Trade and Markets in Glorantha

What are the things available in the market – local produce of course, groceries, poultry, meat of local kinds. Guide to Glorantha gives background to import and export of the goods. This can give some flavor to your market. I took the data from Guide to Glorantha and used it to create local market availability of goods. The system is as follows:

  • anything the area is known to export is available locally in the market as well
  • anything the area is known to import is available from all the markets that export it
    • artifacts, silk and iron are rare in all the markets.
    • article is common if it is available from nearby region
    • article is rare if it comes from non nearby region OR has to cross ocean
    • rarity could be used as price modifier (for example 30-50-100% more price) as it is exotic and might be considered be of better quality to be worth to transport from far reaches of lozenge
    • rare goods (and even some of the common ones) might not be available and might be also subject to seasonal fluctuation (for example riding beasts, herbs and spices)

Created first markets for Umathela, Fonrit, Nochet, Dragon Pass and Pavis. Others will follow if there seems to be demand.

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Here are some markets created with RQ Encounter Generator that contain above items as trade goods.

In the future more exploration about what you might see in the trading routes as some goods need to pass areas which have no demand for them.

Other useful links might be

Italian version of Mythras Charts and Tables

There is now an Italian translation of several of the tables in my RQ6 Charts and Tables page. Translation was done by Lorenzo Soleri and you can find the tables here and in future also Alephtar Games forum. So if you want to do a translation of any stuff in my pages please contact me and I can provide you some minimal guidelines so we follow the fan policies of respective parties.

Classic Fantasy -Old School Monsters

There seem to be lots of interest in old school recently. Classic Fantasy supplement by the Design Mechanism looks likely to fill the craving for old school for a long time to come. the list of monsters is like who is who in the memory lane of the early days of my gaming in late 1970’s. Spent a few moments in creating templates to generate some of the monsters from my very first games in 1976 or 77. Somebody beat me to the indomitable kobolds but here are a few

The first I remember throwing at my players in those school days was the carrion creeper or crawler.

The next that I vividly remember in cube form was

There were others in the early days as well like

..and when the players grew up in levels they found

The interest seems high as I have rarely seen so many contributed monster encounters in so little time in the RQ Encounter Generator. Please keep contributing and marking them with “Classic fantasy” tag. It would be good if you remember to add the “Abilities” to the monster when you create it – this will help gamemasters in not having to flip back into the pdf or book to check the ability.

There are already bugbears, kobolds, goblins, hobgoblins, gnolls, orcs, hill giants, killer mimics, skeletons, umber hulks…

 

To see the Monster Island and die – Monstropedia of Loral

 

Here are few new denizens of the beautiful island called Loral. It is populated by rare endangered pieces unified in their approach to life (hate the intruders). There is rather large treasure ship wrecked on the island and there used to be God Learners here long time ago so the historians are of course quite interested in the island. The below natural exhibits are imagined for RQ6 Encounter Generator. Among the less educated the island is called Monster Island.   The sources have been the Tradetalk #13, Guide to Glorantha and Men at Sea.

Some are really co-operative and are driven by the sense to please (their palates) and fulfill their heart’s desire (hate the intruders). Some of these are bad news indeed.

There are other pages on Monster Island

 

The Sea, The Sea – Gloranthan Ships for RQ6

Glorantha has inspired a largish variety of ships and maritime vessels over time. Most of the sources are out of print, out of date or incomplete. Some of them are not even canon anymore. I decided to gather all of the ships and maritime vessels that have been published and update them to the latest of the ship rules – the gem of a rulebook called Ships & Shieldwalls for RQ6.

Here are the ships The list contains also the physical size information about the ships that has been gathered from all the source material or extrapolated from other ships.

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The full list is here

  • Raft, Small
  • Kayak
  • Dugout
  • Rowing Boat
  • War Canoe
  • Small Fishing Boat or Ski
  • Raft, Large
  • Reed Galley
  • River Transport
  • Viking Longboat
  • Small Merchantman/Cog
  • Small Galley
  • Medium Merchantman
  • Bireme
  • Trireme
  • Large Merchantman
  • Hexareme
  • Grain Transport
  • Kareeshtu Warsail
  • Dwarf Floating Castle
  • Elf Gallegas
  • Knorr
  • Kobaya Support Ship
  • Large Cog
  • Maslo Catamaran
  • Seki-Bune Pirateship
  • Waertagi Fastship
  • Xebec
  • Wolf Pirate Penteconter
  • Kralori Barge
  • Black Galley – troll rowed
  • Black Galley – trollkin rowed
  • Black War Galley – Zorak Zoran
  • Haragalan Tallship (New)
  • Haragalan Tallship (Old)
  • Haragalan Tallship (Very Old)
  • Dragonewt Skeletal Ship
  • Submersible Sharkboat
  • Luvatan Merchant
  • Ratuki Requiem Galley
  • Haragalan Merchant
  • Dhow- small
  • Dromond
  • Fonritian Sambuk
  • Dwarven Submarine
  • Vadeli Merchant Ship
  • Duck Patrol Boat

Feedback welcome.

Close Combat Situational Modifiers For RQ6

In my quest towards perfect GM Screen for RQ6 I gathered all the close combat situational modifiers into one table. 

It now contains the usual ones (fighting in pitch black darkness, partial darkness, blinded, while prone and so on). In addition it has the shorter reach for those of you playing with Reach rules. I added also the fatigue effect on close combat skills and limitations brought by swimming, climbing or riding while fighting.  In case your players are doing a fighting retreat with the loot it contains the encumbrance modifiers as well. If for some reason the players (or even the NPC’s) need to grab a different, perhaps unfamiliar weapon to use – the table contains the modifier rules for those as well. 2016-01-31_22-21-03.png

I also updated the movement chart with colors – green for earthbound movement, blue for swimming.

The rest of the charts for RQ6 are here 

Movement Chart for RQ6

For the future chase sequences in my campaign decided to combine all the movement effects into tables that fit into a single page. I find it easier to look info from table instead of calculating it with the rules.

It contains now a table for movement rates between 1 and 14, effect of athletics on the speed when walking, running or sprinting. It also has a table for the common modifiers for movement like encumbrance, armor and fatigue.  It has also the effects on ranged combat.

Here are the tables as PDF.

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I also added similar tables for swimming.

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Other useful tables exist for Combat Special Effects, Healing and Wounds, Diminish spell effects, weapons and shields & Criticals and difficulty grade effects on rolls.

 

 

Spotlight Cards for RQ

Read an interesting article at Dread Unicorn site about spotlight cards and hipster PDA as a player reference for GM.  The idea is to help GM to remember to let each player shine at the spotlight in the game. This can be especially problematic with larger groups at play same time. The spotlight card method gathers rough information about each player and their aspirations to an index card and at the bottom  of the card ask the question: “has the player been in spotlight already”. At the start of the game session you pick a card and make sure that person gets her spotlight in some way. You may have prepared for this beforehand already. After the spotlight moment you move the players index card to the bottom of the stack and go for next player making sure that during the session everybody gets their chance. On that page there are spotlight cards for several game systems.

I thought this was an intriguing and try to combine it here with having some reference information about the player in one card which I have been thinking about how to do for some time. Here is an example (not of any of my gamers…)

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The card contains information that might be useful for GM overall.

The proficiency is marked as in Monster Island supplement – as a rough measure: Elite would mean between 71-90% and Cannonfodder 30 or below. Proficiency progresses downwards from Elite-Veteran-Seasoned-Green-Cannonfodder. The color coding helps to see at a glance the levels: blues are elites, green is seasoned, red color is cannonfodder or green proficiency. The colors give the GM a quick indication what should be the level of challenge to come up with and what might be the weak or strong areas.

All of the spotlight cards for my players sit in my Evernote with a combined card as a shortcut that has links to all of the individual cards. I might also print out these as index cards.

I will experiment with this for awhile and will return to the subject.

Games and Contests in RQ

Here is a list of games and contests that one could enter to play within RQ. Over at the design mechanism forums there is an excellent thread which mark.s started about how to play games within RQ6. He posted there rules for drinking games like Speed Drinking and Capacity Drinking. Among games of Skill and Prowess he has rules for Gwyddbwyll, Throwboard and Boasting Contest. Physical Games have Badger in the bag, Wrestling and Fire Jumping.

In Book of Quests by The Design Mechanism there are rules for pig wrestling. Trollpak has rules for Trollball – short version can be found here. Sun County has rules for Shield Push and in Garhound Contest in Sun County we have rules for Horse Race, Joust, Wrestling, Pain Test plus a full scenario built around them in Melisande’s Hand.

Gladiatorial contests and Chariot Races are covered in Monster Coliseum.