Show Notes
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 opp
More from The God Learners
Ludo gets the episode number wrong! Also, he’s sick and tried to edit all of his sniffling and coughing out of the audio, but you’ll probably hear some here and there.
For this new Glorantha Initiation interview, we have two guests, which explains the unusual length of this episode… we welcome Antoni and Konrad!