There was a question on Facebook about Finnish translation of the names. Found an old document where I translated for my own campaign the names available at the time – somewhere mid to late 80’s. They were done in my student days. Nowadays perhaps would change a few when both the Glorantha and my knowledge of English has changed.
Reflecting back on time: when this translation was last saved it was written with Word version prior to Word 6 and it does not open with current versions of word. The only available Glorantha materials were
Borderlands
Cults of Prax
Trollpak
Dragon Pass
DW14
genertela
Griffin Mountain
Pavis
RQ Companion
There was no internet for general public. Alarums & Excursions was the closest I knew about general community. Things have changed a bit…
From what I hear there are several expeditions in various campaigns that are heading to interior of Monster Island. Built up some new versions and new variations of the shoals, flocks and hordes in the Monster Island. Now there exists all the sizes of Flocks and the links work again for example: Enormous Swarm of Jellyfish . You can find all these by using search word : Flock , it will find also other people’s flocks.
Lovers of sword and sorcery have a field day now with the long awaited hard cover release of Monster Island by the Design Mechanism and the most appropriate new scenario for it – A Bird in The Hand. Run, don’t walk to Lulu to purchase the hard cover for the sandbox and the new scenario. A Bird in the Hand will give you an excellent induction to Monster Island. You will need a hard cover for the Monster Island as the sandbox will last you a long long time with a lot of gaming. It can easily be slotted into your campaign – in mine I changed the lizard folk to native tribesmen and the high folk to serpent folk with some extra camouflage powers.
A Bird in the Hand scenario contains the wonderful hex crawl rules put together by John Holmes and my group was given a chance to put them to extensive play test and have used them in every scenario ever since. The hex crawl rules makes it a must buy for the scenario itself, for the Monster Island travel and also for other jungle related scenarios. The only thing that is “missing” from the scenario hex crawl rules is a GM sheet for the various hex crawl features. The scenario is perfectly playable without GM sheet and has all the rules.
The Core rules have tucked inside them rules for Survival, Precipitation, Exposure and Wind effects. The combination of Monster Island and the Hex Crawl rules in the scenario makes the terrain and weather of the island itself an adversary worth planning for. Your party better have navigation, survival, endurance and several other skills.
Useful Folk Magic for Hex Crawl
Many folk magic spells would also come in useful. It is of course sad that by default Monster Island does not have folk magic. YMIMV. Cool would help quite a bit during a scene. For drying yourself off “Dry” would help in helping survive the jungle night. Might might help when trying to avoid the encumbrance penalties from Burdened or above conditions. Pathway would help in not losing one’s way so easily within a single scene. Preserve would help in keeping the rations good for longer than the Monster Island week. Tire would be nasty spell against the already fatigued – might even kill a person. Vigour would help avoiding the burdened and above conditions Fatigue rolls and Warmth could help for a bit in the night.
These of course will burn quite a few magic points as they are targeted per person, will last only a short while (scene might not be a day, sounds like too strong for a cantrip like folk magic spell) and magic might not work every time. It is also worth noting that Cool and Warmth requires concentration that might be broken by the denizens and surprises of Monster Island.
GM Sheet for Hex Crawl
I was inspired to create a GM sheet for the Hex Crawl and John was kind enough to provide some feedback to tune it a bit.
You will need Mythras Core Rules, Monster Island and the scenario A Bird in the Hand. GM sheets provide summary information at a glance and refer to the books.
The GM sheets contain
The Monster Island (and Jungle) Hex Crawl Travel rolls
The Monster Island Hex Crawl Travel Distance
Camping in Wilderness V1.3
The GM sheets combine information about Monster Island temperature effects,
Monster Island and Jungle Hex Crawl Travel RollsMonster Island and Jungle Hex Crawl Travel DistanceExposure Modfies if not in shelter
The Monster Island Armour Penalty Fatigue Calculator
The Monster Island Armour Penalty Fatigue Calculator tool calculates the effects of Monster Island Jungle rules for wearing armour. The tool is currently an excel – will likely be added to toolsfrompavis.com later on. Mark here your current fatigue level (Fresh, Weary…), your strength, worn Armour ENC and all other ENC than armour. Monster Island is unforgiving if you wear any armour at all so be prepared for that. If you need to calculate the weapon, specific armour set and other equipment ENC use the Encumbrance calculator and mark down what you need here.
The
Tool results when no armour and weeks rations are carried and nothing elseTool results when just one ENC (note ENC) armour and weeks rations are carried and nothing elseAdded just 15 ENC armourAdded a sword and couple of things raising all other ENC to 16So here wee have the plate armoured warrior with STR11 and weeks rations. Here one with 21 ENC with weeks rations and 1 ENC worth of other equipmentHere a more reasonable armour with normal equipment loadPlate armoured warrior – when exhausted at the Fatigue level – he will die and he is not even burdened by equipment
To get the best of these you will need the Mythras Core Rules, Monster Island and the scenario A Bird in the Hand from Design Mechanism , Mythras Encounter Generator will create you encounters.
Here is a small chart to use when characters are traveling in wilderness. Bird in the Hand scenario brings in more detailed rules for finding shelter. If you do not know where a good shelter is your travel will get slower and there is a risk of having to sleep in the open.
The RAW rules state wearing suitable local clothing permits a character a grace period of their CON in hours before exposure sets in. The chart below shows the RAW rules for effect of being exposed to temperature ranges. The wonderful Hex Crawl rules in the scenario Bird In the Hand situated in the Monster Island enhance if you try to rest without proper tent or lean-to you risk exposure and there is no recovery of fatigue or natural healing.
In the jungle you will be wet most of the time either thru torrential afternoon rains, constant wetness of everything or the rivers. If you try to rest overnight without first drying yourself and without a fire and lean to or tent for the night – you are likely to get more and more fatigued. So if you try to sleep in a tree to avoid ground level predators (and encounter the higher order predators above) you are likely to not get rest unless you find a nice nest or build a tree house but how to keep warm there..
So even if there is no check required – there is no recovery of fatigue or natural healing unless you are sheltered.
City Quarter Generator which generates city quarter for Mythic Constantinople era cities and generic fantasy cities now has the first versions of Gloranthan City quarters. There are two versions – Orlanthi City Quarter and Fonrit City Quarter.
Currently the Orlanthi City Quarter generates temples from the Storm Pantheon. Fonrit one generates from Ompalam pantheon. For this first version the probability of gods are even for the city quarter. There are only gods from a single pantheon in the city quarter. Major Temples are more rare, others are evenly distributed to appear. This also may change in the future. There might even be other pantheons appearing.
The contents of the temples are defines by Mythras ruleset – substitute your own favourite distribution and kinds of priests there. For example acolytes seem to come and go in the rulesets.
These would be most likely suitable for larger cities with tenements, multiple professions and stores and multiple temples. My campaign is in Fonrit where this seems to suit well.
A fellow Mythras fan asked me if it would be possible to create a city quarter generator based on Mythic Constantinople rules.
Here is the first version – it can only do Constantinople and only poor city quarters. More will probably come later and I will most likely do a more sword and sorcery oriented version later on.
The system is based on generating nodes. After generating a few nodes for a part of a city quarter you will draw the streets and alleys around them and then start sketching out the shape of the buildings. You can save the resulting files as .png files and then draw the needed roads, buildings around the nodes.
Here is an item from my Mythras Monster Island Campaign. It is the very rare copy guide to Hummingbirds of Monster Island. It was carefully researches by brave ornithologist Dhatamuzzin – who was lost in his latest travel to upper reaches of cloud forest in Komombo area in search of new subspecies of Prophet Bird. He used large part of his considerable inherited wealth to finance expeditions to inner Monster Island. His collection of bird feathers is beyond compare and is now being cared for in a private museum in the provincial capital.
The book contains first hand observations of the rarity of the birds, their living areas and delicateness of the birds for feather removal. It also contains market value researched which might fluctuate mightily. There is a Mandahi and Varanri Shaman curses put on Dhatamuzzin for his over zealous research in the vicinity of tribal holy places.
New small tool in tools.notesfrompavis.com Mythras Dice Roll Evaluator. Give it a skill and augmenting skill. It calculates those pesky details of resulting skill and various difficulty grades and crits & fumbles. My small contribution to the destruction of in your brain math skills.
Notes From Pavis 