Sources, Sauces, Duck Soup

As I said last week, Glorantha is huge. The sheer tonnage of material published over decades can make for bewildering research. I need to be organised, so here's a list a brief list of the sources I'll be using. Cost and availability are limiting factors - whilst a complete early RQ library would be incredible, much of it is outrageously expensive or simply unavailable. Dorastor, I'm specifically looking at you. 

The idea is that items gradually move upwards, from wishlist to purchase list to owned. One day the Guides will be mine! If there's anything obvious missing please let me know via comments or G+. 


Owned/Accessed Sources

HeroQuest Glorantha - Brand new, glossy and gorgeous, this book will be the primary source informing the "top down" prong of my research. 

King of Dragon Pass - Considered a classic CRPG and one of the best intros to the G, I'll be playing this as part of the "bottom up" prong. 

Prince of Sartar - A superb depiction of gods and heroes at war that throws the reader straight in at the deep end. I'll be cross-referencing this with more textual sources continually. 

OpenQuest Adventures - An anthology of scenarios for my favorite version of the d100 engine; also includes some Gloranthan conversion material. 

Gloranthan Wiki - Looks like it may be useful as a quick referencing tool.


Purchase List 

Gloranthan Classics - Pavis, Griffin Mountain, Borderlands & Beyond and Cult Compendium. A greatly expanded repackaging of RQ 2 material. The little I've read of this stuff in the past oozes ground-level atmosphere and playability. 

Hearts in Glorantha & Gloranthan Adventures - Newt Newport's collection of articles and Gloranthan scenarios. The latter is of particular interest as adventures are typically a great way of communicating setting info.  

King of Sartar - After nearly a quarter century, King of Sartar is now back in print, now fully revised and annotated. This is one of the most important sources of Gloranthan mythology and lore ever written and a must-have for any fan of Glorantha. On the list you go! 

Pavis: Gateway to Adventure - A huge resource for the city, courtesy of the brilliant Moon Design Team. I've never explored the iconic Pavis before so this is a must-buy.

Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes - As Pavis above. Difficult to find in the UK so I may have to settle for pdf. Sartar strikes me as a great place to start a campaign. From my brief investigations it looks like Glorantha in microcosm, and I'm all about that. 

The Sartar Companion -  Additional info and locations for Sartar. 



Wishlist (If I Were a Rich Man, etc.)

Guide to Glorantha & Argan Argar Atlas - Coming in at a collective 928 pages and 14 pounds, the two volumes of the Guide to Glorantha (which are 10 by 12 inch, full color, hardcover books) and the Argan Argar Atlas collectively make a complete encyclopedia and atlas of Glorantha. Cosmology, culture, geography, history, mythology, people, and places are all explored in never before published detail. Hundreds of maps and illustrations bring the setting to life. These are the crown jewels, something to be coveted and maybe even acquired. One day. 

God Time of the Golden Age of Blog

Morning, Sartarites.

I’m Andrew. Thirty-three of my forty-three years have been spent playing tabletop RPGs. This blog is about a very specific segment of that hobby: gaming in the setting of Glorantha.

Now “Glorantha” is a pretty easy word to type. It’s also an easy idea to wrap your head around – a bronze-age fantasy world abundant in magic and riven by warring gods. But doing so is like describing the sea by looking at its surface. There’s Glorantha and there’s GLORANTHA – the vast, mythopoeic world created by Greg Stafford and others across five decades of fiction, board games, tabletop RPGs, fanzines, folios, computer games and who-knows-what-else.   It’s colossal, a creative act beyond compare, and, aside from the broadest details, I know very little about it.

So this is a blog of exploration; of the world and systems that enable play in it. It won’t be a deep survey of fictional cultures – although Big G happily accommodates that – nor will it be a misty-eyed retrospective. Most of this stuff is fresh to me, so that’s how I’ll treat it. My aim is to explore various sources as prompts toward the production of useful, playable content for people who enjoy rattling dice and talking in weird accents. At each turn I’ll try to summarise what I’ve read and the implications for enterprising players and GM’s who want to sit down and game with this stuff.  With that in mind I’ll also look at how innovations and resources from other games – like OSR encounter tables as a means of setting transmission – can be synthesised with existing material for fun and ease of use.

That’s the plan, at least.  I’d bid you a suitably Gloranthan adieu but I don’t know any yet.

'Til next time!