MOST IMPORTANT Loren and Stacy, congratulations to you both on the start of the Big Journey.
NEXT IMPORTANT So MOB is handing over the reins of TOTRM distribution in Oz. On behalf of countless Oz gamers, thanks mate for all your great work and enthusiasm over the last eight (?) years. The fun will no doubt continue.
Good luck with the new job.
LESS IMPORTANT EARTH CYCLES The Far Point menstruation myth I use IMG is as follows:
"When Wild Man Umath first seperated the Earth and the Sky, he pressed hard
against the two and kicked, heaving them apart. The Earth trembled with the
power of his touch, her deep bones ringing and resounding like a bell. The
force of Umath's great effort made the Earth bleed. She still trembles with
the memory down in her bones, and gifted ones can hear that long slow
trembling still, every twenty eight days. This is why women bleed, because
the Earth does. This is why Earth Sisters mark their calendar sticks in
cycles of finger-thumb [four] weeks, and why good sticklepick must ferment
for twenty eight days. Why? Because it is the way it is."
(This, at least, is what the men say).
HEROQUEST AND GAMING STYLES Thanks to all who commented on my TOTRM heroquesting articles, and the related article in Questlines: most I what I might have said in response has already been stated by others more clearly and forcefully than I could have myself; so I'll restrict to myself to a few points of clarification and explanation.
He he. Engage RANT mode:
For me, systematicising Heroquest is a bit like the Gloranthan community's equivalent of the Quest for the Grail: we may never achieve it, but damn it the effort into trying is incredibly valuable in itself. Greg has set high standards in his stated vision (well his vision for that that week), perhaps impossibly high ones, but even in falling far short of achieving that vision we can explore lots of interesting territory, find new perspectives, sharpen our weapons/tools and create some damn FUN games and campaigns along the way. (And that isn't to say we can't generate some useful HQ rule systems either - I for one have been longinging for them since early 1982 :)).
My articles never suggested that HQ was going to be without rules in the trad sense. My own home campaign uses a volatile and ever-changing mix of RQ, Pendragon Pass (yay David D!) a (home-grown) Far Point Tarot Deck and a (also home-grown) Far Point "Once Upon A Time" storytelling deck. We bash our bodhrans and play tin whistles and tell stories and occassionally go mad with the dice.
What I DID say was that in those articles I was exploring other perspectives that hadn't received much attention in the debate to date. And yes I was writing out of my own particular experiences and a particular tradition that I am part of (Australian convention roleplaying traditions of multiforming and systemless gaming), but dammit its a *gaming* and *playing* tradition; and nothing I suggested in those articles hasn't proved *useful* and *fun* in real games and campaigns.
I also explicitly stated that the right Balance/emphasis is a group thing, and most campaigns will drift and change that emphasis (in either direction) over time. Sure I cathart occassionally and dismember characters souls on the hero plane, but I've also got a campaign full of duck morris dancers, randy water spirits and cuk-fighting Enlo. Pass the minties.
Challenging existing assumptions is something I've often written about in articles on general roleplaying: some of those should be available on my home page in the next few months as Pip and I get it up and running. I raise such issues not as an iconoclast but to get people thinking about possibilities.
All myth is about breaking through binary oppositions in our thinking to see things in a new way: heroquest is also about overcoming limitations, pushing the envelope of the possible to bring back "a new way of being" or gift to a community. Its just that in Glorantha it might manifest as a way of walking trackless over snow as well as seeing a problem in a new light.
AT RQ Con Down Under, Greg stated that both the Lunars and the Orlanthi realise that all mythology is a reflection of yourself. You can't seperate your internal state from the external events of heroquest. And unless you have changed your self as well, you cannot change the Universe. That's where Pendragon-style personality traits come in.The seminar transcript will appear in Questlines 2. As a bit of a teaser / preview:
"One of the ways to think about HeroQuesting is as if it were a new
perception or a new form of consciousness. Heroquesters are able to
perceive things in away that uninitiated people do not. They have a sense,
they have a perceptual organ, that other people do not."
One thing that I didn't understand about the recent debate was this linking of insight with psychiatrist's couches: is it perchance a peculiarly American thing? I would have thought that insight was something pretty basic to our experience as humans. Its what the neocortex does BEST, and its what play is all about.
And please, please please, I'm an Australian. I know its being polite, but *please* don't call me Mr Hughes. My name is John, or Jim. :))))))
End RANT Mode.
Have a nice day :)))))
John
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