First off, thanks to all those who replied to my questions about gods and bloodlines. Much useful information.
Many messages past someone (sorry, can't remember who) was asking about what happens to Orlanthi cultists when the Lunars take over.
>A lot of the Glorantha literature seems to imply that many Orlanthi
>switch cults when the Lunars show up.
Someone replied they join Barntar and become inactive Orlanthis
My take is a little different - the impression I have (from reading some of the Pavis stuff I think) is that they *publicly* start worshipping Barntar, but really the priests and initiates are still worshipping Orlanth, they just tell the Imperials that they are now happy little ploughmen. Given that you more likely worship a pantheon than a particular god, all the Orlanthis have to do is make sure they perform no public ceremonies which are readily identifiable as Orlanths - not too hard I should imagine.
>From: PMichaels_at_aol.com
>A while back (Oct 31) I posted a story about the Aldryami Trickster and some
>thoughts about pixies & sprites. I'd like to ask for some feedback from
>those of you who read it.
I'm usually not that interested in elves (trolls are my favourite non-humans - aldryami are just food :-]) but I liked the story
Back on my GL activities....
(most of this was written before I read John Hughes rather long messages on
the subject of Gods, Heroquests, etc - I decided to leave what I had already
written alone and reply to John at the end).
> Uh - define "son" to a spirit entity. "Son" could mean:....
>
> 1) biological offspring (not very likely)
> 2) spirit created by Yelm
> 3) spirit split off from Yelm
> 4) spirit adopted by Yelm, and given a favored status.
Interesting point. How do the Yelmalions define their God's relationship to Yelm? How about any parent-child relationship amongst the gods (and there are lots of them). Do their worshippers regard them as one of the above, more than one, something else?
Jonas Schiott
>Michael goes on to demolish my Elmal/Yelmalio theory:
Urrr, did I? Sorry. But I really doubt all the Elmali priests were illuminated just before everyone switched. Oh, and those who say Elmal and Yelmalio are different may be able to pass off lack of retribution because of lack of guilt, but there is still the question of why the initiates did not have to sacrifice another point of POW (oops, part of soul, this list not being for RQ rules :-]) if the two gods are different.
>>>You some kind of God Learner?
>>What are you going to do if I say yes? :-)
>Welcome you to the club.
Ahh, nice to know I am among friends.
Don't I just ask some fun questions?
(although I doubt I can keep it up for long)
Anyway, my most recent was:
>Are the gods self aware beings?
To which Jonas and Colin Watson replied, in summary, (and they may castigate me thoroughly if my summary is wrong)
the gods are much vaster and complex than mortals and self awareness is difficult to compare between the two.
Now the former I will certainly grant them. Gods do not present exactly the same face to all their worshippers. Sometimes it is markedly different. If I may expand on my question, it runs along the lines of: Is there an entity, aware of its own separateness from the rest of creation (as we humans perceive our separateness), which knows itself as (insert god of your choice here). Do these divine entities know of and recognise other separate, divine entities?
Granted, mortals may not really understand what makes the difference between two (or more) aspects of one god and two or more gods, but do the gods? Are they capable of this level of discernment?
Personally, I don't like the idea (proposed by someone else) of this bit of the godplane makes this god, and that bit makes another god and may be they overlap. It mechanises the gods far too much for my liking.
Colin also talked of the worshippers forming the god, at least in part, in the same way as neurons are part of a human. If it is only in part I can accept it. Simply by the flow of power from worshippers to god if nothing else. If the gods are supposedly totally formed of their worshippers then I have severe difficulty. Apart from gods with no worshippers (like the barley head in Snake Pipe Hollow), the gods are supposed to have pre-existed their worshippers. So if they now consist totally of their worshippers (even with a sum is greater than the sum of its parts line) there must have been a distinct change somewhere.
Nick
>You familiar with the AI conversational computer test? If you can talk to
>someone across a terminal link and not be able to tell whether it's human or
>machine, it's "intelligent".
Yep. I am a computer science lecturer after all. How do you know whether I am a computer or not? I even have advantages over the normal Turing test - I don't have to reply to you in real time. But I have a belief that you are all humans.
>Gloranthan deities may well be self-aware by the same test: there's nothing
> you can do to prove they aren't.
Not from the POV of a Gloranthan mortal anyway. Paralleling my belief that everyone else on this list is human is the Gloranthan theists' belief that the Gods are sentient, separate entities. But it is hard, if not impossible, for them to prove it, even assuming it is true (and they would not see the need anyway). However, we have some advantages over them (and some disadvantages comapred to them). As to proving the answer to the question, at the moment I can't and I don;t think I ever will be able to. Given that we are working with a fictional world (and therefore empiricism is out) all we can do is logical exrapolation from the known facts. Given that these are subject to change, proof is out. However, again because this is fictional, changing and incomplete, we can postulate to our hearts content and, if all else fails, beg Greg to change things we don't like. Even then we can say "well it's different in my game".
>My own opinion is that investigating Glorantha through play and speculation
>is a more rewarding pastime than defining it through obscure philosophies
>that in themselves don't impinge on Gloranthans' understanding of the world.
Sorry, but I like that sort of thing. Just call me a pedantic theoriser (or should I just say GL?)
> (goes on to say any over arching theory has to encompass all four world
views)
Yep, it certainly does. Doesn't stop me trying though. But I don't find postulating a core of identity in each god (somebody else's idea which I quite like) to fall down at this test. The naturalists won't mind. They think spirits have separate identities and gods are just big spirits, so they will probably happily agree. Whatever the gods are the humanists don't like them (or think they are saints) and mystics think they are distractions from the true path. Postulating a core identity for each god is not giving them more power than the humanists and mystics are prepared to acknowledge. Finally, it does not contradict the facts of theism in Glorantha, ie different worship in different places. What it says is that a god does not insist on "one true way" of worshipping it. The gods are quite happy to present various faces to various groups of worshippers. There may be limits, but there is a lot of flexibility.
Martin Crim
>if you ask Yelmalio by Divination whether a particular Elmal cultist is
>a member of Yelmalio's cult, he'll tell you that the worshiper
>is, but that he doesn't have the full revelation. But if you
>ask Elmal whether the YO dude is a cultist, he'll tell you that
>the target worshiper has severed himself from Elmal.
I almost follow this, but why could not Elmal give the same answer as Yelmalio?
John Hughes
>>just what are the gods exactly? Nonexistent?
>>Schizophrenic? Do they exist as identifiable entities
>>at all? Are they completely at the mercy of their worshippers?...
>>So is it actually possible to "make" a god?....Just
>>WHAT are the gods??
>
>Whew. The great God-Learner questions. In twenty words or less? :-)
Well, at least it gives us a short summary opf them :-)
>I think it's very important to distinguish between emic
>(internal) and etic (external, meta-gaming, Gods-Eye
>View) perspectives when discussing Gloranthan issues. As
>hinted above, very few if any of the later are ever
>published - those horrid God Learnerish cult writeups
>are the major exception.
>
>The emic view is the view of the RQ player or
>imaginative journeyer, the only 'real' view 'on the
>ground'. (Logical Fallacies AO1: Discus the
>contradictions in the previous sentence. 500 words, due
>thursday). Even if you have etic views, they cannot be
>expressed 'in game' and will be meaningless to your
>characters. Sure, it might make planning a campaign a
>little tricky if you plan to meet gods on a daily basis,
>but really what difference does it make? Trust your own
>views on the gods and run with them!
Much of what you say in these two posts I agree with. But (isn't there always a but, especially where I'm concerned?), it is a little trickier than that. Try as we might we will never have an emic view of Glorantha - we will never be there. We can approach it, perhaps get very close, but never actually arrive. I think in the first line of the second para you meant RQ character - not RQ player.
>From the POV of an inhabitant of Glorantha they can try anything they like.
Some things they won't try, because they think it would be stupid -
sometimes they will have been wrong and they should have tried. In some sense
a character can do the same thing. But, the arbiter of the Gloranthan's
actions is the world of Glorantha, whatever its reality happens to be at the
time. The arbiter of a character's actions is the GM. And the GM is only
vaguely equatable with the reality of Glorantha. Regardless of knowledge (does
the reality of Glorantha have knowledge? - probably not), the *abilities*
are different. Reality does what it is supposed, a GM does not always know.
Now I hear "follow your own myth" (or even "wing that mother") but GMs are not
always willing or able to do so in a way that satisfies them.
What those GMs want is information on which to base their decisions. Greg is certainly a far better writer than I, I would love to have far more material from him than I do. GMs do not have time to answer the "great" questions, often they will not realise what those questions are until the occasion arises in play. Which is not a good time to trying to come up with an answer.
Is Glorantha a vehicle for myth-telling or roleplaying? Good question, as I believe there is a difference. Can it do both? Yes, demonstrably. Can it do equally well at both? Probably not, I would say, at least in terms of roleplaying accessible to more than a devout few.
Not only is there doubt, there is doubt about where there is doubt. Greg might say "The Gods are sentient entities", he might say "The Gods are groups of nexus points on the god plane", he might say "they are both the above and more", he might even say "I really do not have a clue". I just wish he'd say something. If I don't like it, I could ignore it, but at least I'd have the option.
Now to most GMs, even to a significant number on the daily (hi MOB), most of these questions are irrelevant. Rightly so, they are rather esoteric. What a GM really needs to know, in most cases wants to know, is how this world is supposed to work. The material is patchy and contradictory. To the average roleplayer, this does not encourage their creativity, it drives them off and our community is smaller.
You may say, what do all these questions matter, follow your own vision. Some people do not have the time, ability or confidence to formulate their own. Others wish to understand Greg's vision before deciding where to strike out on their own. Some people want answers to prevent them from a decision which they may later regret. "Oh, you should never have done that, it was obvious that it would lead to blah blah blah". But to some of us it is not obvious. Why do I ask all these questions? Am I just going to do what I'm told. Impossible there are too many contradictions. Take a vote? Possible, but not something I'd suggest. No, the reason I ask all these questions is to see if there are people out there with insights that I do not have. And there are. Some of them have even changed my opinons. Even when I don't agree I value their positions. They make me re-evaluate my own. Cross-fertilisation is a wonderful thing.
Here, for example, are a couple of questions which I think do matter. How lacking in free will are the gods, can they plan?
Certainly some of Greg's early writing state quite clearly that the gods can plan. The example given is Orlanth and Yelm using their cults to continue their rivalry. They lack free will in that they can not escape from the rivalry forged in the God time. The have free will in that they are free to decide how best to pursue that rivalry.
Now why is that important? A GM might like to know whether a cult can act in a co-ordinated manner without contact between its parts. You might say, make up your own mind. But a GM may be worried about the consequences. I do not know if there are any consequences from one answer or the other to this question, but there probably are. And some of them may hit the GM in the face sometime later. Most GMs are prepared to trust the world creator (in this case Greg), often mroe than they trust themselves. I don't think Greg likes that attitude, and I can see why. It really comes down to how accessible you want Glorantha to be.
Glorantha offers many opportunities for experienced, imaginative GMs and players. But it is very daunting for the inexperienced, and becoming more so all the time. It is like asking someone to operate a TARDIS after only ever having flown biplanes. Well, that's obviously an exageration, but you get the idea.
Just a quick note about heroquesting. Are there limits to what it can do? In terms of changing myth or (current) reality, I do not think so. It is just awfully hard to do certain things (like making the sky green). But while it can change reality, I do not think it can do anything to history. People's perceptions of what happened, yes (but that is just part of current reality), but it can not affect what actually happened. If the god's understanding of time is not the best (I'm not convinced it is entirely lacking) why should heroquesting be able to re-engineer history? Even the GL's never did that (and don't say we wouldn't know if they did - they never got anything 100% correct, except maybe Caladra and Aurelion, and even there we know what happened).
Michael
End of Glorantha Digest V1 #43
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