>From: "Nick Hollingsworth" <nick.hollingsworth_at_...>
>Unfortunately the rulebook now attempts to provide an answer before
>play. What it should have done is seperate out the information about
>what people commonly beleive and just describe this with prose. That
>leaves us free to play about with it. Different groups can than have
>different takes on it. Any actual questions that it raises can then be
>answered in play.
Well, take this to it's logical conclusion. Maybe devotees can worship other gods, but simply don't know it. Maybe there are no such things as affinities, or spells, and there's just "magic." Why have any system other than "rate an ability, and call it magical?" Really, if there's no "hard reality" to otherworlds, then why have differing systems to enumerate them at all?
Basically there's a point at which we have to accept that there's some "reality" that is, in fact in effect here. Making these choices hard, in-game choices.
>Providing a 'correct' answer and a set of rules to model it goes
>directly against the spirit of a narrative based game IMNSHO.
I sorta agree. But all games leave some rules as framework. Well, except for those that don't. You could play entirely freeform, too. The point is that the rules that remain here have thematic weight. Yes, it's "predetermined," but many rules are in such a game. Because without anything being predetermined, mechanically, you have to come up with all your themes yourself. I believe that, to the extent that HQ goes beyond the simplest system possible here, and delineates some things as inalterable, they're informing people as to what play is to be about. That is, since magic is enumerated, it becomes thematically important to play. Just like, say, Humanity in Sorcerer. If you take that rule out of that game, you're no longer playing Sorcerer in any functional way. Just as, if you take all of the specific mechanisms for magic out in HQ, you're no longer playing HQ, but a much more generic game.
Which'll work. I just happen to like the themes that the players have to dance about in HQ.
Now, is concentration taking things too far? Well, I can very much understand thinking so, and would have no problem playing in a game where it was absent. But I like what it does in play enough to keep it for my games.
Then again, I'm a structure hound.
One thing further - if you had to enumerate these things separately for every single culture, it would be somewhat nightmarish in terms of volume of information, and keeping track of it all. To an extent, it works to have these things be "true" simply because then every culture handles them in the same fashion. Yes, it's not as detailed, but, again, I think this is simply not something that is needful of alteration to improve player choice.
>I am not saying that there should be a free for all and anyone should
>feel free to just mix any magic appraoch they fancy. I am saying the
>rulebook is an inappropriate place for this sort of information as
>this makes it a single universal truth out of something that should be
>a cultural concern. And embedding it throughout the rules is using a
>sledgehammer to crack a nut since it makes it much harder to play
>about with different takes on it.
If you want something to really take on, IMO something much worse is "Inappropriate Worship." Given the nature of the Gods War, and Heroquesting, etc, it seems pretty harsh to say that the Aeolians calling Barntar, Mr. Farmer, makes them really handicapped. Yeah, from an in-game perspective, since people don't know the metagame, it's not a big deal. But from a POV of a player looking at his choices, you're going to get far fewer heroes worshipping Mr. Farmer than Barntar. When it would have been just as easy to say that all of these views of each god are equally "accurate."
Now, my current understanding is that it's the acts of the people in the mundane world, heroquesting to alter these facts, that make the difference. That is, apparently somehow the Orlanthi have some advantage in this arena over the Aeolings, that makes this so. Which could be considered as hard an in-game fact as whether or not Orlanth is "dead" or even whether the road to the right goes to Boldhome. It's just that this doesn't have to be the case for it all to work out right, and I kinda wish that they hadn't done this.
Fortunately this is simple enough for me - I just don't have any misapplied worship in the world I run. But I think for Glorantha, it's much more problematic than the concentration rules.
Mike
Powered by hypermail