Runequest: Roleplaying in Glorantha is an update for Chaosium's Runequest 2e rules...

Yeah, it's a deeply disappointing game after the shining beacon that was Runequest 6. However, I'll be paying close attention to the line since it'll have so much Glorantha material that's easy to convert back over to Mythras.

Never played RQ but interested in Glorantha, can you tell me why people have such a boner for Mythras? Seems like a slog of a game to me.

The webcomic Prince Of Sartar is nice introduction to the setting, but if you want to go deeper, I imagine that some of the sourcebooks for HeroQuest, like Sartar: Kingdom Of Heroes, would be pretty useful. I'm not overly familiar with much of the pre-Guide setting material, since I pretty much started getting into Glorantha with those two coffee table books.

Because it is just that much better than any other BRP-ruleset to date.
Some people's eyes glaze over when reading it because it breaks away from some of the original BRP-mechanics, others because it, in doing so, adds mechanics that make it crunchy. And some are of the opinion that you can't have RQ without Glorantha.
But as a fantasy toolkit, it is unsurpassed.

"make it seem crunchy" would have been the words if I had been capable of actually writing them.

Ok, so it's essentially the most refined y detailed version of the BRP system, taking into account new-age rpg philophies and descended from an OSR system. It has rules for Firearms, 6 different magic systems, including D&D Casting in the Classic Fantasy Supplement, Psionics and other Sci-fi elements in the form of M-Space, and best of all, Rules for modern and futuristic Firearms that aren't completely shit or OP. You can also port between every other BRP system without much trouble, so your options are nearly limitless.

Essentially it's everything you wanted from GURPS, except where GURPS is so granular it requires you to build the game from scratch, Mythras is merely Modular. It took me five minutes to assemble everything from the various pdfs to make a Low-magic Post-modern-apoc Waterworld setting that felt cohesive.

In that case, are the guides worth it? $170 is really steep.

I've already read and keep up with Prince of Sartar. It's fascinating, even if I don't yet fully understand it.

Who are the various gods Belintar was aligned with? How did he bind them to him, and what are the ramifications of this? When that red bitch pulled him apart, did these deities die,
or were they freed from some sort of captivity?
What are the ramifications of her taking that one piece with her?

What exactly is the Red Moon Goddess and why is she such a bitch to everyone else? And who is that eskimo motherfucker?

How do all these different pantheons fit together? I'm familiar with some of the Orlanthi myths via King of Dragon Pass but it seems to me like the various pantheons don't really have myths about coming into conflict with each other.

On a scale of Apocalypse World to Burning Wheel, how crunchy is it? Because that is one scary character sheet.

I'd place it alongside RQ3 crunchwise.
It is definitively crunchier than AW. I'd imagine that if you culled the worst wonk from BW, what was left would be somewhat on the level.

I absolutely love the guide, but I haven't read it all the way through. It is a very interesting book(s), and details parts of Glorantha that don't really get talked about elsewhere. It also apparently completely revamped Western cultures to make them less mediaeval, which I quite liked.

I can't answer all you questions, but I can give some of them a shot. Sedenya is the goddess of the Red Moon, but that moon only rose recently. No-one else likes her because her followers are okay with Chaos, which everyone else is convinced only wants to destroy the entire world. While the Sun and Storm gods have myths about their conflict, not everyone's myths fit into each other like that, much like in the real world. The Malkioni don't usually see other cultures' gods as worth paying attention to, the Kralori and other Eastern Genertelan cultures have their own gods, and the East Isles have a load of really tiny religions that can seem really narrow and utterly bizarre to outsiders. The last time someone tried to fit everyone's myths together, we got the God Learners, and that didn't end well.

Just recently bought Mythras myself. It's definitely BRP with all its positIves. Comparing it to RuneQuest 2, combat has interesting "special effects," what they call techniques, that you can add in offense and defense and lead to the game being slightly less lethal, no "generic" hit point pool, just hp for body parts and too much damage takes you out, but isn't an auto-kill except, like, the head. 5 magic systems in the main book which is awesome. Pretty refined, all things considered.

Hmm... ignoring the Magic System, the most complex portion of the system, which, like most combat systems, just takes a new players 2-3 sessions to really pick up and get running smoothly, and once you've gotten that down

The classic Fantasy Supplement and M-Space both have alternative rules to simplify it, but at that point you're just playing D&D100, which kind of defeats the point.

My advice? Get M-Space, which is Mythras as simplified as it can be, besides the Mythras Imperative, and run that for a few sessions and see if things click.

Don't even think about touching Animism before you've played for a while. New D&D players play Martials, not Casters, new Mythras players get Folk Magic, not Animism.

I'm inclined to agree with these anons. The newest RQ edition seems like a good game, but nothing we've not seen before, and vastly inferior to RQ6/Mythras. Which is not something to be ashamed of, Mythras is unironically the best game I've ever played. I hope they at least release a set of new adventures and splatbooks.

The most cumbersome part is adding up your skills at the beginning of the game, and getting a hang of special effects in combat. Just print them out and pass out a copy for players to look at, and it's fine.

The overall design seems much weaker. Things like the resistance table are very clunky, and the combat in Mythras seems much more engaging.

I wish there were more Glorantha memes to make it popular but I feel like they would be too complex for most people to understand.

...

Well there's suing ghosts and writing poems and but not a how lot of stuff that you can just spew off.

I like to call these guys the Slapfoot Cucks when I play KoDP because it's so easy to cuck them to death.

I'd be willing to give it a go just to explore Glorantha more.

What was the edition that was low-crunch or high narrative? Is there a free intro for that?

I feel the same. Problem is, it requires a GM versed in Glorantha. This are few and far between.

HeroQuest Glorantha. I could not find a free PDF of this game specifically, but could find a version of its parent system, HeroQuest, that had some Glorantha info in the back but a different cover. I don't understand it.

Mandatory RQ-stuff

D100II SRD. Removed from the shop windows of the net after the resurgence of RQ2

MRQ SRD. Not removed, possibly because Mongoose understands that it will, at best, be a referance document.

>HeroQuest Glorantha. I could not find a free PDF of this game specifically, but could find a version of its parent system, HeroQuest, that had some Glorantha info in the back but a different cover. I don't understand it.

Thanks!
I can't manage that much. Will have to check out the file request thread later to see if anyone has it.

RQ6 quickstart. Removed along with the removal of RQ6 and replaced with the less impressive Mythras Imperative.

What do you consider the essential tonal and mechanical elements of a RQ/Glorantha game? What really captures the "feel" of it?

As a bit of a gloranthafag, lemmie give it a shot:

Those spirits/gods were representatives of the five plus one elements and lands that make up the world and Holy Country.
Darkness/Shadow Plateau, Water/Mirrorsea Bay, Earth/Esrolia, Fire/Caladraland, Air/Heortland and the sixth piece - which is probably one of Man, Law, or Moon; and represents the land of God Forgot. They were all freed, except for the sixth piece, which the Lunar Empire probably has some use for.

The Red Goddess is... well, she's several things. She's several incarnations/different goddesses seen as one, she's the source of mystic enlightenment, she's possibly a Chaos thing in disguise, and she may be the sister of the devil. Many people hate her because her philosophy doesn't hold Chaos as evil, her empire keeps defeating and conquering them, her empire has their ancient enemies in it... and the Orlanthi hate her because the empire outlawed worship of Orlanth.

The Eskimo motherfucker? Harrek the berserk. He's from a stone age, bear worshipping culture who went off to be an adventurer (such as killing the Red Goddesses son as an assassin. He got better)
He really became important when he went back home. His people were calling their great white bear spirit into the world. Harrek killed them, then skinned the bear god - which he now wears. It's still alive, and worryingly it can be hard to tell who's in charge.

The pantheons fit more or less together into a set of legends the God Learners called the Monomyth. You have several tribes of gods. I'll go over some of the more important ones:
Earth - mostly goddesses, very magically powerful. Often marrying them is a route to power.
Fire - the sky gods, of stars and planets. Some married the Earth goddesses.
Storm - Barbarian air gods. Mostly married Earth goddesses (note a trend?)
Darkness - inhuman things from hell.

Chaos and Darkness are both "Bad Things" I take it, but are they related?

It's all about where you're from, who you pray to and how many limbs you're missing.

>less impressive Mythras Imperative.
I was looking to use Imperative to get going with my group since they aren't big on complexity and crunch, is RQ6 quickstart better then?

Chaos is seen by most people as a force that wants to destroy the entire world. It's the formless nothing that exists beyond the world.

By contrast, Darkness is a natural part of the world. A lot of things associated with Darkness might be unpleasant to humans, but if you're a creature of Darkness, like a troll or a fungus, the cold and dark aren't nearly as bad. In fact, trolls are native to the underworld, and their heaven is there. Darkness looks nasty from a human (and probably elf) perspective, but so can a lot of natural things.

RQ Essentials has a lot more content. The only thing it doesn't have is modern stuff.

Ah, makes sense, a clear distinction.

Well the full book has more stuff too, there's a reason I'm not using that. What makes it better to make it worth having more pages for some of the more casual players of mine to read?

Magic rules and a nicer layout?

Sold, thanks.

Not so much.

The trolls, a major darkness kindred, are monstrous things who eat people.

Broo, a Chaos race, would infect you with various plagues, rape you to implant their parasitic young into you, and destroy your soul.

Trolls can be reasoned with, they're just hungry, cruel, and sinister.

Broo find existence painful, and so want to destroy it so that they can return to Chaos.

So were the five plus one parts just nondescript spirits that strongly identified with the region? What was that weird blue guy the moon priestess asked if he bound it to keep the Orlanthi? It doesn't look like any representation of Orlanth I've seen before.

And what does it mean to "bind" a spirit or god to you? If it's like how everyone is aligned with a good in their coming of age in KoDP, why don't more people do what Belintar did?

And is binding like covenant with these spirits, since they came to defend him, or was Belintar just memeing them into servitude?

Hard to tell. Info on Belintar is hard to come by.

The spirit was the spirit of freedom. A child of the Old Gods, and an important figure to the Orlanthi. The legs represent the motion rune

I like that.

I enjoy there are races that are just irredeemably horrible evil things, as it gives something good to unite people against.

I remember from KoDP there is some religous cult that fanatically hunts the Chaos stuff?

Is it random or is it like L5R or 40k "taint" you catch?

Would you say a game where the party all come from one community is still "RQ-ey"? "Where you're from" obviously wouldn't matter as much. I've been working on my own game that hews pretty close to KoDP, with the PCs being members of the Ring who go on an adventure every season and have to make clan decisions during Sacred Time.

Don't see why that wouldn't work swimmingly. Don't see why pretty much anything wouldn't work, the setting ranges from down and gritty stone age societies to flying celtic vikings, ladies who wear beards for a living and sunday dinners with entire pantheons.

If you could change one thing in Glorantha, what would it be?

For me I would kind of replace the Lunars with the God Learners. Then it would be more like actual myth engaged in a battle with rationality.

The battle between the Lunars and other factions is interesting precisely because it's a battle between conflicting mythologies that are also both correct and valid.

I don't know. To my mind the Lunars are kind of boring. Just dick-waving assholes whining about muh Pharaoh, muh goddess. But I am a Glorantha neophyte.

Yeah, Urox the Storm Bull.

And usually you only get Chaos taint by doing something Chaotic, like worshipping a Chaos God, spreading disease, etc.

I mostly didn't start liking chaosium's system until BRP and mongoose runequest.

So, no interest in new rq2.

I like rq6/mythras, (and mrq2/legend, and mrq1).

But I'd say it's mostly good for historical games, or fantasy games with few fantastical elements.

For a generic fantasy toolset, I'm more into gurps, because of gurps powers, and the ability to easily build whatever race/class/template lenses you need for your campaign/setting.

It's hard to justify playing rq2 when mrq 1/2 exist and rq6 exists.

I could see taking rq6 and grabbing mechanics from BRP big gold book.

But "rq2 but prettier"?

I just don't see the appeal.

I intend to graft some parts of it, like the magic and rune mechanics, onto Mythras, and create a monstrous hybrid system.

What's the best edition for this game?

The one you like.

>And usually you only get Chaos taint by doing something Chaotic, like worshipping a Chaos God, spreading disease, etc.

Hmmm, so those times in KoDP where a sheep turns into a hideous Chaos monster means someone was actually dicking around with Chaos around there, so it's legitimately time for a witch hunt?

This is the other thing that keeps me from investing in RQ, it seems good at the same stuff GURPS is an I already am comfy with GURPS. (the other main hurdle being no one I've ever met played it).

BRP and GURPS end up producing quite similar play, only go about it in different ways.
GURPS-fans just refuse the accept the truth and superiority of the almighty d100.

Bell-curves forever! Steve Jackson-akbar!

>But I'd say it's mostly good for historical games, or fantasy games with few fantastical elements
Kinda agree. RQ is tailored to historical and conanesque fantasy out of the box. But there is nothing in it that prevents it from doing extraordinary high fantasy ..cough, Glorantha, cough, Stormbringer, cough..

I even bought that Stormbringer game years ago, I didn't realize it was RQ until just now.

Pretty much. They're feared to be broo infested.

Mutation like the two headed calf may just be random though or due to someone messing with chaos.
It's hard to tell, and often better to assume the latter.

bump

What is it with d100 and contentless bumps?

BRP sucks for supers and creatures with supernatural abilities outside its rigid magic system

RQ can only do high magic fantasy in the specific settings designed for it. It lacks the mechanics to build out content it lacks, such as racial magics and abilities.

BRP sucking for supers might be a thing. I don't have first hand experience there.
But "creatures without supernatural abilities outside of its rigid magic system"? What the hell are you smoking, user?

Seriously, what kind of shit are you smoking?