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Evolving the Setting

Posted on December 30, 2023

In the last month, I’ve been posting a lot of notes about the Hero Wars and how it changes. Couple of reasons for it – most important is that I am trying to finish off the RQ Campaign Book, which gets the setting moving into the Hero Wars. More on that later.

But it is also important to understand that Glorantha is dynamic. The setting is going to change over the next 30 years of setting time. Here are some obvious examples:

Your community is going to change. It may include people that are now foreigners, and it may lose people who are now members.

Your tribe is going to change. Maybe even collapse and reform as something else.

There’s going to be war. Lots of it. Sometimes it will take place in your home, other times it will take place in somebody elses.

Where your center of activity is may change. There’s a good chance a Sartar-centered campaign may end up spending years in Tarsh or even the Lunar Provinces.

Loyalties and passions are going to get tested. And sometimes they will fail.

Even the cults may change. New subcults may be formed. New cults may appear. Your cult might decide that talking to dragons is a good idea – which will change things a lot. Your cult might decide that Illumination is fine – which will change things a lot.

Your favorite feature may turn out to have been temporary.

For me this is critical for Glorantha to stay alive as a setting, and not ossified. But it is also critical that we let you know that basic story so that you can decide to use it or not. And for you Jonstown Compendium folk, I think this is particularly important.

As might be obvious, the blueprint for this is with Pendragon. In Pendragon, the prime engine for turning the wheels is the story of Arthur. But your characters can also seize the wheel and change the setting. Same thing here with RQ – of course the Red Emperor, Argrath, Jar-eel, and Harrek are important engines. But so are your characters, who are the stars of their stories.

For me Glorantha is a five dimensional setting. We have the usual three spatial dimensions, time as a fourth dimension, and the God Time as a fifth. All intersect with each other.

Jeff Richard

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