Kim

Why for the Lozenge's sake would any thing queue up to 'get' a 'rune'?

To the OP: you've got an exciting premise; Make Your Glorantha Vary to suit it. Personally, I've long been fascinated by Coralinthor Bay, but never have caused/been in a party of adventurers who got to go there. You can definitely do better than me

Lots of fun ideas posted here, lots published here and there -- but in the end, we're facing our fellow players and not internet squibble.

I've got geological kinds of patience Just go make a fun glorious mess out of this 'setting'!

This is a great thread. I love the heck out of it.

ISTM that a big (and good/fun) part of Glorantha was about making cosmology and mythology literal and actual and mundane. If that is (or were) the case, then it seems natural that reaching beyond that actual mundane reality should be faced with extreme hostility and violence.

The nasty threat of Illumination is baked into the rich cake of Gloranthan gaming.

I think you've got the seed of a really fun game, and a really fun Gloranthan game, already in the works   Please, please do y'all come back and tell us about what's happening in it.

21 minutes ago, Corvantir said:

You are right but part of the reason why I assume most of the players will be Sartarite exiles is that I want to use the clan creation rules of Sartar:Kingdom of Heroes and Pavis: Gateway to Adventure. I consider them to be a great tool to present Glorantha to the players as it conveys a lot of information about the setting in a fun way.

My players are new to the setting, so it can help a lot to get the ball rolling. And being strangers in a strange land, it explains why they don't know the area and thus their lack of knowledge about this part of the setting.  

I can definitely see and agree with your point of view, here. I do think there are others; for example, the 'deracinated foreigners off the boat in a foreign, foreign land' approach (as taken from Tekumel). As far as being new to the setting, I don't see any difference or advantage between your plan and my quibble. When we are easing newbies into the world, I would argue that it's easier to introduce them to it as monads, cut off from their social network, but given an interesting political situation -- from which they can explore history and culture around them, as they wish. In my experience, running fresh players through any kind of clan/family/background pre-game results in them never leaving it; they end up playing in that pre-game forever.

Not to knock clan-generation kinds of systems per se; I think they're great fun and well interesting.I just think that they're much better geared to reading and thinking by veterans, rather than actual gaming use for new inductees to the world.

On 7/5/2016 at 3:03 AM, David Scott said:

Do you have more details on these HeroQuest stations?

And could you clarify station 4 as I don't understand it, thanks. 

Why, you libelous swine!!! The implication that I had scripted Waha heroquesting as cannibalistic todger-wars is insane and unwarranted! I am shocked and dismayed. In truth, it says far more about you for immediately leaping to that conclusion, than it does about me!!!!!!!!!!!!

Liek, OBVIOUSLY, the burden of "Station 4" is that the culturally-sensitive, nature-protecting Wahans go frell off into heroquesty land or whatever and mystically discover that in fact FODDER was in fact ALWEEZ all about them already, and that when coming back to the mundane world, they can confirm that in NAO-time it is indeed theirs theirs theirs since forever. And is theirs.

(Fodder isn't human people!!! Unless you're morokanth, and then it's OK!!!)

I don't really think this is a problem unless we make it one. Take the 'Borderlands and Beyond' case here --

On the patron side, it seems to me that Duke Raus is an Imperial, but is not a Lunar -- that is, he comes from the ruling/elite class of the highly multi-ethnic and multi-pantheonic Empire, but isn't obviously an adherent of the Lunar religious tradition. (If your players aren't willing to deal with such a basic distinction, then I tend to think all your "Lunars" will end up just as being orcs in Gloranthan drag.)

On the PC side, it seems to me that you're assuming that players be playing Sartarites. (Including Sartar-exiles, Sartar-emigrants, and Orlanthi-linked religious cultures.) Why on earth??? Is it not possible, just to stipulate, while setting up the campaign and doing character-building, rather to say that the normal and basic starting point of the PCs is that of an Imperial colonist/exile/functionary, or Sable Rider, or (to be exotic) neutrally mercenary groups like morokanths and so forth? The great thing about most all classic Gloranthan adventure packs is you can quite easily turn them upside down and/or sideways and make them entirely different gaming experiences, just by inverting the implied values and identities.

I've always always kept Lunar illumination very uncertain and questionable, and basically keeping foreign illuminati as beyond the pale and not really part of the real world.

We had an NPC, DM-expy, and occasional PC who had what we called an Occlusion Insanity(tm) which we defined as "I'm A Happy Little Otter". (At least 1w level, if I'm permitted to define NPCs in such terms nowadays.) The character in question was a Great Troll going on 3m tall and weighing half a ton, so this identity dysphoria was... 'problematical', for those nearby.

Still: people came to believe that this Occlusion Insanity was mostly ever activated under situations of social stress and confusion; the character in question had a history as a carefree rollicking rafter on the Oslir River before becoming a serious, scholarly, cultured Great Troll; and had had a vicious run-in with a rather senior otter-goddess on that same river and subsequently had probably been badly cursed, forever. On the other hand, this... 'person', had a sincerity in the Lunar Path that was unquestioned, a strange familiarity with important Lunar powers and potentates, casual habits in disposing of abstruse epistemological and philological issues that were supposed to beyond the cognitive capability of uzdo, and above all, a startling cosmopolitanism in those spheres where arcane, holy, and taboo knowledge is supposed to obtain.

So was Dr. Pop just a both clueless and neurotic mortal, or a transcendental entity we can only begin to attempt to understand through the crippling lenses of biography and psychology? I think it's best not to really know; and best not to let rules, even the HQ:G style of rules, intrude into the dubious awe.

The creatures we're talking about here who enjoy Lunar comradeship are, I suppose, Brooskis?

I'm not disputing any mythological arguments about broo morphology, but it does seem to be that on a practical level, given 'chaos features' as a thing, a thing that looks like anything could actually be a broo. Regardless of their cosmological nature, and even if many or most have goatish qualities.

That fine kilt which your heroquesting stormlord is strapping on could indeed be a lucky broo. Lucky, lucky broo...

I really like this webcomic. The thing is, there's a viable and active commentary thread already right there on its own website. If we can't get a distinct chat thread going here, is there any value in reposting images of it here? For silence?

In an old Glorantha game I was part of, we had an NPC healer/occasional PC sh*t-stirrer who was a Lunar Broo, a penitent, a devotee of Osentalka, a meek and life-loving little goatly thing that wept ginormous tears out its square-centered eyes when people hit each other, and fled and shuddered at any token of sexual feeling. We all still lived in dread of that moment when 'Maidenly' freaked out, let go of Her Grace, and systematically and brutally face-f***ed all our PCs into Chaos-motherhood.

1) Hungry peeps

2) Hangry me!

3) Food elsewhere

4) TOTES MY FODDER NAO.

5) Repeat until illumination and/or satisfaction

7 minutes ago, MOB said:

(MOB wearing moderator hat again)  - sorry, this is starting to stray a long way from Glorantha, and this a Glorantha forum. And Kim, once again your comments are verging on rude. 

I agree. I'm gonna drop this thread now, and also apologize for all the personal offense I've given. And I'm wondering how bad my brainrot is; I may have been mistaking M Heldson for a completely different person I had in my mind -- embarrassing, and again, I apologize. Whatever Heldson I've been contra-posting with lately, is someone whose Glorantha I still am interested in.

Gimme this Parthian shot though: if this is "a long way from Glorantha", and is (lately) about how historians and historiography do their business, then where exactly can fans of Glorantha talk about one of the disciplines that fed the growth of Glorantha as a thing (a place? a product? a property?)?

Dunno. Maybe I'll try to fire up the old listservs and see if people bite. ('People' in the widest sense of the term, naturally. I do like ducks.)

MOB, M Heldson, I really do apologize. Not for my Glorantha, but my behavior on this private forum.

13 hours ago, M Helsdon said:

The only Thomas Friedman I can find has written the following:

• From Beirut to Jerusalem (1989; expanded edition 1990) – winner of the National Book Award in its first edition
• The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization (1999; revised edition 2000)
• Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11 (2002; reprinted 2003 as Longitudes and Attitudes: The World in the Age of Terrorism)
• The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (2005; expanded edition 2006; revised edition 2007)
• Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—And How It Can Renew America (2008)
• That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back (Co-written with Michael Mandelbaum 2011)

All in the modern era: nothing about the Ancient World that Glorantha emulates.

I'm assuming you're capable of conceiving of the idea that historians work with models, techniques, methods, and theories; and aren't just homespun truth-tellers about way-back-then. But I could be wrong; it seems you're saying that historiography is only a specific time and specific place, and that's it. Someone who is so refractory to acknowledging 'Friedman Analysis' as a common slang in hist-jabber is not the M. Heldson I've idolized.

I doubt The Ancient World you know to be real has much to do with mine.

On 6/11/2016 at 3:11 AM, M Helsdon said:

Had to look up Thomas Friedman; so far as I can determine he writes about modern history and politics, not ancient history.

He can write that far back as modernity??? I should examine and struggle my errors out.

But, seriously: Heldson's implication is pretty close to what I was imputing.

On 6/11/2016 at 6:40 AM, MOB said:

Well, you have - (putting on my moderator hat here): robust discussion is welcome at BRP Central, but in trying to be provocative some of your postings simply come across as needlessly offensive. Strong opinions are fine, but please moderate your language and tone.

I'd like to apologize for the state in which I wrote some of my posts in this forum. The state wasn't mine (medicated or over/underwise); I was the state. I am totally needless to Glorantha, and I'm at least as likely as not to be offensive to it.

So far as I've been able to find out, I'm part of the only Gloranthan-oriented gaming group in a nearly a thousand kilometers that isn't tolerant of a very certain 'Northern European Heritage' type of paganism -- if not strongly supportive of it. Whose needless offense is the topic here?

Is there some neutral ground where Gloranthophiles can perform anything resembling discussions, outside of these hallowed grounds? IDon't tell me about some social frelling media platform; word salad billowing after 72 hours, actual physical privacy vaporizing before 1/72 second.) Wish there were, but this seems to be the best of what we're stuck with: an aggressively commercial chat forum.

I do apologize for all the offenses I didn't intend. Believe it or not, there must have been a lot of those. And for all the rest -- oh, I enjoyed offending all of you!!! YOU'RE GLORENTHA IS RONG!!!!!!

Kim

" How do Aldryami communicate and if different from humans, can humans learn to do the same?"

They communicate by the expression and reception of phylologomenes, a substance that cannot be detected, let alone interpreted, by meat and rock things. No, humans can't learn anything about them. Aldyrami and humans communicate by sheer shrieking pain and hate and fear at each other.

47 minutes ago, Patrick said:

 

Thanks! Everything you've just said about rules and runes and RQ has totally confirmed my suspicions and disinterest in the whole business. Look, it's 2016. We're not teenagers, and actual teenagers are an insane target market now. Only addicts, badly treated autistics, and random male obsessives are gonna pay money for more pages of rules now.

What smacked me up the head about Kralorela, in the Gazetteer, was that after half a million USD investment the writers managed to take an already embarrassing, racist, cliche of China and turn the dial up to 11. Seriously, they couldn't even be bothered to keep on making up fantasy/Gloranthan words for stuff there. Just use modern Chinese! Who cares? It's not like they're people, or even ducks, am I right? Whoo! Heroes! HEROES!!!

4 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

In The Guide to Glorantha, 23 pages out of 754 are specifically about Dragon Pass (several pages are maps). Perhaps another 25-30 pages provide material directly relating to Dragon Pass.

Your complaint seems to be about the coverage of the region in other published material, but that's hardly surprising because it was the focus of most of the Chaosium house campaigns, and the published world has its origins (in published form) in the board game most recently called... Dragon Pass.

It's also a fact that in the world, Dragon Pass is at the crossroads of a continent because it is virtually the only easy pass in a gigantic mountain range that bisects the continent. History is going to funnel through there, much as the Middle East of our world has been the crossroads between Europe, Asia and Africa - and what a lot of history comes from that...

In comparing Glorantha with Tékumel, I would also note that the Tékumel Sourcebook aside, virtually all the published Tekumel material relates to Tsolyánu or to Tsolyáni characters going elsewhere.

 

 

We're going to pick out one publication and count pages? Is that what this discussion is gonna be about?

The idea that Dragon's Pass is a "natural" focus for history that we ought give a fart about, is a huge f__king s__t in the face of actual historians on one hand, and of actual history on the other. There is no sane reason D.P. is a "crossroad" except that it's been designated as one by writers. And WTF do you mean by saying "the Middle East" was/is a "crossroads"? Where exactly are you talking about? And what places do you leave out to create that "place"?

I've been reading, and admiring, and using your stuff for years, so please, even in an imaginary universe, please don't go down the Thomas Friedman route of historiography.

I know nothing about board games about Gloranha, or their importance. I came upon the (imaginary) place fleetingly, or prematurely, and then bought it (literally) in the '80s, as an entire world. At that time D.P. was, as far as anyone I ever got to meet for well over a decade was concerned, was a pretty arbitrary  and pretty obviously over-engineered place to set published adventures/scenarios.

Re: Tekumel, I've been making fun of the place for nearly forty years. Yes, it's incredibly shallow. You don't even have to talk about non-Tsolyani regions to say that. ALL of the damn place is incredibly shallow. Pick any place the size of, say, modern France on the map of the empire of Tsolyanu itself, and try to crank out a regional history or cultural guide: if you're rich and lucky, you've got 200-300 words of text, is all. Barker, by all accounts (slobbering or not) made the place impressive by his fun and inventive live GM'ing. I think he wrote well, too, about the place; I mean his deceit and deception. He made it up as he went along, even after he'd written 'definitive' world-building books about the place. He Gregged the Greggness out of Greggitude, but never could make it commercial.

56 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

The history of Glorantha is filled with events that different groups claim to have caused... Many of the events in or near Dragon Pass have parallel 'causes'. Within Glorantha, given the nature of the cosmos, local events often have non-local causes.

From Cults of Terror...

The Sunstop

The year 374 was critical for Glorantha. At that time many synchronous events of tremendous magnitude culminated to force an impossible act to occur.

In central Genertela, the great Genesis of the Perfect One reached a climax.

In Fronela, the wizards engaged in a thaumaturgical contest with a powerful heathen god, promising a great sign of their strength to destroy their foes.

In eastern Genertela, in the land of Kralorela, the latest of the Dragon Emperors meditated upon a potent symbol, whose consequence and inner working was unknown. Without realizing it or not caring about it, he called upon the Dragon's Eye to shine upon him.

In Pamaltela, a hundred thousand elves, led by their god of nature called Pamalt, sent their energies coursing through the world to call upon a good spirit to come to their jungle to help combat a virulent rot besetting their inner fibers.

Dragon Pass is mythically and universally a cause of local and non-local events because it's the primary site for Dragon Nests, and the home of a bunch of obscure Air Gods.

I pushed the 'like' button on your post, and don't regret it. I also just don't... buy? agree with? care about? what you say about Dragon Pass. Even if it's right, totally correct down to its buttons.

This is a ridiculous piece of territory that we must pretend has much more interesting civilizations, and many, many lesser entities, also must to give a flip about.

I accept that as marketing; I void myself upon it as a consumer. VEHEMENTLY, but not explicitly.

Twice now I've played in & through Gloranthan apocalypses. Dragon's Pass was irrelevant, twicelyful. Why should it have been otherwise? 'Tis a silly bit of space.

48 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

If you did a fanzine I'd read it. Yeah, that's a dare.

Looking for an authentic pre-colonial Kralorela at this point is a mandate for saints and revolutionaries -- in the earliest surviving documents they worshipped "Yelm" over there.

Maybe that's just where "Yelm" comes from, dragging his set of "runes" along with him across the sky from the morning exposure of empire. As generations of travelers come and go, they put two clacks into the prayer machine for a look at the sun just like everyone else. Eventually the cult gets to Raibanth and that's where the Malkioni with their universalizing categories encounter him. They reintroduce their expectations when they go to the Eest. Some of it sticks, most of it doesn't, but it's all available for enunciation as "la langue."

I'd fanzine your bill off, you honey duckling; but the problem is that I used to do intellectual property law to pay my bills, and also I've read fanzines. So that's not happening.

Totally respect you calling my Kralorelan originalism; I sucked and you ruled! But I don't really follow the next paragraph.

The dreaded 'Gregging' came up, and I'd like to say, my own piss-ignorant and childish whining is not based on that issue. I guess I do recognize and appreciate the practical, the emotional, the encyclopedist's difficulties with Gregging, but I think I do support Gregging. The guy made a world and let us in; he put world-defining stories at the center of the world; he let us see, and maybe touch, those stories; how much more boss is there in being the boss?

I don't support Gregging in the game system(s) the same way, though. I do feel like the latest tranche has basically given up on how cool and awesome Glorantha is; it's outsourced all the actual work, both creative and simply sweatly, while still retaining credit and authority over the product. Instead of broad and agnostic game systems that can easily be tuned to cover an entire world of contradictory and also literally true religious traditions, mythologies, cosmologies, and recorded histories (a situation I ADORE), and which contributors and writers leaped to enrich and expand -- I do feel we've been sold an cosmologically authoritative beast of a 'game' that all our Gloranthas must have already accommodated. (If you'll permit the light Renan reference.)

Look at the complete frelling frellfest of Kralorela, as it appeared in the recent Atlas. I'm still shocked and dismayed at it. So a third of that continent's now gonna be subsumed into some three-phase personality rune identity magic affinity globalization thing? Maybe that's best. Second best, after being nuked from orbit.

No. Actually, hang on to that poly-alethian, polycentric Glorantha we've been teased with for so long; adopt a rules system like HQ1 or HQ2 that, gamely and plausibly, promises to take on all comers; love the conflict around Dragon's Pass we've been given for decades, and their fantasies about being the crux of the cosmos, please respect them as valid beliefs about reality; love all the parts of the world where things just don't work that way; please continue to exist when stuff about Dragon's Pass still thinks it's significant.

"[T]he eastern ports of Ssormu, Elelun, and Mimore, pretty, peaceful cities of graceful columns and muraled halls, where scholars sit beneath mullioned windows of ochre and rust-hued glass to debate the wisdom of their forefathers -- and where all the portentious affairs of Tsolyanu and the west are but fanciful travelers' tales, of little relevance to life," MAR Barker wrote once.

Runes are a thing, it's said, has been thought. Skamander's stream was but a dream; the Spire is gone and the center never was nor held. What a peculiar pile we have, of myths of certain people.

I've never said anything like this about a male before: but Greg can give me a Gregging, hard and fast, into the vilest, deepest, foulest depths of Gregness, as hard and explicitly as Greg has ever Gregged a Gregphenoumenon; and I'd accept it.

Ignore it; probably, sure. I'd still accept it.

What I'm trying to say is that old platitude: Hate the sinner, love the sin.

On 6/1/2016 at 2:58 PM, M Helsdon said:

https://plus.google.com/communities/102577244714186267235

Like I'm gonna click on a google.com URL. I have better, important overlords to surrender my clicks to; ones who love and respect me!

On 6/3/2016 at 1:44 AM, Mankcam said:

Yeah I always found it weird that the game was called RuneQuest, yet the game mechanics behind Runes was almost nonexistent.

If CRQ4 is firmly set in Glorantha, then I welcome having Runes deeply embedded in the game mechanics and character generation,

That makes a lot of sense. It's hard to argue with.

I suspect I'm a product of my generation, or my fragment of one. When I encountered the "Rune" in "Runequest", the obvious and automatic assumption that anyone I then knew was, that it was simple branding, '70s woo stuff to appeal to those folks. Either runes for the Tolkien crowd, or runes for the 'Northern European heritage' crowd. Plenty of either crowd to go around.

Again, I came to Glorantha, and Runequest, later than a person to be taken seriously should be. The first time I got a sense of "runes" as being a thing in the gameworld to be taken seriously was in the context of surviving Godlearner knowledge; and, in the meta-world, in the context of people (fans and pros) working to build out Glorantha very strictly and under some unusual fantasy/game constraints, and some very tough constraints.

On 6/9/2016 at 5:53 AM, Viktor said:

Not much point playing epic fantasy then XD Despite the low power beginnings, with its huge complex myth RuneQuest is epic fantasy. Guess what epic fantasy has? Heroes.

Well, obviously.

I don't play epic fantasy. Can't remember when I did. What I did do a lot of was play a lot in Glorantha; with various rules. Literally no one I've ever met, except online, has ever been invested in, or even interested in, 'epic fantasy' as a genre.

If RuneQuest = epic fantasy = heroes, or any arrangement of those terms, then that's a failing of RuneQuest, not of Glorantha.