One of my current projects is a campaign setting for Chaosium’s RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha which will be published through their community content site, the Jonstown Compendium. This page brings together the material I’ve shared, and will continue to share, on this site.
Sylthi is a minor city in the matrifocal land of Esrolia. I’ve chosen to explore it because it homes the main temple of the Sword Sages of Lhankor Mhy, and I love the idea of ass-kicking kung fu sorcerers. I also find Sylthi interesting to write about because it’s fairly small, yet big enough for a variety of action. I want to create a detailed, comprehensive setting, in a way I feel is impractical with Glorantha’s larger cities (like Nochet, Boldhome, and Glamour).
At present, I’m imagining the Sylthi product line’s structure as including the following:
- An Adventurer’s Guide for players in Sylthi campaigns. This will include short-form versions of the city’s cults, summarize core NPCs from the city’s factions—useful for determining the target of Loyalty or Love Passions!—and describe the basic services available between adventures. One of my goals is that with the Adventurer’s Guide, a player can come to the session and say “I want to do X, Y, and Z between adventures” so downtime will be as swift and simple a process as possible.
- A City Guide for gamemasters, and general readers as well. One of my objectives with the main book is to create a work someone who likes Glorantha and RuneQuest can simply read and enjoy. This is a major way a lot of people consume tabletop RPGs, because there’s just more games out there than you could ever play. So even if you don’t get to play a game in Sylthi, I want this to be a book you’ll love. The gamemaster-secret material will be confined to its own section, so reading the rest of the book won’t spoil it if you’re playing in a Sylthi campaign.
- An Adventures book for gamemasters. This will probably compile four to six adventures for the gamemaster to draw from while running a campaign in Sylthi. My goal is that the City Guide will provide a structure to help generate a campaign’s ongoing narrative, while the Adventures book will give the gamemaster scenarios for about the first in-game year of play.
This is, of course, entirely speculative and subject to future change. I have further ideas also—such as a connected work on the nearby temple-city of Ezel, a book generally describing the lands Sylthi governs, a campaign where the adventurers establish their own noble clan, and a work exploring the Undercity—but if I let myself wander off too far on those tangents, my scope bloat problems with this project will get even worse.
Playtest Campaign
This section includes links to blogs I’ve written summarizing sessions of my Sylthi playtest campaign. I try both describing what’s going on, and how I’m making decisions as the gamemaster. My goal is that it’ll be interesting for players curious about Sylthi, but also informative for newer players to RuneQuest and/or Glorantha.
Myths
This section includes links to short stories I’ve published on this site, from the “Sylthelan Mythology” chapter of the forthcoming City Guide. My goal with “Sylthelan Mythology” is to provide stories from a variety of in-world religions which will entertain general readers, and which the gamemaster can draw upon for inspiration—in particular, when devising heroquests.
These are often rough drafts or first drafts, and subject to revision.
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Akhelas 