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, Sun, 07 Aug 1994, part 3 Sender: Henk.Langeveld@Holland.Sun.COM Content-Return: Prohibited Precedence: junk --------------------- From: WALLMAN@VAX2.Winona.MSUS.EDU Subject: comments on comments of newbie Message-ID: <01HFLHJLEES200ASE4@VAX2.Winona.MSUS.EDU> Date: 6 Aug 94 12:08:51 GMT X-RQ-ID: 5507 I did not catch the original newbie questions, but I have some comments. Simon Hibbs writes: > Mr Ennui (??) writes : > : After > :listening to your erudite discussions on this list, the actualmaterial > :disappoints me. Many elements, such as hordes of sentient monsters, > Sorry, I don't understand. Sentient monsters are a staple of the vast > majority of fantasy fiction. Indeed, they are almost universaly present > in earth mythologies. eg the Dwarves, Trolls, Giants, etc of Norse > myth;bthe Cyclops, Minotaur (sentient, though ignorant), harpies, and other good points... I had the same impression as a newbie. When I first saw it, it seemed like someone ran through the Monster Manual and one-upped them by making everything intelligent. I liked the rules so I still played it. I banned ducks at first. Now I understand more and it makes more sense. > :constant references to "adventurers" and the emphasis on treasure > :(sometimes found in stupid places such as gorp corpses) reminds of > :(*shudder*) AD&D. I'm not too crazy about bipedal ducks or mindless > :human animals either. I think the type of RQ that most people play or want to play is not easily expressed in modules. I may be wrong, but I think the goals in many RQ campaigns are less tangible. "Adventurers" (I use "character") originally strove to obtain runes. This is something I wish could be instilled into every campaign (some striving for mythological or sociological ends). : The question I really want answered is: do other products (namely :Glorantha: Genertela and Gods of Glorantha) have the same tone, mood, :feel, flavor, etc of the majority of the RoC book? Genertela turned the game around for me. I did not have all the original stuff, but I liked the game system so I stuck in there. After I saw the whole world, all those complicated myths somehow started to fit together (even when they contradicted). : I hope I don't come across as an arrogant newbie: all I'm saying :is that what I've seen of Glorantha so far is not my cup of tea. : Thanks in advance! There are several things I do not like about Glorantha. The most difficult thing is the steep learning curve. Scenarios do not do it justice, and treatises on mythology are too much. I suggest trying Genertela to get a broad yet summarized view. For me, campaign ideas (not necessarily scenario ideas) lept from its pages. There is a point at which everyone investigating the intricate details of Glorantha say, "Huh?". If you say "Huh?" because you are fed up with things that do not make sense, the game is probably not for you. If you say "Huh?" because you are trying to figure out just how something can be the way it is, then it is for you. Ed When he first found Death, Wallman it was a lawn jart. --------------------- From: strauss@hopper.itc.virginia.edu (John Strauss) Subject: more hummingbirds Message-ID: <199408070537.BAA49241@Hopper.itc.Virginia.EDU> Date: 6 Aug 94 21:37:11 GMT X-RQ-ID: 5508 Sandy sez: > Some butterflies can live up to a year. Still kind of grim >for their owners. I think that when a creature has an allied >spirit placed in it, or it is made into a familiar, that >creature's lifespan is indefinitely enhanced. Monarch butterflies, I am pretty sure, live more than a year. They migrate annually to Mexico. Yeah, I have seen games where the ally physically modifies its host. My Lanhor Mhy parrot started out brightly colored and eventually became gray, simply because the ally disliked being in a garish bird. I don't think that mild enhancement of an ally's host is at all unreasonable. Ultimately, we are just talking about casting "command cult spirit" or some such. Having your ally's body die annually is not that big a deal. If your god is actually limited by myth to using a weenie animal, you can cope. The REAL problem with a hummingbird is what Michelle so appropriately called its "squash factor", which I agree was a big issue with my combat medic style Chalanna Arroy. Mobility is a factor too: In our game, we ruled that there was clinical death and real death. When a character's hp are such that he is considered dead, under the rules, the binding between body and spirit begins to unravel. You have one melee round from that time to heal him so that his body will sustain life. If you can do so, the binding will repair itself. If you can't heal him in time, we are talking resurrection. As we all know, the heal spell is touch only. This makes the job of a combat medic exciting! My Chalanna Arroy had seen too many comrades die from his inability to reach them in time. An animal ally fixes that and GREATLY increases a healer's worth in a battle. And a hummingbird is MUCH more suited to that activity than a butterfly. So the choice of butterfly or hummingbird has very real combat ramifications. > If I had a hummingbird familiar, I'd also take care to port >around a bottle or sac filled with sugar water for it to suck at. >And you bet I'd plant flowers around my temple. Yup. I did exactly that. And thanks to the heroquest, honeysuckle was native to all oases, River of Cradles, CA temples, and the Pavis Garden. Michelle sez: >About two years ago (calendar) when my CA was going to Rune >level, I felt that butterflies were "lame". Not dark, not >light -- lame. I too put forth the hummingbird, but my GM >said hummingbirds are not vegetarians/herbavores -- no go. >He saids bees would be okay. I saw their squash factor to >be even higher than butterflies and let it go. That's too bad. I agree about the squash factor. Who's your GM? Is he a SCAdian? Anyway, politely remind your GM of this: Glorantha is not our universe. It does not follow our physical laws. It is not this world with magic tacked on, but is something completely different, with its own internal logic. A gloranthan hummingbird can be ANALAGOUS to a terrestrial one. They do not have to match. The textbook example of this is gloranthan metals, which would make a materials engineer run away screaming. We might as well piss off zoologists and biologists while we are at it. (I think I read once that it is theoretically impossible for two species to develop sentience in the same biosphere. One species, developing slightly ahead of the other, will wipe out their competition. But, in Glorantha, EVERYTHING is sentient by default. We have myths to explain why certain species LOST their sentience.) If the butterfly has been burdensome, I make a gift of the hummingbird myth to you. Show it to your GM and beg for a heroquest. If you can agree that the butterfly/hummingbird disparity is regional in nature, you could get technical help doing the quest from a distant temple, requiring much less power on your part to pull it off. Another thing you might consider is doing an armor enchantment on your butterfly. It only has one hit location in any reasonable sense, so we are talking only a few points of POW to make a butterfly you can't kill with a ballpeen hammer. > Why did we both think of hummingbirds? It COULD have been mere functional practicality. But I think there is more to it than that. The reason I love Glorantha so much is that it is a "real" place. It isn't like here; it is unique. But, within its own framework, it makes sense. I once met with Greg Stafford for supper and shared with him some of the stuff Phil Davis and I made up for local use. Greg told me that much of what we had concocted on our own matched his own unpublished writings and musings exactly. There was something magical about realizing that Phil and I had actually visited the same place Greg had. It felt good. When Phil left El Paso and moved to DC, he started up a fresh new campaign. He used my old Lankhor Mhy as a hero NPC and gave him a local subcult. A lady in his game who played a Lankhor Mhy called me a couple of times to chat about things and asked me my opinions about campaign situations she was in. I knew NOTHING of Phil's campaign; but I was able to tell her what I thought was going on and suggested investigative courses to prove or disprove my theories. The information I *made up* turned out to be exactly on the money. It was so coldly accurate that Phil made her sacrifice power for divination, specific to my subcult, before she was permitted to discuss the campaign any further with me. The reason I was able to do this is not that I am some sort of genius, (alas). It is simply that Glorantha is so well conceived that it is practical to think of it as a real place. There is an underlying webwork that becomes clear as you absorb Gloranthan material. This underlying pattern makes people independantly invent (discover?) the same ideas. Because Phil and I had explored Glorantha together, the effect was greatly enhanced. You and I each have played a Chalanna Arroy up past rune level. We therefore have a common set of experiences that exist *outside* our normal world. Because Glorantha is so well woven, we can be said to have visited the same place, though we did not meet. It would not surprise me to discover that hummingbirds are the least of our common thoughts as we each struggled to heal the ills we found on our mutual path. (Although my path WAS a little odd. I played a Storm Khan excommunicate who rejected the Bull after slaying his kid brother while berserk.) >Does Glorantha have hummingbirds? Obviously, *I* think Glorantha has hummingbirds. :) It comes down to what you and your GM agree on as to whether there are any hummingbirds in YOUR part of Glorantha. I merely report that I can see them from where I am sitting. (And they are so much more polite than Martin's, too. Look at them all, patiently lined up to use the feeder. They aren't slamming each other, no, just playing an innocent game of tag. And they wouldn't DREAM of eating bugs. Why, that would hurt the bugs!) I just had the oddest stray thought: you mentioned bees? I wonder if you might bind an ally into a HIVE rather than into a single insect. I once read that it is more useful to think of a hive as a single animal rather than to talk about individual bees. (Individual bee is kind of an entymologic oxymoron.) (Yelorna) I think it is keen that you didn't have to choose between the two conflicting models of Yelornan personality. I look forward to hearing how it all works out. John Strauss strauss@hopper.itc.virginia.edu ---------------------