>Since I intentd to largely retain RQ mechanics, I'm going to ignore it
>entirely. 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.
Actually I don't think it does. To me the new game representation of sorcery fits the current background mythology, history, social structure and philosophy of the west much better than RQ3 Sorcery rules did.
>Consider, for instance, that under the religicized HW sorcery system
>even supposedly Atheistic sorcerors "receive" their spells through a
>form of "worship"....
Western Malkioni worship the Invisible God in churches under the auspices of Wizards. This is not new to Hero Wars, but has been part of the standard description of the west for something like a decade to my knowledge.
>...they're still communally reenacting handed-down rituals in order
>to access an Otherworldly higher power (anthropomorphized or not)....
I do not believe that the rituals that Sorcerers use would seem even remotely familiar, even in general terms, to a Pagan and vice versa. Malkioni venerate the Laws and Teachings of Malkion as abstract, yet meaningful principles. The way they do this is IMHO utterly alien to theists. Dara happans believe that Yelm incarnates justice and so what Yelm says goes, whereas Malkioni believe that the Laws revealed by Malkion have innate value. This is a fundamentally different philosophy. Dara Happans worship Yelm who is Just, while Malkioni revere the Laws given by Malkion. The Laws don't even come directly from Malkion.
>I don't have the sources in front of me right now to make an eloquent,
>fact-based case, so I'll suffice to say that, at least to me, this runs
>contrary to the once-standard notion of worldly, pragmatic sorcerors
>honing their individual Skill through practice and experimentation (a
>notion which, I'll admit, I quite liked).
A notion which although easily read from the RQ3 rules, has always jarred badly with the descriptions of how Gloranthan sorcery works at a philosophical level. Malkioni sorcerers express magical powers through their knowledge of the Laws, which enable them to manipulate the world in a precise and reproducible way. RQ3 was pretty crap at representing this in game mechanical terms.
>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.
I don't suppose you've ever read Genertela: Crucible of the Hero Wars? Obviously not.
As for the sorcery plane, I like it because the idea of a pattern of philosophical entities, logical flows of energetic potentials in an abstract plane, fits excellently with what seem to me to be the real world parallels to Malkionism - Plato's world of ideal forms, Euclidean geometry, Kabbalistic diagrams of interconnecting nodes, and geometric relationships between the attributes of god and 'his' creation.
What do you think the real world parallels for Malkioni magical philosophy are? I think a Sorcerer's reference looks like a Kabbalistic treatise, or a book on Hermetic magical theory. What do you think it looks like?
Mikko Rintasaari :
>Their gods are called saints, or ancient sorcerers.
Where does it say that Sorcerers worship saints or ancient sorcerers? Malkioni revere saints and follow their revelations, but this is not the same thing, and is definitely not new to Hero Wars. Also not all westerners are Malkioni and many have nothing to do with Saints which are not a necessery part of their magical philosophy. This is all very old hat to anyone who's been following the plot on Malkionism.
>The Hero Wars sorcerer does not use his own skill, but channels a ready
>spell through his talisman.
Sorcerers in RQ have _never_ been able to cast improvised spells. They could only ever cast spells from a fixed list which they learned by rote.
>Instead of having the most flexible and creative magic, as they
>used to, they are reduced to having "sorcery matrixes"... take away the
>sorcerers toys and he can't pull of a single spell anymore.
Take away the familiar, spell matrices and MP storage devices from an RQ3 sorcerer and they're equally impotent.
>I refer to the entities who begat the nodes, and whose spells even the
>_sorcerer_ utilizes.
Sorcery is based on the manipulation of known laws and philosophical principles. These are sometimes referred to as entities. It does not make them gods and more than the Kabbalistic notion of Chokhma is a god. Are you saying that Judaism with it's Angelic entities and Kabbalistic divisions of the divine continuum (En-Sof) is 'just like' Hinduism, or Shinto?
Yes, you can learn much about one tradition through study of another and you can often even draw interesting parallels, but they are not the same.
Note I am not arguin for or against the way the magic system works in Hero wars, just the way it has been and still is represented in source material. Glorantha has not changed significantly so far as I am concerned.
Simon Hibbs
End of The Glorantha Digest V7 #777
Powered by hypermail