Glorantha - How was it back then and how is it now?

[Séadna]

Do your Characters HeroQuest?

I had one, a risky culmination of a certain PC's beliefs. Only that PC heroquested and died as a result.

Do they use specific ones already known and detailed in different Chaosium or Stafford writings, or do you just freeball it based on what's going on and have someone go on something like the "Orlanth learns to love a clear sky." Heroquest?

It wasn't part of Chaosium's wiritngs, but was one of the myths present in my fleshing out of the Maran Gor (earthquake-cannibal god) cult. The player was aware of the myth from early on, but it wasn't particularly intended as "the one" for heroquesting. It was heavily based on older Babylonian Enkidu material.

 

[CRKrueger]

I had one, a risky culmination of a certain PC's beliefs. Only that PC heroquested and died as a result.


It wasn't part of Chaosium's wiritngs, but was one of the myths present in my fleshing out of the Maran Gor (earthquake-cannibal god) cult. The player was aware of the myth from early on, but it wasn't particularly intended as "the one" for heroquesting. It was heavily based on older Babylonian Enkidu material.

Did it have a specific signature name like the other Myths do like "Monkey Teaches Man to Climb" or was it more general?

 

[Séadna]

Did it have a specific signature name like the other Myths do like "Monkey Teaches Man to Climb" or was it more general?

It was more general than that, closer to a Mesopotamian or Egyptian tale so I didn't go purely for the stuff you'd see in RQG or other official Glorantha stuff.

 

[Alai]

I'm willing to bet you could arm all of us with greataxes and have us go to town, and no one would cut their own head off. Leg injuries, sure, just like you get when people haven't been shown how to cut wood properly. Friendly fire injuries, sure, especially if we tried any formation. But cut off your own head...nope.

As I say, by the Law in the Letter, it doesn't actually mention cranial amputation, it's basically saying any self-inflicted immediate fatality above the neckline. I'll grant you even a 0.01% chance of that still seems on the high side to me, but it's about as low as the system can account for without yet more sub-tables, rerolls, or other such fractional-accounting malarkey. Which wouldn't be rocket surgery to do, of course. You could even steal a leaf out of Steve Jackson's book, and start the most common "hit self" result at reduced damaged, then 15% of the remainder are specials, and 5% crits. (Stealing from Evil Stevie seems only fair, as he's often been described as writing GURPS with a copy of TFT, RQ, etc, open in front of him (no doubt something of an exaggeration), and if we add Murphy's Rule to the picture -- "note to self, don't have 'self-crits'"...)

There's nothing wrong in theory with Critical Hits and Fumbles, but it has to be a weighted roll, based on differences in skill. Bruce Lee in a one-on-one fight against an untrained nobody, there's practically no chance he'd lose. Get him in a bar with an unknown number of possible assailants, his chance of walking out goes down a lot.

Presumably Broos Lee has a Moonchuck, Martial Arts Punch, Kick, etc, and Dodge skill all at Chaotically high levels, terrifyingly far above 100%. So one-on-nobody, he has a 95% chance of a hit, 4% chance of a miss, and 1% of a fumble. (His chance of a Special (Bludgeon, presumably) or a critical is likely some terrifyingly large chunk of the "hits", but as their respective exact skills aren't in evidence, I'm glossing over the details of that.) And conversely, the untrainee still has a 1% chance of a crit, (0% chance of a special, due to the way the rounding works), and another 4% chance of a standard hit, regardless (before Broos gets his Parry or Dodge in, that is). Those are hard-coded maxes and mins in the system, so that's kinda what they've designed-in as a "shizzle hazzens" floor, at least within its design-space of combats they're even bothering to try to simulate.

RQ is a "numbers matter" system to a fairly terrifying extent. (As is RL, most would agree. Something worth reminding MMA zealots when they get over-excited about "realistic" and "effective" martial arts being determined by two weight-matched guys in their undercrackers punching and wrestling one-on-one in a setting with no weapons, gouging, small-joint manipulation, etc.) Six 50% guys are a lot easier to come by than one 100% skill fellah, but I know which my money would be on in a fight.

This is of course ignoring that Fantasy Earth Broos would have Ki Skills, Gloranthan Mr Lee would have Sons of the Bolt or perhaps to be be on-the-nose, Darudan type martial-arts mystical magic...

The world has to be able to exist as if the NPCs running around who are doing things similar to the PCs are succeeding and failing according to their abilities just like the PCs.

Assuming of course that you want the world to be consistent and verisimilar. If your game runs on different logic, then obviously you're doing something different.

That the world is consistent doesn't necessarily mean that the game need be entirely so. As soon as you decide your character's not going to die in chargen, you're buying in to some degree of narrative exceptionalism -- whether that's Plot Protection, or Plot Persecution. But I of course acknowledge that people are going to have different sweet-spots on this, and will and should select and hack games according to their 100% legit preferences.

 

[Moonglum]

Re. the OP, I think the big difference between early and later RQ is that the late70's/early80's version was smaller, more intimate and more human in its scale and focus. Your world could be traversed in a week and contained everything you could want or need. And, because the cults provided a sort of spiritual and cultural element of character growth, it never felt limiting - there were grand things waiting for you, but you could get them even when you stayed close to home. Anyway, I think the expansive world building of later years might make for better fiction but the small, tight focus of the original made for better gaming.

 

[Acmegamer]

You could even steal a leaf out of Steve Jackson's book, and start the most common "hit self" result at reduced damaged, then 15% of the remainder are specials, and 5% crits. (Stealing from Evil Stevie seems only fair, as he's often been described as writing GURPS with a copy of TFT, RQ, etc, open in front of him (no doubt something of an exaggeration), and if we add Murphy's Rule to the picture -- "note to self, don't have 'self-crits'"...)

So... I'm picking up a tone here in your posts. Seems you've got an issue with Steve Jackson? It colors your posts in a way that frankly I don't really care for honestly. Care to clarify the issue(s) so we can understand how it impacts whatever points your going on about in these RQ related threads?

 

[Alai]

So... I'm picking up a tone here in your posts. Seems you've got an issue with Steve Jackson? It colors your posts in a way that frankly I don't really care for honestly. Care to clarify the issue(s) so we can understand how it impacts whatever points your going on about in these RQ related threads?

A tone wildly different from the intended one, then. If it wasn't clear that "Evil Stevie" was entirely a tongue-in-cheek reference -- a time-honored and self-applied one, at that, so I can't even claim any originality here -- then please interpolate emoticons until that effect is more evident. I have no "issues" whatsoever to clarity, but happy to clarify anything I actually said (or "whatever I'm going on about", as you so generously characterise that).

 

[Acmegamer]

A tone wildly different from the intended one, then. If it wasn't clear that "Evil Stevie" was entirely a tongue-in-cheek reference -- a time-honored and self-applied one, at that, so I can't even claim any originality here -- then please interpolate emoticons until that effect is more evident. I have no "issues" whatsoever to clarity, but happy to clarify anything I actually said (or "whatever I'm going on about", as you so generously characterise that).

Works for me, I just thought I starting to see a tone in regards to GURPS/Steve Jackson in some of your counter points about RQ to some. That you were using them as a part of your counter and in a way that was also being critical of GURPS/Steve Jackson in the same breath. One of those situations where text based tonal communication fails.

 

[Alai]

Works for me, I just thought I starting to see a tone in regards to GURPS/Steve Jackson in some of your counter points about RQ to some. That you were using them as a part of your counter and in a way that was also being critical of GURPS/Steve Jackson in the same breath. One of those situations where text based tonal communication fails.

It's a very real phenomenon! No, definitively not, I was just continuing someone else's earlier example, as it seemed a useful parallel to the cases at issue (hitting yourself on the one hand, killing yourself in the process on the other), and it's a system I'm pretty familiar with (and even have quite a few supplements for, if I could summon the energy to make it to my spare-room bookshelves). Whereas -- say -- Rolemaster I only have edited-comedy-highlights knowledge of.

It's not a system I see myself actually foreseeably using these days -- too much crunch -- and worse, prep for the crunch -- for the bang, basically. Then again, much the same is true of RQ, except that I'm more likely to buy RQG things for the G part, so running them with the pre-attached RQ bits is somewhat more likely, at least as the occasional treat/vice.

Before I wander off the topic of Fumbles entirely and start waxing hypothetical about heroquesting, I just remembered the surgery with a 300% mortality rate. Not combat, and didn't manage to kill himself, so slightly off-topic, but beyond the dreams of any RPG critical failure table I know of! Really what's needed is some sort of (to steal from another SJG gag) "glaive-glaive-guisarme and roll thrice more" type of result!

 

[ScytheSong]

So, I love Glorantha. You can probably tell from my avatar.

I can't actually answer the question as posed, because my stint in Glorantha (as a player) was in the mid-90's, with an enthusiastic GM who had all the old RQ stuff (and tried to use it all, with mixed success). We never got to the point of actual HeroQuesting in that game, mainly because we wound up being rootless wanderers in the Big Rubble of Pavis after leaving our home village in Dragon Pass. The key to that campaign was our first session was a "session zero" like encounter where we rolled back our characters as created ten years -- my character was one of two nine-year-olds, and the youngest of us was five in that scenario -- where trolls attacked our village. Our actions that night wound up being the basis of our characters' relationships in the game as it went forward.

My fascination with Ducks and Heroquesting actually came later, when I got Hero Wars and then HeroQuest, and had more access to the online materials. The Durulz of Duck Point are probably my favorite thing in Glorantha, and the question of their curse and their doom is one that I have answered to my satisfaction -- they are the bulwark that keeps the Upland Marsh from overrunning the entire pass (and possibly the world). Originally Humakti who were cursed to be svelte, buoyant waterfowl due to cowardice, they are tasked with containing Delecti the Necromancer in his swamp -- when the Ducks die, they stay dead and cannot be turned into undead. Of course, with Delecti allied with the Lunars, the Lunars are out to kill the Ducks.

On Heroquests, I have an entire dissertation that I outlined for a Liturgy class in seminary (Episcopalian) relating Gloranthan Heroquests to the High Church/Anglo-Catholic Palm Sunday/Holy Week/Good Friday/Easter Vigil series of liturgies. A High Church understanding of Liturgy directly paralells a Gloranthan understanding of Heroquesting -- recapitulating the myths of the community in a way that the community will participate in. But I could blather on about that for pages if I got going any further.

 

[Alai]

SInce it's RQ, Glorantha and Heroquesting we're talking about, I have a few questions for the Glorantha GMs.

Do your Characters HeroQuest?
Do they use specific ones already known and detailed in different Chaosium or Stafford writings, or do you just freeball it based on what's going on and have someone go on something like the "Orlanth learns to love a clear sky." Heroquest?

For full disclosure, I haven't run a Gloranthan came for a while, and when I did, I didn't have the cojones to actually run any heroquests. The last couple of Gloranthan games I did run were HW/HQ, which while they had a little more support for heroquesting, still very much implied it was horrendously difficult in gameworld terms, as it was focusing on the strictly Hero Plane type. So this is just my current theorising on the topic, devoid of any real relevant Actual Play credentials.

Most hqs are so-called "practice" ones, in that you've not physically travelled to the Gates of Dusk and banged on the door to get into Hell, or Hero Plane variations of that theme. You're still in the Middle World, so events still have to make a basic sort of mundane sense, too. You can act according to mythic dream-logic, but that's not generally going to be how the world reacts back. I'm not sure I see this as an entirely binary distinction, but it's a useful one to have in mind: what's happening mythically, grand, but what's happening physically matters too.

Some presentations of heroquests make them look very railroady. You start at Stage 1, if resolve that you move to Stage 2, and so on. That's not super-interesting unless you frame that differently. One device is to emphasise the difficulty of making each such journey in the first place. If it's a mundane-world world, there's the obvious logistical ones. Where to even find a particular ally or enemy when you need it? The trick is making the world conform to the myth, and letting the PCs do the heavy lifting on that, rather than having it arrive on top of them like a Russian-service banquet in which you've drastically over-ordered. For actual Other Side quests, I wonder if making finding the next one extremely challenging might not be a useful technique. If you miss, you're "Lost in the God Time", or whatever that King of Dragon Pass screen was exactly, or simply booted out on yer arse back into the ritual circle where you started. The proviso being, making it 'resumable' after suitable preparation or remediation.

Another key aspect to the monorail problem is to allow and indeed encourage taking different ones, not necessarily just the 'canonical' version of a particular myth. In fact, in a way that's almost inevitable. If the world were exactly as per the myth, there'd be no need to do the heroquest! Or at least, it wouldn't be a heroquest, it'd be a worship ceremony. We're not murdering the sun today! Tomorrow? Who knows. Or the ritual you perform to sack some points of POW for rune magic and gain a new divine blessing -- Cloud Clear! "High level" heroquests with no random elements are reputedly recipes for utter disaster. (Game-world disaster, that is, over and above the likely game-table one.) The Lightbringers' Quest requires a Trickster, indeed -- how random is that? Each myth will in practice have numerous different variations, and hence so will each possible heroquest. Furthermore, Arkat's key insight into heroquesting was that the myths are linked -- you can map them, and where the paths cross, you can switch from one to another.

So to try to sum all that up and return to the question as originally posed... I think that the PC necessarily knows the myth. Knows several relevant ones, indeed. While I'd love to see yet more published myths and even extensive maps of them -- the God Plane as the Web of Arachne Solara -- that's obviously not practical as prerequisites. For this to be at all gameable, we need to be a little most fast and loose. I'd ask the player for the bare bones (and as much flesh as they'd care to add) of what they're trying to do: enough to state -- or more likely for me to infer what some of opposition might be, what possible prowess or virtues are to be demonstrated, and what the prize might be. Then try to relate those roughly to the heroes' personal circumstances. The Thunder Brothers that refuse to allow there to be a clear sky -- sound like any of their clan, their neighbours -- their own PC party? The wise counsel that shows up to tell Orlanth to take a feckin' chill pill and lose the attitude (Ernalda, Chalana Arroy maybe?), ditto. Some sort of reconciliation with a Solar figure? Anyhoo, pick one of those that has some resonance, and start from there. Then depending on how that goes, improvise something for the next stage of the (supposedly!) planned myth, for a variant on the same theme (take the player's intent and remix it a little with a slightly different take on it), or some entirely different mythlet (screw enjoying a clear sky, it's time to stab some Yelmies).

 

[Alai]

But I could blather on about that for pages if I got going any further.

By all means do! Unless anyone here has any objection? In which event, blather on for pages adjacently.

 

[ffilz]

On the subject of Hero Questing, I have never run a Hero Quest. Partly we never got PCs to a point where it was likely something they could do, partly because the lack of any rules for such that made any sense, and that was with being a Wild Hunt subscriber and reading Steve Marsh's zines on Hero Questing, and I think even Greg Stafford wrote a bit on Hero Questing. Seriously for me, its an aspect of Glorantha I don't have much interest in.

Good point also about the smaller scope of RQ2 era Glorantha. That's certainly what I run and is what draws me to RQ and Glorantha.

 

[Acmegamer]

ffilz Right? I mean seriously it was so nebulous, something that we might talk about once in a while but never really focused on. In the early years in particular I'm not even sure if we even knew exactly what it entailed/meant. I think Alai's post was rather well done on listing all the particulars and issues when you consider Hero Questing.

We just didn't have a lot of information as to what Greg meant in regards to it, years later of course it became a lot more clear as to what was it was about. even then though it just always felt potentially problematic to even attempt and felt more like a solo activity honestly. By then I'd moved on to running GURPS and still using the Thieves World setting as my campaign world anyhow and if you know Thieves World, it doesn't feel like a good setting fit to do something like Hero Questing even if I was still using RQ as my mechanics system. Is it was I ended up preferring/liking the Avalon Hill version of RQ when Greg and company had them publish it and separating Glorantha into its own setting books/box sets.

As an aside I still wish that Chaosium would put out all of those box sets and books from the AH days in an updated physical form along with PDFs.

 

[Séadna]

I got my understanding from our own soltakss 's supplement here:

Secrets of HeroQuesting - Chaosium | Jonstown Compendium | DriveThruRPG.com

Secrets of HeroQuesting - Ready to do the Impossible? Come along and discover the Secrets of Heroquesting in this all-new Jonstown Compedium! Insi

www.drivethrurpg.com

I didn't run it as a railroad and the supplement does a good job of explaining why it wouldn't be based on what Glorantha is like.

 

[ffilz]

ffilz Right? I mean seriously it was so nebulous, something that we might talk about once in a while but never really focused on. In the early years in particular I'm not even sure if we even knew exactly what it entailed/meant. I think Alai's post was rather well done on listing all the particulars and issues when you consider Hero Questing.

We just didn't have a lot of information as to what Greg meant in regards to it, years later of course it became a lot more clear as to what was it was about. even then though it just always felt potentially problematic to even attempt and felt more like a solo activity honestly. By then I'd moved on to running GURPS and still using the Thieves World setting as my campaign world anyhow and if you know Thieves World, it doesn't feel like a good setting fit to do something like Hero Questing even if I was still using RQ as my mechanics system. Is it was I ended up preferring/liking the Avalon Hill version of RQ when Greg and company had them publish it and separating Glorantha into its own setting books/box sets.

As an aside I still wish that Chaosium would put out all of those box sets and books from the AH days in an updated physical form along with PDFs.

Having access to the Wild Hunt writings of Marsh and Stafford made it less nebulous, but still hard to wrap my head around and not something that made sense with the scale of PCs we were running. And honestly, I've never been that interested in running things at an earth shattering scale. I prefer a more personal scale no matter what game system and genre I'm running. I'd say the little bit of Champions I ran even ran at a personal scale. This personal scale contributes to the challenges I'm having with an Aldrya Rune Priest (soon to be Rune Lord Priest). There are other cults where a Rune Priest could still operate at a personal scale with a mostly human party but an Aldryami Rune level really shouldn't have anything to do with personal scale stuff of interest to humans... Interestingly the problem would be less with players and a campaign more dug into the larger scale stuff of the Glorantha of today. I'm hoping the season long training period for the Aldrya Rune Lord separates the PC enough that the player either moves on to a different game of starts a new PC.

 

[Acmegamer]

Having access to the Wild Hunt writings of Marsh and Stafford made it less nebulous, but still hard to wrap my head around and not something that made sense with the scale of PCs we were running. And honestly, I've never been that interested in running things at an earth shattering scale. I prefer a more personal scale no matter what game system and genre I'm running. I'd say the little bit of Champions I ran even ran at a personal scale. This personal scale contributes to the challenges I'm having with an Aldrya Rune Priest (soon to be Rune Lord Priest). There are other cults where a Rune Priest could still operate at a personal scale with a mostly human party but an Aldryami Rune level really shouldn't have anything to do with personal scale stuff of interest to humans... Interestingly the problem would be less with players and a campaign more dug into the larger scale stuff of the Glorantha of today. I'm hoping the season long training period for the Aldrya Rune Lord separates the PC enough that the player either moves on to a different game of starts a new PC.

Same here, I prefer more down and dirty gaming, lower magic levels etc. Sword and Sorcery, Fafhrd and Gray Mouser style gaming. Which is why I loved Chaosium's Thieves World box set. The book series (and box set) "mostly" were more low key on magic and shaking/shattering game play. It's a style I prefer to run to be sure.

 

[Alai]

And honestly, I've never been that interested in running things at an earth shattering scale. I prefer a more personal scale no matter what game system and genre I'm running.

As I say, it's not a 'scale' thing at all. Any Gloranthan with any sort of relationship to myth (i.e., all of them), and a wish to whack reality back in line with it -- or their interpretation of it, more to the point -- is heroquest-fodder.

This personal scale contributes to the challenges I'm having with an Aldrya Rune Priest (soon to be Rune Lord Priest). There are other cults where a Rune Priest could still operate at a personal scale with a mostly human party but an Aldryami Rune level really shouldn't have anything to do with personal scale stuff of interest to humans...

What aldryami need is a 'hook'. There's various reasons an ARLP might have left their forest and be hanging around with humans, but 'generic adventuring' is not, at least on the face it it, one of them. Of course, how playable that'll be for the group is another matter, especially if there's a big skill-level differential to boot. Don't want to return it into Elfquest (also featuring their human sidekicks).

 

[ffilz]

As I say, it's not a 'scale' thing at all. Any Gloranthan with any sort of relationship to myth (i.e., all of them), and a wish to whack reality back in line with it -- or their interpretation of it, more to the point -- is heroquest-fodder.

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at here, but my campaign just doesn't run on the same level of myth as Greg Stafford's Glorantha. Sorry, that's how I play it. And no one in all my campaigns has ever looked for a Hero Quest. And my campaign really is at a more personal scale than the Glorantha lore of the past 20 odd years touches on.

What aldryami need is a 'hook'. There's various reasons an ARLP might have left their forest and be hanging around with humans, but 'generic adventuring' is not, at least on the face it it, one of them. Of course, how playable that'll be for the group is another matter, especially if there's a big skill-level differential to boot. Don't want to return it into Elfquest (also featuring their human sidekicks).

Yes, the whole Alryami PC thing was a mistake on my part. The player has not taken multiple hints, and a few weeks ago pitched a fit in chat that I didn't allow all (or almost all) the sentient stocks from the rule book for PCs, claiming balance was a fiction (yes, to an extent it is, but damn, elves just get way too good stats combined with really good rolls using a 4d6k3 type roll up, combined with rich noble, combined with how I handle ability bonus on top of previous experience from the appendix resulted in a god-like PC compared to the others).

 

[Séadna]

At least going by what I read Heroquests don't have to occur at the Epic scale of play. This is from the supplement above:

HeroQuests occur on many levels of power, importance and danger. The Power Levels of HeroQuest (from fairly safe to dangerous) are Mundane HeroQuests, SpellLearning Rituals, Holy Day Rites, Other Place HeroQuests and Other Side HeroQuests. These can take place within normal time or in the mythic GodTime.

 

[ffilz]

At least going by what I read Heroquests don't have to occur at the Epic scale of play. This is from the supplement above:

Yea, I haven't picked that up. I suppose I should, but then, like I said, I've been content to leave Hero Quests out of my game.

 

[Séadna]

Yea, I haven't picked that up. I suppose I should, but then, like I said, I've been content to leave Hero Quests out of my game.

Oh that's grand, just wondering is this some shift in how they were presented over the years. Like early on did Stafford only give examples of ultra-epic ones or something.

 

[ffilz]

Oh that's grand, just wondering is this some shift in how they were presented over the years. Like early on did Stafford only give examples of ultra-epic ones or something.

I'll have to dig out the Wild Hunt material and summarize it. My memory is they weren't necessarily epic, but they definitely were more than just spell learning. I'm not sure how clear they were about what you gained from them. Most of them were also written by Steve Marsh which of course can not be taken as canon in any way.

 

[Alai]

I'll have to dig out the Wild Hunt material and summarize it. My memory is they weren't necessarily epic, but they definitely were more than just spell learning.

Well, yeah. I don't think anyone said they're "just spell learning". But if you were to game out sacrificing for rune magic on a SR-by-SR basis/method roleplaying basis, it'd be a lot like a rather dull, long, railroady, uneventful (you hope!) heroquest. 'Real' heroquests are anything that are more innovative or 'corrective' than that.

At least going by what I read Heroquests don't have to occur at the Epic scale of play.

Bingo. I thought I'd said that in terms a couple of times, but there's obviously some wrist-action in saying it just right. If you're praying for the sun to rise, that's (some small portion of) a heroquest. If you willfully go looking for some Uz to beef with, ditto. (Assuming you have some association with some religion with some myths about fighting trolls... and whose doesn't?) If your heart stirred a little at the line "what we do in life… echoes in eternity" you're getting heroquesting. Some are more self-conscious, some are 'deeper' (AKA, crazy-overpowered-er), some are longer and more elaborate, but that's the essence of it.

I got my understanding from our own soltakss 's supplement here:

Secrets of HeroQuesting - Chaosium | Jonstown Compendium | DriveThruRPG.com

Secrets of HeroQuesting - Ready to do the Impossible? Come along and discover the Secrets of Heroquesting in this all-new Jonstown Compedium! Insi

www.drivethrurpg.com

You say "our own", but I'm not sure I've found an RP on which there isn't a soltakss. And he's said a lot of interesting things about heroquesting on many of them! Also also on his webpage, if we didn't plug that yet. (The site itself is a bit of a throwback to the '90s, so I assume that'll be incentive in itself to get the nicely formatted JC product!)

ffilz Right? I mean seriously it was so nebulous, something that we might talk about once in a while but never really focused on. In the early years in particular I'm not even sure if we even knew exactly what it entailed/meant. I think Alai's post was rather well done on listing all the particulars and issues when you consider Hero Questing.

Thenkyuthenkyuthenkyu. I originally meant to just give a simple answer to CRKrueger's specific question, but it... grew in the answering. So for that purpose is now probably worse than useless. But to solve a problem, you first have to describe the problem, I guess?

By then I'd moved on to running GURPS and still using the Thieves World setting as my campaign world anyhow and if you know Thieves World, it doesn't feel like a good setting fit to do something like Hero Questing even if I was still using RQ as my mechanics system.

RQ is probably a terrible system for heroquesting in any world. I'm sure there are RQ diehards that'll adamantly disagree, just as a certain Chaosium bigwig said that RQ was a great ruleset for community RP... because it didn't have any community rules, but a gritty and lethal combat system instead. (?) Heroquesting could work as described in any myth-rich world -- whether you actually have many myths for it as a playergroup, or are willing to wing it on the lines I tried to outline -- as long as you further buy into the "Gladiator" premise. If you don't, then 'other side' adventures would necessarily have to follow some other pattern. Maybe something like 'faerie' adventures in Pendragon. Or a "run" in a cyberpunk game? Or a shamanic visionquest? Which last reminds me: presumably animist, sorcerous, and heaven-help-us, mystical heroquests all work differently from what we've been discussing. So good luck with!

As an aside I still wish that Chaosium would put out all of those box sets and books from the AH days in an updated physical form along with PDFs.

I get the the impression -- and this is just an impression, please don't try to cash this cheque anywhere -- that they like reprinting RQ2 material as "the classics", but everything later than that they essentially aim to update/override, instead. The Genertela box by the Guide, GoG by a Cults book thick enough to stun an ox, Thunder Rebels by a large landfill site, etc.

 

[ScytheSong]

So, with minimal encouragement and no discouragement, I'm going to talk about Heroquests and Liturgy and why Heroquesting can be explained and outlined by an understanding of how liturgy works in "High Church" ritual. I don't have a lot of stamina right now for writing, so I'll go after this in chunks.

The first chunk is understanding what liturgy is. Liturgy is a Greek term for forms of worship that are intended for groups to perform in community. For instance, a liturgy for the Eucharist (or Lord's Supper) in the Anglican world includes words that are spoken by the priest (or bishop, if present) and people, and actions (rubrics, from the literal red ink that was used in medieval prayer-books) including when the congregation is supposed to stand, kneel, and so on. The intent of liturgy is to get a group in community on the same page for a mystical working that has a practical effect. (Sound familiar?)

Continuing with the Eucharist example, the mystical working is a recapitulation of Jesus' last meal with his disciples, and a participation by the members of the congregation in the Body of Christ through eating and drinking together what is called Christ's Body and Blood. The practical effect is to strengthen the bonds of community -- this is why excommunication is so fraught in some traditions: the person who is excommunicated is at least ritually cut off from the rest of their religious community, and not "one of us".

So you have this ritual where members of the community gather. To some, it's just going to church -- get the bread and wine (or juice and crackers depending on denominational preferences), meet with people you only see once a week, feel better about yourself for "doing the right thing." To others, it is affirming their part in something bigger, following patterns of worship that were establised centuries (almost millenia) ago, and probably that their parents and grandparents participated in. And then there are those who feel themselves swept into the vast mystical reality of all those who were part of the Body of Christ, understanding that the "nave" they are in is the same boat that Jesus saved when he calmed the seas with a word, that by partcipating in the ritual, they are there at Christ's table, feasting on the Bread of Heaven, and that they are thereby renewed as literal members of Christ's Body, sent forth to serve as an avatar of the Incarnated God who defeated Death (hopefully remembering that Christ's mission was to raise up the downtrodden and oppressed). And every nuance in between, given human idiosyncrasies.

And that's the most common of the Christian liturgies.


Once I get some wind back, I'll tackle approaches this suggests for role-playing a HeroQuest.

 

[Acmegamer]

It's not that we don't understand Hero Questing today, I'd say overall we do. It was back in the day that we didn't because there wasn't much information out at the time on it.(78'-82') Now a days there is plenty of information on the subject as well as opinions.

 

[soltakss]

SInce it's RQ, Glorantha and Heroquesting we're talking about, I have a few questions for the Glorantha GMs.

Do your Characters HeroQuest?

Yes, Adventurers in my games HeroQuest all the time.

In the game I am playing in, my Healer has been on 2 Heroquests and may well be on another, if I get things right.

I love HeroQuesting.

Do they use specific ones already known and detailed in different Chaosium or Stafford writings, or do you just freeball it based on what's going on and have someone go on something like the "Orlanth learns to love a clear sky." Heroquest?

I normally freeball, but base it on myths.

However, I have sometimes just allowed things to go with the flow and had a romp through the Hero Planes.

 

[soltakss]

I got my understanding from our own @

soltakss 's supplement here:

Secrets of HeroQuesting - Chaosium | Jonstown Compendium | DriveThruRPG.com

Secrets of HeroQuesting - Ready to do the Impossible? Come along and discover the Secrets of Heroquesting in this all-new Jonstown Compedium! Insi

www.drivethrurpg.com

I didn't run it as a railroad and the supplement does a good job of explaining why it wouldn't be based on what Glorantha is like.

Thanks for the recommendation.

You say "our own", but I'm not sure I've found an RP on which there isn't a soltakss.

I do try.

 

[Alai]

I do try.

That you've survived for that long and that many posts on TRS simultaneously impresses and concerns me!

 

[rmeints]

- How was your Glorantha back in 1980 when there was so little material to work with? Did you invent all your stuff? Was each Glorantha game unique?
- With no heroquesting rules, how did you manage that part of the game? Was it integral? Not so much?
- Anyone considered using Heroquests as an exploration of the myths of Glorantha and also as a world building component? You invent your own Glorantha myths that become fixed in your campaign but are different from every other campaign.

I started playing RuneQuest around 1980, with RuneQuest 2nd edition. Our GM, Tim, ran us through some scenarios of his own creation. They were based on us adventuring around on the Dragon Pass/Prax maps found towards the back of the Rulebook. Once Griffin Mountain came out in 1981 we played through most of that before heading down towards Prax after visiting Gonn Orta. I wasn't the GM, so I didn't invent any of the material we played through, but Tim enjoyed having us encounter Dragonewts and Lunar soldiers. He added lots of smaller things of his own devising. I played an Issaries merchant so we travelled around and encountered a wide range of things. We never HeroQuested, but that was pretty common for the era. We were waiting for the HeroQuest rules to get published, just like we waited for many of the other books promised as "forthcoming" in the back of the RQ Rulebook.

From the first time Iooked at the world map in the RQ Rulebook (page 6 in RQ Classic), the world of Glorantha always seemed to be a huge place, most of which had basically nothing or next to nothing detailed. Whole continents like Pamaltela and Vithela were basically blank lands that I hoped more would get written about. I took a break from playing RQ during most of my time in college, although I started to become a collector of its game material and reader of it. The various RQ2 supplements like Cults of Prax and Cults of Terror were great reads, and the boxed adventures and campaigns were too. I started buying and reading a number of the Avalon Hill RQ3 as they came out, with mixed levels of interest, mainly focusing on the Gloranthan ones. I liked the increased level of Gloranthan info they contained because I was far more a reader than a player.

In the 90s I moved to the UK and got involved with the Tales of the Reaching Moon fanzine team. While they very much liked most of the core Gloranthan material they pretty much all added to it when it came to lower levels of detail, like towns, clans, minor spirits, and cultural detail. They taught me to appreciate that while the broad strokes were easy to keep on top of, it was via creating the finer bits of material that a lot of fun could be had. It inspired me to write about the Upland Marsh, the Longbrewer clan, and a few other bits and pieces on minor spirits and such. I bought a lot of fan publications that were full of material by like-minded fans and it was a great time being a part of such a vibrant and creative community. That community spirit still exists today via the Jonstown Compendium Community Content program on DTRPG. You'll find lots and lots of home-brewed Gloranthan content there.

I've pretty much stuck with that approach ever since. Yes, a lot has been written in the last 40 years. I've read or skimmed the vast majority of it, and played in bits and pieces of it. After Hero Wars came out around 2000 I got to go on some HeroQuests and generally enjoyed the experiences. That was mostly while playing one-shot games at smaller conventions, and luckily GM'd by writers for the game. Inventing myths is fun. I've helped write a few smaller and simpler ones, some of which have made it into print. We've actively encouraged that from everyone. Make as much of Glorantha your own as you want to. That applies to using what has been written by others. It's a sliding scale that goes from 0 to 100 and everyone sets their own number.

I am far from a Gloranthan Scholar. I know the broad strokes of the world, and have access to enough of the info that i can easily fill in more of the details on whatever I want to know more about. When I was doing the layout for the two volumes of the Guide to Glorantha I often got delayed and distracted while I read bits and pieces of the material and marveled at their richness. I've never felt my ignorance of a lot of the material slows me down. I've run some sessions at cons where the players I was GMing for were brand new to it all. It didn't seem to slow them down either. While working in the Chaosium booth at conventions we often get people stop by who tell us about their experiences in playing in one of our RQ demos or regular RQ scenarios. Many of those players are new to the game and new to Glorantha, and they liked it enough that they wanted to learn a bit more. There are a lot of choices to do that without having to drink from the firehose. it's great that they can learn as little or as much as they like, and have fun playing in Glorantha, regardless.

 

[Nobby-W]

[ . . . ]

In the 90s I moved to the UK and got involved with the Tales of the Reaching Moon fanzine team. While they very much liked most of the core Gloranthan material they pretty much all added to it when it came to lower levels of detail, like towns, clans, minor spirits, and cultural detail. They taught me to appreciate that while the broad strokes were easy to keep on top of, it was via creating the finer bits of material that a lot of fun could be had. It inspired me to write about the Upland Marsh, the Longbrewer clan, and a few other bits and pieces on minor spirits and such. I bought a lot of fan publications that were full of material by like-minded fans and it was a great time being a part of such a vibrant and creative community. That community spirit still exists today via the Jonstown Compendium Community Content program on DTRPG. You'll find lots and lots of home-brewed Gloranthan content there.

Agreed here. Mid-level canon is easy to write and pontificate about, but isn't terribly useful outside of a means to hang things together. Player-facing detail is more work but ultimately much more useful.

 

[Acmegamer]

R rmeints Too bad you aren't a fan of the Chaosium material developed and published by Avalon Hill. There are quite a few of us around who'd definitely back in all in Kickstarter of all of that material on physical/pdf format.

 

[rmeints]

R rmeints Too bad you aren't a fan of the Chaosium material developed and published by Avalon Hill. There are quite a few of us around who'd definitely back in all in Kickstarter of all of that material on physical/pdf format.

When did I ever say I'm not a fan of the Chaosium RQ3 material? Granted, I am not a fan of EVERY RQ3 product, but who is?
Getting RQ3 material back into print is not something I have said will never happen. It's just a matter of finding the resources to do it without diminishing the resources to publish new material. Getting older stuff back into print at a standard that people really want/prefer is not as easy as it sounds.

NOTE: It's one thing if "quite a few of us" means 1000+ people. It's a very different thing when it means a few hundred.

Lastly, for what it's worth, I have made a point of getting a substantial amount of older Chaosium material back into print, and I don't think I have ever said we are done with various Chaosium Classics or RuneQuest Classics for that matter.

 

[rmeints]

Agreed here. Mid-level canon is easy to write and pontificate about, but isn't terribly useful outside of a means to hang things together. Player-facing detail is more work but ultimately much more useful.

Tales of the Reaching Moon had playable material, including full scenarios, in almost every issue. My Upland Marsh material included loads of stats for monsters plus encounter tables, which dovetailed nicely with the scenario included in that same issue of Tales. I'm not one to pontificate either. I try to write things that you can use in your games.

 

[Acmegamer]

When did I ever say I'm not a fan of the Chaosium RQ3 material? Granted, I am not a fan of EVERY RQ3 product, but who is?
Getting RQ3 material back into print is not something I have said will never happen. It's just a matter of finding the resources to do it without diminishing the resources to publish new material. Getting older stuff back into print at a standard that people really want/prefer is not as easy as it sounds.

NOTE: It's one thing if "quite a few of us" means 1000+ people. It's a very different thing when it means a few hundred.

Lastly, for what it's worth, I have made a point of getting a substantial amount of older Chaosium material back into print, and I don't think I have ever said we are done with various Chaosium Classics or RuneQuest Classics for that matter.

Gotcha. I took the following....

"I started buying and reading a number of the Avalon Hill RQ3 as they came out, with mixed levels of interest, mainly focusing on the Gloranthan ones". -rmeints

to mean that you aren't really a fan. Glad to know that I misunderstood that and was wrong. It has at times felt that some at Chaosium were not fans of the 3rd edition of RuneQuest. I love reading about Glorantha but honestly the first time I played in back in late 1978 I wanted to play somewhere else, but with those mechanics. It's why back at the time many of us were going about making our own campaign settings or using say Greyhawk.

For me personally when Chaosium released one of my favorite book series (Thieves' World) as a boxed campaign setting in 81' I was beyond happy. I quickly snagged it and then went on to base my ongoing campaign from then on in it. Across many states and in the ten years I was stationed in Europe I ran that as my main game setting up until the late 1990's. I personally feel that by not having an updated version of the big gold book (a tool kit neutral setting) Chaosium is making an error.

If not an updated, new version of the BRP book, a re-release of setting neutral 3rd edition RuneQuest would work, pdf/print on demand. (my old eyes really enjoy using my Surface Pro to read pdfs these days). I am looking forward to the release of "The Rivers of London", but it's not setting neutral. I feel that Chaosium is missing out on taking advantage of the setting neutral niche market. Savage Worlds does quite well with it but Savage Worlds though fun isn't BRP/RQ.

I'd be truly surprised if there wasn't a market for you to do a Kickstarter like you did for Call of Cthulhu Classic/2nd edition. Which I backed though I have no real desire to run CoC. I even have bought some of the 7th edition CoC though I have no desire to run it either. I have bought a lot of the RQG books just because they're fun to read, but I don't want to run them either.

Who knows, maybe I am wrong and there isn't a market for setting neutral RQ/BRP based books these days. I just know that between you all and how Steve Jackson Games handled GURPS 4th edition I've been rather unhappy about the state of two of my favorite skill based rpgs.

 

[Alai]

R rmeints Too bad you aren't a fan of the Chaosium material developed and published by Avalon Hill. There are quite a few of us around who'd definitely back in all in Kickstarter of all of that material on physical/pdf format.

Not a fan? Why...!

 

[ffilz]

You know, I had a thought... If anyone is interested in a bit of a taste of "Glorantha how it was back then," I'm running an RQ1 Glorantha campaign that has "Glorantha back then" as it's foundation and we could use some fresh meat. Sure, I DO use some stuff newer than "Back Then" such as the Dagori Inkarth map from RQ3's Trollpak and tidbits I've absorbed over the years, but for the most part, my Glorantha is not too divergent from what I was running some 40 years ago...

 

[ReluctantGM]

You know, I had a thought... If anyone is interested in a bit of a taste of "Glorantha how it was back then," I'm running an RQ1 Glorantha campaign that has "Glorantha back then" as it's foundation and we could use some fresh meat. Sure, I DO use some stuff newer than "Back Then" such as the Dagori Inkarth map from RQ3's Trollpak and tidbits I've absorbed over the years, but for the most part, my Glorantha is not too divergent from what I was running some 40 years ago...

That sounds awesome. When do you play? If scheduling works I'd love to be a part of your game.

 

[ffilz]

That sounds awesome. When do you play? If scheduling works I'd love to be a part of your game.

Every other Wednesday at 8:00 PM Pacific Time. I know, that's a rough time for lots of folks...

 

[ReluctantGM]

Alas! I’m in Rhode Island. That’s a little late for me.