White Box Glorantha

Orlanthi Adventurer
Many moons ago my gamer buddies and I grew restless to see what lay beyond the roleplaying horizon. Being products of the midwest ourselves, we had made the pilgrimage to GenCon and were aware that in other parts of the land gamers had other games. Out west, in an area around a bay, gamers had discovered a land called Glorantha and its roleplaying game Runequest. We decided to try this west-coast Runequest and found it to our liking. Although we never completely abandoned our midwestern roots and continued to play at white box and newer editions of the Lake Geneva game as well. For a time we were content. But being the white box devotee among our group I eventually attempted to take Glorantha and make it work with my beloved white box. This is the tale of how I did it.
There is a bit of gamer history in the Runequest rulebook that talks about early attempts to make an existing roleplaying game work for Glorantha and how campaigns using those rules had been run using Glorantha as the setting before the Runequest rules were developed. Perhaps that gave me the idea to attempt a reverse engineering of sorts. The first problem I faced was interpreting Glorantha through the lens of its game Runequest. Obviously Runequest would heavily influence anything I attempted with Glorantha, because it was my window into Glorantha. I made certain assumptions about Glorantha based on Runequest, so what I have here is somewhat of a mash-up.
Glorantha/Runequest doesn't fit well with the three class system of White Box. I created the class Orlanthi Adventurer based on the predominant Gloranthan culture I wanted to explore. So having decided all PCs would be Orlanthi Adventurers I set about designing the class. I use the standard white box attributes except Wisdom becomes Spirit and it is used to power spells and interact on a spirit level with other beings. Orlanthi Adventurers are trained in the use of arms so they are Fighting Men with regard to hit-points, weapons and armor usage.
Glorantha is a magic rich world where peasant farmers and royalty generally know a few minor spells to help them in their daily lives.  Warriors are also users of magic, so our Orlanthi Adventurer starts roleplay knowing a few spells, the inspiration for which comes from the Runequest spell list. An Adventurer may learn one spell at each level of experience (taught by a priest or priestess) and may have memorized a number of spells not to exceed the Intelligence Attribute score. Many spells have a fixed Spirit cost to cast, others can have variable strengths depending on PC level.
Variable spells, such as Bladesharp and Heal can be cast at level for the cost of 1 Spirit point per level (up to a maximum). In other words a 1st level Orlanthi Adventurer who knows Bladesharp may cast it on his/her weapon at 1st level for 1 point of Spirit giving the weapon +1 to hit for six rounds. Heal cast at 1st level would cure 1 point of damage at the cost of 1 point of Spirit. Bladesharp has a maximum of +3 and Heal a maximum of 6.
Chaos plays a big part in myth-based Glorantha, so alignment is similar to that in standard white box. Some spells are aligned as in standard play. Religion is what drives most human activity on Glorantha, and our Orlanthi Adventurer reflects this. Orlanth is the storm god of the Heortling people and is the principle deity in the pantheon worshiped by the tribes from which PCs come from. Followers of Orlanth would share common beliefs about the world and a common culture, including magic and fighting skills.
Glorantha is a bronze age world so most tools, armor and weapons are made of bronze rather than iron or steel. The fashions of the culture more resemble the ancient Celtic and Greek than medieval Europe. That's all just looks and doesn't need to have any real impact on rules. Glorantha has it's own unique races and monsters and fortunately white box makes monster creation fairly easy. The Runes that give Runequest its name really play a minor part in the game mechanics and are easily incorporated into the religion and culture side of the game.
Religion, myth and culture are what really drives Glorantha as a unique setting and is all really independent of the rules system used.  Adapting the rules of choice, in this case white box, to the Glorantha setting is really about understanding the setting and being familiar enough with the rules to feel comfortable adapting them. The Orlanthi Adventurer seems to fit my understanding of one type of potential player character in Glorantha. I would devise a different class for a Praxian Nomad or Lunar Legionnaire.
In making the class design decisions I struggled with how much of what I have come to associate with Glorantha was Runquest and how much is world setting.  For many years Runequest and Glorantha were synonymous for me. The publication of  non-Runequest Gloranthan materials and non-Glorantha Runequest has helped me separate the two, at least to some extent. I now feel like I have a handle on my version of Glorantha and the Orlanthi Adventurer seems consistent with that vision. YMMV  I offer this custom character class as an example of how the white box class system can be adapted to a unique world such as Glorantha.