hcarteau :
> Selon Greg Stafford <glorantha1_at_...>:
>
> > > So does that mean that there is a Fourth Magical World? How about a fourth
> > > Magic of Mysticism (separate from Theism, Sorcery, and Shamanism.) ?
>
> > here is what I mean: send your character on a HeroQuest and they will know.
> > And maybe you will too.
> /// Well, maybe they will - and maybe they won't. It takes a pretty deep HQ to
> reach, or even glimpse, the All ! That's one thing the godlearners didn't get -
> their quests were purely technical, dry. They lost the most important goal of
> any important Journey (into ourselves, the otherworlds, to faraway lands etc.)
I don't think that GL HeroQuesting necessarily had to be technical and dry, and heck you can just find out for yourself if they were or they weren't by playing in the Second Age -- I think that the problem that they had is that they viewed the Essence Plane and Sorcery and their God as the only valid path to the Ultimate Reality of Glorantha, so that when they entered into mythic realities having other magical connections they produced warped magic out of them as a result, because they viewed them as devolved and warped manifestations of their own a priori beliefs.
I think that initially this probably wasn't such a big deal, because even a warped connection to the source of magic *is* a connection, and the cosmos can stand the presence of the odd exception or two to the normal order of things -- but when it reached the stage where this questing was being basically mass-produced, I think that the masses of abnormal connections were so warped away from the original lines that the connection was basically lost, so that any potential spiritual element to their questing was probably impossible to attain, particularly because of their own attitudes that anything non-Malkioni was essentially just second rate and not worthy of respect.
Of course, there must have been individual God Learners and some GL groups that never lost sight of the fact that the heathen myths were *also* paths to spirituality, so that even if they viewed them as inferior, they were still worthy of some sort of minimal respect and understanding -- although I'd suspect that most of these must have been Player Character types ;)
> mysticism has no accessible power of value in Glorantha. If power accrued
> through mystical means is used it manifests as one of the other systems.
> /// In other words, it has no value in terms of Game Fun, both for players and
> GMs. I'll leave it as a tantalizing piece of background, i.e. "what these weird
> easterners do" (even if they don't).
I think that this is the crux of the various discussions that have taken place, can there be some sort of special rules or descriptions for mysticism to make it specifically enjoyable in the game whilst remaining true to Greg's vision for it ?
Someone mentioned Natural Magic in connection with Mysticism, and although that source of magic is not "mystic" per se, I can certainly see that some mystic schools could advise students that the mixed-world origin of that magic is less spiritually polluting than either Sorcery, Theism, or Spiritism. Natural Magic also provides a method for a more individually involved spirituality that could be thematically appropriate for a campaign involving mysticism -- but then again, there are also some schools of mysticism that heartily embrace one or the other magical methods...
I think some of the difficulties for portraying mysticism in a Gloranthan game come from potential differences in time scale -- the time scale of mysticism is that of the life journey, whereas the other systems tend to provide some more immediate methods of involvement with ongoing events and crises and wars and questings --- but a Life Journey is difficult to quantify in rules terms, isn't it ... :-)
There are such things as mystic powers, and Greg's suggestions that they usually manifest in the form of some non-mystical magic is a darn useful one :) I guess that what would also be useful for GMs and Players would be some sort of descriptive texts describing the aims and the philosophies of various schools of mysticism rather than any special rules sets for them -- mystic powers can be defined in a very Ad Hoc manner by each individual GM, Player, or gaming group rather than being defined once and for all by some rules text.
All that you would really need from there onwards in my opinion is for say describe your character Liu Kong as being a mystic student of the school of the Seven Dragons and the Nine Tea Merchants, and to define the tenets and goals of their mysticism, such as the Way to Enlightenment is the Path of Fruitful And Pleasant Exchange with Foreigners and Questing to Understand and Share in their Lives and their Religions. Give him some sort of day job, like merchant, travelling martial artist, door-to-door religious nut, whatever, to get him involved in the world, and some magic of some sorts, let's say some natural magic and some wacky pop culture reference that he can hear the secrets of the grasshoppers when they chirp at night to him, secrets of how to develop his player-defined powers and magic abilities. Part of his Life Journey is to travel around to various places where the foreign grasshoppers live, so he can go and listen to them there...
Then define whichever abilities on his character sheet as being "mystic" in anture, and agreeing with the GM how that mysticism manifests as such -- let's say our Liu Kong has :
I Understand that the Foreigners Also Know the Dragons and Follow the Tea Merchants 5W
The Player and the GM can determine what that means in the context of the campaign, and it will work just like any other ability, except that the players all know that it's Shazam! "Mystic" !! :-)
Liu Kong's mystical outlook can be defined however people see fit, it's completely non-problematic -- maybe he spends most of his time meditating, even to the point where he travels about in a trance-like state most of the time ; maybe he reaches towards enlightenment by asking personal questions about people's beliefs to as many people as humanly possible ; maybe he is seeking for the secret of the *perfect* cup of tea which will let him reach "the next level" (whatever that means) when he can finally prepare it for sharing with his friends.
I don't think that adding mystics to any game is much of a problem, no extra special rules are really needed for them, the only real problem is what sort of shape and form should be given to background texts describing mysticism and the various established mystic methods and schools as they are in Glorantha, and some general and specific advice to provide GMs and Players with the means to illustrate these sorts of themes in their games.
Julian Lord
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