Continuum 2012

It's been several months since my last post here, and it will probably be at least as long, if not more, before I do so again. (Although, on the other hand, I've got to review the new Pavis book at some point, so who knows?) Anyway, having just returned from Continuum 2012, it's time to post a review of that. Or, if not so much of the con as an entity, of the games I played, and what I thought of them.

To briefly look at the con itself, not only was it enjoyable, but, from my perspective, everything went without a hitch. I have not one complaint about the con, or its organisation. (I know some people moaned about the food, but I had no problems with it... one doesn't expect top notch catering in a student hall, and it was perfectly adequate for my needs. I'm there to game, not eat). So full kudos to everyone for pulling it off. The only negative points you're going to see in this post concern my reactions to individual game systems, and the like.

So, slot by slot through the con, here we go:

Kingdom of the Flamesword

Some of you may recall that, in addition to the Book of Glorious Joy, I was also commissioned by Issaries to write a similar book on Seshnela and the Rokari. That fell through, as ideas of what Seshnela should be changed. In the none-to-distant future, Issaries/Moon Design will be publishing the Guide to Glorantha which will include the new, canonical view of Seshnela, and we both agree that it's important for any release of my material not to clash with that.

There was a hope that it might be published in some dead-tree format, but that's all stalled, and I've had no reply to e-mails. So, since I do have permission from Issaries to post the material free-of-charge to my website (so long as certain legal disclaimers are included), and in the interests of not clashing with the release of official publications, that's what I've done.

If you liked the Book of Glorious Joy, and wondered what I made of Seshnela, you can find my thoughts in Kingdom of the Flamesword. As always, the non-canonical nature of the work must be stressed, and no challenges to copyrights or trademarks are intended - this is just fan material, nothing more and nothing less. It will certainly be contradicted in official works, and, if that matters to you, this won't be of much use. It's also worth noting that at least some of it was written for HQ1, which was the current edition at the time, and may put some people off.

But otherwise - well, hopefully it will be useful to someone.

Update: Kingdom of the Flamesword, updated to the current version of what is now QuestWorlds, is now available for purchase at DriveThru RPG, along with Forged in Blood and Snow, which does the same for the Kingdom of Jonatela.

Book of Glorious Joy

In case you haven't heard (and its hard to believe that many people reading this haven't), after nine long years, The Book of Glorious Joy has finally been published. Seeing it in print at last is, indeed, both glorious and joyful.

You can buy it, in paperback, hardback, or just as a PDF, here. I don't get royalties, but, obviously, I'd like to encourage you all to do so nonetheless!

This is the book that would have been Lords of the West 3, and the first three chapters of Lords of the West 1: Heroes of Malkion added at the beginning for good measure, and in order to set the scene. It primarily serves as an overview of the magical and idealistic Kingdom of Loskalm, one of whose valiant wizard-knights you can see riding through perilous lands in the superb cover by Jon Hodgson.

I'm not sure there's much more to say here about the book that I haven't said already, so I'll gloss over that. I will say that I actually don't know what has happened to Lords of the West 2: Kingdom of the Flamesword, which would have covered Seshnela and the Rokari in the same way as BoGJ covers Loskalm, and would have also included the full write-ups for the more widespread saints and wizardry schools from LotW1. The last I heard it was still due to be published - but not in a single standalone volume - but more recent attempts at communicating with the publishers have not been successful, so that may no longer be the case.

Commoner Cults of Jonatela

So, in my last post I discussed the reasoning behind the rule mechanics I used for Jonating commoner caste magic in the recent piece at my home page. As I said then, I can think of two other questions the piece might have raised in the minds of readers, and I'll discuss them now.

To begin with, if the Elmoi are supposed to represent a denuded form of Ernalda worship, and they really are theistic, which gods are we talking about here? I see no reason to stay being mysterious about that, and people might wonder, so that's something I can quickly deal with. It should be said, though, that I think it's more important that the cults are distinct, than whether or not the beings behind them are, so I don't think it really matters much. Which means that anyone else's interpretation is as good as mine - if I thought it was important, and made a meaningful difference, I'd have put it in the article, not here.

At any rate, Frona is, I think, fairly clearly some sort of aspect of Ernalda the Great Goddess. She's mentioned as a grain goddess in RQ3, and Thunder Rebels reinforces that the grain goddess cults are different ways of worshipping the great earth mother. Frona, clearly, is the mother goddess and land goddess for Fronela as a whole, and will have her own, regular, theistic cult elsewhere.

Uryana and Vilecha are also aspects of Ernalda, and remember, we're told in Genertela: CotHW that the Jonating commoners worship Ernalda as their main goddess, so it makes sense that she gets the key roles. I don't think of Vilecha as a Chalana Arroy, incidentally, because she's just not powerful enough.

The Magic of Malkioni Commoners

Yes, it's been several months since I've posted here. Not that I haven't been busy writing in the meantime, of course. For one, I have managed to write weekly posts at my mammalogical blog, Synapsida - and those do require quite a lot of preparation. There have been many other bits of writing besides, some of which may eventually appear somewhere for public perusal. But, on the Gloranthan front, I have also continued to write some fan material on Jonatela - what would have been LotW4, had the series not been cancelled.

The latest instalment has taken a while to appear, because its quite a big one - ten new cults, in fact. The next will focus on the wizardry schools and that, too, may take a while because of its complexity (I predict early September). But I think the latest one will likely raise a few questions that I think its worth answering here, rather than in the more formal outlet of the web page itself. The questions are:

1. Why did I treat the commoner caste cults as I did?
2. What, if anything, is their relationship to the Orlanth cults?
3. Why did I even bother?

Taking the first question first, we have to go all the way back to the days of RuneQuest 3. That was the first rules edition to address Malkioni magic in general, or Jonating magic in particular. The RQ3 publication Genertela: Crucible of the Hero Wars says, in the Players Book, that about 75% of Jonatings follow the Orlanth pantheon and gain "the benefits of a barbarian initiate", while the remainder follow the Malkioni religion and receive, unless they are professional wizardry adepts, some limited sorcery magic. There is no indication that - priests and adepts aside - this is anything other than random. That is, parts of Jonatela are Orlanthi, with all the magic that implies, and parts are Malkioni, with all the implications of that.

d101 Con

I've just returned from the d101 "convention" in Matlock, Derbyshire. It's not really a con in any meaningful sense, just a group of people renting out a cottage to do some gaming for a weekend. It was a pretty enjoyable weekend away, and it seems to have been popular enough with those who could attend that we may do it again next year, possibly renting out a second cottage to allow a larger group of players. My thanks go to Newt Newport for arranging it, but my main purpose for posting here is to ruminate on the games we played.

We started off with Action Castle, which, is basically a fun party game for those old enough to remember 1980s computer RPGs. This means we are all now "King of Action Castle"! Cool...

Being too tired from travelling to do anything more taxing on the Friday evening, we kicked off the RPing proper on Saturday morning with Savage Worlds. I've played this once before, but the game is a flexible one not tied to any particular genre, so it's not surprising that the experience was very different. That time, the setting was the old Captain Scarlet TV series, but this time it was a rather more serious sci-fi setting, with distinct Travelleresque overtones. I gather that d101 is planning to release this as a more formal setting at some point, possibly using the easy-to-obtain Savage Worlds license. The setting was a crumbling interstellar empire, with various different factions vying for control, including mad cyborgs and sinister telepaths.

Because the Captain Scarlet game obviously used characters from the TV series, those were all pre-gens, but this time we all made our own characters up on the day. Considering that few of us had any experience with character generation in this system, this seemed a remarkably quick and painless process, which suggests that Savage Worlds would be a good system for use at conventions where you don't want pre-gens. In general, its a pretty simple system, and plays quickly, and has fairly straightforward mechanics, perhaps with something of an emphasis on pulp style excitement. Here for example, is the character I came up with:

Lady Corinia

Agility: d6                    Guts d4                        Psionic Background d8

Strength: d4               Healing d6                  Psionic Resistance d4

Vigour: d4                    Investigation d8

Smarts: d8                   Notice d6

Spirit: d8                      Shooting d4

Psionic Powers: Obscure, Stun, Pyrokinesis

Edges: Mentalist, Rich, Alertness

Drawbacks: All Thumbs

Weapons: Engraved laser derringer (carried in handbag)

...which was enough to give me a reasonable overview of the character, without over-complicating things, or making it seem all overly generalised and simplistic.

In the afternoon, time for a game of HeroQuest, using the Call of Cthulhu setting. Obviously, I'm very familiar with both the system and the setting, although I've never seen the two used together before. In this instance, it seemed to work very well, with, for example, lingering penalties being used to reflect the inevitable loss of sanity that accrues as one continues investigating. The scenario, created by Newt, had the wonderfully appropriate title of "Normal for Norfolk" (unfortunately, if you're not British, the meaning of this reference may not be obvious). Since it was set in the 1970s, and the PCs were all members of the Flying Squad, the inspiration we ended up using was, perhaps, inevitable... Our characters were perhaps, not entirely serious, and we never really got to the end of the scenario, but I won't give out any more details, in case d101 should choose to publish it some day. At any rate, this was my character:

DC Bob Bawdsey

Drive Like a Lunatic  18       Boozing                 13

Shooters              13       Hate Scroats            13

Ignore Procedure      18       Plant Evidence          13

Streetwise            13       Blag Way Out of Trouble 15  

Boxing                13       Look Hard               4M

The actions of our DS (another PC) perhaps got a bit too extreme towards the end, but, being a con game, that was easy enough for me to ignore.

On the Sunday, there was only time for a single game of Burning Wheel, using the introductory scenario from the rulebook. Burning Wheel was once recommended to me (I won't say by who) as a flexible, rules lite, modern system with plenty of options for different ways of resolving things. Most of that seems true, but what would make anyone think it's "rules lite" is beyond me. Indeed, in an age where RPGs seem to be getting simpler, it has to be one of the more complex new systems on the market - although there are plenty of older ones of similar complexity. It's fun enough to play in, especially as a one-off, and it does seem to be very good at describing characters and fleshing them out, but its way too complex and detailed for me to want to ever GM it. I've run a version of GURPS in the past, but that was stripped down so far, that I consider it an entirely new system. Still, even that was more than I'd be happy with today, so while I have no doubt that Burning Wheel is very good at what it does, as a GM, it's not my cup of tea.

But, as a player, I had no problem with it, and it seemed to work fairly smoothly. I certainly had fun with the pre-gen character, who was a somewhat snooty and sinister sorceress. The scenario worked well, and it was an enjoyable game. I'm certainly glad to have tried it, and I wouldn't object to playing it again - so long as I don't have to run it!

The rest of the time was spent relaxing, chatting, watching old movies, etc. making it all a pretty enjoyable weekend, mostly with gamers that I haven't played with much before. Since this was a d101 event, I'll also add a brief update on Book of Glorious Joy: about two thirds of the interior artwork is in (and more came in over the weekend), all of which looks pretty cool. Things are stepping up, and I don't think its going to be too much longer now.

On similar lines, there should be further updates to my unofficial Jonatela material soon - the next one is quite large, which is why its taken longer than usual for it to appear. And, for my ponderings on mammalian biology, there's Synapsida, which has been updated fairly regularly of late. I'm not fully happy with all of the latest posts there, but its something I'm learning as I go along, and I think its getting better.

Just possibly, most likely if I can get something to run put together, I might attend Concrete Cow 11, but no promises there. As for cons later in the year... well, we'll see.

Lords of the West: Update 3

As many of you probably know, if you follow the Gloranthan mailing lists, my Facebook page, and so on, progress on Lords of the West has definitely been picking up recently.

Having said that, I should begin by saying that I have, as yet, no further news on LotW2: Kingdom of the Flamesword. It has a publisher, but no release date or further information. There is no reason to suppose this won't happen at some point, but for the moment, you'll just have to wait.

Progress on the Jonatela material that could potentially have formed LotW4 is slow but steady. The material currently available at my website deals with the more mundane aspects of Jonating life, the workings of the government, and what can laughingly be called the justice system. Obviously, Jonatela is not a very nice place, especially if you're a peasant, and this inevitably colours the material, but it's still enjoyable to write, so I'll keep on doing it. This background stuff will soon be finished, and I'll then move on to starting to compile a gazetteer of interesting places to visit across the kingdom, emphasising some of its magical power as well as its murky peril.

But what's really cool, of course, is the news about The Book of Glorious Joy, which incorporates bits of LotW1 with most of LotW3. As you can see, the cover has been completed - and a very fine piece of work it is, too, showing a valiant Loskalmi wizard-knight charging through a dark and chilly landscape so typical of many parts of Fronela. The interior artwork is well under way, and you can see a sample at the d101 Games product page. Proofing and editing are all completed, and the publisher is aiming at a release in January or February. As always, these dates can slip, but in this case, I doubt it will be by very much.

Lords of the West: Update 2

I thought I'd post an update to clarify exactly what is happening with the Lords of the West books. As most of you probably already know, the books will no longer be published by Moon Design, but have been taken up by other publishers. One of those publishers has not made a formal announcement yet (that I know of), although it's probably not desperately hard to work out who it is! So, to summarise what has been announced:

The Book of Glorious Joy
This will be published by d101 Games, and will be a bumper volume including most of the material from both LotW1: Heroes of Malkion and LotW3, the book that would have covered Loskalm. We're working to make it self-contained, although many of the cults from LotW1 will lack detailed descriptions or rules sections, since a "book of cults" wasn't considered very desirable. There is no definite release date for the book as yet, although we're hoping to have it out by the end of the year, and work is already underway on art and layout.

One chapter of LotW3 has, in fact, already been published. It is available in Hearts of Glorantha #4, available from d101 Games via lulu.com. This is the chapter covering Junora (which does, unfortunately, to some extent make reference to the as yet unpublished remaining chapters). It is graced by some wonderful artwork by Peter Town, and, of course, is accompanied by articles by many other great authors - it's well a worth a read. The magazine is available both as a hardcopy, and as a (cheaper) PDF file.

Continuum 2010

I have just returned from the 2010 incarnation of Continuum, the biennial games convention. I have, of course, mentioned this before, and now its back again! I have to say that this seemed, even by the high standards of Continuum, and its predecessor, Convulsion, to be a particularly good event. So far as I could tell, everything was running smoothly, and there was certainly plenty to do throughout the whole weekend.

Of course, a lot of the time was, as always, spent socialising and drinking (so much so that the bar ran out of cider on Saturday evening - fortunately they obtained more for the next day). As always, the conversations were eclectic, and covered much more than just gaming - such as the precise distinction between Prussia and Brandenburg, the funereal habits of the middle-eastern Neolithic, and methods of promotion in the Royal Navy during the 18th century. Because such things are, of course, more important than anything involving, say, footballs.

But, of course, we're there mainly for the gaming. I managed to get into four games over the course of the weekend, which, with seminars in the mornings, out-of-tune singing on Saturday night, and me shouting at people on Sunday evening, made quite a full timetable. The first game was a Glorantha HeroQuest adventure (just published in Gloranthan Adventures), which resulted in much craziness, and dropping of roofs on top of undead sparrows.

On the Saturday, I played in a scenario for the hard SF game River of Heaven. If you've not heard of that before, it's probably because it hasn't yet been published - apparently it should be out by the end of the year. Hard SF doesn't seem to get much of a look-in when it comes to RPGs (although I'm sure one could argue about just how hard is 'hard'), but this setting did look quite interesting from the brief glimpse we got. The scenario itself, concerning a crisis on an STL interstellar cargo ship, was written and GMed by the game's designer, John Ossoway, and gave us plenty to do, without it being too difficult to follow the relevant details of the setting.

On Saturday evening, that was followed by a free-form set in Kingsport, Massachusetts. I was playing a thinly disguised Herbert West, amidst a steadily growing mountain of insanity, much of which revolved heavily around snakes. By the end of the scenario I was was turned into a brain-eating zombie, which seems appropriate enough, under the circumstances. In short, this was a very fun free-form, and one where I managed to keep constantly busy (I've been in some before where this wasn't the case), which I'd recommend if it's run again.

And then, on the Sunday, I played in a game based on the 1960s TV series Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. I played Destiny Angel - I'm sure you can see the resemblance. The GM was obviously very well versed on the show - certainly far more than I was - and did a good job of working in its various conventions, as well as using a brilliant set of props. All in all, very well done, and a lot of effort looked to have gone into it.

In terms of my own publications, it looks as if much of volumes 1 and 3 of Lords of the West should be out in time for Dragonmeet, although no promises on that one. It's looking highly likely that these will, in fact, be published under a single cover, which will make quite a substantial book. There is no specific news on a release date for volume 2, as yet.

And, of course, the best news: there will be another Continuum in 2012. So that will definitely be something to look forward to!

Lords of the West: Update 1

Well, things have been a lot more encouraging than I had feared. I am not going to give specific details here, since I would not want to seem to be making promises on behalf of other people. However, I can say that there has been a fair degree of interest from Gloranthan publishers in getting the material out there.

I should also stress that Moon Design have been helpful in this regard. While they no longer have any interest in publishing my work, they have been supportive in attempts to get it published by other means. For example, material that I did not originally write, but was supplied to me by Issaries has been cleared for publication along with those elements that I did write.

So, without going into specifics of proposed publication dates or issue numbers, here is what has already been agreed since the beginning of the week:

• The Junora chapter of LotW3, which is largely self-contained, has been definitively accepted for publication in one of the Glorantha magazines. It will almost certainly be the first release, and could be considered a "teaser" for the rest.
  
• The remainder of LotW3 (the Loskalm book) has also been accepted for publication, barring some specifically HQ1 rules sections. I would say that things are looking good for a time frame that I think most people will be pleased with.
  
• Most of the material in LotW2 (Kingdom of the Flamesword) has been accepted for publication in principle, and I am confident that this will also see the light of day before too long.
• LotW1 (Heroes of Malkion), ironically may be the last part to be released. An agreement has been made to publish around half of this, although another large section remains unclaimed at this time.
• I have received permission from Moon Design to publish, free of charge, at my own website, any outstanding material that is not picked up by any of the licensed magazine publishers.

Obviously, I would have preferred my writings to be published, as originally intended, in book form. And I would have liked them to become, at least in part "official" or "canonical", neither of which will now happen. However, I do think that we have a very positive outcome here, from a situation that looked quite bleak just one week ago. It is, in fact, highly likely that this material will now be published sooner than would otherwise have been the case - since MD would, naturally enough, have been working on the Pavis Book and other high priority projects.

I would like to say thank you to all of those involved in moving this forward, who hopefully know who they are! I will, of course, give more specific details once the publishers concerned have decided to release it. For everyone who has been giving me words of encouragement over the last week, I would also like to say a big thank you, and I hope you are all pleased with the final result when it appears.

---

Further Mini-Update:

I can now reveal, to those who haven't noticed, that the Junora article will be appearing in Hearts in Glorantha #4. Note the expected release date of "March/April 2010"!

Lords of the West cancelled

Or at least, the version(s) of it I produced have been; Moon Design may well decide to produce their own version with a different writer at some point in the future. Obviously, having worked for seven and a half years on this, this is pretty disappointing for me. In the end, Moon Design's vision of what they wanted shifted too far from the original agreement (which was not, of course, made by them) for continuing on the project to be worthwhile, and they chose to pull the plug.

Indeed, in general, I have a feeling that since the production of HeroQuest 2, the whole Gloranthan project has shifted from something I enjoy to something that's less so. This is not, of course, to blame any of those directly involved in that change. Change does happen, and whenever it does, people get left out in the cold. It happened before with RQ3 with respect to RQ2 fans, and again with HW with respect to RQ2/3 fans. It's inevitable to some extent, and more so when there is a major change in gaming philosophy involved.

It's hard at times like this, when one is on the losing end, not to feel abandoned or rejected by the Gloranthan 'tribe' that they keep talking about. But that's probably largely unfair. I certainly intend to go to Continuum this year, and hopefully have a good time, overcoming the doubtless unavoidable tinge of disappointment and regret. Heck, after seven and a half years of repeating cycles of hard work and frustration, I was hardly on my most diplomatic behaviour by the end. So, if anyone reading this feels that I have offended them over the course of the last year or so, I offer my sincere apologies.

So, enough moping; where do we go from here? Well, the good news is that I am currently negotiating for publication of at least some of the material through other channels. In fact, some of it may even appear earlier than might otherwise have been the case. I can't give further details yet, as nothing has been definitely agreed beyond an expression of interest from one respected source in the Gloranthan community. Stay tuned for updates as they become available.

Western Heroquesting

Here's a post I made on the World of Glorantha list about Western heroquesting, responding to the statement that it's rather "abstract":

---

>
> The Monotheist experience seems a bit more abstract.

It can be, yes, but it doesn't have to be. Remember, the majority of monotheists aren't wizards (that is, they use wizardry magic, but they aren't pointy-hat wearing professionals). When you attend a monotheist religious service, you experience the Otherworld, and you re-enact the myths of Malkion, the saints, and whoever else it may be. Sure, to an outsider, it may appear that the vicar takes the holy book out of the Arcarium and reads a lesson from it, but if you're in that congregation, the "lesson" becomes real for you; it's a myth that you're interacting with.

Take the New Year's Day ceremony, since that's pretty much universal (albeit not your regular weekly service). You're standing there in the Church, and then the walls and ceiling begin to fade. Now you're in the middle of the countryside, and the sky is gray, like early twilight... but you know it's been like that for all of your life. The landscape around you is gloomy, starved of light. You feel the crushing monotony of the world, of your life in this semi-darkness, holding onto the hope that, one day, God will make it better. You begin to pray, feeling a presence that God is with you, and that soon, very soon, your wait will be over (because you feel you've been waiting all your life for this, and so have your ancestors, for generations back). God will deliver you, because you have been faithful, and Malkion's sacrifice made it so.

And then the sun rises.

And so you continue through the story of the first day, and the first night, and the service ends with the second dawn. Now, here you're experiencing how your ancestors *felt*, but the point is that it's not purely abstract. Another example might be on the High Holy Day of Saint Josselyne, where his adepts will find themselves in the garrison defending his castle against the final onslaught of the Brithini. And, of course, you can heroquest by repeating the saint's actions to gain some benefit - the key point usually being to emulate his virtues.

Sure, if you're a wizard of, say, the Iron Blood School, your heroquests may well be a good deal more abstract, trying to forge link between nodes on the Essence Planes, or building the runes into a new pattern, or something. But even then, you may be interacting with physical (if fairly impersonal) entities that have obvious meanings to anyone - the Sea, for instance, if you're a Debaldan.

Runes in the West

I've mentioned the way that Malkioni interact with runes from a rules perspective in an earlier post. To illustrate further, here is the list of cults from Heroes of Malkion, with their runes. Note that some of these cults may have been moved to later books during the editing process, or had other minor changes - this is just the latest information I have. Furthermore, I won't be describing the cults themselves here; you'll have to buy the book if you want that! Instead, it just shows the range of cults in the book, and perhaps illustrates a little bit of how runes work for Malkioni.

Saints

Althens	Artifice
Anazieta	Harmony
Burning Arrow	Death
Drezedan	Death
Elleish	Man
Falerine	Fertility
Gerlant	Fire
Hasterax	Death
Iames	Harmony OR Light
Josselyne	Strength
Mistandar	Trade
Ongaring	Motion
Padelnik	Strength
Palenna	Fertility
Rendoir	Hunting
Xemela	Harmony
Zemuron	Law
Zmes	Artifice

Wizardry Schools

Areeshka	Luck, Fate
Avlor	Man, Victory, Stasis
Conwy	Trade, Truth
Defences of God	Law, Defence, Force
Hecretes	Illusion, Magic
Herigian	Law, Truth, Mastery
Inner Temple	Literacy, Light, Truth
Iron Blood	Law, Death, Harmony
Jenerin	Law, Trade
Kipperly	Harmony, Illusion
Kyria	Harmony, Motion, Protection
Lenderyn	Motion, Death, Magic
Nerivon	Motion, Destruction
Octahedral	Earth, Mineral
Ouxey	Perception, Stasis
Pure Waves	Water
Querto	Law, Motion, Mineral
Raceen	Law, Artifice
Rose Nuns	Law, Harmony
Siglat	Harmony, Perception, Mastery
Talara Ignia	Fire, Essence
Ulfrathgar	Chaos, Undeath
Urestes	Truth, Matter
Vonerin	Death, Spirit
Yarilia	Storm, Protection, Cold

Some additional things you might notice from this list:

• Not all wizardry schools necessarily have three runes; it depends on the range and scope of their magic.
• Saints grimoires, in particular, may focus on particular aspects of their rune; for example, Althens' Artifice rune/grimoire does not include metalwork, because he's a shipwright.
• Some grimoires, again especially amongst saints, mediate the power of their main rune through another rune; for example the Order of the Burning Arrow's rune is Death, but it's largely (though not entirely) through the medium of fire.
• Iames has two different runes, just to be awkward - but individual members only ever have access to one.
  
• Pastors of the main Malkioni prophets, such as Rokar and Hrestol, use the Law rune in almost all cases, and are therefore too repetitive to list here. Their grimoire is usually The Abiding Book, or some variant thereof.
• Talor simply used his own rune, in the last version I saw.
• There are additional cults, such as the Order of Shining Steel, in LotW2 and LotW3!
  

Heroes of Malkion Update

The latest update on progress on Heroes of Malkion indicates that artwork is still in progress. Moon Design hopes to have it out by the end of the year, which indicates that it will probably be out before the new edition of HeroQuest. (Nonetheless, it does duplicate a lot of information in the main HQ1 rulebook, in order that it can be used by those who only have access to HQ2).

Personally, I'd take the 'end of the year' estimate with a bucket-load of salt; these things are always statement of hope rather than any definite publication deadline. But... well, hopefully by Tentacles, eh?

In the meantime, here's a wordle from chapter 2 of the book (for the uninitiated, a wordle is an artistic representation of which words appear most frequently in a piece of text):

Magic in the West

You may recall that, at Tentacles and Continuum, I (among others) said that Heroes of Malkion would work just fine with HQ2. You may also recall that, in this blog, I was unclear as to how that would be the case. Well, it turns out that it isn't the case; the rule sets are not really compatible at that level. (This, incidentally, doesn't mean that, for example, Blood Over Gold or Thunder Rebels can't be used with HQ2 - just that you'll also need a copy of HQ1 to make full sense of the rulesy bits).

But, fear not! I've spent the last weekend going through the draft of HoM, making sure that, when you get to see it, it is fully compatible with the new rules. There was quite a lot more to be done than at first appeared to be the case. This is because the HQ2 rulebook has very little information on Glorantha and its workings - understandably, because it's a generic rulebook, not a worldbook. There are a lot of things about the West, and Glorantha in general, that were in HQ1, but won't be in the second edition. All of that information had to be repeated, for the book to be stand-alone with the new ruleset.

However, all of that is now done, and what I suspect many people will be interested in is how Western magic works with the new rune-centred approach of the second edition. Here's the quick run-down:

• Knight, noble, and to a lesser extent, commoner heroes, typically gain their magic by following a saint. This gives them access to one rune and one grimoire (spell book) associated with that rune. For example, a follower of Saint Xemela has the Harmony rune, and a book containing healing spells.
• Members of the clergy practice their magic through holding religious services. This gives them access to one rune, and a set of community-based spells contained in one or more holy scriptures with that same rune. For example, a Rokari vicar has the Law rune, and uses the communal blessings and curses found in the scriptures of his Church. Bishops, incidentally, can further boost their magic by accessing the total devotional energy of their diocese.
  
• Professional wizards use exactly the same magical rules as followers of saints, but they have up to three runes, and at least one grimoire for each rune.
• It is generally possible to follow more than one saint, or be both a clergyman and follow a saint; but you cannot have more than three runes in total.
• The majority of non-heroic people gain magical benefits from the blessings of the clergy, and use individual spells learned from folk wisdom, or the like. They usually don't have specific runes.

Note that 'adept' and 'mage' are now magical levels, not professions. Whether you're following a saint, a scripture, or a school of wizardry, you're still an adept - and, with study, you can become a mage. Your Church might not want to let you do this, of course, but the option is there. Basically, the same rules apply to everyone, and those of you confused by the first edition wizardry rules will hopefully find these easier to follow.

In short, quite a lot of work for me, in updating it all, but the end result should be simpler magic rules that are easier to use.

Women in the Gloranthan West

One of the biggest problems I faced while writing Kingdom of the Flamesword is that we know, from previously published material that the Rokari are a pretty patriarchal lot. The default assumption in role-playing games these days is that your character's gender really doesn't matter. What matters is that you're a paladin, or a wizard, or whatever it may be, and nobody will react in the slightest if you happen to be a female paladin or wizard.

Many cultures in Glorantha follow this principle - it's particularly true of the Heortlings, for example, who perhaps are the best described of all the cultures of the world in the existing publications. But it's not true of the Rokari. Now, granted, the Rokari rationale for this is that women 'are more perfect' than men, so they shouldn't be risked in combat... but that doesn't help much in an RPG, even if we accept it at face value.

There is a section in the book about role playing women in Seshnela, and outlining some of the options open to them - there's even a way for them to lay about themselves with swords, contrary to Rokari norms. One of the tools I used to get across Rokari culture is to have three people talking about what's important to them (if you've read by "Voices of Loskalm" piece in one of the Continuum fund-raisers, you'll know the sort of thing); one of the three is a woman, who at least gets to be quite snide about the men in her life. And, if you're happy to play a power-behind-the-throne sort of character, there should be no problem.

But, let's be honest, women in Seshnela don't get the same sort of equality that they do in Heortling lands. Of the NPCs described in the book, the great majority are male. The only exceptions are two members of the royal family, two healers, and one that's a little harder to describe. Now, all of these characters have potential scenarios around them, and two of them are powerful magicians. But, at the end of the day, Seshnela is a male-dominated land, and that's going to come across in the book.

Given the setting, there isn't a lot I can do about that, although I've tried to alleviate it here and there. I've set things up so that you can play a female character doing anything that a man could do - but not so that they can do so without people remarking on it, or devout Rokari looking askance at her if she oversteps the bounds of "propriety". If that worries you, you might want to use the book as a source of enemies to fight... or you might want to wait for the later books in the Lords of the West series.

Loskalm, for instance, is sexually egalitarian. They have female wizards, female knights, female wizard-knights, women at the highest echelons of government, and so on. In Loskalm, women can be whatever they want to be - which is all part of its utopian nature, of course. Further down the road, my view of Jonatela is that women are more or less in the same situation as men. Which is to say, female peasants are just as thoroughly stuffed as their menfolk, while Nemuzhik women get to be just as obnoxious as their brothers. Which makes sense, given that the Jonatings were Orlanthi not so long ago.

Personally, I like this variety. Glorantha is a big world, and it doesn't all follow exactly the same tropes. If you want to explore the pitfalls of patriarchy, the opportunity is there and, more importantly, so is the opportunity to go somewhere else and not worry about it. There are even parts of the world where being male is a disadvantage, after all...

Myths for Malkioni

One of the many things I discussed over a beer at Tentacles this year was ILH-2: Under the Red Moon. If you're a Glorantha fan, there's a lot of useful information in this book about the workings of the Lunar religion and so on. Like my upcoming book, Heroes of Malkion, a fair chunk of the book consists of descriptions of the local cults. Now, on the whole, I was pleased with this as a set of cults, providing, as it does, a whole bunch of character options, and giving us an idea of who the Lunar gods are. The rules implementation seems a bit overly complicated to me, what with trying to merge theism, animism, and wizardry into one seemingly randomly assorted whole, but what cropped up in our discussion were the stories behind the various Immortals.

How could we make such stories interesting and entertaining? We have a good idea of many of the theist myths, and where to take their inspiration from, but the stories of most of the Lunar Immortals are rather different, since most of them used to be living people in historical time, not Gods from Before the Dawn. And, of course, the same question arises with the Malkioni saints. Where to get ideas from, without falling into the trap of endlessly repeating "Saint X was a carpenter/librarian/crocodile-wrangler who was very holy; now he is the Patron Saint of carpenters/librarians/crocodile-wranglers?"

Malkioni hagiography is rather different from the tales of Heortling deities and the like. And where better to get inspiration from it than real-world hagiography? The Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches have many, many saints, and they provide plenty of good ideas for how the Malkioni saints might work. The Patron Saints Index is a very useful online source, here, and one that I have often perused. There is a rich seam of mythology to be mined from Christian and other monotheist stories, and, on the whole, they have not been used much in Glorantha.

That is not to say, of course, that you should lift the story whole from Catholic canon to Malkionism - the religions are very different, and we are trying to create fiction here, not to rip off a real-world source. But the themes can be very helpful, and we can put them into a Gloranthan context. This, hopefully, is what takes a saint cult from "hey, we need a saint for heralds" to something more interesting that feels a living part of Glorantha. It also allows us to show differences between different sects by having different types of story for saints with outwardly similar roles. For example, I made Saint Falerine, the patron saint of noblewomen in Hrestoli lands, very different from Saint Deelia, her Rokari counterpart. Falerine is more pro-active, with romantic elements in her story that fit the Hrestoli mindset, while Deelia is content to do as she's told, attaining sainthood through purity and duty.

It's also the case that quite a lot of Catholic saints, especially the early ones, died quite horribly. This too, is to me an interesting source of stories, with brave Malkioni worshippers fighting against the wicked Brithini, or whatever other enemies present themselves. There is a problem here, unfortunately, in that canonical Glorantha requires that Saints must have been powerful heroes in life (to forge the link with the hero plane), even if their eventual fate is martyrdom. So, none of those truly inspiring stories where someone becomes a saint precisely because they were willing to be martyred despite not being uber-powerful. But such is the framework that we have to work with when writing in what is, ultimately, somebody else's creation, and there's still plenty of room for some great stories of other types. Especially if, like Saint Deelia, the hero path that you took didn't involve the traditional smiting-of-thine-enemies.

Another point to remember is that they are saints; they have to be virtuous from somebody's point of view. (This is less of a problem for the Sorcerous Founders, of course). Just as Orlanth and Yelmalio and all the rest show the virtues of the pagan cultures, the Malkioni saints should do the same. Now, there's no reason why you can't have, say, a Patron Saint of Thieves. Christians do - he's called Saint Dismas, and even if you don't recognise the name, you'll recognise his story. (There's good old Saint Nicholas, too, but he's more of a Patron Saint Against Thieves). Indeed, Saint Osni the Penitent, in Kingdom of the Flamesword, is a patron saint of criminals in just this sense.

Hopefully, the saints described in Heroes of Malkion, and the further ones in the later books, provide a range of stories, from inspirational heroism, to romance, to miraculous deeds that showed new ways of living. My hope is that, after reading Heroes of Malkion, you'll not only remember that Saint Avlor is Patron Saint of Lost Causes, but remember why. Whether I'll succeed... well, I guess we'll find out later this year...

Zemuron, Hasterax, and All That Jazz

A significant part of Heroes of Malkion is taken up with the various cults of the West. Each of the 'big three' Malkioni cultures - Seshnela, Loskalm, and Jonatela - has five specific cults described, and many smaller ones have two or three cults. In addition, there is quite an array of cults that are widespread throughout the Western cultures. You can find the full list at the Issaries website, if you're interested.

You'll note that many are new to print (although, in fact, several of the saints originally came from the fertile mind of Sandy Petersen). So, how did I go about designing all these new cults, and making sure that they fit in the Gloranthan mythos? The first step was to find a niche that needed filling, especially if it was one useful in-game. Some niches may be useful as background material, but can be left out of a book with limited word count - for instance, Saint Jandaris, patron saint of glassworkers, gets a mention in LotW3, but he doesn't have a full write-up. (Perhaps he will, some day, if somebody really needs such a thing, but he wasn't a high priority for me). We need saints and schools to cover entertainers, merchants, scholars, and a number of other special professions, such as heralds. There has to be a good variety of warrior saints, because warriors are a popular character type, and similarly for wizardry/sorcery schools, where there are all sorts of concepts one can play about with.

And, personally, I like healers, so there are quite a number of healer cults in the book, too. Not as many as warriors, maybe, but putting people back together can be as varied an art as taking them apart in the first place, so there's a good range; Saint Falerine is fairly light and fluffy, while, at the opposite extreme, Saint Anazieta is positively scary.

The classic example of me mucking about with character roles is, as many of you probably already know, a certain pair of warrior saints. Chaos isn't quite as big a bogey-man for the Malkioni as it is for, say, the Praxians, but it's certainly well up there as a major foe, being opposed to Law and all. So we need a cult of specialist Chaos-fighters. But the last thing we want is a clone of Storm Bull, so... well, what is Chaos, really, from the Malkioni perspective? Chaos is about the breakdown of society, failure to respect the law, of allowing your baser nature to control your rational mind, replacing Logic with the obsessions of the Id. It therefore follows (said Saint Zemuron) that any move in that direction is a move towards Chaos. The result? A cult of wine-sipping, quiche-eating, frightfully polite chaps who do their best to maintain decorum. And happen to be deadly with a sword and lance, and will hack the tentacles off a charnjibber as soon as look at it.

Of course, as soon as I'd written them up, that rather left the niche filled by Storm Bull/Urox among the barbarians empty. Sometimes you just want to go nuts as a player, and not have to worry about maintaining your composure and writing clever poetry about it afterwards. If you're the sort of player who thinks that all this chivalry stuff is a bit nancy, and just wants to lay about you with an axe... for you, we have the cult of Saint Hasterax. And most of Jonatela, to be fair, but Hasterax is more widespread. Hasteraxi are single-minded nutters, and sometimes that's just what you want in a game.

OK, so now you know that you need a saint for Love, Romance, & Fluffy Bunnies, or whatever it may be. Now what do you do? I'll return to that later...

Starting with an Update

So... if you know me from the internet (or many other places, come to that), you may know me as 'Trotsky', 'Professor Tibble', 'Anaxial'... or, well there's probably some others I'm forgetting. Amazingly, none of these are my real name. I mean, who'd guess that, eh?

I'm actually called Jamie Revell and I'm a gamer, skeptic, writer, and various other things too tedious to mention. Which means I'm likely to fill this up with thoughts about what I'm writing and/or gaming, plus general wittering on about things I know little about (which is the main point of these things, isn't it?) To begin with... here's an update:

---

The chances are that, unless you're related to me, anyone reading this knows me best through my game writing for Issaries and Moon Design. You can find a list of what I've already had published here. None of it is currently in print, so far as I can tell, but you can get it in PDF form by following the links provided. But, anyway, this you probably already know. What's happened with my newer projects? Well, there are three currently in the pipeline, all with suspiciously similar titles:

Lords of the West 1: Heroes of Malkion
This is currently in layout. The cover art has been completed, and the interior art is currently under way. The cover is by Simon Bray, and at least some of the interior art is (so I gather) by the fine, fine chap that is Rolland Barthélémy. Which is something to look forward to, I think you'll agree. Moon Design originally hoped to have this out in August, but I'm guessing it will be a little later than that, publishing schedules being what they are.

Lords of the West 2: Kingdom of the Flamesword
As announced at the Issaries website, this is the book that described the Kingdom of Seshnela. The idea is to describe the nation in such a way that somebody who'd never even heard of the nation before could still pick up the book and get a pretty good idea of what it is. Rules aside, it assumes as little as possible. You can see a pretty detailed list of the contents at the Issaries site, so I won't repeat all that. But the good news is that I have completed the text on this, and handed it all in to the publisher. It is now waiting a slot to go through all the editing and such like that it doubtless needs - don't expect to see it before 2009.

Lords of the West 3: The book with some other title
Something to do with 'wizard-knights' probably - I'll think of something later. But, anyway, whatever it's called, this will cover the idealistic and utopian Kingdom of Loskalm, some way north of Seshnela. Rick has confirmed he wants to publish this, but we're still at an early stage. Having said this, the book is already about half written, not least because I did an earlier version back in the day for Hero Wars. This probably means that I'll be musing about Loskalm a lot in these posts to begin with, since that's what I'm working on. Plans exist in my head (but not yet Moon Design's in-tray) to extend the series up to a Book 7... but that's something for later discussion.

So, not so much an update as rampant self-promotion. But that's blogs for you, eh?