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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wombat" data-source="post: 2427096" data-attributes="member: 8447">Ah, Glorantha, one of the few pre-made worlds that I enjoyed running.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Heck, I even wrote a cult for it (if you ever find The Cult of Indlas Sommer in Different Worlds ... kinda obscure).Glorantha, for me, was lovely because it was both very detailed and still had many blanks to fill in.  It was also interesting becasue depending on who you played at any given time the "bad guys" could shift -- if you played a Lunar then the Sartarites were wild, ignorant savages; if you played a Sartarite, the Lunars were foul allies of Chaos, etc.  And due to the way the various cultures were written up, each of them was equally valid.The world had a gritty, realistic feel to it, but it also had a lot of humour.  On the one hand the game system made one hit, one kill possible even for high level characters.  Equally it was important to make allies (someone to watch your back in hostile lands) and bring the right equipment (basic stuff, like water, rope, etc.).  But then again you had places like Gimpy's Tavern (in Pavis, run by three guys who had each lost a leg while adventuring), Adventuring Licenses for the Big Rubble, and, of course, DUCKS!  What drew me to Glorantha most of all, however, was its mythology.  The gods of Glorantha are a huge, confused jumble of stories that almost all fit together, but not quite, yet the priest will gladly give you explanations for who all of this works anyway.  One of my favourite visions of vampires came from the Gloranthan god Vivamort, God of the Undead.  Everyone in Glorantha believes in reincarnation.  During the Chaos Wars Vivamort, then a very minor individual, was wounded so horridly that even as a hero his life was ebbing away.  Fearing that the tales of reincarnation were untrue, he struck a deal with the gods of Chaos -- he would be healed of his wound by sucking the blood of others.  In other words, to continue this existence due to his own fears, he would forgo any chance of future existence.  Truly a Faustian deal, this.  Another wonderful aspect, and again relating back to both cultures and mythology, was the Trolls.  The trolls were not simply strong, but had their own culture, a culture of the night and of darkness that was as valid as that of any of the daylight races.  They also suffered under a curse that led to the trollkin -- most births led to runt-sized, cowardly, sickly, feeble little creatures who were only good for food, slavery, or comic relief, instead of full-sized, elegant, strong trolls.  Thus trolls become oddly (if simplistically) cultured as well as being tragic figures.Now as to Harn...I love the Harnic maps, love them to tears.  I like the size of the states and how they are organized.  I am bored to tears by their gods, who are far too static and staid for my tastes (besides, in such a realistic world, who would knowingly and actively worship an overtly evil god?), and I think there are way too many barbaric tribes running around the terrain.  Still, I have used the maps and the basic societal structure for foru different campaigns using two different systems -- Ars Magica and D20.  So my suggestion to most folks is get the maps, use the maps, and if you want to use anything else from the world, go ahead, but don't feel like you are bound to them.</blockquote>

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