> 1) Since its possible for people to get drawn into someone else's
>heroquest without wanting to be there, what happens when a hostile 'player'
>in a quest refuses to go along with the script?
Have you seen eXistenZ? He feels a genuine game urge. ;-) Certain things have to get said to advance the plot. At key junctures the character is playing the role, the actor is just along for the ride. Just a suggestion, but I have a vague memory of someone else saying something similar to this somewhere...
>For example, let's say a
>Humakti is doing the Humakti quest from KoDP and draws in a rival in the
>role of Orlanth.
I was wondering more along the lines of what happens when a friendly Orlanthi volunteers for the part. What kind of benefits does he get out of it? I don't think he walks away from it with possession of Death... Maybe a magic sword of slightly lesser power?
>What happens if the Orlanthi refuses to say his lines?
Why would he want to? That would be like a troll or Gagarthi getting sucked into "Orlanth and Aroka" and not putting up a fight. Besides, it's not like the choices Orlanth makes have a huge effect on this particular quest. It's all about Humakt sticking to his guns, or sword as the case may be.
>What happens if he just agrees to let Humakt have Death?
Orlanth smacks him upside the head? He gets a severe penalty to all his combat skills until he's completed some appropriate Orlanthi quest? Preferrably the one where Orlanth kills the Emperor, which I assume is bloody difficult, not to mention politically incorrect.
OTOH, what if an Orlanthi kicks the crap out of the Humakti and takes Death by force? If there's some benefit to this, it might inspire him to not just go through the motions. Of course, his clan's relations to the Humakt cult will be severely strained.
>2) What is the difference between a hero discovering a new mythic path
>and the Godlearners constructing a new path?
Heroes generally don't choose to do it, they're pushed into it by forces beyond their control. They also have to _believe_ in it, not just see it as an interesting hypothesis.
>So how does a hero learn a new
>myth? Surely just going into the hero plane to find a new path is
>dangerously close to manipulating the myths.
I don't think theist heroquesters just go gallivanting onto the God Plane willy-nilly. They'd get lost real quick. And they don't have the GL mindset that would let them systematically collect myths from many different cultures and subject them to comparative analysis. In fact, all of the examples that come to mind of creative heroquesting are the result of more or less _accidental_ culture shock. Of course, there are also cases of people reenacting myths for the first time - not every myth has been turned into a quest yet.
>my CA is going on a quest to learn how to heal someone's mind.
I'd say she has to find some place where such a story is told, either of Chalana or some comparable healing deity. Then she can try to filter out the foreign culture's errors in interpretation of what was obviously a pure CA myth to begin with. :-)
>She's been trying to piece together
>enough of the myth's probable events to be able to do the quest, but she
>doesn't want to fall into God Learnerism and make a path that never existed.
She's already well on the way! I think speculative mythology is a big no-no in Orlanthi culture.
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