This article is about spirits, and animism, and animists, and about animists in a Mythras game.
Here's what the Mythras Core Rulebook has to say about animism.
Animism is magic worked through communion with spirits and the spirit world. It is the magic of shamans and spirit walkers. Such practitioners do not treat with gods or learn their abilities from books or tomes; instead their powers come from the myriad spirits that inhabit the spirit realms, and interact occasionally with the m
Of all the rules of Mythras,the chapter on Theism has the potential to provide the greatest contention, because it covers the topic of the player characters' religion.
Devotion is one of two non-mundane skills used by theists. The other skill, Exhort, is used to invoke Theistic Miracles.
But what exactly is Devotion about, anyway?
Holiness
Can people really measure someone's holiness by a number? Could a religion's Pontiff really throw down some badass righteous smiting from
This article takes a look at an aspect of each Adventurer's makeup which is rarely used, except in dire circumstances as an "extra save roll" when the resistance skills have failed, and before the player uses up a Luck Point to make the problem go away.
This article is about Passions.
Core Rulebook
Mythras, page 282, has this to say about Passions. Bolded parts highlighted by me.
Throughout all kinds of fiction, and especially in fantasy, passion drives the plot. The desire t
[Cover image is from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/Atelier_von_Rahmenmachern_und_deren_Werkzeuge_im_18._Jahrhundert.jpg]
One of the more overlooked issues about Mythras adventuring is what equipment the Adventurers are carrying while out on a campaign. The basic tool lists on pages 60, 61 of Mythras and page 88 of Fioracitta are good guidelines as to what one could expect to take on an adventure, but there is still a need to plan in advance for the adventure.
The
Here we go, final entry for the Bardori campaign. This will be a long one, the Storm Season arc was something like 4-6 sessions, comparable to our Prax and Pavis episodes. The last few sessions occurred right at the beginning of the pandemic, so we had to adjust to online play.
After the horrible events of Dark Season, everyone's main concern was purifying the clan of the sins of Chaos and kinslaying. The Clan Ring and chieftain consult with Ynga the Rock, the Storm Bull representative on
The Adventurers are the core of all games. As games have developed, adventure modules have been less about pre-packaged mazes full of hazards and more about dramas and conflicts, with the Adventurers at the heart of driving the changes.
As adventures have developed from their implausible "mazes full of traps and horrors" to more nuanced scenarios and dramas, so too have Adventurers. Modern Adventuring parties now more closely resemble bands of roaming mercenaries, military units or hunting
Okay, so... my Dundealos campaign ended nearly 2 years ago. I might be starting a new campaign soon, and as I was thinking back on this one, I felt bad that I never did a recap for the ending. So here it is, nearly 2 years late! This is going to be pretty bare bones, because now I only remember the broad strokes.
My players and I went through 2 more seasons of 1626, and decided to wrap things up at Sacred Time. I've saved our old character sheets in case we want to revisit them, but I don'
[Featured image taken from Monster Wiki - https://monster.fandom.com/wiki/Dragon?file=DragonRed.jpg]
This post is a hard one to write, and not for the reasons you might think.
Dragon slaying, noble questing knights, castles ... they are all such staples of fantasy, it's hard to get away from such tropes. From Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern, through to more modern incarnations in popular media such as Kilgarrah (voiced by the late, great John Hurt) in the TV series Merlin, the dr
Lord of the Endless Surf
Born the very hour that the Sun first appeared in the Sky at the Dawn, Indlas Somer found a new world of oppressive rules and stifling traditions. He rejected the depressing vision of the dogmatists and the judges of morality, and sought a life of hedonism and enjoyment. He quested mightily, and succeeded in carving his own place out of the world: a place for friends and celebration of the good things Life has to offer.
Members of the cult enjoy fast chario
With apologies to Greg Costikyan
"In elder days, no rags were offset
and Lord Mimeo reigned supreme.
Prozine was then a dirty word;
Urf Durfal... still a pleasant dream.
"Yet abysmal worlds spawned forth a horror!
OFFSET, challenging mimeo's rule.
Clear printing, yes, but what price glory?
Dare we abandon our god-sent tool?
"Arise ye men of mildewed minds!
Destroy yon evil process offset.
There is no god but GREAT GESTETNER,
and Costikyan is his only prophet."
In the first age, the region now called Balazar was part of what everyone called the Elder Wilds. The indigenous people call their traditions the Elder Wilds Tradition, and it dominates the area. The people live by hunting and gathering. The primary female practice is Hearth-Mother. The primary male practice is Foundchild the Hunter, although some woman become hunters and join this practice instead of Hearth-Mother. Your hero is probably a spiritist of the tradition, and so gains the benefit of
Song of the Forests
In the beginning was the One. Boundless and, yet, constrained, it contained the limitless All. All that was, and All that was Not. Being and non-being. This paradox, the Paradox of Self, fragmented the One, and it became Two: Grower and Taker.
The Grower contained within it all potential. This potential took the form of the Seed. This was the beginning of the First Plantings, the Age of the Grower.
From within the One, the fluid parts separated, and thus came th
The World Machine
In the beginning, there was the World Machine. A device of wondrous complexity, It encompassed the entirety of the Universe, somehow becoming something greater than the sum of Its parts. Self-created, it contained all possibilities within itself. It remains beyond the comprehension of lesser beings, but it may be termed Mostal. Three components were of special interest to dwarf lore: Helper, the first tool; Linchpin, the central support; and the Mostali, independent repair an
One of the most potent storytelling techniques in anybody's arsenal is immersion. Without it, your players cannot really appreciate the setting you have laid out for your characters.
Immersion is, in short, a state of mind in which the players are so invested in the unfolding game that they can forget they are in a game at all, and actually live out the adventure in character.
Immersion is the reason why some game settings just take off, and others fall flat on their face.
The Pow
Tripartite Worship of a Chaos Entity
The Thanatar cult is an oddity in modern Glorantha. An attempt to revere a Chaos entity lost in the Gods War, it is a syncretism of different magical groups. Some blame its resurgence on the sort of magical meddling that backfired on the God Learners; others say the Lunars, Shamans, or Sorcerers are to blame. As the Thanatari are extraordinarily secretive and their works are routinely burned when found, the truth may never be known.
What is clear, how
Most of this week, I have been focusing my attention on "A Race Through Dark Places," my GenCon Online blog set in Fioracitta.
This weekend has been a real test of all those principles I've been using, especially the hypnotic storytelling.
Welcome to Fioracitta
This map is a detail from a region map created by Jim Abbott for Fioracitta, The Heart of Power.
The adventure takes place in Escharro (bottom centre left).
The six player characters are:-
Amares - Adve
And so it's the turn of civilised cultures to come under the spotlight.
The words "civic," "civil," "civilian," "civility," and "civilisation" come from a Latin root, "civitas," city. It can be argued that a civilised nation is one which has reached a sufficient level of sophistication as to require urban developments - the formation of communities into cities, plural.
Throughout history, there have been a good many examples of civilised societies, each of which thought itself the pinn
The Civilised Voice - Alternative ended up being delayed ten hours from its usual go-live time of 12:00 UTC+1. It went live at 22:00 UTC+1.
This was due to my ongoing preparations for running "A Race Through Dark Places" for Fioracitta, at GenCon Online, September 17 and 18.
All future blog posts are going live at 10pm UTC or UTC+1 on Saturday nights, from the 2021-09-11 post onward.
Continuing the exploration of the different Cultures from the Mythras Core Rulebook, this time looking at Nomads.
Nomadic people have coexisted with settled peoples since the dawn of humanity. There has been a dichotomy between settled people and nomadic travellers since the first humans left Olduvai Gorge to fend for themselves when it became too crowded. Some humans settled in new places ... others, kept on going.
Epic Scale
Going by the fossil records, hominins evolved bipedal
Continuing my look into the four basic cultural backgrounds from the Mythras Core Rulebook.
What, exactly, is a barbarian anyway?
What distinguishes a Barbarian culture from a Primitive, Nomadic, or Civilised culture? The answer, shockingly, is nothing. "Barbarian" is a political definition - basically, it's "any culture that isn't ours."
Technically, "barbarian" just means "foreign," or "outsider," just like "pagan" just means "country bumpkin" and "mundane" means "man of the wor
This week, and for the next few weeks, you're going to take a little side step. You're going to be presented with the voices of the different cultures of Mythras.
I know, you've already got The Primitive Voice, The Nomad Voice, and so on, from the Core Rulebooks. But these Voices are different.
A Connected World
These voices assume two things: one, that fantasy worlds are connected places, where that which affects one person, one place, affects other people, other places; and two,
