Most of these responses are personal or campaign related...
> GAZZA wrote:
> I'm going to be starting up a Glorantha campaign in about 3
> months; this time, I'm going to introduce Glorantha tidbits as
> I go, rather than expect my players to absorb it all at once.
My first session (about five years ago), was a general lecture on the nature and myth of Glorantha, followed by the recent politics of Sartar and Pavis. I described the cults that I expected players to take, and had the NPC's in 'River of Cradles' available if they wanted a pre-made character. It was long and tedious, but I felt that players had to have a basic grasp of the culture or they would not make reasonable decisions. Recent experience with new players had tended to support this feeling.
I did introduce a great deal of additional material as the players got used to their part of the world. Releasing it in small pieces makes it more digestible. For the last year, most of my players are running different sections of the campaign, and I am playing.
RQ3 plays fine, and If you start in Sartar, and certainly if you start in Prax, you can pretty much ignore the sorcery rules until you want to deal with them. They are certainly flawed, but playable as is. A few changes can make them more acceptable, or you can get something like Sandy Peterson's rewrite and change them completely.
> got the starting scenario picked out ("Regular Folks")
I started with Greenbrass, from the Glorantha book. I set it in late 1615, and used module material for three years, since so few of my players had a clue about the world or the game material. I mixed 'Pavis' and 'Big Rubble' scenarios with 'Borderlands' and 'Sun County', and later added 'Shadows on the Borderlands' and parts of 'Strangers in Prax'.
The stories were close enough together in time, that the campaign is in 1619 after five years of play... that's right... I am not keeping up with the real world. This is certainly a sign that there has not been enough down-time for training, but the events seem to push the characters on without rest.
> a reasonable collection of RQ stuff (plus King of Sartar)...
> ... where I might be able to pick up a copy of Genertela: Crucible
> of the Hero Wars? I can't find this ANYWHERE,
'King of Sartar' is a wonderful glimpse of the events in the northern continent leading up to the Hero Wars, which is what RQ was basically published for. It has allowed me to insert news and events from others parts of the world that characters have no control over, and this has expanded their awareness of the world and added a sense that Glorantha is living.
'Genertela...' is not essential, but the longer you play, and the farther you travel, the more useful it would be. Sartar and Pavis are well described without it, but you can't really run most other parts of the continent without additional material. Also, the snippets regarding the Hero Wars, interspersed through the book, are additional windows into upcoming events, and are well worth the original price.
> Secondly, I note that Big Rubble is available from Wizard's Attic.
> Is this worth getting?
If you intend to run Pavis at all, you could really use this book. No single book is critical, once you have the rules, but each book or pack gives you more information to build on what went before, and once a book is published, it's story usually becomes official (with variations injected from the current campaign). As with most modules, change what you have to, when you have to. Make it interesting and challenge the players in some way.
> Thirdly, when are most Gloranthan games set?
RQ was intended to get players ready for the Hero Wars, so most campaigns start after 1600 and before 1620, though any period is possible, and the Hero Wars take nearly 100 years, so new warriors have to be introduced. The Cradle coming down the Zola Fel for the first time in several hundred years is considered the first significant battle of the coming wars, and is the first introduction of Argrath. This event is campaign dependent, but occurs between 1618 and 1620. I think that the official date is 1620, though my campaign went for the early date. The original idea was probably to have experienced characters ready for the early battles of the wars in the 1620's when Argrath has come back from Harrak's trip around the Homeward Ocean.
If you inspect the timelines of all of the published material, you can make a good guess of the order they were printed by looking at the last entries. Each module added material to the timeline and pushed it up. This generally correlates to events in the Chaosium house game where the material was playtested. 'King of Sartar' and 'Genertela...' were the first packs to take a good look at where the 'history' is intended to go (although Dragon Pass clearly started it all). They leave plenty of room for inserting entire campaigns that might ignore the wars, have them be peripheral to the campaign, or have the players take a direct hand. Bob Stancliff
End of The Glorantha Digest V7 #141
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