HQ re-enactments.

From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_interzone.ucc.ie>
Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 14:56:09 +0100 (BST)


David Cake is hereby quoted and argued with at length, so if you're getting bored with the HQ discussion... you're probably on the wrong mailing list! <duck>

> >How many
> >very "mythicly significant" events are never re-enacted, or only
> >re-enacted disasterously?

> I'm sure there are plenty of mythicly significant events that are
> never or seldom re-enacted. Mythical disasters, creation myths, and so on.

I find that very unlikely. Aside from cultures which don't HeroQuest (with a capital H-Q) at all, which is a separate issue entirely, I think all their myths will be re-enacted in some form or another. After all, the generic explanation of Sacred Time used to be that everyone wheeled out their creation myths.

> Though note the
> Antirius Hill of Gold, which was a disaster the first few times.

That's a disaster of a myth, not a disaster of a re-enactment. ;-)

> >How many "insignificant" events are regularly
> >and successfully re-enacted with great magical benefit?

> I think there are 'insignificant' effects that are regularly and
> successfully re-enacted with minor magical benefits. Several published
> heroquests fit nicely into this category.

That's not an instance of the "significance" and "ease" of the quest being "not directly related" to the benefit, which is what you were originally referring to.

> The point is that the difficulty and potential reward of a
> heroquest path is related to a number of things [...] rather than
> simply being a function of how well trodden the path is.

I certainly never said it was "simply" anything. My point is that _all other things being equal_, the more "maintained" path, by worship, HQ, myth-telling, whatever, is the "easier" it's likely to be. (A circumstance so unlikely as make something's "instrinsic" difficulty a fairly meaningless concept.)

> And 'experimental' heroquesting is dangerous because its venturing into
> the unknown, not dangerous because its just intrinsically harder.

I keep acknowledging the importance of the first, but I can't agree that the second is irrelevant, unless we define "intrinsic" difficulty in a way that's unreasonably narrow.

> But that you can find previously unknown hero
> paths that work well is an argument against the idea that the difficulty of
> the heroquest is a function of how often its been performed.

It would be, if that argument was being made in those terms. Of course, most people discovering such would conclude someone, whether God or Hero, had "made" them beforehand...

> For one thing, I dislike the idea that the opposition gets
> gradually weaker because, if followed to its logical conclusion, it kind of
> trivialises the whole thing. Eventually the ZZer taps him on the head, and
> Yelmalio just falls over and his liver leaps out, because his defeat is
> inevitable.

Why is that the logical conclusion? It only would be if the Zorani were increasingly pounding the spark gods all over Glorantha, and they were not doing much about it. It would seem more logical to assume that there was a Balance of Violence between the two, maintaining the status quo, or if anything that things might be tilting towards the Yelmalians, given the degree to which the Elder Races have been on the skids.

> Now, I think it does get easier in practice, but because
> everybody knows that they are doing.

You mean, it gets "easier" for _both sides_, of an adversarial HQ? And that's the only possible change in the nature of the myth/quest? So if the ZZers didn't quest for several generations, or conversely if several dozen Yelmalian questers in a row came back coughing up blood and expiring on the temple floor, it would effect neither the myth, nor the "ease" of the quest for either side? That the next quester to try would discover exactly the same mythic environment, in either case?

> Also, I prefer to think in terms of the myth is a map, and HQing is
> exploring, rather than 'changing' the myths. [this] cuts through a lot
> of the bizarreness of heroquest mechanics discussed here, which leads
> me to suspect that its on the right track.

You haven't solved any of the "mechanical" problems, it seems to me, just defined them out of existance by an act semantic will. Now all we need is "just" a complete picture of, not just every actual myth in Glorantha, but of every _possible_ myth in Glorantha (the "unexplored" HP territory), and then all the HQ game system questions would be solved. Even if I agreed with that entirely as a philosophical position, I don't think it helps one iota, in practical terms.

> Another good example of what I'm talking about is Valare Addis
> quest. Her quest is unquestionably easier to those who follow afterwards.
> But its not intrinsically easier - you still need to mutilate yourself, and
> confront Natha, and work desperately in Hagu, and so on.

This seems to be an argument that because a re-enactment actually is a re-enactment, then by definition it must not be any "easier", as you stil have to do the "same" things. To take an admittedly somewhat trite counterexample, assuming Valare's cult offers some divine magic, hasn't it become, by her actions, (almost infinitely) easier to gain such-and- such a spell by a given series of re-enactment type actions?

> plus there is some 'magical infrastructure' in place to assist (like the
> goddess Addi in the care of the Kovarians).

Gah! Why do you acknowledge that "magical infrastructure" can aid in a quest, and continue to deny that your precessors along the Hero Path, the people who _put_ the blithering things there, have made the quest any easier? What's the conceptual difference here between the original metaphor you're disputing of making a forest trail (and notice it was _making_, rather than simply trudging along), and the above?

Basically, your position seems to be that quests can become "easier" in almost every respect, just not in some theoretically "intrinsic" fashion.

> The guys who do it all wrong - beat up Orlanth, beat up ZZ, beat up
> Inora, they don't even have cautionary tales, because they die horribly

They do? Why? What kills them? I don't for a moment think so, myself. I think they merrily get their fire powers back, though they don't become immortal. I'm sure there's even Creator God support from this, from as far back as the notorious Late Sunday Night at Conjunction, though admittedly certain positions have changed since then.

Phew.

Slainte,
Alex.


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