Sorry Jonas, I wasn't responding to your post with the little diatribe on 'roleplaying the farm'. As usual, my stream of consciousness got a little jumbled.
>Perhaps I need to give an instructive example. Here follows the plot of
>"The Wolf Sceptre", an old scenario from when we were playing in Dragon
>Pass
I played a version of that scenario at GothCon in 1984 or something like that. We had a great time for sure, with a lot of bizarre occurrences, but I wouldn't want every session to be like that.
>What if you _don't_ lower the power level, but just implement the other
>change? Infusing the non-combat scenes with magic and myth is simply a
>matter of keeping your Glorantha Lore at the front of your mind when you're
>creating the NPCs and plotting out the scenario, isn't it?
Onviously not, since the game sessions grind to a halt when the non-action comes up and I can see the players' eyes glaze over with boredom (slight exaggeration here of course).
What the spirit plane looks like
- --------------------------------
Harald wrote a great summary of events in his campaign to illustrate the spirit plane, which inspired me to follow his example.
Now, the East Islanders don't speak of the spirit plane, but call it the dream world. The effect is the same though, it's the Otherworld.
The background for the situation was this: the PCs had their first ship built. Taniara, the best sailor among them supervised the construction. The ship builder asked her if she wanted the ship to have a soul of its own. 'Sure' she said (of course). So the ship builder explained the ritual and told her to go fish/hunt for a large dangerous sea beast. So she took a boat and went out and fished up a huge octopus (with an incredible kamikaze tactic, but that's another story).
The ship builder instructed her to cut the beast's eyes out and all the PCs sacrificed some POW into the eyes, to use as a gift for the spirit which would inhabit the ship. Then the ship builder led a ritual in which Taniara fell asleep and had a very vivid dream.
First she was standing on a beach of pure white sand, looking out at a bright turqoise sea. At the shore lay a huge sea shell shaped almost like a boat. So she stepped into the shell and drifted out into the sea.
Out there she encountered a shark. A contest of wills showed that Taniara was stronger, so the shark avoided physical confrontation. She asked it where there were sea serpents in this sea. (The PCs had killed a big sea serpent earlier and used its head as a figure head for the ship). Taniara had bested the shark, but it wasn't above playing a trick on her, so it said that in the sunken city, beyond the red island she would find sea serpents.
She spotted the red island on the horizon and steered the sea shell there. Beyond the island she could sea the columns and broken roofs of a sunken city through the crystal clear water. The shark was right, two huge sea serpents came swimming up from some lair in the city. They turned out to be guards of the triton king of the sea who had his abode in the city.
Taniara, overconfident as usual, demanded to speak with the king. She beat the serpents in a social contest, so they called for the king. When the powerful triton emerged, Taniara began to realize that she might be in over head (pun intended), but she bargained with him and with the addition of the POW gift and the support from back home by the other PCs and some relatives she convinced the king that her cause was worthy.
So the king of the sea gave her one of his sea serpents, but with two conditions. Each year on a specified week, Taniara has to make an offering to te sea and when the king calls, she must make haste to come to his service.
When Taniara woke up she no longer held wet, slimy octopus eyes, but two slightly glowing amber orbs, which they put in the sea serpent figure head's empty eye sockets. So now all the PCs can access the MPs of the ship spirit.
Taniara also found that her eyes had changed colour from dark brown to blue-green.
I improvised the entire quest. I had no idea from the start that the king of the sea would show up. When I needed to resolve events I used my own diceless heroquest rules.
Erik on Mostali and spirits:
>I think Mostali are full aware of the existence of spirits. They just
>see them as another form of matter, or rather an effect of certain
>interactions of matter and energy.
Perhaps they see physical bodies as hardware and spirits as software?
Martin Crim:
g>& D. Hall et al., Korata by Guy Hoyle (1/2 page), Atek's Ghost by Gre
Guy Hoyle:
>That's funny, it must be something that I wrote, submitted, and then
>forgot about. Just what the heck IS Korata anyway?
I think I might have an explanation. I submitted a piece on the Korolan games to Mike. I think that may be the cause of the confusion (the names Korata and Korola do bear some resemblance).
Nils W | Here we are! Office: niwe_at_einku.ericsson.se | We sail on a ship made of dreams.Home: nilsw_at_ibm.net
Powered by hypermail