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Hero Wars: Roleplaying in Glorantha
Across Glorantha heroes prepare for the greatest cataclysm that the world has ever seen. Hero Roleplaying in Glorantha brings the players into the action at any level of from clan warrior to hero or even demigod. Take part in mythic quests on the hero plane, invoke the power of the gods, control spirits, or force the very laws of nature to obey your command. This is the Hero Wars. Hero Wars is a roleplaying game where players create imaginary characters who will struggle with gods and demons in the fabulous world of Glorantha. A Narrator provides the plot, animates the population of the world, and provides the challenges for heroes to overcome. This book is a complete game including everything (except the dice) that a player needs to create a colorful magical character and join in the epic struggle.
- GenresRole Playing Games
253 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2000
8 people want to read
About the author
Robin D. Laws
147 books195 followersWriter and game designer Robin D. Laws brought you such roleplaying games as Ashen Stars, The Esoterrorists, The Dying Earth, Heroquest and Feng Shui. He is the author of seven novels, most recently The Worldwound Gambit from Paizo. For Robin's much-praised works of gaming history and analysis, see Hamlet's Hit Points, Robin's Laws of Game Mastering and 40 Years of Gen Con.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 11, 2018
Hero Wars, published in 2000 and designed by Robin Laws, is the core book of a roleplaying game set in Greg Stafford’s Glorantha. Reading this book is my first foray into Glorantha.
According to Shannon Appelcline, in his Designers & Dragons: The ‘00s, the publishing of the book was rushed because the funding, which was provided directly by the fans, was running out. In this first edition, that rush is apparent.
To be clear, the design, the game itself was not rushed, only the presentation of that game was. Information is presented in less-than-clear order, reference charts are scattered throughout the text, like information is not grouped together, and most painfully, there is no index to help you find your way in the book, making it useless as a reference book during play.
And there is a lot of information in this book. You learn not only how to make characters and how the core mechanic works, but because characters are part of already developed fictional communities in Glorantha, and since you need to understand those cultures in order to know which “keywords” apply to your character, the book provides you with necessary information about Orlanthi culture, Lunar culture, the pantheons of gods worshipped by both cultures, and the nature of three different kind of magic beyond the theism of the central cultures in the book. Moreover, the region of Glorantha focused on in the book is in a time of conflict, so the nature, history, and key players of the conflict need to be detailed as well.
For a first-time reader like me, that’s a lot of information to juggle. And if you wish to understand the game, you need to get a grip on that information because the mechanics of the game are, rightly, intimately bound up with the specifics of the game world.
I ended up reading the book fully through twice, then reading the Narrator’s Book, which is the companion instruction book for the game, focusing on the GM’s function. Then I read Rebel Thunder: Player’s Book for Orlanthi Barbarians and Sartar Rising: Barbarian Adventures, which are a player’s handbook of the Orlanthi culture and a setting book for the Orlanthi people of Dragon Pass. I looked through Anaxial’s Roster: The Creatures of Glorantha, a kind of monster manual; Storm Tribe: The Cults of Sartar, a handbook on the religion of the Orlanthi people; and Sartar Rising, Volume II: Orlanth is Dead, the second campaign book, before coming back and rereading this core book. No one needs to go that deep to play the game, but the texts are all interrelated in a way that made me feel like I needed each text to fully grasp the workings and the intent of the game. (As a selling technique, it’s a very clever way to integrate supplementary material foundationally with the text.)
My point is only that learning the game from this text takes work and determination, but then, that’s why they created a second edition.
The core mechanics of the game is clever and smart, providing a single mechanic to resolve conflict of any sort, be it combat, seduction, climbing, singing, performing rituals, or anything else your character might do. The game involves everything from gods and god-like forces to mere mortals, and the mechanics scale to cover that whole range of actions, and it does it all with each player rolling no more than a single d20. It’s both impressive and cool.
Through the course of a campaign—and the game is really designed for campaign play—characters can grow and develop from local nobodies to practically god-like heroes. I’ll discuss campaigns more in my brief reviews of Narrator’s Book, Sartar Rising: Barbarian Adventures, and Sartar Rising, Volume II: Orlanth is Dead.
Religion is central to the game, to Glorantha, and to the mechanics. Magic is everywhere in Glorantha, and the root of magic is in religion. There are four different kinds of religion and their corresponding magic in the game: theism, sorcery, animism, and mysticism. Interestingly, each cosmological view is true and coexisting in Glorantha, and the four do not butt up against each other or challenge each other. The different systems and how they work are fully considered and thorough throughout the various books. That too is impressive.
Along with religion, mythology plays a central role in the setting, as each religion relies on mythology to understand the world and activate their magic. For example, to perform a ritual in the theistic culture, the people reenact mythologies to channel the power from the plane of the gods to the human realm.
Hero Wars is supposed to include “everything (except the dice) that a player needs” to play according to the back of the book, but that’s not really true. At minimum, you’ll want the Narrator’s Book, so I’ll continue my thoughts in the review of that book.
According to Shannon Appelcline, in his Designers & Dragons: The ‘00s, the publishing of the book was rushed because the funding, which was provided directly by the fans, was running out. In this first edition, that rush is apparent.
To be clear, the design, the game itself was not rushed, only the presentation of that game was. Information is presented in less-than-clear order, reference charts are scattered throughout the text, like information is not grouped together, and most painfully, there is no index to help you find your way in the book, making it useless as a reference book during play.
And there is a lot of information in this book. You learn not only how to make characters and how the core mechanic works, but because characters are part of already developed fictional communities in Glorantha, and since you need to understand those cultures in order to know which “keywords” apply to your character, the book provides you with necessary information about Orlanthi culture, Lunar culture, the pantheons of gods worshipped by both cultures, and the nature of three different kind of magic beyond the theism of the central cultures in the book. Moreover, the region of Glorantha focused on in the book is in a time of conflict, so the nature, history, and key players of the conflict need to be detailed as well.
For a first-time reader like me, that’s a lot of information to juggle. And if you wish to understand the game, you need to get a grip on that information because the mechanics of the game are, rightly, intimately bound up with the specifics of the game world.
I ended up reading the book fully through twice, then reading the Narrator’s Book, which is the companion instruction book for the game, focusing on the GM’s function. Then I read Rebel Thunder: Player’s Book for Orlanthi Barbarians and Sartar Rising: Barbarian Adventures, which are a player’s handbook of the Orlanthi culture and a setting book for the Orlanthi people of Dragon Pass. I looked through Anaxial’s Roster: The Creatures of Glorantha, a kind of monster manual; Storm Tribe: The Cults of Sartar, a handbook on the religion of the Orlanthi people; and Sartar Rising, Volume II: Orlanth is Dead, the second campaign book, before coming back and rereading this core book. No one needs to go that deep to play the game, but the texts are all interrelated in a way that made me feel like I needed each text to fully grasp the workings and the intent of the game. (As a selling technique, it’s a very clever way to integrate supplementary material foundationally with the text.)
My point is only that learning the game from this text takes work and determination, but then, that’s why they created a second edition.
The core mechanics of the game is clever and smart, providing a single mechanic to resolve conflict of any sort, be it combat, seduction, climbing, singing, performing rituals, or anything else your character might do. The game involves everything from gods and god-like forces to mere mortals, and the mechanics scale to cover that whole range of actions, and it does it all with each player rolling no more than a single d20. It’s both impressive and cool.
Through the course of a campaign—and the game is really designed for campaign play—characters can grow and develop from local nobodies to practically god-like heroes. I’ll discuss campaigns more in my brief reviews of Narrator’s Book, Sartar Rising: Barbarian Adventures, and Sartar Rising, Volume II: Orlanth is Dead.
Religion is central to the game, to Glorantha, and to the mechanics. Magic is everywhere in Glorantha, and the root of magic is in religion. There are four different kinds of religion and their corresponding magic in the game: theism, sorcery, animism, and mysticism. Interestingly, each cosmological view is true and coexisting in Glorantha, and the four do not butt up against each other or challenge each other. The different systems and how they work are fully considered and thorough throughout the various books. That too is impressive.
Along with religion, mythology plays a central role in the setting, as each religion relies on mythology to understand the world and activate their magic. For example, to perform a ritual in the theistic culture, the people reenact mythologies to channel the power from the plane of the gods to the human realm.
Hero Wars is supposed to include “everything (except the dice) that a player needs” to play according to the back of the book, but that’s not really true. At minimum, you’ll want the Narrator’s Book, so I’ll continue my thoughts in the review of that book.
Displaying 1 of 1 review