Mapping Runes for the Greek Gods / Titans / Heroes

[Mr_Douglass]

I am working on a setting that is fantasy Bronze Age Greece, and I am starting to work on Runes for the Greek Gods / Titans / Heroes.

I assume I am not the first person to have this idea - do you know of any resources for this kind of mapping?

Edited January 6 by Scotty
Changed title and moved to RQ

[jajagappa]

17 minutes ago, Mr_Douglass said:

do you know of any resources for this kind of mapping?

I don't think there's any explicit resource, but I'd probably start from the Greek myths and work out Elemental Runes first, then consider the role and powers that each take on to develop Power or Form Runes. Hesiod would be the classic source to start from, I think, and perhaps Robert Graves' Greek Myth volumes as they incorporate a wide range of myths.

Some will be fairly obvious. Zeus: Storm, Mastery; Apollo: Fire, probably Harmony; Poseidon: Water, Movement, possibly Mastery; Hades: Darkness, Death; Demeter: Earth, Fertility; Persephone: probably Earth, Fertility, and Plant; Aphodite: Fertility; Ares: Death, probably Disorder; Hephaestus: Fire/Heat, probably Movement given his ability to make/transform objects. 

The Titans might be more obscure or harder to differentiate.

The Heroes probably get the Man Rune (as mortals) plus another Rune.

[Simulacrum]

What job would Gloranthan runes have in a fantasy Bronze Age Greece? Is this to transfer the RQG inspiration mechanic?

[Alex]

2 hours ago, Mr_Douglass said:

I am working on a setting that is fantasy Bronze Age Greece, and I am starting to work on Runes for the Greek Gods / Titans / Heroes.

I assume I am not the first person to have this idea - do you know of any resources for this kind of mapping?

First order of business is deciding if you're using Gloranthan runes as-is, tweaked, or something completely bespoke.  For a 'straight' Greek game I'd strongly recommend the latter approach, but you will have your own artistic truth (and campaign plan, perhaps).  For example, the usual four western elements, Powers patterned after your preferred theogeny, etc.  If it's some sort of explicit crossover -- like this querent's --  then your needs and purposes will of course be very different.

 

[Ali the Helering]

I am working on a general Ancient Near East setting/potential source book, although it probably won't see light of day for a couple of years at least.

I will totally avoid the rune mechanic, since it has no RW analogue, and fails to encompass the breadth of the RW deities.  Similarly I will avoid mapping RW and Gloranthan deities, because there is a huge difference between the mind of a 14th century BCE priest and that of an anthropologically inspired guy from Connecticut some 3,500 years later.  Greg was a genius (in every sense), but some feats are just beyond us.  The person in Gloranthan inspired work who has come closest is Prof Oliver Dickinson.

[Jens]

IMHO there are two challenges you’d need to overcome in mapping Gloranthan runes to Bronze Age Greece- 

1. Runes are not a concept found in Ancient Greece, but primarily come from Germanic (as linguistic) and Norse (as religious) sources. This means you’ll find few if any historical references that might help. 

2. Gloranthan runes are steeped in Gloranthan cosmology, and wouldn’t map directly to Ancient Greek thought. Which runes are opposed, elemental vs form vs power vs condition, even the presence of individual runes like chaos, moon, or disorder may not make sense in an Ancient Greek context. 

I did try my own hand at creating Greek runes for a game in the ‘90s, but gave up after some time bashing a square peg into a round hole. Instead I found a better fit looking at the writings of philosophers like Aristotle, Plato, and Democritus ; there are some interesting concepts in Atomism I was able to make work as a magic system, although sadly those notes seem long lost. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomism

Good luck at your own attempt- hopefully you’ll have more success than I did. 

Edited January 6 by Jens

[M Helsdon]

15 hours ago, Mr_Douglass said:

I am working on a setting that is fantasy Bronze Age Greece, and I am starting to work on Runes for the Greek Gods / Titans / Heroes.

Well, the Bronze Age pantheon differed from the Classical pantheon. Ignoring the Bronze Age deities who lack obvious Classical equivalents, to offer a guide for their Runes, perhaps:

Perjo	Apollo	Yelm/Yelmalio
Are	Ares	Humakt
Diwonuso	Dionysus
Apaitijo	Hephaestus	Mostal
Emaha	Hermes	Issaries/Lanbril
Pajawone	Apollo	Yelm/Yelmalio
Posedao	Poseidon	Magasta/Maran Gor
Diwe	Zeus	Orlanth
Atemito	Artemis	Hunter Goddess/Yelorna
Damate	Demeter	Grain Goddess
Diuja	Zeus (female)	Orlanth
Awoijo	Eos	Theya
Era	Hera	Ernalda
Matere Teija	Mother Goddess	Ernalda
Atana	Athena

 

Edited January 6 by M Helsdon

[David Scott]

14 hours ago, Mr_Douglass said:

I assume I am not the first person to have this idea - do you know of any resources for this kind of mapping?

Given that the Runes have only ever tied mechanically to RuneQuest in this edition, you may indeed be the first. But BRP is a different case.

14 hours ago, Mr_Douglass said:

I am working on a setting that is fantasy Bronze Age Greece, and I am starting to work on Runes for the Greek Gods / Titans / Heroes.

Have a look at this thread, it's BRP, but it's likely to be of use: 

 

and Warlords of Alexander is hosted on this site:

 

[Scotty]

Gentle reminder - 

 

[tzunder]

I think you have some great ideas there and I think you could have a great time with it.

Note that Mythras has had Mythic Greece on the to-do list for some years, and maybe by the time you have setup and run your campaign then it might be out!

In the meantime I really recommend having a read of GURPS Greece (which is NOT Bronze Age but Classical) as another source of Greek inspiration

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, M Helsdon said:

Apaitijo

Hephaestus

Mostal

I'd generally think Lodril/Gustbran is a closer association for Hephaestus than Mostal.

[M Helsdon]

4 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

I'd generally think Lodril/Gustbran is a closer association for Hephaestus than Mostal.

Yes. These were just off-the-cuff thoughts.

[Rourou]

As others have already said, the most straightforward solution might simply be to "derunify" RQ7 (which might require a bit of tinkering for the divine/runic magic and sorcery), or to go back to a different version of BRP/d100 such as RQ2/3 or Legend/Mythras/Openquest.

Yet, there is something delightful about adapting the runes to ancient Greece and her mythology: the result might be much more satisfying than what one might expect. At first sight this seems like a really bad idea: while the metaphysics of "real world" mythology is usually contradictory, vague and shrouded in mystery, Glorantha (just like many other created worlds) has a very well-defined set of cosmological principles. But then we have a game like Call of Chthulu, which happens in our world as conceived within the Chthulu mythos. And, honestly, the final result is great.

I find it simply a fascinating exercise of imagination, where the way I would do it would be the following:

1) Localize the name runes to a different setting: probably runes will still be great in a setting base on Norse mythology, but for Greece the word "rune" really does not click.

Basically, I understand the runes as an exuberant version of the four elements of antiquity. Instead of a relatively small set of elements or principles from which the cosmos would be made, we end up with 25 give or take (I did not count them). Each of these principles is similar to the arche or logos that were later sought by the presocratic philosophers. Thus, archai or logoi (plural or arche and logos) could be both good localizations of the Gloranthian runes.

As a different example, if one wanted to apply this idea to ancient Egypt, we might go for the "true names" of the immanent principles of which the gods themselves emanate.

2) Introduce them in a less overt way to the players: the affinity with a specific rune might be better modeled with the affinity with a principle, element or idea. A character might like the concept of harmony, or might long for the primordial chaos before the gods, or might like everything plant-related.

For instance, I like to celebrate each full moon by observing how it raises over the horizon and then drinking a bit of beer and wine while enjoying it. Probably I am somehow attuned to the moon, which might also explain why Thoth (Egyptian, not Greek, but it also serves as an example) is one of my favorite gods.

3) Associate them with each of the gods, where the association might not be unique.

Here it is important to notice that the players/characters might have no idea of what are the archai, logoi or whatever that are behind each god. In ancient Greece we had on the one hand the social/civic (or layman's) approach to religion and the gods, and on the other the mystery cults that taught the esoteric secrets of a certain god.

The magical and religious teachings of these cults were obviously well-guarded secrets, and they are the perfect canvass in which to pour your imagination. It could be the logos/arche related to a certain deity.

Also, it was really common for a deity to have different aspects. Sometimes this came from the assimilation of a less known deity to a major one (e.g. Horkos/Orcus, the underground deity protector of the oaths, which gave rise to Zeus Horkios, the aspect of Zeus that worries about oaths; though not Greek, other god with far too many aspect is Enki, from god of the city of Eridu, to lord of the waters, protector of humanity, god of magic, etc.). It is perfectly possible that the "runes" associated with a given god might depend on the particular mystery cult.

4) Other aspect that might contain endless possibilities is sorcery: though the presocratic philosophers appeared around 500-600 BC, we might pretend that their teachings originated in a much more distant past, when these philosophy schools/cults were indeed sorcery schools. This is not so crazy when one takes into account that people in the past often liked to root their beliefs or teachings in the ancient past. Though from China, one example would be Peng Zu, a powerful daoist sorcerer that lived about 2000 years before daoism became a thing. So nothing is preventing us to apply the same principle to the presocratics.

These schools would be usually linked to a unique arche, which they would believe to be the ultimate origin of everything in the universe. Taking into account that they might be a bit monothematic (i.e. based on a unique Gloranthian rune), it would be good to recover the spells animate(substance) and form/set(substance) from previous RQ editions.

For example, the school of the Abzu (or Water, though Abzu gives it a mesopotamian flavor) could be based on the ideas of Thales of Miletus and thus will be linked to the rune --- I mean arche --- of water, though not necessarily in the usual way one thinks about it. For instance, Thales thought that earthquakes were caused by movements of the water over which the continents floated... which means that this school of magic could have an earthquake spell based on the water rune/arche. This does not make sense for people with modern and scientific sensibilities like us (who would insist on such a spell being based on the earth rune), but made total sense to people in the past. Also, since Thales believed that all things contained a spirit or soul (to explain things like lodestone's magnetism or amber's electricity), it would make sense for members of this school to complement their sorcery with spirit magic.

Analogously, it would be really easy to create other sorcery schools... maybe with the exception of the one based on Anaximander and the apeiron, as this arche does not seem to have a clear analog to the known runes except maybe infinity... though this looks a bit overkill. And this brings us to the probable necessity of extending the current list of runes/logoi/archai/mystic principles on which to base a possible adaptation to ancient Greece.

Fun fact: there is even a sorcery school that was rumored to be founded by Heracles/Hercules during his adventures in Iberia. Apparently his Hero quest was really complete and covered all possible forms of magic.

5) Finally, though unrelated with the previous discussion, I think that the analogy Mostal/Hephaistos is better than it looks at first sight, more so when we consider the Cabeiri, the sons of Hephaistos and the nymph Cabeiro (daughter of Proteus), who were dwarvish metal-workers (or not... depends on the myth/text) rumored to have taught a series of useful crafts to the locals of the Greek islands were they inhabited. Conversely in Egypt we have the little Ptahs or Pataikos, another version of the dwarves related in this case with the Egyptian version of Hephaistos. All this smells very mostalish to me...

If we compare these Cabeiri with the Norse dwarves, this is really interesting: Proteus is known to be a master shape-shifter, just like the Norse dwarves. And both Norse and Greek-island dwarves seem to have a connection to the sea (which goes completely against their character in their current RPG incarnations). The most important difference is their personalities though: while the Cabeiri loved to drink wine and join orgiastic dances with the locals of the islands they inhabited, the Norse dwarves are really antisocial and do things like killing people to create a magical mead that will grant you the skills of the victim... looks like comparing Georgie Dann with Euronymous.

6) In short, I think it is a really interesting project that you have in your hands! Just working out the details will be an epic adventure.

Edited January 9 by Rourou

[Mr_Douglass]

Thank you so much for your very thoughtful answer!  This is EXACTLY the kind of discussion I was hoping for when I posted this question. However, I confess that I do not know all that much about the presocratics.

As a result, I would be very interested to hear your take on which items / principles you would use for the:

• "25 give or take"

list you mentioned.

I also love the idea of the differences between the lay members of a Greek cult and those who have been initiated into the mystery cults (ex:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleusinian_Mysteries).

 

[Rourou]

Just to be sure: what you want is to adapt RQG to mythic Greece with minimal changes to the rules, right? I will simply assume this in what follows. 

0) Caveat: I have never become a rule-expert in RQG, only in RQ3 a long time ago. Regarding RQG, my personal impression was that adding the runes as part of the mechanic was a minus rather than a plus, as I preferred the runes to be shrouded in mystery (and thus be governed by soft rules instead of hard rules). But I can understand why rulifying the runes would be a welcomed move for other type of players/masters.

Nonetheless, I have a certain familiarity with RQG: just take whatever thing I say about the rules with a grain of salt.

1) By 25 give or take, I was referring to the list of runes in RQ.

However, many of them are still not really used as a game mechanic. For instance, the RQG character sheet only includes 16 of them. There is a rune spell reference for the Red Book of Magic that only list spells related to 19 of them. IIRC, the old RQ3 supplement Gods of Glorantha lists 24 runes. Some of the runes listed are not always the same, so one might easily find more than 25 in published materials. Probably there is no harm in adding more runes if this is required for a given gloranthan setting.

2) Now we want to localize this metaphysical system to the Greece of mythology and we begin by calling the runes by another name (e.g. logoi or words/principles/reasons) and maybe making them a hidden or advanced mechanic for the characters joining a mystery cult.

Note: there are different philosophies with regards to whether mythic earth is low or high magic. For instance, the "Mediterraneo mítico" supplement for mythras assumes magic is scarce. However, my interpretation from either reading mythology or what I could find about the history of magic is that bronze age people thought of their own world as very, very, very magical.

We might organize spirit/rune(now divine) magic and sorcery a bit like this:

2.a) Most of the characters might simply be lay members of maybe an Olympian god and/or a minor deity. They have access to spirit magic, which in the Greek mythology is mediated by the daimones/daemones (i.e. spirits or minor gods), which are sort of messengers between men and gods. But access to spirit magic might also come from invocations to local heroes or the character's ancestors.

A strong point of using a well-developed mythology such as the greek is that there is a lot of information about daimones. Most of them are personification of abstract ideas. A really complete list can be consulted here:

https://www.theoi.com/greek-mythology/personifications.html

Thus demoralization might come from Deimos or Phobos, strength could come from Kratos or a local hero, etc. This is however completely optional, as it only involves creating the atmosphere for the setting (which might be achieved by simpler means).

2.b) Deities are the tricky part, as it is here when we need to include the runes/logoi.

Minor deities are the easiest ones, as their roles tend to be better defined. For example, the mystery cult of Hekate might reveal that the goddess channels the principles/logoi of Moon, Magic and Darkness. The Moirai will have fate (but just like Arachne in Glorantha it might be really tricky to create a cult for them). Etc.

Major deities are a headache though, because they are associated with far too many aspects of reality. Let's take Zeus as an example: as has been already suggested in this thread, for sure he should have mastery and storm. But he is also the sky god, which means that fire/sky should be associated with him and this already posses a problem: IIRC, the elemental connection between fire and sky comes from Aristotle, who argued that fire goes up because its natural place is in the heavens. But Zeus is not usually associated with fire, only with the sky. The solution here could be to only provide runic/divine spells with a sky association.

However, we have not ended here with Zeus: he is also associated with law and order (Zeus Nomios, we give him the law rune/logos and maybe the stasis rune/logos), destiny (though subject to whatever the Moirai have already decided) and even public assembly (Zeus Agoreus) and commerce. He is also one of the protectors of marriage (despite the fact that one of his favorite pastimes is infidelity, go figure). These are too many aspect.

A solution is thus to make a vainilla mystery cult for him, with the first three runes/logoi (mastery, storm, air/fire) and then do other more obscure mystery cults for other aspects of his divinity. Probably preparing the cults for the 12 Olympians should be easy (e.g. from the list of rune associations already proposed in this thread). With that one could begin running a game and later on complement these basic cults with a few more minor deities or alternative mystery cults of the major deities.

Since we do know very little about the mystery cults and what type of religious/magical knowledge they possessed, the game master can simply let his/her imagination run loose.

Note: if anyone thought Greek gods might be a bit too broad, just consider the Sumerian god Enki (my favorite!). Enki is the god of water, the moon, knowledge, the crafts, civilization, writing, creator of mankind, trickster god, magic and healing, etc. Basically a combo of Lhankor Mhy, Eurmal, the Red Godess, the River Gods, Zola Fel, maybe even certain aspects of Mostal and Ernalda, plus other roles for which I do not find any equivalence. Would he move to Glorantha, he would be the freaking lord of the runes! This is also a god that for game balance reasons must be divided in several independent cults.

2.c) But greek deities have also their own plans and machinations that do not take into account mystery cults. They deities love to interfere in the lives of famous mortals, and will provide them with magical assistance / obstruction (most probably both, as one god will be helping and a rival god will be hindering the heroes).

IMHO, it is better to leave this to the judgment of the game master and only when the characters have a really high reputation and begin to become part of legends and myths.

2.d) For sorcery (the ugly duckling of Glorantha, unfortunately) there are also endless possibilities that might make it more interesting and appealing.

Basically in-game sorcery refers to magic which is derived from impersonal principles or powers (in contrast with spirit/divine magic that is derived from different types of personifications of the many aspects of nature). Thus my previous suggestion on basing sorcery on the later presocratics.

In the spirit of the presocratics, the sorcery schools might likely be obsessed with a particular rune/logos that they will understand to be the origin of everything else. Admittedly, this might only work with the elements, but one might extend it to other runes/logoi. They will call this special logos the arché or final principle, and it will probably include things that we usually would not associate with this principle without drinking enough wine first (the example of earthquakes as generated by water is a common occurrence, not only in Thales but also on other presocratics).

The easiest type of sorcery cult that we might devise will be based on one of the four elements: fire, water, air and earth. First, even if it seems mundane, it would be good to recover form/set(element) and animate(element) as sort of the butter and bread spells of these cults. Then include the spells already associated with any of the elements in RQG. And then include spells that might be in line with whatever beliefs later presocratics might have had about a particular arché. This later step could include mis-runifying spells already present in RQG, maybe simply because within the sorcery cult beliefs this rune/logos is easily derived from their arché.

For instance, the previous example of a water sorcery cult based on Thales of Miletus might include the aforementioned earthquake spell, as he thought they were cause by the movements of the water over which the continents floated. Maybe one could invent condensation and rarefaction spells that will transform fire->air->water->earth and vice versa, as at the end they are all water. Their neutralize magic spell might be twice as strong against anything based on the moon rune/logos, as Thales thought that the moon merely reflected the light of the sun (which would negate the existence of moon as a legitimate rune/logos). His belief that the world and the natural phenomena are full of spirits probably suggests that sorcerers of this school would have zero problems with using spirit magic (and as a consequence, their free-INT should not be reduced from having spirit magic).

Finally, if you want a non-completely-greek-yet-totally-memorable sorcery cult, try adapting hermeneutics to your bronze age setting. You could call it the school of the three incarnations of Hermes / Thoth, depending on whether you want to give it a greek or egyptian twist.

3) Probably a good source for more ambientation could be Mazes & Minotaurs, which besides being a hilarious parody of D&D is also superbly researched.

For creating the cults of the Olympian gods, it might be nice to go back to RQ3 and check their generic list of deities (that already provide a very good template on which to work further).

There is also a very interesting BRP version of bronze age Greece called Kosmos:

https://kosmoslejeuderole.wordpress.com/telecharger-kosmos-basic/

It's in French, but provided you have around a 30% on read/write French it should be understandable. Very well researched.

And there is of course Warlords of Alexander that can be found somewhere in this forum and that has already been mentioned in this thread.

----- Addenda -----

Expanding this framework in more detail:

a) First, the runes are basically a variation of the passion mechanic. In the case of Glorantha, they are linked to the actual metaphysical foundations of Glorantha herself: they are expected to be the true and ultimate principle on which Glorantha is based, at least if we play RGQ as intended.

Of course nothing prevents a game master to subvert the metaphysics of Glorantha and include a competing set of deities or forms of magic that are independent of the runes, mimicking the existence of competing mythic explanations of our own world. But in general this is not expected to be the way the setting will be used.

b) But in our own mythic past there are indeed competing and contradictory explanations. Thus, when recycling the runes for non-Gloranthan setting, one might give space to alternative possibilities.

The most obvious consequence is that we have to be open to the inclusion of new runes/logoi/principles when recycling the RQG rules is not enough. A few examples:

b.1) For the goddess Aphrodite: do we give her the harmony rune? or should we better create the love rune, which might be more suitable for her (and which might be closely associated with the harmony rune)?

b.2) If we want to extend it beyond greek mythology, e.g. chinese mythology, then there are five elements: earth, water, air, fire and wood. Do we equate wood with the plant rune? Or do we create a new elemental rune (that might be associated with the plant rune)?

b.3) If we revisit the idea of sorcery cults, if the school of water thinks that water is the ultimate principle, should the water rune give secondary control to the earth, air and fire elemental runes? (and the movement rune, if we go outside the elements). Why should we follow the classification given by Zzabur in the first place?

b.4) To summarize here: the runes/logoi/principles already present in RGQ could be but the start. This scheme can be extended as required, and relations can be established for any new rune we include with the already known ones.

How one wants to formalize these relations is up to the master: it might be that a passion towards a given principle might provide a reduced percentage in another principle. For instance, an X% affinity with the concept of love might give you with a (X/2)% affinity in harmony. Or one might simply take a similar approach to the Zzabur classification of the elemental runes and their relations.

c) The chaos rune might be interpreted very different than the one in Glorantha.

The primordial chaos in greek mythology is more akin to a mythical, undifferentiated substance from which the world was made of. The apeiron of Anaximander might also be equated with this chaos, and thus if we create a sorcery cult based on the apeiron it would treat chaos as an elemental rune. Meanwhile chaos in Glorantha has much more destructive undertones.

For comparison, in sumerian mythology the primordial chaos is actually the salty water of the seas (or Abzu). Tiamat will be associated with Abzu or chaos. In egyptian mythology the primordial chaos also happens to be salty water (maybe from sumerian influence or vice versa) and is called nun. For these two mythologies, would it make sense that the chaos rune also gives some control over phenomena associated with the water rune? 

 

Edited January 11 by Rourou

[soltakss]

The writeup of Apollo in Different Worlds #5 has this.

and 

 

[soltakss]

On 1/6/2025 at 12:41 AM, Mr_Douglass said:

I am working on a setting that is fantasy Bronze Age Greece, and I am starting to work on Runes for the Greek Gods / Titans / Heroes.

RuneQuest, or BRP, would, of course, be great for this. Jason and the Argonauts, for example, suits RQ perfectly.

You could use Runes as Spheres of Influence for the Deities, rather than building blocks. So, Apollo would be Light, Zeus would be Air and Sky, Ares would have Death and Disorder, and so on. 

Or, you could just have keywords showing what Spheres of Influences they had, in the same way that RQ3 had Deities of War, Healing, Ruling, Cities, and so on. If you wanted to give each of them a score then they would be functionally equivalent to Runes. So, a worshipper of Apollo might have War 70% Harmony 60%, Healing 55%, and Music 80%.

[jajagappa]

7 minutes ago, soltakss said:

The writeup of Apollo in Different Worlds #5 has this.

Reminds me that there is also a writeup of the cult of Dionysus in Different Worlds #22.

[soltakss]

15 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Reminds me that there is also a writeup of the cult of Dionysus in Different Worlds #22.

Oh, I forgot about that, thank, The version I have is missing half a page, unfortunately.