>My feeling is that the states of consciousness are more along the
>lines of:
>Infinity (possessed by dragons and superheroes)
>Illumination
>RuneQuest Sight
>One per Rune
>One per God
I would junk the concept of a state of consciousness corresponding to a rune. It's ugly and presumes that the runes are objectively valid which I don't think is true. For starters, the Orlanthi view of Death (Humakt) is very different from the Troll view of Death (Yelm). What runes would we be using? God Learner? Kralori? Dara Happan? I don't think that the God Learners ever worshipped the runes and if they didn't, who else did? If one needed to have the Rune Consciousness, I would use the same mechanics as a god.
I don't think the RuneQuest Sight was a 'state of consciousness'. My current feeling is that it was a spell (like mystic vision) making it another Secret Man was Not Meant to Know. The spell interpreted everything the God Learner saw in terms of the response a runic detector saw. For instance, a god learner well versed in illusion magic could tell whether some had spoken a lie by means of this spell. Conversely, when the God Learner experiences a concept he is unaware of and does not know of any runes for (like say Illumination), he will see nothing. Of course, the God Learners when they went HeroQuesting armed with this spell and their reductionist materialist philosophy, the results were catastrophic...
Furthermore besides Illumination there are many other spiritual states that do not seem to be accounted in the above list and yet do not seem to be connected with a God or Rune.
The Modern Malkioni strive to become Saintly. The Perfecti try to become something similar whereas the Losers strive to become Hideous Saints. This can't be the Law Rune or else Zzabur would have attained this status. The Kralori seek to become enlightened. This I think combines Illumination with their mysticism. The Mostali have diamond dwarfdom whereby the clay dwarf adopts inhuman mental discipline to compress his mind and soul into the Diamond pathways.
Lastly, although the Infinity rune is mentioned, I must express my dislike of the term whenever someone is said to have this rune. It sounds like a gutter god-learnerism. I prefer to think of the status as having reached _beyond_ the Tree of Emanations (or whatever takes your fancy) rather than having reached any stage _of_ the Tree.
>I'm thinking here about how this might work in the game rules.
>Without putting numbers on them, IMO, the more skill a person has in
>a state of consciousness the more easily s/he may reach it when s/he
>wants, and the more power s/he has with it.
I really think that we already have several mechanisms for dealing with the state (ie Runepower, Sorcery, Eastern Mysticism etc). Some cultures might have the same state but the path to achieving it is different. (I realise GoonQuest actually seeks to simplify the mechanics, but I was thinking of how it might be simulated in more complex systems while mindful of the twin precepts of MGF and KISS).
Powered by hypermail