REVIEW: The Prosopaedia for RuneQuest

After an 18-month hiatus without official RuneQuest material from Chaosium, that oasis sprang to life last week. On July 13th Chaosium published the first volume in their much-anticipated series “Cults of RuneQuest,” The Prosopaedia. Fans have been awaiting “the cults books” since the current edition’s 2018 release, and if I were to measure the depth of the community’s collective drool, I’d need a yardstick. This volume is slated to be followed up by The Lightbringers and The Earth Goddesses in August, followed by Mythology later this year.

Let’s take a dive into book one!

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What’s Inside?

The Prosopaedia is an extensive reference work composed of short entries describing numerous gods, spirits, heroes, belief systems, and magical elements which are part of RuneQuest’s setting, Glorantha. These entries range from a few short sentences for obscure entities (like Gosarh), to about a full page of text for the most prominent (like Orlanth). Each generally begins by providing the entity’s Runes, a pronunciation guide, and the entity’s pantheon plus common titles. Some entries add red “see also” text. A typical entry’s text consists of three to five paragraphs with a focus on an entity’s mythic feats and relationships, then relationships within time, and finally iconography. In a few cases this last is weighted quite heavily—throughout I felt that The Prosopaedia was not just saying “this is what the gods are about,” but also “this is what the gods look like.”

I consumed this book as an “armchair” read, cover-to-cover, and I think that it’s pretty firmly an “armchair” or “reference shelf” work on my “armchair to tabletop” spectrum. Reading through The Prosopaedia, the most engaging element was the puzzling through the mix of familiar and unfamiliar material and seeking out interesting connections or conjectures to draw from the text. The book is not a terribly enthralling armchair read—but it’s not meant to be, either, and it shouldn’t be judged on that merit. I also wouldn’t say that it’s a bad armchair read. You just need to be a certain sort of over-engaged fan of Glorantha. Fortunately, many of us are, so that works out pretty well.

Since I’m not terribly familiar with Glorantha’s pre-2018 material, I’ll leave the bean-counting to other commentators. (That said, there are at least three beans, because the Three Bean Circus made the cut.) Instead, I’ll just note those points which have managed to remain lodged in my attention several hours after finishing my read.

There’s several entries which I think will be very interesting to fellow creators and gamemasters. In particular, I found the entries on the God Time, the God World, and the Spirit World intriguing, along with pretty much all the entries on “universal” or “near universal” mythological aspects. These include world features like the Sky Dome, as well as the ancient gods & goddesses of the Celestial Court (like Larnste and Gata).

Ancient gods are also interesting because they tend to have the Infinity Rune. I had doubted this Rune would show up on anyone outside Arachne Solara—the spider-goddess of Time—so seeing it somewhat frequent caught my eye. These ancient gods are, notably, generally considered dead and destroyed. This is further complicated because three notable non-ancient entities have the Infinity Rune: Arkat, Harrek the Berserk, and Jar-Eel the Razoress. These last two are the setting’s big kahuna, kind of like Acererak or Mordenkainen in D&D. I have a few conjectures on this topic, but I think I’ll save it for another article.

The red “see also” text was surprisingly scarce, and at first I felt frustrated by that as I read. It made the book feel a bit incomplete. However, as I kept reading I noticed that a number of articles indicate in their prose that the God Learners associated the entity with so-and-so, but the red text did not. For example, the god Balumbasta (from Glorantha’s southern continent, Pamaltela) is described as being associated with Lodril, but lacks the “see Lodril” text. I noticed this frequently enough that it seems intentional, perhaps as a subtle nod to when the God Learners were correct, and when they were in error.

Oh, for those who don’t know, the God Learners are a bunch of sorcerers from a past age who tried to warp and drain mythology itself with their magic. It worked for a few centuries, but then they got smacked by a gigantic karmic mallet.

Which, come to think of it, does lead me to a weakness in this book. I’m hoping—and I think Chaosium is too—that Cults of RuneQuest will be an exciting entry point for new fans of the game and the setting. However, there’s a lot of information in this book, and even I get swamped pretty often. The Prosopaedia is a no-holds-barred soup of Proper Nouns. Now, most of those Proper Nouns are explained, by nature of the book. Some aren’t. I suspect references to the Doraddi, to Pamaltela, Vormain, the Vithelans, and other geographical concepts not included in the RuneQuest core rules will leave newbies feeling alienated, rather than excited. Setting jargon is still jargon.

There were a few absences and alterations I found interesting. I was surprised that there’s no mention of the Luathans—giant purple demigods who live in the land of sunset, and invaded the mortal world to wreck a God Learner kingdom. The story of Ingolf Dragonfriend seems changed from older material I’ve read, and I find it less poignant. Likewise there’s no entry for the Orlanthi draconic mystic Obduran the Flyer, though he does get mention in Ingolf’s entry. Finally, the hero Renvald isn’t mentioned, which is a shame because I liked that he put a name to the Machine War. The Machine War is one of these Second Age events which is described as a cataclysmic conflict, but without much detail and attention compared to the other Second Age battles.

For those who care about canon, “Renvald” and “Ingolf” both don’t find much when I search through my PDFs of The Guide to Glorantha. So it doesn’t seem much has changed from the 2015 presentation of Glorantha, on these fronts. I only know a bit about the Second Age because of ongoing research for one of my Jonstown Compendium books.

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Speaking of, did you know that it’s Christmas in July on DriveThruRPG? There’s loads of great stuff on sale from the Jonstown Compendium, including my adventure To Hunt a God. If you like reading reviews and articles here about Glorantha, consider picking up some books! You get fun stuff to play, and I get to keep writing for you—I call that a win-win!

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I’m not outraged that I happen to know a hero which wasn’t included in The Prosopaedia. I mostly find it interesting, based on the book’s generally exhaustive approach to Gloranthan mythology. One of the best features of The Prosopaedia is that it feels like real mythology, with both horrors and joys like tales passed down from Earth’s history. Seeing all of the entities and beliefs and other elements of Gloranthan religion woven into a tangled mesh makes me want to write with them. I really like that it doesn’t feel stifling or “definitive” in the authoritarian, book-closed sense. It feels like an expansive book.

On the polish and presentation of the text, I appreciated that The Prosopaedia does feel like a professional release. The last two releases from Chaosium were a notable improvement in textual quality over the initial wave, and it’s great to see they’re continuing to improve. I did notice the occasional typo or grammar hiccup, but let’s be honest—in a book this length, with this many fantasy words, there are going to be errors. The errors never reached a point where I felt distracted or confused about a sentence’s meaning.

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Illustrations

The Prosopaedia is illustrated by Katrin Dirim, who won Chaosium’s 2021 Greg Stafford Memorial Award. It’s always great to see Chaosium supporting members of the Jonstown Compendium community, and they made an excellent choice in selecting Dirim to illustrate this book.

Dirim’s illustrations consistently present a bright, colorful, Bronze Age mythology stuffed with detail and life. The subject matter focuses on presentations of gods as depicted by people living in Glorantha. This does expand a bit to include worshipers of the gods wearing religious costume, and it fits in well. The text often describes a variety of media worshipers use to depict the gods, such as carvings, woven baskets, and wall paintings. One example is an illustration of a Pamaltela fertility goddess as carved into a tree. This piece is great because it emphasizes the diversity of media described in the text. We don’t get tons of this material presented, but it’s a good addition to the more obvious frescoes or painted bas reliefs.

My brain doesn’t instantly grab a favorite illustration, but there’s a number which come to mind. In general, I think the best are Dirim’s full-page plates, because these have extra detail used to depict myths from (or not from) the text. The best example of this is a Lunar illustration of Shargash (war god of the Red Planet) and Verithurusa (ancient moon goddess) embracing like lovers.

I feel like this piece manages to capture romantic affection while simultaneously using the profile perspective commonly found in ancient art. Best of all, I can’t find any mention of these two interacting in the entries. The art not just depicts, but enriches the book’s content.

Another great piece is Daka Fal judging the dead. One of the souls stands abandoned by their god or goddess, for their misdeeds during their life. Finally, I think the cover deserves a shout-out too. It’s a complicated, busy piece. It feels like it hit me on the head with an ice pick; it shouts at you. That might not work for all books, but I think it works well for The Prosopaedia. It tells you what’s going on more clearly than the title.

I have two caveats—NOT complaints—to note about the illustrations. First, my print copy hasn’t arrived yet, so I’ve only consumed them as part of the PDF. In general, I don’t really “grok” art until I’ve had a physical book in hand; but if I like it now, I’ll probably like it more when I get my copy. Second, there is quite a lot of both male and female nudity in the art. I think it’s well done, probably better than nudity in Chaosium’s prior RuneQuest books. It’s clearly intended to reflect ancient art norms, and they’ve succeeded at their design goals. That being said, I think it’s worth mentioning the nudity so buyers can make an educated choice.

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Conclusion

Ultimately, I’m of two minds about this book.

I like The Prosopaedia quite a lot as what it is, book qua book. I think that’s clear from the review. It looks to be an excellent mythological art book, a useful writing reference for my RuneQuest work, and a fun book to page through at random. I might ask a bit more of it as an all-in-one reference to Gloranthan mythology—such as two pages defining the Runes and pantheons—but any such asks would be fairly trivial. I do recommend The Prosopaedia to my fellow Jonstown Compendium creators. And, well, my fellow hardcore Glorantha nerds were gonna buy it anyway, so I don’t need to give you advice!

Evaluating The Prosopaedia as the first book of Cults of RuneQuest is a different matter.

To phrase it a bit gently, if Chaosium released this without an announced date for The Lightbringers and The Earth Goddesses I would have been pretty disappointed. I’m utterly baffled Chaosium has not released an official product in a year and a half. The line was never dead. The developers are far too active in the community (and show off plenty of beautiful but expensive art) that I am 100% certain that they are serious about this game. I don’t feel I would have written this review honestly, if I left out The Prosopaedia‘s context.

The Prosopaedia, in my opinion, is a book without directly gameable material. It has inspirational material, but as the first book in this series that’s doesn’t really cut it. Like the Red Book of Magic, it feels like Chaosium began at the wrong end of their publications. These types of reference works feel like useful tools after the material you use them with is released. After ten—more?—volumes of Cults of RuneQuest, I’d be aching for a quick-reference book. As we currently stand, I’m aching for something I can play. That doesn’t have to be an adventure! The forthcoming cults books absolutely count, and are why I’m just a bit frustrated instead of angry.

If you’re a RuneQuest gamemaster, I recommend saving your money for the upcoming books instead. The Prosopaedia has done a good job convincing me these next books will be worth checking out. I just don’t see what this volume has to offer someone who meets up with their friends to seduce dragons and smite Chaos for a few hours each week.

And that’s a shame, really, because I do like this book. It’s actually exceeded my expectations. I just don’t feel I can recommend it to the typical RuneQuest gamemaster.

Until next time, then.

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