The Broken Tower pt. 1

Session Notes (05/21/22)

Game: Runequest: Roleplaying in Glorantha

Module: The Broken Tower

Players: 3

I’m lucky to have lots of friends that want to play RPGs online.  Part of the group that played through “Curd Your Enthusiasm” with WFRP gathered to play Runequest!

Characters:

Elfriede (homebrewed character), an Ernaldan Farmer, from the Tarling Clan of the Colymar Tribe 

Vasana (pregenerated character), a Vingan Warrior, from the Ernaldoring Clan of the Colymar Tribe

Mago (pregenerated character), a Storm Bull Mercenary, from Wilmskirk

Session:

After the shortest possible bullet point “this is the setting of Glorantha” list I could possibly make, the adventurers began with a summons to the Chief of the Ernaldoring Clan’s home in Clearwine.  There they met Zarah, the wife of chief Baranthos, and two other women: Emane, a runner, and Bara, an injured herder.

Bara told how the Greydog clan had raided them, and slain her brothers and stolen 60 cattle.  She recognized Danakos as their leader, and spoke in a rage that the Greydogs deserved death.  Zarah bade the three follow the cattle trail, and capture them so that they could be ransomed, and Bara's brothers' weregild could be paid, and for the cattle to be returned.  Bara wished to go with them, again demanding vengeance, but Vasana and her companions decided against it.

It was not long on the trail of cattle hooves they found a dead body.  It looked like a woman, and her throat was cut.  Elfriede cast second sight and observed a powerful aura emanating from a blood soaked stone on the ground, while Vasana and Mago investigated the surroundings.  They found signs of a campsite, and spotted some movement in the nearby shrubs.  It turned out to be Carthalo, a local hermit and shaman, who the characters recognized, and who recognized Vasana!

He made sure the corpse was treated with the proper rites, which caused its spirit to materialize.  Lannike told the tale: the cattle raid went wrong, as Danakos slew the Ernaldorings.  The rest of the Greydogs agreed to pay the weregild costs of the deaths, but Danakos went into the woods in anger.  When he returned, he slew Lannike.

Lannike demanded the heroes capture Danakos and undo all these wrongs and avenge her murder, which they accepted.  She told them to take the blood soaked stone, and with it they could summon her spirit to aid them.  Carthalo seemed pleased with this and hurried the Heroes along as he finished the preparations for Lannike’s remains.

Before leaving, Mago found a broken statue of a heavyset woman, with earth rune markings on them.  Carthalo warned him and the others to “stay away from her” because “she was angry”, but refused to elaborate.

Gamesmaster Notes:

This was my first time running Runequest, a game I’ve been reading since this past September.  So I’m new to the setting, but I’ve been absorbing a lot.  I’ve been keen on finding ways to quickly introduce Glorantha to new players, and my five bullet points are trimmed out of the opening paragraph of the quickstart:

• Glorantha: heroes, allegiance to tribe, city and cult; think of Odysseus and Gilgamesh

• Gods and goddesses are real, and tied to the runes; think of Zeus, Thor, Shiva

• Runes are cosmic powers that define glorantha

• Adventurers join cults of the gods and gain access to their magic through the runes

• Dragon Pass, center of conflict

I don’t like read-aloud text, so distilling the message down into bullet points that I can riff off of was important.  And I decided then as well to not mention anything else unless it directly happened in the game.  No description of the lozenge shaped flat world.  No description of ducks, trolls, et. al.  No description of the lunar/sartar conflict, Argrath, or the dragonrise unless it was happening in the game right now.  It worked nicely.  There were a few times when digressions naturally arrived, though, which were fun.

For example, when Mago discovered the broken stone statue, he noticed the earth rune was on it.  So I had to describe the appearance of the earth rune, which is a little square.  This then allowed me to say, “the reason it looks like that is because Glorantha is not a planet.  It is the world, and the world is a square shaped lozenge.  So the earth rune looks exactly like the earth.”  This made everyone smile.  It was a fun fact, it was weird, it was Glorantha!  This happened a few more times, which really gave the sense that we were exploring Glorantha.  I am no expert on the setting, but it seemed like keeping the “lore dump” VERY light at the beginning worked great.  Handing our Pregens helped as well, and asking players to JUST focus on the little story and the notes of “how to play” I think gave everyone a toe-hold.

As far as rules went, I told them explicitly we would just play and find out how to play when things came up.  So the core idea of “roll under d100” only came up during the encounter with the dead woman: Vasana’s player scanned the horizon, so we used a scan roll.  There were two times when I roleplayed an NPC with a strong “Hate” for something.  The second time I did this I explained what passions were, and told them to take a look at their sheets to see what their character’s passions were.  Without describing the rules I simply told them to use them as a roleplaying guide, but that if they thought they applied they should let me know.  The opportunity didn’t seem to arise in play though.

The Broken Tower is the adventure in the quickstart, and I am starting to see why it is well regarded.  The dead body, spirit, and Carthalo all do a really good job of helping to convey how Glorantha is different from other settings, in a fun way.  I disliked the start of the scenario though, and threw together my own “starting scene” at Zarah’s house in clearwine.  I thought it better to start with some roleplaying, some introduction to the map and the space, and also to give the players an immediate roleplaying choice: bring the hot-headed Bara with them as a guide?  Or let her cool off here.

We only played for a short hour, but feedback was positive.  The number one complaint was a short session!  But the simplicity of the d100 system seemed to really please everyone, and the most common positive was that the rules seemed very easy, which let the players really get into the scenes, their characters, etc.

As a final note, two players selected pregens because this was their first time sitting down with the game and Glorantha.  Elfriede’s player went through the arduous process of making a character with me back in november or december when I first got the Runequest Roleplaying in Glorantha hardcover.  Her player (and I) found the character creation process to be very long - it took us 3 or 4 nights of work to get through it.  I wish there was an “in between” way of making characters that was faster and simpler, and that wasn’t just picking pregens.  Although I will comment that the pregens, especially from the starter set, are really great.  Is the solution to just keep churning out pregens with great art?  I am not sure.  But for new players I think pregens help them get into the setting with a working character and to focus on exploring Glorantha, so I suppose it seems the best.