Ye Booke of Tentacles II is the second in a series of fund-raiser books produced the German RQ Society to help stage their annual RuneQuest/Glorantha convention in a picturesque castle above Bacharach on the Rhine. Here's my mini-review.
Great CGI cover from Dan Barker, whose showing he's a dab hand at
electronic depictions of Uz. Nasty nipple-piercings though...
Range of articles inside, from Glorantha through to Cthulhu, Nephilim,
Eternal Champion, Pendragon and Misc. Mostly Glorantha though; in fact, a great whack of the book details the Culbrea Tribe, by Martin Laurie and Patrik Sanberg. Lots of stuff to complement any Sartar campaign: worth gettin' your hands on the opus for this alone!
Some other articles of note include the entertaining German RQ Con Lore Auction transcript, some weird but gameable tales by Darvall, and more unfinished stuff from yet another Stafford work-in-progress. There's a real strange article on Gloranthan shells, and a running gag called "Glorantha's worst books" which seems to have lost something in the translation. If you're into rules-fixing, check out the swathe of useful articles on spirits, including Sandy's revised Shaman rules (which makes shamanism cool like it was in RQII) and Nick Brooke's cheerful ideas on spirit cults.
At the end of the book, Shannon Appel's "Adventure of the Reluctant Bride" is a superb Pendragon scenario that I've played and can heartily vouch for.
My personal contribution to Tentacles II is "The Men with the Golden Gun", more Sun Dome loopiness from Sun County, this time the left-handed misfits who man the giant spear-thrower at Harpoon.
Tentacles II is highly recommended to fans of Glorantha and the other Chaosium games it features. It is available from Reaching Moon Megacorp. Ordering information is available at Nick Brooke's
homepage: http://www.btinternet.com/~Nick_Brooke/.
Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)
