Glorantha Initiation: Benjamin, Podcasts, Wikis, and Looking for the One Truth

We are back with a long overdue Glorantha Initiation interview featuring twice the amount of French accents! We talked to Benjamin, aka Dasfynx, who is the webmaster of the (French) RuneQuest Wiki, and co-hosts the (also French) “Runecast” podcast with Gianni Vacca.

• Le Wiki du JDR RuneQuest
• Le Runecast (you can of course find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on whatever app you use to listen to podcasts!)

Here are the things we talk about in this episode!

• Ben’s podcast “Runecast”
• This is one of the three known “talk show” podcasts about Glorantha right now, the other one being the Finnish Dayzatarin tähtien alla (“Under the stars of Dayzatar”)
• Ben also runs the French RQWiki which started as a translation of Chaosium’s wiki.
  • It started as just figuring out what tech was powering Chaosium’s website
  • Then it was a small translation for Ben’s players
  • And then other fans joined the effort… there are now extra things compared to the Chaosium version
• Any extra material on the wiki that is from the published material is reproduced with the approval of Studio Deadcrows, the French publisher for RQG
• Watching old adventure/sci-fi movies on VHS, and being pitched the Warhammer Fantasy RPG (WFRP) as similar to those movies
• Ben’s first purchased RPG books were from the Call of Cthulhu and World of Darkness lines, but we was busy playing sports and listening to rap, so he read the books but didn’t play them!
  • This may be called “lonely fun”
• Only years after that one WFRP game did Ben finally find another gaming group playing the WEG Star Wars RPG
• Ben offered to GM Call of Cthulhu after that, which lasted for a handful of years, going through the Spawn of Azathoth campaign
  • You too can learn geography and history by GMing Call of Cthulhu!
• It’s hard to find English or French RPG books while living in China, so Ben loaded up on many books whenever he would come home
• As a Roliste TV watcher (YouTube channel here), Ben learned that one host (Mathieu) is a big fan of RuneQuest, so Ben bought the latest edition… and didn’t like it!
  • This is because the world wasn’t described enough for Ben to picture, so he bought the Glorantha Sourcebook… and didn’t like it either! Too many names and lists of things!
  • It was the Bestiary that made Ben “get it”: each “monster” is actually coming from somewhere and have their place
• After that, Ben was deep into Glorantha and started reading more and more books about it
  • Glorantha: a steep curve followed by a rabbit hole!
• Books are expensive so Ben got Gianni Vacca to explain things to him for free!
  • Gianni is Ben’s co-host on the Runecast podcast
  • Gianni is Ben’s Joerg, an old hands of Glorantha… actually even older than Joerg, since Gianni started with RQ2!
  • Ben’s wiki and podcast are geared towards beginners
• Favourite thing about Glorantha:
  • Dorastor, to make players suffer!
    • See Simon Phipp’s “Secrets of Dorastor” (and other related books), and his interview episode on the show
  • Sartar, because it’s an interesting place
• Next on Ben’s reading list are the Red Cow campaign books (book 1 and book 2)
  • See also Ian Cooper’s Questworlds interview on the show
• Things Ben doesn’t like: the gray areas, because he likes to feel like he understands everything
• Ben asks Joerg what is the nature of the great compromise?
  • Joerg explains how gods can break the compromise and act in Time
  • We talk about avatars of gods also manifesting gods enough to endanger the Compromise, and how Chaos allows gods to get involved in Time
• Greg’s narrative framework of writing “in world” texts that give contradictory views and accounts
• The annoyance of “no answers” vs “multiple answers”
• King of Sartar is… a dense and complicated book
• GMing the French campaign “Children of the Flame” (Gianni is an author on it)
  • This campaign helped show Ben what is possible in Glorantha
  • It’s about the Dundealos tribe, near Swenville, after they have been replaced by the Lunar Entalos tribe… until the Dragonrise gives an opportunity to retake their lands
  • Faction play, with various tribes, the Lunars, etc.
  • There’s a map of Swenville!
• A good way to start in Glorantha is a good example: a scenario, a campaign, etc.
  • The Sourcebook isn’t a good idea for beginners
  • The GM pack or a campaign are better! (classic RQ2 campaigns, or newer ones from the Jonstown Compendium)
  • Basically, start small!
• The French edition of RQG has one scenario in the rulebook, and one in the bestiary… something the English edition is lacking!
• Ludo briefly talks about his similarly failed encounters with Glorantha
• Ben reiterates how Glorantha is consistently deep and how he loves that about it
• Ben started just with the books for a while, but later discovered there are so many things about Glorantha on the internet!
  • Shout-out to 7Tigers, who translates all the news and Well of Daliath content to French
  • Also shout-out to Olivier from “Les Fils du Chaos” for helping correct the French RQWiki
  • And shout-out to everybody else helping in their own way
• Ben asks Joerg about the Sky World and Joerg obliges!
  • Ludo adds his take about the multi-shaped Sky World
  • Ben still wants one final answer on everything!
  • Joerg mentions the “blind men touching the elephant” tale, and Ben wants to see the elephant, not be one of the blend men
  • We devolve into Jungian archetypes, and other tangents…
• We end with some quick-fire questions… Ben loves ducks!

The intro music is “Dancing Tiger” by Damscray. The outro music is “Islam Dream” by Serge Quadrado. Other audio is from the FreeSound library.