Bits of Glorantha you ignore

[Sir_Godspeed]

5 hours ago, simonh said:

There was a “Little Teshnos” district in my version of Karse, but many of the residents were actually Kralorelan, and a Kralorelan street magician was an incidental character but that’s about it. Mainly I just wanted to show that Karse is moderately cosmopolitan so I had incidental characters from various corners of Glorantha.

You could plausibly put pretty much anyone from anywhere in Nochet as well, for anyone so inclined.

Edited October 14, 2021 by Sir_Godspeed

[jajagappa]

56 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

You could plausibly put pretty much anyone from anywhere in Nochet as well, for anyone so inclined.

Nochet is definitely the melting pot of Glorantha.  You'll find enough inhabitants from Teshnos, Kralorela, Seshnela, and Fonrit to have local shrines to their deities.  There's even a few Vadeli around. 

[Puckohue]

I don’t actively ignore anything, I think, but as all games I’ve run have been in the Dragon Pass area I’ve not bothered to read up on the rest of the world.

Also there’s so much info I go with ”good enough”. Fun is the aim, not Fantasy anthropology.

Edited October 14, 2021 by Puckohue

[AlHazred]

On 11/18/2017 at 4:59 AM, soltakss said:

Oh no, not again! I'd hate this thread to be another ten-pager on why longbows are/aren't the best medieval weapon ever. Nobody mention slings, either!

I'm glad you brought up slings 3 years ago. I have hard maths here to demonstrate why the sling is, both objectively and subjectively, better than the longbow on a tactical and strategic level. Anyway, it begins with Newton's Third Law...

[EDIT: Hmmm... It appears the forum software had a problem with my post, which exceeded 10,000 words. No problem, I'll turn it into a pdf and put a link in here once I have it up on a peer-reviewed site! I wouldn't want anyone to miss the devastating Glorantha puns I put into the 3rd Appendix!]

[Ali the Helering]

I think there is definite mileage in having an Issaries-worshipping giant who keeps his ass in a sling....

Personally I seldom use anything written after Greg's passing.  I'm even suspicious of my own output.😁

[AlHazred]

1 hour ago, Ali the Helering said:

I think there is definite mileage in having an Issaries-worshipping giant who keeps his ass in a sling....

Personally I seldom use anything written after Greg's passing.  I'm even suspicious of my own output.😁

That's fair. I'm suspicious of your input, too!

[dumuzid]

I did some significant reshuffling of the feudal structure in Seshnela for the purposes of my game, mostly for the sake of having a more legible political landscape for my players to navigate.  I also turned up the Hrestoli tendency in Pithdaros  circa 1626 several notches, to make it a more naturally welcoming starting place for pretty heterogenous central Genertelan player character group in the Seshnelan arc of the campaign.  IMG Count Jahiz of Oradaros is a fully open Hrestolist with several Men-of-All in his court, for instance, rather than just a rumored supporter.

Edited October 14, 2021 by dumuzid

[ffilz]

Hmm, my campaign is set before all the Hero Wars stuff, so most of the timeline is ignored by me. We've also kept mostly to Sartar (and really not much South of there) and Prax (mostly Pavis, Dead Place, and along the Zola Fel) with a bit of exploration of Balazar. I haven't followed all the cultural changes post the RQ2/3 era.

[Orlanthatemyhamster]

On 11/10/2017 at 1:18 PM, David Scott said:

 

RQ3 also introduced some distinctly non-gloranthan creatures like the the headhanger.

 

 

That runner does look like a hippy chimp.

I like the Headhanger as a Bagogi offspring, it doesn't feel any more or less Gloranthan than many other creatures, I mean Shadow cats are associated with a Wind God, What?

 

Edited October 15, 2021 by Orlanthatemyhamster

[Runeblogger]

On 11/17/2017 at 3:16 PM, Akhôrahil said:

Jack o' Bears.

Not happening. Ever. It's a stupid idea in so many different ways all at once.

I play jack o´bears as the pumpkin head is only a rumor, a product of a horror-stricken person's description of the monster.  As the monster in the film "Pumpkinhead".
The art in the RQG Bestiary agrees with this "it only looks like a pumpkin" theory.

[Stephen L]

On 10/13/2021 at 5:30 PM, Darius West said:

I have a friend who finds ducks to be utterly immersion breaking

I find it very curious that ducks are considered immersion breaking, but, for example, centaurs or minotaurs are believable...

[Akhôrahil]

32 minutes ago, Runeblogger said:

I play jack o´bears as the pumpkin head is only a rumor, a product of a horror-stricken person's description of the monster.  As the monster in the film "Pumpkinhead".
The art in the RQG Bestiary agrees with this "it only looks like a pumpkin" theory.

But in that case, what's even the point? Why does it look like it has a pumpkin for a head?

[Guest Vile Traveller]

24 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

But in that case, what's even the point? Why does it look like it has a pumpkin for a head?

It's all because of these minis: https://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2013/05/holmes-little-metal-people-take-ii.html

[Guest Vile Traveller]

37 minutes ago, Stephen L said:

I find it very curious that ducks are considered immersion breaking, but, for example, centaurs or minotaurs are believable...

Because centaurs and minotaurs fit right into a bronze-age setting - Howard the Duck, not so much.

[Akhôrahil]

4 minutes ago, Vile Traveller said:

It's all because of these minis: https://zenopusarchives.blogspot.com/2013/05/holmes-little-metal-people-take-ii.html

"This monster exists because I have a model that fits" is very Gygaxian. 🙂

[Runeblogger]

1 hour ago, Akhôrahil said:

But in that case, what's even the point? Why does it look like it has a pumpkin for a head?

It looks like a pumpkin because that's the way a terrified farmer described the misshapen, horrendous head of the jack o´bear. See the poster of the horror film Pumpkinhead, for example. It does not look like a pumpkin at all, but someone, trying his best to describe it, used the word "pumpkin".

[Baron Wulfraed]

1 hour ago, Stephen L said:

I find it very curious that ducks are considered immersion breaking, but, for example, centaurs or minotaurs are believable...

The 'taurs have a classical background. The only long-necked avian of the time occurs in "Leda and the Swan", and even that is purported to be Zeus in disguise (the morals of the greek gods, or at least of Zeus, are non-existant: Leda, Ganymede, Callisto, and a few others).

[Bill the barbarian]

Aight all ya buncha duck haters.... My intellectual 2 bolgs worth...

PHHHHHHHTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!

Nah, seriously I get it.

Weird 1970’s stoner California-isms are not everyone's cups o' teas. There are a lot of things that drive me <red> batty about Glorantha! I believe I have already mentioned my queasiness with Morokanth (it took a parody about Planet of the Morokanthi to change my view on the issue). As mentioned upthread... jack ‘o bears are a bit off-putting (but after being introduced to Hungry Jack, my opinion again changed). Mostali, well Greg himself caused my disconnect with his “Why I hate Mostali" article from DW (I believe). Easily solved, just imagine these little assembly-line robots in a steam punk way... QED! So, the problems seemed to just need minor adjustments and Bob was once again yer aunt! 

Huzzah!

Edited October 17, 2021 by Bill the barbarian

[Sir_Godspeed]

Not sure how "canon" it is anymore, or ever was, but I definitely ignore the idea that the symbol of the EWF was, in-universe, literally the three Latin letters "E. W. F." fused together.

[simonh]

7 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Not sure how "canon" it is anymore, or ever was, but I definitely ignore the idea that the symbol of the EWF was, in-universe, literally the three Latin letters "E. W. F." fused together.

I'm ok with accepting it as a strange co-incidence that this magical rune in Glorantha happens to correspond to something for us, but not that the latin alphabet exists in Glorantha.

[AlHazred]

Ducks in my game are the gods taking on mortal form. You thought that meant "human" form? Why? Just because a bunch of humans made their images in human form? In the myths, Zeus appears as a swan, or Apollo takes the form of a dove or whatever, they appear as birds! So, I'm drawing my inspiration from classic literature!

[Stephen L]

On 10/15/2021 at 9:02 PM, Vile Traveller said:

Because centaurs and minotaurs fit right into a bronze-age setting - Howard the Duck, not so much

 

On 10/15/2021 at 10:29 PM, Baron Wulfraed said:

The 'taurs have a classical background.

I don't think that creatures that existed in classical mythology should have anything to do with how believable it is for Glorantha.  Otherwise, well where to start... Dragonewts, Broo, Morokanth, Waktapi...

However, it might just be that I've never really come across Howard the Duck that I lack the bias that might... engander.

[Eff]

For me, much of the idea of a Chaos "pantheon" and many of the gods therein is just ignored in my Glorantha, along with a few deities that have crossed back and forth over the Chaos line. Not to say that there isn't a giant shark-ish kaiju wandering the seas of my Glorantha, but the idea that Gloomshark or Krjalk or Krarsht or Pocharngo are best understood as being gods, things that have an independent existence outside of the curses and theories of people trying to understand the monstrosity, is something I find a little... too pat? To me it feels more interesting if Seseine and Bad Man and Wakboth are cautionary figures, warning signs, that sometimes run out of control and produce people worshiping them.

(This is setting aside Bagog and Thed and Cacodemon, but they usually get relegated to the role of being an ancestral figure more than a deity in a pantheon of unreality.)

Alternately, I might be convinced to accept a Chaos Pantheon as long as I got to throw Xiombarg, Queen of the Swords into it...

[simonh]

2 hours ago, Stephen L said:

However, it might just be that I've never really come across Howard the Duck that I lack the bias that might... engander.

You may have done, but not realised it. He's in one of The Collector's display cases in Guardians of the Galaxy, and I think appears in the end of credit scene. He has a speaking part in the T'Chala/Star Lord "What If...?" episode. That's all I know the character from though.

For the record, i think ducks are great. They're one of the many things that make Glorantha quirky and fun for me. I like the idea that there are other tiny communities of strange beings out there in various corners of Glorantha too, it's just that we know about ducks and not the others because the game happens to have focused on Dragon Pass.

Edited October 17, 2021 by simonh

[JonL]

1 hour ago, simonh said:

You may have done, but not realised it. He's in one of The Collector's display cases in Guardians of the Galaxy, and I think appears in the end of credit scene. He has a speaking part in the T'Chala/Star Lord "What If...?" episode. That's all I know the character from though.

He's also briefly seen on Sakaar in Thor Ragnarok, and joins in the big battle in Avengers Endgame. 

(He makes another What If appearance as well, but I'll leave the details unspoiled since it's current-ish.)

Edited October 17, 2021 by JonL