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This is the RuneQuest Daily Bulletin, a mailing list on
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From: john.hughes@anu.edu.au (John P Hughes)
Subject: Games etc
Message-ID: <9404160050.AA16207@cscgpo.anu.edu.au>
Date: 16 Apr 94 15:49:46 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3669
Howdy folks, John Hughes here.
Two sections to this long posting - an
article on Gloranthan games put together with player characters in mind,
and something decidedly light and frothy for your amusement.
GAMES GLORANTHANS PLAY
Here's a real Gloranthan game volunteered by Greg in one of his sillier
moments (see trollball, Mostali, Grotaron, Avalon Hill, Lhankor Mhy etc).
You need several small humanoids (the 'balls') and a high wall or cliff. Each
player takes a ball (usually trollkin) and THROWS IT against the wall as
hard as s(he) can. The winner is the one whose humanoid STICKS TO THE
WALL highest from the ground. It's called SPLAT!, and I have a suspicion it
might possibly be Uz in origin :-).
- SARTARITE GAMES
The Irish Celts were very big on Hurling, a no holds-barred form of hockey
(see the stories of Cu Chulain's youth in the Tain for details). It sounds
related to the Sartarite 'full-contact golf' mentioned earlier.
Divination and oracular games for fun and profit are very popular. Examples
include dream and vision interpretation, catching a hare or other small
animal by hand and examining its entrails, and 'Scarring' - telling another's
fortune by examining the faint scars left by healing spells on the head and
skull. ('He's gone to have his head examined'). Note that these are officially
'party-time' divination - priests of any persuasion take a dim view of
others encroaching on their turf (and income).
Card games (with hand painted cards) are very very rare, and associated
with Lunar decadence. The Gloranthan Tarot deserves a discussion stream
in itself. Suffice to say, any set of cards would be an unusual and valuable
piece of booty.
Spinning tops are very popular with young and old, and in fact play an
important part in both official and unofficial Orlanthi divination
ceremonies. Skip the Wind and Eurmal's Boast are both divination games
played with tops on some marked surface similar to a oiuji board.
Most indoor sports seem to have developed as accompaniments to the noble
art of feasting. Celtic 'chess' or brandub, bone dice games, and storytelling
of the 'tall story' variety loom large. Simple feasting games include Nine
Holes and Fox and Geese (Broo & Cattle). See the SCA reference below for
rules. Mumbledy-peg, anyone?
If you want some STRONG local colour derived from the Britons, add a
professional farting choir. A possible PC hook: sent out at midnight to
obtain more beans ;-(. Note: this is entertainment for the nobility only:
most Sartarites consider it 'high' art. Perhaps there's a Urox sub-cult for
this...
Storm is gambling game played with bone dice. It's played on a painted
board or simply scratched in the dirt: an inward spiral (Air Rune), marked
with 'spots', and every 5th spot marked as a 'storm'. Landing on a storm
gets you an extra dice throw. Many elaborations exist, and many are made
up as the game (and the drinking) progresses. Best left to your imagination
really...
Popular outdoor games for festivals and Holy Days include:
* Hoodman's Blind: a version of Blindman's Bluff - nearly everyone has
a hood on their cloak),
* Catch the Devil: everyone is blindfolded: the 'Devil', wearing bells, must
avoid them while staying within the playing area, and
* Geo's Kettle: a blindfolded player armed with a stick (or something
bigger, - we're Orlanthi after all) guards a kettle and ladle. The others
must sneak up and hit the kettle with the ladle. If anyone dies, their
relatives get to keep the kettle...
And lets not forget ROLEPLAYING. In a culture where the warrior ethos is
esteemed and where many temple rituals are sacred dramas recreating the
feats of the mighty, its no wonder that the young are encouraged to play
out the tales of myth and heroquest. It's a way for the young (and
outsiders) to learn the great stories while improving their martial and
dramatic (ceremony) skills. Its not without its dangers: even childrens'
rituals can evoke stray magical effects (half the fun really) and on rare
occasions thrust them into the heroplane. In 1619 in Ironspike, eleven
children were crucified after being discovered by a Lunar patrol playing
'Lightbringer's Quest'. They had substituted the Red Emperor for the Devil,
and the young girl playing his part had been strung up by her feet over a pig
sty...
- DORADDI PAMELTELA
When the Monsoon comes, many tribes of both the Left and the Right Hand
have no option but to sit and wait for the rain to stop. They come together
in large camps, and gather in segregated same-sex groups (as is the
dominant custom). Tension and boredom can lead to quarreling and
violence, even with fellow Husband-Takers. Therefore games play a very
important role in defusing tension.
In such situations, gambling becomes rife among the Right Hand folk. Bored
Right Handers are said to bet on ANYTHING. Herds of buffalo have been
known to change hands after a game of 'Wait'. In Wait, a piece of offal is
placed in an open spot, and players bet on the portion where flies will
first lay eggs. In the wet season, this can take a looong time...
Because of the Meeting Contest, Doraddi always look forward to unusual
challenges of skill, and try to invent and practice new ones at every
opportunity. During the Wet, Meeting Challenges are often organised
between different skins to practice. These are semi-ritual occasions, for
everyone holds the Meeting Contest to be sacred, the second greatest of
Pamalt's Gifts. Unusual skill-games include jewelry and mask making,
water divining, sandstone carving, creative tattooing and sexual massage.
Variations on HopScotch and Rope Skipping are very common amongst both
children and adults. In Hopscotch, the path is maze (often a 'safe' secular
version of a sandpainting), and players must attempt to pick up stones
along the way.
Hunting and gathering are crucial survival skills, but they are first taught
to children as games. They are often practiced by adults as games.
They include stalking, ringtoss, knife toss, spear throwing, darts, and
'grease the gerbil'. (The last is not the apocryphal Terran pastime but a
game of attempting to recapture any small greased animal).
Storytelling and singing games are always popular. Games include:
* Charging Lion, where an original story is passed on to the next person at
a crucial moment. 'She was alone and wounded. The Thylacine charged
forward, baring its great teeth. Take over cousin...'
* What Pamalt Did, where players are challenged to recount a particular
myth, or make up a story to show how Guidefather might have handled a
given situation. This an example of an entire class of 'dilemma' games.
Often the audience must complete or provide an ending to the teller's tale.
* Naming, where players are challenged to give the ancestry of anyone in
the immediate kin group all the way back to the First Drinkers. (Mostly
they can, too - though women are much better at this than men).
* How and Why, a version on 'Just So' stories - 'Tell me cousin, why does
the tortoise have a broken back?'
Riddling is very popular among the Doraddi, and the connotations that such
activity carries in the north are unknown here. (Are there many Illuminates
in Pamaltela? I've never encountered a tribe where such a term is used.
However, many do speak of semi-mythical wanderers called !Darhatti,
'those of gentle light', men and women whose 'bodies are filled with liquid
quartz' and who have become 'brothers and sisters to the gods'. These
beings are spoken of with reverence and respect. Go figure.)
Proverbs are similarly popular, and they provide guides to acceptable
behaviour. The respondent must provide the second half, either known
or made up. Unethical or cynical responses can get you into a lot of trouble.
Q. 'We know who we love..."
A. 'But we don't know who loves us.'
Q.'If a child listens to Guidefather... '
A. 'He will sit with chiefs'.
Q. 'A husband may go, a child become an adult..."
A. "But a brother is to be cherished forever.'
Harmonic singing is very popular, and sometimes an entire encampment
will sing these unearthly wordless harmonies for hours at at a time. Given
the prevalence of Songs of Power in Pamaltela, these concerts will
sometimes create random magical effects. The Doraddi love music, and
drums and clapper sticks are very common. Communal drumming sessions
will also continue for long periods, accompanied by dancing, and often
inducing ecstatic or oracular states. A much loved musical instrument
among the Right Hand Tribes is the Tek'na (!tek//na). It's a small, flat
piece of wood four or five inches square, with eleven metal prongs
attached to it, arranged in two rows across two bridges. When played, it is
always placed upon a hollow melon rind, which acts as a resonator.
Plucking the prongs produces a bell-like vibration. It uses a musical scale
based upon the nine colours of the rainbow. Left Hand Tribes fear the
Tek'na, for improvised music might undo the songs of creation.
Dancing games are also very common. The one called Ostrich provides a
fairly typical example. A dancing couple face each other. As one crouches
or bends forward from the hips, the other swings his or her leg over the
first without missing a beat or disrupting the flow of the dancing body.
This is extremely difficult, as the Ostrich also has to make certain
movements and sounds, and sometimes move at counterpoint to the rhythm.
Eventually the game progresses to Ostriches fighting or mating...
LOZENGE-SQUARE GAMES
I suspect the most popular game in all Glorantha is storytelling. A close
second would be CATTLE (or other herd beast) RAIDING, a variation on the
universally esteemed 'HEY I'M BORED LETS GO AND RAID THE NEIGHBOURS'.
Prove your adulthood, get talked about, and maybe acquire something
valuable in the process. The 'rules' would normally be adjudicated along kin
lines, and would range from friendly 'test each others defences' cousin-
raids (where violence is minimal and stolen beasts are returned for a
small reward) to all out kill-and-be-killed raiding. I believe that even this
dangerous extreme is as often done as much for the 'sport' as
the material plunder.
Battle magic is a source of wonder to children everywhere; and endless fun
is to be had Disrupting strangers' horses, climbing into the loft for
Befuddle parties, Purging the neighbour's cat or applying Bladesharp to
sewing needles.
[For legal, moral and aesthetic reasons, the fun-filled sections on 'Games
Broo Play', 'What to do after the Darts Competition', 'Thirteen Uses for
Major Heads on Rainy Afternoons' and '101 Playful Uses for a Wolf-Pirate
Captive' have been deleted from this document.]
How about playing actual games 'in session'? I have a copy of Viking Chess
(Hnefatafl) that was obtained from the Viking Village Centre in York. Full
rules for many historic earth games are given in the games article in the
SCA's 'Known World Handbook'. Standard references for historic games
include 'Games of the World', edited by Frederic Grunfield, and R. C. Bell's
'Board and Table Games From Many Civilisations'.
SOMETHING LIGHT AND FROTHY...
A few years ago, the Sydney roleplaying convention circuit
went through an even weirder than usual period where
people would write up bizarre module adds in local magazines,
and then other people would take up the challenge and WRITE
& RUN said modules. My 'Necro-file' poster for 'White Slave Zombie
Flesh Eaters On Broadway' became a freeform module by Robert
Prior, and an add for a Call of Cthulhu multiform for five penguin
investigators backfired when I had to WRITE the damned thing for
Necronomicon III. Anyway, I preface the following in this way because
THIS IS NOT ONE OF THEM. IT'S SERIOUS DAMMIT! I've harboured the errr,
dream for this module since 1988, its just that Philippa wouldn't let me
write it. Not Ironspike V by any means, something more in the tradition of
'7 Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em'. If you're really unlucky, it will show up at RQ-CON
DOWN UNDER next year. Enjoy...
The Wyrm's Footprint presents a fringe-Ironspike
systemless multiform...
Roleplaying as you like it - much ado about nothing!
Greg Stafford meets William Shakespeare
in a two session romantic comedy for five
Gloranthan Ducks with ATTITUDE.
Oh brave (ONE TRUE) world, that has such creatures in it.
Sartar, 1617. Ten leagues from Ironspike and a thousand leagues from
care...
However, a tempest is about to overtake the duck denizens inhabiting
the peaceful Sartarite hamlet of Lear. Lunar troops - responding
measure for measure to the bandit escapades of Orthello the Moor-duck
and his merry wives of Wind-Soar - have kidnapped a number of
village elders. These hostages, including King John, two gentlewomen
called Verona, and seven of the eight Henrys, will soon be in one hot
stew. The Lunars plan to serve them up as very special guests at the
wicked sheriff's twelfth night dinner unless Orthello turns himself in.
Into this comedy of errors waddle our heroes, four star-crossed lovers
and the dread, (though rotund) Death-Lord Quackbeth. The horrible
discovery of the missing Henry (the sixth) in three parts means
even nastier complications in the form of a broo bachelor's party
and an Aldryami exotic dancer with a big copper axe. What is the secret
contained in the wagon full of beetroot seized by the Lunars from Octavian,
the Merchant of Menace? Will the Lunars, led by Julius, ceasure the
village? Who is the mysterious stranger in the donkey mask and iron
armour? What about the sacred Ulerian fertility play? Will love's labour be
lost or can it be that all's well that ends well. Or to put it another
way will the elders truly get stuffed, or can our heroes tell the
Lunars to 'get pucked' and so ensure the taming of the broo?
FIND OUT IN...
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DUCK
Romance, confusion, magic and mystery.
Ducks, elves, fairies and broo.
A fun-filled feast of frolic and fantasy that'll quack you up.
Sauce L'Orange?
Featuring a cameo appearance by Nick Brooke, pursued by a white bear.
Original soundtrack for two Storm Bull and a krashkid by David Hall.
______________________________________________________
I hesitate to bring this up, but why does KOS refer to ducks as
'wereducks'? I daren't not think. Greg's persecution of this romantic,
serious, and tragic people is relentless.
John
john.hughes@anu.edu.au