Glorantha Guide

[Y Mab Darogan]

Two hopefully easy questions 

1. why isn't the guide available on drivethru?
2. Wow, why is the PDF £40? That's possibly the most expensive PDF I've ever seen?

With RQG coming I'd like to finally get this but boy am I going to have to treat my wife nicely 

[jongjom]

6 minutes ago, HorusArisen said:

Two hopefully easy questions 

1. why isn't the guide available on drivethru?
2. Wow, why is the PDF £40? That's possibly the most expensive PDF I've ever seen?

With RQG coming I'd like to finally get this but boy am I going to have to treat my wife nicely 

No doubt the luminaries will answer but a few thoughts:

1. If you buy The Guide from Chaosium they will get all the revenue.

2. It's £40 of pure awesome Gloranthan Gold. 800 pages of mind blowing art, detail description, maps, and background from decades of development from a very large number of contributors, least not Greg Stafford and Sandy Petersen's deep delve into the world.

Treat your wife nicely, as always. In fact really, really nicely and go for The GtG slipcase set. In the unlikely event you do not take to it then there is market for The Guide and you are likely to get most of the money back (but get to keep the PDF).

[David Scott]

18 minutes ago, HorusArisen said:

Two hopefully easy questions 

I'm not a Chaosium or Moon Design employee, but am a contributer to the Guide:

Quote

1. why isn't the guide available on drivethru?

30% goes to drivethrough (much like amazon, apple, etc). Buying it from the Chaosium website means all the money goes to Chaosium, supporting a small RPG company make more cool products.

Quote

1. Wow, why is the PDF £40? That's possibly the most expensive PDF I've ever seen?

It's an amazing product, two volumes, colour plates, a whole world mapped and mythologised. The actual books are huge and weighty.

[Y Mab Darogan]

Probably a silly question but do chaosium store purchases?

thats quite a bit bigger than I realised mmm

[nclarke]

If you mean do Chaosium allow you to redownload the products you buy (and keep a record of your purchases) then yes (I think it's a max of 4 times rather than unlimited like DTRPG though).

Edited April 9, 2017 by nclarke

[Y Mab Darogan]

I'll probably hold off for now then. Shame but I'll take a second look after RQG comes out.

[Rick Meints]

2 hours ago, nclarke said:

If you mean do Chaosium allow you to redownload the products you buy (and keep a record of your purchases) then yes (I think it's a max of 4 times rather than unlimited like DTRPG though).

Chaosium did limit downloads in the past, but we got rid of that feature so you can now download things again and again as needed. Yes, Chaosium keeps a database of all past purchases, at least back to August of 2014, which was when the current website was launched (we didn't pick that date). 

The Guide to Glorantha, if printed as a series of 256 page books, would be at least 4 volumes. When you look at the price tag for the Guide, in printed or PDF form, ask yourself what you think is an ok price for 4 full color 256 page books.

[Jeff]

4 hours ago, HorusArisen said:

Two hopefully easy questions 

1. why isn't the guide available on drivethru?
2. Wow, why is the PDF £40? That's possibly the most expensive PDF I've ever seen?

With RQG coming I'd like to finally get this but boy am I going to have to treat my wife nicely 

I routinely buy Kindle books that are more expensive than the Guide.

[Y Mab Darogan]

I think if it was unlimited downloads I'd go for t but it'll have to wait till I replace my storage now.

[Y Mab Darogan]

1 hour ago, Rick Meints said:

Chaosium did limit downloads in the past, but we got rid of that feature so you can now download things again and again as needed. Yes, Chaosium keeps a database of all past purchases, at least back to August of 2014, which was when the current website was launched (we didn't pick that date). 

The Guide to Glorantha, if printed as a series of 256 page books, would be at least 4 volumes. When you look at the price tag for the Guide, in printed or PDF form, ask yourself what you think is an ok price for 4 full color 256 page books.

Lol last response was before reading this, in that case happy days.

I actually had no idea how huge it was which completely changes my opinion on the price 

[g33k]

5 hours ago, HorusArisen said:

Lol last response was before reading this, in that case happy days.

I actually had no idea how huge it was which completely changes my opinion on the price 

This is a segment from the 1st-shipment unboxing.  As noted above, the reprinted version now on sale has a nice slipcover case available...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQPXbAIKA94#t=5.655997

 

[Y Mab Darogan]

I'll have to decide whether I keep with my PDF only rule or go full print...it's an attractive book.

[g33k]

On 4/9/2017 at 6:43 AM, HorusArisen said:

Probably a silly question but do chaosium store purchases?

Chaosium has their own web-store, yes; or did you mean FLGS?  Their stuff is in FLGS's, but of course that's up to the individual store.

Given the high ask for GtG, however, my experience is that RPG retailers don't stock it.

  

[Y Mab Darogan]

No I was referring badly to digital records of purchases. But someone confirmed they do and you'll have infinite access to download 

[JonL]

While more expensive than most RPG single purchases, I believe that the Guide is appropriately priced for all that it provides. 

[Y Mab Darogan]

6 minutes ago, JonL said:

While more expensive than most RPG single purchases, I believe that the Guide is appropriately priced for all that it provides. 

Definitely, once someone pointed out the size and I checked out the YouTube review I completely rescinded my pricing opinion. It's one impressive book(s).

[Pentallion]

Best money I ever spent was to get the hardback.  pdf gets all the use, the actual books get all the love.

[g33k]

54 minutes ago, Pentallion said:

Best money I ever spent was to get the hardback.  pdf gets all the use, the actual books get all the love.

For me, the PDF is about lookup/search.  Books are my preferred way to settle down and enjoy the content ...

[Y Mab Darogan]

If it's the book may need to wait till my birthday but sounds like it would be worth it 

[g33k]

38 minutes ago, HorusArisen said:

If it's the book may need to wait till my birthday but sounds like it would be worth it 

For Glorantha, it's the Ultimate Book.  Possibly all of RPG'dom (though Nobilis 2e, the "GWB" edition... a thing of brainbending beauty, that !  )

 

[Mankcam]

Future generations will view Gloranthan fans as 'not serious', unless they have a copy of the G2G.

Much like how Tolkien buffs view the fans of the New Line films who havent actually read the novels of The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings.

It's that good 

Edited April 11, 2017 by Mankcam

[g33k]

1 hour ago, Mankcam said:

Much like how Tolkien buffs view the fans of the New Line films who havent actually read the novels of The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings.

*ahem*

Silmarillion, yo.

Also "Tree and Leaf" and "Leaf by Niggle" & "Smith of Wootton Major" & "Farmer Giles of Ham" &c...

[Y Mab Darogan]

8 hours ago, g33k said:

For Glorantha, it's the Ultimate Book.  Possibly all of RPG'dom (though Nobilis 2e, the "GWB" edition... a thing of brainbending beauty, that !  )

 

The great white book 

[Mankcam]

2 hours ago, g33k said:

*ahem*

Silmarillion, yo.

Also "Tree and Leaf" and "Leaf by Niggle" & "Smith of Wootton Major" & "Farmer Giles of Ham" &c...

You're more Inner Circle than me, I stop somewhere in The Silmarillion 

[Joerg]

The Guide is the great overview over the physical world of Glorantha and some of its history. It is a great basic foundation for the world.

It is not the Ultimate Book - that would be a book about the mythic foundations of the world, of the myths driving the mundane nature of the world. Such a book doesn't exist, though. It might be approached on a much smaller scale by a collection that would reflect Belintar's Book (an in-Glorantha document). Parts of the Stafford Library might contribute to it.

Could this book be written? I am not certain. Also, much of it would appear irrelevant to most people's involvement with Glorantha.

To compare with the Tolkien estate, I did consume the Silmarillion completely, and went happily for and through the Unfinished Tales and the more detailed fragments that formed the basis of the Silmarillion in the first iteration released by Christopher Tolkien. I went for the verse editions of the lays, but didn't quite make it through them. They lost me on the following iterations on the releases.

The Guide has the Silmarillion level information on Glorantha. It lacks many of its details, and focusses primarily on the oncoming Hero Wars, giving information for earlier Ages only when pertinent on developments in the oncoming conflict.

I don't think that many people have gone and created alliterative or verse poems of the Gloranthan myths (yet) - most of the poetic effort I have seen has gone into the Gloranthan songbook. Given the quality of the Orlanthi staves of the storm voice, I suspect Greg hasn't gone far in this direction either, so there won't be much verse to parse.

Greg has a different mode of storytelling, a prose that may come around as dry in places, and at the same time very evocative in seemingly throw-away side remarks. Sometimes these can be parsed, at other times they can just be referenced for further study. Delving deep into those fragments of or hints at further myths can be maddening at times, especially if you approach these with a mind to map these to a time-line.

I think the Arkati mapping of the myths was a version of hypertext links rather than creating a formal structure - that's what the God Learners attempted to do, and did succeed with as far as they could, before placing their structure above the real myths, and attempting to bend those myths to their structure.

An annotated book of myths with branching and crossing of paths might be a theoretical ultimate source to travel these myths - a game which Greg seems to have chased all those years.