#glorantha

a commission for a friend! featuring his vision of Ralzakark from Glorantha, the king of the beastfolk

Character Designs for HeroQuest Glorantha

By Steve Perrin, Ray Turney, Steve Henderson, and Warren James

The grand daddy of d% based RPGs, RuneQuest is a fantasy role-playing set in Greg Stafford's original fantasy setting of Glorantha and the game that would serve as the basis for Chaosium's Basic Roleplaying system that powers games such as Call of Cthulhu and King Arthur Pendragon.

Glorantha is a bronze age setting that operates on mythic logic: the world is still young, since time only began relatively recently as a result of a cataclysmic theomachy, and many of the founding myths that shape the world are not just myths but the literal truth. The Hero Wars time period of at least the first and second editions of the game was centered largely on the region of Dragon Pass, which also appeared in the cool as hell video game King of Dragon Pass.

As a game RuneQuest is clearly a reaction to early Dungeons & Dragons in many ways: characters advance organically by training or learning skills through use, magic isn't arbitrarily restricted by "class," and combat is notably less abstract and more blow-by-blow than in D&D. There is also an attempt to integrate the setting very strongly with the mechanics, aptly demonstrated by the various organizations and cults characters can join to unlock new avenues of advancement.