> Date: Thu, 8 Apr 1999 15:09:48 -0700
> From: David Dunham <dunham_at_pensee.com>
> Subject: Re: Praxian clans
>
> Brian Tickler
>
> > Nobody I know has ever used the term "clan" to reference Praxians...
>
> The Dragon Pass board game does so, if I recall correctly. I don't know how
> far back this goes, i.e. whether White Bear & Red Moon (the first
> incarnation of this same game) does this as well.
Several of the responses jump on this statement, citing literary references to the word "clan". Let's all agree that the word "nobody" refers to people, not written works...so, then, what I mean here is that in spite of a few offhand references to the word clan in the written works (which I had already copped to, BTW), none of the, oh, 40-60 or so RQ players I have associated with over the past 2 decades uses the term "clan" as a consistent way to specify a Praxian nomad family group. Clan-based ideas and values have never played a significant role in any Praxian campaign I have seen or played in...now maybe if you had a quote from the Barbarian Gods overview in Cults of Prax that said "Prax is a clan-based society and its peoples live their lives accordingly" I'd be inclined to agree with you, but don't toss up a few paltry references and then try to claim that they prove that all along this was a key point in understanding and playing in a Praxian campaign; it wasn't, and isn't. If it was, then the book would have better been titled "Clans of Prax", with chapters on each tribe and how it's broken up, with the cults described in Appendix A, no? IMO, a Praxian's tribe and cult both are orders of magnitude more important than any hard notion of a "clan".
> Date: Thu, 8 Apr 1999 18:41:24 EDT
> From: <TTrotsky_at_aol.com>
> Subject: Re: Praxian Clans
>
> Troubled? No... but you appeared to think that 'keeping the clans out of
> Prax' was a good thing. Whether I agree with you or not, it seems reasonable
> to point out that it ain't going to happen.
So you (and many others) just felt compelled to point out that my light-hearted jab is just wrong, wrong, wrong (it's wrong, dammit).
Ok. I hope this really is fun and/or satisfying, because from where I sit seeing 4-5 posts pounce at the same time, it seems kind of silly. The image of Nick B. sitting down to actually look up every page in Cults of Prax that actually uses the word "clan" is especially amusing...even more so when I realize that for some of you, the very fact that the word is used anywhere in any Gloranthan publication must be clear proof to you that Praxian society is totally colored by it.
> Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 01:14:05 +0100 (BST)
> From: Alex Ferguson <abf_at_yeats.ucc.ie>
> Subject: 1984 -- Gloranthan Year Zero?
>
> the contrary. I'm not particular interested in which such sources
> are pre-RQ3, especially since no such retrospection was in any way
> implied in the original post.
Maybe that's because the original post you're referring to was a one-liner, and not a retrospective? Hmmm, maybe?
> Argumentfollowingwise (as Gary Trudeau's Al Haig might have said) I think
> I might claim the converse, with at least as much basis. Let's further
> examine the publication plan this seems to imply. First, Issaries
> 'churn' all the existing material on Prax[*], so as to have a basis on
> which to: second, publish some additional material.
I've already come out against this very approach. But that wouldn't stop one from having a 5 page overview handout on Prax to go with all your brand-spanking-new Praxian campaign material.
> ... Does anyone honestly think
> the Praxians would sustain the sort of depth of information that
> Sartar and the Orlanthi are going to come in for (3, 4 books?) without
> starting to send the average gamer to sleep? Sure, one could simple
> write endless Praxian scenarios, but I don't think that's a remotely
> viable plan to jump-starting a new game.
So you're missing my original point again, which was basically that the average gamer would be more happy with a completely fleshed-out small campaign area, then in a mediocre amount of information about an entire world with little spread out areas of it discussed in detail. I considered this to be a strength of RQ2 nearly as important as the rules or the Glorantha game world. So actually, my point is that, yes, I do think it's "a remotely viable plan to jump-starting a new game"...
> Date: Fri, 9 Apr 1999 08:54:18 +0100
> From: "Nick Brooke" <Nick_Brooke_at_csi.com>
> Subject: Re: Clans of Prax
>
> Brian Tickler writes:
>
> > Nobody I know has ever used the term "clan" to reference Praxians...
>
> Cults of Prax p.24 (Waha): "Each tribe is ruled by a khan, who is the High
> Priest of Waha for the whole tribe. Each clan in the tribe is ruled by a
> chieftain, who is a priest of Waha and rules the Initiates and Lay members
> of the clan." In Brian-world, one assumes, the defining social cult in Prax
> organises itself by clans, but the Praxians themselves somehow don't...
Well, here's an interesting "played vs. published" POV I can jump on:
Waha is not the defining social cult in Prax, from a game perspective. It's Stormbull. How do I know this? Because there's at least 20 Stormbull player characters for every Waha player character. It doesn't really matter how important the "background" material says Waha is or what percentage of Praxian tribe members the books say worship him when there are so many more PCs, *NPCs published in official scenarios*, etc. that are Stormbull, and not Waha. What difference does it make what the background and overview material says when in the course of gaming you run into 10 significant Stormbull personalities for every significant Waha one? Waha is a washed-out bit-player by comparison.
> Plus a specific named clan of the Bison tribe on p.111:
> "'They call my clan the Flower Bison now, because the women all sing to narl
> flowers.'"
This is the only reference that really has any meat to it, I'd say; all the rest are just using the term clan because they can't come up with a better word to describe "an American Indian-ish family group belonging to a larger tribe". Certainly I do not picture your average Praxian character as a thane-type who swears Oaths of Kin, or demands weregild, or cares a whit about their "hearth". So, ok, perhaps I should be annoyed at the lack of availability of a better word to describe them and just keep my jokes private, but I still don't fathom the pile-on response.
> nomad clan? (I agree that Glorantha sometimes has a problem with multiple
> reuse of generic terms -- the "khans" in both Prax and Pent annoy, as do the
> "kings" in Orlanthi, Dara Happan and Western lands. But the use of "clan,"
> meaning "subdivision of a tribe," is pretty consistent throughout. And
> nobody who knows them would confuse the Greydog Clan (of the Lismelder
> Tribe, in the Kingdom of Sartar) with the Flower Bison Clan (of the Bison
> Tribe, on the Plaines of Prax)).
I'm glad we have some common ground to stand on...but it is still then an as yet unexplained phenom: why don't players (or, to be fair, "any players that Brian knows in the whole United States") refer to such groups as clans consistently? Probably because nobody ever heard the word "clan" in a cowboys-and-indians flick, I guess.
> > I'm sure you understand very well that people who started playing
> > Orlanthi and/or Praxians in the early 80's had no significant infor-
> > mation about either being a clan-based society...
>
> Frankly, you could cut the last five words from that sentence and it would
> still be largely true.
That's debatable though. Did the players then not know the depths of what Prax was and how to evolve it properly beyond the basics, or did Greg et al not know the depths of what Prax was and how to evolve it properly beyond the basics?
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