HAVAMAL Martin asked about my .sig.
Havamal, or 'Words of the High One' is one of the books of the Elder or Poetic Edda. Its a collection of Viking verse and maxims relating to life and law, purportedly from the mouth of Wotan ('The High One') himself. First compiled in the 9th or 10th century, Havamal is both marvellous poetry and a fascinating insight into the cruel, stoic and treacherous world of the Norwegian Vikings. Must-read stuff for anyone running Orlanthi. I adapt and transliterate bits all the time for my Far Point campaign, as anyone who's suffered through the draft of 'Fires of Mist' may already realise.
'Three things are difficult to know Q a man, an oak tree, and the gors
and gallt beyond Alda Chur. Wild and untravelled the gors and the gallt,
hollow the oak tree, and full of shame the man.'
Orlanthi proverb.
Recorded in Ironspike, 1621.
'Praise not the day till evening has come; a woman till buried, a man till
burned. Praise not a horse till broken; a sword till bloodied; a youth till
married. Praise not gors till it has been crossed; gallt till it has been
hunted; beer till it has been drunk.
Praise not a life till death has judged it. Thereafter, nothing can
change the story to be sung of our valiant dead.'
The prisoner Balin GodgiftUs speech before Harvar Ironfist and the Golden Octad. Alda Chur, 1630.
Another resource I'm always using comes from the companion Prose or Younger Edda, compiled about 1360 by the redoubtable Snorri Sturluson. Although the entire Edda is fairly indispensable, I particularly use the book called Skaldskaparmal, which is, as the name suggests, a book for the training of skalds. (Anyone willing to give an exact translation of the title?) Skaldskaparmal provides lists of the standard poetic terms for hundreds of common objects. Hence:
'AXE and iron-sparth, horny, scraper and bearded, cutter and gaper,
power-span, Gnepia [towering], giantess and Fala [frightener], spiked
and bulging, whiskered and Vigglod [battle-bright], hewer and stretched.
Then there is soft-horned: this is considered the highest of names for
axe.'
The Younger Edda is available as an Everyman paperback under the title
'Edda'. My copy of Havamal is published by the Viking Research Society.
SYSTEMLESS - NEITHER NEW NOR REVOLUTIONARY Nils commented on my defence of 'systemless' gaming styles, asking why the aspects I emphasised - in-depth characterisation, atmosphere, the exploration of emotional and moral themes, and the associated reliance on inter-player trust, group ethic and mutual storytelling - couldn't be used in a 'normal' game system with dice etc. He stated that "claims of 'the new and adult way of roleplaying, the future of our hobby' do sound just a little bit pretensious in my ears."
And so they should. I wouldn't advocate either claim. Nor did I - despite the quotation marks! :-) In the post - basically a key point summary from a fairly long booklet I'd written on the subject - I hoped that I'd made a couple of points clear. (maybe I didn't - it WAS a long post :-)). Let me repeat them again.
Firstly, 'systemless' approaches (there are lots of them, and there's nothing particularly new about any of them them) are merely a set of tools in our basic toolkit, and secondly, 'because I state that systemless approaches emphasise X, I'm not implying that other styles don't emphasise X' (that's a real quote). I'd never claim that systemless gaming is the future of roleplaying (I enjoy my fumbles too much), though I DO believe that we have a lot to gain from experimenting with and testing different approaches to roleplaying. As I said, it's really good for certain types of story, useless for others.
In Oz, systemless gaming often gets labelled 'adult' only because it often deals with subjects that are either explicit or require a certain amount of real life experience to deal with properly (sex and gender, fidelity, violence and non-violence etc.) These are topics that are difficult to deal with in many commercial systems, the reasons to do as much with Industry publishing guidelines and the age of the intended audience as with structural limitations of the games themselves. (Violence is encouraged: sex....?)
Many systemless techniques can be used in conjunction with dicesystem games - that's certainly the way I run my campaign. Pendragon for instance, is not only a wonderfully fluid system, but it encourages a certain style of gaming that is perfectly compatible with systemless aims and techniques. That's partially because the simulation underlying Pendragon is about WHO YOU ARE as much as WHAT YOU CAN DO.
In the end, that's the crunch, and the problem with certain types of compatibility. Games bring with them their own 'genre' their own set of unwritten and often unconscious assumptions about the type of universe they want to simulate and what will be important within it. (We've discussed this before when talking about heroquest). On the next level, STORIES also have their own unwritten laws and assumptions - we call this 'genre' You can cross genres, and you can mix simulations, but you have to be very careful. Terry Pratchet, Tolkein, Greg Stafford, Phillip Jose Farmer and the guy who does the 'Gor' novels all write 'heroic fantasy' in their own fairly self-consistent universe. However trying to mix their different approaches and emphases (not to mention obsessions and fetishes) into one story would be very difficult if not impossible. Its the same with systems and other approaches to a game. You have to think carefully about what you're trying to simulate. Often the rule system can get in the way of what you're trying to achieve - its like using a motorbike to tow a trailer, or going shopping in a 10 tonne dump truck.
I raised systemless gaming only because it had been attacked on the Digest in a fairly caricatured and negative way. I realise that this is not the forum for a detailed discussion. In addition, the way to explore roleplaying style is to PLAY OUT the damned idea, not talk in the abstract about it, especially with a vague and woolly INTP like myself. (After we play, then we can talk).
I think the points about what systems do and do not simulate and what their unwritten assumptions are are fairly central to any discussion of Glorantha. They are certainly key issues in understanding heroquest. Beyond that, its up to you. if you find any technique useful, then use it. If not, then chuck it in the back cupboard.
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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