I'll start by qualifying my response in three directions.
Firstly, if this malarkey is all vitally necessary in order to adopt the RoleMaster RPG system for Glorantha, then obviously nothing I say can add anything of use to Richard's campaign and I'm clearly wasting my time considering his posts. (From my recollection of RuleMaster, however, you don't *have* to destroy the uniquely interesting features of fantasy worlds in order to use their rules -- although, cf. ICE's Middle-Earth modules, it clearly helps to ignore colourful background in favour of Stock Fantasy).
And secondly, given Richard's original obsession with strict adherence to "THE One True Glorantha", the fact that his rather unnecessary theories are drawing so much flak from so many "usually well-informed sources" might give him pause for thought.
And thirdly, if Richard feels that it's vitally necessary to Know the Secret of the God Learners in order to role-play in Glorantha, he's wrong. Almost none of us do. What's interesting is that we don't feel the need to warp our campaign worlds to fit our theories of what that Secret might be.
> Chicken and egg.
> The answer I would propose lies pre great compromise. In other words,
> gods were allowed to exist without worship before the great compromise.
> At that point worship was established but after the compromise they
> needed it to continue to exist.
Not so. See your original quote from Greg Stafford. If the Lunars wiped out the worship of Orlanth, but did not heroquest to destroy Orlanth, Orlanth would nonetheless continue to exist. (This is a strictly literal interpretation of a source you introduced to the argument. I can see no other valid reading).
>> There is no such thing as "a huge plague with no Malia presence", from >> a Theistic POV.
> That's exactly what I believe. So why can there be storms without Orlanth
> (or Storm God)?
There can't. You are the only one who thinks it necessary that there can be.
You seem to require that every cloud formation be the conscious result of a prior act of sentient worship, and that in lands where nobody worships the Cloud God there will be no cloud cover, since this is the only way that your "scientific/atheist" Gloranthans will be able to disprove the existence or importance of the Cloud God (i.e. they never see clouds, so they don't need theories to account for them).
This seems purest baloney to me. If you are so worried about what will happen when a credulous theist travels outside familiar territory, then what on earth will the Scientific Atheist think when he does so ("Wow! There's a SUN! And WINDS!! And SHEEP!!!")
> If it's an absurdity then you'll be able to give me loads of examples
> where it isn't true.
I am aware of no instances in Glorantha where the sun shines less brightly over a country on account of there being no worshippers of the Sun God in that country. Cases that come to mind (e.g. the Shadows of Shadows Dance, Kahar's Sea of Fog, the "greyness" of Arolanit) can be attributed to other known features of those lands: the local strength of Darkness in Dagori Inkarth, the Fog, and that naughty Brithini habit of Tapping their ambient environment.
Counter-argument: who is the Sun God of Prax? And is the Sun less bright in the desert Wasteland because you can't pin a name or attribute much worship to him? I rest my case.
> As far as Arolanit is concerned, first of all they worship the
> Invisible God, which is worship, isn't it? Couldn't it be that
> monotheists worship one god which has, effectively, all runes
> associated with it?
But by your argument, that god should have "all GODS" associated with it, no? Otherwise you could have a storm that was associated with the Storm Rune but not with Orlanth (owner of the Storm Rune), couldn't you? And that would collapse your theory, you think. (I don't -- I'm just trying to follow your train of thought).
> I'm not trying to screw up Glorantha. I'm postulating theories to try to
> explain Glorantha.
They don't work very well.
> I propose a theory and make predictions from it. If it's wrong then
> my predictions will fail.
Name one successful prediction that has arisen from your theory. ("There are caverns full of death-cultists under Brithos. Theists who travel outside their homeland invariably lose faith. There are storm-worshipping Care Bears in every windy forest. There are zillions of magical fish in Drospoly's Lightless Depths. The Sun shines out of Yelm-worshippers' arses, but you can't see daylight in Orlanthi lands").
> I made a statement that I believed sun worshippers on earth believed
> that the sun shone brightest over their temples. Peter and Nick want
> proof! Let me simply state that I _imagine_ this to be the case. It
> seems to be very much the sort of thing that religions say.
OK, then, but it is common for a Real World argument to be introduced to add credibility to a proposed feature of Glorantha. In this case, you are saying "The sun should shine brighter in sun-worshipping lands [*] because people thought it did in the Real World." We, reasonably enough, ask "Says who?" An unsubstantiated and unshared belief that something is so in the RW does not carry much persuasive force.
Nick
:::: web: <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Nick_Brooke>
[*] I pass over the obvious chicken-and-egg situation -- people are more likely to worship the Sun in lands where it is impressively bright and hot -- as Richard doesn't include these in his theories.
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