>Doyle:
>
><< If I understand you correctly, you are objecting to making the scale of
>inhabitants the Mundane, physical world more vast than two levels of Mastery.
>Correct? >>
>
> I can't speak for Alex, but the objection I would be making is
>that, if
>I read David Scott's post correctly, three levels of mastery is the minimum
>to be a rune level. I wouldn't dispute that such people exist, and some who
>are more powerful too, but they ought to be few and far between, certainly
>far rarer than the 'typical' rune level.
I tentatively disagree. It seems clear to me from listening to Greg's fiction reading that these sort of individuals are a lot more common than RQ Glorantha has led us to recognize.
I could be wrong, though.
><< There were several Mundane entities in RQ Glorantha that were always
>recognized as being beyond stats. Gonn Orta leaps to mind. Yet we also knew
>that there were people, described as Rune Lords or Priests or RLP, etc. who
>could put up a fight with this scale of entity. Right?>>
>
> A few individuals capable of taking on the likes of Gonn Orta might
>exist, but they're hardly what we'd normally think of as Rune Lords or
>whatever - they'd be far more powerful than that. If the minimum for rune
>level is WWW, then to describe someone capable of taking on Gonn Orta you'd
>need loads of levels of mastery, which I suspect is what Alex means by
>'big-number-itis'.
Fair enough. I don't won't the game to turn into number-crunching city, myself. But I willing to go into more complexity if an accurate representation of Glorantha demands it.
><< No mastery: Normal Guy
> W: Skilled Guy (or good initiate)
> WW: Really skilled (nearly priest)
> WWW: Rune lord or priest>>
>
> If so, the term 'mastery' is obviously a misleading one, seems it seems
>rather peculiar to say that someone has 'mastered' a skill when they're so
>far short of rune level.
I agree (see my previous comments to Alex).
><< In this context, you have to have multiple levels in Mastery for the
>inhabitants of the Mundane World. Otherwise the discernable differences
>between various power levels become to close in game terms, and as a
>consequence cease to make sense, in terms of the Target Narrative that Greg
>seems to want to have set in the game.
> I dunno what a Target Narrative is, but it seems from Mikael's
>descriptions, and from comments made by Robin and Greg at Convulsion last
>year that one level of mastery (as it was defined then) is the absolute
>maximum one would want a PC to possess.
Really? At the LA con, it seemed to be the case that playing with the big boys was a real design goal, and getting multiple levels of Mastery would be a doable thing, in the long run.
>That being so, it would clearly make
>no sense for the minimum for rune level to be two higher than that! Of
>course, some people would like to game at that power level, and its great
>that HW allows that possibility, but unless a mastery level now means much
>less than it did before (always possible) so that Mikael's descriptions are
>out-of-date, then a WWW character is well above the typical rune level type.
At the LA con I got to play in the Black Horse troop round, where at the end of the game we fought Ironhoof. Much of it was obviously tongue-in-cheek, but Robin did make the comment that Ironhoof should actually have about six levels of Mastery in his main combat skills. So I can easily believe that Rune level equates to WWW.
>
> It sounds like a fight between a WWW character and a no-mastery
>character would be a pretty sure thing for the former, albeit not cast-iron
>guaranteed (and if I'm wrong here, many of my objections may be discarded),
>which definately should not describe a fight between a
>just-became-a-rune-priest character and a recent initiate; the former should
>have a sizable advantage, but not *that* big, IMO.
Agreed, using a RQ paradigm (Oops, there goes that word again. Somebody smack me.)
But the RQ description of reality may be totally flawed for describing Gloranthan reality. This is what I meant by target narrative. The narrative that would be taking place in a short story set or novel in Glorantha rather than the narrative that took place in a RQ session.
> OTOH, that doesn't mean
>that people with sort of power don't exist, and shouldn't be describable in
>HW, because they do and they should be.
As I have mentioned before, I think it possible that they might a lot more common then we have been led to believe.
DWRT
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