From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RQ Digest Maintainer)
To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest)
Reply-To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RuneQuest Daily)
Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Thu, 19 May 1994, part 3
Sender: Henk.Langeveld@Holland.Sun.COM
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From: niwe@ppvku.ericsson.se (Nils Weinander)
Subject: East Isles and other
Message-ID: <9405181723.AA04175@ppvku.ericsson.se>
Date: 18 May 94 21:23:42 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 4060
Nils Weinander writing
garydj@ditard.dit.gov.au writes:
>Were the East Isles once a continent?
The East Isles were once part of the continent of Vithela, which
was torn apart by monsters during the gods' war. At least that's
what I have found on the subject.
I agree with Devin Cutler on the literary vs gaming Glorantha issue.
Here in the daily the gaming side tends to drown in posts on cultural
initiation and Malkioni theology. But that's our fault who write to
the daily, right?
Personally I don't mind the changes in history and myth (Yelmalio/Elmal),
I just use the version I prefer, but it must be incredibly confusing
to new Glorantha gamers. At least it should say in big friendly letters:
'Gloranthan information is often inconsistent and may be contradicted
later by new information. Please use whichever version works the
best for you, or make up your own if there is something you don't like.'
Let's not fall into the 'One True World' trap.
Anyway, there should be no difference in value between roleplaying a game
of heroic fantasy in Glorantha, roleplaying a politically correct
sociological simulation of the agricultural year and discussing the
literary world. So, condescending branding of gaming issue speculation
as GodLearner-ism or RQ2-ism does seem a bit unfriendly.
/Nils W
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From: aweill@netcom.com (Andrew J. Weill)
Subject: Re: RuneQuest Daily, Wed, 18 May 1994, part 3
Message-ID:
Date: 18 May 94 04:30:08 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 4061
On Wed, 18 May 1994, Devin Cutler wrote:
>
> I mean, let's face it, if the Jews were constantly receiving direct updates
> from Yaweh on a weekly basis, Judaism (or any other religion) would probably
> become a very uniform affair. Regional differences in religions arise because
> of human interpretations (which differ) regarding how God wants people to
> act.
>
To which I must say: I respectfully disagree. There are numerous sects
of Jews (many of whose members believe they are getting weekly or daily
updates from God) and whose views differ diametrically. Yes, there are
certain common points. But no one could confuse me (a very Reform Jew)
with a Hasidic Jew. This is because there are cultural modifications to
every religion. Direct updates from God will always be understood in
context of the local culture, and even then there is considerable room
for diversity.
I don't believe in Divinations which give simple answers to complex
cultural questions. Imagine a Divination by a Christian: "How should we
treat homosexuals?" The answer comes back: "Treat them according to My
word." (A typical Divination response, in my view.) Certain priests
will say this means to condemn homosexuality in accordance with
Leviticus; others would argue that this means to tolerate differences in
accordance with the larger messages of Biblical teaching. Divine
communication is an inherently uncertain business, even (or perhaps more
precisely, particularly) in Glorantha.
---Andy Weill
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From: fletcher@u.washington.edu (Brent Krupp)
Subject: Devin Cutler's comments about Glorantha, RQ, etc.
Message-ID:
Date: 18 May 94 05:14:17 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 4062
Let me be at least one person to offer an emphatic second to Devin's
wonderful comments about the direction this list has taken, and its
almost total disregard for actually gaming Glorantha (using real rules,
not off-the-cuff storytelling methods).
As wonderful as Glorantha is, it would be nice if more effort was made to
remember that while Greg Stafford may have created it in the first place
as a literary world, it was presented first (and for many years
afterwards) to the gaming public as a game world. That doesn't have to
make it any less internally consistent, or interesting, or intriguing,
but it would help if (as Devin already said) it was as least remotely
posssible to game in with a finite set of rules.
On a related topic, I think it is horrible how much some people on this
list seem to want to turn Glorantha (especially the West) into a funny
looking Earth. Remember folks: MAGIC IS DEMONSTRABLY AND VIVIDLY REAL IN
GLORANTHA! I can't believe how much people are turning to earthly
analogues to defend or justify their view of (for example) how cults and
religions work. Please try to imagine how incredibly different cultures
and peoples would be if magic worked at all like RQ suggests it does in
Glorantha. Please don't assail the last statement as God-Learnerism and
tell me the rules cannot in any way be used to draw conclusions about the
Glorantha. The bottom line is that Glorantha is a fantasy and game world,
not (I dearly hope) an anthropology, sociology, and comparative-religions
world that you can only play in if you've got an advanced degree in one
of the above and great talent as an author and playwright.
I will end this ramble, but also let me encourage people who agree with
Devin to *not* use email, but share your feelings with the list. If there
are a bunch of 'lurkers' out there who have been intimidated into
ssilence by the impenetrable Gloranthan scholar discussions, please let
your voice be heard.
Brent Krupp (fletcher@u.washington.edu)
---------------------
From: joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner)
Subject: Aeolian Church misunderstandings
Message-ID:
Date: 18 May 94 19:23:38 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 4063
Alex, X-RQ-ID: 4044
> Me and Joerg, unusually enough:
>> Not in the God Learner sense of "theistic".
Now it's my time to say: Why do you argue, I agreed.
>> Yet wizardry is tied firmly to the religion of the Invisible God.
> Wizardry is sorcery with a funny hat, to anyone else but the Westerners.
> There is no objective way. or even one most people agree on, to tell the
> difference between a sorceror and a wizard.
The RQ:AiG set of spells did change this to some degree: There are
a number of ritual spells useful only for religious purposes, called
Banishment (a funeral rite), Blessing (e.g. at weddings etc.) and its
reversed (which needn't be by The Power Of The Invisible God, but can be),
and Solace, a spell for the dying moment of the caster, preparing his way
to Solace. I doubt these work for any but true followers of the IG, so
there you are.
> "Wizardry" is really only
> well-defined to mean "sorcery [in the RQ sense] which we approve of".
> Even "follows the commandments of the IG" is something which is open to
> interpretation, manipulation, and downright fraud, and isn't much like
> the (enforcible) requirements to belong to theistic cults.
I'd say that the requirements of the Rokari church are as easily
enforcible as those of say Chalana Arroy. Or do you mean that the
spells don't become one-use? Neither does cult spirit magic, and I find
this a rules nit anyway.
>> From my understanding, the spells granted from a deity to associates
>> always covers one imortant aspect of the deity.
> Not necessarily: more specifically, it's the use of the most "use" to
> that associate. The "most important" spell is likely to be one taught
> at (ordinary shrines).
Like all those useless Cloud Call shrines dotting Sartar?
Note that I proposed this as kind of a meta-rule for designing
associate magic. Of the various spells reflecting the aspects the
associate cult is granted one of the most useful, agreed.
>> Call it heroquesting for an ability, if this sounds more RuneQuesty to you.
> No, it doesn't. At the moment, it could be argued "heroquest" is a polite
> term for "no-one knows how this works". Anyway, making things sound
> "RuneQuesty" isn't something I'd advocate at all costs.
I have a "working" system, mainly by ignoring any rule change, but by
changing the world aspects. I think any attempt to quantify heroquest
effects will end up with a non-Arkati, God Learner view of the
participants, and be detrimental.
>> (Sartar is sorcery-user friendly: look at Apple Lane. The TEB smith
>> family lives without fear of pogromes.)
> What makes you think anyone knows they are sorcerors? I presume most
> people thing they worship "the gopd of the Third Eye Blue cult". I think
> most Sartarites would be very unhappy with Aeolians they happen to bump into,
> chucking around sorcery willy-nill, and saying wildly heretical things
> about _their_ god in the same breath as stuff about this ficticious
> deity the Westerners worship. Note the same could be said for Invisible
> Orlanth worship...
What is heretical in saying that Orlanth is supreme King of Gods, and
has the most noble ancestry of all Elements? These guys speak a bit
funnily about the deities, using some outlandish (western) prefix for
the cults. Remember Asterix in Britain? Separated by a common language...
I doubt the average Gloranthan will notice the difference between a
somewhat outlandish casting of a spirit spell and a sorcery spell.
[Irish "St. Brigid"]
> I don't know about "quick", but at any rate, the result was a form of
> worship quite different from, and entirely incompatible with, the worship
> of the original pagan "pantheon". If this has happened in Heortland,
> I suspect you'd find the remaining "conversative" Orlanthi, and their
> similarly-inclined neighbours, much less happy about the whole process
> than you seem to envisage.
The Aeolians are far more off-Malkioni than off-Theyalan. This is, their
Malkionism is far more compromised than Irish Christianity ever was.
I hope to scare the living daylight out of the other bishops at HtWWW
with my Theyalan convictions, and expect a quite fiery end if I can't
rally the Stygians. (Provided the delay of my official participation
form can be excused with my troubles to round up the currency :-( )
> This is simply wrong, from the point of view of "modern" Christainity: ask
> your friendly neighbourhood Roman Catholic if he thinks St. Christopher is
> a god, in any sense.
I have little personal experience with catholicism, but I bow to the
inside knowledge of Greg Stafford, who has been quoted to say it was
a polytheistic religion.
> Can we at least agree you're not using the "usual"
> sense of the word "saint"? As far as I can see, the Western Churches
> also use the term in its "usual" sense.
I don't use the usual, 20th century definition of Saint. Intentionally so.
I try to use the Irish and Anglosaxon definition of Saints, as far as my
knowledge permits. Ever compared St. Brennan to Manannan McLir?
> How the RQ rules defines deity isn't very relevant to how a particular
> socity does. And isn't the definition of "saint" we disagree on? If
> you're referring to the mortal saint/divine saint thing, recall it was
> you who made the original distinction...
The Western definitions for False Gods and Saints aren't too different.
Mortal Saints are what you would call Cult Heroes in theist cults, Divine
Saints are individuals who attained their divinity either in Godtime
(Malkion, the Orlanthi deities) or through apotheosis in Time (Dormal,
Arkat, Belintar).
At one point in the doctrine (Henk, will you please distribute it soon?)
the Aeolians prove that Malkion was a Storm Deity, and that the whole of
Malkionism is little more than a strange offshoot of Storm worship combined
with the powers of the Kingdom of Logic, which are mirrored in the Holy
Country. (I think this latter would date from c. 1340, when the Aeolians
had finally come to terms with Belintar's rule.)
--
-- Joerg Baumgartner joe@sartar.toppoint.de
---------------------
From: joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner)
Subject: More misunderstandings
Message-ID:
Date: 18 May 94 20:06:59 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 4064
Yet Alex, X-RQ-ID: 4045
> I meant, is he being initiated _to_ something in particular, but that
> question doesn't translate well across the boundaries of our different
> views on theistic initiation.
He is initiated to the cult and its secrets. He will form his special
link to a patron, or remain with the mainstream Orlanth Miscellaneous
cultists.
> Ahem, I never said it wasn't important to the _cultist_. I'm saying that
> I think the _truth_ of what a cult claims about the afterlife it offers is
> a matter beyond discussion of cult structure, GLish "proof", 'n'stuff.
> Whether it's beyond HQ is a thorny issue.
It isn't. The Jonstown Compendium in RQC has someone visiting King
Heort's halls (within the Halls of Orlanth, I think) and witness this
hero's afterlife.
> After all, if it were a matter of GLish cult comparisons, it would be
> hard to see how you could "get to" the same afterlife by Aeolian and
> Sartarite Orlanthi worship.
You go to Solace in Orlanth's Halls. Easy, isn't it?
> This seems to be somewhat in contradistinction to your implication of
> them converting en masse to crypto-Malkionism, which after all, has a
> totally different, not to say incompatible, view on the afterlife.
They took over lots of Malkionist elements into their worship of Orlanth.
Neither fish nor flesh, but both of it. WRT afterlife, see above.
In X-RQ-ID: 4048, Alex actually backs my position of Malkioni Saints
(outside of the Aeolian church). What did I do wrong?
--
-- Joerg Baumgartner joe@sartar.toppoint.de
---------------------
From: joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner)
Subject: Scholars vs. Gamers?
Message-ID:
Date: 18 May 94 20:07:17 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 4065
Devin Cutler in X-RQ-ID: 4049
> While a good literary creation does have to possess internal consistency, it
> does not have to provide, in full view of the public, a formulised mechanism
> for its inner workings.
> Because a literary creation is bereft of such a requirement, it can be as
> imaginative and complex and as richly woven as the author's mind can imagine.
If it fails to have an internal set of rules, it will be found lacking
if continued over a longer time, since the inconsistencies will amount
to glaring errors.
> A game, needing to provide consistent functional mechanics with which to
> describe not only a finite list of set circumstances which might arise in a
> literary creation, butalso any number of infinite situations that will arise
> during role playing, can only approach accurate description of a literary
> setting at a cost of complexity and playability.
Even a rules/world combination as obsessed with details and realism as
Harnmaster/Harn does little more than describe how the world works.
> Let's face it, for RQ to mirror Glorantha even closely, the way Glorantha is
> currently evolving (i.e. one god = 250 cults or vice versa), there would
> probably need to be a 50,000 page rulebook.
I thinnk you fail to see that this diversification has also the aim to
leave the GM space for his own imagination and creativity. If I couldn't
twist at least local phenomenons to my gaming purposes, _then_ the world
would become unsuitable to _my_ gaming. I stopped playing other systems,
on other worlds, for just these reasons before.
> I will leave my finer points to anyone wanting to discuss this with me in
> private, but suffice to say that I see two camps in the RQ/Glorantha field:
> 1) The Scholars
> 2) The Gamers
> The scholars really tend to focus on Glorantha as literary creation. They
> tend to despise the RQ rules as God "Learnerisms" and generally seem more
> interested in Glorantha as a vehicle for examining ethno/socio/mythological
> processes rather than as a medium for entertainment.
Interesting. Would you classify me as a scholar, or as a gamer?
> The gamers tend to focus on the game mechanics.
Untrue. The game mechanics are a vehicle for gaming, little more. Unless
certain mechanics come up sour, to discuss them is to me like comparing
sport cars - a pastime I wouldn't take part in.
> They enjoy Glorantha for the
> most part, but only as a vehicle in which to enjoy role playing games. Not
> all gamers (I include myself here) are hack and slashers. We simply put
> entertainment value first and foremost. We still crave a consistent and
> "realistic" gaming world,
So do I. Only my personal enjoyment is diminished when consistency breaks
down.
> just not one that has become hostile to the fact
> that it was designed to be gamed in, not to serve as a tool of study.
It wasn't, but that's not the point. The scholarly pursuit of themes
Gloranthan to me is another level of gaming.
> IMHO, Glorantha is daily becoming more and more hostile to Gamers. The
> constant switching and playing around with "game world history", et el, makes
> it extremely difficult to engage in any sort of campaign.
So you would object if another part of game world history was revealed?
Sorry, but this happens to all game worlds alife. You do want new game
material, don't you? Then do you object if this contains historical details
previously unmentioned? Buy generic scenarios, then.
> For example, I try
> to follow Glorantha as much as I can, but I do not enjoy setting up an entire
> scenario around the fact that Kolat existed in Godtime, and then finding out
> that he was a God Learner construct.
Who said Kolat was a GL construct? Burn that man! The GLs _claim_ to have
constructed Orlanth, Humakt and Yelm as well (the False Gods).
> Similarly, despite any brilliant explanations to explain the Elmal/Yelmalian
> switcheroo, the move sucks, and has really bolluxed a number of campaigns out
> here in California.
I can feel sympathy with this. The Yelmalio switch concerned a cult present
from earliest days (CoP), and used as "absolute truth" in a number of
campaigns. Do you blame the scholars for trying to minimize the damage
done to campaigns?
Yelmalio still is one present at Hill of Gold. There have come a few more.
> Similarly, I am becoming less enamoured of how cults are being handled. Why
> this need for so many different cultic variations over Glorantha (i.e.
> "...what we really need is a cult of Yelmalio for Peloria, one for Prax, one
> of Pavis, one for Grazelanders, one for Sartar...")? Yes, cults varied wildly
> here on earth, but Glorantha is not earth.
I hate monolithic game worlds, which strangle my imagination. Any game
world with a fixed number of cults to divine entities to me generally sucks.
> I do not find it unreasonable in the least to find that, say, Humakt is
> worshipped in exactly the same manner in Esrolia, Prax, and Ralios.
Then you don't allow for local cult heroes? Or is there a high holy day
broadcast of cult heroes, transmitted via satellite to every cult centre,
describing the hero's deeds, and rewards?
And don't you see that this cult diversity even allows you to retain
your RQ2 Sword Sages of Lhankor Mhy and Sword Priests of Humakt?
Bugger the rules changes, if I want my Issaries Rune Lord, I play it,
and claim that his community still has this rank. This is a gamers'
tool, not a scholars' construct.
> I do not find it unreasonable to believe that Humakt himself, through
> Divinations and the like, has prescribed a single mode of worship throughout
> Glorantha.
Did it ever strike you that all these discussions we have here are based
on the same divinations (sources) we all received, and that our opinions
and interpretations differ greatly? And we _do_ have a means of immediate
communication between different centres of power.
> As long as the scholars continue to "run the show", I feel that Glorantha
> will likely become a wonderful literary creation (and fiction should be
> published) but will die as a game. Certainly, new players will be extremely
> intimidated by a game system where the world can change at a whim, where the
> gods they read about in one supplement (GoG or CoP) are determined to be
> later constructs in another. Such multiplicity and changeability make for
> great scholarly debates but they really bite when you try and GM in that
> environment.
Then the main fault of the scholars is that they don't make clear that
whatever they debate about Godtime, 3rd Age Glorantha looks just the way
it is presented in the most recent official RQ publication. If something
was constructed at any time during history or myth, _now_ it is reality.
If the report about its having been constructed is accurate at all.
Face it: Glorantha has always been a world subject to change by
interference with the myths. Already CoP has in its introduction
an article about the natures of Time. Scholarly stuff, high-headed,
I'm not sure I understood all of it. But it has been _there_, all
the time.
--
-- Joerg Baumgartner joe@sartar.toppoint.de
---------------------
From: joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner)
Subject: German RQ-Con this (long) weekend.
Message-ID:
Date: 18 May 94 20:07:26 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 4066
Nick Brooke asks in X-RQ-ID: 4052
"Heaven or Hell or Dusseldorf?"
> PS: by staying on at work til midnight for a week or so, I've convinced my
> bosses to give me next weekend off. See you German RQers in Dusseldorf!
I doubt all of us will be at the airport. The actual convention takes
place in Herdecke, some 35 km further to the east.
Should anybody (like Nick) decide to join us last minute, I'll receive
and reply to email coming in until Friday, 09.00 MESZ (Central European
Summer Time), or you can phone Lars Thoms, Tel.: +49 2330 12117 to civil
times.
The more English-speaking people are around, the more we will have to
offer in English...
PS: Glad to hear you could arrange to come, Nick. I'll bring some lager.
--
-- Joerg Baumgartner joe@sartar.toppoint.de