Turning an adventure into a heroquest is easier than you might imagine in RuneQuest.
Let’s remember what a heroquest is at its most elementary – a heroquest is a commingling of the “mundane Glorantha” that your adventurers are exploring with the “mythical Glorantha”.
By heroquesting, your adventurers seek to “transform Glorantha” in some means. That might mean to create a magical effect outside the scope of the rules. It might mean to gain magic outside of your cult or the existing rules. It might be to change themselves – their characteristics, their cult status, their spirits, etc. It might be to transform their understanding of Glorantha.
Now there are a few published adventures that push into this. The Cradle scenario in RQ2’s Pavis is a heroquest. If you go into the Puzzle Canal during Sacred Time you have a good chance of finding yourself on the Styx River in the Underworld. Greg ran Snakepipe Hollow during Sacred Time and the Duke of Disorder ruled from within, with many strange guests and unusually magical rules and taboos, although I usually run the Inner Temple as being a heroquest.
All heroquests have some “crossing over moment”. The Cradle becomes a heroquest once you begin to explore the Cradle and interact with its strange inhabitants and magic. The Puzzle Canal becomes a heroquest as the adventures find themselves on the Styx River. But the easiest to imagine is a “dungeon” like Snakepipe Hollow. Enter the underground and you enter the Hero Plane. What matters is that on a heroquest, the world is no longer the familiar mundane world, but is unfamiliar, fantastic, and often very dangerous.
Heroquests also involve the “mythical Glorantha”. Now that is probably broader than many people think. The Cradle is loaded with mythic themes – the baby giant going down into the Underworld via Magasta’s Pool, the strange learning tools within, the nymph and her allies, and of course the missing Gold Wheel Dancer. Puzzle Canal links to a place in the God Time – the Styx River that runs through the Underworld (and ties Glorantha to Homer and Virgil). The Inner Temple of Snakepipe Hollow is the echo of a God Time tragedy.
In that regard, all of the Big Rubble is “heroquest adjacent”. Temple Hill is the former glory of the Spike during the Greater Darkness, as trolls and darkness entities now rule over the shattered ruins of the pillar of creation. The Garden is the refuge of High King Elf. The Devil’s Playground is a Chaos nests tied to the Unholy Trio and their progeny. And so on. Put on your poetic glasses and you’ll see it through their metaphorical polarizing lens.
What you need to add to it is obstacles and entities that aren’t part of the mundane world. The Eye of Wakboth. The Hungry Eater. Oakfed. Lord Pavis. The Faceless Statue. And so on. Lean into that stuff. Tangible spirits with powers outside of the rules like Broadblade Blue, weird entities like Blorn and the animated chess figures, the Crimson Bat, the Nuckelavee, or the giant sea monster from Strangers in Prax.
What I’m hearing here is that every published adventure is open to the transcendental if the players cross their eyes right. Some adventure design simply pushes that aspect closer to the surface but even when it’s accidental or ignored you can find it. And of course day-to-day Glorantha is what we do between adventures, all the fretting about keeping our equipment sorted so we can run when we hear the call. Yes. 100%.
The Gods Time underlies the mundane world. It’s what gives us all life. Squint hard enough, and you can still see it.