Last week we began voyaging through the Jonstown Compendium’s Titanic-class labor of love Ships & Shores of Southern Genertela, by Martin Helsdon, with a review of the fiction narrative “A Periplus of Southern Genertela.” This week that voyage continues with evaluating “Ships & Shores,” the book’s largely-nonfiction treatise on ancient seafaring. We’ll conclude by considering how these two halves of the work fit together.

Let’s continue!

Disclaimer: I worked with this author in the past, on Men of the West. I was not involved in producing this volume, and I am reviewing a hardcover copy I purchased personally.

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What’s Inside Ships & Shores?

“Ships & Shores” is an extremely detailed description of seafaring in Earth’s past, which is retrofitted for Glorantha and then modified to describe how ancient techniques would apply given the exigencies of the fantasy setting. For example, a majority of Bronze Age and Classical seafaring took place in the comparatively safe and gentle Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea, and Persian Gulf. In contrast, nearly all Gloranthan sailing occurs along the coastline, exposed to the full brunt of the ocean. “Ships & Shores” retains the same coast-hopping triremes and tubs of ancient Earth, but naturally some cultural and technological modifications are necessary due to this difference in the seafaring environment.

Of the 400-ish pages in Ships & Shores of Southern Genertela, this treatise fills 208. The pages not included in either half are dedicated to front matter, character portfolios between chapters, and a lengthy (and helpful) glossary of nautical terms in the rear of the book.

“Ships & Shores” casts a very, very wide net to collect its seafaring topics. Ranging from persons who go to sea, to the construction of harbors, to a comprehensive description of every type of vessel used by humans at sea in the Third Age in terms of length, beam, speed in knots, crew required, and so on. Despite this great variety, the book never feels “off-topic.” These are not random tangents. Rather, they’re detailed descriptions of the various elements required to understand ancient seafaring.

To give an example, the Shipbuilding chapter describes how “length-to-beam and beam-to-draft ratios are fundamental to the design and seaworthiness of a ship” (Ships & Shores, page 68). It then proceeds to describe the shipbuilding logic, of why certain ratios work best for triremes, while others are better for the fat “tubs” preferred for shipping cargo.

This level of specific detail is prominent throughout the entire work. From the shipbuilding skill required to identify, harvest, and transport a tree for shaping into a mast, to defining different types of waves and how they affect a ship, Ships & Shores is glutted with precise information about ancient nautical activities.

And that, to be honest, is where I start drowning.

I love the level of detail in “Ships & Shores.” It is an absolute treasure-trove of information. However, the historical accuracy and research is so overwhelming that I’m not sure how to use it for RuneQuest.

Let’s take a simple example. The penteconter—the favorite vessel of Harrek’s Wolf Pirates—has a typical sailing speed of 2–5 knots, depending on the weather. It can reach a maximum of 6 knots when under oars during combat, before ramming another ship. On one hand, it makes sense to describe speed in knots. After all, this is a nautical book.

On the other hand, I have no clue how fast a knot is, nor how quickly a penteconter can travel across an Argan Argar Atlas hex while at sea. In a very real sense, the use of “knots” is meaningless to me as a gamemaster when I’m trying to figure out how long it takes my players’ Wolf Pirate penteconter to go from point A to point B. Kilometers per hour—even if technically improper, since this is a ship—would be more useful to me because it coheres with RuneQuest’s usage of metric.

(A conversion is provided, by the way, in that very handy glossary—ramming speed at 6 knots converts to 11.112 kilometers per hour. Held for a maximum of 20 minutes, a penteconter covers just about half of an Argan Argar Atlas hex.)

This illustrates the general challenge“Ships & Shores” presents. As a history nerd, I love how much information is at my fingertips. As a gamemaster, I have no idea how to implement “here’s how to tack into the wind,” or “this is why mortise-and-tenon joints hold planks together” into a tabletop roleplaying game.

The most immediately useful section of “Ships & Shores,” as a gamemaster, is the encounters section in the Seafaring chapter. Running to about 65 entries, this list provides many delicious problems to inspire how things may go awry during a voyage. Ranging from spoiled food to being sucked up in a Doom Current, there’s a strong variety of the fantastic and the mundane presented. Other quickly useful sections are sailing times around Choralinthor Bay, rules for sea battles, a new Sailor profession, and price lists for storage containers (no joke, my players were eager for this, wanting to store and carry their booty but not finding the cost of a sack in Weapons & Equipment).

Overall, the quality of the information is very high, but its applicability to RuneQuest feels more mixed. Further use of the RuneQuest rules as part of the description of entities (like wave spirits) and processes (like how to negotiate with elves to harvest lumber) would improve “Ships & Shores” as a gaming supplement.

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Production

As with the “Periplus,” this section of the book is also utterly gorgeous. Mark Smylie’s work is featured most prominently, but a number of other illustrators are present as well (such as licensed reprints from the work of Angus McBride). Dirim’s work in the “Periplus” is wonderful, but the illustrations throughout “Ships & Shores” are really something special.

The artwork in “Ships & Shores” focuses on depicting the processes described in the book. These pictures do an excellent job bringing Glorantha to life. From a minotaur helping haul lumber to a dryad negotiating with woodcutters, the fantastic element of Glorantha is strongly present throughout Smylie’s contributions to the volume.

That’s not to say that all the glory is the illustrator’s—unless my eye deceives me, Helsdon’s done fine work here as an art director as well. Every artist, naturally, adds their own touches to a piece. But the way in which detail is used throughout “Ships & Shores” suggests to me that the author’s expertise was involved in each illustration’s design. Together, the result is magnificent.

On the textual side, “Ships & Shores” is quite similar to the “Periplus.” Obviously there’s no changes in tense to worry about, but the treatise could also use a line edit to address sentence length. The proofreading quality is likewise quite high, with minimal errors throughout the work.

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Conclusion

When you read widely from RuneQuest material, it’s apparent that one way in which everyone’s personal Glorantha varies is in the prevalence of magic. In my Glorantha, for example, people live alongside spirits which make their presence known readily, and their world is filled with frequent displays of Rune magic. I see Chaosium’s Glorantha as a bit less magically dominant, due to the focus on geographical and anthropological realism which pervades their books. Magical events seem to be something “othered,” focused on as something which occurs in strange and wondrous adventures, rather than a piece of day-to-day life.

All Gloranthas, naturally, feature magic due to the mythic nature of the world. The observed variance is instead in the frequency and impact of magic on people’s lives.

Magic is certainly present in Ships & Shores. To my subjective sense, it feels much more restricted than how I usually envision Glorantha. For example, battles in the “Periplus” emphasize Conan-style swordplay, and the use of magic in warfare reads somewhat as a postscript to the lengthy discussion on ramming tactics and shipboard artillery in “Ships & Shores.” The fantastic is not absent, but it does feel a bit subdued.

I think Ships & Shores had a strong opportunity to dig deeper into the fantasy elements of Glorantha, and I wish the author chose to do so. Imagine descriptions and illustrations of the living ships of the Aldryami, or the floating concrete fortresses of the dwarfs! Even if presented in an abbreviated way in the Appendices—since an in-depth realistic and/or historical analysis of their creation verges on impossible if striving for any semblance of reasonable page count—including such wonders would enrich games of RuneQuest set on the waves. Considering it’s unlikely Chaosium will ever publish on the topic, it’s a shame Ships & Shores didn’t try to fill this niche.

A similar opportunity is missed, as noted earlier, in the minimal reference to the mechanics of RuneQuest. Even rules along the simple lines of “drying out a trireme in a slipshed replenishes an additional +X to Seaworthiness” would strengthen immersion in the material.

Viewed as a whole, the two halves of Ships & Shores compliment one another well. The “Periplus” does indeed help bring to life the concrete details of “Ships & Shores,” and reading the latter provides perspective on the events of Rossvaran’s story. The only substantial critique I have of the two is that the “Periplus” includes tables of imports and exports which are not included in the Seafarers and Cargo chapter. Including these tables in the “Periplus” makes a lot of sense, and contributes to the illusion that it is a utilitarian in-world document. Their reproduction in “Ships & Shores” would collect the information in a single place, and make it easier to find when perusing the book.

Despite their synergy, I do wish the two halves were published as separate books. Doing so would allow the “Periplus” more room to breathe and tell its story. That said, this isn’t possible due to Chaosium’s licensing requirements on the Jonstown Compendium—straight fiction is prohibited, but permitted as a tie-in. I think something like the “Periplus” would be a great fit for Glorantha as licensed third-party fiction. At present, though, pure fiction may only be produced for free under Chaosium’s Fan Material Policy.

After all the nitpicks, all the “wishing” and “could have beens,” one simple truth remains: Ships & Shores is a fantastic book, wholly deserving the title of magnum opus.

Why?

I read a lot of relatively academic works. I’m familiar with how much detail might be in different “levels” of work on a particular topic. Ships & Shores is as detailed as any specialist volume I’ve read. I actually own few such works myself, due to their expense. And that’s the starting point of why Ships & Shores is fantastic—it offers a tremendous deal for the cover price.

The illustrations aren’t merely beautiful. They depict processes described throughout the text, activities which specialist historical literature rarely has the time or budget to illustrate in detail. Even without considering RuneQuest, Ships & Shores contains a phenomenal wealth of information for enthusiasts about history and seafaring at a quarter of the price for specialist literature, at higher quality than in that type of expensive book.

Finally, good art is a boon, but rarely qualifies to make a book “great” on its own. Perhaps I’m biased, being a writer, but I do quite firmly believe that a gaming supplement’s text is more important than its illustrations. “Beautiful” does not equal “good.” I don’t have to make an exception for Ships & Shores—the text holds up on its own—but this work is one of those rare exceptions where I would. The art’s design, the way it depicts both historical technology and the wonder of Glorantha, really elevates Ships & Shores to the point that it’s worth the price even just for the artwork.

Combine this with an engaging fiction set in Glorantha, and there’s really a delightful variety of strong content in this work.

And to be crystal clear, Ships & Shores isn’t just “well, it’s worth it for the cheap price.” At double the cost, it would still be providing content worth the expense and remain cheaper than comparably specialist works. It’s a good book and also a good value.

It is quite firmly an “armchair” book in my mind, not “kitchen table.” While I’ll certainly bring it to the table when we next have a sea battle, the “Periplus” is armchair reading and “Ships & Shores” is a handy reference work for the bookshelf.

I recommend Ships & Shores highly to anyone interested in the Bronze Age or ancient seafaring. Even if you aren’t interested in RuneQuest, it’s still a stupendous book. Obviously if you have no interest in going to sea, the book’s applicability to RuneQuest gamemasters will be limited. Even if the details in this volume are difficult to implement in an actual tabletop game, I do still recommend this book for RuneQuest campaigns dabbling in the ocean. In my own Wolf Pirates game, it’s been useful for brainstorming ideas and figuring out the pragmatics of how the Wolf Pirate fleet actually would perform its Circumnavigation of the Homeward Ocean.

Ships & Shores of Southern Genertela is available on the Jonstown Compendium in the following editions:

• PDF: $24.95
• Standard Hardcover: $59.95
• Premium Hardcover: $94.95

While those print prices look outrageous, that’s just the reality of Print On Demand—there’s no crazy markup going on. I have the standard edition, and I think the color looks pretty good. “Premium color” books do have a discernible improvement—and the art in Ships & Shores really is gorgeous—but I don’t know that I’d recommend spending an extra $35 on it.

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