Opinions wanted on some RQIII supliments

[tal]

Can anyone give me their oppinion of the RQ III supliments Gloranthan Bestiary and Elder Secrets? Are they essential, nice to have, so so, or a waste of time to track down?

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Can't comment on Elder Secrets, I don't have it. Gloranthan Bestiary is so-so at best; I much prefer the treatment in the RQ2 book (which has Dragonewts!)

[Trifletraxor]

Originally Posted by tal

Can anyone give me their oppinion of the RQ III supliments Gloranthan Bestiary and Elder Secrets? Are they essential, nice to have, so so, or a waste of time to track down?

The Gloranthan Bestiary is filled with nice monsters, definitely worth having. Can be found both on eBay and eMule. Elder secrets is essential for a Gloranthan game, and a nice supplement if you play using RQ3 creatures in other settings.

SGL.

[Shaira]

Neither of the supplements are essential for Gloranthan gaming, though they're clearly nice-to-have. A large proportion of the Bestiary is critters from Pamaltela, which means either you don't use them unless your game goes to Pamaltela, or you fudge and use the critters in unusual circumstances in Genertela. Nice to see stats for Slarges, though! The rest of the critters were initially valuable for their RQ3 writeups, as prior to the Bestiary many monsters had only existed with RQ2 stats and had to be converted by GMs. Now that's a moot point - if you have RQ2, MRQ Monsters, etc, you may find you already have lots of the critters already available. Personally, I'd get it (price depending, of course) - just for Gloranthan critter completeness.

Elder Secrets is remarkable for the appalling artwork and some really good content. The Secrets book itself contains some excellent essays, though these days you might find a lot of it published elsewhere (GSA, the HQ Glorantha Book, etc). The Elder Races book again contains writeups of Trolls, Elves, Dragonewts, and some cults, etc, which you might find elsewhere, although there are some tidbits which you won't find anywhere else. It's certainly useful for a writeup of how Gloranthan metals and crystals (especially iron) *should* work. I'd grab it, again price depending.

Incidentally, have you looked at some of the HQ books, in particular Anaxial's Roster and Introduction to Glorantha? You'd have to more or less write your own stats for the monsters in Anaxials, but it's v. good Gloranthan info.

Cheers,

Sarah

[tal]

Thanks everyone!

[soltakss]

A bit late, but yesterday (8th March) was International Women's Day and it was more than my life's worth to go on the PC.

Elder Secrets is good, lots of information about some of the Elder Races. It also has an updated Cacodemon cult with Vomit Acid, Fiends and stats for Cacodemon himself. It also covers Mostali, Aldryami, Uz, Baboons, Beast men, Centaurs, Giants, Grotarons, Jelmre, Keets, Luatha, Ludoch, Motocanth, Newtlings, Ogres, Slarges, Timinits, Tusk Riders, Voralans, Waertagi, Wind Children, Dragonewts, Dinosaurs, Magisaurs, Wyverns. Wyrms, Stoorworms, Cult of the Bloody Tusk and Cacodemon. There are stats for Cacodemon, The Crimson Bat, Cwim, The Mother of Monsters, the Hydra of Dragon Pass, The Chaos Gaggle and a Roc. Theer is a bestiary that contains Amphisboena, Catoblepas, Hippogriff, Nasobeme and Redcap. It also covers inaccessible areas of Glorantha and several secrets that are not covered anywhere else, to my knowledge.

Gloranthan Bestiary has a few cult outlines that aren't found anywhere else (e.g. Kaarg) and a lot of creatures in RQ3 format. Most of these were in the RQ2 Gateway Bestiary and other RQ2 products, but they were updated for RQ3.

Of the two, Gloranthan Bestiary is probably the more useful as it has all the common creatures that you would need stats for. Elder Secrets is the more interesting of the two, however.

There are PDFs knocking around of these and all the other RQ2/RQ3 products, if you can get hold of them. They also appear fairly regularly in games shops and at conventions. You can get them on eBay as well, or so I am told.

[tal]

Soltakss,
Thanks, I got Elder secrets off ebay and am waiting for it to arrive. Waiting for the Bestiary to show up on Ebay(not a real fan of PDF's) for a decent price.

[sinisalo]

Elder Secrets is a must-have imho. That one page article on heroquesting kept me running my game for about 10 years!

[FunGuyFromYuggoth]

Both are excellent. Happy hunting.

[tal]

Found them both. Thanks everyone.