OK so I've just started digging into the Glorantha setting. And obviously this is a setting people are really heavy on the lore of and immersion of.Now when I look online the most common results are either a pretty bare-bones-in-detail but comprehensively indexed Glorantha wiki, or this Well of Daliath site by a guy named Jeff Richard. And as far as I can see he is the current chief creative guy for Glorantha. But the Well of Daliath usually gives a pretty straightforward detailed answer, whereas the wiki is more like "well it might have been this or maybe it was this" even though it lacks detail.Syncretism is one of the things that appeals to me about the setting, so I want to understand the context by which one answer might be chosen out of many. It's not helped by, sometimes I'll read a forum thread on a Runequest lore question or whatever, and this guy Jeff will give an official answer. But then some other poster might mention what Greg Stafford, who I understand was the inventor of the setting, said and then Jeff will hurriedly backtrack to include that and say something like, "I forgot Greg mentioned that." Like I've seen this on two separate forum threads and it's noticeable even to an outsider.So I've two main questions:1) Is the best way to get a good general understanding of Glorantha and the context for decisions now made about it just to read as much material as I can in chronological order?2) What is the deal with the original creator/material and this Jeff guy?
1) The Guide to Glorantha is the most comprehensive take on the setting, but that's a lot to drop on someone new to the setting. I'd actually suggest playing the King of Dragon Pass/Six Ages games to wet your toes and use it as a starting point for further digging.2) I think Richard is trying to streamline the setting to make it appeal more to a general audience, but I feel that this being done at the expense of what a lot of people like about it.
>>93426553The thing to understand about decisions being made by Jeff and Chaosium is that they're engaged in both a deliberate hagiographic enterprise with Greg and, ironically, trying to make the setting (or present it as) more basic and less contradictory. This creates serious problems, both for the readers of the new books and for Jeff. Greg was a human being and, to what extent he had any ownership over it, Glorantha was his passion project for more than 40 years. This inevitably means he changed his mind or simply forgot his previous positions, so reconciling his various positions in to a unified canon is hard enough. This is made doubly difficult by the fact that Greg liked his setting to have contradictions and multiple points of view, that while seeming mutually exclusive can and must be mystically reconciled at a certain level. The most iconic of these is the Lunar-Orlanthi conflict. In the new canon Jeff has decided to calcify this by taking the Orlanthi position that the Lunars are, in fact, an existential threat to reality, despite the fact that Greg went out of his way to exposit the Lunar position and develop nuance in his later works when he had the time to.
>>93426553Remember that a deep understanding of the lore isn't necessary to run a good, fun campaign in Glorantha. My group just finished a 2y long Runequest campaign and none of us, not even the GM, delved that deep into the lore. He knew the broad strokes and details in areas that he thought were cool, but beyond that just do your own thing. It's a cool setting but from what I've seen online it seems like a lot of people are purely interested in reading the lore, rather than actually using it to game.
>>93427351>>93428732>>93428832Thanks for your reponses.>Remember that a deep understanding of the lore isn't necessary to run a good, fun campaign in Glorantha. Yeah, I understand that. All the same, I am not purely interested in the lore, but I am interested in the lore.
>>93428732>Glorantha was his passion project for more than 40 years>be failed novelist turned wargame designer turned rpg designer>work on hyperdetailed mythic setting for your entire life>be successful>end the setting with some superhuman guy who comes along, effortlessly beats everyone, kills the gods, changes everything people like about the setting and turns the world you created into boring mundane dreckWhat, unironically, did he mean by this?
>>93430813Not those anons, but:To add to other answers, Jeff inherited unreleased notes from Greg and other materials. He is somewhat responsible for things some people really love, like creating Elmal, but he also is responsible for some things people hate, like removing Elmal (his own creation) and making him just a different name for Yelmalio.I think he really cares about the setting (you can especially see this when reading his articles on Well of Daliath about Esrolia or Sartar economy/culture, they are really interesting) but sometimes makes bad decisions to achieve "stability". So in conclusion, he is fine, I think. And compared to other designers (like current devs of VtM or D&D) he is definetely good.If you want to read canon material, which WON'T CHANGE, then you should read Guide to Glorantha and King of Sartar.
>>93428832ThisAs always, YGMV. As Stafford intended, contradictions and diverging versions is what real mythology is like
>>93430840>>end the setting with some superhuman guy who comes along, effortlessly beats everyone, kills the gods, changes everything people like about the setting and turns the world you created into boring mundane dreckpill me about this guy t. glorantha newfag
>>93437823Argrath. Originally I think he was intended to be multiple people fused into one by time and myth, but in the current setting he's just one guy who can never fail and who ultimately destroys the Lunar Empire, then tricks all the gods into getting eaten because of some kinda humans r now free motivation that was never particularly elaborated on beforehand.
>>93438485Sounds like something great to ignore. What people also have to realize with this world is that Your Glorantha is not the Published Glorantha. You can alter whatever you want, exclude what you want. In the grand history of oral tradition keep what you like and ditch the rest to better serve your story
>>93438539Not sure what the other anon is talking about. The source on this stuff is King of Sartar, which is a compilation of in world historical documents written a thousand years later by several biased historians. It's a very schizophrenic document that can be interpreted a number of ways, but explicitly disagrees with anon.
Does the recent Chaosium Guide to Glorantha change anything from Moon Design's version?
PsstHey kid, wanna buy some pdfs?https://www.humblebundle.com/books/runequest-chaosium-inc-books?hmb_source=humble_home&hmb_medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=mosaic_section_4_layout_index_4_layout_type_threes_tile_index_1_c_runequestchaosiuminc_bookbundleLess than 24 hours left, so better hurry up!
>>93438485Pavis: Gateway to Adventure has Argrath Whitebull and Argrath of Pavis as separate people, at least.
Do broos actually say "broo"?
>>93446994>baaaah/[whatever else they have as a head]
>>93445685Nice
