> An interesting "played vs. published" POV:
> 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.
Turning to the description of Storm Bull's social role (the one in Cults of Prax, naturally), we find:
"Due to the small number of warriors in it, the actual political power of this cult is small, at least as far as determining tribal policies. Socially they are unacceptable. They characteristically act with total disregard for any tribal taboos or manners..."
So: we could ignore this description of the "Nature of the Cult" and pretend (because it's what we see in Brian's games) that Storm Bulls are really responsible, archetypal leaders of their tribes, that their anti-social ways define Praxian society, that all Praxians disregard their own tribal taboos...
Or we can ignore Brian. Who does sound like a Call of Cthulhu player deciding that the USA must be run by retired professors, gangsters and private investigators -- because those are the only people he meets in game play.
> 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.
In the context of the great Crusade Against Chaos, I agree. Waha defines what Praxians do in *Praxian* situations -- fights against ungodly demonic incursions from the otherworld are what Storm Bullies do for him. So, if your games concentrate on the latter (i.e. RQ chaos rumbles), then Storm Bull is more important. If, OTOH, you were running (dare I say it) a clan-centred, family-based or political game in Prax, the Waha and Eiritha cults come to the fore.
I dare say both of these defining Praxian cults are washed-out nonentities in Brian's gameverse. (I hadn't previously realised there were RQ2 grognards who ditched material from Cults of Prax, even -- now *there's* an attitude...)
> 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".
Nor does anyone else. This is your own deliberately limited interpretation of what "clan" means. Stop it.
>>> People who started playing Orlanthi and/or Praxians in the early 80's >>> had no significant information 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?
Well, as the published basics (from which your players constructed their Prax) told us that Waha defines the Praxian lifestyle and runs the clans and tribes, while Storm Bull is a social outcast, it is hard to see what use players in your immediate vicinity were making of the material Greg et al provided.
Storm Bullies fight Chaos, true. This is a fun and exciting thing to do in role-playing games. That doesn't mean that Storm Bullies define their society, especially when we are told that it just ain't so in our introduction to the cult. You meet lots of Storm Bullies, Humakti and Chaos High Priests in a RuneQuest game (or a published RuneQuest scenario) for the same reasons you meet lots of computer hackers, secret agents and corporate assassins in a Cyberpunk game -- frequency of encounters does not equate to demographic or socio-political importance.
It's a genre thing.
Regards, Nick
PS: When Brian writes:
> Let's all agree that the word "nobody" refers to people, not written
works...
let's all remember that he's refining this statement:
> Nobody I know has ever used the term "clan" to reference Praxians...maybe
> it's in some of the "later" books, like Genertela, I don't recall.
This association with published material suggested to me that "nobody" must include books, not just people. Can anyone else feel the ground shifting?
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