Interesting starting cultures for Game Masters with deep Gloranthan background knowledge

[Joerg]

I lifted this out of the "how to sell RQG to players" (presumably players without Glorantha experience) as that thread really also is for GMs just cutting their teeth on Gloranthan roleplaying.

First, let's deal with the typical drift what familiar earth culture you would use for which Gloranthan culture, starting (as usual) with the Orlanthi.

2 hours ago, soltakss said:

The Storm Stead/Storm Tribe ideas appeared in Hero Wars and, while very evocative, they still don't really gel for me. Sure, I get the Clan/Tribe relationship and the importance of weregeld, honour and so on and it all fits. I see Orlanthi as Heroic Age people, similar to Vikings/Celts/Angles/Saxons/Homeric Greeks, with Mead Halls, Chieftains, Warriors and so on.

The concept of the Stead as the central place for the important person is as old as the arrival of agriculture outside of the semi-arid river valleys. The neolithic farmers had pretty much the same idea of the stead as had the Icelanders up to the 19th century.

Likewise cattle-herding, plowing, sheep- and goat-herding, and the use of the semi-domesticated pig for meat (a lot less dangerous away from the hot conditions of the Fertile Crescent).

For some reason, I associate neither Irish nor Greek myths with the Orlanthi of Dragon Pass. I'm fine with the Mabinogion, the Nibelungenlied with its own Migration Age heroic age  condensation of historical figures (often telling the same stories as Homer), the Ynglingatal in the Heimskringla or the Kalevala, and not hostile to the Vedic myths of the interaction with the urban natives of their conquest, or the Philistines in the bible.

Until the Ernaldori clan received the focus, the Orlanthi have been predominantly portrayed as rural clans far from any urban activity. With the Ernaldori clan centered in Clearwine, this has at least been changed to a fairly urban setting. More urban than I would have expected of any Colymar clan, really - prior to seeing the Mediterranean temple-fortress of Clearwine, I would have regarded Runegate as the more urban place in Colymar lands, a town shared by the three clans of the former Triaty (with the lost clan replaced by the Taralings) and the clans playing a role in town management similar to the tribes in the confederated cities.

But then, the non-urban clan has received a near-perfect treatment with the two Red Cow books, so I guess it is time to move onward.

I would have preferred a Kheldon-and-Boldhome setting to start with, though. But canonically, Kallyr only lasts about as long as Ned Stark in Game of Thrones, and even in the alternate canon provided in King of Sartar she doesn't last more than five years more (mowed down by Harrek after the conquest of Furthest).

2 hours ago, soltakss said:

Where things get interesting is in the other cultures, such as Praxians. I really like the Praxian Culture and how they are described.

For being the dominant ethnicity in Prax, the Beast Riders have seen as little description as the Sartarites or even less up to the publication of Hero Wars. I did play a few games as a Praxian, but they never fascinated me the way urban Sartar or the Holy Country did.

@David Scott has a fairly advanced Praxian project at his hands, but it doesn't seem to be in a production state yet (unlike the new Troll Pack).

2 hours ago, soltakss said:

Pavis is interesting, as it is a mixture of cultures, all trying to get on and never quite succeeding.

The Zebra tribe of Prax and the Zebra riders of Pavis are the one exception to my dis-interest in the Beast Riders. That, and the EWF inheritance. Old Pavis has a lot of Karakorum, only without the empire. New Pavis is a Sartarite plant dealing with the local inheritance, and gels with my fascination of the urban Orlanthi. I am fairly certain that Robin Laws will surprise me with is take on Pavis after the liberation.

Barbarian Town and the Pol Joni are the other Praxian riders that have my attention.

2 hours ago, soltakss said:

Troll culture is fascinating.

Troll history was my entryway to the history of Glorantha. I never played a troll character in table-top roleplaying, although I was type-cast as a terrifying troll in freeforms twice, and played an entire Blue Moon plateau tribe as my "character" in a memorable Heroquest session with Greg. Very playable, and there is an upcoming project that has been announced officially, i.e. already out of the hands of the author.

2 hours ago, soltakss said:

Even Mostali and Aldryami have interesting cultures.

As player characters both of these are approachable only as presented in the Griffin Mountain encounters, i.e. fairly generic. The Mongoose Aldryami book presumably was the published version of Shannon Appelcline's Hero Wars Elf Pak manuscript, but it didn't make me want to play an aldryami. The semi-rootless Yelmalian scouts into human lands and their gardener companions preparing the Reforestation might offer a campaign arc, but I don't see much potential in playing aldryami outside of their three big arcs in the Hero Wars.

The Aldryami arc with the most potential to me would be the defense of Enkloso against the Mostali Land Raising and cleansing. Cooperation with or rather control over the local Orlanthi and a nightmarish wake-up for the Malki(oni) in the coastal cities provides quite a bit of potential. Journeys to Grigdom to ally with the Malasp who are about to lose their homes, and possibly the Dwerulans who are about to be crushed between the shard of Slon and the basal cube of Earth provide several possibilities for travel scenarios.

How to make orthodox (i.e. Nidan or Slon) Mostali playable without entering Paranoia (the rpg) territory is difficult to envision. You'd probably have to play a collective each, similar to the troll game experience mentioned above. In that case, you could be trouble-shooting the resistance to the Land Raising in Umathela and Jrustela.

2 hours ago, soltakss said:

Balazarings were touched on, but not really well described, which is a shame.

They get slightly better treatment in Griffin Mountain than the Beast Riders get in Pavis and Borderlands, but most of that campaign is about citadel-based Lightbringer or Lunar adventurers. They lack a set of dog-folk specific scenarios, with typical annual events and then repercussions of the Hero Wars.

2 hours ago, soltakss said:

I'd love to see a proper rendition of Pentian/Grazelander culture, as that should be as interesting as the Praxians.

Getting a proper way to have independent women in the party will be the main project when you look at what we got in the Hero Wars rules book. It is quite ironic that the historical Bronze Age horse riders had a greater share of women with warrior careers in the archaeological record than the Gloranthan equivalent has seen so far, unless you count the Pavisite cult of Yelorna and their free-roaming sisters in the plains of Prax.

The Grazers have already experienced their years in the spotlight, only we didn't get to play any of those events (the Esrolian campaign, the rise of Jandetin the Avenger). Apart from Argrath's upcoming marriage to the Feathered Horse Queen, they are looking towards a period of auxiliary cavalry service with one or two back-lashes, and a conflict with the False Sunhorses a dozen (Gloranthan) years or so in the future.

2 hours ago, soltakss said:

Even the Lunar/Dara Happan cultures are interesting, especially where they diverge and what they have in common.

Urban Dara Happa has all the opportunities for urban adventuring that Pavis has. While the Lunars aren't an occupying force, they form a counter-culture with various facets, and then there are the residents from Heartland regions which aren't strictly Dara Happan (which is the majority outside of the river wetlands, really).

The basic idea of describing numerous facets of an Imperial Association in ILH2 was quite nice, but what an overkill of factions and facets to follow. Too much, and at the same time way too little information. To quote Tom Perry's "Into the Great Wide Open": "I don't hear a single." A more concrete campaign outline with less organisations might be playable from a book that waits to be written.

2 hours ago, soltakss said:

The powerhouse of Glorantha is, however, the cults. If you have a cult, you can see what the people who normally worship the cult are like. You see how they live, what they believe, how they act, who they generally like/dislike, what they do and don't do. It really shapes people in ways that their culture doesn't. 

Hmm. Each culture deserves its own adapted write-up of the important cults or temples.

The Darjiinians with their hilltop cities and their swamp Heron heritage are significantly different from the surrounding Lodrili wet or dry farmers the wet farmers being part of the Dara Happan culture, the dry farmers with more pastoralism and potentially some transhumance a great deal less under Dara Happan control although they have Dara Happan officials on imperial business.

The three major Dara Happan metropolises (sp?) and the lesser large cities all have their own peculiarities, possibly on the same scale as the Sixths of the Holy Country. Life under Alkothi protection with Darjiinian revanchism will be different from pompous Raibanth and studious Yuthuppa.

 

How to deal with the Meta-Plot? Don't worry much about it. There is a possibility that scenarios or campaigns will be published for a later part of the meta-plot that won't fit your current campaign, but how common are (Gloranthan) decades-long campaigns nowadays?

Should there be a great Lightbringers Quest as one (intermediate) high point of the campaign? Certainly. And there is a possibility that Argrath joins it only as rescuee in Hell, or as guide to the deeper quest for Sheng, if your players managed to off him and his bunch of supporters on the way and now need to rescue a hero carrying the light of hope. Quite a few of the metaplot events follow the LBQ that releases Sheng, like the Flood, the Kalikos quest, or the increasing bloodthirst as the corn rites offer an opening for the Ignorance deities of Terror to enter Peloria.

 

The Takenegi Stele offers a campaign with a scope similar to Dara Happa Rising, with young Phargentes at its focus rather than Karvanyar, bringing on a new, re-invigorated Lunar Empire. You could possibly take Dara Happa Rising campaign and re-frame it with the events of that stele.