Review of the Cyberpapacy and Tharkold for Torg: Eternity

A few years back I did a review of the first three rounds of supplements for Torg: Eternity--The Living Land, The Nile Empire, and Aysle.  Overall these products were strong, and I got the sense that the designers were getting their "sea legs" as they went along and the overall quality improved.  In the last few years. notwithstanding COVID and all of that, Ulisses Spiele knocked out crowdfunding campaigns for all four of the remaining cosms--Cyberpapacy, Tharkold, Orrorsh, and recently Pan Pacifica.  All of the campaigns had the same format as the previous cosm campaigns, so check the previous post for a discussion of what's involved.  This post will handle the Cyberpapacy and Tharkold, and I will follow up with the other two.

Cyberpapacy:  If there was ever a concept that was designed to appeal to me and my interests personally, it would be the Cyberpapacy.  As one can glean from the name, the Cyberpapacy is basically cyberpunk fiction, but with the Evil Corporations replaced with the worst sort of "burn the witch" inquisitorial expy-Catholicism as the primary antagonist.  I like cyberpunk fiction, and I am really interested in all-things related to Christianity in general and high-church versions of Christianity in particular, both the good and the bad.  So, again, right in my wheel-house.   

I loved the original Cyberpapacy Sourcebook at the time it came out, but having re-read it in preparation for this review, I get the sense that the designers were not entirely sure what they wanted to do with their concept.  It has plenty of cyberware, which is good, and it had some stuff about burning witches, which is also good, but it didn't really deliver a cohesive picture of the reality of the Cyberpapacy.  Part of the problem was that the continuity of the original game had the "cyber" dimension of the Cyberpapacy be a newly imposed innovation into the reality of Magna Verita (the home cosm of the Cyberpapacy).  As a result, all of this cyber stuff was actually layered onto otherwise standard oppressive psuedo-medieval Catholicism.  It didn't fit together, and that was kind of the point.

This new take on the Cyberpapacy abandons that altogether, in favor of a much more interesting vision of the linkage between the "cyber" and the "papacy."  Now, technological innovations come from direct divine revelation (or: in a slight spoiler, from other sources. . . .)  And, critically, from no other source--science is not supported by the reality of the Cyberpapacy, and is in any event completely heretical.  Cybernetics are seen as holy because they channel the Holy Spirit of the Machine, allowing the believer to shed the weak and sinful flesh for the pure, divine mechanical replacement.  Because science is not a thing, the feel remains very culturally medieval--monasteries are basically centers of manufacturing, with monks serving as floor supervisors and the assembly line workers basically taking the role of serfs.

All of this is clearly at least an homage to the Tech Priests of Warhammer 40k, but I think this was a strong design choice.  It makes the whole thing feel like a fully formed idea as opposed to jamming together two ideas.  A small, but I think very clever and flavorful idea is the notion of a "Piety Score"--each person has a numerical rating based on saying prayers and doing Cyberchurch-approved activities (ranging from "spending your Sunday volunteering to make cyberware" to "denoucing a heretic").  Those scores are displayed when you jump into the Cyberpapacy's version of the Matrix, the Godnet, as well as anyone who has a connection to the Godnet (which is basically everyone in the Cyberpapacy).  Reaching certain tiers in your Piety Score brings you access to certain perks, both inside the Godnet and in the "real world."  For example, the "Annointed" (Piety Score 1000+) have the right to use a personal car, as well as grow wings when the they are in the Godnet.  The idea of the "gamification" of faith as expressed with Piety Scores is both brilliant and perfectly on point for the setting.

Speaking of the Godnet.  As in the previous version, the Godnet is basically the Matrix, but with a religious theme--Heaven, Hell and Purgatory are places you can go in the virtual world.  In this version, Heaven takes the form of a seven level mountain, and one's access to the levels is determined by, you guessed it, one's Piety Score.  Conceptually, this works, just like it did in the original.  But, if I may say, the devil is in the details.  Netrunning/decking rules are a notorious pain point in almost all cyberpunk games, and the rules in the original Cyberpapacy sourcebook (and the associated Godnet sourcebook) were no execption, requiring GMs to map out a dungeon-style route to go through to get to the data the PCs are seeking.  The rules in this book are much more streamlined, checking in at only eight pages, and are pitched at a much higher level of abstraction.  

Beyond the rules, I really liked two other design decisions for the Godnet.  The first is the idea of "hard light holograms."  Basically, holograms in the Cyberpapacy take on tangible form, which allows personas that are in the Godnet to project into the real world.  This solves maybe the biggest conceptual problem in netrunning/decking systems, which is that they often become divorced from what the rest of the PCs are doing.  Now, "Nodders" (Cyberpapacy's version of deckers/hackers) can hack a holoprojector and fight in the real space beside all of the PCs.  It's a brilliant solution to a difficult design problem.  The other is to put all of the "paydata" that the PCs are going to want to go get in isolated monasteries or convents, isolated from the broader Godnet.  That way, PCs as a group are going to have to physically travel to locations to get what they want, bringing the non-computer focused PCs into the action.  Also very smart, even if the explanation for why all the good stuff is in isolated locations might be a little hand-wavy for some tastes.

Unhallowed Data is the adventure path, and it is different from the previous cosm's adventure paths. It is both a mystery-focused adventure and designed for the PCs to take the quiet approach as opposed to going in guns blazing.  Stealth-oriented adventures, depending on the personalities of the players at the table, may require the GM to "gently remind" the PCs of the consequences of breaking cover, and the adventure is clearly aware of this and provides plenty of hand-holds.  It also has a very well done Act set in a convent, where the PCs have to infiltrate the convent and the nuns to get access to the key data to move the story forward.  It also features the Godnet in a later portions of the adventure path, which makes perfect sense for the Cyberpapacy adventure path.

All told, the Cyberpapacy package takes a set of sneakily difficult ideas and fuses them together in a clever, accessible, gameable set of products.    

Original Torg
Tharkold Sourcebook,
with High Lord Jezrael
a/k/a Cyber Benetar

Tharkold:  I also went back and read the original Tharkold sourcebook, and I am reminded what a fun bit of early 90s RPG cheese it was and why it was one of my (and I think many people's) favorite original Torg products.  It is just chock full of big guns and cool powers and recycling trucks that will recycle people and a major bad guy named "Sterrett of the Blades" and some half-assed social commentary on early 90s Los Angeles and a High Lord, Jezrael, that kinda looks like a cyber version of singer Pat Benetar on the cover art.  Is it all well balanced?  No.  Does all of it make sense and fit together?  Not entirely.  But it is fun.  

With the exception of the Living Land (and arguably Pan Pacifica), Tharkold got the biggest make-over for Torg: Eternity.  Much of that change has to do with relocating Tharkold back to its original location of Russia (in the original Torg continuity, Tharkold attempted to invade Russia, was defeated, and then arrived in Los Angeles and later Berlin later the war).  Some of the change was a straight-up nerf--Tharkold is now inferior technologically to the Cyberpapacy, and no longer has access to religion and miracles, getting instead psychic powers.  But reading the Tharkold sourcebook, it is also clear that the tone and mood of Tharkold has been radically changed. 

One of the more subtle but far-reaching changes has to do with the nature of the headliner antagonists in Tharkold--the techno-demons, or Tharkoldu.  In the original version, the Tharkoldu are monsters, in the sense that they are normal, albeit magical, creatures native to the Tharkold home-cosm.  In this version, they are demons in the classical, theological, and ontological sense--pure evil incarnated into a physical form via the power of magic.  Rather than the eternal predators of the humans of Tharkold ("the Race"), it is stated that these Tharkoldu were originally summoned into the cosm from Tharkold's version of hell by the wickedness and sins of the Race.  As we learn in the opening fiction, the creed of the Tharkoldu is "the evil we do lives after us"--they exist to make the world worse, to spread pain and abuse.

In fact, let's talk about the opening fiction for a moment.  I will admit that I often skip the opening fiction of ttrpg books, as it is often not that great.  The opening fiction in the Tharkold sourcebook is some of the best I have ever read.  It's so well done, in fact, that I think it probably should come with some sort of content warning.  In a few pages, the authors depict an abusive relationship between Kranod, the Tharkoldu High Lord, and Jezrael, Kranod's (at the time) human woman thrall, and the psychology that underlies such a relationship.  There is a small detail where Kranod licks Jezrael's face, and we are told that he has done that so often that hair doesn't grow on the side of her head in that region.  That detail made my skin crawl.  The resolution of the story (which I suppose it's OK to talk about as the designers have talked about it publicly) is that Jezrael kills Kranod, and Kranod accepts this because he knows that he has so traumatized her that she will never be free of the effects of the abuse she suffered at his hands.  

The new Tharkold, expressed most clearly in this story, is in a very real way an exploration of generational trauma, and how evil gets passed down and transmitted across time.  That's pretty heavy material for a game like Torg.  But it also acts as a glue to the genre elements embodied by the cosm--basically Hellraiser meets Mad Max.  Both of the component genres are pretty grim, and the synergy of them is definitely grim.  To take a single example out of many--Tharkold's version of the Matrix/the Godnet is Kur, which is literally hell, populated by lost souls and horrors who must be bargained with to find the information you are looking for.   

Upping the grimness factor is the fact that Tharkold is in the midst of a three-sided struggle for power in the cosm in the wake of Jezrael's assassination of Kranod.  One side is the completely sociopathic Jezrael; side two is fan-favorite from the original Torg Thrachen, a Tharkoldu with big ambitions and an alliance with the Gaunt Man (the High Lord of Orrorsh and the leader of the overall invasion).  And the third side is the President of Russia, a former intelligence officer who wormed in way into power pre-invasion and has used the crisis as an opportunity to not only solidify power in Russia, but also invade and annex Russia's neighbors.

I mean, it's Putin.  I know it says in the book "President Volkov," but it is clearly Putin, so much so that I would just call him "Putin" in my games.  Keep in mind that this was written prior to the invasion of the Ukraine, which I actually think is really fortunate, given the apparent unwillingness of the Torg: Eternity team to engage with current events (see my next post on Pan Pacifica).  The idea that a "native" would use an invasion as an opportunity for power is a dimension that was not really present in the original game, but it makes sense and is a fertile field for game stories.  And reading the material in the context of real-world events adds an additional edge--as over-the-top as Tharkold is, it feels more real somehow.

As far as the game mechanical content, it is what you might expect--lots of cyberware (known in Tharkold as "occultech") and psychic powers and magic spells with a suitably demonic theme.  In a nod to the original game, there are rules for playing a demon who rebels against their demonic nature; unlike the original version, these rules are relatively well balanced, which is nice.  There are also mutant powers that come with random negative side-effects, which do a nice job of being meaningfully negative without being unworkably punitive.  Nothing is world-shaking here, but everything is well done and flavorful.

The adventure path for Tharkold is Blood on the Blasted Lands.  I have discussed previously that Torg adventurers tend to have a "theme park" quality, designed to show off all of the varied elements that a particular slice of the Torg universe has to offer. Blood on the Blasted Lands is absolutely an example of this, but it is a really, really well done version of the Torg theme park.  The PCs will be traveling across the Tharkold realm, hitting both the irradiated wilderness areas as well as the major cities.  One of my favorite elements in its structure is that it starts out as a fairly conventional quest structure to travel around and find clues about The Thing while fighting off baddies and dealing with horrors, and then organically immerses the PCs in the political elements of setting.  That's tricky from a writing perspective, and it is easy to make awkward and clunky, but here it is done very well.  Getting players to care about politics in a setting and getting buy-in for difficult moral choices is often a struggle, but I think this is going to work, even for groups that already drinking deep from the Torg lore.  It's more conventional in its structure than Unhallowed Data, but it works and is very evocative of the brutal complexities of Tharkold.  

I can't decide whether Cyberpapacy or Tharkold are my favorite cosms in Torg: Eternity.  Design-wise, I think Cyberpapacy had a higher degree of difficulty, if for no other reason than coming up with good and workable netrunning rules has been such a white whale for some many games.  And I think Unhallowed Data is one of the best of the adventure paths (rivaled only by the Orrorsh one, about which more in the next post).  But there is something about Tharkold's grimness and splatter-violence mixed with a more sophisticated-than-you-would-expect political intrigue that really works.  Tharkold is still every bit as fun as the old version, but now much better balanced.  Either way, I think these two really show off the best of the genre mash-up fun that Torg has to offer.

Gaming in Glorantha, Part 1--The World of Glorantha

[Note:  All art in this post was done by Jan Pospisil a/k/a "Merlkir" and can be found in the Guide to Glorantha]

My first encounter with Glorantha came in the form of a product called Under the Red Moon:  Imperial Lunar Handbook Volume 2.  This was in 2012 or so, and I was fully getting back into the tabletop RPG hobby after an extended absence beginning in the mid-90s.  I remembered reading a couple of old Dragon Magazine reviews of Runequest products back in the day, but otherwise I had no exposure to Glorantha.  So, when I saw the PDF for a very reasonable price, I bought it.  Let's see what this Glorantha thing is about, I thought.

The Lunars

Reading it was an experience that I will not forget.  First off, I couldn't really make heads or tails of it.  I like to think that I have good reading comprehension, and I have lots of experience reading about fictional worlds.  But I was way over my head reading this product, in a way that I simply don't experience very often.  The book had a flood of terms and concepts, presented not in normal game terms but much more "in character."  But not "in character" in the way that games like Shadowrun have in character material--it was more like reading something coming from a long-lost religious text.  It felt like I would have to do extensive background research and maybe learn other languages in order to understand what was going on.  And that was very frustrating, but also intriguing, a challenge.

Now, to be fair, Imperial Lunar Handbook Volume 2 is kinda impenetrable, even going back to it having read a ton more Glorantha stuff.  No one should start their journey in Glorantha there, and I don't think I would get any push-back from the folks at Chaosium, the game publisher where the setting originated and now have brought all things Glorantha under one roof.  But my experience of reading Imperial Lunar Handbook Volume 2 does reflect, in a hyper-distilled form, the baseline experience I have when I engage with Glorantha material.  There is something different about Glorantha, something mysterious and just a little bit inaccessible about the setting.  Reading Glorantha stuff still feels like reading a religious text, even if you have more sense of what is going on and who the players are.  In the interim I have amassed a pretty significant collection of Glorantha stuff, all of which is of extremely high quality.  It's been work, but I am an official Glorantha fan now.

This post was originally going to be a review of the new version of Runequest.  But it became clear to me that to do a review of Runequest, you need first to talk about Glorantha, and also you need to talk about the two other officially licensed tabletop RPG products that are set in Glorantha--Heroquest Glorantha and 13th Age in Glorantha.  So, this post is going to be about Glorantha, and the rest of the series will talk about the games.

So, what is Glorantha?  The best way to describe it is to compare it to Tolkien's Middle Earth.  Tolkien was living and writing in an England in decline as a result (in large measure) of its participation in the two World Wars, a linguist, steeped in medieval-era mythology and folklore, and a devout Roman Catholic.  Each of those facts can be seen in the structure and themes in his work.  Glorantha, by contrast, is primarily the vision of Greg Stafford, an American, an active member of the Bay Area counter-culture of the 1960s and living and writing in the aftermath of that era, who dove deeply into pre-Christian, Bronze Age mythology and anthropology and who was himself engaged in pagan and shamanic religious practices (indeed, he passed away last year while in a sweat lodge which, while obviously tragic, was also somewhat fitting).  As a result, Glorantha is both like Middle Earth (in the sense that it reflects Big Ideas) and utterly unlike it (as those Big Ideas are very different).

On a more concrete level, the core conceit of Glorantha is that the mythical understanding of the world and how it functions is literally true.  The sun is a literal embodiment of the sun god, who rises out of the ocean in the east at a specific point and sets in the west at another specific point.  The red moon in the sky is a mass of earth that was literally ripped out of the ground and formed into a sphere during the final apotheosis of Sedenya, the Red Goddess and patroness of the Lunar Empire.  Physics, chemistry, biology--none of that exists in Glorantha, as the world works according to mythical laws and logic, not scientific ones.

Moreover, the world of the gods and the world of "normal" people exist side-by-side.  While a worshiper honors the gods, the worshiper also participates in, and embodies, the stories of the gods.  This participation, referred to as "heroquesting," causes a "bleed" between the two worlds, so worshipers can take on the powers of the gods, but the actions of the worshipers can affect the gods.  The gods, with one notable and important exception (the aforementioned Red Goddess of the Moon), are limited by the Great Compromise known as Time to not directly walk Glorantha, but their powers and presence are everywhere and form the engine that drives everything.

Characters in Glorantha are defined primarily by culture, which in turns defines the gods and the foundational myths and stories that inform your character's life.  While the full Glorantha experience includes dozens of different cultures, the primary focus of most Gloranthan material are the Heortlings, and more specifically the Kingdom of Sartar.  The Heortlings generally venerate the Storm gods, led by Orlanth, and live in clans, which in turn are organized into tribes.  While the authors of Glorantha, especially the recent material, go out of their way to disclaim any one-to-one connection any Glorantha culture and any historical culture, I have always gotten a strong Celtic/Germanic vibe from the Heortlings.

The surrender of the Sartarites to the Lunar Empire

In the time period focused on in the game materials, the Orlanthi and especially the clans and tribes in Sartar, are menaced by the expansionist Lunar Empire.  While this conflict has the normal dimension of battles and territorial movement, it also has a mystical dimension, as the ascension of the Red Moon into the sky is a challenge to Orlanth's formerly unchallenged rule over the Middle Air.  What I love about this conflict is the way it subverts and challenges many of the pre-existing assumptions that a modern person brings to a setting like this.  See, most of the stories are told from the point of view of the Sartarites.  But if you look at the Lunar religion, it is one of tolerance, pluralism, and multi-culturalism--it's core theological motto is "We Are All Us."  The Sartarites, by contrast, are traditionalists and exceptionalists in every way, clinging to a very singular understanding of what is good and right.  Cheering on, or especially embodying through play, what are essentially conservative religious fanatics against the broad-minded forces of progress is going to be a strange experience for some folks.  But, on the other hand, the Lunars really are deeply colonial and often brutal in their imposition of "broad-mindedness" (they routinely deploy the Crimson Bat, a giant flying demon that must consume 25 people per week, as a terror weapon), so it's not at all hard to see where the Sartarites are coming from.  As someone who is into religion and thinking about religion in a big way, this kind of stuff is like catnip for me.

The nomads of Prax

The other thing that sets Glorantha apart is how deeply weird much of it is. One of my favorite little bits of Gloranthan weirdness are the morokanth of Prax.  Prax is a big grassland, and each Praxian tribe is a bunch of humans whose entire culture revolves around a particular four-legged animal (think the way that the Native Americans of the plains related to the bison).  All except the morokanth, who are four-legged creatures who rely on "herd men," basically humans with animal-level intelligence, for food and tools.  See, the gods of Prax had a lottery for each tribe to decide who would form the herd and who would be the herders, and in each tribe except one the humans won.  The morokanth think the humans cheated, but in any event they got to have the intelligence and their herds of humans do not.  That's deeply weird, and I love it.

Likewise, the standard fantasy races are weird in cool ways.  Dwarves are biological robots built for a single task in the greater project of rebuilding the World Machine, and don't age so long as they stay faithful to their task.  The elves are walking plants, and come in various types depending on which type of tree or other plant they are associated with.  Trolls are matriarchal, eat everything, and while brutal are not evil (and, in fact, have been a staunch foe of Chaos).  There are humans with blue and red skin, color-coded to reflect their caste functions and who also don't age so long as they stay within caste laws and taboos.  There are no orcs and other fantasy antagonist staples, but there are broo (goat-like creatures of Chaos that can breed with anything) and walktopi (i.e. walking octopi).  Dragons are miles long, god-level entities whose sleeping bodies form mountain ranges and other topographical features.

The Trolls

This mix creates a fantasy experience that is different from anything I have seen before, and certainly different from your standard ttrpg fantasy experience.  Reading Glorantha stuff is dislocating, like you are entering a funhouse with distorting mirrors.  If you are someone who has drunk deeply of Tolkien-inspired fantasy, some of the fantastical elements may not feel very fantastic anymore.  Since Glorantha is so different, it doesn't run into this problem.  And if you are in any way are burned out with standard fantasy, then this is a way to recharge those batteries.

But, I mean, is Glorantha good?  As a literary creation, absolutely--it's incredibly good.  It is the deepest and richest fantasy setting to come out of tabletop RPGs, and holds its own with any other literary creation you can come up with.  The spotlighted Sartar/Lunar conflict is great, and many of the other parts of the setting chronicled in the mammoth two volume Guide to Glorantha cry out for further development.  As I mentioned at the beginning, there is a tone to Glorantha, a way in which it communicates its mystery in a way that is hard to pin down.  Even a casual reading of a Gloranthan source makes it clear that there is something different going on here, something brilliant.  It has occurred to me recently that all of the world-building I've done myself since being exposed to Glorantha has been influenced by the world and its themes--the centrality of culture, the complicated villains with self-consistent motivations.

But is it good as a setting for a tabletop RPG?  That's a little more complicated.  The thing with Glorantha is that it seems to me if you are going to use it, you have to go all in.  The depth and the complexity and the cultures and the myths are the things that makes the setting worthwhile, and so everyone has to be committed to exploring these things.  If GM or the players are not going to focus on that stuff, and they just want to have a low-key, beer-and-pretzels style fantasy game, then there are far more accessible options out there.  I want desperately to run a Glorantha game, but I would only do so if I had full player buy-in, and they were stoked about digging deep into the Red Cow clan, its relationships to the other clans of the Cinsina tribe, and its role in the climatic events of the Hero Wars, or whatever hyper-specific Gloranthan angle we have settled on.  If they just wanted to fight some monsters and get some treasure, or they weren't interested in the sort of deep cultural play, then I think the complexity and nuance of Glorantha would be a hindrance to the experience at the table.  Because, while the stuff that is there in Glorantha is great, there is a lot of it, and it takes work to take it on board.  It's just not suited for a beer-and-pretzels-style game.

The other thing to say up front is that Glorantha has more-or-less a metaplot.  Runequest and 13th Age in Glorantha are set to default to 1625 ST, right at the beginning of the Hero Wars that end the Third Age; much of the published Heroquest material is set around 1615 ST.  The events of the Hero Wars, at least in broad strokes, are described in the Guide to Glorantha and a deeply strange and wonderful book called The King of Sartar.  You could, of course, ignore all of this material, and many of the published sources emphasize the principle of "Your Glorantha Will Vary."  But, again, you are going to want to incorporate that stuff--I mean, Prince Argrath rules (a life goal of mine is to find a way to work the phrase "This is how we deal with assassins who have no respect for life" into a conversation).  Still, running a game set in Glorantha brings into the the sorts of continuity questions that you get in games based on licensed properties.  Some GMs really, really hate this kind of thing, and if it bothers you, be warned going in.

Still, if any of this sounds remotely interesting to you, you owe it to yourself to take a dive into Glorantha.  The new Glorantha Sourcebook is one probably the most accessible introduction to the setting, though basically limited to the Dragon Pass region; beyond that is the Fully Monty of the Guide to Glorantha.  I would also recommend a series of free documents called "Heroquest Voices," which consist of a series of stories written as questions children ask their parents about Glorantha, told from the point of view of various Gloranthan cultures.  It's a really good way of showcasing how culture is so central to Glorantha, and gives you a sense of the different points of view.  There is also an online comic series, The Prince of Sartar, which is a good introduction to the big-name characters and the bigger metaplot and lore.

But, let's suppose you and your group are all in, and you want to play.  If so, which one of the three games should you go with?  That also depends.  First up for consideration is the newest version of the oldest Glorantha vehicle--Runequest: Roleplaying in Glorantha.