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Mythic Adventure; Culture and Community; Unique Adventurers; Brutal Combat — Check out everything that's going into the new RUNEQUEST STARTER SET! Just a few final tweaks and then it's off to printer...

The Company of the Dragon is out. Andrew Logan Montgomery’s RuneQuest coming-of-age campaign Six Seasons in Sartar is the best book on the Jonstown Compendium. So what does he do for an encore? He only goes and surpasses it. The Company of the Dragon is a RuneQuest campaign about outlaws and freedom fighters, war and heroism, history and legend. Where Six Seasons was inspired by the feel of first encountering RuneQuest, The Company of the Dragon takes its lead from White Bear & Red Moon, the board wargame of the Hero Wars in Dragon Pass. Its heroes appear in these pages – Argrath and

The Starter set: Book 1: Rules is 64 pages, and has some rules for experience and regaining rune points. Book 2: World of Glorantha is 64 pages. Book 3: SoloQuest is 60 pages, and has ONE soloquest. Book 4: Adventures is 84 pages.

Some of you may have already noticed Gloranthan runes showing up on this site. They are the same as the Gloranthan Core Rune Font (except with sorcery runes!) and available in two sizes: Large 50pt Small 20pt (suitable for use in a sentence) There are two methods of using them. METHOD 1 Click the Emoji button in the editing toolbar (may not appear on small screens, see method 2). Then click categories on the top right At the bottom you will find Big Runes and Small Runes: Select the size you want, then click on the rune to insert it: M

Because the 'Dragon Community' is so important in this, I have started creating a 'character sheet' for it. This is what I have so far - any suggestions for improvements gratefully received

By Jason Durall, RuneQuest creative director As outlined in my initial Design Diary post, we had several main goals with the RuneQuest Starter Set. First and foremost was to make it a wholly accessible product for newcomers to RuneQuest and the world of Glorantha. But another important goal is to make sure the Starter Set also has value to our already-established player base. Too many starter sets are throwaway items or are of no use to veteran players. Not this one! Here's what you're going to get for USD$29.99: The Box We’re absolutely thrilled to have this as the first of

The Starter Set for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha is coming! Between now and its release later this year, RuneQuest creative director Jason Durall's Design Diary will share insights about the development of this exciting new boxed set which will introduce the RuneQuest RPG and Greg Stafford's mythic world of Glorantha to all-new audiences. @Jason D: Two years ago, in the center of Chaosium’s booth at Essen Spiel, the largest game convention in the world, I sat down with my colleagues Jeff Richard, Rick Meints, and Neil Robinson to plan a Starter Set for RuneQuest: Roleplaying

The RBoM has been printed and is being shipped to all of our warehouses.

For Immediate Release Taking Bronze Age authenticity to the next level: Chaosium announces clay tablet cuneiform edition of RuneQuest Ypsilanti, MI. April 1, 2021 Chaosium Inc., publishers of RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha, have announced a special cuneiform edition of their popular heroic fantasy tabletop RPG. “Unlike most fantasy settings, RuneQuest draws its greatest inspiration from the myths and literature of the ancient world, including such sources as the Iliad, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Epic of Gilgamesh,” said Chaosium's Wallace Trumble, who previ

Fresh from our Polish printer - we got a look at advance copies of The Red Book of Magic today, and it sure is beautiful! The rest are being dispatched to our warehouses and will be available for purchase soon. In the mean time, remember if you buy the PDF direct from Chaosium.com you get the full price of the PDF off the physical book when it is out.

Let's start with a look at the ToC for the 64 page rulebook and for the 64 page Glorantha book: The Homelands info in the starter set is in the Glorantha book. All of them are there, but they are 2 pages of info in total. The core book has 21 cults described over 22 pages. The starter set has 20 cults described with 3 pages of overview. The starter set has 37 spirit magic and 94 rune spells documented. Sorcery is briefly covered, and one of the pre-gens has 3 sorcery spells detailed.

For what it is worth - in some older stories and in places like Saird, Orlanth and Yelm are the Two Rival Brothers. And the Orlanthi readily acknowledge that killing Yelm had Bad Consequences. Just as the Greeks readily admit that Zeus was dick about that hold Prometheus thing.

BtMoM will be $49.99 USD and HotOE will be $89.99. Available for sale on Chaosium.com this month.

Chivalrous is short-hand for "Cult of Hrestol". The cult of Hrestoli imposes a stringent code on its initiates and demands that they: 1. Uphold justice and fight injustice. The Hrestoli ultimately must determine what is Just and what is Unjust, and fight for what is Just. This includes an obligation to protect the weak (especially women and children) from the strong, but generally excludes barbarians and the Elder Races; indeed this obligation is often celebrated by fighting monsters or Krjalk. Justice is considered more important than such virtues as Loyalty. 2. Sacrifice oneself fo

A Glorious Easter to you all!

Oppressed Ernaldans in a Yelmalion patriarchal theocracy IN PRAX. The Yelmalions in Dragon Pass have the bare-boobied snake cult and probably are as shocked as other Sartarites by the low status of Ernalda in Praxian Sun County.

Hi - before we can release the Curse of Seven, we want to release the new edition of Cthulhu by Gaslight, which is currently in writing and development.

Paul gets it in one. That's an image from the Glorantha part of Book 2, which depicts a bit of Nochet.

We will sell the PDFs at $14.99 when we start selling the printed set for $29.99. Same day.

In the latest of our Chaosium Interview series, RuneQuest creative director Jason Durall discusses more about what's to come in the RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha product line including the RuneQuest Starter Set. Jason is talking with Chaosium's James Coquillat.

It probably helps that pretty much everyone in the company is an active gamer. We do have a company board though, but eldritch considerations mean we usually meet outdoors...

A giant ship having to maneuver through a clearly inadequate stretch of water? Sounds like a good time to homage Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo! The Waertagi captain is clearly Klaus Kinski.

The Tribal Moot may well take longer than a week, depending on how large and important the clan is. Depending on how frequent or infrequent they are there may be a lot of backlog of business to attend to. Every Clan Chief will show up with an entourage and they will all need to be housed and fed. The Tribal King's hospitality will be on display as a measure of their right to rule. Much can go wrong. Much depends on dinner. Suggestions: (1) Pretty much every clan will have an in-tribe feud, as feuds outside the tribe can lead to tribal wars, whereas if they are conducted within the t

I know we had an old thread, but I didn't want to engage in necromancy. I thought this very interesting, if not exactly portable... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-56648055

If your tribe/clan/village/temple can't afford a ransom, then capture someone from the other side who has a similar ransom. Problem solved! I can see no down sides to this solution.

"Combat in runequest is visceral and always potentially deadly. Players should be mindful that even the least trollkin can take out your..." Then it cuts off.

Currently I'm at 12 nonhuman adventurers, each a unique race, and may increase the total to 14.

Two things: 1. HotOE and BtMoM had no content changes or additions. We just redid the layout and fixed obvious typos. These are new printings, not new editions. 2. They both go on sale next week.

Actually the problem was simpler. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Greg wasn't writing any RuneQuest - he was working on First Age material for his Harmast novel. So he needed to answer questions like: what did the survivors of the Great Darkness in Dragon Pass call the Sun when it first rose? What did they call the Volcano Gods of what would later be Caladraland? And so forth. Same thing with Dara Happa - Greg's focus was on how the Dara Happans viewed the world before they really started interacting with the Theyalans in the Broken Council. This was all fascinating stuff - but also more t

Whereas my player love them, use them all the time as it defines who their adventurer is. The Storm Bull in the group failed his Beast rune inspiration twice last week. He's looking to atone for whatever has caused Storm Bull's ire with him. Looks like a pilgrimage! They are the main tools for roleplaying in my game (same in Pendragon too). We have a lot of opposed Passion and Rune rolls too as they wrestle with loyalties, runic traits and honour. except it's a roleplaying game of fantasy high adventure in a bronze age magical world, not a roll-playing game of dice values and probabili

I adore stuff like this. My favourite ever Runequest 6 game was supposed to be about exploring a grim world of dark and ancient magic, but took a decidedly Austen-y turn when the PC had to flee the hapless suitor her eldest brother had contracted for her to marry. I decided that I had accidently created a new genre, 'sword-and-sensibility'.

I started running borderlands yesterday and... MAN WHAT A GREAT SESSION!!! The adventurers are a Yerlornan from the unicorn people, a Humakti berserker from (somewhere in dragon pass) and a Lhankor Mhy from Pavis. The 4th player couldn't make it this week sadly. Players were new to Glorantha and Runequest, with only DnD experience. I just pulled the OG map of Prax and started telling them how it was the holy land and a paradise, but then the storm god murdered the sun and... Well you guys know how the story goes. The players got hooked instantly and I couldn't have been happier!

It probably bears repeating that most iterations of BRP stress that you only need to roll in dramatic or tense circumstances. Normal, standard, typical, everyday exercise of a skill is an automatic success: no roll needed, because the circumstances are favourable, no pressures, time constraints, threats or deadlines. It's only when such things come into play does the skill value take on dramatic meaning, and those who aren't quite as skilled as others start to feel the pressure. Practical example: Lewis Hamilton = Drive 115%. Joe Everyman Drive 50%. Both characters drive the shops to buy

1. It will probably be printed in Poland. 2. Nice try. 🙂

In the 40th anniversary year of the game, Tabletop news site BELL OF LOST SOULS describes how the release of Call of Cthulhu in 1981 changed the face of Roleplaying: "Modern gaming wouldn’t look remotely like what it does today without [Sandy] Petersen and Call of Cthulhu. It was the game that finally got RPGs to leave behind their Wargame roots and step fully into a new genre of game." Read the article here: Bell of Lost Souls.

I always find Huichol yarn paintings very near the mark (and of course the basis of the spirit art in RQG). You can find some animated if you look around: Every day in the spirit world: Not Huichol, but has some great spirit landscape imagery and shows a ritual for dealing with ferocious polar bears

It has just occurred to me that one particular manifestation of the six-slice pizza that is the Holy Country in the material world is the layout of the core Disneyland parks: six themed areas laid out in a supposed circle around the central palace of wonders. Of course, the actual Disney parks follow this shape only on maps, and there are all kinds of tricks of liminality played by the Imagineers/Masters of Luck and Death to carefully blend the Sixths together. I'm not sure where I'm going with this, beyond the combination of pure artifice and control with spontaneous discovery of the proper t

Gorgorma and Monster Man... So, you have five very prominent goddesses in the big Dara Happan myth complex. You have Ourania, who rules the domestic life of the Sky Dome, Dendara, wife of Yelm, Entekos, ruler of the air and calmer of storms, Oria, the fertile earth and peasant woman goddess, and Gorgorma, who is the mirror image of these four faces of virtue. Gorgorma is insouciant, impure, corrupts whatever she touches, and in at least some material has a vagina dentata thing going on which I take as a kind of representation of that inversion- she devours with that mouth instead of anyth

This is as Peter has said, the Grazer god Yu-Kargzant. In this form he's not the source of the Fire rune. In the GoG write up you will see Not stasis and Mastery in RQG, yes in older write ups: https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/home/gloranthan-documents/prosopaedia/deities/y/yelm/ That's the nature of Yu-Kargzant. Yu-Kargzant, see above. Yelm receives Sunbright from the subservient cult of Antirius, Antirius is not a subservient cult of Yu-Kargzant. There is only one cult with the stasis rune, and they focus on truth, knowledge magic and sorce

Trotsky this is...brilliant. Gorgeous. I would LOVE to include this in the book. Contact me and we will work something out!

Way back in Wyrms Footnotes #5, there was information on how villages "near Alone" (and in the Far Place in general) would include big sharpened and poisonous tree trunks sticking out of buildings' rooftops (pictured below). The reason for that was supposedly that the Far Place is near the "Giants' Path", a route that Giants frequently take coming down from the mountains to go to Snakepipe Hollow. Giants would be less inclined to stomp on those houses. Here's the map of the area from Snakepipe Hollow.... the Giants' Path is the dotted line along the Vale of Flowers. As you can s

So many variables: 1. We have no idea when your birthday is, so let's say the time until your birthday equals ?. 2. Printing takes X time, shipping to our four warehouses in the US/UK/AUS/EU takes X time, getting through international customs takes X time, then additional shipping from customs takes X time. Then it's a case of how long it takes our warehouses/fulfillment centers to from "pallets of boxes on loading docks" to "ready to put product into the mail." Let's call that time... X. So putting those together, it's hard to say whether ? is greater than or equal to X+X+X+

And now the Monomyth complete! Agathe noted in the post that it took some 210 hours to complete... Several weeks study of this fresco in Boldhome will increase your Cult Lore by at least 20%. There are also some who claim that this is one of the Devil's Riddles, and if you study too long you will increase the likelihood of becoming Illuminated...

More broadly: a theme I'd use in Yelmalion folk mythology is that the ideal heroic champion is the Good Soldier Son, like Yelmalio. While his father is wise, benevolent and patriarchal, he doesn't necessarily need to know what's going on in the barracks, on the march or on the battlefield (Yelm, & the Count / my revered Dad); some Uncles are foolish, lascivious and beastly (Lodril, & all those hazia-smoking skirt-chasing lazy drunken backsliders who don't embody YO virtues); other Uncles are aloof, austere and too otherworldly for their own good (Dayzatar, & High Temple Light Pries

There's about as many Pelorians as there are Kralori or Teshnans (i.e. a handful, at most). You can meet one of them in The Corn Dolls, importing cutting-edge agricultural techniques (latifundia!) to Sun County. Lodril is not a significant cult, though I imagine Yelmalio's naughty uncle Lodril features in Sun County folk myths as an exemplar of What Not To Do, always getting into the sort of lecherous drunken self-indulgent beastly troubles that foolish peasants are tempted to lapse into, but which fine upstanding Yelmalion soldier-farmers like us would never dream of tainting our pure so

More of the Monomyth now filled in...

My view? Go big, or go home. A Waertagi Cityship surfing The River from Skyfall down to the Mirrorsea sounds all kinds of awesome!

OK. PG Wodehouse was a British author who wrote comedies about weird upper-class families, mostly. The most famous are the “Jeeves & Wooster” books, in which a phenomenally capable butler (Jeeves) and a blithering nincompoop (Bertie Wooster) navigate an aristocratic world of breaking scandals, doomed romance and minor crimes. The Drones Club is the spiritual home of idle young men like Bertie (generically, “Drones”): pampered and cosseted by inherited wealth, they have never had to grow up and instead spend their time being tossed on the tempest waves of their Aunts’ scheming. Some Dr

No! Don’t wimp out! Rather than seeing it as setting the bar too high, consider it instead as an opportunity to set a different bar. Don’t try to recreate what has been done, create something new with that as inspiration, as artists have done throughout history. In my own efforts I’m taking a consciously old school RQ2 approach, feeling more like the kinds of adventures you’d find in an early 80s fanzine than the modern lush dramatic soap operas with extensive portions of narrative to read to the players. The art is going to be tough, and I’m starting to feel around locally for artist