What is Your Favorite Glorantha?

[Rurik]

For those who play, have played, or will be playing in Glorantha, what is your preferred flavor?

Personally, I can play in any of the settings (I know people who stick with RQ2), but am rather excited about the Second Age - I just haven't decided on a ruleset. It may well be BRP with some MRQ Magic (their Sorcery and Dragon Mysticism at least). SimpleQuest looks intriguing, as it is basically the MRQ SRD reverted back much closer to its' BRP roots - but I love my Hit Locations though.

[Rurik]

Edited because I can't delete posts. Damn you Dice Roller!

[Jarulf]

Trollkin pie tasted as fine in the second age as in the third, with or without sorcerers, with our without Y/Elmal/io. It's a different taste each time, true, but I like them all. It is still Trollkin pie.

[TRose]

I prefer 3rd age because I have more source material at present. I dont really like either Elmal or Vinga as I dont think they where really needed.

[Trifletraxor]

Edited because I can't delete posts. Damn you Dice Roller!

What's your damn skill? [roll0]

[Lord Twig]

I prefer 3rd age because I have more source material at present. I dont really like either Elmal or Vinga as I dont think they where really needed.

100% agreement. Elmal and Vinga are completely superfluous.

[GerallKahla]

I'm kind of an RQ2 fan who has pulled some of the specifics from RQ3 into his games...

Sorcery is part of that culture over there, but the cults are pretty standard to RQ2 (Elmal and Vinga? C'mon!). When the RQ3 Sorcery skills advance at 5% per check - things get interesting quick!

Culturally, my Glorantha is distinct from any published Glorantha because the Lunars have different tactics from the onset of their expansion. So, that's kind of where I am...

[soltakss]

None of the above really fit my idea of Glorantha and my wife says I can't have all the pies.

I liked the simplicity of the RQ2 background but I also like the way that cults have been expanded on in RQ3 and HW/HQ.

Personally, I'm not that keen on the way HQ cults are organised into one big cult and lots of subcults (Vinga with her hat on, Vinga with her hat off) but if you treat the HQ cults as RQ cults then conversion is a nobrainer.

I didn't much care for sorcery as in the RQ3 rulebook, but I like the Malkioni sects and much prefer the new style for sorcery, although making distinctions between Grimoires, Orders, texts and what-have-you is just confusing.

So, I take bits and pieces from all the incarnations of Glorantha.

[TRose]

My main problem with Malkioni sects is that for players who have the wrong background , it was hard to justify them learning sorcerers or joining other adventures. I might add I thought the reaction to sorcerers as printed in "Strangers in Prax " was a little extreme. Gods Forgot not that far away and merchants and their sorcerer guards would travel to and from Pavis and through Prax on occasion. And you dont lynch people who come to buy your goods as it makes for few repeat customers. Might add I made up my own Malkoini sect for God's Forgot since there still very little printed on the sorcerers in that region.

[RMS]

I liked the simplicity of the RQ2 background but I also like the way that cults have been expanded on in RQ3 and HW/HQ.

Personally, I'm not that keen on the way HQ cults are organised into one big cult and lots of subcults (Vinga with her hat on, Vinga with her hat off) but if you treat the HQ cults as RQ cults then conversion is a nobrainer.

This is very similar to my take on Glorantha. I love the adventures and area details from RQ2 (and the brief RQ3 take on this in the mid 90s). However, I like the RQ3 cult writeups much more than RQ2. RQ2 still feels very formulamatic in it's approach to cults, and in RQ3 they flow naturally from the background. The main problems is that very few cults got long official cult writeups, though I took most of them in TotRM as official. I like HQ as both a system and it's approach to Glorantha, but I agree that endless list of subcults seems overdone at times.

I really, really want to get into the new 2nd Age material, just to shake things up. I haven't bought anything except the main 2nd Age book though because of all the rules errors, inconsistancy, and above all, unwillingness to reasonably address them. This isn't the place to go into that. It just frustrates me because I really want the material.

[Guest the Bromgrev]

Yep, I'm also of the RQ2 and 90s RQ3 flavour of pie. I was put off by the brief cult descriptions in RQ3 at first, but in practice I've found it really makes no difference to my games. I mean, how often do you look at those long cult histories and mythologies after your first read-through?

[TRose]

So who wants to go over to Thunderbreath's for a trollkin Burger and side order of roof rats? I personally like the batter fried pixies.

[Rurik]

So who wants to go over to Thunderbreath's for a trollkin Burger and side order of roof rats? I personally like the batter fried pixies.

I'll take a double with extra fleas.

Very Rare. It isn't the same if they don't struggle and scream.

[Jarulf]

Very Rare. It isn't the same if they don't struggle and scream.

Interesting fleas :-) So, who wants to stat them?

[Newt]

I've played enough RQ3 back in the 90s to appreciate its weaknesses for me personally, higher level characters became to much of an exercise in number crunching.

Same with HQ, seven years of gazing into the Abyss that is the numerous details of various cults and the ever expanding background made my head spin!!

Not convienced by MRQ's take yet, but its early days yet and to be fair I've not read all the books (even the core of Glorantha 2nd Age, Cults 1&2 and Magic of Glorantha) in enough depth.

So if I was to play Glorantha these days I would play it out of the box with RQ2 and the Gloranthan Classics

Or I'ld be a Heretic and use the following systems for the following games >:->

Unknown Armies: Lunar Empire, the pcs are members of the lunar cults jostling for immortality and power, risking insanity and all the other wonderful personality disorders that UA's Madness Meters encourage.

Savage Worlds: Rumble the Rubble (Pavis) . Fast furious fun as Orlanthi rebels take on the might of the Lunar Empire!

Burning Wheel: Sun Dome County. BW would nicely support the intense character driven pace that parts of the Sun Dome County write up suggest.

[Triff]

I've been very happy with RQ3 for a very long time now, but feel the time have come to move on. I bought a lot of HQ books to convert to RQ, but teh "new" Glorantha have been gregged to being recognition for me. 2nd Age sounds fun, but I will probably never get into it as I've stopped buying more Mongoose books.

SGL.

[Darran]

I do like the new Gloranthan books for HeroQuest.

Storm Tribe, Thunder Rebels, and Lunar Imperial Handbooks are just fantastic.

Gives me much more to work with in play than any other books before or since. :thumb:

[TRose]

How adaptable are the HQ books for those of us that play BRP or

Runequest. I been thinking of putting them on my list to buy.

[soltakss]

The HQ Books are very adaptable to BRP/RQ.

Books such as Storm Tribe/Thunder Rebels/Imperial Lunar Handbooks/Sons of Kargzant/Blood Over Gold/Wintertop's Shadow have a lot of background material with Homelands and Cult writeups.

Homelands are character backgrounds, giving skills and professions available to people from those Homelands. Cult writeups are generally very sketchy with very little background or flavour but describe the spells that a cult gets. I use the HQ format when I am prototyping a cult - I write it up in HQ format then flesh the spells and skills out for RQ.

You have to do a bit of work on the cults to use them in RQ/BRP, but it is not impossible. I'm currently working on adding the later HQ cults to my HW/HQ Cult Conversions and am planning to convert Homelands as well.

But, there's no reason why you can't take a HQ book and immediately start using it for BRP/RQ.

They are very Gloranthan, though, expect for Mythic Russia, of course. So, you'd have to use them with a lot of adaption outside Glorantha.

But, if you want new cults, new backgrounds and interesting scenarios then I'd recomment the HQ stuff.

[Rurik]

I've never been a HQ player (never got past HW) but I have bought a few HW/HQ books and they are very useful. Great background generally to a level of detail that exceeds any other Gloranthan publications. I have a few more on my 'to buy' list.

[TRose]

OK bought Stormtribes fro RPG now. When I get time might try to make a spirit cult to Vorgoth the Strong man . that should be a fun one for my players. Think a spe where for every magic point they spend they gain 2 strength but lose 1 intelligence would be about right for him

[Kloster]

100% agreement. Elmal and Vinga are completely superfluous.

Idem.

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

[golden wheel dancer]

bronze thorn died, worm white, big danger

[Agentorange]

bronze thorn died, worm white, big danger

First RQ supplement I ever bought bought it before I even had the rules, on the basis that I was young and ignorant and didn't realise that there were any other games besides D&D. Had the old William Church cover with Bigclub wrestling the giant snake, got it home and thought " this isn't D&D, I've wasted my money......actually this looks more interesting, I wonder what game it is? " the rest as they say is history

[weasel fierce]

I like it all the ways If I could have God learners facing off against the lunars, I'd be peachy.

I really liked the 2nd age book from Mongoose. Very concise introduction to the setting.

As far as mechanics, RQ3, HQ or MRQ, Im happy either way (i've played RQ2 as well, but the skill acquisition is a bit awkward)