Harrek has been said to be a mere mortal initally and if he can become what he did then so could any PC. Well this is true but heroes are created by events which they often have little control over, events that focus massive forces of mythic and social pressure upon them to make them what they are. Because of this they are extremely rare. Harrek has waged war and done things that have _made_ him into Harrek the Berserk. Often he probably had little free will in those events and certainly suffered immensly for his powers. Thats the thing with Glorantha that is so vital. There has to be a cost to a benefit and that the problem with most high powered PCs that seperates them from the NPC.
From a refereeing perspective it is incredibly hard to give any PC even an incling of the social depth of his society without immense ammounts of time and work. The mythic complexity of this becomes overwhelming as the PC rises within the power structures of his society and God. Leadership has terrible responsibilities but how many GMs can truthfully say that their players actually play out those responsibilities accurately?
This problem becomes grotesque as they rise in power thus to accurately have a player hero of the power of Harrek you would literally have to play out his life on an almost day to day level to give the player the true feelings of the hero. Otherwise its a joke, they get the reward without the cost. They get the big sword without the terrible loneliness of being Harrek.
Perhaps I'm alone in viewing this as a bit pointless?
It may also be a question of scale. Remember the fuss I had to cope with over the Onslaught character stats from the Deville stories? Many people found Onslaught to be utterly Gross and many considered him way better than Argrath. This was amazing to me but then I play mostly at the 100% level for my PCs and consider only Rune Levels of 200%+ to be true weapons masters. Hence someone like Harrek will be way beyond even that level.
This level of competence combined with his magical strength would be so enormous that only a handful of people like him could exist in all of Glorantha without it going critical and exploding. In the entire Lunar Empire, the most magically coordinated Empire in the world with the possible exception of Kralorela, there is only _one_ superhero.
Yet we are discussing _groups_ of PCs doing things that whole Empires could not do!!!
I just don't see there being that many people of that ability in the entire universe of Glorantha short of the heroplane. There's a reason that most heroes end up there you know, the material plane would be wiped if they were all on it.
Martin Laurie
Powered by hypermail