Glorantha

[Don Allen]

I never played in Glorantha before (had the old versions of RQ but never used the Glorantha setting).
Seems like everyone who played RQ in the old versions loved it and can't wait for the Glorantha setting to be released.

What is so cool about Glorantha? What did you like about the setting? Will you be using Glorantha for your RQ games or a different world?

Thanks...

 

[soltakss]

What's so good about Glorantha?

1. The Mythology - Glorantha has a very detailed mythology and many different pantheons that interact

2. The History - Each region of Glorantha has a detailed history going back thousands of years

3. The Lands - Glorantha has many different lands, each of which have now been detailed very well

4. The People - Glorantha has many different cultures with very detailed writeups

5. The Action - Third Age Glorantha has the Hero Wars where Argrath and the Sartarites take on the Lunar Empire in a 150-year long struggle. Second Age Glorantha has the Age of Empires and the struggles between them.

6. The Campaign Settings - RQ2 had some of the best campaign packs around (Pavis, Big Rubble, Borderlands, Griffin Mountain, Trollpack), RQ3 carried on with some good supplements (River of Cradles, Sun County, Shadows on the Borderlands, Strangers in Prax), HeroQuest has concentrated on the Heortlings (Sartar Rising Series) and supplements from other companies (Thieves Arm, Sons of Sargzant). All of these had detailed histories, detailed myths, cult writeups, detailed background and very playable scenarios.

So, Glorantha has a depth and a breadth that is rare in Fantasy Worlds. It is also fairly consistent and believable.

Would I play RQ anywhere else? Maybe in Alternate Earth, probably not in other worlds. My preference is, always has been and probably always will be Glorantha.

 

[WildHealer]

What's so special about Glorantha? That is a very tricky question to answer.

Imagine a world where the Ancients were right. Where the earth was flat, and you could fall off the edge. Where the sky was a solid dome, with holes where the light beyond shone through - the stars. Where the sun rode across the sky in his chariot every day, and where if you dug down far enough you'd find the underworld. A world where the Gods are real.

That's Glorantha. And your character lives there, in a world of mysteries and secrets, where much of the knowledge of the past has been wiped out, and then reinvented. Is what he knows true? Was the god he worships always a god, 'cos there are some intriguing hints he may once have been something else - maybe even just a mortal. Could your character follow his path?

Glorantha has been in existence close on 40 years, first the work entirely of one man, and now the work of many, in a loose collaboration "chaired" and "guided" by the same man - Greg Stafford. You can contribute to the "reality" of Glorantha - cultures, histories, mythologies - if you want, or you can just draw on the product of the creative energies of hundreds of passionate players & fans worldwide for a game world of really amazing depth.

If you want to pile down a dungeon and smash up some monsters, fine - Glorantha has that. If you want to track down the mysteries of the past, or destroy an Unfathomable Evil, or raid the lands of the gods, Glorantha has that, too. And if you want to experiment with your ideas on cultures, mythologies, and so on, Glorantha draws on the works of such key thinkers as Joseph Campbell and so on for its philosophical structure.

Something for everyone, really. Oh, yes - and it owes practically nothing to Tolkien. There are no orcs. It's a bronze age world, inspired more by ancient Sumer, Greece, Rome, and Byzantium than Merrie England or Middle Earth. It's as immediately accessible as Jason and the Argonauts or Sinbad the Sailor - but you can go much, much deeper - if you want.

Told you it was a tricky question...

Sarah

 

[zanshin]

Agree with both the above. Would justy like to add that the villains are the best of any roleplaying game I have played.

Chaos is the big baddy for 90% of the world/players. It is selfish, destructive, it mutates, it delights in the pain of others, and particularly insidious forms try to subvert those who are non chaotic to their ways.

Cults of Terror, the RQ supplement for the chaos gods still rates , after 24 years, as the best supplement I have ever obtained for any RP system.

It is not just a case of killing another orc etc, chaos creatures are believable, consistent with explicable (yet hideous) motivations. A whole cult - Storm Bull - exists purely to destroy chaos, it has no other significant role, and their followers feel pain in its presence, driving them to acts of berserker rage to end the pain.

It is what , for me , elevates Runequest to the unique status of heroic horror roleplaying.

 

[Don Allen]

So what sorts of player races are there? Is it all human or are there other "fantasy" races?

 

[RMS]

That's a tricky question. There are plenty of other species (not really races here) that are very playable as PCs. However, they are not simply funny looking humans with some special powers. They are as different to a human as a cat or a bird is...with the exception of actually being intelligent.

In my experience, all human groups are by far the most common. There's such diversity in cultures and backgrounds that there's plenty to do there. Next, are all troll groups. (Note: Gloranthan trolls are nothing like D&D or Tolkien trolls.) Dwarves (Mostali) are so alien as to be virtually unplayable in Glorantha IMO. Elves (Aldryami) are also very alien compared to D&D/Tolkien type elves, but would be pretty playable with the right group of players. Just don't expect a couple of them to go wandering around with a bunch of humans on a regular basis.

 

[AKAramis]

Elves: Not Tolkien's Elves... more like diminutive and hyperactive ents.

Dwarves: Golems. Every last one of them. And they are all male. Tinkering on the machine... the machine called Glorantha.

Ducks: Take Donald Duck, Daffy duck or Howard the Duck. Now give them a grim mediaeval outlook on life. A race of "Cartoon Ducks" with bad attitudes. (My last RQ campaign, back in 1990 or so, was inspired by someone commenting "Hey, Howard would make a cool character!" followed by "Runequest has stats for Ducks as PC's...")

Trolls: Big, mean and ugly...

Broo: chaos beasties... upright bipeds with (usually) herbivore body parts and carnivore tastes.

Dragonnewts: probably the source from which DL ripped off the draconians... No, seriously, dragon worshiping draconic bipeds... with deep secrets.

Almost any species with all stats can be made into a PC in RQ3. It looks even easier in Mongoose's RQ. And there are quite a few.

 

[zanshin]

The stats are easy to run up for a wide variety of races/species , but the mindset is what takes getting used to. Any Dwarf or Dragonewt would have to be very unusual/exceptional to become an adventurer , but that doesn't mean its not possible.

Trolls are big ,mean and nasty. They are also gourmet epicures (of intelligent flesh preferably) and doughty opponents of chaos - the true evil in Glorantha.

 

[simonh]

So what sorts of player races are there? Is it all human or are there other "fantasy" races?

The main playable races are Mostali (Dwarves) - they worship Mostal, the creator and embodiment of the World Machine. They are mechanistic and believe that emotions are evidence of the brokenness of the world. Aldryami (Elves) are living, thinking plants that worship the ancestral forests and fight to protect them. Uz (Trolls) are darkness beings that were driven from the Underworld, literaly the lands of the dead which they call Wonderhome, during the destruction fo the world in mythic times and hate light. They understand only strength and survival.

There are many other sentient races, but these are the most important ones. Their ways of thinking are very different from ours, although some exceptional individuals are capable of dealing reasonably with humans (enough to function as player characters). Normal members of their species generaly consider them to be crazy or sellouts.

I wrote about their psychology on the Glorantha Digest. The post is archived here.


Simon Hibbs

 

[moonbroth]

So what sorts of player races are there? Is it all human or are there other "fantasy" races?

You could check out the (rules-free) Gloranthan supplement HeroQuest Voices for a look at what makes Gloranthan elves, dwarfs and trolls so different from the Generic Fantasy archetypes.

Cheers, Nick

 

[GbajiTheDeceiver]

The key difference about Glorantha, and what sets it genuinely apart from almost any other fantasy world, is that it feels real. A good Gloranthan supplement is more like a well written history book that focusses on all the cool stuff, whereas other settings, no matter how good they may be, well, you know it's just a setting. With Glorantha, you could be talking about stuff that actually did happen.

 

[AKAramis]

I dislike playing in Glorantha... I always feel like anything I do will soon get "Gregged" by some other player reading something I don't have in MY collection.

On the other hand, they are EXCELLENT reads, almost universally. Then again, I read history, often fairly dry history, for fun... so YMMVAPD.

 

[Adept]

Elves: Not Tolkien's Elves... more like diminutive and hyperactive ents.

Dwarves: Golems. Every last one of them. And they are all male. Tinkering on the machine... the machine called Glorantha.

Ducks: Take Donald Duck, Daffy duck or Howard the Duck. Now give them a grim mediaeval outlook on life. A race of "Cartoon Ducks" with bad attitudes.

Ahem.

Elves: Deeply tied to the forests, children of the goddess Aldrya (goddess of the forests). As they get older they become more tree like, but are quite human looking and pretty when younger.

Dwarves: They see themselves as parts of the world machine, but they are alive, come in male and female, and do breed with each other. Admittedly the process where the male and female dwarf "grind away at their mortar and pestle" is alien and unsettling for them, and the resulting lump is grown in a vat. Still, they propably could breed quite normally, technically speaking.

Ducks: Are not Donald and Daffy! They are a variety of beastman. Often rediculed for their small size by their larger neighbours, but not necessarily any more rediculous than halflings or gnomes.

 

[RMS]

I dislike playing in Glorantha... I always feel like anything I do will soon get "Gregged" by some other player reading something I don't have in MY collection.

I read this from time to time and it's unfortunate IMO. I don't understand reading Glorantha and not playing it. (If I'm just going to read, I'll stick with the real world.) I run Glorantha frequently and just tell the players that it's our own creation and that nothing is official in our game (YGMV as Greg states) unless I say it is. I've never had a problem with this.

 

[mthomason]

I don't understand reading Glorantha and not playing it. (If I'm just going to read, I'll stick with the real world.)

You'll find there's quite a few people out there - myself included - that love to read RPG sourcebooks as if they were works of fiction. I can quite happily sit up till 3am leafing through a sourcebook for pretty much any game world.

 

[simonh]

I dislike playing in Glorantha... I always feel like anything I do will soon get "Gregged" by some other player reading something I don't have in MY collection.

I've heard this from a number of people. Not just of Glorantha, but in other game worlds it's usualy related to metaplot issues.

My approach has been to very explicitly choose a particular 'take' on Glorantha for each of my campaigns, to the extent in some cases of conciously overriding known cannon for the purposes of that campaign, if that's what it takes to achieve the effect I wanted in my games.

If it's any help, that's actualy exactly the approach Greg takes in his games too - a number of things in his previous campaigns nolonger fit with his current view of the world but as he says, that doesn't mean those games were any less fun at the time, or any less fun to remenisce about with the people who were in them.

IMHO, and I don't mean this to be rude, but it's a bit like not asking that girl out in case you get hurt or turnd down. Face it, you're going to get hurt at some point whichever way it goes - that's what happens in relationships. The question is, how are you going to deal with that?

Simon Hibbs

 

[mthomason]

Yup, the answer is usually to inform said player that

a) This is "your" Glorantha
b) If you were following the books to the letter, what would be the point as everyone could just go read about it and know stuff their characters don't.
c) They *really* need to stop arguing with the GM, who could quite easily have a few Broo get into that character's room next time they fall asleep.

 

[Cut]

You'll find there's quite a few people out there - myself included - that love to read RPG sourcebooks as if they were works of fiction. I can quite happily sit up till 3am leafing through a sourcebook for pretty much any game world.

I second that. I even cherished the background stories of some older computer games (ever played StarControl 2, great game, good story ).

If I would only get books that I could be sure of using anytime soon, my gaming library would be much thinner. I can take great joy in reading well done stuff for different settings, even if I'm not very likely to play in that system / setting.

Some systems (like Lone Wolf) just don't do it for my few gamer friends, but still I'd like to have all available titles and love burrying my nose in the books just for my amusement

 

[AKAramis]

I'm a history buff. Greg writes histories of places that never were in excellent historical fashion (save the lack of citations).

There is, however, WAY too much canon for Glorantha out there to become proficient in with less than a major investment of time and money. Which, despite being the primary GM in my gaming circles, I am about the most challenged for.

Further, I'm not terribly interested in trying to detail out enough to play in when I am reasonably certain a player will go and find a book to contradict me about the details.

So I buy the Glorantha stuff when it is dirt cheap (I picked up GoG for $4 during a closeout sale). Lunar Empire for HQ/HW I got for $2, again, in a bargain bin. Bought just for reading, not for playing. I did buy HW for the rules, to see if I could adapt to pendragon and see what the hype was... (No, and I'm still not certain, but I think it would make for a great sci-fi game.)

But playing it is not my goal in buying it. I borrow ideas from it, enjoy the histories, have fun reading, and rarely, composing materials around it, but I don't play it.

 

[atgxtg]

Yup, the answer is usually to inform said player that

a) This is "your" Glorantha
b) If you were following the books to the letter, what would be the point as everyone could just go read about it and know stuff their characters don't.
c) They *really* need to stop arguing with the GM, who could quite easily have a few Broo get into that character's room next time they fall asleep.

There is another Greg game that requires the same sort of thinking. Have you been reading your "big book" again?