Just how expansive will the Gods Of Glorantha guide be?

[Rob Darvall]

But does it have a write up of Kyger Litor?😇

[oomizuao]

So actually when we can get these holy books, preferably down-loadable ones?

In order to placate the conquering evil spirits of Crowned raven,

we need the help from as many gods as possible.

In another words,

we Japanese Glorantha-philes are quite bored and having a lot of free time,

as most of us are under the self-imposed isolation because of the CORVID-19.

To kill time, and satisfy my craving for Gloranthan experience,

we desperately need these guides now!!

[Nick Brooke]

1 hour ago, Rob Darvall said:

But does it have a write up of Kyger Litor?😇

First cult in the book, of course.

[dumuzid]

What about Jeset, the Ferrytroll of the Underworld?

[davecake]

7 hours ago, Redmoongodess said:

That is very disappointing, honestly,

I couldn’t possibly describe what I’ve seen (I have the draft that was released at Gencon last year) as disappointing. It’s terrific, huge and rich. It has everything that was done for previous editions - like Cults of Prax, Cults of Terror, Troll Gods, a fully fleshed Earth Pantheon, a fully fleshed out Solar Pantheon, a mass of great Lunar material that is entirely new and opens up the Lunars for play as never before, all in one, all with new gods we haven’t seen before in the mix. 
 

it’s not the last Gods book we’ll see, it’s the first. And it’s an amazing start. Sure, I can’t wait for Gods of East or Sorcery of the West either, or material on Pamaltela. But once this first book is out, we’ll be better off for material in the core regions of play than we ever were before, and Jeff just made it clear there is plenty more in the pipeline. 
 

[Jeff]

1 hour ago, dumuzid said:

What about Jeset, the Ferrytroll of the Underworld?

Jeset doesn't have much of a cult. To the extent he is worshiped as a spirit cult by the trolls, that is better addressed in a troll book.

[dumuzid]

34 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Jeset doesn't have much of a cult. To the extent he is worshiped as a spirit cult by the trolls, that is better addressed in a troll book.

Well fair enough, he's been classed with Boztakang and Vaneekara as ancestor gods with few non-uz followers before.  Makes uz nocturnal pirates that much less expected on the high seas, I suppose.

Edited March 24, 2020 by dumuzid

[Jeff]

35 minutes ago, dumuzid said:

Well fair enough, he's been classed with Boztakang and Vaneekara as ancestor gods with few non-uz followers before.  Makes uz nocturnal pirates that much less expected on the high seas, I suppose.

I also don't give cult writeups for Holder, Kaldar and Sinjar, or Bimbaros the Porter to Hell. 

[dumuzid]

5 minutes ago, Jeff said:

Bimbaros the Porter to Hell

Suppose we'll just have to wait for the Lunar Empire expansion to see what those souls on adamant pegs can do.

[Jeff]

1 minute ago, dumuzid said:

Suppose we'll just have to wait for the Lunar Empire expansion to see what those souls on adamant pegs can do.

Many of these Underworld entities don't have cults. They might be invoked in other cults, but are not a source of magic or other direct benefits. Thryrk and Aroka do not have cults, although they are well known to the Orlanthi.

[dumuzid]

I'm just having fun, but given their other associations it'd be interesting to see some ways to source magic from these Pelorian Underworld entities show up as associated spirits of Shargash, Yara Aranis etc.

With the choice to avoid particularly parochial cults I assume a lot of the Esrolian goddesses and gods will have to wait for a Holy Country book or something similar, but did Dormal make the cut?  I seem to recall him having temples as far afield as Fonrit.

[hkokko]

2 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

First cult in the book, of course.

Kyger Litor needs to be in both volumes. That is the holy tradition...

[Rick Meints]

11 hours ago, Redmoongodess said:

That is very disappointing, honestly, I wonder if at this point we will ever see any of those pantheons be fleshed out like they deserve to be...it really feels like the guys at chaosium are only interested in Orlanthi and the areas around them at this point.

The current Gods of Glorantha manuscript is over 600 pages in length. The work done thus far required a lot of author time, and many of the cults in this manuscript already had a lot of their info already fleshed out (although it did have to be updated and edited, sometimes heavily). It is quite easy to imagine that the rest of the cults in Glorantha would require at least as big of a manuscript, and many of them have far less written about them. There is a very distinct tradeoff between getting a lot of Gloranthan Cults this year, or getting every Gloranthan cult two or three years from now. We at the Chaosium have decided to provide a large number of cults based on what most players desire the most. Holding up the publication of a cult from Dragon Pass or Prax for a few years so people can also get the Cult of (insert deity rarely worshipped in some far flung corner of the lozenge) at the same time would disappoint far more people. The goal of "complete" would, quite bluntly, just sacrifice every ounce of "timeliness".

As for what we are interested in publishing, that is another matter. There are two main factors at work here, as we have stated previously, but are worth repeating:

1. WRITING CAPACITY: Jeff and Jason are our main in house writers for RuneQuest, and Jason spends the majority of his time as the line editor. All the rest of the writing comes from freelance authors. Historically, Glorantha has always struggled to attract authors willing and capable of writing for it. That was true in 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, and is also true today. Wishing for a Book on X or Y doesn't mean anyone is going to step up and want to write it. That is probably doubly true for the less documented areas of Glorantha.

2. ECONOMICS: We are very willing to publish any RuneQuest material that will sell well enough to pay the bills. Some topics though are far from mainstream interests. Yes, we have no doubt that there are fans out there who long to buy a book on X or Y, but many of those topics won't sell well enough for Chaosium to invest the resources (mainly money) for a full blown supplement. In many respects, that's what the Jonstown Compendium was created to help alleviate. Chaosium needs to produce material that will sell X thousand copies, not X hundred copies.

Edited March 24, 2020 by Rick Meints

[soltakss]

3 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

There is a very distinct tradeoff between getting a lot of Gloranthan Cults this year, or getting every Gloranthan cult two or three years from now.

This year? This year? This year?

[7Tigers]

A month ago, in France, Jeff said "We're looking at getting the Cults book out by the end of the year", with some art still pending, such as some by Loïc Muzy.

[Nick Brooke]

5 hours ago, dumuzid said:

Did Dormal make the cut?  I seem to recall him having temples as far afield as Fonrit.

Yup. Check out Scotty's photos of the contents pages, upthread.

[M Helsdon]

Based on the draft I have seen, it does for the religions of Glorantha, what the Guide does for the world of Glorantha.

[davecake]

11 hours ago, dumuzid said:

With the choice to avoid particularly parochial cults I assume a lot of the Esrolian goddesses and gods will have to wait for a Holy Country book or something similar, but did Dormal make the cut? 

Dormal is in the Gods book. 

The main Earth pantheon deities are in there - including full writeups for Asrelia, Babeester Gor, Ty Kora Tek, Maran Gor, Voria etc. There is also a thorough discussion of the grain goddesses. And some other important gods of the region, like Caladra and Aurelion, and Choralinthor. That gives you most of the major deities of Esrolia. There are a few major deities specific to Esrolia that will likely be covered when an Esrolia related book is released - for example, Norinel, the goddess of Nochet - but you should be able to mostly run an Esrolia based campaign with what is in the Gods book. 

That idea of Esrolia being the land of 10,000 Goddesses of course doesn't mean they have 10,000 cults - those thousands of goddess include what we would normally categorise as hero cults, sub-cults, subservient cults that don't even count for anything in game terms (ie a certain being might be named as the source of a particular rune spell for the cult, but its exactly the same in game terms), famous ancestors, nymphs of various kinds, landscape spirits, or variants (for example, different goddesses for different plants and animals, even though they might be regarded as the one minor deity in other lands). They do have a lot of major cults, and a lot of minor ones too, but not insanely so - mostly they just call things goddesses that would regarded as something else by others, and like to distinguish between the roles of beings that might be conflated by others. 

 

[Jeff]

2 hours ago, davecake said:

Dormal is in the Gods book. 

The main Earth pantheon deities are in there - including full writeups for Asrelia, Babeester Gor, Ty Kora Tek, Maran Gor, Voria etc. There is also a thorough discussion of the grain goddesses. And some other important gods of the region, like Caladra and Aurelion, and Choralinthor. That gives you most of the major deities of Esrolia. There are a few major deities specific to Esrolia that will likely be covered when an Esrolia related book is released - for example, Norinel, the goddess of Nochet - but you should be able to mostly run an Esrolia based campaign with what is in the Gods book. 

That idea of Esrolia being the land of 10,000 Goddesses of course doesn't mean they have 10,000 cults - those thousands of goddess include what we would normally categorise as hero cults, sub-cults, subservient cults that don't even count for anything in game terms (ie a certain being might be named as the source of a particular rune spell for the cult, but its exactly the same in game terms), famous ancestors, nymphs of various kinds, landscape spirits, or variants (for example, different goddesses for different plants and animals, even though they might be regarded as the one minor deity in other lands). They do have a lot of major cults, and a lot of minor ones too, but not insanely so - mostly they just call things goddesses that would regarded as something else by others, and like to distinguish between the roles of beings that might be conflated by others. 

 

All the main cults in Esrolia are covered here - Ernalda, Asrelia, Esrola, Choralinthor, Engizi, Babeester Gor, Maran Gor, Argan Argar, Barntar, Orlanth, the Lightbringers, Lodril, etc.  There's a few purely local deities like Vogarth that will get presented in a regional supplement, but less than 5% of the population are initiated into all these minor cults collectively. 

 

[Julian Lord]

On 3/24/2020 at 10:07 AM, Jeff said:

In my opinion and Greg's, there was not enough detail in the RQ3 cults book to run a game in central Genertela, let alone anywhere else.

Those were the sad days of the haves v. have-nots regarding access to Greg's unpublished materials ...

This sounds much much better !!

[Julian Lord]

ewww !! Long-form Uleria ?

I attempted that and failed completely, so *that* one I am very interested in ...

[AndreJarosch]

3 minutes ago, Julian Lord said:

ewww !! Long-form Uleria ?

I attempted that and failed completely, so *that* one I am very interested in ...

The attempt in Tradetalk 16 was fine. :-)

[AndreJarosch]

The original question was "Just how expansive will the Gods Of Glorantha guide be?". 

The Guide to Glorantha has 800 pages and costs about $ 169,99 (~ $ 0,21 per page)
The Smoking Ruins has 192 pages and will cost about $ 37,95 (~ $ 0,19 per page)

If The Cults of Glorantha will end up about 600 pages, with ~ $ 0,20 per page, i assume the price will be about $ 120,00. 
It depends how much the artwork will cost them, and if it will be just two books, or two books in a slipcase. 

 

[soltakss]

14 minutes ago, AndreJarosch said:

If The Cults of Glorantha will end up about 600 pages, with ~ $ 0,20 per page, i assume the price will be about $ 120,00. 

The PDF will be cheaper.

[g33k]

10 minutes ago, soltakss said:

The PDF will be cheaper.

One cannot ... fondle... A PDF.

 

 

No matter how cheap they are.