Re: Non-Glorantha HeroQuest?

From: David Dunham <david_at_...>
Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2005 14:03:44 -0800


Sophie

>Then tonight I was hit with a blasphemous thought. You see, a couple of
>years ago Atlas Games published Chris Dolunt's terrific book Nyambe,
>which was basically African D&D. Wonderful book, full of flavour and
>character. Unfortunately, when we tried to play it, we hit the D&D
>wall; it turned into dungeon-crawling, which I find deadly dull. BUT--
>Nyambe is full of gods and heroes and spirits, and I think it would work
>well in HeroQuest. I can see that Glorantha is already thick with
>background and history, so I can't even begin to figure out whether
>that, uh, ecological niche is filled (African Glorantha). So, here are
>my questions (yes, I did have some):
>
>- Has anyone come up, officially or non-officially, with an African
>setting for Glorantha?

While I wouldn't go so far as to say that Pamaltela is Africa, it's the most obvious place to find some African analogs.

Missing Lands and Tales of the Reaching Moon 11 have some information. Sandy Petersen posted a lot more to the Glorantha Digest (search for "Doraddi," the name of the principle plains culture). And the free PDF "HeroQuest Voices" includes the Doraddi.

I think your "ecological niche" term is spot-on -- the Doraddi fill a somewhat African savannah-like niche, but have their own adaptations. They aren't an African culture, and they have a Gloranthan history (e.g. they had to deal with the God Learners).

>- Has anyone used HeroQuest to run non-Glorantha campaigns? (I've heard
>somewhere of a Jorune HeroQuest game, which sounds like a fun idea.)

I haven't, but I think it'd work perfectly well. HQ's most detailed rules cover Gloranthan magic, and you might want to alter those radically. (The original playtest version of the game essentially treated magic as abilities no different from any other, so there's a lot of leeway.)

I haven't seen Nyambe, but from what I can glean on the web, it would probably be easiest to just run that land as is. You might be able to run it in the plains of Jolar (Pamaltela), using Fonrit as the evil zombi empire, and somehow fitting in Pamalt, supreme god of the Doraddi, but my guess is this would be a lot of work.

-- 

David Dunham
Glorantha/HQ/RQ page: http://www.pensee.com/dunham/glorantha.html
Imagination is more important than knowledge. -- Albert Einstein

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