THE 'TRIBE' AND 'CLAN' DEFINITION DEBATE
I dunno about sensibly, but I can try...
The word 'tribe' is one of those loose, mushy, imprecise terms
that are a nightmare to define except in ethnographic context.
It is a word much misused: the Aboriginal 'tribes' of Australia,
for instance, are in fact for the most part patriclans. Roger Keesing's
'Kin Groups and Social Structure', one of the standard university
texts on kinship and descent, doesn't define the term at all.
If pushed, I'd offer something like, 'a politically independent group usually claiming a definite territory and often with a distinct dialect and culture'. The important point here is that it is primarily a POLITICAL rather than a KINSHIP entity. (Yes, kinship is politics, but you know what I mean...)
Clan is easier, though there are many different types of clans. A general definition would be, " a unilineal corporate descent group based on real, or more commonly, fictive kinship." Keesing (for the purists among us, and for Alex ;^) ) gives a more formal definition:
'A unilineal descent group or category whose members trace patrilineal
descent (patriclan) or matrilineal descent (matriclan) from an apical
ancestor/ancestress, but who do not know the genealogical links that
connect them to this apical ancestor.'
To round things out, let me include Keesing's definition of a descent group, a general term that would include Orlanthi bloodlines:
'A kin group whose membership is based on a rule of descent.
Appropriate descent status (patrilineal, matrilineal or cognatic,
depending on the society) entitles a person to be a member of the group.
I agree with young Sandy that the internal structure of the Sartarite and Praxian tribes are very different.
SANITY, MOTIVATION AND ROLEPLAYING GENRE (Apologies that the following paragraphs are only peripherally related to Glorantha.)
For me it could never work, mainly because of the very different genres and background assumptions of the two games.
RQ is a classic male heroic fantasy, pushing adventurers to become supra-human: bigger better faster, wiser. 'Every day in every way I'm getting better and better, and I've got the experience points, err skill checks to prove it.' It's about values of domination and power.
[Obviously, its about a lot more than that as well (storytelling, myth, fun, duck bandits, fun...) otherwise most of us wouldn't be reading this digest. Glorantha is much much bigger than RQ. But in a formal sense, domination and power are what most fantasy roleplaying games are about.]
Call of Cthulhu is faithful to Lovecraft in that it is a game of fears and shadows, of ordinary people with ordinary failings who are drawn into things almost against their will, and suffer as they touch upon 'Things Humankind Was Not Meant To Know' (TM). Lovecraft once described his philosophy and vision as that of humans realising that they are mere insects on the stage of an enormous cosmic play: a play conducted by incomprehensible beings of unimaginable power for purposes our tiny brains cannot fathom. The sanity stat is a wonderful game mechanism for putting this genre into practice.
Lovecraft's stories (and the better COC scenarios) are about realising just how insignificant we humans are before one of these gigantic creatures casually crush us, usually without even realising we are there. He called it 'Cosmic Indifference', in our terms it might be 'Every day in every way I'm getting smaller and smaller, and I got the Sanity points to prove it.'
COC suffered a lot in the early days because players approached it like all of the other (male heroic fantasy) games on the market: you collected weapons and you killed things. When they realised that characterisation was a goal in itself (in formal terms, celebrating the uniqueness of your character and human nature - searching for your essence, cause you were about to lose it), games began to change. THEY were going to get you, you didn't know when, but until they did you could at least ROLEPLAY.
In Australia at least, COC's emphasis on characterisation and human essence rather than skills and attributes provided the stepping stone for the development of systemless and multiform styles of gaming in the mid nineteen eighties.
Having said all that, I should confess that I've led my Cthulhu group of upper class British twits into occasional aberrations of shoggoth hunting with flamethrowers and machine guns, and it was lots of fun, especially when things began to go wrong. After all, there's an adolescent male within us all who wants Power and Mastery, that's probably the prime reason why rpgs remain popular. I've also had occasional highly atmospheric mood excursions in RQ. Inevitably however, the mood breaks as soon as the first sword is drawn and the dice start rolling. Sometimes, system and mood are incompatible.
I guess my general point is that rule systems and even game backgrounds bring their own tacit set of rules and assumptions; you can break these rules (powergaming in COC, fear and twittering in RQ) but only at great cost. Its like using a motorbike to tow a trailer or a ten tonne truck to go shopping: its not what the thing was designed for. Sanity rules do not fit into RQ's heroic genre, and as for COC, have you ever noticed how hard it is to hit ANYTHING in that damned game!
The point also has a lot of pertinence for describing and running Gloranthan cultures, and for designing characters, and has a lot to do with the heroquest system I'm currently describing in TOTRM. Another time maybe.
Cheers
John
... a flying arrow, a crashing wave, night old ice, a coiled snake,
a bride's bed talk, a broken sword, the play of bears, a king's son. Havamal 86.
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