Lordabdul

Thanks @Brian Duguid and @7Tigers! I inserted a correction in the article and of course credited you two 😄 And thanks for the kind words @Gallowglass , it's always very much appreciated.

We are kicking off a new season of our "Glorantha Initiation" series with the amazing Bridgett Jeffries! We talk about bronze age tropes, fandom gatekeeping, drawing Earth Runes on your face, spending your evenings in a basement with old men, and more! Listen to it now here, or in your favourite podcast app!

The Journal of Runic Studies 83 is out! Open licenses, BRP discounts, the syndics ban, a rules-light bronze age fantasy game, neolithic proto-writing, Lunar concrete, beautiful broos, and more!

The Journal of Runic Studies 82 is out! New Jonstown Compendium releases, and lots of annotations on Jeff's posts, such as Orlanth's sacred mountain, religion in Safelster, Orlanthi in Ralios, and more!

W00t, congrats Nick!

You mean the FFG Star Wars games? That would make sense. I only have Edge of the Empire, though, which doesn't seem to have a chapter on that topic. Maybe it's in the Rebellion or Jedi versions of the game? Do you have some page reference? I'm very curious about this. (edit, in EotE I can only find a small sidebar on page 295)

Really, there are 4 ways to deal with a metaplot: - It's happening. Run adventures related to it, underneath it, or with it in the background. Can you play on Earth? A Call of Cthulhu campaign set in the 1930s in Europe? A Mythic Greece game set in the Peloponnesian War? A Three Musqueteers or Robin Hood campaign set in their respective eras? Yes? Then you can handle any metaplot. No? Try something else, like... - It's frozen. The big NPCs are stuck in their patterns, and your campaign is effectively a procedural series instead of a drama. For instance, if you play a Robin Hood campaign, the Sheriff of Nottingham is always the bad guy. Prince John is always on the throne, and King Richard is always missing-but-hopefully-coming-back-anytime-now. The years go by but you don't track them. It's always the early 1200s and we never see any significant event shaking up the setting. The Lunars are always occupying Sartar and New Pavis, your Orlanthi PCs are always fighting them, the Dragonrise never happens. That's not bad! Entire beloved TV series made multiple seasons of this kind of stuff! - It's a guideline. You have your key NPCs and some "example" events to play with from the "canonical timeline". But the PCs can directly affect these NPCs and these events, so who knows what will happen! Maybe they're Sartarites who save Kallyr or Leika, and that can change the timeline a bit or a lot. If you're playing Lunars, maybe you help prevent Argrath from taking back New Pavis, or maybe he still does but not as well as he's "supposed" to. This is the fun zone: the GM has toys to play with, the players don't know what to expect. If your GM still forces the "official" timeline down on you, knock them on the head a bit. - It's got a PC-shaped hole in it. Dumping Argrath is only interesting (to me at least) if you replace him with the PCs. For the love of gods do not start your RQG campaign with the normal character creation, start it instead with already-powerful PCs, because if you start with "normal" PCs, it will take ages for them to become leaders and heroes, and all you did is remove interesting NPCs and make the setting more static (and not even in the "It's frozen" (see above) way -- at least with "It's frozen" the setting still has all the interesting NPCs!) So start with PCs who are Bison tribe khans and Paps priestesses and exiled Heortland kings. Or keep Argrath but dump Leika and make the PCs into Runemasters of the Colymar tribe who are coming back from exile to fuck things up. Or dump Harrek and have fun play super powerful angry pirates who literally destroy armies and pillage magical cities. It's a whole different game but that sounds fun to me. But again, do not remove Argrath "just in case my PC who has 3 points of rune spells wants to liberate New Pavis". This is like the RPG equivalent of minimum wage Americans who vote against social reform just in case the American Dream works and they become millionaires (which they won't).

Or maybe she's not dead. Remember that there currently is zero Chaosium-published material that advances the metaplot (there's only one oblique reference to Kallyr's LBQ in one of the scenarios in The Smoking Ruin and Other Stories). So "canonically speaking" RQG currently has no metaplot. Now we know there will be some metaplot material with (at the very least) the Dragon Pass Campaign book (probably only released in 2 or 3 years). But until then, the GM can easily do whatever they want with their Glorantha. They'll probably have finished two entire campaigns of RQG before Chaosium gets around to publish anything that contradicts it. So Kallyr isn't dead. Yet. The GM can throw around opportunities to become a companion of Kallyr, Leika, Argrath, Samastina, whatever. See what sticks, what the players are interested in. Say they pick Kallyr. The GM can either go with it or throw a wrench in the player's plans. It's easy to pick the metaplot timeline and mess around with it. Maybe Leika dies before Kallyr. Maybe Kallyr leaves for New Pavis, allies with Argrath, and takes his place because he's too wasted on hazia to do anything. Or maybe it goes exactly as the metaplot goes. It also all depends on whether the players know the metaplot or not. There's a big difference between players who rally behind Kallyr if they know her fate vs they don't. It's the GM's job to also correctly manage player expectations, the players' job to tell the GM what they hope to accomplish in the game. That's totally not what I got from my reading of the published material.

Fixed, thanks! I thought Soldier's Ferry was considered in Balazar but I admit I only glanced quickly at the Griffin Mountain map...

The Journal of Runic Studies 81 is out! Our new episode on the Jackals RPG, sneak peek at Barntar, new Jonstown Compendium releases, Malkionism, Argrath and the Gloranthan metaplot, video game sales, and more!

The Japanese covers come in two flavours: "cheesy anime awesome" and "dark anime painting awesome". You can see them all here, and @Runeblogger has written an article about them back in 2017 with many pictures. I mentioned those in issue 30 of the Journal of Runic Studies.

Nope -- reread my message. I'm saying that elfs are free to join many of the Lightbringer cults, and that the human ancestor god (Grandfather Mortal / Daka Fal) can be initiated into without transforming into a human by using the "alternate version" of him (like Grandfather Baboon). So I'm saying that elfs, trolls, and maybe triolini (not sure) are possibly "forcing" this biological conversion, whereas humans don't. So humans seem much nicer about accepting non-humans than the opposite. It's possible that humans are outliers in that regard, which does say something about non-human races in Glorantha (although there are many other non-human races, I'm not going to do a thorough census of who's doing what). But really, it's not about that -- it's about what it means to "initiate" into a cult. My original understanding was that it was about dedicating your life to a deity, and serving a temple. The first one is a personal choice, the second one is a social construct. I can imagine that some (most?) elf "temples" (groves) might be super conservative and refuse initiating non-elfs. But maybe not all. Elfs are people too, with politics and biases and whatever. This is the age-old issue of some Gloranthan material saying "X does Y" and some people interpreting that as "X always does Y" and others interpreting that as "X usually does Y". IMHO, initiating into Aldrya as a human (or non elf) you would not have the Plant Rune, and might not be able to cast half of the cult's magic. You wouldn't be as much "part of the forest" as the elfs. But that's the character's/NPC's choice. Again, it's about what it means to become an initiate of a cult.

Episode 19 of the God Learners welcomes Evan & JM from "Exploring Glorantha"! We discuss JM's bronze age fantasy game "Jackals", its worldbuilding, campaign framework, system, and what we can learn and apply to Glorantha gaming!

That's my main problem too. It's not like elves or trolls need to be transformed into humans to worship "human" (big quotation marks here) deities. And sure, Aldrya and Kyger Lytor happen to be the ancestor of elves and trolls, unlike whatever other deities non-humans might join (Humakt, Yelmalio, Babeester Gor, whatever). No god besides Grandfather Mortal/Daka Fal fits that description of being "father of humans", and other races tend to worship a different version of Daka Fal to get around the problem ("Grandfather Baboon" and so on). But that shows how this thing is weirdly setup. I blame the 1970s human-centrism of fantasy world-building, which we still have to wrestle with. That would be my version as well. I don't like this write-up of Aldrya that forces you to become a biological elf in order to become an initiate, as opposed to, you know, a cultural elf. Societal constructs of identity and all that jazz. However, I could totally see the Aldrya cult limiting God-Talker and higher levels of hierarchy to "actual" elves, forcing you to undergo the transformation if you want to rise up the ranks.

The Journal of Runic Studies 80 is out! Lots of new RuneQuest community content for the holidays, my top 5 elder races, Belintar theories, the moons of Glorantha are a mess, how to become an elf, horsemen miniatures, Nazca Lines, and more!

The Journal of Runic Studies 79 is out! This is a short one because Ludovic's been sick... but not enough for him to not give his thoughts on Chaosium's releases this year. Plus, Jonstown Compendium releases, reviews, and more!

The Journal of Runic Studies 78 is out! A sneak peek at the upcoming RuneQuest video game, new Jonstown Compendium items, greater gods, Yelmalions, the monomyth, Runic dice, and more!

As David Scott says, CHA is leadership and strength of personality. Broos and Tusk Riders in particular are, basically, bullies. They have little personality besides how mean and violent their are. Their leaders lead by being the strongest and by threatening others with violence if they don't follow... not by being the most "leadership material". They lead (and generally speaking interact "socially") with STR and CON, not CHA. While I have my problems with CHA and, in general, with RQ and BRP's characteristics, I actually love this because it explains why, in terms of world-building, the Tusk Riders need to raid other people and capture their souls in their severed hands or tails: it's because that's the only way the Tusk Riders can get more than a few points of magic. For more discussion on Tusk Riders and why they're awesome, there's our podcast episode on the subject.

The Journal of Runic Studies 77 is out! Our new podcast episode on Biturian Varosh, Khan of Khans going out of print, new community content for #RuneQuest, lots of annotations on #Glorantha geography, detecting and tolerating Chaos, Asterix, and more!

Drew Baker is back to accompany Ludovic on the last leg of Biturian Varosh's travels! We share crazy conspiracy theories, nerd-out on logistics and prices, complain about heroquesting, and more as we reach the end of RuneQuest's Cults of Prax!

The Journal of Runic Studies 76 is out! Meints Index to Glorantha, new Jonstown Compendium releases, SimpleQuest, Zeus getting rid of flies, angry naiads, and more!

Yeah -- I didn't see this one, but I saw the other two he did with Loic (one on Cthulhu art and one on Gloranthan art).... but do you expect me to trust everything I see on YouTube? 😄

Congrats James! I wanted to check his French-speaking credentials at the last chaosium-con but sadly he wasn't there... fingers crossed for next year 😉

The Journal of Runic Studies 75 is out! An essay on what "too much lore" does (or not), some conjecture about the upcoming Cult of Glorantha books, RuneQuest battle rules, Lunar vs Esrolian science, Six Ages: Lights Going Out updates, and more!

The Journal of Runic Studies 74 is out! Our episode on the Hsunchen, some POW gain house rules for RuneQuest, Glorantha is too small, what can you do with heroquesting, Tutankhamun's tomb-raiding anniversary, and more!