JC - New "Family History" ?

[g33k]

Hi, all -- but especially @Nick Brooke --

I was wondering if anyone had track of which JC products had substantive new regions/eras/peoples expanding the "Family History" parts of character-creation?

Jaja's new Imther product does, I think; and the Durulz get theirs in Duckpak; and there's that BRPC-crowdsourced product to retcon RQG-chargen back to the RQ2 era; and ... ?

 

[Nick Brooke]

That one’s called Early Family History, and is for campaigns kicking off in 1610 or earlier.

There’s my Sun County Backgrounds article in Tales of the Sun County Militia, which gives a slightly different way of generating backgrounds for “Sandheart” characters starting in 1615.

There’s definitely some East Isles stuff in the Korolan Islands setting book. That’s notionally set in 1613, I think.

And there are notes in Six Seasons in Sartar, but nothing particularly new: you play younger-than-normal characters starting play earlier-than-normal (1619), so it kinda cancels out.

Edited January 9, 2023 by Nick Brooke

[jajagappa]

2 hours ago, g33k said:

Jaja's new Imther product does, I think

Edge of Empire absolutely includes full character background generation for Imther!  😎 

Early Family History is also available on DTRPG.  Edited by Jacob Andersson with assistance from myself and Jeff Erwin (and developed out of the BRP thread).

 

[g33k]

4 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

That one’s called Early Family History, and is for campaigns kicking off in 1610 or earlier.

2 hours ago, jajagappa said:

 Early Family History is also available on DTRPG.  Edited by Jacob Andersson with assistance from myself and Jeff Erwin (and developed out of the BRP thread).

Yes, that's the one!  Thank you both (and my apologies for not tracking down the title myself!).
 

4 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

... There’s my Sun County Backgrounds article in Tales of the Sun County Militia, which gives a slightly different way of generating backgrounds for “Sandheart” characters starting in 1615 ...

If it's not too much trouble, could you give a sense of what this "slightly different way" looks like?  How hard would it be (for example) to extrapolate the method to other regions?  Etc...

 

[Nick Brooke]

8 hours ago, g33k said:

If it's not too much trouble, could you give a sense of what this "slightly different way" looks like?  How hard would it be (for example) to extrapolate the method to other regions?  Etc...

Sure. The issue I had to deal with was the diversity of Sun County and especially Sandheart characters’ origins (there’s been a lot of movement in recent decades), and the nuances of local politics every time the Count changes.

So for your grandparent, there are eight possible events: you roll or pick the one that had the most impact on your family, and also roll or pick to find out what that impact was. But lots of other people in Sun County weren’t significantly affected by it - and I really didn’t want everyone to roll on every table and get lots of “meh” results, I wanted to know the most interesting thing in your grandparent’s story.

Things settle down for your parent: you work out their attitude to the previous Count’s innovations (he was a pro-Lunar hippie), the rise of the Red Moon in Prax, and how your family fared during Count Solanthos’ coup. Plus, in rather a nifty section on Initiation, all the schemes we came up with for the Secret History of Sun County get laid out on the table as stuff that everybody gossips about but nobody knows for sure - and your native Sun Domers get a personal link to whichever Rune Lord or Priest led their initiation ritual.

And there’s guidance on inserting non-natives of Sun County into the story, when families migrate from Dragon Pass to Prax during the usual Family History process.

It’s just under twenty pages, hilariously illustrated by Mark Baldwin (if you know the Chaosium principals, anyway), and contains some lovely throwaway boxouts about local abuse and slurs, how to use the “real” Sun Dome Templars in a Sun County Militia game, and so on. And all the Sandheart books are great, anyway… plus they’re dead cheap, so what are you waiting for?

[Nick Brooke]

There are ten pages of Kralori Family History (more like a clan questionnaire than the RQG version) in Paul Baker's Kralori Primer, which is phenomenally good value if you are at all interested in playing RuneQuest in its mythic fantasy China analogue (still just $4.00 for over 300 pages, with more in the pipeline).

There is a method for determining the caste and fate of your adventurer's previous incarnations in Paul Baker's The Houses of Teshnos.

(Why don't any of the people who keep telling us they want more RQ settings outside of Dragon Pass and Prax ever discuss Paul's significant body of work? It baffles me)

[Nick Brooke]

If we branch out into Orlanthi Clan Creation Questionnaires (which end up with recent history after all the mythic origins and previous Ages), there's @Ali the Helering Alistair Jones and @Tindalos Edan Jones' Heort's Legacy and Alakoring's Legacy for QuestWorlds, which do a great job of showcasing variant Heortling and Orlanthi traditions. Since we're talking history here, the Heortling book covers recent history for clans from Esrolia, Saird, Tarsh, Maniria and Sartar, while the Alakoring book covers other parts of Tarsh, the Far Point, Red Dragon Vale, the Tarsh Exiles and the benighted Aggaring dog-worshippers. There's also a whole bunch of twisty new options for the mythological questionnaires. The takeaway is, of course, that some of your neighbours believe extremely weird shit, and the foreigners over there are even worse.

[AlexS]

16 hours ago, g33k said:

I was wondering if anyone had track of which JC products had substantive new regions/eras/peoples expanding the "Family History" parts of character-creation?

It's not on the JC yet (and may take a while yet to get there) but there's a lot of Family History reworking in the Esrolian character creation resource we're writing, which is previewed a bit here:

The main way we structure the changes from vanilla FH generation is by using Alliances. We assume that although the Red Earth, Old Earth and Warm Earth Alliances only emerged into the open after Belintar’s disappearance in 1616, these Alliances developed out of informal factions that had been taking shape over the previous two decades, which in some cases will have included actively opposing or supporting the advance of the Lunar Empire.

For example, adventurers from Red Earth Alliance families rolling an FH result of 18-19 for their grandparent in 1597 and getting ‘Fought in the Holy Country, witnessed murder of a member of the Sartar Royal House’ will read this as ‘Fought in the Holy Country, helped to track down fugitive member of the Sartar Royal House’ and gain 'Loyalty (Lunar Empire)'. On a result of 20 (‘Died with great glory’) this will read as ‘Died with great glory while attempting to prevent the escape of a fugitive member of the Sartar Royal House’ and lead them to gain 'Hate (Sartar)'.

Later on in the timeline, with the Alliances out in the open, FH results for Old Earth adventurers' parents are more likely to lead them to fight the Lunars in Heortland in 1619-21, and Old Earth adventurers themselves are more likely to join Kallyr in Sartar or Argrath in Pavis.

Red Earth adventurers are not excluded by the Homeland modifier system from fighting on the Lunar side in the siege of Nochet, but on a result of 2-5 (‘Killed by Earth magic’), instead of the Hate (Esrolians) Passion they get Hate (Old Earth Alliance). 

As this last example shows, while RQG pretty much assumes that all 'good Esrolian patriots' are in the Samastina-Argrath camp, we reckon that there is great gameplay potential in moving beyond homeland-essentialism to build in conflicting loyalties (somewhat as RQG does with the Fazzur/Pharandros conflict for Lunar Tarshites, where the default is to assume that adventurers are pro-Fazzur even when they are Empire loyalists).

Among the more minor FH tweaks, we also use the timing of specific conflicts involving Esrolia (particularly Ditali, Solanthi and Grazer incursions) from the material in Wyrm's Footnotes 15 (specifically the 'Army Activity by Homeland' table on p.53) to guide some of the results (and associated Passions) for specific years.

Finally, we lean into the importance of House loyalty for social belonging (and plain survival) in Esrolia by indicating that one possible outcome of the RQG FH result of ‘Nearly starved to death, kept alive by stealing from your Clan’ for the Great Winter in 1622 is being exiled from your House. We replace this result with ‘Avoided starving to death by stealing from the House granary, but caught and exiled by the Grandmothers’, the consequence for which is to change the adventurer’s House affiliation to ‘Loner’ (the term use in 'Land of 10k Goddesses' for people who lose the protection of their House).

We are assuming that most GMs and players will decide to ignore/reroll this result (I wonder how many people actually run with the 'stealing from your Clan' result when it is generated randomly during the FH process, given the extent to which it clashes with RQG's emphasis on community belonging?) but we left it in because of the importance of Loners in the cities of our Esrolia, which for all their cosmopolitan bustle and new commercial as well as old agricultural wealth are also deeply traumatised by a decade of war and crowded with desperate refugees.

[Ludo Bagman]

For character generation and family history of Balazar/Griffin Mountain characters, see this thread:

 

[Jon Hunter]

Ive justed edited an approach which sightly trimmed down for balazaar, expect it to be put 2nd half of the year.

[Beoferret]

I, for one, would welcome some alternate options for family history generation. Particularly anything that's more focused on local affairs, rather than all the big battles and major historical events. For my own campaign, I've been working on (but have not finished - not by a long shot) a set of small random "boons" linked to a character's childhood; things that make them a little unique, while often providing a small skill boost or other small boon. For example, for Sartarites, options include that a PC was known for being very athletic (+5% to two Agility skills, Grapple, etc., or 10% to one); the PC was a bully as a kid (+5 to Intimidate, Fist, or Kick or +10% to one - and someone out there has the Hate (PC name) passion); or the PC has a parent or other close relative from another Homeland (+5% to Customs (other homeland), other language, or Lore (other homeland) or +10% to one.) Nothing earthshaking, but enough to make PCs a little more rounded and to provide flavor that, in some cases, could lead to more roleplaying and/or future adventure hooks.

[Jason Farrell]

10 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

(Why don't any of the people who keep telling us they want more RQ settings outside of Dragon Pass and Prax ever discuss Paul's significant body of work? It baffles me)

Grammar and spelling issues aside (which are admittedly very distracting for me), Paul Baker's work is great.  Tons of interesting ideas, and he gets Glorantha, so those ideas have a high hit to miss ratio for me. 

Jamie Revell is another good source of material about places outside Dragon Pass and Prax.   And of course the recent Imther book by Harald Smith.  (I know you know this, Nick, but for others who might be interested)

Edited January 10, 2023 by Jason Farrell

[M Helsdon]

On 1/10/2023 at 10:08 AM, Nick Brooke said:

(Why don't any of the people who keep telling us they want more RQ settings outside of Dragon Pass and Prax ever discuss Paul's significant body of work? It baffles me)

By my own experience, sales for material outside the core region don't seem to have a large market, comparing the sales of Armies & Enemies of Dragon Pass with Men of the West.

[Nick Brooke]

I know! (I have published a Malkioni book myself, and another one is on the way). But the people who are noisily in favour of those books existing stay remarkably quiet about them once they've been written and published. It's bizarre!

[soltakss]

On 1/9/2023 at 6:41 PM, g33k said:

I was wondering if anyone had track of which JC products had substantive new regions/eras/peoples expanding the "Family History" parts of character-creation?

The upcoming Holiday Dorastor: Risklands supplement has Family History for the Risklands, Bilini and Talastar.

 

[g33k]

3 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

I know! (I have published a Malkioni book myself, and another one is on the way). But the people who are noisily in favour of those books existing stay remarkably quiet about them once they've been written and published. It's bizarre!

<supercilious sniff>
Well, but... are they  canon,  sir?

/snark

I hope the people who are clamoring these products are going ahead and buying these products -- using them at their tables, enjoying them; and giving stars & reviews !!!

But I have some understanding -- and even sympathy -- for the desire to get "canonical" sources.  I think most GM's have a hard time saying "no" to (and most players resent having) "official content" (canon) barred from the game; but what d'ya do when your game has leaned-in on some JC source before Chaosium got 'round to that release (looking at Kralorela in particular, where there are persistent rumors of a ms. sitting at Chaosium in near-final state, while Mr. Baker just churns out content for the region!) and then Chaosium "canon" comes along and "invalidates" some part of your campaign, of PC's backstories, etc...?

Yes, yes, I know -- YGMV, just play your Glorantha at your table, take what you want -- from whichever sources you want, with blithe disregard for what is/isn't "canon" -- to Vary Your Glorantha.  But realistically, most people prefer to have "the canon" as the baseline from which they Vary.

[Nick Brooke]

More fool them. Chaosium will be looking at the extent of buzz around community content (among other things) when deciding what to publish. No sizzle: no steak. If you want official East Isles releases, at least pretend to be excited about the unofficial ones, eh?

[soltakss]

2 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

Chaosium will be looking at the extent of buzz around community content (among other things) when deciding what to publish.

I didn't know that, thanks for sharing.

 

[g33k]

4 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

More fool them. Chaosium will be looking at the extent of buzz around community content (among other things) when deciding what to publish. No sizzle: no steak. If you want official East Isles releases, at least pretend to be excited about the unofficial ones, eh?

<sigh>

NOW  he tells us!

Man oh man, I'd have been hype'ing hardcore on every JC product with new cults/gods/spirits, in hopes they'd throw (yet more) effort into the "Cults of Central Genertela" product!
 

(I joke)

(sort of)
 

Edited January 12, 2023 by g33k
but also: I *DID* specify that I hoped the baying mob was buying & "sizzling" those products!

[jajagappa]

5 hours ago, g33k said:

I hope the people who are clamoring these products are going ahead and buying these products -- using them at their tables, enjoying them; and giving stars & reviews !!!

I'm looking for more of them!  Edge of Empire sits at the threshold of Silver Status (which we all know it needs to achieve to get recognition from Moonson).

5 hours ago, g33k said:

Well, but... are they  canon,  sir?

I don't know about all places, but for many, these will effectively be "canon" or as close as will come (particularly assuming they are derived from and align with the Guide, the Glorantha Sourcebook, and when available the Cults of Glorantha).