Lay Membership in RuneQuest

In Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity, anthropologist Roy Rappaport says that rituals “are public, and participation in them constitutes a public acceptance of a public order, regardless of the private state of belief.” Being the sort of person I am, Rappaport’s work has been doing an awful lot to poke my brain with questions about the meaning and purpose of ritual in my RuneQuest games. In particular, as a social element in Glorantha. This line of thought keeps emerging in my head because Rappaport’s work focuses on the ways in which ritual activity and personal belief intersect as methods of communication for societies.

Behavior and belief are tricky elements of a fantasy world, especially one like Glorantha. Religion is a central theme of Glorantha. For the people who live in this fictional setting, participation and belief aren’t just methods of communication—they really are integral to the creation and re-creation of the universe. Ritual plants the seeds, calls the rain, and kills the earth so grain may be harvested. Those initiated into the worship of a god must believe, or risk that deity’s Spirits of Reprisal afflicting them or their community.

Yet, this acceptance/belief, public/private dichotomy can still be played out in our games. In my mind, this is the ideal dimensions for exploring lay membership.

My RuneQuest games—and, I suspect, most RuneQuest games in general—tend to overlook lay members. They are, to some extent by design, the backdrop. They’re the Greek Chorus, the backup dancers, the astonished crowds waiting outside the temple. Players recognize that their adventurers are likely lay members of numerous cults, but which cults is rarely worth enumerating. For example, The Earth Goddesses notes that “it can be assumed that all people are lay members of [Ernalda].” Lay membership of Ernalda is the minimal status of everyone who derives sustenance from the earth. As players and gamemasters, lay membership is so general as to be meaningless.

Ritual participation as acceptance of social order can re-imbue this status with meaning. And not just as a weird worldbuilding element, but in actual lived, played games of RuneQuest. Lay membership gives the gamemaster and the players an additional tool for exploring social and political conflict in their campaigns. Further use and rough tracking of lay membership can have worldbuilding consequences which lead into game-mechanical consequences about player access to magic.

Becoming a lay member of a cult, in Rappaport’s terms, is accepting that cult’s social order. In most cults (like the Lightbringers) this entails participation in a larger social order in which the adventurer probably is already invested. Where this gets interesting is lay worship of unconventional cults. The prime example is the Seven Mothers cult, the evangelizing religion of the Lunar Empire.

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Worshiping the Seven Mothers as a lay member isn’t just grabbing some bread and wine. It’s an acknowledgment of the Lunar social order, a confirmation that the lay member recognizes the Red Emperor’s cosmic sovereignty. However, it’s not necessarily a social act which will imperil the adventurer’s private religious beliefs and obligations. (Well, for an initiate—Rune Masters are and ought to be held to higher standards.) This allows for greater flexibility in using polytheistic worship as political posturing. Worshiping the Seven Mothers doesn’t mean the adventurer believes the Red Emperor should rule the world. It just indicates that they’re (currently) accepting of this hierarchy.

Pulling this into game mechanics, an adventurer’s ability to learn Rune magic and replenish their Rune points is connected with the size of the temples to which they have access. Temple size, in turn, is determined by the combined number of lay members and initiates which worship there. I imagine in most Sartarite cities and tribes, the number of initiates which worship seasonally at a temple is close to static. There’s a bit of variability as people die, and new adults are initiated.

In contrast, the quantity of lay members is volatile. A dingy statue of Chalana Arroy might receive a shrine’s worship one season, then climb all the way up to major temple in times of plague and war! Polytheists worship both from personal devotion, and in pursuit of what they need. The killing powers of Humakt aren’t always useful, but Ernalda’s bounty is integral to existence. Likewise everyone needs to laugh, so the Trickster ought to have great temples in every hamlet of Dragon Pass!

This mobility of lay members acts as an index of the community’s hopes, fears, and dreams. Telling the players “everyone’s worshiping Humakt” provides an in-setting way to tell them the community fears war is upon them. Alternately, if a player’s temple diminishes in size, this reduces their bonuses to Worship and the Rune magic which they can choose to learn. This, of course, provides an impetus to perform heroic deeds and attract more worshipers.

Surely causing a crisis to increase your own cult’s usefulness and standing won’t backfire…

Whether an adventurer scheming to subvert the social structure they outwardly support, or a gamemaster moving worshipers to make your players panic, there’s a surprising amount of utility to lay membership. Focusing on this cult status for its social elements, rather than magical, helped me conceive a number of ways to enrich my Glorantha.

Until next time, then!

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