Out now in print - Jonstown Compendium Catalogue 2023

[Nick Brooke]

The updated Jonstown Compendium Catalogue (2023 edition) is now available at DriveThruRPG! This book details every supplement published in the first four years of Chaosium's community content programme for RuneQuest and Glorantha. As before, the book merges the 2022 JC Catalogue with the 2023 JC Index to present every release up to the end of December 2023, divided into categories. Titles in most categories are ranked by sales.

 

The nine categories used are RuneQuest (scenarios), Glorantha (sourcebooks), QuestWorlds, Monsters of the Month, Virtual Tabletop Tokens, Cartography & Battle-Maps, Artpacks & Stock Art, Shorter Works, and Play Aids & Random Stuff. Detailed listings analyse content (pages split between scenario, stats, maps, etc.), calculate the price per page of content (excluding front matter, blank pages, etc.), and summarise key details about each title.

 

Three Where in the World? maps show product locations (where they can be pinned down). There are notes on when each scenario and campaign is set, by year and season, including all Chaosium RQG scenarios. Appendices include notes for creators and best-seller charts (all time and 2023 by quarter), and a selection of fascinating bar-charts showing the growth of the programme.

 

205 pages (6x9 inch) for $3.50 digital (PDF) or $11.95 (standard colour paperback).

Edited January 19 by Nick Brooke
Out now in print!

[JDM]

Excellent. As usual.

[jajagappa]

10 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

The updated Jonstown Compendium Catalogue (2023 edition) is now available at DriveThruRPG! This book details every supplement published in the first four years of Chaosium's community content programme for RuneQuest and Glorantha. As before, the book merges the 2022 JC Catalogue with the 2023 JC Index to present every release up to the end of December 2023, divided into categories. Titles in most categories are ranked by sales.

Looks great! As always, lots of excellent detail.

@Nick Brooke one minor note: you picked up the original cover illustration for Nochet: Queen of Cities rather than the updated/final one.

[Nick Brooke]

Thanks, I’ll fix that.

[Scornado]

Just a query about Jonstown Compendium ... is there any danger that material may be superseded and invalidated by a canon publication? 

 

[Nick Brooke]

Of course!

[Nick Brooke]

Everything on the Jonstown Compendium is original creative non-canonical fan work, which adheres to Greg Stafford’s foundational principle that Your Glorantha Will Vary. Chaosium is in no way obliged to make its own publications conform to non-canonical fan works, and of course it can’t simply copy them. Chaosium does not review or approve JC creations prior to publication, or limit creators’ creativity in any way (other than the obvious: no plagiarism, no ‘extreme adult content,’ etc.).

Now, some JC authors and artists also work with Chaosium in various capacities, and many of them are extremely familiar with their own Gloranthas. Some authors go to great lengths to conform to the latest orthodoxies, whatever they may be, while others enjoy sticking to familiar but superseded versions, or exhuming ancient texts, or blazing entirely new trails. Your Glorantha Will Vary, and it can and should borrow widely from stuff you love. Not all of which will be in official, “canonical” Chaosium publications, unless you take a rather blinkered and un-creative approach to the setting.

[Nick Brooke]

So, realistically: is Chaosium about to publish its own city books describing Nochet, Furthest, Glamour, Boldhome, etc. in gazetteer-level detail?

Magic 8-ball says "Very doubtful."

Is Chaosium about to publish its own identical-only-better, somehow-canonical replacements for all the awesome scenarios from the Jonstown Compendium?

Magic 8-ball says "Don't count on it."

Do you want to have fun playing in Glorantha today, rather than waiting for the mythical "Next Year" when everything magically appears all at once and makes your game experience 100% orthodox and wholly compliant with 2025-era canon?

Magic 8-ball says "Signs point to yes."

[soltakss]

On 1/5/2024 at 5:32 PM, Scornado said:

Just a query about Jonstown Compendium ... is there any danger that material may be superseded and invalidated by a canon publication? 

Of course there is danger, and I welcome that.

I would be happy for Chaosium to copy my Dorastor material and use it for "official" Dorastor, but I very much doubt if they will. However, it can be used alongside official Dorastor material. 

Personally, I have never understood the prioritisation of "official" or "canon" material over unofficial material. In the Dark Days, when there wasn't much official RQ or Glorantha material around, we used what we found on the Internet and incorporated it into our games. When official material came out it sometimes wasn't as good as the unofficial material so we used a hybrid of the two.

Edited January 20 by soltakss

[soltakss]

1 minute ago, Nick Brooke said:

Do you want to have fun playing in Glorantha today, rather than waiting for the mythical "Next Year" when everything magically appears all at once and makes your game experience 100% orthodox and wholly compliant with 2025-era canon?

I have been officially told not to use the "Next Year" joke on RQ forums any more, so I am immensely pleased that you can still use it. 🙂

Edited January 5 by soltakss

[Austin]

1 hour ago, Nick Brooke said:

Some authors go to great lengths to conform to the latest orthodoxies, whatever they may be, while others enjoy sticking to familiar but superseded versions, or exhuming ancient texts, or blazing entirely new trails.

I vote option E - all of the above!

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, Scornado said:

Just a query about Jonstown Compendium ... is there any danger that material may be superseded and invalidated by a canon publication?

As Nick noted above, yes. But also looking at it realistically:

• Cults - we're expecting Lunar and Solar cults in 2024. Then Darkness, Sea, Spirits, Invisible God, Chaos during 2025-6. 
• Sartar/Dragon Pass - will have gazetteer and possibly core region book in 2024, but some areas already have sufficient detail (Clearwine, Jonstown) to allow solid additions that will likely not be superceded (e.g. the two Clearwine supplements)
• Great Hero Wars Campaign - will probably cover the overarching arc of the struggle between Argrath and the Lunar Empire. This would probably cover broad events and where, but without local details. Perhaps in 2024-5?
• Prax/Pavis - presumably will build off the original RQ Classic material with updates for timeline. Perhaps we will see new works in 2025?
• Nearby regions - Grazelands, Heortland, Tarsh, and Esrolia - will likely get their own region books. In some cases (e.g. Heortland) the manuscripts are in with Chaosium, but unknown time schedule vs. other works. Likely post-2025.
• Where after that? Lunar Heartland, trolls, aldryami? And by then we're easily 3 years out.

So whether you want to look at large cities (as I did with Nochet), peripheral regions (my Imther material, Simon Phipp's Dorastor), or more remote locations (e.g. East Isles, Teshnos, etc.), there's unlikely to be any significant material in the next 3+ years that would invalidate a work if you start from the Guide, the Glorantha Sourcebook, and the available Cults books as your reference points.

And even it it did, so what? 🙂 As Nick said very well:

1 hour ago, Nick Brooke said:

Your Glorantha Will Vary, and it can and should borrow widely from stuff you love. Not all of which will be in official, “canonical” Chaosium publications, unless you take a rather blinkered and un-creative approach to the setting.

[Nick Brooke]

If your campaign is set in and around Jonstown and the Colymar lands, and you only use the characters, scenarios and setting material published in the RuneQuest Starter Set, Core Rules, Colymar Adventure book and various other "canonical" books from Chaosium, then Your Glorantha Will Still  Vary. It's inevitable! As soon as you start playing with this stuff, doing anything original and creative with it, you varied and broke with canon. So you might as well embrace it, and have fun!

[Scornado]

22 hours ago, Scornado said:

Just a query about Jonstown Compendium ... is there any danger that material may be superseded and invalidated by a canon publication? 

 

OK guys, it was only asked to satisfy my curiosity .... my Glorantha already varies, and our gaming is SLOW.  Thanks for all your thoughts though ....

[Squaredeal Sten]

It is my impression that:

1) A lot of canon material originated as fan material in various fanzines.  Most of which are out of print now, and cannot be reprinted due to original authors not being contact-able.  So Glorantha has been a multi-person collaboration for decades, with wise editorial control..

2) Of course it got Chaosium edits along the way, Including some significant revisions.   For instance "the west" was once  presented as semi medieval, not so now in canon. 

You who were participating when I had lost touch with Glorantha from the mid 1980s to 2018,  please correct my possible error.

Anyway, Jonstown Compendium material ought not to suffer from the out-of-print problem.

 

 

[Nick Brooke]

[Ian A. Thomson]

On 1/6/2024 at 5:54 AM, soltakss said:

Personally, I have never understood the prioritisation of "official" or "canon" material over unofficial material. In the Dark Days, when there wasn't much official RQ or Glorantha material around, we used what we found on the Internet and incorporated it into our games. When official material came out it sometimes wasn't as good as the unofficial material so we used a hybrid of the two.

Yup

In the second Pavis campaign I ran was also in an interesting position of having some big-time Gloranthaphiles as Players, including one who is officially associated with Chaosium

We discussed this very question as the campaign began to roll more seriously.

To cut a long story short, there was 100% agreement that they were very happy with my approach

This was to stick to canon as much as possible as a backdrop only

[The rest of the %s are illustrative of the consensus of course. We didn't decide on specific figures]

IE The world of Glorantha, it's history and Cults 90%+ accuracy, but 10% variety and new things to retain the air of mystery that otherwise wouldn't exist since they already know so much about the place

Currently unfolding events 70% accuracy, since they all loved Gloranthan lore, but again didn't want to know exactly what was happening. So they literally preferred a flexible timeline. (The conversation started when I discussed the plan - without specific details - and said that I would have to shuffle around dates if I wanted to include all the stuff I thought was most interesting.) Basically they said: "We PREFER that, as that way we don't know exactly what's on its way or exactly when it will happen."

And as an extension on that when I mentioned I was wanting to change certain ideas and extend others, they also said they would PREFER that too. So that once again they didn't know what to expect exactly, and were happy with an even higher % of variety

In short these experienced Glorantha fans/players said: As long as you are sticking to a generally accurate Glorantha as it stands as a backdrop and history, we genuinely don't care how it unfolds from here. Any congruent changes/adaptations are fine with us, and make the story more interesting and mysterious

[g33k]

WARNING:  contrarian input coming!

On 1/5/2024 at 9:32 AM, Scornado said:

Just a query about Jonstown Compendium ... is there any danger that material may be superseded and invalidated by a canon publication? 

No danger of that whatsoever!
(despite the universal "yes, it will" you see in the answers above)

Because the JC content is already explicitly non-canonical, and actively varies from Chaosium's canon.
Mind you, there may be a few (a very few) items on the JC that 100% adhere to "the canon."  But not even the dozen or so very-best pieces of JC content reliably adhere to canon.

It's like asking "is there any danger of Winston Churchill dying before the next election?"
No "danger" of that happening, no...  None whatsoever!

Edited May 15 by g33k