Mankcam

Yeah I am toying with getting Men Of The West, it does look pretty good. However after changing the Malkioni depiction several times, I really would love to see some more official canon for the Malkioni. I never really get into the debates regarding magic and such, I don't really care if Malkioni use Sorcery or Rune Magic. The later would have been preferable, just to un-complicate matters, but that horse bolted several decades ago, so I just go with the flow. I am more interested in how these fantasy cultures are presented, and what historical civilisations can be considered analogies to be blended together, to give us a sense of how to portray these unique cultures in Glorantha. I'm seeing some Vedic influences at times, primarily with the emphasis of Caste etc which is almost a different sub-culture within each regional culture of Malkioni. I really like the notion that Caste isn't just another version of 'social class', but it encompasses role, magic, destiny, etc. Will be very interested in how far this idea goes with RQG. I tend to view the Horali as being similar to Byzantine and Sassanid Cataphracts. That works for me at present, but I'm interestred where the canon goes with it. It's funny, after reading some Tales Of The Arabian Nights and watching some Sinbad movies, I've started to envision the Malkioni having lots in common with Mythical Arabia. Not sure why, but some of the G2G artwork hints at this as well, and I can easily see Sinbad being Dormali. I also envison some flavour coming from Slavic folkore, especially the colder regions like Fronela. Not sure why, but the Zzubari tend to feel like Eastern European Orthodox scholars and Priests to me. Will be interesting to see what the canon Malkioni are like, but some of the these analogies work for me

Five years since we kicked off this thread speculating about the Malkioni in the current version of Glorantha. Wow time flies...😁

Hmmm I just grabbed Pavis, Big Rubble, Borderlands, and Trollpak. Perhaps next month I might grab Griffin Mountain, Cults of Prax, Cults of Terror - that's my adolescent RQ fantasies covered! Can't wait for them to arrive!!!

Hmm this looks good. Just ordered the pdf copy, and can't wait until I get a hardcover version!

Cool, thanks for the above link! Interesting to see that Greg envisoned Big Sur for the Manirian Coast - I was not aware of that - however, it certainly makes sense It's pretty cool, as when I was last down on the Great Ocean Road (Victoria, Australia), I remember thinking that this could be what the New Coast of Maniria must be like, well in summer anyway, and it turns out that it fits Greg's vision reasonably well

Yes I can't remember if I read that here or in the Glorantha FB group. Years ago I read that Greg Stafford initially received geographical inspiration for Dragon Pass and Prax from North American terrain, and this has been confirmed many times since. Not to say that Europe isn't a good analogy, the Alps, the Balkans etc. But I do like to keep the Americana flavour for Dragon Pass & Prax, as it makes it feel more unique when you add the ancient world-influenced cultures to it. So I am using the Sierra Nevada range and the American Rockies for alot of my geographical references for Dragon Pass, lots of redwood forests and such, and some of the more dry forest lands as such - this fits the impressions I get of Bush Range and places like that.. Sticking with alot of Arizona (and similar terrain) for Prax. However, whilst Arizona is certainly my biggest reference for Prax, I also throw in some influences from Western Australia as well:

Anyone have any real-world inspiration for Gloranthan terrain? I stumbled across this video, and perhaps this could be the mountain ranges throughout Dragon Pass...: https://player.vimeo.com/video/186483277 Feel free to post pics/videos of your own inspiration for Gloranthan geography!

Not exactly Lovecraftian, but some of the classic Brit Horror is certainly tropey enough to be retrapped for a Mythos plot

Wow, this looks really good - a streamlined version of BRP, as well as a cool setting. Count me interested! 😎

I don't see any need for a new edition of Call of Cthulhu for many years yet. A decade even. But I'ld certainly be happy to see a new version of Beyond The Mountains Of Madness to go with the updated versions of Horror on the Orient Express and The Masks of Nylathotep. I would also like to see a new version of Cthulhu By Gaslight, perhaps covering a wider range of different settings - the default of Victorian England is great, but Gothic Americana could work equally well. I think occasional revisiting and updating some of the big ticket titles is fine, but I wouldn't want to see it overdone. From my point of view, I have lot of that in back catalogue which is easily converted on-the-fly, so I would prefer to see fresh new stuff being the main focus these days.

I can use all of my back catalogue with Coc 7E no worries - for the opponent/NPC stat blocks, just multiply the core charactersitics by 5%, and that's pretty much it. Nothing has been superceeded to an extent that it is obsolete, which is really cool.😎

Capturing Glorantha is a different task. I tend to think of an ancient world setting, steeped in living mythology, with touches of bizarre 'trippiness' and sometimes even a 'western' flavour at times. It's a place where Achilles would be adoredby the public, but there is also room for down and dusty anit-heroes like Mad Max as well. It is difficult to put Glorantha into words and images, so the only way to do it is to approach it as a collage. Films: 300. 300: Rise Of An Empire (especially the later works well for the Lunar Empire) Conan The Barbarian (Arnie version) Valhalla Rising Alexander Bahubali Clash of the Titans Wrath of the Ttians The Golden Voyage of Sinbad Jason And The Argonauts The 13th Warrior Hercules (Dwayne Johnson version) Satyricon (very 'trippy') Troy The Man With No Name Trilogy (ok, yep these are Westerns, but the vibe can be thrown into Glorantha in a major way) Deadman (another Western, but it feels like a HeroQuest or the Spirit Plane) TV Series: HBO ROME (definately) History Channel's 'Vikings"

I have been playing BRP/RQ for so long, I'm not sure what are official rules and what are house rules. For me as a GM, I sometimes don't like keeping actions unresolved as a stalemate. So I go with my gut - if it feels like being unresolved is something that adds to the drama and tension in the game, sure, I'll go with it. But if it feels like this will slow the pace down, then I'll push to resolve it by calling for a Resistance Table Roll, and spitball what the relevant Characteristics would be to bring to the roll. It's always seemed to work well. I also use it in combat if the rolls are tight, but only in the character's favour. For example, if the PC does a successful parry, then that roll stands. But if an NPC opponent successfully parries, and the result is tight (almost a miss), then I might call for Resistance Table rolls to determine the outcome. I have found that it adds to the tension in combat, yet keeps it feeling fast-paced as well. That's the good thing with BRP and RQ - there are some core rules that can easily be applied across a wide range of situations ad hoc. I tend to play this way, and only refer to the rulebook for specific spot rules and such when I am not at the gaming table. If the official rule seems better, then I mentally flag it for next time. If not, I just go along my merry way with 'rulings over rules'. So I guess this may be one of those times for me 😎

I have a lot of RQ2 supplements that I never used. So I intend to start our next RQG characters with much less experience, and set the intial session in Sartar around 1615 or so. The plan is to move the setting to Pavis & Prax, then run the game set in the 1615 - 1620 era. If the game continues, I will skip 5 years and the PCs will be back in Sartar so they can play the RQG era of 1625 +

I find that having the extra success level (hard success) speeds things up in opposed rolls, there is much less stalemate due to this. So I've ported it into any of my bRP games!!!

I heard about this, but never actully saw it before now. That's an impressive piece of work!

I am still reading thru the Red Cow campaign, and I assumed that RQG would be just the Gloranthan timeline a decade later. Cool, thanks for the explanation, this is good to know 😎

Sorry to digress, but are you sure? The Red Cow Campaign is a current HQG campaign, published after the G2G. I would assume that the first book, The Coming Storm, is part of the contemporary canon for Glorantha... Some of the artwork (not all) in the second book, The Elven Lights, looks more consistent with the previous Saxon-like depictions of Orlanthi (like in the KoDP computer game), rather than the more contemporary Thracian look, but that's about it. YGWV and all that. I would be surprised if the content is not current canon.

I definately agree that Titan is perfect for Magic World, it would be a great fit !!! I've always loved that loose classic fantasy feel of Titan, great for a sandbox, and the kind of setting that Magic World is designed for, Make sure you describe how things are portrayed in Titan. For example, the Dwarves are often eccentric spry bearded gnome-like characters; the Goblins are a cross between Tolkien Orcs and Brian Froud goblins; Port Blacksand is like a rotting Lanhkmar which feels like it could topple over and rot away, all that stuff. Magic is something unusual and often whimsical, and everything has that sense of wonder to it. The original artwork really captures all this. I recommend showing pictures of the creatures as portrayed in 'Out Of The Pit,' but using the BRP/MW stats. Sounds like alot of fun. Go for it! 😎

Wow, that is very impressive! Easy to see lots of effort went into building your homebrew. Love it!!! 😎

Wow!!! I never even noticed that archer had pointed ears until this thread indicated that there was an Elf on the from cover of the Gloranthan Bestiary! It reminds me of the original RQ2 art before the Aldryami for more uniquely detailed. They were illustrated as standard high fantasy Elves in much the same way as Mostali were depicted as standard high fantasy Dwarves back then. My old RQ2 homebrew days definately had high fantasy Elves and Dwarves, but all I had was the RQ2 corebook and the RQ2 Companion. It wasn't until late RQ3 and HW era before I realised how different the Aldryami and Mostali were to classic high fantasy Elves and Dwarves. That archer on the cover of the Gloranthan Bestiary is definately inconsistent with most contemporary portrayals of Aldryami. I do remember reading somewhere that the Aldryami sometimes bred/grew particular individuals to be their liasion and diplomats with other races, and these ones were the most humanoid looking. I don't think it meant they looked like Tolkien Elves however, but they just had more skin than bark, hands instead of roots, stuff like that.That way you could have PCs who were journeying throughout the region alongside human adventuring parties, basically were doing general exploration and learning about the wider world, with an aim to one day return to their forests with the knowledge they had learnt. They could blend in a bit more under hooded cloaks and such, not looking like Groot. I think they still were meant to be very much like 'plant people' however, but were meant to be perceived a bit more humanoid than what intelligent plants would be. Not sure where I read that, or if it is still canon. Anyway, that still doesn't fit the depiction of the elven archer on the front cover of the Gloranthan Bestiary. Once it has been seen it cannot be unseen! Same goes for the Mostali, which just looks like a high fantasy Dwarf on the Gloranthan Bestiary cover. It's not as wrong as the Elf, but it isn't the most consistent with other depictions either. The cover artwork, despite this, is great. Feels very much like something from a European graphic novel or something like that. Certainly very visually pleasing and distinctive for cover art. I'm definately sticking with the Aldryami and Mostali portrayals from the G2G, and the internal artwork depictions within the Gloranthan Bestiary. They just have so much more flavour and uniqueness to them, and tell me that this is Glorantha.

That version of Harrek sounds pretty cool, he also just might make it into my current canon 😎

Well to kick things off, here is a copy of my post on TBP thread. It's more nostalgia than anything else: A GLORANTHA UNLIKE ANY OTHER... I originally started with Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, so the look of the 'World of Titan' influenced me a bit. I then wanted to get Basic D&D, but my cousin ended up convincing me to get RuneQuest instead. Good decision. I initially had the RQ2 Box Set and nothing else to go on for a year, then I had the RQ2 Companion. It would be at least two or three years before I got the Cults books (which expanded religions and cultures at the same time), or any of the official RQ2/RQ3 supplements. So during the gap years in between, I just had to wing the entire setting. This was the 1980s and I was a teen who lived in a regional Australian town. We were a long way from the hub of the rpg industry at that time, there was only a few groups of kids who played rpgs in the town, and we knew most of them. Things are quite different now, but back then we had to work with whatever we had. All I had for most of that interim time to play RuneQuest was the RQ2 Box (corebook, two scenarios), and the RQ2 Companion - these books eluded to an ancient world setting, gave a bit of history, had two very evocative maps, and that's about it. The World of Glorantha was just a bare bones setting with these books, and pretty much a canvas for me to add alot to. So although this was a published setting, my original Glorantha was at least 70% my own homebrew ideas, which was a mish-mash of what influences were around me at the time. I was very influenced by ancient history, as well as Sword & Sorcery, with lots of ideas ported in from a plethora of CONAN comics, as well as the old Sinbad movies. In addition to this, I was fascinated by 'The Lord of the Rings' (both the book, as well as the animated film), and I loved the Brian Froud influence in 'The Dark Crystal' and 'Labyrinth'. Additionally as a player in other GM settings I was also exposed to Basic D&D 'Greyhawk', AD&D's 'Krynn', MERP, and Rolemaster's 'Shadow World'. When it was time for me to GM, all these influences poured into my home brew of Glorantha Think a bizare homebrew cross between 1980s 'Clash Of The Titans', "CONAN The Barbarian', 'Beastmaster', Ralph Bakshi' 'Lord Of The Rings', and a hobble of psuedo-feudal atmosphere influenced by Jack Vance or Fritz Leiber, that Classic Fantasy flavour. Touches of 'Dark Crystal' and 'Labryinth' as well. Even influences from the BBC series 'Robin Hood' at times. I also loved the David Lynch 'DUNE' film back then, and although it was SciFi, it also influenced my Glorantha quite a bit. Of course I was a big fan of 'Star Wars', I think some of it may have unconsciously also slipped into my Glorantha at times. In addition to Tolkien, I was also influenced by Ursula LeGuin's "Earthsea', Terry Brooks 'Shannara', Fritz Leiber's 'Fafhrd & Gray Mouser' series, Weis & Hickman's 'Dragonlance Chronicles', and Raymond Feist's 'Magician' (which would lead into his 'Riftwar Saga' series). My high school Ancient History textbook was used quite alot. It also was a great cover for when my parents walked in expecting to see me doing homework, and I had my Ancient History textbook sitting right there in front of me. For Glorantha, I only had the Kerofinela (Dragon Pass) map, and the Kethaela (Holy Country) maps, which were neighbouring regions - one inland and one coastal. I had a very broad world map of Glorantha from the RQ2 corebook, but nothing was detailed. I ended up detailing alot of the cultures and regions myself, completely oblivious that the world was already detailed by the author(s). I had lots of handwritten note books, maps, pictures stuck in from Fangora magazines and such; basically a bursting patische of everything I wanted. Because I never had the Cults Books for Glorantha at that time, then the presence of the Deities was initially very much a background thing (which is actually the opposite of how Glorantha ticks). It slowly became more prominent once it was evident that this is how you could gain magical abilities within the setting. The RQ2 Corebook had the Storm God, and the Darkness Goddess. The Introduction in the RQ book (as well as my cousin) told me about the Sun God, and the Earth Goddess. So I pretty much had everyone worship this one pantheon, placing a different emphasis on whichever deity depending upon the style of culture. I came across write ups for three Death Gods - Mistress of Afterlife, the War/Honour God and War/Berserker God. So these all became incorperated, with the War/Honour God worshippers being stern warriors and noble templars, almost paladins in some regions; whilst the War/Berserker God was for barbarians and evil doers and such. I eventually added the Peace/Healing Goddess once I knew about her, and that rounded the entire pantheon off. So all cultures worshipped these gods, although some were banned in some regions, depending on the situation. I ballooned alot of their magic out beyond what I had in the core magic, and it was a very different version of Glorantha. I was aware of other deities at the time, but I just placed them as folklore, and learning an ability from one of them had to occur under the banner of one of the bigger Cults. The PCs tended to get low-level magic from various temples, and treated them more like a bazaar at times. Once they had learnt a spell, that was generally it, they may learn a Healing spell from the Peace Goddess, or a Bladesharp from a War god willy nilly; it was something that just took the place of Feats in other games. The Gods were portrayed very similar to the ancient Greek gods, as back then that is what I thought a fantasy pantheon should look like. However the pantheon was mainly a background canvas, in much the same way deities tend to be in vanilla fantasy settings. Not a major feature for all of my players. I did have Sorcerers, which felt more like the villains from my CONAN comics than anything else. They also used the Rune Magic, but didn't respect the Gods so they weren't Priests. They mainly summoned the Elementals (from the core book), and I also introduced Demons (some of which was influenced by the 'Stormbringer' game my cousin had acquired). Later on I had some players who wanted to be Sorcerers, and they ended up feeling much like the lone wizards from the Earthsea books or The Riftwar Saga (although this may have been when I bought RQ3 and it introduced a new version of Sorcery, which was different to my previous Sorcerers using Rune Magic to summon Elementals and Demons. This was probably the start of many changes to my original Glorantha homebrew). In RQ2 corebook the Guilds seemed to play a more prominent role than the religions, so Guilds were initially very big in my Glorantha. Even smaller regions were beholden to the Guilds at times. The PCs always seemed to be in debt to the Guilds, and they may have even been on the run from certain Guilds. My cultures were based of tidbits of lore from canon, and alot of my own invention. Looking back it was actually not bad, considering what I had to work with, and my age at the time. The land of Esrolia was based off Ancient Greece, with the capital being like ancient Athens or Corinth. Heortland was similar to an early Franksia, and also took a lot of references from Fritz Leiber's Nehwon, with Karse being based off Lanhkmar. Like Esrolia, Sartar was also very much Ancient Greece, although Sartar's capital was based more off Sparta. The nearby plains of Prax felt like some of the arid lands I had seen in the CONAN comics, maybe Shem or something like that. The city of Pavis was originally a Tarsh colony , with Mongolian like tribes throughout the plains (some were more like Cimmerians, others were a little native american indian as well). Tarsh felt like Turan from my CONAN comics, so it was very Arabic or Moorish in my Glorantha. We had one enduring player-character who was a Foot Barbarian from Prax, so we made him essientially a figure like Conan, except he came from arid plains rather than icy mountains. We kept retconning that character over the years to fit the ever-changing impressions we had of Glorantha. In recent times we reinvented him as a Pol-Joni Raider, which is actually not too far off this original version - he's probably the only thing that has remained constant. I was aware of an empire to the north coming down from Peloria, the Lunar Empire. In my original setting of Glorantha, the Lunar Empire was very much a background thing and not the feature it played in my later games (RQ3+). Originally Peloria was not detailed in the books I had, so my Peloria was a desert region filled with Egyptian-like people, with a range of icy mountains above it filled with Snow Barbarians (like CONAN Cimmerians) and Trolls. The Egyptians (Lunar Empire) had taken over the Arabic region (Tarsh) and had colonies elsewhere (such as Pavis). There was also a Pharaoh in the southern regions who was a mysterious demigod in charge of both the Athenians (Esrolia) and Franksia/Nehwon (Heortland). Because of the Egyptian title of 'Pharaoh', I had him be the exiled brother of the northern Egyptian (Lunar) Emperor who was also a demigod. It could of led to some interesting possibilities. According to the timeline, the southern Pharoah had gone missing, suspect to Eygptian (Lunar) treachery. There had also been a war with the Egyptians (Lunars) and the Spartans (Sartar). The Spartan (Sartar) captial had fallen, but recently been reclaimed by the Spartans (Sartar), and the Eygptians (Lunars) retreated for a while. This was the recent history, so the Egyptian-Sparta (Lunar-Sartar) War was over when I first had the player-characters running around. Arabia (Tarsh) was kind of a neutral ground, and the Arabic-like city of Pavis still had an Egyptian (Lunar) garrison, but that was about it, the Egyptians (Lunars) were no longer a big presence (although I had their Emperor scheming to return one day). Troll hordes were a big threat, and I also read about Delecti The Necromancer, so he became a Sauron-like presence from his swamp (which stood in for a damp Mordor), and he was coordinating the Trolls much like Tolkien's Sauron coordinated the Orcs. So the growing presence of Delecti the Necromancer (who was the Arch Sorcerer, and also High Priest of the Darkness Goddess) was meant to be the big background metaplot to connect the various separate scenarios I was runninng (which were often re-trapped D&D modules). Most of the games were essientially dungeon crawls or hack and slay, and I had to allow extremely liberal use of Luck rolls to save the PCs from the harshnes of the RQ system, otherwise we would of had TPKs every week. I had wanted to pursue my over-arching metaplot of Delecti/Sauron, but the PCs took the campaign further south and I think it derailed in the end. We moved onto other games, but I kept developing my Glorantha, altering it bit by bit as I became aware of new canon, until my original Glorantha really didn't exist anymore. By the early 1990s it had been absorbed into the Gloranthan canon that was on the shelves at that time. So yep, my early Glorantha was a very different setting to what was being published. In my isolation from the commercial side of the rpg industry, I had completely gone down a differen path that the authors would of loved, or completely hated. I would like to think that the original creator Greg Stafford (deceased) is smiling down, chuckling to himself. I did share alot of his initial inspirations, but this train was completely off the tracks. Overall my homebrew Glorantha turned out to be a bizarre cross between Ancient Greece meets Hyboria meets Lankhmar/Nehwon meets DUNE meets High Fantasy Europe. It all came together in an implausible crazy gonzo way that only 1970s/1980s adolescent Fantasy lovers could appreciate. Eventually I became exposed to the real Glorantha canon, and the setting dramatically changed for me over the years. The timeline of the products was often about 5-10years earlier than the RQ2 corebook timeline, and RQ3 firmly made the default date somewhere between that. The Lunar Empire still held the Sartar capital. The Lunars became had become much more Roman-like, the Sartarites became very Celtic-like. That worked okay for well over a decade, but then didn't feel right for me. Something just started feeling a little too different to me, and I started wishing things had been more like I had envisioned in the early days. I really didn't dig Glorantha again until the contemporary interpretation. Glorantha has definately returned to an ancient world flavour, and I really love how it is portrayed these days. The Lunars being very Babylonian- Persian influenced, and the Sartarites feeling like Thracian-Hittiites works well for me, as does Esrolians feeling very Minoan. It certainly is very different from my original gonzo homebrew Glorantha, but it still feels like the mojo comes from the same place now. However despite my appreciation of the current Glorantha, there is still a part of me that yearns for the loose Glorantha homebrew of my youth. It's almost like seeking out a tattered old pulp fantasy novel in second hand book stores, but never finding the one that first grabbed my attention. It really only exists now in my mind, but yeah it was a fun place to play in

HOMEBREW GLORANTHA !!! Over the years, many of us homebrewed our own settings from the ground up, and many of us also homebrewed published settings by filling in the gaps. Glorantha is no different, and in fact many of us may still have very different versions of Glorantha. Given the popularity of 'A Rough Guide To Glamour' it is obivious that the indie-flavour of Glorantha has not gone. There was a post over on TBP where people were talking about their homebrew settings, and I posted a rather lengthy description of my original homebrew version of Glorantha, based off just the RQ2 Box Set and the RQ2 Companion. It was quite a different place to what I discovered in later publications. It got me thinking that others must have done likewise, so It would be interesting to see what's out there in the memory vaults of us grognards who did their own thing for many years. Nothing in this thread should be about 'What I did better in my Glorantha, etc etc'. It is more of a nod to the kid in all of us who went out and did it alone. I think Greg Stafford would have approved all of us doing that at some stage. Feel free to post away if you have any homebrew tales to tell us about your Glorantha 😎