Tell me about Runequest / Glorantha

[Patman21967]

Kvack, the Humakti Duck.

 

[sniffles]

Glorantha is anything but low magic. It’s a little difficult to describe Glorantha without reference to the two, completely different, rules systems used for the game world RuneQuest and HeroQuest. The magic systems, cults, spirits, religions and all other belief systems are integral to the world. Farmers use spells like ‘bless crops,’ warriors use ‘swordsharp,’ etc. The world is in itself magical. The nine great giant mountains are just that, nine great giants! There are monsters and creatures everywhere and dozens of non-human sentient races.

GOM

I would disagree with this somewhat. Glorantha is not low-magic in the sense of magic being rare, but it is low-magic in the sense that most spells and magic items are a lot less powerful than those in D&D. Magic also has more of a personal cost, and requires more personal sacrifice or service to obtain, which offers a lot of opportunity for plot hooks.

GOM is right about religion being integral to the system, much more so than any other game I've played in. It also has a much more fully developed sense of culture and ethnicity. When you go from one part of the world to another it isn't just a costume change, like on a tv show. One of the things I like best about Glorantha (although it can also be really frustrating) is that there is no such thing as a "common" language. You can actually end up with a party of adventurers who can barely communicate with each other, which is much more realistic than D&D giving practically everything "Common".

Man, I miss playing RuneQuest!!

 

[Odhanan]

To put it simply, Glorantha for me is to RPGs what Middle-earth is to fantasy literature.

To put it less simply, it is a complete believable fantasy world that doesn't have the same logic as our earth: Gods and demi-gods are concrete, real mystic forces influencing each and every ethnicities of Glorantha. Religion isn't based on faith since people *know* gods exist. It is based on cultural tradition and identity. Magic is everywhere. The Loskhalmi peasant prays to Malkion to save his crop from blight and it works. Orlanth, god of thunder, storm and freedom, has his fate closely linked with the nation of Sartar. Every religion relates to one another with different sets of beliefs (it isn't like the FR where all deities acknowledge and thus are part of the same cosmology). It is also a setting that draws more on classical greek, roman, early/mythic dark ages periods than late medieval types of fantasy so usual to D&D. It is a setting where there's always something new to learn and/or design, even though Glorantha may, with some particularly tight kinds of GMs, suffer from the same flaw as Middle-earth: so much is already there that one can wonder what remains to be achieved for the PCs.

It's a truly awesome world. Perhaps more fit for fiction than RPG, unless you don't mind discarding some elements of the background when they aren't convenient to your creativity.

 

[Glyfair]

Gods and demi-gods are concrete, real mystic forces influencing each and every ethnicities of Glorantha.

I said it before, just looking at the maps show that major events have affected the world.

 

[howandwhy99]

Hey, I'm impressed folks.

But I am still wondering about my second question. Are there one or two books (or boxes) I should buy before anything else to learn about Glorantha? There are a lot of products on those websites, and I couldn't say which to pick first.

 

[fusangite]

If I could obtain them, I'd buy the second edition rulebook and Cults of Prax. Following that, I'd probably get Cults of Terror and then the Pavis & Big Rubble scenario packs.

 

[Faraer]

The HeroQuest rulebook describes Glorantha throughout, but look at the "Introduction to Glorantha" amd "Playing HeroQuest" chapters particularly, which can be downloaded here.

The fullest, but complex, introduction to the whole of Glorantha is the Introduction to Glorantha book, which is unfortunately out of print. The Avalon Hill Genertela boxed set has a similar function.

The old-time Chaosium products fusangite mentions (some of which have been reprinted by Moon Design Publications) have good (though out of date) information about the Prax region, but not the rest of Glorantha.

 

[howandwhy99]

Thank guys

 

[fusangite]

The old-time Chaosium products fusangite mentions (some of which have been reprinted by Moon Design Publications) have good (though out of date) information about the Prax region, but not the rest of Glorantha.

But for those of us who see 2nd edition Runequest as having a better Glorantha than the current version in Hero Wars, these publications are the Big Also.

 

[Turjan]

Of course, you can try your luck on ebay, but what's definitely available are the newer books. A very short introduction to the region on Glyfair's second map is Dragon Pass - A Guide to Kerofinela with only 72 pages and a colour map. It's a product for HeroQuest, but as it doesn't contain much game info, it's more or less system-free. The books Storm Tribe - The Cults of Sartar and Thunder Rebels - A Player's Book for Orlanthi Barbarians are written for HeroWars and contain more game info than you possibly want, but give a nice introduction to the cultural aspects of the humans around the Dragon Pass. And then there are always the classics, like Griffin Mountain .

Edit: Let's see where Mongoose will land with their price per page. Most Glorantha products are pretty expensive nowadays, because of low print runs.