The Big Rubble is about 15 square km or 1500 hectares. That’s basically the Upper Westside of Manhattan or little bigger than Kensington plus Chelsea in London. Another way of thinking about it is that it is 50% bigger than the Commonwealth in Fallout 4 or the Mojave Wasteland in Fallout New Vegas.
Inside the Big Rubble reside some 6200 sentients. Now that is actually more than the population that resides within the walls of New Pavis, which the Pavis cult claims is proof of their god’s power within the walls. To compare it to the previous video games, its got around twice the inhabitants of Fallout New Vegas (although New Vegas has actually more humans), and two or three times the inhabitants of the Commonwealth in Fallout 4.
I think of the Big Rubble as being three towns, plus some little satellite villages and wandering bands. The towns are:
The Troll Stronglands. That’s 2500 dark trolls, trollkin, great trolls, and cave trolls. They have a fortified acropolis, Temple Hill, plus numerous underground passages, a market, and likely some other fortified places in the ruins. This really is a troll town, with temples to Kyger Litor (several actually), Argan Argar, Zorak Zoran, and Xiola Umbar.
Manside. That’s some 1600 humans, most in the Real City, but with a fortified compound at Zebra Fort and another at Mani’s Hill. There’s a scattering of smaller compounds and residences throughout Manside, such as the Yelorna Temple. There’s also a dwarf complex at the North Quarry which is another 200 inhabitants.
The Garden. That’s 1000 aldryrami. Most are runners, but there are 250 elves, and about a dozen dryads, plus Warriors of Woods and other plant defenses. They have contacts with New Pavis, Manside, and even occasionally Sun County.
Finally there are smaller groups.
Between the Garden and Manside are some 150 dragonewts, centered on a dragonewt temple founded in the Rubble after the Dragonewts’ Dream in 1551 and built on the ruins of another Dragonewt temple inhabited during the time of the Empire of the Wyrm’s Friends. They are ruled by at least one full priest.
And there has always been Chaos in the Big Rubble. Broos, ogres, vampires, and even scorpion men. Ogre Island, the Devil’s Playground, Blind Kings Hill, and Griffin Gate are all pretty notorious for having Chaos nests. Since the liberation of New Pavis, they have been more active and are estimated to be over 500 Chaotic beings in the Big Rubble.
Now I like comparing the Big Rubble to Fallout as a setting, because I think it has some parallels. Ruins of a past civilization, monsters in hiding, people in strongholds potentially open for negotiation and trade. Also it gives you an idea how long it takes to walk from one side of the Rubble to the other – and just how dangerous that can be!
Now my own take is that the Big Rubble/New Pavis combines the three classic sandbox settings – dungeon, city, wilderness – making it a very easy entry point to Glorantha and RuneQuest. It is also easier for the GM to lean the ropes. Some thoughts:
- Start with an easy small dungeon bash. Send the players to Kakstan’s Art Gallery, have them explore the basement below some old complex in the Main Ruins, have them go to the Flintnail Temple, or even have them go and raid some slum of the Troll Stronglands. Straight forward easy stuff.
- Have them return to New Pavis. Let them buy some spirit magic and training with their loot. Get the involved with their temple and learn their temple has rivals. Maybe they get an offer to help guard someone or maybe they get an offer to steal something from someone? Or maybe they get a contract to go back into the Big Rubble!
- Go back deeper into the Rubble. Maybe this time it gets them really involved with one of the main factions in the Rubble, with repercussions. Kill some important trolls and that’s going to have consequences. Same thing goes for the elves. Take something from Lanbril or Black Fang and that is going to have consequences. Screw with whatever the Chaotics are up to and that is going to have consequences. Stumble into a bunch of vampires and that is really going to have consequences.
- Play out the consequences, and now introduce them to the bigger picture of Argrath, the Nomads, the Lunar remnants, and Dragon Pass.
The advantage of this approach is that they learn the setting through play rather than by front-loading them information.
Also – I strongly recommend setting it after the city is liberated from the Lunar Empire. You greatly reduce the amount of up-front lore you need to deal with then. And you don’t have to worry quite so much about the Lunar cycle from the start.
Now if we go to the classic and canonical RQ2 Big Rubble map, we can see that the Big Rubble is roughly 4.32 km from New Pavis to Green Hill, and about 3.84 km from the walls near Furner Fields to the opposite side. Since the Rubble is not a rectangle we need to remove a bit, and end up with about 15 km2.
“That doesn’t seem very big!” say some. But it is the size of the Upper West Side of Manhattan, which has a quarter million inhabitants (twice the population of Sartar). It is about 50% bigger than the Mojave Wasteland in the Fallout New Vegas game with about twice the inhabitants. I think it is plenty big.