> Wait. I'm confused. My reading of the short Sorcery blurb in the HQ2
> book has exactly that. Rune > Grimoire > Spell
>
> A grimoire is linked to a rune, spells are linked to a grimoire.
>
Hmm, that wasn't my understanding...
Grimoires are *associated* with particular runes, but are not linked to them
in the way in which a theists feats might be.
Mechanically, you can learn any grimoire your school teaches (or any
grimoire, once you are a "real" adept).
The ability rating for a grimoire is it's own rating and is not associated
with a 'personal' rune; it has spells which fit in under it. In effect it is
a keyword, with abilities cascading under it.
A theist can improve their magic directly be increasing their rune's rating - a wizard must increase the grimoire's rating.
> Well, personally I think ALL magic should live under a Homeland keyword
> to some degree. There are no pure Theistic/Animistic/Essentialistic
> societies from what I understand.
This is more of a game mechanical decision than one driven by cosmology for me. If you have a rune that fits you personally integrate with the magic in some way - it's a mechanics break for someone who wants to take common magic that fits their runes, rather than their homeland. It also fits in with my general policy of avoiding 'orphan' abilities whereever possible and reasonable.
For instance, if all Sartarites have runes when they are initiated into
> adult hood then all Sartarites have the ability to do lay person
> Theistic magic, even the ones who have chosen to follow Kolat. (Although
> as a Shamanic practice, I suppose at some point Kolat people have to
> abandon that.)
>
I imagine that Kolatings either have a high Air rune (with spirits living under that) which represents their ability to relate with air entities, rather than their capacity to mimic different air entities. The runes are presumably beyond (or behind?) the "three worlds".
Alternatively a Kolating might have the Spirit rune too and be some kind of Shaman. I think that wind spirits could probably happily be linked with either Air or Spirit - I see no benefit in bring especially prescriptive about this in our games.
> I'm not sure what you mean by "let it live under the appropriate Rune"
> keyword, though.
Sorry, mechanically take it's rating from the Rune [keyword]. "That lives
under this" is a common form I use when talking about abilities in our
games. ;)
Usually it is "that can live under this, or this, or this, where would you
like it?"
> I've never considered that common magic. That's ritual magic blessings.
> Common magic is knowing a spell. It's why I've gleefully ignored (even
> if it seems to be canon) the idea that people in Animist societies can't
> make charms of their own, other people have to make them for it. Animist
> "common magic" is also, like the "blessing" view of Essential magic
> (Church magic, anyway) not something you have yourself but something
> someone else gives you. I always thought that crazy. For me, if the clan
> knows that you go to Old Honeysuckle Woman on the hill and sing for her,
> you wind three flowers into a charm, then you do. No one else has to do
> it for you.
>
It's a ritual, in the fiction of the game. When it is a ritual with a weekly duration that is performed on you every week for basically every week of your life I think it could be safely modelled by abilities. The times where it *isn't* in effect are aberrations and can be modelled mechanically with penalties to the ratings as they "fade" or can just be determined to be beyound credibility by the Narrator if they wish.
I actually don't think we need three radically different mechanical systems
to model magic in HQ2 and that cosmology should *mostly* live in the game
fiction and the credibility tests rather than in the functional mechanics of
the game.
It seems clunky to me to allow theistic magicians to consider their best
rune as their social, mythological, and magical keyword and to require
wizards and animists to take an *additional* keyword for each magic they
want to learn. This privileges theists dramatically in terms of the
mechanics. Arguably the flexibility of animism and wizardry ("want radically
different magic? read a new book or meet some new spirits!") might "balance"
this, but given how resistances work in HQ2 I don't think this is the case.
Sorry for getting a bit "system specific" Gloranthaphiles! :(
> Except there is no "common magic" as far as I know. The term has been
> dropped. Which is fine by me since it was always used in a slapdash
> manner anyway.
>
I would imagine that for most monotheists, or at least for a lot of them, their "commonest" magic is being regularly blessed by their priest in worship ceremonies.
Sometimes it might be the same kind of folk learning and "wise craft" that other kinds of religion have - although the church frowns on this. I would like to be able to model some kind of common magic for true believers who actually observe the church's strictures though. The idea that monotheistic tenets are a bit of a joke or something to be flaunted sort of undermines their dramatic and narrative power for me.
Other religious varieties typically don't involve the distribution downwards (as well as upwards) of ritual power; the ritual magical ceremonies of theists (e.g. the Arming of Orlanth rite) are typical exceptional rather than regular, especially when compared to Monotheistic ideas of regular ritual...
> It's one of the reasons I am kicking around whether or not "everyone has
>
> three runes" is something Gloranthan or a rule-keeping device or
> something Orlanthi or Sartarite.
>
Runes are pretty neat, and a part of the Glorantha I enjoy thinking about and using in the games I play. That being said, I have some "heretical" ideas about how to interpret them and I find the idea that theists have some special capacity to use this nifty descriptive feature of Glorantha "better" than other people to be a bit tedious. The Orlanthi are neat, but they are not the be-all and end-all of Glorantha - at least not for me.
I consider the runes to be a Gloranthan thing (after reading things on this very list); and I think they are able to be represented reasonably elegantly in the game mechanics of HQ2. I'd just like to understand a bit more about the "design philosophy" behind the magic rules in the HQ2 appendix so I can appreciate the intent of the design before I start messing with it in our game (more than I already have.;)).
--
John Machin
"Nothing is more beautiful than to know the All."
- Athanasius Kircher, 'The Great Art of Knowledge'.
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