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Ludo gets the episode number wrong! Also, he’s sick and tried to edit all of his sniffling and coughing out of the audio, but you’ll probably hear some here and there. Our Guest Our guest is once again Austin Conrad! His website is Akhelas. Get his various books on DriveThruRPG! Learn movies and US geography with Austin’s jokes! (Ludo makes excuses for not getting those pretty straightforward jokes) Other Business Ludo also advertises the Glorantha articles on his blog, and in particular his post on Chaos as criminal organizations. We discuss this for a bit. Main Topic We return to the tale of Paulis Longvale! Ludo summarizes the story so far, but you should really listen to the previous episodes in this series (see episode 34 and episode 36). In this episode we end up talking way too long and only get through two chapters of the story: Thanatar and the Crimson Bat. Ludo notes that each cult is written by a different author, and how that makes the chapters feel different. Austin reminds us that Simon Phipp’s stuff on Dorastor is great, and there’s a LOT, starting with Secrets of Dorastor. We interviewed Simon in episode 35. Here’s the map from Cults of Terror that might be useful to follow along some of the discussions in this episode: Thanatar Ludo describes Halgrim’s plan and thinks it’s terrible. We discuss the various ways to cross the mountains into Dorastor. “Plateau of Wrath” is an excellent name, and it has some cool history related to Arkat (the “super RuneQuest stuff that Arkat is known for”). Ludo talks about Razalkark’s Citadel and how its description evolved between RQ2 and RQ3 (“even Chaotic people have gentrification”). Joerg goes into the “multiple Razalkark theory” (which isn’t a theory, he says) Of course we end up in the multiple Arkats theory too. Austin gets crazy about all these theories, and mention King of Sartar’s storyline about the “Monster Empire”. Feeling bad, Austin brings us back on topic. Ludo complains about heavy crossbows in his bronze/iron age fantasy. Joerg tries to justify it. We look at the treaty that Bolthor negotiated with Razalkark and find it “acceptable”. Austin mentions the “Risklands” campaign from the RQ3 Dorastor book, showing how the local Orlanthi are the assholes, trying to push into Razalkark’s lands. “The problem are the hillbilly people, not the Chaotic people”. Ludo and Austin talk about their game, and how Ludo tried very hard to make the PCs compromise on their values. Negotiating with Razalkark is like negotiating with Hitler to divide Poland. We also try to compare the situation to the Cold War, and how that would transform a game set around Dorastor. We discuss the big fight between Bolthor and the PCs. Ludo talks about his love for the Thanatar cult. “Babeester Gor dick magic!” There is some talk about the problems with that particular Thanatar cultist in this combat, and more generally how the text of the rules compares to the text of the fiction. Joerg mentions head-hunting as an ancient Orlanthi tradition. Once again we mention the use of “rules-talk” inside the fiction. We get into an argument about whether Bolthor is a Runemaster or not. How much Rune magic does Paulis have? Which of the Seven Mothers and other Lunar cults are actually improvements upon the Lightbringers pantheon? “Irripi Ontor is a scholar WITH A GUN” On the difficulty of making a campaign in the Lunar Empire, without making an apology for imperialism and such. Exploring the moral conundrums of “complicated” situations, like a game in which you play a KGB agent. Ludovic unsurprisingly mentions Delta Green. Austin parallels moments of The Iliad with Halgrim’s sacrifice, and more generally about manufacturing epic and mythically resonant moments in an RQ game. Austin also talks about the difficulty to prepare dramatic moments in a game, compared to a short story. Ludo talks about TTRPG games benefiting from being less nuanced and subtle than novels and movies. Austin shares a “goblin in a funny hat” story from his game. How would you arrange Bolthor’s head-halves if you were to decorate your village with them? Crimson Bat Negotiate with the Lunars! It’s good for you! Austin is annoyed by the generational way Sartarite succession works. Austin mentions his players going against the Crimson Bat…. wisely, they ran. The Crimson Bat illustration from 13th Age Glorantha is so f*****g great! We talk a bit about various giant Chaotic monsters, like Cwim and the Cacodemon. What size is the Crimson Bat’s Glowspot? Did it already have it in the God Time? Is Austin being “lore accurate” or just “a smart-ass”? RQ2’s “manichean cults” vs RQG’s “it’s all cults, you decide”. Evil and Chaotic are different things! “Glorantha is great for moral relativists” Does Glorantha have an ontological evil? “The cultists of Wakboth have ACTUAL faith”. Ludo’s hot take sends Joerg into deep upcoming/unpublished lore. Writing RQG stat-blocks is a bore. Is the Crimson Bat’s size variable? The Crimson Bat vs Mothra! Super-RuneQuest or Call-of-RuneQuest? Can you parry a dinosaur? Can you parry the Crimson Bat? The Crimson Bat’s mouth as an Area-of-Effect attack. How much does the Crimson Bat need to eat? Let’s starve it! Playing the Crimson Bat as a cat who’s fussy with food. The Crimson Bat cult advertising the “leaderboards” for the next city to be visited by the bat. What qualifies as Chaotic? We get into some weeds there. “I hate the greater good” There’s wiggle room in the cult compatibility chart. A Lunar Joe Rogan podcast! Chaotic Evil is different than Morally Evil! Morally Evil is OKAY! The Lunar Empire compared to the US and the British Empire, nations to which you may (should?) have an ambivalent relation. The Lunar Heartlands are one of the best places to live in Glorantha. The Lunar Empire has checks and balances! Everything is under control! The Lunar Empire can be easily compared with any big power of the last 2000 years, without being an allegory for any particular one, and that’s why it’s so compelling. Credits The intro music is “The Warbird” by Try-Tachion. Other music includes “Cinder and Smoke” and “Skyspeak“, along with audio from the FreeSound library.

For this new Glorantha Initiation interview, we have two guests, which explains the unusual length of this episode… we welcome Antoni and Konrad! Konrad studies Bronze Age history, does LARPs, and runs games for teens and children. He has been running RPGs for about 11 years, and RQG for 4 years. You can catch him on Discord as @SpellcastingKisiel Antoni studies geography. You can find him on Facebook as Antek Bartoszko. Konrad and Antoni also give a shout-out to the Polish world-building community Krytyka Światotwórcza. Show Notes Antoni introduces himself: Started RPGs with D&D 3e in high school. Then Warhammer 2e, which is “the most patriotic Polish RPG”. Gothic is the most patriotic Polish computer game. Antoni has opinions about the “drama kids” school of RPG and modern games. He’s a novice GM, and has more fun as a player. Recent games Antoni likes are Fabula Ultima (a TTRPG inspired by JRPG video games) and Vaesen (a Scandinavian 19th-century folk-horror TTRPG). Apparently Antoni broke Vaesen with min-maxing! Konrad introduces himself: He discovered RPGs in a summer camp, watching kids playing Warhammer 2e… but they never let him play! Booo! The following year he started playing and GMing, notably a post-apocalyptic Polish game called “Afterbomb Madness”. Konrad feels more comfortable as a GM, and likes faction play. Warhammer is very very popular in Poland! Poland didn’t have any particular printing of any RPG at first, so people smuggled hastily translated rulebooks. Warhammer was a good fit. It was one of the very first officially released RPGs in Poland. Then, the only Polish RPG magazine at the time broke everyone’s mind about Warhammer because everyone was pretty much taking Warhammer at face value, instead of the comedic game it’s supposed to be. The pun names weren’t translated! Antoni got Konrad into Glorantha. He discovered Glorantha with King of Dragon Pass through a video game streamer playing it. He loved the cultures and vibrant world. He later discovered that there was an RPG, but was turned off by the “realistic combat” that RuneQuest boasted about having. After playing Six Ages, Antoni started ranting to Konrad about Glorantha. We talk a bit about heroquesting as Antoni misunderstands a question about HeroQuest/QuestWorlds as an alternative system with no “realistic combat” in it. Since these books weren’t really available in Poland, it wasn’t on his radar. Konrad realized that he tried playing Six Ages, as he was interested in bronze age gaming, but didn’t get very far. So when Antoni mentioned Glorantha, he was vaguely familiar with it. He had heard about RuneQuest as a “classic RPG”. Konrad started researching the setting and realized he loves it. Glorantha has “hard worldbuilding”. Konrad likes granular mechanics, so RuneQuest’s system looked good. He also appreciates that he can make his own subsystems easily. Konrad still hopes to run a “proper long campaign” soon. Glorantha is “doing good work” about representing the clan, tribal, city state, and god king mindset that might look alien to a modern reader. It’s not a “historic documentary” game, but it’s a “good approximation”. Glorantha might help later understanding real history. Konrad specializes in Levantine late bronze age (15th to 12th century BCE). He’s also interested in European bronze age. He studies social dynamics, people living outside of temple/city-state systems, etc. Joerg on the other hand started looking into European bronze age first, and didn’t look into the fertile crescent until later. Ludo got into Glorantha first, and then looked into Earth history later. Konrad loved the lore and the societies that “feel alive”. There’s a lot to play with when you’re a GM who loves faction play. He notes how Jonstown is described in the Starter Set, and how it contains multiple groups with multiple motivations and agendas, interwoven with their religious beliefs. In RuneQuest, even the monsters are people. Ludo talks about subsystems for political negotiations, as his players are trying to take over the Alone Confederation. Konrad likes the RQG sorcery rules! Joerg says sorcery is like shamanism: you need to min-max a lot to be useful. Konrad doesn’t seem very interested in shamanism, whereas Ludo thinks it’s one of the unique interesting features of the game. “There are now 7 RuneQuest players in Poland!” Konrad tries to run RuneQuest at every convention in Poland, and in the summer-camps he’s working at… basically trying to kick-start a Polish fandom for RuneQuest. The reception of RQG in Polish conventions seems pretty good. Most players are new to RuneQuest as far as Konrad can tell. Chaosium fans in Poland know and play Call of Cthulhu, which Antoni suspect is the biggest TTRPG in the country right now. Or at least one of the “Holy Trio” (CoC, WFRP, D&D 5e) When Ludo asks if Pendragon is known in Poland, Antoni explodes with laughter. He can’t believe anybody would play this game. There is a Polish edition of Pendragon, which Konrad claims is better-looking than the English one. So Polish people know about the game, and the Polish editor released the translation almost at the same time as the original version. Ludo says that Pendragon is probably not played that much in the grand scheme of things, and probably not in the “top 20 games”, but Joerg ask the rhetorical question of what “top 20” means anyway? (I probably meant “top 20” in terms of number of players) Antoni says that, just like Mage: The Ascension, Pendragon, to him, is more meant to be read than to be played. Ludo mentions he played Mage in his youth, having been a big World of Darkness fan back then. Ludo’s first couple TTRPG purchases were Cyberpunk 2020 and Vampire: The Masquerade, which Konrad says are “very Polish tastes”. Ludo asks Antoni what he doesn’t like about Glorantha. Antoni talks about the various “phases” he had with Glorantha. He mentions the “Dukaj-Stafford” effect (from Jacek Dukaj and Greg Stafford… Dukaj is a Polish science-fiction and fantasy writer). This is when a settings is so good that it makes you give up trying to expand it, because you can’t make anything half as good. Antoni’s “second phase” was discovering the Mongoose RuneQuest books, and the cool aspects of gaming in other places and times in Glorantha. Antoni’s Glorantha will definitely vary, and he wants to give a shout-out to Nick Brooke for enabling that. Antoni’s Dara Happans are cool and awesome, and he has hot takes about them. Antoni talks about the different scopes and takes on Glorantha between the editions, or between the TTRPGs and the video games. Konrad agrees, especially since he discovered Glorantha with Six Ages, so “his boys” are the Solar people. Konrad appreciates “well written barbarian cultures” in Glorantha, but he is more interested in the various types of Solar cultures, or about Orlanthi people in Peloria (“solarized Sartarites!”) Konrad has strong opinions about Elmal vs Yelmalio! He doesn’t buy the “wide scale replacement” of one cult by the other, and gives his reasons for it. Antoni doesn’t really like some of the Gloranthan authors’ approach of pretending that they are “translating” some “actual” Gloranthan texts, instead of just writing a game book. Ludo talks about HeroQuest/QuestWorlds as the thing Antoni and Konrad may look into as they mentioned having trouble doing “bigger things” in RuneQuest. Konrad mentions his “biggest issue” with RuneQuest: how the game and the world are presented. Gloranthan and RuneQuest are “absurdly hard to get into”. The best way to get into this game is “finding a GM”. Konrad says that getting into it by yourself is much harder. Konrad mentions the video games (King of Dragon Pass, Six Ages, RuneQuest Warlords ) as good first steps but admits they are niche games and not for everyone. He’s looking forward to the first official Gloranthan novel (A Pyre for Gods and Heroes). We play the game of “what gets released next year?” Joerg is rather optimistic about it. Ludo is pessimistic… and probably right, since this interview was recorded 6 months ago and nothing Joerg has mentioned seems to be happening soon. Antoni mentions that Konrad often compared Glorantha to the Elder Scrolls video game series… and so he argues Gloranthan needs a Skyrim-like game. No biggie. Ludo mentions The One Ring TTRPG (second edition), trying to make a point about games introducing deep lore to players, and once again the guests immediately laugh. Konrad and Antoni apparently have both very strong, and very opposed, opinions about it. Antoni doesn’t like TOR 2e because of its default place and time. But he likes the progression from easy to hard between The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and the Silmarillion. “With Glorantha, you start with the Silmarillion”. Konrad agrees about that, and mentions how even the RuneQuest Starter Set floods the reader with too much information. How much information is needed to start? Probably a lot less than what the Starter Set gives. Konrad thinks the Starter Set has a good setting and adventures, but not a good presentation of the setting. Antoni gives praise to the fan community, especially the Glorantha groups on Facebook. He also praises the “Prince of Sartar” webcomic as an entry point into the setting. Antoni ask why there’s not Malkioni-Solar syncretism, when there is Malkioni-Orlanthi syncretism that exists? Joerg explains it with the timelines of when Greg Stafford and Jamie Revell were working on this or that across Glorantha. Jamie’s books are available

Our Guests For this episode we welcome Malin and CJ, which Ludo met in person at ChaosiumCon UK 2025. The book we’re talking about is “Life and Traditions under the Sun Dome” Ludo also took so long to edit this episode that Malin and CJ’s next books are already out: “Three Doors to Your Heart” and “Uleria Loves You” Malin is on Bluesky and has a Patreon CJ is also on Bluesky Show Notes Things we discussed in this episode: Malin and CJ published a book about Life and Traditions of the Sun Dome because they’ve been playing there for a while. Malin got into Glorantha via CJ, and became fascinated by stuff in Cults of Terror. CJ got into Glorantha via some people talking about RuneQuest and its cultures, religions, weird spells, and “walking tapirs”. After playing in Pavis and the Big Rubble, CJ bought RQ3 and some RQ2. The Dragon Pass board game Playing near Sun County in HeroQuest, with the Cradle scenario. CJ bought the RQ3 Sun County book, reading it directly in the post office. It was hard to get a group going. The “Life and Traditions” book is a “more detailed” Sun County, compatible with previous official material (Sun County) and JC material (Black Spear, Sandheart). Many people have written stuff in that area, it’s important to honour that. Back in the day, it felt like Sun County was more “bronze age” and exotic than Sartar, which felt more “celtic” and common. Research for the book included a lot of Bronze Age history. Big spears, shield walls, and hoplites! Back in the day, there wasn’t much material on Sartar. A lot of books were out of print, and in piracy was the only way to access them. Very trusting people who mail their copy of Griffin Mountain to strangers to read and send back! Sun County was a “standalone” book and setting, easier to grasp than other places in Glorantha. To secular Sweden, religious fanaticism is exotic! The reason for the “Life and Traditions” book is that many players have questions… sometimes weird questions… Malin wanted to emulate the “Daily Life in ” children books about ancient Egypt or Greece: what is it to live in these places and times? Also, a desire to answer questions to the players who didn’t know Glorantha. Malin loves making house rules and handouts! A character wants to get married? Write a handout about property rights! “It escalates so fast!” Between different regions of Genertela there are different rules and cultures. Sun County should feel different from Sartar. “RuneQuest is a game for over-thinkers” CJ is a sociologist, so how does the class system work!? “Life and Traditions” has a bibliography! It’s serious work! It’s a xenophobic and misogynistic place but they have nice beaches. CJ looks at other countries with the same problems for reference, in addition to historical Bronze Age and Iron Age, and previous Gloranthan material. People are still people, and it’s interesting to see how people would react and behave in a place like Sun County. How to use this book? As an academic description of Sun County, or as a collection of articles to be skimmed and picked from as needed? “It should be read but not memorized”. “It’s a confidence builder”. Instead of adding more history and names and places, the book tries to just add more context to one already established place. Joerg likes the tables to “look around the house”. Ludo likes the random event table. Players can read the book, there is not much “secret information”. The bad stuff in Sun County: patriarchy, xenophobia, etc. How is that fun to play? Depends on the group… it can be treated as background vibe, or as the main theme. The book also shows how to play other types of characters. CJ tried to lean into the set parameters of the place, as established by prior material: Yelmalio is patriarchal, Ernalda is made into a subservient wife, and Zola Fel provides a good part of the fertility magic that Ernalda usually provides elsewhere, etc. Still had to “address the elephant in the room and make everyone feel welcome at the table”. CJ and Malin had several women characters in their campaign. What does that mean for them? How do they live in this society? CJ makes the good point that it’s like playing Call of Cthulhu in the default era of the 1920s, which is a “horribly racist” time in America. “The gamemaster has to address this with the group”, deciding how much to lean into it or address it. Ludo mentions Harlem Unbound as an example of leaning into the racism of the 1920s for Call of Cthulhu. Cool stuff in Sun County: as a foreigner, you interact with a very weird and insular society! An excuse for sending your PCs to Sun County is that the River of Cradles is strategically important! Do your players enjoy being “administratively frustrated”? The absurdity of Glorantha. The cool thing about Yelmalio is that he is NOT cool! “He’s a poser guy wearing shitloads of bling for compensating about all the things he cannot do!” Orlanthi cultists are like Tom Cruise. Yelmalions are played by William H. Macey. Another cool thing is that Sun County is very, very ancient. There are many very old archives and items to be found here. Ludo talks about how he would send his players there. CJ says it’s a good entry point into a new campaign: the place is semi-isolated, with a limited number of cults to choose from, etc. Great for newcomers. “If you want to play a trickster in Sun County, go ahead and try!” No need to go into complex clan/tribe relations here. You can play it like Star Wars/Andor, living in some oppressive society, or like NYPD Blues with Sandheart, or as some Iliad thing with lone people defending their outpost against the nomads. You don’t need to lean into “colonizers vs natives”. Custom rules for faction play: “It’s easier to reward your players when you have numbers on a paper”. Build a shrine to your god so you don’t have to commute! Characters built for intrigue and politics should have as much fun and input into the game as those built for combat. It’s still useful and interesting to track favours and standings even for non-political characters. Tracking even small-scale relationships in some situations like long-term travelling. Switching from RuneQuest to QuestWorlds. RQG starts breaking down the more you play, especially the experience system, which slows down to a crawl. Malin says QuestWorlds is better than HeroQuest. CJ says it used to break down with the bidding system. Malin gives advice for how to convert RQG characters to QW. QW is easier to make little subsystems for since it’s a lot less crunchy. Players had trouble phrasing their keywords, and coming up with flaws. RQG helped establish the “reality” of the fictional world before moving on to QW, which is very valuable. Nick Brooke’s “song book” for conventions and the “HeroWars Gaga” song. Gloranthan cookbooks! Do players behave differently when you change the system? Malin says she had to change her GMing style a lot. QW requires more narrative responsibility from the players, which can overwhelm some of them. Joerg mentions the Swedish RuneQuest Talastar project. Dragonbane mention! Joerg asks about the Teshnans… Malin has plans! Ludo took so long to edit this episode that the Ulerian books that CJ and Malin announce here are already out! Credits The intro music is “The Warbird” by Try-Tachion. Other music includes “Cinder and Smoke” and “Skyspeak“, along with audio from the FreeSound library.

Our Guest We welcome once again Austin Conrad to the show! His website is Akhelas Get Treasures of Glorantha: Volume 2, one of the finest books on the Jonstown Compendium! (which we talked about in episode 31) Austin hopes to be “done soon” with his upcoming “Wolves of the Wild Hunt” book… that was a couple months ago and it’s not done yet The book will include slightly remastered previous materials such as The Quacken, and The Queen’s Star, plus new stuff about Gagarthi monsters! Show Notes Things that happened in this episode: Joerg reminds us what the Reminiscences of Paulis Longvale are… Listen to episode 34 if you haven’t already! Cults of Terror is “the gamemaster’s best friend” Also listen to episode 35 with Simon Phipp, specialist of Dorastor! Yes, YOU too can play a Thanatar cultist! Ludo summarizes the previous episode’s story Austin mentions the old Dorastor book, plus gives another shout out to Simon Phipp’s books Ludo goes on a short tangent about the name “Bilini” Austin lays down another argument about the Orlanthi really being Vikings We discuss the various motivations of the characters regarding Chaos, Dorastor, and the Lunar Empire Ludo has made a spreadsheet! He tries to figure out what are the chances of the Bilini king’s army against Razalkark’s army How cute are baby broos? Or baby Scorpion Men? Apparently Diana Probst has one of those in Stone and Bone, go check it out! We talk about battle tactics and “broo walls” How the hell do you recreate this story using RQ rules? Should we play using HeroQuest/QuestWorlds? (again) The phalanx rules suck? Is dual wielding better than using a shield? (We fumble around the convoluted RQG dual wielding rules) Rules terms inside the narrative text… what to make of it? Would you abstract the things we see in this story to “just a few rolls” in RuneQuest? Austin is being an a*****e (his words! not mine!) How much plunder do you get from Chaos creatures? Giving a “personal touch” to plunder and gifts… or just add some jewels! Reselling gifts to buy actually useful stuff, like skills and spells! “WHERE IS MY MONEY?” and other things players say Ancient cultures versus transactional cultures Ea-Nasir name drop! Storm Bull cultists as a biker gang Austin mentions “A Short Detour” and the way we tried writing Chaos cultists as nuanced people Are Illuminates crazy assholes? Or are they people with feelings? Uleria is more powerful and bad-ass than we give her credit for Body horror with Uleria! Play Limbo! Austin has more conspiracy theories about the Celestial Court on his website! Vampires in Dorastor… do they have enough to eat? World of Darkness vampires vs Dresden Files vampires (also, Ludo mixes up Dresden Files and Laundry Files) Austin’s Harrek campaign, and the shenanigans the PCs are up to Give player characters cool or embarrassing epithets! The interesting framing of a Chaos-based narrative with a Lunar perspective Telmori vampires! Or vampires feeding on Telmori! Maybe both! The lost power of RQ2 vampires that can steal Rune magic when feeding off someone Rituals to get your magic items to trust you Fear mechanics in RuneQuest? There’s a difference between improvising and off-the-rails-improvising! RQ2 silver magic collars… they’re in every RQ2 story How do you keep prisoners? Suspicious tricksters! (aren’t they always?) Joerg tells us about Jojo The Bobo. Also, Bugs Bunny and the Puppeteer Troupe “We’re in Dorastor, but we’re getting…. human drama???!” Credits The intro music is “The Warbird” by Try-Tachion. Other music includes “Cinder and Smoke” and “Skyspeak“, along with audio from the FreeSound library.

We are back with a long overdue Glorantha Initiation interview featuring twice the amount of French accents! We talked to Benjamin, aka Dasfynx, who is the webmaster of the (French) RuneQuest Wiki, and co-hosts the (also French) “Runecast” podcast with Gianni Vacca. Le Wiki du JDR RuneQuest Le Runecast (you can of course find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on whatever app you use to listen to podcasts!) Show Notes Here are the things we talk about in this episode! Ben’s podcast “Runecast” This is one of the three known “talk show” podcasts about Glorantha right now, the other one being the Finnish Dayzatarin tähtien alla (“Under the stars of Dayzatar”) Ben also runs the French RQWiki which started as a translation of Chaosium’s wiki. It started as just figuring out what tech was powering Chaosium’s website Then it was a small translation for Ben’s players And then other fans joined the effort… there are now extra things compared to the Chaosium version Any extra material on the wiki that is from the published material is reproduced with the approval of Studio Deadcrows, the French publisher for RQG Watching old adventure/sci-fi movies on VHS, and being pitched the Warhammer Fantasy RPG (WFRP) as similar to those movies Ben’s first purchased RPG books were from the Call of Cthulhu and World of Darkness lines, but we was busy playing sports and listening to rap, so he read the books but didn’t play them! This may be called “lonely fun” Only years after that one WFRP game did Ben finally find another gaming group playing the WEG Star Wars RPG Ben offered to GM Call of Cthulhu after that, which lasted for a handful of years, going through the Spawn of Azathoth campaign You too can learn geography and history by GMing Call of Cthulhu! It’s hard to find English or French RPG books while living in China, so Ben loaded up on many books whenever he would come home As a Roliste TV watcher (YouTube channel here), Ben learned that one host (Mathieu) is a big fan of RuneQuest, so Ben bought the latest edition… and didn’t like it! This is because the world wasn’t described enough for Ben to picture, so he bought the Glorantha Sourcebook… and didn’t like it either! Too many names and lists of things! It was the Bestiary that made Ben “get it”: each “monster” is actually coming from somewhere and have their place After that, Ben was deep into Glorantha and started reading more and more books about it Glorantha: a steep curve followed by a rabbit hole! Books are expensive so Ben got Gianni Vacca to explain things to him for free! Gianni is Ben’s co-host on the Runecast podcast Gianni is Ben’s Joerg, an old hands of Glorantha… actually even older than Joerg, since Gianni started with RQ2! Ben’s wiki and podcast are geared towards beginners Favourite thing about Glorantha: Dorastor, to make players suffer! See Simon Phipp’s “Secrets of Dorastor” (and other related books), and his interview episode on the show Sartar, because it’s an interesting place Next on Ben’s reading list are the Red Cow campaign books (book 1 and book 2) See also Ian Cooper’s Questworlds interview on the show Things Ben doesn’t like: the gray areas, because he likes to feel like he understands everything Ben asks Joerg what is the nature of the great compromise? Joerg explains how gods can break the compromise and act in Time We talk about avatars of gods also manifesting gods enough to endanger the Compromise, and how Chaos allows gods to get involved in Time Greg’s narrative framework of writing “in world” texts that give contradictory views and accounts The annoyance of “no answers” vs “multiple answers” King of Sartar is… a dense and complicated book GMing the French campaign “Children of the Flame” (Gianni is an author on it) This campaign helped show Ben what is possible in Glorantha It’s about the Dundealos tribe, near Swenville, after they have been replaced by the Lunar Entalos tribe… until the Dragonrise gives an opportunity to retake their lands Faction play, with various tribes, the Lunars, etc. There’s a map of Swenville! A good way to start in Glorantha is a good example: a scenario, a campaign, etc. The Sourcebook isn’t a good idea for beginners The GM pack or a campaign are better! (classic RQ2 campaigns, or newer ones from the Jonstown Compendium) Basically, start small! The French edition of RQG has one scenario in the rulebook, and one in the bestiary… something the English edition is lacking! Ludo briefly talks about his similarly failed encounters with Glorantha Ben reiterates how Glorantha is consistently deep and how he loves that about it Ben started just with the books for a while, but later discovered there are so many things about Glorantha on the internet! Shout-out to 7Tigers, who translates all the news and Well of Daliath content to French Also shout-out to Olivier from “Les Fils du Chaos” for helping correct the French RQWiki And shout-out to everybody else helping in their own way Ben asks Joerg about the Sky World and Joerg obliges! Ludo adds his take about the multi-shaped Sky World Ben still wants one final answer on everything! Joerg mentions the “blind men touching the elephant” tale, and Ben wants to see the elephant, not be one of the blend men We devolve into Jungian archetypes, and other tangents… We end with some quick-fire questions… Ben loves ducks! Credits The intro music is “Dancing Tiger” by Damscray. The outro music is “Islam Dream” by Serge Quadrado. Other audio is from the FreeSound library.

Our Guest Our guest this episode is Simon Phipp, author of Secrets of Dorastor, Secrets of Heroquesting, and author or contributor on many, many other books. Joerg sadly isn’t present this time: he was stuck on a highway somewhere in Germany waiting for auto-assistance. Show Notes Here are some various things we talk about in this episode: Getting started playing in Glorantha in 1982… which sounds like 15 years ago but apparently is a lot longer ago RuneQuest 2 (with Cults of Prax) was Simon’s first game Bud (from Bud’s RPG Review) recently said that it’s like being born with a silver spoon in your mouth Watching “World of Sports” and reading “The Iliad” as a kid… as one does Simon loves RQ2 for its scale and the visceral feeling you get from playing it Playing in Dorastor because it was nasty and unmapped in the early 80s The only source was the Paulis Longvale narrative from Cults of Terror Other GMs in Simon’s gaming circles were already playing in the “usual places” (Sartar, Prax, Pavis & The Big Rubble) We started our series on Paulis Longvale last episode! Running a Star Trek-like episodic campaign in and out of Dorastor, starting around 1985 Later, during the RuneQuest 3 era, Dorastor: Land of Doom was released Simon’s players accused him of knowing about the upcoming book’s contents! The pros & cons of playing in the vaguely defined Glorantha of the 80s vs the encyclopedic Glorantha of the 2010s The Dorastor: Land of Doom’s warning on the back cover is factually accurate… if you consider Simon, as a GM, as a big and ugly thing! Come to the Risklands! It’s great! The Chaos Nests of Genertela. They’re great too! Simon’s Dorastor has multiple Chaos Nests In his campaign, Simon’s players killed Razalkark, the king of the Broos, and occupied his fort… and then things got worse Chaotic True Dragons are apparently a bad thing? Simon tells us the story of Dorastor, including his own interpretation of the whole Nysalor/Gbaji/Arkat thing You may remember we discussed some of this with Bud in a previous episode Dorastor is filled with lots and lots of bad monsters! How do you get your players to go there? Simon’s Dorastor is a bit more nuanced than just “a place to kill monsters”: you can create alliances, do trade, and so on Simon gets bored to tears watching the Gloranthan metaplot unfold, with NPCs doing all the cool things HeroWars was very guilty of this Dorastor is so far away from Dragon Pass that we don’t care what Argrath is doing! Simon’s books contain many, many scenarios for Dorastor, plus many adventure seeds There are several layers to Dorastor: Go in, fight Chaos, come out (if you succeed enough times, become a Dorastor guide!) Interact with the big personalities of Dorastor (meet the Spider Queen, she’s great!) Storm Bull initiates must learn to prioritize Humakti broos! Dorastor ducks! Giant vampires! Relationship with the neighbours Don’t forget not all cults hate Chaos Simon likes messing with his players’ heads Chaotic people: they’re not as bad as you think? But watch out, you might quickly end up worshipping Thanatar if you don’t pay attention to Simon’s evil schemes Finding lost or secret things in Dorastor What makes heroes? Super-RuneQuest! and other high-level character stats… The most useless magic item ever… until it breaks your scenario! The problem of long running campaigns Acid! Poison! Ash elementals! Bathing in gorps! Ludo discovers that Cacodemon got Vomit Acid in RuneQuest 3 Fun with Chaos Features! Simon’s best anecdote: basilisks and mirrors! Designing encounter locations It’s not the GM’s job to know the solutions, it’s their job to setup problems Hair and fingernail elementals! Illumination in Dorastor: break the rules, become good, become evil? Come to Dorastor, it’s lovely, and you can become heroes! Credits The intro music is “The Warbird” by Try-Tachion. Other music includes “Cinder and Smoke” and “Skyspeak“, along with audio from the FreeSound library.

After too long a hiatus, we are finally back! Well, almost, because Ludo is an idiot and got the time zones wrong while setting up the recording, so Joerg shows up a bit later. Ludo apologizes for messing that up but hey, this is an episode about Chaos, so… Our Guest We welcome once again Austin Conrad to the show! His website is Akhelas Get Treasures of Glorantha: Volume 2, one of the finest books on the Jonstown Compendium! We actually talked about that book, and magical items in general, for episode 31 Austin’s ghost was summoned during our more recent episode on RuneQuest house rules Show Notes In this episode we chat about things like: Cult of Terror (RQ2, 1981) You can get it as a POD reprint or in PDF from Chaosium Dorastor: Land of Doom (RQ3, 1993) The Cults of Runequest sourcebooks (available here from Chaosium) Shadows on the Borderlands (RQ3, 1993) The first time the Gloranthan cosmology and history is presented in one text Worshipping Mallia as a non-Chaos deity, in a propitiatory way King of Dragon Pass RuneQuest Warlords Razalkark, the King of the Broos, and a “good boy” Cults of Prax (RQ2, 1979) and the tribulations of Biturian Varosh Our episode series on Biturian Varosh started back when we were the “Wind Words” podcast, and continued with guest Drew Baker early in the God Learners podcast The four philosophies and magic forms of Glorantha… plus a few more! Add you own! The usual suspects: the Guide to Glorantha, the Glorantha Sourcebook, and the Mythology book The entire cosmology and history of Glorantha in 10 pages! Boom! Done! Ludo’s favourite RuneQuest cover, by Jennell Jaquays (see the real wrap-around version!) A Gloranthan pronunciation guide! Can YOU pronounce Gloranthan deities’ names correctly? The Prosopaedia The Curse of Thed: it really sucks! Ludo got confused by his notes (“confusing notes” is a Chaotic feature!) “Reverse Chaos” was renamed “Curse of Thed” in RQG Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay features chaos corruption rules that affect the player characters, sometimes willingly We should be playing in Bilini and Dorastor, there’s a lot of fun stuff happening there! Is it Chaos, or Just Very Bad Thing? Simon Phipp’s Secrets of Dorastor and lines of books Our episode on Arkat, with guest Bud from Bud’s RPG Review The big-ass Genertela map Austin is supposedly being “very polite” in Ludo’s game about NOT becoming an assassin. Spoiler: a month later, Austin did in fact murder a long-standing NPC and initiated into the Eurmal Murderer cult… Wesley Crusher Ragnar Lodbrok and the TV show “Vikings” The Orlanthi as Vikings vs the Orlanthi as ancient Greeks Want to make your players go on a quest? Loan them magical items! The Lightbringers Summons and forcing it on your players Chaos as organized crime Mallia and pandemics… too soon, Joerg! Shenanigans with disease spirits! Dealing with trickster player characters… Scorpion Men: the other iconic Gloranthan bad guys? Beer With Teeth’s Stone and Bone 13th Age Glorantha‘s Scorpion Men illustrations Gagyx Two-Barb, Scorpion Queen The Footprint, another place of Chaos Food and water are tainted! Roll to find safe things to consume, or pack them! Making your own funky diseases Using the table of troll drink effects from Trollpak (RQ2, 1982) Differences in Chaos curses between RQ2 and RQG Paranoia in players, and nasty Chaotic features Xenohealing, the spell nobody misses, apparently Hashtag Not All Chaos! Adapting a combat scene environment to the baddies’ abilities… For instance: Scorpion Men can climb very well! Austin’s correct answer to Scorpion Men is “don’t” Milking Scorpion Men…. uugggh The players are always the baddies! Credits The intro music is “The Warbird” by Try-Tachion. Other music includes “Cinder and Smoke” and “Skyspeak“, along with audio from the FreeSound library.

We said we were back from our summer break with episode 32, but we lied! Joerg’s laptop died and he was busy growing a moustache, and Ludo was ridiculously busy with work. Either way, we are back again, just in time for the end of the year! Our Guest This time we welcome Jon Webb again, who appeared on our show back in episode 6 along with Neil Gibson. Jon is of course the wonderful author of the equally wonderful “Sandheart” series of scenarios: Sandheart Volume 1: Tales of the Sun County Militia Sandheart Volume 2: The Corn Dolls & Fortunate Sun Sandheart Volume 3: Tradition Sandheart Volume 4: The God Skin & Mad Prax Disclaimer: the above links are affiliate links of course (please use them to support the show!) The Making of Sandheart Our first topic is the Sandheart series of scenarios (see links above) which, although they have been written and published a long time ago, we had not covered on the show before… better late than never! We chat with Jon about how Sandheart came to be, the strength of its campaign framework, moral choices, “street-level” adventures, designing problems for which you don’t know the solution, culture clashes between characters, custom heroquesting rules, and more. If you haven’t read or played Sandheart, there shouldn’t be any spoilers for you — only titillating previews of the sort of fun you can expect therein. Note that if you don’t plan on getting all four volumes of the series, we recommend getting volumes 1 and 3. The reason for this is that volume 3 is a scenario that spans multiple years, as the adventurers are tasked with guard duty for a recurring ritual. Getting volume 3 early will let you weave the first couple occurrences of the ritual into the first few adventures. House Rules and Custom Systems In the second and larger half of the episode, we exchange all kinds of ideas about tweaking and extending the RuneQuest rules. Among the things we talk about, in no particular order: Picking rules from different editions of RuneQuest Hit Points formulas Initiative systems and Strike Ranks Sorcery rules Experience checks and experience gain Resolving ties Failing Forward Combat effects and aiming at hit locations Custom hit location tables Shields Granularity of rules per activity Gritty tactical combat vs heroic scenes Average skill scores vs heroic skill scores Fighting styles and converting to other weapons Group rolls Adopting rules from Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition Chaotic corruption! Lingering emotions Caravan trading rules Going into a rabbit hole of research and math, and finding what a mechanic should be about Keeping custom mechanics into the “spirit” of the main system Post-coital pillow talk rules We also mention: Ludovic’s own adventure, “A Short Detour” Mythras Troika Dragonbane Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Traveller Alien RPG Credits The intro music is “The Warbird” by Try-Tachion. Other music includes “Cinder and Smoke” and “Skyspeak“, along with audio from the FreeSound library.

Our Guests In this episode we welcome returning guests Evan Franke and J-M DeFoggi (who had to leave early because of Imperial Administration requirements). You would of course know Evan and J-M from our previous episodes with them: Chaos Rises! (episode 26 about 13th Age Glorantha) and Jackals and Ancient Worldbuilding (episode 19 about J-M’s Bronze Age fantasy adventure game, Jackals!) Our guests are also found in these fine places: The Exploring Glorantha Series on YouTube Lots of Iconic Production endeavours, including YouTube and Patreon. As we release this episode, Evan’s Red Moon and Warring Kingdoms is officially out! Go grab it now, it’s FREE! Show Notes Things we mention during this episode, in vague chronological order, include: TORG Shadows of Esteren The Arms of Nargash-Tor (for Palladium Fantasy) The Cults of RuneQuest books and, of course, The Lunar Way in particular You can read Ludo’s own reviews of these books here As always, we mention the usual Gloranthan sources: The Glorantha Sourcebook (or in PDF, or on DTRPG) The Guide to Glorantha (or in PDF, or on DTRPG) Our episodes on Furthest and Imther, and their corresponding books: Furthest: Crown Jewel of Tarsh Edge of Empire Are you using The Lunar Way mostly for PCs or NPCs? Themes of a Lunar scenario or campaign Citizens of the Lunar Empire Xena: Warrior Princess featuring many Greek gods The Red Goddess as a guest star in your campaign Glorantha, where everybody’s an Illuminated a*****e, and nobody’s the good guy The Empire’s trading, culture, politics, etc. Star Wars Glorantha as a Manichean settings vs a nuanced setting The problem of the “simple” settings of our youth becoming more nuanced as we grow older RIFTS and the Coalition States The X-Men, Magneto, and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants Memorable Lunar villains The morality of the Lunar Empire The Lunar Empire as a pretty great place to live in, actually There’s no fairness and civil rights in the Bronze Age The Lunar Empire as the Roman Empire The human flaws and administrative weight of the Lunar Empire The Crimson Bat was self-defence! Struggling to show the Lunar Empire as a nuanced faction Using the USA as a model for the Lunar Empire The editorial history of the Lunars in RuneQuest publications White Bear & Red Moon Harrek the Berserk is “not a great guy!” Beatpot Aelrwin Argrath is up to no good, meddling with stuff he shouldn’t Evan is available for rent as a guest Argrath Black Spear, and Nick Brooke’s take on Argrath Alexander The Great Sartar Griffin Mountain and Strangers in Prax Our favourite cults in the Lunar Way The Seven Mothers as the “Justice League cult” The awesomeness of the Crimson Bat cult The Nysalor/Gbaji chapter and its fourth-wall breaking aside Crimson Bat feeders publishing city rankings for their “visits” The demonic cult of Yara Aranis, which is pretty much as bad as the Tusk Riders Maran Gor is bad too! Sheng Seleris, the Gloranthan Ghengis Khan The Carmanian Empire roughly explained Lunar Magic, and how to use it in play Getting the Glowline to fail, so you can land your Stormtroopers and AT-ATs Ghost heist at the Lunar Temple! Harry Potter and the Lunar College of Magic Questworlds and 13th Age Glorantha as alternate game systems for certain campaigns The fine points of Lunar phases There are no physics in Glorantha Dragon Pass is a distraction for the Lunar Empire, which is mostly worried about the Pentans Dart Competitions as a Jason Bourne spy-thriller Credits The intro music is “The Warbird” by Try-Tachion. Other music includes “Cinder and Smoke” and “Skyspeak“, along with audio from the FreeSound library.

Guests Our guests for this new episode of the Glorantha Initiation series are Christian and Amber, from DMs After Dark! We chatted with them back in… (checks notes) November 2023! How time flies… you can find DMs After Dark in many places around the internet, including: YouTube and Twitch Facebook, Twitter, and Bluesky Amber has written a few things, including some short story in the Monstrous Feminine anthology, and can be found at the West Warwick Public Library where she curates the gaming collection. Christian has written and published several scenarios, including “Zennor & The Sins of St Senara” and “The Night Mother’s Moon“, for Call of Cthulhu, published by Stygian Fox. Show Notes In this episode we talk about, more or less: Luring Amber with promises of playing a werewolf (Telmori) Using Chalana Arroy for luring in the cleric-loving player, and shamans for the player who likes weird characters Animism, the Spirit World, and other gameplay elements that are fairly unique to Glorantha Starting with the Starter Set, then going to the Sourcebook Pacing actual play games, making it feel like sitting at an actual table RuneQuest grognards coming to help with the rules Christian has a “book problem”… Ludo can relate Using Six Seasons in Sartar as a way to start small and get all the PCs together Collaborative storytelling and world-building Reconciling player-created lore with “canon” lore Being mindful of players and the audience when preparing storylines, especially cult initiations leading into mythologies like the Unholy Trio, the Sex Pit, etc. Amber acting as a GM assistant, especially in the early stages of preparation Ludo mentions his short story about Chalana Arroy and Mallia Ducks! Broos! Verisimilitude and/or realism to the Bronze Age and other antiquity history Approaching sensitive topics, and doing editorial work with players to match their comfort levels Casino Town! Cwim! The Crimson Bat! What makes sense in your Glorantha, and what seems out of place Early RQ2 dungeon crawling vs later RQ2 dungeons with ecologies and mythologies Understand the vibe of the system over the rules of the system Mary Renault’s The King Must Die and The Bull From The Sea, as good sources for getting a grasp on the antiquity RuneQuest’s crunchy combat system, with its many moving parts and possible combinations A wild mention of Shadows of Esteren makes Ludo happy! Telmori lore! Of course we mention Brian Duguid’s Children of Hykim (see also our interview episode with Brian) Credits The photo of the red deer used in the title image is by Michael Brace. The intro music is “Dancing Tiger” by Damscray. The outro music is “Islam Dream” by Serge Quadrado. Other audio is from the FreeSound library.

A new episode is out but Joerg still doesn’t have his replacement laptop so there are no detailed show notes again! Our Guest We welcome the ever prolific Austin Conrad back on the show to talk about his new book which is all about magic items. Links to Austin’s stuff: Treasures of Glorantha Volume 2: Relics of the Second Age Treasures of Glorantha Volume 1: Dragon Pass Note that the above are affiliate links — please use them, thank you! You can also get the old Plunder book for RuneQuest 2nd edition in PDF and in POD from Chaosium. Credits The intro music is “The Warbird” by Try-Tachion. Other music includes “Cinder and Smoke” and “Skyspeak“, along with audio from the FreeSound library.

Show Notes Joerg is still without a computer, so not only are there no detailed show notes again, but he’s not here to stop me from giving a clickbaity title to this episode! Because, indeed, we have zero news about a Questworld Glorantha book… if anything, it’s the contrary. But what we do have for you is Ian Cooper as our guest! Ian comes on the podcast to talk to us about the imminently coming Questworlds. We talk about what it is, what it isn’t, how its mechanics work, and what it’s good for. You can find Questworlds’ free SRD here. You can find Ian on Mastodon here, on Bluesky here, and on Twitter here. We also chat about the game’s history as Hero Wars and then HeroQuest (1st and 2nd editions). Ian tells us about his Red Cow campaign books, The Coming Storm and The Eleven Lights, and what happens in the unreleased sequels that he’s played through. We talk about Greg Stafford’s design philosophy and involvement in the early days of the product line, the differences between the other product lines, and more! Of course, it’s not a zero-sum game, so Ian also makes a point that you can play some games with RuneQuest, and some other games with Questworlds… it’s all about the sort of experience you want for a given story. Credits The intro music is “The Warbird” by Try-Tachion. Other music includes “Cinder and Smoke” and “Skyspeak“, along with audio from the FreeSound library.

Photo by David Dunham This time we interview Gloranthan newcomer Joel Bridge, who thinks we’re intimidating but also nice! Joel is originally from New Jersey but currently lives in San Diego. You can find Joel on Discord as @sirjamesfriendofthecolonel, and also sometimes on the Glorantha-related subreddits r/Glorantha and r/RuneQuest. Show Notes Here are things we talk about in this interview! JRPGs like Final Fantasy and Parasite Eve, but also other video games like Metal Gear Solid which ingrained a love of deep lore and complicated narratives in Joel’s mind. Games where mechanics are intertwined with the setting. Finding D&D at a board game cafe in New York and starting playing roleplaying games… this was followed by Vampire: The Masquerade and Vampire: Requiem. Creating a character one way and roleplaying them another way. Playing Don’t Rest Your Head and Unknown Armies. We digress a bit about Unknown Armies’ “One Shots” scenario collection, where Jailbreak and, especially, Fly to Heaven are featured. Life-path character creation systems, especially Traveller’s. King of Dragon Pass, back when it was a game in a box with manuals. We digress again about old school video games that had actual good stuff in the box, not just a DVD, especially one Ludo’s favourite video games ever, the Ultima series (you can get them on GOG). Playing KoDP again later on mobile/tablet to finish it properly. Using the Glorantha wiki to learn more about the lore, mostly by looking at the references mentioned at the bottom of the pages. This led Joel to getting some old RuneQuest and HeroQuest products in PDF before buying the new RuneQuest: Glorantha books. The idea of time and god in theology/philosophy classes. Roughly speaking, gods need to be outside of time to not be subject to change. Joel was interested in the metaphysics of the setting, but the RuneQuest mechanics were intimidating. Joel’s ideal game: KoDP but with an “adventure mode” like in Dwarf Fortress to play members of the tribe. Joerg mentions that he did play games like this with HeroQuest: Glorantha (now Questworlds), which had some rules for handling the clan. We mention the overlap between KoDP and HeroQuest in the person of Robin Laws. Talking about Six Ages and its sequel, we answer questions about heroquesting. Joerg explains it as a “passion play”, and goes into a bit more detail. Joel draws some analogy with his own religious experiences and theological education. Answering more questions about the mythology and cultures of Glorantha (the Red Goddess, Chaos, etc) sends Joel on another philosophical discussion about Platonic ideals, “true evil” as non-existence, and other erudite things. Joerg explains his take on Chaos. Joel and Joerg discuss the different world views and creation myths on Glorantha. Ludo compares the “default” theistic Gloranthan creation myth with Greek mythology, but notes that there are other views. Joerg launches us into the draconic view, and Joel notes the parallels with Hinduism. While we’re at it, Ludo even mentions the Malkioni humanists. Joerg adds more information, and Joel sees it as an interesting mix of many real-world inspirations from all over the map, across many different eras. Of course, Plato’s Republic gets a mention. We talk some more about the Hyalorings that you play in Six Ages. Joel asks about their pedigree, so Joerg is happy to provide him with their story from the God Time to the Second Age. This leads us somehow to talk about Argrath and the Red Moon & White Bear board game. Joel says he would like to get an RPG group going but he hasn’t been able to so far. We talk about the different types of gameplay possible in Glorantha. Asking Joel about what he doesn’t like about Glorantha, he mentions how there’s a lot of material that’s hard to shuffle through. He mentions how Harnworld (another favourite of Ludo’s) also has a lot of material, but is well organized. With Glorantha, you’re “feeling around in the dark”, dealing with many competing systems and titles. Joel says that starting with the video games was good but was just the tip of the iceberg. Joerg recommends the RuneQuest Starter Set, and the usual other books. Joel mentions that he listens to podcasts to get into history and lore — for Earth he regularly follows the History of Rome podcast, the Revolution podcast, and two History of China podcasts. Ludo mentions that he got interested in Earth ancient history after getting into Glorantha. The actual interview actually ran much longer than this episode’s duration, and a lot of it was cut in the editing room. So if you think we’re digressing a lot, believe us, it was even worse. Credits The intro music is “Dancing Tiger” by Damscray. The outro music is “Islam Dream” by Serge Quadrado. Other audio is from the FreeSound library.

Our Guests For this episode, we have Nick Brooke and Simon Bray as our guests to talk about Simon’s book Furthest, Crown Jewel of Lunar Tarsh, and about what goes on in Lunar Tarsh in general. Show Notes There are no fancy show notes for this episode yet: Joerg’s laptop seems to have been blown up by Orlanthi rebels who don’t want the truth to be told… we will edit this post with the final show notes when Joerg has acquired a new laptop. In the meantime, you can go buy Simon’s stuff: Furthest, Crown Jewel of Tarsh (PDF & hardcover) Simon’s Redbubble shop, including the Map of Furthest and the Map of Tarsh. Bonus stuff: Hydra! (PDF) Adventurers from the Lunar Provinces (PDF) Credits The intro music is “The Warbird” by Try-Tachion. Other music includes “Cinder and Smoke” and “Skyspeak“, along with audio from the FreeSound library.

This episode comes much later than anticipated, but this is Ludo’s fault! Apologies to all. Our Guests In this episode we welcome Kevin Jacklin and David Hall: Kevin has been writing freeform games for a very long time, and table-top role-playing games a little before that, becoming a huge fan of RuneQuest. Kevin names a fateful meeting with our other guest David Hall at a board-gaming convention in the West of England that had a big bearing on what happened afterwards. David Hall started producing a RuneQuest and Glorantha magazine by the name Tales of the Reaching Moon back in 1989. The magazine lasted until 2002 across 20 issues. David was also behind the Reaching Moon Megacorp which produced a number of supporting Gloranthan publications over the same period. Of course the Megacorp was not as massive as the name suggests, it was basically David working part-time out of a very small flat in Slough. Lastly, David was the organizer of the Convulsion game convention from 1992 to 2002, which continues to this day by the name Continuum. And it was at the first Convulsion in 1992 that David and Kevin ran their first freeform, Home of the Bold. Main Topic Ludo admits that he has no experience at all with freeforms but then asks Jörg when he first got into this form of roleplaying. Jörg’s first exposure to freeforms was in the same year he met David for the first time, in 1993 when David visited our annual German RuneQuest convention. While it was not a Gloranthan freeform, it was a Call of Cthulhu freeform which saw Jörg wearing his lab coat chasing after a bird mummy and other stuff. Ludo asked whether there was someone actually dressed as a mummy, but that mummy actually was a prop – a desiccated bird carcass originally wrapped into linen bandages. David sadly did not play in that freeform, as it was German language only, but we (the German RuneQuest society that had been organizing these conventions since 1990) remedied that language problem two years later at our convention near Berlin. The next year Jörg attended the second Convulsion convention in Leicester and had a role to play in How the West Was One, the second of the Reaching Moon Megacorp Gloranthan freeforms. What is a Freeform? David describes a freeform as a microcosm of fantasy roleplaying. Home of the Bold is a fifty player game where each of the fifty players gets a pre-generated character. They get objectives they are trying to meet, they get a list of characters in the game who they are supposed to know, and they get a few abilities and spells to help them get along. Effectively, the cast covers the Lunar administration, the Lunar military, tax collectors, spies, merchants, and on the Sartarite side it includes the city councillors, guilds people, merchants, the local underworld, city constables who look after the local underworld, heralds, and various members of the tribes who are in the city of Boldhome. Altogether a microcosm of the whole of Sartar and the whole of the city, and effectively what happens is that everybody talks to each other. As the directors of the freeform “all we do” is to write the characters, set up the scene, sort of coil the spring, and then just let it go. By the end of the game, the directors will know a lot less about the game than the players will know because they will be living the game and they will work out what’s happening. Kevin adds that it is very much a living thing. To be ultra-precise about it, this is not people sitting around a large table rolling dice, this is a large playing area. People will very often costume for this. It runs over several hours – Home of the Bold in particular is an eight or nine hour game, with a break in there – so it lasts pretty much for the whole of one day of the convention, and people can be caught up in it. That is something that regular table-top roleplaying usually doesn’t do, you can actually become lost in the whole thing. This direct experience is one of the huge benefits of the whole freeform game. Something like that is very taxing to write and organize, which is why you need a convention to support a freeform game. You cannot really run a massive freeform anywhere else. The very first Convulsion had a big freeform game, and David brought Kevin on board because he knew a little bit about them. Kevin’s experience with freeforms originated from a conversation with Sandy Petersen because he had written a Call of Cthulhu scenario. In the late eighties and early nineties Kevin got a chance to visit the Chaosium headquarters because the head offices of his company were situated in the Bay area, too, giving Kevin a really good excuse to go and visit Chaosium and see the folk at work there. A year or two later, Sandy had moved to Microprose on the east coast of the US, and he told Kevin about a group of folks there who had started to write freeform games. This was something that had been going on mainly on the east coast and west coast of the US, something called Interactive Literature., which is in fact live action theatrical roleplaying or freeforms. Sandy had got into a group that included e.g. Lawrence Shick who had written for D&D. The group was called Cruel Hoax, and they were putting on a big freeform in a convention on the east coast, and because Kevin had accumulated lots of air miles, Kevin decided it would be a good idea if he and Dan Steel, a friend of his, flew over to take part in this. The game was called Café Casablanca, effectively a mash-up of all the film noir of the late 1930ies and 40ies including Casablanca of course. Having taken part in this, Kevin thought this was a really cool idea (Details can be found on the Convivium convention website run by Kevin) David knew Kevin, and when Kevin told him about Cafe Casablanca it sounded amazing. David showed off his costumes and everything, and David wanted to have one of those freeforms for the Convulsion convention he was setting up in Leicester for 1992, so they sat down to write one. David says that had they known how much work it was to write a freeform, they might not have started that. Kevin remembers that it was not quite that straightforward – they had to convince the rest of the Convulsion committee that this was a cool thing to do. Because nobody had ever played a freeform, and because they needed how cool they really are, Kevin wrote one which he ran at his house for the committee. That was Adventures of Robin Hood, Kevin asks David whether there exist any pictures of him in tights, which David (quite vehemently) negates. Anyway, the committee seemed to like the concept, and the following year they introduced Home of the Bold to an unsuspecting public at Convulsion. Freeform Plots Ludo falls into his role as the newcomer to this kind of activity, and he asks about what to expect from a freeform. He has some idea about murder mystery games which have a inciting incident – the murder – and then people trying to get behind who did it, and that’s the big resolution. David replies that there are always a number of plots in the freeforms. There are about ten or twenty plots in Home of the Bold, some bigger than others. There are probably murders that need to be solved, heists the underworld is trying to pull, but the main backdrop is the occupation by the Lunar Empire, so there is a big aspect of that. The directors set this thing up, then it all depends on what the players do. There is no such thing as a right ending, but there is a likely ending. Kevin adds that one of the things the directors do put in place is scaffolding which gives players something bigger than themselves to do. So for example there is an election, and it is in the objectives of some of the players to try and get elected, so you have to go around and persuade people, or blackmail them or whatever you want to do to vote for you. There is a chariot race, and there are prizes for people who win the chariot race. You have all of these things that people hang on to that are part of something that is really big, and that’s a cool thing about freeforms. Everybody does have their own objectives, but the trick with writing a character sheet is that if you need to go and find X, there is going to be someone who has got X or who has information how to find X. Every player is the star of their own movie, things are happening to them. If you talk to the lowliest street beggar about what is going on in Home of the Bold, it is going to be the glorious rise of the street beggar, he probably doesn’t care about the Lunar occupation as long as he is getting a bowl of soup at the end of the day. The writers basically provide half a novel for each of the players and give them a bunch of objectives. The really good players are ones that make up more objectives for themselves, which is when things become self-generative. David adds that the writers have another technique. Some player characters get an envelope which is to be opened when there is a life-changing event happening to them. When a certain triggering event happens, their whole objectives may change. There are romance plots as well, you may end up sharing objectives with people who you may not accidentally fall for. There are all sorts of things that can send people off into a different direction. There is one rule though that unless it is into the last hour of the game, you never make it a player’s objective to kill another player character. That is a big no-go in freeforms. Ludo asks whether “except in the last hour” means that there is going to be a big blood-bath. Kevin explains that some people spend weeks and months to prepare their characters for the game. There usually is a good mix of genders attending such a freeform. A lot of players like to do the costuming bits, some might have a different costume for eve