Bell Digest v930921p4

From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RQ Digest Maintainer)
To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest)
Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Tue, 21 Sep 1993, part 4
Reply-To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RuneQuest Daily)
Sender: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM
Precedence: junk

The RuneQuest Daily and RuneQuest Digest deal with the subjects of
Avalon Hill's RPG and Greg Stafford's world of Glorantha.

Send submissions and followup to "RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM",
they will automatically be included in a next issue.  Try to change the
Subject: line from the default Re: RuneQuest Daily...  on replying.

Selected articles may also appear in a regular Digest.  If you 
want to submit articles to the Digest only,  contact the editor at
RuneQuest-Digest-Editor@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM.

Send enquiries and Subscription Requests to the editor:

RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Henk Langeveld)

---------------------

From: joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner)
Subject: Re: RuneQuest Daily, Sat, 18 Sep 1993, part 1
Message-ID: 
Date: 20 Sep 93 21:05:28 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1761

Henk Langeveld in X-RQ-ID: 1726
>Subject: Re: The Masks of God

>Paraphrasing:

>>He could succeed (in mundane terms): he could convince himself that he's 
>>right. He could perhaps succeed (in a HeroQuest): he could definitively 
>>"discover" that the two gods are the same (of course, this is a personal 
>>religious experience, thus not definitive in any global sense). He might 
>>even become a cult hero, if he can find a way of showing anyone else what 
>>he's learned, and have them believe him. Then the Boar Cult will get 
>>stories of how their god gored the Devil, and go on to higher and better 
>>things.

One question I kept asking myself: what would this Boar-God worshipper 
have to do to be accepted as Storm-Bull? Would he have to join as 
totally new member, i.e. undergo the social, intellectual and spiritual 
initiation process and tests, could he join as an associate, or as for 
a sub-cult? How much POW would he offer, and to whom?  Would it be 
possible to be initiated to the same deity through a multitude of 
avatars AT THE SAME TIME? This is getting hairy if regarded from the 
game point of view.

>A question which has kept me thinking on this is: Would the HeroQuest
>be necessary?   Maybe, if he's part of a larger group, who become lost
>in a foreign country, they may, as a group decide/discover/realise that
>the Storm Bull would be a different pose of the Great Boar, and try to
>join in any worship service.   As Loren says:

>LM>> Every worship service is a heroquest, and such worship slowly changes 
>LM>> the mythic landscape for a particular locale or bloodline. Thus tradi-
>LM>> tions develop and diverge, so that people worship differently in diff-
>LM>> erent places...

>Nick>YES! YES! You are *so* right in what you say. Hurrah for common sense!

Weeellll, a worship service creates a reality on the god-plane, but to 
call it a HeroQuest...

>Which only strengthens my fears about the way in which the God Learners
>operated.   Take one Illuminate, so that people won't detect his real
>affiliation, who just happens to have a very convincing story about 
>this new god,  and he starts a 'fake' worship ceremony.  *His* motives
>don't really count in the ceremony, it's that of the worshipers.  If
>those are swayed by his story, they could, without realizing, create
>the god on the spot, if they're sincere...  The 'priest' could use
>any of his other cult affiliations to produce some convincing magical
>effects...

Why have a God-Learner/Illuminate present? Take any ordinary bunch of 
worshippers. Let them have a spiritual connection to an aspect of a 
deity. Gather these worshipers in a service and they'll create their 
subjective reality. If some Uroxi view the Stormbull as a big male 
cattle, others as impala buck, and yet others as a human with horns, 
I'd be interested in the mask of the avatar they'll get. If all of them 
have the same idea of how the god willl appear, it will appear that 
way. Read Terry Pratchett's Small Gods about how Patina, Ephebian 
Goddess of Wisdom (spoofing Athena) came to the Penguin as pet instead 
of the owl.

One God Learner experiment created a god in Umathela which didn't exist 
before. They got a group of natives worshipping this "fake" deity, and 
at their downfall it manifested itself.

(Not too dissimilar from the conception of dream dragons: one draconic 
mind causes mundane plane manifestations, a group of human minds causes 
gd plane manfestations...)

Did anybody notice the sentence "The earliest practitioners were the 
Seven Explorers, [...]" on p.24 in the Glorantha Book of the Glo Box?
^^^^^

Seven mothers, Seven lightbringers, ...

It really makes me wonder how many companions Orlanth had when rescuing 
Yelm...

-- 
--  Joerg Baumgartner   joe@sartar.toppoint.de

---------------------

From: cpearce@nemesis.acs.unt.edu (Chris Pearce)
Subject: Adjacent cultures in the River of Cradles
Message-ID: <9309202057.AA29207@nemesis.acs.unt.edu>
Date: 20 Sep 93 10:57:53 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1762

Glorantha is a world sharply divorced from modern-day culture. As a player,
it is mind-bogglingly difficult to achieve the correct cultural perspective.

The cultural descriptions presented in the Player's Guide to Genertela
are helpful, but in a culturally diverse area such as the Zola Fel
river valley, those descriptions are hardly sufficient.

In the Zola Fel river valley, complicated interactions occur. Primitive
riverfolk live next to civilized Sun Domers. Nomadic beast riders raid
Orlanthi villages. Some blurring of cultural boundaries must be occurring.
"What's happening at the edges?" must be a valid question for players and GMs
to ask.

In the modern world, several boundaries prevent cultural blending. I have
no experience in anthropolgy, but I can make reasonable guesses at a few.

Geographical isolation helps preserve cultures. Primitive cultures still exist
in the Amazon rain forest and in Africa. (As a side note, those PBS specials
that describe primitive culture have become *much* more interesting since
I've begun playing in Glorantha.) The Australian aboriginal culture 
probably would rank as a primitive culture, except that I don't know
how assimilated into Australian urbanite culture that culture has become.
The remoteness of the Amazon and African tribes from centers of civilization
seems to be one reason their culture is still intact.

Language helps preserve cultures. I *can* talk reasonably intelligently
about this subject. When two cultures interact at length (usually because
one has conquered the other), a pidgin language can develop. (I will 
find out specifically under what conditions such a language will
develop and contribute this data in a follow up posting.)

This pidgin language is usually extremely simple--it contains only the
more basic parts of speech from the parent languages. Function words and
complex inflections disappear. It doubtless loses some of the expressibility
of either parent language.

When two languages have been in contact for a generation, then exciting
things start to happen, because the *kids* start to use the pidgin language.
At that point, the language becomes a creole language. Creoles are
really full-fledged languages that pick up their own unique characteristics
and offer full expressibility.

Religion helps preserve cultures.

Finally, politics and political boundaries help preserve cultures. 

A key here seems to be isolation. Geography, language, and political
boundaries serve to hamper communication between different cultures because
they hamper interaction between peoples of those different cultures.

Another key seems to be caution and conservatism on the part of a
culture's decision makers. Culturally, both nomadic and primitive
cultures of Glorantha consider the more advanced cultures as having
chosen a dangerously weak method of group survival. By rigorously
maintaining the traditional methods of accomplishing the tasks
of survival, the also help preserve their culture.

The Zola Fel river valley, therefore, seems an anomaly. The cultures of the
valley are not isolated geographically from each other. Also, except for the
insular Sun Domers, they don't really seem to be isolated politically.
The other major settlement of the river valey, Pavis, is a cultural
polyglot, mixing Praxian, Lunar, and Orlanthi cultures.  Finally, 
there do not seem to be any pidgins or creoles that have developed--
except, perhaps, Tradetalk. 

Pavis is the most unusual case, since it combines some many different
cultures--Pelorian expatriates, Pavis residents, Praxian nomads, Zola
Fel riverfolk. The Genertela handbook describes these cultures as
*radically* different. It seems to be a potentially explosive combination of
different religious and worldviews. (What keeps horse-hating Praxian
nomads from running rampant through town slaughtering horses, for instance?)

So what's happening at the borders of these cultures? And what is the
upshot to Gloranthan players?
-- 
Chris Pearce -- cpearce@nemesis.acs.unt.edu
How do you say delicious?                          How do you say delovely? 
How do you say delectable, define?             How do you say - deGORgeous? 
How do you say dewith-it?                            How do you say Delite?

---------------------

From: henkl@glorantha (Henk Langeveld - Sun Nederland)
Subject: Re: Why change spirit magic?
Message-ID: <9309202256.AA20679@glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM>
Date: 21 Sep 93 02:56:45 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1763

davidc@cs.uwa.edu.au (David Cake) in <15B68D22BB6@mkt46.wharton.upenn.edu>:

>> reason why I advocate the spirit = spell ideas, the
>> spirit helper and animist concepts: it gives players
>> some idea of what is going on.
>	I have some problems with it. I am unconvinced that this is how magic
>is supposed to work in Glorantha, and it introduced (IMHO needless) rules
>incompatibilities and role-playing complications. The things that people have
>been describing as animist spirit magic sound a lot more like ordering
>magic spirits around than casting spells. I'm not saying that it is 
>something that shouldn't be in the game (indeed, its given me lots of great 
>ideas for role-playing shamans) , but it is not something that I want to have
>replace spirit magic. I think of spell spirit combats as more like an ordeal,
>or a ritual trial, to gain the power of X by confronting its essence, rather
>than a straight out attack on a spirit and capture of it. Remember spell 
>spirits are non-sentient, and I would rather that they stayed that way.

I prefer your model of the spell spirits as the essence of the spell,
although I appreciate the idea of interpreting Bladesharp as 
'talking' to your sword and asking it to help you.  Whatever metaphor
you use, it's all a matter of focussing on what you're trying to do.

I do agree that the spellteaching ritual and most spirit stuff could
use more role-playing incentives.  The possibilities are there, we 
just have too few examples...

About Improve(Skill): I'd really use 5%/mp, no more, which would make
Bladesharp a specific instance of this spell -- Improve(Sword attack).
Apply 1pt side effects, for handling additional ENC, armor points, etc.

-- 
Henk	|	Henk.Langeveld@Sun.COM - Disclaimer: I don't speak for Sun.
oK[]	|	RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM

---------------------

From: Tom.Zunder@mettav.royle.org (Tom Zunder)
Subject: Gods
Message-ID: 
Date: 20 Sep 93 18:22:40 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1764

God Learners and Gods
---------------------

Well, do the gods really exist?

That's it, innit?

Well the answer is of course No and Yes.

I think that Terry Pratchett's book Small Gods is the best
example. The gods are there, waiting to be worshipped, but
in what form, they either cannot or do not care to determine.

Thus a core god such as Orlanth can be viewed differently, but
behind all versions is the core Orlanth.

Thus I doubt that a God Learner could create a deity from
scratch, but could re-awaken or re-direct or alter the aspect
of an existing spirit or deity or proto-deity into something
suitable for his plans.

Alternativley all the retrogressive muddying and dirtying of
Gloranthan mythology is a God Learner attempt by Nick Brooke
and Greg "Nick Illuminated Me" Stafford!

I try and keep my mind open by refusing to decide on this, thus
I can achieve the God Learner ambiguity of believng orlanth to
be as Cults of Prax said he was and also recognis that he's a
cultural fiction and also only a game construct..

This does induce paranoia and schizophrenia, of course..