Re: Free will from Jane Williams on 1997-06-22 (Glorantha Digest Vol 04)

From: Jane Williams <janewill_at_mail.nildram.co.uk>
Date: Sun, 22 Jun 1997 18:18:00 +0000

Richard Melvin came up with, among much other good stuff, the best explanation of the lack of Free Will on the HP I've come across:

> So making a change involves:
> - - getting at least a clans worth of people to pledge some fraction
> of their soul to you in a suitable ritual.
> And free will? That's simple - work out the fraction of your POW
> (inculding fetch, active spells like the above, etc.) that is really
> _yours_, as opposed to coming from supporters, gifted to you by other
> gods, or whatever.
> If 95% or more of your soul is not actually _you_, how much influence
> can you expect to have over your own actions?

And as I remember the definition, Traits are a measure of how other people see you, not what you're really like. So if all your supporters believe you'd charge in and attack Wakboth and his minions, that's what you're doing!

The idea of having chunks of your soul not under your control ties in at a lower level with some of my half-formed ideas about divine magic and initiation. This concept that you "sacrifice" POW to form the divine link, and again in exchange for magic. Would it not make more sense (if no game difference) to say that the POW is "allocated"? It's still there, still part of you. It just isn't available for any use other than the one you've defined for it. I'd say that's where POW lost to DI goes, too: if the whole soul is "allocated" (dedicated? mortgaged?) to the deity, you're a spirit in his service by definition.

OK, in normal game terms this is irrelevant: I had some idea that it's the total POW that you use for DIing (or rather, free + that allocated to that god). But once you get it linked to Traits and Free Will, it becomes more important. Suppose half your POW is your own, and half "allocated" to Orlanth for various reasons. And you have to make a Trait roll on one of the Orlanth-related Traits? I'd say you've got 50% chance of overriding the Trait roll and using Free Will. The other 50% of the time, your Orlanth connection will be in control.

This sounds to me as if high-level priests and RuneLords would by definition become very much like their deity. Which is perhaps no bad thing.

Making it more complex... suppose for each point allocated for a spell is assigned a relevant Trait? (Truesword: Valour) And can only affect decisions relating to that Trait? So Henry Humakti, with ten castings of Truesword and no other divine spells, has little choice in his Valour roll but quite a lot in his Honesty roll.

OK, change tack before I introduce any more complications. Someone was suggesting a while back that marriage is a HQ, and was an example of one that limited your Free Will. And/or gave you geases. I've been musing on that over the weekend (attending a wedding, and appreciating my own), and it's an interesting RW example of how these things work. How helpful it is I'm not sure, though.

To start with, an important distinction between Glorantha and the RW. For me at least, the RW ceremony was a legal irrelevance. Should my marriage ever break down, I'll have some legal protection, and there are some tax benefits, but that's about it. In Glorantha, the ceremony would have more significance. So, what I'm considering as a RW example isn't "marriage" but the formation of a permanent one-one relationship, legal relationships aside. As far as I'm concerned, that pre-dated the ceremony by several years.

So, has this given me any geases, gifts, etc? To some extent the definition depends on how you see geases working. But to start with the low-level stuff:

My husband is asthmatic, and allergic to most things with fur or feathers. Therefore, our keeping a pet is out of the question, and I have to think before stroking next-door's cat. Hotel rooms have to be checked for feather pillows before he enters them. If I get it wrong, he's going to start wheezing, and I don't want that. This is something I have to actively think about, and the consequences of "breaking" the requirement are unpleasant but not at Spirit of Retribution level.
He can't cope with high altitudes. I always wanted to go walking in the Himalayas. Obviously, he can't go, and I no longer want to go without him. Notice that change of heart: was that a limitation on my Free Will? There's nothing stopping me going alone, which is what I'd originally planned. I just don't want to.
Upping the stakes a little here: marriage makes it illegal for me to go to bed with other blokes. Fortunately, the same applies: I no longer have any desire to do so. Is this a geas? If I break it, it's certainly Spirit of Retribution time, and the rest. But again, I no longer have the bit of Free Will that would make it possible.
The really extreme loss of Free Will bit: what happens if some nasty person decides to hurt my Dave? Based on a single sample, the result seems to be a demonstration of the Berserk spell. Chances of success irrelevant, proportionality of offence to punishment irrelevant, knowing perfectly well that this is a bad idea irrelevant. It's a classic case of the PC failing a Trait roll and the player objecting. I didn't even get to control the method of attack used. I can't think of a model for this in RQ terms - perhaps those "never allow any * to suffer needlessly" geases? No-one's ever suggested that they trigger this kind of response, though.

Perhaps any geas can be acquired at varying levels?

Level 1 = know action X is a bad thing
Level 2 = X is unthinkable, you have no desire to do it
Level 3 = the overkill above?

The gifts to go with the geases - sorry, I just can't get it into proper words, much less RQ rules. Confidence, support, immunity to most depression-based problems.... it just doesn't go into game-relevant terms. Anyone else out there lucky enough to have this sort of relationship and better able to explain it?

So is marriage a HQ? I'm still not sure. It seems to have HQ-level effects, certainly. But HQs are meant to be difficult. Meeting the one right bloke and falling in love didn't require any effort on my part at all. Maybe it comes under the heading of Things That Are Fated - those promises from the Three at birth. Maybe each day, each PC should roll percentiles: if you get 01 three times in a row, you've just met the one for you.

And, just to complicate matters, I gather that not all relationships work like this one. (Evidence: there is a thing called "divorce"). So this is not a representative sample. Any more married or otherwise committed Digesters got any more gifts/geases to add to the list?

Jane Williams                     jane_at_williams.nildram.co.uk

http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~janewill/gloranth/index.shtml

End of Glorantha Digest V4 #533

WWW at http://rider.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html