This is my RuneQuest and Glorantha Web page. I apologize for the unorganized state of this page in spite of the fact that this page has been in existance for several months. There might still be open or wrong links, if so, please complain or comment so I can do something about it. Things announced but not linked to are available either via e-Mail or via setup on my page. Let me know if you want to see the stuff.

Legal Disclaimer:
Glorantha is a trademark of Chaosium, Inc. Gloranthan material is copyright 1997 [or the year of publication] by [the individual author] and by Greg Stafford. Glorantha is the creation of Greg Stafford, and is used with his permission.
In this case, the Gloranthan material provided here is copyright 1997 (or otherwise indicated) by Jörg Baumgartner and Greg Stafford, plus additional authors where indicated.

Glorantha is a fantasy world created by Greg Stafford. It was first published as background for the boardgames White Bear & Red Moon (later Dragon Pass) and Nomad Gods, and for the fantasy roleplaying game RuneQuest. This setting is special among other game settings for its rich mythological background and the enthusiasm of its fans, and has spawned some literary efforts as well.

There is an official Glorantha Webpage, maintained by Chaosium Inc., which includes much of the Introduction to Glorantha booklet from the RuneQuest 3rd Edition DeLuxe box, for a general introduction.

Who is this guy who wrote all this?

I took up roleplaying in my second year at university, in 1985. That was a time when the first mass-produced rpgs became available in Germany, and I tried most of them. After some experimenting, I settled for a German system called Midgard (with slight similarities to the original game system of Empire of the Petal Throne), and created my first gaming world from the scraps offered in the official publications (which means I included those places into a much larger setting). About the same time I discovered that there had been conventions in my home town of Kiel for a couple of years, and I visited the last two of them. Then the organisers moved away, and there were no more conventions in Kiel... so I started a university game club with my gaming group. We got cheap rooms, some advertising, and 180 visitors where we had expected 120. Kiel got a regular convention twice a year...

During my phase of experimentation I had read a German book on rpgs, which had an enthusiastic article on RuneQuest and the world of Glorantha by Lutz Reimers. This aroused my curiosity, but since the rights for RQ had just passed to Avalon Hill, neither the Chaosium or Games Workshop editions of RQ2 were available any more, and RQ3 was beyond any students financial margin. However, when Games Workshop published their edition of RQ3 (the Standard Rules - sigh), I bought it. Next thing was the Vikings Box, and based on that I built a new fantasy game world, with Viking-like settlers in a Hebrides-like archipelago, borrowing somewhat from Andrew Offut's continuations of R.E. Howard's Cormac Mac Art novels. Soon an entire planet, with myths, history, lots of cultures etc grew around this and became RuneWelt. As I built this world, I aquired all of the Avalon Hill Glorantha material (prices had gone down to affordable in the meantime), and I incorporated some Alternate Glorantha into my Alternate Earth settings. My players and I roamed this world for a couple of years, while I studied Glorantha, and learned more and more about it. I started aquiring RQ2 materials...

In 1990 Lutz Reimers organised the first German RQ-Convention in Cologne. I managed to participate for the second half only, but it gave me a boost in my RQ activities (which had previously consisted of a home-made translation of parts of the rules for clarity).

Then university ended, and I went to work in northern Norway for a year. North of the Polar circle, during the long night there sometimes was little else to do in the "evenings" but sit down and write or read roleplaying material. I continued work on RuneWelt, but I studied Glorantha.

In the meantime, the people who had met on the convention started to found the German RuneQuest Society. I joined as soon as I got back from Norway.

One of the aims of the society was to publish a regular magazine with RQ-scenarios and articles. I wasn't too pleased with the first issue and grumbled (a bit too loudly) that I could do better. Shouldn't have done that - a couple of months later I was asked to do issue 2, a rush job to appear in time for the Essen Game Fair. I did, and kept the job, thanks to good material available for that issue. Issue 3 did look better, and I kept the format as long as I remained editor, i.e. until issue 7. I finally quitted from exhaustion when #7 contained mostly my own stuff. By that time I had become one of the chairmen of the RQ society.

By the time I published Free INT 4 I had discovered email, and the RuneQuest Digest which became the Daily under Henk Langeveld's maintenance just when I joined. I didn't enter the hot discussions until half a year later, though. After delurking, I soon became notorious for too long contributions and lengthy discussions.

I didn't play, or write, Gloranthan RQ until issue 5 of Free INT, which saw an adaption of a quite successful convention scenario of mine. It was our editorial policy to publish scenarios in Glorantha, so I transferred the stuff from my own game world. I ended up in a dead volcano off the shore of Heortland, and with active help from Nick Brooke tuned the scenario into the Gloranthan background. This left me with an unhealthy curiosity about that region.

My first big strike in the direction of creating Glorantha material took some time to see distribution. The Aeolian Church of Heortland was my experiment to create a Stygian heresy of Malkionism for RQ3 rules. After much preliminary discussion, it went into one of the digests in July 1994.

Then I got a chance to playtest the new rules of the "RQ4 - Adventures in Glorantha" project, and I had to run a game in that setting. For the first time since my earliest rpg experiences I used a gaming background not written by myself again.

The campaign started off in Heortland in the year 1615, with the initiation of the characters. I wanted them to experience an intact Holy Country before tumbling them into the Hero Wars. This spawned quite a lot of campaign notes which I intend to put up on this page. My enthusiasm was boosted when I was contacted by Jeff Richard (Seattle), who happened to play in roughly the same time in Volsaxiland. We connected our campaign backgrounds.

Sadly, job pressure brought both our campaigns into hibernation after a while, but the ideas are still there, and development goes on.

Another creative rush spawned by my interest in Heortland are the Freca Tales which are found here as well. I have various ideas I need to put into words, but like with the rest, development goes on.