Review of The Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass

The Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass by Martin Helsdon covers the armed forces of the Hero Wars in Greg Stafford's beloved fantasy world of Glorantha. All of them. Well, maybe there's an odd irregular duck militia or newtling tribe that's been left out, but essentially the author has tried to render every single notable combatant group in the alternative history of central Genertela, from roughly 1600 to 1630, complete "with details about their weapons, armor, cultures, gods, organization, fortifications and magic."

What's especially remarkable is that this is essentially a fan-created work, "one of the initial releases for the Jonstown Compendium, DriveThruRPG's new community content resource for Greg Stafford's world of Glorantha." As Chaosium proudly declares, "within 24 hours, A&E was the #2 best-selling title on DriveThruRPG and shortly after reached Silver Seller status." You can see why.

The Armies and Enemies of Dragon Pass weighs in at a gargantuan 382 pages. It seems like, not so much a labour of love, more a work of obsessive passion, pursued and finally consummated over years. Martin Helsdon not only researched and wrote the text, he also contributed many of the illustrations. The world of Glorantha is hardly short on source material, but even so, with all the other competing volumes on so many other topics related to the realm of Dragon Pass, this book stands alone in terms of its comprehensiveness and wealth of detail. It also takes the world of Glorantha right back to its roots in the original White Bear and Red Moon wargame. Martin Helsdon details the whole process in a fascinating interview with Chaosium from Dragonmeet, well worth looking up on the Chaosium blog.

The book's style is reminiscent of the Osprey Men At Arms books, all troops in battledress of various kinds, weapons, mounts, war machines, fortifications and formations. This being Glorantha, though, the different troops and types are incredibly diverse, bizarre, fantastic and just out there. Favourite Praxian nomad types, for instance, have probably never looked more realistic and convincing. The chapter on "Regional Warfare" covers all the major cultures and fighting styles of the different combatants of the Hero Wars, while the archaeologically grounded chapters on "The Battlefield" and "Transport and Mobility" are juxtaposed with chapters on "Arcane Warfare" and the "Gods of War." No matter how intense the focus on real Bronze and Iron Age exemplars, the author never forgets that we're in a fantasy universe, with magical units, patron gods and goddesses, and wild and wacky races. Even the Broo and other hideous Chaos monstrosities get their own units and writeups.

Much of the book's extraordinary depth comes from real historical precedents, mostly from Western antiquity and prehistory, and especially Ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman exemplars. All the technological and social details underpinning warfare are covered in depth, from the metallurgy of weaponsmithing to the influence of seasons on campaigns. The attention to detail in terms of mechanics is just as intensive. The Army Lists not only include every major unit and regiment in the armies of the major combatants, but also the hero and special units for each, with Magic, Missile and Melee Factors to give the relative strengths of all. (I'm not sure if these are compatible with Dragon Pass or the other early boardgame rules, but I am sure they could be worked into a RuneQuest campaign with relatively little effort, perhaps with the Battle skill in the new RuneQuest Glorantha rules.) There's enough crunchiness here to delight the most battle-hardened grognard - in fact, the book cries out for a rules system to allow gamers to play clashes between its various units.

If there is one small criticism of the volume, and it's more of a petty carp, it's the quality of the illustrations. They're incredibly detailed and wide-ranging - I count 19 distinct types of curved sword in one picture alone - and clearly drawn with great love of the material, but sometimes the quality just isn't quite what you'd expect from the current generation of superbly produced and intensely atmospheric rulebooks and supplements coming out of Chaosium at the moment. That, however, is a very minor criticism, and should not prevent any RPG fan from rushing to buy this book.

Even if your RuneQuest campaign consists entirely of small-party adventuring or dungeon-crawling, and you never plan on involving any larger formation than a stray Lunar patrol, this magnum opus will still immensely expand your knowledge of the world of Genertela and all its various cultures. Even if, as the book stresses, it does not define canon, it's so good that it's liable to displace canon for many campaigns and inspire new ones. There's practically fresh inspiration at every turn of the page. Who wouldn't want a siege tower on the back of a Triceratops to come stomping their way at some point? Or a Dwarf party with their Alchemical Transformer drawn by blind cave oxen? It's the kind of sourcebook you can dip into only to get lost for hours and re-emerge with glazed eyes. If any other Jonstown Compendium product ever equals it in quality and comprehensiveness, I'll be impressed and incredibly surprised. A masterpiece.