>Chaos is a cop-out for plot writers
>- -----------------------------------
>It's very easy to write a plot with obvious "Good Guys" (the PCs) and
>"Bad Guys" (the chaotics). It gives the PCs a good motivation.
>Chaos has nifty "weird stuff" for a challenge. But doing so cheapens
>Glorantha. Good drama needs well-rounded characters, with both good
>and evil aspects to their personalities.
Such as the Lunar Empire and it's various religions, for example? The enlightened Lunar appreciation of chaos is far from black and white, good vs. evil. Illumination offers a completely different understanding of Chaos to the one we've been debating so far, which I have alluded to obliquely.
> .....Very often, conflicts are not caused by differences
>between Good and Evil, but simply by different sets of people having
>different agendas.
Such as the Illuminated Mistresses of the Sedenya cult, the Red Emperor cult, the White Moon faction and the Rufelzan Redneck. All competing factions within the Lunar Empire with very different long term agendas. This, without even stepping outside the empire. For Orlanthi Chaos is evil, but that simply isn't so for much of Glorantha.
>Chaos means no moral or ethical decisions
>- -----------------------------------------
I simply don't see how you can say that Gaumata's Vision offers no moral or ethical challenges. Take the same PCs that slaughtered the children and then show them a Teelo Nori Creche for the Chaoticaly Afflicted. See how the healing love of the Goddess brings succour to the stricken! Contrast with bands of roving Sartarite thugs slaughtering law abiding, Yelm worshiping tax collectors because they're 'Lunars' and 'Lunars is Chaos!'.
> ......But give all the
>characters, PCs and NPCs, more objectives, more avenues, and you'll
>get a more rewarding and enjoyable game.
I couldn't agree more.
>In fact, I think that the presence of Chaos in Glorantha is so
>pernicious that I think it should be removed from all out contacts
>with the world. If we do that, what do we loose? Very little, if
>anything.
Nobody is stopping you from interpreting Glorantha your own way in your own game. Everyone does that. I'm sure even Greg does that. if he were to run a game set in sartar now I'm sure there would be differences from when he ran similar games back in 1980. At the end of the day though, Snakepipe Hollow is a depressin on northern Dragon pass that's infested with broo. That's just thye way it is. That doesn';t mean you have to run a game set there if you don't want to.
If you want to create a completely different game world in which chaos does not feature but which still has lots of familiar Gloranthan features then that's fine by me. This kind of thing is exactly what Questworld was supposed to offer. However such a world in not Glorantha, and nor should it be.
>The real world doesn't have clearly labelled evil. This makes for
>difficult judgements. Gameworlds like _Call_of_Cthulhu_ don't have
>clearly labelled evil. That makes for interesting play. Why should
>Glorantha be so impoverished?
It isn't. ok, Orlanthi and Praxians are rabidly anti-chaos, but Pelorians by and large are not. Kralorelans also have very different takes on these things. The situation in Glorantha as a whole is nowhere near as simplistic as you are implying. I'm runnign a game at the moment in which the players are all Lunars. A game like this puts a completely different spin on things.
Simon Hibbs
End of The Glorantha Digest V6 #529
Powered by hypermail