Archaic Glorantha

[charles ferguson]

Hey all

I'm playing my first HQ game in a couple weeks. I'ts a 'short story arc' thing, we're trying a few games & HQ is next up (I'm GMing).

So, all very exciting :) SOmething that totally rocks me about Glorantha is the bronze age thing. To that end I want to make the setting archaic bronze-age-faithful: basically, canon Glorantha with the anachronistic elements removed. Ie:

* horses are only used for chariots. Chariot-riding aristocracy or royal troops. THis can be from civilized palace-states, or nomadic cattle-herders, or tribal kindoms. The only cavalry would be the savage tribes of the Praxian Wastes who ride exotic beasts. No horse cavalry at all.
* no bronze chain mail or "full plate"
* no Churches. The third branch of magic would be called "Gnosticism" which would keep with the existing HQ use of "Essence" magic, only instead of saints, liturgists, churches, orders & so on, it would have "Great Sages" who teach Gnostic Paths followed/taught by philosophers and bards (still use wizards & sorcerers just like canon HQ).

I'm cool with canonical elves & even dwarves, provided the highest-tech dwarf stuff is ironworking.

I'm thinking that something like this has to have been done before, but I haven't been able to find anything so far.

Does anyone else know of any?

many thanks!

[Lamorak33]

Hi

Folk in Glorantha do ride horses. I am curious as to why would you want to remove that? Horses were a big part of celtic bronze age society.

Also, as you will be using Heroquest I am puzzled by your comments on armour, as armour type, if in keeping with the culture, is so minor a point as to often be overlooked by most folks.

I am also interested on your Gnosticism. When you say canon HQ do you mean canon Glorantha? HQ is starting to be considered a generic game engine, one that can be used easily to create other genre's.

So, are you basing your ideas in Glorantha, in some other fantasy world or are you creating one yourself?

If in Glorantha, when (2nd age, early 3rd age, Herowars period, etc.) and where (Dragon Pass, Lunar Empire, Ralios, Umathela?).

Regards
Rob

[James Holloway]

Also, as you will be using Heroquest I am puzzled by your comments on armour, as armour type, if in keeping with the culture, is so minor a point as to often be overlooked by most folks.

Right. Basically, armor is either good, bad, or extra-special. It's true that the descriptions of this armor include stuff like bronze chain mail, which is not, as far as I know, historically attested (and might just plain not work). But this is pure setting stuff -- a Gloranthan issue rather than an HQ issue. In mechanical terms, changing it is child's play -- just assume that the heavy armor is big old bronze stuff like the Dendra panoply, that the light armor is leather or textile (or "just a shield and a helmet"), and that the really good armor is super-awesome magic stuff like dinosaur hide or whatever. Easy-peasy. I plan on doing this for my own game, actually.

Different areas of the setting are going to require different amounts of work. Up the mystery and ritual in the Lunar Empire and you're good to go; Dragon Pass and Prax are going to require hardly any alteration at all. But the west, which is obviously medieval, is going to be a bitch and a half to bronze-age-ify. Even if you go around removing all references to iron and so on, you're still going to have a very feudal feel to it. If it were me, I would just stay out of it.

[Jane]

archaic bronze-age-faithful: basically, canon Glorantha with the anachronistic elements removed.

You did realise that they're not anachronistic at all? "Canon" Glorantha isn't Bronze Age with some wrong bits, it's more like Iron Age/Dark Age with "bronze" (a metal you can mine) taking the place of iron. Not that that invalidates your preference for altering it to resemble Homer, I'd just point out that you may have a lot of work on your hands.

[rstites]

archaic bronze-age-faithful: basically, canon Glorantha with the anachronistic elements removed.

You did realise that they're not anachronistic at all? "Canon" Glorantha isn't Bronze Age with some wrong bits, it's more like Iron Age/Dark Age with "bronze" (a metal you can mine) taking the place of iron. Not that that invalidates your preference for altering it to resemble Homer, I'd just point out that you may have a lot of work on your hands.

Correct.  Bronze in Glorantha, as written anyway, is not like Earth bronze.  It is mined, as it is the bones of dead gods.  It can be created as an alloy too, but that'd be pretty rare.  It does have the strength to create mail.  Armor in Glorantha seems to parallel Roman armor pretty closely, though most of the cultures in Glorantha predate the Empire by a few years.  In the published setting there are conflicts as to whether it deteriates due to exposer (ie. rust) or not...that's Glorantha for you! :)

The cultures of Glorantha have their closest analogs in 600 BC - 200 AD earth cultures, so horse riding is perfectly reasonable and expected.  Now if you want to remove a "wrong bit" from Glorantha, you could well write out the stirrup.  You could just give it to certain cultures too: only those with a myth to the stirrup could use it, for example.  This shouldn't have any ingame affect in HQ, though in RQ it would remove the ability to use heavy one-handed weapons from horseback and remove the massive horse strength aided damage on charges.

Since HQ doesn't really deal in detail with any of this, it'd be pretty easy to deal with it on the fly if you have a good understanding of where you want to take it.  As previously mentioned, armor is either good, better, or best.  Just change the names and it still works the same.  The same goes for any other mechanical issues.

[charles ferguson]

Hi all
thanks for your comments & suggestions!

Just to give some context, I own the HQ corebook but have only this last week begun to discover the Gloranthan resources that exist outside of it. I had no idea just how vast GLorantha is, & how thin a slice of that is presented (it seems to me at this point) in the HQ corebook. This is not a criticism, in fact the opposite: it's an awe-felt tribute to the act of creation that Glorantha's become, and a great admiration for the writers of the corebook whose task was to decide what to leave out. They've done that with enormous skill.

Also, re: my use of "canon HQ" / "canon Glorantha", I kind of used them both interchangeably up there. Rob, I take your point about 'generic HQ', and while I'm not sure if I entirely agree with it, I'm going to defer to your much greater experience on this one in this thread. So consider my use of 'canon' here to be 'canon Glorantha'. My exposure to Glorantha at this point has been almost entirely the HQ corebook, so please excuse it where I've conflated the two.

archaic bronze-age-faithful: basically, canon Glorantha with the anachronistic elements removed.

You did realise that they're not anachronistic at all? "Canon" Glorantha isn't Bronze Age with some wrong bits, it's more like Iron Age/Dark Age with "bronze" (a metal you can mine) taking the place of iron.

Of course you're right, Jane. I meant "anachronistic in a bronze-age faithful setting", not "anachronistic in Glorantha".

I love the bronze age elements in Glorantha. When I read some material from the web on Dara Happa (Alkoth, the Carmanians) the whole Heroquesting element of HQ (which I found intellectually interesting but didn't grab me emotionally) came alive. I got sucked into the 'dawn time / age of heroes' thing that made it all 'fit' for me. I wanted to walk a world that resonated with Graves 'The White Goddess', Campbell's 'Hero With A Thousand Faces', Mary Renault's 'The King Must Die' & ' Bull From The Sea'

That world is not a world that big-S simulates "real" bronze age societies. I just want to turn up the focus on the bronze-age elements in Glorantha that bring me personally closer to that 'dawn-time' feel (palace-state / tribal cultures, chariotry, bronze age metalworking), and fade out the elements that take me further away from it.

It's not that I have anything against medieval elements in games, it's just not what I want to focus on in my upcoming HQ game. And they'll distract me from the things I do want to focus on.

Basically, armor is either good, bad, or extra-special ... In mechanical terms, changing it is child's play -- just assume that the heavy armor is big old bronze stuff like the Dendra panoply, that the light armor is leather or textile (or "just a shield and a helmet"), and that the really good armor is super-awesome magic stuff like dinosaur hide or whatever. Easy-peasy. I plan on doing this for my own game, actually.

Different areas of the setting are going to require different amounts of work. Up the mystery and ritual in the Lunar Empire and you're good to go; Dragon Pass and Prax are going to require hardly any alteration at all. But the west, which is obviously medieval, is going to be a bitch and a half to bronze-age-ify. Even if you go around removing all references to iron and so on, you're still going to have a very feudal feel to it. If it were me, I would just stay out of it.

Thanks James. Yeah, I'd figured I leave the West alone. Not as if there isn't a whole world else to explore.

Folk in Glorantha do ride horses. I am curious as to why would you want to remove that? Horses were a big part of celtic bronze age society.

I'm not trying to realistically simulate a historical period, I'm trying to capture a feel: one more exotic than the feudal or even Iron Age. And I think that replacing horse-calvalry with chariots might be a powerful way to do that. There's lots of super cool mytho-historic templates to draw on: nomadic proto-Aryan chariot tribes migrating west from the Indus, the Bhagavad Gita, Homer, the Mycenaeans, Pharoanic Egypt, The Shang, Celts, Hitittes, the Israelites, and so on.

I also think Robert Drews' view of chariots in the Bronze Age (in this book) will work in well with the whole Hero Wars thing.

So, are you basing your ideas in Glorantha, in some other fantasy world or are you creating one yourself?

If in Glorantha, when (2nd age, early 3rd age, Herowars period, etc.) and where (Dragon Pass, Lunar Empire, Ralios, Umathela?).

Regards
Rob

Glorantha, Herowars, probably Lunar Empire or Dragon Pass (depends what my players want to do).

...you could well write out the stirrup.  You could just give it to certain cultures too: only those with a myth to the stirrup could use it, for example.  This shouldn't have any ingame affect in HQ, though in RQ it would remove the ability to use heavy one-handed weapons from horseback and remove the massive horse strength aided damage on charges.

Since HQ doesn't really deal in detail with any of this, it'd be pretty easy to deal with it on the fly if you have a good understanding of where you want to take it.  As previously mentioned, armor is either good, better, or best.  Just change the names and it still works the same.  The same goes for any other mechanical issues.

Thanks (sorry, I don't know your name). I'd hoped this would be the case. I was figuring the whole 'no riding horses' to be a myth-thing, too. Maybe 'horses are too sacred to be ridden' or 'a mark of Chaos' (maybe too close to being a beast-man???), with the Praxians as stirup-less riders who can only do so because of their mystical union with their mounts (involving rites no civilized person would even want to know about), and even though they don't ride horses, it's still way too close to blasphemy for most non-Praxians to accept.


many thanks, charles

[charles ferguson]

Errata:

the following:

Maybe 'horses are too sacred to be ridden' or 'a mark of Chaos' (maybe too close to being a beast-man???)

should read

"Maybe 'horses are too sacred to be ridden' or riding them is 'a mark of Chaos' (maybe too close to being a beast-man???) "

many thanks, charles

[rstites]

Charles,

Just to give some context, I own the HQ corebook but have only this last week begun to discover the Gloranthan resources that exist outside of it. I had no idea just how vast GLorantha is, & how thin a slice of that is presented (it seems to me at this point) in the HQ corebook. This is not a criticism, in fact the opposite: it's an awe-felt tribute to the act of creation that Glorantha's become, and a great admiration for the writers of the corebook whose task was to decide what to leave out. They've done that with enormous skill.

Yeah, the amount of information out there on Glorantha is huge and can be overwelming.  It's great if you want to take it, shake it up, and make it your own.  With that in mind, I'll just mention some issues that stand out to me with your ideas as I understand them.

Of course you're right, Jane. I meant "anachronistic in a bronze-age faithful setting", not "anachronistic in Glorantha".

You know where you're going with this, which is great.  I'm sure that Jane, like myself, has just seen lots of people talk about Glorantha being Bronze Age for years, when it's really not.  It is an Ancient vs. Medieval feel, for certain, but not really Bronze Age.

Thanks (sorry, I don't know your name). I'd hoped this would be the case. I was figuring the whole 'no riding horses' to be a myth-thing, too. Maybe 'horses are too sacred to be ridden' or 'a mark of Chaos' (maybe too close to being a beast-man???), with the Praxians as stirup-less riders who can only do so because of their mystical union with their mounts (involving rites no civilized person would even want to know about), and even though they don't ride horses, it's still way too close to blasphemy for most non-Praxians to accept.

With Praxians, it is part of their myth.  However, if you're going to write out horse riders in the Dragon Pass area, the Pol Joni are storm worshipping horse riders that exist as a buffer between Sartar and Prax.  Also, to the west of Sartar in Dragon Pass are the Grazelanders (Pure Horse Tribe) who are also horse riders.  To the north of Prax, in Pent (borders the Lunar Empire in the far north) are the Pentans who ride horses and herd cattle.  Just some peoples to think about what you're going to do.  Also, if your game is in Dragon Pass, do the Lunars have cavalry (including the famous Antelope Lancers - riding the same Sable Antelope as the Praxian Tribe).  If they only have chariots, those won't be of much use in the rugged terrain of Dragon Pass.  You can still argue that their heavy, disciplined infantry can overpower the Orlanthi tribesmen, so it's not a huge problem.  I'm not trying to be a pain, but just pointing out some things to think about if you're going to make this change, and plan to add additional Gloranthan material.

I don't find the metal/armor to be a problem at all.  I've always seen the Lunar armies as being Alexandrian Greek (though the culture is ironically more Persian than Greek! :) ), and just moving that back a few centuries works fine in my mind.  I'm just trying to think of a place that might already fit your ideas, without much modding, but it's not coming to mind.  Glorantha has an interesting mix of cultures:  stone age up to high medieval all rolled up in one nice package.

Ross (inadvertenly left off my last post)

[Jane]

I'm sure that Jane, like myself, has just seen lots of people talk about Glorantha being Bronze Age for years, when it's really not.

Yes, that's just it. It's a very common mistake, and can lead to a lot of confusion.

But...

I wanted to walk a world that resonated with Graves 'The White Goddess', Campbell's 'Hero With A Thousand Faces', Mary Renault's 'The King Must Die' & ' Bull From The Sea'

Yes! I'm not into Campbell myself, but Graves and Renault - yes! HQ is the right vehicle for it, I'm less sure about Glorantha. Shifting the emphasis to get the resonance to work for you will be interesting, but really, whether your hero rides a horse or uses it to draw a chariot is window dressing. What's its name, where did he get it, is it loyal to him? GO for it!

[Lamorak33]

Hi

Remember that 'Your Glorantha Will Vary'.

Thus if you want to do away with Horses and declare that Dragon Pass is no more hilly or rugged than, say, England the I say indulge yourself. Absolutely do not get hung up on details that you might think conflicts with the 'canon'.

And to illustrtate that point I will tell a little story. My campaign took the Player Characters to Whitewall. It turns out that my suppositions about the culture and politics was just plain wrong. Jeff, who is working on a Heroquest book about this exact locale told me so. Oh, a book will be coming out in a couple of months or a couple of years that will contradict what I used in my game. But guess what? It doesn't matter! We had a blast and the stuff I made up worked very well, we had fun and that campaign has now ended, still with no sign of that book!

So as Jane says, you go for it!

Regards
Rob

[soru]

One possibly interesting way of doing what you want is to steal the idea from Questworld that there are sister worlds of Glorantha, sharing the same metaphysics, prehistory and many of the same gods and cultures, but seperated since Time began.

That way you can steal any idea you like without running into any considerations of canon.

So you perhaps have a chariot-using Solar empire, with ruling god Jalm, presiding over tributary, rebel and enemy kingdoms that also fight with chariots, while in the hills the barbarians and animal-people lurk, ignored because they can´t fight on the plains where real people live.

Somehwere far to the East are the primitive horse hsunchen, an ignored and exotic people who guard the secret of the bond between man and horse, the magics that allow them to transform into centaurs at time of battle.

[charles ferguson]

Hey all

However, if you're going to write out horse riders in the Dragon Pass area, the Pol Joni are storm worshipping horse riders that exist as a buffer between Sartar and Prax.  Also, to the west of Sartar in Dragon Pass are the Grazelanders (Pure Horse Tribe) who are also horse riders.  To the north of Prax, in Pent (borders the Lunar Empire in the far north) are the Pentans who ride horses and herd cattle.  Just some peoples to think about what you're going to do.  Also, if your game is in Dragon Pass, do the Lunars have cavalry (including the famous Antelope Lancers - riding the same Sable Antelope as the Praxian Tribe).  If they only have chariots, those won't be of much use in the rugged terrain of Dragon Pass.

Cool, this is very helpful, thx Ross.

Yes! I'm not into Campbell myself, but Graves and Renault - yes! HQ is the right vehicle for it, I'm less sure about Glorantha. Shifting the emphasis to get the resonance to work for you will be interesting, but really, whether your hero rides a horse or uses it to draw a chariot is window dressing. What's its name, where did he get it, is it loyal to him? GO for it!

Yeah, Campbell does it for me the least out off those three (and his ideas are most heavily represented in the corebook anyway).

I get what you're saying about the window dressing Jane. Seems to me though (right now anyways) than what my characters believe (the real lifeblood of HQ) is going to be different for a bronze-age Darra Happan chariot lord than for a Dara Happan cavalry officer--which is the underlying point, for me. But who knows, maybe I'm just falling into the common HQ newbie trap of fixating too much on the 'stuff' of the setting, which just fades right away once play really begins. Like you said, it'll be interesting to see.

...Somehwere far to the East are the primitive horse hsunchen, an ignored and exotic people who guard the secret of the bond between man and horse, the magics that allow them to transform into centaurs at time of battle.

Now that is something I might just steal...

Thanks again all! You've given me some great ideas & advice. Unless anyone knows a link to any material that's already tried this kind of thing, this thread's pretty much done for me. I'd like to promise an AP report of our coming game/s, but time to do that is hard to come by for me & I'm notoriously unrealiable at providing them. So if it comes, it'll probably won't be any time soon ;)

many thanks, charles

[Mike Holmes]

One possibly interesting way of doing what you want is to steal the idea from Questworld that there are sister worlds of Glorantha, sharing the same metaphysics, prehistory and many of the same gods and cultures, but seperated since Time began.

Hmmm. Interesting. What's your source on that?

Mike

[Mandacaru]

Chariots in East Ralios

Sam.

[charles ferguson]

Many thanks, Sam