<sound of a couple of clacks being thrown into the discussion>
Cult of Greg:
Alex "Fast typer or too much spare time?" Ferguson:
>One of the leavening things about the Cult of Greg is that as religions
>go, both the object of worship, and several sections of the Priesthood
>are quite willing to send themselves (and each other, more to the point)
>up mercilessly.
Naah. There is no cult of Greg... that's a GLism. There's a cult of Glorantha, Greg's just one of the main prophets/heroes. That comment was only 50% tongue-in-cheek!
Stephen "Harmony Rune" Martin:
>Contrary to what Alex
>Ferguson said, most of the references have seemed to me to be derogatory,
>not in the spirit of fun. And not all of them were aimed at me, either.
>But again, I think many people on the Digest are too offensive, and many
>of them on purpose.
"Me Too". I have a thick skin so it doesn't bother me much, but I'm sure this has discouraged some people. Then again, I'm sure I'm guilty of this too (short-tempered bastard that I am).
>Let's try to be a tad
>bit respectful and, dare I say it, grateful, eh?
I agree with this bit totally (even though I'll probably get pelted with abuse by some %_at_!*er for it).
Pendragon Rules Problems:
Nikk Effingham:
>I never did like the Pendragon system to the extent other people
>did. I didn't find it as sleek and simple as other people had told me it
>would be, and the integration of traits/passions with a role-playing system
>wasn't what I expected. Maybe it was because I've got 3rd edition and not
>4th edition??? For a simple system, look at Storyteller.
Frankly, I don't rate "Rules Lite" systems very much. The rules are _always_ a backup to the creative interactive storytelling aspect of roleplaying, which should be dominant except at the times when you _want_ to rules play. I've found that having an all-encompassing and (dare I say it?) fairly complex system does help when you want to fall back on something. I've played in quite a lot of "Rules Lite" games/systems and they were all good up to a certain point, at which point they ended up looking a bit sad. They're great for one-offs, but I wouldn't use them otherwise.
To me, Pendragon is (generally) a rules-lite version of RQ when it comes to combat mechanics and the like, and really doesn't seem to work too well for this sort of thing, which is a shame. However, the Personality Traits concept kicks ass, and makes it a cool system for all that. I'm hoping G:tG will be midway in complexity between RQ and Pendragon, with Pendragon-style personality traits and the promised social systems.
Nikk, I think Storyteller sucks, and Mark Rein-Haagen Dazs is a pretentious wanker. There are far too many rules holes in the Storyteller system. For a similar system that actually works (apart from the magic system being too powerful), try Shadowrun. It's better than Storyteller, anyway. No offense to you intended at all, Nikk, just my honest opinion.
The Ongoing HeroQuesting discussion:
This is great stuff. Keep going, guys!
FWIW, I feel that the personality traits _are_ culturally based, and also linked to deities/pantheons. Really there should be a list of loads and loads of personality traits for Glorantha, only some of which are directly attributed to each character. The rest are assumed to hover around the 8/12 to 10/10 mark, that is, they're present in that character but not immediately relevant.
Now, each deity would also have personality traits associated with it, and high scores (15+ maybe) required in all the relevant traits to achieve Rune level in that cult, along with some skills of course... a much better system than the current RQ one IMO. The traits would then also supply modifiers for HeroQuesting, Ritual Magic, etc. Each _rune_ would have trait affiliations too, and when a HQ tied him/herself to a rune, the relevant traits would become set at extreme levels (this ties in with loss of Free Will as discussed at length). Of course, extreme scores in the right sort of traits would be necessary to tie to the rune initially.
The fact that each culture uses a different set of traits would help to show the differences between cultures and what is important to them, providing an immediate roleplaying guide. To integrate with another culture/deity, the character would need to "activate"/acquire the relevant traits, representing him/her becoming aware of the importance of that aspect of his/her personality.
I'm sure Illumination could fit in here neatly, maybe as a hidden trait that started off as 10/10 and was modified by circumstances until it hit a high level (20?), when the player is informed of the stat having reached 20 and the Illumination of the character. Hmm, needs some work but I'm sure I could figure it out.
The above are throwaway comments that don't do justice to the workable system that I have devised over the past year or so, most of which is in my head. I do use it in my campaign, and don't (currently) let the players see their traits (we don't make rolls on them either, but it is important for initiation/rune level stuff etc), which seems to work fine.
Arachne Solara's Web:
"This view holds that our physical world is not a structure built out of independently existing unanalysable entities, but rather a web of relationships between elements whose meanings arise wholly from their relationships to the whole."
No directly relevant that, but it's so cool I had to post it. Amazingly, it's from a book discussing the relationships between Quantum Physics and magic in the RW...
Nick Brooke's New Competition (GD #553):
I was really tempted to cite the whole damned thing here because it was so funny. Nick, you nearly killed me with this... I was drinking some milk the first time I read this and I almost choked! :-)
Does anybody know what Mr Arsehole was going on about? I think he was trying to be sarcastic, but failing due to not being English (actually this is an assumption, but any native English speaker who writes that disjointedly in English should be disowned anyway), Sarcasm is an English cultural personality trait y'see...
I have a new e-mail address everybody (see above). The old one goes down on the 5th July.
Cheerio,
Paul.
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