Each cult performs holy day ceremonies that reinforce the link between the cult members and the deity. These links can mechanically be described as the cult’s available Rune spells. These ceremonies fit…
Tag: RQG Heroquesting
Running a Heroquest
So let’s think about how to run a heroquest in a game session, based on the ideas in my previous posts. Couple of ground rules: Let’s set the scene. The community or…
Untangling Heroquesting
Let me try to untangle a few things. Let’s start with what a heroquest is: it is the direct interaction between the eternal God Time and mortal beings. Now that may sound…
Magic Road Quests
Orlanth‘s deeds in the God Tine set the path for many, maybe even most, heroquests known in the Third Age. He is the god of Heroes after all. This is especially true…
Heroquest Activities in RQG
When we think about Heroquests in RuneQuest, we really have two types of activities under that rubric. The first is the most common. Initiates and Rune masters (who are of course also…
Navigating the Hero Plane
So when thinking about any heroquest, I start by looking at one of Greg’s old Hero Plane maps. This is a map of archetypes – and not the same thing as the…
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…
Exploring Glorantha’s Collective Unconsciousness
A heroquest is an exploration of Glorantha’s collective unconsciousness – the realm of mythology. In a heroquest, the questers interact directly with the primal forces and archetypes that make up the world….
A Basic Heroquest Example
As an aside, most heroquests are not about changing reality, or rewriting major myths – for what it is worth, I find such heroquests are not all that interesting. They are about…
Heroquesting Lexicon II
Many terms get thrown around when talking about heroquesting. Here’s a short list of terms used in the heroquesting rules – be aware that Gloranthans are definitely not going to be this…
Thinking About Heroquests
When thinking about heroquests, I strongly recommend reading Jung’s “Red Book” aka the Liber Novus. That and “Inanna’s Descent into the Underworld“. And Gene Wolfe’s “Soldier of the Mist.” Those three books…
Heroquesting and the Hero Wars
Here’s a snippet from a discussion I am having elsewhere that I think is of broad general interest: I think for almost everyone heroquesting falls into one of two categories: 1. We do…
Heroquesting sheet sketch
Here’s another sneak peak of what I have been playing around with. I’m not going to explain it or answer questions about how it works – just showing it off because it…
Heroquesting game mechanics for RuneQuest
Had a fantastic time playtesting the near-final heroquesting game mechanics for RuneQuest with Neil Robinson, Claudia Loroff, David Larkins, and Matt Ryan. Andrew Logan Montgomery has really done a fantastic job putting…
HeroQuest Powers
One of the great benefits of heroquesting is the ability to gain magic outside of what can be gained from one’s cult. These magic abilities often operate mechanically similarly to Rune spells….
HeroQuesting Context
So often when we talk about heroquesting, it is in the context of gaining power, defeating a foe, exploring the mythic realms, learning magical secrets, and so on. Not surprising – that…
HeroQuesting & The Proximate Holy Realm
So when we think about heroquesting, the Empire of the Wyrms Friends, and Belintar’s Holy Country, one common thread is the idea of the “Proximate Holy Realm”. The mundane world and the…
Heroquesting contexts
My hope with these posts over the past few weeks is to give an impression as to the context around heroquesting, and to get us away from the approach in the King…
God Time and the mundane world of our adventurers
When we think about the interactions between the God Time and the mundane world of our adventurers, two categories come into view. First is the regular, ceremonial interaction that every cult does…
Heroquest: “What is It?”
One of Greg’s earliest manuscripts on heroquesting hits all the key points, explains what it is, and the key elements involved. I’ve added a few footnotes, but let this digest a little….
Ranging and Joining
A technique developed by participants in the Tournament of the Masters of Luck and Death, these questers range at the edge of an ongoing quest or ritual and watch for events or…
A few more Arkat Cult notes
As said many times before – After the long war Arkat retired with his closest confederates to Arkhome, which became the capitol of Arkat’s Autarchy. Arkat instituted formal cult procedures, created a…
Heroquesting Lexicon I
God Time: In the God Time, there was no division between the worlds of men and gods, between Life and Death, or body and spirit. The events and deeds of the God Time…
Heroquesting 102
OVERVIEW The process by which an individual contacts the world of the gods and grows in it is slow and gradual. When mortals participate in a religious ceremony, they expend energy and…