Joerg Baumgartner wrote:
> (The fact that [guilds] are mentioned in the character creation for
RQ2
> doesn't say much about Gloranthan reality, but then urban craftspeople
> always tended to cluster their knowledge, and form cartels to keep out
> unwanted competition.)
About the time Cults of Prax came out, there was discussion in _Alarums and Excursions_ about how to fit guilds into the same environment; and one person proposed a "standard Guild template" to match the cult template. The main stubling block was seen to be that of magic : in the theist part of Genertela which was all that was know about at the time, the monopoly of the cults upon magic and ceremony gave them a significant boost over purely mundane guild structures. This would be as true for simple craft guilds as for anything that an "adventurer" might get involved in - a purely mundane smith would be at a disadvantage against a Gustbran or Third Eye Blue initiate; a butcher would benefit from honouring Waha in his aspect as the Butcher in ways that a craft confraternity could not match (in terms of appeasement of animal spirits, for example).
Even with the significantly evolved contemporary view of Glorantha, there may well be some force to this argument for some crafts in some locations : while the Sartar economy probably doesn't have a niche for a specialist butcher, the smith is likely to be a member of some scary specialist cult (just as RW smiths were seen to be magical people). It is probably a personal call as to whether it is credible for shamanistic sources to ply craft-related magic, or whether some form of low sorcery might be kept as a "trade secret".
Setting magic aside, the issue still remains about the economic state of the area under consideration. Craft guilds and confraternities are a product of specialisation, which in turn depended strongly on urbanisation. My gut feel is that they would be unlikely to be significant in Sartar, but would be more likely in the West, and, perhaps, Kralorela.
> On the other hand, the earth cultists may
> know magical roads between their cities crossing practically no
> wilderness
Magic road heroquests have been mentioned in sources from way back - ISTR one mentioned in some of the house campaign write-ups in WF, lo these many years ago.
The interesting thing about them from a game PoV is that these actually provide a fairly closed, limited, benefit to the quester (and companions), and don't get too embroiled in the "gaining a super-power" or "hacking the mythology" stuff : perhaps for that reason, they have been a rather neglected facet of the subject. The main reasons I can see for not introducing more of them are
Lee R. Insley wrote
> In some Viking cultures, when at the moment a person died, a window
was
> opened in order to let the spirit of the body leave the building.
> It was generally believed that if the
> body was removed through a window or doorway, the dead could find its
way
> back home through that entrance
The sagas also tended to include a significant number of restless dead : anything vaguely magical about the deceased or their manner of decease would provide an excuse for them to rise. If you pattern your take on Sartar after the Vikings, there would be serious precautions taken to ensure a quiet rest for significant figures, and probably a number of war chieftains who don't sleep easily in their barrows, and occasionally stir to trouble either the clan(s) they feuded with, or those unwitting foreigners.
End of The Glorantha Digest V5 #202
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