That all computes perfectly well for me... If you were explaining this in the context of 'why Onslaught is as insanely dangerous as a person can ever possibly become "mundanely", the best you can ever hope to be _without_ being a (strong sense) Hero', then I'd be nodding along quite happily (roughly speaking at the tribal champion scale of things, though IMO any 'reasonable' means of getting to be a tribal champion is not going to be strictly 'mundane') along quite happily. It's the next bit I have bovver wid...
> I believe that Humakti reach a point where the community is actually
> restricitive to their mythical growth, that staying tied to the clan or
> tribe actually cripples their route to greatness. Therefore I think a tiny
> percentage move on and become something more. In effect they strive to
> master the affinities of Humakt and then heroform him or part of him to
> become a living weapon, his sword on the material plane. They seek death
> and deal death and are no longer social creatures, but something more.
Or is that, 'less'? I don't entirely disagree: when I talk about whether hero is 'contextualised' or not, I don't necessarily mean in purely social terms, I mean broadly speaking, mythically.
Let me put it like this: in order to get to be a big, bad-ass Hero (as Onslaught seems to have escalated himself into being), you have to be a li'l baby Hero first. Typically, you do that by Doing What Humakt (say) did. You do such-and-such 'bog standard' (give or take) HQs, you establish a toe-hold in the mythic realm. And you get to 15W3 (or whatever) without being 112 by the time you get there. But this isn't a free (will) lunch, it has an otherworldly cost: you're lashing yourself to the mast of the roles you adopted in those quests, to a greater or lesser extent. I don't 'get' any of that from the Onslaught stories, rather I just get 'social loner, mythic loner; bound by no precedent other than to commit as many meaninglessseeming acts of fatal sword/axe/toothplay as possible per paragraph'.
Now granted, I can't say definitively that this is Not Correct. Just because it's without mythic precedent doesn't necessarily mean it's Wrong. OTOH, it gives no reason to suppose that it's Right, either, other than authorial assurance, which is why I can't internalise this putative datum. You _tell_ us that he's a 'top line Humakti Heroquester', but you're not _showing_ it. Certainly in no sense is he any sort of examplar of _how to become_ a Hero, IMO.
If it makes you feel less put-upon, Martin, I'll stipulate that there _could_ be a "Humakti" (in the broad sense) HeroQuester who acted like the character portrayed in those stories, following some path which is not evident to the reader for [this or that reason], and either having not bother doing the things a 'traditional' Humakti heroquester would have done, or someone having done them, and later shrugged off the magico-mythic consequences, somehow. (Heaven knows, _that's_ been done...) It just so happens in my Glorantha that there ain't -- not because it's impossible, but because I don't find it compelling, or indeed at all motivating. (This is the strongest claim I've made at any point about Onslaught, please note all, as my original subject line way back when ought to indicate.) Back before the whole 'Onslaught as Hero' thread I hadn't troubled to think about it much, I confess.
> The reason why this pisses people off when I say it, is due to
> gameworld stasis. Because there have been no new heroes written about for
> eons, then arguing that a character created by anyone could kill or defeat
> an Argrath or Harrek in some way, is tantamount to blasphemy to some folk.
You don't have to be in favour of statis to be against changes (or in this case, decontextualised insersions) one dislikes. I admit I find it unlikely you'd find many people able to beat up Harrek in your soup most days (but we all have bad days...), but (to revert to stat-itis) I don't think Wx4 abilities levels in combat is in any sort of way singular -- there has to be a few, to a few dozen of these guys loitering around the 'Central belt' in the Story Arc here and now, much less once the HW get 'properly warmed up'. ("Sorry pal, this club is strictly 18W3 and over. Don't be making trouble for yourself, now.")
> Correct. In fact, Alex complains that I don't have enough mythic depth to
> the Onslaught character, but I've written far more words about him in one
> story than appears on Jar-eel in any offical literature. Where is Jar-eels
> mythic depth? Where do we know how she grabbed all her powers and on what
> heroquests did she partake? If one looks at it objectively, she seems
> rather bland and thin as written.
Perhaps she just benefits from Cool Ambiguity; the more I read about Onslaught, the more I think a) 'Well, _that_ wasn't a very Humakti thing to do; this isn't the Truth of Death, this is just more ad hoc violence', and b) there becomes less room to imagine that there's more to him than is meeting this reader's eye. (Having said that I was never reading them in that light until Martin's post, subsequent to his last story, in which the H-Word was floated in conjunction with his O-ship.) OTOH, I read about someone who's allegedly much weaker, like Morden, and I don't find such a credulity-straining mental leap here.
> The problem we have here is that there has been few efforts to clarify what
> a hero is, and what qualifies one for the status. The HW rules say you
> need a tripple mastery and a couple of doubles to qualify but this is
> "mundane" and not what Alex and others see as being appropriate.
I'm not saying that it's _in_appropriate; just that that's not all there is. You can 'heroquest' in the sense we often use the term at any ability level, of course, but in order to be a Hero, as a Heortling would understand the concept, you have to have both these elements in play.
> Read the saga to see the progression. If anyone else has similar
> experiences in playtest, please share them.
I haven't played long enough to have a terribly good feel for this (and the 'Johnny One Ability' thing is something I've feft sufficiently uneasy about that I have have (not so) subtly discouraged it, anyway), but I think the recognise the pattern, yes. It's certainly different from RQ; as far as making a good game, and perhaps even as regards 'Gloranthan reality' I think it maybe goes a bit _too_ far in the other direction. (In RQ everyone does everything, in HW nobody does nuthin', to put it in crude terms.)
Two good HW rules to help counterbalance this, btw, are directed HP awards (which I think are mentioned, though very much in passing last I looked), and the rule about half-cost for abilities that were narratively significant. (Or double cost for ones that weren't, for you pessimists...) Thankfully neither of them are in the realms of RQ 'tick-fishing', though.
Cheers,
Alex.
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