Kralorela

From: TimTorres_at_aol.com
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 1996 16:20:29 -0400

OK, I'm delurking again because I could use a little reenergizing on my Kralorelan project. First some RW background: I was bored and left feeling too bland by the RQ3 martial arts (MA) rules. I designed a more detailed MA system. Several digest readers sampled my rules and draft #3 seemed ready for playtesting. I managed to tempt my players into creating PCs to playtest my MA rules and began my Kralorelan "campaign" using RQ3 supplemented by my MA rules.

The "campaign" has been very low fantasy so far ... starting out with just a small village and a small shrine/monastery/MA school. At first we simply fought some training combats and made some adjustments in the rules. Then there were intermittent scenarios still very episodic and higly referee-controlled. We advanced the PCs artificially between episodes until recently, and the campaign is now becoming more like a real campaign. The main PCs immediate quest is to discover, through meditative episodes similar to heroquesting, the mystic power of his particular martial art form. He has a longer range goal of mastering a second school and combining the two to create his own martial art form.

I'll be posting some of his adventures in story form, but was wondering if there is any Kralorelan source material published besides GoG and Glorantha (boxed set). I can create my own but would rather not invite future contradictions if I can help it.

I've been using some rules for mysticism provided by Nils and the cultural/geographical material in GoG and the Glorantha boxed set.

Nils or Sandy or anyone else in the know on Kralorelan mysticism ... would a one-use mystical poem be imbued with specific mystic effects or simply allow the user to concentrate more mystic energy to create greater effects with his/her own mystic talents? (In spirit magic terms, would it be more like a spell matrix or more like a POW-storing crystal?)

Also, in addition to cult magics, my ultra-civilized Kralorelan citizens use mysticism (variously taoist/buddhist/etc) instead of sorcery, altho there are also sorcerors found in all the cities and the outlying villages have their share of village elders (wise men/women) who practice a form of spirit magic instead (based on the kami of shinto religious belief).

I've introduced my PC to hsunchen, barbarians from the Bliss of Ignorance, a rebel band hiding/running from the army and bullying helpless villages, assassins, soldiers, miscellaneous citizens, street burlies, undead, spirits, a tiger, and a troll. I would expect most of Kralorela to be short on "monsters" except by the action of the intelligent races. I would also expect chaos to be very uncommon.

Does this sound accurate? And is there any more printed source material?

Tim

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