*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.
By "adventuring party", what I mean is a group with diverse talents in order to allow each player to have a distinct role and niche. I probably didn't make that as clear as I intended. I have added additional examples onto each point.
There are game implications to do with setting choices, and Glorantha-RuneQuest does not handle them well at all.
I think there are ways to manage them better, and that will be covered in my fix article.
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If you have a certain kind of player, then they will enjoy the moral ambivalence of the setting. The issue is that it otherwise pushes away a lot of players, makes it harder for DMs to run the game and leads to problems in play if the moral dissonance is not expected or welcome.
The biggest issue is, I think, the mishandling of Lunar lore by Chaosium. I will be going into this in the 3rd article in the series, but they have massaged the lore to make Lunars more palatable despite their overt and disgustingly evil actions.
I mean... okay, I get what you're saying. But I feel like Pendragon, another Greg Stafford game, this is not a place where the niches are meant to be clear cut.
People are people, and their differences are going to depend on Skill picks and Passions. It's about the differences, which is also the case in Call of Cthulhu.
If the game is about Tribal Warriors in the hills fighting Lunars? That's what the game is about, it's not gonna directly cater to several character concepts, unless you directly shape your game towards it (the game of Sword and Sorcery Exiles in a distant city) - the game does not explain that at all, and presents the Cults as almost character classes.
Like, the Starter Set have the adventuring party be a crew of exiles and wanderers, and it feels like it. Very few of them have non-adventuring roots to work with.
However, in my view, it's the occupation that is gonna tell you what the game is about.
I do love everything you've written about this. It makes my brain go *wrrrrrrr* to talk about this game and the world.
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Reg. Lunars.
You are writing from a very clearcut perspective, but I understand the point. I'm looking forward to seeing where you're going with it in article 3.
But, do remember that Empires often have beneficiaries as well as victims. It would be kinda strange for the authors to ignore that. Case in point? The US.
Well there is clear mythic structure for the sociological structure of a mixed adventuring band in the Lightbringer's quest, but it is hard to see it at play from a low level to a high level, the party needs to be established as an already experienced group of warrior/trader/scholar/healers who are thrown together for one big quest. This makes a lot more sense as a one-shot. Or Everyone (including Lunars ) vs the horrific Thanatar temple of heads, an utter one shot.
The fact that the runequest game system is an incredibly crunchy attempted combat simulator which is entirely opposed to the mythic structures at play is kind of funny coincidence of how Steve Perrin and crew started working with Greg Stafford.
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.
These points are valid across all big tabletop settings though.
Vampire: the Masquerade as an example. The "adventuring party" is the group brought together by the Camilla to do something, to investigate or similar. The "morally acceptable antagonists" are the Sabbat. The metaphysics of the setting do not matter so much, because they are covered mechanically.
Call of Cthulhu is another. The "adventuring party" is a diverse group brought together to investigate a singular mystery, for clear reasons and motivations. The "morally acceptable antagonists" are... pretty much every Mythos beast. The metaphysics do not matter so much because they are covered mechanically and in writings.
In RuneQuest Glorantha adventuring parties stay together by virtue of pertaining to the same city/clan/tribe or because they fought at the same side during one of the many battles of recent years, or [insert any other reason also valid for any other RPG]. For example: the sample pregenerated characters in the rulebook. So they can be diverse. There's even a Lunar in the group of pregenerated characters!
What Soren says about community campaigns is also true, and it does not mean that all characters are too similar. For example, the Orlanthi pantheon is big enough that can accommodate adventurers as diverse as a group of Call of Cthulhu investigators. For example, you can have an Orlanthi farmer who worships Orlanth Thunderer, an Ernalda priestess, a Lhankor Mhy sage, an Issaries merchant, a Humakti warrior, a Yinkini hunter... etc.
Moral relativism is great. It means characters are more similar to us. It means you can explore lots of dilemmas in the grey areas.
Also, I do not agree that RPGs totally need "clear enemies to fight". Do the several factions in Game of Thrones have clear enemies to fight? Well, from their point of view yes. The same goes for every culture in Glorantha. And if you want really really really crystal clear enemies to fight, there are broos aplenty. So you get both flavours, really.
"there are no easy locations for DMs to drop their players into."
What about the city of Jonstown described in the RQ Starter Set or the city of Clearwine described in the RQ Screen Pack?
"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. " - In the Starter Set and also on Chaosium's website you can play a solo-scenario that literally puts you in one of those battles. Also, there are plenty of RQ publications where those battles are part of the adventure.
“Oh, it’s such a hard setting to get into.” In my experience, people who say that have never tried to get into the setting to begin with.
Your example group would split up as soon as their starting task is finished. The sage would go back to being a librarian, the Humakti would go back to contemplating his sword etc. In Call of Cthulhu, the mystery is often the whole campaign. In RQG, there's no reason for everyone to stick together.
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Moral relativism isn't great for a tabletop setting because it causes cognitive dissonance in players, and causes out of character friction. I'll go into the mishandling of Lunars in part 3 of this series.
Your Game of Thrones example doesn't work because:
1. Its a literary setting, not a tabletop setting.
2. There are loads of designated antagonists, from the White Walkers to the Lannisters to the Boltons.
The fact you brought up the grey and black morality of A Song of Ice and Fire is great. It's a good demonstration of how a morally dubious set of characters can be set against evil.
I'm late to the debate, but wanted to toss in a few thoughts.
I don't much like the hero wars (especially in dragon pass) as a setting for a ttrpg in general, and RQ in particular. I played RQ3 in the then default year ('18, maybe?) and we certainly had no issues with any of what you listed, but then again it was a couple of constrained campaign arcs (to be played over a four month university term). If you expect your campaigns to last for years, with ongoing characters,even that starting year may have been tough. But we could have our adventures without being overshadowed.
I loved how Blood Over Gold (for heroquest) handled things, giving reason for a diverse party to come together and stay together. But again the characters could influence what was happening where they were.
I did run Heroquest, starting with recently initiated adults (no cults yet) not long before the death of Orlanth. That was working pretty well until the pressure to level up fast through heroquesting began to strain credibility.
I also took part in an HQ game where the PCs were all students in a wizardry school along Lake Salfestar (sp?), and it was a blast, one of my very favorite games ever despite that we were all nominally the same 'class'. But nothing was impacting our organic growth.
If I run something in Glorantha again, it likely won't be in the default dragon pass setting. There is huge RP potential in Glorantha, including during the most intense parts of the hero wars. To play in dragon pass during the hero wars you face a lot of constraints, that I don't think I'd care to deal with again. (More power to those who do!). But judging Glorantha by that is a bit like judging all of the US by Manhattan.
Lack of nano-fiction: yes, I would like to see more. Not as part of the rules set, though. Not as "must read" for a scenario, either, but as something to read leisurely. The problem with any fiction is that the impression the author has of Glorantha may be incongruent with your own pre-conceptions. Certainly often enough with mine.
Drop-in locations - no such thing in Glorantha. Or Middle-Earth or Star Wars, really. You can create a clan village, or perhaps use Ian Cooper's fantastically detailed Red Cow clan in The Coming Storm (currently out of print due to sale of the HeroQuest trademark) for HQG. You can use fan-made offerings from the Jonstown Compendium, or you can create one of your own. There is always New Pavis, except that it will have undergone changes we only learn about when the books submitted by Robin Laws finally see print.
There is the Lunar army as a drop-in (and drop out of) tool for the GM. Under-used, despite the introduction of Vostor in Vasana's Story.
The Hero Wars offer no leverage for player agency? True, there is a lot of plot armor on the destined protagonists for the Hero Wars. But then, have you ever killed Darth Vader or Emperor Palpatine in a Star Wars game, or maybe one of the rebel characters (Princess Leia, Luke, Han Solo, Chewbacca) in your games? Would you aim to if you played Star Wars?
You can steal the spotlight and portions of plot from the offered players, or change the plot for your iteration of Glorantha. Lead a revolution in the Lunar Empire, possibly abolishing some of the worst Chaos there, at the cost of the magic and the social cohesion, and opening the path for mortal enemies like Argrath or the Pentans, or releasing suppressed internal dangers like the Spolites.
If your players are willing, they can carry the plot. In my practical experience, few players are willing to carry the main plot, preferring to go on less involved adventures solving minor mysteries instead.
For me, Glorantha is the first setting I have GMed in for more than a few sessions that I did not create from scratch. And I used to be the regular GM for my group. I have loaned features from other settings, like e.g. the excellent City of Carse supplement written by Raymond Feist, originally published by Midkemia Press (and still available as scanned pdf of a charmingly 1980ies style supplement for five bucks), but also adapted to other settings. I have used features from published scenarios.
I have GMed a few published scenarios, in Glorantha and in other settings. I prefer to work with stuff of my own, easier to adapt to the story lines and abilities of the players' characters.
Does Glorantha suck as a setting for a given style of roleplaying? The chances are good that there may be compatibility issues, and prerequisites of that style not met - like unmitigated evil, hyper-specialized character niches, or spawning points for replacement or newly introduced characters.
One thing that RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha shows me is that you need to twist a setting to make it work with a rules system. With the runes re-defined from their treatment in the HeroQuest/QuestWorlds family of games or even the RQ2/RQ3 treatment of certain runes like Light or Communication a different presentation of Glorantha has resulted. YGWV, RQG-GWV. 13th Age Glorantha does vary - perhaps in ways that satisfy some of your needs for a roleplaying game more, regardless whether you use 13th Age rules or just the setting adaptation with a different rules set.
Does roleplaying require a clearly defined, unmitigated evil?
I don't think so. Moral relativism is what you gain from putting yourself in the shoes of your opposition, something the GM should have done in order to present opponents as something other than cardboard targets for shooting practice. Villains with good intentions can be some of the scariest.
Claims that the Lunar Empire is unmitigated evil clashes with the idea in the White Bear and Red Moon board game where you would play either side as your side, with atrocious options allowing you to gain an advantage over your opponent, such as sacrificing an emissary to Delecti or the Tusk Riders in order to gain their support. Claims that the Sartar side in the conflict has the just cause are dubious, too, especially under Prince Argrath.
There are aspects to the Orlanthi society that are corrupt and evil by any means. You may whitewash these, like the Summons of Evil or the practice of "affordable murder" by paying weregeld, possibly in advance, much like most countries whitewash their histories of genocide and exploitation. (For instance, Germany has a peace award named after Charlemagne, a king who performed systematic genocide on the pagan Saxons he had conquered. And while German colonial efforts were not as long lived as most other European countries' exploits, or as the US internal as well as external colonization, there were some episodes as grisly as the US systematic genocide of its native population and theft of their territory. Not to mention slavery as in mass deportation of de-humanized Africans to the colonies, or of natives of any ethnicity other than one's own dominant one in conquered areas.)
This isn't wokeness, it is brutal honesty. And not cynical honesty as in "my ancestors were better rapists and murderers than yours."
Esotericism - tolerable when put into game mechanics but intolerable when being kept vague?
The Guide is not a rules-specific game aid, but an introduction to a (somewhat shared) fantasy setting that has been used for roleplaying games and board games. It is system-agnostic. It offers no GM crutches like random events tables.
Most of the information in the Guide can be safely ignored as of little relevance to your piece of the world chosen as roleplaying setting if you want to try to keep things canonical. And there is no obligation to do so - everybody's interpretation of the setting and its lore is going to differ, and sometimes (or rather more often than not) GMs/narrators will overwrite certain "facts" of the setting, whether by ignorance or by wanton decision. E.g. positing the Lunar Empire as unmitigated evil. (Or claiming that there is a leftist party in the US American two-party system when the Democrats maintain a policy that is at most center-right in most European democracies, and the Republicans of the Trumpist brand occupying positions going against accepted human rights.)
What happens when a myth is created or re-enacted? Results vary, depending on the implementation of whatever plan the player characters come up with and what bits the GM will allow to succeed , whether with or without future consequences. As a rule, there always are future consequences, often unintentional. That's what that entire God Learner fiasco was about.
Messing with myths in Glorantha is similar to messing with time lines in time-travel settings. There might be something resembling the desired outcome. Or there might be something completely off about the results. Sometimes a small change may cause just a small change as a result, but the GM can always call back on consequences of mythical interaction later on.
Does that give you a concise instruction how to GM such a thing in Glorantha? No. At best, you get some idea from past intrusions into the mythical make-up of regions of Glorantha, like Fronela (still reeling from the Syndics' Ban) or the Holy Country with the numerous consequences of Belintar's conquest. Or Fonrit.
The techniques of LARP or of other game forms have been used successfully in tabletop roleplaying. Maybe not your brand of tabletop roleplaying, though, especially not if you apply World of Warcraft-like conventions at your table or require a certain formalism.
Glorantha is different from Greyhawk or Golarion, or Midkemia, or Middle Earth, or Aventuria. That's a feature. It means that certain conventions you may have adopted gaming in those settings don't apply. If that is too much of a stumbling block, unmodified Glorantha is not for you.
YGWV - Your Glorantha Will Vary. Mine certainly does. And that is not unique to Glorantha, it applies to any setting.
GM one and the same scenario multiple times, and the outcomes will vary greatly depending on player input. lack thereof, and dice luck.
I cannot help but disagree with many of your premises of what a role-playing game needs, except that those are things that make up your personal brand of what makes a game fun. But then, gaming culture varies not just from country to country but also from board to board.
Uniform party make-up: No two RuneQuest characters have the same set of skills and abilities thanks to elective ways to build a character. That is unless your gaming group consists of hard-core mini-maxers creating the one optimized type of character (and even then, approaches might differ).
Niche protection: A niche is not just created by character class, but also by roleplaying opportunities. I have played games with rather little dice rolling (and as a result few experience rolls) where decisions unrelated to skills or game mechanics have decided the course and ultimately outcome of the story.
There is a form of "niche protection" that requires the GM to provide at least one task for each player's niche in the course of a gaming session, something usually at odds with using a published scenario as is, especially if the player's chosen niche is not exactly standard. A combat-only character in a mainly social situation will get fewer chances to roll their dice if they insist to use their character only to hack away at enemies.
And while certain characters may have their speciality, that doesn't mean that they need to be the only people proficient in that niche. It can be frustrating if one only has one chance at shining but a different player maneuvers their less specialized character into that spotlight. But that's always the danger with playing one-dimensional characters good at a single trick and inept at everything else. Or, in other words - Not My Style of Play, Not My Problem.
Is there a place for murder-hobos in Glorantha? Definitely yes. It is not a very plush or comfortable place in a setting which has accountability, but playing as outlaws with rewards on their heads is one way to play a game.
Or did I miss or mis-interprete your definition of "adventurer"?
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.
By "adventuring party", what I mean is a group with diverse talents in order to allow each player to have a distinct role and niche. I probably didn't make that as clear as I intended. I have added additional examples onto each point.
There are game implications to do with setting choices, and Glorantha-RuneQuest does not handle them well at all.
I think there are ways to manage them better, and that will be covered in my fix article.
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If you have a certain kind of player, then they will enjoy the moral ambivalence of the setting. The issue is that it otherwise pushes away a lot of players, makes it harder for DMs to run the game and leads to problems in play if the moral dissonance is not expected or welcome.
The biggest issue is, I think, the mishandling of Lunar lore by Chaosium. I will be going into this in the 3rd article in the series, but they have massaged the lore to make Lunars more palatable despite their overt and disgustingly evil actions.
I mean... okay, I get what you're saying. But I feel like Pendragon, another Greg Stafford game, this is not a place where the niches are meant to be clear cut.
People are people, and their differences are going to depend on Skill picks and Passions. It's about the differences, which is also the case in Call of Cthulhu.
If the game is about Tribal Warriors in the hills fighting Lunars? That's what the game is about, it's not gonna directly cater to several character concepts, unless you directly shape your game towards it (the game of Sword and Sorcery Exiles in a distant city) - the game does not explain that at all, and presents the Cults as almost character classes.
Like, the Starter Set have the adventuring party be a crew of exiles and wanderers, and it feels like it. Very few of them have non-adventuring roots to work with.
However, in my view, it's the occupation that is gonna tell you what the game is about.
I do love everything you've written about this. It makes my brain go *wrrrrrrr* to talk about this game and the world.
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Reg. Lunars.
You are writing from a very clearcut perspective, but I understand the point. I'm looking forward to seeing where you're going with it in article 3.
But, do remember that Empires often have beneficiaries as well as victims. It would be kinda strange for the authors to ignore that. Case in point? The US.
Well there is clear mythic structure for the sociological structure of a mixed adventuring band in the Lightbringer's quest, but it is hard to see it at play from a low level to a high level, the party needs to be established as an already experienced group of warrior/trader/scholar/healers who are thrown together for one big quest. This makes a lot more sense as a one-shot. Or Everyone (including Lunars ) vs the horrific Thanatar temple of heads, an utter one shot.
The fact that the runequest game system is an incredibly crunchy attempted combat simulator which is entirely opposed to the mythic structures at play is kind of funny coincidence of how Steve Perrin and crew started working with Greg Stafford.
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.
I think I leaned too hard on the D&D comparison.
These points are valid across all big tabletop settings though.
Vampire: the Masquerade as an example. The "adventuring party" is the group brought together by the Camilla to do something, to investigate or similar. The "morally acceptable antagonists" are the Sabbat. The metaphysics of the setting do not matter so much, because they are covered mechanically.
Call of Cthulhu is another. The "adventuring party" is a diverse group brought together to investigate a singular mystery, for clear reasons and motivations. The "morally acceptable antagonists" are... pretty much every Mythos beast. The metaphysics do not matter so much because they are covered mechanically and in writings.
You are exaggerating. A lot. :-)
In RuneQuest Glorantha adventuring parties stay together by virtue of pertaining to the same city/clan/tribe or because they fought at the same side during one of the many battles of recent years, or [insert any other reason also valid for any other RPG]. For example: the sample pregenerated characters in the rulebook. So they can be diverse. There's even a Lunar in the group of pregenerated characters!
What Soren says about community campaigns is also true, and it does not mean that all characters are too similar. For example, the Orlanthi pantheon is big enough that can accommodate adventurers as diverse as a group of Call of Cthulhu investigators. For example, you can have an Orlanthi farmer who worships Orlanth Thunderer, an Ernalda priestess, a Lhankor Mhy sage, an Issaries merchant, a Humakti warrior, a Yinkini hunter... etc.
Moral relativism is great. It means characters are more similar to us. It means you can explore lots of dilemmas in the grey areas.
Also, I do not agree that RPGs totally need "clear enemies to fight". Do the several factions in Game of Thrones have clear enemies to fight? Well, from their point of view yes. The same goes for every culture in Glorantha. And if you want really really really crystal clear enemies to fight, there are broos aplenty. So you get both flavours, really.
"there are no easy locations for DMs to drop their players into."
What about the city of Jonstown described in the RQ Starter Set or the city of Clearwine described in the RQ Screen Pack?
"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. " - In the Starter Set and also on Chaosium's website you can play a solo-scenario that literally puts you in one of those battles. Also, there are plenty of RQ publications where those battles are part of the adventure.
“Oh, it’s such a hard setting to get into.” In my experience, people who say that have never tried to get into the setting to begin with.
Your example group would split up as soon as their starting task is finished. The sage would go back to being a librarian, the Humakti would go back to contemplating his sword etc. In Call of Cthulhu, the mystery is often the whole campaign. In RQG, there's no reason for everyone to stick together.
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Moral relativism isn't great for a tabletop setting because it causes cognitive dissonance in players, and causes out of character friction. I'll go into the mishandling of Lunars in part 3 of this series.
Your Game of Thrones example doesn't work because:
1. Its a literary setting, not a tabletop setting.
2. There are loads of designated antagonists, from the White Walkers to the Lannisters to the Boltons.
The fact you brought up the grey and black morality of A Song of Ice and Fire is great. It's a good demonstration of how a morally dubious set of characters can be set against evil.
I'm late to the debate, but wanted to toss in a few thoughts.
I don't much like the hero wars (especially in dragon pass) as a setting for a ttrpg in general, and RQ in particular. I played RQ3 in the then default year ('18, maybe?) and we certainly had no issues with any of what you listed, but then again it was a couple of constrained campaign arcs (to be played over a four month university term). If you expect your campaigns to last for years, with ongoing characters,even that starting year may have been tough. But we could have our adventures without being overshadowed.
I loved how Blood Over Gold (for heroquest) handled things, giving reason for a diverse party to come together and stay together. But again the characters could influence what was happening where they were.
I did run Heroquest, starting with recently initiated adults (no cults yet) not long before the death of Orlanth. That was working pretty well until the pressure to level up fast through heroquesting began to strain credibility.
I also took part in an HQ game where the PCs were all students in a wizardry school along Lake Salfestar (sp?), and it was a blast, one of my very favorite games ever despite that we were all nominally the same 'class'. But nothing was impacting our organic growth.
If I run something in Glorantha again, it likely won't be in the default dragon pass setting. There is huge RP potential in Glorantha, including during the most intense parts of the hero wars. To play in dragon pass during the hero wars you face a lot of constraints, that I don't think I'd care to deal with again. (More power to those who do!). But judging Glorantha by that is a bit like judging all of the US by Manhattan.
Lack of nano-fiction: yes, I would like to see more. Not as part of the rules set, though. Not as "must read" for a scenario, either, but as something to read leisurely. The problem with any fiction is that the impression the author has of Glorantha may be incongruent with your own pre-conceptions. Certainly often enough with mine.
Drop-in locations - no such thing in Glorantha. Or Middle-Earth or Star Wars, really. You can create a clan village, or perhaps use Ian Cooper's fantastically detailed Red Cow clan in The Coming Storm (currently out of print due to sale of the HeroQuest trademark) for HQG. You can use fan-made offerings from the Jonstown Compendium, or you can create one of your own. There is always New Pavis, except that it will have undergone changes we only learn about when the books submitted by Robin Laws finally see print.
There is the Lunar army as a drop-in (and drop out of) tool for the GM. Under-used, despite the introduction of Vostor in Vasana's Story.
The Hero Wars offer no leverage for player agency? True, there is a lot of plot armor on the destined protagonists for the Hero Wars. But then, have you ever killed Darth Vader or Emperor Palpatine in a Star Wars game, or maybe one of the rebel characters (Princess Leia, Luke, Han Solo, Chewbacca) in your games? Would you aim to if you played Star Wars?
You can steal the spotlight and portions of plot from the offered players, or change the plot for your iteration of Glorantha. Lead a revolution in the Lunar Empire, possibly abolishing some of the worst Chaos there, at the cost of the magic and the social cohesion, and opening the path for mortal enemies like Argrath or the Pentans, or releasing suppressed internal dangers like the Spolites.
If your players are willing, they can carry the plot. In my practical experience, few players are willing to carry the main plot, preferring to go on less involved adventures solving minor mysteries instead.
For me, Glorantha is the first setting I have GMed in for more than a few sessions that I did not create from scratch. And I used to be the regular GM for my group. I have loaned features from other settings, like e.g. the excellent City of Carse supplement written by Raymond Feist, originally published by Midkemia Press (and still available as scanned pdf of a charmingly 1980ies style supplement for five bucks), but also adapted to other settings. I have used features from published scenarios.
I have GMed a few published scenarios, in Glorantha and in other settings. I prefer to work with stuff of my own, easier to adapt to the story lines and abilities of the players' characters.
Does Glorantha suck as a setting for a given style of roleplaying? The chances are good that there may be compatibility issues, and prerequisites of that style not met - like unmitigated evil, hyper-specialized character niches, or spawning points for replacement or newly introduced characters.
One thing that RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha shows me is that you need to twist a setting to make it work with a rules system. With the runes re-defined from their treatment in the HeroQuest/QuestWorlds family of games or even the RQ2/RQ3 treatment of certain runes like Light or Communication a different presentation of Glorantha has resulted. YGWV, RQG-GWV. 13th Age Glorantha does vary - perhaps in ways that satisfy some of your needs for a roleplaying game more, regardless whether you use 13th Age rules or just the setting adaptation with a different rules set.
Does roleplaying require a clearly defined, unmitigated evil?
I don't think so. Moral relativism is what you gain from putting yourself in the shoes of your opposition, something the GM should have done in order to present opponents as something other than cardboard targets for shooting practice. Villains with good intentions can be some of the scariest.
Claims that the Lunar Empire is unmitigated evil clashes with the idea in the White Bear and Red Moon board game where you would play either side as your side, with atrocious options allowing you to gain an advantage over your opponent, such as sacrificing an emissary to Delecti or the Tusk Riders in order to gain their support. Claims that the Sartar side in the conflict has the just cause are dubious, too, especially under Prince Argrath.
There are aspects to the Orlanthi society that are corrupt and evil by any means. You may whitewash these, like the Summons of Evil or the practice of "affordable murder" by paying weregeld, possibly in advance, much like most countries whitewash their histories of genocide and exploitation. (For instance, Germany has a peace award named after Charlemagne, a king who performed systematic genocide on the pagan Saxons he had conquered. And while German colonial efforts were not as long lived as most other European countries' exploits, or as the US internal as well as external colonization, there were some episodes as grisly as the US systematic genocide of its native population and theft of their territory. Not to mention slavery as in mass deportation of de-humanized Africans to the colonies, or of natives of any ethnicity other than one's own dominant one in conquered areas.)
This isn't wokeness, it is brutal honesty. And not cynical honesty as in "my ancestors were better rapists and murderers than yours."
Esotericism - tolerable when put into game mechanics but intolerable when being kept vague?
The Guide is not a rules-specific game aid, but an introduction to a (somewhat shared) fantasy setting that has been used for roleplaying games and board games. It is system-agnostic. It offers no GM crutches like random events tables.
Most of the information in the Guide can be safely ignored as of little relevance to your piece of the world chosen as roleplaying setting if you want to try to keep things canonical. And there is no obligation to do so - everybody's interpretation of the setting and its lore is going to differ, and sometimes (or rather more often than not) GMs/narrators will overwrite certain "facts" of the setting, whether by ignorance or by wanton decision. E.g. positing the Lunar Empire as unmitigated evil. (Or claiming that there is a leftist party in the US American two-party system when the Democrats maintain a policy that is at most center-right in most European democracies, and the Republicans of the Trumpist brand occupying positions going against accepted human rights.)
What happens when a myth is created or re-enacted? Results vary, depending on the implementation of whatever plan the player characters come up with and what bits the GM will allow to succeed , whether with or without future consequences. As a rule, there always are future consequences, often unintentional. That's what that entire God Learner fiasco was about.
Messing with myths in Glorantha is similar to messing with time lines in time-travel settings. There might be something resembling the desired outcome. Or there might be something completely off about the results. Sometimes a small change may cause just a small change as a result, but the GM can always call back on consequences of mythical interaction later on.
Does that give you a concise instruction how to GM such a thing in Glorantha? No. At best, you get some idea from past intrusions into the mythical make-up of regions of Glorantha, like Fronela (still reeling from the Syndics' Ban) or the Holy Country with the numerous consequences of Belintar's conquest. Or Fonrit.
The techniques of LARP or of other game forms have been used successfully in tabletop roleplaying. Maybe not your brand of tabletop roleplaying, though, especially not if you apply World of Warcraft-like conventions at your table or require a certain formalism.
Glorantha is different from Greyhawk or Golarion, or Midkemia, or Middle Earth, or Aventuria. That's a feature. It means that certain conventions you may have adopted gaming in those settings don't apply. If that is too much of a stumbling block, unmodified Glorantha is not for you.
YGWV - Your Glorantha Will Vary. Mine certainly does. And that is not unique to Glorantha, it applies to any setting.
GM one and the same scenario multiple times, and the outcomes will vary greatly depending on player input. lack thereof, and dice luck.
I cannot help but disagree with many of your premises of what a role-playing game needs, except that those are things that make up your personal brand of what makes a game fun. But then, gaming culture varies not just from country to country but also from board to board.
Uniform party make-up: No two RuneQuest characters have the same set of skills and abilities thanks to elective ways to build a character. That is unless your gaming group consists of hard-core mini-maxers creating the one optimized type of character (and even then, approaches might differ).
Niche protection: A niche is not just created by character class, but also by roleplaying opportunities. I have played games with rather little dice rolling (and as a result few experience rolls) where decisions unrelated to skills or game mechanics have decided the course and ultimately outcome of the story.
There is a form of "niche protection" that requires the GM to provide at least one task for each player's niche in the course of a gaming session, something usually at odds with using a published scenario as is, especially if the player's chosen niche is not exactly standard. A combat-only character in a mainly social situation will get fewer chances to roll their dice if they insist to use their character only to hack away at enemies.
And while certain characters may have their speciality, that doesn't mean that they need to be the only people proficient in that niche. It can be frustrating if one only has one chance at shining but a different player maneuvers their less specialized character into that spotlight. But that's always the danger with playing one-dimensional characters good at a single trick and inept at everything else. Or, in other words - Not My Style of Play, Not My Problem.
Is there a place for murder-hobos in Glorantha? Definitely yes. It is not a very plush or comfortable place in a setting which has accountability, but playing as outlaws with rewards on their heads is one way to play a game.
Or did I miss or mis-interprete your definition of "adventurer"?