Anti-glorantha rant to moongose.

[Dan True]

I think it's important (as others have said before me) that this discussion does not turn into a Glorantha vs. Others discussion. We discuss if sales could be helped by supporting more settings, or if the Core Rulebook should not mention Glorantha at all.

Actually I never felt "forced" into Glorantha by the rulebook. It doesn't contain that much Glorantha.

But the art... I really think making a new edition of the core rulebook with better (and color) art, would draw a crowd.

- Dan

 

[DigitalMage]

(and color) art, would draw a crowd.

Definately agree with this, I haven't bought MRQ2 because I barely used MRQ1 and so didn't feel the expense was worth it, but even if I did, I feel the black and white interior is a step backwards. Most of the books in MRQ1 I bought were in full colour (Players Guide to Glorantha being the only exception).

 

[cerebro]

The PC game King of Dragon Pass had good art, some of it can be found through Google:

http://www.google.fi/images?q=king+of+dragon+pass

This is the state of play in 2010/2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzNs4-kRLaE

You get my point,sir. How am I suppose to get people to play Runequest, when I have to compete with this kind of visuals?. Images help the mind. Get people in the mood.

 

[Dan True]

The PC game King of Dragon Pass had good art, some of it can be found through Google:

http://www.google.fi/images?q=king+of+dragon+pass

This is the state of play in 2010/2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzNs4-kRLaE

You get my point,sir. How am I suppose to get people to play Runequest, when I have to compete with this kind of visuals?. Images help the mind. Get people in the mood.

Especially if RQ is going to draw in more new players from my generation... People who don't remember the "You're in a glade and a Unicorn is standing to the north, a river runs to the east ..."-games.

- Dan

 

[cerebro]

Many people understand that D&D 3.5 is broken. Assemble the magic combination and your character can overwhelm virtually anything with an exponentially more potent slew of spells. There is dissatisfaction with WotC's new creation, and we should ease the way for d20 refugees into our system because it is fundamentally better.

I agree. I'm one of them.[/quote]

 

[Deleriad]

You get my point,sir. How am I suppose to get people to play Runequest, when I have to compete with this kind of visuals?. Images help the mind. Get people in the mood.

Well one way would be the same way that people get in the mood by reading Harry Potter. Those books manage to sell pretty well despite only being in black and white. Art's pretty minimal too.

Comparing tabletop RPGs with computer games is like comparing books to movies. They provide very different pleasures.

 

[Dan True]

You get my point,sir. How am I suppose to get people to play Runequest, when I have to compete with this kind of visuals?. Images help the mind. Get people in the mood.

Well one way would be the same way that people get in the mood by reading Harry Potter. Those books manage to sell pretty well despite only being in black and white. Art's pretty minimal too.

Comparing tabletop RPGs with computer games is like comparing books to movies. They provide very different pleasures.

Of course they do. We're just saying that we're dealing with a generation of players who has grown up seeing awesome effects and everytime they saw a movie or game with bad effects... The movie or game was bad (broadly speaking).

Now, they have just been hooked and RPGs and they're standing in the books store. To the left are colourfull d&d books, pathfinder, WFRP boxes and even a gorgeous Dark Heresy book. To the right is the most awesome gaming system ever made, in a leather bound book with a gold rune -> interesting.
Then our people open the book to take a look inside... Inside the books to the left he finds awesome and heroic fantasy drawings in full color, and cool background images on every page... Inside the book to the right he finds a cool system but he doesn't have time to realise that. He just notices that everything is black&white and the pictures are mostly not that great (there are a some).

- Dan

 

[HalfOrc HalfBiscuit]

A few disorganised ramblings:

I'm not a Glorantha fan, really - I'll nick ideas from it, but I doubt I'll ever run a Gloranthan campaign. That said, of course any version of RQ has to support Glorantha - the history of both is so intertwined.

Having said that, I think MRQ may suffer somewhat from a perception from gamers who looked at earlier editions of RQ that RQ=Glorantha, despite that no longer being the case.

I also don't think that Glorantha is the easiest of worlds to get into. Partly because of the huge body of existing Gloranthan lore, which I'm sure is an attraction to some, but is definitely off-putting to others. (And, yes, I'm fully aware that one doesn't really need to read and digest the whole lot just to start a Gloranthan campaign - but I think its mere existence weighs heavily on the setting.)

Then there's Glorantha's divergence from the "fantasy norm" - by which I mean LotR, WoW, Warhammer, the main D&D settings, Dragon Age etc. Not that these are identical with each other of course - but I think they're fairly easy for players/GMs to switch between.

Having said that, I'm not sure the answer is for Mongoose to provide a new "vanilla" fantasy setting. However, I do think they could give more help towards home-brewing.

It strikes me that that core rules are written primarily for reasonably experienced GMs - and GMs reasonably experienced in RQ (or at least BRP) at that.

One of RQ's great attractions is the emphasis on culture and myth - PCs are much more than just a bunch of stats and abilities, and spells don't just pop up randomly or at the GM's (or player's) whim. However, the drawback of this is that RQ is not so readily playable "out of the box" as D&D.

I would like to have seen in the core rule book (or in a free pdf available when the core rulebook was launched and the existence of which was flagged in that book):

- half a dozen or so examples of each type of cult (or in the case of sorcerous cults at least half a dozen or so grimoires);

- more extensive advice on encounter building (it's great that the emphasis on RQ isn't just fight, fight, fight - but I often have a tough time telling whether a given set of foes, if it does come to a fight, will challenge the PCs, wipe the floor with them, or just be an annoyance);

- an adventure suitable for starting characters and novice GM.

 

[cerebro]

You get my point,sir. How am I suppose to get people to play Runequest, when I have to compete with this kind of visuals?. Images help the mind. Get people in the mood.

Well one way would be the same way that people get in the mood by reading Harry Potter. Those books manage to sell pretty well despite only being in black and white. Art's pretty minimal too.

Comparing tabletop RPGs with computer games is like comparing books to movies. They provide very different pleasures.

Of course they do. We're just saying that we're dealing with a generation of players who has grown up seeing awesome effects and everytime they saw a movie or game with bad effects... The movie or game was bad (broadly speaking).

Now, they have just been hooked and RPGs and they're standing in the books store. To the left are colourfull d&d books, pathfinder, WFRP boxes and even a gorgeous Dark Heresy book. To the right is the most awesome gaming system ever made, in a leather bound book with a gold rune -> interesting.
Then our people open the book to take a look inside... Inside the books to the left he finds awesome and heroic fantasy drawings in full color, and cool background images on every page... Inside the book to the right he finds a cool system but he doesn't have time to realise that. He just notices that everything is black&white and the pictures are mostly not that great (there are a some).

- Dan

Exactly my point. In my country,most of my players are 20 something or early 30s. The thing is,this system is better suited to play modern fantasy games (by the way I'm not saying big eyes small mouth art. I'm talking record of Lodoss war, ninja scroll, Thundercats even). You dont need to go all out on the idea. Make an adventure. Lets start from there. Make a city.

By the way,Record of lodoss war would be a nice setting. Is not developed and is famous. A clean plate to work with.

 

[languagegeek]

Actually I never felt "forced" into Glorantha by the rulebook. It doesn't contain that much Glorantha.

But the art... I really think making a new edition of the core rulebook with better (and color) art, would draw a crowd.

I think we *are* forced into buying Cults of Glorantha if we want to have a clue how to use cults in the game. The 3 or so cults in the corebook were not nearly enough for me to understand how to use them mechanically / assign spells / scale resonance / etc.

I've been thinking too that first impressions of Glorantha are spoiled by old-school mediocre art. I hate to come off as superficial but the first thing I see in the Monster Col. or the corebook about Glorantha are the pictures. My first impression is that it's old-fashioned, corny, I've already got piles of settings like that, my group doesn't want to play in Basic-Box D&D. Honestly, we'd be better off with text-only so I can create my own imagery. If there were full-blown colour awesome wickedness, then fine, but the pics are campy and discouraging. Now that I've read through Cults a few times, I'm starting to ignore the art and building my own vision of what Glorantha looks like, but if I weren't stubbornly attached to putting cults in my game, I would have left Glorantha in the dust ages ago. Now I'm starting to dig it (a bit)

And instead of putting out Races of Glorantha style books, maybe something like Paizo does: Elves of Golarion, Guide to Katapesh, shiny paperback and relatively cheap. With Races of Glorantha, I see ducks (corny), dragonewts (weird name, off-putting, newts?), and trolls (well, maybe). So, if I only want to use trolls in my campaign, I can buy a cheaper book and leave out the other species I don't like. But I probably won't spend $40 on a third of a book.

I'm a bit worried about the kewlification of RQ though. Sure the mechanics work really well, but without the possibility of cults, cultures, history, monsters-are-people-too, I never would've bought the first book. I'd hate to see the game dropped to a lower common denominator.

As for other settings? I strongly support the world-building guide concept and historical settings. Licensed fictional settings only work if I've read the books, and chances are I haven't. Neither do I like the way licensed games overlay a cannon that is hard to change when the players have read more of the novels / watched more of the movies, then I have. I tried a Dresden Files one-shot at a con the other day and it sucked - these guys knew (lived) the books inside out and I had nothing to contribute only having read a couple of them.

 

[Deleriad]

I'm just mulling over some ideas because that's always more interesting than complaining and I've decided what it is that I would have liked to have seen that would make RQ stand out and also be potentially quite cool while staying black and white and within what seems like Mongoose's business model.

Do the book almost like an old naturalist's book. Have black and white sketchbook art almost as if someone is sketching something they've just seen. Do little clippings from travel maps. Have little naturalist sketches of creatures and monsters. Style it in the way so that when you're glancing through it you see something you never see in video games, something intriguing. Rather than trying to make it look like a computer game or like a WoTC/Pathfinder clone, take a different route. That's what I would do.

 

[Dan True]

I'm just mulling over some ideas because that's always more interesting than complaining and I've decided what it is that I would have liked to have seen that would make RQ stand out and also be potentially quite cool while staying black and white and within what seems like Mongoose's business model.

Do the book almost like an old naturalist's book. Have black and white sketchbook art almost as if someone is sketching something they've just seen. Do little clippings from travel maps. Have little naturalist sketches of creatures and monsters. Style it in the way so that when you're glancing through it you see something you never see in video games, something intriguing. Rather than trying to make it look like a computer game or like a WoTC/Pathfinder clone, take a different route. That's what I would do.

Great idea! That would be awesome... One thing that I think makes a lot of difference in making art look awesome, is making the whole page an image. Not just a piece of text and some images, but background also. When looking at the rpg books I find coolest: Dark heresy, Kult and 3.5 DMs guide this is true for them all. In them artwork is not just an image added to a page, it's something permetrating the whole book.

Making the book color would still be great (there's no denying that colors catches the eyes), but it seems Mongoose is focussing on staying black and white.

- Dan

 

[languagegeek]

Do the book almost like an old naturalist's book. Have black and white sketchbook art almost as if someone is sketching something they've just seen. Do little clippings from travel maps. Have little naturalist sketches of creatures and monsters. Style it in the way so that when you're glancing through it you see something you never see in video games, something intriguing. Rather than trying to make it look like a computer game or like a WoTC/Pathfinder clone, take a different route. That's what I would do.

Didn't Talislanta do something similar with "A Naturalist's Guide to Talislanta" and "Chronicles of"? Learn about the world through someone wandering around it?

For 2nd Age Glorantha, you could make the art be in inspiration Etruscan or Old Khmer, or something.

As it stands, the style is old-RPGesque, which is *not* how the Gloranthans themselves would create art. Make Glorantha books look like something the Gloranthans would make themselves. That could be black and white, cool, cheap, and yet would breathe all kinds of culture.[/url] It would certainly catch my attention.

 

[danbuter]

Art behind text is an awful idea. Layout is the one are that I think RQII and D&D 4e are both outstanding on. There should never be anything behind text, because it makes the book hard to read.

 

[Antalon]

I agree with the intent behind the original post:

1) we all agree that RQII rules are clearly superior to many other systems, and are disappointed that sales do not reflect this;

2) some of us, to varying degrees, find Glorantha - as a core / key setting - too 'challenging' as an entry level game world to support the rules, help new players enter the game and give players of rival systems a more 'out of the box' play experience. The elements of Glorantha (and RQ) that are most difficult to grasp quickly is the mythic aspect.

If this is a fair summary, then a solution would be to develop a series of self contained adventure locations and 2 - 3 adventures. This is precisely what Pavis Rises is, it has also worked well with a kindred game OpenQuest with its 'The Savage North' setting http://d101games.co.uk/books/openquest/the-savage-north/

An 'adventure pack', with 3-4 ready made generic cults (religions, sorcery orders, spirit cults, guilds or societies etc), guidance on applying / using mythic elements and some gritty detailed adventures within a described locale would work wonders. Simialr to the concept of Monster Island as Loz described above.

Last, perhaps we, as GMs / players, should make more effort to post our own efforts at adventures, cults, magic, campaign worlds, locales etc etc? No matter how limited our efforts may be helpful to some GMs out there to open up this game system and their worlds of adventure.

Antalon

 

[Mark Mohrfield]

I'm not sure Chaosium/Runequest/Glorantha were alone in treating non-human races with a bit of depth. Tekumel did it, Traveller had whole books on each major race, etc..

None of them did it as well as Trollpack. The trav supplements where extremely dry, and I would argue that Tekumel never even tried;the emphasis of that world has always been on the human cultures.

Trollpak, however much it pushed the envelope at the time, was 30 years ago, a period of time longer than some RQ players have been alive. Lets not keep on saying how great it all was.

So we're not allowed to like something when it reaches a certain age?

So, dwarves think they're part of a machine and elves are plants? The end result is the same, dwarves are surly, elves are mystical tree huggers, the same as in every other fantasy environment. (I'm playing devil's advocate a little here, you understand).

But the end result is NOT the same. The resemblence is only superficial. Why are the elves mystical tree-huggers? Because they part of the forest, not just nature-loving humans. Why are the Dwarves surly? Because they perceive every other species as being a threat to the order of the World Machine, of which they believe they are a part.

Honestly, we have here one the great achievments of world-building in not just rpgs, but heroic fantasy in general; ought we not make use of it?

 

[Psuedosirus]

No one's saying don't play Glorantha. I love elements of Gloranthan Elves ("Can you bleed on my pancakes?") and insert them into whatever world I make. Elves as plants make total sense. Adopt & Adapt.

Agree completely on art. I'd incline more toward color and splash than the Naturalist book, again because the future is with younger players and I believe that approach favors them. But part of what's being discussed is choice: do both, one with a slicker setting, one more traditional. Is it that hard to find art students who need work for their portfolios?

Perhaps a challenge from Mongoose run through these boards: Create a campaign setting suitable for a 50 page pdf download. Winner gets hugs and kisses or whatever and handles questions about the setting from an adoring public. Oh, and money would be nice too.

I sure hope Mongoose is reading this thread.

 

[cerebro]

Questmaker: Seems to be the book we want. How to make Cults, Traps ,Encounters. A Runequest GM book for world building. It's something all GMs here do,make their own version of the setting.

Quests. You don't have to make a world. Start with a location an keep on expanding. If it caches on,then keep doing it. I will make one,in full color pdf.

By the way,I love the cults mechanic when it comes to Divine spells.

 

[ledpup]

I'm a 4E D&D refugee. I played it once, that was enough. A couple of months ago the prospect of playing RPGs again came up. I was on a long break from my D20 days (a system I was never overly enamoured by). I read a history of RPGs (http://ptgptb.org/0001/history1.html) and arrived with a short-list of RPGs to check out. There was:

Call of Cthulhu
Amber Diceless
Savage Worlds
True20
Traveller
RuneQuest
Paranoia

I really wanted to play a fantasy-based game, so that struck-off half the list (though I really want to play Traveller). I downloaded a copy of the new RuneQuest rules and thought "Wwwwow, this is superb!" I hadn't felt as inspired to play RPGs since D&D 3rd edition first came out (10 years ago. Wow).

Glorantha, on the other hand, was more "this is really weird." Ducks?! Stone dwarfs?! Acronyms?! (i.e., EWF). What was all the crap about myths and HeroQuests? And why is it so complicated? I struggled on. The Intro to Glorantha is pretty good. There is excellent advice by Simon Bray that I've put on my blog (http://ledpup.blogspot.com/2010/12/it-would-have-been-good-to-know.html).

Glorantha is much more intriguing than Faerun or Greyhawk. There is actual substance here as everything is inter-related. Faerun is just a spatial and temporal mess. It's too huge. There are endless descriptions that a random text/map generator could create. Also, Wizards always advance on the years with every new edition. Why is that? (I like how Mongoose went back in time.)

The myths are truly amazing stuff. The idea that cultures don't subscribe to a universal truth is insightful. This is what makes Glorantha special. And before you think, "oh this is just an exercise in moral relativism or post-modernism", you have the God Learners. How cool are they?! Total bastards who go around plundering cultures/myths for whatever they can get out of them. They're the modernists invading pre-historical cultures. Can Forgotten Realms claim to be anywhere close to that level of sophistication? Or Tolkien for that matter?

Over the last few weeks I've gone from "Gloranth... ick?!" to having bought everything Mongoose have on Glorantha for RQII. I'm actually reading it too. This hasn't happened since I was a teenager buying all the 2nd edition D&D stuff.

And the ducks? It's seriously easy to get over. Stop letting your puritanical notions of what fantasy should be cloud your appreciation and see what is beyond. Ducks are actually the Palestinians/Kurds of Glorantha. It's ironic that they receive such harsh racism from outside of Glorantha too. In fact, one could see embracing the duck as a metaphor for bringing down the racism inherit in fantasy fiction.

I'm not saying that Forgotten Realms, Tolkien, or any other modernist/grand narative world doesn't have its place. They're fine, occasionally great. I was impressed by Midnight (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_(role-playing_game)), for example. Nevertheless, people are doing themselves a great disservice in not looking a bit deeper into Glorantha.

If Mongoose put out more RQII settings, that's fine with me. I might get them. I've already ordered Clockwork and Chivalry. I really want more adventures for Glorantha, however. I'm awaiting Pavis Rises, but something as clever as Blood of Orlanth would be good too. That might be Pavis Rises, probably will be, but I'll want more after that too. The Monster Island book sounds fantastic. Kind of Isle of Dread like, I liked playing that.

I don't know why sales of RQII aren't going well. The art doesn't bother me. I'd prefer it to the hyper-realism of recent D&D. It could be better, but it didn't even come close to stopping me from buying 2 copies of the core book. Poor editing throws me off far more than average art. I haven't bought the Arms and Equipment guide, for example. Most of the books are edited well, however.

I think the people who have worked on RQII have done an amazing job so far and I'll be hanging around to see what else they come up with.

 

[Dan True]

Art behind text is an awful idea. Layout is the one are that I think RQII and D&D 4e are both outstanding on. There should never be anything behind text, because it makes the book hard to read.

Well, I don't mean the art should literally be behind the text. What I mean is that there is art around the edges of the pages, which sorta continues in under the text but where it more takes the appearance of a water-mark / background.

It's just so there are something other than bland white behind the text - grey, water-mark-opaque "swirls" or something similar.

Take a look at the "Kult - Beyond the Veil" or the Dark Heresy Core Rulebook if you ever get the chance, and you'll see what I mean. It just lends so much more style and atmosphere to the book. At least I think so.

- Dan