This week on the Vintage RPG Podcast, we take a look at the first six (!) of ten (!!) volumes of Chaosium’s Cults of RuneQuest series of sourcebooks. Taken together, they form an important foundation for bringing mythology to life in RuneQuest campaigns. Important stuff, since RQ is essentially a game about living mythology!
* * *
Instagram? Old news. Join the Vintage RPG Newsletter! That’s where all the cool kids are now!
Stu’s book, Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground is for sale now! Buy it!
Patreon? Discord? Cool RPG things to buy? All the Vintage RPG links you need are right here in one place!
Like, Rate, Subscribe and Review the Vintage RPG Podcast!
Edited by the one and only R. Alex Murray.
Send questions, comments or corrections to info@vintagerpg.com.
Available on iTunes, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Spotify, YouTube and your favorite podcast clients.
The Vintage RPG illustration is by Shafer Brown. Follow him on Twitter.
Tune in next week for the next episode. Until then, may the dice always roll in your favor!
Don’t feel bad or awkward about geeking out at length on the topic of Glorantha! In the past, when I flipped through RuneQuest books at the game store, I didn’t really get much of an impression (you know how fictional names sometimes don’t work for you? I ran into that with Glorantha—camel case names that felt too modern, for example). But hearing you talk about them in-depth and explain the appeal grabs me in a way that a cursory glance through the books didn’t. I always enjoy hearing you talk about Glorantha!
Lovely insights of Glorantha and Mythology! I enjoyed listening to you.
Glad to hear it!
Finally worked my way up through the eons to this one! 😀
I have *another* book to ask you about that is not really RPG adjacent, but is, loosely, metafictional. Two books actually. They are a part of a 10 volume series (maybe 15 volumes depending on what you count) by an outstanding Italian author named Roberto Calasso.”
The whole series is amazing, but the ones I want to ask about/ recommend are The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, and Ka. The first is kind of a mile high romp through Greek mythology, and the second is through Vedic mythology. Normally that degree of abstraction makes a book insipid, but in this case the author speaks the languages and does his own translations of what he presents. He is a genuine, old world, first rate scholar, and his work, and the style and method of his work are interesting.
I had really wanted to somehow get Jon Peterson’s First Edition to him because I think he would have had interesting things to say about gaming if he had ever encountered it. Alas, he passed away in 2021.
I would love to hear if you had already discovered him, if you are intrigued enough to dip a toe in, and what you think if you do.
This sounds cool, I’m gonna check him out!
This was a truly great episode, Stu – seriously – you put your finger right on the allure of archetype at the heart of RPG – we’re either here for a touch of the timeless and numinous, or we’re not really even role-playing.
I hope you go even deeper, with whatever related content you surely have – maybe an essay. Same with the “games are simulators” line of thought. This is the stuff, you are right on track, keep going.
(Your content was so good that Hambone’s dismissals at the end really put me off – he’s usually a warm nothing at best, but on this ep felt borderline anti-intellectual. I hope you consider other podcasting partners at some point, because you truly are a historian of your field, our shared world, and we’re only going to get so many hours from you – would be nice if you were paired with an equal for some of these explorations. HB don’t worry I’ll still keep listening, some days I just feel like drinking beer and throwing dice, too, you’re my guy here, rock on etc)
Happy to have longer podcasts, however the flow goes! I enjoyed learning about the actual RuneQuest products (don’t know much about that system at all), but was totally digging the background setup conversation about the idea of “myth” and all. I hadn’t given the idea of it a lot of thought before, and was intrigued by your analysis.
And “So many times in myth, it’s like this guy with a sword looking for trouble.. and getting it!” is a new favorite quote for me!