Interesting that folk are writing about Pendragon Virtues for Glorantha seeing as though in just one month the official rules for PenDragon Pass (courtesy of the tsar of PDP David Dunham, with a little input from myself and some others) will be printed and available in - ENCLOSURE. Yes, one month. All you need to convert Pendragon to Glorantha in one fine book. Also contained are new PenDragon Pass cult writeups for the cults of Orlanth, Ernalda and other Quivini cults including. . . Elmal.
Hopefully, this will act as a temporary pacifier for everyone who's complaining about the lack of new printed material that doesn't require a degree in Comparative Mythology to read.
On another front, Jane Williams wrote:
> In practice, the transition
> from "our local gyda, who leads our prayers to Ernalda", to "great
> heroine whom we honour as a daughter of the Earth" is likely to be
> a relatively slow, fuzzy, and potentially somewhat erratic one.
>As it should be: and it looks like we've got a rule system here that
>makes it possible. But it occurs to me that that was a fair description
>of that Theya woman we keep hearing about: which implies that their
>campaign already has such a rule system. Pam? Jeff?
I use Pendragon Pass, Lite on the Rules. I really do not believe that Heroquesting is a Rules Thing - and I think it can be handled through roleplaying and PenDragon Pass. I tend to think RQ2 & 3 have some structural handicaps to effective mythic re-enactment unless the players are really comfortable about their characters' own cultural mythos - i.e. they have that "feel" for the myths.
My personal advice on running Heroquests is pretty simple.
1. As a GM, know the cultural myth you want to explore;
2. Make sure your players have a decent panoply of cultural myths that
they can draw on. For Orlanthi this means they should know the Orlanthi
Mythology section in KoS reasonably well. For Dara Happans - read GRoY or
TFS. For Yelmalions - lock yourself up in damn stone hut until you starve
to death. You get the point.
3. If this is a "new myth" that you want to explore, tell the players the
story before hand.
4. Figure out what you think is really important about the myth (i.e. lack
of Justice allows Emperor to be killed, defeating Aroka means new friend,
whatever) and what the myth means.
5. Watch as the players fumble their way through it.
6. Figure out the ramifications of their actions (ie., dead
emperor-figure, new buddy, bad harvest, whatever).
Enclosure is going to contain about a half-dozen or so examples of Heortling cultural heroquests. Cool art too! If you want any more information buy Enclosure.
As for "experimental heroquesting" - most people should avoid that like the plague. It's like driving through downtown Naples without a map, blindfolded and during rush hour. Not a good idea.
Jeff Richard
Powered by hypermail