From: bmason@kean.ucs.mun.ca
Date: Thu 17 May 1990 - 09:56:33 EEST
A REVIEW OF _ELDER SECRETS_
===========================
Authors: Greg Stafford and Sandy Petersen Reviewby Bruce L. Mason (bmason@kean.ucs.mun.ca)
_Elder Secrets of Glorantha_ is the new biggy from The Chaosium,
detailing, mainly, the 4 major ``elder races'' of Glorantha --- the
elves, trolls, dwarves and dragonewts. It's boxed, retails for $20
and contains two books (_The Secrets Book_ 50 pages; Elder Races Book_
120 pages) and a half-size map showing the major distributions of the
elder races. The map is only marginally useful and the books are
Avalon Hill's usual shoddy affairs and will probably fall to pieces
before the year's out.
Having got the usual gripes off my chest, to ES itself. The concept
is a bit of a mish-mash, featuring a lot of the stuff that got left out
when the planned _World of Glorantha_ supplement got broken into
different pieces. Some of it is old stuff updated, some of it is
new, and some of it is new stuff reprinted. The _Secrets Book_ is a
pot-pourri of the odd and downright weird and even has a page on
HeroQuesting. The _Elder Races_ book gives details on the elves,
dwarves and trolls in order to make them usable as player-characters.
No details on Dragonewts cause they're still N.P.C.s. So the
_Secret's Book_ first.
It is formed of many parts. The book starts with a very odd section called ``Inaccessible Glorantha'' which gives brief descriptions of many of the most interesting areas of Glorantha and then warns G.M's not to set campaigns in any of them. Given that this includes Pavis, Dagori Inkarth and so on I think that this statement should be taken with a grain of salt. The Chaosium claims that this injunction is there because they intend to publish supplements dealing with all these areas. Excuse me whilst I duck some flying pigs...
[Perhaps it's not too much to hope that an updated Pavis will be out in the not-too-distant future? -Ed]
The rest of the book is less schizophrenic and is sort of a monsters
and magic items manual. First off are the ``unique mysteries'' of
Glorantha, detailing places such as Hell's Crack and Harajallenburg
--- the walking fort. It's classic Chaosium stuff with that
wonderful, warped Californian concept of weirdness. Each one of these
mysteries has enough about it to create a campaign around. Next we
get the secrets of Dragonkind. This is basically reprinted stuff from
_Wyrm's Footnotes_ with some extra goodies about the important
draconic N.P.C's in Glorantha. All neat stuff. The ``Monsters and
Terrors'' section provides various messy ways to slaughter
player-characters. The monsters function as addenda to the
_Gloranthan Bestiary_ and includes new species such as the Nasobeme,
some sort of creature that bounces along on its *four* noses. Weird,
man. The terrors are individual monsters that are there to gross out
the players. Our old friend the Crimson bat is back, and boy is it
tough these days. CON 1200. Apparently it has 1640FPs though what GM
would be mad enough to dock its FPs I don't know. ``OK. End of the
melee round. Every one lose an fp. Crimson Bat loses one too.'' We
also get stats for the Hydra of Dragon pass, Cwim (don't ask) and The
Mother of Monsters. The Mother of Monsters could quite happily eat
the Crimson Bat. You want gross you got it. At long last RQ can have
its own version of Godzilla versus the Smog Monster.
More good stuff in the magical geology of Glorantha that at long last gives the RQ3 versions of rune metals, magic crystals and truestone. The book is finished off with a star map of the heavens and a look at the weather patterns. Finally on the last page we have the secrets of HeroQuesting. Bad news I'm afraid as it does no more than tell us, yet again, that Arkat discovered comparative HeroQuesting and that it's time for the Hero Wars. Worst kept secret in Glorantha these days.
About half of the _Elder Races_ book is taken up with descriptions of the elves, dwarves and trolls. Each species is presented in a set formula. The mythical and historical past is given. The current regions of origin listed (in the same way as done in _Glorantha: Genertela_) and various boxed items deal with interesting bits. Next the mechanics of creating player-characters are given as well as suggestions for how to create workable characters. Finally the rune cult of the species is presented (ie Mostal, Aldrya, and Kyger Litor) in the ``extended'' format. It's all great stuff.
The info. about the Mostali is reworked from the old _Different Worlds_
article. They were then an excellent satire and age has improved it.
The paragraph about mostali procreation is not to be missed. Character
generation allows for the play of apostate, heretic or orthodox
mostali. It is presented in such a way that I can see mostali
becoming popular P.C.s for a while because they are certainly a
challenge. The cult of Mostal includes some new spells not seen in
_Gods of Glorantha_ and hints that these are really only a partial
listing.
The Aldryami are still, basically, boring. There's some suitably weird stuff about Elven sexuality, but on the whole the work is pedestrian. It's not as hilariously satirical as the dwarven write-up nor is it as inventively appealing as the trolls. The character generation reflects this, being good at churning out elves with high bow skills and a certain lack of personality. The write-up of Aldrya has changed little since _Cults of Prax_ and contains nothing that wasn't in _Gods of Glorantha_.
The Troll write up has been lifted wholesale from _Troll Pak_ with a few new bits of boxed text. The character generation system is the same one with a paragraph moved. The cult of Kyger Litor has just been moved from one box to the other. So if you bought _Troll Pak_ then you get the same 20 or so pages again. This is now the third time in a row that the extended Kyger Litor write-up has been put in a supplement. It may be good, but it's not that good.
The rest of the book consists of descriptions of 19 of the minor elder races with the mermen left out. The characteristics aren't given, they're in the _Gloranthan Bestiary_ but brief descriptions are given of the social structures of the creatures as well as information on how to create player characters. This is about as in-depth as the style of info. given in the _Deluxe Creatures Book_. The best bits in this case are the cult write-ups of Cacodemon and The Bloody Tusk and the Chaosium really went to town on these. In keeping with the whole RQ3 ethos Cacodemon has been significantly upgraded. It turns out that all those RQ2 ogres weren't really summoning the Big C after all, just a type of lesser demon known as a fiend, of which Cacodemon controls several dozen. The new improved version will stomp all over any P.C.s and the fiends themselves would sorely trouble a party of rune-levels. The Bloody Cut must have been written the last time the Chaosium got a tax bill, cause boy is it sadistic. Let's hope the Moral Minority don't see this one. The ``Bloody Cut'' itself is a new skill that, opposed to the peaceful cut, is designed to cause the most painful death possible. When allied to the proper rune-magic this traps the spirit in the body. Now you can see why people really do hate the Tusk Riders as they've become thanatari on pig-back. Unfortunately the write-up for Thed, mentioned earlier in the book, doesn't turn up.
The book is finished with various scenario outlines featuring each of the species mentioned in the book. They're workmanlike rather than inspiring, although the lost-dwarves mini-campaign has some potential and some of the vignettes have their moments. (I like the philosophical Morocanth.) Mostly, however, they are of the form, ``Some broos are raiding local farmsteads and the PCs are offered lots of money to deal with them.'' Hardly scenarios.
Overall this set is excellent. If you missed out on the RQ2 stuff of many moons ago you're in for a real treat as Glorantha is still, in my opinion, the best campaign world ever published. If you do have the originals, then unless you've already made up your own versions of all the above and would find it hopelessly contradictory, you still can't afford to be without it. Now, at long last, the expansion of Gloranthan knowledge promised to us with the release of RQ3 has been delivered.
There are some gripes. The books are riddled with typos and this
habit of wholesale repetition of previous supplements, primarily the
trollstuff, gets annoying. I hope I don't have to pay for any more
copies of the Kyger Litor cult. This much I can cope with but
Dobyski's illustrations are another matter. It's not just that they're
bad, in fact it's some of the most pathetic attempts at drawing that
I've ever had to pay money for in my life --- his tusk-riders were
obviously farmed out to his 10 year old son. He has some talent at
drawing human figures but that's about it. However what really
annoyed me is that he comes damn close to plagiarism on several
occasions. There's a difference between being inspired by J. Kevin
Ramos's wonderful illos for _Gloranthan Bestiary_ and copying them dot
for dot: and Dobyski's on the wrong side of that difference. When he's
not copying Ramos he turns to Lisa Free. So far he has disgraced
_Troll Gods_ and now _Elder Secrets_, I hope the Chaosium have nothing
further to do with him.
In summary, if you run Glorantha then beg, borrow or buy a copy of this. Stick blank paper over the illos and correct the typos and you have a supplement almost up to the standard of _Glorantha: Genertela_ -- and that's a high standard. Now a little less background and a lot more scenarios might not go amiss. Hmmmn wonder if I can persuade the Chaosium to let me have mine as a review copy...
[Personally, I'd rather see a separate scenarios book, sold separately.
There's info that I would let players have access to in the books (if
they are playing particular races), but there's other stuff that
shouldn't be so free access.
It would also be nice to see everything put into a format where
things could be put into three ring binders, instead of having these
flimsy bound volumes and expanded write-ups of various things all over
the place. -Ed]
--Bruce.
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