From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RQ Digest Maintainer) To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest) Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Wed, 06 Oct 1993, part 1 Reply-To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RuneQuest Daily) Sender: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM Precedence: junk 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: davidc@kultarr.cs.uwa.oz.au (David Cake) Subject: Spirit Plane Message-ID: <199310050740.PAA10270@kultarr.cs.uwa.oz.au> Date: 5 Oct 93 07:41:40 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1908 > > From: eosgg@raesp-farn.mod.uk (Geoff Gunner) > Subject: Spirit Plane (again...) > Message-ID: <9310041315.AA17392@raesp-farn.mod.uk> > Date: 4 Oct 93 13:15:53 GMT > X-RQ-ID: 1902 > > Geoff Gunner here, folks. > > GP = Gods/Hero Plane, SP = Spirit Plane, MP = Material Plane > There is a heirarchy; MP -> SP -> GP. ( -> ? ) > Each successive level is an abstraction of the previous. Quite reasonable. > Things such as fear spirits are much more explainable. They might even be > linked to a god, if 'fear' has been personnified into a deity. > If fear is an attribute of a deity, it will have fear spirits associated with it. > > On taking myself to another plane, I can make my *spirit* aware of the 'rational > me', and so extend myself into the spirit plane (note, this isn't sending 'me' > off into the spirit plane, but bringing the spirit to me.) This seems to me > to be how shamans and dream workers do it. > Quite reasonable - but 'bringing the spirit plane to you' is in rules terms Second Sight, I would guess. Not discorporation - which starts with gaining awareness of the spirit plane, but also includes moving your spirit free from the body. Perhaps some people can do this in dreams? > The idea of transferring myself physically into the SP I'm having a lot of > problems with ( e=mc^2, after all! The physical can't exist on the spiritual, > so where does it go ? Saved up as raw energy for the transfer back ? I just don't like it. Why make it something possible if it makes no sense? Certainly for it a spirit being to gain a physical body in moving closer to the mundane plane would be exceptional. I prefer to think that most of the summonable creatures with bodies are summoned from the GP, and that the GP has some sort of physical existence. > Hence > the mythical time limitations on walking the planes, as this energy is slowly > dissipating. Or perhaps it could get 'eaten' by some spiritual horror). I thought that the time limit was more from fear of getting lost. > And transferral the other way (i.e. Demonic appearence) has the same problems. > But note - the use of energy to create mass might account for the temperature > drop/rise present at so many mythical happenings. Anyone help me out of this > hole I've dug myself ? Well, I can tell you that you are not going to get around it with physics. The amount of energy in the heat change, is very insignificant campared to mc^2. I once calculated that for m=1kg, the amount of energy is sufficient to vaporise a sphere of Ice well over a km in diameter. I guess summoned things that have physical bodies already have them before summonable. > > And what if a species, rather than an individual, learnt to cross the boundary > between the planes ? As with all invader species, they would find life a lot > easier. So the Tuatha de Daan (?) retreat from the Milesians into the lands > of Faerie in Celtic mythos. They would gain in spiritual skills to help them > survive but slowly loose their physical skills until they were fully part of > the spirit world (Irish legends are full of the TdD using mortals to do their > dirty work). I prefer European elves to Gloranthan, and forsee some good stuff > coming from this approach. Ghouls I can see as a species that are moving the > other way in a particularly nasty manner. > I prefer to think that in RQ terms the TdD live on the God-Plane. I actually think of HeroQuesting as most HeroQuesting as not involving directly moving to the Hero-Plane, but perceiving it, and increasing your presence there, so that your physical efforts have more significance. Also, as you perceive and move in the HP, some places that are neighbouring on the HP may not be physically as close. Some places on the HP may not appear to have a physical correspondence that we can locate, such as Hell or the Sky. This, however, does no mean that it is not real in some sense. > > > ps. Has anyone done any work on translating C&S magic into RQ terms ? > Although most of it is more appropriate to medieval FRP, things like the > Drug Trance and Power Word magics are very tempting ! > Well, the Sorcery system that I am still working on (very intermitently) is influence by C & S Basic Magick. But I would love to see more differentiation of the different approaches to the same spells, like C&S Drug Trance or Thaumaturgists. Someone else said > > 'Course, you could say that everything on the Mundane Plane has an underlying > Magical Structure. The magical structure of the Living is a Spirit. The > magical structure of the Non-living is something less than a spirit but still > magical in some way. (I'd draw a real-world analogy with Organic and Inorganic > chemistry; but I ain't no chemist.) Perhaps this magical structure is visible > on the Spirit Plane... who knows? I think that there should be some relationship between the mundane and the spirit plane geography. Things with spirits associated with them, particularly, such as Streams and rocks. The same goes for the Earth, which after all has a large pantheon. But that does not mean that all the spirit plane is this closely associated with the mundane (only the Frontier region), and it does not mean that all the mundane plane things are represented (only those things with spiritual importance, which generally means not transient). > Also, on thing like Frogs and Frog Woman - frogs have spiritual presence, and so the existence of many frogs give a source of froggy power. Worshipping Frog Woman (which humans do, and frogs generally do not) gives this froggy power a name and an associated presence, and allows humans to tap into this power. If humans worshipped a different Frog deity, then they would be able to summon it and talk to it - though maybe they need to HeroQuest to make this deity real. But this other deity would tap the same source of froginess. I too, deny ever having been a God-Learner. And on the subject of deteriorating spirits - I dislike it, because it makes it highly unclear what is meant by the afterlife. Gloranthans fear above all else the loss of the Immortal soul, and this makes it sound inevitable for anyone not saved from this fate by their god. I much prefer the lack of memories that has always been mentioned. Spirits that die first lose tracks of their earthly motivations, and then gradually lose all memories, and then when they have lost all the memories that connect them to Earth they go to join their god, drifting towards the Heroplane, 'connected' to their God by initiation. Spirits that are not initiated drift with less purpose, perhaps ending up at Daka Fal. Ghosts exist both in the normal, bound form (conventional ghosts) and ocassional ghosts that do not lose their connections to the mundane plane. A special example is the various ghost battles, where the ghosts do not go their eternal rest because they are constantly reminded of the battle with their enemies by their attacks. They may forget everything else but the battle, but the battle remains. Just my thought Cheers Dave Cake --------------------- From: STEVEG@ARC.UG.EDS.COM (Steve Gilham Entropy requires no maintenance) Subject: C&S quest Message-ID: <01H3QGJBQ9IQ002G2X@UG.EDS.COM> Date: 4 Oct 93 17:51:08 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1909 >ps. Has anyone done any work on translating C&S magic into RQ >terms ? Although most of it is more appropriate to medieval FRP, >things like the Drug Trance and Power Word magics are very >tempting ! I made a number of jottings in the margin of my copy of C&S to this effect, and sketched out a conversion of the Basic Magick effects to Battle-magic (RQ2 notation here). The most difficult thing was trying to make an RQ equivalent for the 10,000xp "Concentration level". For MKL I suggested sacrifice of current level points of POW (which made the step from 21 to 22, involving a sacrifice of 21 POW just a tad difficult. I suppose I might as well dig them out & post --------------------- From: STEVEG@ARC.UG.EDS.COM (Steve Gilham Entropy requires no maintenance) Subject: Errata Message-ID: <01H3QGPZGG8Y002RUR@UG.EDS.COM> Date: 4 Oct 93 17:56:31 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1910 Newton Hughes noted in X-RQ-ID: 1906 that >There's a Humakti (Platewalker) listed as having the Berserk >spell. In _Gods of Glorantha_ this became a Humakt special Rune spell. There was some discussion of this in the Humakt issue of Reaching Moon; a suggestion was that this was a "go out in a blaze of glory" spell. --------------------- From: glidedw@sfsuvax1.sfsu.edu (Godzilla's Home Boy) Subject: Re: RuneQuest Daily, Tue, 05 Oct 1993, part 2 Message-ID:Date: 4 Oct 93 19:48:43 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1911 To Geoff gunner: while I agree that moving from one place to another, ie to the spirit Plane would be trouble, invoking einstein in relation to a magical world is risdiculous. magic assumes the absence of science. fire burns as an expression of s fire spirit, and not from combustion. The mechanics are the same, and as guaranteed. This explains why a fire starting spell will work as well, as a flint and iron combination or a bow and arrow kit. magic is the high end of technology. That you have to involve mythology, means that the use of technology can have side effects, that with technology you don't see as easily. I recently saw an article that claimed that if we changed all businesses to the model used by The body shop, we'd still have problems. There is a physical rainforest, et al damage, from using technology the way we do. the collateral effect, over generations will change our mythology. RQ seems a way to confront the changes of science and tech on our personal myths, by designing the everyday world of the mythical, in terms that make sense in dreams. The rules mechanics are a systemitization of our dream counterparts. Using too much, such as modern physics, calls into question the reason that magic is assumed to work. Einstein plays no part in my games. To think that you can't go faster than light, when light itself is a person, having form, is hard for me to deal with. What if the personage of Light, which is the barrier, gives me permission to exceed itself? then I just do so. --------------------- From: yfcw29@castle.edinburgh.ac.uk Subject: A Ralzakark Hypothesis Message-ID: <9310051225.aa16442@uk.ac.ed.castle> Date: 5 Oct 93 11:25:14 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1912 David Dunham wrote: >>From: DScott@snail.demon.co.uk (David Scott) >>Who thinks after reading Dorastor that Ralzakark is a part of >>Nysalor/Gbaji/Arkat, and what will happen if all the parts are brought >>together again. Will Nysalor/Gbaji/Arkat re-form. > >Ral(-???) + zak(-???) + ark(-at)? See 'Dorastor : Land of Doom', pages 10-11, section titled 'The Second Age : Dorastor in Ruins', note the following passages: 'In 842 Balarzak Leatherwing, a dragon-worshipper from the land of Tarsh, led his companions to recover ash and water from the ruined place. They reported sounds of huge forms moving in the night, and a terrifying pulsating earthquake which thumped like a panicked heart and lasted for many minutes. Balarzak and his companions returned alive and well, yet all died within three years, none by normal means, with blood bubbling from his lips.' 'Two famous Talastari heroes, Turvoy the Foreigner and Hardral the Flying Urox, entered Dorastor in 857 to repeat the adventures of Balarzak; they emerged the following year as draugr.' Hardral Ral Balarzak + Zak Arkat + Ark = Ralzakark ? Now I don't know much about these other two characters, but could this be more than a coincidence? And what is a 'draugr'? I get the impression that you wouldn't take one home to meet the folks, and Steve Thomas tells me it is the Norse word for undead. So : three heroes (Arkat, Balarzak and Hardral) enter Dorastor, meet an untimely demise ( Arkat is the possible exception here) and up pops Ral-zak-ark. And one paragraph later, 'a hero called Ragnaglar or Ralzakark embarked upon a great raid out of Dorastor...' Now, where have I come across Ragnaglar before ... +------------+--------------------------+ | Phil Hibbs | Kindly posted by my 'bro | +------------+--------------------------+ --------------------- From: eosgg@raesp-farn.mod.uk (Geoff Gunner) Subject: Mounted Combat and other stuff Message-ID: <9310051314.AA10078@raesp-farn.mod.uk> Date: 5 Oct 93 13:14:24 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1913 to Eric Johnson-DeBaufre, on your lumbering Uroxi. The rules work fine for combat that lasts one round or more. Remember, the 'attack' is not a single attack but the effects of a number of feints, lunges, etc. When you translate this to a situation where the combatants are only in striking distance for a split-second, then the rules are no longer valid. Instead trust your judgement. You could say that in dodging out of the way of the spear left him too far away from the Zebra, so no return blow. Or, you could be kind and have allowed him his strike. Depends how you saw the situation. Incidentally, the movement-SR relationship is way, way out - they bear little relation to reality. re: the meta-cult, which one changes worship of aspects through one's life. Seems to me that some sort of ceremony would arise in which (say at the cost of one POW to your former god and one to the new) you could trade in old divine spells for new. Otherwise, people would't sacrifice to the earlier stages, saving up for later on in life. Better for the deities to get the POW now and repay later (divine hire-purchase !) re: spirits - Does an earthworm have POW ? Do microbes ? Of Course ! (but problems - you have a cold and cross your family's 'Warding'. Immediately every cold germ in your body takes 3D3's worth of diruption. Take that, sniffly nose !) So on the spirit plane you'll have a goodly thickness of tiny spirits below you from the soil. And when High King Elf knobbled Mostal, did every rock die ? So you may well have a sort of spiritual awareness of the soil under you. And think about how people refer to a land a 'she' or whatever - it's alive, so would probably exist on the spirit plane. Cosmic ! :-) re: Colin Watson saying that Ghosts never acheive that state without help from the living .. *WHAT !??!* Loose all those lovely traditions of hauntings because of a horrible crime, or unfulfilled life, and so on ? If there's one gripe I have with RQ it's that it falls down heavily on the supernatural. I want fear, terror, dread of the dark ! If it's just another monster to bash, that flies out of the window as the players start to figure out how to kill it. And in a previous letter I mentioned using physical skills on the spirit plane. This is because I want to send players into there and not have them torn apart by the first bunny rabbit which has been around and so has 60% in relevant spirit skills, as opposed to their piffling 5%. And I don't want to use POW as that then makes the whole idea of spirit combat a featureless stodge. RQ2 related skills to POW anyway, so I'm only extending that a teensy bit ... The idea of 'outer' and 'inner` spirit planes completely escapes me - why not just regionalise the SP, like terrain has places where bad dudes hang out ? Why give them a whole place of their own ? And if you say that they're migrating away from the shallow end, where's their target ? The God plane ? And re: Colin Watson's comment 'what happens if you break an object with a spirit in into pieces - does each pebble have a spirit ?' If I break you into pieces, does your hand have a spirit ? Your nose ? No. Slow change is okay, but fast change frees the spirit from it's attachment. I agree, not every inanimate thing has to have a spirit, but an awful lot of cultures early on in our history did think so. So if my Telmori believes that the little pebble he sat on earlier has a spirit and my Sorcerer thinks it doesn't, who's right ? Geoff. (with you in spirit ...) --------------------- From: yfcw29@castle.edinburgh.ac.uk Subject: Spiritual Musings Message-ID: <9310051337.aa29897@uk.ac.ed.castle> Date: 5 Oct 93 12:37:49 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1914 Spirit Plane Musings -------------------- 1. I agree with Colin Watson about the difference between 'detached' and 'Corporeal' spirits (including bound spirits). 'Corporeal' spirits should only be at risk from spirits with 'visibility' or a natural equivalent. The Second Sight spell is a puzzler though. You can use it to look at both bound spirits AND spirits on the spirit plane! Perhaps spirits on the spirit plane are only seen as though from afar, ie in less detail? 2. Of course rivers and mountains have spirits! These spirits/deities are the Mythical consequence of the _worldly_function_ of the thing, and are _not_ simply a result of it's mere material substance. They do not inhabit the stream/mountain in the way that a living being does, though they may manifest within it at times. To destroy a river god, you would have to destroy the river. A river is not mere water, after all after a few days all the water in the river has cycled out of it anyway. But the river still exists. Mountains are a bit different, but just chipping bits off it won't get you far. Eventualy you could destroy or damage it, thus it's importance as part of the landscape and ecology would be reduced, thus the mountain god would be hurt. Likewise you could dam the river and so wound the river god. (That is a very interesting idea actualy. Would a heroquest be required? There is a dam which holds back the sludgestream river in Dorastor.) Personality Traits in RQ ------------------------ Personality traits NEVER force a player into a course of action, as I understand it they are a score card of how the character has behaved in the past, and thus how other people expect the character to behave in future. If the character starts behaving differently, the traits will change to reflect this. All the criticisms of personality traits I have ever heard were based on the misconception that they force they players hand, they do not! If your GM uses traits to manipulate the characters that is a gross abuse of power. Diatribe over. Actualy, personality traits could offer a realy handy alternate spirit combat system, as was discussed in the daily recently. The turn sequence would be : 1. Players pick the trait they will fight with. 2. Make resistance rolls, trait versus trait. 3. Looser marks off 1D3 MPs. The victor may make a trait increase roll, both may make POW gain rolls. I have not realy thought about the implications of this, I just thought of it. Simon Hibbs ----------- --------------------- From: paul@phyast.pitt.edu (Paul Reilly) Subject: Re: RuneQuest Daily, Tue, 05 Oct 1993, part 1 Message-ID: <9310051545.AA22776@minerva.phyast.pitt.edu> Date: 5 Oct 93 15:45:13 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1915 Dave Cake brings up the example of River Gods & spirits as creatures that exist on the God and Mundane planes simultaneously. Many gods are like this. Orlanth's body is made of the great circulating winds of Glorantha. Yelm IS the Sun. Xentha IS Night. Lorian IS the Great Sky River (the blue we see through the Sky Dome) Annilla IS the Blue Moon Etc, etc. More later, Paul Reilly --------------------- From: ddunham@radiomail.net (David Dunham , via RadioMail) Subject: Re: traits; elves; Issaries Message-ID: <199310051556.AA28234@radiomail.net> Date: 5 Oct 93 15:56:24 GMT X-RQ-ID: 1916 >From: Tom.Zunder@mettav.royle.org (Tom Zunder) >From: Paul.Baker@mettav.royle.org (Paul Baker) >I'm appalled by the idea that people want to adopt the traits/passions >from >Pendragon. This mechanism is deterministic, allows no free thinking >roleplaying and presumes that none of us can play a character from a >nother >culture or mindset. If you need these mechanics then you won't >understand >what they're trying to do, if you understand whta they're trying to do >you don't need the mechanic. The idea behind using traits is two-fold. First, it's a way to indicate what a religion values, using standardized terms. Second, it's a way to measure a character's personality. Slay an opponent who begs for mercy? Gain a Cruel check, and your trait will probably change. When rolls are called for, the assumption isn't that you can't play your character, but that the character in his world might behave differently than the player, with her meta-knowledge, would. Trait rolls should never be slavishly applied. If you've seen that, then I submit you've seen bad GMing. I use trait rolls to see if your character can "convince the examiners" and advance in a religion. If you actually behave the way the religion values, you've earned checks and gone up in those traits, and making the rolls should be easy. >From: eosgg@raesp-farn.mod.uk (Geoff Gunner) >And what if a species, rather than an individual, learnt to cross the boundary >between the planes ? As with all invader species, they would find life a lot >easier. So the Tuatha de Daan (?) retreat from the Milesians into the lands >of Faerie in Celtic mythos. They would gain in spiritual skills to help them >survive but slowly loose their physical skills until they were fully part of >the spirit world (Irish legends are full of the TdD using mortals to do their >dirty work). I prefer European elves to Gloranthan, and forsee some good stuff >coming from this approach. Elves in my PenDragon Pass (non-Gloranthan) game are like this (tho the Otherworld isn't the standard spirit plane). Since time passes differently in the Otherworld, this is the source of the rumor that elves are long-lived. >From: C442196@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (Newton Hughes) >the one thing that >seems extremely weird to me about Issaries is the restriction on theft. >I never heard of a Real World god who drew such a distinction; usually >their cultures consider both trading and thievery to be dishonorable >activities. Hmm, maybe Issaries should have the Honest trait (not one of those I'd assigned)...