As the official Anti-pope of the OSR, I feel that it is my (anti)papal duty to introduce you to various heresies for your own edification and corruption. This is the first of them.
4th edition D&D is the perfect system for Glorantha.
Glorantha is an old-school setting in which almost everyone uses a little magic to make their lives easier. 4th edition D&D is a setting reviled by old-school grognards because all characters have "powers" and supposedly these powers "make everyone a wizard." All that shit grogs don't like is actually magic in Glorantha. The fighter uses a power that moves all his enemies closer to his sword sweep? Yeah, he learned that power from the cult he belongs to. The ranger's weapons are suffused with crackling lightning? He worships Storm Bull. What now, grog?
Hell, Glorantha has three distinct sources of magic: sorcery (the result of arcane study), divine magic (gained through initiation into cults), and spirit magic (gained through dealing with spirits). 4e D&D has power sources that map neatly to that tripartite division: arcane power (sorcerous magic), divine power (the power of the gods), and primal power (the power of natural spirits).
Glorantha is also a game where the characters can re-enact the quests of great heroes and gods to gain a portion of their mythic abilities. 4e D&D is a system that allows for Epic Destinies modeled after mythic archetypes.
Glorantha has elves that are plant-people. 4e D&D has these guys:
Glorantha as a playable race of Dragonewts. 4e D&D has these guys:
I like Glorantha; I like 4e. You just blew my mind.
ReplyDeleteNice! I hope you give it a whirl.
DeleteI never even thought of that until reading this...WOW! It makes perfect sense!!
ReplyDeleteThis heresy is winning people over much more easily than I imagined.
DeleteWell sussed, indeed. These are two things that have never worked for me, but wow, together they just might make up for each other's faults.
ReplyDeleteLike an anti-Reese's Cup.
DeleteI like it.
ReplyDeleteChargen is still too complex though. Too many feats and too many powers.
Ditch feats entirely, ditch prestige class (or whatever they are called in 4E) requirements, maybe discover powers through play... then we're in business.
Yeah, IV chargen is always going to be a bear.
DeleteInstead of discovering powers through play, I'd have player narrate what their characters are up to in their downtime to gain them.
I had thought about it before and Glorantha makes chargen easy. Your build is set by your cult. At low levels all the fighters of Orlanth would be the same but as you advanced choosing Rex, Adventurous, or Lightbringer would mean the various builds would map to the cult you joined.
DeleteNicely done. The only flaw I can see is a 4e Glorantha game wouldn't feel much like Glorantha--at least not how Glorantha reads to me. 4e seems mostly about tactical combat and set piece challenges (at least, that's what it has rules for mostly), Glorantha (at least in its Hero Wars/Heroquest form I'm most familiar with) seems much more about culture context and clash of cultures. You could do that with 4e, I suppose, but it's not really a part of rules as written.
ReplyDeleteTrue, but to be honest I don't really seem how RuneQuest was all about the clash of cultures either. It always seemed like a gritty bronze age/iron age simulator with an emphasis on deadly combat and kinda technical magic.
DeleteThat's true, though didn't Runesquest at least had cultural skills "lens" or whatever for skills or what not, didn't it? I've never played it so I'm not sure. Again, I suppose that's something 4e could do fairly easily.
DeleteI think maybe the new-fangled ones pay more attention to that, but the RQ3 of my youth didn't really dig into it. Have Spear 75% seemed more like the focus.
DeleteYeah, I think the whole "ooh, it's all about cultures" was some Gregging aka ret-conning of what Glorantha was all about.
DeleteWell, it was all about cultures, if that is what you made of it. I'm sure some people did so.
DeleteThe chargen isn't difficult at all if you are willing to spend the cash on D&D insider for the character builder. In fact it doesn't take much longer than making an od&d character if you have access to it.
ReplyDeleteI don't know...you still have to pour over all the feat and power options...that is where chargen eats up time in 4e.
DeleteWhat is this I don't even...
ReplyDelete...this is breaking my reality.
YES JUST LET IT HAPPEN
DeleteYou need a "heresies" tag. So future visitors can find them all at once.
ReplyDeleteDone!
DeleteI've been thinking some more about this (instead of writing on "the use of inclusion in the curriculum") and ducks would be halflings (gnomes are too magicky in 4e), all characters would get a bonus feat of Ritual Caster, dwarfs could be represented either with... dwarves, or perhaps warforged (to emphasise their link to the world-machine). I'm so heretic, I don't even know it.
ReplyDeleteThat was the general interpretation in my circles in the early and mid-80s with RQ2/3.
DeleteYeah, you're right about ducks!
DeleteDon't limit the power sources just to mapping to RQ magic (later Glorantha briefly had a fourth magic, mystic, in Hero Wars).
ReplyDeleteShadow could be used for Trolls with Kigor Ligor and Agor Arak cults (although based on half of the Shadow classes it might map to Chaos) while Primal might work well for Glorantha Elves, especially from Pamalelta, as well as Shamen.
Yeha, I had a feeling shadow might work in there, but you came up with a better use for it than I would have.
DeleteGiven I'm on the Kickstarter for the guide with lots of extras (one of two I went overboard, along with Deluxe Tunnels and Trolls) this is going to be a hard temptation to resist.
DeleteRunning the Hero Wars in D&D4 is so wrong it's right.
"System?" Glorantha takes your "systems" and destroys them and remains Glorantha.
ReplyDeleteSure, D&D 4. I'm told it's pretty close to Hero Wars anyhow.