The Will to Power.

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_interzone.ucc.ie>
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 1997 22:50:43 +0100 (BST)


Mike Cule doesn't quite agree, though he doesn't say with what.

> Way I saw it, you would start with a certain amount of Free Will and be
> able to increase it by actions on the Mundane Plane. (Specifically, in
> game terms, mastering skills would increase your will.)

This is part of the "standard" proto-Chaosium-system I was describing. However, one of the Ugly Hacks in it is that one _can't_ increase your Will, once you've started to HQ. That's what I meant by it being "on the skids". This is, as I see it, an attempt to enforce the notion that only Powerful People can be Heroes, but avoidng the sort of thermal runaway effect you'd get if you allowed the results of HQing to feed back into the start of the Will equation.

However, it probably _should_. HQing changes your ability to effect the HP; if the primary mechanism to change the HP is Will, then it seems dubious that it's at its _most_ when you're a HQ newbie, and decreases progressively as you become all the mightier. That's why I'm inclining towards a system in which "will" is separate from "power". Apart from your combining these two, I'm not sure what we're disagreeing on. (Rest of section deleted as being apparently non-controversial.)

(I'm ignoring "support" for the moment, and only considering ones "inherent" power.)

> I think I can reconcile the Objectivist/Subjectivist dispute......)

Good luck! Yours is the (in general terms) sort of schema I had in mind when I suggested the "HVO" idea, foolishly imagining that'd be a basis for compromise, or at least, less acrimonious debate. To wit, a formulation of the "mechanics" of the GodPlane, if people really want one, without insisting that subjective experience can't differ. As you can see from the discussion ever since, it worked _wonderfully_.(*)

> [on The Harrek Problem] I personally
> believe that access to the Infinity Rune will multiply the level of Will
> available to a person enourmously.

That begs the question, though, doesn't it? I think, btw, that Greg has repented fairly thoroughly of the Superhero/Infinity Rune idea by now.

> But if you are doing something NEW then you ought to burn your own
> exxence. You are cutting a fresh path through the cosmos and it is
> others who will be changing themselves in an effort to become more like
> you in years to come.

It seems to me this is handlable by the same sort of mechanism. If you create a path, you're binding yourself to it, even as you create it. By travelling it, you define both what's Correct for the path, and Correct for you. If your quest concerns generosity, say, then you have to be generous to do it, and doing it _commits_ you to generosity.

In fact, your Traits, etc, will be altered and fixed in the same directions anyone who follows your path would be, except _moreso_. The Quester who first walked whatever-path-gives-cultists-Generous+3 obviously had his _own_ Generous fixed to 127, or some such silly number, in the process, in addition to whatever other effects occurred, and doubtless expending a lot of "power" in the process too.

(*Ironically and)
Heroically,
Alex.


End of Glorantha Digest V4 #551


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