Introduction and a caveat
Thunder Rebels is the first culture specific sourcebook for the Hero Wars/ Glorantha line by Issaries Inc. Its subtitle "Player's Book for Orlanthi Barbarians" summarizes its purpose and target audience. It is aimed at players of Hero Wars who want to portray a member of the Orlanthi culture (a Heortling), which is probably the most widely known and most often played human culture of the Gloranthan world.
The book is also the first complete product of the Hero Wars/Glorantha line that I have read. My knowledge of the Hero Wars rules is limited to the overview version available from the Issaries website and the facts I have learned from several reviews. I have a fairly good knowledge of the old Avalon Hill/ Chaosium products though and have been interested in the world of Glorantha for a long time. As Thunder Rebels is not "rules-heavy" that should give me enough knowledge to provide an acceptable review.
I will not give much background information about Glorantha in this review. Instead I recommend that those who don't know much about the world read the excellent info available on the net:
http://www.glorantha.com/
http://www.pensee.com/dunham/glorantha.html
Overview
As I sit here and type I try to think of something to compare Thunder Rebels to - something that makes it fit into a category. But I realize there really is not anything like that. The book does not lend itself to categorization. It describes a single culture in incredible detail, more detail than I have ever seen in an RPG book before. I was tempted to say it read like an anthropology text, but it does not. It describes too much from a Gloranthan viewpoint for that. Perhaps it reads like an anthropology text written by a Gloranthan scholar. And this wealth of detail covers only the mainstream culture. The book states explicitly that its generalizations cover only about 85% of the Orlanthi populace. The rest will be dealt with in "Cults of Sartar", another 256-page sourcebook.
The title of that book is telling: "cult" affiliation is the dividing line between mainstream and minority culture and religion plays the central role within Orlanthi culture and Thunder Rebels. The gods, their presence, the cults and peoples' beliefs shape both the culture and the book into a coherent whole. This is only "realistic" for a world where the gods are real and present - and defines much of Glorantha's flavour - but may turn off those who like to gloss over religion in their games.
The amount of detail and the book's way of presenting it from within the culture obviously caters to deep-roleplaying and simulationist gaming. Those who prefer monster bashing and treasure hunting should not expect much from this book. Those who like to immerse themselves in their character and his or her surroundings are the real target audience and I will try to give them an overview of what to find in this book.
Format, Layout and Style
Thunder Rebels is a softcover in a relatively uncommon format for an RPG book: half-letter. It is easy to get used to this size though, since it makes it easier to carry the book around and more comfortable to read snuggled in a chair somewhere. On the downside space for larger illustrations and especially maps is reduced by half. Not so nice is the font used for narratives within the text - I find it rather hard to read. Add the standard font and another one used for the headings, and this makes three different fonts within the text. Together with a large number of uses for italics and boldface, many lists and numerous boxed texts, they make the whole book appear cluttered and disorganized. The font used for narratives and myths was especially hard to read. I cannot really comment on how easy it is to find something in the book though, as I have not used it for gaming. At least it contains an index. Proofreading seems to have been thorough. I found few errors or spelling mistakes. A list of errata is available from the Hero War's website at: http://www.herowars.com/hw/thunder_errata.html
The cover illustration by Stefano Gaudiano nicely captures the heroic, magic-rich style of Glorantha without being quite as garish and comic-like as the Glorantha and Hero Wars covers. I hope to see more of his art. Interior is relatively sparse, but very well done. Most is either character depictions - I especially like the Lunar troop types - or icons of Orlanthi gods. The latter are all in the same style and provide a nice glimpse of original Orlanthi art. The only illustrations I find atrocious are the maps. They are a clutter of different fonts and ugly fill styles. Their information content is very low. But the again, I love good and beautiful maps. Others might care less about this.
So far the softcover binding of the book has held up well the in face of an extended holiday trip and being read on the plane, in the car and on the beach.
Chapter-by-Chapter Reference
Thunder Rebels is divided into an introduction, eight chapters that cover the breadth of the Orlanthi setting, and an index. The main headings don't say much about the actual contents of the chapters - most of the time you have to look at the sub-headings to get a better clue of the topics: The People of the Storm, Society, Religion, Magic, Worlds, Character Creation, Ernalda and Orlanth.
The introduction contains a quick-reference for beginning role-players and points newcomers to Glorantha to the most accessible and important parts of the book. These are scattered throughout the book, making it clear that it is aimed more at veterans of roleplaying in Glorantha than at newbies. The intro is completed by some general guidelines on using the book and the important caveat that it covers the majority of Orlanthi culture, but not all of it.
The Heortling Way - The People of the Storm (8 pages)
The first chapter looks at the Heortling people (Orlanthi) from the perspective of one of their own. In the tradition of Chaosium's RQ3 material, a clan member answers questions like "Where do we live?", "Where do we come from?" and "What makes us special?". Apart from the facts that the whole chapter is in the hard-to-read font mentioned earlier and contains the first of the ugly maps, it made for an entertaining introduction into the topic of the second chapter:
Inside Heort's Hall - Heortling Society (38 pages)
The detailed description of the setting begins with a look at the structure of Heortling society, from the uppermost level (kingship) to the lowest (the hearth), and continues to topics like Law and Justice, Warfare and Surrounding Lands and Peoples. Interspersed are several paragraphs on other aspects and customs like wergild and hospitality. Almost like an afterthought several paragraphs on the geography of Dragon Pass and Heortland are tugged into the end of the chapter.
The description of society is dense and artfully combines Nordic and Germanic bits with fantastical ones into a coherent whole. Personally I would have liked a more detailed description of the geography, but as Thunder Rebels is a cultural sourcebook this can perhaps be forgiven.
The Storm Tribe - The Religion of the Heortlings (35 pages)
Despite being a few pages shorter than the previous one, I consider this chapter - together with the next one - the heart of the book. It details the religious customs of the Heortlings. As it is fitting for the Glorantha setting their relationship to the gods is both very intense and based on mutual obligations. As the gods are real and their manifestations form an integral part of the world, Heortling worship is less abstract worship than continuous dealing and bargaining with the divine. In my opinion the Glorantha model, and in this case the Heortling one, is one the most convincing ever devised for a fantasy world where gods are real and depend on their human worshippers.
The chapter covers the roles of the Heortling within their religion (worshippers, initiates, priests), divination, divine retribution and other topics. All the gods of the pantheon are listed in a short format, but only the two most important ones - Orlanth and Ernalda - are given greater detail in a later chapter of the book. All the other gods and their cults are described in the companion volume "Cults of Sartar".
Call the Lightning - Magic among the Heortlings (37 pages)
The division between the last chapter and this one seems to me largely artificial. Far from being a list of available spells "Call the Lightning" covers the manifestation of divine power on the mundane plane (the physical world). This includes not only spiritual guardians of the community (called wyter) and holy places, but also seasons, holidays and the weather. The supernatural is so intricately interwoven with the natural, that the two become an inseparable and intriguing whole.
The previous chapter and this one highlight both the strengths and the weakness of the Gloranthan setting. It is one of the few that integrate the fantastic almost seamlessly into the mundane - Glorantha is certainly no "medieval Europe with magic". At the same time this makes the setting very alien and hard to approach for newcomers. It is easy to feel intimidated by the complexity of the setting.
Inside Orlanth's Hall - Heortling Worlds (21 pages)
Nowhere is this strangeness more apparent than in this chapter. Which other roleplaying settings describes "worlds" of one of its cultures? In Glorantha the homes of the gods, the myths and history can all be reached on a semi-regular basis by so-called heroquests, ceremonial re-enactments of the deeds of the gods. The time and place of those myths become "real" for the participants and by completing the quests they both strengthen the gods and themselves.
Consequently a sourcebook on Heortling culture has to detail these mythical "worlds". The chapter does this by describing the home of the storm gods (Orlanth's pantheon), the bygone ages of history and the deeds of the gods.
I am not even sure I have summed up the concept of the heroquest correctly, and I imagine it might prove strange and confusing to some. But heroquesting and many of the other religious concepts are certainly explained in more details in the basic books "Hero Wars" and "Glorantha".
Become the Thunder - Character Generation (23 pages)
After presenting the Heortling society Thunder Rebels naturally provides the system specific information for creating a character. This chapter is still mainly flowing text, contains almost no "numbers" and is perfectly understandable without having read the rules. This attests that the Hero Wars rules - at least those for creating characters - are very well integrated into the setting.
Defining characters in Hero Wars works with so-called "keywords", which define a PC or NPC both rules-wise and setting-wise. This chapter contains the keywords necessary to play a detailed Heortling character.
Ernalda and Orlanth (30 and 40 pages respectively)
Thunder Rebels is completed by the detailed description of the culture's two major gods and their cults: Ernalda and Orlanth. The two form a familiar male-female, active-passive, ying-yang counterpart and their followers make up something like 85% of the Heortling population. Their functions are manifold and they have a variety of subcults, so that enough diversity is provided to customize the religious side of a character.
The chapter contains a lot of magical effects and secrets of the cults, which together form a sort of spell list - or something as close to a spell list as magic in Thunder Rebels and Glorantha gets.
Conclusion
Thunder Rebels presents an incredible wealth of detail on a single Gloranthan culture - the Heortlings. The authors' love of the setting speaks from every single line of the book and makes it a very enjoyable read. The book tries to present the information in an approachable and digestible manner, but the sheer amount of information and the long history of the Glorantha setting work against this goal. It is difficult to imagine that a single reading of the book would let a player confidently portray an Orlanthi, a fact that the book states itself. It recommends taking the material one step at a time and getting accustomed to the setting slowly.
For the avid Glorantha GM or the player who wants to play an Orlanthi barbarian, this book is certainly indispensable. Most other gamers will probably pass it by - at least the casual ones. I would recommend it to another group though - anyone who wants to see an original, superbly crafted and VERY fantastical setting.
My ratings
I give Thunder Rebels a five in substance. I was tempted to make it only a four, because the amount of material makes it a bit hard to swallow. But this would have been unfair, as I would not want to miss anything from the book. Style gets only a three though, especially for the hard to read font and the ugly maps.
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