>I haven't seen the high skills problem others have
>encountered though. I mean, you have to burn a lot
>of Glory just to get from 15 to 20.
So who burns Glory that way? You take skills up to 20 by the long slow slog of yearly training and experience ticks. Then you use Glory to push it above 20.
Then it's me and Alex going round and round and round.....
>Mike Cule says the quaint ol' DP Superhero/Infinity rune equation:
>> [...] is needed to account for certain phenomena.
>
>Only under certain other assumptions, such as the infamous Will one;
>I think Harrek _ought_ to be accountable for by HQ mechanics, without
>an entirely shamless Superhero Ex Machina. Just don't press me for
>the details, quite yet...
Well, the mechanics I'm proposing are trying to reflect what Greg says about how HQ works and the observable facts about Glorantha. However we express it mechanically, most HeroQuests are supported by social units and fail without them. But occasionally along comes a bugger like Harrek who makes nonsense of the whole set of assumptions.
>> >But I think that some of the things Will is used for, are such that
>> >they _ought_ to be "improvable" by HQ.
>
>> 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 not suggesting it _should_ though; I'm saying this is a flaw, or
>at least, a serious limitation, in the whole "Will" concept.
>Gloranthans _do_, at least according to Greg anecdote, HQ to make it
>easier (or possible) to accomplish other HQs. The numeric Will
>idea tends to make each successive HQ _harder_, at least in many
>respects.
Well, in some respects (but not many) it does. And that's intentional.
You gain other benefits from the earlier Questings. The sacrifice of Will is only the final bit to cement it. And you can gain effective Will by binding yourself to a HeroQuesting Ring. But eventually you loose out.
The way I see the 'typical' HeroQuester's career going is something like this:
>[Experimentally dodging Orlanth on the HoG]
>> 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.
>
>Which is why I think "type I" and "type II" aren't the "correct"
>distinctions to make. You seem to be, broadly speaking, saying
>that the important, distinct sorts are (what I'd call) "shallow,
>re-enactment" HQs, and on the other hand, "deep, extrapolative"
>(or Experimental, if you prefer). Firstly, I'm saying that there
>are two, somewhat orthogonal, notions going on here; and secondly,
>that neither is in principle so different from the other as to
>require an entirely different explanation, or "mechanism".
A quest can be both shallow and experimental, deep and re-enactment. The depth of the quest will affect the difficulty of doing it as well as the cost of making it real. The further into the HeroPlane you go, the harder and more numerous the tasks you have to fulfill to complete it.
The Lightbringer's Quest is a re-enactment quest. But it is horrendously long and complex. I'm unclear at this moment whether to classify the climax (where the successful Quester can ask the assembled Gods for virtually anything) would count as re-enactment though. Arguably not.
I would argue that Argrath did first the most complex re-enactment quest possible and then a totally new extrapolative quest to free Sheng Seleris.
>> 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.
>
>I'm not sure I see the significance of this requirement Why isn't
>the "will" expended in _doing_ the things? I don't immediately see
>why the quester ought to have the option of abandonning an "unsaved
>position", without paying the "cost" of his actions.
But there are two costs. You pay in blood, toil, tears and sweat (and possibly the death of body and soul) to get the change made. And then you pay again to fix it and make it real.
>And the same applies to a small-beer HQer, as much as a Real Hero(TM).
>The difference is just the the first makes a small change, in this
>case too small to make a dent in the "received mythology" of anyone
>much, except possibly himself and some cronies. And it makes it
>only marginally easier for someone to follow him. The real difficulty,
>though, is that if a sub-Hero tried to do this, he might be able to
>avoid Orlanth, but doing so would almost certainly make it impossible
>to complete the quest in a satisfactory way.
I'm not at all sure what you're saying here. It is true that a Hero of the Cult of Rafia Working won't need to sacrifice as much as a Hero of Humakt when he tries to make a change in the myth of his god. Why is this a problem?
As you note what I'm saying works best for the culture we know most about, the Manirian Orlanthi.
I note what you say about Chaosium's hostility to the single Free Will characteristic. But I think we can use this model to talk about the issues involved in all mechanics. (And in fact we are.)
I'm not unsympathetic myself to some of the other approaches being batted around. The 'stored POW affecting personality' idea strikes me as being especially promising since it integrates Rune Magic into a continuum with the abilities gained from Hero Questing.
But I do think we need to make a distinction between Re-enactment and Experimental as regards costs and effects. It can't be a hard distinction since There Are Exceptions To Every Rule. The Lightbringer's Quest for example certainly blurs the distinction. But I think it is still a real and useful one.
End of Glorantha Digest V4 #563
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End of Glorantha Digest V4 #564
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