Bell Digest v930609p1

(Message rqd:19)
Return-Path: 
Received: from Holland.Sun.COM (sunnl) by homeland.Holland.Sun.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1)
	id AA05189; Wed, 9 Jun 93 17:16:51 +0200
Received: from glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM by Holland.Sun.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1e)
	id AA11411; Wed, 9 Jun 93 17:16:17 +0200
Received: by glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (4.1/SMI-4.1)
	id AA14378; Wed, 9 Jun 93 17:15:16 +0200
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 93 17:15:16 +0200
Message-Id: <9306091515.AA14378@glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM>
From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RQ Digest Maintainer)
To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest)
Reply-To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RuneQuest Daily)
Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Wed, 09 Jun 1993, part 1
Precedence: junk
Status: O

The RuneQuest Daily and RuneQuest Digest deal with the subjects of
Avalon Hill's RPG and Greg Stafford's world of Glorantha.

Send submissions and followup to "RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM",
they will automatically be included in a next issue.  Try to change the
Subject: line from the default Re: RuneQuest Daily...  on replying.

Selected articles may also appear in a regular Digest.  If you 
want to submit articles to the Digest only,  contact the editor at
RuneQuest-Digest-Editor@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM.

Send enquiries and Subscription Requests to the editor:

RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Henk Langeveld)

---------------------

From: kenrolston@aol.com
Subject: RuneQuest Daily from Ken Rolston
Message-ID: <9306081412.tn49986@aol.com>
Date: 8 Jun 93 18:12:21 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1004

About Sorcery:

I'm somewhat in David Hall's camp on sorcery. I want first to see a sorceror
in his setting, how he dresses, what he does, and then decide what kind of
spells he can throw. On the other hand, I think rules sets are excellent idea
engines for considering the kinds of things a sorceror COULD be doing. Coming
at sorcery from either end should be a helpful exercise, but I don't see much
speculation on the Sorceror the Man, or The Sorceror's Place in Society.
   Mike Dawson has done a very nice piece for Strangers in Prax -- 25+ pages
on a Malkioni sorceror in Prax. It should become a very useful starting point
for discussion -- once it gets into print. Maybe polite cheevying would
persuade Mike to preview a few bits of Arlaten the Sorceror here in the
Daily.

Me, I'm mostly interested in what sorts of stories I'll be telling about
sorcerors. Any anecdotes out there to help me get a sense of what you folks
think a Gloranthan sorceror looks like, talks like, and acts like?

---------------------

From: awr0@aberystwyth.ac.uk
Subject: Guys I've finished my degree and was
Message-ID: <9306081621.AA01800@uk.ac.aber.fronta>
Date: 8 Jun 93 18:21:10 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1005

HORRENDOUSLY DRUNK LAST NIGHT.

Thank you for hours of excuses as to why I should be revising and am reading 
my PruneQuest material.

I will be putting together a 'book' as I now have the time. This book will 
contain as many Cults as possible and any material I consider to be useful
to a GM and Player of PruneQuest. What I am asking for here is material. 
If you have something that is in ASCII format or any other format you 
can think of...eg postscript that you consider useful to PruneQuest
Please send it to me. I will be raping the various ftp sites for relavant 
material, in particular searching all the digest and supplement material.

What I want from you lot of lazy layabout Lankhor Mhy/God learner people is:

CREATURES
STORIES
NEW SYSTEMS : e.g. The Plant communication thingy etc.
PLAYER SHEETS
NPC STATS
ADVENTURES
CULTS
MAGICAL ITEMS
ANYTHING ELSE
	(Your money?)
I will be using something like Microsoft Publisher to produce a large 
post script file which I will then mail you all. Authors will be acknowledged
if the material has them on them, otherwise I'll print it anyway.

If anybody moans about copyright or anything similar, sue me. I want to collate
together all the good Public material so that atleast it's in a format that can
be useful to the PruneQuest GM or Player....rather than 400 pages of ascii 
printout.

Mail all material to :
	awr0@uk.ac.aber

The format should hopefully be similar to TORM, from which I will 'borrow' 
the look. I like the look of TORM and I don't see why any material printed 
shouldn't also look good. 

Why am I doing this? I'm leaving Uni so need a way of getting everything 
together into one document, which should really of been done months ago!

Adam.

PS: PruneQuest == RuneQuest...slight derivation which my concubine came up with
	one night!

---------------------

From: peterw@computer-science.manchester.ac.uk (Peter Wake)
Subject: Re: RuneQuest Daily
Message-ID: <9306081707.AA02460@r2d.cs.man.ac.uk>
Date: 8 Jun 93 17:07:09 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1006

I've just uploaded improved versions of my RuneQuest 3 postscript
character sheets to soda.berkeley.edu.  They will now adapt to A4 and
US format paper (not fully automatic I'm afraid) but all you have to
do is uncomment one clearly indicated line.  A4 is the default.

I've put *all* the sheets there.  There are the Land of Ninja sheets
and the special magic sheets with space for lots of spells/spirits
with variants for both sorcerors and priests.  There are also magic
sheets that include the personality traits from Pendragon (quite
compactly).  They're not exactly the same as in Pendragon, they're
RQised a bit.  Fun for those that like that bit of the Pendragon
system and want to use it in RQ.  They were inspired by the Pendragon
Pass article in TotRM.

Check out the readme file for info on all the sheets.
--
Peter Wake

---------------------

From: joe@sartar.toppoint.de (Joerg Baumgartner)
Subject: The different paths of sorcery, in Gloranthan context
Message-ID: 
Date: 8 Jun 93 19:46:27 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 1007

What is sorcery to me

All of the Gloranthan stuff is either based on RQ3 material published by 
Avalon Hill, Cults of Terror or pure imagination of my own, spiced with 
recent contributions to sorcery.

On my own Gameworld (kind of Alternate Earth plus Alternate Glorantha) I 
reserved the pure Rune Magic for the Gods and Heroes. It still reminds me 
of God Learner style of magic, which destroys the user if applied in 
Glorantha (courtesy David Hall), also called theomancy. Still, there are 
quite a lot of scenario options to leave the compromise, especially with 
more experienced characters, i.e. Rune ranks. That's why I want the 
system!

I thoroughly agree with Nick Brooke that there might be several approaches 
to sorcery. I'll try to detail my vision of some of them below.

I agree with David Hall that sorcery has to be seen in its cultural 
context, but alas, the world spanning Jrusteli Empire dropped it 
everywhere outside of the Empire of Wyrms Friends - that's Peloria, Pent 
plus Maniria now.
When the Jrusteli Empire broke down, most of its parts had already been 
assimilated by the native populace to a certain degree - that's what 
theomancy was about, if you believe the forbidden parts of the Caladra and 
Aurelion write-up in Tales 7, and take hints from the God Learners' 
occupation in Kralorela.

One might dispute that the Taoist sorcery (from Land of Ninja) was at home 
in the East before the Jrusteli came. Fine with me, perhaps they stole 
their manipulation skills there?

Maybe the Western wizards (Brithini and Vadeli excepted) just practiced 
kind of a scientific approach to Spirit magic, losing their overall 
casting chance to the possibility to learn each of them to a higher level 
than previously possible?

Start distraction --------- Cut here -----------
That's the way "Low Sorcery" was introduced into my world, a kind of magic 
practiced by full time wizards as well as by certain crafters' guilds, 
which have their special guild magic - some way to provide my world with 
its "magic" carpets, harps, weapons etc. The system I used was stolen from 
Drakar och Demoner, a swedish Basic Roleplaying offspin, and heavily 
reduced in effect to fit into the overall magic level.

The mechanics of my system are simple: Each spell has a starting chance of 
POW*2 plus magic skill bonus; these skills may be traned by experience; 
each spell takes up one point of Free INT (used as spell memory capacity 
only). This skill denotes the casting chance for a given intensity, range 
and duration, equivalent to one magic point. Each point of intensity etc. 
in excess of this decreases the casting chance by 5 to 10% (depending on 
an extra skill), except if the spell has been memorized for several points 
of INT: in this case, the decrease starts once you exceed your used up INT 
points of intensity...
Long term duration/range is possible, but requires lots of ceremony.
Ceremony can be used to augment casting chances, but not maximum 
intensity.
This has been slightly playtested on a low skill level.
End distraction --------- Cut here -----------

Brithini sorcery can be expected to be notably different from Malkionist 
sorcery, especially considerring their use of the immortality spell and 
its effects and conditions. The most improtant thing is, though, that they 
don't care a **** for the compromise - maybe their longevity is simply the 
side effect of not acknowledging time! Only by procreating or by enabling 
change (that special spell which allows them to make their farmer class a 
screaming mob) they acknowledge time, and thereby lose their immunity to 
it.
Well, these guys would certainly manipulate the very essence of the world, 
the Runes, to a certain extent. I'd view their sorcery very much as those 
rune alphabet systems but with certain limits.

It was Arkat, who sprang from these roots, but was illuminated by the 
Nysalori, who exceeded these limits and made theomancy possible. I don't 
think that he made it his legacy, though, and would give the Stygian 
College of Magic sorcery a more Early Seshnelan charakter.

I'd picture the Hrestoli much as Paul Reilly did in his contributions to 
Western saints etc so far, having useful spells, each created by some 
sub-saint, very much like the special cult spirit magic in theistic 
cultures. Their magic obviously builds upon Rokari concepts.
I might be wrong, but Hrestol appears to me as a Fronelan character, who 
started the Malkionist church as Loskalm knows it.

The Rokari church must be pre-dawn, it's class system a copy of the 
Brithini cast system. Following GoG, they are most prominent in Seshnela 
and Umathela.
If the story about real humans and evolutionary humans (animal - hsunchen 
- modern humans such as Kralori, Theyalans or Westerners) has some 
substance, their system differs because of that.
If Malkion came first among the Brithini and spread knowledge about the 
Creator God (which in time became the Invisible God as proclaimed by 
Hrestol), maybe that was the original reason for parting their way from 
the Brithini way. (The Hrestoli concept of Solace may have crept in during 
the first century ST.) They might even have transmuted spell spirits into 
magic skills, as my concept of Low Sorcery proposes, which might be the 
reason for the "spiritual deficiency" of the West.

The Boristi offshoot of the Rokari Church can't be older than the greater 
darkness, because before there was no Chaos to be tapped. Else I don't see 
much difference.

The Galvosti might be older than that, they're obviously Brithini 
influenced and believe in the distinguishing heritance of Malkioni (true 
humans) and other humans (beast humans), this being the reason why _they_ 
may be tapped. They seem to be popular in the kingdom of war and in 
Ramalia, no matter what GoG tells us. No wonder these are marked off as 
enemy nations.
I think it was Nick Brooke who hinted at a possible connection to Vivamort 
Vampires here. Maybe that's just a Stygian Galvosti heresy?
Anyway, if you want your standard evil powerful sorcerer, pick a Galvosti. 
Maybe an Ogre Galvosti. Make him/her gross. Make him/her evil. Make it a 
challenge to a group of Rune-Levels. This is the sorcery noone really 
likes, this is Griffin Island style RQ3 sorcery. Use it. Hate it. Let your 
players hate it. And enjoy it !

Belief into the Creator God is shared by the rock-bound Mostali, whose 
believes have something of a Stygian heresy - there's Maker, their Creator 
God, in personal union with Mostal the World Machine, his BROTHER (an 
absolutely non-Mostali word) Stone, the entity called Grower, who provided 
Maker with substance to work upon (before escaping this slavery/being 
horribly disfigured and producing life, ach), and there's Glorantha, the 
MOTHER / the primal mechanism. Their sorcery is hinted at in GoG and Elder 
Secrets, it's freaky, and it's working with the current system (RQ3+ES), 
though far from being completely described.
(My favorite background reading for them is Huxley's "Brave New World".)
The Mostal worshipping humans of Slon might possess some sorcery of this 
kind, but since they don't get the automatic POW increase once per year, 
to them this way of sorcery is rather unefficient - as doubtlessly wanted 
by their Mostali Overlords.

Non-Gloranthan Dwarves like those in Griffin Island are a totally 
different matter and don't belong into tis discussion. Something more on 
ordinary dwarves, including Flintnail cultists, sometimes later.

The Henotheist Church from Ralios is an offshoot from the Stygian 
(=trollish in plain English) College of magic. On the magic side they seem 
quite similar to Rokari or Hrestoli wizards, except for their fascination 
with divine (I'll avoid the word Rune in this context) magic. They are the 
homespun version of where the God Learners started from.

Carmania features conventional Malkionism, though nobody (except Nick 
Brooke) tells us which variety, plus the cult of Invisible Orlanth, which 
sounds like a great God Learner experiment to me (who said the had died 
out? They just don't do _it_ on Glorantha any more).
This should magically be similar to Carmanian mainstream (what is that, 
Nick?), but specialising on air magics. Their cult saints most probably 
contain versions of all the Orlanthi pantheon's members.
Another Carmaninan brew (plus Eastern Fronela) might be Lunar sorcery, 
subject to cycles, but thats wide open speculation.

Last not least from the Westerners I'll discuss the Jrusteli.
In the beginning, they were Rokari who were influenced by the Stygian way. 
Other than the Henotheists they looked around and adopted long-dropped 
Brihtini pactises, probably imported by the Vadeli, and from them learned 
secrets of Rune manipulation. This went well with common sorcery 
manipulation, which they might have learned on Vormain, in Kralorela or in 
Vithela. (Might as well have known it before?) Instead of placidly using 
their powers, like the Henotheists do, they refined their skills and 
turned on to Theomancy, the very Magic of The Gods (all capitals 
intended). They cast Runes like Lunar nobles have darts cast, their powers 
were gross, and their sorcery has to be, too. This ought to be the purest 
Runic Sorcery. Now why waste breath - sorry, Bytes - on a magic system 
that has left the world? Because it's still there, outside, and 
threatening to come in, now that the compromise has been weakened (by 
those "evil" Lunars, by the way). What kind of sorcery do you think 
sorcerous heroes tap into?

By the way, Nick: RuneQuest (sight) is a God Learner word. Maybe that's 
the reason why only we esoterics use it, and the average Gloranthan 
doesn't.

Before I totally leave the Western Sphere now, towards a western peole 
turned Eastern: The Waertagi, who had been pushed into the East by the 
closing.
ES or Gloranthan Bestiary tells us that they are the descendants of 
Malkions son Waertag, who was born by a Sea nymph (of whatever kind).
(As with all of thes mythical origins, I assume that some companions of 
Malkion and/or quite a lot more nymphs must have been involved to give 
this new species a starting chance )
They were closely associated to the Brithini for some reason, which looks 
strange if one regard those as atheists (which some of us on the digest, 
me included, seem to do). So if ES tells us thy practise spirit magic 
(ancestor style?), worship the merman pantheon or the Malkioni array, this 
last one should include belif in the Invisible God. Their origin is so 
old, though (Malkion still lived, although we don't know anything about 
procreation of the Malkioni in God Time, only that nobody (except Yelm and 
Grandfather Mortal) died before the lesser darkness), that they may have 
combined Brithini ways (e.g. the cast system) and the theistic background 
of their maternal heritage into something unique, and definitely 
non-Rokari, definitely non-Stygian. (On second thought, the Brithini must 
have tolerated some henotheism, in this case as well as in Arkat's).
Don't ask me how it looks like...

I stand on firmer ground with Eastern Sorcery. Since ES told us the the 
other big secret of Glorantha - Vormain has features of Nihon - (the first 
being the coming of the Hero Wars :-), Chinese style taoistic sorcery is 
legitimate on Eastern Glorantha. It probably has it's origin somewhere on 
now drowned Vithela, and made its way to dragon-obsessed Kralorela, 
sun-watching Teshnos, and maybe the northeastern Pamaltelan reaches before 
the Embyli seized all of it.
The Taoist concept is made notable by its acceptance of the void, an 
almost illuminated concept (but then, Rashoran has always reminded me of 
Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon). On Glorantha, the Void contains the Chaos 
outside the world...
I think that this Eastern way of sorcery should be somewhat different from 
it's Western counterpart. The Mandala Enchantments strike me as similar to 
awakening a shamans fetch, and I'd like to exploit that. Having only their 
Mandalas, and no spirits or familiars available, they are much reduced in 
power, even using RQ3 sorcery in munchkin ways. So why not continue that 
way? Eastern Gloranthan societies are so bizarre, that they need some 
generic system to be covered.
And then, I liked Godunya's magic as the Eastern Dragon approach, and 
adopted it for all Dragon worshippers on my own gameworld.

This leaves Fonrit. Quite easy to handle: they adopted Jrusteli sorcery in 
an earlier form, and clung on to it. If we need to compare it to Western 
culture, it's Galvosti...

A question which is not handled by any Gloranthan supplement is: which 
cultures have sorcerous familiars?

I'd deny them for Hrestoli, allow one animal or a certain object to 
Henotheists (after all, that's what the gods offer as allied spirits, 
too), allow one familiar to Rokari or Boristi wizards, multiple familiars 
to Brithini Zzabur class wizards and Galvosti, mandalas to Eastern 
sorcerers. If there still are Jrusteli sorcerers around, yes, these guys 
would have at least one familiar, maybe even their own fetch as a 
familiar. On the chaos side I'd allow ogre sorcerers on Pamaltela, maybe 
with fiends as familiars - too dreadful to be crossed, but luckily rare.

Well, this covers all I can think of now.


On other topics:

MOB in X-RQ-ID: 975

> In fact, there are very 
> few RuneQuest campaigns that I know of where the RQ3 sorcery rules 
> are still being used as presented: everyone seems dissatisfied with 
> the official rules and are trying out their own or just ignoring 
> them.

This may be true for Australia and maybe Great Britain, where RQ2 was big. 
Outside, however, things are different. I met a couple of RQ-players 
lately who started RQ with the Games Workshop edition of RQ3 and never 
ever had heard of Glorantha. It's this kind of customers, too, that AH 
must reach to make RQ4 and RQ in general a financial success!

> So why does RQ4 sorcery have to be backwardly compatible with RQ3?  It 

because of said (sad?) people...

[ some flames on RQ3 sorcery deleted ]

Is this the person who wrote "Hut of Darkness", featuring one of the 
grossest RQ3 sorcerers I've ever seen (Thurla)? (Gross because of 
combining all three kinds of magic to maximum effect.)

MOB on Lunar Moon Boats in X-RQ-ID: 976

I like your version better than Nick's, but I'd adopt Nick's propulsion 
ideas for your sails (and maybe oars, too).
They'd still be in trouble when Orlanth or Storm Bull winds sweep, not to 
mention Gagarth and his ilk.

___________________________
Nick Brooke in X-RQ-ID: 977

> Some day I'll write up all the "MoonQuest" rules I've experimented with 
> and post them somewhere.  'Til then, I hope you guys aren't too annoyed 
> at these piecemeal revelations...

As long as they keep on coming...

__________________________
Tom Zunder in X-RQ-ID: 980

> I will implement sub skills in my game for combat. I'll use the RQ4 combat
> options as sub skills, I have a couple of weapon masters. Also have a
> master Hider so I'll decide what it meand for him , now where is Nihon (I
> refuse to call it Ninja)

Ok, let these subskills be big secrets of either cults or guilds (for more 
primitive surroundings, clans), and I think they run well with the feel of 
RuneQuest and/or Glorantha.

> Kites

Why bother, when you have Fly, Command Sylph, etc.

> Like the idea of focussing, ceremony would work as well tho, wouldn't 
> it?

Nope. Takes too much time.
I'd suggest you make it a hard or very hard skill ()if you introduce it at 
all), allow no experience rolls, and alternatively use this or POW*5. This 
could explain why so few people bother to learn it (except if they just 
survived DI :-).

__________________________
James Kundert X-RQ-ID: 985

>>>
  The point is that, if the designers have ever BOTHERED to play or look 
at other RPGs, they should have a sufficently generalized view of magic 
mechanics to build a system that is BOTH Gloranthan and (with the 
terminology changed) Generic.
  (The reason I bring this up is that the hobby as a whole is leaning 
toward _fewer_ rules these days, but the snippets I see of RQ4 have MORE 
rules than RQ3.  If this leviathan ever reaches print, the RQ4 authors 
could well contribute to the ultimate death of the game they love.)
<<<
Well, let's wait and see how Dangerous Journeys, Ars Magica and Rolemaster 
develop: each with loads of rules.
But in general I share your fear. What initially brought me to RuneQuest 
was NOT Glorantha but the "one rule for all" approach, which seems to get 
lost.

___________________________
Nick Brooke in X-RQ-ID: 988

> Me, too.  It's the way people dive in with rules systems without trying to 
> explain what they think Sorcerers *are* or *do* that upsets me.  Maybe I'm 
> a Gloranthan purist ("Maybe," he says!), but divorcing the system from the 
> world and from society at large is alarming.

What we really have to do is to fit the rules to any society which uses 
them. Not only for sorcery...

> Discussion point: Vivamort is a Western Sect, not a Rune Cult.  If you can 
> drain the life energy from someone else, while living forever yourself, 
> what are you?  Either a Vampire or else a Sorcerer (note how many 
> Gloranthan Vampires come from the West).  If we can crack this little 
> puzzle, we may know what it is that other, more morally-based sorcerers are 
> trying to achieve... what makes them tick.

> What Makes The West Tick?

I butchered that above...

> Brian Hebert:
>> I want to clarify for Joerg that I wasn't proposing adding
>> anything to PC or NPC sheets.  My idea was to quantify the
>> attitudes of *social groups* not individuals.

> Interesting: I'd have thought the two systems went hand in hand (which is 
> why I probably confused you by rabbiting on about personality traits 
> yesterday!).

So did I. And then that wasn't meant as personal criticism, in fact I've 
had a discussion like this boiling in Bielefeld on the Con.

> Ed Wallman:
>> What I really want to post are my convincing explanations
>> of why the Air Rune is REALLY associated with INT and why
>> the Fire Rune is REALLY opposite the Beast Rune...

> They're what I REALLY want to see!  Unless this is a piss-taking parody, of 
> course... (no offence: I only say this because I honestly can't see the 
> connections you propose!).  I'd love to see those explanations, if they can 
> be written up some time.

That's why I find the idea about different schools Graeme offered so 
appealing.

Boy, this got long!

-- 
--  Joerg Baumgartner   joe@sartar.toppoint.de