More on HeroQuests. Sorry........

From: Michael Cule <mikec_at_room3b.demon.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 1997 00:27:20 +0100


First Jeff he say:

>For all of the folk who have the Lunar Empire summarily outlawing and
>suppressing the cult of Orlanth in Tarsh and Sartar, I have a couple of
>questions.

Well, they aren't trying a frontal assault. That would be silly.

They are trying to take away all the social advantages of being an Orlanthi and transfer them to being a Good Lunar Citizen. Manipulating the tax laws, refusing to allow rituals ('Against the New Public Order Act for more than four people to meet in a Temple...') and generally doing all that the British did in Ireland to suppress Catholicism and more.

They are putting their own people into the temples where possible and subverting Orlanthi myths and doctrines on the Mundane and Mythic planes.

Softly Softly, catchee monkey, in other words. And when one of the things you are doing causes a rebellion supress them even further!

My comment on evocatio BTW wasn't meant to say I think the Lunars want to eliminate Orlanth. Just to bind them to their pantheon and 'tame' him.

Alex and I continue to bat things back and forth about HeroQuesting.
>
>> HeroQuesting (with the exception of reaching into the Infinity Rune)
>
>"How do you do that, then?"
>
>> doesn't provide increases in the Will of the Quester.

That information is not available at your security clearance.

And is certainly not going to be available to PCs.

But is needed to account for certain phenomena.

>So sez you, and formerly Chaosium. But I think that some of the things
>Will is used for (in our system and theirs), are such that they _ought_
>to be "improvable" by HQ. That is, the use of Will to alter the HP,
>essentially. Gloranthan HQers are known to quest for exactly that
>purpose, after all, and I don't think it's simply to "suck in" more
>"supporters", though that's a handy side-effect to have.

The HeroPlane, in fact the entire cosmos, is embodied Will. While what you do on the Hero Plane may give you +100 skill in Rafia Weaving, that isn't going to increase your Will by an iota.

>> >(I'm ignoring "support" for the moment, and only considering ones
>> >"inherent" power.)
>
>> I don't think you can. See above.
>
>Well, I can, because some HQers _do_. Ultimately, we may have to wave
>our hands and say "Harrek and co.: special cases", but I don't want to
>give up just yet.

I'm afraid I more or less already have. Hence the Infinity Rune note.

>
>> If you choose to leave the path and do something new then the price
>> should be higher (MUCH higher) than doing what has been done before.
>
>Perhaps the general terms we're discussing this in, are obfuscating more
>than they reveal. To take a more specific example: Say I, as a
>Yelmalio quester, try to avoid Orlanth on the HoG. This isn't going to
>require vast amounts of Will, or POW, or whatever, it just requires
>I deal with the consequences of that choice (which are likely to be
>altogether bad). Is that a reasonable example?

The trick isn't avoiding Orlanth (though that should be reasonably difficult). The trick is, when you return to the Mundane Plane, making that change real for the rest of Glorantha.

Let me make this explict. You can camp about on the Hero Plane all you like and refight the Hill Of Gold fourteen ways to Sunday if you like.

But when you return and pass through to the Mundane Plane, that is the point at which you must give up part of your Free Will (whether we express it as a numeric characteristic or effects on Traits) to make it real and part of the Web of Arachne Solara. If you haven't the resources to bind that new Reality into Glorantha, either from your own self or from those who support you then it will all have been as unreal as a dream and the great change you made will vanish the way a computer game position vanishes when you switch off after forgetting to save.

And what is worse, if you don't reaffirm the reality, normally by founding a cult that will re-enact the new myth every Sacred Time, then it will start to fade.

The cost is paid when you return. Not when you do the deed.

>> With PENDRAGON mechanics though there ain't much point in having a score
>> in anything above 40 (always criticals!).
>
>This is largely because the Pendragon critical system is Rather Silly.

I agree. (See an earlier post of mine)

>
>Example: Sir Insipid (relevant traits at 2), and Sir Puissant (ditto, 20)
>both attempt to ask the Fisher King the Grail Questions. (I forget
>the details of the adventure, but it's one of the published ones.)

The Battle of the Castle of Joy.

>Their chances of critting their rolls, and hence succeeding in asking
>the right question, are _identical_.

And it gets worse when the scores go over twenty and the chance of a fumble vanishes and the chance of a critical starts being ridiculous...

Snip stuff where Alex disagrees with what I said about distinctions between type I and type II heroquests. I think I've covered that above.

A Type I is being maintained by someone other than the Quester.

A Type II is (will be) maintained by the Quester and his supporters.

It isn't a difference in degree of effect. The effect on Glorantha of a Humakt Type I heroquest may be far greater than the effect of a Quest by a hero of the cult of the god of raffia work. The difference is one of kind.

Jane wants to know:

>First I'd like to thank David Dunham and Nick Brooke for their help in
>answering some of my question's back in Digest #544. But I'm still
>confused.....I guess it's the very nature of Sacred Time that seem's to
>be be the crux of my failure to understand. I was working under the
>assumption that this season held importance for Lhankor Mhy and Issaries
>and in a minor way Orlanth. This information I garnered from the
>calander of holy days in CoP which shows 2 high holy days for the first
>two. I do remember that it was a bad time to surf the Puzzel cannal in
>old Pavis as you could end up on the river Styx (not good!)...so is this
>period of time of importance to all cults? What's the deal?

In my opinion, the Sacred Time is the celebration of the Dance of the World. Everything, even the things that want to unravel it altogether, comes together to reweave and repair the Web of Arachne Solara. They tell the tales, they sing the songs, they re-enact the myths. And if they do it right, the sun will rise again over Glorantha.

(And if you have read Terry Pratchett's HOGFATHER you know what will rise if they don't....)

They make their cults real again for the next year. That's what I think.

>The piety trait has been confusing people. Me included, I might add.
>Until I remembered a line from back when I was running a PBM. A PC and an
>NPC are discussing what initiation and adulthood will be like. The PC
>has a very low Piety score. He says:
>"I've better things to think about than that. The gods leave us alone and
>we leave them alone: that's the Great Compromise, right?"
>Wrong... as the NPC points out. The PC goes on to consider the
>advantages of the various cults (he's a city-born Pavisite, BTW). He
>slightly resents being forced to do what some god tells him, but sees the
>political necessity of joining a power-group.

That's very good. A pious person is one who thinks that what one player in my campaign said to another is not a curse:

May the Gods notice you! May they take an interest in you!

>And finally (?), Alex has been confusing me even more. (Easily done, I
>know).
>>Jane Williams, clearly a _Grand_ Master (Mistress?) of Ecky Thump,
>If that was an accusation of being a Northerner, it's way off target. I
>enjoy good food even when it comes from barbarians with strange accents.
>

EEEEEEEEE. I'll send around some of the lads!

End of Glorantha Digest V4 #558


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