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RuneQuest / Glorantha - related media


Friedelinde

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Dungeons & Dragons 5e (D&D 5e) player here. I heard great things about RuneQuest from D&D Beyond General Forums.

Does RuneQuest have any media aside from pen-and-paper RPGs that would get people interested in the world of Glorantha?

My RPG Background:

Spoiler

I only ever played computer RPGs (CRPGs) until I saw the show The Legend of Vox Machina. That led me to the YouTube channel of Critical Role, which is essentially a group streaming a D&D 5e play in a fun and hilarious manner.

After mentioning Dungeons & Dragons one of my friends introduced me to an ancient CRPG called Baldur's Gate. That turned out to be an amazing CRPG with highly memorable characters and a fantastic setting called the Forgotten Realms which is the default setting of Dungeons & Dragons.

Long story short my formerly CRPG-playing friends and I game became avid fans of D&D 5e. But that's because we were previously introduced to the world of D&D through different media that made us emotionally connect with Dungeons & Dragons. After recently watching trailers of the upcoming 2023 movie Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves my friends and I bought all the D&D 5e adventure books involved in the trailer.

Edited by Friedelinde
Redundant last paragraph.
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19 minutes ago, Steve said:

Sadly the links are all messed up on that site, if I go back to the start I get the German version and it breaks in  other ways as well. Page 3 links back to Page 1, but if you edit the URL to http://www.princeofsartar.com/comic/4 then you can get to numbered pages directly. Some numbered pages don't exist so skip them if for example http://www.princeofsartar.com/comic/10 takes you to page 100.

Edited by PhilHibbs
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While not at all connected to Glorantha, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was heavily influenced by RuneQuest. More in the ways of gameplay than in the setting, obviously.

 

There are board games that use Glorantha as a setting, but AFAIK of those there is only one currently available, Khan of Khans, a rules- and lore- light dip into Glorantha on a game engine by Reiner Knizia.

Out of print and/or yet to be reprinted board games include Dragon Pass (earlier White Bear and Red Moon, also Le Guerre des Heroes in the French edition), Nomad Gods (Les Dieux Nomades), and Sandy Petersen's Glorantha: The Gods War. Some of these might be available as virtual tabletop games.

Another board game that was available as print-your-own is Last Faction Hero.

In addition, there are at least three published fan-adaptations of the Britannia rules for areas of Glorantha, published in the Rule One online fanzine as free pdf to print your own: Fronela (#3), Peloria (#7), Kralorela (#5).

 

Maybe not that newcomer-accessible, but there is an English language podcast dedicated to Glorantha and RuneQuest, the God Learner Podcast. (Neither of the current hosts is a native speaker of English...)

 

40 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

Sadly the links are all messed up on that site, if I go back to the start I get the German version and it breaks in  other ways as well. Page 3 links back to Page 1, but if you edit the URL to http://www.princeofsartar.com/comic/4 then you can get to numbered pages directly.

Once you're on the German language page, the links work, and you can select your language of choice again under the flag. Might be a problem with insufficient cookie information, permission, or usage.

The main problem with the Prince of Sartar webcomic is that it is breaking off in the middle of the action.

 

 

Edited by Joerg
Forgot to mention that podcast of ours...
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Telling how it is excessive verbis

 

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Glorantha (english language publications only): 

RPG: 
- RuneQuest (1978, 1979, 1984, 2006, 2010, 2012, 2018-now)
- HeroWars/HeroQuest (2000, 2003, 2009-2017)
- 13th Age Glorantha (2018)

RPG Community Content: 
- Jonstown Compendium on DrivethruRPG (more than 200 titles, 2019-now)

Boardgames: 
- White Bear & Red Moon/Dragon Pass (1975, 1977, 1978, 1980, 1983)
- Nomad Gods (1977)
- Khan of Khans (2017)
- Glorantha: The Gods War (2019)

Magazines: 
- Wyrms Footnotes (15 issues, 1976-1982, 2012)

Fanzines: 
- Pavic Tales (9 issues, 1987-1989)
- Tales of the Reaching Moon (20 issues, 1989-2003)
- RuneQuest Adventures (6 issues, 1993-1998)
- Codex (3 issues, 1994-1995)
- New Lolon Gospel (2 issues, 1995-1996)
- The Book of Drastic Resolutions (3 issues, 1996-1998)
- Tradetalk (17 issues, 1996-2009)
- Enclosure (2 issues, 1997-1998)
- Ye Booke of Tentacles (6 issues, 1998-2006)
- The Unspoken Word (5 issues, 2001-2004)
- The Zin Letters (4 issues, 2003-2010)
- Hearts in Glorantha (7 issues, 2008-2018)
Rule One (online fanzine, 15 issuers, 2009-2013)

Fiction: 
- King of Sartar (1992, 1999, 2015)
- The Collected Griselda/The Complete Griselda (1993, 2001)
- The Widow´s Tale (2003)
- Eurhol´s Vale & Other Stories (2007)
- It´s Not Easy Being Grim & Other Stories (2010)
- Kraken Convention Chap Books --> new Griselda Stories (7 booklets, 2014-2021)

Comics: 
- The Path of the Damed (three issues, 2002-2004)
- The Prince of Sartar (online comic, print 2015)

Computer Games: 
- King of Dragon Pass (1999-now)
- Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind (2018)

Dice: 
- Special RQ dice

Merchandise: 
- Red Bubble store

Edited by AndreJarosch
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1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Once you're on the German language page, the links work, and you can select your language of choice again under the flag.

Not quite - you get stuck on Page 4, the "Next" link goes to itself, as it does for subsequent pages as well. But if you switch to English at that point, you can continue.

Edited by PhilHibbs
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The Well of Daliath has Prince of Sartar now!
https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/catalogue/websites/pos/prince-of-sartar/

Alas, it does not have the convenient "Prev/Next" links under each panel.
But at least it's organized & accessible, and the "related links" at the bottom of each page allow reasonable navigation.
 

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Thanks for the help guys. 😊 All the posts have been very helpful. 👍 Sorry for not promptly responding or reacting much to your friendly and helpful posts but the number of posts and reactions I can make is severely restricted at the moment. 😒

While my friends and I have never heard anything about King of Dragon Pass or Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind we've all heard about the Elder Scrolls series. Unfortunately due to the mention of the Elder Scrolls (read: Skyrim) our DM had decided we should play more Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden. 😢

I think if you promote RuneQuest or Glorantha enough to young people it can become even more popular as our tastes and habits are still being formed. Chaosium should know. It was able to do that in Japan through Call of Cthulhu (CoC), according to this article.

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4 hours ago, Friedelinde said:

While my friends and I have never heard anything about King of Dragon Pass or Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind we've all heard about the Elder Scrolls series.

That reminds me of a convention game that I played in a week ago. The GM helpfully listed a number of camp-spy series so that we would know the flavour of the game, things like The Avengers, Man from UNCLE, Gambit and so on, with a twist of Austin Powers. Most of us were in our forties/fifties, so understood all the references, except a chap in his twenties who had never heard of any of them, not even Austin Powers.

That brought home how cultural references are often age-related.

I haven't played King of Dragon Pass, as I don't play Computer Games and don't really understand them, so the cultural references in that, and Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind, passed me by. For a younger audience, they might have passed by because they were popular several years ago.

That is why media posts, such as this one, are useful, as they tie the look and feel of Glorantha to TV Series and films that people are likely to have seen.

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18 minutes ago, soltakss said:

That reminds me of a convention game that I played in a week ago. The GM helpfully listed a number of camp-spy series so that we would know the flavour of the game, things like The Avengers, Man from UNCLE, Gambit and so on, with a twist of Austin Powers. Most of us were in our forties/fifties, so understood all the references, except a chap in his twenties who had never heard of any of them, not even Austin Powers.

 

Just ran a game at Gen Con online, in what I billed (did ya see what i did there, did ya see it, eh?) was a bronze age desert oasis mystery in a film noir mystery vein on the plains of Prax... I knew the players got it when one of the departing adventurers turned to say “Uhhhh... just one more thing...."

 

 

Edited by Bill the barbarian
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... remember, with a TARDIS, one is never late for breakfast!

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On 8/8/2022 at 9:47 PM, Friedelinde said:

Does RuneQuest have any media aside from pen-and-paper RPGs that would get people interested in the world of Glorantha?

There's not much media outside books or pen-and-paper, though the amount of stuff on YouTube is slowly growing.

For the general aesthetic and "vibe," my go-to film is Bahubali. It's a Bollywood epic in the vein of Lord of the Rings, although it's about Love and Hate rather than Good and Evil. Great film, but long.

I think one odd, but flavorful, "elevator pitch" would be "The Iliad featuring Donald Duck," especially with the recently published community content books about the noble durulz (anthropomorphic Death-worshiping ducks).

image.png.c2bd915c871829f281bf4fbd4a7571ff.png

image.png.d0d213c1f819bcc686d769175d53ba33.png

(Not that you have to play ducks, but it's a good example of some of the cool weirdness available for games in Glorantha. 🙂 )

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RQ is not 'generic medieval' like most DnD millieux. It's SOLIDLY Bronze Age.

So, movies that provide some inspiration:

- Troy [2004] Yes, the Brad Pitt version

- The Odyssey [1997] The Armand Assante /Greta Scacchi mini-series

OK, these next few are digging back into the archives...

- Jason and the Argonauts [1963] Ray Harryhausen Claymation goodness!

- 7th Voyage of Sinbad [1958] Ditto!

- Demetrius and the Gladiators [1954] A lot of Christian allegory here about the reign of Emperor Caligula and Claudius - decadent empire political shennanigans

- The Egyptian [1958] In my mind, this is the Most RuneQuest Movie EVER...

-- Honorable Mention: The 13th Warrior [1999] Yes, it's Beowulf-ish, yes all the armor and weaponry are So. Very. Wrong., but it's an RQ adventure with the nameplate scraped off.

 

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"The Kindly Ones", the longest and penultimate arc of the original Sandman run, has one of the best examples of a heroquest I have ever seen.

(Although we got a nice little heroquest in the Sandman bonus episode that just dropped, as well.)

Edited by Akhôrahil
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Note that "Moana" is another Disney movie that -- really -- is structured much like a RQ-style Heroquest.

+1 for the Bollywood epic Baahubali

And of course the Harryhausen claymation movies -- +1 to each of them!


We should probably point to the several Actual Play streams, but I don't follow those, and don't have the pointers (URLs) to hand, don't know which to commend as better.

Edited by g33k

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So it looks like Page 29: The City of Wonders is low resolution (779x1024), but Page 30: Sideshows is high resolution (1829x2043), as are many possibly all subsequent images.

Any chance of getting the earlier pages (first two chapters, plus first page of chapter 3) in higher resolution? I have them already from the original web site, but I think it would be nice for people to be able to seem them in their original glory on The Well.

(casts Summon @Scotty)

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On 8/9/2022 at 4:47 AM, Friedelinde said:

Does RuneQuest have any media aside from pen-and-paper RPGs that would get people interested in the world of Glorantha?

Someone on this forum made 3D videos of the Rainbow Mounds, a classical RQ adventure. And someone has also a 3D model of Pavis. It gives some hints about the background and atmosphere of the setting. If someone here knows what I'm talking about, he could write the links.

 

There is a lot of art unveiled in this forum and in the runequest facebook group.

 

Wind on the Steppes, role playing among the steppe Nomads. The  running campaign and the blog

 

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Thank you very much for the helpful posts everyone.

The reason I started this thread is because our DM said Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) is undergoing a transition into a new edition and there's a possibility the new edition may not be to our liking. So as a backup plan he asked us to look into other tabletop RPG systems.

I looked at RuneQuest and a few other sytems besides. I showed them this thread. Unfortunately none of my friends appear to be enamored with the world of Glorantha.

Our group couldn't agree on a tabletop RPG system that would appeal to all of us the way D&D 5e did. So we just decided that should the next edition of D&D suck we'll stick with video games.

Still, I have to thank the RuneQuest community for being helpful to an outsider.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 8/30/2022 at 9:16 AM, Bill the barbarian said:

Glad your experience was a positive one! If I might be so bold...

YAY US!

Gee thanks Mr. Bill. That's really nice of you. 😊

On a lark I searched for "Glorantha" on YouTube and sorted by view count. Surprisingly the Chaosium video introducing RuneQuest is only #4.
#3 is a stream of a RuneQuest tabletop gameplay by a channel that strangely enough is dedicated to D&D.
#2 is a commercial for some kind of Peruvian lozenge.
#1 is a review of a board game called Glorantha: The Gods War by a channel that is dedicated to a very eclectic mix of topics.

On another note why don't you guys stream online George R.R. Martin playing RuneQuest? He created the setting for the very popular videogame Elden Ring whose mechanics are heavily based on RuneQuest. You just need to polish and shorten the video a little. Like this one.

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