Glorantha Initiation: Michael, Gloranthan Fiction, and Not Worrying About It

After a hiatus last month we are back with another Glorantha Initiation episode in which we interview a newcomer to the tribe. This time, Ludo is by himself due to some scheduling issue with Joerg (it was Ludo’s fault), interviewing Michael Bernth.

Michael lives in Europe’s first… no, second (probably?) happiest country. He is a multi-skilled designer (among other things) so if you’re working on a Jonstown Compendium book, he might be able to help with some InDesign layout work!

Show Notes

In this episode we talk about:

Miniatures of the 1980s
Comics like Conan the Barbarian (Barry Windsor-Smith’s run) or Prince Valiant
Ivanhoe (1952)
D&D Basic and Expert, followed by Advanced D&D
Going bananas with RPGs: Traveller, Bushido, Golden Heroes, Rolemaster, and more
Games Workshop’s RuneQuest and Broos miniatures
Call of Cthulhu, Cyberpunk, GURPS, Delta Green
Avalon Hill RuneQuest, Sun County, River of Cradles
The Grognard Files podcast and coming out of the “deep freeze”
Jonstown Compendium, and in particular the Sandheart series
Playing in Prax
Not throwing too much at the players
How to put all the lore and metaplot events in the game
Dealing with the metaplot the same way you treat real history in Call of Cthulhu adventures
Not being so precious about the lore
Lots of gold lying around in the Glorantha materials… pick it up and do what you want with it
Playing with new fantasy tropes, different from the usual Tolkienesque stereotypes
Playing with rich cultures, mythology, and cults
Glorantha is not about good vs evil or even order vs chaos
Chaos is great, it can add a touch of horror in your fantasy game
Where to start? Are there actually too many places to start?
Lack of knowledge to “hang yourself onto”
Broos are problematic, Morokanths may need tweaking
Handwaving rules like ENC, varying crunch based on the story
Spirit combat easily gets into a dealock, possession can lead to player agency issues, shamanism and sorcery rules are complicated, and… how does heroquesting even work?
The rulebook has many editing issues, and its index could be improved
Wishing for spell cards, god cards, and a Gloranthan tarot deck. But overall, wishing for Gloranthan novels and short story collections
Romulus TV show

…and more!

Credits

The intro music is “Dancing Tiger” by Damscray. The outro music is “Islam Dream” by Serge Quadrado. Other audio is from the FreeSound library.

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