Our Guest

Our guest this episode is Simon Phipp, author of Secrets of Dorastor, Secrets of Heroquesting, and author or contributor on many, many other books.

Joerg sadly isn’t present this time: he was stuck on a highway somewhere in Germany waiting for auto-assistance.

Show Notes

Here are some various things we talk about in this episode:

• Getting started playing in Glorantha in 1982… which sounds like 15 years ago but apparently is a lot longer ago
• RuneQuest 2 (with Cults of Prax) was Simon’s first game
  • Bud (from Bud’s RPG Review) recently said that it’s like being born with a silver spoon in your mouth
• Watching “World of Sports” and reading “The Iliad” as a kid… as one does
• Simon loves RQ2 for its scale and the visceral feeling you get from playing it
• Playing in Dorastor because it was nasty and unmapped in the early 80s
  • The only source was the Paulis Longvale narrative from Cults of Terror
  • Other GMs in Simon’s gaming circles were already playing in the “usual places” (Sartar, Prax, Pavis & The Big Rubble)
  • We started our series on Paulis Longvale last episode!
• Running a Star Trek-like episodic campaign in and out of Dorastor, starting around 1985
• Later, during the RuneQuest 3 era, Dorastor: Land of Doom was released
• Simon’s players accused him of knowing about the upcoming book’s contents!
• The pros & cons of playing in the vaguely defined Glorantha of the 80s vs the encyclopedic Glorantha of the 2010s
• The Dorastor: Land of Doom’s warning on the back cover is factually accurate… if you consider Simon, as a GM, as a big and ugly thing!
• Come to the Risklands! It’s great!
• The Chaos Nests of Genertela. They’re great too!
  • Simon’s Dorastor has multiple Chaos Nests
• In his campaign, Simon’s players killed Razalkark, the king of the Broos, and occupied his fort… and then things got worse
• Chaotic True Dragons are apparently a bad thing?
• Simon tells us the story of Dorastor, including his own interpretation of the whole Nysalor/Gbaji/Arkat thing
  • You may remember we discussed some of this with Bud in a previous episode
• Dorastor is filled with lots and lots of bad monsters! How do you get your players to go there?
• Simon’s Dorastor is a bit more nuanced than just “a place to kill monsters”: you can create alliances, do trade, and so on
• Simon gets bored to tears watching the Gloranthan metaplot unfold, with NPCs doing all the cool things
  • HeroWars was very guilty of this
• Dorastor is so far away from Dragon Pass that we don’t care what Argrath is doing!
• Simon’s books contain many, many scenarios for Dorastor, plus many adventure seeds
• There are several layers to Dorastor:
  • Go in, fight Chaos, come out (if you succeed enough times, become a Dorastor guide!)
  • Interact with the big personalities of Dorastor (meet the Spider Queen, she’s great!)
• Storm Bull initiates must learn to prioritize
• Humakti broos! Dorastor ducks! Giant vampires!
• Relationship with the neighbours
• Don’t forget not all cults hate Chaos
• Simon likes messing with his players’ heads
• Chaotic people: they’re not as bad as you think?
  • But watch out, you might quickly end up worshipping Thanatar if you don’t pay attention to Simon’s evil schemes
• Finding lost or secret things in Dorastor
• What makes heroes?
• Super-RuneQuest! and other high-level character stats…
• The most useless magic item ever… until it breaks your scenario!
• The problem of long running campaigns
• Acid! Poison! Ash elementals!
• Bathing in gorps!
• Ludo discovers that Cacodemon got Vomit Acid in RuneQuest 3
• Fun with Chaos Features!
• Simon’s best anecdote: basilisks and mirrors!
• Designing encounter locations
• It’s not the GM’s job to know the solutions, it’s their job to setup problems
• Hair and fingernail elementals!
• Illumination in Dorastor: break the rules, become good, become evil?
• Come to Dorastor, it’s lovely, and you can become heroes!

Credits

The intro music is “The Warbird” by Try-Tachion. Other music includes “Cinder and Smoke” and “Skyspeak“, along with audio from the FreeSound library.

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After too long a hiatus, we are finally back! Well, almost, because Ludo is an idiot and got the time zones wrong while setting up the recording, so Joerg shows up a bit later. Ludo apologizes for messing that up but hey, this is an episode about Chaos, so…

Our Guest

We welcome once again Austin Conrad to the show!

• His website is Akhelas
• Get Treasures of Glorantha: Volume 2, one of the finest books on the Jonstown Compendium!
  • We actually talked about that book, and magical items in general, for episode 31
• Austin’s ghost was summoned during our more recent episode on RuneQuest house rules

Show Notes

In this episode we chat about things like:

• Cult of Terror (RQ2, 1981)
  • You can get it as a POD reprint or in PDF from Chaosium
• Dorastor: Land of Doom (RQ3, 1993)
• The Cults of Runequest sourcebooks (available here from Chaosium)
• Shadows on the Borderlands (RQ3, 1993)
• The first time the Gloranthan cosmology and history is presented in one text
• Worshipping Mallia as a non-Chaos deity, in a propitiatory way
• King of Dragon Pass
• RuneQuest Warlords
• Razalkark, the King of the Broos, and a “good boy”
• Cults of Prax (RQ2, 1979) and the tribulations of Biturian Varosh
  • Our episode series on Biturian Varosh started back when we were the “Wind Words” podcast, and continued with guest Drew Baker early in the God Learners podcast
• The four philosophies and magic forms of Glorantha… plus a few more! Add you own!
• The usual suspects: the Guide to Glorantha, the Glorantha Sourcebook, and the Mythology book
• The entire cosmology and history of Glorantha in 10 pages! Boom! Done!
• Ludo’s favourite RuneQuest cover, by Jennell Jaquays (see the real wrap-around version!)
• A Gloranthan pronunciation guide! Can YOU pronounce Gloranthan deities’ names correctly?
• The Prosopaedia
• The Curse of Thed: it really sucks!
  • Ludo got confused by his notes (“confusing notes” is a Chaotic feature!)
  • “Reverse Chaos” was renamed “Curse of Thed” in RQG
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay features chaos corruption rules that affect the player characters, sometimes willingly
• We should be playing in Bilini and Dorastor, there’s a lot of fun stuff happening there!
• Is it Chaos, or Just Very Bad Thing?
• Simon Phipp’s Secrets of Dorastor and lines of books
• Our episode on Arkat, with guest Bud from Bud’s RPG Review
• The big-ass Genertela map
• Austin is supposedly being “very polite” in Ludo’s game about NOT becoming an assassin. Spoiler: a month later, Austin did in fact murder a long-standing NPC and initiated into the Eurmal Murderer cult…
• Wesley Crusher
• Ragnar Lodbrok and the TV show “Vikings”
• The Orlanthi as Vikings vs the Orlanthi as ancient Greeks
• Want to make your players go on a quest? Loan them magical items!
• The Lightbringers Summons and forcing it on your players
• Chaos as organized crime
• Mallia and pandemics… too soon, Joerg!
• Shenanigans with disease spirits!
• Dealing with trickster player characters…
• Scorpion Men: the other iconic Gloranthan bad guys?
• Beer With Teeth’s Stone and Bone
• 13th Age Glorantha‘s Scorpion Men illustrations
• Gagyx Two-Barb, Scorpion Queen
• The Footprint, another place of Chaos
• Food and water are tainted! Roll to find safe things to consume, or pack them!
• Making your own funky diseases
• Using the table of troll drink effects from Trollpak (RQ2, 1982)
• Differences in Chaos curses between RQ2 and RQG
• Paranoia in players, and nasty Chaotic features
• Xenohealing, the spell nobody misses, apparently
• Hashtag Not All Chaos!
• Adapting a combat scene environment to the baddies’ abilities… For instance: Scorpion Men can climb very well!
• Austin’s correct answer to Scorpion Men is “don’t”
• Milking Scorpion Men…. uugggh
• The players are always the baddies!

Credits

The intro music is “The Warbird” by Try-Tachion. Other music includes “Cinder and Smoke” and “Skyspeak“, along with audio from the FreeSound library.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (39.8MB)

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We said we were back from our summer break with episode 32, but we lied! Joerg’s laptop died and he was busy growing a moustache, and Ludo was ridiculously busy with work. Either way, we are back again, just in time for the end of the year!

Our Guest

This time we welcome Jon Webb again, who appeared on our show back in episode 6 along with Neil Gibson. Jon is of course the wonderful author of the equally wonderful “Sandheart” series of scenarios:

• Sandheart Volume 1: Tales of the Sun County Militia
• Sandheart Volume 2: The Corn Dolls & Fortunate Sun
• Sandheart Volume 3: Tradition
• Sandheart Volume 4: The God Skin & Mad Prax

Disclaimer: the above links are affiliate links of course (please use them to support the show!)

The Making of Sandheart

Our first topic is the Sandheart series of scenarios (see links above) which, although they have been written and published a long time ago, we had not covered on the show before… better late than never!

We chat with Jon about how Sandheart came to be, the strength of its campaign framework, moral choices, “street-level” adventures, designing problems for which you don’t know the solution, culture clashes between characters, custom heroquesting rules, and more.

If you haven’t read or played Sandheart, there shouldn’t be any spoilers for you — only titillating previews of the sort of fun you can expect therein. Note that if you don’t plan on getting all four volumes of the series, we recommend getting volumes 1 and 3. The reason for this is that volume 3 is a scenario that spans multiple years, as the adventurers are tasked with guard duty for a recurring ritual. Getting volume 3 early will let you weave the first couple occurrences of the ritual into the first few adventures.

House Rules and Custom Systems

In the second and larger half of the episode, we exchange all kinds of ideas about tweaking and extending the RuneQuest rules. Among the things we talk about, in no particular order:

• Picking rules from different editions of RuneQuest
• Hit Points formulas
• Initiative systems and Strike Ranks
• Sorcery rules
• Experience checks and experience gain
• Resolving ties
• Failing Forward
• Combat effects and aiming at hit locations
• Custom hit location tables
• Shields
• Granularity of rules per activity
• Gritty tactical combat vs heroic scenes
• Average skill scores vs heroic skill scores
• Fighting styles and converting to other weapons
• Group rolls
• Adopting rules from Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition
• Chaotic corruption!
• Lingering emotions
• Caravan trading rules
• Going into a rabbit hole of research and math, and finding what a mechanic should be about
• Keeping custom mechanics into the “spirit” of the main system
• Post-coital pillow talk rules

We also mention:

• Ludovic’s own adventure, “A Short Detour”
• Mythras
• Troika
• Dragonbane
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
• Traveller
• Alien RPG

Credits

The intro music is “The Warbird” by Try-Tachion. Other music includes “Cinder and Smoke” and “Skyspeak“, along with audio from the FreeSound library.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (44.7MB)

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Our Guests

In this episode we welcome returning guests Evan Franke and J-M DeFoggi (who had to leave early because of Imperial Administration requirements). You would of course know Evan and J-M from our previous episodes with them: Chaos Rises! (episode 26 about 13th Age Glorantha) and Jackals and Ancient Worldbuilding (episode 19 about J-M’s Bronze Age fantasy adventure game, Jackals!)

Our guests are also found in these fine places:

• The Exploring Glorantha Series on YouTube
• Lots of Iconic Production endeavours, including YouTube and Patreon.

As we release this episode, Evan’s Red Moon and Warring Kingdoms is officially out! Go grab it now, it’s FREE!

Show Notes

Things we mention during this episode, in vague chronological order, include:

• TORG
• Shadows of Esteren
• The Arms of Nargash-Tor (for Palladium Fantasy)
• The Cults of RuneQuest books and, of course, The Lunar Way in particular
  • You can read Ludo’s own reviews of these books here
• As always, we mention the usual Gloranthan sources:
  • The Glorantha Sourcebook (or in PDF, or on DTRPG)
  • The Guide to Glorantha (or in PDF, or on DTRPG)
• Our episodes on Furthest and Imther, and their corresponding books:
  • Furthest: Crown Jewel of Tarsh
  • Edge of Empire
• Are you using The Lunar Way mostly for PCs or NPCs?
• Themes of a Lunar scenario or campaign
• Citizens of the Lunar Empire
• Xena: Warrior Princess featuring many Greek gods
• The Red Goddess as a guest star in your campaign
• Glorantha, where everybody’s an Illuminated asshole, and nobody’s the good guy
• The Empire’s trading, culture, politics, etc.
• Star Wars
• Glorantha as a Manichean settings vs a nuanced setting
  • The problem of the “simple” settings of our youth becoming more nuanced as we grow older
• RIFTS and the Coalition States
• The X-Men, Magneto, and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants
• Memorable Lunar villains
• The morality of the Lunar Empire
• The Lunar Empire as a pretty great place to live in, actually
• There’s no fairness and civil rights in the Bronze Age
• The Lunar Empire as the Roman Empire
• The human flaws and administrative weight of the Lunar Empire
• The Crimson Bat was self-defence!
• Struggling to show the Lunar Empire as a nuanced faction
• Using the USA as a model for the Lunar Empire
• The editorial history of the Lunars in RuneQuest publications
• White Bear & Red Moon
• Harrek the Berserk is “not a great guy!”
• Beatpot Aelrwin
• Argrath is up to no good, meddling with stuff he shouldn’t
  • Evan is available for rent as a guest Argrath
• Black Spear, and Nick Brooke’s take on Argrath
• Alexander The Great
• Sartar
• Griffin Mountain and Strangers in Prax
• Our favourite cults in the Lunar Way
• The Seven Mothers as the “Justice League cult”
• The awesomeness of the Crimson Bat cult
• The Nysalor/Gbaji chapter and its fourth-wall breaking aside
• Crimson Bat feeders publishing city rankings for their “visits”
• The demonic cult of Yara Aranis, which is pretty much as bad as the Tusk Riders
• Maran Gor is bad too!
• Sheng Seleris, the Gloranthan Ghengis Khan
• The Carmanian Empire roughly explained
• Lunar Magic, and how to use it in play
• Getting the Glowline to fail, so you can land your Stormtroopers and AT-ATs
• Ghost heist at the Lunar Temple!
• Harry Potter and the Lunar College of Magic
• Questworlds and 13th Age Glorantha as alternate game systems for certain campaigns
• The fine points of Lunar phases
• There are no physics in Glorantha
• Dragon Pass is a distraction for the Lunar Empire, which is mostly worried about the Pentans
• Dart Competitions as a Jason Bourne spy-thriller

Credits

The intro music is “The Warbird” by Try-Tachion. Other music includes “Cinder and Smoke” and “Skyspeak“, along with audio from the FreeSound library.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (42.0MB)

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A new episode is out but Joerg still doesn’t have his replacement laptop so there are no detailed show notes again!

Our Guest

We welcome the ever prolific Austin Conrad back on the show to talk about his new book which is all about magic items.

Links to Austin’s stuff:

• Treasures of Glorantha Volume 2: Relics of the Second Age
• Treasures of Glorantha Volume 1: Dragon Pass

Note that the above are affiliate links — please use them, thank you!

You can also get the old Plunder book for RuneQuest 2nd edition in PDF and in POD from Chaosium.

Credits

The intro music is “The Warbird” by Try-Tachion. Other music includes “Cinder and Smoke” and “Skyspeak“, along with audio from the FreeSound library.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (44.5MB)

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Show Notes

Joerg is still without a computer, so not only are there no detailed show notes again, but he’s not here to stop me from giving a clickbaity title to this episode! Because, indeed, we have zero news about a Questworld Glorantha book… if anything, it’s the contrary. But what we do have for you is Ian Cooper as our guest!

Ian comes on the podcast to talk to us about the imminently coming Questworlds. We talk about what it is, what it isn’t, how its mechanics work, and what it’s good for.

• You can find Questworlds’ free SRD here.
• You can find Ian on Mastodon here, on Bluesky here, and on Twitter here.

We also chat about the game’s history as Hero Wars and then HeroQuest (1st and 2nd editions). Ian tells us about his Red Cow campaign books, The Coming Storm and The Eleven Lights, and what happens in the unreleased sequels that he’s played through. We talk about Greg Stafford’s design philosophy and involvement in the early days of the product line, the differences between the other product lines, and more!

Of course, it’s not a zero-sum game, so Ian also makes a point that you can play some games with RuneQuest, and some other games with Questworlds… it’s all about the sort of experience you want for a given story.

Credits

The intro music is “The Warbird” by Try-Tachion. Other music includes “Cinder and Smoke” and “Skyspeak“, along with audio from the FreeSound library.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (45.3MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS | More