>Some things are "magical" in
>Glorantha which we would say were psychological or intangible in the real
>world.
[eg Fanaticism]
I know a lot of people believe this. But I'm sorry, it just doesn't make any sense. To say that 'Fanaticism' is the same thing as 'being really angry' is to not compatible with rules as they stand now. I don't have any disagreement with anybody who wants to make their Glorantha work that way (personality trait rules would seem to be good place to start working it into the game), but its not the standard conception.
To take Fanaticism as an example... its a spell. You need to contact magical spirits to obtain it. You can cast it on others against their will, including when they are not aware of you. So then you can only make the psychological identical with the magical by suggesting that to a Gloranthan being so angry that you behave as a Fanatic, or being so afraid that you behave as if demoralised, are not possible other than by using the spells, which makes Gloranthans outrageously weird.
Not that I want to dig my heels in on the point - if someone wants to redesign RQ so there truly is no difference between the psychological and magical influence, then I might well start using such a system - but it sure aint so now.
Don't think of it as 'some psychological things are magical in Glorantha', think of it as 'the psychological can be influenced by the magical in Glorantha, just as the physical can, but even easier'. I also (and I no others do) accept that the magical can be influenced by the psychological, to a great extent, but that does not mean that Gloranthan can't tell the difference between being Fanaticised and being angry.
>I'm very pleased with the way the Cult of the Granite Phalanx gave rune spells
>for hoplites to explain the mechanics of their way of fighting: it seemed to me
>to be a more RuneQuesty way of seeing the hoplite "ideology" than working out
>mechanics for how much better you get at certain skills after practicing them
>for certain amounts of time.
[warning, rant ahead]
Its public knowledge that I hated it. And I hated it because it seemed to me to completely devalue the fact that they are trained hoplites, not just guys with spells. To me, forming a shield wall should be something that seems like a good idea simply using the combat system if you have the appropriate training, and shouldn't be a 'magical' result any more than we should claim that a Yelmalion Pike regiment has a magic spell that means their pikes do extra damage against horses when set against a charge - they do that because they are pikes.
It seems to me like a cheap trick, to have the training and tactics involved in a phalanx reduced to a quickly learned spell, kind of instant hoplite, just add magic, but it never tastes the same.
I also think that the spells will never really work, as well. The spell is not the same, and it can show. The Standfast spell (for example) can in theory be used on anyone on the casters front, for example, even if they happen to be armed with bolas and a war pick. It can certainly be used in all sorts of inappropriate ways - I am sure it would be very useful on narrow paths in single file, for example, which has relationship to a Shield Wall at all.
Which is not to say that the custom spells are necessarily bad, on the contrary they are the heart of RuneQuest - but they can be way overemphasised in relation to other aspects, and used inappropriately to create detail that should be there otherwise. The Granite Phalanx cult is IMHO a good example of both problems - there is only one sentence specifically about fighting style, but two spells designed to encourage that fighting style. The spells also contain all sorts of things in their descriptions that are very specific to Hoplite combat (such as the word 'Hoplite', for example), and are designed to force the Hoplites to maintain formation for magical reasons - when the Hoplites should stay in formation because it is the sensible Hoplite tactic, without which they may well die.
All that said, I like the Granite Phalanx cult writeup apart from the spells - in my game I use the cult as is, except replace Shield Wall with plain old Shield, and remove the 'only in on Hoplite in front' restriction on Standfast (they are probably trained to cast it that way, though). I keep the massed singing of the Red Vexillum (from the Shield Wall description) as part of the casting of Morale (they don't need to sing it actually charging into battle, but they probably do anyway).
> expressing the view that "Some God Learners were OK
>guys" in Glorantha today is like saying "Well, at least under Hitler the trains
>ran on time... and he was a vegetarian, and kind to Eva Braun's dog."
for a start, I think the God Learners are demonised a little less than the Nazis in general - their crimes are seen as more of criminal stupidity and hubris rather than evil. But more to the point, I think that many people who are, for all intents and purposes, God Learners are simply not commonly thought of as such, because they aren't thought of as being one of the villains. In much the same way Werner Von Braun is not a Nazi.
A good example is the twin founders (sorry, name escapes me) who 'united' the Caladra and Aurelion cults. God Learners of the most extreme, but not thought of as bad guys, so obviously not God Learners.
But I suspect that there are many historians who know better the real truth. I suspect that your average Rokari might get a shock if he asked the senior church historians about who was a God Learner, and discovered that many of the revered Church Fathers where, for example.
Cheers
Dave
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End of Glorantha Digest V2 #452
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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