One aspect of this is the use of ritual. We invoke our myths pretty often, too -- we sing national anthems before sporting events, we say pledges of allegiance, we open political meetings with prayers, and so on. Not all the time, but often enough. In Glorantha, people do the same, but it's necessary -- if you don't call on Dar, the Ring doesn't form, and decisions can't be made properly. If you don't say the prayer that lets Alkoth accept you, you can't enter the city (or you're sorry when you do). If you have not done the adulthood ritual and been recognized by Kygor Litor and the Ancestresses, you are not an adult, an Uz, or even a person. These are not social rituals, they are essential actions; a real world analogy might be if the lack of a driver's license meant that you could neither start nor steer a car rather than that you shouldn't.
So I think that expressing this is one key to a "deep" game -- get the
players involved -- when the characters leave the tula, they say a prayer
and when they return, they say another. When they drink, they pour out a
little for the Ancestors and the house daimones. There are charms and runes
and prayers for everything not out of superstition, but because that's how
the world works. Everything is, in some way, a heroquest. When you churn
butter, you are enacting the first butter churning. When you sharpen your
sword, you are recalling how Umath prepared his weapon when he went to his
first fight. When you get married, for a moment you are Orlanth or Ernalda
(or Yelm and Dendara or Lodril and Oria or Yu-kargzant and La-ungariant or
you get the idea). Now, these are all really minor -- hardly anyone needs
to really enact the First Butterchurning, but, if she does, she gets
*amazing* butter. So, encourage the players to do this sort of thing --
create prayers and little myths. If it drifts from "Official Glorantha,"
there's plenty of room for "that's how our clan/league/city/whatever does it."
A lot of these "mythlets" are pretty short -- they are concerned with how a particular action is done. Most are probably part of longer myths that have things like a plot, a moral, and so on. That's where I think you'll find the weird and unpleasant things in Gloranthan myth. So maybe the "mythlet" for the Gerendetho feat "Magic Spear" tells how the Billy Goat god realized that his two normal horns (much less his third horn) were insufficient for the business of killing the Five Bad Brothers, and he found the Secret Horn in his heart that was long and straight and sharp, and he defeated the Brothers and killed each one. The full myth might tell a longer story how the Five Bad Brothers were Gerendetho's cousins, and killing them was a bad thing (even though it was a necessary thing), because killing family is pretty bad most of the time, and, besides, the Billy Goat god is about fighting and loafing and fornicating, not killing. And using his Secret Spear made him a worse man, and he eventually used it to kill his son when the kid was misbehaving, and, and for that Gerendetho was chained for a year and a day in the service of King Someone of Someplace and had to do some heroic and unpleasant things and learned that justice is the province of the Boss, and fathers should be stern but not too violent, and so on. Should Using "Magic Spear" always lead to disaster? No, or it would be a pretty poor feat. But if your Gerendetho PC uses Magic Spear in every conflict and kills people often rather than beating them up and letting them go like a good goat, I would eventually slap him for it, because he is not just using the feat, he's entering the bigger myth. And maybe there's someone who wants the Fruit of Wisdom that are guarded by the Brass Crows. He makes himself mythically King Someone of Someplace, and the myth drags that naughty PC into killing his son (or a good substitute), and the PC gets arrested and sentenced to penal servitude, and that heroquester gets the work contract, and.... And whether I as narrator or you as player created the mythlet or the bigger myth, we all benefit.
I tried to write a folk tale a few year back that had no obvious "feat
producing effect." It just told a story that said a thing or two about
perseverance and revenge and how the community helps you or doesn't and so
on. What I ended up with was "The Tale of Hall the Farmer"
(http://www.glorantha.com/tribes/hall.html). You could probably wring a
heroquest or a feat out of it, if you really wanted, but that's not really
the purpose, and I think bigger myths in Glorantha are like that -- the
story of Barntar's death doesn't exactly lend itself to generating feats,
but it adds a lot of color to the game world. It makes you feel you're
there. Heck, sometimes it helps you deal with grief in the real world,
which is a pretty good thing for a myth (or a game) to do.
Peter Larsen
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