> On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 10:05 AM, Matthew Cole <matthew.cole_at_...
> > wrote:
>
> > I'm sure most here have read, heard or watched stories where the mystic is
> > a
> >
> > protagonist. One obvious example is Kung Fu (http://tinyurl.com/yu6zo9 -
> > Wikipedia link).
> >
> Well, he's a pretty bad mystic. One problem with mystics in HQ is the models
> that we have are mostly like Ingolf (I may have the name wrong) -- mystic
> studies give you fantastic powers that can't be used outside of very
> specific ritual situations -- something that would be deeply frustrating to
> most players, I think. Also, since mysticism in Glorantha has been defined
> as a pulling away from the world, but most players want to be more enmeshed
> in the world they are exploring, another source of frustration.
Well, that's really only ONE form of Gloranthan Mysticism as far as I know.
I'm not the expert here, but transcending the world is not the only path of transcendence available.
Kung Fu (or similar martial arts) is not mysticism, although it does share some meditative practices and it can be a companion discipline and pathway, from a Gloranthan point of view.
Mysticism exists in all of the major Gloranthan Religions, in some form or other -- so that it exists in some form(s) of relationship(s) with all of the magic systems. Hence the difficulty of writing up some sort of singular game system for it, apart from just using the basic HQ rules themselves.
> Which doesn't mean that you can't have a character with that feel -- you
> could easily have a swordsman like Li Mu-bai in Crouching Tiger, Hidden
> Dragon -- someone who has a mystic outlook but follows a god or sorcerous
> school that gives powers that the player can use and feel good about. So the
> character is mystic culturally without being mystic mechanically.
If you read the book that the film is based on, it is quite clear that he is not a mystic. All of the protagonists and antagonists are revealed to be motivated by lustful and worldly human concerns, and their air of mystic endeavour is essentially shown to be pompous and greed/lust-motivated hypocrisy :)
The main character is endearing because he is wistfully aware of this flaw, both in himself and others, and the ironic resolution of this conflict is that he detaches himself from these concerns only because they are violently destroyed, leaving him with an ambiguous mix of fragile enlightenment and utter regret.
> Or that is my thoughts, having spent the better part of a year trying to
> come up with mysticism rules that would actually work in play and that Greg
> felt matched the feel of Glorantha.
I think that a game that could portray the slow reaching towards mysticism would need to be fairly spread out in time instead of trying to focus on some specific period of time.
I mean : "what do you do ?" -- "I meditate on the relationship between the elements and the spirit for 7 years" as a single action round ;)
I think that the path of the mystic is very alike to the path of the teacher. Just as the teacher needs to be able to step outside the boundaries of his subject in order to understand it, so the Gloranthan Mystic would need to step outside the boundaries of his cultural and magical upbringing as a foundational transcendence.
Julian Lord
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