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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 2424895" data-attributes="member: 7240">Runequest was a great game for two reasons. One was the BRP system. The other was Glorantha. Together, they were a great combination. Glorantha is a world with a true sense of otherness to it. The way that religion and history are handled in the game force both player and GM to actually try and enter the mindset of genuinely different yet compellingly believable alien cultures. That stated, it is not low-magic in the traditional sense; a larger portion of 2E Runequest NPCs can cast spells than in nearly any other world. But very very very few spell do anything other than make you luckier or more proficient at combatting invisible spirits. Magic is ubiquitous but largely invisible. Other races, similarly, are at once more alien and more three-dimensional than anything you can read regarding a D&D setting. I'm not sure how much detail it's worth going into given the amount of free Glorantha content out there on the web. The history and map of Glorantha are full of amazing places and events and the non-human intelligences are brilliantly made. But what makes the world stick together is the sense on the part of the author that culture and religion are real, meaningful and vibrant things that shape a player-character's experience of the world. But they aren't presented in an academic or dry way -- you're swept right along.A couple of really cool features I'll just randomly mention: while, like any other game, Runequest lets mortals get more powerful, the realtive power of gods to mortals is much more appropriate than D&D's over-powered mortals and under-powered gods. In one book, just to make their point, the game designers statted the steed of the Red Moon Goddess, the Crimson Bat; he was indescribably powerful. Then they statted the ticks in his fur. One of them could give the party a fair fight. Dragons in Runequest are like this too. Their dreams can kill people. Another feature: there is no 100% agreed-upon history of the world; different groups of people have different histories that contradict eachother. Often the general events are the same but the details are reversed. This is just a continuation of the myths from Godtime, that the different cults fight about. There is a very sociologically credible blending of history and myth in the setting material that I found deeply satisfying.Harn is okay: dry, over-detailed and a little brittle. But still lightyears ahead of setting materials published since. But I cannot recommend Glorantha highly enough.However, if you are purchasing Glorantha stuff, buy second edition materials. There's a company, Issaries I believe, that sells reprints. The system isn't as good but that's when the designers really new what they were doing, unlike the third edition when Avalon Hill tried to mainstream it or Hero Wars which is in danger of turning Glorantha into something combining some of the less positive elements of Harn and the games turned out by The Forge.</blockquote>

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