>From: Gianfranco Geroldi <giangero_at_yahoo.com>
>this is a relevant fact IMO. Our astronaut PC tries to
>use technology, but it seems that magic is more
>"economical" (easy to obtain) than technology in
>Glorantha. My opinion (as the narrator) is that the
>drawback is implicit: magic in glorantha is easy to
>obtain (given a determined powergaming attitude) but
>it tends to mold, focus, refine the hero's "humanity"
>much more than technology does.
The way I would play this is that the astronaut could quite easily use technology he already has or can replicate from his knowledge but like most modern people he doesn't have the knowledge or skills to make the tools he needs to maintain what he has. Indeed I would expect an Afghani tribesman to be better able to maintain his rifle in Glorantha than an astronaut. At the same time the astronaut will repeatedly encounter people who use magic to achieve the same result as technology and see no reason to change.
As far as humanity is concerned, Homo Sapiens is pretty much unchanged both physically and mentally since our ancestors were hunting mammoth with wood and flint spears. What's changed has been the social structure in which humans operate and the rules of those societies. Individuals who move from one society to another or have to adapt often struggle but subsequent generations generally manage well. So I would definitely regard Gloranthans as human to the extent of having identical or almost identical DNA but having social structures which have developed in the way they did because magic works.
>Also, magic encourages the repetition of past acts
>(heroquesting) and so epytomizes (sp?) conservatorism.
>Technology is a progressistic force (I don't say this
>is a good or evil fact) because it pushes forward
>itself.
Users of technology also repeat past acts, indeed there is more room for a HeroQuestor to modify and improve the quest than there is for the average person to improve technology. At the same time I can imagine the Lunar Colleges of magic deliberately experimenting in a systematic way to improve quests. That is unusual, not because of anything inherent in magic, but because only the Lunar empire has the resources to do such experiments and also recover from the inevitable mistakes.
-- Donald Oddy http://www.grove.demon.co.uk/ --__--__-- End of Glorantha Digest
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