and resend and we can possibly use it in our next podcast. 

 

For sure. I'll try to overcome my technical shortcomings and get a sound file to you.

 

Brent.

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41 minutes ago, BrentS said:

For sure. I'll try to overcome my technical shortcomings and get a sound file to you.

 

Awesome!

Now, no guarantees that all feedback we receive will make it to the podcast. Space, time, need and relevancy will be our guide, and we have three people weighing in on what gets used, so no guarantees that we will

a) use all feedback we receive, and
b) not edit (for brevity, etc.) it if we use it...

but we will read, listen to and treasure all your feedback. 

Cheers!

Edited by Bill the barbarian

... remember, with a TARDIS, one is never late for breakfast!

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  • 3 weeks later...

The 3 people in the back who have subscribed to our podcast using their finest podcast player might have noticed that it's the end of the month but Episode 4 still hasn't magically appeared on their listening devices... it's taking a bit longer than usual due to it being bigger to edit and cut than our previous episodes...

ww_editing.jpg.7583ca41e71b917643bbf847b08a42c9.jpg

You'll understand why when you hear what we've got in store for you! We think you'll like it! It should go out in the next day or two...

Edited by lordabdul
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Ludovic aka Lordabdul -- read and listen to  The God Learners , the Gloranthan podcast, newsletter, & blog !

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