The God Learners

Glorantha Initiation: Michael, Gloranthan Fiction, and Not Worrying About It

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After a hiatus last month we are back with another Glorantha Initiation episode in which we interview a newcomer to the tribe. This time, Ludo is by himself due to some scheduling issue with Joerg (it was Ludo’s fault), interviewing Michael Bernth.

Michael lives in Europe’s first… no, second (probably?) happiest country. He is a multi-skilled designer (among other things) so if you’re working on a Jonstown Compendium book, he might be able to help with some InDesign layout work!

  • Michael is on Twitter and Mastodon
  • Michael’s portfolio
  • Michael’s design company
    • Show Notes

    In this episode we talk about:

    • Miniatures of the 1980s
    • Comics like Conan the Barbarian (Barry Windsor-Smith’s run) or Prince Valiant
    • Ivanhoe (1952)
    • D&D Basic and Expert, followed by Advanced D&D
    • Going bananas with RPGs: Traveller, Bushido, Golden Heroes, Rolemaster, and more
    • Games Workshop’s RuneQuest and Broos miniatures
    • Call of Cthulhu, Cyberpunk, GURPS, Delta Green
    • Avalon Hill RuneQuest, Sun County, River of Cradles
    • The Grognard Files podcast and coming out of the “deep freeze”
    • Jonstown Compendium, and in particular the Sandheart series
    • Playing in Prax
    • Not throwing too much at the players
    • How to put all the lore and metaplot events in the game
    • Dealing with the metaplot the same way you treat real history in Call of Cthulhu adventures
    • Not being so precious about the lore
    • Lots of gold lying around in the Glorantha materials… pick it up and do what you want with it
    • Playing with new fantasy tropes, different from the usual Tolkienesque stereotypes
    • Playing with rich cultures, mythology, and cults
    • Glorantha is not about good vs evil or even order vs chaos
    • Chaos is great, it can add a touch of horror in your fantasy game
    • Where to start? Are there actually too many places to start?
    • Lack of knowledge to “hang yourself onto”
    • Broos are problematic, Morokanths may need tweaking
    • Handwaving rules like ENC, varying crunch based on the story
    • Spirit combat easily gets into a dealock, possession can lead to player agency issues, shamanism and sorcery rules are complicated, and… how does heroquesting even work?
    • The rulebook has many editing issues, and its index could be improved
    • Wishing for spell cards, god cards, and a Gloranthan tarot deck. But overall, wishing for Gloranthan novels and short story collections
    • Romulus TV show

      • …and more!

      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.

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