Return to Griffin Mountain

When I started roleplaying, back in 1979 or thereabouts, it began with RuneQuest.

My dad had bought the 1979 edition of the game (RQ2) and, whilst he rejected it, I became fascinated. Squirreled away in my room, reading RQ became an obsession for many months, nay years.

Once I became friends with other novice roleplayers then I played different games (Traveller and D&D Basic being the first). But RuneQuest stayed with me.

This week, finally giving in to the urge that has been growing within me since Christmas, I opened up my .PDF copy of Griffin Mountain… and began to journey back to Glorantha.

Glorantha

Originally, RuneQuest was set in Glorantha. Greg Stafford’s mythical world has haunted me (in a good way) ever since I first read the pages of the rulebook, the Apple Lane supplement, and other books collected over the years. This year, some thirty-odd years later, I have decided to make a journey back there.

Glorantha is a rich world. A setting of deep magic and mythological power, it’s a place of wonder. As the Glorantha.com website says,

…Glorantha is a mythic world of heroes and adventure. It has far more to do with Cú Chulainn, Gilgamesh, Heracles, and Väinämöinen than it does with medieval Europe, Le Mort D’Arthur, or the Hundred Years War. Its heroes are Conans, Grey Mousers, and Rostams, not Lancelots, Percivals, and Rolands.

For me, this is a world that has rooted deeply within my subconscious. Re-reading materials in the past few weeks, I realise that the Lightbringer gods and other such Gloranthan ideas have permeated my own roleplaying creations.

Griffin Mountain

This is a worthy tome of Gloranthan lore which, as a re-print and re-presentation of original stuff from the 1980’s, is a glorious introduction to the setting. Here we visit the harsh lands of Neolithic-like hunters who, isolated from the Bronze Age world around them, offer us a pathway into the richness of the wider world.

For me, Griffin Mountain is an ideal introduction to Glorantha for both my school-based teenaged roleplayers and also the hard-bitten grognards I game with on the occasional Friday night. The task of converting the old RQ stats across into another system, such as HERO 6e (or, if desired, the new RQ6 rules) is not a forbidding one. I have begun.

Look what I found in the “attic” room…

Thus, as I searched out my ancient copy of RQ2 as reference, I have been delighted to also discover Mark Doherty’s useful HERO 5e conversion for that same game: HEROquest.

My plan is simple: create a handful of Balazaring hunters and offer an introductory scenario to some players. From there, we can begin the quest for the Wind Sword in earnest… and trek the wild lands of Balazar in the search of rune lore and greater power.

I’m not sure if it’s everyone’s cup of tea, but for me it feels a lot like coming home. It’s a sort of “old school” journey but into the wildernesses of Glorantha instead of into the dungeons of the Greyhawk-inspired OSR. Perhaps you’ll be willing to join me in this journey back into “that mythical world that inhabits the Other Side of our consciousness.”

I’m going there… and I hope that you’ll be tempted to follow in my footsteps.