Masters of Luck & Death Wargame

[7Tigers]

Just saw that in an old Greg Stafford interview (1980/03/15 in The Dungeoneer #17):

It seems game was fairly advanced.
Does anybody know what happened that prevented publication?

[jajagappa]

It was noted in RQ2 as well:

MASTERS OF LUCK AND DEATH
The third boardgame in the Dragon Pass trilogy. This one is not going to be a war game per se, but instead is a Heroquest to become the ruling deity on the board. This is done through various magical alliances and rites, dealing with various parts of the spirit plane. It covers the tide-wracked Holy Country. By Greg Stafford.

The intent was to reflect the chosing of Belintar's next body.  Some notes on that here:  http://www.glorantha.com/the-tournament-of-the-masters-of-luck-and-death/

In the HQ1 era (2003), a book of hero bands was finally published with that title, but did not reflect the original game intent.

Also check out this event from Convulsion in 1998 which seems a bit closer to original ideas: http://etyries.albionsoft.com/etyries.com/cons/molad.html

As for how far it got, check out the response from Greg here:  https://www.acaeum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?cache=1&f=1&t=4109&c=1

Marinagh wrote:I have a question that I've wondered about ever since I picked up the Dieux Nomades reprint of Nomad Gods.  In the introduction to the rules it mentions a third Glorantha boardgame "Masters of Luck and Death".  

I'm a bit surprised that they put that in there. By the time Oriflam printed their board games it was well established that Masters of Luck and Death--the boardgame--wouldn't be finished, never mind be published.

Was this game ever close to being published?  Is it ever likely to be published in future?

It got as close as having a map made and some counters made, by hand. It was to be a multi player war game, and also one in which the players ran around the board and assembled runes to create the winning combination, a new leader of the entire region. It was going to work in conjunction with the other games--Dragon Pass/WB&RM and Nomad Gods as well, hence the mysterious runes in them.
However, I got entirely diverted by RPGs, especially RuneQuest, and instead had planned to do the "make the leader" game as part of the RPG.
And, well, that never got done either.
Nor do I have plans to do it.

[jajagappa]

Looking over brief notes from Greg in a couple of the old Wyrms Footnotes as to what he hoped to accomplish (e.g. completing rituals and the like), it actually sounds very close conceptually to what Sandy Petersen has produced in The Gods War.

[Jenx]

I was actually working on a super-rough prototype for a MoLaD board game, though that one was slightly less focused on direct combat between the players (it was still possible). However, in keeping with the spirit of the original MoLaD that design didn't go anywhere, and was abandoned.

[Joerg]

The game was meant to have a hex-board for the surface world conflicts, and a separate board for the magical otherworld 

I have seen the map of the surface world, but when I discussed the game as a follow-up to Les Dieux Nomades (using the rules of Robert Corbett rather than the original ones of White Bear and Red Moon or Nomad Gods), there was no known list of units, or a gameboard for the Otherworld.

[Rick Meints]

Alas, we have almost no material related to the war-game Masters of Luck and Death in the archives. No draft rulebook, no draft counters, no hex map. We only have very brief mentions of it. Having chatted with Greg about the game several times, the situation is simple. There's no game anywhere remotely close to being done. Not even extensive notes, etc. Whatever there was at one time back in the late 70s has been lost somewhere along the way.

[Yelm's Light]

I wish I'd've seen the Convulsion event.  I'll bet it was interesting and occasionally inventive.

[David Scott]

On 10/09/2017 at 0:24 AM, Rick Meints said:

Alas, we have almost no material related to the war-game Masters of Luck and Death in the archives. No draft rulebook, no draft counters, no hex map. We only have very brief mentions of it. Having chatted with Greg about the game several times, the situation is simple. There's no game anywhere remotely close to being done. Not even extensive notes, etc. Whatever there was at one time back in the late 70s has been lost somewhere along the way.

We do have from Greg's archives a lot of draft and preproduction counters. Some are clearly WB&RM and Nomad Gods counter, some are clearly for those products but not used, some even have references to them - e.g. A&E pp5 (If you have this please let me know). Some are alternative poses and some are a mystery. I couldn't say for certain that any of the unidentified ones were for MoLaD. There are elephants for Nomad Gods, but also dragons, whales, balloons with gondolas, stars and many unfinished doodles all by William Church. Theses two are clearly for the Mammoth vs Dragon boardgame :-)

[David Scott]

On 10/09/2017 at 0:28 AM, Yelm's Light said:

I wish I'd've seen the Convulsion event.  I'll bet it was interesting and occasionally inventive.

As one of the Convulsion committee I have no recollection at all of this event!. It's likely there were photos of it as our opening party events always involved a lot of dressing up and impromptu props. Our guests of honour were usually the faction heads - Greg Stafford, Ken Rolston, @MOB, Robin D. Laws, @NeilRobinson and Oliver Dickinson. Anyone have photos?

[Tindalos]

Has a few of the pictures for the tokens, which is nice to see.

[Yelm's Light]

2 hours ago, Tindalos said:

Has a few of the pictures for the tokens, which is nice to see.

Love it!  I'm sure I recognize some of those from the AH Dragon Pass game...the Shadowland troll is the one that immediately jumps out at me.

[jajagappa]

9 hours ago, Tindalos said:

Has a few of the pictures for the tokens, which is nice to see.

Nothing like a Timinit with a Sword!

[Tim Ellis]

On 9/13/2017 at 1:26 PM, David Scott said:

As one of the Convulsion committee I have no recollection at all of this event!. It's likely there were photos of it as our opening party events always involved a lot of dressing up and impromptu props. Our guests of honour were usually the faction heads - Greg Stafford, Ken Rolston, @MOB, Robin D. Laws, @NeilRobinson and Oliver Dickinson. Anyone have photos?

It was Prior to me having a digital camera. so I'm afraid I don't.  I do recall I was in the Caladraland faction, that we were, at one stage all Volcanoes, and we ended up singing the "Crazy world of Arthur Brown" song "Fire" - but not who else was in the team, or what anyone else did...