The Gaming Den

FrankTrollman wrote:

Could someone please explain what the fuck this is.

Glorantha is a fantasy world with a race of Donald-style Ducks.

It's a "classic" beginner module for RuneQuest.

The wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glorantha

Game On,
fbmf

Glorantha is a fantasy world that was created to do gaming in during the early seventies. It is thus roughly contemporaneous with D&D. But it didn't specifically get a role playing game made for it until a few years after D&D was a thing. It has a consistent set of metaphysics and legends, a world with stuff in it and a rich history and all that is praiseworthy.

Unfortunately, it's really fucking terrible. Glorantha has Donald Duck-style Ducks. Why? I don't fucking know, I think someone thought this was fucking hilarious, but it completely shits on the "serious business" mood that the rest of the world is going for. Also they try to have things be "mythically real" rather than actually real. Which means that physics and shit is supposed to function via symbolic understanding, which basically means that the game world is a literally unending rabbit hole of stupid shit.

Also, the game is tied to the RuneQuest game system, which is basically the system of Call of Cthulhu. Now imagine that you were playing Call of Cthulhu, except that your characters dying constantly from stupid crap wasn't the point and was objectively a flaw in the system.

-Username17

So far as I know, ducks are more the Howard variety than Donald. Don't know how much of a difference that makes.

Get this, the guy who runs the Runequest game I play in, and recently started a new, non-Glorantha world and had us write up nations for our characters, thinks that Ponies would be too much of a joke race. Yes, really. Ducks=perfectly fine. Candy Coloured Magical Ponies=Joke race.


Edit: I do have to say that death toll isn't that bad. Usually. Mythically Real is fucking bullshit, but things generally work ok, as far as what one would expect from physical reality. Except that bases don't exist. Fuck Glorantha. (no one died, I just hate that one time)

FrankTrollman wrote: Unfortunately, it's really fucking terrible. Glorantha has Donald Duck-style Ducks. Why? I don't fucking know, I think someone thought this was fucking hilarious, but it completely shits on the "serious business" mood that the rest of the world is going for. Also they try to have things be "mythically real" rather than actually real. Which means that physics and shit is supposed to function via symbolic understanding, which basically means that the game world is a literally unending rabbit hole of stupid shit.

You can simply ignore minor stupid crap like ducks in most cases, or trivially edit it out. And yeah, there are a couple of other "funny hah hah" things scattered around. All the ones I can think of are pretty minor and have no real significance.

You can also ignore most of the metaphysics causes, since the world pretty much behaves on the macro level like earth. Other then actually being a flat disk with topology vs a sphere, I can't think of anything that really matters a whole lot to the average player. At crazy power levels the metaphysics becomes important, but you don't have to go there.

I respectfully submit that Donald Duck is a badass wizard.

Evidence:



He is, however, substantially less badass a wizard than Daffy Duck is.



Daffy even has a harem of bound succubi in his secret tower in his private demiplane.

WHAT?

What is that image from? What the fucking duck harem fuck?

Daffy Duck is The Wizard.

-Username17

It's the new looney toons cartoon. It's actually pretty good. Daffy even has business cards that say "professional warlock."

I had never heard of this before, I think playing Ducks could be actually kind of cool, and given some arguably "silly" stuff in fantasy, unsure why Ducks are unfit to he bill.

There are easily some cool ducks out there, for example, and if it's all political esque game, can have some kind of duck, color of feathers and like, symbols of station

Also, I had seen that video on TV before, it's still just as awesome, and another example that Ducks can totally be taken seriously.

*nods*
the Daffy Duck - The Wizard is pretty divine.

Most of what I know about Glorantha comes from The King Of Dragon Pass, which is a pretty kickass game.

Jezuz fuck, a great visual representation of why wizards win the game.

Korgan0 wrote:Most of what I know about Glorantha comes from The King Of Dragon Pass, which is a pretty kickass game.

This.

King of Dragon Pass is the best intro for the setting so far, and perfectly demonstrate its differential to other fantasy rpg settings out there, in the way its culture and religion drives the gameplay and forces the player to think like a bronze age man would. All the while being a kickass strategy-sandbox-emergent narrative game.

The thing about Glorantha is that its a setting created by a mythologist as a vehicle for his experiments the same way Middle Earth is a vehicle for a linguist´s experiments. Thus its cultural and mythological aspects are rich and "organic" in a way few other settings do. Its the only setting I know where religion is actually coherent with what is seen in the peoples and cultures of the ancient world/iron/bronze age. (albeit with its own twists, like the Campbellian "heroquests")

As an example, "magic" in the setting is the little charms and supersticious habits old peoples had (and have even today), like holding a rabbit foot for luck, or punching the wood 3 times to avoid bad eye, etc. In the game, these things actually have tangible effects. (in high level magic though, you still have more "traditional" spell effects, like flying or commanding animals, etc)

About the Durulz (the ducks) I agree theyre a silly race. But it doesnt degrade the setting the least for me (the same way Gifs or Halflings also dont degrade D&D settings, even if theyre silly races as well, in my opinion).

And that cover just make it worst. The art below is the current "official" one for them, and while they continue a silly race (IMO), at least they dont look like Duck Howard..

FrankTrollman wrote: Unfortunately, it's really fucking terrible. Glorantha has Donald Duck-style Ducks. Why? I don't fucking know, I think someone thought this was fucking hilarious, but it completely shits on the "serious business" mood that the rest of the world is going for.

It's because swedes are intensely fascinated by Donald Duck, Duck Tales, and Scrooge McDuck.


I would rather have ducks than gnomes

Are there ducktits in Glorantha? I will reserve my judgement on the sentient duck race until the ducktit status has been either refuted or confirmed.

Look, honestly, anthropomorphic ducks is really no worse than lizardfolk, gnolls, minotaurs, centaurs or any of a number of classic D&D creatures. They're a bit ridiculous, but if it weren't for the myth of one man eating specimen, minotaurs would be pretty ridiculous too.

OgreBattle wrote:It's because swedes are intensely fascinated by Donald Duck, Duck Tales, and Scrooge McDuck.

Seriously, Donald Duck (Kalle Anka) gets more votes in every Swedish election than like half the parties. Consistently. Every single time. Voting isn't even compulsory there, so it's not like here where you rock up to avoid the small fine and just draw a penis on the ballot paper, they decide they really want to go and vote for Donald Duck. Jesus gets a tiny handful of votes, about as many as Robin Hood. Next is Hitler, more popular than either. Batman gets more than all of those combined, but seriously, Donald Duck is the big one. If a party could actually get Donald Duck on board (which would be difficult to say the least), they would win the elections for ever.

Koumei wrote:

OgreBattle wrote:It's because swedes are intensely fascinated by Donald Duck, Duck Tales, and Scrooge McDuck.

Seriously, Donald Duck (Kalle Anka) gets more votes in every Swedish election than like half the parties. Consistently. Every single time. Voting isn't even compulsory there, so it's not like here where you rock up to avoid the small fine and just draw a penis on the ballot paper, they decide they really want to go and vote for Donald Duck. Jesus gets a tiny handful of votes, about as many as Robin Hood. Next is Hitler, more popular than either. Batman gets more than all of those combined, but seriously, Donald Duck is the big one. If a party could actually get Donald Duck on board (which would be difficult to say the least), they would win the elections for ever.

They could just get their candidate to change their name to Kalle Anka.

Oh man... I prefer the old cover, the one without shirtless ducks with defined pectorals and six-packs hahah

Incredible how Pipes make everything better. I would play with this guy.




I doubt a pipe would do any good for this fella, though.

Are you kidding? A pipe would complete a Giff. Giffs are fucking awesome.