The God Learners

Our Guests

For this episode we welcome Malin and CJ, which Ludo met in person at ChaosiumCon UK 2025.

The book we’re talking about is “Life and Traditions under the Sun Dome”

Ludo also took so long to edit this episode that Malin and CJ’s next books are already out: “Three Doors to Your Heart” and “Uleria Loves You”

Malin is on Bluesky and has a Patreon

CJ is also on Bluesky

Show Notes

Things we discussed in this episode:

Malin and CJ published a book about Life and Traditions of the Sun Dome because they’ve been playing there for a while.

Malin got into Glorantha via CJ, and became fascinated by stuff in Cults of Terror.

CJ got into Glorantha via some people talking about RuneQuest and its cultures, religions, weird spells, and “walking tapirs”.

After playing in Pavis and the Big Rubble, CJ bought RQ3 and some RQ2.

The Dragon Pass board game

Playing near Sun County in HeroQuest, with the Cradle scenario.

CJ bought the RQ3 Sun County book, reading it directly in the post office.

It was hard to get a group going.

The “Life and Traditions” book is a “more detailed” Sun County, compatible with previous official material (Sun County) and JC material (Black Spear, Sandheart).

Many people have written stuff in that area, it’s important to honour that.

Back in the day, it felt like Sun County was more “bronze age” and exotic than Sartar, which felt more “celtic” and common.

Research for the book included a lot of Bronze Age history.

Big spears, shield walls, and hoplites!

Back in the day, there wasn’t much material on Sartar. A lot of books were out of print, and in piracy was the only way to access them.

Very trusting people who mail their copy of Griffin Mountain to strangers to read and send back!

Sun County was a “standalone” book and setting, easier to grasp than other places in Glorantha.

To secular Sweden, religious fanaticism is exotic!

The reason for the “Life and Traditions” book is that many players have questions… sometimes weird questions…

Malin wanted to emulate the “Daily Life in <place>” children books about ancient Egypt or Greece: what is it to live in these places and times? Also, a desire to answer questions to the players who didn’t know Glorantha.

Malin loves making house rules and handouts!

A character wants to get married? Write a handout about property rights! “It escalates so fast!”

Between different regions of Genertela there are different rules and cultures. Sun County should feel different from Sartar.

“RuneQuest is a game for over-thinkers”

CJ is a sociologist, so how does the class system work!?

“Life and Traditions” has a bibliography! It’s serious work!

It’s a xenophobic and misogynistic place but they have nice beaches.

CJ looks at other countries with the same problems for reference, in addition to historical Bronze Age and Iron Age, and previous Gloranthan material.

People are still people, and it’s interesting to see how people would react and behave in a place like Sun County.

How to use this book? As an academic description of Sun County, or as a collection of articles to be skimmed and picked from as needed?

“It should be read but not memorized”.

“It’s a confidence builder”.

Instead of adding more history and names and places, the book tries to just add more context to one already established place.

Joerg likes the tables to “look around the house”.

Ludo likes the random event table.

Players can read the book, there is not much “secret information”.

The bad stuff in Sun County: patriarchy, xenophobia, etc. How is that fun to play? Depends on the group… it can be treated as background vibe, or as the main theme.

The book also shows how to play other types of characters.

CJ tried to lean into the set parameters of the place, as established by prior material: Yelmalio is patriarchal, Ernalda is made into a subservient wife, and Zola Fel provides a good part of the fertility magic that Ernalda usually provides elsewhere, etc.

Still had to “address the elephant in the room and make everyone feel welcome at the table”.

CJ and Malin had several women characters in their campaign. What does that mean for them? How do they live in this society?

CJ makes the good point that it’s like playing Call of Cthulhu in the default era of the 1920s, which is a “horribly racist” time in America.

“The gamemaster has to address this with the group”, deciding how much to lean into it or address it.

Ludo mentions Harlem Unbound as an example of leaning into the racism of the 1920s for Call of Cthulhu.

Cool stuff in Sun County: as a foreigner, you interact with a very weird and insular society!

An excuse for sending your PCs to Sun County is that the River of Cradles is strategically important!

Do your players enjoy being “administratively frustrated”?

The absurdity of Glorantha.

The cool thing about Yelmalio is that he is NOT cool!

“He’s a poser guy wearing shitloads of bling for compensating about all the things he cannot do!”

Orlanthi cultists are like Tom Cruise. Yelmalions are played by William H. Macey.

Another cool thing is that Sun County is very, very ancient. There are many very old archives and items to be found here.

Ludo talks about how he would send his players there.

CJ says it’s a good entry point into a new campaign: the place is semi-isolated, with a limited number of cults to choose from, etc. Great for newcomers.

“If you want to play a trickster in Sun County, go ahead and try!”

No need to go into complex clan/tribe relations here.

You can play it like Star Wars/Andor, living in some oppressive society, or like NYPD Blues with Sandheart, or as some Iliad thing with lone people defending their outpost against the nomads.

You don’t need to lean into “colonizers vs natives”.

Custom rules for faction play: “It’s easier to reward your players when you have numbers on a paper”.

Build a shrine to your god so you don’t have to commute!

Characters built for intrigue and politics should have as much fun and input into the game as those built for combat.

It’s still useful and interesting to track favours and standings even for non-political characters.

Tracking even small-scale relationships in some situations like long-term travelling.

Switching from RuneQuest to QuestWorlds.

RQG starts breaking down the more you play, especially the experience system, which slows down to a crawl.

Malin says QuestWorlds is better than HeroQuest. CJ says it used to break down with the bidding system.

Malin gives advice for how to convert RQG characters to QW.

QW is easier to make little subsystems for since it’s a lot less crunchy.

Players had trouble phrasing their keywords, and coming up with flaws.

RQG helped establish the “reality” of the fictional world before moving on to QW, which is very valuable.

Nick Brooke’s “song book” for conventions and the “HeroWars Gaga” song.

Gloranthan cookbooks!

Do players behave differently when you change the system?

Malin says she had to change her GMing style a lot.

QW requires more narrative responsibility from the players, which can overwhelm some of them.

Joerg mentions the Swedish RuneQuest Talastar project.

Dragonbane mention!

Joerg asks about the Teshnans… Malin has plans!

Ludo took so long to edit this episode that the Ulerian books that CJ and Malin announce here are already out!

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.

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! (which we talked about in episode 31)

Austin hopes to be “done soon” with his upcoming “Wolves of the Wild Hunt” book… that was a couple months ago and it’s not done yet The book will include slightly remastered previous materials such as The Quacken, and The Queen’s Star, plus new stuff about Gagarthi monsters!

Show Notes

Things that happened in this episode:

Joerg reminds us what the Reminiscences of Paulis Longvale are… Listen to episode 34 if you haven’t already!

Cults of Terror is “the gamemaster’s best friend”

Also listen to episode 35 with Simon Phipp, specialist of Dorastor!

Yes, YOU too can play a Thanatar cultist!

Ludo summarizes the previous episode’s story

Austin mentions the old Dorastor book, plus gives another shout out to Simon Phipp’s books

Ludo goes on a short tangent about the name “Bilini”

Austin lays down another argument about the Orlanthi really being Vikings

We discuss the various motivations of the characters regarding Chaos, Dorastor, and the Lunar Empire

Ludo has made a spreadsheet! He tries to figure out what are the chances of the Bilini king’s army against Razalkark’s army

How cute are baby broos? Or baby Scorpion Men? Apparently Diana Probst has one of those in Stone and Bone, go check it out!

We talk about battle tactics and “broo walls”

How the hell do you recreate this story using RQ rules? Should we play using HeroQuest/QuestWorlds? (again)

The phalanx rules suck?

Is dual wielding better than using a shield? (We fumble around the convoluted RQG dual wielding rules)

Rules terms inside the narrative text… what to make of it?

Would you abstract the things we see in this story to “just a few rolls” in RuneQuest?

Austin is being an asshole (his words! not mine!)

How much plunder do you get from Chaos creatures?

Giving a “personal touch” to plunder and gifts… or just add some jewels!

Reselling gifts to buy actually useful stuff, like skills and spells!

“WHERE IS MY MONEY?” and other things players say

Ancient cultures versus transactional cultures

Ea-Nasir name drop!

Storm Bull cultists as a biker gang

Austin mentions “A Short Detour” and the way we tried writing Chaos cultists as nuanced people

Are Illuminates crazy assholes? Or are they people with feelings?

Uleria is more powerful and bad-ass than we give her credit for

Body horror with Uleria! Play Limbo!

Austin has more conspiracy theories about the Celestial Court on his website!

Vampires in Dorastor… do they have enough to eat?

World of Darkness vampires vs Dresden Files vampires (also, Ludo mixes up Dresden Files and Laundry Files)

Austin’s Harrek campaign, and the shenanigans the PCs are up to

Give player characters cool or embarrassing epithets!

The interesting framing of a Chaos-based narrative with a Lunar perspective

Telmori vampires! Or vampires feeding on Telmori! Maybe both!

The lost power of RQ2 vampires that can steal Rune magic when feeding off someone

Rituals to get your magic items to trust you

Fear mechanics in RuneQuest?

There’s a difference between improvising and off-the-rails-improvising!

RQ2 silver magic collars… they’re in every RQ2 story

How do you keep prisoners?

Suspicious tricksters! (aren’t they always?)

Joerg tells us about Jojo The Bobo. Also, Bugs Bunny and the Puppeteer Troupe

“We’re in Dorastor, but we’re getting…. human drama???!”

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.

We are back with a long overdue Glorantha Initiation interview featuring twice the amount of French accents! We talked to Benjamin, aka Dasfynx, who is the webmaster of the (French) RuneQuest Wiki, and co-hosts the (also French) “Runecast” podcast with Gianni Vacca.

Le Wiki du JDR RuneQuest

Le Runecast (you can of course find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on whatever app you use to listen to podcasts!)

Show Notes

Here are the things we talk about in this episode!

Ben’s podcast “Runecast”

This is one of the three known “talk show” podcasts about Glorantha right now, the other one being the Finnish Dayzatarin tähtien alla (“Under the stars of Dayzatar”)

Ben also runs the French RQWiki which started as a translation of Chaosium’s wiki.

It started as just figuring out what tech was powering Chaosium’s website

Then it was a small translation for Ben’s players

And then other fans joined the effort… there are now extra things compared to the Chaosium version

Any extra material on the wiki that is from the published material is reproduced with the approval of Studio Deadcrows, the French publisher for RQG

Watching old adventure/sci-fi movies on VHS, and being pitched the Warhammer Fantasy RPG (WFRP) as similar to those movies

Ben’s first purchased RPG books were from the Call of Cthulhu and World of Darkness lines, but we was busy playing sports and listening to rap, so he read the books but didn’t play them!

This may be called “lonely fun”

Only years after that one WFRP game did Ben finally find another gaming group playing the WEG Star Wars RPG

Ben offered to GM Call of Cthulhu after that, which lasted for a handful of years, going through the Spawn of Azathoth campaign

You too can learn geography and history by GMing Call of Cthulhu!

It’s hard to find English or French RPG books while living in China, so Ben loaded up on many books whenever he would come home

As a Roliste TV watcher (YouTube channel here), Ben learned that one host (Mathieu) is a big fan of RuneQuest, so Ben bought the latest edition… and didn’t like it!

This is because the world wasn’t described enough for Ben to picture, so he bought the Glorantha Sourcebook… and didn’t like it either! Too many names and lists of things!

It was the Bestiary that made Ben “get it”: each “monster” is actually coming from somewhere and have their place

After that, Ben was deep into Glorantha and started reading more and more books about it

Glorantha: a steep curve followed by a rabbit hole!

Books are expensive so Ben got Gianni Vacca to explain things to him for free!

Gianni is Ben’s co-host on the Runecast podcast

Gianni is Ben’s Joerg, an old hands of Glorantha… actually even older than Joerg, since Gianni started with RQ2!

Ben’s wiki and podcast are geared towards beginners

Favourite thing about Glorantha:

Dorastor, to make players suffer!

See Simon Phipp’s “Secrets of Dorastor” (and other related books), and his interview episode on the show

Sartar, because it’s an interesting place

Next on Ben’s reading list are the Red Cow campaign books (book 1 and book 2)

See also Ian Cooper’s Questworlds interview on the show

Things Ben doesn’t like: the gray areas, because he likes to feel like he understands everything

Ben asks Joerg what is the nature of the great compromise?

Joerg explains how gods can break the compromise and act in Time

We talk about avatars of gods also manifesting gods enough to endanger the Compromise, and how Chaos allows gods to get involved in Time

Greg’s narrative framework of writing “in world” texts that give contradictory views and accounts

The annoyance of “no answers” vs “multiple answers”

King of Sartar is… a dense and complicated book

GMing the French campaign “Children of the Flame” (Gianni is an author on it)

This campaign helped show Ben what is possible in Glorantha

It’s about the Dundealos tribe, near Swenville, after they have been replaced by the Lunar Entalos tribe… until the Dragonrise gives an opportunity to retake their lands

Faction play, with various tribes, the Lunars, etc.

There’s a map of Swenville!

A good way to start in Glorantha is a good example: a scenario, a campaign, etc.

The Sourcebook isn’t a good idea for beginners

The GM pack or a campaign are better! (classic RQ2 campaigns, or newer ones from the Jonstown Compendium)

Basically, start small!

The French edition of RQG has one scenario in the rulebook, and one in the bestiary… something the English edition is lacking!

Ludo briefly talks about his similarly failed encounters with Glorantha

Ben reiterates how Glorantha is consistently deep and how he loves that about it

Ben started just with the books for a while, but later discovered there are so many things about Glorantha on the internet!

Shout-out to 7Tigers, who translates all the news and Well of Daliath content to French

Also shout-out to Olivier from “Les Fils du Chaos” for helping correct the French RQWiki

And shout-out to everybody else helping in their own way

Ben asks Joerg about the Sky World and Joerg obliges!

Ludo adds his take about the multi-shaped Sky World

Ben still wants one final answer on everything!

Joerg mentions the “blind men touching the elephant” tale, and Ben wants to see the elephant, not be one of the blend men

We devolve into Jungian archetypes, and other tangents…

We end with some quick-fire questions… Ben loves ducks!

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.

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.

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.