We’ve set up a set of free downloadable player handouts for Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes:

Sartar Player Primer - The free Sartar Player’s Primer gives prospective players in a Sartar campaign all the information they’ll need to quickly familiarize themselves with the setting.

Sartar Clan Questionnaire - all the questions for the Clan Questionnaire (but without the answers) to help your players create their own clan.

Character Sheets – male and female blank Sartarite character sheets

Male Sartarite Character Sheet

Female Sartarite Character Sheet

Clan Sheets – blank Sartarite clan sheet

Sartarite Clan Sheet

As I wrote in my last blog today I will discuss characters (you know – the thing when somebody tells you about his or her character and what famous thing they did and it is sooo boring for you! ). I blame Jeff for this topic; he wrote a cool NPC for the Pavis book and he told me this is a typical character I would like to play. I got curious and asked him for the relevant paragraph:

Elarona the Bull Priestess

Elarona is the rare female Bull Priest. A Pol-Joni, she was a wild, problem child and grew up to be a fierce fighter. Elanora expects deference from others but gives them none. Strikingly attractive and fair in appearance, she is lusty, energetic, fearless, and crafty. Anyone who can best her in battle will earn her respect. Elanora has a passion for gems, liquor, and honey. She and her band of Bullmen roam the plains searching for Chaos. Elanora greatly enjoys setting traps – both physical and intellectual – to bedevil strangers.

Elarona is typically accompanied by her own personal band of Bullmen recruited from amongst the Pol-Joni and Bison tribes. They are foul tempered and dangerous – the town watch discretely follows them when they leave the Farmers District or Oldtown.

Hmm – when I read it I thought that’s more like the characters I usually play in a freeform – you have the goods she likes and you can bribe her with, her back stepping temper and her goons. I would love to play this character in a freeform but in my opinion it would not work as pen and paper player character – only as an enemy or ally. Why? Because she is not really adventurer-party compatible. She would have to be the party-leader and would never accept a no or a different idea from another character. Who likes to play in a party like that? Of course from time to time it’s fun to play a servant of another character. But a whole group? And because she is a very tough fighter-priest she fights the others down if they do not do what she wants. She is too tough for a gaming group. Playing tough characters is OK. But especially the tough ones need to have good weak points to fit into the player party.

[Jeff comments: Elarona is a NPC after all! A great enemy or ally for your party. But she is based on how you play freeforms….]

How boring is it to play an honest Humakti killing all evil. OK – you can boost him so he will win every fight but without a bit of insanity or a cool weakness it would be so boring (of course – when you were 16 you liked these characters but today as an experienced gamer?). I play a female Humakti in our Dorastor campaign. Oh – she is very useful in battle but most of the games the important thing for the other players is to maximise the sheep or to marry the players as best as they can (means getting more wealth in form of cows and sheep’s and getting more influence). A Humakti is NOT very useful in raising sheep (she has to stay away as far as possible from the livestock) and you can’t marry her because she is already officially dead. I still can play her because she is not only strong in the death-rune but also in darkness and eternal battle – means if it gets too boring for her she drinks with some Stormbulls and goes out for a Broo – hunt or kills a Telmori. But this is one of this characters you sit around a lot in a game without doing anything (good if you have a one year old son who demands entertainment) until the fight starts. Than you are in the centre of everything and burn hero points like pizza vanishes with gamers immediately (had the Pizza even touched the table before it was eaten?).

The sister of one of my characters made it into Sartar Companion. Jeffs says Jorjeria Latish, a Lankhor Mhy Priestess, is much nicer and useful as my character Gorgor Latish is. I can’t believe it…

Aristocratic, commanding, and beautiful, Jorjera is a member of the powerful New Pavis Latish family. Her father is the Chief Librarian of the New Pavis Knowledge Temple. Jorjera is a remarkable librarian with a remarkable knack for finding the right scroll. Ambitious and a skilled politician, it is widely believed that Jorjera seeks to succeed Garangian Bronze-Guts as Chief Librarian and has lined up support from powerful sages including the great Minaryth Purple.

Jorjera came to Jonstown Temple about five years ago and has become a specialist in the genealogical records kept by the Temple. Her knowledge of old clan and tribal disputes is second to none in the Temple.

But it seems that one of those abilities is a family thing: “finding the right scroll”. Combined with “remember something out of a scroll” and you have the main abilities of my character Gorgor Latish, her brother. And Jeff gave him the flaw “shift the blame” – Gorgor is now very good in that! However – this character is actually the total opposite of my Humakti. He can not fight at all (always telling the others “the feather is stronger than the sword!”), is a total wimp, likes to drink and go into brothels, hates his cousin because she puts him always in dangerous situations (an other player character), has noble manners, runs around with fine cloth and a lot of beard wax (he is a priest after all and the beard has to look good!) and always loses his mules in adventures he never wants to do but is always dragged into by his cousin, an assassin and thief. This character is a lot of fun to play and no – really – he can not fight or heal at all and still can be useful (in my opinion)!

Oh – and there is my third character – Shiny – my sun-worshipping-want-to-be-Yelmalio women who loves everything shiny and fights excellent with a shiny weapon. Yes yes yes… I stop here to talk about my characters before it gets too boring.

When I discussed my characters with Jeff he told me that they are untypical for women. I asked why? He said in his experience many women play characters that empower women. Strong, tough, excellent in their way. I thought about it – these were the characters I liked to play when I started with role playing a long time ago. But now in my job, I have to be strong, tough and excellent and so on. And not only in the job. From an emancipated women it is expected to be strong, tough and excellent. I don’t want to have it different! But maybe this is one thing why I like role playing games – this is a good possibility to test something totally different or totally weird. In the last years my characters differed more and more from each other. The thing they usually have in common is that they are extreme in their ways. And that’s a lot of fun as long as they are still group compatible and playable. To play them is like holidays for the brain. Maybe that is also a reason why I like one-shot-adventures a lot – you can be extreme and if your character does not survive it’s fine. Or if it does not work out for you its fine as well because next time you can play someone else.

Hmm – I don’t know if there is a higher meaning in what I wrote but I let my mind drift – make something out of it – or not !

Claudia

The long awaited Book of Heortling Mythology is now available through our website for only $30 (plus shipping)! Just about every Orlanthi myth that Greg Stafford ever wrote all in one place, including many that have never seen print before! A must have for anyone running an Orlanthi HeroQuest Glorantha game!

Check it out here.

Greetings all -

The text has gone through copy edit twice, the art is nearly all finished and layout has commenced! That means very soon we will be putting up the ordering information for The Sartar Companion – the sequel to Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes.

The Sartar Companion includes:

• Full write-ups for places like Jonstown, Tarndisi’s Grove, Runegate, Old Wind, and the New Lunar Temple;
• 42 Exemplary Random Encounters and 31 Special Encounters – each a potential adventure in its own right;
• Six full-length adventure scenarios; and
• Full write-ups of the cults of Argan Argar, Babeester Gor, Eurmal, Heler, Kolat, and Odalya.

With more than 100 illustrations, including at least 18 maps, The Sartar Companion is, if anything, even more fantastic than Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes.

Today was my first workday after spending a year at home to take care of our son. Orlanth sent thunder, lightning and a lot of rain on us this morning – perfect mirror of my mood. However – I survived, Finn (our son) survived and Jeff (who has to take care of Finn until Finn goes to the child care) survived. We will get used to it and of course – this is a situation Jeff put into his planning for the upcoming publications.

As I wrote last time Sartar Companion will be delayed a month (the last proofreadings, layout and so on) due to our internet problem last month. But this has also a good side: it gives artists more time for art – in fact there will be additional art. Colin Driver is making an extra map on the basis of ideas of Greg Stafford. Additional maps of locations (cities, temple – even the Jonstown Library) are being worked on. Jeff used a lot of the “internet free time” to make sketches of the different locations (some of the original papers of Jeff’s are a bit crinkled because our cat spilled a bowl of water over them) which are put into nice drawings by proper artists right now.

Here is one of Jeff’s four sketches of the library. This is of the ground floor. A real artist (I think Gill Hellion) will make his crude sketches look good!

And here a few more archery bits as an answer to blog comments:

I took 5^th place at the World Archery Championship. And yes – I love the Robin Hood stories (always did) and – I started archery with 10, role playing with 15 – maybe it was archery that got me interested in roleplaying. And if you want to buy a bow – there are shops for archery like for everything else – even in the internet. But keep in mind – a bow is no toy but a dangerous thing. Join an archery club and don’t shoot ever at your neighbour’s dog!

Last and longest topic: What do I not like about the RQ3-archery-rules? Start with the range. I don’t know if somebody forgot to convert feet into meter but an effective range for a long bow of 90 meters is totally unrealistic – a maximum range of 275 meters is something you simply can not do. Nowadays you shoot relatively accurately (think of something of the size of a boar or a deer) up to 45 meters – if you are very good maybe up to 60 meters (but even here you would miss with a fourth of your arrows an unmoving target).

There is a fun competition where you try to hit or come as close as possible to a stick at 175 m – with a long bow you are lucky if you even get an arrow this far. And these are modern long bows (different woods laminated together to get higher speed and a softer shot)! Most of the people are not so insane to shoot 80 lbs bows but something between 45 and 60 lbs is very common which in my opinion equals the stronger bows they shot in history.

What you call in roleplaying a composite bow I would say is a a rider or horse bow with a bit of a recurve bow. A rider bow usually does not shoots as good on far distances as a good long bow (the use is different anyways – from a horse). With a recurve bow (without any fancy stuff to target on it) you shoot better than with a long bow on longer distances. But in the end your results are better but you do not shoot longer distances.

The thing which is described as “self bow” is I think what I built in a course where an historian showed me how to build an English long bow. Hmmm – however – horn tips are the only protection for the bow ends against the bow string and they look cool. Nothing else. And the strength you need for a bow has nothing to do if it is a “self”, “composite” or “long” bow. It depends on how the bow is made and which wood is used. If you take wood away on the right places the strength you need to pull the bow goes down. Bamboo is much softer to draw and has a not so bad aftershock than yew. However, yew was in Europe the most important bow wood because the core wood and the outside have very different flexibility attributes. This combination is good for bow making. Nowadays you glue different woods with different attributes together to optimize this effect. But keep in mind we are playing a game in a fantasy world and maybe in this world it is possible to shoot so far so please don’t take my ranting too serious and have fun in your games!

Hmmm – this got much longer than I expected….

Not much about HeroQuest this time. Promise – next time I will jump into the pit of doom of “don’t tell me more about your character…” and discuss the fun of playing eccentric characters in our HeroQuest games and how they slipped into the next publications!

Claudia

I’m back from my archery competition and – more important – we have finally (since yesterday evening) our proper internet connection back! A good reason to write something new!

Jeff and his work suffered a lot over the last three weeks due to the lack of our internet connection. And I suffered because he always stole my iPhone to answer his emails. We have now a new provider (the other really needed three weeks to send somebody over to fix the problem) and I have a new iPhone (and Jeff got my old one – only in case….).

However – even without internet Jeff was very busy. He accompanied me to my archery world championship in Dahn (in the Pfalz-area in Germany, close to the border to France). He, my mom and Finn explored all the old castles and ruins there – there is one on nearly every hill/mountain. He visited museums, took many notes, bought books and so on. Translated this means a lot of input for his writings.

[Jeff says that the Pfalz area of Germany is his model for Sylila, with the urbane and settled Rhineland valley serving as the Oslir and the rugged hills serving as upland Sylila. I guess that means there is plenty of wine in that part of the Lunar Empire!]

BTW – on one of our five archery parcours we hat five targets in an old castle ruin. Only to let you know – it is impossible to defend a castle with a longbow. You have to stand very high up to be able to shoot over the walls which means you would be exposed and very likely shot. Keep this in mind for your next adventure (we had a very cool shot 50 meter down from one of the towers). And maximum range to hit a target with a more or less good chance with a longbow or composite bow is something around 40 meters (if the target stands still). Everything further away is difficult… I’m doing string walking with a composite bow and we had targets up to 73 meter – to hit something over 60 meter constantly was very difficult and I do this sport for a long time… I hate role-playing game rules concerning archery because usually they are very unrealistic. Sorry – I got carried away.

What is the Moon Design news? We came back from the archery tournament last Saturday which gave us the chance to visit The Kraken (Fabians fun new convention) on Sunday. This was a business trip for Jeff. One of the guests of honour there was Greg Stafford and the two discussed a lot of content, maps and future plans for publications (I played a card game killing many monsters). Jeff also used the opportunity to throw ideas at Alex Fergusen, Ian Cooper, Eric Vanel, Henk Langeveld and a few other people. And got a lot of useful feedback.

It was also a good opportunity to discuss the supplement “Coming Storm” Ian Cooper is writing (adventures and background for Sartar). Ian stayed at our placed over night and Jeff and he worked until late at night and the next day until Ian’s flight left.

Because we are talking of publications – due to our internet problem the release of the Sartar Companion book is delayed a bit. Jeff is sorry for this (and cursed our internet provider a lot) but for him it’s more important to publish quality than publish fast. His expected release is now early September.

More soon!

Claudia

PS: Jeff wanted to throw in some images of the sacred regalia of the Hohenstauffen Emperors of Germany. A few ideas perhaps for Glorantha?

25^th July 2010

The week of problems…

This week was tough for Jeff. Finn and I, we caught a bad summer flu – a really terrible one – and of course Jeff has it now. In addition, after a big thunderstorm Thursday evening our internet connection died – very terrible for Jeff because he needs it desperately for his work and to talk to the Moon Design Team. The telecom company promised to send somebody over on Monday – hopefully everything will be al right then (means also that I write this today but it will be posted when our internet is working again). Due to the flu and the curses of the bits and bytes in Jeff’s opinion there are not many new things to talk about but I think that’s not true.

As an example, early this week I got a peek on the cover for the Sartar Companion book. It will of course be in the style of the Sartar book –it is a Simon Bray cover. And I already checked – this time no sword is pointing at a delicate area (for the innocent ones: in an early version of the Sartar Book the sword held by one of the guys in the front pointed directly on the priestess’ cleavage – it was by accident and we hadn’t seen it! Some fans made some a bit overenthusiastic comments about this but Jeff and Simon were thankful because they could change it before the book was sent to the printer.
The Sartar Companion cover shows an adventurer group fighting trolls and trollkins. Simon is working on the right perspectives, the last bits of shadings, details on the trolls, visualisation of the use of magic and so on. However – it’s so much more difficult to make a cool colour picture than a black and white. For me it is much more difficult to find a colour fantasy art picture I like than the ones I don’t like (and which does not look too kitschy). I mean think about photos – everybody makes colour pictures as a rememberance of holidays or whatsoever. The pictures are nice but usually you really like only a few.

Black and white photographs, on the other hand, are always looking somehow cool and mysterious. They have charm. It’s not totally the same with fantasy art but I’m often fascinated how much power a black and white drawing has and how often coloured pictures look ugly (especially when artists combine a lot of red, pink and blue, mixed with some yellow lightning and half naked women – but taste is different as we know). Sorry – I got carried away. As I said the cover will be in the same style like the Sartar cover and I like it. There you will find a Lhankor Mhy priest calling a spell on a trollkin, a fighter women with an axe (hmm which Gloranthan fighter women use axes…), a Yinkin worshiper fighting on a tree stomp, a lot of ugly trolls and a bunch of scared trollkins.

Now something else. Today is the second wedding anniversary of Jeff and me (yes – we are still happy). Using the two years as a starting point I asked Jeff what he did two years ago in the Gloranthan context and then we let the conversation drift…

Jeff: “Two years ago I wasn’t involved in MoonDesign. I worked with Greg on the Stafford Library Books. I think we just did the Esrolia Book. And a book with some info on the Dara Happen Cities.”

Claudia: “What pop’s into your mind on the word ‘Library’”?

Jeff: “Glorantha is a Library of non-existent books. We refer to things like the ‘Jonstown Library’ or the ‘Abiding Book’ or the ‘Eternal Book of Lhankor Mhy’ – all are texts that do not exist. Like the fictional books of Jorge Luis Borges or Umberto Eco. This is one of my favourite things about Glorantha and Call of Cthulhu. All of these are books that the fans know all about but not a page of any of them has ever been written down.”

Claudia: “Would you like to write one of this well known books?”

Jeff: “No, absolutely not. The power of these nonexistent books is that they are conduits for our imagination. True tabulae rasae to be filled with our imagination. Whatever I write or anybody else for that matter would be a disappointment. Imagine how lame it would be to read the ‘Necronomicon’ and not go insane!”

Claudia: “What is the most famous nonexistent book in Glorantha in your opinion?”

Jeff: “Either the ‘Abiding Book’ (the sacred grimoire of the Malkioni religion) or the ‘Jonstown Compendium’ (a collection of writings kept in the Jonstown temple of Knowledge). In my mind the ‘Jonstown Compendium’ looks like one of the big old catalogues like the ones we have seen in the Herzog Augustus Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel – a library which I strongly recommend to visit! The place is like a Lhankor Mhy temple filled with medieval and renaissance era books.”

Claudia: “Does one of this books appear in one of your (real) next books?”

Jeff: “The ‘Jonstown Compendium’ appears in Sartar and the Sartar Companion. Plenty of non-existent books will appear in the Pavis Book. The ‘Abiding Book’ will make it’s first appearance in the Guide to Glorantha – although Greg and I have written loads about it in the Middle Sea Empire book.”

I promise from now on I will try to be more interested in all the important non-existent books my husband refers to but won’t write!

Like last time here a new piece of cool art (black and white) which will appear in the Sartar Companion book. This time the scene is inside the Jonstown temple of knowledge (location of the Jonstown Compendium – see how we come around to where we started!).

The artist is Jan Pospisil, a fantastic Czech artist doing some really cool pictures in the Sartar Companion. Jeff better have him do more art in the future books, because his stuff is great.

Finally I want to thank you for all the encouraging comments on my writing from last week! Answering all of them is not possible or our one year old would be very very angry with me! However -  Jeff wrote a few answers and I promise to read all of them carefully, shake them, stir them, scramble them and use the essence as input to pester Jeff or to peak around files or whatever and write about the results.

Claudia

This morning, Orlanth called thunder and lightning down on us – I decided it’s a good day to start this blog!

Introduction:

My name is Claudia Loroff and I’m married to Jeff Richard – main writer of Moon Design. I love gaming for many years and I met Jeff gaming. However, making a hobby to your business is a very different thing and gives a new perspective on your hobby. Jeff did this and his work for Moon Design dominates a lot of our time at home – even if I’m working in a very different area.

During breakfast I get all the news about the good and bad comments fans made in several forums Jeff regularly checks (please – I prefer the good comments much more than the complaints about little things – criticisms are very important and good but also keep in mind what you do to our theoretically harmonious breakfast – please do it in a decent tone you would like to be treated when criticised and fair comments are even better and very helpful!), having lunch together he tells me about new projects and in the evening I’m allowed to make my comments about new art sketches coming in.

Finn – our one year old son – is used as a name creator by Jeff – more about that you can read later. You see – we are not only frequent con goers and play games from time to time (we are not students anymore so the time of having a game twice a week or more often is over but we still enjoy gaming when we have the time for it!) but gaming dominates a lot of our time (and space – all the rule and source books, print outs, my board games…).

Why do I write all of this?

A lot of people share our hobbies and are interested in what Jeff is doing for Moon Design. However – he is the main writer and does also a lot other organisational work. And sometimes his family needs him a well. It’s very tough for him to keep everybody in the loop posting news and so on. Because I hear a lot of the ongoing stuff anyways I offered to write about it – bits and pieces we talk about anyways or things I’m allowed to peek into and so on. And of course – sold books means new diapers for Finn – another good reason to support Jeff’s work with a bit of writing!

What will be the content?

The goal is to give you a peak into what is going on at Moon Design and maybe make you curious about new releases, let you know about new projects, introduce you to the team behind Moon Design and so on. However – this is a blog and following the spirit of this medium I plan to write about things which had popped up during the week without following a special structure. It could be about a new book or how Finn had eaten some of Jeff’s precious notes (yesterday during gaming it was close – he snatched Jeff’s notebook and ripped a few pages out until we could get it back…).

What is the frequency of new posts?

I will try to post something once a week (very likely during the weekend).

One last thing before I end this introduction and jump into the “content”: English is not my native language and I’m sure some denglisch or germlish will slip into my writings more often than I like. However – I’m sure you can cope with that.

17^th July 2010

Hmmm… the next paragraphs sound more like an advertisement bit than what I promised above but as a start into the Blog an overview is maybe a good thing. I asked Jeff this morning at the breakfast table between pancakes, jam and butter what he is just working on. “A lot of different projects” was his answer and that’s true:

A scenario section for the Pavis book containing scenarios for Pavis itself and around Pavis which can be played as a campaign or not: Some scenarios have the Griselda-Feeling (means stealing things, dealing with the criminal elements of Pavis and so on), others are radical updates of old adventures (the word “radical” was very important for him) from 20-30 years ago (like fighting against Muriay, witch queen of the broos, stealing from duke Raus). Some adventures reintroduce you to old acquaintances and famous items (a new adventure with Treasure Trove Hurbi, something in Sun County and the Yelmalions, an adventure around one of the fabled organ stone of Pavis).

Jeff says that he expects to finish the texts in about a month. Add another 2-3 month for art and layout and the release could be somewhere in fall of 2010.

The next project he is working on is editing Ian Coopers “Coming Storm”. This will be a book with adventures and background for Sartar but not connected to the Colymars (you will read about them in Sartar Companion coming out next month) but the Cinsina-Tribe. The release of the book is roughly planned for fall-winter 2010.

Jeff is also working on a Big Rubble Adventure pack (this reminds me of our game where he sent us into the Devils Playground but our group decided that it was too dangerous and after putting our noses into we immediately decided to leave. It was a short adventure but still a good one – and we survived! Jeff says that Devils Playground will make it into the new book – maybe there are braver adventurers to deal with it than we were!) which will be available around winter 2010.

The next thing he is working on are the final bits and pieces for the Sartar Companion book (final art and layout) which will – if everything is going fine – released sometime in august.

Two books are in commission (not playing in Glorantha) – one is Hero Quest Horror, written by Ben Monroe and the other one is as Jeff describes it a “Victorian literary HeroQuest Game” with the feeling of being in the footsteps of Sherlock Holmes, Jules Verne and Edgar Allan Poe. No idea for when they are scheduled but I will asked Jeff about it.

So much for the overview. Now I will lift the secret of creating cool names for NPCs. All you need a little kid preferably around one year and just learning how to speak and some imagination. Due to the fact that our son Finn is challenged to learn two languages (English and German) right from the beginning he plays around with the stuff he hears and makes up new words which sound English or German (even if he can not speak yet). Jeff uses his approaches with some fantasy as input for cool names for monsters and weird foreigners. One example you will find in the Sartar Companion book: Ecklar the Easterner is one of Finn’s creations and one of his first words which nearly sounded like a word and not only like baby talk! Who still needs computerised name generators if you have somebody doing it for you?

I would say this is now enough for the start.

I plan to present on the end of every entry an art piece which will make it in one of the next books and which I personally find cool.

As an appetizer for the coming Sartar Companion book here a very cthulhuid picture which is actually the Crimson Bat approaching from Jed Dougherty, a fantastic artist from California. The resolution of the picture in the book will of course be much better than here.

Lots of activity going on behind the scenes in Moon Design Studios. Simon Bray is gathering the art for the Sartar Companion, which we plan to release in August.

Meanwhile I am finishing up the draft for Pavis: Gateway to Adventure, which details New Pavis and the River of Cradles, provides lots of encounters outside the walls and in the new city, six new cults, and bunches of adventures. After that, I have to finish up the Big Rubble, which provides loads of new information and material for the Big Rubble, plus lots of adventures.  These books build on the classic Chaosium Pavis and Big Rubble books and hopefully take them several big leaps forward. Originally, I had planned to have one big book, but we have so much new material that it will have to be two.

At the same time, work goes forward on the Guide to Glorantha. Colin Driver and our new map intern are busy working on new maps of Glorantha and I think we have worked out the kinks in our draft Lunar and Malkioni magic rules for HQ2. Greg has worked out some interested charts to present the Gloranthan Gods Age in a more visual manner, showing events that were observed by nearly ALL cultures during the Gods Age.

Anyways, got to get back to work – I don’t want to be holding any of this up!

Sartar Companion, the follow-up book to Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes is in the art phase and we are shooting for an August release. Several significant Sartarite locations are described, the long-promised “road encounters” for Sartar, adventures, and new cults – all in the Sartar Companion. Here’s a few images that will be appearing in the book to whet the appetite: