Episode 32: The Lunar Way

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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:

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
  • As always, we mention the usual Gloranthan sources:
  • Our episodes on Furthest and Imther, and their corresponding books:
  • 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.

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Glorantha Initiation: Amber and Christian, Wolves, Book Problems, and Actual Play

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Guests

Our guests for this new episode of the Glorantha Initiation series are Christian and Amber, from DMs After Dark! We chatted with them back in… (checks notes) November 2023! How time flies… you can find DMs After Dark in many places around the internet, including:

Amber has written a few things, including some short story in the Monstrous Feminine anthology, and can be found at the West Warwick Public Library where she curates the gaming collection.

Christian has written and published several scenarios, including “Zennor & The Sins of St Senara” and “The Night Mother’s Moon“, for Call of Cthulhu, published by Stygian Fox.

Show Notes

In this episode we talk about, more or less:

  • Luring Amber with promises of playing a werewolf (Telmori)
  • Using Chalana Arroy for luring in the cleric-loving player, and shamans for the player who likes weird characters
  • Animism, the Spirit World, and other gameplay elements that are fairly unique to Glorantha
  • Starting with the Starter Set, then going to the Sourcebook
  • Pacing actual play games, making it feel like sitting at an actual table
  • RuneQuest grognards coming to help with the rules
  • Christian has a “book problem”… Ludo can relate
  • Using Six Seasons in Sartar as a way to start small and get all the PCs together
  • Collaborative storytelling and world-building
  • Reconciling player-created lore with “canon” lore
  • Being mindful of players and the audience when preparing storylines, especially cult initiations leading into mythologies like the Unholy Trio, the Sex Pit, etc.
  • Amber acting as a GM assistant, especially in the early stages of preparation
  • Ludo mentions his short story about Chalana Arroy and Mallia
  • Ducks! Broos!
  • Verisimilitude and/or realism to the Bronze Age and other antiquity history
  • Approaching sensitive topics, and doing editorial work with players to match their comfort levels
  • Casino Town! Cwim! The Crimson Bat! What makes sense in your Glorantha, and what seems out of place
  • Early RQ2 dungeon crawling vs later RQ2 dungeons with ecologies and mythologies
  • Understand the vibe of the system over the rules of the system
  • Mary Renault’s The King Must Die and The Bull From The Sea, as good sources for getting a grasp on the antiquity
  • RuneQuest’s crunchy combat system, with its many moving parts and possible combinations
  • A wild mention of Shadows of Esteren makes Ludo happy!
  • Telmori lore! Of course we mention Brian Duguid’s Children of Hykim (see also our interview episode with Brian)

Credits

The photo of the red deer used in the title image is by Michael Brace.

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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Episode 31: Treasures of Glorantha

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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:

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.

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Episode 30: Questworlds Glorantha

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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.

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.

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Glorantha Initiation: Joel, Theology, and Old-School Video Games Boxes

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Photo by David Dunham

This time we interview Gloranthan newcomer Joel Bridge, who thinks we’re intimidating but also nice! Joel is originally from New Jersey but currently lives in San Diego. You can find Joel on Discord as @sirjamesfriendofthecolonel, and also sometimes on the Glorantha-related subreddits r/Glorantha and r/RuneQuest.

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Episode 29: Furthest in Tarsh

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Our Guests

For this episode, we have Nick Brooke and Simon Bray as our guests to talk about Simon’s book Furthest, Crown Jewel of Lunar Tarsh, and about what goes on in Lunar Tarsh in general.

Show Notes

There are no fancy show notes for this episode yet: Joerg’s laptop seems to have been blown up by Orlanthi rebels who don’t want the truth to be told… we will edit this post with the final show notes when Joerg has acquired a new laptop. In the meantime, you can go buy Simon’s stuff:

Bonus stuff:

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 (50.6MB)

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Review: Cults of RuneQuest: Mythology

The fourth and first book of the newly minted Cults of RuneQuest series is not only out, but also made it to the gloomy frozen wastes of Valind’s Glacier! Well, the south-western parts of it, I guess. I probably live more in Fronela than anything else, really… but even though it’s not frozen, it’s quite gloomy, hence the gloomy photos in this article!

Anyway, Cults of RuneQuest: Mythology is indeed the fourth release of the ten originally planned books, after the Prosopaedia, the Lightbringers, and the Earth Goddesses, all of which I’ve reviewed here previously. But it’s also the first of all these books, as Jeff Richard explained himself in a recent episode of our podcast. It’s conceptually the introduction to the series, and it contains most of the material that was supposed to go at the start of the big Cults of Glorantha slipcase which was originally planned. Yes, Chaosium has a known problem of releasing their RuneQuest books in “the wrong order”, but I’ve already discussed this enough in previous reviews.

Before we dive in, you can get Cults of RuneQuest: Mythology in PDF from DriveThruRPG (affiliate link), or in hardcover and/or PDF from Chaosium. This article was done with a review copy that was sent to me by Chaosium. Thank you Brian and Dustin!

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