More on cult magic

From: Paolo Guccione <teigupa_at_tss.tei.ericsson.se>
Date: Fri, 07 Mar 1997 17:23:32 +0100


Sorry, only roolz rantings in my posting today. I would like to write something about unvountary heroquesting (I have staged several of them), but I have no time left. Why is that darn rules-digest out of service, after all?

Peter Metcalfe


About my statement that Spirit Magic is different in nature from Sorcery:

> Here you're really arguing from the roolz. Look at Gods of
> Glorantha where cults which fuse spirit magic and sorcery
> (ie Red Goddess) and divine magic and sorcery (ie Godunya)
> are given.

Not from the roolz as game mechanics, from the part of the RQ rules that describes the mental approach to magic of a Shaman and a Sorcerer (the "How do I do magic?" section). The spirit magician's and the sorcerer's answers are extremely different, while the Priest and the Shaman share a lot in philosophical insight, though they are very far away from each other in game mechanics. Godunya uses sorcery _effects_, but relies on POW sacrifice to manipulat them, and this is a game semplification. And the RG allows its worshipers to do anything,, so no surprise she is the exception. Your answer may be more correct than mine as far as Glorantha is concerned, but think about this: magic is weird and unpredictable, why should it be continuous and not discrete?

> Some possible degrees (there may be more):

> [ here P.M. describes four different cases going from Sorcery to Theism ]

I like your idea on a cultural basis, though I am still unconvinced about the way you describe the effects in game terms. I think you are right in assigning the different shades of Malkioni/Orlanthi hybridation to the areas you mentioned.

Me: >>I would very much
>>prefer a different approach for non-runic magic taught by cults, barring
>>shamanic cults. But the hope of anybody persuading the average
>>Gloranthan player to drop easy access to spirit magic is very near zero

P.M. >I agree here, but think it would be better to amend the spirit
>magic taught by Shamanistic Cults rather than theists. That way
>the change over would be less painless.

Your suggestion is smart, but I think the real problem is not shamanism. The description RQ3 gives of shamans is quite appropriate: people who talk to spirits, make small charms through which magic is cast and go out of their bodies to follow the spiritual version of their totem animal. Changing this instead of that blasted Spellteaching ritual that gives you a lot of powerful magic with low cost and no risks, this would be a shame!

Or is it making the spell descriptions different for cult spirit magic or shamanic magic that you are suggesting? I see no need of this: you quoted Godunya magic as an example, and it is just sorcery spells gained through POW sacrifice to the gods. Jose Ramos posted a list of Lightbringer "Saint" blessings that are just rune magic used as blessings - the approach changes a lot, the spell effect does not change at all - I am convinced! What we need is not new spell descriptions (we have plenty of those), but different ways of describing and roleplaying the path that characters take to rise in the cult ranks and to gain more and more powerful magic. Something like Sandy did with his vow system: have you ever thought that it works fairly well even if you do not change the spell descriptions from RQ3 sorcery?

Erik Sieurin


> The max points you can point into a Divinely gained Spell depends on
> your link with it's source (god, goddess, big spirit, pool of
> slime...). The numbers are more or less random, but something like:
> Associated Guy or Doll (Issarite casting Orlanthi magic) POW/10,
> Initiate POW/8, Acolyte/Godi POW/6, Full Priest/Rune Lord POW/4.

Are you talking about Rune spells or the cult-equivalent of Spirit Magic? Whatever the answer, I buy your idea of linking spell stacking to degree of closeness to the source/deity. The only remark I have is: why POW? What if we used the (Cult) Lore skill the way Intensity is used in RQ4 sorcery? Spell stacking limit could be Cult Lore/20, with (Associate Cult) Lore being the default 5%+INT modifier or (Main Cult) Lore/3, whichever is higher. This way our faithful Orlanth initate with Orlanth Lore 30% could cast Bladesharp 2 and Demoralize, but not Befuddle from Chalana because his (Generic Lightbringer) Lore would be just 15%. Cult Lore increases automatically with Holy Day rites, because you gain intimacy with the myth which is the source of your magic, and with Heroquests, of course.

Hmm, this resembles Peter Metcalfe's suggestion about 'Humanistic Theism'. Maybe I agree with Peter's POV much more than I thought at start.

David Dunham


on Runepower

> Assuming you can regain the rune spell, you would regain a
> Thunderbolt, not 3 points of RPP. This gives some of the flexibility of
> Runepower, but still forces you to make choices.

Hmm, I suspect it is almost useless. Most reusable magic is cast over and over, so it would be very rare for a Rune Level to have 'unset' points of RP. Also remember that priests use to cast a lot of runespells for initiates (frex, Bless Crops, Divination, Spellteching, Spirit Block, Heal Wound, Resurrect, etc.). If a character is a priest, he has probably used up all of his rune points before going into adventures, so all of his magic will probably be already 'set'.

> in my PenDragon Pass rules, initiates usually regain one or
> two points per year, depending on how well they express the cult virtues).
> Jeff Richard recently added the twist that members of a War Clan* regain
> war-related magic more easily [ snip ]. In
> Orlanth's case, this means you could regain more points of Shield than
> normal, but probably fewer of Thunderbolt (since it's from his Thunderous
> aspect), and definitely fewer of Cloud Call.

Good, and it allows more roleplaying and MGF. I use a similar system, but linked to runes. If your Humakti behaves honourably, he gains "Truth" runepoints and can learn/cast Oath (a Truth-related magic). If he can regain the runepoints, he regains "Truth" points, with which he can learn/cast more Oaths or Detect Truths, but no Shields or Trueswords. The Runes associated to runepoints are more a byproduct of personal behaviour than clan orientation, but this may be varied to suit more community-oriented campaigns (like yours).

FINAL THOUGHTS


Guys, and I mean all those I have just replied to and all others, it appears that we are all not very content with the magic gained and regained by initiates and priests. It may even turn out that divine magic is now more broken than sorcery was two years ago {:-(. We are all experimenting with different theories and mechanics and posting them on the digest. Why don't we all try and discuss one generally-agreed solution for this? I mean, the same as we are doing on the digest, but with the declared intent of ending with a playable cult magic variant, writing it down as it was done with Sandy's Sorcery and David Cheng's Runepower and making it available on a fanzine and/or online. Since there will not be more official Glorantha supplements using the RuneQuest III system, we should start "doing it ourselves" anyway. Why not cooperate?

			http://www.geco.it/~guccione

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