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, Tue, 09 Aug 1994, part 8
Sender: Henk.Langeveld@Holland.Sun.COM
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From: igorlick@bnr.ca (ian i. gorlick)
Subject: Dayzatar, Adventures, & more
Message-ID: <_6732_Mon_Aug__8_08:18:51_1994_@bnr.ca>
Date: 8 Aug 94 04:14:00 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 5534
(Alison Place here, not Ian Gorlick)
Hello, from another newbie on the Daily. I've been reading the dailies for a few
months now (courtesy of a friend who would print them), but haven't tried
putting in any comments before. I have about 11 years playing experience, have
GMed occasional scenarios that I've written, but mostly just enjoyed letting our
resident GM do the nasty, rough work of inventing all our difficulties and
writing the stats for them. I did get down to RQ-Con in January, and boy, was
the drive back to Ottawa fun on Monday!
My thoughts on some of the latest topics follow:
X-RQ-ID 5395, Sandy P.'s comments on Dayzatar, new people in RQ, "adventurers"
in the world, and the long-running discussion on gods and magic points.
I must admit that I have thought for some while that conversion to Dayzatar
might well be very much like much of the Catharist full initiations. Since to
be one of the Perfecti meant forswearing sex, touching the other sex, all meat,
and material possessions, the number of practising priests was very small, and
they were very respected. However, deathbed baptisms for the sake of guaranteed
salvation were common. If a person recovered, they just had to stick with the
vows they had made. In much the same way, many Christian catechumens waited
until the last minute to formally convert.
I agree that it is difficult for new people to comprehend all the material that
has been published, much less written or discussed, concerning Glorantha. We
have just (last week) started a new campaign based in Sartar after Kallyr's
rebellion. There are two new people involved, and I don't know whether they
will stick with us or not. I can still remember being given the RQ2 book to
read one afternoon, and being very confused by the whole deal. At that time I
had six years of roleplaying experience with AD&D variants. These people
haven't any, really, and I think that we will have to be careful not to dump all
sorts of references on them that they would be frustrated at not understanding
and need explained all the time. The rest of us have gamed together every
fortnight for years. Our very keenness to share our world might be
intimidating.
Re: Adventurers
Then there is the question of why certain people get many more problems thrown
at them to solve (usually by fighting) than the rest of the world. Well, they
probably wouldn't, unless they were professional fighters in the retinue of a
local lord in a very rough area. This is the justification that we've used for
the past five years in our Praxian campaign. We are the sworn men of Duke Raus,
and he has to pacify and settle a new area of farmland. We avoid fighting as
much as possible. Political repercussions are forever on our minds.
We have had members of our select band actually marry, retire, and start
farming. Then the players started over. My character, who has remained the
same, started life as a supernumerary son of farmers in Sylila. There wasn't
any land for him. He joined the Lunar infantry. Five years of digging ditches
convinced Marcus that this was too much like working for his dad, and he quit,
and got hired in Pavis by the Duke. Since then, he has actually risen to
Lieutenant, got himself well-known the length of the valley, and holds land as a
vassal (a treasured promotion from mercenary) of the Duke's. His long-term
ambition is now to return home, show everyone that he's done well, and try and
persuade his old priestess of Hon-eel that he is a worthy candidate for the
priesthood himself, so that he can happily raise corn with his wife and his very
own vassals in the Zola Fel valley. The marriage negotiations are presently
underway.
However, in most areas there won't be much of that kind of work. So, we invent
the wandering company of misfits, and give them the problems. These people do
it for the money, the name, the threats of local prosecution, whatever the GM
can think of. In reality, whoever was most competent locally would probably
take the risks, but since we as players don't want to play new characters every
week, we put up with the fiction of migrating problem-solvers.
In a previous campaign, the justification for my character Nicola was that she
had run a too-successful scam on the local Lunar quartermaster in Sartar, and
had left for healthier trading opportunities abroad with her father's mule train
(Balazar, for instance). (As my
husband just helpfully pointed out, my dedicated roleplaying of her various
trade deals became quite tiresome for other party members. Imagine, they didn't
care that red beads were worth more than blue ones!)
Michael Morrison (X-RQ-ID 5398) thinks that one might find enough to do locally.
I disagree, unless the encounters are spread over a lifetime, or you are truly
in a frontier area where the previous inhabitants are willing to dispute the
point. One did not go viking locally, and activities like cattle-raiding and
feuding may be reasonably constant sources of friction and danger, but they
generally stay at that level, and would quickly become repetitive. Gaming
groups want innovation, and frequently more and more difficult trials as their
favourite characters grow in capabilities. They will have to leave home.
On to gods and magic points. To my characters, most of the deities are hugely
powerful former people. Sartar, Pavis, Hon-eel, the Red Goddess, Dormal, and
the Seven Mothers all became gods after they were people. Leaders all need
followers, that's how you know that they're great, and that's usually how they
become powerful. A great general with no army is impotent and unemployed. I
have this vision of Orlanth bragging to Yelm, "So what have your heroes done
lately? Mine just killed the Crimson Bat." They aren't allowed to play on
Glorantha anymore, so their status among other gods would come from impressive
followers invoking their name, and using their magics. It is an incredibly
anthropomorphic view and it's not all that I think the gods are, but is probably
not amiss for many of our characters.
Back to Michael Morrison's message. Trained farmers are commonest where there
is a free levy. I think that most of the experience was got during the period
of call-up, though. If you lived, you knew how to fight. The trouble has
always been that farmers must farm, or we all starve. When you can't stay off
the land that long, that's where hired guns, I mean swords, come into play.
They certainly cost more, though.
As for Rune levels never being former adventurers, I am sure that that is not
true. I, as a local priest, however, would certainly not ordain someone who
might suddenly skive off. I think that you would have to go away, make your
mark (and do remember to get all those other priests and important people to
give you letters of reference) and then settle down and prove that you are now a
part of the community again. Then your outside experience might be considered a
valuable plus. An exception to this might be the case of a person wishing
ordination for the purpose of going proselytising. You have to have a full
priest to make initiates in new areas. This is Marcus' big problem just now.
There is one acolyte in Pavis, and that is it. He will have to go back to his
old temple and get ordained there.
By the way, Joerg, a nitpicking (but somewhat interesting) point is that many
dragonflies are found far from water as adults, making it very difficult to find
some of them. (I'm the one who brought a bumblebee garnish for the pickled elf
brains at RQ-Con, and a fellow employee who's an avid dragonfly collector has
mentioned this difficulty to me.)
My last comment - I thought that the reference to tapping women's Int was to
balance the sexes, not that we weren't using it!
My thanks to all those who read all this, and I look forward to your comments.
Alison Place
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From: joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner)
Subject: Slontos
Message-ID:
Date: 8 Aug 94 12:57:35 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 5536
During my reply to the False God challenge, I was sidetracked about
the nature of Slontos between the Dawn and its destruction.
I personally believe that Slontolia is a likely land of Origin for
the personality and cult of Issaries, as Kethaela is for Lankhor Mhy
(spelling intended). Our information on Slontos before the Jrusteli
took over control there (some time between 734, the liberation of Seshnela,
and 789, the founding of the Empire of the Sea and Land) is next to zero.
We know that Arkat liberated the land from Palangio the Iron Vrok's claws
around 440, and that a spirit called Kaxtor held out in a shrinking
perimetre against these forces. There was (and is) a Dragonewt Kingdom
to the north of Slontolia, in Ryzel.
I think that the civilized Theyalans created a quite civilized colony in
Slontos in the time between the conquest (115) and the Broken Council
(365). We don't know exactly how their relation to the Second Council was,
being the farthest corner of the Empire they would have been even more
independent than the Shadowlands under the rule of the Only Old One as
gouvernor for the Council.
Before, Slontos is likely to have been just another Hsunchen land in
the Great Forest (shown on the map in Uz Lore, p.13). Ramalia nearby
was inhabited by pig Hsunchen, Pralorela by elk and deer Hsunchen, the
coastal regions might have been home to otter Hsunchen (Help from the
West). These resistd the Theyalan missionaries for a while, and were
conquered by force, not friendship.
When the High Council broke in 365, trolls, dragonewts and humans from Aram
Ya Udram's province (Dragon Pass) rebelled. We know that the Kethaelan
Orlanthi joined this rebellion, and were crushed along with the Kerofinelan
humans, and we know as well that after 380 Palangio stretched his claws to
the west. Kaxtor resisted, and from that little bit other people in (then
Central) Maniria did as well.
From the early Second Age we know little about Slontolia. The Return to
Rightness Crusaders did not explicitely conquer it, but seemed to have
routed Arkat's Empire following the trail of the hero (from the Neliomi
Sea - Loskalm, c.725 - through Tanisor - 734 - to Ralios - c.740). I would
expect that they force-converted the Stygians of Slontos between 740 and
789.
The Zistor movement culminated in the sieges of Jadnor, Lylket and Locsil
(aka Clanking City) 906-916. According to KoS (p.95) the Zistori movement
"remained a mostly unpracticed belief until Inolzi the Learned" made his
inventions, and started the active proselytizing of the faith.
We know that the God Learners (the magicians, not their empire) were
active in Maniria before the Rightness Crusaders came there. The God
Learning documents from Lylket and Jadnor, and the Auld Wyrmish school
in Nochet (c.573) are proof for their presence there. For this reason,
Dalarok Redsail might have been a pre-Rightness God Learner of Slontos.
The combats mentioned in the life of Geolgin Askarios date the conflicts
mentioned in KoS p.95 to about 610 ST. This makes the Slontoli coastal
sea merchants even during the Waertagi-dominated time (the map in Uz
Lore p.21 shows islands in Slontos), and makes the existance of larger
cities very probable.
This leaves me with a Theyalan urbanised culture for the time before
Arkat, and a Stygian culture not too unlike early Second Age Ralios for
the time afterwards. These Stygian Malkioni were traders between
conflict-torn but iron-exporting Seshnela to the West and ever-stable
Kethaela and first troll-ruled, then draconic-thinking Dragon Pass. They
were power-traders not unlike the Jrusteli, and tried unsuccessfully to
conquer their intermediates to the budding EWF several times. When the
God Learners had replaced the Stygians, they continued these politics.
Is there anybody who disagrees with this history of Slontos?
Who has better informations?
--
-- Joerg Baumgartner joe@sartar.toppoint.de
---------------------
From: niwe@ppvku.ericsson.se (Nils Weinander)
Subject: Kralorela nit-pick continuance et al.
Message-ID: <9408081455.AA22982@ppvku.ericsson.se>
Date: 8 Aug 94 18:55:04 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 5537
Nils Weinander writing
I wrote that ancestor worship and human spirits are not a part of
Kralorelan culture.
Joerg answered:
>What about shades of the deceased, not their true spirits, but some
>form of awareness?
Like the memory of the dear departed taking on some kind existence
of its own? Sounds like nothing ever heard of in Glorantha, but on
the other hand, Kralorela is weird.
>What about the Buddha-like spirits who abstain from the perfection
>they've attained to stay around and help?
That's more likely, perhaps a dead person's spirit can choose to stay
for a while to help out and then go to Vithela in time to catch the
imperial train to who knows where.
And now for something completely different: a mythological question.
The myth says that Ernalda hid deep under the ground during the
Great Darkness. Which god(s) managed to get her back above ground?
I know I have read this somewhere (I think I know...), but I thought
I'd spare myself a lot of flipping through books by asking the
learned savants of the Daily.
/Nils W
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From: MILLERL@wharton.upenn.edu (Loren J. Miller)
Subject: Chalana Allies
Message-ID: <01HFNX9JSTNM8ZE5B1@wharton.upenn.edu>
Date: 8 Aug 94 15:07:20 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 5538
Why restrict yourself to Butterflies and Hummingbirds? Why not Doves?
Are not Doves a symbol for peace?
Are not Doves clad in white just like the White Healers?
Do we not refrain from killing and eating doves because of their
symbolic value, though we have no such compunctions about Pigeons?
Chalana Arroy healers are not required to be vegetarians, so the fact
that doves eat insects (creatures of darkness) is immaterial
whoah,
+++++++++++++++++++++++23
Loren Miller internet: MILLERL@wharton.upenn.edu
"Enough sound bites. Let's get to work." -- Ross Perot sound bite
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From: 100102.3001@compuserve.com (Peter J. Whitelaw)
Subject: RQ Newsgroup
Message-ID: <940808154434_100102.3001_BHJ42-1@CompuServe.COM>
Date: 8 Aug 94 15:44:35 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 5539
Hi all,
John J. Medway:
>> From: loren@marketing.wharton.upenn.edu (Loren Miller)
>> Subject: what do folks think of a runequest newsgroup?
>> X-RQ-ID: 5458
>>
>> I'm thinking of sticking my neck into it again. The runequest mailing lists
>> and digests clearly have a large enough audience to justify a newsgroup for
>> runequest and glorantha. However, is a runequest newsgroup a thing that we,
>> the runequest fans, will want to use?
>
>
>Fine for me, but ... (there's always a "but")...
>
>How well are usenet newsgroups gatewayed (obviously not the correct form of
>the infinitive "to gateway", but whatever) to CI$, AOL, and the other online
>services? If it's not pretty well done, we'll split our population.
>
>It does have the advantage of advertising itself, though.
This is my concern also.
My only access to the Internet is via CIS. Whilst I can send/receive e-mail
(obviously), I have no access (I am sure) to such services as usenet newsgroups
and ftp.
I would rather not miss out on much of the RQ dialogue.
All the best,
Peter
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From: jonas.schiott@vinga.hum.gu.se (Jonas Schiott)
Subject: Brief comments.
Message-ID: <9408081554.AA23857@vinga.hum.gu.se>
Date: 9 Aug 94 01:09:18 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 5540
Well, I'm back online and catching up.
Nothing much intelligent to say, the unnaturally hot summer we've had here
in Sweden has caused my brain to overheat slightly...
Re: Sandy's suggestion about Divine Magic renewal.
Don't certain cults have _weekly_ holy days? This unbalances things, mainly
in the favor of such cults (assuming many cults are still restricted to
seasonal ceremonies - though with this mechanic in place, what cult in its
right mind would stay with such a limit?), and of course in the favor of
characters with dozens of DM points. Someone else's idea that you can
regain magic (as a priest) whenever you can round up enough initiates to
hold a ceremony rebalances somewhat, but there is still the problem that
powerful priests are favored _at_the_expense_ of the less-powerful: the
simple Ernaldan who just wants to cast as many Bless Crops as possible,
mentioned by yet another person, gets shafted. Maintaining parallell
systems (_both_ the old 1pt/day _and_ the new everything-on-a-holyday)
seems to be overdoing things - whatever will the sorcery buffs on the Daily
say?
Re: Peter Michaels' Sexual Prowess.
Why is the spell stackable? What good would it do? Extension seems more
useful. :-)
And, since nobody else seems interested...
Martin in X-RQ-ID: 5418
>"I remember Sam, he was the village idiot, and though it
>seemed a pity it was so. He loved to burn down houses just to
>watch them glow, but nothing could be done because he was the
>mayor's son." (Name that composer.)
Tom Lehrer. "We're recording tonight, so I'll have to leave this next line out."
( Jonas Schiott )
( Institutionen for Ide- och lardomshistoria )
( Goteborgs Universitet )
---------------------
From: Bob.Luckin@tiuk.ti.com
Subject: Sam's Sartar BG
Message-ID: <9408081734.AA23535@ibrox.tiuk.ti.com>
Date: 8 Aug 94 17:34:08 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 5541
Hi from Bob Luckin !
Sam (X-RQ-ID 5451) said :-
>To aid with background I produced a many page guide for them - as they all came
>from the same clan it was important that we all had the same info on the other
>clanmembers. (I have been working this into a presentable form for all those
>who requested a copy... It will be 20 or so pages A4 typeset w pictures..
Sam, if I didn't request a copy before, I'm doing so now ! :-)
[Did I mention I have a good photo of your haggis being ceremonially carved in
Geos ? (I also have a shot of Ken lapping it up, and of Greg pretending to do
so, but in actuality trying not to throw it up...)]
Loren asked about setting up a newsgroup :-
I confess I'm in two minds about this. At first hand, it seems a good idea,
particularly for those who want to be able to follow threads (if they have a
threaded newsreader). But a mailing list can get to many more people, since
not everyone with email access also has newsgroup access.
If we have both a newsgroup and a mailing list, then there will be a lot
of duplication, and if I get both it'll take longer to read it all. But if I
don't get both, I might miss something important in the one I don't get...
At least with only a mailing list, I'm reasonably sure I'm not missing
much (when I can find the time to keep up with it all :-)). I suppose it
might be possible to gateway the list and the newsgroup together, so they
both contain the same stuff, and then you can choose which way you prefer to
get it. (Henk ?)
Or is this what you meant in the first place ?
Cheers, Bob
--
Bob Luckin voly@tiuk.ti.com "Able was I ere I saw Corflu"
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From: SMITHH@A1.MGH.HARVARD.EDU (Harald Smith 617 726-2172)
Subject: pig style
Message-ID: <01HFO8YIB800RFNNPK@MR.MGH.HARVARD.EDU>
Date: 8 Aug 94 11:27:00 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 5552
Hi all--
- Henk asked what I pictured the Pig Style (as opposed to sty) to look
like.
I picture a rolling body-block style which deemphasizes kicks (unless
the opponent is downed) and punches and favors defensive maneuvers to
roll away from the opponent's blows and then swerving in under their
guard. Almost a gymnastic style of tumbling combat. And they would
probably oil their bodies so opponents can't grab them.
--Harald
---------------------
From: paul@phyast.pitt.edu (Paul Reilly)
Subject: Re: RuneQuest Daily, Mon, 08 Aug 1994, part 2
Message-ID: <9408082050.AA10491@minerva.phyast.pitt.edu>
Date: 8 Aug 94 20:50:37 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 5553
Paul Reilly replying to this:
"From: Argrath@aol.com
What needs to be changed is the whole "POW spirit, spell
spirit, magic spirit, etc." taxonomy. I favor a view in which
there are spirits of persons, places, and things, any of which
can be placed in an enchantment, and the type of the enchantment
tells you what you can get from the spirit: just MP, or spell-
casting, or spell storage, or send-the-spirit-out-to-do-
something."
I pretty much agree with Argrath (Martin, I think) above. We have
been handling this differently - the base feature of a binding enchantment
is to hold a spirit. You can let it go if you want and if you have a control
spell you might even send it out and bring it back.
Features like using its mps and INT are accessed not by changing the
enchantment but by making a Power Pact with the spirit in it a la
Steve Maurer's rules from several years back. Basically the process is
much like Initiation - you put Power in to form a link and the spirit can
now pass you magic points, jsut as you can pass MPs to your god along the
Initiation link. (I also think that apprentices should be able to pass
MPs to their sorcerers, given physical contact and an appropriate ritual)
Martin's approach might be better, I don't know. Would have to playtest...
- Paul