Force Is Strong In This One – The Guide to Glorantha has arrived

Today I received my copy of Guide to Glorantha. 12 kg’s worth of Gloranthan goodness. This is the book that we have been waiting for all these decades.  Extensive information on all of lozenge in the two volumes of Guide and 1 of maps. Additionally all of Genertela in 6 maps and all of Lozenge in 24 maps.

Attached are few pictures before sharing the loot. The Herbert’s science fiction paperback shown as a size comparison.

The Guide is just gorgeous and full of info just on the right level at multitude of aspects of Glorantha so it can be used and extended for a multitude of campaigns and scenarios. Perhaps later a small review after I have had enough time to digest all of it. The guide can be bought as PDF’s but the print version really does justice to the contents.

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What does the NPC look like?

There have been cases where the enemies have looked like stereotypic characters from a hack thriller – menacing, dark hair or bald, with a shade of beard, muscular. RQ Encounter tool has now new features you can add to bring a bit of variety to the looks of your shopkeepers, bosses and barkeeps.

There are now the following features that you can add:

  • Appearance (Arms, Back, Beard, Cheeks,Chest, Chin, Ears, Fingernails, Hair Color, Hair Condition, Hair Style – Men, Hair Style – Women, Hands, Legs, Lips, Mouth, Neck, Nose, Physique, Shoulders, Skin, Skin Texture, Stomach, Teeth)
  • Physical Expressions (Visual, Voice)
  • Motivation, Malformity, Personal Secret, Compulsion, Character Oddity, Character Looks, Character Complication, Character, Attitude, Social
  • Greetings
  • Fonritan Appearance
  • Fonritan hair color
  • Lunar appearance – skin, eyes, hair
If you like to rapidly create just the looks – take a look at this and generate the looks and discard the rest of the stats
Here is a test character that has almost all of the above features
These feature tables work best if you pick for example hair color and maybe one or two other attributes as 100% random feature and pick a few/all of the rest with a very small percentage thereby creating short descriptions that can vary quite a lot.
Here is a general barkeep following that guidance.
If you want to have features for Fonritan – use Fonritan hair color but not the general one.
 Sources
  • Appearance and Physical Expressions tables based on work developed by Darren Andrews. Used with permission.
  • Character, character complication, character looks, character oddity, motivation and social feature tables were started from The Covetous Poet’s Adventure Creator and Solo GM Guidebook and are used with permission of Frank Lee

tool

Gloranthan Cult One-Pagers get PDF of all cults

PDF file of all cult files is now available by popular request. It has bookmarks to individual cults. Thanks for Barry Baker for the first round of this – now will be provided every time cults change.

Gloranthan Cult One pagers have one page reference for RQ6 for most popular Gloranthan cults – more than 130 of them.

More info on the one pagers here

Updated cults main page exists here ! Updated cult descriptions, more cults. 

Rq6 Offensive and Defensive Special Effect Charts updated

Reformatted the offensive and defensive special effect charts for better glancability. All the related special effects should now be in the same groups (Defensive – move, Defensive – criticals, Defensive – fumbles, Defensive – does not need special conditions, Defensive – needs special conditions)

Similar grouping done also for Offensive (Does not need special conditions, move, needs special condition (for example certain kind of weapon), attacker critical, defender fumble etc)

The charts can be found here:

Offensive Special Effects

Defensive Special Effects

Rest of the charts

 

Grazers are here – Cult One Pagers update

Here is the July update on the cults. Some new cults are available as one-pagers

  • Shargash
  • Ana Gor (Sorana Tor)

Four of the Grazer cults have now been fleshed out based on David Dunham’s Grazer material.

  • Yu-Kargzant
  • Hiia Swordsman
  • Henird the Leader
  • Jardan the Warrior

The cult files are here.

Updated cults main page exists here ! Updated cult descriptions, more cults. 

Gloranthan Timelines – Generational Perspective

In my campaign I have long wanted a view of Gloranthan history from a perspective of an ordinary people who might only think about just a few years back, in my father’s day, when my grandfather was young, when my great-grandfather was initiated.

At the same I wanted to see what was happening at other regions at the time. Created the database for the calendar information and wanted to share a generational perspective for the Gloranthan history.

Now your Sartarite NPC or your character can say that the Moon worshippers finally got us when my father was young. My grandfather died with the last true king of Sartar – Salinarg.  My grandfather had seen the opening of the seas and the Sun Worshippers receiving their land and starting to construct their temple.

Currently my campaign has some seafaring parts so I wanted to know when closing was in effect overall and in particular areas.

Almost all the dates and history information are compiled from the Guide, Kingdom of Sartar and the new Pavis book.

The generation is defined to be 25 years which might be a bit high for barbarian cultures but would work for civilized. The base year in the years ago is 1625. The table contains event per year for all areas, how many generations ago it happened, how many years ago it happened and whether closing was in effect at the time.

Timeline pdf is here

RQ Encounter Tool – Pamaltelan Special

Many of the Anaxial Annex‘s Pamaltelan creatures have now been converted to RQ6 and available in RQ6 Encounter tool (use filter for Pamaltela or any place within Pamaltela)

The following creatures exist now – italics are older ones that have been tuned

Mundane Carnivores

  • Erenxi
  • Hyaenodon
  • Jaguar
  • Leopard
  • Sabretooth cats (Hantra, Jisharin)
  • Vangono’s Horror

Mundane Herbivores

  • Baluchithere
  • Elephant
  • Maslo Elephant
  • Jitano
  • P’tunga
  • Shovel Tusker
  • Tanuku
  • Uintal

More Animals and Birds of Pamaltela

  • Condy
  • Gorilla
  • Rhea

Carnivorous Reptiles of Pamaltela

  • Constrictor Snakes
  • Horror Crocodile
  • Gorg
  • Nguma Lizard
  • Pteranodon
  • Velociraptor (=raptor)
  • Sailback
  • Coral Snake
  • Green Mamba
  • Spitting Cobra
  • Tyrannosaur and Allosaur

Herbivorous Reptiles of Pamaltela

  • Ankylosaur
  • Bonehead
  • Hadruk
  • Iguanodon
  • Stenog
  • Triceratops

Reptiles of the Ocean

  • Plesiosaur
  • Sea Snake

Mundane Amphibians and Fish

  • Barracuda, Great
  • Shark
  • Eel, Lightning

Giant Insects

  • Giant Beetles
  • Giant Mantis

Other Invertebrates

  • Giant Centipede
  • Giant Jellyfish
  • Giant Octopus

Non-Chaotic Pamaltelan Monsters

  • Amphisboena
  • Dirt Devil
  • Fright
  • Gulper
  • Hoon
  • Midget Slasher
  • Nightstalker

Magical creatures and beings

  • Chonchon
  • Loper
  • Parenling

Elder Races of Jrustela and East Isles

  • Blattenite
  • Lucan
  • Blue-point Myrmidon
  • Odonatite

Elder Races of Pamaltela

  • Gorger
  • Grey Giant
  • Jelmre
  • Rascullu
  • Slarge
  • Slorifings (Erinjo, Oralan, Orveltor, Scythanni)
  • Jungle Troll
  • Mountain Troll
  • Sea Troll
  • Voralan

Mermen

  • Dwerulan
  • Gnydron
  • Malasp
  • Ysabbau
  • Ludoch

Chaos Monsters of Genertela

  • Cockatrice
  • Catoblepas

Chaos Monsters of Pamaltela

  • Charnjibber
  • Grue
  • Nightrider
  • Succubus
  • Watchwere

Spirits and Undead

  • Mummy
  • Vampire
  • Wraith

In addition to these the normal Embyli, Trolls, Agimori, Doraddi etc can be found under Pamaltelan keyword. Rest of the Annex will likely follow later.

 

Mythras Encounter Tool – feature recap for busy GMs

Mythras Encounter Generator (formerly known as RQ6 Encounter Generator) (the creation of skoll (his nickname in thedesignmechanism forums)) has grown lately to have quite a bit of new features and content. Content is crowd sourced.

So for the hard working GM’s there is now an easy way to generate many types of enemies. You need a herd of allosaurs – click, select number press generate and unleash doom. The characters finished them off – need a bigger reserve herd – click a number and generate again. Other beasts got attracted to the noise – perhaps a tyrannosaur – click a number and generate again.

Endless supply of Lunar more what you need – pick from the list – generate again. In units nicely formed of up to 40 individuals – they will march to restore peace and order in the name of the Moon again.

Town guards noticed your character’s getaway from the second story job – click a number and generate.

Serpent People to fill your jungle with silent death – select from the list.

More than 1400 templates (more than 1700 in Feb 2015, more than than 1840 in April 2015, more than 2800 in April 2018, 4000 public ones in May 2022, almost 4500 in October 2024 (and more than that in non public) have already been created for Gloranthan, Monster Island, General Fantasy settings by the users of the system covering most of the monsters in Mythras, Monster Island, Anaxial’s Roster and Anaxial Annex and many more.

http://skoll.xyz/mythras_eg/

Need a new kind of enemy – use the templates from existing races and templates, modify to your heart’s content and create away. http://skoll.xyz/mythras_eg/instructions/ You can add features to your template by selecting from over 100 (more than 400 in June 2022, 440 in January 2025) categories ranging from abilities and  combat styles to disguises.

Most of the Gloranthan cults have templates from initiate to a priest (more than 450 cult templates, more than 600 in June 2022, more than 660 in January 2025). You can search for them by name in the enemies tab or by name and cult rank in the home page. The cults are created according to Gloranthan Cult One-pagers while we wait for the Adventures in Glorantha.

You can create parties that contain variety of enemies.  Here are a few for an example.

Your own parties can have party features ranging from mission and fatigue status to sartar tribe names.

If you are in a hurry you can go to party (or enemy) page, filter the results and press “Do you feel lucky”.

The generated enemies names and note fields can be modified and saved either as pdf or web page to save your favorite enemy stats.

You can save your favorite enemies to your home page.

If you would like to encounter something you might not see every day filter your party page by “Off the beaten path”

Visual guides to RQ Encounter tools