Books are a big deal for the Moon Design team – not just RPGs and fantasy literature, but history, mythology, religion, and classics of literature. You might have noticed that the Guide to Glorantha and HeroQuest Glorantha have bibliographies of sources and suggested resources. We’re going to be expanding on that in our new Gloranthan Readings page. For the time being, books are organized by Classics, Reference Books, Epics and Sagas, and Fantasy. We’ll have a short synopsis of a book, why we think it is worth your time to read, and even a link to Amazon so you can buy it (if you don’t already have it).
You can even suggest books to add to this list – if I haven’t read it, I’ll put it on the stack. Every week or so, we’ll add another book with a synopsis and a few comments. First up, of course, are the books we’ve already recommended, but we’ll adding to that list soon enough.
First on the list is Herodotus, “The Histories”. Seriously, if you haven’t read Herodotus you owe it to yourself as a literate person to stop what you are doing and get it. Now.
Herodotus wrote the first history book – an account of the wars between the Greek city-states of Athens and Sparta against the Persian Empire, written from the perspective of an educated Greek in the 5th Century BC. The Histories serves as a Greek sourcebook for Persia, Babylon, Egypt, Scythia – even India!
For Glorantha-philes, there’s a tremendous amount of inspiration here. The roots of the story of Sartar against the Lunar Empire isn’t “Braveheart”, they are the Persian Wars. Like a good Gloranthan, when Herodotus wants to get down the ultimate cause of the conflict, he goes to mythology and the Trojan War. Like a good God Learner or Arkati, he discusses the religion of other peoples within the constructs of Greek mythology.
Seriously, click on the link and just buy it, and then read it.
So why don’t you go over to Gloranthan Readings and check out what we’ve got up?