Glorantha's Gaming Future?

[mserabian]

Hey guys

Not sure if this has been discussed (I haven't been paying 100% attention)...

Once the new RQ is completed are there still going to be HQ Gloranthan releases, or is everything going to be for RQ and 13th Age?

Does anyone know the time frame of the new releases? I know the Dragon Pass Campaign book is focusing on the Rise of Argrath period, and 13th Age in Gloranatha Core book and Glorantha Sourcebook are set in the War Against Chaos period. So is each game going to get releases for only a specific time frame?

thanks

malcolm

Edited March 16, 2017 by mserabian

[jajagappa]

1 minute ago, mserabian said:

are there still going to be HQ Gloranthan releases

Yes, that is my understanding of the plan.

2 minutes ago, mserabian said:

I know the Dragon Pass Campaign book is focusing on the Rise of Argrath period, and 13th Age in Gloranatha Core book and Glorantha Sourcebook are set in the War Against Chaos period. So is each game going to get releases for only a specific time frame?

These periods are the same.  It's basically a bump up to 1626-7 as a general starting point for new material rather than pre-Great Winter/Hero Wars.

[mserabian]

One of the reasons I ask is because at Chaosium's web site there are prominent links for RQ, and Cthulhu, less prominent links for Glorantha, and no specific mentions at all (at least on the main page) for HQ...

Just got me thinking...

nevermind. just saw the link under products

Edited March 16, 2017 by mserabian

[jajagappa]

3 minutes ago, mserabian said:

no specific mentions at all (at least on the main page) for HQ.

There are several of us working on HQ material.

[g33k]

5 hours ago, mserabian said:

One of the reasons I ask is because at Chaosium's web site there are prominent links for RQ, and Cthulhu, less prominent links for Glorantha, and no specific mentions at all (at least on the main page) for HQ...

Honestly, the Chaosium website is a bit of a mess; but lack of web skillz shouldn't be taken as ANY sort of indication of their plans or priorities (other than having the website as a low priority).  

[Steve]

Yeah there are plenty of upcoming HQ publications for Glorantha. Take a look at the "Upcoming Glorantha publications" sticky. Out of that, as I understand it the following are all HQ-based pubs - The Eleven Lights, Notchet guidebook, Casino Town/Holy Country book, Trollpack, Riders of the Storm, Sun County (not sure about this one).

Also, although the Glorantha sourcebook is part of the 13th Age releases, it's totally system free and is basically a big book of myths.

So don't worry, there's plenty of stuff in progress for HQ:G.

 

Edited March 17, 2017 by Steve

[g33k]

4 hours ago, Steve said:

... as I understand it the following are all HQ-based pubs - ... Trollpack ...

Erm...?

Given that the original RQ2 "Trollpak" is returning (via the RQClassic KS), is a HQ book of the same(is) title coming, too?

Or will there be some other title for the HQ book(s)?

Or ... ?

 

[Steve]

16 minutes ago, g33k said:

Erm...?

Given that the original RQ2 "Trollpak" is returning (via the RQClassic KS), is a HQ book of the same(is) title coming, too?

 

Yes, Dan McCluskey is working on a new, 3-volume, HQ-based Trollpack. See the sticky post for more details, i.e.:

Trollpack vol 1 ("troll info and adventures for humans")
Trollpack vol 2 ("everything you need to run troll PCs in a trollish setting with a campaign based around trollish clan life")
Trollpack vol 3 ("covering Dagori Inkarth with a full description of Redstone, and takes the campaign literally from 'tussle over a cave' into creative heroquesting, PC heroes stomping around like a chit in the DP wargame, and climaxes with one of the defining magical events of the Hero Wars")

 

Edited March 17, 2017 by Steve

[boztakang]

5 minutes ago, Steve said:

Yes, Dan McCluskey is working on a new, 3-volume, HQ-based Trollpack.

At this point, books one and two are "text-complete" and 3 nearly so. 

Approximately one third of the first book is material from the original trollpak, and the rest is almost all new material.

[Steve]

Can't wait!

[Steve]

Just to add to the original question - since HQ is a very rules-lite system, it will be pretty easier to convert any of the new RQ stuff to HQ. So the gaming future for HQ in Glorantha is very bright.

 

[Noita]

1 hour ago, boztakang said:

At this point, books one and two are "text-complete" and 3 nearly so. 

Approximately one third of the first book is material from the original trollpak, and the rest is almost all new material.

Great to hear.

[g33k]

2 hours ago, boztakang said:

At this point, books one and two are "text-complete" and 3 nearly so. 

Approximately one third of the first book is material from the original trollpak, and the rest is almost all new material.

1:  Just to clarify:   Might the final as-published title be different (Uzpak? Trollhorde?) ?   Or has the decision been made to have 2 different "Trollpack" titles simultaneously in-print, for two different game systems within Glorantha?    oooookay.    Not the choice that I would have made... but <shrug> so far, nuChaosium really seems like they're on top of things, so maybe they have reason to think it's a good idea; based on their successes to date, I trust their judgements over my own on subjects like this.

2:  HQ, as noted, can pretty easily "adapt" RQ content; what about those going the opposite direction?  How much RQ-crunch will GM's need to make, if they want to fully-use this HQ material?

3:  Is this just going to be a "regular product," or is a KS campaign planned?

 

[Richard S.]

I'm personally hoping they'll go through with some of the stuff they promised in RQ2 back in 1970-something: the Aldryami Campaigns, the Mostali Campaigns, etc..,

Alternately, I would accept the Mostali book promised in Anaxial's roster, or any elder race book for that matter.

[Joerg]

14 minutes ago, g33k said:

1:  Just to clarify:   Might the final as-published title be different (Uzpak? Trollhorde?) ?   Or has the decision been made to have 2 different "Trollpack" titles simultaneously in-print, for two different game systems within Glorantha?    oooookay.    Not the choice that I would have made... but <shrug> so far, nuChaosium really seems like they're on top of things, so maybe they have reason to think it's a good idea; based on their successes to date, I trust their judgements over my own on subjects like this.

There are going to be three books, presumably each with their own title, and the subtitle or series name which might well be Troll Pak, possibly with Heroquest mentioned.

Hero Wars or Heroquest 1 only had the Unspoken Word publication Uz - the Trolls of Glorantha, which basically was a scenario sized version of Troll Gods with a few pages on character creation. The name wasn't really memorable, luckily the acronym UtToG sounds a bit like an uz name.

I expect the HQ2/G publications to be the usual 120+ pages per book, which is in sum way more than we have ever seen on uz (and they got up to a pretty good page count already on RQ2 Trollpak or the more distributed RQ3 troll material, spread across two boxes (if you substract duplicate Kyger Litor full cult write-ups, which was basically most of the troll content in Elder Secrets) and two separate scenario booklets (Haunted Ruins, Into the Troll Realms).

14 minutes ago, g33k said:

2:  HQ, as noted, can pretty easily "adapt" RQ content; what about those going the opposite direction?  How much RQ-crunch will GM's need to make, if they want to fully-use this HQ material?

 

Opponents won't be statted, and you'd have to be on top of the skill and ability system to demand the correct skills or success modifiers for a situation. In my experience, it isn't too hard to stat a couple of opponents if need be.

Improvising spells to match HQ magical powers might be a bit more of a challenge - you always risk introducing something terribly unbalanced with that precedent.

On the whole, the information I get from a HQ scenario is about on par with the notes I produce for a game session of my own for RQ.

[Ian Cooper]

Hello,

Our goal is to push out 2 HQ publications in a year. That is a reasonable goal for us for now. It can take a couple of years from inception to finished book in your hands, and about a year from an ms being finished. A lot of that length is due to the labour intensive nature of the tasks (creating text and art, laying out etc.) and the difficulty in parallalizing some of those steps effectively (at what point can you commission art during creation of the ms etc.)

We have some material written and waiting to go out, and we have more in 'development' and some at more of  an inception phase.

Of course HQG players can adapt anything for RQ or 13thAge as well. We are having some interesting discussions about the idea of systemless books supplemented with system books for them. But nothing concrete, just ideas about how to effectively meet everyone's needs given production constraints.

[The Hooded Claw]

What happened to the Big Rubble book?

[Mankcam]

6 hours ago, Ian Cooper said:

We are having some interesting discussions about the idea of systemless books supplemented with system books for them. 

I have heard this previously mentioned and I think it is a great idea!

Not only would this allow GM flexibility with preferred game mechanics (RQ, HQ, D20 13th Age), it also allows GMs from completely external systems to tinker with their own games using Glorantha as a setting.

As an example, I have a good friend who backed the G2G who would use his preferred system, HARP Fantasy, and play it in Glorantha.

I personally prefer RQ, but buy any HQ supplements to expand my Gloranthan library. In many ways I would prefer a set of system-less setting and scenario books, with pdf resources that adapt them to particular rule sets.

I definately would see this as a way forward for Glorantha. The interest in the G2G demonstrates that the setting can exist independently from a defined set of rpg mechanics.

[boztakang]

13 hours ago, g33k said:

1:  Just to clarify:   Might the final as-published title be different (Uzpak? Trollhorde?) ?   Or has the decision been made to have 2 different "Trollpack" titles simultaneously in-print, for two different game systems within Glorantha?    oooookay.    Not the choice that I would have made... but <shrug> so far, nuChaosium really seems like they're on top of things, so maybe they have reason to think it's a good idea; based on their successes to date, I trust their judgements over my own on subjects like this.

2:  HQ, as noted, can pretty easily "adapt" RQ content; what about those going the opposite direction?  How much RQ-crunch will GM's need to make, if they want to fully-use this HQ material?

3:  Is this just going to be a "regular product," or is a KS campaign planned?

 

1: the current designations are "Trollpak" for the old material, and "Trollpack" for the new. Though each book has it's own subtitle. The new version gets an extra letter because there is more of it (and Jeff isn't super fond of deliberate misspellings).  I suspect the individual book titles will be more prominent for the new material than the trollpack part, but will be happy with whatever chaosium decides to do.

2: the scenarios are very much designed with HeroQuest in mind, and may be a bit tricky to translate to RQ or 13G - there just isn't that much plain old fighting in most of them, which is where those systems really shine. Just guesstimating, maybe a third can translate quite well by creating appropriate stat blocks, another third could be used with some more creative re-imagining, and the last third will have to be treated as back-story or played out free-form in some fashion. 

3: I honestly have no idea. As far as I know, there is no KS actually "planned" at this point, but I would not be hugely surprised if they didn't end up taking that route. I suspect a lot will depend on available funds and perceived demand and other things I don't have a lot of insight into.

[jongjom]

20 minutes ago, boztakang said:

1: the current designations are "Trollpak" for the old material, and "Trollpack" for the new. Though each book has it's own subtitle. The new version gets an extra letter because there is more of it (and Jeff isn't super fond of deliberate misspellings).  I suspect the individual book titles will be more prominent for the new material than the trollpack part, but will be happy with whatever chaosium decides to do.

2: the scenarios are very much designed with HeroQuest in mind, and may be a bit tricky to translate to RQ or 13G - there just isn't that much plain old fighting in most of them, which is where those systems really shine. Just guesstimating, maybe a third can translate quite well by creating appropriate stat blocks, another third could be used with some more creative re-imagining, and the last third will have to be treated as back-story or played out free-form in some fashion. 

3: I honestly have no idea. As far as I know, there is no KS actually "planned" at this point, but I would not be hugely surprised if they didn't end up taking that route. I suspect a lot will depend on available funds and perceived demand and other things I don't have a lot of insight into.

1. This makes eminent sense. Easily recognisable yet distinguishable. Kudos

2. This highlights why there should not be generic scenario books. Or just have free PDFs to 'translate' scenarios as best you can.

3. Yes please KS! But the real value (e.g. funds for more art / content / maps etc.) for doing a KS might now be lost if KS has slid too far towards a glorified pre-ordering business.

Edited March 18, 2017 by jongjom
Typos

[Mankcam]

5 minutes ago, jongjom said:

This highlights why there should not be generic scenario books. Or just have free PDFs to 'translate' scenario s as best you can.

I can pretty much run a HQ supplement with RQ rules no dramas, although the portrayal of magic can sometimes be difficult.  I can perhaps see a case for having system-less setting books, but system-specific scenario books.

 

Edited March 18, 2017 by Mankcam

[Steve]

10 hours ago, Addison said:

What happened to the Big Rubble book?

See this:

 

[The Hooded Claw]

20 hours ago, Steve said:

See this:

 

But that was a year and a half ago. And there is no current mention of the book.

[Steve]

6 hours ago, Addison said:

But that was a year and a half ago. And there is no current mention of the book.

If you go back a year and a half then probably only the new thing for HQ published since then was The Coming Storm. And that was at the top of the list. Given that Big Rubble is near the bottom of the list, I wouldn't hold your breath.

 

[The Hooded Claw]

Trust me, I gave up holding my breath a long time ago.