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, Fri, 06 May 1994, part 2
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From: sandyp@idcube.idsoftware.com (Sandy Petersen)
Subject: The Dallas guy
Message-ID: <9405051655.AA02644@idcube.idsoftware.com>
Date: 5 May 94 04:55:57 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3918
MOB asks:
>A question: when the renascent Vadeli arrived off the Pamaltelan
>seaboard claiming they were gods (neato trick!), what did they think
>of the wretched Blueskins (Veldang) of Fonrit? Or are they the
>wrong shade of blue?
I'm sure that if there IS any connection between the Blue
Vadeli and the blueskins, the Vadeli didn't dare mention it for fear
that their new "worshipers" would realize that the Vadeli couldn't
possibly be gods (if they're related to the Blues).
In general, I think there's a tendency to read too much into
blue skin. Blue-skinned individuals show up again and again in
Gloranthan history, and I'm not sure there's always a connection
between them. There are the blue-skinned folk who overran Peloria in
the God Time, there are the Artmali. there are the Blue Vadeli, and
there is Heler (the blue-skinned rain god). No doubt it's not ALL
coincidence, but though blue skin certainly seems impressive to an
Earthling, I imagine few inhabitants of Pamaltela think twice about
it. For that matter, there are red-skinned entities that come from
the Red Moon, but are not necessarily related to the Red Vadeli.
The Blue Vadeli's skin tone might indicate a relationship to
the Blue Moon. Or it might indicate a relationship to the sea gods.
One intriguing point, though, is the fact that the Artmali Empire is
REALLY old (pre-Yelm's demise) and so are the Vadeli. In addition,
the Artmali seem to have been pretty much jerks (expelling all
non-perfect folk out of their empire), and it's widely believed that
the Vadeli are, too. Perhaps they are more closely related than
previous study had led us to believe. In fact, perhaps the Brown,
Red, and Blue Vadeli are NOT related to one another, but are three
separately "evolved" races of man who joined together to form a
single society of immortals.
Boris asks:
>how long is human gestation in Glorantha?
I'd say around 270 days, give or take a week or two. While
it's clear that the human lifespen is less on Glorantha than Earth (a
problem I attribute to the Sunstop, because All Time Changed after
it), I don't think that gestation necessarily changed. It makes it
simpler to calculate matters for PCs if biological functions are the
same, despite the year length.
Rich Staats opines:
>So, the sorcerer, who may not have the spiritual relationship with
>the Earth/Nature the Orlanti does, would probably have a far better
>grasp on how the physical universe fits together.
This leads into the whole God Learner problem. They
undoubtedly understood more about how the laws of Glorantha worked
than anyone else before or after. But yet they didn't understand
anything. The whole question boils down to: Who knows the forest
better? The man who lives there, the talented man who paints its
landscape in oils, or the man who lives a hundred leagues away and
studies its ecological subsystems? I'm a science guy myself, but it's
clear we can learn about something by moving in directions other than
towards greater quantitative analysis.
>tree shrews' inclusion in the primates seems to depend on when you
>went to college.
Or WHERE you went to college. Incidentally, I have tried to
avoid mentioning tree shrews at any time in my discussion of primates
and trolls, because of the debate concerning their placement. I don't
think trolls are related to tree shrews, but to the other kind. (And
I mean "related" not in any sort of real sense at all other than in
psychology and physiognomy.)
Pmichaels says:
>Makes me wonder if the (admittedly rare) troll Uleria worshipper
>would draw the more masochistic type of client
While I don't know if trolls "bite" during lovemaking or not,
one of my characters (Mad Dog, a horseman from Erigia) visited the
Uleria temple in Furthest in Greg's campaign and had an interesting
experience. He was going along with another character who really
liked elf women, and was boasting of the fact that there were several
elf women in this temple. Mad Dog, always contrary, asked, "Do they
have a troll?" Turned out they did. When Mad Dog was escorted into
her room, she took one look at the little bandy-legged guy, grabbed
him by the neck and picked him off the ground, said, "I know what YOU
guys want." and batted him clear across the room! The rest of the
evening I'll draw a veil over, only to say that in the morning, Mad
Dog had two black eyes and several missing teeth. It was his first
sexual experience. He wasn't sure if he liked it or not, but he's
never experimented with sex again.
>I think you lost a lot of the duckish mystery.
I think you're reading too much into the ducks. I think they
primarily exist at the Roleplaying level of Gloranthan Reality, which
is why they have so little existence in the mythology or history. If
you need to give them an impressive background, psychology, and
mythology in order to feel comfortable with them, that's fine, but
I'm perfectly happy without any duck "mystery" at all.
Dave Dunham corrects:
>While it's natural to link "chaos" and "swamp," Genertela Book says
>the Sodal Marsh is "now one of the richest regions of the region."
My mistake. Though it also does say that "rumors say that
monsters exist there" and that only the ruling family knows the
"Secret tracks" through the marsh. It's clear that the monsters don't
issue forth from it anymore though.
---------------------
From: jacobus@sonata.cc.purdue.edu (Bryan J. Maloney)
Subject: The Godlearners
Message-ID: <9405051638.AA04002@sonata.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 5 May 94 06:38:12 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3919
I would classify the GLs as SCIENTISTIC rather than scientific in
their thinking. They were deductionists rather than inductionists,
and, practiced a pseudo-science because they never appreciated or
tested the limits of Falsification. (Of course, since my model of
SPOT ON! Give that man the anatomically correct Vanna White doll! As a
working scientist, I get so damned irked when people point to the Godlearners
as being "scientific" in their approach to the world. They were technocratic,
they were scientistic, but they were certainly not scientific. To quote
an English biochemist: "I got into science because I wanted to discover
absolute truth, to seek perfect knowledge, and to determine the underlying
system of reality. This is like becoming an Archbishop to meet girls."
It is UNCERTAINTY that drives science. It is technocracy that posits that
our current knowledge can "solve everything". The Godlearners had an
_a priori_ "system" and they tried to shove all Glorantha into it. For
real scientists, all systems are provisional and temporary. The systems
used thirty years ago are not today. The scientific truth of today will be
regarded as quaint tomorrow.
I believe the GLs were more like Christian theologians than
inductivist empiricists: theologians compiling and comparing their
sometimes contradictory proof texts, arriving at some kind of
untestable synthesis, and then suddenly being confronted with the
wider discourses of other world religious systems. We all know
what a crock the GL cult write ups are.
Of course, I accept that on the literary level (see above) the GLs are
an ironic sendup/criticism of modernist empirical thinking and its
dangers.
Except that the Godlearners were NOT empirical thinkers, they were Platonic
realists, which is about as far away from empiricism as you can get.
Perhaps most tellingly, I think Greg's attitude to the GLs comes
pretty directly from Joseph Campbell, and is intended as a lesson in
what happens if you try to manipulate myths scientistically rather
than from an involved cultural perspective. (Prospective
Heroquesters take note! - "no questing without respect and
humility".) To quote Big Jo:
This is interesting, since I consider Joseph Campbell to be the prototypic
Godlearner with his "all heroes are one" and like crap.
---------------------
From: f6ri@midway.uchicago.edu (charles gregory fried)
Subject: e-Glorantha
Message-ID:
Date: 5 May 94 16:59:50 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3920
Greg Fried here again.
MOB:
Yep. They are (were!) called Shakers. But I doubt that, as a matter of
their relgious faith, they all actually did not have sexual feelings (though
some of them may have attained this state). Nor did they achieve
immmortality (on this side of the Great Divide, anyhoo) for their sacrifice.
John:
I thought of something else -- something which in my experience has blurred
the buffer between levels 2 and 3 in my campaign: e-gaming. I run a VERY
intermittent campaign. Months may go by between gaming sessions, since my
players live all over the US Midwest. But in the interim, I try to keep
things going by what I call e-gaming. I send the players stories about what
is going on for them. I send individual players background material
appropriate to them, and interact in e-mail privacy with individual players
who have their own singular reactions to the on-going narrative and wish to
do something on their own. Depending on the workload in RL of everyone, this
can work VERY well, giving the players a much richer feel for their
characters, since they get to react at their leisure (more or less) to a
literary depiction of the narrative, which they can then engage with --
almost always without dice-rolling.
GF out.
---------------------
From: jesper.wahrner@hts.ct.se (Jesper Wahrner)
Subject: Voria/Voriof as children's gods
Message-ID: <2dc8f172@hts.ct.se>
Date: 5 May 94 11:15:00 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3921
Some people, whose identity unfortunately was devoured by the
FIDO-net gate I'm getting the digest through, wrote about
Voria/Voriof's roles as childrens deities.
(The very same gate seem to eat about half of the messages I
write as well. I suspect it must be a tool of Thanatar who uses
it to steal the priceless gems of knowledge that passes through it.)
As I see the children's cults they are mostly educational institutions
whose purpose is to learn children how religion works early in their
life. If there is an initiation it is merely a mock thing to teach them
the importance of such things. There is a set of "Cult-secrets" that
is tought so they may learn what such things is like, without compro-
mising the secrets of the main gods. This goes for the participating
in clan rituals as well. Its enough to give the kids a taste of the real
thing that will be theirs when they grow up to become initiated, but it
shouldn't have the magical qualities the rituals has for true initiates.
The main non-educational function they have is to make sure that childen
get a decent afterlife should they die before initiation.
---------------------
From: jesper.wahrner@hts.ct.se (Jesper Wahrner)
Subject: Godlearner Question
Message-ID: <2dc8f171@hts.ct.se>
Date: 5 May 94 11:15:00 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3922
Sandy wrote:
> 4) The Vadeli know the God Learner Secret [rare]
This makes me wonder one thing. How common is the knowledge ABOUT
the GL Secret? Not the secret itself but the knowledge that the
secret ever existed, and brought down the God Learners. I've always
thought that the Doom Guardians were quite efficient in not only
eradicating the secret itself but also the knowledge about the secret.
Hmmm... This may possible be a Nysalor riddle: "Is it possible to
eradicate a secret by killing everyone who knows it?"
Yours,
Jesper
---------------------
From: NDROBINS@NDROBINS.FIN.GOV.BC.CA
Subject: GMing in Glorantha
Message-ID: <9405051901.AA1066@NDROBINS.FIN.GOV.BC.CA>
Date: 5 May 94 17:40:00 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3923
All this discussion about the many levels of Glorantha relates
directly to running games in Glorantha, and the difficulties
imposed for both the GM and the players.
I have just started to GM, and after a trial run in my own world, have
decided to let my players enjoy the richness of Glorantha. Two of them
are D&Ders I'm hoping to convert, and the other two are completely new
to gaming. I ran my third session last night. It was interesting.
Things that came up over the evening varied from Yinkin to
the Trollkin curse. It is a real challenge for me as a GM. I am not willing
to waste the player's time while I look things up, so I had better
have a good handle on not only Pavis, but all of Prax and all the
history too. With my Gloranthan Lore hovering around 25%, I am finally
feeling confident about running a game in Glorantha. The players
were awed by the amount of detail and the flavour.
Now I have role-played for about twelve years, and have been addicted
to a losenge-shaped world for at least five. RQ was the first game I played,
but I moved to AD&D after finding no suppliments in my small town. I only got
back into RQ once I got onto the RQ digest mailing list.
New GMs will find Glorantha overwhelming, to say the least. I have all
the RQ2 suppliments to fall back on, but they won't. To support
Glorantha as a closed, fully-functioning world, which I try to, you need
access to all the background information, or at least a large chuck of it.
Without the information provided on the net, I would be lost. Sure I can
wing everything, but then things start to get inconsistent.
Neil
_______________________________________________________________
Neil Robinson NDROBINS@NDROBINS.FIN.GOV.BC.CA
---------------------
From: alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk (Alex Ferguson)
Subject: X.ians, M.ions.
Message-ID: <9405052217.AA03091@keppel.dcs.gla.ac.uk>
Date: 5 May 94 22:17:39 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3925
Prince Martin Crim of Pavis, King of Dragon Pass, Holay, and Saird has typed:
> Alex opines:
> "It's very unclear what you mean by "Ancient" Christianty here:
> your answers (mostly deleted herein) don't seem consistent for
> any one period."
> I meant roughly A.D. 300 to 500, during the period covered by the
> "Credo!" card game.
The article isn't to hand, but broadly I'd say the "non-statist" comments
apply to an earlier period (and the church elsewhere, subsequently), while
other particulars, such as the sacraments, the dating (and possibly
existance) of the festivals, doctrines such as the trinity, and dietary
customs, are all later.
> Alex states the truth:
> "Christianity has been a `state' religion (off and on) since its
> adoption by the Roman Empire."
> Yes, but there has been separation between the ecclesiastical
> powers and the temporal powers, as a result of the way
> Christianity BECAME a state religion.
What do you mean when you say "has been"? Not always, and everywhere,
certainly. Frex, the Queen being Supreme Governor of the Church of
England, bishops sitting in the House of Lords, to name but one Sturch.
The Vatican, after all, is a state. Throughout the middle ages, the
clergy exercised powers indistinguishable from that of "secular" persons
of comparable rank.
> In Islam, there was never this separation.
There certainly there is in most modern Islamic states.
> "Hmm. Another candidate for the Americanisation Test,
> Inquisitor. }B-)"
> What?
I was referring to Joerg's (Americani(s|z)ed) use of the word "regular".
> BTW, it's immanent, not imminent. But I doubt Alex thought I was
> saying Aldrya was likely to occur at any moment or threateningly
> or menacingly near or at hand.
Only for the purposes of (alleged) humour. (And due to being terrorised
by (other) pedants after making the converse typo...)
Alex.
---------------------
From: alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk (Alex Ferguson)
Subject: Elf types.
Message-ID: <9405052220.AA03100@keppel.dcs.gla.ac.uk>
Date: 5 May 94 22:20:21 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3926
Great map of Pamaltela in Tales #11: one unfortunate omision, though, is
distinguishing between the different elf types (or types of forest where
there are no elves.)
Grigdom: brown/green.
Other islands in archipeligo: brown? (Forest, no elves.)
Vralos: Exclusively brown, or brown/green?
Enkloso: why are there two large areas in the north-east marked as being
free of both elves and trees? Are these areas human-occupied, or
deforested by some natural phenomenon?
Where is the "border" between the jungles in the east, and the forest of
the west? Perhaps there really isn't one, since the types of trees may
be rather similar, there simply being a gradation in the climatic
conditions.
I don't know if David has many of these left, but The Fall of Boldhome is
certainly worth a brief spell in prison for illegally photocopying: gasp
in wonderment at the heroic rebels; snicker as Temertain struggles between
the distinction between a simile and a hyperbole, much less the political
situation; find out what 'Making a fast lunar' _really_ means; pout at Ken
and Sandy for not including a report of their shenanigans.
Alex.
---------------------
From: sschne00@reach.com (Scott Schneider -- HRA - Chicago)
Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Mon
Message-ID: <9405052249.AA03742@cl1..reach>
Date: 5 May 94 22:49:48 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3927
subject:
--------------------- Forwarded Message ----------------------
At the risk of offending some and everone, especially worshippers
of Little brother who should know better, i was wondering what
kind of initiation ceremonies the Vingans would go through.
typically, and I understand this has been discussed in these pages
before, males typically undergo one or a combination of the
following upon becoming a man - tatooing, ritual scarification,
circumcision, knocking out a tooth, and, I forget the formal term,
the creation of an artificial vagina by slicing a trough on the
underside of the penis. Excuse me if I'm incorrect, but the
Vingans are the warrior-females of Orlanth, and that they should
probably follow the male initiation rituals. Anyone want to
speculate on the particular one(s)?
*======== Regarding ========*
Date: Mon, 2 May 94 10:51:32 EDT
---------------------
>From: MOBTOTRM@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au
Subject: Lost Subber
---------------------
From: jdegon@vega.iii.com (Jim DeGon)
Subject: taxonomy, apes
Message-ID: <9405060022.AA11310@enrico>
Date: 5 May 94 10:22:54 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3928
I hope that John Hughes' commentary classification has ended the
scientific/taxonomic/biologic/natural_process threads rather than
stimulated them.
Glorantha is absolutely, positively and with no doubt a Creationist
world with _no_ evolutionary history as we 20th century "humans" know
it. There is no point in classifying families in this manner.
Now, the question of whether ducks have teeth is very important, and is
being approached in a very useful manner (cigars! yes!)
Jim DeGon
---------------------
From: thecam@aol.com
Subject: Mostali and Biological Classifications
Message-ID: <9405060157.tn211054@aol.com>
Date: 6 May 94 05:57:54 GMT
X-RQ-ID: 3929
> I don't see a strong need [for dwarfs] to
> ever develop teeth, unless they have some additional purpose
> (e.g. they aid in earthsense).
I always thought of dwarfs as eating rock and/or metal. An excellent
reason for needing teeth.
[lots & lots of stuff about the classifications of various Gloranthan
creatures]
I believe that Gloranthan creatures defy terran classifications. Humans in
Glorantha are NOT homo sapiens. That is a terran classification that does not
apply here. Gloranthan scholars (you Lhankor Mhy know who you are) would most
likely use runes to classify various species. I always figured that it was
called Runequest because runes were intrinsic to the very fabric of
Glorantha's universe. Runes would be perfect (Mike of Codex fame - maybe I'll
work on this one next.)
Dave Camoirano
TheCam@aol.com