Glorantha Initiation: Bridgett, Bronze Age Tropes, and the Basement Operation

The God Learners

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!)
• Author and contributor to many things on DriveThruRPG, especially on the Miskatonic Repository
• Streaming on the Symphony Entertainment YouTube channel and Twitch channel, the Chaosium YouTube channel, and many others
• Co-host of the Miskatonic University podcast, and appearing in several other horror and gaming podcasts
• Check out Bridgett on Twitter!
• Also check out her Patreon!

Show Notes

In this episode we talk about:

• Playing AD&D, Champions, and Battletech as a covert operation in a basement with middle-aged men
• Chaosium’s RuneQuest Starter Stream, and the New Hero actual play
• RuneQuest 3rd edition, its fantasy Earth, and Glorantha as a separate setting
• Moral ambiguity in Glorantha: nothing is straightforward, everything comes with the “weight” of the lore and the setting
• Activating Runes or Passions to augment rolls is dope!
• Having an assistant GM to help with the rules is great for a game like RuneQuest
• It’s hard to relate to the Bronze Age, compared to other eras… what even is the Bronze Age?
• The problem with gatekeeping by grognards (old fans), and letting newbies discover and play the game in their own way
• Tropes vs lore (see also this essay I wrote on the subject)
• The Rome TV series, Troy, The Ten Commandments, Alexander
• Tropes of the Orlanthi: violence is always an option, no one can make you do anything, follow chosen leaders
• Tropes of the Bronze Age:
  • Religion is politics (priest kings and such)
  • Cities with temples on hills, markets full of merchants and mules and slaves, philosophers on soapboxes
• Tropes of Glorantha:
  • Everybody comes from their own culture, with their own reasons to do things
  • Use the Runes as a guide for how cults fit in the world, use archetypes first and lore later
  • Spirits are everywhere (shamanism, animism)
• Getting used to magic being everywhere
• Glorantha is flat, the Underworld is below, rivers used to flow upwards!
• The Jonstown Compendium is awesome
• Drawing Earth Runes on your face
• Using the RuneQuest Starter Set‘s art as reference
• The trolls are political refugees
• Exploring Glorantha, your Glorantha 101 YouTube series

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.