I'd have written sooner but i've been embroiled in exams...
- Anyway, on the subject of 'the man from DOOM' in snake pipe hollow.
Glorantha being the place it is, a chaingun is perhaps inappropriate, but
it doesn't stop Blastowicz from being a Mostali. To my knowledge, we are
never told what race he is, and his eyebrow twitchings seem
characteristically 'Mostalian' to me. Therefore can't he enter snake pipe
hollow with muskets blazing? I've recently come to see 'the man from
DOOM' as an iron dwarf, and it enhances the game no end (why can't he
wave an adamantine axe in your face instead of a chainsaw?).
- I like the idea of cthulhu in glorantha. Certainly, i would not want
investigators blowing away broo with 8 gauge shotguns and screaming 'guns
go first!' but i like the 'cosmic horror' aspect. The book of drastic
resolutions, illumination and bizarre chaos monstrosities, could have
easily been plucked from a call of cthulhu game. Of course, carl stanford
hasn't yet cropped up in glorantha, but i'm sure many lunars are as
devillishly fiendish as he (we always imagined him as being a clone of
peter cushing).
In glorantha, seeing many chaos horrors is sufficient to induce raving
lunacy, like the crimson bat, for example. Gaining cthulhu mythos
knowledge as an excuse to fight the mythos itself is similar to
illumination i feel - ultimately it may corrupt and destroy the hero, and
place him/her/it in the clutches of the forces they would wish to resist.
Of course, if you are illuminated it is also a force for good - there is
some hope, unlike the mythos. One wonders if the sacrifice is worth it.
Illumination, like so-called postmodern theory (which was always present
in the philosophy of the likes of Nietzsche in 'modernist times), has the
potential for liberation, but could also spell the doom of all sentient
races on glorantha. Personally, i feel that illumination in itself is not
wholly dangerous, only the ends to what it is put (arkat used it to save
the world).
Of course, there are great dangers in uncritically equating
'postmodern' theory with illumination (i assume you mean lyotard,
mainly). The real world is not like glorantha - glorantha is obviously
full of gods and magic, and it is difficult to resist the nature of their
existence when they are so substantively 'there.' I must confess that it
is wading through post-structuralist gunk that i have come to approach
illumination.
However, like theodor adorno (frankfurt school bloke), i feel that
postmodernism presents a limited pluralism - there is still a subtext of
what can and cannot be said. I suspect glorantha is like this too, in
that underneath illumination there is a hidden agenda. I cannot
empirically support this, it is just a 'feeling' - illumination for
example, questions some things, but not others. The nature of lunar
colonialism is not criticised - an enterprise which cannot be objectively
supported (it has an inherent 'positionality,' in that it depends where
you stand) by any means whatsoever.
Therefore i would argue that illumination, as presented by lunars at
least, is limited and dangerous, and not really truly relativist. So there.
- I noticed the roman technology debate was rearing its ugly head again
(and boy is it ugly). Since my earlier arguments i feel i have to admit
that i was probably 90% wrong in a lot of what i said....i've got to read
up my lunar stuff, and not fill in the gaps with roman archaeology. After
all, i personally wouldn't want to play an 'economic' gloranthan game
about the heroic saga of how a brightly coloured pot got traded to a
squint-eyed morokanth, and how that act brought down the lunar empire.
Any road up, i suggest you check out john r. loves book on 'antiquity
and capitalism' - its a weberian account of why capitalism didn't develop
in roman society. I've noticed that many of you have inadvertently
covered part of it - ie. they lacked a 'capitalist ethic' etc.
Personally, the only people likely to have an 'industrial revolution'
in glorantha might be the mostali. However, having said this, they
probably aren't bothered about profit motives. Personally, i suspect that
applying the historical 'accident' of capitalism to glorantha might be a
mistake. I did this earlier, and had to confess i became extremely bogged
down.
- Dwarf food. They eat something in cans, don't they? I once got
extremely confused when i was asked in a game what it tasted like. At the
time i suggested a mixture between cat food and cement mix. However, this
seems somewhat clumsy - after all, i've never met a mostali. Am i right,
or does anyone else out there have any ideas?
- That giant maggot in snake pipe hollow. I suppose it could be a
mutated cthonian. But where was it going and what was it doing? It must
have lived down there for a long time. We ran away when we saw it,
screaming 'the mother of all maggots is upon us!' On the subject of snake
pipe hollow, who was the little barley headed god you could bring back to
life in it? Any ideas?
- I like the idea of SAN in runequest - after all, most of the time
people only run away from things because they think they will get
stomped, not necessarily because it is a sanity blasting horror from
beyond. Perhaps a pendragon style 'valorous' stat might work.
Anyway, here are some suggested san losses...
(for a laugh)
gorp....(0/1d4)
walktapus.....(1/1d10)...obviously relations of cthulhu, they even
regenerate like him - perhaps they are his nephews, visit rl'yeh on
bank holidays and play cricket with easter islanders
Big Gorp....(1/1d10)
Charnjibber....(0/1d6)
Crimson Bat....(1d10/1d100)
The red goddesses crater....(1d10/1d100)..maybe yog-sothoth lives in there!
Seeing inside a copy of Borderlands.....(1d10/1d100)
Anyway, enough of this...
7. I've been thinking about the existential terror induced by 'walktapus
rations' (from dorastor). The regenerative power of walktapi is infamous.
Some lunars and trolls like to eat bits of walktapi...does this mean that
if they die with partially digested walktapi in them, that a walktapus
will burst from the corpse (or indeed from lunar latrines favoured by
connasieurs of walktapi brains).
If this is the case, won't the lunar empire be overrun by rampaging
walktapi? Also, it appears that a new walktapi grows from bits that are
hacked off them (in the 'dyskund caverns' some chaos chap had the idea of
breeding them by doing this). If this works, why don't chaos worshippers
just breed walktapi by the billions? Perhaps there can be only so many
walktapi in existence at one time (restricted number of souls?)....
Dominic.
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #626
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html