False beards were common in ancient Egypt for both male and female high-ranking officials. In fact, statues of Queen Hateshpsut depict her wearing the "divine" beard of rule.
They were reserved for women who ended up doing what was traditionally a man's job. Babylon and Assyria were other ancient kingdoms that used the fake beards.
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You said you ended up with more questions than answers. I think that's the whole point of this starter set. It's a hook into the Runequest world, and they did a good job then!
Yeah I’m not really sure what he expected from a starter set. It’s supposed to make you want to buy the book lol and it’s perfectly usable without all of that background information. Glorantha lore is so dense they couldn’t put it all in the starter set.
My experience of the world started years ago, with a fascination for RuneQuest as a gritty simulationist role system almost 40 years ago but not yet much appreciation for the setting of Glorantha (which was not supported by the main rules at the time, except for a flimsy "introduction to Glorantha booklet" that detailed one cult, the dragonewts, the geography of the surface world of Glorantha, and the runes. My first experiences playing in the world were as the board game Dragon Pass, the second edition of the board game White Bear and Red Moon which started the publication history of the setting. That was a game of epic magical battles between the Lunar Empire and the uppity Kingdom of Sartar and its barbarian allies. There was an escalation of seven scenarios in the board game, each bringing in more magic and weirdness, until there was a full game with both sides throwing everything at one another. By that time I had read some of the Gloranthan material that was published almost as an afterthought for RuneQuest in its third edition, raiding it for my own campaign on a DIY world with a more than 10,000 year backstory etc., which made studying the (then sparse) information on the setting an exercise in comparison and creative adaptation (aka stealing), especially the finer ins and outs of some of the magical races for my (also very humanocentric) setting. Your hunch that you can play RuneQuest in Glorantha as a conflict mainly between humans is right. The Elder Races are there, they can be interacted with and they will provide some serious opposition in the prophecied futures (not exactly a meta-plut, but...), and yet the main antagonists are humans, and at times even co-religionists. My comparisons between the setting of Glorantha and my own creation led me to dive deeper into the lore, ultimately creating my own lexicalic index... Glorantha's depth can be addictive. And you can add to that, or just insert your own local detail, without derailing the setting (much).
It's such a wild setting. I've only been digging into it for a year or so, even though I've known about it since getting into the hobby back in the 80s. It's just so different and so deep. I may have mentioned this in your previous video, but the thing that helped me have something of a breakthrough on the world and how a game might actually go, was watching someone play the video game Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind. It's when I started getting the idea that game play would be a lot about community, and would also likely be seasonal. Much of the year would be involved in tribal stuff, with maybe just one season set aside to go out and do...whatever. Even though it's a very different game in many ways, it reminds me a lot of Ars Magica. I wonder if, like Ars Magica, it's a game that rewards you more the more effort you put in. Ars Magica is pretty daunting, but if you're in a group that really gets into it, and you really get into it, it's absolutely amazing. I have a feeling RuneQuest would be similar.
'King Of Dragon Pass' was the original video game, like Six Ages (it's sequel), which was also set in Glorantha. Basically narrative-heavy Gloranthan tribe management games. KoDP may be a better view of the settled tribes regarding the overall macro scale goings-on in the settlements depicted. I think Six Ages depicts the more nomadic tribes. Either way, it does help realize how those societies work.
For the Trolls, Tollpak is the best RPG supplement on a singe non-0human culture ever put to paper. The Uz aren't just monsters, they're a people with an ancient and sympathetic history, blighted by a terrible curse. For all they, they're still happy to eat you and everyone you know if given a chance.
I've heard the name Runequest for years but wrote it off as something that wouldn't appeal to me. I heard "bronze age" and said "no thank you." I can see now I might have been too quick to write it off. I love books with richly detailed well-defined settings. It is kind of like having a vacation home for my imagination. I'm going to give this a closer look after seeing your video. Thank you for once again producing another thought-provoking review. I continue to appreciate how you balance showing the best of what a game has to offer without turning a blind eye to its shortcomings.
Objectively, I think you could make a very strong argument that Glorantha is the best fantasy setting ever created. It's deep but also primally rooted in the feeling of real human mythology. You don't need to read hundreds of pages about it to "get it," but if you want to dive deeply there is a bottomless well of ideas waiting for you. Greg Stafford produced something epic and unique when he created it, before RPGs even existed. By the time RuneQuest caught on, the setting was already unparalleled. Forty years of dedicated fandom later, it's a singular creation. I think the most likely turn-off is that there are silly elements to it, so someone who wants a tonally-serious setting may dislike those pieces. But they're also easy to omit in your home game.
@@maxducoudray Much of the world building is pretty good, but breaks down quite swiftly outside of the best known areas. Unique? really?... Away from Dragon Pass, Prax, and their neighbours, for the most part it becomes Wizard-World, Asia-World, Pacific-World, and Africa-World. There's nothing necessarily wrong with this, but those regions are slightly-differently flavoured stand-ins for the Earth equivalents much like ... every other invented fantasy-world which pulls the same trick! Even the Lunar Empire, as it stands is largely fan-created at this point. There's also no getting away from the Roman Vs Celt central conflict that the Lunars Vs Sartarites itself draws from, and that's the best constructed part of the fiction, and also a big part of the appeal because it's so recognisable. Recent depictions have tried to get away from that - by employing more Vedic imagery for the Sartarites! OK Chaosium ... but it makes the Orlanthi look like thinly papered-over Celts to me.
The West has not been "Wizard-world" for some time, and Malkionism is very well developed at this point. I honestly don't really know how you can claim the setting isn't original. It is, deliberately and unapologetically pulling from real places, but that's not unoriginality.
Fun fact = when you described the coins, you mentioned that "a silver coin called a cow is worth 20 L". this isn't a coin, it is referring to actual cows! anyway, great video! I love this game.
Thanks for your video! I love the world of Glorantha, also because it is radically different from other fantasy worlds. Greg Stafford, and hundreds of others, have been developing and expanding it for more than four decades. It always helps me to know that Greg was a practicing shaman, and as such, he had a very personal approach to his world. There are many, sometimes contradicting histories of Glorantha, and that is part of the idea of such a world. You can spend a full campaign in just a small part of this huge world, but also travel around into undiscovered territories. It's not a world to just go dungeon-delving and looting. It is a world that makes you experience how a person in the bronze age probably perceived their lives, their magic, their world. I see people interested in myhology, in bronze age history, in shamanism and magic liking this world. Others might prefer other worlds. And yes, the other races are not designed to be used as player characters, but as essentially different kinds of intelligent mythical beings. Most players will probably only ever play humans, and considering how many human cultures there are, that will be plenty enough. I was first also confused by the sheer amount of infirmation I got from Glorantha. I think that this small basic book does a good job in introducing new payers to some basic ideas, but more importantly, to get you fascinated about the much bigger world waiting for you to discover.
Most cultures in Glorantha ARE human-only. Only the Orlanthi (aka, the Storm Tribe, or inhabitants of Dragon Pass) have relations with non-Chaos non-human races, and this makes them considered weird at best and as monstrous as the non-humans at worst. Trolls call themselves “Uz”, BTW, and are really creatures originally from Hell, until Orlanth killed the Sun God and sent him to Hell (which made it too bright and hot for the inhabitants, who crawled up to the Surface arriving at just the right point to become great Chaos killers rather than eaters of all the sentient races. And yes, I am slightly more familiar with the setting than you would be, as I started with RQ before it had editions. When I bought the book from my FLGS, it only had RQ2, which was almost identical to the original version.
It's understandable, even among long time fans, that Glorantha can be intimidating. I started GMing RuneQuest with the 2nd edition in the early 80s and found that Gloranthan fiction is the perfect primer for the setting. The short stories are insightful. I hope you enjoy your quest and may the Issaries cult protect your library.
Those illustrations are mind-bendingly beautiful. Like looking encyclopedia-based recreations of historical societies, beards and all. As far as beards as a symbol of station, it reminds me of the statuary depicting Hatshepsut :) Edit: As far as my personal experience with the setting it was through the King of Dragon Pass computer game mostly. Playing it I didn't realize that the mythological reality reflected the common reality of these peoples, and I was also a bit annoyed at the existence of duck people and the like, but I guess people could tailor the setting a bit as long as everyone was OK with it. Since the game focuses on a certain group of people with a council of elders and mainly concerns running a small village and going on occasional trippy quests it was only a taste but it was certainly unique. When playing I wondered if it might be a post-apocalyptic setting but I was pleased it seemed to be reaching for something else instead.
It's easy enough to push the Ducks, and any other strangeness, off to the side. I do like how they treat some of the Elder Races. Such as 'elves' being more alien and strange in nature like old faerie tales, for example. More like dryads and such. Luckily the game is human-centric regarding PCs to emphasize such things.
I highly recommend to check Bud's RPG review and Iconic Production and good starting point isThe Glorantha Sourcebook and if you are still hungry then maybe The Guide to Glorantha slipcase set. Always remember YGWV “Your Glorantha Will Vary". Why are we here? We are here to serve our masters, to be served by our slaves, and to feast upon our enemies.
I played a lot of late 2E and early 3E RQ back in the mid-80s and my memory is that it was, in fact, human-centric. I'm sure there were groups that used the other races more heavily, but if one is playing true to the source material, they are quite alien. Did you see that Aldryami ("elves") are literally plants? It's made clear that it would never be easy for a non-human to function in the human realms of Prax, Dragon Pass, the Lunar Empire and other common starting areas.
Just got back into gaming after a 30 year hiatus. While I had played Runequest back in the day it was getting reacquainted with Glorantha that drew me back in. Purchased the slip case set to start with and just received the Glorantha Sourcebook and Red Book of Magic. There are a lot of fiddly rules but most of it is just basic arithmetic , 1/5th or 1/20th of a skill for special and criticals. The resistance table just modifies by 5% for each point of difference.
Glorantha was created by Greg Stafford in the mid-1960s well before RPGs were a thing. His fascination was with mythology and his setting reflects this. I have been role playing in Glorantha for nearly forty years and have only explored a small area of the world. Almost all my characters have been human and almost all the elder races are near impossible to play. They are not just humans with non-human skins. Most of them do not like humans. The Hero Wars reflects an ongoing struggle between the storm god and the moon goddess to see who will dominate their particular realm of the Middle Air.
Yes, you can become a Rune Master or Rune Priest, but those roles tend to be very tied to their community, moving more towards a more large scale, tribe vs tribe style stuff
@@DaveThaumavore The lady with the beard is a follower of a knowledge god whose followers are known as Gray beards. All members are meant to be bearded. For those who find it impossible to grow one have to use an artificial one one one type or another.
4:38 More accurately, Dwarves invented it and are stingy with their copyright. Also, I think you may have been a bit quick to write off the elder races. They don't show up too much, so meeting one is an incredibly rare, mysterious and intense occasion. They feel less like fantasy races and more like cryptids with an agenda, but not always one you'd be at odds with.
I'll say you covered the material very well, but seemed harsh at times considering how much they needed to condense. In my opinion, this was just a primer to get started in the game... then grow as your group grows.
The roles the fantasy play in the world is actually pretty interesting and well done, especially the trolls and Dragonnewts, who are two of the most interesting fantasy races ever. Trolls play a massive role in the history of all the peoples of Glorantha, and are important political players on the world stage. Dwarves and elves, while interesting, do tend to just kind of be "around" however.
I've yet to run RQG, though I do hope to "soon" . . . . . . . . . . . . I jumped in by getting the core book _and_ the starter set. And the bestiary. Partly because I had money to waste at the time, but also because I've found that a starter set is typically a great introduction to a game (though some aren't so great at this) but will always be lacking stuff from the actual core book. I was drawn to RQG -- from having never touched any RQ game -- because of it's promise of a different _tone_ of play from something like D&D and its copies. Combat happens in RQ but it's deadly and debilitating and so characters are naturally encouraged to avoid it. Look for alternatives whether social or deceptive or whatever else. I also have wanted to run a game with the style of ancient Greece back to ancient Egypt, etc. Villages are still the norm, and most people are in some sort of tribal / clan arrangement living more closely entwined with the nature around them. And most places are either unexplored or just not properly recorded. And I love that RQ focuses more on the socio-political relationships. And also, I would like to weight things towards being more human-focused and less "any sort of weird creature you can imagine lives in the big cities and may even run a shop." Which I find to be anti-immersive. Every kind of creature winds up feeling the same, they just have different masks/aesthetics that can be forgotten about in 99% of interactions. The difference between a human or an elf living in the city is basically non-existent in D&D settings because the core rules/setting doesn't really care about it -- the rules only care about a minor stat boost that influences how they may choose different combat options. BUT the main thing postponing me getting RQG going is that it's a very complex game. Crunchy, indeed. Narrative, but with tons of crunch. And that can be a hard sell at times. I know that I'd have to become a near-expert on the system so that I could eschew a lot of that complexity for my players. They tell me what they're looking to do and I give them the simplified options available to them and a brief description of why they'd favor one over another. I can ask them to learn the game, to read the rules _AND_ the setting info, but realistically they will at most skim through. Not until involved in a high stakes game with lots of narrative hooks sunk into them will my players go to the books _to read up on a specific topic relevant to them._ And I kind of get that, we all have limits on our time and attention, so we've gotta triage what is and isn't worth the investment. Additionally there are about 5 million other games I want to run or play, and many of them are a lot easier to pick up and play -- and may even have a built in story so that as a GM I don't have to invent much. And many of them also have some crazy hook that makes them sooooo much easier to sell to the table. Like, the next game I have lined up will have them play as IRL cats, but who can create curses, see supernatural stuff, and have to deal with other neighborhood animals as well as oblivious humans. Sounds fun, it's easy to run, and the rules are extremely simple. Meanwhile, to get RQG to the table, I'll more or less have to treat it like a college course and do a lot of reading and steady and "labs" to get it into my head. And then I'll have to take a long time to teach it to my players _as_ we play. And just hope that they enjoy it enough that we'll play it long enough for them to learn the bulk of how to play. Yet even with that obstacle, I'm still very intrigued by RQG.
The evil nature of one side or the other is never addressed In Runquest any more than it would be in a history book recount the Catholic?Protestant conflicts of the 16th century. This book is based around a region where people follow the Lightbringer Pantheon. and so they see themselves as the heros fighting the decadent and perverted Lunars. . A book set in the Lunar Empire would be full of people who see Sater as primative and brutish Barbarians. Other region's would have a different take. they might share gods they might revile each others gods. and the Non human races? theycan see things through a very different prism. You are told what people believe and what they have It is up th the Players to judge right and wrong. not the system.
I love how the Bronze Age, primitive screw-heads of Jonstown have figured out how to decommodify food. I don't know how deep you got into the main rule book but that may explain why the height of hills is explained. The game has a battle system that allows for whole armies to clash. Understanding the terrain would be important if you want the campaigns climatic battle to be more than a gaggle fuck of 1v1 fights seen in movies.
handing out food was actually pretty common in antiquity, the best example is of course Rome and its grain dole, but in command economies that preceded the Bronze Age Collapse, you had wheat collected into centralized storage at the ruler's palace and then handed out to commoners. Egypt brought it to the extreme ofcourse, Historia Civilis has an excellent video on how bureucratic it was over there, I highly recommend you watch it. It was great way to centralize power in the hands of the elite, but, as I mentioned, this system largely fell out of use after the Bronze Age Collapse
I have both the starter set and core book. However, I've never played or read them. The whole rune/gods aspects are less than compelling for me and almost a reason against. Is there any way to play this without using them?
“The obvious choice is King of Sartar, published by Chaosium. Then "The Collected Griselda" by Oliver Dickinson - basically a chronicle of his 80s White Dwarf articles about his character's activities in Pavis. For actual fiction with a Gloranthan "feel", I'd got for the Druss the Legend series, other David Gemell books, The Orcs (for a flavour of Gloranthan Trolls), The first 5 Malazan Empire books, or anything by Patrick Rothfuss.”
Bronze Age: you don't have to be an anthropology or archaeology major to have heard about the Nordic Bronze Age which lasted until about 500 BCE... limiting the term "Bronze Age" to the Fertile Crescent and Greece does the "Barbarian Belt" (which is sort of the home of the Orlanthi) a disservice. There is more than just the material culture to the "Bronze Age" mindset, part of which is having divine king-priests. The Mickey-Mouse-eared druid-king of Glauberg is one such a Bronze Age leader from about 500 BCE; part of the Hallstatt Culture aka continental Celts (which does not mean "Irish" at all).
Chaosium are caught in a bit of damned-if-they-do, damned-if-they-don't conundrum when it comes to the world background. So much is not needed or not going to be relevant to people's games, but on the other hand if they are going to introduce the setting they may as well say something. There is a huge difference between Glorantha and RuneQuest as it is presented (and I think played) now compared to when it came out in the 1980s. Back then the setting was defined but not given that much detail. In 1980 the RQ rules had less than 3 pages of background on Glorantha and the local setting (I just checked my rulebook!) and that was it, although many people came to the game and setting via the Dragon Pass boardgame which gave a lot more detail of the region. If you wanted more you had to buy Cults of Prax which gave details of some of the religions, ironically *not* of the 'starting region' (ostensibly Sartar) but, not surprisingly, of Prax, a neighbouring region which was substantially different from Sartar. We never got a campaign book for Sartar, or the Lunar Empire at any time during RuneQuest's life at Chaosium or indeed at Avalon Hill. That is a reflection of the chaotic and unplanned nature of the game and the campaign world as it got developed - Chaosium just published whatever was ready and whatever they felt like, whether it made sense or not. This is also reflected in the adventures published by Chaosium and others, which were very much in the D&D mold, just with a Gloranthan veneer and sometimes quite gonzo (see Duck Tower). The beards btw are worn by priests of Lhankor Mhy, the knowledge god. Both men and women wear beards to emulate their god. I am surprised this is not made clear somewhere in the text, I am guessing there are no full cult entries in the starter set. I am surprised there isn't more on the non-humans in the starter, but this in general seems to be the new Chaosium approach - a very narrow, very detailed focus. It strikes me as worthy but not very exciting. Playing non-humans was one of the features that attracted players when we ran games in the 80s, in this respect it was way ahead of D&D at the time since any intelligent creature would "work" as a PC. We had a centaur, a troll, a dragonewt and a duck in our group.
I've been on the lookout for a low magic human-centric world. This does have some of that flavour but one thing bothered me about what I saw. The picture of the city earlier in the video was perfect, flat roofs which is very bronze age, but the image on the map shows all pitched roofs.I know it sounds nit-picky but those flat roofs and how they were used as spaces just seems so integral to the bronze age.
The maps are all highly stylized.The picture of the city with flat roofs is way more accurate. It would be a shame to let that very minor point (artist's choice) get in the way of checking out a very worthwhile setting.
Interesting. I'd be curious as to what you mean? Is it the system itself? Or the very thorough worldbuilding and lore? It is a lot of material, for certain, especially if you prefer settings with only a single lore book (or even none, lol). I find it about as wide as Forgotten Realms, but deeper, which appeals to me but I love digging into the nuances of a setting. Then again I love Middle-earth and have read through the History of Middle-earth books etc, so that is probably personal preference. I will say it's a little weird to me, especially the ducks and the mounts of Prax, but overall I love the bronze age feel and spiritual underpinning of the world. Because of its depth and its occasionally contradictory nature it feels more real than many rpg settings. I wish there were novels tbh, lol. But a lot of that comes from enjoying what Glorantha does, while I am not as interested in Forgotten Realms or Eberron (as examples) because they don't focus on those things. Regardless, if you chose to give it a shot or not, enjoy whatever game you love!
The thing about rune quest is it is not a globe trotting high fantasy game like dnd. All the games I have played in Golrantha have focused on small areas and usually a single tribe or cult. Even the early adventures focused on single towns or areas. Yes Golrantha is a massive setting but the focus is usually smaller. Another important piece that hasn’t been covered in these videos it the adventuring year, most campaigns will only have one or two adventures a year in setting.
False beards were common in ancient Egypt for both male and female high-ranking officials. In fact, statues of Queen Hateshpsut depict her wearing the "divine" beard of rule.
Excellent. Thank you.
They were reserved for women who ended up doing what was traditionally a man's job. Babylon and Assyria were other ancient kingdoms that used the fake beards.
Also, that style of beard was common in Sumer, Akkad, and Ur.
Errata: A “cow” isn’t a coin, it’s a unit of value in the form of an actual cow.
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You said you ended up with more questions than answers. I think that's the whole point of this starter set. It's a hook into the Runequest world, and they did a good job then!
Yeah I’m not really sure what he expected from a starter set. It’s supposed to make you want to buy the book lol and it’s perfectly usable without all of that background information. Glorantha lore is so dense they couldn’t put it all in the starter set.
My experience of the world started years ago, with a fascination for RuneQuest as a gritty simulationist role system almost 40 years ago but not yet much appreciation for the setting of Glorantha (which was not supported by the main rules at the time, except for a flimsy "introduction to Glorantha booklet" that detailed one cult, the dragonewts, the geography of the surface world of Glorantha, and the runes.
My first experiences playing in the world were as the board game Dragon Pass, the second edition of the board game White Bear and Red Moon which started the publication history of the setting. That was a game of epic magical battles between the Lunar Empire and the uppity Kingdom of Sartar and its barbarian allies. There was an escalation of seven scenarios in the board game, each bringing in more magic and weirdness, until there was a full game with both sides throwing everything at one another.
By that time I had read some of the Gloranthan material that was published almost as an afterthought for RuneQuest in its third edition, raiding it for my own campaign on a DIY world with a more than 10,000 year backstory etc., which made studying the (then sparse) information on the setting an exercise in comparison and creative adaptation (aka stealing), especially the finer ins and outs of some of the magical races for my (also very humanocentric) setting.
Your hunch that you can play RuneQuest in Glorantha as a conflict mainly between humans is right. The Elder Races are there, they can be interacted with and they will provide some serious opposition in the prophecied futures (not exactly a meta-plut, but...), and yet the main antagonists are humans, and at times even co-religionists.
My comparisons between the setting of Glorantha and my own creation led me to dive deeper into the lore, ultimately creating my own lexicalic index... Glorantha's depth can be addictive. And you can add to that, or just insert your own local detail, without derailing the setting (much).
It's such a wild setting. I've only been digging into it for a year or so, even though I've known about it since getting into the hobby back in the 80s. It's just so different and so deep.
I may have mentioned this in your previous video, but the thing that helped me have something of a breakthrough on the world and how a game might actually go, was watching someone play the video game Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind. It's when I started getting the idea that game play would be a lot about community, and would also likely be seasonal. Much of the year would be involved in tribal stuff, with maybe just one season set aside to go out and do...whatever.
Even though it's a very different game in many ways, it reminds me a lot of Ars Magica. I wonder if, like Ars Magica, it's a game that rewards you more the more effort you put in. Ars Magica is pretty daunting, but if you're in a group that really gets into it, and you really get into it, it's absolutely amazing. I have a feeling RuneQuest would be similar.
Yep, it’s one of those deeper RPG experiences. Demanding but rewarding.
'King Of Dragon Pass' was the original video game, like Six Ages (it's sequel), which was also set in Glorantha. Basically narrative-heavy Gloranthan tribe management games. KoDP may be a better view of the settled tribes regarding the overall macro scale goings-on in the settlements depicted. I think Six Ages depicts the more nomadic tribes. Either way, it does help realize how those societies work.
For the Trolls, Tollpak is the best RPG supplement on a singe non-0human culture ever put to paper. The Uz aren't just monsters, they're a people with an ancient and sympathetic history, blighted by a terrible curse. For all they, they're still happy to eat you and everyone you know if given a chance.
I've heard the name Runequest for years but wrote it off as something that wouldn't appeal to me. I heard "bronze age" and said "no thank you." I can see now I might have been too quick to write it off. I love books with richly detailed well-defined settings. It is kind of like having a vacation home for my imagination. I'm going to give this a closer look after seeing your video. Thank you for once again producing another thought-provoking review. I continue to appreciate how you balance showing the best of what a game has to offer without turning a blind eye to its shortcomings.
Thanks. I hope you find some inspiring stuff in this setting.
Objectively, I think you could make a very strong argument that Glorantha is the best fantasy setting ever created. It's deep but also primally rooted in the feeling of real human mythology. You don't need to read hundreds of pages about it to "get it," but if you want to dive deeply there is a bottomless well of ideas waiting for you. Greg Stafford produced something epic and unique when he created it, before RPGs even existed. By the time RuneQuest caught on, the setting was already unparalleled. Forty years of dedicated fandom later, it's a singular creation. I think the most likely turn-off is that there are silly elements to it, so someone who wants a tonally-serious setting may dislike those pieces. But they're also easy to omit in your home game.
@@maxducoudray Much of the world building is pretty good, but breaks down quite swiftly outside of the best known areas. Unique? really?... Away from Dragon Pass, Prax, and their neighbours, for the most part it becomes Wizard-World, Asia-World, Pacific-World, and Africa-World. There's nothing necessarily wrong with this, but those regions are slightly-differently flavoured stand-ins for the Earth equivalents much like ... every other invented fantasy-world which pulls the same trick! Even the Lunar Empire, as it stands is largely fan-created at this point. There's also no getting away from the Roman Vs Celt central conflict that the Lunars Vs Sartarites itself draws from, and that's the best constructed part of the fiction, and also a big part of the appeal because it's so recognisable. Recent depictions have tried to get away from that - by employing more Vedic imagery for the Sartarites! OK Chaosium ... but it makes the Orlanthi look like thinly papered-over Celts to me.
The West has not been "Wizard-world" for some time, and Malkionism is very well developed at this point. I honestly don't really know how you can claim the setting isn't original. It is, deliberately and unapologetically pulling from real places, but that's not unoriginality.
Fun fact = when you described the coins, you mentioned that "a silver coin called a cow is worth 20 L". this isn't a coin, it is referring to actual cows! anyway, great video! I love this game.
Yeah someone caught that. I added it to the errata in the pinned comment.
Thanks for your video! I love the world of Glorantha, also because it is radically different from other fantasy worlds. Greg Stafford, and hundreds of others, have been developing and expanding it for more than four decades. It always helps me to know that Greg was a practicing shaman, and as such, he had a very personal approach to his world. There are many, sometimes contradicting histories of Glorantha, and that is part of the idea of such a world.
You can spend a full campaign in just a small part of this huge world, but also travel around into undiscovered territories. It's not a world to just go dungeon-delving and looting. It is a world that makes you experience how a person in the bronze age probably perceived their lives, their magic, their world.
I see people interested in myhology, in bronze age history, in shamanism and magic liking this world. Others might prefer other worlds.
And yes, the other races are not designed to be used as player characters, but as essentially different kinds of intelligent mythical beings. Most players will probably only ever play humans, and considering how many human cultures there are, that will be plenty enough.
I was first also confused by the sheer amount of infirmation I got from Glorantha. I think that this small basic book does a good job in introducing new payers to some basic ideas, but more importantly, to get you fascinated about the much bigger world waiting for you to discover.
Yeah, my journey into Glorantha hasn’t even really begun with this Starter Set. I’m looking forward to going down the rabbit hole a bit.
Most cultures in Glorantha ARE human-only. Only the Orlanthi (aka, the Storm Tribe, or inhabitants of Dragon Pass) have relations with non-Chaos non-human races, and this makes them considered weird at best and as monstrous as the non-humans at worst. Trolls call themselves “Uz”, BTW, and are really creatures originally from Hell, until Orlanth killed the Sun God and sent him to Hell (which made it too bright and hot for the inhabitants, who crawled up to the Surface arriving at just the right point to become great Chaos killers rather than eaters of all the sentient races.
And yes, I am slightly more familiar with the setting than you would be, as I started with RQ before it had editions. When I bought the book from my FLGS, it only had RQ2, which was almost identical to the original version.
Reminder that King of Dragon Pass and its sequels takes place in Glorantha if you wanna play video games.
Your channel is a gem of the TTRPG community.
It's understandable, even among long time fans, that Glorantha can be intimidating. I started GMing RuneQuest with the 2nd edition in the early 80s and found that Gloranthan fiction is the perfect primer for the setting. The short stories are insightful.
I hope you enjoy your quest and may the Issaries cult protect your library.
I got to play a Duck when I crashed a Runequest game as a high school kid wandering around SUNY Binghamton. He had a false beard.
That’s so Runequest.
Those illustrations are mind-bendingly beautiful. Like looking encyclopedia-based recreations of historical societies, beards and all. As far as beards as a symbol of station, it reminds me of the statuary depicting Hatshepsut :)
Edit: As far as my personal experience with the setting it was through the King of Dragon Pass computer game mostly. Playing it I didn't realize that the mythological reality reflected the common reality of these peoples, and I was also a bit annoyed at the existence of duck people and the like, but I guess people could tailor the setting a bit as long as everyone was OK with it. Since the game focuses on a certain group of people with a council of elders and mainly concerns running a small village and going on occasional trippy quests it was only a taste but it was certainly unique. When playing I wondered if it might be a post-apocalyptic setting but I was pleased it seemed to be reaching for something else instead.
It would probably be too weird of a setting if everything were to be taken in all in one adventure.
It's easy enough to push the Ducks, and any other strangeness, off to the side. I do like how they treat some of the Elder Races. Such as 'elves' being more alien and strange in nature like old faerie tales, for example. More like dryads and such. Luckily the game is human-centric regarding PCs to emphasize such things.
I highly recommend to check Bud's RPG review and Iconic Production and good starting point isThe Glorantha Sourcebook and if you are still hungry then maybe The Guide to Glorantha slipcase set. Always remember YGWV “Your Glorantha Will Vary". Why are we here? We are here to serve our masters, to be served by our slaves, and to feast upon our enemies.
I played a lot of late 2E and early 3E RQ back in the mid-80s and my memory is that it was, in fact, human-centric. I'm sure there were groups that used the other races more heavily, but if one is playing true to the source material, they are quite alien. Did you see that Aldryami ("elves") are literally plants? It's made clear that it would never be easy for a non-human to function in the human realms of Prax, Dragon Pass, the Lunar Empire and other common starting areas.
Just got back into gaming after a 30 year hiatus. While I had played Runequest back in the day it was getting reacquainted with Glorantha that drew me back in. Purchased the slip case set to start with and just received the Glorantha Sourcebook and Red Book of Magic. There are a lot of fiddly rules but most of it is just basic arithmetic , 1/5th or 1/20th of a skill for special and criticals. The resistance table just modifies by 5% for each point of difference.
Glorantha was created by Greg Stafford in the mid-1960s well before RPGs were a thing. His fascination was with mythology and his setting reflects this. I have been role playing in Glorantha for nearly forty years and have only explored a small area of the world. Almost all my characters have been human and almost all the elder races are near impossible to play. They are not just humans with non-human skins. Most of them do not like humans. The Hero Wars reflects an ongoing struggle between the storm god and the moon goddess to see who will dominate their particular realm of the Middle Air.
Nice! Thanks for the deeper info.
Yes, you can become a Rune Master or Rune Priest, but those roles tend to be very tied to their community, moving more towards a more large scale, tribe vs tribe style stuff
Sounds cool!
Also need to have pretty high skill levels in all the appropriate runes as well as some serious role playing to get there.
@@MacDhomnuill good to know that you can’t just walk into those roles. That would cheapen the experience.
That beard is Egyptian styled - when a woman had to be king. Nefertiti I think was the first to wear the beard as proof she could be king.
Aha! Thank you!
@@DaveThaumavore The lady with the beard is a follower of a knowledge god whose followers are known as Gray beards. All members are meant to be bearded. For those who find it impossible to grow one have to use an artificial one one one type or another.
Wow! More videos on Glorantha, please!
I’ll definitely be considering it as I dive into the core books.
Egyptian Pharaohs Male and Female wore prosthetic beards.
Nice, thanks!
4:38 More accurately, Dwarves invented it and are stingy with their copyright.
Also, I think you may have been a bit quick to write off the elder races. They don't show up too much, so meeting one is an incredibly rare, mysterious and intense occasion. They feel less like fantasy races and more like cryptids with an agenda, but not always one you'd be at odds with.
I'll say you covered the material very well, but seemed harsh at times considering how much they needed to condense. In my opinion, this was just a primer to get started in the game... then grow as your group grows.
The roles the fantasy play in the world is actually pretty interesting and well done, especially the trolls and Dragonnewts, who are two of the most interesting fantasy races ever. Trolls play a massive role in the history of all the peoples of Glorantha, and are important political players on the world stage. Dwarves and elves, while interesting, do tend to just kind of be "around" however.
I had the Avalon Hill game Dragons Pass as a kid The lore was deep although i've never had a chance to play Runequest
It takes a lot of mental investment from everyone at the table, that’s for sure.
If you want to learn about Glorantha in a fun way, play the King of Dragon Pass (and Six Ages) video games. They’re chock full of lore.
I've yet to run RQG, though I do hope to "soon" . . . . . . . . . . . .
I jumped in by getting the core book _and_ the starter set. And the bestiary.
Partly because I had money to waste at the time, but also because I've found that a starter set is typically a great introduction to a game (though some aren't so great at this) but will always be lacking stuff from the actual core book.
I was drawn to RQG -- from having never touched any RQ game -- because of it's promise of a different _tone_ of play from something like D&D and its copies. Combat happens in RQ but it's deadly and debilitating and so characters are naturally encouraged to avoid it. Look for alternatives whether social or deceptive or whatever else. I also have wanted to run a game with the style of ancient Greece back to ancient Egypt, etc. Villages are still the norm, and most people are in some sort of tribal / clan arrangement living more closely entwined with the nature around them. And most places are either unexplored or just not properly recorded. And I love that RQ focuses more on the socio-political relationships.
And also, I would like to weight things towards being more human-focused and less "any sort of weird creature you can imagine lives in the big cities and may even run a shop." Which I find to be anti-immersive. Every kind of creature winds up feeling the same, they just have different masks/aesthetics that can be forgotten about in 99% of interactions. The difference between a human or an elf living in the city is basically non-existent in D&D settings because the core rules/setting doesn't really care about it -- the rules only care about a minor stat boost that influences how they may choose different combat options.
BUT the main thing postponing me getting RQG going is that it's a very complex game. Crunchy, indeed. Narrative, but with tons of crunch. And that can be a hard sell at times. I know that I'd have to become a near-expert on the system so that I could eschew a lot of that complexity for my players. They tell me what they're looking to do and I give them the simplified options available to them and a brief description of why they'd favor one over another. I can ask them to learn the game, to read the rules _AND_ the setting info, but realistically they will at most skim through. Not until involved in a high stakes game with lots of narrative hooks sunk into them will my players go to the books _to read up on a specific topic relevant to them._ And I kind of get that, we all have limits on our time and attention, so we've gotta triage what is and isn't worth the investment.
Additionally there are about 5 million other games I want to run or play, and many of them are a lot easier to pick up and play -- and may even have a built in story so that as a GM I don't have to invent much. And many of them also have some crazy hook that makes them sooooo much easier to sell to the table. Like, the next game I have lined up will have them play as IRL cats, but who can create curses, see supernatural stuff, and have to deal with other neighborhood animals as well as oblivious humans. Sounds fun, it's easy to run, and the rules are extremely simple. Meanwhile, to get RQG to the table, I'll more or less have to treat it like a college course and do a lot of reading and steady and "labs" to get it into my head. And then I'll have to take a long time to teach it to my players _as_ we play. And just hope that they enjoy it enough that we'll play it long enough for them to learn the bulk of how to play.
Yet even with that obstacle, I'm still very intrigued by RQG.
The evil nature of one side or the other is never addressed In Runquest any more than it would be in a history book recount the Catholic?Protestant conflicts of the 16th century. This book is based around a region where people follow the Lightbringer Pantheon. and so they see themselves as the heros fighting the decadent and perverted Lunars. . A book set in the Lunar Empire would be full of people who see Sater as primative and brutish Barbarians. Other region's would have a different take. they might share gods they might revile each others gods. and the Non human races? theycan see things through a very different prism. You are told what people believe and what they have It is up th the Players to judge right and wrong. not the system.
"A cow" isnt a coin. It's just a cow. Pretty common trade among tribal societies to treat cattle as currency
Haha! Whoops. I misread that completely.
@@DaveThaumavore it’s all good. I don’t think many people would be used to cows as currency.
LIvestock as currency, in general.
Great review, thank you!
I love the setting, but I'm still trying to gronk the rules. I bought the massive two volume guide because I was so interested in setting.
I love how the Bronze Age, primitive screw-heads of Jonstown have figured out how to decommodify food.
I don't know how deep you got into the main rule book but that may explain why the height of hills is explained. The game has a battle system that allows for whole armies to clash. Understanding the terrain would be important if you want the campaigns climatic battle to be more than a gaggle fuck of 1v1 fights seen in movies.
handing out food was actually pretty common in antiquity, the best example is of course Rome and its grain dole, but in command economies that preceded the Bronze Age Collapse, you had wheat collected into centralized storage at the ruler's palace and then handed out to commoners. Egypt brought it to the extreme ofcourse, Historia Civilis has an excellent video on how bureucratic it was over there, I highly recommend you watch it. It was great way to centralize power in the hands of the elite, but, as I mentioned, this system largely fell out of use after the Bronze Age Collapse
I have both the starter set and core book. However, I've never played or read them.
The whole rune/gods aspects are less than compelling for me and almost a reason against. Is there any way to play this without using them?
Are there, any RUNEQUEST novels?
“The obvious choice is King of Sartar, published by Chaosium. Then "The Collected Griselda" by Oliver Dickinson - basically a chronicle of his 80s White Dwarf articles about his character's activities in Pavis.
For actual fiction with a Gloranthan "feel", I'd got for the Druss the Legend series, other David Gemell books, The Orcs (for a flavour of Gloranthan Trolls), The first 5 Malazan Empire books, or anything by Patrick Rothfuss.”
Bronze Age: you don't have to be an anthropology or archaeology major to have heard about the Nordic Bronze Age which lasted until about 500 BCE... limiting the term "Bronze Age" to the Fertile Crescent and Greece does the "Barbarian Belt" (which is sort of the home of the Orlanthi) a disservice.
There is more than just the material culture to the "Bronze Age" mindset, part of which is having divine king-priests. The Mickey-Mouse-eared druid-king of Glauberg is one such a Bronze Age leader from about 500 BCE; part of the Hallstatt Culture aka continental Celts (which does not mean "Irish" at all).
Awesome!!!
Chaosium are caught in a bit of damned-if-they-do, damned-if-they-don't conundrum when it comes to the world background. So much is not needed or not going to be relevant to people's games, but on the other hand if they are going to introduce the setting they may as well say something. There is a huge difference between Glorantha and RuneQuest as it is presented (and I think played) now compared to when it came out in the 1980s. Back then the setting was defined but not given that much detail. In 1980 the RQ rules had less than 3 pages of background on Glorantha and the local setting (I just checked my rulebook!) and that was it, although many people came to the game and setting via the Dragon Pass boardgame which gave a lot more detail of the region. If you wanted more you had to buy Cults of Prax which gave details of some of the religions, ironically *not* of the 'starting region' (ostensibly Sartar) but, not surprisingly, of Prax, a neighbouring region which was substantially different from Sartar. We never got a campaign book for Sartar, or the Lunar Empire at any time during RuneQuest's life at Chaosium or indeed at Avalon Hill. That is a reflection of the chaotic and unplanned nature of the game and the campaign world as it got developed - Chaosium just published whatever was ready and whatever they felt like, whether it made sense or not. This is also reflected in the adventures published by Chaosium and others, which were very much in the D&D mold, just with a Gloranthan veneer and sometimes quite gonzo (see Duck Tower).
The beards btw are worn by priests of Lhankor Mhy, the knowledge god. Both men and women wear beards to emulate their god. I am surprised this is not made clear somewhere in the text, I am guessing there are no full cult entries in the starter set. I am surprised there isn't more on the non-humans in the starter, but this in general seems to be the new Chaosium approach - a very narrow, very detailed focus. It strikes me as worthy but not very exciting. Playing non-humans was one of the features that attracted players when we ran games in the 80s, in this respect it was way ahead of D&D at the time since any intelligent creature would "work" as a PC. We had a centaur, a troll, a dragonewt and a duck in our group.
Hatshepsut the female pharaoh is famed for being depicted with a fake beard
Nice, thanks!
I've been on the lookout for a low magic human-centric world. This does have some of that flavour but one thing bothered me about what I saw. The picture of the city earlier in the video was perfect, flat roofs which is very bronze age, but the image on the map shows all pitched roofs.I know it sounds nit-picky but those flat roofs and how they were used as spaces just seems so integral to the bronze age.
The maps are all highly stylized.The picture of the city with flat roofs is way more accurate. It would be a shame to let that very minor point (artist's choice) get in the way of checking out a very worthwhile setting.
The false bears are due to both women being a part of the cult of Lhankor Mhy, God of Knowledge and Writing.
:< D
The game is fine. The setting however sucks and that always kept me away from it.
I'm about to give up on this game.
😅
The more I hear about Runequest the less I'm interested in it. What a bloated and convoluted game.
Interesting. I'd be curious as to what you mean? Is it the system itself? Or the very thorough worldbuilding and lore? It is a lot of material, for certain, especially if you prefer settings with only a single lore book (or even none, lol). I find it about as wide as Forgotten Realms, but deeper, which appeals to me but I love digging into the nuances of a setting. Then again I love Middle-earth and have read through the History of Middle-earth books etc, so that is probably personal preference.
I will say it's a little weird to me, especially the ducks and the mounts of Prax, but overall I love the bronze age feel and spiritual underpinning of the world. Because of its depth and its occasionally contradictory nature it feels more real than many rpg settings. I wish there were novels tbh, lol. But a lot of that comes from enjoying what Glorantha does, while I am not as interested in Forgotten Realms or Eberron (as examples) because they don't focus on those things.
Regardless, if you chose to give it a shot or not, enjoy whatever game you love!
The thing about rune quest is it is not a globe trotting high fantasy game like dnd. All the games I have played in Golrantha have focused on small areas and usually a single tribe or cult. Even the early adventures focused on single towns or areas. Yes Golrantha is a massive setting but the focus is usually smaller. Another important piece that hasn’t been covered in these videos it the adventuring year, most campaigns will only have one or two adventures a year in setting.
@@MacDhomnuill all very good points!
I'm curious what you think of Call of Cthulhu in that case.