The Plane Above - the Glorantha-fication of D&D?

[JohnRTroy]

For some reason D&D has never had good fluff, and I think the problem might be Gary's whole approach in the first place, which was very superficial. Sure, he knew a fair bit about myth and folklore but he just used it as a source for monster stats. The protagonists in his favoured fiction are rootless, ruthless individualists seeking gold, like oil industry workers in Robert E Howard's small Texas towns, spending all their money on drink and whores. Can you imagine a more shallow, pointless existence? This is the model for D&D.

Subsequent writers have taken Gary's jejune ideas and, nerds that they were, tried to make sense of it. Explain things, tie up the loose ends. Tell us what sort of hats gnomes wear and what flinds like to eat. Useless crap.

I certainly wouldn't call Greyhawk or much of the original D&D Mythology "shallow", nor would I call it Superficial, and I certainly wouldn't call Gary's ideas jejune. To be honest, a lot of the "well thought out" stuff was coming, but as D&D grew organically, it was hard to present a top-down view of everything.

And I hate to say it, but anybody who creates an RPG is a "nerd", Greg Stafford included. Let's not dismiss the people who aren't "avant-garde" as being lesser than those that are.

 

[Plane Sailing]

A couple of things that marked out Glorantha as distinct and unique in its day.

1) It was there in the original rulebook. There wasn't much, but there was a map with interesting site names, there was about half a page of history, there were protagonists and antagonists sitting there, and there was enough information about the religious cults to both get you straight into the action and wanting to run a game there.

2) It was mythic in scope (even if much of that doesn't actually effect game mechanics, at least in RQ2). Iron is rare, so most armour and weapons are made of bronze - which is mined directly from the bones of dead gods(!). The devil is trapped under a huge block of special stone in the prairie, where the Storm Bull god trapped him. The premise (which was never realised within the RQ2 lifetime) was that ultimately heros would be "heroquesting" - travelling back into creation myths and interacting with the gods and heroes of bygone ages to acquire heroic powers themselves.

3) Forget alignments. People joined cults in order to gain advancement, learn more magic and so forth. These cults could have a matrix of relationships with other cults. You might be adventuring with four friends who are all in cults allied or friendly to your own, and you meet some Kyger Litor trolls who are neutral to you, friendly to some of your mates and enemies with others! The rich tapestry was a huge boon in developing the feel of the world. The nations were the warp and the cults were the weft which gave pattern to the tapestry of the world.

Cheers

 

[TerraDave]

Useless crap.

?

The focus for Gygax was right were it should be: individual glory in a strange and dangerous world.

And of course he introduced the idea of broader themes and an underlying "D&D" mythology that the PCs could engage in.

You also know in-game mythology is a double edged sword and can too easily became a story that the players juts aren't that into. And that what 4E has done is OK, but not that ground breaking or that relevant for a lot of 4E games out there. (Though it is fine).

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

RuneQuest/Glorantha

I played RuneQuest for about 20 years, often running Glorantha. There was a time when I knew a ridiculous amount of useless detail about Glorantha.

In my opinion, it's still unsurpassed as a setting. It has far fewer monster types and races than D&D, but almost all of them (especially trolls) are far better developed than any PC race in D&D.

It's a world that , given the existence of magic and gods, takes that fact to its logical consequence.

Playing in Glorantha had its pluses and minuses. The benefit was that the world was heavily developed; the problem was it was hard for a DM to add his own stuff without conflicting with canon. There was even a term for it in the Gloranthaphile community; getting 'Gregged'.

We waited forever for HeroQuest to come out, even using various fan-created rules set for it since it never did.

I mostly played RuneQuest 3. I still have a playtest copy of RuneQuest 4: Adventures in Glorantha somewhere, which I really liked. Sadly, the author of RQ4 was convicted (wrongfully, it was overturned on appeal) of a sex crime ad RQ4 was shelved -- possibly because of this, though I had heard that Greg Stafford wasn't totally happy with RQ4.

Later , HeroQuest came out, and it was heavily storytelling based and just completely turned me off. 3rd Edition D&D came out about that time, and I never looked back.

I cannot imagine a greater irony, than if 4E brings playable heroquesting rules to an RPG before RuneQuest does.

Ken

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Wasn't King of Dragon's Pass set in Glorantha? That was a pretty awesome game with a pretty neat setting.

 

[pemerton]

For some reason D&D has never had good fluff, and I think the problem might be Gary's whole approach in the first place, which was very superficial. Sure, he knew a fair bit about myth and folklore but he just used it as a source for monster stats. The protagonists in his favoured fiction are rootless, ruthless individualists seeking gold, like oil industry workers in Robert E Howard's small Texas towns, spending all their money on drink and whores. Can you imagine a more shallow, pointless existence? This is the model for D&D.

Subsequent writers have taken Gary's jejune ideas and, nerds that they were, tried to make sense of it. Explain things, tie up the loose ends. Tell us what sort of hats gnomes wear and what flinds like to eat. Useless crap.

The best approach is to start again from the beginning, imo. Right at the very beginning - myth. I like how 4e has more of a mythic resonance - elemental giants, Celtic otherworlds, devils as fallen angels. It's good stuff, a step in the right direction. It's nothing like as good as Glorantha but it couldn't be because Greg Stafford is a genius.

Doug, I really enjoyed this post but can't give XP at this time etc etc.

What interested me about the Plane Above wasn't so much the depth of mythology, but (like Glorantha) presenting it not just as background scenery but as something the players are expected to engage with in the course of play. I can live without the richness of detail - my players have pretty finite attention spans and memory capacity for that sort fo thing anyway. It's the fact that the myth isn't simply setting background and colour, but actually part of the ingame situation with which the players can engage, that reminds me of Glorantha.

2) It was mythic in scope (even if much of that doesn't actually effect game mechanics, at least in RQ2). Iron is rare, so most armour and weapons are made of bronze - which is mined directly from the bones of dead gods(!). The devil is trapped under a huge block of special stone in the prairie, where the Storm Bull god trapped him. The premise (which was never realised within the RQ2 lifetime) was that ultimately heros would be "heroquesting" - travelling back into creation myths and interacting with the gods and heroes of bygone ages to acquire heroic powers themselves.

3) Forget alignments. People joined cults in order to gain advancement, learn more magic and so forth. These cults could have a matrix of relationships with other cults.

These things - especially (2), but also (3) to a lesser extent, are what I was trying to get at in the OP. 4e has succeeded in presenting a world that is mythic in scope, and in which the PCs can engage with that myth. There were hints of it in Players Handbook 2 (Invoker covenants), Arcane Power (a sidebar on Warlock pacts) and Divine Power (more on Invoker covenants and how multiple gods, including mixes of good and evil gods, can be involved). But Underdark and now The Plane Above really seem to me to be realising the potential.

I think the mechanical foundation for this (and it probably explains why D&D has got to this point ahead of Runequest) is the whole notion of the Epic Tier. Instead of the GM and/or players having to stretch or break the rules to bring the PCs into the mythic action, it's built right in to the character design mechanics.

 

[pemerton]

I cannot imagine a greater irony, than if 4E brings playable heroquesting rules to an RPG before RuneQuest does.

The sketch of these rules in The Plane Above is just that - a two page sketch with some examples. And (given their track record with modules) I'm pretty confident that WotC won't give us a decent worked-out example any time soon.

But the rules are there. Their foundation is the whole idea of the Epic Destiny as a guaranteed aspect of play rather than a goal for which the players have to strive and which the GM has a discretion to withhold (thus the great difference from the Immortals rules in earlier D&D). But as well as the mechanics, heroquesting also needs myths that are not just background, but that tie into the current situation in the gameworld, so that epic characters have a reason to engage with them. And this is what 4e has now given D&D, as far as I am aware for the first time.

 

[firesnakearies]

It's too bad that the adventures written for 4E don't match up to the coolness of the flavor/background/campaign advice text in the more recent rulebooks.

 

[Glyfair]

Most of the best Gloranthan material was piecemeal throughout the Chasoium RQ2 supplements and boxed sets of the early 1980s (Cults of Prax, Cults of Terror, Borderlands, Pavis, Big Rubble, etc), though Avalon Hill's RQ3 Glorantha:Genertala set was pretty good as well (RQ3 stuff being written by chaosium anyway). Unfortunately all of this stuff fetches high $ these days (I got a pretty penny for my RQ2/R3 collection, far from complete, about 7 years ago)

Most of the RQ2 books were reprinted in large "telephone book" reprintings. They are somewhat expensive due to size (retail varied from $60-$80) but that is still a great deal compared to the size of the reprints. They are also still somewhat available.

In fact, Steve Jackson Games (I believe the official distributor of the Heroquest print products) has hardcover copies of the Cult Compendium (every cult write-up written for RQ2) and seems to be getting in more of the Borderlands and Beyond collection (the great Borderlands campaign along with a bunch of miscellaneous books including the magic item reprints). $60 may seem steep, but these are huge hardback books.

As for Glorantha, it has a huge rich background (perhaps made a bit too rich in some later publications). IMO, the Griffin Mountain book was the best campaign area book ever published and few who have seen it can argue that Trollpack isn't the best "race book" for an RPG setting (unfortunately, Trollpack wasn't reprinted in the above reprints, but Griffin Mountain was).

 

[pemerton]

it's too bad that the adventures written for 4e don't match up to the coolness of the flavor/background/campaign advice text in the more recent rulebooks.

qft.