Danny, the gods not having free will is the canonical Glorantha. Its what Greg thinks, and it comes across (subtly) in many of his works. Sure, you are free to believe something else - but thats a variant, perhaps the major number one variant, but still a variant. So if you don't accept free will, you will never reach a resolution on this issue, so just give up trying and accept that your Glorantha is different.
And for that matter, I see no need for the gods to be 'subjective' in order for them to lack Free Will. As has been pointed out many times, the Compromise effectively means the same thing.
>If, however, you believe that the
>worship of Humakt has grown up around Humakt being what Humakt is, then
>it's not necessarily the case that Humakt has no free will.
You could believe that Humakt had free will then, and doesn't now. Everyone knows that mortal beings have free will, and everyone knows that the relationship between the humans and gods was different once. So you could assume that Humakt had free will either a) when he walked the earth as a mortal (OK, not generally believed to be true in Humakts case, but applies for many other deities) or b) in the Godtime, before the Compromise, but he doesn't anymore.
From discussions with Greg, the real trick the Red Goddess pulled being both mortal and deity at the same time, thus being a free willed deity. But even she is probably not free willed any more.
>It is entirely
>possible that he could change the Way he Is and his worshippers would
>either follow suit or go off and worship someone else.
Even if I did believe that Humakt was capable of doing this, I believe it would violate the Compromise.
Lanbril
>I still wonder why Lanbril has the Mastery Rune...
Because he is a god who values skill. The Mastery rune is associated (largely by dint of being the RQ2 RuneLord rune) with those who attain power through mundane skill rather than magic, which describes Lanbril master thieves pretty well.
Someone, Nick I think, mentioned that if the cult was to be redesigned for RQ3 we would get rid of the Master Thief/ Ringlead-priest dichotomy. Unfortunately, if we go by the RQ3 description of thief cults, instead of priests and master thieves we end with shamans, which while it does make some sense, is ultimately unsatisfying. 'You mean the only way I can progress to master of the thieves cult is by becoming a shaman, thus thoroughly screwing up my abilities as a reliable thief, not to mention my criminal lifestyle?'. I ended up leaving in Master Thieves because they are so much more satisfying as PCs and as NPCs than having all the heads of thieves rings being shamanic. While I perfectly understand the reasoning behind the thieves cults being shamanic, MGF ruled in this case.
Cheers
David
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