Me too, but only since 1981. ;)
> 1) Its multiple points of view: each culture has its own explanation
> for such things as magic, myth, and the nature of reality.
Any gameworld could have a set of subjective descriptions of good and evil and other cultural issues.
> 2) The Monomyth, which artificially unifies all the world's myths
> into one "coherent" whole
So you like subjective morality, but prefer objective mythology? I think the Monomyth is useful, as are the concept of Runes, but the actual set of Runes and the actual Monomyth are not particularly great.
> 3) Many different approaches to magic, which is available to almost
> everyone
To some extent I agree, but it also makes for a game that is extremely difficult to GM and design for.
> 4) HeroQuests, which can be as simple as a religious ceremony or as
> complex as the meddlesome God Learners' experiments that changed the
> very nature of reality.
For those not acquainted with Glorantha or the HQ, here is a brief description. The HQer, by use of ritual, proper intentions, and community support enters into the MythWorld and does stuff there (usually as an aspect of some deity). When finished, the actions of the HQer in MythWorld have an effect on the mundane world. If the HQer did really well and got a wonderful Heroic Gift, then the community that supported the HQ can get a magical link to a similar ability. For instance, if a HQer gains the Gift to whistle up a wind, then the community gets access to the ability to whistle up a wind too. They may need to undergo various initiations and make sacrifices to actually use the ability, but it is somehow available.
Even though HeroQuest rules were never published formally, I agree that HQ is a very important part of Glorantha. In fact, I think that because of the lack of officially published Glorantha info HQs have somehow shifted their landscape and do not operate within Glorantha itself at this point, but instead take place within the Glorantha fan community. Nowadays it seems that the most major and far-reaching changes to Glorantha happen because of the actions of ordinary people who decide that they are good enough and smart enough to add to Glorantha, so they come up with a great idea and send it to the mailing list, and the readers go "Wow! I never realized that was true until now." and it becomes true in all these Gloranthas, and sometimes that truth even makes it back to the official, rarely-published, Staffordite Glorantha. In this virtual HQ each writer is a HQer, the community that supports him/her is the mailing list, and the Gift is a new truth about Glorantha, and once it has been discovered everybody is able to use the new truth.
> Also, I hear that the Giants in the Deep project had some discussion
> about Glorantha as an example of world design; I'd like to find out
> more about that, and hear from people who have used Glorantha in
> designing their own worlds.
The main explicit discussion of Glorantha had to do with the nature of Giants in the game. Glorantha is plentifully supplied with universe-shaking dragons. As GID involved giants, and was in fact *named* after giants, we wanted to make sure that everybody knew that the giants were *Giants* and NOT Dragons. GID is a Mythically based world, like Glorantha, and not at all based on scientific principles. GID has four elements, frex, Fire above, then Air, then Earth, then Water. In GID Earth actually floats on Water, or at least the islands do. In GID compasses work by the magical principle of Correspondence, and not by magnetism. There are other things I could point out that make GID a Mythic world, much like Glorantha. Because Glorantha is the best known Mythic gameworld, we thought distinctions such as Giants/not Dragons were necessary. And we also took some lessons from Glorantha, such as the necessity to allow for a subjective viewpoint. But I think those lessons were implicit rather than explicit. The most important lessons we took from Glorantha were in the nature of which departures to make from the Gloranthan design model, and for me the most significant departure was the Matrix Game roolz.
Cheers,
Loren
End of Glorantha Digest V4 #283
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