I think most of the quests that don't involve combat are not directly adversarial. Valara Addi's, for example. And lots of quests are not directly adversarial. Take the magic road quests, for example - in order for the Orlanthi quester to succeed, it is not necessary for the various people met on the quest to fail at whatever they are doing. But I'm not suggesting that the 'rules' are any different for adversarial quests in any case - its just that what I'm trying to say is harder to express in those cases.
Alex paraphrases me
>[We don't need mechanics for changeing the HeroPlane, because it doesn't]
I think it can - but I don't think all quests do this.
Alex characterises my ideas thus
>Nope, in the way you'd need a map of all future space-time if you thought
>that all your characters' actions were hyperdeterministic, that they had
>no scope to create anything new, and wanted a game which was founded on
>such an assumption and wanted to enforce it in play.
I'm sorry, Alex, I really have no idea what you are getting at. As it does seem you are trying to construct some sort of readily combustible straw man here, I'm not inclined to put a great deal of effort into working out what it is you are on about.
>You don't, apparently, admit the possibility that anything
>new can be created there.
A good point, and I could see how you could come to that conclusion - - thanks for bringing it up. And now I have some idea what you talking about in the quote above (though I'm still not touching it with a large pole). I certainly do believe that dramatic changes can occur to the heroplane - I just don't think that has a lot to do with 're-enactment' heroquests.
There are two types of quest that create a permanent change to the heroplane that I can see know. The first, is the experimental path that is indistinguishable from walking a previously completely unknown path for the first time - where the heroquester comes back with a brand new thing (like Hon-Eel and maize). The second is the more adversarial kind - where you change some existing aspect of the world, and something (even if only the worlds magical inertia) resists. I believe these DO change the heroplane, but I think it relates to the question of support and so on. When Nysalor did his quest, he 'escalated' things to the point that every troll in the world was opposing him, somehow. So when he succeeded, they all lost. Future small scale re-enacters of that quest don't make that loss of fertility more entrenched for the whole world - just for those that opposed them directly, and their supporters.
Considering this point, about the supporters being vulnerable to the quest somehow, leads me to slightly recant my original contention. Yes, re-enactment quests do make the quest potentially easier - but only by the obvious method of eliminating future opposition, which has the effect of reducing, very slightly, the number of potential opposers, a reduction that generally is completely insignificant compared to the general statistical noise of deaths, plagues, conflicts and so on. Yes, when the ZZ whacks Yelmalio, he has made the quest 'easier' - but only because there is one less Yelmalion opponent for the future. Now, if a Yelmalion once and for all decided to win the fire powers of ZZ back for the cult, he would need the whole cults backing and be opposed by the whole cult of Zorak Zoran (eventually, not necessarily on his first step) - and we aren't talking about a re-enactment quest anymore, we are talking about a major heroic undertaking. Similarly, re-enactment quests that are serious big deal things (like the Kalikos quest) do make the quest easier the next year - but by the obvious and simple mechanism of beating up on a large proportion of the potential opponents.
I also don't believe that changing the heroplane changes the myths (at least, only through social mechanisms). Take the classic example of a world change - Nysalor cursing the trolls. He didn't change the myths - the trolls still believe Korasting is the Mother of Many - he added a new one, the myth were Korasting is attacked by the horrible demon D'Wargon. I think all changes to the myths work something like that - its just that sometimes, people stop telling the old version of the story. I see the mechanism for how old myths disappear being sort of Kuhnian usually. Thats ignoring Minarian memory removals and such, which are special and strange cases IMHO.
Cheers
David
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