The God Learners

Edge of Empire and map of the “known world” © 2022 Runesmith Publications & Chaosium Inc., Argan Argar Atlas map © 2022 Chaosium Inc. Our guest for this episode is Harald Smith, aka Jajagappa. BRP Central profile RPGGeek profile You can also find Harald on the Facebook RuneQuest group and Jonstown Compendium Creators Circle group . Introduction Jajagappa is the dog-headed psychopom...

We kick off this new season of the Glorantha Initiation series with the lovely Bridgett Jeffries, aka “the happiest voice in cosmic horror”! About Bridgett You can find Bridgett all around the internet, but in particular: Founder of Symphony Entertainment Community embassador for Chaosium and, just as I write this, promoted to coordinator of events and outreach (congrats Bridgett!) Aut...

In this episode Joerg is still taking a break, but Ludovic is here to welcome Evan Franke and JM DeFoggi (not to be confused with JM DeMatteis !) Exploring Glorantha Evan and JM are probably best known to listeners and readers of the God Learners as the hosts of Exploring Glorantha , the YouTube series that presents Glorantha in an accessible manner to the general public. But they are also part of...

Drew Baker is back on the show to accompany Ludovic on the last leg of Biturian Varosh’s travels. Sadly Joerg could not make it this time, and stayed behind in Pavis to rest. Introduction Drew introduces himself and talks a bit about the upcoming book 4 of Duckpac, the last in the series about playing Duck characters in RuneQuest Glorantha. The three first books are available here: Duckpac B...

Art by Kristi Jones We are back into Gloranthan anthropology (more or less) for this episode, with our guest Brian Duguid, author of Children of Hykim . By virtue of having literally written a book on the subject, Brian is an expert in the Hsunchen, the stone age people who are each associated with a tribal totem animal. This topic might be rather unfamiliar to newcomers to Glorantha, since the Hs...

This twelfth episode of the Glorantha Initiation series brings us to the last of the interviews we recorded in the fall of 2021! We are talking to Chris, who discovered RuneQuest 2nd edition just last year and, only a few weeks later, upgraded to RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha! He doesn’t have an ongoing Gloranthan campaign yet but we talk about his sudden love for the setting, playing...

For this episode we welcome two guests: Katrin Dirim and Claudia Loroff. The Guests Claudia is part of Jeff’s house campaigns with notable characters like Gina Gravedancer in the White Bull campaign, Yanioth, and the snake-dancer mystic in the HeroQuest Glorantha examples. Claudia is also the author of an upcoming Gloranthan cookbook. It is about 95% done, and is a travel guide accompanying Yaniot...

In episode 11 of our Initiation Series, we chat with Juan Ochoa, an illustrator that fell in love with Glorantha with the most unlikely book you could ever start with. And he wishes he had started with King of Sartar instead! Other things we chat about in this episode: The one RPG shop in Columbia Having a player buy more books than the gamemaster Running Glorantha with the crunch of RuneQuest, or...

Our guest for this episode is Dom Twist of the Beer With Teeth writers’ (and gamers’) collective, known for his contributions both in a couple of Chaosium publications ( Pegasus Plateau ‘s Crimson Petals, and Weapon and Equipment Guide ) and for various Jonstown Compendium publications by Beer With Teeth (including Dregs of Clearwine , Cups of Clearwine , Stone and Bone , and Rocks Fall ). D...

Episode 10 of the Glorantha Initiation Series is with Chris Webb, who played RuneQuest 2nd edition once in the early 1980s, and gave up after saving Gringle’s Pawnshop from baboons. Him and his friends played without cults or magic because it was too weird and obscure. This was with the British version of RuneQuest, which was a boxed set containing Apple Lane and a few other supplements in a...

In Episode 14, the God Learner podcast returns to its exploration of the Nomad Gods , with David Scott from Chaosium . News The “ Write Your First Adventure ” summer workshop has started, with a RuneQuest course by Nick Brooke. Pirates of the East Isles is out, with some art and minor spoilers by Ludo. The Red Deer Saga (incorrectly mentioned as “White Deer”) is now availab...

Photo by Chaosium We talk to another Scott this month for our Initiation Series. This one was recorded back in November 2021, which is why we still mention the very imminent release of the RuneQuest Starter Set. Scott is a newcomer to Glorantha who couldn’t wish for better guides to navigate Strike Ranks and Sartarite tribes. Some of the things mentioned in this episode include: D&D BECM...

Our guest for episode 13 is Nikolas Lloyd, the multi-talented host of the Lindybeige YouTube channel . News Jörg mentions Eternal Convention at Castle Stahleck in Bacharach, Germany, and the UK Game Expo which both just ended at the time of recording. On the Jonstown Compendium we had The Lifethief, a scenario by the Beer With Teeth collective, and an overview map of the Jonstown area by Mikael Ma...

The new Initiation Series interview features Scott Rinehart, and was recorded back in October 2021. Scott is new to Glorantha, having only played in a couple of one-shot games, but he has flipped through the new RuneQuest slipcase books, and the Glorantha Sourcebook. Things mentioned in this episode include: Rankin/Bass animated films “ The Hobbit ” and “ The Return of the King &...

Shannon Appelcline is our guest for the 12th episode. Shannon tells us about his entry into the roleplaying genre, which features the typical games of the early eighties. RuneQuest became one of his main systems when he joined the Erzo game by Eric Rowe, a long-running campaign set on Eric’s own universe, but he also started exploring Glorantha. In the 1990ies , Shannon joined the Chaosium s...

Art by Diana Probst This episode was recorded in November 2021. For this Initiation Series interview we welcome back Diana Probst, the totally biologically human member of Beer With Teeth, which we already had on the show with some of her collaborators in Episode 6: Gamemastering RuneQuest . Diana talks about her obsessive approach to RPGs and RPG settings, and her early years playing Amber Dicele...

For this episode of the God Learners podcast we welcome back Drew Baker, who followed Biturian Varosh with us back in episode 5 . Drew is doubly qualified for this task since he just released a new Jonstown Compendium item called Highways & Byways which is a travel reference for Dragon Pass and its surroundings. News Ludo advertises our Gloranthan newsletter, The Journal of Runic Studies , and...

For episode 6 of the Glorantha Initiation Series we welcome Wayne Peters, who played RuneQuest once in the 80s and hated it. More than 30 years later, Wayne returned to Glorantha with the Broken Tower, the adventure from the RuneQuest Quickstart. He talks about riding Praxian mounts, making miniatures, YGMV, ducks, silly location names, and more! Wayne Peters on Twitter Picture of Wayne’s Hi...

In this month’s episode of The God Learners podcast we are very happy to welcome Rick Meints , the president of Chaosium. He’s here to talk about collecting Gloranthan books , ChaosiumCon 2022 , and more. News In the news section, Ludovic plugs the Journal of Runic Studies , our weekly newsletter. It features everything directly or indirectly related to Glorantha that we could find ove...

In this new episode of the Glorantha Initiation series, we welcome Steinar, aka Felix, aka Coffeemancer. We talk with him about convincing players to try RuneQuest, getting started with King of Dragon Pass, stealing Lunar officials’ sandals, and adapting funny internet memes to Glorantha. Also: Steinar gives us his “Elmal rant”! Mentioned in this episode: The BRP Central thread t...

We apologize for the tardiness on this episode: we are not used to Earth’s weird calendar where one month is surprisingly shorter than the others. Plus, Ludovic was busy with work and with writing two convention scenarios for ChaosiumCon. It also didn’t help that this episode was a lot heavier on the editing than usual. Without further excuses, this month we welcomed Chaosium’s D...

For this fourth episode of the Initiation Series, we chat with Discord regular Skulldixon, which is apparently how everybody actually calls him except for his parents. Skull (let’s call him Skull for short?) talks about his campaign, all the numerous things he likes about Glorantha and the RuneQuest system, how to deal with mountains of lore, and more. Art by Skulldixon Of course we also tal...

Photo by Wayne’s Books We are joined on this trip down memory lane by Doc Cowie, Doc sums up his credits as “40 years RuneQuest player, published one scenario”. Ludo also gets Doc to talk about his custom-made bronze shield depicting Chalana Arroy fighting Chaos, made by Type 40 : The RuneQuest shields were originally high-level stretch goals of a crowdfunding campaign , although...

For our third episode of our Initiation Series, we interview Erin McGuire, who was only supposed to play RuneQuest for one night, but hasn’t stopped for the past couple years, and is now possibly an heir to the throne of Sartar. These things happen, you know. Throughout the episode we talk about this campaign. You can read the vast amount of game logs and lore information that Erin’s g...

Art by Andrey Fetisov, used with permission from Chaosium Inc. Ludo and Jörg are joined by Diana Probst, aka Berra from Beer With Teeth, bravely entering a realm of unreal time before sunrise. News Episode 2 of our Initiation to Glorantha series was released, and teasing upcoming interviews, including Diana’s Ludo is chuffed about his review of the starter set making it onto the Chaosium blog . Th...