>It's also noteworthy that under RQ sorcery was the most versatile form of
>magic -- through manipulations and multispells, sorcerors >could be a lot
>more innovative with their spells than other types of >magicians. This is
>reversed in HW, to the point that every type of >magic can be used
>Improvisationally EXCEPT Sorcery!
That's not a good comparison. No spell could be improvised in RuneQuest. The sorcerous advantage in extending range and duration are still there in HW.
RQ sorcery also suffered from the design flaw that many spells were weaker than the corresponding spirit magic - for damage resistance, one had to make a resistance roll to negate the damage which was worse than the corresponding protection spells available to illiterate animists and pagans.
>I, personally, think it was done in an attempt to shoehorn sorcery into the
>'Blank Tradition Format,' to make them more directly parallel to shamans
>and priests, which I think was a lame idea.
That parallel has been explicit since Cults of Terror so it's hardly a new thing.
>In the old days, sorcerors were Individuals who excelled in their magic due
>to personal Skill and Power, instead of relying on communal worship of
>higher powers to receive Gifts.
Sorcerers do not worship. Their manipulation of natural laws and use of higher powers is no more an act of worship than for me to use the ohm's law to give heat.
>Under the new system, sorcerors have become essentially oddball >Priests --
>wearing different color robes, praying with different words, worshipping
>gods with different names, going on Heroquests to a different neighborhood,
>but not really Different in any >fundamental sense.
There seems to be a confusion over what a sorcerer is. What you have described above is a Wizard (or a liturgist), a malkioni magician who venerates God (and perhaps his Saints). Saints have been around since Gods of Glorantha (although rules for them came later).
In HW, Sorcerers are still atheists and do not worship any god or thing. God in their PoV is the sum of the physical laws of the Cosmos.
>It also seems that this is part of Hero Wars' deliberate agenda to
>emphasize the Group over the Individual -- redefining formerly
> >individualist sorcerors to stick them with "temples" and "congregations"
>that they're dependant upon (and answerable to) just like everbody else.
Sorcerers group togther in schools because like Science, an individual approach gets them nowhere in their investigations of the Cosmos. They have to work with other sorcerers and build upon their learning.
Wizards and Liturgists do cluster around churches and congregations because that is what God has ordained their purpose in life to be. They can't have an individual approach to God because they are meant to serve their Malkioni community.
>However, I'm concerned how this will affect forthcoming Gloranthan
>material. It alters to a greater or lesser extent the whole complexion of
>the West, including mythology, history, social structure, and philosophy.
It doesn't really. Much of the HW PoV about Malkioni society, religion and social structure, has been described in Gods of Glorantha, Genertela CotHW, Sog City Guidebook and Tales #13.
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