Blank Heroes from richard on 1998-01-20 (Glorantha Digest Vol 05)

From: richard <rad_at_nwpeople.com>
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 10:15:50 +0000

I feel that Glorantha is missing an important ingredient - key to making it a role playing campaign as opposed to an enjoyable and envolved saga. That ingredient revolves around the integration of player characters.

It seems to me, as I read more and more Gloranthan material, that the heroes of the Hero Wars are not going to be (my) PCs. It was probably a section in the Genertela box which crystalised this for me where you're advised not to let your PCs even interact with the likes of Arkat, Jareel (sp? - the Lunar lass) and so on.

Now I do not accept that Glorantha is "mine", as GS put it. My reason for using Glorantha is not just because of what has been published, but also because of all the extra material yet to be published. I do not want to snapshot the world as it is understood by me now and then go off at a tangent - I want to run a campaign which fits into the objective, rather than subjective, Glorantha (IYSWIM).

Now GS/Chaosium has placed a number of customisation lands around Glorantha - the Blank Lands. I would like to suggest that the same thing be done with a number of people/events. I say events because the most important thing about a hero is what he does, specifically how he affects the Gloranthan saga.

A Blank Hero could be minor, such as some lieutenant who leads a telling assault at a particular battle, a sorcerer who uncovers / exposes some particular secret, or an adventurer who defeats some particular chaos / darkness entity. Maybe Kiger Lytor is destined to be destroyed by a party of Orlanthi adventurers, or maybe Raznaklar (sp? again - the king of the Broos), or maybe sections of the Machine City will be reactivated. Major Blank Heroes could be ones actually involved in the Hero Wars, and wouldn't it be nice if the outcome was left blank too!

What I would like to see is a set of Blank Hero events, whose effect on the history of Glorantha, particularly the Hero Wars, is documented, but whose details are left, and are guaranteed to be left, deliberately blank (including the names of the heroes involved). That way I can run a campaign with PCs which can become an integral part of Glorantha, rather than:

being spectators in a saga they cannot affect, or
being forced to make my Glorantha different to the published Glorantha.

Of course if none of my PCs ever do fill in any of these Blank Hero Events then we can simply assume that they happened with some NPCs. The important thing is to have the people/events clearly defined, especially in relation to the unfolding events of Gloranthan history, whilst guaranteeing that details will be left to individual GMs.

Richard