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A Rough Guide to Glamour
A Rough Guide to Glamour is your indispensible companion for any visit to the capital city of the greatest empire the world of Glorantha has ever known!
This 111-page book contains:
A comprehensive map, gazetteer and guidebook detailing the capital of the Lunar Empire;
Portraits and descriptions of eleven Very Important People who can be encountered there, including Moonson, the Red Emperor, and the Lunar hero Jar-eel the Razoress;
A description and map of the Sultanate of the Silver Shadow, the throbbing heart of the empire;
Sweeping overviews of the geography and history of the Lunar Empire;
RuneQuest writeups for the cults of the Red Emperor, the immortal wizard-ruler of the Lunar Empire, and the goddess Glamour, the humble nymph who became the First Inspiration of Moonson;
Insights into the secrets of Kalikos Icebreaker, the Lunar College of Magic and the Imperial Monopolies of the Etyries cult;
Never-republished supporting material from the legendary fanzine Tales of the Reaching Moon;
Rumours, fiction, poetry, and more besides!
This is a thoroughly revised and expanded edition of the original Rough Guide to Glamour, written by Chris Gidlow, Mike Hagen, Nick Brooke, Michael O’Brien, Jeff Richard, Greg Stafford and friends, lavishly illustrated by Dario Corallo, Simon Bray, Julie Hudson and other artists.
Foreword by Jeff Richard, Creative Director of Chaosium Inc.
A Rough Guide to Glamour was first published as a players’ background book supporting Reaching Moon Megacorp’s Life of Moonson, a 50-player live-action role-playing game that debuted in 1997 and ran in the United States, Europe and Australia.
Revised & Expanded?
The 1998 edition of the Rough Guide to Glamour contained 29,000 words. We have cut out a third of the book: sections either reprinted in or made redundant by the Glorantha Sourcebook (The Lunar Pantheon, Dart Competitions & New Year Ceremony) and sections primarily written to support the freeform Reaching Moon Megacorp’s Life of Moonson (Recent History & a list of Sultanates, Provinces etc. and their rulers). So there are 20,000 words from the old Guide remaining.
The Jonstown Compendium edition of the Guide contains more than 50,000 words.
Most major sections are significantly expanded (eg: the Gazetteer is 60% longer, detailing 117 locations in Outer Glamour; the Rough Guide itself has two new pages on Holidays and Festivals). We have incorporated material from the Guide to Glorantha (a full writeup of the Silver Shadow Sultanate, with new maps by Colin Driver), from Tales of the Reaching Moon (Cult of the Red Emperor, Lunar Government, Satraps & Sultans, Letter from a Monopolist, A Visit to Glamour), and from the epic Yolanelathon (three interlinked stories by MOB and Nick, presented at various conventions in the nineties but never collected under one cover). There is a new 4,000 word writeup of the Cult of Glamour by Jeff Richard, plus obscure rumours, fragments and oddities scattered throughout (eg: Antiquities of Old Glamour, Red Empire, Pelorian Rhapsody, Annual Dinner of the Lunar College of Magic).
If you liked the original Rough Guide to Glamour, we think you’ll like this version even more!
This 111-page book contains:
A comprehensive map, gazetteer and guidebook detailing the capital of the Lunar Empire;
Portraits and descriptions of eleven Very Important People who can be encountered there, including Moonson, the Red Emperor, and the Lunar hero Jar-eel the Razoress;
A description and map of the Sultanate of the Silver Shadow, the throbbing heart of the empire;
Sweeping overviews of the geography and history of the Lunar Empire;
RuneQuest writeups for the cults of the Red Emperor, the immortal wizard-ruler of the Lunar Empire, and the goddess Glamour, the humble nymph who became the First Inspiration of Moonson;
Insights into the secrets of Kalikos Icebreaker, the Lunar College of Magic and the Imperial Monopolies of the Etyries cult;
Never-republished supporting material from the legendary fanzine Tales of the Reaching Moon;
Rumours, fiction, poetry, and more besides!
This is a thoroughly revised and expanded edition of the original Rough Guide to Glamour, written by Chris Gidlow, Mike Hagen, Nick Brooke, Michael O’Brien, Jeff Richard, Greg Stafford and friends, lavishly illustrated by Dario Corallo, Simon Bray, Julie Hudson and other artists.
Foreword by Jeff Richard, Creative Director of Chaosium Inc.
A Rough Guide to Glamour was first published as a players’ background book supporting Reaching Moon Megacorp’s Life of Moonson, a 50-player live-action role-playing game that debuted in 1997 and ran in the United States, Europe and Australia.
Revised & Expanded?
The 1998 edition of the Rough Guide to Glamour contained 29,000 words. We have cut out a third of the book: sections either reprinted in or made redundant by the Glorantha Sourcebook (The Lunar Pantheon, Dart Competitions & New Year Ceremony) and sections primarily written to support the freeform Reaching Moon Megacorp’s Life of Moonson (Recent History & a list of Sultanates, Provinces etc. and their rulers). So there are 20,000 words from the old Guide remaining.
The Jonstown Compendium edition of the Guide contains more than 50,000 words.
Most major sections are significantly expanded (eg: the Gazetteer is 60% longer, detailing 117 locations in Outer Glamour; the Rough Guide itself has two new pages on Holidays and Festivals). We have incorporated material from the Guide to Glorantha (a full writeup of the Silver Shadow Sultanate, with new maps by Colin Driver), from Tales of the Reaching Moon (Cult of the Red Emperor, Lunar Government, Satraps & Sultans, Letter from a Monopolist, A Visit to Glamour), and from the epic Yolanelathon (three interlinked stories by MOB and Nick, presented at various conventions in the nineties but never collected under one cover). There is a new 4,000 word writeup of the Cult of Glamour by Jeff Richard, plus obscure rumours, fragments and oddities scattered throughout (eg: Antiquities of Old Glamour, Red Empire, Pelorian Rhapsody, Annual Dinner of the Lunar College of Magic).
If you liked the original Rough Guide to Glamour, we think you’ll like this version even more!
113 pages, ebook
Published April 13, 2020
5 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 29, 2020
This could have been just another roleplaying sourcebook. At the hands of Gidlow, Brooke, Hagen, and others it still would have been brilliant. But instead of taking that staid, traditional route, the group did something entirely different and better.
A Rough Guide to Glamour is a hodge-podge of materials about the capitol of the Lunar Empire that, like the best material on Glorantha, tells its stories through both the intersections and the absences in a series of overlapping materials. (At one point, I thought this could have a been a 21st issue of the long-gone and much lamented Tales of the Reaching Moon magazine, a Lunar Special, but it's actually something much more than that.)
The major article is a rather extensive Gazetteer of Glamour, but rather than being the sort of thing you'd find in LE1: The City of Glamour, it instead reads more like a tourist guide — and it turns out to be a pretty wonderful way to view a roleplaying city, because it's full of plot seeds and ideas that you could turn into real gameable moments if your players somehow make it all the way out to Glamour.
The other most gameable part of the book is a pair of cults. The Red Emperor is one of the most extensive cults in all of RuneQuestdom, while Glamour is a fine example of a mischievous, rebellious city god. These materials could easily be used for any RQ game.
The rest of the book is made up of the rather joyfully overlapping stories that give all of this depth. There's some fiction that provides some rather interesting insights into the Lunar Empire and the Red Emperor. There's a bit of song that's more of an ode to the Queen than the Emperor but is still hysterically funny. There's also information on history, peoples, governance, and the nearby regions that's everything you wanted to know about the Lunar Empire but were afraid to ask.
Overall, a wonderful bit of Glorantha lore, highlighting the Lunar Empire as seen by its biggest fans in the '90s.
Oh, and it's wonderfully produced with beautiful art and great design. Get the POD, it's a great looking hardcover.
A Rough Guide to Glamour is a hodge-podge of materials about the capitol of the Lunar Empire that, like the best material on Glorantha, tells its stories through both the intersections and the absences in a series of overlapping materials. (At one point, I thought this could have a been a 21st issue of the long-gone and much lamented Tales of the Reaching Moon magazine, a Lunar Special, but it's actually something much more than that.)
The major article is a rather extensive Gazetteer of Glamour, but rather than being the sort of thing you'd find in LE1: The City of Glamour, it instead reads more like a tourist guide — and it turns out to be a pretty wonderful way to view a roleplaying city, because it's full of plot seeds and ideas that you could turn into real gameable moments if your players somehow make it all the way out to Glamour.
The other most gameable part of the book is a pair of cults. The Red Emperor is one of the most extensive cults in all of RuneQuestdom, while Glamour is a fine example of a mischievous, rebellious city god. These materials could easily be used for any RQ game.
The rest of the book is made up of the rather joyfully overlapping stories that give all of this depth. There's some fiction that provides some rather interesting insights into the Lunar Empire and the Red Emperor. There's a bit of song that's more of an ode to the Queen than the Emperor but is still hysterically funny. There's also information on history, peoples, governance, and the nearby regions that's everything you wanted to know about the Lunar Empire but were afraid to ask.
Overall, a wonderful bit of Glorantha lore, highlighting the Lunar Empire as seen by its biggest fans in the '90s.
Oh, and it's wonderfully produced with beautiful art and great design. Get the POD, it's a great looking hardcover.
Displaying 1 of 1 review