Bell Digest v940329p1

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Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Tue, 29 Mar 1994, part 1
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X-RQ-ID: Intro

This is the RuneQuest Daily Bulletin, a mailing list on
the subjects of Avalon Hill's RPG and Greg Stafford's 
world of Glorantha.  It is sent out once per day in digest
format.

More details on the RuneQuest Daily and Digest can be found
after the last message in this digest.


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Date: 28 Mar 94 13:01:59 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3425


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X-RQ-ID: Intro

This is the RuneQuest Daily Bulletin, a mailing list on
the subjects of Avalon Hill's RPG and Greg Stafford's 
world of Glorantha.  It is sent out once per day in digest
format.

More details on the RuneQuest Daily and Digest can be found
after the last message in this digest.


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From: Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.xerox.com
Subject: My Stab at Nothern Prax and the Shadowlands
Message-ID: <_26-Mar-94_17:40:02_GMT_.*.Guy_Robinson.sbd-e@rx.Xerox.com>
Date: 26 Mar 94 17:40:02 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3417


After some gentle encourage from Sandy Peterson here is what I
would make of Northern Prax and Adari.  I will attempt to
answer my own question.

River of Cradles as an the timimg of my campaign I would say that
the activities of the Lunars has taken away the better land
from the control the Praxian Nomads, driven them into the scarcer
areas treacherous to all but animal nomads.

The trolls would hold their niche as the Lunars are more interested
in consolidating their hold on the human dominated areas of
Glorantha and hence rewriting the common mythic background that
they share with the threatened Orlanthi culture.

Dramatically the Lunar Empire will the unseen monster that threatens
all but is rarely seen.  Not only have they attempted to drive the
Praxian Nomads against the Trolls and Adryami but they are also
supplying Sallow Root (my invention) to Arkati's Dark Empire.

Sallow Root is a plant which when dried and smoked rewards the
user with great eloquence and inspiration at the cost of an
associated drain of magic points.  This quickly leads to addiction 
and weakening of the orginal effects unless the addicts starts
to sacrifice POW while under the influence.

This is having a catastrophic effect on the Dark Empire as 
money floods from it's coffers to pay for the Root and it's
brightest and best are often left after an addiction to Sallow
Root as apathetic street litter.

The players come from this culture, which I am using as a distant
sorcerous culture, and are part of a caravan designed to root
out the Sallow Root supply by whatever means possible.  They have
a carte blanche responsibility although they are accompanied by
adminstrators and quartermasters.

I envisage Adari to be to major trading place between Uz and
humans.  Here I will place Sartarite rebels seeking to petition
the Uz to fight the Lunars in the midst of a city dominated
by humans but run to appeal to the the tastes of the Uz.

From Northern Pax will come Animal Nomads who might become 
covertous of the Valley of Flowers within the Shadowlands due
to increased pressure on the meagre plains of Prax.  I envisage 
that the caravan might seek to explore down to the Dead Place 
that seems to be a marsh within Prax into which seasonal rivers 
run.

I think Prax could be a weak point, especially if I can manage
to run the Shadowlands work well, venturing into Prax could be
anti-climax.

Regards

 -- Guy Robinson -- 

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From: argrath@aol.com
Subject: Classification Systems
Message-ID: <9403261329.tn144526@aol.com>
Date: 26 Mar 94 18:29:27 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3418

I just came across a great classification system in Walter Anderson's
_Reality Isn't What It Used to Be_, where he quotes Jorge Luis Borges, who in
turn cites a taxonomy of the animal kingdom from an ancient Chinese
encyclopedia:

(a) animals that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are
trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs,
(h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as
if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine
camel's hair brush, (l) others, (m) those that have just broken a flower
vase,
(n) those that resemble flies from a distance. 
     Take that, Linnaeus!  
     The point is that classification systems that appear bizarre to us are
"natural" to others, and presumably vice versa.  In Glorantha, a
classification that puts bats with invertebrates is appropriate, because
they're all Darkness animals.  Likewise, snakes and pigs are earth animals;
birds and horses, Fire animals; and so on.  
     Anderson also mentions Gould's essay "What, if Anything, is a Zebra?" 
He might also have mentioned, but hasn't up to the point where I've read,
that some biologists now put humans in the same genus with chimpanzees. 
Linnaeus himself declared that he knew of no generic (i.e., genus-level)
differences between humans and chimps.  So our culturally-accepted categories
make no sense from a cladistic view.
    All of which is just my two cents, but in Glorantha, we should remember
that different people will have different classification systems, based on
principles that make sense to their society.  
    BTW, 22 people have asked for the Hykimi files, and they should be in the
soda.berkeley archives now.  Next time, I'll just send the whole thing in
pieces over the Daily--it'd be less work.
   --Martin (argrath@aol.com)

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From: argrath@aol.com
Subject: Identity and Essence
Message-ID: <9403262318.tn155582@aol.com>
Date: 27 Mar 94 04:18:56 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3419

On identity:
     Always bear in mind the caution that appears in several
places in published sources, to the effect that the names of gods
given are the most commonly accepted ones.  Where are Calyz or
Furalor in GoG?  Or for that matter in Glorious ReAscent?  To the
extent that names are standardized across cultures at all, it's
because of God Learner attempts to systematize.  Like all
attempts to impose a pattern on our perceptions, every pantheon
fails to explain something and probably contains inconsistencies
and paradoxes.  I _like_ having contradictory and competing
mythologies.
     Of more weight, to my mind, than the identity of Lux/Arraz
is the identity of Yelm.  We Orlanthi always thought that Orlanth
killed Yelm, and everything from before Glorious ReAscent stated
that.  Now we find that Oralanatus killed Murharzarm, not Yelm,
but that Yelm disintegrated because of his son's death.  My
Lhankor Mhy friends tell me that this is just a Dara Happan
rationalization, based on their belief that Yelm was unkillable. 
Their research, from speaking to those who took part in Heroquest
rituals reenacting the Contests, shows that Orlanth killed the
Emperor in his aspect as the Bad Sun.  
     My personal opinion is that Greg Stafford is consciously
making Glorantha a constructivist universe, where reality depends
entirely or almost entirely on the viewer, and it is unknown and
possibly unknowable whether there is an underlying God's-Eye
Truth.  This is not the case in Mike Dawson's Glorantha, however. 
Mike wants a universe that has a single Truth knowable by the GM. 
I think a subjectivist universe is much more interesting.

Greg Fried asks: 
>Can't tigers and lions interbreed?  

And Sandy Petersen replies: 
>  Yes, but the offspring is not fertile, and can't produce 
>further offspring on its own. 

     I hate to nit-pick (all right, I love to nit-pick), but a
tigon and a liger can crossbreed to produce a litigon.  I'm not
making those names up.  The litigon is a rather ill-tempered
beastie, but I forget whether the news report of its birth and
first year or so of life said whether it was fertile.
     Barriers to natural cross-breeding do exist, even where
tiger and lion range overlap (or overlapped--both ranges are now
much diminished).  Does that make a species?  It depends on your
definition.  Some species (and subspecies and "race") lines are
invisible, while others are more or less clear.  Many lines (and
the concepts themselves) are rather fuzzy, however.

     Speaking of fuzzy logic, did anyone else take special note
of one of Greg Stafford's answers at the Lore Auction?  He said,
"An Orlanthi 'yes,' which means 80% yes."  That's pure fuzzy
logic--which, for those not up on abstruse mathematical
developments, is a legitimate field of math now, with
applications in robotics and elsewhere.  Appliances with fuzzy
logic circuits are popular in Japan.

Sandy goes on to say:
>Of course, Telmori can mate with other humans and produce normal
>offspring, too. 

     If he says so.  I would think this would not be widely known
or believed.  My Orlanthi friends think of Telmori as wolves in
the shape of men, not as man-wolves.  Mating with one (even in
man form) would be bestiality, which is taboo and criminal and
yucky.  In rationalist terms, this is because Telmori have wolf
essence.  
     Speaking of essence, did anyone else see the article in
today's papers about genetic engineering's effects on kosher and
halal laws?  A coagulant for making cheese, which uses a pig
gene, was held to be OK for making kosher food (despite the
prohibition on pigs AND the prohibition on mixing meat and milk),
but not OK for halal (Muslim food).  The kosher authorities held
that the gene lost its pig essence when it was copied to a
bacterium.  There were several other examples.

"Does existence precede essence?  Or what?" --Cherry Poptart

--Martin Crim

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From: drcheng@sales.stern.nyu.edu (David Cheng)
Subject: Cheap Dragon Pass Minis
Message-ID: 
Date: 27 Mar 94 23:35:21 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3420

I don't know about you international readers, but here in the States 
we're finally getting over "dinosaur fever."  Jurassic Park, Barney, etc. 
are now receeding from the consumer markets.

Along with all the hoopla, many toy stores stocked up on dinosaur 
toys.  I have noticed these are now being sold at great discout, just
to clear the shelf space.  

Remember that Dragon Pass is literally overrun by dinosaurs.  One 
could make the argument that every major Dragonewt area is surrounded
by those misled newts whose spiritual development has become perverted
or misled.

Dinosaurs make good encounters in a Dragon Pass campaign.  Think of
the damage a small herd of Brontosauri could inflict on a poor PC's
crops... 

Anyway, if you're looking for cheap plastic dinosaurs, check out your
stores now.

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From: cryptomatt@aol.com
Subject: Impalas & Leaping
Message-ID: <9403271954.tn172740@aol.com>
Date: 28 Mar 94 00:54:45 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3421

The Gloranthan Beastiary says that the Impala can leap up to 9 meters in a
single bound. Obviously this distance is only for unencumbered Impalas. Here
is the question for all you praxians and impala experts...

How far, if it all, can an impala leap while carrying a rider?

I think that a rune magic leaping spell would be an appropriate goal for an
Impala tribe hero quest.

-Matt Thale

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From: marks@slough.mit.edu (Mark S. c/o Tom Yates)
Subject: Plentonius the Wise
Message-ID: <9403280445.AA21461@Sun.COM>
Date: 28 Mar 94 04:46:19 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3422

Nick Brooke:
>Also note that the Gods Wall identifications are those made by
>Plentonius: only an arch-conservative Dara Happan would both
>know them and assume them always to be correct. Me, I doubt the
>published identification of some of the most prominent figures
>on the Gods Wall. If you have a problem with anything in the
>Glorious ReAscent, try thinking your way through it: why does
>Plentonius want to say it that way?
 
        Indeed, that's the only way one can make sense of some 
parts of Glorious ReAscent.  I might quibble with with the 
description of Plentonius as an "arch-conservative".  I see 
him acting more creatively, he's trying to put together a 
sort of mythic ideology for the Khordavu dynasty.  The 
"walkers" need to legitimise their usurpation of power from 
the "Sons of the Sun".  Glorious ReAscent does for the Dara
Happans what the Aeneid did for Augustus (albeit for higher 
stakes).  Of course, much of the creative reinterpretation of 
myth might have already been accomplished by the Ten Princes.
 
        Also - don't tease us Nick - which Gods Wall 
identifications do you think are incorrect? 
 
        I enjoyed Peter's Duck Tower story as well as both
Jesper's and David's take on Humakti in Fronela.  My own
Oranorians don't worship Humakt, with Valkyries, Orlanth, and 
Eurmal taking his place in myth.  
 
Jesper's description of a openhandist merchant dwarf was 
really amusing as well.
 
                        Mark Sabalauskas

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From: robmh@aol.com
Subject: On the "race" and "species" issue
Message-ID: <9403280129.tn181028@aol.com>
Date: 28 Mar 94 06:29:36 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3423

 
The tendency to call other sentient species "races" is so widespread (in the
only places it could be widespread, science fiction and fantasy) that I
believe it reflects a deep assumption about the proper way to conceive of
other sentient beings.  The most virulent forms of racism deny that certain
groups of people are human at all.  Subconsciously, gamers and writers
demonstrate certain basic assumptions of respect/equality by consistently
mislabelling other intelligent species as other races.  Since humans have no
peer-species on this planet, we have no pre-set patterns for conceiving of
non-human sentients as other species.  

Try saying this out loud:  "The Elven species, the Dwarven species, the Troll
species, the Klingon species."  To consistently begin to refer to other
sentients as separate species may require deep rethinking of some basic
assumptions.  One of which, of course, is to consistently think of your own
type of lifeform as a species; the phrase "the human race" slips easily off
the tongue, but "the human species" sounds a bit off, doesn't it?  

--Rob Heinsoo

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