Our Guests In this episode we welcome returning guests Evan Franke and J-M DeFoggi (who had to leave early because of Imperial Administration requirements). You would of course know Evan and J-M from our previous episodes with them: Chaos Rises! (episode 26 about 13th Age Glorantha) and Jackals and Ancient Worldbuilding (episode 19 about J-M’s Bron…

Guests Our guests for this new episode of the Glorantha Initiation series are Christian and Amber, from DMs After Dark! We chatted with them back in… (checks notes) November 2023! How time flies… you can find DMs After Dark in many places around the internet, including: YouTube and Twitch Facebook, Twitter, and Bluesky Amber has written a few thing…

A new episode is out but Joerg still doesn’t have his replacement laptop so there are no detailed show notes again! Our Guest We welcome the ever prolific Austin Conrad back on the show to talk about his new book which is all about magic items. Links to Austin’s stuff: Treasures of Glorantha Volume 2: Relics of the Second Age Treasures of Glorantha…

Show Notes Joerg is still without a computer, so not only are there no detailed show notes again, but he’s not here to stop me from giving a clickbaity title to this episode! Because, indeed, we have zero news about a Questworld Glorantha book… if anything, it’s the contrary. But what we do have for you is Ian Cooper as our guest! Ian comes on the …

Photo by David Dunham This time we interview Gloranthan newcomer Joel Bridge, who thinks we’re intimidating but also nice! Joel is originally from New Jersey but currently lives in San Diego. You can find Joel on Discord as @sirjamesfriendofthecolonel, and also sometimes on the Glorantha-related subreddits r/Glorantha and r/RuneQuest. Show Notes He…

Our Guests For this episode, we have Nick Brooke and Simon Bray as our guests to talk about Simon’s book Furthest, Crown Jewel of Lunar Tarsh, and about what goes on in Lunar Tarsh in general. Show Notes There are no fancy show notes for this episode yet: Joerg’s laptop seems to have been blown up by Orlanthi rebels who don’t want the truth to be t…

This episode comes much later than anticipated, but this is Ludo’s fault! Apologies to all. Our Guests In this episode we welcome Kevin Jacklin and David Hall: Kevin has been writing freeform games for a very long time, and table-top role-playing games a little before that, becoming a huge fan of RuneQuest. Kevin names a fateful meeting with our ot…

For this new initiation series episode we are happy to welcome Aaron King! Aaron is the designer of SpeedRune, an OSR-esque rules-light game of Gloranthan community adventures. Get it here, it’s free! There are even now a few supplements available for SpeedRune, including some things we discuss in this episode. Check out Aaron’s itch.io store! Aaro…

We finally worked up the courage to get Jeff Richard on our show! Jeff is the Creative Director and Chair of Chaosium, the lead writer on most of the RuneQuest books, the lead art director on RuneQuest, and the editor for Pendragon. Jeff is also generally responsible for the look and feel of the Chaosium books. Jeff’s Gaming History Jeff’s roleplay…

RuneQuest is copyright 2023 Chaosium Inc., Old-School Essentials is copyright 2023 Necrotic Gnome This new initiation episode features Matt, a school teacher who recently moved to Virginia and does the Lord of Chaos’ good work by introducing kids to roleplaying games. Show Notes Things we mention in this episode include: Starting with D&D (of cours…

In this episode which we finally get around to talking about 13th Age Glorantha. Ludo and Jörg are joined by Becca of “Dames & Dice” fame on the Iconic Podcast, and by Evan Franke, of “Exploring Glorantha” fame. Becca is part of the Iconic Production Podcast, a bunch of podcasts and channels dedicated to talking about 13th Age, which includes 13th …

Our guest for this episode is Austin Conrad, who last graced our podcast in episode 2, On the Road. Austin is the author of many things on the Jonstown Compendium, generally publishing under the “Akhelas” brand, while he is known as “Crel” on BRP Central, Discord, and social media. Introductions Austin is a contender for the most productive publish…

In this month’s Glorantha Initiation interview, Ludo talks to Bryon Ross without any Joerg present. Bryon is a long time RuneQuest lover, but he played mostly with the Fantasy Earth setting until the release of the RuneQuest Quickstart in 2017. He is also a retired marine, SCA participant, and regular Chaosium convention gamemaster. You can find Br…

Art by Dan Barker, from the Broken Council Guidebook We start this episode with a minor existential crisis on Ludo’s identity, followed by Ludo being protective of our usual guests by volunteering to take the brunt of Jörg’s incoming obscurantism and pedantry. Ludo accuses rather than praises Jörg of being a bright guy… Main Topic The Second Counci…

Joerg and Ludo welcome Bud from Bud’s RPG Review, where we see his hands in a typical unboxing set-up, not just doing flip-throughs but also a whole series of explanation videos: Bud’s RPG Review YouTube channel RuneQuest reviews [1] Bud explains… RuneQuest (which, at this time, includes the Lightbringers, the Uz, Illumination, and the Seven Mother…

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 desig…

Art by Dario Corallo We resume our series on the People of Glorantha with, according to our guest, the very best people that there is on Glorantha. Our guest is indeed Nick Brooke! Among his many hats, Nick is: A community content ambassador for Chaosium, where he promotes fan creations and helps fans put out Print-on-Demand books An author and col…

This episode starts with Jörg pronouncing our guest’s name wrongly! We welcome James Coquillat of Chaosium to talk about RuneQuest actual play and gamemastering. James is both on the digital content team and on the editorial team for Call of Cthulhu. You can find James at the following online places: James’ personal website Twitter The Chaosium You…

Fionn fighting Aillen by Beatrice Elvery, Jason and the Argonauts by Columbia Pictures, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay by Games Workshop In this episode of our Glorantha Initiation Series, we had the absolute pleasure of talking to Lee O’Connor. He came to Glorantha during the initial pandemic lockdown by way of his love for mythology and the fact that…

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 Jaja…

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…

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 …

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 thr…

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 u…

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 abo…

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 9…

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 …

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 Clearwin…

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…

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…

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 men…

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 …

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” …

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…

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 s…

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 n…

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! W…

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 t…

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 e…

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, thi…

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 m…

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 c…

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 l…

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…

Art from King of Dragon Pass, by A-Sharp On this second episode of the Glorantha Initiation Series, we interview Russano Greenstripe. Russsano discovered Glorantha with King of Dragon Pass, a game by A-Sharp, available on pretty much any platforms you’d want to play on. If he could start a Gloranthan game, Russano would pick QuestWorlds as a rulese…

This topic was actually suggested to us by our guests Jon Webb and Neil Gibson. Jon Webb is the initiator and an author of the four volumes of the Sandheart series, following the challenges of the militia of a remote Sun County hamlet. Also featured on the Chaosium Blog. Neil Gibson returns after gracing us in our first God Learner Podcast episode,…

This is the inaugural episode of the Glorantha Initiation series, where we talk to members of the tribe who recently joined the God Learner studies. The God Learner Podcast wants to investigate how people comparatively new to Glorantha experience the world, what are the rewards, what are the hurdles when approaching this setting. To test the concep…

Our guest for this episode is Drew Baker, author of a series of products on the Jonstown Compendium, including the QAD (Quick and Dirty) series (available as the omnibus edition “Pimper’s Block“), the Rubble Redux scenarios Insula of the Waning Moon and Insula of the Rising Sun, and Alogo’s Caravan – Riding Animals of Dragon Pass.. Announcement: Th…

This episode’s guests are Beer with Teeth, at time in character: Erin (aka Varanis, a noble of Sartar lineage) Dom (aka Rajar, a huge Storm Bull axe fighter) Diana (aka Berra, a tiny Humakti warrior) We also learn about their original GM Tom who is at fault, and about Kris who is the resident visual artist. Why Beer With Teeth, and how they arrived…

Our guest this (long!) episode is David Scott, who wears a number of Chaosium hats – among others convention presence, rules Q&A, and the web archives. David talks about his work on the Well of Daliath – a collection of material posted on glorantha.com, slowly reconstructed from backups when stuff didn‘t migrate that well across platforms, and also…