Is RQ getting blander, edition by edition?

[atgxtg]

Considering that most of the information and detail has gone into the Heortland, Prax, Balastar, and parts of the Lunar Empire, quite a bit. If RQ2, the only ares details used Battle Magic, and even in RQ3, the vast bulk of materials did not involve Sorcery, and Sandy's alternate version wasn't widely available when I was running this.

I have always run Sorcery-intensive games, both in Alternate Earth and in Glorantha. I moved to the West of Glorantha in 1993, and never went back to Heortland, although my old group is now playing Sartar vs. Lunars (with a lot of Sorcery, though). Most of the stuff about the West was in fanzines, but it was available for an affordable amount of bucks.

There are vast areas and cultures of Glorantha that have been explored in HeroQuest for the first time, but the amount of information that HQ added to the understanding of the West is close to neglectable, so far. Of course this is going to change, as there are several books for the Malkioni areas in the pipeline at present.

A lot was avaialbe in fanzines, but it wan't easy to get those fanzines. Like I said, this way way back, before the net had caught on. I had a few issues of Wryms Fottnotes, and that was about it.

As for the West. I never really cared much for it. From what I saw, it was sort of bland. Pretty much everything other than the Dragon Pass/Prax setting seemed to be just a barebones setting thaqt needed to be fleshed out. Perhaps I'd have liked it if I had seen the same fanzines you had, but as I didn't, I was more inclined to running in non-Glorantha settings that I did have info on.

 

[Voriof]

So I think it is up to third party publishers to bring in more "mature" contents. What is sad is that third party publishers cannot write about Glorantha, at least not without lengthy negotiations with Greg, I suppose.

That's pretty much the case. Sadly, Cults was sanitized fairly heavily for sex. The rather minor Ulerian and Ernaldan fertility spells were removed but the torture, human sacrifice, canibalism, zombie-making, brain-sucking and head-hunting material was untouched. I was a bit surprised, considering that the picture of Oria the River Goddess is quite tittilating.

For what it is worth, I'd suggest looking at the 3rd Age material and just retrofitting it into 2nd Age Glorantha. In my experience, Greg's very reasonable about people writing HeroQuest. Quite a bit of the material I have written over the years would be considered somewhat risque by Mongoose standards but on several occasions Greg's turned it up a notch or two. On the other hand, HQ handles things like sex and interactions a bit more smoothly than MRQ or RQ did so it doesn't make as big a splash.

But YGWV. Mine does.

Jeff

 

[atgxtg]

That's pretty much the case. Sadly, Cults was sanitized fairly heavily for sex. The rather minor Ulerian and Ernaldan fertility spells were removed but the torture, human sacrifice, canibalism, zombie-making, brain-sucking and head-hunting material was untouched. I was a bit surprised, considering that the picture of Oria the River Goddess is quite tittilating.

Jeff

I think that is one of the problems with our modern culture. We seem to have some stange standards. Sex is taboo, but violence, gore, torture, etc. is wholesome family entertainment. Sort of explains why the world is the way it is.

Even RPgs, we have tons of game systems with lots of rules hat detail how to kill, main, mutilate, burn, each other, and selling them to children, but anything about sex is a no no.

It's messed up somehow.