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.

Continuum Podcast

A podcast from Continuum is now available online here. I'm on for around five minutes out of 90, and there's probably not much new here, either. But the podcast is generally worth listening to, as an update of what the HeroQuest writers are up to as a group. Kudos to Darran Simms for producing this.

The Post-Continuum Post

Over the last three days I attended the glorious collection of gaming fun that was Continuum 2008. I didn't seem to have as much planned for this year as usual, but I still managed to enjoy myself, and get quite a few things done. And quite large quantities of cider[1] were consumed, including some Weston's Old Rosie, which was certainly a pleasant change from the usual draught stuff. Aside from Glorantha and related matters, topics ranged through Doctor Who, prog rock, some stuff about computers that I really didn't understand, and cricket. Some of which, at least, just goes to prove that we're thoroughly British! And even just socialising, there is definitely something to be said for a place where someone can not only use the word 'chalcolithic' in casual conversation, but where everybody present knows exactly what it means...

I spent much of the first 24 hours answering the question "when is Heroes of Malkion coming out?" which at least confirms that there is definitely interest in this! On the Saturday morning, I took part in a panel on the future of Glorantha, in which all the books currently planned for the setting were discussed. My own segment was relatively short, and added nothing that is new to readers of this blog, but you will be able to hear a recording of it all online soon, courtesy of Darran Simms. I'll post a more specific link once it's available.

The biggest announcement in that respect was the new magic system. For those of you who don't know, HeroQuest v2 (or whatever the final title will be) will be a generic rulebook, with only a few pages of Gloranthan material in the back. So, although there will be a brief summary of magic included in that, the full system will debut in Cults of Sartar. It's a simpler system than the old one, although largely compatible. Obviously, CoS will focus on theism (pfft! damn pagans!), as practised by the Heortlings. Which means that I don't know exactly how it will affect the wizardry that is the focus of my books. Because HoM, in particular, is already well past the 'final draft' stage, it will use the existing magic rules. I'm assured that this will not have any effect, and that the old and new versions are fully compatible, so far as the cult write-ups are concerned, although I have to confess to not being entirely sure how this is so.

It does, however, turn out that the maps and annotations for LotW3 that I've been working on for the last two months will have to be redone, possibly from scratch. Nuts.

Sunday morning, and I just managed to get to "Murder at the Greydog Inn" without falling asleep. A freeform at 9:30 in the morning? Hmm. I was playing a dodgy Sun Domer trying to smuggle drugs into the Lunar Empire. Unfortunately, my contact was rumbled early on by the Lunar officials, so, while I did try to warn him, we were under too much observation to get much done in that regard. Doubly unfortunately, he turned out to be the murderer, and gave me up to the Lunars after an Ernaldan (of all people) threatened to use a red-hot poker on him if he didn't. Which I guess would convince me, too.

Because the game wrapped at that point, I'm unclear whether I died in glorious battle against my cross-dressing commanding officer, or whether I got arrested and sentenced to one of those Retirement Towers that they have in Sun County. A word of advice to the organisers, though, if they're reading this: for at least half an hour out of the three hour game, non-clan members have nothing to do, except sit about in a corridor twiddling their thumbs while everyone else goes off to resolve the plot in a closed room. Although the rest of the game is great fun, you might want to fix that if you run it again.

Later on, I took part in a tabletop game run by Ian Cooper, although, sadly, exhaustion was catching up on me towards the end. We used the new system for resolving extended contests, which I'd previously tried out at Tentacles, and is, to my mind at least, a great improvement over that in earlier editions. Once again, I played a Healer, which meant a lot of use of the new "Assist" rules, especially since this game was fairly combat-heavy (or at least was before I became to exhausted to continue... I imagine that Ian had rather more planned).

And then, in the evening, came the Storytelling, which got a good audience, having been relatively sparse in recent years. I couldn't match Malk Williams' ballads for quality and sheer inherent coolness (what a pity that this wasn't recorded, like the seminars... although, as a non-expert, I'm unsure whether the sound quality of podcasting equipment would be sufficient to really bring the effect across or not). Anyway, I had the unenviable task of following Malk's first ballad, and performed my new Vadrus story. It needs a little more work, I think, but it went down well, and I'll post it to Mything Links when I have the time. Technology permitting, I may also figure out a way of recording it and posting the sound file, since, as with all Vadrus stories, it's far better to hear performed out loud than simply to read as a text file.

With a little time left over, I received a request to reprise "Enkoshons the Dragon", which I have performed at a number of cons over the years, ever since I first did so (to a shocked audience!) at Scotscon in 2003. Even those who had heard it before seemed to appreciate it, and I had some very positive comments from those who hadn't. The Storytelling concluded with a new (to me, anyway) Griselda story by Oliver Dickinson, who inspired so many of us to get involved in Glorantha in the first place.

Following that, and the obligatory Closing Ceremony, there was much more cider, plus an impromptu barbecue laid on by Charlie Krank. During that, I got into a conversation on my coming books with Michael Cule. He had a few valid concerns that, I fear, the books won't address, so I'll try and do so in coming blogs here. Even so, it was an interesting and worthwhile discussion. Or so it seemed at two in the morning, when you're full of cider and roast pork...

All in all, many kudos to the organisers, and I'll definitely be back in 2010, for what will be the 18th anniversary of the convention (counting Convulsion, but not the earlier event in Cambridge). If anyone is reading this who hasn't been, and who enjoys roleplaying, I'd recommend that you do the same.

[1] If you're American, and are thinking, "oh goody, Tibble's is a fine teetotal chap that only drinks cloudy apple juice," then... yes, of course I am. (Nods unconvincingly). :)

Voip Gaming

I ran a HeroQuest game over VOIP tonight. We had originally planned this to be the opening session of a Men of the Sea campaign, but most of the players had to pull out at the last minute. I managed to dig up a copy of the scenario originally included in an early draft of the Men of the Sea book, but I only had an hour to look it over before the start of the game. As a result, I was left floundering in places, trying to remember what was supposed to be happening. It didn't help that, while the original scenario has the characters heading to Corflu, I needed to get them to Noloswal, where we'd agreed to start the campaign proper. This meant I had to make adaptations, largely on the fly.

I'm not sure how well it all worked out, although as a prelude to more involved adventures, it was probably fair enough. It left them with mysteries to solve (not least because the original scenario doesn't explain them, either), which I will now try and work into the ongoing campaign. There were only two players, one a relatively inexperienced roleplayer, which also made things a bit strange. Nonetheless, while not a lot actually happened (in the usual HeroQuest community rivalry way, or combat, for that matter), everyone seemed to have fun enough. We'll just have to see how it all turns out in the future...

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...

Made in Sartar from Gyrdas

(Appalling pun stolen shamelessly from Stu Stansfield).

As I write, there is currently a debate on the World of Glorantha mailing list about, essentially, whether anybody else can understand a word we're on about. Or more precisely, how difficult to understand are books about Glorantha, and, if the answer is 'very', should we care anyway? The debate began when someone questioned whether the word 'gyrda' (meaning, if you ask the people I've been writing about recently: "some pagan bint that claims to talk to false gods") should be used as is, or replaced with something more easily understood[1].

Myself, I'm inclined to use the simpler term, if I can get away with it. The late Ken Bulmer (who I had the privilege of gaming with for a number of years) used to say, of made-up names in science fiction, "if you can use the real world word instead, do so." I think this is pretty good advice. It doesn't take away from the richness of the world, but it does make it easier for other people to understand.

Of course, there's more to the approachability of a book than the author's choice of words. Not to mention that are many words in any fantasy world that won't have an even approximate equivalent in English - "Rokarism" and "broo", for example. And then there's a whole bunch of proper nouns. So, making allowances for all of that, I wonder how comprehensible my books are, and if they are readily comprehensible, whether that means they're too dumbed-down to get across the richness of the setting.

Some have singled out Thunder Rebels as a book that's too complicated for newcomers to understand. I can't say that I felt that myself, and I think it's a great book, but then I'm not a newcomer. At any rate, whether it is or not, I would have guessed that LotW1: Heroes of Malkion is about on the same level. Which means that if you didn't like the former, because of its level of detail, you aren't going to like my next book, either. So fair warning to you on that front.

This is partly because LotW1 covers a lot of ground. It's not that I didn't try to make it readable (obviously), but the subject requires a lot of detail, and, even then, it's going to be obvious that there's a lot more detail out there beyond that. Which is why there are other books in the Lords of the West series at all, of course.

However, LotW2: Kingdom of the Flamesword is written much more for the beginner. Now, it's not totally self-contained, because there are certain details, especially of the rules, that you'll need LotW1 for. But, as a description of the culture, I think it's fairly comprehensible. It may help that the West is easier to understand than the Heortlings, because it's closer to our own society, and the generally weirder culture of Loskalm may make LotW3: Wizard-Knights a more difficult proposition.

But then, again, there is a lot of detail in it. And there's not much in the way of ready-to-play scenarios, which may not help. It's a culture book... but I'm not sure it's any more complicated than, say, this (which, for all I know, sunk like a stone - but was at least published by a company with a pretty good track record for selling RPG books that people want to buy).

So I don't know, really; I tried to make the book easily accessible, but I'm not myself in a position to know whether I've succeeded. Or if, in so doing, I've wiped out the depth that makes Glorantha as interesting as it is. But I do generally think that the balance of detail and usability of recent HQ books has been about right, and I'd point to Blood Over Gold as a case in point. The Stafford Library series is a different case, but it doesn't pretend to be an easily usable gaming resource in the way that the other books are. To be honest, if I can be on a par with Blood Over Gold, I'll be pretty happy. If you were looking for something more like the old Apple Lane book, with its keyed locations and scenarios, you're probably going to be disappointed with most of what I write, anyway.


[1] Such as, say, "some pagan bint that claims to talk to false gods". Or you could use "wise woman" or "god-talker", I suppose.

Wizard-Knights Saints list

A full list of contents will appear at the glorantha.com website in due course, but as an illustration of what I have been working on, here is the list of new cults described in the book so far:

• Saint Erivies - patron of servants
• Saint Gerid - patron of farmworkers
• Saint Menena - patron of housewives
• Saint Neuteboom - patron of generosity
• Saint Raigarn - patron of artisans
• Saint Sestercian - patron of merchants
• Saint Bertorl - patron of missionaries (brief write-up previously included in Masters of Luck and Death)
• Saint Carpattia - patron of guards and protection
• Saint Merwyn - patron of those who work with animals
• Saint Shalara - patron of peace
• Saint Taralda - patron of justice
• The Artificers' School - wizards of sacred architecture
• The Order of the Companions - common magic
• The Holy Office for the Protection of the Faith

In addition to these, the book will provide more information on the following Loskalmi saints already included in Heroes of Malkion, and in the current core rulebook (many of which are more directly adventure oriented than those above - it made sense to do them first):

• Siglat, Elleish, Falerine, Hasterax, Herigian, Jenerin, Josselyne, Kipperly, Kyria, Lenderyn, Ongaring, Palenna, Talor, Xemela, Zemuron
  

Finally, although I haven't written these sections yet, Saint Tomaris the Apostle will also be included, along with at least two other non-Idealist cults relevant to the region.