If RuneQuest is a game about exploring the physical world of Glorantha, HeroQuest is a game about exploring Glorantha’s living mythology.

The history of HeroQuest (previously Hero Wars) is a bit convoluted (it isn’t connected to the Milton Bradley board game in any way) and I will cover it at a later date. For now, know this: for decades, Stafford wanted to develop an RPG that could tackle the exploration of Gloranthan mythology known as heroquesting. HeroQuest Glorantha, designed by Robin D. Laws, is that game.

HeroQuest is a narrative game focused on quick, collaborative resolutions of conflict. Your characters are defined by key words with a numerical rating that get added to die used in contests. Keywords are inherently improvisational – if you have the keyword “soldier,” you can apply that to any contest the involves the skills you successfully argue are part of that profession, like swordplay or horse riding. Because of this, the game easily scales from personal conflicts like man-to-man combat to large scale military battles to cosmic events while keeping resolution a simple die roll.

The omission of heroquesting, the practice of magically taking the role of gods outside of time to re-enact mythological events of importance in order to bring powerful magic back to the material world, from the original RuneQuest is at once strange and understandable. Strange, because heroquesting is integral to how Glorantha works – groups of all kinds do it regularly in order to survive. Understandable, because a system simulating the real world is ill-suited for metaphysical explorations. HeroQuest, though perhaps a bit hard to grok, is a key tool for understanding the spiritual ideas Stafford baked into Glorantha.