Why Glorantha Sucks
(as a tabletop roleplaying setting)
How To Fix Glorantha Series
Introduction
UPDATE: I leaned a bit too hard on the D&D comparison. I have added alternative examples at the start of each point to illustrate what I am talking about.
Glorantha is a beautiful, inventive and unique setting, with a depth of lore unrivalled in any other fictional world that I am aware of.
It is also a terrible tabletop roleplaying setting.
I discovered this when I was trying to work out why I did not want to run a Gloranthan campaign again.
I love the setting, even if I have never engaged in the online communities, but the idea of running a campaign in the setting fills me with unease.
Others probably feel the same way, and this has affected the success of both Glorantha and RuneQuest across the years.
This is a three part series, to be released across the coming week.
Also, a warning to Americans: This article contains art of nudity that is, at most, tangentially related to the article itself.
Now onto “Why Glorantha Sucks (as a tabletop roleplaying setting)”:
1. No adventuring parties
Other examples: Camarilla in Vampire the Masquerade forcing different vampires to join together. Call of Cthulhu having a clear mystery to bring together a bunch of diverse skills. Ars Magica having troupe play to allow different character’s skillsets to come to the fore.
The standard Dungeons & Dragons group is a set of people with different, but complimentary, skillsets and viewpoints who are working together to achieve a common goal. Ideally, there is little overlap between their skills so that they can each feel important and needed, and not step on each other’s toes. They are thrown together by circumstance, but share a common goal that they wish to resolve.
This concept does not exist within Glorantha.
There are a few reasons for this:
A character in Glorantha has three main pieces: Homeland (Culture), (Initial) God, Career. Homeland has suggestions for the character’s Career options. Their God is determined almost completely by Career and Homeland, making them all heavily linked. In addition…
Most (90~%) of the people within a culture are initiated into the same gods as everyone else. Amongst the Orlanthi, these are Orlanth for men and Ernalda for women. These are the ordinary and common people, and they are the majority of the tribes. Which brings us to…
The strictures of rarer deities are both clear and opposed. The worshippers of the god of death (Humakt) desire to practice their skill with the blade and kill undead. The worshippers of the god of Chaos killing (Urox) desire to practice their skill with weapons and kill Chaos-creatures. The worshippers of the god of farming (Barntar) want to plant crops and raise cattle. Which nicely segues into it…
A lot of the gods provide no “adventuring” benefit, and exist to provide setting depth rather than provide a core gameplay loop. This is fantastic if the aim of your campaign is “Orlanthi farming simulator”, less fantastic if you want a group of rough and tumble tribesmen cum mercenaries fighting against oppression.
These three points mean that making a group similar to an adventuring party feels contrived. There are ways to shoehorn a diverse party into place but it makes players wonder “why is my character sticking around” rather than “oh I am having fun with my friends”.
This is the against the concept of niche protection, a concept that is applied by every good game designer in order to reduce the feeling of inadequacy that players get when their characters are contrasted against better versions of their characters.
This lack of niche protection causes issues at a table of five friends as they feel friction from being too similar and not having clear roles within the group. In addition, it can be hard for a DM to make an easy entry campaign to the setting, especially when transferring from D&D and similar games.
Frustratingly, the Guide to Glorantha (which are a beautiful and enormous pair of books) discusses the idea of “adventurers” in Glorantha but they are described more as paramilitary forces or conquering wanderers than the above adventuring party.
2. Moral relativism
Other examples: Sabbat in Vampire the Masquerade who are easy evil antagonists. Call of Cthulhu having… pretty much the entire Mythos. Ars Magica having demons for enemies.
Tabletop roleplaying games need clear enemies to fight. The decision on the part of the character to attack and kill an enemy needs to be vaguely justifiable on the part of the player, otherwise they begins to experience moral dissonance and lose some level of enjoyment in the game.
Dungeons & Dragons had this previously with goblins, orcs and the like. As time has gone on and these enemies have been associated with victims of colonialism, new clear enemies have sprang up (or older enemies coming more to the fore) which are more associated with the colonisers themselves. But, still the enemies are clear and cruel and should be defeated “for the sake of good”.
Glorantha did have this, in the earlier editions. The Lunar Empire were the big bads, beating up the Orlanthi and colonising their lands. They were associated with the monstrous Chaos, which spawned creatures such as the rapist Broo, the cannibalistic Ogres and the undead… Undead.
There were minor inimical forces, such as the trolls (Uz), the elves (Aldryami), and the dwarves (Mostali), but these were enemies or friends of circumstance rather than being blatant foes. This deepened the setting and made it interesting, but never went too far.
As time has gone on, and the setting has advanced, the Lunar Empire has been associated with an egalitarian and feminist society that sees beyond the tribal actions of their contemporaries to bring everyone together in peace and harmony.
Including the rapist Broo, cannibalistic Ogres and the Undead.
Non-Chaotic beings in Glorantha are opposed to and physically sickened by the overt presence of Chaos. Similarly, Chaotic beings (even sentient ones) seem to act on a hatred for the world and seek to do as much harm as possible to spread Chaos.
“Illumination” is the Lunar Empire solution to this. This is the process of functionally opening the third eye and understanding how the universe truly works.
An Illuminated Chaotic being no longer feels it has to act on it’s Chaotic impulses (although they still often do), and is not detectable as being Chaotic.
An Illuminated non-Chaotic being is no longer sickened by the presence of Chaos, and can use Chaotic forces without being corrupted.
This has led to a good chunk of the player base (and seemingly the setting designers) believing that the Lunar Empire are at least as morally good as everyone else is, if not more so. In turn, this means the Empire has had their overt cruel and evil actions toned down and whitewashed in the lore as the setting has marched on.
Unlike with D&D, this clear foe has not been replaced. The setting is now very morally grey, which leads to strong moral dissonance on the part of players when they try to engage in the setting and difficulty on the part of the DM to construct scenarios that they can get broad engagement in.
(It is also interesting to note that the Lunar Empire are colonialists and have became at least morally neutral, whereas in other tabletop settings the colonialists have became overwhelmingly evil.)
3. The esotericism of the setting
Other examples: Most settings do not struggle with metaphysical esotericism, because they cover it off mechanically. Vampire the Masquerade has the humanity mechanic, as an example.
This is probably where people expect me to say something already said a thousand times, such as, “Oh, it’s such a hard setting to get into.”
That is there to some degree (see Honourable Mentions after the Final Words), but that isn’t the main issue here.
The underpinnings of the setting have not been published in a clean way. While this is true of many tabletop settings, it is unique to Glorantha that players will be interacting with these metaphysics from the very start of the campaign.
The Guide covers off quite a few metaphysical underpinnings, but does not address them in a way that allows for DMs to easily play using them. This is a shared problem with mechanics, and I will be covering that off in the “Why RuneQuest Sucks” article.
Taking a look at one of the big things in the setting, the idea of “God Time”. This is the time before and / or beyond time, where gods exist and there is no clear and distinct chronology.
This time hosts all the mythology of Glorantha. Characters in Glorantha step into this time in order to repeat the acts of the Gods they worship and gain blessings from doing so, which is called HeroQuesting in the setting.
There any many questions around this, one of which is whether myths invented in the current time become part of the myths of the God Time or if they can be changed through HeroQuesting. This is not addressed except with a “sometimes”.
The best a curious DM is going to get is a 30-year-old Usenet post that at most has a tangential answer to the question.
So what happens when a player tries to create a myth or “re-enact a myth that probably happened”? I don’t know, and that’s the issue.
Final Word
I think this article will be controversial, but it comes from a place of affection.
I love the setting of Glorantha. I want it to grow and be loved by many more people. I want it to be played in and played with by generations to come.
I just do not see it being that way as it stands.
One of the important things to note is that the above three things are good for the other columns of the Gloranthan world, which are LARPs and more constrained gaming (like board and video games).
The lack of adventuring parties and the similar abilities of a group of people mean that LARPs do not need ten thousand pages of rules to cover every eventuality.
The moral relativism means that players who are in peaceful situations can embody them without feeling significant moral dissonance.
The esotericism of the setting does not matter if you are playing a video game with restricted mechanics set in Dragon Pass.
But all these things do matter in tabletop roleplaying, and they do matter in a way unique to Glorantha.
Other settings may suffer from some of these, but their ambitions are less lofty and their lore less deep. They may give a restricted entry point into the world and keep players thinking on the small scale.
Glorantha is different, and that is the problem.
Honourable Mention: Setting depth
Mentioned in 3, there is an issue of setting depth interfering with an introduction to the game world. I would recommend some nano-fiction being published for the setting to help with this, but it is a well tread road already.
Honourable Mention: Lack of easy drop in locations
Mentioned partially in 1, there are no easy locations for DMs to drop their players into. Players have to have an awareness of the general area for their characters and DMs have to have a deep awareness of the greater area, otherwise cracks start to show.
D&D avoids this through cultural awareness. Empire of the Petal Throne avoids this because the recommended introduction is “barbarians being dropped off on a boat”.
I do not think this is a massive problem, because it is possible to create a constrained area for players to interact with or an initial path for them to follow.
Honourable Mention: The Hero Wars
Shortly after the recommended default start year (1625), there is an long-term, complicated and devastating war… that the players will be unlikely to participate in. This includes the default setting area (Dragon Pass) being invaded and liberated/conquered by one of the most powerful characters in the entirety of the setting.
I will discuss a related issue in the next article on “Why RuneQuest Sucks (as a system for Glorantha)”.
† All art is from the Guide to Glorantha.
Honestly, you're not wrong in a lot of ways.
*however*, the adventuring "party" solution of D&D has a certain kind of story. A story about a road trip band of merry orphan-brigands with a chip on their shoulder.
Whereas, when you approach the setting from the eyes of a story about a community? That's the gold. This is a game where you have a home, a family and a place to rest. It matters who your kin is, what they do and how you approach things with that in mind.
Become adventurers with a base and leave home for a few weeks before returning and helping with the harvest. It makes it be lived in.
Adventuring as a concept for a five man band is just... well, not a thing in that setting. And it might be hard to rewire that set of thought without a specific understanding of how important ties are, when we live in a world where individualism rules supreme.
Of course, there are traps that the current agenda does not really adress such as the cults, the strange lack of advice to not become completely out of luck when you pick a obscure god that doesn't help you survive if you end up in a dungeon run by the classic D&D style.
Like, there's a reason why old RuneQuest had cults be something to aspire towards. If you played in Pavis, you were exiles and knaves, the adventurers who we recall from D&D. But it was obvious you are now in Gloranthan Mos Eisley with all the weirdness in the ruins.
I *kinda* agree with the Moralistic Acceptable antagonist issue, but I can tell you this much, the fact that those Lunar soldiers had families means very little when their presence will mean that my family will starve. No matter how "progressive" the Lunars seem to think themselves, if I play the opposing viewpoint, they are still my opponents.
The Sartarites are violent and cruel to their enemies, they are often xenophobic and think that a fun pastime is concussion club when going Cattle Raiding. I still play them. The Praxians are... well, even more aggressive towards outsiders than the Sartarites.
For what it's worth - I don't think measuring Glorantha (or any other setting) against the tropes that are so embedded in DND is the right approach. Different settings work better or worse for different kinds of stories. So, judging Glorantha by its ability to tell a DND story is sort of like saying a hammer is a crappy fishing pole.
BTW, I'm not suggesting that Glorantha doesn't have its share of flaws, but I think it is suited to an entirely different kind of story than DND. That can make for a challenging transition into the setting/game if your GM and players all come into things expecting it to be 'psuedo-bronze age DND'. However, I think that same kind of dissonance shows up when DND players try to shift to practically any other system.
I think you are right though that the transition is easier if you use some 'gateway' platforms like video games. I think King of Dragon pass is a very good example - it's challenging, but much different than any other game I think of with a linkage to a TTRPG and does a great job of conveying that this is a totally different kind of world.