Glorantha Thread

"Guide to glorantha"

Thank You! I'm never going to be able to play a fucking game but I am interested in the setting.

>I don't know what culture are the not-Incas tough, a Solar cult?
I think they are Sun-Domers

Apparently, this is their newest attempt at introducing people to the setting. Haven't read it yet though. I'm actually introducing myself to Glorantha by reading classic Runequest stuff. It's honestly pretty great.

So the Lunar Empire is the inclusive one that tries to assimilate everyone except for Orlanth worshipers? Are they properly evil or is it just because people don't want to be forced to be part of the empire?

>Make awesome setting.
>Ruin it by adding Donald Duck people.

It's Star Wars and Ewoks all over again.

You know that they only live in very specific locations where nobody of note wants to live?
If you don't like them you can basically ignore them.

Both, a lot of people don't like to be conquered by smug, imperialist jerks and the Lunar elite legitimately believe they can control a force corrosive to existence itself.

Argarth demonstrates that they aren't necessarily wrong as he does a lot of similar rites, but Chaos is always bad as it is simply anathema to the materiel and spiritual world.

With the rising number of people (or just one colossal samefag) on this board i think it's actually their next step.
First lure in the oldfags and the autists in with the guide to glorantha.
And then publish something for normies.

heroquest glorantha actually states that one form of insanity you can get with illumination is thinking that chaos is pretty allrigth

Yeah except every time someone brings up the setting someone reminds us all about gag joke that are the ducks. Authors who don't take their setting seriously are the worst.

So I want to play Runequest Classic (2nd edition in the 70s), but I want to include Western Socery.

Does anyone have the giant folders of notes you could get from the Kickstarter which had the unpublished Sorcery rules? Or a reliable way to convert between Runequest 3rd edition Magic Points and Runequest 2nd POW?

I have literally never heard about one of those gag-jokes and i've been around for some time.

>And then publish something for normies.
13th Age is probably the most normie thing possible so yeah. I think you're right. The video game will probably bring in new blood too.

I still contend that the RQ2-reprints are the best intro to Glorantha.

So Runequest was also a thing in Japan?
The rpg market is weird.

>eating chaos-octpus dick
How about no ?

I would play a Runequest game that looked like that.

You mean generic 70s anime style?
>All that steel equipment
At least they got the troll right, so that's a plus

Yep. Besides for all the bronze, the designers admit the social system is more Iron-age with small communities digging up the material needed without have vast trading networks devoted to smelting alloy.

>Or a reliable way to convert between Runequest 3rd edition Magic Points and Runequest 2nd POW?
RQ3 MP Come Directly from your POW. So if you have 16 POW you have 16 MP.

So if your RQ2 Character has 16 POW, he has 16 MP in RQ3 ezpz

>You mean generic 70s anime style?
Something about this style combined with fantasy really gets me going. Japan's dnd rulescyclopedia is similarly great.

Who who has primary in lore Sandy or Stafford?

Actually better question, who makes better lore?

So just, so I won't waste my time reading non canon stuff. I should basically just skip Mongoose Glorantha books right? Where should I get my info for the Second Age then?

>Who who has primary in lore Sandy or Stafford?
Glorantha is Staffords life work so I would go with him here.

For the second question I am not sure, I never really differentiated between the two and what they wrote.

I did skip them and never felt bad for it. Second age stuff is in the Guide to Glorantha aswell.

Second age is boring

Guide to glorantha and the glorantha sourcebook is pretty much a retcon too, so you won't technically miss stuff.
Also Mongoose couldn't handle an IP if their lives would depend on it.

I see where you come from and you aren't wrong.

Typical Lunar dupe!
To become truly Illumined, you must understand the nature(s) of Law, Chaos, and Balance. The simplest way is to be well known as a champion of one of them, thus attracting the interest of one or more followers of Nysalor. They will then gradually open your mind to potential Illumination through their mystical riddles until you eventually break free of your old ways of thinking.
Being the degenerate scum that they are, the Lunars draw their inferior Illuminatory abilities from Gjabi the Deciever , Nysalor's destructive and chaotic aspect.

Arkat called, you need to go

Looks like dogshit

Is the 13th Age version out? Is it any good?

Alternatively, do a whole lot of drugs.

Or communicate with a true dragon.

Why don't they like Orlanth?

Bunch of reasons.
The orlanths brother is Urox whose policy on Chaos is "murder on sigth with throbbing erection" and you don't let family down.
The culture they emerged from (dara happa) always had beef with the Orlanthi
Orlanth rules over the space between earth and sky dome, where the lunars want to put their red moon permanently, they basically put their car in his kitchen.

It's very 13th Age, so it's very combat focused to the point that the default Dragon Pass setting has more trouble with Chaos so Chaos bashing seems to be the default assumed campaign. I like the Hero Quest rules though, easy to understand. I also like the text acknowledging that a true Glorantha grognard will just do their own thing anyone, so they hope the rules can help.

What I don't like is how damn conversational the book is. It's too informal for my tastes.

Orlanth is rebellion without purpose and is therefore sterile and stagnant. He advocates change but doesn't change himself, which is probably reflected on how Orlanthi are tradition-bound.

>What I don't like is how damn conversational the book is. It's too informal for my tastes.

For that reason i love the Heroquest: Glorantha book, it does away wiht alot of "GM
romanticizing" and goes straigth for the meat.
"So you want to run a game, huh? Then listen up"

>Orlanth is rebellion without purpose and is therefore sterile and stagnant. He advocates change but doesn't change himself, which is probably reflected on how Orlanthi are tradition-bound.
That sounds like some solar talk to me.
First decree of every orlanthi is always "nobody can make you do anything".
Also when you look at his myth he had a lot of development as a character, going from violent storm elemental, to a dude who is trying to figure out what this new "justice" thing is to the man who literally became friends with his nemesis.
The basic idea is much closer to "don't break tradition unless you got a good reason to do so and are willing to defend your decision"

Its from a Lunar Priestess preaching in Tarsh actually. I got it from HeroQuest Voices. That PDF paints a pretty kind picture of Lunar beliefs.

Yeah, is more narrativist. I hate narrativist systems because I prefer the nitty gritty feel, but it isn't a bad one and lets itself well to Glorantha.

I feel we will go to Prax/Pavis instead of Dragon pass with six age. The ruins seemed very Pavis.

>I got it from HeroQuest Voices
Just found it on the interweb and that's one really good PDF i'll show to my players.

>but Chaos is always bad as it is simply anathema to the materiel and spiritual world

Didn’t the world originate for chaos?

Yeah, by deciding not to be chaos anymore.
Like islands are pretty nice but the ocean will fuck you up.

Reminder that the world has a hole in it because Chaos fucked it

...

I have a good feeling about this one, they have picked one of my prefered artist for a good deal of the art.

What duck design is best duck design ?

...

Is that Parn and Deedlit?

More likely art inspired by it, which is true to most Fantasy rpg art and even the Shadowrun Manga.

>didn't listen to age old advice.

...

Something similar to this and not the Howard The Duck version.

Povorot's dinosauroids/Nemo Ramjet's Avisapiens are a good template.

What other non-humans are normal parts of larger society? I was reading Prince of Sartar and saw some dragon-people, one of the duck guys and I think I saw a boar-guy too. I know the tapir-guys are out there and I guess baboons.

>Povorot's dinosauroids/Nemo Ramjet's Avisapiens
Top taste.

Newt people, minotaurs, centaurs, bird people, walrus people, dolphin people, shark people, insect people, really anything.
This isn't a setting where old grannies go "my grandmother told me that once there were people looking like X"
This is a setting where X is out and about and ready to mess you up.

Best and most workable Heroquesting rules?

Anyone has messed up a bit with Balazar?
Personally I like the idea, less so about the execution, the barreness of it all specially and how poor and boring the locals where. So I decide to spice it up a bit. First to add a few more natives, was thinking to add some stone age based tribes and mixing this with some of my prefered gods/tribes, like a Lodrills or the Kitori (so a Bunch of stone age Lodrilli worshipers, similar to the One and half men, but being Red headed and with golden eyes, thinking to rationalize them as descendents of a Lodrilli adventure), a bunch of sneaky-snek tribe of rangers and hunters than use shadow spirits and are more or less allied with trolls, that kind of stuff.
Was thinking in Resurrecting my prefered god, Vadrus. Valind is a wimp and while gagarth is pretty cool its at best a natural force. Not sure if make not-Praxian using the winter gods animals or simply add more Hsunchen.

B: extend arm

Does anybody have one of the chaos mutation tables?
A player did dumb shit and my mantra is "play stupid games, win stupid prices"

I wish there was an article or short pamphlet written in this irreverent style so that you can see at a glance how batshit insane Glorantha is and what makes it different. Something with plenty of bullet points and exclamation points so you won't have to do some digging to get to the "good stuff."

so what is your least favorite part of Glorantha, personally I really hate their take on Dwarves, who I feel are just unpleasant assholes, and not in an interesting way either, honestly if I ever ran a Glorantha campaign I'd probably establish Dwarves as being mostly extinct

>Hegemonic Roman-Babylonia-Buddhist with the Fucking Moon on their side
I'm fucking sold.
Tell me more.

No, that's about the re-colonization of the area after the Dragons killed everyone
Whatever the canon* end to the Dragon Pass game is, the area gets conquered by Lunars eventually and Sartar leads the revolt against them.

*however much that exists in Glorantha

Not that's Argarth, Sartar is the canon ending of KoDP.

I like those concepts but Howard the Duck is the best way to do Glorantha ducks

Never seen what's wrong with Duck-men just being Duck-men.

same

So the Guide to Glorantha is the Encyclopedia Grognardica, and the Sourcebook is like a high school textbook.

What is the "For Dummies" intro I can plumb and give my more ambitious players to digest for a game in two week's time?

Same that sounds fucking amazing.

The Runequest box set from 3rd edition/ Heroquest Voices pdf.

Cliff-notes: The two pages in Runequest 2nd edition/Classic book.

Ta.

>Hating in Mostlis.
I kinda of see why you will hate them, but personally I love them. They are best as NPC tough.
What I liked less was the initial Malkioni, the ones than where too medieval specially. The new ones are pretty cool tough.

So what do YOU think 4th Age Glorantha looks like?

Like the old one but round?
A whole extra hemisphere attached?
Everything starting to shift into Earth or the Hyborian Age?
Like the old one but less magic?
Some combination?

What exactly happens at the end of the Hero Wars anyway? What was the big climactic event?

I'm not sure what the different ages are, have we seen more than one?

Argarth traps the gods and the Devil in a net while his trickster betrays him, modifying the Lightbringer Quest. As the universe is dying/breking, it has a bigger impact.

All gods including Devil die a little more permanently, it's harder to contact them or work magic. Side-effects including changing geography and a plague of illiteracy, probably caused by knowledge god or trade god dying.

Eventually the Kingdom of Sartar (the book) is published by some scribes who work for some despot with different ideas on calendars. Also they calculate the time since the Hero Wars and worry if the Devil will return soon.

So like a "Bronze Age Collapse" period?

Damn. That sounds like something on the level of the birth of a Chaos God and the collapse of Empire of Wyrm Friends alright.

There's still some kind of magic available to 4th age glorantha, ie the invisible moon and still being able to seize your inner dragon, but Stafford usually responds to questions about it by pointing to the outside of whatever con he's at.

What do you expect from a man who does drugs for a living ?

What's the best book to learn about the Lunar Empire? I'm not looking for stats, but more about the culture, places, people, etc.

Voices of Glorantha
Glorantha sourcebook
Guide to Glorantha

From where is that image ?
Is there a KoD 2.0 ?

I went through the Guide but the chapter on Lunar culture isn't that detailed. I'll check the other two you mentioned, thanks.

See , same team making a spiritual successor with more artists. Pic is from an old Veeky Forums questfag.

After reading the Carmanian part of the Guide,I want to learn a bit more about them, is there anything more?

I'm new to Glorantha so I hope other anons supplement this answer. I found this to be a pretty good introduction to Lunars. Got me interested in em.
princeofsartar.com/comic/chapter-2-the-lunar-way/

Try Dara happy culture, since the lunar empire emerged from those guys and the lunar cult has infiltrated them with their red emperor and stuff.

Also the Lunar "culture" isn't as much a culture as it is a cult on steroids. So while sable riders are also part of the lunar empire they will be very different from Dara Happan people.

What's with that conspicuous glacier patch?