Courtesy in publications

[Malin]

Alright, I'm a newly registered user, but I've lurked around here for a couple of years and read through the forums (yes, I am that person), so it already feels like home. However, I have never really felt the need to add anything due to being busy with my own writing, but now I am on my first vacation in years and have too much time to think about Runequest, so I have a question.

What kind of unwritten rules/common courtesy is there about publishing things through the Johnstown compendium when it comes to things set in the same setting as other supplements?

The reason why I'm asking is that I have been running a Runequest campaign set in Sun County (1615 onwards), based on the old Sun County/River of Cradles/Cults of Prax books, with the addition of the wonderful Sandheart supplements by Jonathan Webb and stuff scavenged from the Prax threads on this side. Being who I am (a game designer/writer who can never shut up), I produced a lot of handouts for my players (one of which was pretty much a complete Glorantha newbie) and started delving into bits I was missing from the content I had. This is mainly things like Yelmalio initiation rites, marriage traditions, food, clothing, architecture, and festivals. In short, the kind of cultural immersion I love about playing in Glorantha, which helps my players get into character. This is in addition to certain rules additions, like a politics and influence system (because the players are getting political).

So, as I mentioned, I am now on vacation, and after reading the Nochet supplement by Harald Smith, I woke up at 2 am one morning and started to turn my scattered handouts (25 000+ words) into a more complete cultural guide to Sun County.

I am not doing this to try to rewrite the setting, instead, I am trying to write about the things I miss. The original books are filled with stats, rules, characters, and adventures, but most of them (apart from Sandheart) seem to be written with the assumption that the players are strangers passing through, not people born in the place and trying to make a living there. I wanted to try to give the (sometimes maligned) Sun Domers some practical depth and culture to help new players make sense of Count lists and cult strictures, to know the rhythm of life and agriculture, and whatever minor thing my brain decides to research when it gets distracted. And yet, I worry about stepping on toes I might not even be noticing.

So far, I don't think there is much overlap other than the very broad ones of being set in the same place. I am planning to do thorough references in the Nochet style to show where I have got what facts I reference, and I plan to recommend said books in the intro. As I said, I see this as a companion piece (much like the Six Paths for Heortling gender roles), not as a rewrite or a replacement. Forum posts are an entirely different kettle of fish, not sure if those can or should be referenced, but I guess I don't need to elaborate on Praxian cheesemaking in this specific volume... (still my favorite forum post)

Is there anything else I need to consider?  (also, hi!)

[Nick Brooke]

Hi, Malin!

Please don’t worry about treading on anybody’s toes! Your Glorantha Will Vary, and I know that both @MOB (author of Sun County) and @Incendiary Pig (Jon Webb, creator of the Sandheart series) will be delighted to see a fresh take on Sun County. (As will I, for what that’s worth: my own snippets about women, folklore, etc., are in the Manifesto.)

If you say a few kind words about the giants whose shoulders you’re standing on in a foreword, or on the credits page, or whatever, you’ve gone beyond what’s strictly necessary (although I’d always advise people to give both credit and thanks widely and generously, because what harm has common courtesy ever done?).

You are explicitly permitted to use anything from any Chaosium or Moon Design publication - which includes all of the RuneQuest Classics, Avalon Hill’s Gloranthan books and boxes, the Gloranthan Classics, the HeroQuestWorldWars lines, the modern RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha line and anything published on the Jonstown Compendium - as inspirations for your own Gloranthan works.

You aren’t allowed to substantially quote from (or rephrase, rework, etc.) those prior works, without permission, but you can certainly reference them, build on them, do your own original thing with named characters, places, deities, etc. found in them.

And if you ask for permission to quote or paraphrase something, you might just get it!

[Nick Brooke]

For forum posts, if anybody has shared their ideas in public (without hemming them around with weird legalese), you can of course use them as inputs to your own creative process, but you can’t simply cut’n’paste their wording (unless you ask for and receive permission), and you ought to give credit anyway. (Folk wouldn’t have shared their ideas in public if they didn’t want other people to be influenced by them, right?)

[Malin]

Thank you so much! It was as I hoped and suspected, but I figured it's better safe than sorry.

[Nick Brooke]

You shouldn’t use any stuff that you only find in Mongoose RuneQuest books, because they aren’t Chaosium / Moon Design property. We can’t give you permission to quote that, it’s not our original IP. Best avoided.

If your community content publication uses game rules, they should be from RuneQuest Classic (RQ2), modern RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, the “HeroQuest Glorantha” implementation of what we now call QuestWorlds, or 13th Age Glorantha. It can’t use rules from Avalon Hill RQ3 (because Chaosium won’t let you - there’s a narrow exception for monster stats), or from Mongoose RuneQuest/ “Legend,” or the Design Mechanism’s RQ6/ “Mythras” (because Chaosium can’t let you, as that’s not our stuff).

Obviously you can use the Stafford Library books, the old board wargames, the systemless Guide and Sourcebook, etc. to your heart’s content (short of quoting or paraphrasing, unless you get permission first).

[Malin]

I never actually got around to buying any of the Mongoose stuff, so I think I'm safe there. What rules there will be, is modern Runequest, as that's what we're running our campaign in. And oh boy, I do not want to mess with Avalon Hill 😅

90% of it will be system neutral (except the influence/politic system).

(and thanks for linking your  manifesto, it's turned out to be an interesting read and we agree on a lot of things)

[M Helsdon]

1 hour ago, Malin said:

Is there anything else I need to consider?  (also, hi!)

As Nick says, thanking people is always good; I also try to add a Sources list of publications, whether official or Jonstown Compendium.

My current project includes this:

Edited August 4, 2023 by M Helsdon

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, Malin said:

and after reading the Nochet supplement by Harald Smith, I woke up at 2 am one morning and started to turn my scattered handouts (25 000+ words) into a more complete cultural guide to Sun County.

Glad to hear it was inspirational for you! 🙂 

I can't really add much to what Nick has already noted. 

1 hour ago, Nick Brooke said:

You are explicitly permitted to use anything from any Chaosium or Moon Design publication - which includes all of the RuneQuest Classics, Avalon Hill’s Gloranthan books and boxes, the Gloranthan Classics, the HeroQuestWorldWars lines, the modern RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha line and anything published on the Jonstown Compendium - as inspirations for your own Gloranthan works.

I believe this includes particular section types/styles. So, if for instance you like the Cast of Characters style and the Best Friend/Worst Foe/... content I did for Nochet, you could do something similar for Sun County. 

[Malin]

4 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

I believe this includes particular section types/styles. So, if for instance you like the Cast of Characters style and the Best Friend/Worst Foe/... content I did for Nochet, you could do something similar for Sun County. 

I was indeed considering asking permission to do that (with attribution, of course) because it is a brilliant means of immersion and just showing the breadth of characters that can exist in a setting. 💚

[Nick Brooke]

Drew kindly let us use his Runic personality notation format from Six Seasons in Sartar in Citizens of the Lunar Empire. (I kinda wish Chaosium would start using it in “proper” publications, because it’s so handy!)

[Malin]

2 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Drew kindly let us use his Runic personality notation format from Six Seasons in Sartar in Citizens of the Lunar Empire. (I kinda wish Chaosium would start using it in “proper” publications, because it’s so handy!)

It really is, I have borrowed that for all my npc's as well (though I doubt there will be any in that detail in this book), it is such a neat way to describe a character.

[Squaredeal Sten]

Malin,

I believe most people who have published a setting (a recent example of which is Harald Smith's Nochet, Queen of Cities), would be  happy if someone started publishing adventures set there and referencing his book.  He wrote it for people to play in.   I'd say try not to kill off his named NPCs.  Just don't lift blocks of text or maps from it without permission and giving credit.

I know for sure that if you write an adventure starting from the inn described in Caravanserai, in either of the  locations I suggested for GMs to use or a different one, I would be very happy if you published it.  Just give credit up front in the vicinity of the Chaosium logo, as you see examples in existing JC publications. 

If you have specific non-hypothetical questions on Chaosium policy, relevant to something you are actually writing for publication, then message Nick Brooke, community ambassador.  He does answer.  He is helpful, and if it needs a permission from someone at Chaosium he will say who it is and possibly act as an intermediary.

These people want you to succeed in publishing RQiG adventures.

[soltakss]

17 hours ago, Malin said:

What kind of unwritten rules/common courtesy is there about publishing things through the Johnstown compendium when it comes to things set in the same setting as other supplements?

Don't wholesale copy things from other supplements?

That's about all I can think of.

Nick recently clarified, and again in this thread, that people can use elements of any Chaosium RuneQuest publication in any Jonstown Compendium supplement, which includes any Jonstown Compendium supplement. So, someone could use a monster from Monster of the Month, for example, or could mention the Spiderlings from Spider Woods. It might be worth referencing them in the Credits section, perhaps, as a courtesy.

Personally, I would love other people to write about Dorastor, or HeroQuesting, as they are areas that need multiple authors.

As for Sun County, there is a lot of it and I can see benefits of a campaign pack set there, so it would be good to see your material published.

[Soccercalle]

I think its great to develop both official and ”non-official” supplements. I run a Six Seasons- based campaign and have a very ”political” group of players and wanted some intrigue and powerplay among the Haraborn. So I created some bloodlines based on the ”founding fathers” of the clan so that different coalitions and loyalties would be logical. I also distributed the NPCs and steads among the different bloodlines.

But I would never publish anything of this without the consent of Andrew Logan Montgomery who was created and written the books about the Haraborn. But the bloodlines exists at ”my” gaming table.

[Nick Brooke]

Ask him.

[Malin]

5 hours ago, soltakss said:

Personally, I would love other people to write about Dorastor, or HeroQuesting, as they are areas that need multiple authors.

I do have heroquest rules since I absolutely love that part of the game and it's an intrinsic part of it for me (we played the quest for the white bull in our campaign), but I am not sure how publishable those will be since they are second-guessed and cobbled together from official comments and play. Hopefully the real ones will come soon...

[mfbrandi]

3 hours ago, Malin said:

I am not sure how publishable those will be since they are second-guessed and cobbled together from official comments and play.

I wouldn’t worry about what Chaosium may or may not publish in the future — currently, yours may be more real than theirs, and I suspect heroquesting rules will be very much a matter of taste: people will want a menu to choose from.

[Nick Brooke]

On 8/4/2023 at 5:21 PM, Malin said:

I wanted to try to give the (sometimes maligned) Sun Domers some practical depth and culture to help new players make sense of Count lists and cult strictures, to know the rhythm of life and agriculture, and whatever minor thing my brain decides to research when it gets distracted. And yet, I worry about stepping on toes I might not even be noticing.

If it helps, you have my complete blessing to use or ignore anything I've ever written about Sun County - the motherlode is Sun County Backgrounds in Sandheart Vol. 1.

If you want to quote bits of that article, borrow any epithets that are only found there (Gold, Bronze & Copper Lords, the Red Count, etc.), work the miraculous Summer of Love into your agrarian sociological model, etc., I'd be delighted!

If you want to quote lots of that article verbatim or rework it somehow, just let me know: I can provide editable docs on request.

Two other great sources are the Secret History of Sun County (on Jane Williams' website) and MOB's thread Some notes on the Cradle aftermath...

[Malin]

8 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

If it helps, you have my complete blessing to use or ignore anything I've ever written about Sun County - the motherlode is Sun County Backgrounds in Sandheart Vol. 1.

If you want to quote bits of that article, borrow any epithets that are only found there (Gold, Bronze & Copper Lords, the Red Count, etc.), work the miraculous Summer of Love into your agrarian sociological model, etc., I'd be delighted!

If you want to quote lots of that article verbatim or rework it somehow, just let me know: I can provide editable docs on request.

Two other great sources are the Secret History of Sun County (on Jane Williams' website) and MOB's thread Some notes on the Cradle aftermath...

Thank you! A lot of your stuff is the basis of my writing! That was what got my brain going in the first place. I don't have direct quotes, but I am certainly using the terms and ideas. I am also heavily inspired by MOB's posts, but won't get to that point since the timescale is around 1613-1620 for this one as that's the period I'm running my campaign in so far. Secret History of sun county had some interesting ideas, but there mine diverge a bit more. There are seeds in there though.

Yep, I've been scouring Sun County material from the web for a long time, I might be a slight gloranthophiliac...

[DrGoth]

On 8/5/2023 at 2:46 AM, Nick Brooke said:

Avalon Hill’s Gloranthan books and boxes,

What is the status of this material? I t would be great to see the RQ renaissance material in PDF or PoD.  I keep worrying about the longevity of my copies.

[Nick Brooke]

It is all owned by Chaosium. Because the company doesn’t currently sell a convenient edition of the RQ3 rules (and nor does it plan to reissue them as such), we aren’t encouraging people to write anything for them.

But all of the Gloranthan books and boxes are largely canonical, and since YGWV anyway you can use anything from them that you like in your own Jonstown Compendium publications - but please don’t write for that edition of the rules. (You can convert RQ3 monsters to RQ Classic or RQG, and you can ask for permission if you want to use anything else - which you might not get.)

The Jonstown Compendium welcomes material written for RuneQuest Classic and RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha because those are the two editions of the game we currently sell. We don’t want people to buy a “RuneQuest” scenario or supplement and find it’s full of an obsolete version of the Sorcery rules, etc.

The situation is much the same for QuestWorlds. The only version of the rules we are supporting is HeroQuest Glorantha (HQ 2nd edition). You can use Gloranthan stuff from any Hero Wars or HeroQuest book - since YGWV, and we really don’t care about canon on the JC - but please don’t write for obsolete versions of the rules, and don’t just copy out or paraphrase stuff from our books without asking for permission (which you might not get).

Edited August 8, 2023 by Nick Brooke

[DrGoth]

22 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

It is all owned by Chaosium. Because the company doesn’t currently sell a convenient edition of the RQ3 rules (and not does it plan to reissue them as such), we aren’t encouraging people to write anything for them.

But all of the Gloranthan books and boxes are largely canonical, and since YGWV anyway you can use anything from them that you like in your own Jonstown Compendium publications - but please don’t write for that edition of the rules. (You can convert RQ3 monsters to RQ Classic or RQG, and you can ask for permission if you want to use anything else - which you might not get).

The Jonstown Compendium welcomes material written for RuneQuest Classic and RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha because those are the two editions of the game we currently sell. We don’t want people to buy a “RuneQuest” scenario or supplement and find it’s full of an obsolete version of the Sorcery rules, etc.

The situation is much the same for QuestWorlds. The only version of the rules we are supporting is HeroQuest Glorantha (HQ 2nd edition). You can use Gloranthan stuff from any Hero Wars or HeroQuest book - since YGWV, and we really don’t care about canon on the JC - but please don’t write for obsolete versions of the rules, and don’t just copy out or paraphrase stuff from our books without asking for permission (which you might not get).

I can see why Chaosium doesn't want to bother with the RTQ3 rules. I still think it would be good to have some of those supplements available in PDF.   Sun County gets referenced a lot, but those who came along in the last 25 years may have trouble getting a copy.

[Nick Brooke]

I agree. I can’t say much more now: the thing I can confirm (which other Chaosium spokespersons have done before) is that there are no twisty rights issues (e.g. “Oh noes, Hasbro owns Avalon Hill so the RuneQuest Renaissance books are forever off-limits!”). Chaosium owns all that material outright. Be not afraid. Set no hares running. Scare no horses.

The RuneQuest Classic Kickstarter brought the RQ2 books from the late seventies and early eighties back into widespread availability in digital and print-on-demand formats; there’s no reason Chaosium couldn’t Kickstart or otherwise release the RQ3 books from the early nineties as well, other than lack of bandwidth and higher priority competing projects. (Speaking of which, have you seen the new Cults books?)

Collectors will be delighted to hear that the company is unlikely to put any real effort into reissuing stuff that has already been updated in the Guide / Sourcebook / RQG (cf. Missing Lands), or that was only converted from RQ2 to RQ3 when a RuneQuest Classic is already available (e.g. the sliced-and-diced Trollpak reissues for RQ3). Those occasional updated paragraphs and fancy new maps / artwork are yours to treasure (or indeed eBay), if we didn’t back-port them into the Classic editions.

[Rick Meints]

On 8/7/2023 at 7:56 AM, DrGoth said:

What is the status of this material? I t would be great to see the RQ renaissance material in PDF or PoD.  I keep worrying about the longevity of my copies.

As the head of Chaosium's Nostalgia Department, I feel best placed to restate the status of these sorts of things. We own all of the rights to the RQ3 material. There is only one hindrance to getting any of that material released: Time. Yes, nobody likes that answer, but that does not make it any less true. We have all our staff, except a small part of my time, focused on new product releases. While we could hire additional staff to work on these "classic reprint" projects, that just guarantees we would make less money on them when many of them are only marginally profitable. We usually only sell a few hundred of these sorts of RQ books, btw. That's PDF and POD sales. It's hard to be profitable.

[Squaredeal Sten]

59 minutes ago, Rick Meints said:

As the head of Chaosium's Nostalgia Department, I feel best placed to restate the status of these sorts of things. We own all of the rights to the RQ3 material. There is only one hindrance to getting any of that material released: Time. Yes, nobody likes that answer, but that does not make it any less true. We have all our staff, except a small part of my time, focused on new product releases. While we could hire additional staff to work on these "classic reprint" projects, that just guarantees we would make less money on them when many of them are only marginally profitable. We usually only sell a few hundred of these sorts of RQ books, btw. That's PDF and POD sales. It's hard to be profitable.

So if someone competent (not me!😄) were to volunteer (out of pure fandom and without expectation of significant profit, or with a profit-sharing deal) to scan the old copies and set them up for re-publication as PDFs, would you be likely to authorize that?  Subject to approval of the final version based on quality, of course. 

Who knows, you might have a volunteer out there.  😀  Or if you don't then that might quiet the recurring questions, since silence indicates agreement that the action would be a money loser..

Edited August 8, 2023 by Squaredeal Sten
since silence