jrutila

In the Third Age the Red Goddess was born. Is there some discussion thread around there where it would be opened up a little bit how new gods can be born/ascended. Didn't the Great Compromise nail the God World and Time began? Or is it that Chaos breaks the Compromise, but then all the new gods should be somehow chaotic. We still have for example Dormal and other non-chaotic new gods.

This age is about the Red Goddess and her influence. But, judging from the used space, the opening gets more attention. Is it because there is so much more material about Lunar Empire elsewhere (in the Guide and other material) or is the opening actually so important event? We know this age will end in the Hero Wars and the opening doesn't play any role at that point. I have always wondered the bans around Glorantha a little. At some point I thought the map maker run out of ideas and just drew a large area labeled "Under the ban". Or is there something else with these?

Second Age has two movers: Empire of the Wyrm's Friends and the God Learners. I have heard and read before something about EWF but now understand it's rise and fall. Moral of the story is not to play with the Dragons (or other things you don't understand). Somehow I have always envisioned God Learners as the different companies and people (as in our world) that have changed Glorantha canon and written rules (for RPGs) about it. They were switching gods and classifying magic systems and trying to define the ultimate truth behind everything. but the system returned to the original way. I got that there wasn't any great heroes (comparing to the First Age) during this time. All the big things happening were more of crowdsourced stupidity.

The Dawn Age's important place is Dorastor. Important actors are the councils, Osentalka/Nysalor/Gbaji/Perfect One and Arkat. Again there is no single truth and both the "final battle" heroes can be seen as good or evil. Did the Sunstop break a contract from the Great Compromise some way? Wasn't the Time itself produce of the Great Compromise? Also the first human HeroQuest (that took two years!) happens during this time and after that Arkat started shopping for religions. Was Arkat, among many other things, also the first God Learner? The maps are interesting anc give some overall picture (other continents missing though, as Joerg said) but what is it with the double lines around some areas? There is no index about those.

This chapter was quite short and technical in nature. Of course there was mythos-part. We calculated that if you convert (from days) 1600 years of Gloranthan history to human years, that is 1200 years. 1200 years around year zero (1200 BC to 1200 AD) in our world gives about the setting where we move in Glorantha. Well, this is playing with numbers, but it was interesting still.

Following is some thoughts from the discussion in Ropecon. It is interesting how this classification to Lesser Elder Race was decided. I was kind of expecting for example Griffins appear here and see Scorpion Men more as a monster. Is it about that they are intelligent and civilized races or is it about their influence to others? Someone has said that the Elder Races are the link to Scifi from Glorantha meaning that you can explore scifi themed issues through Elder Races. We also noted that none of the Lesser Elder Races (from Elder Races also only Mostali) are atheist. Some of the Lesser Elder Races are little hard to digest, but that resonates with our world. With Beast Men we noted that they are appearing in areas that have experienced some kind of big havoc where humans were wiped out. About broos: If you don't know what to do with Chaos, bring broos. The ducks have always been the somewhat controversial part of Glorantha. They can be very well used when exploring minority questions. On the other hand the Keets have had their on islands where they are kind of majority. Jelmres wre interesting in that they have their own magic system from the usual four. Newtlings were said to be Dragonewts for Dummies. Ogres are hidious creatures and bring Chaos amongst humans, hidden. Broos are corrupting the physical beings and Ogres corrupt the morality of humans.

The Ropecon is over and we had the discussion! Well, there was only two of us, but at least we discussed about the topics in the chapters. I will write short posts about the discussions to their corresponding topics. Thanks to Topi for attending.

Suomeksi or in English if there appears participants that don't speak Finnish.

It is probably a long shot, but there will be organized real life discussion this weekend about week 6 topics at Ropecon, Finland. So, if you happen to be at Ropecon on Sunday 30th, read the chapters and come to in front of the Info desk at 11:00 (AM). I will be hanging there and we will find a place for the discussion. I try to write something from that discussion to these forums afterwards.

Isn't this in the style of Hillfolk? In that game relationshipmaps are quite handy.

Out of curiosity, was this Extended Contest or "series of simple contests" (as the say)? Apparently it wasn't a single simple contest. What led you to use selected method?

The Uz, they are slowly becoming my favourite lesse race (after Ducks, of course). Lots of new and interesting info in this chapter. First, in the Mythos I was really delighted about how their mythology intervenes with others. As Yelm was driven to Underworld, trolls had to get out of there. That is so brilliant! Now that I caught this, I have to start putting my mind more into these mythology sections. Are they all telling the same stories essentially (deep discussion alert!)? To this day I thought all troll females had six breasts. I blame the Trollpak character sheet that had the naked troll female depicted there. But they act as a marks of power with the dark troll children. See, we are talking about breasts again. Somehow I felt really sorry for these creatures with their curse of kin and also loneliness. Even though they have their communities I get the vibe that trolls are quite solitary individuals and only gather when needed. Illustrations are great (especially the colored one). I think Glorantha trolls look a little bit like dogs from their head (and not apes, I am looking at you Gods war first designs!). In other fiction dragons are usually given dog-like appearance and actions. I am glad this chapter was a little longer and had enough information about trolls. Maybe I should go through the Trollpak some day again.

I am puzzled how Merfolk has their own section in the book (next to such major influences as Uz, Mostali, Aldryami, Dragonewts and Dragons). I haven't much heard or seen much about Merfolk and they could have been in Lesser Elder Races. I have always envisioned Merfolk as mermaid type trope, but luckily Glorantha again differs from the usual suspects (except female Zabdamar, they are mermaids, correct?). I see Merfolk more as monsters when compared to trolls and dwarves. The Hero Wars box talks about Uz plan to break Valind's Glacier. Looking through the Uz section didn't give anything to support this. Did I miss something?

The dwarf vs Mostali thing was new to me. I have used them interchangeably but there really is a clear difference. Dwarves work (pun intended) really well in the Glorantha setting. The whole World Machine building gives them their own weird reason to exist. I really liked to read the couple of dwarf-based scenarios from Sartar books. In those scenarios (and the Pavis book) the dwarves were illustrated to look quite "normal". And the dinosaurs are here again. Maybe they are the perfect match as a dwarven working horse. The Hero Wars begin story is great.

From the dwarf section: "p87 - list of heresies. Weeps bitter tears that Closedhandists never made it into Canon" What is closedhandism and why it didn't make it?

Whoa! I think you mixed this week. We should be discussing about Mostali, Uz and Mermen.

Also, I think following is something that could happen in an HQ game: Player: "I want to detect any hostile enemies as we approach" Gm: "Hmm.. I didn't think there would be any but go ahead. What will you try to achieve? You understand that if you fail there will be an ambush or you weaken your possibilities other way in the next encounter." I think all contests can ignite some kind of story branch even if they come from the players. So the detecting shouldn't be just some constant automatic action (just like @Jeff said above).

I have always found the generic HQ2e rules really useful. I think I got the gist of the system better from that book. HQG on the other hand told me how to use the system in Glorantha setting (runes and cultural keyword etc.), but also clarified some parts. My suggestion for reading order is: HQG, HQ2e, Sharper adventures in Glorantha, Hamlet's Hit Points.

I have to challenge this a bit. If you are using HQ you don't have to care about how many times a Lunar can cast a spell (Lunars are NPC here, right?). It all depends on the story! What emphasis you like to put on the crossing? Is there any interesting adventures waiting if they don't make it (probably)? If the crossing is just to get to the target, but failing would produce interesting subplot, you can go with group simple contest. If failing would not produce anything interesting it is an automatic success. If this crossing is emotionally important, for example they have been preparing and building the tension for this trip, you can go with group extendend contest. If you want the trip to be an adventure on its own for multiple sessions, bring out the encounter tables and draw some encounters there and make them work their way through Lunar lands dodging Lunars and trackers etc. I think HQ has nothing to do with the opposition spell casting abilities. But as this discussion is on Glorantha as a setting forum I will end my off-topic here.

Thanks for all the dinosaur defending and ideas. Maybe I just have to learn to like them and see them as part of Glorantha. It worked with ducks, too!

It is interesting Dragons are part of Elder Races as they could've been part of the World Structure or Beyond the Middle World. Joking aside, the magnitude of Dragons has always intrigued me and the whole True Dragon - Dream Dragon (and apparently also Mythic Dragon, which was new to me) thing is really cool. The picture of the Dragon laying next to the village was something I liked to show to my friends (it was in the back of Player book in AH RuneQuest set if I remember correctly) when introducing Glorantha: "See, in Glorantha the dragons are this big and their dreams are something you would encounter in an adventure." Somehow I have always disliked the idea of Dinosaurs in Glorantha. It is mixing too much Earth's history in to the setting and I can't but think the Dino Riders. On top of that do Gloranthan dinosaurs now also have feathers as is current scientific consensus about Earth dinosaurs? Probably not because they are developed from Dragonewts (definitely no feathers). Visit to the Dragonewt city was a nice read. Maybe it shoud've been in the Dragonewt chapter.

The dragonewts have always been the mystical race in Glorantha. Even reading through this chapter they still remain that way and I think it is good. A Dragonewt can do practically anything and only explanation needed is that "it is a dragonewt, they do weird stuff". The pics are really cool and I think the looks of Dragonewts has been most concise throughout all the publications when comparing to other races (dwarves, ducks, elves...). The Code of ethics box was new to me and shed some light to the way of living as a Dragonewt. The Duty to Repay Favors gave me an instant plot hook idea of accidentally doing a favor for a Dragonewt and then handling the complications that arise when it is returning the favor.

This chapter was interesting read and clarified some things I have been pondering. First of all, not every forest contain elves. Or maybe a single dryad but you can "safely" enter forests and probably your parents have warned you about going to specific forests as there are elves. The trading section was interesting. I have been toying with the idea of a trading game that would follow the Dragon Pass events from a trader's point of view. One more place for trading highly rare items from elves. But what would an elf want in trade? Don't they get everything they need from the forest. I have too been bugged by the human-looking elves. Maybe the explanation about fooling humans is good enough, but I would still keep them more in the "tree-creatures" caste. I also liked the Hero Wars box. The elves are the "greens" of Glorantha and they want to grow forests and trees back (?) to everywhere. If there would be an elf-friendly human (or probably there is). What gods would that individual probably worship?

I have to say about Glorantha Elder Races that they really were the thing that hooked me up when I was young and first started to read about Glorantha. Every other (or so it seemed to innocent young me) fantasy world had those basic Tolkienesque tropes of Trolls, Elves and Dwarves. And orcs! The first thing I was so happy was that there was no orcs! In Glorantha Trolls are intelligent "dark humans" and they have their own civilization. Is still remember how I liked to read the menu from a Dagori Inkarth Inn (don't remember the name of it but the specialty was roasted elf or something). Elves are basically trees and Dwarves pieces of a world machine. Dragonewts are a specialty in Glorantha and are way more mystical than the others. It was so different! About playing games set in Glorantha your usual hero group does not contain every possible species but can meet them as NPC's. And I like that. So, maybe take this as an intro to Elder Races and as something I really wanted to say at this point of this great group reading.

All of this section was new to me. Nice to see that there is some civilization in Pamaltela also. I think slavery is a central point of Fonritian culture. Every chapter had some kind of mention about slavery and I like how the whole culture builds upon that even in the god level. I can't help but draw similarities to Westeros and Slaver's Bay. At least in the tv series the city was liberated from an old habit and way of life (haven't read the books, sorry). I would imagine that "liberating" Fonritians would shake their core religious foundation and face much bigger oppression (against dragons, hmm..).