Has there ever been a Collected History of...

[g33k]

of ... Gregging?

Although I consider myself a Gloranthan Grognard (having begun in 1980 (or maybe early '81, Godtime heroquesting makes those dates vague), I haven't really  been continually part of the "Gloranthan community."  I never got the AH/RQ3 ruleset, only discovered the unpublished "RQ4AiG" years after it was dead and buried, etc etc etc.  I've seen only a few Gregging Events occur "live" (die, Vegetarian Morocanth!), and brushed against a few more.

I'm particularly interested Greg's contributions, but more generally also most/all of the substantive revisions to the Glorantha "Canon."

Obviously the GtG has become the de facto baseline; what substantive material did it materially change?

I'm not really looking for minor tidbits.  For one thing, every major change will domino innumerable little items outward.  And obviously one Glroanthaphile's "major change" is another Gloranthaphiles "minor tidbit" (we shall probably en-Gern such heretics and feed them to the Morocanth).

There is the Orlanthi cultural stuff, the shift from the largely-northern-European cultural cues to mostly-Mediterranean/Middle-Eastern & hints of Vedic.  There is the deprecation of the "Glorantha is Bronze Age" POV; etc etc etc... ad infinitum, it sometimes seems!

... anyone...?

 

[Richard S.]

Well there was the whole Yelmalio/Elmal controversy.

[David Scott]

I've always been slightly bewildered by the term and consider it pejorative. IMO it seems to occur when the creative author of Glorantha changes his mind about something or something he wrote is published and at odds with what others have decided as "true" or part of their game world. For example Sandy Petersen = carnivorous morokanth, Gregs Stafford = vegetarian morokanth (although they still eat meat in holy day ceremonies). I think the creator has the right to change his mind YGWV was the positive outcome. Likewise a lot of stuff written for Glorantha never passed Greg's eyes, MRQ for example, so may well be at odds with the creator's vision. There is also that under the definition Greg Gregged himself repeatedly, especially as concepts and parts of the world evolve, it hasn't finished by any means. Here's a good example of where Greg Gregged himself:

 

[simonh]

I’ve also come across people citing examples of Gregging, where in fact they just assumed something about Glorantha and were wrong. Every now and then someone would join the RQ Digest and complain about something “in RQ2” being later Gregged by X, only for it to turn out that whatever it was wasn’t actually in RQ2 and anyway there was an even earlier source for X in WB&RM or an early copy of Wyrm’s Footnotes.

Simon Hibbs

[Joerg]

I think people would be surprised how short that list is when you apply it to Greg himself contradicting officially published Glorantha. Fairly often the reason for Greg giving a different idea for some place in Glorantha may have been because he had not really studied that source where some other author slipped an assumption or three into published works.

Quite a lot of perceived Gregging is Greg or someone near to Greg stating "no, your idea doesn't mesh with Greg's idea of Glorantha", like e.g. Soviet Lunars, Egyptian Esrolians or any other 1:1 parallel assumptions.

 

@David ScottThe map of the Empire in White Bear and Red Moon isn't a retcon. It simply has a gliding scale and isn't true in the presentation of angles. Most of the topology is accurate. A few of these flaws are evident even by comparing that map to the map represented by the game board.

Confusing the EWF with the (kingless) kingdom of Orlanthland or even the Unity Council in the history section of the game might be seen as a better example of this, or alternatively be read as some in-world text with a less than accurate knowledge of history older than the Hero Wars.

 

Elmal and Yelmalio... I don't recall any statement that the deities in Cults of Prax, or those mentioned in the Wyrm's Footnotes series Gods and Goddesses of Glorantha, were the complete set, even for a single culture. There is no Esrola in either of these sources either - she appears first in the Holy Country article in Chaosium's RuneQuest Companion.

 

Some of the minor changes were e.g. from mis-spellings (pharoah, saggitus) to better spellings (and pharaoh being dropped when it turned out that it didn't have the meaning it was supposed to have).

The concept of knights has been returned to the original concept in Hrestol's Saga (which tells us about the creation of this not-quite caste). This has reduced the medieval concepts that were suggested for Rokari Seshnela in Genertela Book, and has led to the Gregging of Jamie "Ttrotsky" Revell's work on the western culture. I think this is the heaviest case of all.

But then my early work on Heortland leaned heavily on the throwaway mention of knights in the RQ Companion piece, too, so this may be personal bias. My ideas weren't Gregged, however - they simply started in a number of irrelevant directions.

The introduction of Elmal made defining the history of Yelmalio interesting, but not impossible. Its timing was unfortunate. It shattered the illusion of many a player that there was One True World where each Gloranthan deity was the same wherever it was encountered, but that was something never explicitely stated anywhere, more an assumption from people whose other source for deities in rpgs was AD&D's Deities and Demigods.

Lax control over the Hero Wars/Heroquest 1st ed publications during Greg's Mexican exile led to apparent "canonisation" of a number of assumptions, sometimes by single authors, sometimes by group collaborations.

 

Greg's agonizing about how to bring the cool story concept of heroquesting into gameable rules is a long process of attempting to combine all the various aspects he saw in this. I have yet to see a game mechanic that captures all of the prerequisites that are supposed to go into this activity (but then I haven't studied either 13G nor RQG in that respect, yet). I doubt that the "resource allocation game" like groups giving specific support (that Greg at one time felt would be best solved as a boardgame) is properly included.

But that isn't really contradicting an earlier statement, but rather pointing out where certain rules constructs don't quite conform with the concept.

 

Much china ware has been broken over the "Vingans are transgender people with predominantlly male sexuality" upset, possibly a few years before the non-standard gender/sexuality abbreviation had more than three letters.

 

A number of perceived Greggings which alienated former active contributors didn't originate with Greg.

 

Edited May 21, 2018 by Joerg

[jajagappa]

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

The map of the Empire in White Bear and Red Moon isn't a retcon. It simply has a gliding scale and isn't true in the presentation of angles. Most of the topology is accurate. A few of these flaws are evident even by comparing that map to the map represented by the game board.

And I would argue that it's a perfectly reasonable map found in Glamour or Raibanth or even Mirin's Cross that I would hand out to players to say "this is what your characters know".  No Argan Argar Atlas for them!

7 hours ago, g33k said:

Obviously the GtG has become the de facto baseline; what substantive material did it materially change?

I think most cases of getting "Gregged" really reflected people other than Greg attempting to work on or build upon early material before Greg had a chance to establish canon, and then finding that their work didn't fit his vision.  The 'medieval' west, the 'soviet'/'red' Lunar Empire, the Unspoken Word publications and early HW/HQ1 'little gods'/'many runes' era.  

Works like The Missing Lands, Arcane Lore, and Revealed Mythologies show some of the adjustments made in conceptualizing Glorantha and can be contrasted to more finalized forms as they appear in GtG or Glorantha Sourcebook.

[Yelm's Light]

Huh...I never got soviet from the Lunars; they always seemed to me to be more on the Roman model.

[Mankcam]

The Lunars were very Roman, at least from RQ3 onwards if not earlier. However they are now much more Babylonian, Hittite, and Achaemenid influenced. I can live with that.

The more Mediterranean flavoured Orlanthi fit my vague early impressions from the non-specific artwork that was cluttered around many RQ2 era products. Although some of the Pavis artwork was inconsistent, and occasionally even had Dark Ages or even Tutor Era characters sitting in taverns etc. Hard to know where they were from, but as Sartar was the closest major population to Pavis, then it was inferred that these were Sartarites or Pavasites. Although I also saw a fair bit of other RQ2 artwork of warriors that felt more ancient, so I went with them for my idea of Sartarites and Pavisites.

I don't think I was aware of the term 'Orlanthi' back then, and if so I would have I felt that it indicated a religious body rather than a cultural or ethnic group. That was my impression anyway.

In my RQ2 books we just had Pavasites and Sartarites, and they were being oppressed by the Lunar Empire, which felt a stand-in for Romans back then. Because the setting felt ancient, I disregarded any pictures of medieval characters in taverns, and made my Pavasites like Yiddish folk and my Sartarites were like townsfolk I may have seen it the cities of Conan comics. They felt ancient, but I couldn't place the influences, vaguely Hellenic Greek I suppose. 

When the RQ3 Glorantha box was published, the Orlanthi were definately a collective ethnic culture that spanned several regions and nations.  The pictures of the Orlanthi were quite Celtic or Norse, and the references to them changed quite quickly after this. Especially during the HeroWars/HeroQuest 1 era.

We were happy to play Orlanthi as Celtic or Norse types, although I did miss my earlier homebrewed Ancient Greek flavoured version of Sartar and Holy Country.

So I'm glad we are back to Orlanthi being somewhat different now. These post-G2G days I tend to see the Orlanthi as being very Thracian with lots of extra little bits thrown in, such as Dacian, Achaean, Assyrian, etc. It's not like I originally envisioned, but it works well for me as they do feel like an ancient world civilisation.

Although I have to undo two decades of player expectations now...

Not sure what I thought Esrolians were like, I just didn't get enough flavour on them from the RQ3 Glorantha Box. My RQ2 Companion had a bit more, and they sort of felt very ancient in tone.  When I read that Stafford Library's Esrolia book I could see that they were very Minoan-influenced, and this portrayal seems to be continued in the G2G and such.

I'm glad that the Holy Country was ruled by the God-Emperor rather than the earlier title of The Pharaoh. The Pharaoh feels very Egyptian to me, whereas the term 'God-Emperor' feels much more sword n sorcery flavoured.

The Animal Nomads in RQ2 were very sword n sorcery flavoured, reminded me of Hyborian Age characters. Then RQ3 had them very much flavoured as Native American Plains people. It's hard to say what the analogies are now for Prax, it's quite a mixed bag, but I think there are elements of Huns there now. Mixed in with lots of other stuff of course.

While we are on this thread, I agree that the Malkioni are obviously the biggest reboot we have seen. Even if Greg did not initially present them as a medieval culture, the official artwork in the RQ3 Glorantha Box certainly did, and the Hero Wars and HeroQuest books did as well, right up to the Blood Over Gold campaign.

I do like the more ancient direction of the current portrayal of Malkioni, as it feels more Gloranthan. However we really need to see much more of them to get a better grasp on the culture. At the moment I am envisioning a very big melting pot of influences, such as early Byzantine Empire + Vedic India + Castellan Conquistadors + Orthodox Eastern European. I might be way off, but then again we don't have anything in depth to reference them. However the artwork in the G2G clearly presents them as an ancient world culture, not a medieval one. It's quite a big Greg 😉, but in a good way.

Edited May 23, 2018 by Mankcam

[Joerg]

The feel of Hrestol's Saga doesn't really give any pointers to a real world culture. There is this caste-structured society with hereditary rulers following something like primogeniture (rather than elected rulers from eligible candidates within the caste). But then, the entire concept of people inheriting positions of power is relatively new in Frowal at the Dawn.

Froalar is the son of Talar of Brithos, and together with his twin Hoalar presumably the first-born. Other Talar caste folk are addressed as cousins, but so are a few wizards, and, on the visit to Brithos, "Duke" Horal. All of the titles are standard modern English terms for nobility, as is the honorific "Sir" for knights. But this doesn't point to any specific point in European or non-European history, and could be applied to e.g. a pseudo-Japanese setting without all the few Japanese terms we have become familiar with through various media.

So yes, knights hold vigils. Much like Samurai meditate, and initiands undergo other such preparations when abduction isn't part of the initiation rite (as per Orlanth's Uncles).

There isn't anything there that cries high medieval culture.

That's what led me already more than 20 years ago to suggest heavy cavalry parallels for knights that are found in the time of the late (West) Roman Empire, in the migration era, with examples from the Fertile Crescent as well. Armor like depicted on the Bayeux tapestry would have been the absolute high end of armoring technology, and Renaissance era armor like shown for the Loskalmi knight in Genertela Box... bad art direction and too low art budget, really. In a way it is a pity that Games Workshop never did any editions of the Gloranthan RQ3 material. It would have been interesting to see what kind of art they would have applied to these chapters.

But outside of the Rokari influence, the knight is a magical warrior with basic education as a noble, too, which makes even a knight born to another caste (like Sir Faraalz, Hrestol's Horali-born sidekick) eligible as low level ruling Talar of a settlement in Froalar's/Ylream's expanding kingdom.

 

Much of the Gregging is in the skewed reception of the data rather than in the data itself.

I learned that if I say “Celtic” this is interpreted as “Irish”, not even Welsh, let alone Hallstatt or Heuneburg.

When people see a longhouse, they instantly assume Viking, even though houses in that style had been in use for three millennia when the first Viking raids reached Northumbria (where people had just the same style of housing…).People lived in longhouses before they had copper for tools. let alone bronze or iron.

 

Greek or even Minoan or Mycenean style equipment for Orlanthi is as unfortunate as Viking or Saxon, or Phoenician. A naval culture without ships is just a silly parallel for foothill dwellers. You could as well take a nomad culture like the Huns or the Mongols without mounts or wandering herds, made sedentary – see how useless this gets?

Nick Brooke nailed it: “Parallels aren’t.” In this Malkioni case, cookie-cutter medieval culture won’t get you to any meaningful conclusion.

And even then, what is medieval culture? Childerich’s Franks, or the Visigoth kingdoms? Charlemagne’s companions? Muslim Spain? Otto the Great’s heavy lancers overcoming the Magyars at Lechfeld? The Bayeux Tapestry? Provencal chivalry with its troubadours? Richard Lionheart? Edward I? Henry V? Henry VIII? The defense of Vienna against the Turks? Or fantasy stuff, like Mallory’s Morte D’Arthur, T.H. White’s Once and Future King? The Nibelung Song? Blackadder?

[styopa]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

Nick Brooke nailed it: “Parallels aren’t.” In this Malkioni case, cookie-cutter medieval culture won’t get you to any meaningful conclusion.

And even then, what is medieval culture? Childerich’s Franks, or the Visigoth kingdoms? Charlemagne’s companions? Muslim Spain? Otto the Great’s heavy lancers overcoming the Magyars at Lechfeld? The Bayeux Tapestry? Provencal chivalry with its troubadours? Richard Lionheart? Edward I? Henry V? Henry VIII? The defense of Vienna against the Turks? Or fantasy stuff, like Mallory’s Morte D’Arthur, T.H. White’s Once and Future King? The Nibelung Song? Blackadder?

Meh.  I get your point and agree with most of it.

But as a practical approach to a game that's going to be sold to human beings with lives, I personally believe you HAVE to make some concessions vs canonical purity, if only because your players want to imagine as they play, they want to visualize.  The consistency of that visualization between players and between the players and the dm goes a lot toward the verisimilitude of the setting.  The more of the setting one can take as 'given' (or which can be painted in broad brushes anyway) the more time can be spent playing rather than describing.

If the GM has to explain what every house looks like, every torch sconce, every nuance of social organization, or use different words for common things, I believe that builds a barrier that makes the game harder for the broad swathe of players to enjoy (no doubt some will actually prefer it because of the in-group tribalism such a learning curve provides).

This is precisely, in my view, where Tekumel failed; an absolutely engrossing, fascinating deep-dive into a completely novel culture...that was really hard to relate to and thus remained unapproachable for many.  (aka the "Jorune" effect).*  Glorantha verges on it.

I dunno, maybe Chaosium have long-since crunched the numbers and decided that serving a dedicated (profitable) niche market is better than trying to appeal to the RPG LCD?  Leave D&D to the masses and RQG to those willing to put a little more effort in?  It's certainly an approach.

*tbh I don't think it's fair to say Tekumel failed precisely; I don't think MAR Barker's goal was commercial success.  I think he did precisely what he wanted - serving a niche that satisfied him personally was enough.

[Rick Meints]

The entire 50+ years of Glorantha's existence has been one of evolution. Glorantha changed greatly when it was adapted for WB&RM, RuneQuest and Nomad Gods in the 1970's. It changed greatly when Greg published King of Sartar in the 90s. It changed when HeroQuest was published by Issaries Inc. It changed when the Guide to Glorantha was published. While there are certainly some vivid examples of changes made to Glorantha that have been very disliked by a minority of its fans, and possibly a few by a majority of its fans, such is life. That's one of the beauties of Glorantha and part of its allure. Some people personally invest a lot in exploring the world and using it at the gaming table. Some have done so for many decades. If something changes that they really care about, I fully understand and respect why they could treat it negatively. Regardless, Glorantha is going to keep on evolving. You can use it any way that you want to and adapt it suit your needs and desires. What you view as "being this way in Glorantha" may not be what Chaosium publishes, but who cares. Over time I am pretty sure that everyone adapts and changes some small and/or large bits of Glorantha to better fit how they see it working. I know I do. I have never felt "Gregged". I agree with David that it is often used in the pejorative. It shouldn't be taken that way. Greg changing his mind isn't about that.

[jajagappa]

22 hours ago, Yelm's Light said:

Huh...I never got soviet from the Lunars; they always seemed to me to be more on the Roman model.

http://etyries.albionsoft.com/etyries.com/songbook/newlunar.html

The original RQ2 material definitely had a Greco-Roman feel.  The "Red" Emperor etc. prompted a lot of soviet references in the 90's and early 2000's (many humorous, of course).  If you read through the Imperial Lunar Handbook materials or Champions of the Reaching Moon, you'll find them (e.g. secret police, fiscal anarchists, the Char-Un as Cossacks).

[Yelm's Light]

6 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

 I have never felt "Gregged". I agree with David that it is often used in the pejorative. It shouldn't be taken that way. Greg changing his mind isn't about that.

I have.

Vegetarian morocanths.  'Nuff said.

[metcalph]

3 hours ago, jajagappa said:

  If you read through the Imperial Lunar Handbook materials or Champions of the Reaching Moon, you'll find them (e.g. secret police, fiscal anarchists, the Char-Un as Cossacks).

The Fiscal Anarchists were actually in the Genertela Book (p28 - Rare Tripolis Events).  The Secret Police are first mentioned in Troll Gods p6 while the Spoken Word, the Entalothosium and the Kastokus still survive in the current canon (Coming Storm has references to all three).

 

[g33k]

I honestly think the term "Gregging/Gregged" is archetypal Geek:  irreverent, fond, annoyed, respectful,  and more; all at once!

[David Scott]

That certainly wasn’t its use for the first 10 years (at least). 

[Madrona]

Dobre den tovarysh! I bring the word of Comrade Nestor Ivanovych Aelwrin! We Are all us! Workers of the Empire unite, we will throw off the moonson and their filthy empire, and rise up as laborers. No gods, no kings, only The Lunar Way! Join the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Char-Un!

Already, though, the far off empire is sending the general of the Red army, Jar-Leon Trotsky the "Razoress" to fight us, do not believe her false words!

Seems about right.

[simonh]

Nonsense. Only the Popular Revolutionary Army of Char-Un truly represents the Char-Un people and true spirit of revolution!

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, simonh said:

Nonsense. Only the Popular Revolutionary Army of Char-Un truly represents the Char-Un people and true spirit of revolution!

Don't you start with the suicide squads....

[David Scott]

On 5/22/2018 at 1:40 AM, Yelm's Light said:

Huh...I never got soviet from the Lunars; they always seemed to me to be more on the Roman model.

You had to be there, 1996:

The crimson paper scanned badly.

[styopa]

7 hours ago, simonh said:

Nonsense. Only the Popular Revolutionary Army of Char-Un truly represents the Char-Un people and true spirit of revolution!

Splitters!

Respectfully,

The Char-Un Peoples' Front

[Yelm's Light]

7 hours ago, David Scott said:

You had to be there, 1996:

Yeah, I remember seeing that in my surfings, but never took it seriously.

[David Scott]

1 hour ago, Yelm's Light said:

Yeah, I remember seeing that in my surfings, but never took it seriously.

It was serious, but I don’t think it was ever published. 

[jajagappa]

7 hours ago, David Scott said:

It was serious, but I don’t think it was ever published. 

There's bits that get reflected in ILH1 and ILH2, Champions of the Red Moon, and Sons of Kargzant.

[Rick Meints]

On 5/30/2018 at 5:16 AM, David Scott said:

You had to be there, 1996:

The crimson paper scanned badly.

I was very lucky. Like David Scott, I was there. It was an absolute pleasure. Convulsion and Tentacles were the conventions to be at. Chris and Nick did a brilliant job on this sort of material. The freeforms were great. The related songs we sung at the convention sing-alongs made it all the better. I miss those days.