How Glorantha has changed over RL time

[Aurelius]

I've read some of Jon Peterson's books on how Gygax and Arneson created Dungeons & Dragons. He writes these excruciatingly detailed books on how Thief class was added to D&D originally as a fan contribution, and once he gets out of the 70s and even 80s, I expect him to detail when and how it became a Rogue, and how then Thief became a subclass of Rogue. 

In Glorantha, we don't have a Jon Peterson -- actually, trying to look for people writing about working on Glorantha, pretty much the only source I've found was in Nick Brooke's Gloranthan Manifesto, the piece where he discussed working with Greg. I loved that piece for the way it conveyed both appreciation and frustration, and how some of the painfulness of the collaboration was there.

Is there anything else I could read? 

I'm interested in the big things. How Malkioni became Arthurian knights, and how that was undone later? How the entire Yelmalio-Elmal thing developed not in Glorantha, but on planet Earth. How the Hero Wars version of Glorantha came to be, and how and when we got yanked back on the RQ track with a lot less Helamakt. How the Mongoose Glorantha got so far away from Chaosium and Issaries Glorantha.

I'm also interested in the small things, even individual words. Why are some words forbidden, like the Pharaoh, and Sultan-or-Satrap I don't remember which one. RQG seems to have rehabilitated the word "elf", and maybe "dwarf"? I guess Chaosium never says Elmal, except to state that Elmal is Yelmalio, but it still says Buserian and Erissa? 

I guess new Chaosium creative direction is making Glorantha more accessible, which I appreciate ... while maintaining a lot of Glorantha's traditional mystery and its inherent paradoxes. I stopped reading Mongoose RQ at the point where they disclosed their understanding of the Godlearner secret.

I know some these questions might be painful, and I don't really want to open up all the Greg-said-Sandy-said wounds of the community. But if I've missed some source that would cover at least some parts of Real World History of Glorantha, it'd sate a lot of my curiosity. I guess I'm hoping even for a  podcast or a RQ Con transcript somewhere.

[scott-martin]

15 minutes ago, Aurelius said:

I know some these questions might be painful, and I don't really want to open up all the Greg-said-Sandy-said wounds of the community. But if I've missed some source that would cover at least some parts of Real World History of Glorantha, it'd sate a lot of my curiosity. I guess I'm hoping even for a  podcast or a RQ Con transcript somewhere.

“No heroquesting without Respect and Compassion.” I love it. @Rick Meints has a great publishing history lavish with anecdotes and Sandy Antunes has other bibliographic resources but in terms of the concepts and personalities a simple unified narrative may be important as we approach Chaosium 50. While the real truths that matter might slip out of that kind of storyline accepting the adventure would be a good use of time.

[Nick Brooke]

Read the MIG. Rick knows the history.

 

[RicKaySi]

23 hours ago, Aurelius said:

Is there anything else I could read? 

I'm interested in the big things. How Malkioni became Arthurian knights, and how that was undone later? How the entire Yelmalio-Elmal thing developed not in Glorantha, but on planet Earth. How the Hero Wars version of Glorantha came to be, and how and when we got yanked back on the RQ track with a lot less Helamakt. How the Mongoose Glorantha got so far away from Chaosium and Issaries Glorantha.

If you like this kind of creative archaeology you should should see if you can find the 90s Avalon Hill material like Dorastor: Land of Doom, Shadows on the Borderlands and River of Cradles. It presented a grungy, dangerous and disgusting version of Glorantha (with Dorastor and Broo-haunted Prax as example areas they focused on) that I think really informed a lot of the aesthetic associations of a lot of the RQ fans to this day.

I also personally really like that material's focus on mechanics-as-storytelling. Rather than "show don't tell", like a lot of RPG settings, they actually had mechanics for farming in Dorastor, which was as difficult as it sounds, and demonstrated how hard Chaos is to dislodge by making it geographically inaccessible. Instead of heroic charges into pitched battle the players had inglorious and difficult fights in the sheer bluffs of Vulture Country and waterlogged caves under the Rubble.

I love RQG's new art direction, it's a lot easier to convince cozy/casual fantasy DnD players I know to try Glorantha now it's pretty and inviting and maybe some of them will love it enough to go back in time and find things they love in all the versions (I still love Mongoose's Blood of Orlanth). The genderqueer, LGBTQ+ representation and ethnic/cultural diversity in a lot of the new art feels very welcome considering that's always been one of the more unique and interesting aspects of Glorantha as a setting.

Edited Saturday at 02:12 PM by RicKaySi

[jajagappa]

21 hours ago, Aurelius said:

But if I've missed some source that would cover at least some parts of Real World History of Glorantha, it'd sate a lot of my curiosity. I guess I'm hoping even for a  podcast or a RQ Con transcript somewhere.

Well if you want some real nitty-gritty discussion, you can go back to the RQ Daily Digest and the Glorantha Digest. Those were the daily email discussion threads from the 1990s and there are literally 1000s of posts. There's a summary (and search function) for those and other indices here: Index of Glorantha Stuff.

Some of the history of Chaosium is included in Shannon Appelcline's 4-volume series Designers and Dragons. Shannon was at Chaosium during some of those years. You can find an interview of Greg by Shannon in the mid-2000s here: The RPGnet Interview #13: Greg Stafford, Glorantha - RPGnet

Rick's index to all the RQ works has been noted above.

21 hours ago, Aurelius said:

Why are some words forbidden, like the Pharaoh

Greg used the term Pharaoh for Belintar because he thought originally it meant "God-king", which is what Belintar was. After learning that Pharaoh actually means "Great House" he no longer felt that it fit and stopped using the term.

21 hours ago, Aurelius said:

Sultan-or-Satrap I don't remember which one

See Nick's Manifesto on that one. Sultan was originally used, but IIRC seemed too "modern" so got replaced by the more ancient term of Satrap. (However, we still have the Mad Sultanate so it's not like it disappeared from use.)

21 hours ago, Aurelius said:

How Malkioni became Arthurian knights, and how that was undone later?

The art in the RQ3 box set "Genertela" depicted medieval knights for the west. This was carried on into the Hero Wars era. I don't believe it was Greg's original intent, and it was shifted to current view with the Guide.

22 hours ago, Aurelius said:

How the entire Yelmalio-Elmal thing developed not in Glorantha, but on planet Earth.

Start here: Library of Londarios: The Birth of Elmal (1993) – The Well of Daliath (chaosium.com)

If you scroll down on that page, you'll also find links to all the Greg Sez articles from late 1990s as well as his Myths of the Month and Library of Londarios articles. (Note: just because an article is called "Greg Sez" doesn't necessarily mean he wrote it in its entirety, though he did usually reference them as "Guest", e.g. I wrote the answers to the "Dragon Slayers and Dragons of Saird" and the "Who Are the Dog Fathers?" articles as I was working with Greg on the land and gods of Saird at the time.)

 

[Aurelius]

Thank you for the reading tips and answers everyone!

[svensson]

Well, back in the Ancient Seventies when rocks were soft, RQ was published as an alternative to the class-based DnD. It was designed to be more free-form with characters starting out as striplings off the farm and growing into mighty Rune Lord/Priests who became legends in their faiths. It was just as dungeon-crawly as its competitors, but the combat and spells systems were specifically designed to be logical and accessible to new players. It helped that those who designed combat system were fencers, heavy fighters in the SCA, and armory historians... weapon length counted, as did quickness, size, and skill. The magic system was specifically set up to do away with arbitrary 'No, you can't!' type rules [the big example being AD&D's prohibition on using arcane magic in armor].

As more scenarios and sourcebooks were published, things got more complicated but not so complicated that the core essential differences were forgotten. In RQG, just as in RQ2, your character begins knowing the important skills of his family and they learn new skills as they adventure. The average Farmer doesn't know diddly/squat about Lock Picking but if the player wants to learn that skill there are avenues to do that. Combat is still logical based on actual physics... Long spears hit before swords hit before daggers. Two handed weapons do more damage than one handed weapons. Etcetera.

As fans we all always knew that Greg had much more in mind in Glorantha. The problem was getting the ideas out of his filing cabinets and his head, organizing them into holistic whole, and then getting them written in a presentable form... with each step submitted for Greg's approval until the team had earned enough trust that Greg knew his baby had a reliable babysitter.

And even THEN a lot of us old grogs will dispute this or that. I personally like the idea of Elmal being Baptists to the Yelmalio Anglicans, that two faiths can worship the same Gloranthan deity in different ways and the deity approves of both of methods. I'm a proud member of Elmal Heretics R Us 😆

As for HeroQuesting, that's only just opened up in these last 5 years or so. We're all really excited to see how the epic level of the game works out.

At the end of the day, Glorantha is like MAR Barker's Tekumel. There is enough legends, lore and apocrypha to keep you happily grogging for the rest of your life and we wouldn't have it any other way.

[Brian Duguid]

7 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Some of the history of Chaosium is included in Shannon Appelcline's 4-volume series Designers and Dragons. Shannon was at Chaosium during some of those years. You can find an interview of Greg by Shannon in the mid-2000s here: The RPGnet Interview #13: Greg Stafford, Glorantha - RPGnet

There is also some additional history of Moon Design and Reaching Moon Megacorp at Shannon's Patreon (subscribers only), although that is also very much company history rather than setting history.

[metcalph]

13 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Greg used the term Pharaoh for Belintar because he thought originally it meant "God-king", which is what Belintar was. After learning that Pharaoh actually means "Great House" he no longer felt that it fit and stopped using the term.

I think the real problem with using Pharaoh was not the etymology but that it strongly conveyed a strong sense of ancient Egypt which wasn't Greg's intention.   

[John Biles]

Sultan was not just too modern... Sultans *are the top dog*.  They do not serve an Emperor, they *are* the Emperor.

They were secular monarchs, replacing the old divine monarchy of the Caliphate in which the leader led both the church and state.  The Sultan dominated religion but there was no pretending he was a successor to Mohammed.

So getting rid of that as a title was wise.

 

[MOB]

On 6/29/2024 at 12:12 AM, Aurelius said:

I guess I'm hoping even for a  podcast or a RQ Con transcript somewhere.

We have something things in the planning for next year, Chaosium's 50th.

[Aurelius]

Thanks for all the helpful links ... the previous MIG I read was a bit of a List of Stuff and it was a long time ago. 

Did I miss other significant changes where later canon Glorantha directly contradicts earlier canon Glorantha?

[Jens]

1 hour ago, Aurelius said:

Did I miss other significant changes where later canon Glorantha directly contradicts earlier canon Glorantha?

Potatoes... their removal may not be a major change, but have certainly given rise to long & heated discussion threads both here and elsewhere.

Here's the official reason they are gone- 

 

[jajagappa]

3 hours ago, Aurelius said:

Did I miss other significant changes where later canon Glorantha directly contradicts earlier canon Glorantha?

It all depends on what you (or others) considered canon.

Generally, the Hero Wars/HeroQuest v1 era is considered to have gone down a rabbit hole of many little gods and godlings (post RQ3) and has been pruned.

The Mongoose era is considered completely non-canonical.

For many the entry into Dragon Pass was the video game King of Dragon Pass. That (along with some of the Hero Wars era works such as Thunder Rebels and Storm Tribe) give the Orlanthi of Sartar the appearance of a very rural, rustic society. But with the works coming out now, we see Sartar with its trade roads and cities is much more urban and functions as the center of trade moving between the Holy Country and the Lunar Empire or Prax and Dragon Pass.

[John Biles]

3 hours ago, jajagappa said:

For many the entry into Dragon Pass was the video game King of Dragon Pass. That (along with some of the Hero Wars era works such as Thunder Rebels and Storm Tribe) give the Orlanthi of Sartar the appearance of a very rural, rustic society. But with the works coming out now, we see Sartar with its trade roads and cities is much more urban and functions as the center of trade moving between the Holy Country and the Lunar Empire or Prax and Dragon Pass.

I have to note that King of Dragon Pass is set three centuries before the Hero Wars and about two centuries before King Sartar, shortly after settlement of Dragon Pass by humans again.

 

[jajagappa]

31 minutes ago, John Biles said:

I have to note that King of Dragon Pass is set three centuries before the Hero Wars and about two centuries before King Sartar, shortly after settlement of Dragon Pass by humans again.

Quite true, but that doesn't stop people from equating the two/expecting similar behaviors (particularly where the Hero Wars era material carried the KoDP type content into the current Dragon Pass setting).

[Nick Brooke]

12 hours ago, Jens said:

Potatoes... their removal may not be a major change, but have certainly given rise to long & heated discussion threads both here and elsewhere.

ITYM "one man's struggle to remove them." The rest of us can see what Greg, Steve and Sandy wrote, and conduct ourselves appropriately.

[g33k]

19 hours ago, Aurelius said:

... 

Did I miss other significant changes where later canon Glorantha directly contradicts earlier canon Glorantha?

IMG, the Morokanth are still (rather creepily) "Eaters" via the covenant of Eaters & Eaten.

Greg had gregged that to have Morokanth (by and large) eating a diet much like wild tapirs eat (other than in the context of religious / ritual occasions).