A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Griffin Mountain

Griffin Mountain by Rudy Kraft, Jennell Jaquays and Greg Stafford is a role playing game supplement published by Chaosium Inc. for use with RuneQuest.

The supplement is available as a 226-page PDF from DriveThruRPG for $15, though it was purchased at a reduced price during a sale. Two pages are the front and rear covers, two the front matter, one the Table of Contents and six the Index. There are also three supplementary PDFs.

Memories has recollections from one of the original designers and another explaining that this supplement doesn’t bear much similarity to the RuneQuest 3 Griffin Island that followed. It also says it contains all the original RuneQuest 2 material, as well as some supplementary material created as magazine articles and some RQ3 maps.

The Introductions have three introductions from the original designers, followed by a section on how to read the stats.

Chapter I: Geography & History starts by looking at Glorantha itself, giving an overview of its history and geography. It then looks at the continent that the adventure is set on, followed by the neighbouring lands to the regions in the supplement. This is followed by some common knowledge of Balazar, the Elder Wilds and the Elf Sea, that’s known to citizens of a number of lands and is easy enough to gather from various sources. Weather in Balazar is covered, followed by a history of the land. Finally, Scenarios has a number of different adventure hooks that could be used as reasons for the characters to be heading into the region.

Chapter II: Balazar starts by looking at the Balazarings. There are three tribes, which are named for the three rival citadels, and they are representative of the hunter-gatherer societies of the region. The tribes are organised into clans and a d20 table gives the clans and their enemy clans. The intensity of dislike between clans can vary. The social order of the tribes is given and there’s a table to determine the size of a hunting party. The tribes are not much good in formal battle, but in their home territory they are good at ambushes and hit and run tactics, though their weapons are primitive. The region has a native tongue, though some others may be spoken. A map of the area is given. Dogs are important to the tribes, and two types with stats are given, along with rules for them in combat, training dogs and two skills related to understanding and communicating with animals. There are some rules on creating Balazaring player characters, which generally follow the normal method with some differences. Following this are details on religions, which fall into two categories, the indigenous ones and those brought by foreigners. Most of them are given an overview, but two are covered in detail in the same way as they are in Cults of Prax. Finally, there are scenarios for introducing players or new referees to a campaign game.

Chapter III: Citadels starts with some background on the citadels, which are small and squalid rather than being magnificent castles. There are special encounters to have in the citadels, being gangs of local children and some described individual NPCs. some of whom could work for providing adventure hooks. A brief section covers inns & taverns, with two tables to roll on for people to meet in them.

Each of the three citadels is then described. Their history and population are given, and what the characters will encounter when arriving at each citadel, as well as guards, authority, attitude to troublemakers, meeting the king and encounters. There are details on some important NPCs, an encounter table for each citadel, maps of each citadel with various locations detailed, some guards of which are covered in more detail and include maps.

Chapter IV: Leaders looks at the major NPCs that can be encountered. Important NPCs are detailed, along with their stats for the most important or details of which standard stats to use for those of lesser importance, divided up into the different citadels and groups, as well as a couple of major NPCs that do not belong to particular groups.

The NPC Record Form has a blank form for recording important details for RuneQuest NPCs together with an explanation of how to use it.

Scenarios has a number of different adventure hooks. It starts with tasks, many of which are similar though with different employers and slightly different things to do. There are then some more detailed hooks and finally Crypt of Elkoi, which can be adapted to the other two citadels, which describes a crypt in the citadel where a valuable item could be recovered.

Chapter V: Caravans starts by looking at travel and what the citadels trade in. The distance and travel times between different places is covered, when local caravans are expected and the Lunar supply caravans. There is also a list of the regular caravans to the three citadels in different seasons. Most trade is done by barter, rather than exchange of money, and Joh Mith’s buying prices – he runs a regular caravan – and prices for goods for sale are given.

Joh Mith’s caravan is covered with details on important NPCs in it as well as his travel Routes. There are also details of some other caravans that travel the region. Finally, there are a number of caravan related scenarios.

Chapter VI: Information has things that can be found out about the land. It starts with what the Balazarings know about various places, with a brief paragraph on each. This would be known by the natives, some of the foreigners who live in the land or some well-informed Lunar sources. The Elder Wilds are covered in a similar way, except that much of the region is left for the GM to design. There is also a map of the area.

Information can be bought, from a number of different sources. Prices are given for getting standard information from Broos, dwarves, Dykene, Elkoi, elves, Trilus and trolls, followed by a list of sources of information divided by subject. After this is information that can be obtained from specific sources, divided by source and the different pieces of information and cost of such. Different sources will know different things, and are not necessarily accurate.

Maps are something else that can be bought. These range from government issue maps, available in different parts of the book, hand-made maps, available to print off in this section, and verbal descriptions. Each maps has information given on it. There is a list of rumours, both true and false, that can be obtained, with modifiers for getting it, and finally some scenarios, one for getting information, the other for dealing with con men.

Chapter VII: Encounters starts with some details on terrain and movement through it, including crossing rivers. Next there is a reaction table showing how different groups, characters and creatures react to each other, then an encounter table showing which of the different encounters can happen in different regions, with a d100 roll to determine such. Most of the chapter is taken up by 25 different encounters of various types, along with stats. Some of the encounters can be with variants of the groups, whilst others are more straightforward. More complex encounters explain how the different characters in a group react to those met. Though stats take up a good portion of every encounter description, more details on each for the intelligent beings encountered is also included.

Chapter VIII: Points of Interest covers nine different places of interest. They have specific or general locations for which they were originally designed, but in some cases, GMs can determine the exact location following some guidelines given. Each place is then covered, with maps, stats and details as appropriate; most of them are potentially dangerous places, though a couple can be places to rest and resupply.

Griffin Mountain: A Look Inside looks at the design processes used to make Griffin Mountain, and to make it realistic – excluding the fantasy aspects, of course – and a suitable location for starting adventurers to be based, and also one, given the low population, where they could meet the local movers and shakers and make a difference to the region.

Extroduction to Griffin Mountain has details on how to run a campaign in the region and the types that can be run, with an example.

Player Handouts is a 12-page PDF of material to be given to the players.

Elder Wilds is a one-page PDF having a map of the region.

Balazar Map is a one-page PDF with a map of the Balazar region.

Griffin Mountain in Review

The PDF is bookmarked, with major and minor sections linked, though not to the depth they could have been. The Table of Contents is to a similar level of depth and is hyperlinked. The Index is more thorough and is hyperlinked. Navigation is good. The text maintains a two-column format and some errors were noticed. There are a variety of black and white illustrations and maps, which were probably custom for the original supplement.

The book was designed to be all that was really needed, along with the rules, to run a campaign in the region, though Cults of Prax is stated to be useful. As such, it contains quite a lot of material and is definitely suited for sandbox style play. There are plenty of details on important locations and NPCs, the culture of the Balazarings and enough material to keep a good-sized game going, yet given the region is still large, albeit largely underpopulated, there are plenty of places where GMs can add their own touches to it. Given the nature of the game, a substantial chunk of the book is taken up by statistics; a single NPC can have enough associated spirits that their stat box is comparatively huge.

Griffin Mountain is indeed a major resource for GMs to run various different types of adventures and campaigns, though there aren’t really any major dungeon-style locations to be found; there are some fairly small places that nearly qualify, but nothing large. With the material given, even without expanding it, games going on for some time could be run in it. Griffin Mountain is a good campaign supplement for RuneQuest and it can be found by clicking here.