Close
Close
Advanced Search

Citizens of the Lunar EmpireClick to magnify
Quick Preview
/gs_flipbook/flip.php?xml=/demo_xml/344349.xml&w=500&h=324
Full‑size Preview
https://watermark.drivethrurpg.com/pdf_previews/344349-sample.pdf

Citizens of the Lunar Empire

ADD TO WISHLIST >
Selected Option:

citizens-1365x267.png

Nominated for the "Best Organized Play" Ennie Award 2021!


“Welcome to your new apartment, Citizens! New to Glamour? Well, I’m sure you’ll fit right in. Rent is payable in advance...”

Citizens of the Lunar Empire is a sourcebook for urban adventures for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. It focuses on the day-to-day lives of the working-class heroes of the Lunar capital.

Inside, you will find a detailed home base for your adventurers: The Insula, a typical multi-storey residential city-block. A self-contained microcosm of Lunar urban society, it is home to many families and businesses, ranging from scribes and traders on the lower floors to the unemployed, squatters, temple dancers and students at the higher levels.

This 172-page book contains:

• Maps, floorplans and elevations.

• Descriptions of 12 businesses and 25 families.

• Portraits and statistics for 70 NPCs.

• 60 adventure hooks for your urban campaign.

• Details of daily life in an ancient city, from bread-making to waste disposal.

• Rules for making a living and keeping a roof over your head in the sophisticated Lunar Empire.

Full details of the two main cults featured in Citizens, along with a detailed gazetteer and map of the city of Glamour, can be found in A Rough Guide to Glamour, also available from the Jonstown Compendium.


pixel_trans.gif
 
 More from this Title's Contributors
pixel_trans.gif
 
 Customers Who Bought this Title also Purchased
pixel_trans.gif
pixel_trans.gif
Reviews (10)
Discussions (5)
Customer avatar
January 29, 2021 11:51 am UTC
Paul D ' Both are constructs of the modern world, citizen first being used as a term in the 1800's and class being defined socially and economically later than that'.Surely there were 'citizens' in Greek City states dating back to the 7th or 8th century BC? Paul D 'there is very little historical evidence to suggest unemployed existed in any settlement in numbers worthy of mention'. Similarly the urban poor were also a feature of politics in this period and later.
Customer avatar
Michael O January 25, 2021 2:15 pm UTC
PURCHASER
This is a highly entertaining and superbly written book by Chris Gidlow, the writer and historian who also created the Chaosium "duelling dogmas" board game Credo. Citizens of the Lunar Empire is beautifully illustrated too. Whether you're an active RuneQuest gamer or just enjoy reading richly-imagined fantasy world-building, this is a 5-star recommendation from me.

BTW Paul D, the "common folk", the plebs (plebeians), were definitely citizens of Rome. Right through the Republic and the Principate they were part of the "P" in SPQR, even if some of them were layabouts relying on the corn dole to get by.
Customer avatar
Jeffery R January 25, 2021 11:04 am UTC
PURCHASER
A great product by Chris Gidlow and friends. I love it!

As an aside, I was actually just reading Marco Liverani's "The Ancient Near East: History, Society, and Economy". Apparently complaining about unemployment is as old as written records.
Customer avatar
Paul D January 24, 2021 10:30 pm UTC
Hmm not sure any bronze age settlement, no matter the size, would call its people citizens or contain a working class. Both are constructs of the modern world, citizen first being used as a term in the 1800's and class being defined socially and economically later than that. when you see movies like Gladiator where you may get a person addressing a crowd as Citizens of Rome, that's just poor writing. The common folk were plebs.

Also there is very little historical evidence to suggest unemployed existed in any settlement in numbers worthy of mention. If you didn't work you were a burden. You'd either move on as a transient begger, be moved on by authorities, be thrown in a cell and left to rot or be sold as slaves. Life was cheap.

IF you want people to immerse themselves in the world you are trying to create and expand upon, correct terminology is kinda important otherwise you may as well call a chariot a car, I mean they are both literally carriages.

Your products aren't...See more
Reply
Customer avatar
Shawn G January 25, 2021 5:42 am UTC
PURCHASER
There is just so much ignorant crap in all of this, really. People who fit the definition of the word citizen certainly existed in ancient times (i.e. free inhabitants of cities with rights based on their status) They were an elite, to be sure, but they existed. Certainly the English word wasn't used then, but neither was English itself. Latin term is Civitas. You also mention the word Pleb, while trying to imagine that there was no recognized analogy to a working class, which is hilarious. And rampant unemployment has been noted by numerous historians as a significant factor in the decline and fall of Rome (for which the Lunar Empire is a rough analogy) But what do historians who spend their lives studying this stuff know?

Even if you actually had any sort of actually historically relevant points on the subject, it's all moot because this product is not a historical document, it's a piece of fantasy game content made for consumption by modern gamers. This is about as relevant as criticizing...See more
Reply
Customer avatar
Chris G January 25, 2021 6:57 am UTC
CREATOR
Hi Paul
'Citizens' is intended to represent the Lunar Empire as it was portrayed in 'Dragon Pass' and RQ2 ad RQ3. With its Steel Sword Legion, mass produced paper adventurer forms and ubiquitous silver coinage, it is considerably more sophisticated than any real world Bronze Age State, being much more akin to Rome and the Hellenistic monarchies of the Late Iron Age. For consistency, I have assumed a technological and social base of First Century BCE to First Century CE. By this time, Rome did indeed have a considerable Unemployed population, with slaves performing many of the functions previously filled by the urban poor. These unemployed people were supported by the state and by clientage of the Rich. There was a recognisable urban Proletariat but not, as you say, a self-aware Working Class. Where that term appears in 'Citizens' it is a modern one, and is not used by the Citizens themselves. There is, by the way, nothing anachronistic in that term. First Century BCE orator Cicero coined the famous tag 'Civis...See more
Reply
Customer avatar
Nick B January 25, 2021 8:18 am UTC
PURCHASER
At just 12 cents a page, this is one of the less-expensive titles on the Jonstown Compendium, which explicitly welcomes non-canonical content under the banner, "Your Glorantha Will Vary." You can certainly write your own authentically "Bronze Age" version of Glamour, using the "correct terminology" for its citizens, dinosaur carts, gin palaces, dream towers and sorcerous colleges; and you can charge as much or as little as you want for the results. You don't even need to cover art costs, if you don't want to. That's the beauty of this community content site: there's room on it for everything. Let a thousand flowers bloom!

(I note in passing that you haven't bought the book yet. Maybe let us know what you think of the writing /after/ you've read it?)
Reply
Customer avatar
Paul D January 25, 2021 2:17 pm UTC
I won't be buying the book, I prefer my RQ to actually match up with the terminology in the current Chaosium line. Modern terminology kills it for me, sorry.
Reply
Customer avatar
Paul D January 25, 2021 2:27 pm UTC
Maybe it should be portraying LE as it exists in roleplaying in glorantha, seeing as that is the book line this product is noted as supporting.
Reply
Customer avatar
Matthew T January 25, 2021 2:40 pm UTC
I am not sure that the Glorantha in RQ:G is as Bronze Age as you think it is.
Reply
Customer avatar
Martin H January 25, 2021 2:44 pm UTC
PURCHASER
In the ancient world, even in the Bronze Age, the urban poor included 'day workers' who were hired, if there was work, for a day. Often the availability of work was seasonal, and so at some times of year, there was a large number of people reliant upon handouts, especially from temples. There are even 'pay stubs' from Uruk, which show that workers were paid in beer - not the drink we'd assume, but a starchy brew that could double as a meal.
Reply
Customer avatar
Michael O January 26, 2021 3:24 am UTC
PURCHASER
Paul D. - "I said there is little historical evidence to suggest mobs of unemployed would be found in any habitation in the BRONZE AGE. The fall of Rome happened 4 centuries after Rome had entered the IRON AGE, therefore your point while correct on the one hand was erronious on the other."

And yet, curiously, you were the one who cited the movie Gladiator, set in the late 2nd century AD reigns of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, to make your (wrong) assertions about citizenship in the ancient world. Weird.
Reply
Customer avatar
Shannon A January 26, 2021 6:03 am UTC
FEATURED REVIEWER
TL;DR. OP: "It wasn't for me."
Reply
Customer avatar
Paul D January 28, 2021 2:43 am UTC
IT literally states on the cover, rping in a BRONZE AGE.
Reply
Customer avatar
David L January 28, 2021 8:47 pm UTC
"im not owned! im not owned!!", i continue to insist as i slowly shrink and transform into a corn cob
Reply
Customer avatar
Martin H January 28, 2021 9:03 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Citizenship dates back at least to the early Greek poleis, back to the 8th century BC, and much further back in time to the earliest cities. In Uruk the citizens, the free born, owed a labor duty to the temple, though they could instead make a payment of silver.

As a concept our word citizen is derived from the Proto-Indo-European *ḱey- (to lie down, settle; home, family; love; beloved) by way of Latin. It's an ancient concept with its roots back in the earliest cities of the Bronze Age.
Customer avatar
Lowell F January 24, 2021 1:43 am UTC
PURCHASER
Are there plans for a printed or PoD version of this?
Reply
Customer avatar
Nick B January 24, 2021 1:18 pm UTC
PURCHASER
We'd love to, but the Jonstown Compendium rules say we need to sell 250+ digital copies first; if that changes, we'll be sure to let you know.
Reply
Customer avatar
Chris G January 24, 2021 1:29 pm UTC
CREATOR
Thanks for asking Lowell! I'd love to, but I need to sell quite a few more PDF copies first!
Reply
Customer avatar
Chris G February 16, 2021 4:13 pm UTC
CREATOR
Lowell, the hardback of Citizens is now available! Many thanks for your interest.
Browse Categories
$ to $
 Follow Your Favorites!
NotificationsSign in to get custom notifications of new products!
 Recent History















Product Information
Gold seller
Community Content
Author(s)
Rule System(s)
Pages
174
Format
Original electronic Click for more information
Scanned image
These products were created by scanning an original printed edition. Most older books are in scanned image format because original digital layout files never existed or were no longer available from the publisher.

For PDF download editions, each page has been run through Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to attempt to decipher the printed text. The result of this OCR process is placed invisibly behind the picture of each scanned page, to allow for text searching. However, any text in a given book set on a graphical background or in handwritten fonts would most likely not be picked up by the OCR software, and is therefore not searchable. Also, a few larger books may be resampled to fit into the system, and may not have this searchable text background.

For printed books, we have performed high-resolution scans of an original hardcopy of the book. We essentially digitally re-master the book. Unfortunately, the resulting quality of these books is not as high. It's the problem of making a copy of a copy. The text is fine for reading, but illustration work starts to run dark, pixellating and/or losing shades of grey. Moiré patterns may develop in photos. We mark clearly which print titles come from scanned image books so that you can make an informed purchase decision about the quality of what you will receive.
pixel_trans.gif
Original electronic format
These ebooks were created from the original electronic layout files, and therefore are fully text searchable. Also, their file size tends to be smaller than scanned image books. Most newer books are in the original electronic format. Both download and print editions of such books should be high quality.
File Last Updated:
May 18, 2021
This title was added to our catalog on January 23, 2021.