Sell me on Glorantha and RQ:G

[Neon]

Ok, so glorantha and RQ are luminaries in the ttrpg sphere. And as such they both pique my curiosity.

The problem I have with glorantha, from the little I know, is that I always get the impression that characters will just be going around and learning about the vast and rich cultures and religions within the game. Cool for those who want to explore that but not so cool for everyone else.

It doesn't seem to strike me as a group of adventurers kicking ass and taking names kind of a game. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

For those of you playing in Glorantha what are your games and adventures about. How tightly woven is culture and religion within these stories?

Thanks

 

[Necrozius]

I would also like to know more. I’m married to Mythras (aka Runequest 6e) but the pseudo ancient Greek or whatever bronze age culture looks super interesting.

 

[robertsconley]

Glorantha is also the setting of Apple Lane and a bunch of stuff centered around the Big Rubble a Megadungeon ruins. So it is a bit of a bunch of things.

I suggest starting with the list here and looking at the various item.

List of RuneQuest supplements - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Mankcam]

Ok, so glorantha and RQ are luminaries in the ttrpg sphere. And as such they both pique my curiosity.

The problem I have with glorantha, from the little I know, is that I always get the impression that characters will just be going around and learning about the vast and rich cultures and religions within the game. Cool for those who want to explore that but not so cool for everyone else.

It doesn't seem to strike me as a group of adventurers kicking ass and taking names kind of a game. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

For those of you playing in Glorantha what are your games and adventures about. How tightly woven is culture and religion within these stories?

Thanks

I'll be definately responding to this thread when I get time soon!
(Just not at this current monent)

 

[ScytheSong]

I don't know about more modern versions, but most iterations of Glorantha absolutely have a kicking ass and taking names aspect to them. There's Pavis and the Big Rubble, where one of my characters had his head shriveled by a Walktapus. There's Snakepipe Hollow, a den of chaos that literally spawns corrupt monsters that, if left unchecked, will sprawl out and destroy Dragon Pass (the usual starting area for the game). There's also the Lunar invasion of Sartar, where raiding parties from either side can throw the results of an entire war into the other column. And that's before you get into the wierd stuff -- like the Ducks/Durulz (see my avatar), whose devotion to the God of Truth and Death is getting them killed so that their cursed existance won't stymie the area's most powerful necromancer. Or the Trolls/Uz, who can eat literally everything.

 

[David Johansen]

I think the big thing is that Glorantha takes fantasy tropes and turns them on their heads. It's a bit jokey for some ("trollkin" burgers anyone?) The ducks are offputting for others but I think the main thing is to remember that you're not in Middle Earth anymore.

While the lore and cultures can be daunting, the main campaign is young Orlanthi barbarians finding their place in the world, learning magic, joining cults, and eventually heroquesting to gain crazy cosmic powers.

The game is, in many ways, about the relationship between the player characters and the gods. They're likely to run across the Broo as the avatars of chaos and the Lunar Empire and its legions as long term foes who can be on good terms individually but are enemies politcally. The pcs may journey out to The Block where the Devil is pinned or up the River of Cradles from the ruins of Pavis. But that particular campaign is probably the closest to something recognizable. Another option would be an "off the boat" campaign like Barker used in Tekumal, the PCs are new comers to the land, just getting off the boat from somewhere more recognizable and exploring Glorantha in that context.

 

[T. Foster]

I can’t speak to the contemporary stuff, and can attest that by the time I jumped off the train around the turn of the century (with the release of Hero Wars) it did seem to be moving more and more in a direction I wasn’t interested in seemingly focused mostly on fictional anthropology and canon-lore oneupsmanship, but the classic RuneQuest stuff from the 70s-early 90s was almost all very good and adventure-oriented. The cultural detail was mostly in the background but gave everything more depth and gravity compared to D&D’s generic fantasy stew, in the same way that the RQ rules felt like D&D with an added layer of maturity and sophistication. By the time my childhood gaming group hit college RQ was the only fantasy game that was appealing to us - D&D seemed like simple-minder kids’ stuff.

 

[zanshin]

I would track down Cults of Terror or the 3e update Lords of Terror and read that. Some of the best horror for any RPG.

If that excites you then there is a world of heroic butt kicking in Glorantha, whether fighting the monstrous adherents of Thed and Bagog head on or tracking down the hidden cultists of Krarsht & Thanatar.

 

[Nobby-W]

Ok, so glorantha and RQ are luminaries in the ttrpg sphere. And as such they both pique my curiosity.

The problem I have with glorantha, from the little I know, is that I always get the impression that characters will just be going around and learning about the vast and rich cultures and religions within the game. Cool for those who want to explore that but not so cool for everyone else.

It doesn't seem to strike me as a group of adventurers kicking ass and taking names kind of a game. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

For those of you playing in Glorantha what are your games and adventures about. How tightly woven is culture and religion within these stories?

Thanks

In the beginning there was RQ I/II. These had a flavourful world, a nice integration of the world into the system (cults essentially function as a proxy for character classes) and about the right balance of lore and accessibility. It was nice, and you didn't have to be a grog who had spent your entire life studying the lore to make sense of it. This was fab - to this day RQII is still my all-time favourite fantasy game. In practice, all you really needed was the rulebook and Cults of Prax. There were some nice adventure modules like Snakepipe hollow, and so forth. There were some good supplements - Trollpack and Cults of Terror. Trolls were pretty cool in RQ as well.

If you run RQ like this and avoid true fans then you will have fun and you don't have to spend half a lifetime studying the lore. I'm pretty sure that reprints of all the RQII material are also available. I'm sure there are also a lot of ideas that can be cribbed from the modern stuff, but I suggest you just do that bit by bit if something takes your fancy.

 

[CRKrueger]

Here's the Sales Pitch...

If Glorantha and RuneQuest get big, people will find out about the Broo and some of the Gods with more...Bronze Age views of things. That should make for some interesting times for Chaosium on Social Media.

 

[Mankcam]

Ok, so glorantha and RQ are luminaries in the ttrpg sphere. And as such they both pique my curiosity.

The problem I have with glorantha, from the little I know, is that I always get the impression that characters will just be going around and learning about the vast and rich cultures and religions within the game. Cool for those who want to explore that but not so cool for everyone else.

It doesn't seem to strike me as a group of adventurers kicking ass and taking names kind of a game. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

For those of you playing in Glorantha what are your games and adventures about. How tightly woven is culture and religion within these stories?

Thanks

Ok Glorantha is a really great setting, one of my absolute favourites!
Very ancient world in flavour, and up there with Middle-Earth when it comes to lore background.
So for anyone who wants to play in a very immersive setting like that, then it's almost a gold standard.
If you want to play a lighter tone game, then that's pretty easy as well, but it's not the core theme, that's all.

RuneQuest is the main default ruleset for Glorantha, and you build your character from a mix of cultural background, career, and relgious background.
There's a array of Gods etc, very visceral combat scenes as well, so it's aiming at an immersive gritty gameplay

The RQ2 era was perhaps the easiest entry, the writing of the setting books was excellent, although the art direction wasn't consistent, which means lots of people interpreted the setting of Glorantha rather differently, ranging from a Bronze Age setting thru to a Dark Ages one.
The next edition of the game, RQ3, initially divorced itself from Glorantha, although the later RQ3 books returned to it rather well.

The current version is RuneQuest: Adventures in Glorantha (RQG), which has the most consistent art direction and the books are a thing of beatuy to behold. The system itself is probably okay, but from my perspective it is a bit clunky. It's built off RQ2/RQ3 with lots of bits bolted on, and it feels like it belongs in the late 1980s/early 1990s. In some ways the charms of RQ2 gets a bit lost in lots of other stuff. However it is very good in lots of other ways.

I played RQ2 and RQ3, but I really prefer what TDM did with RQ6 in terms of game mechanics. It hits all the great beats that the earlier versions did, and feels like a more matured set of game mechanics, it's crunchy without being clunky. TDM do not publish RQ6 anymore, however they rebooted those rules under the Mythras ruleset, so Mythras is practically the same rules without Glorantha.

I've got pretty much everything from RQ2 and a fair bit of RQ3, and I'm collecting the RQG stuff (which I love), but I'll be running all of it with RQ6/Mythras just because those mechanics work better for me. Being all part of the BRP family of games, the RQG stat blocks are so similar to Mythras that conversion is pretty easy and can be done on-the -fly, so that's no issue.

I am just starting to look thru the RQG adventures, and they look pretty cool.
Culture and religion is tightly woven together however, so if someone doesn't want that, then maybe Glorantha isn't the setting for them.
Having said that, I can easily intersperse typically D&D style adventures in Glorantha, I just have to change the trappings etc, but you can still play dungeoneers, rogues, etc to an extent as there are plenty of ruins etc to explore with wonderous magics and such.

The combat scenes are very tactile and deadly, so lots of kicking arse, and lots of potential to get your arse kicked. Much more than in modern D&D which is very heroic fantasy, and as such it's about feeling powerful in the setting. In contrast to this, RQ has always been similar to WFRP (actually WFRP ripped RQ's mechanics off) in the fact that character survival is a much more precarious prospect than in most trpgs. The characters do eventually progress into epic hero abilities with their access to Rune Magic, but the challenges remain very present all the same.

(Actually from what I read in RQG, the characters will be getting epic rather quickly, which is another reason why I am not sold on RQG - I prefer the more gritty dirt crawling action of RQ2/3 era. Mythras starts characters much more resilient than RQ2, but not as powerful in Rune Magic as RQG, which works better for my games)

However the meat of Glorantha is the setting itself, the cultures, religions, politics, etc are central to the immersion and enjoyability of the setting.
To completely ignore it would be unusual, it would be akin to playing D&D in Westeros, and ignoring the intrigue, factions and warring Houses.

I do recommend RQG (although I recommend using Mythras to play it, but that's subjective).
However if not wanting cultures, religions, etc then I would just advise to get Mythras instead - it's a great set of BRP mechanics you can plug into whatever setting you want. If wanting Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron, or Dark Sun, but not D&D, Mythras can do anything like that quite easily. If wanting Ancient Rome it can do that as well, or early Dark Ages Britain etc

So I guess it depends on what you are looking for

 

[Mankcam]

BTW, for a sense of the setting of Glorantha, perhaps the closest thing I have seen in cinema is HBO ROME.

Then throw in some higher-end epic stuff from Baahubali and 300: Rise Of A Empire. Also lots of scenes from Game of Thrones, especially the Eastern Continent, Essos, Dothraki, etc

So that's sort of in the ballpark when it comes getting a feel for the more epic side of the setting, which can be as upfront as you want or only a background canvas.

 

[Mankcam]

Here's the back covers of the current two adventure books for RQG, just to see the kind of plots the authors are envisioning:

RQG The Smoking Ruins & Other Stories

RQG The Pegasus Plateau & Other Stories

So it looks like no shortage of adventuring activities to be involved in...

 

[Fenris-77]

BTW, for a sense of the setting of Glorantha, perhaps the closest thing I have seen in cinema is HBO ROME meets Baahubali meets 300: Rise Of A Empire.
Also lots of scenes from Game of Thrones, especially the Eastern Continent, Essos etc
So that's sort of in the ballpark when it comes to the more epic side of the setting, which can be as upfront as you want or only a background canvas.

MADNESS?! This ... is .... PASTICHE!!!!!!!

 

[Mankcam]

MADNESS?! This ... is .... PASTICHE!!!!!!!

It's the closest I could find for the epic background canvas of Glorantha, given it's on the verge of The Hero Wars
Pastiche it most certainly is, heh heh

 

[Fenris-77]

Of course, but it's the closest I could find for Glorantha
Well the epic background canvas of Glorantha anyway, given it's on the verge of The Hero Wars
Pastiche it most certainly is

I really wish I'd been introduced to Glorantha in my formative RPG years. I wasn't and now it seems like more setting than I want to digest, as awesome as it seems.

 

[Moonglum]

Others have already started the task of explaining the setting, but I'd like to push back on the OP's premise, that the conundrum with running the setting is that all you do is wander around and learn about cultures. Whatever the setting is or isn't, it is 100% in the hands of your group (and mostly the players, who are the ones making independent choices about character actions) as to what you do with it. Any campaign type you want to name can be played in just about any setting, and certainly in Glorantha.

 

[Mankcam]

I really wish I'd been introduced to Glorantha in my formative RPG years. I wasn't and now it seems like more setting than I want to digest, as awesome as it seems.

Yeah that may well be true for many people.
Not sure why people tend to feel that way with Glorantha and not other fantasy settings.
I suspect that the internet reputation preceeds it more than anything.

In the early days of the internet, The Gloranthan Digest received a reputation as a hotbed of endless arguments and debates over what was Gloranthan and what wasn’t. The legacy of this seems to endure to this day, but the Gloranthan lore ramblings tend to be less fevourous now. Having said that, the tangents on BRP Central are often rambling at times, and it only takes a few prominent voices to drown out everyone else.

The creator Greg Stafford was much more loose with how others interpreted his world. He famously posted once that he was very clear on what Gloranthan wasn’t, and was quite happy that ”What is Glorantha?” was less definable.

Things tightened up with the publication of The Guide To Glorantha, and Moon Design/Chaosium have been defining that interpretation ever since. I really love the more clear ancient-world flavour, but it is easy to see why rifts happen on the forums regarding all the different flavours of Glorantha over the years, not to mention the home brew nature of our hobby.

I started with RQ2 as a teen, and only had two or three books for a few years, so I wasn't overwhelmed at all
RQ2 had some good sandbox settings so it did lend itself for more D&D style adventures for a while. There is a huge ancient city complex in ruins (both above and below ground) which acts a bit like a Moria or mega-dungeon, so that gave us heaps of reasons for dungeoneering. I had to fudge alot of GM rolls howeve, otherwise there would have been too many TPK. People sometimes talk about the old TSR dungeons like Temple of Elemental Evil being unforgiving and harsh on the characters, but RQ easily beats that if the player-characters are too reckless

I wasn't aware of the heavy lore stuff for at least a decade later. It's actually not as big of a ball & chain as what new fans fear it is.

As a comparison, lots of people play TOR and AiME and love all the lore, checking Middle Earth wikis all the time etc, but at a pc adventuring party level things are much more localised, so alot of that is parked in the background.

That's pretty much how Glorantha is for lots of people playing it. We love the cultures, lore, history etc, but given everything is usually localised in our games all that other stuff is parked to the side, and we just focus on one region.

Come to think of it, it's not really any different to people playing D&D in Forgotten Realms. Well how it used to be played during the AD&D 2E era.
There is alot of lore and history for the Faerun setting, but most people stick to small villages or towns of their own design which are near Waterdeep, Balders Gate, etc, but not necessarily right in the heart of the action and lore. I guess with the D&D 5E era the adventure path books change the focus somewhat, but lots of folk will still have their own little patch to focus on.

So I don't see Glorantha any different to Middle Earth, Forgotten Realms, or any setting that has a bit of lore canon structure to it.

 

[Fenris-77]

Yeah, Forgotten Realms was exactly what I was thinking. I never had any issues with the bulk lore there, at least early on, because I immersed myself in it organically. Now I have to force myself to digest that much setting, and mostly I decline the attempt.

 

[Atelerix]

The core of the game is still about rooting out chaos nests, fighting off nomad raids, attacking troll settlements, foiling the machinations of the invading Lunar Empire. Or all at once!

The difference is that all those cultures are as detailed as your own, and have their own logic and motivations. Enough that you can play the game from their point of view perfectly well.

Lunars feel more modern than the intolerant, narrow-minded and aggressive Orlanthi. Inquisitive, experimenting, tolerand and inclusive (at times).

Trolls are an ancient and tragic culture, cursed and cast out of their cool, dark underworld into the burning sun. You can certainly trade with them, learn to become part of their culture and even be reborn as one.

The Praxian nomads live in a harsh, unforgiving environment, and their culture reflects this. Dances with a Man Called Horse, anyone?

The material also turned traditional adventure games on their head. Fossil-hunting in a chaos nest. Or you're farmers granted an area of land to bring under the plough and civilise... right next to monsters that can crush you like a bug.

Maybe look back to the more traditional RQ2 stuff on the Chaosium site? It's PoD, don't mix them with an order of their own material - website gets confused.

 

[SJB]

Not our first time at this rodeo! However, in a (+) answer to the OP’s question.

1. RQ:G is a complete rulebook. Its systems are derived from two classic games, Runequest and Pendragon. They have stood the test of time and they work.

2. The game can be run from the GM Reference: it avoids the discursive elements whilst capturing the game’s mechanical flavour. In this form RQ:G is very efficient.

3. The game can be set in Pavis (it is on the far right of the RQ:G map). Pavis and its Old Rubble was the campaign created by RQ’s original designer, Steve Perrin. It is a classic. Pavis can take as little or as much background as one cares to add. The Chaosium supplement Pavis: City of Adventure is good and set earlier than the scenarios in the rulebooks by ten years. It was a simpler age.

 

[Voros]

I really wish I'd been introduced to Glorantha in my formative RPG years. I wasn't and now it seems like more setting than I want to digest, as awesome as it seems.

Just play the video game King of Dragon Pass on your phone or PC and that will give you a good sense of the setting flavour and lore, plus it is a really good game. There was a much belated sequel but I haven't played it yet.

 

[Mankcam]

Despite leaning towards Mythras as my preferred BRP mechanics, RQG is still very good.
I would recommend it over RQ Classic (RQ2 reprint) for new fans.

You can easily set the timeline a decade earlier for the RQ2/3 era products (1615 -ST - 1620 ST), then use the RQ2 back catalogue reprints for lots of adventuring content for the land of Prax - Pavis/Big Rubble/Borderlands makes an exceptional linked setting. There’s also Griffin Mountain, whilst set further afield, is also a really good sandbox.

The RQ2 opponent stat blocks are highly compatible with RQG - all you do is add Passion and Rune skills (if applicable), then RQ2 resources are easily used for RQG. Not that this is a big issue for any BRP game really, as the RQ2 stat block is almost as easy to port to RQ6/Mythras as it is to RQG - I just reduce RQ2 hit locations by 1pt, and then everything is more or less in the same ballpark. Many skill names are different, but it's easy to find the analogy as Mythras has less skills covering the same thing as RQ2/G, so conversion is a cinch either way. My back catalogue certainly won't be going to waste.

I would suggest using the RQG optional rules for starting player-characters with lower skill levels, otherwise I think some of the grittiness is lost, and I strongly feel that aspect is part of the novelty running RQ. Otherwise one might as well just play D&D 5E.

RQG is set a decade after RQ2/3 (1625 ST +), and politcally things have changed somewhat, and a time of great upheaval is close. You can easily keep using the same characters from the earlier period, or start again with new ones.

The Pegasus Plateau and Smoking Ruins adventures books look really well done for RQG, as does the adventures in the RQG GM Pack, so I am pretty happy how Chaosium is moving forward in that respect.

One thing is that when the new RQG Cults book is published, it will open the game up to a much wider variety of character concepts, given the way that the cults have a significant impact on the characters.

Until then, I would recommend taking a look at the pdfs of RQ2 Cults of Prax and Cults of Terror - or better yet, the compiled version called Cults Compendium. Some of it is bound to change for RQG, but those books are being used as a foundational template for the new RQG Cults book currently in development.

 

[Mankcam]

Just play the video game King of Dragon Pass on your phone or PC and that will give you a good sense of the setting flavour and lore, plus it is a really good game. There was a much belated sequel but I haven't played it yet.

KoDP is a great game, although some of the art direction in clothing styles etc is more early Dark Ages influenced than Ancient World influenced.
Esrolians and Sartarites are much more Urnfield/Minoan/Thracian in presentation these days.

(and, as an aside, the opposing Lunar Empire is much more Achaemenid/Assyrian/Punic Era Republic Roman rather than the Late Republic/Imperial Roman flavour of early Gloranthan depicitions)

Having said that, lifestyle in a localised village region is not much different between Ancient times and the Dark Ages, it was the larger urban regions that were different .

Not a big deal, just a visual inconsistency with current depictions of the setting/cultures.

The content itself of KoDP is excellent - the lore, the plots, how the clan ring works, etc, is very well done and this game endures as a favourite

 

[Atelerix]

Good point Mankcam - the art direction in RQ:G takes the setting away from medieval or Roman-era fantasy, and back to the (real-world) Bronze Age - to Harappa, Mesopotamia, Knossos and Mycenae. The drawings of Clearwine make it much more explicitly ancient.

I've not seen the new scenario books, but the older RQ2 material still stands up.

 

[T. Foster]

Sartarites have been Celts and Goths in my imagination for so many decades I couldn’t possibly see them as anything else.

 

[Mankcam]

Sartarites have been Celts and Goths in my imagination for so many decades I couldn’t possibly see them as anything else.

Yeah I totally get the reasons for this
The legacy of some of the artwork of the later RQ3 products, as well as the HeroWars/HeroQuest products has certainly coloured everything

I cannot remember any Celtic/Saxon/Gothic influence at all in RQ2, so in my mind the Sartarites were possibly Hellenic-influenced if anything.
There was also some underlying Medieval trappings here and there due to the inconsistent art depictatons in RQ2.
But all the content and descriptions in RQ2 pointed towards a vaguely Hellenic style culture. I was also into Ancient Greek Epics at that time, so that worked for me.

But then the RQ3 Glorantha book had one pic of an Orlanthi warrior which changed all that.
My mind was blown, as this Sartarite guy looked like a Scottish highlander from the Dark Ages. Very cool, but not what I had been envisioning up to that time.
This was then followed by the RQ3 Dorastor book which had some pics of the Orlanthi villagers who were also very Celtic/Saxon in flavour.
So I was kinda forced to change my original impression of the main default culture for our games

The fanzines in the 1990s reinforced these changes. By the time Hero Wars and Hero Quest were developed, the Celtic/Saxon Orlanthi flavour of Orlanthi was firmly accepted. Even Mongoose RQ (ugh!) also went with this to an extent with their products.

It really wasn't until HeroQuest Glorantha and The Guide To Glorantha that there was a major return to a more ancient-flavoured depiction. I really like it, as it feels much closer to my intial impressions from reading RQ2 and the RQ2 Companion, as well as snippets in those early Wyrm Footprints magazines.

But I can understand why people find it difficult to change their perception, given the amount of years that the art direction for Orlanthi was firmly Celtic/Saxon influenced. It's understandably one of the biggest bone of contentions there is within the Gloranthan fan community.

 

[Bilharzia]

Ok, so glorantha and RQ are luminaries in the ttrpg sphere. And as such they both pique my curiosity.

The problem I have with glorantha, from the little I know, is that I always get the impression that characters will just be going around and learning about the vast and rich cultures and religions within the game. Cool for those who want to explore that but not so cool for everyone else.

It doesn't seem to strike me as a group of adventurers kicking ass and taking names kind of a game. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

For those of you playing in Glorantha what are your games and adventures about. How tightly woven is culture and religion within these stories?

Thanks

Gloranthan RuneQuest went through several stages, it's different to different people depending on whenever they encountered it, and what they did with it at the time. Viewed from the mid-80s when I first picked it up, the ancient-world-cultural-tourist-land I have heard it described as seems quite comical to me. That aspect is absolutely there, but it simply provides the context in which whatever adventures you want to have take place.

RuneQuest started with the boardgame, White Bear and Red Moon, later called "Dragon Pass". This is the setting for the early RQ games. RuneQuest was the roleplaying game designed for players of the boardgame. WBRM has armies, magicians, spirits, trolls, dinosaurs, runes, and ducks.

There is the earliest RQ (around 1976-1980) which was very much a d&d hack, played with Glorantha as a setting. This covers the time in playtest which started around 1976, with RQ1 publication in 1978 up to Griffin Mountain in 1980. The game was largely a hack & slash, dungeon-crawling game run very much like d&d. The difference was the setting, which had Cults PCs could join (like Orlanth), dangerous adventure locations - Snake Pipe Hollow was a cave complex full of terrors. Compare that with d&d and TSR, which published "Keep on the Borderlands" in 1979, Snake Pipe Hollow was published in the same year. Apple Lane (1978) was a simple town PC base, with a local cave (Rainbow Mounds) which was effectively another dungeon, filled with Gloranthan Trolls.

Mechanically it's a different game from d&d with every PC belonging to a cult, which effectively stands in for a character class, and as a consequence every PC having magic of some sort. It was probably as lethal as d&d at the time as well. With low skill values, a RQ PC could get killed pretty easily, and this is where the limb-chopping meme starts with RuneQuest.

So at this time, it's like a different flavoured d&d, and played like it. From reading about what people did and reading the RQ publications of the time the idea that characters would be "learning about the vast and rich cultures" is an absolutely ridiculous notion. It was about wandering around in caves and castles killing stuff, trying not to get killed and taking things if you lived. Questing for runes was part of the playtests for RQ, but got dropped for the RQ rules.

There is still a jokey-gonzo feel to RQ at the time. In Different Worlds 6, Greg Costikyan writes a Gateway cult "Cult of Gestetner" the god of Dark Duplication.

In this phase, Judges Guild publishes a few adventures for RQ, they are all dungeon crawls of one type or another. Wyrms Footnotes is publishing Glorantha histories, rules clarifications for RQ and always lots on cults.

In "Different Worlds" 7, from May 1980, Cults of Prax is reviewed with the comment
"Cults of Prax is the best extant cosmology designed for use with any FRP that has been published ... I view the addition of social interaction mechanisms and a delineated cosmology to be integral to a complete fantasy campaign. Cults of Prax is the only published sourcebook of this type that gives these factors anywhere near their proper weight."

Things start to change just a little when Cults of Prax is published in 1979, RQII is released in 1980 (no changes of note), Griffin Mountain 1981. In the Griffin Mountain campaign players can start as Balazarings who are described as hunter-gatherers. There is some guidance about starting as young Balazaring characters, who co-incidentally don't know anything about the outside world. So as players, you don't have to know zip about anything else, and your tech level means you start out with stone, leather and bone equipment. There are several tribes in the area, and there are "citadel" settlements whose populations are a bit more sophisticated and settled. There are NPCs, plots, politics and a bit of contact with the outside world.

Internally, Chaosium was running HeroQuest adventures which took place along mystical lines connected to the players' cults. But HeroQuest in this form is never published, and to date, rules for HeroQuesting using RuneQuest have not been published, at least not by Chaosium nor anyone who has had the licence, to my knowledge. (There is a lot of fan-published HeroQuesting rules and adventures)

Griffin Mountain is the first big campaign published for RQ and this is when you can see the ideas developing for more of a game based on different cultural backgrounds and settings in a wider context. The location, the different people and the different religions start to become more important and might be more of a factor in games. There are still monsters, bad guys and lots of bad cults, Cults of Terror is published in 1981, the same year as Griffin Mountain.

Griffin Mountain is the transition point, when RQ and Glorantha starts to get more culture-based.

When the campaign boxed sets come out - Borderlands, Trollpak, Pavis and The Big Rubble - they create the first golden age of RQ, and are when it starts to get a strong identity. If you look at the adventure material though, it is very standard stuff. Borderlands has the PCs hired as mercenaries, a military police force / death squad, in charge of Duke Raus' territory, "cleaning up" problems and negotiating with various groups. This nevertheless takes place in a fairly rich setting, but it is basically an excuse to duff people and creatures up and take their treasure. Trollpak is a good deal more different as it is a more radical attempt at portraying an intelligent non-human group, the adventure material is ok, but it is not really doing anything with cultural ideas, or history, and it doesn't touch the cults or heroquesting, or even spirits that much, it still can be pretty gonzo. Strangely, despite the material being almost entirely about trolls, and about creating trolls, troll gods and troll practices, all the adventure material is geared around human adventurers as visitors and outsiders in troll lands.

So all the way through the early to mid 1980s, my sense is most people played RQ in a way that most d&d players would recognise, albeit dressed up in a world setting which was not a standard medieval European one. Yes it had tons of history, and religions and cultures were distinct, and you could emphasise that in your games but it did not stop anyone from playing murder-hobo or the equivalent, they just murder-hoboed "for Orlanth" or whichever cult they decided to join.

Fanzines picked up the slack in the mid 80s to mid 90s when professional RQ publication goes into the toilet. I think it's here when a lot of the old fan culture around the game starts to develop, more histories, more cults, some HeroQuesting articles. You could still see a sense of fun in the game, it was a mix of stuff being published by amateurs, which does give you a sense of how and what people were doing when they played.

By the time Avalon Hill starts to publish decent stuff in the 90s the approach has changed. A good comparison is with Borderlands from 1982 and River of Cradles in 1992. Now things are more serious, far more rooted in religious cults, people and places of a region, the history and politics and so on. River of Cradles is still a fairly action-packed adventure, but all that context is now much more important. Instead of policing and murdering the people and creatures that your adventuring party were tasked to do in Borderlands, now, (10 years later in publication time), your party represents the people and creatures of the region, and you are tasked with protecting everyone from Chaos, the acceptable big bad of the setting.

At this point RQ publishing dies 'officially' but fan publications pick up and generally maintain and increase this new emphasis. Then things get more complicated with HeroWarsQuest and the "higher level" style of play, leaving the lowered powered RuneQuest game the poor cousin.

Skip forward 25 years, now the new Chaosium RuneQuest inherits all that much more serious take on the setting and the game, a lot of influence from HeroQuest and King Arthur Pendragon and all that goes along with it. All the culture, history, background, is pumped into character creation and the game setting and the adventures so it feels stuffed to the brim with it all.

The very tight character creation focus in RQG does make it feel like a limited and particular experience on that Dragon Pass setting, which is understandable but also a bit weird to see if you are familiar with the broader and more looser setting of old. When I played, our party of adventurers consisted of a centaur, a crested dragonewt, a great troll, and a token Satarite, we all walked into a bar and had a great time. There is nothing to stop anyone from doing the same now.

 

[Nick J]

Fretting about the costume and general look of a fictitious ancient people is exactly the kind of "lore wank" I found off-putting when I tried to dip my toes into the fora at BRP Central when I finally got a little bit curious about what all the fuss was about this Glorantha thing. That said, I find the idea of the setting fascinating as someone who is incredibly drawn to the histories of the ancient real world, but damn, that particular cross-section of the fandom disabused me of the idea of ever trying to run a Glorantha game, unless it was completely filled with neophytes with no preconception of the setting.

 

[sharps54]

Sounds like if you want the flavor without the lore and the setting lawyers that come with it stick with pre-Griffith Mountain, I can do that.

 

[Bilharzia]

completely filled with neophytes with no preconception of the setting.

Probably the best way to run it. I've tried with the old grogs and it was as painful as you might imagine.

Running newbies in a Balazaring game could be huge fun. Personally I would do it with Mythras and snag any bits I needed from RQG.

 

[Nick J]

Probably the best way to run it. I've tried with the old grogs and it was as painful as you might imagine.

Running newbies in a Balazaring game could be huge fun. Personally I would do it with Mythras and snag any bits I needed from RQG.

Yeah, Mythras (or even OpenQuest perhaps) was precisely what I would use. What exactly is Balazaring?

 

[Bilharzia]

Yeah, Mythras (or even OpenQuest perhaps) was precisely what I would use. What exactly is Balazaring?

Balazar and the Elder Wilds is the region where Griffin Mountain is set. Balazarings are the people who live there.

 

[Mankcam]

Fretting about the costume and general look of a fictitious ancient people is exactly the kind of "lore wank" I found off-putting when I tried to dip my toes into the fora at BRP Central when I finally got a little bit curious about what all the fuss was about this Glorantha thing. That said, I find the idea of the setting fascinating as someone who is incredibly drawn to the histories of the ancient real world, but damn, that particular cross-section of the fandom really put me off the idea of ever trying to run a Glorantha game, unless it was completely filled with neophytes with no preconception of the setting.

Cultural trappings are important when portraying characters in an immersive setting.
I remember how Boromir in Lord of the Rings was drawn like a Viking in the old Bakshi cartoon, which was just plain wrong for a Gondorian nobleman (whom were most likely based off the Franks/Normans).

So too with the cultures in Glorantha, the descriptions are part of identity, so getting the flavour right is just good common sense.
Given that there are different visual representations for the cultures depending upon the different RQ editions, there is also no point arguing about which one is right or wrong; folk should just play whatever edition works for them.

Most people don't have a big drama with this, but occasionally you get someone who just can't see another person's point of view, and that's when these things get annoying. Given the age of the setting and the maturing years of the fan base, it just gets ridiculous at times with a small group of likely grumpy old men who think they'll call the shots for everyone else.

It's sad that sometimes a few loud voices get in the way of enjoying a great setting and a great rule set
Those idiots aren't indicative of a major population by any measure
In reality it's probably just a small handful of people who are just pushing their views into a few forums
Lucky to be more than one or two carloads of idiots tops I reckon
The internet is just a small pond which makes them seem like big ducks (heh heh)

I have played RQ since 1985, I have lots of Gloranthan resources and I likely know the lore just as well as any of these self-professed Gloranthan lore experts.

I used to really enjoy the banter on BRP Central (especially the Gloranthan banter), but since Chaosium took over the forum and honed the discussions down to primarily Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest, the loose vibe has changed somewhat, and there has been an increase in Gloranthan truism agenda-pushing to be sure.
On one side they often proclaim Greg Stafford's motto YGMV ("Your Glorantha May Vary"), but many statements and conversation tones seem to fly counter to this now, which is what happened back in the old Gloranthan Digest days.
I guess Grogs are gonna grog, heh heh

Although I love Glorantha, this kind of approach was never my scene, so I drifted away from BRPCentral quite a bit, hence why I'm a better fit here

Glorantha is a great setting. It's no different to Middle Earth or any other detailed setting however - there is heaps of lore, heaps of richness, and occasionally people arguing over minutia which can sometimes blot everything else out.

If you want to discuss Glorantha or RuneQuest without that side of things, then you're in the right place here.
We do discuss Glorantha from time to time, some of us have shared views whilst some of us hold very different views.
It's doesn't really matter because there is some commonality to it all, and the creativity is the main thing we take away from each others' stories.

I have recently given it alot of thought which version of BRP I will run Glorantha in next.
For me RQG would be great if it was 1995, but BRP has moved on since then.
I would recommend OpenQuest if you like a lighter system, but for me personally I love the gritty side of things - so RQ6/Mythras is definately what I will be using to run any RQG products and RQ2 back catalogue.

 

[T. Foster]

Sounds like if you want the flavor without the lore and the setting lawyers that come with it stick with pre-Griffith Mountain, I can do that.

Griffin Mountain is almost absurdly good (IMO still one of the best rpg products ever published) and mostly self-contained, so I’d personally put it on the “included” side of the break. There’s a bit of cultural stuff - there are the Neolithic hunter/gatherer tribes and then the three citadels that have each been influenced by a different outlander culture/religion (Lunar, Solar, and Storm) giving them distinct flavors - but it’s a pretty light touch and very adventure-oriented. We had it in play for something like 2 years and didn’t come close to exhausting all of its potential, and had several of the most fun and memorable sessions in our ~15 years of playing together. I really can’t recommend it highly enough!

 

[Nick J]

Mankcam I appreciate your enthusiasm for Glorantha (and all things BRP generally), but when it comes to artistic renditions of culture groups or what's held in the mind's eye, how important is it that everyone at the table visualizes the same thing? If one player envisions a pseudo Celt with lime in his hair and blue woad on his face, while another envisions a proto-Mycenaean what's lost? As long as both players get the beats of the game and understand their place in the larger context of the setting, a shared vision in the mind's eye shouldn't be all that important. Certainly, the author(s) of a game setting will pick art that reinforces their conception for publication and it doesn't hurt anything if players can more easily grok a setting's broad strokes through a few well picked/placed bits of visual media, but it's still up to the GM to convey the details of a culture, person, place or thing with words and that always leaves a lot of room for interpretation. You're right though, Bakshi's depiction of Boromir was a weird choice when compared to Tolkien's detailed descriptions of what a Gondorman was, but I can still appreciate that he put his own spin on it and turned it into a creation distinctly his own (which is what every GM should strive for IMO).

In any event, I wouldn't let a few pedants on a forum sway me from playing a game/setting if I really wanted to; it was just my initial impression and although it wasn't very pleasant it did solidify that if I was going to run some kind of Glorantha game it, I would do what I usually do, and that's take a bit of inspiration from it and and run off in a completely different direction that would horrify all of the pearl-clutching, purists.

For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure this kind of thing happens with all highly detailed RPG settings that go through several iterations by different authors. I experienced the same attitude with some very uptight Forgotten Realms fans in group a decade or more ago who first encountered the setting at different stages, so I don't think Gloranthaphiles are in any special category of their own.

 

[Mankcam]

Mankcam I appreciate your enthusiasm for Glorantha (and all things BRP generally), but when it comes to artistic renditions of culture groups or what's held in the mind's eye, how important is it that everyone at the table visualizes the same thing? If one player envisions a pseudo Celt with lime in his hair and blue woad on his face, while another envisions a proto-Mycenaean what's lost? As long as both players get the beats of the game and understand their place in the larger context of the setting, a shared vision in the mind's eye shouldn't be all that important. Certainly, the author(s) of a game setting will pick art that reinforces their conception for publication and it doesn't hurt anything if players can more easily grok a setting's broad strokes through a few well picked/placed bits of visual media, but it's still up to the GM to convey the details of a culture, person, place or thing with words and that always leaves a lot of room for interpretation. You're right though, Bakshi's depiction of Boromir was a weird choice when compared to Tolkien's detailed descriptions of what a Gondorman was, but I can still appreciate that he put his own spin on it and turned it into a creation distinctly his own (which is what every GM should strive for IMO).

In any event, I wouldn't let a few pedants on a forum sway me from playing a game/setting if I really wanted to; it was just my initial impression and although it wasn't very pleasant it did solidify that if I was going to run some kind of Glorantha game it, I would do what I usually do, and that's take a bit of inspiration from it and and run off in a completely different direction that would horrify all of the pearl-clutching, purists.

For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure this kind of thing happens with all highly detailed RPG settings that go through several iterations by different authors. I experienced the same attitude with some very uptight Forgotten Realms fans in group a decade or more ago who first encountered the setting at different stages, so I don't think Gloranthaphiles are in any special category of their own.

While I don't think getting minutia correct will add to a good game, I do think getting things in the ballpark does have merit.
Potraying 300 Spartans as French Knights would be a weird thing to do, for instance, so that's the kind of thing I'm getting at.
Having a shared vision works well, it's just makes things clear what I'm describing, and that makes it good for my gaming group.
These days it's pretty easy to grab a couple of pics off the internet and show that to my gaming group, and that sorts out any discrepancies.
If they want to visualise something different in their heads then that's up to them, but as GM that's the visual cues I'm going with.

Arguing with online posters about it however isn't my thing, as the main reason I frequent rpg forums is for the good vibes and creativity.
Once things descend into pedantic statements about whose way is the right way then I'm out of there. I could just as easily jump into the fray, but what would be the point? It's highly unlikely that any of the posters will be part of my gaming group - and my own group of friends are really the only ones that I want to have on the same page, as they are the people I am actually experiencing the setting with at the game table.

I still love the fact that every gaming group's version of a setting will be a bit different, its one of the features of this hobby.

Sorry to hear that you experienced some negativity over at BRP Central.
I'm not surprised, as it only takes a few incessant postings from a couple of drongos who want to promote their perceived postions of self-importance.
Also some people must get generally distressed when they find others views are contary to their own, and I suspect there are a few factors driving some of that stuff over there.

Bantering about Glorantha is just so much easier to do here in this forum.
If you run a different world flavour to anyone else, then that's cool, the more creative the better
The foundation of the Gloranthan setting is really good, and it's there to stimulate our imaginations
It's just good to see folk enjoying it for what it is

 

[ffilz]

Ok, so glorantha and RQ are luminaries in the ttrpg sphere. And as such they both pique my curiosity.

The problem I have with glorantha, from the little I know, is that I always get the impression that characters will just be going around and learning about the vast and rich cultures and religions within the game. Cool for those who want to explore that but not so cool for everyone else.

It doesn't seem to strike me as a group of adventurers kicking ass and taking names kind of a game. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

For those of you playing in Glorantha what are your games and adventures about. How tightly woven is culture and religion within these stories?

Thanks

Sorry for coming to this party late... I was at the beach and didn't spend much time forum browsing...

I run a Gloranthan campaign using the 1978 RQ1 rules (with some bits taken from RQ2, and hints of bits taken from later editions).

My campaign is definitely NOT about wandering around learning about the vast and rich cultures. That stuff interests me a bit, and I do read the BRP forums, and then ignore most of the blather. My Sartar is some kind of medieval/bronze mish mash, I dunno, I don't worry about the culture much. Some players might pay a bit more attention and that's fine with me. My campaign is a bit more principled than murder hobo kill 'em and take their treasure, but not much. We have fun.

The cults give the PCs some motivations but are mostly "character classes" of a sort.

The more I hear about RQG, the less I am interested in it as a system and I'm glad I've stuck with RQ1 (and by the way, having done a section by section comparison of RQ1 and RQ2, there's more difference than folks realize, sadly I can't share it because The Chaosium felt it copied too much text for their fan license and I don't want to put in the effort to make it publishable, so sorry, you can make your own comparison, or become good friends with me and I might share).

I will still stand by my suggestion that someone wanting to get into RQ and Glorantha can't go wrong with RQ1 or RQ2 and Cults of Prax. Pick up an adventure or two from the classic era. On the other hand, you probably are better off starting with RQG, but you are going to get more immersion in the culture and more emphasis on adventure grounded in supporting your clan. You're also going to start off at a much higher power level.

If Glorantha interests you, pick up a rule set (sure, Mythras might be good too, but you may have a bit more work to use the cults), something with some cults, and some adventures and start playing. Don't worry about trying to get the setting right. Do what YOU want with it. Don't drink from the fire hose. Ignore the folks getting lost in the minutiae of the setting (well unless you REALLY want to).

I have run at least some RQ in Glorantha in every decade starting in 1978. No other RPG hits that (I didn't do D&D in the 90s, I didn't do Traveller in the 90s or 00s). And no other setting even comes close.

 

[zanshin]

I would say about the 'wandering around encountering different cultures' that is a plus for me about the setting, but it's more about the fun the players get when their characters pursue their goals.

For example, one of the quests my PCs ended up on was to find a missing NPC. As part of that they had to negotiate with a Morokanth slaver - they needed information only he could provide. In the process of that (the PC's were Sartarites) they learn a whole lot about the Prax compromise, herd men and encounter an intelligent Tapir who I played like a jovial mobster.

The richness of the setting is best revealed through play, and for me is a massive plus for Glorantha.

 

[Mankcam]

I would say about the 'wandering around encountering different cultures' that is a plus for me about the setting, but it's more about the fun the players get when their characters pursue their goals.

For example, one of the quests my PCs ended up on was to find a missing NPC. As part of that they had to negotiate with a Morokanth slaver - they needed information only he could provide. In the process of that (the PC's were Sartarites) they learn a whole lot about the Prax compromise, herd men and encounter an intelligent Tapir who I played like a jovial mobster.

I used to find lots of D&D adventures in White Dwarf, Dungeon, and Dragon magazines.
It was alot of fun retrapping those plots, locations, cultures etc, for Glorantha; then running those sessions using the RQ2 or RQ3 game mechanics.
I would generally have to reduce the number of foes so not every combat scene ended up TPK. It was alot of fun for me to work with the Gloranthan cultures, it often put a very different spin on the plot. I remember one player had previously played one of the same adventures using AD&D (or perhaps it was D&D 3E), and didn't even realise where I had lifted the scenario from.

So yeah, having the strong influences of the different cultures is a big plus for me, certainly not a negative feature of the setting

The richness of the setting is best revealed through play, and for me is a massive plus for Glorantha.

Yep, totally agree with this