Platinum Best-Seller: A Rough Guide to Glamour

[Nick Brooke]

The Dice are Screaming podcast reviews A Rough Guide to Glamour.

This is a lovely, insightful discussion -- Randy & Mike really get what we were doing. If you want to skip to our bit, it starts 16 minutes in and runs for the rest of the episode.

Edited July 15, 2020 by Nick Brooke

[Nick Brooke]

 The thirtieth ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating for our book A Rough Guide to Glamour is rather special: it came with a review by the celebrated RPG historian Shannon Appelcline, author of Designers & Dragons:

 

 

Quote

 

This could have been just another roleplaying sourcebook. At the hands of Gidlow, Brooke, Hagen, and others it still would have been brilliant. But instead of taking that staid, traditional route, the group did something entirely different and better.

 

A Rough Guide to Glamour is a hodge-podge of materials about the capitol of the Lunar Empire that, like the best material on Glorantha, tells its stories through both the intersections and the absences in a series of overlapping materials. (At one point, I thought this could have a been a 21st issue of the long-gone and much lamented Tales of the Reaching Moon magazine, a Lunar Special, but it's actually something much more than that.)

 

The major article is a rather extensive Gazetteer of Glamour, but rather than being the sort of thing you'd find in LE1: The City of Glamour, it instead reads more like a tourist guide — and it turns out to be a pretty wonderful way to view a roleplaying city, because it's full of plot seeds and ideas that you could turn into real gameable moments if your players somehow make it all the way out to Glamour.

 

The other most gameable part of the book is a pair of cults. The Red Emperor is one of the most extensive cults in all of RuneQuestdom, while Glamour is a fine example of a mischievous, rebellious city god. These materials could easily be used for any RQ game.

 

The rest of the book is made up of the rather joyfully overlapping stories that give all of this depth. There's some fiction that provides some rather interesting insights into the Lunar Empire and the Red Emperor. There's a bit of song that's more of an ode to the Queen than the Emperor but is still hysterically funny. There's also information on history, peoples, governance, and the nearby regions that's everything you wanted to know about the Lunar Empire but were afraid to ask.

 

Overall, a wonderful bit of Glorantha lore, highlighting the Lunar Empire as seen by its biggest fans in the '90s.

 

Oh, and it's wonderfully produced with beautiful art and great design. Get the POD, it's a great looking hardcover."

 

 

 

[Nick Brooke]

Bientôt dans le Compendium de Jonstown...

Le Guide pratique de Glamour 

Edited March 30 by Nick Brooke

[Joerg]

Do I read this correctly - the French call Takenegi a bastard?

[Nick Brooke]

Parthenogenesis, Joerg. No father.

[Nick Brooke]

Vivien Prigent writes: ”Oui, Moonson est assez délicat à traduire. Ce n'est pas un titre mais un nom propre donc Fils de la Lune ou autre était exclu. LuneFils est abominable. Du coup nous avons opté pour un décalque du nom propre d'un autre souverain historique nommé d'après la majesté de sa mère: Henri II Plantagenet dit FitzEmpress. Les noms en Fitz dénotent une naissance hors mariage, ce qui correspond à l'Empereur Rouge qui est le "fils parthénogénétique" de la Lune.”

[Joerg]

I'll count that as a "yes", then.

[Eff]

3 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

Vivien Prigent writes: ”Oui, Moonson est assez délicat à traduire. Ce n'est pas un titre mais un nom propre donc Fils de la Lune ou autre était exclu. LuneFils est abominable. Du coup nous avons opté pour un décalque du nom propre d'un autre souverain historique nommé d'après la majesté de sa mère: Henri II Plantagenet dit FitzEmpress. Les noms en Fitz dénotent une naissance hors mariage, ce qui correspond à l'Empereur Rouge qui est le "fils parthénogénétique" de la Lune.”

Merci beaucoup. C'est magnifique.

I suppose the English double-meaning there is in the same spirit as explaining Moonson's role as the masculine aspect of Sedenya by calling him "an enormous prick".

[Minlister]

Quote

Do I read this correctly - the French call Takenegi a bastard?

Are you finally ready to take responsibility for him?

Edited February 4, 2021 by Minlister

[Nick Brooke]

Disponible dès à présent dans le Jonstown Compendium: le Guide pratique de Glamour, edition français. 12.50€ pour 135 pages en PDF (+ 7 de cartes).

Le Guide pratique de Glamour est votre indispensable compagnon de voyage pour toute visite de la capitale du plus grand empire que le monde de Glorantha ait jamais connu !

[Jape_Vicho]

Just had a class about the medieval islamic world and the picture the teacher used to show 8th century Baghdad reminded me instantly the Glamour depicted in this book. Wondrous cities both, and cheers to the artists that made the representations. Culturally there are resemblances too, as both are very exclussive cities, home to the emperor and his palace and top religious sites for their respective religions. Baghdad no loger looks like this at all, nor has that religious importance, in case you were wondering. 

[Nick Brooke]

A Rough Guide to Glamour is now available in a Japanese translation, featuring gorgeous new cover and VIP artwork by Yoshihide Yano.

Edited October 17, 2022 by Nick Brooke

[jajagappa]

2 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

gorgeous new cover

Love the new cover artwork! 👏

[Nick Brooke]

It is the autumnal equinox, when the cyclical powers of Light and Darkness hang balanced by Time. And in the back streets of Accursed Torang, something wonderful has come to pass: Glamour goes Platinum (Blonde)! 

[Qizilbashwoman]

On 2/17/2021 at 2:27 PM, Jape_Vicho said:

Baghdad no loger looks like this at all, nor has that religious importance, in case you were wondering.

The Ilkhanate destroyed Baghdad in 1258. In Muslims history, this approaches the cultural resonance as the fall of the Second Temple does for Jews.

Some of the most popular traditional song stylings (maqam) in the larger Muslim world's music are based on laments for Baghdad written after its fall.

The destruction of Baghdad was horrendous. It had one million civilians before the siege. A year after the siege, fewer than 10,000 remained in the area, and most of the buildings had been burnt or pulled down. It remained an uninhabited ruin for centuries. Survivors said the streets were ankle-deep in coagulating blood and the Tigris itself was red, and the Caliph, whom many Muslims believed was the appointed ruler of humanity, was imprisoned to starve to death.

It is thought that the deliberate destruction of the extremely ancient canal system resulted in the desertification and destruction of agriculture over much of Iraq, causing the collapse of Mesopotamian civilisation. After the siege, the center of the Arab world moved to Egypt, and the centre of the non-Arab world to Persia and then Central and South Asia (ironically because the southern Mongols converted to Islam).

[Nell]

Now I 100% could be wrong, but I was under the impression that recent historical study has found that the brutality and thouroughness of the sack of Baghdad has been greatly exaggerated, like many famous sacks of important religious centers, Constantinople being another example.