Alex:
>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've never pictured O as being mundane in his magic. As a NPC and way back
as an actual character, he was a heroquester and still is IMO. However, I
don't write the stories to show this because thats not what I was interested
in at the
time. What I was doing was amusing myself, and some readers, by presenting
him as a kind of wandering catastrophe that people interact with to their
detriment. I also find the exploration of extremity appealing and I like
extreme characters, can't stand wishy washy pragmatist, fit in types at all.
>> 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.
I concur in some respects. However, for me to contextualise O as a hero for you I'd have to write his mythic relationships and explain his heroquesting past. Thats not why I write the O stories at all. I could do it, but as I write them for FUN, I'd rather not. I spend way too much time as it is right now writing stuff thoroughly contextualised in myth thanks!
>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.
Yes, he did that. Thats becoming a Sword.
>You do such-and-such 'bog standard' (give or
>take) HQs, you establish a toe-hold in the mythic realm.
He did that too.
>And you get to 15W3 (or whatever) without being 112 by the time you get
there.
And that.
>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.
Here I disagree. Greg has shown that you can actually do "other" things on your HQ. You can, at each station, do something different. You do not have to tie yourself, action wise and personality wise to the quests you've been on. The mundane people do, IMO the hero is the individual who breaks the mold.
>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 meaningless-
>seeming acts of fatal sword/axe/toothplay as possible per paragraph'.
Hes a social loner as hes social suicide. Hes not a mythic loner in my mind but then you and I are looking on the stories from very different contexts. When I reread my writing, I think that I've captured his Humakti nature as I intended. You disagree with my concept of Humakt and so do not think he's mythically linked.
>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.
The problem here Alex, is that there bugger all mythich precedents for Humakti heroes. We really know very little about them. If they existed in the RW there would be thousands of books and stuudies done on the them and STILL people would argue the nature of the beast. We have a couple of write ups and the odd myth here and there and yet we try to say what is right and wrong for each other. Here I think is the problem.
>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.
Okay, maybe we can work on that, but it'll take time. In three years I've written perhaps five O stories...
>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.
Fair enough. I think this is reasonable. The character doesn't interest you in that way. Fine. Perhaps he made you laugh on occasions, but perhaps not. Your method of writing about a Humakti might differ from mine, but thats why IYG and not mine.
> 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.
No, but I find increasingly that there is a very thin line, oft ignored, for some folk. As changes one dislikes is open to subjective thought, it returns us once more to being in favour of stasis for ones own likes and change for ones dislikes. However, we're all guilty of this one, me included.
>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...),
I totally agree. He is mega-tough. 6w in a few skills and lots of other nastys too.
>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.")
I think there will be more as the HW progresses as the need and the heroquesting becomes more active. In fact, there will be more and more HQing as th battles intensify and new methods of HQ are discovered. Remember war is the engine of HQing...
>> 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',
You see ad hoc violence, I see him doing his mythic job - killing people.
>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.
Aha! Perhaps because Greg wrote Morden? Also, Greg wrote Morden to show the way heros fight and heroforming is done. I don't write O for that. Sorry!
>> 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.
Well, perhaps this is why O is referred to as a non-hero, as a demonised or generally feared figure.
>> 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.)
I find that a few players concentrate on a couple of skills and specialise. However, this also depends on the scenarios I put them through. The Hedkoranthi player in my group was given the post of Warlord for the Border Marches and he was actually not a very good warleader. So he has been desperately learning how to command troops and manage an army. Its a slow process for him but it stopped his rise in combat skills.
>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.
Though players do still seek to gain the narrative relevent status and thus tick fish in a small way.
Martin Laurie
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