Second Glorantha Preview

[Lord Twig]

I have the Cult Compendium, it is a great buy for anyone interested in the cults of the original Glorantha. As opposed to what HW/HQ has twisted it into.

I have no problem with honest to gods new stuff. But changing old stuff is not new stuff, it is changed old stuff, and it is confusing.

Halamalao is obviously Yelm. Why not just call him Yelm? Sure in Aldryami they might have another name for him, but I don't speak Aldryami and the book is not written in Aldryami. It is written in English. If they really can not help themselves and absolutely must give new names to old gods, at least clue the rest of us in on the addition.

I don't think they are just changing the names though. The are actually adding another Sun to Glorantha, which apparently only shines for Elves (excuse me, Aldryami) and no one else can see, since there is only one sun visible. Just like Elmal(sp?) only shines for Orlanthi I guess. :roll:

This goes back to my theory that the God Learners are absolutely right. The different races are worshiping the same gods and just don't know it. Either that or they are just mental constructs given power by mass belief in them. Imaginary figments given power by worship don't have to make sense, they just need enough people to believe in them to give them power.

And while Zorak Zoran is cool, as is Aldrya (the Good Food Goddess to Trolls), I would think it was apparent by now that I am a God Learner. :wink:

 

[Lord Twig]

As for what I would actually like to see. A more complete work up on Aldrya would be cool. I would love to hear more about Flamal, High King Elf and others. New gods, goddesses would also be good. Not sure what role they might fill. God of shrubbery. Goddess of rain, maybe she was a wind spirit that left Orlanth's court? Whatever! Just something new!

Instead we will likely get a write-up on the sun god (again) only this time he shines because the plants love him or whatever. How many sun gods do you need?

I don't see why all of these different cultures in Glorantha can not admit that the gods of other cultures exist and fulfill a vital role. If the gods are really real, and in Glorantha they are, then there is no disputing who shines in the sky or who causes storm clouds to appear. Try to worship a false god and you get nothing in return. Accept the Sun for who and what he is and you will be rewarded with magic.

 

[waiwode]

As opposed to what HW/HQ has twisted it into.

We've entered pretty far into the realm of opinion here. Some may differ.

But changing old stuff is not new stuff, it is changed old stuff, and it is confusing.

To me, it seems merely to be a view of creation and the gods, seen through the eyes of the elfs. The gloss by Spolorfal the Arranger, Dean of Pythos University highlights this (and touches on the central tenet of the God Learners at the same time). I find this altered view of creation to be a useful piece of game, and not at all merely recycled old fluff.

This goes back to my theory that the God Learners are absolutely right.

Theory, sir? Have you not read Spolorfal's most illuminating monogram on the subject? I nearly think you haven't, to brandish such loose and imprecise terms around, like a mere market mountebank!

Doug.

 

[HyrumOWC]

I think what we're looking at is a pre-God Learner universe. The 3rd Age is what results after the GL's have cataloged and sorted everything out.

Hyrum.

 

[Archer]

And with that, I believe we have come full circle

Yah, really. Before any new posters leap into this discussion, let me just let you know that the whole elf/aldryami appearance thing was hashed out to within an inch of it's life some time ago.

If you are a masochist by heart and still feel like reviewing the discussion -- all eighteen pages of it -- scroll back to page 2 or 3 of the RQ forum board and look for the Elves and Dwarves thread...

I started that discussion, and I never got any good answer.
Now that the "elves" have been verified to be walking trees, I definetly say they should be called ents, if you are not to use unique names at all.

 

[Archer]

What I find just so irritating is the use of the word elves, even if it is the humans that call them that. And using the explanation that the word "elf" are only used in the game due to the fact that the humans call them this, feels rather hollow.

This could be used to your advantage: not every human in Glorantha has met an elf or even heard about their true appearance. For all we know the players and their characters should believe that that elves are pointy eared Swedish hairdressers dancing in forests. Nothing will shock them more than finding out the truth.

Well, I can say with 111% certainty that my players want to play Elves, dwarves, etc, and not humans, to get the rather unique perspective these has. If you wonder why, go read some articles why aliens are used in scifi movies that deals with themes that are important or intressting to us humans.

Also calling elves beautiful is deceptive as beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I have discussed with Tolkien fan, who stated that Tolkien's elves shouldn't be necessary depicted as beautiful humans but as beings who first defined beauty. Over the years over sensibility for this peculiarity has perverted to our contemporary view of beauty. If we were to meet an elf we wouldn't be necessary delighted but scared by its looks.

Well, thats the thing, the Folklore elves always appears beautiful to the beholder, that is part of their magic.

The only thing tolkien did, was to solidify the image that goes with the world elf in modern fantasy litterature. So basically, using the world elf in a text puts a certain predefined image into the mind of the reader, and then you instead have an ent and say that is an elf. Too me that is an oxymoron of big proportions.
If the elves looked like elves (pointed ears etc.) and had a vague barklike skin, you would still be within the image the world elf conjures up in the imagination, but with a slight tweaking. That is a much better way to deal with it, than taking a smaller ent, and saying "this is an elf".
My point is that the word elf should not even be in the description, it should not be used, because the creature the word is to describe, is not anything like an elf.
Which brings forth the whole giant hole in the logic to why the humans would call the aldryama elves in the first place.

 

[Lord Twig]

I think what we're looking at is a pre-God Learner universe. The 3rd Age is what results after the GL's have cataloged and sorted everything out.

Well we can thank them for that at least then!

Absolutely a lot of this is pure opinion. I liked what was being done with Glorantha in the past and do not like what they are doing now. Without a doubt though, there have been changes. The term 'gregged' would not have developed if there hadn't.

As you can tell I feel fairly strongly about a lot of this. I am an old, die-hard fan and I don't like when things I liked from the past are changed into something that I do not like. Obviously there will be some who view these changes as positive, but I question how many.

One final thought on Elves. I know that Mongoose is hand-cuffed to Greg and probably had little choice on how Elves would be displayed, but they will lose customers because of it. This fact is evident to anyone who looks into it.

I am not saying that Elves need to be the cookie-cutter elves of Middle-Earth and D&D. They can and should be different. But losing their human-like appearance will be a turn-off to many gamers looking at the books for the first time.

Bottom line, people like to play attractive characters. Look at all of the Online games. Do they have ugly characters in them? Sure they have playable races like Trolls and Ogres for people who want to have a character with brute force, but for everything else the demand is for physically attractive characters.

 

[Lord Twig]

Here is a picture of something that would be a little more acceptable.

http://gionco.com/Malos/Une%20Aldryami%20noble%20Civilis%E9e.jpg

Or this one,

http://gionco.com/Malos/Un%20Aldryami%20pr%EAtre%20civilis%E9.jpg

Edit: Heck, here is the whole site. It is in French, but has some great Fan drawings of Gloranthan creatures.

http://gionco.com/malos.htm

Edit again: Warning that the broo pictures are pretty graphic. Although highly acurate in my opinion.

 

[Archer]

Stepping away from the ghastly Aldryami (Elf) (that is how the book lists them). I am not liking a lot of the writing.

I already suspected it, but this just confirms it. The huge array of unrelated and confusing gods are going to be portrayed in the Glorantha book.

Eron, Halamalao, Bebester, Bergara, Vronkal, Trigora, Veratha, etc...

WHO THE HECK ARE THESE PEOPLE! :x

Don't answer that! I don't want to know!

The problem is that they probably correspond in some ways to gods I have heard of. Yelm, Mostal, Zorak Zoran, etc. But I have no way of knowing which is which. Is Bebester Zorak Zoran or Wakboth? Were they fighting Chaos? Trolls? Other races? Falamal seems to be Flamal and Aldrya is still Aldrya at least.

Yuck. Anyway, I will still probably buy the book and pull what I can out of it. I will be throwing away a great deal though.

And I will just pretend that the image of the Tree Creature from the Planet Gregging does not exist.

I have decided on a whole other solution to the problems with all the multitude of gods, and other crap put into Glorantha to make it *irony on*unique*irony off*; I will simply not use Glorantha. I might use some ideas, if there are anything that is at all usable and that can be brought screaming and kicking into year 2006 from 1966.

RuneQuest for me is the potential to get a Basic Role-play like system as an OGL game, for which I can write my own SciFi and Fantasy Settings.

Unfortunately, from what I have seen so far, I have very strong doubts that the system is going to be able to top either RQ3 or Stormbringer 5 as my simple-to-use-and-run-system-of-choice. So where does that leave me? I have an OGL with a Basic Role-play like system, and only the OGL is tempting, since it would allow me to get a system for my settings and publish them, a system that is fairly compatible with Basic Role-playing and would allow people to use that if they prefer.

I would love to be proven wrong, and find that I love the RQ system though. Because an open Basic Role-play like role-playing system have been something I wanted for a long time (I never really liked Gurps).

 

[Archer]

One final thought on Elves. I know that Mongoose is hand-cuffed to Greg and probably had little choice on how Elves would be displayed, but they will lose customers because of it. This fact is evident to anyone who looks into it.

I am not saying that Elves need to be the cookie-cutter elves of Middle-Earth and D&D. They can and should be different. But losing their human-like appearance will be a turn-off to many gamers looking at the books for the first time.

Bottom line, people like to play attractive characters. Look at all of the Online games. Do they have ugly characters in them? Sure they have playable races like Trolls and Ogres for people who want to have a character with brute force, but for everything else the demand is for physically attractive characters.

Alas, my point earlier about using the words elf to lure players into thinking some of the most loved races of fantasy RPGing is available to play in RQ (if you do not believe me, check how many playes elves in World of Warcraft, or how many plays Elves in any pen-n-paper RPG for that matter).

As I mentioned earlier, any game that has to a great extent tried to change the standard fantasy fare just to be original, have not succeeded very well in the past.
Either it ends up being too weird (talislanta) and ends up with a small fan-base that plays the game. Or it sells for a while, before it sinks into oblivion (Wizards and Warlocks, Chronopia, Gemini are good examples).

As for my reasoning about using a name to relate to a specific phenomenon, object, or creature;
If we take the archetypichal image of the celt warrior of history, and start modify his appearance, lets give him four arms, three eyes, oh he is a plant so he has bark skin, and he breathes fire. The celt also is highly relious and believes in roman christianity, and he cares nothing for nature, exploiting its resources for his delight. After all, the earth is there for his taking, and does not need to be worshiped or revered.
This is clearly a celt in our setting. Because, at what point would he stop being a celt?
You see my point?

 

[Cobra]

I don't like when things I liked from the past are changed into something that I do not like.

Nobody likes when something they like is changed into something they don't like. That's the definition of not liking something!

I am not saying that Elves need to be the cookie-cutter elves of Middle-Earth and D&D. They can and should be different. But losing their human-like appearance will be a turn-off to many gamers looking at the books for the first time.

Personally, I think this is a little melodramatic. I find it very hard to believe that Fantasy Roleplayers would be unable to pretend that elves are whatever they want them to be and would discard a whole system or world based on one picture. If you and your players want aldryami to be elves, then make them elves. Use the stats from the book and describe the visuals however you like. If you don't want them to be elves or even confused with elves, insist on calling them Aldryami. You can even subtract a hero point when people break the rule, if you want. Or, if you don't mind that they're called elves and look like driftwood, use them as written and give them names like 'Tumbleweed' or 'Snotty Wrangler', or even 'Lord Twig'. Do whatever you want. IT'S ALL MAKE BELIEVE AFTERALL!

Cobra

 

[Mac V]

I have noticed a large amount of howling over small details. I guess if these things are all such big deals to you, don't buy it. I don't mean to belittle anyone's feelings on the subject, really. It's cool that everyone's so passionate about the game. It's part of what interests me about RQ. However, if RQ 1,2,3 etc. is THE game for you, than why even look at MRQ? Just play that edition. Plus, this is all 2nd age stuff, so if you play 3rd age, who cares what the elves look like on page x? You already know what you want them to look like, just describe them that way.

I'm new. I'm looking forward to trying this out, and it seems to be a good place to start rather than trying to hunt down OOP books. Plus, what you see in these previews is what you're going to get, no matter how hard you object. I'm sure it's too late in production to redo much.

Most importantly, I haven't heard a bad thing yet from the few people who actually played the game at the open day and were kind enough to post.

I guess what I'm saying is this game might not be for everyone, but let's at least see the books, and read some reviews from those who have actually read the entire book and played a game or 2 before we condemn it.

I'm not trying to protect Mongoose. There have been serious issues in the past with some products. We know what they are. If these books repeat those errors, I'm done. Period. I will not buy a "corrected" edition. I'm just not ready to deep six the whole thing based on a few pages of text and a single picture.

 

[SteveMND]

I started that discussion, and I never got any good answer.

Nah; you got plenty of reasonable answers. You may not have agreed with them, but that didn't keep them from being good.

 

[andakitty]

Hey, I am a real hardcore RQ/BRP oldtimer. I like what I see. It would take some major blunders to turn me away from MRQ at this point. In fact, it looks right now like a better system than RQ, probably better than my favorite, Stormbringer. It looks good enough to forgive little warts and blemishes. I like having a living, in print supported game to look forward to again. Every change, to me, has been an improvement or is no more of a flaw than whatever rule it replaced. I'm in unless Mongoose performs a major, major fumble.

I even like the non-sophomoric writing... :roll:

 

[homerjsinnott]

And with that, I believe we have come full circle

Yah, really. Before any new posters leap into this discussion, let me just let you know that the whole elf/aldryami appearance thing was hashed out to within an inch of it's life some time ago.

If you are a masochist by heart and still feel like reviewing the discussion -- all eighteen pages of it -- scroll back to page 2 or 3 of the RQ forum board and look for the Elves and Dwarves thread...

I started that discussion, and I never got the answer I believed was right.
Now that the "elves" have been verified to be walking trees, I definetly say they should be called ents, if you are not to use unique names at all.

Edited for the truth.

 

[Archer]

Here is a picture of something that would be a little more acceptable.

http://gionco.com/Malos/Une%20Aldryami%20noble%20Civilis%E9e.jpg

Or this one,

http://gionco.com/Malos/Un%20Aldryami%20pr%EAtre%20civilis%E9.jpg

I agree, those are elves not ents.

 

[Archer]

Yah, really. Before any new posters leap into this discussion, let me just let you know that the whole elf/aldryami appearance thing was hashed out to within an inch of it's life some time ago.

If you are a masochist by heart and still feel like reviewing the discussion -- all eighteen pages of it -- scroll back to page 2 or 3 of the RQ forum board and look for the Elves and Dwarves thread...

I started that discussion, and I never got the answer I believed was right.
Now that the "elves" have been verified to be walking trees, I definetly say they should be called ents, if you are not to use unique names at all.

Edited for the truth.

Edited for your point of view, not the truth. It is always easier to call someone names, belittle them, or make fun of them, rather than to meet their arguments, when you find yourself running out of good arguments to meet them with. So please, dont. Let us continue to keep the discussion civil.

The fact remains, all the reasons I got why the elves should look like trees, and still be called elves, seemed hollow. Especially since RQ had elves in the past, and now they are gone, replaced with mini-ents.
The only reason to call the mini-ents elves, seem to be because adryami in the past were true elves in apperance (and in the meaning of the word as used in modern fantasy litterature), and changing the name now (the name the humans use), would turn away some RQ players.

Give me a fact, showing where the meaning of the word elf refers to being that looks like a walking tree, and I will accept that as a good argument for the current aldryami to be called elves.
In fact, there is a stronger case for using the word elf to describe a short stocky human with a beard (dwarf), since they have been somewhat interchangable throughout mythology (especially in the Eddan). But then, that would go against what the word "elf" and "dwarf" has come to mean in modern fantasy litterature, and would go against the imagery that is now associated with each of those two words.

Sure, as someone said, RQ is make belief. But so are all RPGs, including Talislanta. And you can ask yourself and other Talislanta players (other than me), why that game has not gained a greater following with it's very non-standard races.

 

[Mac V]

Especially since RQ had elves in the past, and now they are gone, replaced with mini-ents.

Well, not to nit-pick, but wouldn't the past editions of elves actually be in the future? Maybe they evolve. :lol:

 

[kpmcdona]

I agree that gloranthan elves don't match most real world elven folklore, at least as described in wikipedia. That said, gloranthan elves have been the way they are for a loooong time now, and IMHO are better off the way they are - plant people. I would be very dissapointed if their depiction went back to the way it was in the late 1970s. I like my non-humans to look non-human. Pointy ears just aren't alien enough for me.

In my game I don't generally use the term "elf" because I don't want the tolkien influence to prejudice my players. I stick with the term Aldryami if speaking generally, and "talarg" if speaking from an Oronin Valley (where my game takes place) perspective.

YGWV

 

[wartorn]

Here is a picture of something that would be a little more acceptable.

http://gionco.com/Malos/Une%20Aldryami%20noble%20Civilis%E9e.jpg

Or this one,

http://gionco.com/Malos/Un%20Aldryami%20pr%EAtre%20civilis%E9.jpg

Edit: Heck, here is the whole site. It is in French, but has some great Fan drawings of Gloranthan creatures.

http://gionco.com/malos.htm

Edit again: Warning that the broo pictures are pretty graphic. Although highly acurate in my opinion.

I would have thought "Lord Twig" would be exhilirated with the reimagined style.

I dunno;I don't find the 'mini-ent elves' attractive and mysterious. I do think they fit better with the Gloranthan mythology (what little I know of it). To me they look quite hideous and terrifying - the perfect villains to drag hapless PCs into the bog pits for sacrifice. Shambling Mounds anyone?