Griffin Mountain....wow

[BrentS]

I'm a long time Runequest and Glorantha fan......avid player and GM in the 80s.....sporadic since (life, career, family, overrated adulthood). I've been re-exploring Glorantha as a reader and  part-time GM since the current revival. In our Runequest heyday it was all Prax, Prax, Prax....Pavis, the Rubble, The River of Cradles, the Wastelands. A friend owned Griffin Mountain and there was always the intention for us to head to the Green Place 🙄 Hidden Greens and Gonn Orta's Castle but we never got around to it and so Balazar and the Elder Wilds remained unknown and undiscovered for us. For me, Pavis & the Big Rubble, Borderlands and Cults of Prax have always been the apex of Runequest design (supplemented by the excellent AH publications developing the area), even though I was aware of Griffin Mountain's reputation as a seminal gaming publication.

 

I've just had the pleasure of reading the classics reprint of Griffin Mountain, supplemented by the excellent Balazar and Elder Wilds maps available in the Jonstown Compendium, and I was totally enthralled. I thought the Praxian publications were the apex of Gloranthan material and I'm dumbfounded to discover, decades later, that there was something even better. Has there ever been a roleplaying publication to match this for maturity, richness, depth and possibility......and right at the infancy of the hobby? Lovingly detailed and yet completely open, the ultimate sandbox, and with the light touch and warm humour that characterised the golden age of Runequest. It's a rare gem.

 

No purpose to this post except to enthuse. I wish I'd discovered Griffin Mountain back in the day and regret not having explored it when I was young and adventurous. I may never get around to doing so now but it's worth it just for the inspiration and a reminder of what a special game Runequest has always been and what a unique world Glorantha is. Thanks Greg & Co for  creating such an astounding document and to modern Chaosium for making it available again.

 

Brent.

Edited November 6, 2021 by BrentS

[DucksMustDie]

I started playing RQ with my friends in 1991 and we played Griffin Mountain at least two times before switching to another game in 2005. Now, having returned to RQ 16 years later, I agree with you: the Griffin Mountain and the Praxian supplements are still the best rpg adventures ever that I have encountered 🙂 

Edit: bought the maps, thanks for the tip

Edited November 4, 2021 by DucksMustDie

[Darius West]

On 11/4/2021 at 1:31 PM, BrentS said:

Has there ever been a roleplaying publication to match this for maturity, richness, depth and possibility......and right at the infancy of the hobby? Lovingly detailed and yet completely open, the ultimate sandbox, and with the light touch and warm humour that characterised the golden age of Runequest. It's a rare gem.

Brent.

There is no question about Griffin Mountain being a classic.  For those in the know, it became a product against which all other RPG supplements and adventures needed to be judged.  The only comparison I can think of is B3 Keep on the Borderlands, which introduced urban and wilderness adventures to D&D, and provided the first notions of dungeon encounters having a context to other encounters.  Griffin Mountain provided a setting where settlements had character and characters fitted into an overall milieu in a way that had not been done before.  It maintained traditions such as the found item table from Borderlands, which worked and were fun.  And the scenarios were setting appropriate and good.  There was a lot for a GM to sink their teeth into.  In retrospect, more info on the actual clans and politics of the Balazaarings might have been good, but there are hints on the main map and in the text.  As player character were assumed to be from Praxian or Sartarite backgrounds, the citadel settlements were more important than the tribal hearths, as they were more familiar to settled people, so it fits that the citadels get written up but the clans were not. 

I remember the joy of discovering the Prison of Firshala for the first time, and the terrible fight we had trying to get the admantium spike away from those damn giant crabs as some of my fondest roleplaying experiences.

[Austin]

Mm, I might need to bump this up on my reading stack, then. 🙂 I've got a copy of the RQ Classics reprint on my shelf, but haven't got around to reading it yet (nor Pavis: Threshold to Danger). As someone who doesn't have nostalgia-glasses for the 80's, I was pleasantly surprised at how well Trollpak held up to its hype. It says a lot to me that someone who likes that era, but never ended up playing Griffin Mountain, is impressed with it.

[jajagappa]

10 hours ago, Crel said:

a lot to me that someone who likes that era, but never ended up playing Griffin Mountain, is impressed with it.

Griffin Mountain was a great book!  And is probably one of my two RQ books (the other being the main RQ3 Gods of Glorantha book) in the worst condition from wear & tear.

One reason I set my original RQ3 campaign in Imther was because it was directly adjacent to the whole Griffin Mountain region and I could draw from it or send PC's into it as appropriate.  The player's quest to Gonn Orta's castle to recover one of the Four Sacred Weapons of the Earthwielder was a centerpoint in the initial campaign - a journey that took them through Trilus, Dykene, and the Troll Hills on the way.  Getting to play Gonn Orta himself, holding the little character figures in my hand as they made their petition for help was a classic moment.  My later campaign saw the intrepid PC's start a colony upon the Elf Sea to harvest amber - and had to fend off the Balazaring shaman upset with their interference with the local magical ecology.

[RandomNumber]

15 hours ago, Darius West said:

There is no question about Griffin Mountain being a classic

I agree. I received the Chaosium edition (not the GW version) for Christmas - in 1981 I suspect. Considering the RPG hobby was barely 6 years old this was an incredible innovation. I devoured it over the school holidays and ran it for my friends. Often they simply spent time travelling around Balazar, interacting with encounters, getting involved with tribal politics in the three citadels and trying to bring down Halcyon var Enkorth. I still have it but it is so well-used that it is now pretty much a folio of loose sheets bound with 35 year old sellotape. Great memories.

[GMKen]

What I like about Griffin Mountain is that while it is Glorantha, it’s not really tied to the meta-narratives that have taken over the more recent iterations.  It’s just a place to go exploring and have adventures.  It’s easy to slot in miscellaneous small adventures from a variety of sources, like the Judges Guild adventures.  So Duck Tower and Duck Pond could be located in a swampy area on the north shore of the Elf Sea, or the Hellpits of Nightfang up by the Gork Hills.  Broken Tree Inn can be slotted in somewhere west of Elkoi.  Lair of the White Wyrm could be part of the mysterious Dragonewt activity in the region.  The list goes on.  Jon Hunter’s “Back to Balazar” website offers many interesting encounters, like Blueface’s Green Age cabin, where I intend to hide a pair of 7-league moccasins.  So the narrative potential is much more open, while still allowing for easy linkage to the stuff going on in Dragon Pass and Prax.

[d(sqrt(-1))]

4 minutes ago, GMKen said:

What I like about Griffin Mountain is that while it is Glorantha, it’s not really tied to the meta-narratives that have taken over the more recent iterations.  It’s just a place to go exploring and have adventures.  It’s easy to slot in miscellaneous small adventures from a variety of sources, like the Judges Guild adventures.  So Duck Tower and Duck Pond could be located in a swampy area on the north shore of the Elf Sea, or the Hellpits of Nightfang up by the Gork Hills.  Broken Tree Inn can be slotted in somewhere west of Elkoi.  Lair of the White Wyrm could be part of the mysterious Dragonewt activity in the region.  The list goes on.  Jon Hunter’s “Back to Balazar” website offers many interesting encounters, like Blueface’s Green Age cabin, where I intend to hide a pair of 7-league moccasins.  So the narrative potential is much more open, while still allowing for easy linkage to the stuff going on in Dragon Pass and Prax.

Completely agree. I much prefer to have a setting like this.

Thanks for the mention of Back to Balazar - I'd not come across it before.

 

[soltakss]

We played in an RQ2 Griffin Mountain campaign and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The Griffin Mountain supplement, and the Griffin island RQ3 version, are both very good.

The Gloranthan Classics Griffin Mountain combines the two wonderfully and is even better than the separate individual supplements, so I would look out for that.

Griffin Mountain gets the balance just right. It is a sandbox with directed scenarios. It has mythology and history, but doesn't go over the top and drown you, it has magical and mythical elements. Granny Keeneye, from Griffin island, really fits into Griffin Mountain well.

[soltakss]

17 minutes ago, GMKen said:

Jon Hunter’s “Back to Balazar” website offers many interesting encounters, like Blueface’s Green Age cabin, where I intend to hide a pair of 7-league moccasins.  

I would love to see Back to Balazar fleshed out and expanded as a Jonstown Companion supplement.

[Nick Brooke]

42 minutes ago, GMKen said:

What I like about Griffin Mountain is that while it is Glorantha, it’s not really tied to the meta-narratives that have taken over the more recent iterations.

I never meta narrative I didn’t like…

(Sorry, not sorry).

Interesting plural there, @GMKen. Seems to me the “more recent iterations” (counting back) are RQG, 13AG, HQG and MongRQ. One of those iterations is arguably tied to a meta-narrative (though not in a way that’s prevented me from having a whale of a non-canonical time in the interstices, cf. Dangerford & Black Spear). The other three?

[Nick Brooke]

Gorgeous free map of Balazar from Halberd Games:

https://www.halberdgames.com/Balazar/Images/balazar v2.jpg

[RandomNumber]

51 minutes ago, soltakss said:

The Gloranthan Classics Griffin Mountain combines the two wonderfully and is even better than the separate individual supplements, so I would look out for that.

Huh.  I didn't know that.  The Moon Design era was during my deep freeze.  Somehow I have the their Pavis & Big Rubble hardback (I never owned Big Rubble) but I assumed these were otherwise just reprints of boxed sets I already owned. I'll have to check out the PDFs of the other two.

[GMKen]

3 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

The other three?

I think you’re reading too much into that s.

The context for that comment comes from my current reading of Eleven Lights, which I just found at my new local FLGS, as well as the RQG adventure supplements.  So.  Much.  Narrative.  Pages and pages of narrative.

My personal opinion and feelings are that it seems to create a sense of the characters participating in someone else’s story, versus creating their own.  As an example, I’m working on an adventure where the characters would be participants in a heroquest to plug the chaos portal at Festering Island.  I’m creating the narrative, as Griffin Mountain doesn’t say what ends up happening with Festering Island, only that it is there and a problem.  So the solution can be open ended and I get to flex my creative thinking.

The Dragonrise?  That happens.  Period.  

[Rick Meints]

6 hours ago, RandomNumber said:

Huh.  I didn't know that.  The Moon Design era was during my deep freeze.  Somehow I have the their Pavis & Big Rubble hardback (I never owned Big Rubble) but I assumed these were otherwise just reprints of boxed sets I already owned. I'll have to check out the PDFs of the other two.

All of the four volumes of the Classics contain extra bits from various sources. You would certainly be hard pressed to call the Cult Compendium "just a reprint". It's wonderful that if you have only one of the books it is the hardcover of P&BR. It is the rarest and most sought after.

[Ian Absentia]

10 hours ago, Nick Brooke said:

Interesting plural there, @GMKen.

For heaven's sake, people are entitled to their opinions.  Stop assigning motive, Nick.

!i!

[Rodney Dangerduck]

11 hours ago, GMKen said:

My personal opinion and feelings are that it seems to create a sense of the characters participating in someone else’s story, versus creating their own

I took MOB's Mello Yello long epic in the same way: epic, creative, yet, ultimately, to me, "someone else's story".

Many readers loved them.  There's room enough in Glorantha fandom for both approaches.  But I strongly agree with GMKen, "better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection".

[GMKen]

17 hours ago, soltakss said:

The Gloranthan Classics Griffin Mountain combines the two wonderfully and is even better than the separate individual supplements, so I would look out for that.

I wish I had the Gloranthan Classics Griffin Mountain.  I’ve got the other three Classics and mine them regularly for ideas and info.  I’m just not going to pay the stupid prices that the internet speculators/arbitrageurs want.  I’d rather spend that money on the Jonstown Compendium printed books (most of which I already have) or the upcoming Starter Set.

And I agree with wanting to see the Back to Balazar content compiled into a JC publication.  I’d buy a print version of that in a heartbeat.

1 hour ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

I strongly agree with GMKen, "better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection".

I wish I was smart enough to say something like that.

[Rodney Dangerduck]

18 minutes ago, GMKen said:

I wish I was smart enough to say something like that

So do I.  🙂

[soltakss]

4 hours ago, GMKen said:

I wish I had the Gloranthan Classics Griffin Mountain.  I’ve got the other three Classics and mine them regularly for ideas and info.  I’m just not going to pay the stupid prices that the internet speculators/arbitrageurs want.  I’d rather spend that money on the Jonstown Compendium printed books (most of which I already have) or the upcoming Starter Set.

It is available as a PDF, which is the next best thing.

[GMKen]

3 hours ago, soltakss said:

It is available as a PDF, which is the next best thing.

Yeah, nah, not really.  Having a hard drive die recently has renewed my distrust in electrons.  My physical copy of the Cults Compendium is -always- at hand right there on the the bookshelf.

[Scotty]

14 minutes ago, GMKen said:

Yeah, nah, not really.  Having a hard drive die recently has renewed my distrust in electrons.  My physical copy of the Cults Compendium is -always- at hand right there on the the bookshelf.

Or get the Classic POD version: https://www.chaosium.com/griffin-mountain-softcover-pod/

the physical maps are bought separately:

https://www.redbubble.com/people/chaosium/works/36040388-map-of-balazar-griffin-mountain

https://www.redbubble.com/i/poster/The-Elder-Wilds-Map-Griffin-Mountain-by-Chaosium/36040687.E40HW

[GMKen]

Totally picked up the Classic POD, mainly so that I could put my original copy aside to not damage it further.  I did keep the map out for current use.  100% worth the investment.

[Alex]

20 hours ago, GMKen said:

I think you’re reading too much into that s.

The context for that comment comes from my current reading of Eleven Lights, which I just found at my new local FLGS, as well as the RQG adventure supplements.  So.  Much.  Narrative.  Pages and pages of narrative.

My personal opinion and feelings are that it seems to create a sense of the characters participating in someone else’s story, versus creating their own.

Fair enough, and that seems to me to pass the "plural" test, with maths that didn't even need me taking my socks off.  Everyone is going to have a different sensitisation in their metaplot allergies, and I'm only passingly acquainted with the scenarios put out for RQG:  maybe they run more "narrative" than I'd realized.  But as far as I can tell, they're not all in the category of accessories-before-the-fact in someone else's huge world-changing heroquest and military campaign.  But those things are happening, one way or another.

I think it's not news that Gloranthan history ("recent" and otherwise) has some Big Events in it.  Just look at what antics happen in White Bear and Red Moon -- if major magical happenings aren't to your liking, you need to reverse-iterate back to before RQ1 -- and indeed the entire hobby of roleplaying itself -- were things.  Obviously there needs to be a balance between generic "could have happen pretty any time" material, and "timeline" stuff.  Which in turn in necessarily going to have to vary between the PCs being bit players, I'm Argrath and so is my alynx, and everything in between.  And tastes on what the right balance is will vary.  Hopefully we can discuss how best to configure available resources to suit different preferences without it getting too edition-warring.

[icebrand]

On 11/3/2021 at 11:31 PM, BrentS said:

For me, Pavis & the Big Rubble, Borderlands and Cults of Prax have always been the apex of Runequest design (supplemented by the excellent AH publications developing the area), even though I was aware of Griffin Mountain's reputation as a seminal gaming publication.

I think the same way as you did; i skimmed and old, torn apart copy of griffin mountain and i found it quite intimidating! I'm gonna reconsider it after reading you!!!