How Glorantha has changed over RL time

[Nick Brooke]

11 hours ago, Jens said:

I didn’t get the sense there was any guilt involved in the change- more that their traditional diet was easier to sustain, and that tasty herd men were reserved for ceremonies and feasts. 

Absolutely. All Praxians eat herd men and feel no guilt: they’re herd beasts.

The question is whether Morokanth eat meat (herd man or otherwise) because they’re meat-eaters (unlike tapirs), or because it’s a religious obligation they have to fulfil in order to uphold Waha’s Covenant (which they may or may not have cheated to win).

At the risk of stating the obvious, the Morokanth aren’t like other Praxian tribes, and do things rather differently. Most Praxians prefer to eat other tribes’ herd beasts (won in raids!) rather than their own. The Morokanth are (a) less inclined to steal herd beasts from other tribes (because they don’t really want to eat them,?), and (b) more likely to eat their own herd beasts to “prove a point” (“See: we’re following Waha’s Covenant!”), so what’s true for “Most Praxians” isn’t necessarily true for the Morokanth.

[Rick Meints]

While the latest edition of the MIG contains more history on the development of the game, especially via what was and wasn't published, it doesn't go into any real detail on the development of Gloranthan canon over time. Yes, the book documents a handful of general shifts in canon, but only a few. Documenting how Glorantha has evolved over time, and in detail, could easily be a book all on its own. I don't really have much interest in writing that book, although I would assist in its creation with what I know, just like many others would. While I've been a part of the Gloranthan community for over 30 years, following the evolution of Glorantha in detail isn't my passion. The single biggest reason it isn't my passion is probably that it is incredibly easy to make it a subjective discussion as opposed to an objective discussion. A lot of creatives were involved at varying levels of detail and the amount of time they spent. Greg was always pretty much at the center of it until shortly before he passed away, yet he happily shared and let others do a lot of work on topics they were passionate about, especially when Greg didn't have much passion for that specific topic. As Gloranthan canon evolved it was fairly common, or at least more common than many people liked, that people got upset with the changes. Hence the invention of the term "Gregged" to mean when someone's creation(s) got ignored and/or contradicted by Greg. Few people enjoy that experience. 

For example, not that much had been done visually with the West of Glorantha until a single picture of a Knight (wearing plate mail) on a Horse (wearing plate mail) was published in Avalon Hill's RQ3 Glorantha: Genertela, Crucible of the Hero Wars boxed set, which came out in 1988. The picture is easily found on the cover of the Genertela book (Book 2 in the set). Greg said he wasn't very involved in the art direction or art reviews by this point in time. The work relationship between Avalon Hill and Chaosium had been on a steady decline since 1984, and it formally ended less than a year after this boxed set was published. Greg said he never envisioned the West as medieval Knights that wore plate armor, nor would they pretty much look at home in the Middle Ages. Yes, he used the term "knights" to refer to them, going back to the 1960's, but that was mainly because he hadn't really thought through the consequences of using that highly evocative term as a descriptive shortcut. It's similar to him using the word Pharaoh, which instantly conjures up classic Egypt, the pyramids, and such. A number of people started running with the concept that the West was full of plate mail wearing knights, castles, bishops, maidens, and all the other familiar Middle Ages tropes, even though that wasn't how Greg saw things. Of course, most of what Greg had written on the West prior to 1988 was unpublished. That's mainly due to it not really being focused on what you needed for use in an RPG. Greg mainly wrote history and mythology, with a big dose of cartography along the way. As fan publications bloomed in the 90s a lot got published on the West. When "official" publications came out later their content often ignored or contradicted a great deal of those fan publications. A number of people got upset, especially the authors. 

The above example is an oversimplification. It's just how I remember things from back then, and based on my conversations with Greg and many members of the Gloranthan community. I'm not trying to offend anyone or start a debate. That's one of the core problems; it's easy to have the discussion become a debate or an argument, with hurt feelings all along the way. A number of people have quit the community over it.

 

Edited July 8 by Rick Meints

[Nick Brooke]

With great respect, while we’re speaking of oversimplifications, “Gregging” is what happened when Greg Stafford changed his mind about something and retconned Glorantha, not when he contradicted someone else’s creative work.

And your example of how un-mediaeval the Malkioni West was can’t survive even the most cursory read of the Orange Box, replete with keywords like feudal and medieval, which were written in-house by Chaosium’s authors and not inserted afterwards by some rogue art director. (“Bormandy,” man. “Bormandy.”)

Just putting that out there. As a historian, it’s hard to follow the company line where it’s so readily contradicted by printed facts and lived experience. I accept that anyone wanting to play in a deuterocanonical version of the Gloranthan West may have to wait a few years for official support to catch up; in the mean time, they can still use what Chaosium and Issaries published from the eighties through the noughties, or indeed fan-created works consistent with those RQ3 & HW/HQ-era sources. (We have a clutch of them on the community content store, including Jamie Revell’s takes on Seshnela and Jonatela and my own lavishly-illustrated History of Malkionism.)

[Aurelius]

Thank you for all the replies and comments so far. 

On 7/8/2024 at 10:05 AM, Nick Brooke said:

As a historian, it’s hard to follow the company line where it’s so readily contradicted by printed facts and lived experience.

I think this unpacks a lot about what I was trying to put into words. I'm very much an outsider; Glorantha has been a part of my life for most of my life, but I've always been just a random player / GM and the one time I met Greg I was too young to even understand what he was saying, let alone being able to articulate an intelligent question. 

Reading up, I've stumbled on this, let's call it rhetoric, a few times, where Glorantha has never changed and it's just that some earlier documents are heresy. "There were never potatoes in Glorantha, and sources that claim there are, were always incorrect" ... as opposed to "When we figured out more about how Glorantha works, we decided that there are no potatoes in Glorantha because it made no sense". 

I guess it comes from Greg's own rhetoric of being an explorer and a shaman, rather than a creator or a designer. Glorantha is not made, it is revealed to us, and thus it cannot change based for design reasons. Being an arkati trickster rather than an omniscient narrator.

For an outsider staring at the things from a distant orbit it is often a bit daunting! "Knights? Lol, not that kind of knights! See Guide to Glorantha vol 2 p. 406 to see how completely different they have always been at least in Seshnela". It's a bit daunting because things have changed, but a lot more daunting because the rhetoric implies that you should have known that Greg never meant whatever it was that a Chaosium artist drew. 

The second bit is Glorantha's paradoxical relationship with real-world historical cultures. I think that initially Glorantha was a bit more like a fantasyized sketch of the real world similar to WHFRP:s Old World. West had a bit more knights and castles, Lunar Empire has a bit more ancient Rome, and Kralorela still has a bucketload of the Orient. As the creators worked on the various areas, they fleshed out the regions, adding a lot of Babylonia and Mesopotamia and Arabic influences to Lunar Empire, making sure the Heortlings are not inland Vikings nor Celts although they may contain trace amounts of both. Kralorela has never gotten the attention, especially not canonic attention, so it remains closest to its initial RL counterpart. 

The Gloranthan paradox is that much of the uniqueness and originality of Glorantha comes from the bricolage of real-world cultures, because they are so incredibly powerful shorthands. The Lunar Empire, which I regard as the Best Ever Fantasy Nation Ever is original because it is a complicated composition merging a million RL strands together -- glued together with a lot of mythology that is not bricolage. 

I can't help but to wonder what Kralorela would have been revealed to always have been, if our fallible arkati trickster shaman would have had a few years write the Shameful PreDescent of Godunya or whatever to explore it.

[Ian Absentia]

19 minutes ago, Aurelius said:

Reading up, I've stumbled on this, let's call it rhetoric, a few times, where Glorantha has never changed and it's just that some earlier documents are heresy.

[...snip...]

For an outsider staring at the things from a distant orbit it is often a bit daunting! "Knights? Lol, not that kind of knights! See Guide to Glorantha vol 2 p. 406 to see how completely different they have always been at least in Seshnela". It's a bit daunting because things have changed, but a lot more daunting because the rhetoric implies that you should have known that Greg never meant whatever it was that a Chaosium artist drew. 

We are playing with, in, and around a succession of medieval drawings of a giraffe rendered from only anecdotal accounts and the artists' own imaginations.

!i!

 

Edited July 11 by Ian Absentia

[Aurelius]

Has it ever been disclosed what kind of discussions were had when the Canon decided to walk back from the QuestWorlds mythology and de-canonize the endless hero subcults established in the Hero Wars books?Did Greg ever open up about that huge decision?

[mfbrandi]

2 hours ago, Aurelius said:

Kralorela has never gotten the attention, especially not canonic attention, so it remains closest to its initial RL counterpart.

I am pretty sure that real-life China is not ruled by a dragon, but I like to think that all the women in Kralorela talk like Miriam Margolyes.

What did it say on the cover of Panzer Pranks, “World War II as it actually was in the movies”?

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, Aurelius said:

Has it ever been disclosed what kind of discussions were had when the Canon decided to walk back from the QuestWorlds mythology and de-canonize the endless hero subcults established in the Hero Wars books?Did Greg ever open up about that huge decision?

You may want to read the series of Design posts that Jeff provided back when RQG was being released.

Articles – Designing the New RuneQuest – The Well of Daliath (chaosium.com)

I don't recall if they explicitly note Greg's thoughts but they should give you a general idea of the approach taken. Greg was definitely part of and approved the design direction. 

[Aurelius]

3 hours ago, jajagappa said:

You may want to read the series of Design posts that Jeff provided back when RQG was being released.

Articles – Designing the New RuneQuest – The Well of Daliath (chaosium.com)

I don't recall if they explicitly note Greg's thoughts but they should give you a general idea of the approach taken. Greg was definitely part of and approved the design direction. 

Thank you! This is exactly what I was looking for! 

[Aurelius]

16 hours ago, jajagappa said:

You may want to read the series of Design posts that Jeff provided back when RQG was being released.

Articles – Designing the New RuneQuest – The Well of Daliath (chaosium.com)

I don't recall if they explicitly note Greg's thoughts but they should give you a general idea of the approach taken. Greg was definitely part of and approved the design direction. 

This was very useful and a part of what I was very much looking for. 

But it didn't touch the Glorantha creation parts of HWHQQW at all -- its kinda like making a RPG design fork at RQ2.5 implies also making a Glorantha creation fork at the same point.

It does make sense to me that it does, and I personally think it was the absolutely right decision.

But IDK whether Glorantha now has never had Helamakt. 😄 I guess there now is a category of deprecated mythology that YGMU (Your Glorantha May Use) but are no longer supported in the Master branch releases.

Yes, sometimes it feels like Glorantha should be developed as a git repo. 

[Joerg]

Individual Storm Brothers, obscure handmaidens of Ernalda and their even more obscure lowfire husbands or lesser Anaxialian emperors as cult entities are still there to be used as local color and may appear in geographic feature names.

Puma people, Malkioni acolytists receiving lesser "essential magic" (sorcery) from church scripture might be harder to reconcile with the main branch.

A good many features in Glorantha started as "it seemed like a good idea at the time" and some managed to be affirmed by audience reaction or fan activity. Others went the way of the Sun Domer slavocracy.

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, Aurelius said:

But IDK whether Glorantha now has never had Helamakt.

He is accommodated for as part of the collective Thunder Brothers. As noted in the Lightbringers' Book:

The collective offspring of Orlanth are worshiped as the Thunder Brothers (which sometimes include Orlanth’s storm brothers as well). They have immense power and are his aspects, companions, manifestations, and messengers. They are very violent and aggressive, armed with lightning and thunderbolts or with terrible swords. They split the clouds so that rain can fall and are capable of shaking mountains and destroying forests. The Thunder Brothers are usually shown as a collective of Storm gods, numbering between three and sixty.

Was there a need for a unique Helamakt? Not really. But it is easy to bring him back as a local bit of color. 

The ones that I thought went particularly off the rails were the odd deities in the ILH2: Under the Red Moon book. The Lunar cults were fairly well outlined in the old Redline History of the Lunar Empire. This was not an ancient culture and there were sufficient new gods. But suddenly we got lots of new, unheard-of figures (e.g. Selven Hara) which just made a rather confusing mess. I've been quite happy to see those trimmed out. 

[mfbrandi]

7 hours ago, jajagappa said:

This was not an ancient culture and there were sufficient new gods. But suddenly we got lots of new, unheard-of figures (e.g. Selven Hara) which just made a rather confusing mess.

I am quite relaxed about such things. Think how sects, fringe groups, NRMs, and flying saucer cults (these categories overlap) proliferate IRL. Glorantha and — perhaps — especially the Lunar Empire with all its upending of the old ways would surely have these, too. Just as on Earth we mostly ignore them most of the time — and certainly fail to understand them — we can in Glorantha, too. Live and let live; don’t chisel them off the pillars, just forget to inscribe them on any new ones. 😉 There will always be Gloranthan gods and cults none of us has ever heard of — undocumented Rajneeshis and the like.

Of course, no sane person would want to write them up in “universal cult format” — shudder! The world lives where it oozes out from under our crunchy modelling tools.

[Ali the Helering]

Glorantha has an uncounted number of gods and goddesses, much to the bewilderment of Gloranthans as well as the reader new to Glorantha. One of the joys of Glorantha is uncovering the identity and experiencing the mythology of these beings layer by layer.   Greg in his intro to Hero Wars.

I agree with him - the complexity made for joy, not confusion.  Simplification means that I am becoming disaffected with the game and, to my great sadness, Glorantha.

 

[jajagappa]

4 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

I am quite relaxed about such things. Think how sects, fringe groups, NRMs, and flying saucer cults (these categories overlap) proliferate IRL.

I tend to treat the HW/HQ1 period as a set of documents about Glorantha written from the future where the sages mixed together scraps of lore about gods, heroes, and various other folk. Some like the assorted Thunder Brothers or Handmaidens were minor deities or other names for the deities (which is why you can find Kadone the Grounder and Kev the Seer in my vision of Nochet). Some like Selven Hara were people of the early Hero Wars era who perhaps later became deities or were misconstrued as such - but your characters can meet these figures in this time period. 

[SDLeary]

2 hours ago, jajagappa said:

I tend to treat the HW/HQ1 period as a set of documents about Glorantha written from the future where the sages mixed together scraps of lore about gods, heroes, and various other folk. Some like the assorted Thunder Brothers or Handmaidens were minor deities or other names for the deities (which is why you can find Kadone the Grounder and Kev the Seer in my vision of Nochet). Some like Selven Hara were people of the early Hero Wars era who perhaps later became deities or were misconstrued as such - but your characters can meet these figures in this time period. 

I like to approach from the opposite direction. HW/HQ is the "real" Glorantha, what it is/was actually like. With a multitude of local gods that appear just enough different, and worshipped in a different enough way, that they are different; even if they represent the same concepts.

What we are getting now is from the future, where all we have for records are those that actually survived. Major artifacts covering various topics from the (minuscule) number of archaeological sites that have actually been found and explored. 

Or, to look at it from another way, we are actually looking at and playing in the monomyth these days.

SDLeary

Edited July 13 by SDLeary

[John Biles]

HW/HQ encouraged proliferation of cults because it was really easy to define a cult in that system.

Stripping down to a smaller number of deities still means the need for a huge series of cult books for Glorantha just to cover all the big ones for the new Runequest.

 

 

 

[radmonger]

7 hours ago, John Biles said:

Stripping down to a smaller number of deities still means the need for a huge series of cult books for Glorantha just to cover all the big ones for the new Runequest.

 

Functionally, that is the core of the change in focus. To make it into RQ:G, you have to have perhaps 10,000 or so initiates, and provide multiple unique rune spells available nowhere else. That scope was probably set when the book was going to be two printed volumes.

Minor regional cults are not covered; they still exist. Regional variants and alternate names are not exhaustively covered; they still exist.

But most importantly,for every deity that has an organised cult with temples and standardised Rune magic, there are at least 10 for which that could be the case but isn't. HQ:G had a tendency to imply that every deity had a cult. And so if you wanted to find out about say Rigsdal you would go to the Rigsdal priest at the Rigsdal temple. Wheras in RQ:G, Rigsdal is personally worshipped by Kallyr who met him on a heroquest. And so she has unique powers that no-one else currently has[1].

In Marvel comics, there are supposedly 80,000 characters that have appeared in more than one story. A quiz team assembled from knowledge cultists of different Gloranthan cultures could probably match that. And even they would still miss many. So at that level of detail, when you want a new unique deity for for your heroquesting PCs to interact with, make it up. Noone is crazy enough to try to define the canon name of every shopkeeper and guard in Nochet, updating it seasonally to match births and deaths.

But that's actually a comparable scale.

[1] canonically I don't think she succeeds in turning that into a lasting legacy in the form of a cult, but things could presumably have gone differently, and indeed will in some campaigns.

[Beoferret]

17 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

Glorantha has an uncounted number of gods and goddesses, much to the bewilderment of Gloranthans as well as the reader new to Glorantha. One of the joys of Glorantha is uncovering the identity and experiencing the mythology of these beings layer by layer.   Greg in his intro to Hero Wars.

I agree with him - the complexity made for joy, not confusion.  Simplification means that I am becoming disaffected with the game and, to my great sadness, Glorantha.

 

I'm honestly a bit saddened by this. RQG is my first edition of RQ and my first solid intro to Glorantha. As a setting, Glorantha (as currently presented) can already come across as having an intimidatingly steep learning curve. Its very richness as a setting is a virtue that doubles as a vice. In other words, the RQG Glorantha is already complex enough to scare some folks off. Insisting on maintaining dozens of subcults, hero cults, etc as canon would scare even more people off, I suspect. The great thing is, if you end up finding other players who are as deeply invested in Glorantha as many of us are, you can clearly bring all those previously delineated subcults, hero cults, local variations of each deity, etc into play. It feels like it'd be a reward for those who've enthusiastically followed Greg down the rabbit hole to the wonderland he had created.  

Also: I honestly appreciate that RQG's presentation of Glorantha still provides some room for our innovations.

Edited July 13 by Beoferret
Superfluous use of the word "a".

[Nevermet]

On 7/2/2024 at 4:44 PM, Tiggy said:

Am I to understand that Heroquest material is no longer considered canon? How come? Wasn’t the same people writing that as RQ:G? I only just now got hold of a second hand copy of Heroquest Glorantha and I am really intrigued by it. 

It depends on what intrigues you about it.

Anything related to mechanics, including discussions of shamans, devotees, etc... that's Questworld / HQG mechanics.  It should be relatively easy to take any setting information you like from the RQG books and use it with HQG.

That said, yes, it will be "unsupported" in the sense that "QW Glorantha by Chaosium" is probably not going to be a major thing in the foreseeable future.

As far as setting goes, some of the setting details presented in HQG don't match what one finds in the Guide or the Sourcebook or the RQG pubs after them.  The broad brushstrokes are generally the same.