Hear hear Peter. This is one of those dreaded 'Yes I agree' posts. Personally I feel that Glorantha, though it has room for every facet of human experience, also has evolved a fairly finely-tuned set of conventions and genre rules. We skip over the consequences of death and violence for the sake of storytelling, but our common world has evolved its own 'cosmic laws' that channel and balance pc activities to a certain extent. I use an 'instant karma' approach in my campaigns: if your players routinely rape (for whatever justification), are they equally comfortable with being raped? (Or substitute power fantasy of choice). What sort of heroes do my players aspire to be? What stances do their gods encourage? How do their communities and families support them in this, and how do they support their communities?
All IMG of course.
Equally important is the ethos and ideoculture created by the *players* and gamesmaster - the conventions they use to govern interactions between themselves.
Peripheral to this, and verging OT, RPG Studies have recently transcribed an *ancient* (1988) paper of mine onto the web. Called 'Therapy is Fantasy: Roleplaying, Healing and the Construction of Symbolic Order' and it explores some of the issues of ethos and character action. If you're interested in the wider issues of roleplaying, it can be found at http://www.rpgstudies.net/hughes/therapy_is_fantasy.html. It may also explain some of my particular biases and ways of approaching material like the above. :)
Cheers
John
nysalor_at_... John Hughes
Passion for cosmos itself is an aesthetic act, a commitment to beauty.
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