The Only Story You Need: More Thoughts on Glorantha

When I introduce newcomers to the world of Glorantha, I always start with some variation of the following: it's an ancient world setting that focuses on myth, and there's really only one myth you need to know. It goes something like this.

The cosmos emerges from Chaos. First comes Darkness, then Water. The Earth emerges from the waters and begins the Green Age, the spring of the world. The Sky rises from the earth and starts the Golden Age, ruled by the sun god. The world is shaken then by the birth of the Storm gods. They tear heaven and earth apart to make room for themselves. One storm god slays the sun, throwing the world into darkness and eternal winter. This ignites the Gods War. The gods fall to fighting each other, and Chaos re-enters the world. Nearly everything dies. In a last ditch effort to save the cosmos, the gods bind themselves and create Time. The time of the gods is over. It is the time of the mortal races. History begins.

It's a fractal story. The general pattern is easy to grasp. We all know this story because we all live it. Our lives begin in Darkness and Water--the womb. We are born into childhood, the Green Age, followed by youth, the Golden Age. Strife and struggle enter our lives, then decline and darkness. Our time ends and someone else's begins.

A Fractal Cosmos

But the deeper you look, the pattern repeats itself endlessly. It's there in the order of the Gloranthan seasons, the days of the week, and even the Ages of Time (which begin with exploring new powers and end with conflict and destruction). The myths of individual deities almost invariably explore how the god or goddess in question fits into the story told above, and it even dictates the layout of the Elemental Runes on your character sheet.

With new players, I like to start campaigns during Sacred Time, when some variation of the story above is retold. I don't tell the players the story ahead of time, I give it to the characters during the game. Then I play seasonally, starting with Sea Season, letting the pattern become obvious as we play. Gods and cults get introduced as necessary. I've done this hundreds of times and it's never failed me.

Skip the "Family History" section of character creation. It means nothing to newbies. Right on p. 29 RuneQuest tells you it's optional anyway. I also use the "Inexperienced Adventurers" option (p. 25) and skip choosing cults. You can get new players into the game in about 20-30 minutes with these options, and teach them the game and setting through play. Essentially, Six Seasons in Sartar was my blueprint on how to do all this.

This works particularly well at conventions. I shun pre-generated characters, and have been able to introduce first time players with their own characters and still have time to play. 

I introduced all four of my current players to RuneQuest this way. Sure, now they are all Glorantha nerds, putting their grubby little mitts on my precious tomes and getting lost in the pages of The Guide to Glorantha, but they all went into it blind. They hadn't even read the rulebook. But that's the thing about rabbit holes: you don't need to know what's at the bottom of them before you take the plunge.  

If you like what you read, consider buying me a martini! Follow this link--> ko-fi.com/therook93

Greg Stafford's "A Pyre for Gods and Heroes" at Long Last. or, Where the #$%& Have You Been the Last 5 Months Montgomery?

READERS MAY HAVE NOTED an absence of posts since August 2025. That is the longest period of silence this blog has seen since it launched in 2012.

I could tell you that I ran off and joined the circus, that I was abducted by aliens, that I joined a tantric cult and achieved higher states of consciousness one yogini at a time. The truth is, however, that I suddenly had a project on my lap that was for me a wish come true, an offer I could not refuse, and something I was willing to suspend all my projects for (including this blog). Now the cat is out of the bag, and I can talk a little about it.

Chaosium's Michael O'Brien (MOB) posts about this over on the Chaosium page (link here), but I will quote the first half of what he has to say to set up the picture:

As many Glorantha fans will know, Chaosium founder Greg Stafford long harbored aspirations to be a published novelist, and worked on perfecting his “Harmast’s Saga” novel over many years – decades even – stopping and starting several times. Greg would sometimes read and share his work-in-progress at conventions; today there are different, incomplete fan versions out in the wilds of Gloranthan fandom, but no complete “novel” per se. 

Starting in 2015, Jeff Richard, Greg’s frequent creative collaborator, and editor Susan O’Brien, who knew Greg personally, began – with Greg’s blessing – the task of gathering these manuscripts together and constructing a master text. The plan then was to work with Greg to “fill in the gaps” and, at long last, publish a novel pitched for Glorantha fans and the general reader alike. 

Jeff and Susan made solid progress. Altogether the tale Greg wanted to tell was about 90% complete. And for the parts yet to be done, Greg left himself notes about what was needed. Sometimes these notes were detailed drafts, sometimes dot points, sometimes there were even diagrams.

Sadly, Greg’s untimely passing in 2018 put paid to this three-way approach. Work on the ‘Harmast’s Saga’ project was shelved as we mourned Greg. Jeff and Susan went on to other creative endeavours…

For Chaosium's 50th anniversary year, one of the things that was decided was this was the perfect time to honor Greg by finishing, and publishing, his novel. Back in July of 2025, MOB arrived about a week early for KaijuCon, and we had dinner in Tokyo. He asked--straight-faced--If I might like to finish up Greg's novel and get it across the finish line. 

Naturally I said "no"...

...in some bizarre alternate universe. In this one I said "yes," and spent the next five months alone with Greg, pouring over what was written and his notes and trying to figure out where he had intended to go with it all.

I didn't do this alone. Susan O'Brien returned to the project as editor, and together we wrote, rewrote, and rearranged to get a text that would read something like a modern novel. Understand, this is not another King of Sartar. Greg was writing a novel, not an in-world collection of historical texts. This book was different from anything else the world has seen for Glorantha. I honestly believe it will change how people approach Gloranthan gaming. It certainly changed how I did.

I will not give spoilers, but the histories are out there. The novel takes place in the First Age, 1200 years before the events of most RuneQuest campaigns. The main events are set in 411 ST, with a lot of material showing the years and decades before that. You will see the breaking of the First Council. You will see the birth of Nysalor (and get to know him fairly well). And you will meet Harmast Barefoot, at the very beginning of his career. That is about all I will say.

Also, for the record, one thing I never plan on discussing is what I wrote and what I didn't. A lot of what I did was adding to Greg's chapters, clarifying. The chapters that were mine, I wrote using Greg's character's, following his notes, advancing his plot. So to my mind it was, is, and remains Greg's novel.

So go to Chaosium and download the sample chapter, "Invitations." And stay tuned.  

 

One of the Top Ten Adventures that Changed the RPG World(?)

The virtual table top Quest Portal has just released on their website the ten most influential and game changing adventures in the history of TTRPG, and Six Seasons in Sartar made the list!

It sits alongside undisputed classics like Masks of Nyarlathotep, The Great Pendragon Campaign, Ravenloft, and one of my personal favorites, The Dracula Dossier.

My thanks to Quest Portal for thinking I made the cut. A tremendous honor to be included in such august company. 

Follow the link here.

 

 

Be an Adventurer! 3Hex Issue 1, a quick look at a little game.

I love me a good ole' Old School hexcrawl.

This frequently throws people. I have made it fairly clear that Basic RolePlaying is my preferred rules system, a deeply simulationist game. By that, I mean that BRP attempts to model in math the genres it is applied to. Call of Cthulhu recreates the cosmic horror of Lovecraft, with a sanity system that models how people go nuts in his fiction, not in real life. RuneQuest Roleplaying in Glorantha models the bronze age world of, no surprises here, Glorantha. It does not seek to accurately recreate the economics, sociopolitics, or brutality of the terrestrial bronze age. Pendragon is, frankly, Sir Thomas Malory summoned back from Avalon with dice. It has nothing to do with the middle ages. And Basic RolePlaying is a tool kit to model whatever genre you want. These are not games that depend on randomness. Randomness is an element, and has to be in any game reliant on dice, but they are very structured, intentional systems meant to control the type of play that emerges.

On top of that, I am known for story-oriented scenarios. The three Six Seasons books chronicle the fall of a clan, its time as a warband, and its return home. The Final Riddle is a one-way trip into madness. Again, randomness is present. Characters can fail. They can die. But there is a narrative in place. 

Old School gaming has no interest in simulation or stories. Crom LAUGHS at your narrative arcs! At Old School's core is emergent play. Roll the dice, see what happens. The results of the dice rolls, and the decisions you make, are the story. In the stricter Old School games, you don't know what character you will play until you roll stats for it. Adventures, locations, and encounters can all be determined randomly. Gygax had tons of random tables in the original Dungeon Master's Guide, and modern descendants like Old School Essentials or ShadowDark have followed suit. You can literally build the campaign, and the world, as you go. And unlike the more simulationist games mentioned above, the lighter dice systems of Old School games are little more than pass/fail mechanics. There are fewer skills (if any) to sculpt the expectations of the setting. Worlds are implied in the rules, but not explicitly modeled. You jump in, you play, and the game emerges.

Be an Adventurer! 3Hex Issue 1 (man that is a mouthful, let's call it 3Hex from here on) is a little solo-play game with decidedly Old School leanings. Author Mark Quire LAUGHS in the face of your simulations and narratives, by Crom! Yes, I promise to stop doing that. Weighing in at all of five pages, this PDF is essentially a three hex dungeon/wilderness crawl (which might have something to do with the name). One hex is The City, one is The Reach, and one is The Badlands. Each has its own random encounters generated when you enter the hex. The tongue-in-cheek conceit of the game is right there on the first page:

Be an Adventurer! THEY SAID. It’ll be fun and make You RICH! THEY SAID.

It’s not.

None of this is fun, none of this has made me rich. I’ve been stuck in this swamp for four days. There is something growing between my toes that I SWEAR occasionally giggles, I’m super hungry, AND I AM REALLY NOT HAPPY. NOT. HAPPY. AT ALL.

Your naive would-be Adventurer begins in The City, and sets out to win treasure and fame in this and other hexes (but is more likely to starve or die a hideous death). Each day of play, called a "loop," you either roll for an encounter in the hex you are in or more to the adjacent hex. At the end of each day, you gain a point of Hunger (Hunger also acts as damage in this game). At 6 points of Hunger, you are dead. But Hunger can be combatted with one of your three other stats. Groats are the coins in the game, and you start with D6. Vittles are rations, and you can spend one each day to prevent Hunger. Finally there are Upgrades, which are weapons, armor, magic items, and experience, making your little bugger (sorry, your brave hero) tougher and more resilient. Like Hunger, Vittles and Upgrades start at zero and are gained in play.

The core mechanic for tests in the game is to roll 2D6 + your total Upgrades and - your current Hunger. You will want to roll higher than your opponent's combat scores or the difficulty of whatever test you are facing.

Aside from the randomness of the game, what makes it Old School adjacent is the entire core concept. Old School games are notoriously brutal. They were survival horror games, not heroic fantasy. 3Hex leans hard into that spirit. Like Knave! or MÖRK BORG, there are no character classes here, however. You are defined by your gear. Presumably further issues will add more hexes to explore, and perhaps more complexity, but as is 3Hex is a lightning fast solo play with a sense of humor about itself. Like MÖRK BORG the fun is in your inevitable, horrible doom.

Or maybe you could get lucky?

        

The Sutra of Pale Leaves: Carcosa Manifest, Available at Gen Con in limited pre-release!

While I will not physically be at Gen Con, I will be there in sinister, psychedelic spirit. "Wonderland," which premiered in Nagoya, Japan just two weeks ago, will be available in The Sutra of Pale Leaves: Carcosa Manifest, in a limited Gen Con pre-release!

When a horrific and inexplicable act of self violence happens at a Tokyo high school, your Investigators fall down a rabbit hole where nothing makes sense and nothing and no one are what they seem. Play the Pale Prince's game... 

“93. In the Garden of Wonders, the Chosen Disciples remove the masks forced upon them in the womb. 94. There, in beds of black henbane and laughing mushroom, fevered reason lies dead and Self becomes a riddle that only silence can answer. 95. There the Chosen abandon themselves to the Court of the Pale Prince, laughing as they dance the Riddle of the Leaves. 96. These are those who know that the Court is the Garden, that the Garden is the Chosen, and that the Chosen are the Prince. 97. And in their dancing, only the Prince is there, dancing for the empty hall.”

—Sutra of Pale Leaves, 93–97

KaijuCon 2025, Nagoya Japan

 Signed copies of The Sutra of Pale Leaves today, including the second volume which has not been released yet but includes my first official Call of Cthulhu scenario, “Wonderland.” Then I ran a three hour session of Six Seasons in Sartar and a debut three-hour “Wonderland” session. 

The “Greater” Magic of Anton LaVey

Inspired by a recent podcast interview I was in (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pjx0W8Bjejc), I thought it might be interesting to examine Church of Satan founder Anton Szandor LaVey’s thoughts on ritual magic, which he referred to as “Greater” Magic. Here is a brief overview of what I think are the most salient points.

The Materialist Magician. First and foremost, LaVey’s cosmos was strictly material. There is no ontological category of “spirit,” and the mind is electrical activity in the brain. On the other hand, LaVey’s universe is largely unmapped and unknown. Our sciences have only allowed us to glimpse a fraction of its phenomena. It is clear that he was convinced of the efficacy of magic, but also that the mechanics of magic had their basis in as-of-yet unknown natural law.

The Magic of Emotion. For LaVey, the ritual manipulation of symbols and elements are only as useful as the emotional response they cause. The candles, the Bell, the Sword, Baphomet, etc have no intrinsic power, the power is in the emotions they trigger. Magic works by raising, and directing, emotions. The exercising—and exorcising—of emotions was perhaps even more important to LaVey than if the ritual “worked.” If one is wronged, society does not allow us to take matters in our own hands. Yet if the wronged party fashions a voodoo doll of the one who wronged them, and ritually dismembers them in a blinding rage, the negative energy is released. If the victim of the hex also happens to expire, all the better. LaVey did apparently embrace Wilhelm Reich’s concept of biochemical “orgone” to an extent, and saw emotional energy as a physical power that could be directed to effect change, but the psychological benefits of releasing pent-up emotion were important to him as well.  

The Magic of Limitation. Limitation, balance, and conservation were defining features of his view of magic. Human potential is not unlimited. Greater Magic (i.e. ritual magic) was about the expenditure of energy, biomechanical in nature. It was raised and released through intense emotions. It could shift odds in your favor, but not perform miracles. He referred often to the Balance Factor in this regard. A skinny, unemployed young man with poor social skills could not expect to perform a ritual to win the stunning beauty next door. But if he joined a gym, got a good job, and employed a little Lesser Magic (applied psychology, manipulation, charm, seduction) the scales could be balanced enough that magic might tip them in his favor. 

Because magical energy is expended, it should only be used sparingly, and LaVey was also concerned with techniques to replenish it. He often referred to this as “revitalizing.” One of his most intriguing theories was ECI, or Erotic Crystallization Inertia. The theory is that the period of our sexual awakening becomes fixed in the individual’s mind. The music, the clothes, the sights and sounds and sensations, etc. By re-creating those conditions, and surrounding themself with them, the magician is revitalized, recharged. 

The Magic of Opposition. A magician’s power, the efficacy of their magic, is rooted in non-conformity. A magician cannot be part of the herd, and doing what is popular—rather than what is unusual or even better unique—and generate very much magical power. Dynamic change comes from division and opposition. A deck of cards is static and unchanging until you divide it and shuffle. To effect change, the magician wants to be outside the system inasmuch as possible. Using an extremely trendy piece of popular music to cap off a ritual is less effective than a piece of music that no one else is listening to. The energy of the first piece is spread out over millions of listeners, but the rare piece is for the magician alone. Conformity saps the magician of what makes them a magician, their Otherness or Outsiderness. 

Also under this heading is the idea of Inversion. “It will be observed that a pervasive element of paradox runs throughout the rituals contained herein. Up is down, pleasure is pain, darkness is light, slavery is freedom, madness is sanity, etc” LaVey writes in The Satanic Rituals. There is magical power to be found, in the ritual chamber, by Inversion. Again, this is seen as revitalizing. “Wherever…polarity of opposites exists, there is balance, life, and evolution. Where it is lacking, disintegration, extinction and decay ensue. It is high time that people learned that without opposites, vitality wanes.” Ritual inversion, for LaVey, empowers the participants.

The Command to Look. So far we have limited our discussion to LaVey’s ideas on Greater Magic, the harnessing of emotional energy in the ritual chamber. But perhaps LaVey's greatest contribution to the magic arts was Lesser Magic, the use of cold reading, somatyping, applied psychology, and the like to beguile, bewitch, and manipulate. The Command to Look is a Lesser Magic principle that nevertheless also reaches across into Greater Magic, so we need to dip our toes into the waters here.

LaVey was inspired here by a (then) obscure book by photographer William Mortensen, The Command to Look. I say “then” because much like “Ragnar Redbeard,” LaVey’s interest in Mortensen rescued this book from obscurity and put it back in print.

Mortensen’s book is revolutionary, to say the least, with principles of manipulation that are truly “occult,” or “hidden.” The book is about photography, composing images that seize and hold the viewer’s attention. LaVey would adapt these principles to Lesser Magic (to manipulate people you must hold and command their attention), but he embraced them in the ritual chamber as well. So it is worth our time to look at them.

To seize and command the attention, Mortensen said you needed three steps. First, you must make them LOOK! He uses a coercive technique here, trying to inspire a lizard brain fear response by the use of four shapes. The “S” shape, reminiscent of a serpent (but also sexual, in the curves of the body), the Lightning Bolt suggesting sudden danger or swiftness, the Triangle representing sharp teeth, and the Trapezoid, a dominant mass that implies obstacle. These images jump out at the viewer, triggering a threat response and thus attention.

Now the image must INTEREST! It draws your attention with images that trigger one of three emotions. Sex is the first. The viewer must be aroused or titillated. Sentiment is the second. The image must inspire tender emotions, nostalgia, or sentimentality. Wonder is the last, presenting images of awe, mystery, strangeness, or fear.

Finally the viewer must ENJOY! The image must keep the eye, presenting new details or revelations. Or the viewer must recognize the subject matter, and relate to it.

This is a very terse overview, but let’s test it on the main focal point of the Satanic ritual chamber. The symbol of the Baphomet. 

Composed of sharp triangles it immediately catches the eye. The fact that one point is down also suggests a lightning strike.  Hidden in the top of the Baphomet—the two upper points and side arms—is a trapezoid, a dominant mass. When you see the Baphomet it seizes the mind for a second with a sense of “danger.”

But then the Wonder sets in. We know immediately it is the Devil, and the Devil has been intriguing people for millennia. We stare and wonder about those curious characters around the five points. Then the enjoyment sets in. We participate in the image, recalling all the associations with the Devil we have learned over our lifetimes. The Baphomet is the focal point of the ritual chamber because of these factors. It grabs our attention and holds it. 

Also notice the color composition. White on black. In a darkened ritual chamber, those white lines stand out in stark contrast.