Heroquest, Heroquest: Glorantha
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Sample file HeroQuest, HeroQuest: Glorantha gWs Moon Design Publications Sample3450 Wooddale Ct file Ann Arbor, MI 48104 Glorantha 1 HeroQuest Credits Written By Jeff Richard and Robin D. Laws and Neil Robinson and David Scott with assistance from: Martin Helsdon, Rick Meints, and Michael O’Brien. Special Thanks: Steve Perrin, Sandy Petersen, Ken Rolston, and Ray Turney Design & Layout by Rick Meints Cover by Jon Hodgson Illustrations by: Jan Pospíšil, Dan Barker, Rick Becker, Simon Bray, William Church, Gene Day, Jed Dougherty, Alberto Foche, Lisa Free, Stephano Gaudiano, Eric Hotz, Jennell Jaquays, Kalin Kadiev, Stephen Langmead, Jeff Laubenstein, Juha Makkonen, Regis Moulin, Luise Perrine, Mike Perry, Roger Raupp, John Snyder, Steve Swenston, and Cory Trego-Erdner. Cartography by: Colin Driver, William Church, and Darya Makarava. Art Direction by Jeff Richard Additional Thanks: Nick Brooke, Ian Cooper, David Dunham, Dan McCluskey, Kevin McDonald, Sarah Newton, Phil Nicholls, and Harald Smith. Playtesters included Joerg Baumgartner, Franziska Bauss, Herve Carteau, Matthew Cole, Ian Cooper, Christian Einsporn, Daniel Fahey, Simon Hibbs, Kris Alice Holhs, Olli Kantola, Sebastian Koerner, Johan Lindholm, Claudia Loroff, Robin Mitra, Michael O’Brien, Alison Place, Christine Reich, Mikko Tormala, Gianni Vacca, and Valentina Vacca. As always, a special thank you and credit goes to Greg Stafford, without whom none of us would be reading this, or playing games in Glorantha. Copyright © 2015 Moon Design LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction of this work by any means without written permission from the publisher, except short excerpts for the purpose of reviews or game play, is expressly prohibited. Glorantha and HeroQuest are trademarks of Moon Design Publications. First Printing - Summer 2015. ISBN# 978-1-943223-01-5 Would you like to know more about Glorantha? See our extensive website at www.glorantha.com This Samplebook is protected by the terrible swift blade of the Avenging Daughter. Her wrath shall be upon any whofile misuse its secrets! 2 Glorantha HeroQuest Table of Contents Introduction 4 Magic and Cults 131 Overview 131 The World of Glorantha 7 Cults 131 Overview 7 b Spirit Magic 134 The Runes 14 Spirit Traditions 138 R Rune Magic 139 Dragon Pass and Environs 19 Ernalda 147 General Description 19 Orlanth 151 Significant Places 20 The Seven Lightbringers 157 Dragon Pass Timeline 31 Issaries 159 Humakt 163 Creating Your Hero 33 Waha 167 Some Vocabulary 33 a Sorcery 172 Create a Hero As-You-Go 34 Lhankor Mhy 175 The Heroes of Samastina’s Saga 53 4 Lunar Magic 179 The Seven Mothers 187 Game Mechanics 57 Heroquesting 193 Overview 57 S Illumination 202 Framing the Contest 58 Rules for Contests 63 Gloranthan Creatures 208 Consequences 64 Overview 208 Group Simple Contest 70 Elder Races 208 Extended Contests 72 ? Chaos Horrors 219 Group Extended Contest 78 Rising Actions and Climactic Resolution 82 Gaming in Glorantha 221 Tactical Options 101 Creating Adventures 222 Modifiers & Augments 102 Hero Points 105 Appendixes 233 Recovery and Healing 106 A: Calendar 233 Running Contests 107 B: Equipment 234 Assigning Difficulty 112 C: Languages in the Dragon Pass Region 238 The Pass/Fail Cycle 115 D: Glossary 239 E: Bibliography 241 Gloranthan Communities 119 F: Other Gloranthan Material 242 Defining Your Community 119 G: Quick Reference 243 Sample Communities 120 Drawing on Resources 123 Index 246 Gaming Tips 127 Maps Glorantha 8-9 Dragon Pass 22-23 SampleBattle of the Auroch Hillsfile 89 Glorantha 3 HeroQuest Introduction HeroQuest Glorantha is a roleplaying rules engine designed for play in the world of Glorantha. The game presents a simple and flexible system allowing Game Masters to make decisions the way that epic stories and myths do. HeroQuest Glorantha encourages creative input from both Game Master and players, resulting in an exciting, unpredictable narrative created through group collaboration. Its abstract resolution methods and scalable character levels allow you to fully experience the magical world of Glorantha from the mundane to the heroic. Glorantha Tools, Not Rules HeroQuest Glorantha is set in the fictional world of Think of HeroQuest Glorantha not as a set of inviolable Glorantha, one of the oldest and best-defined rules that you must adhere to in order to be running fantasy roleplaying settings. Glorantha is a Bronze the game properly, but as a toolkit containing a variety Age world, and people hold allegiance to tribe, city, of ways of resolving dramatic situations as they arise Version History and cult, not to abstract alignments or ideologies. in play. It is meant to facilitate your creativity and HeroQuest Glorantha Although humanity is the dominant species, their then to get out of your way. It offers multiple ways began its life in 2000, dominance is due only to the quarrelling of the Elder of resolving conflicts, and relies on you to choose under a slightly different Races who still rule large parts of the world. the best one for the current moment based on your title, Hero Wars. The Glorantha’s main theme is religion and the storytelling instincts. game was reissued, in magical relation of man to god. In Glorantha, the Every HeroQuest Glorantha Game Master can, a revised edition, as gods and goddesses are real, and play an active and and should, use the toolkit the game provides to Heroquest, in 2009. important part in most major events through their run it in her own way. You may run it differently Now in 2015, it is being followers and cults. The Sun, the Earth, the Air, from one campaign to the next, or to suit your revised again to focus fully the Water, the Darkness, and the Moon all have players. It does not make specific decisions for on Glorantha. The book powerful deities associated with them, as do powers you, but instead helps to shape and guide your you hold in your hands is such as Death, Life, Change, Stasis, Illusion, Truth, own decision-making process. It is well suited to a the game’s reappearance Disorder, and Harmony. There are lesser deities to collaborative, friendly group with a high degree of for the setting of Greg things as diverse as cats, cows, boats, vengeance, trust in each other’s creativity. Stafford’s classic fantasy and volcanoes. If the members of your group are often at world of Glorantha, first Glorantha is a complete universe. It is self- odds and rely on their chosen rules kit as an arbiter glimpsed in 1975 through contained, and from its myths to its molecules between competing visions of how the game ought Chaosium’s boardgames it must be taken on its own terms. You will find to develop, HeroQuest Glorantha is not the rules set White Bear and Red no worshipers of Zeus or Allah here. There are you need. Stick with your more structured system of Moon and Nomad Gods no Romans, Vikings, or Huns; although there choice, but feel free to borrow and use any concepts and now fully detailed in are certainly empires, pirates, and nomads. Many from this book you find useful. Moon Design Publications' creatures rightfully rooted in other fantasy settings HeroQuest Glorantha becomes your game as soon Guide to Glorantha. have no representatives here. as you start to use it. This principle is known as The world of Glorantha is fully described in YGWV: Your Game Will Vary. For those concerned SampleMoon Design Publications' Guide to Glorantha, but a about canonical Glorantha , fileit also stands for Your brief summary is presented in this book. Glorantha Will Vary. 4 Glorantha HeroQuest Roleplaying in a Nutshell Roleplaying is a hybrid experience, combining For example, say that you’re running a game set elements of game play and collective storytelling. in the ruins of the Big Rubble of Pavis. A hero is A group gathers together to talk its way through running along the top of ruined buildings, pacing a a spontaneously created story, like a sort of zebra ridden by the main bad guy. The player wants improvisational radio theater. All but one of the his hero, Vargast the Thunderer, to jump onto the participants, called players, create fictional characters zebra and cut the villain down. You must decide how (called heroes) defined by various abilities written hard it is for him to do this. Need down on paper called character sheets. Using these In most roleplaying games (particularly those More Help? abilities, the heroes pursue various goals in the mythic often described as “simulative”), you’d determine Have any questions world of Glorantha portrayed by a participant called how hard this is based on the physical constraints about the rules of about the Game Master. you’ve already described. In doing so, you come up Glorantha that this book The Game Master controls various other people with imaginary numbers and measurements. You’d doesn’t answer? Please and creatures in Glorantha. The players describe how work out the distance between the ruined buildings head on over to www. their heroes pursue their goals; the Game Master and the zebra. Depending on the rules set, you might glorantha.com and join challenges them by putting obstacles in their path. take into account the relative speeds of the running the friendly and supportive Sometimes these barriers to success come in the hero and the zebra. You determine the difficulty of Gloranthan Tribe. We form of non-player characters who oppose them; the attempt based on these factors, and then use have articles, forums, a at other times, they’re impersonal physical or mental whatever resolution mechanic the rules provide you mailing list, a full set of challenges, like a lock that must be picked or a cliff with to see if the hero Vargast succeeds or fails.