> Michael Cule muses about a Free Will in a HeroQuest system, and mentions
> Pendragon traits and passions. Surely Pendragon traits and passions represent
> free will directly? As your traits and passions reach extremes you gain bonuses
> (religious or chivalric, as well as increasing mana levels of magicians),
> whilst your behaviour becomes more and more constrained.
Well, I have to distinguish (both in PENDRAGON and in my speculative HQ rules) between what happens in the mundane world and what happens in the Other World.
In the mundane world you have the free use of your Free Will and you can act with or against your defining personality traits and your passions. But if you go against your passions and traits they will fall and their value to you will be reduced.
But in the Other World of PENDRAGON and in the God Plane of Glorantha, those traits become much more vivid and well defined. You can no longer lie to yourself and to others about who and what you are and the character you have built up over your life in the Mundane world is tested for certain sure.
In my (currently running to a close) PENDRAGON game we have just had the party questing to the Castle of Joy and one player hated (very much) the fact that his Generous trait failed him and he could not make it past that test on the path to the Castle. "I know better than to take something that's not mine in Fairie!" he protested. And in the Mundane World he'd be right.
Hmm, a mechanical note to myself: you can burn temporary Will to get another
chance at a trait roll in the God Plane.
>
> It is possible to argue that extreme traits and passions do not represent any
> loss of free will, but rather that are just a mechanism of reflecting the
> character of a person. I do not agree with this, a trait or passion not just is
> a measure of personality, but when it has an extreme value, it constrains
> behaviour, even if following the trait or passion is not in the best interests
> of the individual. To argue that some one with an extreme trait or passion
> still has free will, it is just that they always chose to act in a specified
> way, sounds like semantics to me, the final effect is the same.
In the Mundane World you can decide that (for instance) preserving your Honour passion isn't worth getting chopped into small pieces or preserving your Hate Saxons passion isn't worth earning the High King's enmity. In the Other World you are driven by your passion.
> Also do you need HQ rules? I have run what would be HQs if they were set in
> glorantha very successfully in my Pendragon campaign, with heavy emphasis on
> the characters' traits and passions.
Yes. You need rules if you are going to allow players to try to do things that can rewrite reality in your Glorantha. Oh, my ears and whiskers you do.....
Then "Benedict Adamson" <ben_at_cd.co.uk> he said:
> There is a Larry Niven SF story with a relevant plot (although it
> has high-tech medicine inserting a central nervous system, rather than
> magic inserting a spirit), as follows. The children of a wealthy person are
> kidnapped, one is killed (I think) and the other recovered safely, but
No, they drove the sister mad with a device that stimulated her pleasure centre.
> seems never quite to recover from the ordeal. The kid-nappers are never found.
> Years later a PI realizes that the kid-napper IS the apparent survivor,
> having murdered both children and then swapped bodies.
>
> Could make an intersting adventure plot. Add Krasht, Illumination, people
> in high places and stir...
>
> `But my dear, breasts are simply OUT this year.'
> `Oh, and this slave girl cost me a FORTUNE.'
You are sick! Sick! Sick! (But I'm sure that somewhere on Glorantha there are secret societies that do this....)
Then we heard from: James Wadsley <wadsley_at_cita.utoronto.ca>
> Free Willy
> - ----------
> If worship and influence constrain a god, what does its lack do?
> [Readers of Terry Pratchett's "Small Gods" take note]. If people stop
> worshipping the great turtle god, he not only loses power but also the
> desire to rule consistently from on high (i.e. be constrained by the
> compromise or othercultly equivalent). IMG (or yours) he should then
> be much freer to manifest and attempt to garner worshippers more
> directly (with vastly reduced powers). Unfortunately for gods such as
> the Polar Bear god, you might just run into Harrek and get bound.
Yes, this happens. The gods who loose worshippers loose their anchor to the core reality of Mundane Glorantha. They become less and less real and eventually are forgotten. They aren't destroyed, they could be reactivated but they no longer have a priesthood capable of taking the actions that would restart their worship.
Actor And Genius
AKA Theophilus Prince Archbishop Of The Far Isles Medieval Society
Arms Purpure An Open Book Proper: On the Dexter Page an Alpha Or
On the Sinister an Omega Or. Motto Nulla Spes Sit in Resistendo
(Resistance is Useless). Ask me about the Far Isles:
Better Living through Pan-Medieval Anachronisms.
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