Using Monster Island in Second-Age Glorantha

Monster Island for RuneQuest 6 by the Design Mechanism has been available for quite some time now, but due to very long holidays —not that I am going to complain— which have completely dried up my bank account, I haven't been able to lay my grubby hands on this mouth-watering tome yet.

I have already blogged about this S&S sandbox supplement, so I am not going to go through a description again, especially since I haven't seen the final product.

However, a recent thread on Google+ has sparked renewed interest in Monster Island, viz:

I want to set Monster Island in Second-Age Glorantha but my players are asking where exactly the Island is and what year in 2nd Age - would appreciate any advice on both?

to which I have answered along the lines of:

There is a monster island off the coast of Pamaltela— Loral. According to the upcoming Guide of Glorantha: “Loral was inhabited by humans before the Closing. Their land used to be called the Queendom of Loral”.
As for the year to set the campaign in, it could be just before the Closing, to add an impending sense of doom!

And if you rotate the map of Monster Island ninety degrees anticlockwise, it even becomes very similar to the map of Loral!

Map of Second-Age Slontos before the Sinking

The title says it all:

click to enlarge

(from the Glorantha community on G+)

New “glorantha.com” web-site

As I had announced on 21 May 2013, Moon Design have acquired from Greg Stafford the rights to the world of Glorantha. The acquisition has been finalised as of 14 August, and as a result Moon Design is reshuffling and restructuring its web-site.

The first step has been a change in the domain name (glorantha.com rather than moondesignpublishing.com), but more is in the works, as Moon Design are obviously going to take advantage of the acquisition to emphasise the world of Glorantha and to recentre their line of business by focusing more on Glorantha and, apparently, not only through HeroQuest if I am to believe what the good people at Moon Design have written on the various social networks. That was a long sentence.

One consequence is that the user credentials from moondesignpublishing.com are not necessarily going to be carried over to glorantha.com, so watch the latter and make sure your account is still working/has to be re-instated.

Another consequence is that you may lose the ability to download whatever PDFs you had bought from the online store so, again, watch the latter web-site and make sure you still have access to your purchases. If you don't, contact Moon Design through this page.

The forums re-start from scratch. Stop using the old forum and move on to the new one. You will have to re-create a user account ☹ and man does the interface suck.

Guide to Glorantha KS Update (cont'd)

The upcoming Guide to Glorantha will include a massively detailed map of Glorantha, including Pamaltela!

Backers of the project have received 'sneak peek' PDFs of the atlas. Here's a small excerpt of central Umathela, just you give you an idea of the sheer detail of the maps:

click to enlarge

Lioness Lamia

When it comes to inspirational art, Le Chaudron chromatique is definitely one of my favourite blogs. Cédric just keeps posting the most inspirational weird illustrations in an amazing black-and-white ligne claire style. I have already posted quite a few of his works (just click on the inspirational label on the left hand-side), which are usually inspired either by Slavic mythology or by weird fantasy à la Lamentations of the Flame Princess — and both of them are definitely cool with me!

click to enlarge

Today's picture is an awesome Lamia crawling out of her lioness body. Cédric presents various theories as to why Lamiæ should hide in a lioness body, and various consequences as to their ecology. They can all be adopted for a Second Age game.

RuneQuest Ad

This is an October 1990 ad for the Spanish version of RuneQuest, published by Joc Internacional.

I really dig the drawing and the 'hand drawn' looks of the Runes.

War in Glorantha KS

There's just too much Gloranthan goodness going on at the moment. Look what's KickStarter'ing this summer:

click to enlarge

Guide to Glorantha KS Update (cont'd)

Update No.38 has just been posted on the Kickstarter page of the Guide to Glorantha. Since I do not know how accessible this page is, I'll just copy 'n paste the interesting bits here. BTW— not much new information if you've been a loyal follower of this blog.

1. The mapping stretch goals turned out to be even more massive than we thought. Pamaltela (which is done) is about 50% BIGGER than Genertela (once Kralorela and Teshnos got added). We have finished Kralorela, Teshnos, Pent, Jrustela, Teleos, Pamaltela, and Slon, plus a few sundry other islands. It took Colin and Jeff nearly two years to do the first two-thirds of Genertela. In the last six months, they've done about twice that much work. Colin and Jeff are now working on Vormain and the East Islands. After that we hope to crowd-source fact check the entire set of maps, so that no stupid typos mar this masterpiece. We hope to be able to be done with Vormain and the East Islands in about two weeks (but this is really complicated mapping, so it may take longer).

2. There was SO much new art — and of so much detail — that it has taken longer to finish than expected. Several key artists still have several plates to finish. Most of those pictures had several thousand words written to describe what the picture should look like, in intricate detail [賈尼— We want a book with all that accompanying text!].

3. Additional Appendixes. There are still several appendixes (including hero-questing, Hero Wars events, etc) resulting from the huge number of stretch goals, that Jeff needs to finalise. Once the maps are finished, it will be easy to finish them up.

Once the text and art is finished, then the Guide goes over to Rick for layout and then printing. The Argan Argar Atlas will be ready once the maps are finished and checked, so that will get done first, most likely for a Gen Con Debut [賈尼— 15-18 August 2013]. The Guide itself is looking more like a Fall 2013 release [賈尼— I says December. Wanna wager?].

You Are Here

This is less detailed than the map I've posted a while ago, but it gives a clear idea of where Umathela lies with regards to the neighbouring lands. And yes, it is a Third Age map.

You are here

Slon

OK, if this picture doesn't sell you Pamaltela, you're fuсking hopeless.

Dinosaur-riding cavemen fighting Mostali musketeers in Slon

The Design Mechanism Seminar

The Design Mechanism's panel was held on Saturday night. Loz highlighted what happened since last year's panel, when the RuneQuest 6 rule book was about to be published.

✠ RuneQuest 6 core book: the sales have better than anticipated, with customers evenly split between dead tree and electronic format. There are customers from all over the world, but the core market is obviously constituted by the English-speaking countries.

✠ the Book of Quests is out. It consists of seven linked scenarios, written by new authors; since the reception has been good, a "Book of Quests II" is likely to see the light in 2014.

✠ the Design Mechanism are busy preparing Monster Island for release in September. This is a 100% Pete Nash product. It is NOT a mere book of monsters; it is a pulp/S&S sandbox populated with monsters, over 80 of them. It was actually thought of as a homage to Griffin Island. The PDF map will have layers so that the GM can customise his printouts. Also, the book is illustrated by legendary British illustrator Russ Nicholson.

✠ There are quite a few other setting books in the pipe [thank you bloody iPad for having eaten up all my notes on this part of the panel]:
    ‣ a Luther Arkwright setting book. The Design Mechanism managed to get hold of the licence of this famous (at least in Britain) steampunk/plane-hopping/sci-fi comics series by Bryan Talbot. It will include rules for firearms, vehicles, etc.; everything needed for a contemporary setting.
    ‣ Shores of Korantia, a new campaign/setting book by the author of Age of Treason
    ‣ The Fall of Byzantium, by Michael 'MOB' O'Brien. This is going to be a historical campaign/supplement focusing on the two-month siege of Byzantium in 1453 by Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II.
    ‣ I'm pretty sure another book was mentioned, but the evil iPad ate my notes.

✠ There is going to be a KickStarter for a hardback edition of the RuneQuest 6 rule book

✠ There are quite a few translations of RQ6 in the pipe: French, Spanish, German, possibly Swedish.

✠ The above are the plans for 2013. The plans for 2014 are as follows: more historical settings (Mythic Briton), a RQ6 sourcebook for Glorantha called RuneQuest: Adventures in Glorantha, RQ6 articles in Wyrms Footnotes, and a RQ6 campaign pack set in a particular area of Third Age Glorantha.

⁂

The last panel (on Sunday night) was a common Moon Design/Design Mechanism panel. I missed it because I was busy GM'ing Arrows of Indra. Apparently, the panel involved a large crowd of Glorantha drunkards enthusiasts who managed to mob the Design Mechanism into writing more Gloranthan stuff, and earlier than expected. As a result of the common panel, RuneQuest: Adventures in Glorantha has become a top priority; Pete Nash is taking the reins of the project, and he will start work on it very soon. The idea is to release RQ: AiG as close as possible to the Guide to Glorantha (see the relevant blog entry). Also, the area the Design Mechanism will focus upon is going to be a different one from the one initially expected.
A side effect of this focus on Gloranthan material for RQ6 is that Luther Arkwright: Role-Playing Across the Parallels and the historical settings will be delayed.

Pronunciation

There was a recent post by Charles about the pronunciation of Gloranthan names on the Moon Design forum. It prompted me to have an in-depth look into that. I've always thought that linguistics was the weak part of Glorantha. You can easily notice that Greg Stafford is bigtime into religion and mythology, but not languages! Anyway, the fact that those pronunciation guidelines use bits and pieces of English syllables rather than the International Phonetic Alphabet doesn't help either.

I would say that most of them correspond to the way I would've pronounced them, except maybe the way some words are stressed.

The most surprising pronunciations were:

Babeester Gor             BAH-bees-ter GORE ['bɑbistə 'ɡɔɹ]. I would've stressed the second syllable myself.
Bagog                         ba-GOG [bæ'gɒg]. I would've stressed the first syllable.
Ginna Jar                     GIN-nuh JAR ['gɪnnʌ 'dʒɑː]. For some reason I was expecting a soft 'G'.
Godunya                     goe-DOON-yah [gəʊ'dunjɑ]. This I had really no idea how to pronounce it!
Himile                         hih-MEEL [hɪ'mil]. Another name I had no idea how to pronounce.
Hyalor                         HIGH-ah-lor ['haɪɒlə]. Ditto.
Jmijie                          zh’MEE-zheh ['ʒmiʒe]. Weird.
Kajaboor                    KAHZH-ah-bor ['kɑʒɑbɔɹ]. Wow.
Keraun                        kerr-AHN [ker'rɑn].
Metsyla                       met-SIGH-lah [met'saɪlɑ]. For some reason I was expecting a short 'i' in the middle.
Mikyh                         MIK-yuh ['mɪkjʌ]. Another unexpected one.
Pamalt                         PAM-ahlt ['pæmɑlt]. I'd always stressed the second syllable.
Seseine                       seh-SAEN-ay [se'seɪneɪ]. I'm pretty sure Jeff pronounces it [se'sin].
Subere                        soo-BEER-ee [su'biri].
Teelo Noori                TEE-loe NOR-ee ['tiləʊ 'nɔɹi].
Tien                            t’YEN [tjen].
Jrusteli                        j’russ-TEL-i [dʒrʌs'teli]. I'm pretty sure I've heard Jeff pronounce it with an initial [ʒ].

Back from the Eternal Convention (cont'd)

Further pics. These are from Sunday.

live game of Trollball

close-up of the winning team

Me GMing Arrows of Indra

the loot! (mostly from the traditional Sunday night auction)

Huge On-Line Archive of Spanish-Language Gaming Magazines

Thanks to Spanish-language blogger Cronista, I have been made aware of a huge treasure trove of Spanish-language gaming magazines.

The site Sinergia de rol hosts an impressive quantity of quite high quality scans of Spanish gaming magazines from the 1980s and the 1990s, amongst which many that tackled RuneQuest and Glorantha. Líder magazine, for instance, was the flagship magazine of Joc Internacional, who published both the RuneQuest and the Call of Cthulhu role-playing games at the time.

If you read Spanish, you will find many interesting analyses, house rules, and adventures for RuneQuest in the pages of Líder magazine. In issue No.8 of Líder, for instance, there is a long RuneQuest scenario (pages 31 to 39) set in the Elamle Peninsula, in Third Age Pamaltela!

Edit:  The Troll 'zine is also quite interesting. It was the 'zine of the Barcelona-based Auryn role-playing club, whose members were actively promoting RuneQuest in Spain at the time. Apparently, their home campaign was based in Pamaltela, because there is yet another scenario set in the Elamle Peninsula in issue No.17 of the Troll 'zine.

Moon Design Seminar

The traditional Moon Design seminar was held on Friday night. Here are my notes.

Guide To Glorantha
This was obviously the 'hot' topic, and first of all the availability of the product. The current ETA is "this year" (i.e., December) — the main reason is that a lot of supplementary art has been commissioned, and the art director has quite an obsession with detail :)

Honestly, we were treated to amazing art (incl. art commissioned by Kickstarter funders), and incredible maps, maps, maps: maps of the mythological ages, of the Sky, of the other worlds, geographical maps of Third Age Glorantha in unbelievable detail, magical maps, ethnic maps, trade maps, political maps... A map of the underwater roads of the Mirrorsea Bay (!!!). A map of the Closing... We can expect 100 pages of maps!
Oh, and did I mention the amazing art? Osprey-like colour plates, portraits of the various Mostali sub-races, Kralorelan art...

The most awesome picture from the seminar was actually one that formed in my head, evoked by Jeff's words: Dinosaur-riding cavemen attacking Dwarves armed with muskets in Slon.
Edit: this picture is now visible on the Gloranthan Google+ community page.

Upcoming products
The Guide To Glorantha was on everyone's minds, but obviously we also wanted to know about other products. So here's the latest from your favourite sleuth:
- There will be Gloranthan RuneQuest 6 products by the Design Mechanism [see the upcoming blog entry]
- Other Moon Design products are on hold until the GtG is out (because authors need it to write canonical stuff)
Status on the upcoming books:
- First one out possibly Gods of Glorantha, to complement GtG
- a Gloranthan bestiary by Pete Nash
- the Coming Storm (a massive Sartarite campaign) by Ian Cooper
The manuscripts of the two previous books are almost finished. The issue, again, is art.
- Big Rubble companion (at the moment, this is only a project)
- King of Sartar re-write by Greg Stafford, good progress

At the end we had a Q&A session; here are mine:
- last year during the con, Moon Design mentioned one or even two Gloranthan boardgames — Jeff & Rick now mention three boardgames in the works.
- Teleos: pirates in the Second Age, peaceful people in the Third Age. What happened? The Closing & the Opening. Same for Loral. This will apparently be mentioned in the historical parts of the Guide.

Back from the Eternal Convention

The convention was fantastic, but I'm too tired now to write anything, so have a look at the Saturday pictures, and wait for my next blog entry!

The Moon Design seminar

an Umathelan Malkioni at the freeform

Every year, we get to play an incomprehensible card game.

Me GM'ing Monsters & Magic

Sunny weather!

To be continued...

Guide to Glorantha KS Update (cont'd)

Frankly, we knew the Guide to Glorantha would be late. With all the stretch goals that just kept being added during the KS phase, this comes as no surprise. But I tell you— I'll take a late, expanded Guide chock-full of new information over an on-time one that is just a rehash of the Avalon Hill material any day!

So on to the latest information from Moon Design: Jeff and the team are nearly done detailing Pamaltela, which turns out to be 50% BIGGER than all of Genertela [Pamaltelaaaaaaa!!! ‒賈尼]. Plus they've finished Jrustela, Teleos, Kumanku, and a few other places.

The manuscript that started out at a slim 400 pages is almost at 520 pages, and there's still more to do. Another "sneak peek" is close at hand.

We've signed up to do the same to Vormain, Vithela and the East Isles - and we will be starting that in full swing after Eternal Convention (May 17-20) [I'll be there! ‒賈尼]. Keep in mind that this is no little archipelago - and very, very underdetailed despite all of Greg and Sandy's notes. That means a lot more work. Jeff and Colin hope to have a feeling for how much new work later this month, but the point is that the book is not going to be ready for layout until the East Islands are done.

As for the Argan Argar Atlas, it's growing as well. Check out the NEW overview page for Pamaltela as the last sample picture [Pamaltelaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!! ‒賈尼].

Home at last

It looks like the new ETA for the Guide will be August 2013. I'll torture ask Jeff and the others during Eternal Con and I will let you know on the blog.

Map of Second Age Jrustela

This is from the latest KS update. The Guide is going to be HUGE!

click to enlarge

Naiad

Naiads in art are always depicted with European features. Hey, why should that be? This is Pamaltela, after all!

a Naiad (Freshwater Nymph)

(picture stolen from this site)

Guide to Glorantha KS Update

It has apparently become extremely fashionable in the rpg blogosphere to write bad things about Kickstarter-funded projects. They're late. They're only in for the money. They don't even have a draft. It'll never be published. And on and on.

Well, Rick has recently posted the latest news with regards to the Guide to Glorantha Kickstarter-funded project, which I am reproducing below:

As March quickly draws to a close I wanted to provide you with more information about all the work that continues on our Awesome Guide to Glorantha project. In the broadest sense it all boils down to three simple words: words, maps, and art. As for words, the page count keeps steadily growing as Jeff works through the epic stretch goal new material. What started out as a 400 page text-only document has grown to 500 pages, with more to be written. I will be sending out a new "sneak peek" pdf tonight. No need to ask me for it. We're harnessing the latest dwarven technology and will send you a link to download it. As for maps, enormous doesn't begin to describe them. We looked forward to the "big kahuna" map of Genertela being basically 2 meters tall and 6 meters wide. I was chatting with Colin (Main Map Man) when he casually dropped into the conversation that  the overall map of the world would be more than 12 metres by 12 metres at regular size. Yeah, regular, not zoomed in, size. Another sampler of some of the latest cool places will go out this week for all to revel in their glory. As for art, the 25+ colour pictures keep rolling in. We have brought on several new artists to help meet the production timeline. You all have been very patient, and we are doing all we can to keep the machinery moving. We'll have more art samples in our next update.

While I still do not believe that I will be receiving my parcel in May, I have a feeling that June may still be quite reasonable a target. Anyway, I guess I'll have more information after the Eternal Con in May. As for advancement, I have received the link mentioned by Rick above, and I have downloaded the PDF draft document: 523 pages without any art. Can you just imagine the size of the final product once it gets all the art in?! Also I have seen the central Genertela part of the map mentioned by Rick above and it is really huge, beautiful and detailed.