This may well be a rambling post, so apologies in advance.
I've been reading the recent posts, having been away from my PC for a few days, and several things strike me.
Glorantha has always had some kind of description of Deities and their origins and powers. So Orlanth is a Storm God but also King of the Gods, Humakt is the God of Death, Honour and Warriors and so on.
The mythology of various parts of Glorantha has been written in a general and fairly consistent way.
There have been various attempts in the past to describe the magic that is accessible through a particular deity.
Writing myths and descriptions of Deities using Game Mechanics is a BAD, BAD, BAD idea.
It looks as though the new version of HeroQuest seems to be trying to rewrite the functions of the major deities using new rules and game constructs, which in itself is fine. The major driving force seems to be the use of runes, which again is fine. However, it also seems to me that the deities are being shoehorned into runic templates that do not fit their mythic origins, which to me is a BAD thing.
The main example of this in the recent posts is that Lodril has been designated an Earth god rather than a fire god as a game mechanic. In my opinion, this kind of approach is wrong. A god like Lodril has been well described in the past and his powers and properties are well known. The game mechanics should be malleable enough to accept such a major and complex deity rather then forcing it down a certain path because of an arbitrary game mechanic.
I have had a long-time aversion to runic descriptions of deities. I believe that deities should have their powers and functions described in a more flexible way than that which is provided by runes in isolation.
HeroQuest Version 1 had an interesting way of describing the powers granted by deities. I wasn't a great fan of the very rigid way of using Affinities and Feats but I could see that they worked. I wasn't very keen on the rigid Animist/Theist/Wizardry split, nor on the complex way of casting magic in the different types of religious organisations.
Clearly, the powers that be have decided that this is not the way forward. One of the reasons behind this seems to be that Greg Stafford's writings do not describe magic use in the same way as has been described in earlier workings of Glorantha. So what? I personally don't really care about that kind of thing. What I care about is that the Glorantha that I enjoy playing in, reading about and writing about is fairly consistent and fairly usable. To me, these changes don't seem to work very well.
I must say that I haven't yet bought HeroQuest 2, so I can't comment on the rules as have been written so far. I have, however, seen an earlier copy and have read various comments about the rules. When I see a copy in Wayland's Forge I'll probably buy it. If that invalidates any of my earlier comments, then I apologise for wasting your time.
See Ya
Simon
Powered by hypermail