So, they are "people" in that they are not just magical tools -- they have wants, desires, preferences, and even personalities, although the latter are very strange to humans, even animists.
They aren't human in that their concerns, emotions, and everything a very different.
So a brook spirit will be very interested an knowledgeable about things in (and around, to a lesser degree) its brook. It will be much less aware of things not near it's brook, with, perhaps, the exception of gossip it hears from other rivers. The nature of water is fluid and flowing. The brook spirit doesn't understand permanence or even linear time. Everything moves, so why keep track? When a brook spirit encounters something uncomfortable, it flows away to a new place or a new shape where that thing doesn't exist, so a brook spirit has very little sense of consequence. It may be friendly, and give you cool water to drink, but it is just as happy to drown you. It doesn't mean anything by that, by the way; it's no use getting angry; that's what brooks do. And, while the brook spirit may have been your friend before, chances are it has flowed into a new shape by now that could be anything.
On the other hand, a wolf spirit understands pack social relations very well -- it remembers who you are and where you fall in the hierarchy. Are you dominant? Then it will try to please you. If you are submissive, it will bully you and demand service. If your status is unclear, you are going to have to fight. Unlike the brook, it can be loyal, as long as your status is clear. The wolf spirit knows about predators and prey. It knows its territory and what surrounds it, but nothing beyond that. It's hungry pretty often, so, unless you bring it something to eat and let it eat, it may not pay too much attention to you. If you show weakness, you may get challenged.
A ghost is stuck at the moment of its death. It may have been human once, but now it is obsessed with how it died. It knows that, and it may remember things from its life, but you need to draw its attention to them and keep them there, or it will just talk about how it died or its dominant passion in life. A ghost probably knows things about its family, too, if its from a culture with strong family ties.
A really big spirit might be more complex, but it also might be much, much simpler. Oakfed probably mostly thinks about burning, and, if its going to put on a more "human mind," it's only going to do it to get you to burn something or let it burn something.
Try to make the spirits alien -- give the characters nicknames based on what the spirit cares about (a wolf names people by smells, perhaps). If your players are into it, you can select a quirk to really play up -- repeat phrases or conversations over and over, jump around from topic to topic, mix up events being recalled across generations, and so on. Requiring ritual behavior is also a good trick -- I had a game where a character became very agitated if asked questions. The players were first annoyed, then they really got into how to quiz a witness about an event without asking any direct questions. It's easy to imagine other spirits that don't understand time or adjectives or whatever, so just communicating with them is a bit of a challenge.
Anyway, that's some of my ideas.
Peter Larsen
On Sat, Feb 9, 2013 at 8:07 PM, michaelL <michaelalewis25_at_OlLvVMM3IdCHw4KjztfaZgRlc59_CYEK3KUJuB85v3YkPCYAi6guQXZcuKu9iLRfCeyYHD5lEd3C_BETaHy6ug.yahoo.invalid> wrote:
> **
>
>
>
> I'm starting my first Glorantha campaign in 2 weeks. I have a player who
> was thinking of a spirit as a patron. I'm using Griffin Mountain as a
> starting play and GURPS Ice Age for use as background of nomadic stone age
> technology.
>
> Are spirits just people and animals with no bodies who have been dead for
> a long time?
>
> What's it like to talk to an animal spirit? I assume some of them are
> intelligent, otherwise it would be pointless.
>
> How do you treat spirits in your game world?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Michael
>
>
>
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