Something I have long been frustrated by is the tendency that RPG battle rules have always been mass combat rules designed to determine the winner of a battle, rather than something player…
Latest posts
Four Ways to Experience these Stories (re-post)
As Cults gets closer and closer to some big and exciting announcements, here’s a little passage that I think is particularly important for this forum: Four Ways to Experience these Stories Myths…
Heracles on the Argos
If you are playing in the RQ Campaign, sooner or later your player characters are going to cross paths with the likes of Harrek, Prince Argrath, Gunda, the Feathered Horse Queen, Jaldon…
Well-educated Lunars
The following is what a well-educated Lunar might learn from an Irrippi Ontor sage in the 6th, 7th or 8th Wanes: SCIENCE AND REALITY Science bases itself on sense perception. Religion uses…
How Cults Change
The archetypes and patterns of the God Time are eternal and fixed. But what we in Time experience of the God Time, what we call things, what we offer magic points to…
Prax, The Lunar Empire, and The White Bull
The Lunar imperial presence in Prax was an existential threat to the Praxian way of life – much as the westward expansion of settlers into the Great Plains endangered the Plains Indians…
The Size of Genertela
When we think about the size of Genertela, remember that it is roughly 5000 km long from west to east and 1700 wide from north to south. It is a little bit…
Gloranthan Dwarfs
Always keep in mind that Gloranthan dwarves are most emphatically not the Scottish-accented dwarves of the Peter Jackson movies or of most D&D campaigns. A small Gloranthan dwarf might only weigh 10…
Notes on Eiritha
The Herd Mother is the single most widely worshipped deity in Prax. In Sartar, she is worshiped as the Cattle Goddess, and her Praxian Herd Priestesses are known to have a special…
How to Run RuneQuest
In this interview, Jeff Richard, creative director of Chaosium, walks you through the tools, tactics, and tips, you need to run your first game of RuneQuest. Chapters
Esrolia’s Population
Esrolia is very densely populated – “too dense” say many. At somewhere around 200 people per square kilometer, it is even more densely populated than medieval France. This means that every 4…
Sartarite Inns
Inns along main trade roads go back at least to Achaemenid Persia, probably older. For example, Herodotus writes concerning the Persian Royal Road: “Now the true account of the road in question…
Esrolian fleets
I’ve been thinking a lot about the size of the Nochet trireme fleet, and clearly the number of rowers (and not finances) is the biggest limiting factor. If we assume HALF the…
Deep Lunar Synthesis
One of Greg’s deep background notes that I refer to an awful lot when I think about Glorantha is this chart that he put together to try to think about the basic…
What books do I need to run a RuneQuest campaign?
So I’ve said what the “canonical corpus” is for Chaosium publications. Perhaps more important – what books do I need to run a RuneQuest campaign? This is a shorter list: The Starter…
Jeff’s Canonical Corpus
So let’s talk about the books I think constitute the “canonical corpus” for official RuneQuest publications. These are the works that get referenced in future Chaosium publications with very few changes, and…
Glorantha is a Bronze Age setting
People use bronze instead of iron, use ox-plows, and so forth. But it is a fantasy Bronze Age setting, not a historical one set in the real world. We have silver coins,…
Vadeli
There are about 150,000-200,000 Vadeli in Glorantha, most in the Vadeli Islands or Pamaltela. That’s roughly the same number as Brithini in Arolanit and Sog City. Although they are descended from Malkion,…
Notes on The Invisible God I
The Invisible God is abstract, the ultimate reality in the universe. It is Brahman, the Ein Sof, the Unmoved Mover, the One. The Invisible God does not change, but is the cause…
Sartar’s Roads & Inns
So people have asked why the Sartar route over Dragon Pass is preferred to the Grazeland route. It basically comes down to that it is much cheaper and safer to travel over…
The “Fourth Age” of Glorantha
This is not intended to hammer down the “Fourth Age” of Glorantha, but let’s look a little bit at our King of Sartar sources. Now remember, I edited this book and work…
Feeding Boldhome
Normally a city gets most of its food from within about 30km. Within about 30 km of Boldhome is about 250-300 km2 of cultivated land, raising mainly wheat. Now that is enough…
Kallyr’s Short Lightbringers Quest 1625 – IV
Kallyrs Stationary Lightbringer Quest was much like how many people understand heroquesting. She got the tribes and temples to perform a giant ceremony filled with pageantry. People wore masks and sacred regalia…
Silver Lunars and Costs
Silver coinage is incredibly common. The caravan trade between the Holy Country and the Lunar Empire uses silver. The Lunars also dump a huge amount of silver into circulation to pay their…
Royal Economics and Demographic Distribution?
So, one might ask, why are you spending so much time figuring out royal economics and demographic distribution in developing a game that is so heavily about mythology and magic? Easy! The…