Gloranthan history

From: David Cake <dave_at_difference.com.au>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 15:20:42 +0800

At 8:05 PM +0800 19/11/03, glorantha-request_at_rpglist.org wrote:
>I'm not worried about mechanics, which I'll probably mostly ignore, but
>more about the metaphysics of Glorantha. Has this changed at all over
>the 20-some years of Gloranthan publication? Has there always been a
>split between theistic/spiritual/wizardly magic? How have the major
>pantheons changed (I keep hearing grousing about Elmal, or at least
>references to grousing about Elmal)? Was old-school Glorantha really
>just all about Chaos-bashing? Were the Hero Wars always a big focus?

        Its interesting actually how consistent Glorantha has been in intent, if not execution and clarity, over this long period.

        There has always been a split between
theistic/spiritual/wizardly magic, though it took a long time for wizardly magic to be written up. From the very beginning there has been some overlap and confusion about exactly what the relationship between them is (ie Black Fang cult in RQ), some of which stays with us to this day in the form of at least recurring arguments about the separation. The pantheons have changed a little, notably the addition of Elmal, and we know far more about them than we did - but the basics have remained fairly consistent. And the Hero Wars was always, from the first publication, intended to be the focus - its just that with rules that made it difficult to really play a Hero, it was easy to get confused about exactly what that meant for a game.

At 8:32 AM +0800 20/11/03, glorantha-request_at_rpglist.org wrote:
>The split of magic was introduced in RQ3, prior to that the split was
>battle magic/rune magic. The former being equivelent to common magic.

        Not strictly true. While the split was made more explicit, and rules for sorcery introduced, with RQ3, shamans have existed, and been a separate (if somewhat overlapping) status to priests, since RQ1.

        The difficult part has not been the battle magic/rune magic split, but that some shamans have always had some access to divine magic, and this was very much the norm for a shaman in Gods of Glorantha (and there were mixed sorcery/divine cults there as well). So while there have always been three types of magic, its generally been presumed that some overlap was more common than it seems to be in HW. But this is perhaps simply a matter of degree rather than indicating deep metaphysical changes? Or not?

        Its interesting that some of the earliest sources, such as the History of the Lunar Empire, sound more like something that could happen in actual gameplay now than they did when they were written.

	Cheers
		David

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