Anyway, Glorantha's canon leaving the nature of the Vadeli's rotten natures purposely vague has certainly led to all sorts of really amazing creative input from the Glorantha list readers. I'm amazed. However people decide to run the Vadeli in their campaigns, I think every single idea presented about them here could be useful within everyone's campaigns as rumors about the "truth" of the depraved nature of the Vadeli. Even Martin Laurie's (?) original submission, to which the outraged response from several list members really surprised me. He must have really trodden on some cultural taboos there!
HEROQUESTS Michael Schwartz commented about traits being more important in Heroquests than skills. Boy, I sure hope that this idea makes it intact into whatever HQ rules come out. Of course, the real danger is that the rules will encourage heroquesting by die roll (against traits), which seems totally at odds with the way HQ should be. Kinda Taoist, really... attempting to formally express Heroquesting in games mechanics terms may completely fail to capture the truth about Heroquesting.
Anyway, the thought of one's traits being more important in Heroquesting than one's skills comes as close as I've seen to capturing the narrative essence of myths. It's easy to see how one could get hung up on using one's skills to quest, because most male-based epics involve the hero defeating external opponents with a combination of prowess in combat, guile, and the succor of beautiful women. The Odyssey to me always seems to be almost the perfect manifestation of such a quest. A skills-oriented system seems to arise naturally when one attempts to model such fiction.
But a real Heroquesting system should also be able to model a more feminine quest, in which protagonists tend to conquer through passivity and holding to ideals. In the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, Beauty is not called upon to take any actions of derring-do but is rather challenged to keep her promises, maintain her charity, and eventually, to realize that a hideous exterior does not necessarily reflect a hideous interior. (Course, I haven't read the Brothers Grimm version, which might be quite different.) Cultural propaganda designed to indoctrinate children into socially acceptable roles? Well, sure, but all fiction that finds popularity within a culture is more likely to affirm that culture's moral code rather than challenge it. My point is more that a good story is more about the paths a character chooses to take rather than how well the character performs in following his or her chosen path, so a good HQ system needs to be able to reflect all kinds of story.
John Brown took exception to the idea of heroquesting as a psychoanalysis session. I think this view has quite some degree of validity... but it would be lying to say I agreed with the view as the poster stated it. Certainly, to publish rules that try to somehow enforce personal change upon the players of a heroquest is an exercise in futility, and the aim of a heroquest isn't necessarily to change the quester himself. Rather, I think that such a change is the necessary byproduct of the choices that a character (and to some extent the player) makes in resolving a posed problem. By having his character confront difficult to resolve problems, the player himself may end up gaining insights about life that he would never have garnered otherwise. Even your standard broo-hunt and looting session is a heroquest in that having the player take the typical approach to a fantasy roleplaying problem (kill the evil thing, steal his stuff) serves to affirm certain personal attitudes and cultural values. Choosing to not choose is still making a choice. And any system that set about dictating that after a heroquest is done, if the roll of the dice is less than 10, the player himself will have a personal insight is doomed. (There, killed that straw man.)
In truth, distinguishing heroquests as the only life-changing events seems rather specious, also. Life itself creates changes. Take, for instance, the skill system of RQ. In RQ, training a skill improves simply the percentage chance that a player character has when attempting a task requiring that skill. In actuality, undergoing a course of training--perhaps lifelong--could have profound effects on the way a person perceives all aspects of his life. I've recently started taking aikido. While I can say that my life has yet to be recast as a result of this training, I can state that years of aikido *have* affected the way my sensei perceives the world. Aikido stresses some basic concepts called "blending" and "moving from the center" and "connection" as well as probably lots others I haven't even been exposed to yet. While these concepts seem immediately applicable in the performance of aikido skills, my sensei encourages his students to take these concepts and try to apply them to other aspects of their lives, business dealings, interpersonal relationships, and response to other challenges. These concepts seem to have affected the way in which my sensei reacts to the world because they serve as a metaphor into all sorts of unrelated(?) disciplines. It is easy to see, for instance, how a Humakt worshiper's relationship with his sword would cross over into the entire way the Humakti would approach life itself.
Finally, to return to the concept of the passive heroquest, think about even some Gloranthan myths. A few months ago, list readers slapped my hands for thinking about taking the LBQ and then refusing to join in the compromise. Just playing around with ideas. But for another HQ idea, take the "heroquest" of Arroin. I'm not terribly clear on the details, but it seems that Arroin took an almost entirely passive outlook on life... more so that Chalana Arroy herself. For his views, Arroin was slain by Wakboth. Seems like the end of the story, but, the story had another effect. As a result of the slaying of Arroin, who was beloved of Chalana Arroy, Chalana Arroy renounced her egalitarian views towards Chaos and removed those of Chaos from her protection. Perhaps this change in Chalana Arroy's attitudes affected other quests she went on (like the LBQ) and affected their outcomes in ways that no one could predict. Perhaps not.
But imagine an Arroinian reenacting this Heroquest in order to stir an
otherwise disinterested neutral party into acting against an enemy of
the Arroinian's culture. Of course, enacting the HeroQuest would lead to
the Arroinian's death, but perhaps his sacrifice might save his culture.
So you think passive is equal to wimpy? Indeed!
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Chris Pearce
cpearce_at_incite.com
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