> Mikko,
>
> The following responses are strictly my own opinion, and come at the end of
> an exhausting day (ad triple-digit-Fahrenheit), so it's bound to sound a
> bit critical; I apologize in advance. Really, what I want to do is show
> how I think that the Hero Wars rules do a better job of entering into the
> true spirit of (my) Glorantha, a world I've been in love with since 1979.
>
> Guy Hoyle
Ok Guy, I'll have a go at this again. Chaos ate my frist reply...
> On 8/10/00 at 12:42 AM Mikko Rintasaari wrote:
<snip>
> > I want details. I want Glorantha to feel real. I want my gamers to
> >feel the hot sand in their sandals and worry about their bronze sword
> >getting dull. I don't want Xena vs. Batmat cinematics in gloriously
> >vague dreamcolor.
>
> Then don't run it that way! HW is a game that depends utterly upon the
> Narrator to bring it to life. It's a set of tools for you to use, not a
> straitjacket. Don't worry about the type of Glorantha in everybody else's
> game, worry about your own True Glorantha.
I'm all set, owning almost all the stuff from RQ-2 era onward. But I have another worry. I'd like to see Hero Wars prosper. I think Glorantha is a magnificent work. My worry is that the newcomers are going to be stymied and dismayed by the lack of information.
> >But is the current view then that we should cast away all cohesion and
> >similarity between our views about Glorantha? What good will the
> >published stuff be then? Are we all just left to our own devices. The
> >cults for instance get only the bare outline, with feats named with
> >whatever amused the writer at the moment "the names mean nothing anyway,
> >they'll just have to make it up themselves"
>
> It seems to me that the names mean a LOT, given that we have only the
> published myths to go by (and those may not be readily available to
> everybody). The published stuff is a source of ideas, of inspiration, that
> must ultimately be realized by a narrator. You are the most important
> source of creativity for your players, not some 20+ year old system of
> rules that never really captured Greg Stafford's vision of Glorantha. Your
> Glorantha probably wouldn't be the same as anybody else's; I have my own
> preferences, Greg and Roderick and Sandy have theirs. Personally, I prefer
> the liberation that the HW rules give us; I don't have to remember what the
> range of a Disrupt spell is, or the particulars of the Second Mouth
> runespell (horrific as that is), or what the Blast earth spell does in RQ
> terms; I know how those would be resolved in HW, and don't have to have the
> critical hit chart memorized to boot.
We still have charts, and they are not all that intuitive to me, seeing how Hero Wars is such an abstract system. I don't need the strikeranks and the hitpoints. I just want to know what a given feat is supposed to do.
> >Then we just make up our own views on his magic. I don't see that the
> >current trend is giving us much more than that. The details we have are
> >all from the RQ stuff.
>
> Actually, I know more about Glorantha as a whole from HW than I did from
> all of RuneQuest 1st and 2nd editions, and there are more details in the
> first 3 books than there ever was in the RQ3 boxed set.
We have information on cultures, which is good. We have a rather confusing game system, and some meta rules on magic that have been partially gregged already. We don't have something that is ready to play. The new GM is going to be rather baffled at the feats and such.
> >> The RQ version of Thunderstone was a stone imbued with the power of
> >> Thunder, usable only for lobbing it at your enemies. The HW version
> >> is that you imbue a stone with the power of Thunder, usable for
> >> whatever is appropriate, which includes, but is not limited to,
> >> lobbing it at your foes.
> >
> >And this makes for a more believable and deep Glorantha to you?
>
> Does for me. I realize that Glorantha is more about mythic reality than it
> is about game stats.
>
> >It's the details that make the world. Othervice we are just playing make
> >believe, and we dont need any rules or backround for that. The details
> >make Glorantha come alive.
>
> Details about Glorantha, agreed. Needless detail in the rules seems
> counterproductive to that.
Details, let's go into that for a moment.
Here's something I _don't_ see happening in Glorantha:
Hrolf Swordthane was a famous fighting hero in his time, and I've learned his "Leaping Sword" feat from one of his followers. Hrolf was famous for throwing his sword at deadly accurasy, a last ditch move, but one that saved his or a friends lives on occasion. But lately I've started wondering... "Since the feat is called "Leaping Sword", shouldn't I be able to make the enemies swords leap right out of their hands!"
---
Now I hope even the slowest of you will see where the problem lies. The feats are named after something. They refer to feats done by a god or a hero. People who learn this feat have to know what they are learning, and they are not trivial things, not something you can just decide to interpret totally different.
"Son, I say, Son! What are you doing, I'm trying to show you the "leaping Sword" throw, and all you do is stare at those kids practising with their wooden swords" (trying to interpret the feat to mean making swords leap from peoples hands)
Now I'm not saying that such a feat can't be done, but it has nothing to do with Hrolf Swordthanes "Leaping Sword".
In the same way I think we really need to know what the feat names are referring to.
> >> Remember, just because something was determined in RQ doesn't mean
> >> that that description was actually correct or exhaustive.
> >
> >It's way better than not having any!
>
> And it's probably misleading and constricting. HW aims to make Glorantha
> more than just the sum of its parts.
But it fails to give us very much to work with.
-Adept
"thinker, dreamer and adventurer"
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