jrutila

Jussi Löytökorpi is a Finnish GM analyst. He has written a book called "Directing the Game – Black Belt Techniques for GMs", where he lists 30 techniques for advanced GMs to help spice up your game. Jussi visited us in the "Daytazarin tähtien alla" podcast where we had a lengthy discussion on how to improve the Glorantha vibes on the table so that playing in Glorantha doesn't feel like just another generic fantasy game. It was a good discussion but unfortunately, for the rest of the world, it was in Finnish.

Still, we decided to distill our talking points and findings into this PDF. It can give you some ideas on how to get more Glorantha into the narration of the game. Some might seem self-evident for seasoned Glorantha GMs but hopefully, it will give you some food for your brain. If you want to see the techniques in more detail I can highly recommend Jussi's book. It is more of a coffee table book where you can pick a technique to try out in your next game to see what kind of an effect it has on the game. 

You could say this PDF is the official Glorantha extension to Jussi's book.

Check out the PDF attached to this topic and Jussi's book in DriveThruRPG (this is an affiliate link that helps our podcast, thank you)

GM_BB_Glorantha_Techniques.pdf

8 hours ago, SDLeary said:

Only other thing you need to remember is that Masteries off opponents cancel out, still something that doesn't affect the number to the left.

With QW you don't even have to remember to do that. You just sum up the successes and compare them.

Thank you for this question! It reminded me about a blog post sitting in my drafts folder. I now finished it and hopefully you get some tips out of it, too.

https://worldsofqw.wordpress.com/2022/10/02/using-questworlds-as-the-system-for-play-by-post/

After a too long hiatus I managed to publish a blog post at Worlds of QuestWorlds! It is about group contests with the theme of My Little Pony.

https://worldsofqw.wordpress.com/2022/04/19/group-contests-share-the-spotlight/

Do you use more group contests or augments in your game to bring other PCs into the spotlight?

The great thing about resolution points is that the contest will be over in maximum of nine rounds. And that's the worst case. In my experience it is usually something like max. five rounds. If you only use extended contest once or twice during the session, for the contests that the players are really invested in, having couple of extra rolls should not be a problem.

When narrating a round in extended contest you have lots of input: the final prize, used tactics in the round, round outcome, the new RP situation, other contests. The new RP situation is extremely valuable. Is the opponent one Marginal Victory away from the win? Would that yield a Marginal or Major outcome for the whole extended contest? All of these aspects should result in different narration. Take your time in the extended contest narrating the rounds. It might be your sessions most important contest, after all.

Now, about your stress point (I like the name) mechanic. Wouldn't static reduction values make the contest longer the bigger the starting values are? For example (don't know if anyone still plays with values this big) 5W2 vs. 3W2 would drag for ages. Of course, masteries could cancel, but then the match will end in one marginal outcome.

The other thing to take into account is the added advantage. In a case of 14 vs. 15W the 14 value already has a disadvantage on the rolls. Having 20 stress points less just adds to that. This same point can be made for the wagered sequence in QW rules, though.

@lyssa, your question was such thought-provoking that I decided to answer it through a blog post: https://worldsofqw.wordpress.com/2021/05/06/the-role-of-npcs-in-questworlds/

News from Finnish Glorantha podcasting scene. Two new episodes out since my last post. First, in episode 12, we looked into south, to Pamaltela. Quite soon we realised Pamaltela is quite big and deep in lore and we only scratched the surface.  We took a small dive into Fonrit, tough. Maybe we have to revisit some parts of Pamaltela later. One thing I personally learned from the episode was the idea, that chaos monsters in Pamaltela are individual creatures and there really isn't chaos races like broos and scorpion mens etc. Never thought of that before.

Our latest episode was about art and illustrations of Glorantha. We had special guest, illustrator Ossi Hiekkala (https://www.archipictor.com/) who is doing illustrations for Glorantha products (for example, the cover of the new RuneQuest Starter Set). Our episode base structure was an e-mail interview with @Jeff. We read the answers and then discussed about the topic. You can find our questions and Jeff's answers from below. Thank you Jeff for taking time to answer our questions. We collected a Pinterest board containing couple of pictures from artists and topics we discussed about.

We also reviewed the RuneQuest Coloring Book in the episode.

E-mail interview with Jeff Richard

Art direction has taken a huge leap under your guidance. It has not always been the number 1 priority in Gloranthan publications. Has this been a resource thing, or did you have an “awakening” about the importance of art? What have your main influences been?

Art is absolutely necessary in order to "see" the setting. IMO being able to imagine what a Sartarite warrior or a dark troll or the plains of Prax look like is as important asthe text. Unfortunately, until we Kickstarted the Guide, we really didn't have the resources to do things right. During the Issaries period (HeroQuest, Sartar, etc.) we were working on such a shoestring budget that we pretty much had to use whatever we could get. But with the Guide, and now with RuneQuest, we can really put the resources into art that the setting deserves.

In terms of influences on the use of arts in our books, I am strongly (perhaps overly) influenced by things like the Osprey books with Angus McBride, John Warry's Warfare in the Classical World, and the DK Eyewitness series. I want to see what people wear, how they live, how they die, and how they imagine the world through  their own art. Having a bunch of people stand around in heroic action poses bores me silly. In terms of classic game art, give me Lisa Free, Gene Day, Miles Teves, or Jeff Laubenstein any day of the week. I've also got a tremendous fondness for the work of Erol Otus, David Trampier, and Russ Nicolson.

I love it when fantasy artists take elements from the classics - Gustav Klimt, Alphonse Mucha, Viktor Vasnetsov, John William Waterhouse, Franz Stuck, etc. Mark Smylie recently did a cover for us (Red Book of Magic) which was inspired in part by Carl Jung's illustrations in the Liber Novus.

Any hints for other cultural influences for Glorantha? Any museums etc that have made a deep impression, and every Glorantha fan should see?

I'm an inveterate museum goer. The Louvre, the British Museum, Museumsinsel - I've made repeated pilgrimages to them for ideas and references. Some other fantastically Gloranthan museums are the National Museum of Archaeology in Valetta, the Heraklion Archaeological Museum in Crete, and the National Archaeological Museum in Naples.

But also be willing to run with over the top sword and sorcery ideas - loincloths, bare chests, magical crystals, glowing swords, swirling spirits, and armor that is as much about showing off as it is for being practical. This is a magical and fantastic world as well as a material one. Burning Man i as good a source of ideas as the Altesmuseum. 

Any pop culture references you care to share?

Musically, I associate Glorantha with Bowie's flights of wild fancy that get grounded by Lou Reed's focus on the losers and failures and Johnny Cash singing about murder and love. Add a bit of Zeppelin and Iggy Pop's rock shamanism, Kate Bush's magical imagination, the drug use of the Stones and the Doors, and the occasional cavalry charge of Beethoven, and you got what runs through my head. 

Moviewise, I don't really associate Glorantha with things like Game of Thrones or Vikings or whatever. I associate it with Westerns. Unforgiven, Deadwood, Deadman, Tombstone - go wild with it. A dangerous frontier where we can explore the consequences of violence and vengeance, we can try to impose civilization, or try to communicate with the powerful spirits of the place.

How much canon you get to (or have to) create when guiding the, more and more detailed, graphics? There must be questions like, for example, should they be serving wine from a barrel or an amphora. Do you find answers from existing sourcebooks?

Thanks to the Guide a lot of that is set down, and books like the forthcoming Sartar boxed set provide more information. Where I don't know, I try to refer to several different cultures that are more or less similar to that Gloranthan culture. So for the Sartarites we reference a lot of Southern European, Near Eastern, or South Asian material artefacts from the Bronze and Iron Ages. Material culture tends to be more widely spread than we like to pretend, and Sartar is a mixing point of lots of different cultures, so look for appropriate reference points and mix it up.

There are quite many “Where in Glorantha” posts around showing a real-world landscape that could fit in Glorantha. There have also been prominent Glorantha landscape visualizations published by artists. What aspects make the Gloranthan landscape unique when picturing it? What differs it from our world or generic fantasy?

To me, the landscape of Glorantha is inspired by the Western United States - the landscapes of the American Rockies and the Southwest, or the Sierra Nevada. That's Dragon Pass and Prax. I imagine Glorantha as people from the ancient world inhabiting Pleistocene North America, with herds of bison and antelopes, saber-toothed cats and other megafauna. Plus dinosaurs. The Mahabharata performed in Jackson Hole. With dinosaurs of course. You have fantastic high mountains, grasslands mixed with forests of pine and oak, and scrublands. Places like Devil's Tower, Mount Rainier, Yosemite Valley, the Black Hills and the Badlands, US Route 50 in Nevada - all of that inspires Glorantha. 

Do you have a personal favorite image you keep getting back to? What aspects of a Glorantha imaginary do you, personally, pay special attention to?

I've got bunches of favorite published pieces and even more favorite unpublished pieces! Among my absolute favorite published pieces are the Vasana pic done by Loïc Muzy, Andrey Fetisov's pic showing Vasana and Yanioth offering sacrifices to Ernalda, and Jakub Rebelka's Red Goddess. But I got SO many favorite unpublished pieces. Especially by Ossi - I think his Sartarite social classes piece might be one of my absolute favorites. There's a piece by Hazem Ameen's in the forthcoming Starter set that I often refer to - it captures the Sartarites perfectly. And the stuff Agathe Pité and Loïc are doing for the Cults book just blows my mind.

I'm sure Ossi can say that I pay special attention to skin color (the Orlanthi are olive-brown, not white), tattoos (I am coming up with a tattoo guide) and material objects.  

Any other remarks or pointers you want to make about Gloranthan graphics?

Let the Gloranthans be their own thing. Borrow from many different points of reference - mixing things up. Don't let any Glorathan be a one to one correspondence to a real world culture. Experiment with body shapes, skin and hair color, and wild hairstyles. And be willing to show ordinary scenes that tell stories - one of my favorite images from Ossi is a Sartarite farmer tenderly holding his child in his arms. That's Glorantha to me!

Hello again,

posting here what is happening in our Finnish Glorantha podcast "Dayzatarin tähtien alla". Even though most you don't understand our weird language I thought you like to hear what we do. These are also free ideas to use in other podcasts if you ever decide to do one.

This month we arranged a Juke Box Jury (I think that's what it is called in UK, Levyraati in Finland) of Glorantha music. So every participant brought a song that they think goes somehow with Glorantha. We also briefly discussed about how to use music with Glorantha (in game, to get into mood, as a background).

We also reviewed Red Book of Magic. Given that the podcast participants are Glorantha grognards there wasn't really new spells or information, per se. But there were new images and we applauded that. We also had brief discussion if a person living in Glorantha can name the spell they are doing ("I cast Bladesharp 4!") or is it just rules thing. There is the mention about God Learners indexing and determining the spells. But we all know what happened to God Learners.

Winner of the Juke Box Jury was CMX with their song Vainajala. It was also the only Finnish song on the list. It tells about transitioning into the underworld. Unfortunately, I don't have the forewords for the songs for you but at least the list is here:

Synaulia - Pavor
https://open.spotify.com/track/0t0TT2q7XJ65uDoRiHWcSN?si=ArBInD18Tv-bkQnZMTLNbQ
https://youtu.be/f0IpxYUi2Dk

System of a Down - Toxicity 
https://open.spotify.com/track/0snQkGI5qnAmohLE7jTsTn?si=s4QzKim2RYORA2GIRf5hEA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iywaBOMvYLI

Mercan Dede - Ab-i Lal
https://open.spotify.com/track/4YPb1lAnzH16WrjItMaD4i?si=1upHEZjjTJqLpDTphv2POQ
https://youtu.be/nhssFIoi7mY

CMX - Vainajala
https://open.spotify.com/track/1nNAnDhwkJgQNTVcQa4Aou?si=FnGBxaITS3-vaOLzgHhn6g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsYTHe5DKfY

6 hours ago, Dimbyd said:

SRD is close to final, please promote the SRD in appropriate forums so that we can begin to slowly build buzz around the engine again.

Could the official QuestWorlds site be updated now that it is close to final and we promote the SRD? @Ian Cooper

I would like to drive people to the site rather than into the github repository.

Let's add to the question one more aspect: how do you feel the current way works? Has this caused problems in play? Should they be more of only magic system or personality definition?

I edited the original start with this question.

Very interesting discussion stemmed in Facebook and I thought to bring it up here, too.

We are talking about the three runes you define for the character in HeroQuest Glorantha. Do you see them as some kind of personality definition that can be also used to solve contests in mundane way? Or are they the magic system of HQG that lets the characters do extraordinary deeds? Or are they both?

On top of that question: what does it mean to you, that the runes are keywords (instead of abilities)?

Which way have you used them in your games?

Edit: Let's add to the question one more aspect: how do you feel the current way works? Has this caused problems in play? Should they be more of only magic system or personality definition?

We finished our King of Sartar trilogy in Dayzatarin tähtien alla podcast by discussing about Argrath. There was lot of new stuff for me and I think I now know a little bit more about this hero. In next episodes we will pick something lighter for a change, though.

This was also our 10th episode, yay! Our first episodes have also reached the one hundred plays per episode. That is, in my opinion, quite nice taking into account our language area and the topic.

We also released a six minute bonus episode that is a small story about Argrath written by @af Granskär 20 years ago and now recorded in speech by me.

So, that is what's happening in Finnish Glorantha podcasting scene. How's the English counterpart doing?

Keeping the flame up we released our 9th episode of Dayzatarin tähtien alla. It was about Orlanth mythology from King of Sartar. We spoke about the myths and discussed about them. We also went through Jalk's Book briefly. Very interesting stuff. This was also our longest episode so far: 1h 55min. Hopefully this does not become a trend...

By my calculations the next episode of Wind Words should be out already. Everything ok?

On 11/14/2020 at 9:34 AM, Bill the barbarian said:

Thanks Eff, and now it is time to get our Finnish friend @jrutila to ask his question!

 Ask, and you shall receive. I sent my questions via email.

I took the player types from Robin's Laws of Good Gamemastering and wrote a blog post on how these player types fit to QuestWorlds.

https://worldsofqw.wordpress.com/2020/11/09/different-player-types-in-questworlds/

On 11/5/2020 at 10:52 PM, Joerg said:

@jrutilaDid you discuss the lack of acknowledgement of Moirades' death/ascension in 1610? Even with the leading statement that the lost fragment detailing Fazzur's side and the period of the military governors being ascribed to the same author, I find it strange that the lost Fazzur section talks about interaction with Moirades rather than Pharandros.

Well, we didn't get that deep into the history. Maybe we can address this as a footnote on our next episode as we continue tearing the King of Sartar apart.

In the Finnish Glorantha podcast world we released our eighth episode. We started to go through, none other than, King of Sartar book. It will span to multiple episodes, so this first one was about the Composite History of Dragon Pass.

There is only one game of HQG available and that is on Friday (during my work). Do you know if there will be more HQG games coming?

RuneQuest is a d100 based task resolution system with combat rules and specific rules for, for example, chases. It is representing, what you would call, old school play style. It is based on BRP. Or actually, BRP is based on it.

HeroQuest is a d20 based narrative story obstacle resolution system. It abstracts all dice rolling to important points in story and doesn't have special rulings for, for example, combat. It has nothing to do with BRP nor the boardgame with the same name. The HeroQuest next edition is called QuestWorlds.

Both are set in Glorantha and explore it with different play styles. Both have integration into Glorantha through runes and other stuff.

On 8/30/2020 at 8:29 PM, aumshantih said:

However, I really strongly dislike the base dice mechanic of opposed d20, and the tallying up of abilities and augments and bonuses and penalties, to me at least, crosses the point of "too much math for too little fun."

You could of course ignore all the augments and bonuses and penalties and just make single opposed rolls. That way you are not too far off from something like Freeform Universal (isn't it single d6 roll?) but you still have some say which way you would like the story obstacle to go. Of course reading the value from the d6 is easier than comparing the two rolls. Have you looked at the HeroQuest dice help table? You can print it and put the dice to correct row and column to read the outcome.

Thank you everyone for interesting pointers.

The Divine Intervention (rule in some version of RQ, at least) where the god does something direct for the worshipper really steers to the direction that people tend to ask things from the gods and they can grant it. Would a god in Glorantha send the boat to the man on his roof plagued with flood?

But still I would like to think this other way around to make a distinction to a "normal" way of praying. Maybe we could say that in Glorantha the worshipper "works" for the god and not the god working for them. And as they do the "work" (praying, sacrifices) the god gets stronger and as the god is stronger the wheat grows better etc. In the case of flood the worshippers should strengthen the flood-removing aspect of one god to get out of the trouble. Not asking for flood removal but working for the god to get the flood removed.

I don't know if this really matters but this is just, in my opinion, another neat difference to every other fantasy world out there.

How do you feel day-to-day praying looks/feels like in Glorantha? I've been reading Songs of Ice and Fire and in that world there is the (pretty familiar) idea that humans ask/hope/pray gods do some good deeds for them. They assume gods play tricks on them or cause certain things to happen etc. Of course I mirror this to Glorantha and I feel the premise is a little different in Glorantha.

In Glorantha the world keeps on going forward (or doing it's cycle) because the Middle World folk (humans, trolls, everyone) do their deeds and strengthen the gods. So, in a prayer, they wouldn't be asking stuff from the gods but sending some divine power to the gods to strengthen them. If they want something from a god they don't really ask the god to do something but they emulate the things the god did during God Time to achieve that. That is because the gods don't really have power to change things anymore (Cosmic Compromise). So, the mother of a family is not praying "Ernalda, protect our family" but "Ernalda, I will hit our door hinges with a broom thrice this evening as you did so that you have strength to protect your house from terrors." If something bad happens do they curse a god for causing it? Or do they feel that their god is losing their strength and succumbing to bad gods?

On the other hand ancestors and spirits can be petitioned to do something for the family. "Oh grandfather, protect our family from terror. We will leave this porridge for you to eat during the night."

Does this sound like Glorantha to you?

I wrote a blog post about Genre emulation in QuestWorlds inspired by Panda's Talking Games podcast episode.

How much do you feel that you can bend the QW basic core system for some specific genre?

It will be interesting to see what kind of extra rules and ideas the upcoming QuestWorlds based games will introduce. Any spoilers from the designers?

1 hour ago, Balakatun said:

Then, regarding your examples above, I think I am getting confused about the definition of the Prize. At first I thought you meant the Prize is the goal of the whole encounter (as per the rules), but after a couple more reads I think I understand the prize is the goal of a single exchange ("I use a spell to slow him").

Long contests (either scored or extended, not sure about chained) should be framed just like simple contests. So there is a prize for the whole encounter.

The "I use a spell to slow him" is just a tactic for a single exchange. After you know the outcome of the round you should look at the overall point situation (Is anyone close losing? Are there clear gap between the points?), previous narration, the tactic for this round and the outcome of this round and base your narration to those.

Overall I would defer telling what happens in a single exchange until the outcome is clear. Usually the tactic (the skill) tells enough but maybe the player needs to justify the use.

I wrote a review about Valley of Plenty: https://worldsofqw.wordpress.com/2020/06/10/valley-of-plenty-review/

I would appreciate constructive feedback about the review as this was my first time writing a longer review of, well, about anything. So, please be gentle.