How to Create a Character in RuneQuest: Glorantha Character Creation Guide for Beginners

Roleplaying in Glorantha by Chaosium is the main rulebook for the latest iteration of the RuneQuest TTRPG. In this guide, we take you through creating an adventurer in Glorantha. Grabbing a copy of the book is the best way to make a character, as it will provide detailed options in each of the steps outlined below.

No, sure if Glorantha is for you? We have this handy, beginner-friendly guide to the setting and game here.

Follow these eight steps to create your adventurer.

• Step 1: Homeland. Choose your adventurer’s Homeland.
• Step 2: Family History. Develop the family history of your adventurer and their history before their life of adventure.
• Step 3: Rune Affinities. Choose your adventurer’s Runes. These quantify your adventurer’s connection to specific Runes and drive personality and social impulses.
• Step 4: Characteristics. Determine characteristics and secondary attributes.
• Step 5: Occupation. Choose your adventurer’s occupation.
• Step 6: Cult. Choose your adventurer’s cult.
• Step 7: Personal Skill Bonuses. Allocate personal skill bonuses.
• Step 8: Other Information. Give your adventurer a name and determine other information needed, such as gender, equipment, family heirloom, etc.

Before continuing, ensure you and your Game Master have discussed the character options on the table. The following guide only provides information as presented in the official rulebook. Other supplements or books (official and community-made) might provide additional options.

You can pick up a copy of Roleplaying in Glorantha or the Starter Set on the Quest Portal Marketplace.

Six human Homelands surround Dragon Pass: Sartar, Esrolia, Grazelands, Prax, Lunar Tarsh, and Old Tarsh.

A Homeland is more than just a location on a map. It helps determine the initial customs, languages, and religions that your character may adopt. Homelands help define how your character might respond to outsiders or how others may perceive your character. Ultimately, you still have the power to defy expectations and play contrary to stereotypes.

Sartar is the default Homeland for characters. It’s a mountainous kingdom of Storm-worshipping hill tribes united by the royal house of Sartar.

Esrolia is a rich and civilized land ruled by a matriarchy. The Grazelands are a region of grassy hills and valleys inhabited by the Pony Breeders. Prax is the collection of plains east of Dragon Pass, populated mainly by barbarian nomads. Lunar Tarsh is the province of the Lunar Empire. Old Tarsh is a group of tribes centered on the foothills of Mount Kero Fin.

Many great maps can be found on wellofdaliath.chaosium.com.

Family history strongly influences characters' drives and Passions. The role your parents, grandparents, and other influential family members held in history can give your character a more meaningful connection to the world.

You can skip this step in the character creation. If you do, check out the core rules for mechanical implications to your character.

The first step in generating a family history is to pick which family members most impacted your character’s sense of identity. You do this first for a grandparent and then for a parent.

The second step is to determine the occupations of your grandparents and parents. Occupations tend to be hereditary, but you might want to explain why if your parent doesn’t have the same occupation as your grandparent. When choosing an occupation for your character, you can always choose differently from what your ancestors did.

The third step is determining what events your grandparents and parents participated in. Each event might influence your character by adding Passions or Reputation. Events might dictate if and when your grandparent or parent died. If they make it to the end of the event section alive, they retire, and you continue to your history.

The fourth step is to determine your own character’s past. When your adventurer comes of age, they will have participated in some events. These events might give your character new Passions or Boons.

Once you’ve completed your family history, your character will feel more rounded as you start role-playing. You will have events to lean on to connect better with the world around you, and it might even influence your decisions in shaping your character further in the next steps of character creation.

Every character is tied to several of the Runes and represents the strength and nature of your character in the world. Rune Affinities are expressed as a percentile chance of success. The choice of Runes heavily depends on the Cult you want your character to belong to. Each Cult’s god will have a Rune associated with it, and your character’s abilities to use the cult’s Rune spells are directly tied to your affinity with those Runes.

Three categories of Runes comprise a character: Elemental, Power, and Form. First, choose three Elemental Runes to represent your character. The primary starts at 60% affinity, the second at 40%, and the last at 20%. Then modify based on your Homeland selection. Second, choose two of the Power and Form Runes to start with an affinity of 75%. Remember, Power and Form Runes come in pairs and are all balanced with an affinity of 50%/50%. If one pair goes up, the other must decrease by the same amount. Therefore, setting the affinity to Harmony to 75% will reduce the affinity to Disorder to 25%.

You will get 50 points to distribute among your Rune Affinities. (Rune affinities are determined by selecting Runes based on priority and then modified by Homeland and Rune modifiers. They are not assigned through a point-buy system.) This is a great way to make your character more powerful by improving their best Runes or adding points to new Runes as flavor that might come out in roleplay.

Characteristics are numerical values that describe your character. The characteristics are Strength (STR), Constitution (CON), Dexterity (DEX), Power (POW), Charisma (CHA), Intelligence (INT), and Size (SIZ).

You can determine your character’s characteristics by rolling 3d6 for STR, DEX, CON, POW, and CHA and 2d6+6 for SIZ and INT. If the total is less than 93, you are allowed to assign three more points as desired. No single characteristic can total more than 18 at this stage.

After applying Homeland modifiers, add +2 to the characteristic linked to your highest Elemental Rune, and +1 to the one linked to your second-highest. You can see the Rune Modifiers to Characteristics in the Roleplaying in Glorantha rulebook.

Your chosen Homeland might provide additional modifiers to the characteristics. Bison Riders, High Llama Riders, and Impala Riders get modifiers while others do not.

The rulebook has detailed information on how characteristics influence the different attributes. For example, your Magic Points are equal to your current Power. Hit Points, Healing Rate, Damage Bonus, Spirit Combat Damage, Maximum Encumberance, and Strike Rank all flow from one or more characteristics.

Characters in Glorantha are usually not full-time adventurers. They have jobs or responsibilities to support and feed themselves or their families. The core rulebook has a detailed list of occupations you can choose from. Each occupation begins with a description of the occupation and will include some of the following information:

• The Homeland where the occupation is common
• Occupational skills and the bonuses they provide
• The annual base income
• The expected standard of living
• The cults commonly associated with the occupation
• Favored passions that can be added or augmented
• Equipment appropriate for the occupation
• The ransom applicable to members of the occupation

Occupations count towards how you plan on role-playing your character. It allows you to shape your character’s skills and define what they’re good at. It gives you flavor to present to other characters and NPCs in sessions. Taking the time to find an occupation you connect with can be a worthwhile exercise.

The biggest influence on your character is the Cult they belong to. Sometimes, you might play an adventure that puts strict restrictions on what Cults can be chosen, but more often than not, you will have a choice. An important choice.

Each cult is different in the ceremonies it performs, the responsibilities it imposes, and the magical secrets it shares. Nearly every adult is initiated into a cult, and a new adventurer should start as an initiate.

It’s important to note that selecting a cult means selecting a deity to connect with. Your connection with said deity is measured with Rune points. The more you have, the better the connection, the more you can call upon the deity’s magic. Each initiate starts with three Rune points dedicated to their cult. Additional Rune points can be gained during play, but usually it requires a sacrifice to the deity.

There are Rune spells that become available to your character once you choose a cult. You can then use your Rune points to cast those spells. Additionally, your cult might teach Spirit Magic or Sorcery, and you will be able to learn more in those areas of magic.

Finally, choosing a cult will give your character additional bonuses to skills and favored passions. There are many nuances about choosing cults that might be good to discuss with your Game Master. For example, you may wish to decide on your adventurer’s cult and occupation in tandem, as many occupations are closely associated with certain cults.

Adventurers have personal interests beyond those demanded by their occupation, cult, and culture. Add the Personal Skill Bonus of +25% to any four skills on the adventurer sheet, and +10% to five more skills.

No skill may be raised above 100% in this step. Suppose your adventurer has a skill at 100% or greater through a combination of base chance, history, boons, skill category bonus, cultural skill bonus, occupational skill bonuses, and cult skill bonuses. In that case, you cannot add additional personal skill bonuses to that skill.

This is the step where you get to personalize your character and truly bring them to life. Here, you pick the basic stuff like a name, age, and appearance. Among the things you can define are your character’s sex (there are four!), gender (there are six!), marriage type (there are seven!), and family situation from the inclusive worldbuilding of the RuneQuest rule book. You can add further detail by describing distinguishing traits or discussing family heirlooms.

You can grab a fillable PDF Character Sheet from Chaosium’s website. The Character Sheet will include fields for everything discussed above. You will need access to the rulebook to find the available options and figure out how to calculate things like derived attributes, skill category modifiers, and more.

You can also use the RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha Character Sheet template in Quest Portal. The benefit is the automatic calculation of derived stats and modifiers. It is also much more flexible in adding detailed notes about your character or making significant changes to the sheet to accommodate homebrew or other important things about your character.

Ready to dive into Glorantha? Grab the RuneQuest Starter Set on Quest Portal and start creating your hero today. All you need to begin your RuneQuest RPG journey is just a click away.