Table Tales: Tell Me About...

By Mark Morrison

A few weeks ago I ran one of the best RuneQuest sessions of my life, and trust me, I’ve seen more than my share of Sacred Times. What made this particular game sing was these three words:

“Tell me about…”

“Tell me about Glorantha” is something that Greg Stafford, original creator of the setting, would do when running a game for new players. Greg liked to make myths together, so he would invite everyone to build a little part of Glorantha with him for that session.

He might mention a name – say, the goddess Eiritha, and then would say to the group “I don’t much about her, what can you tell me?” To Greg, didn’t matter if what they came up with contradicted something that had been written before. What mattered was that everyone at the table got to tell the story rather than just listen to it, and Glorantha was a world you lived in rather than visited.

This technique is brand new to me, and now I love it with my whole Life Rune. I find it more powerful than the highly useful “Your Glorantha May Vary”. That tells us that anyone can run Glorantha however they like. This goes one step further, and includes everyone at your table. For the new player, that flips Glorantha from being a big world that I have to learn about, to being a big world that I get to help make.

Glorantha has of course already been lovingly explored by generations of players and dreamers. You can find out about any landmark from a RuneQuest book or in the Jonstown Compendium community content. (Lands of RuneQuest: Dragon Pass is my favourite, it has so many sites for adventure!)

But tonight, I didn’t want to open any sourcebook. I wanted to run the game with zero prep, and see what happened. I wanted to recapture the feeling I had when I first cracked open RuneQuest Classic many years ago and saw an amazing map full of cool sounding places. I had no idea what most of them were, but that didn’t stop us from immediately playing games there. Could I recreate that feeling?

I offered a selection of the new pregenerated RuneQuest adventurers that Brian has been working on, with wonderful art from Ossi. Marcellinus chose Deseros, a bison-riding nomad who hates Chaos and worships the tempestuous god Storm Bull. As a contrast, Scott chose Kilystra, a disciplined Sun Dome templar who worships Yelmalio, son of light.

Their meet-cute was Kilystra surrounded by dead Sun Dome templars as she was about to be overwhelmed by Chaos monsters. Deseros rode in on Bessie the bison to slaughter the remaining Chaos filth. Battle-crazed, he of course then had a go at Kilystra, who invoked her Beast Rune to yell powerfully at him that she was not Chaos. This was the first sign that this upright Sun Domer was about to fall off the phalanx. Meanwhile, Marcellinus had already decided that Deseros was pretty much the Feral Kid from Mad Max 2, all grown up.

A swing and a parry later, they made up.

Disease is scary in RuneQuest, and Deseros caught mild Soul Waste from the Chaos blood. I wanted to try Spirit Combat, so a Spirit of Disease drifted up out of the piles of dead. Deseros was already sick, so it went for Kilystra. She quickly cast her Spirit Block Rune spell to fend it off, but was still so outclassed she could barely damage it. I allowed Deseros to use his Rune spell Impede Chaos to help her, because if a player has a cool way to use a spell, go for it. (Well, plus the fact that otherwise Scott was about to need another pregen and we’d only just started.)

There was nothing else Deseros could do, so he decided to Worship Storm Bull. He yelled and beat his chest, cast his eyes to the clouds above, and rolled a 99. His god had forsaken him.

Luckily, Scott’s dice were truly sun-blessed, and Kilystra finally sent the hideous thing screaming back to the Spirit World.

We had finally got to the sandbox part, so I pointed to a blank spot in the Plains of Prax where they currently were, and asked:

"Where do you want to go?"

"Pimper's Block!"

"Marcellinus, tell me about Pimper."

"He was a Storm Bull hero who fought the Devil!"

"Scott, tell me about the block."

"It's a ziggurat, made of a single piece of stone!" *

Inspiration struck: The players had made it sound like a religious place, and Deseros needed guidance after his disastrous attempt at worship. A ziggurat could basically be Bruce Lee's Game of Death, a stepped pyramid with seven trials. Each level could be a challenge related to one of the RuneQuest skill categories: Agility, Communication, Knowledge, Magic, Manipulation, Perception, Stealth. If one character failed a challenge, the other could still try, and as long as one of them succeeded they could both go up to the next level. If they reached the top they would pass the test, and Deseros would be absolved of his Storm doubts.

The surrounding area was a big bison camp with lots of Storm Bulls getting on the beers. "Dezzie!" they yelled, delighted to see him. "Who's this?" After some discussion, they rejected the names Kilystra and Killa, and settled on Sunnygirl.

Naturally, by then Deseros was already riding his bison straight up the ziggurat.

At each level I let the players tell me what the challenge was and which skill they’d use from that category to beat it. It was like a reverse dungeon where they set the rules, except that I told them that the Magic test would be last. The players chose Agility for the first level. Deseros made a Ride Bison roll to jump across the gap between the ramp and the next step, and we were away.

Each level was huge fun, with lots of Rune augment rolls and creative skill choices. On the Manipulation  skill level they finally had a combat, and the most appropriate thing was the one damn monster included in the new book that I had not yet printed out: a bison, in the form of a great statue. I gave it 6-point stone skin and it was time for bison vs bison action. Turns out Bessie had the harder head.

Pride comes before a six-level fall. The problem with choosing skill categories in the order you want is that you inevitably save the worst for second last. Stealth was their undoing. Deseros couldn’t hide his bison to save himself, so Kilystra tried to use her Fire Rune to sneak past in a flash of Yelmalio’s blinding light, and rolled (drum roll) another 99. A massive storm cracked the sky as Storm Bull bellowed his rage at this sacrilege.

It was Kilystra’s turn to have crisis of faith. The ziggurat had defeated them. But random stories always have a shape to them, and I remembered that she came back from near death when the game started by invoking a Beast Rune. So, the blue spirit of Pimper reached down from the summit to offer a glowing Predator handshake: if she became a Storm Bull initiate, they could pass.

Reader, she said yes. And then of course she flubbed her POW ×5 roll to be initiated, so Storm Bull bounced her clear off the top of the pyramid, hitting every step on the way down (doh! doh! doh!). But the fact that she was willing in that moment to forsake the Sun meant that the penultimate test was passed, and so Deseros ascended to the top step.

It was Dezzie’s turn for a Predator handshake from Pimper. Marcellinus chose to reaffirm his love of Storm Bull by selecting the Worship skill from the Magic skill category. Because dice know what’s what, he rolled the third 99 of the night, and Storm Bull atomised Deseros in a blast of lightning. (Silver lining: at least that cured his Soul Waste.)

"We really should be hearing AC/DC's Thunderstruck around now" said Marcellinus, grinning.

So I stopped playing RuneQuesty soundtracks and cranked up Highway to Hell** as Bessie stamped her hooves and let out a bison bellow, charging down all seven ramps to race out into the storm to wherever Deseros had been blasted.

Kilystra scrambled up and tried to get into the saddle, but borked her Jump roll and took 12 points of bison horn in the guts. Thank goodness for Sun Dome templar armor.

Off into the storm raced Bessie, Kilystra dangling off one horn like a shiny earring, with “See ya later, Sunnygirl!” ringing in her ears. I absolutely can't wait to find out what happens next game when she and the faithful bison find the D-man.

Maybe you had to be there, but we were grinning from ear-to-ear all night. Glorantha was wild and untamed. The players were my guides as much as I was theirs, and the dice did the rest. Sorry Pendragon, it’s not you, but RuneQuest is my favourite game again. I am discovering Glorantha anew, because my players told me about it.

* Right now, I know RuneQuesters in the comments are itching to tell me what’s written about Pimper’s Block, which I had totally blanked on at the time. You don’t need to, I’m good. As Rick kindly told me afterwards, it is literally the first place that the trader Biturian Varosh visits in Cults of Prax !

** I’m an Australian of a certain age. If you’re gonna blast Acker Dacker, it’s gotta be Bon Scott.