I'm begining to think it is the "Heroquest" of "Hero Wars" - you know the thing we are always promised will be coming out next, but never quite makes it...
>
> It did make me think, though. How much history does your typical
>Glorantha hero know? My family has no legends going farther back than
>about 200 years, and much of that information is suspect. Of our
>Scottish ancestors' struggle with the English we have nothing. Of our
>old culture, we have only silly (but fun!) reconstructed highland
>games in Red Springs and Grandfather Mountain (North Carolina, USA).
Well I think a couple of differences, at least in terms of the Orlanthi, are that they not only worship their ancestors, but their ancestors take part in their ceremonies, and their whole belief structure is set up around "doing what their ancestors did" - also the lack of an industrial revolution means that many of them are doing the same sorts of jobs as their grandfathers grandfathers, and with the same sorts of tools, so more information will be passed down.
Also is it "family" legends or "cultural" legends that are important (how "suspect" the information is is besides the point so long as it "works"). For example, I live in a town that was granted a royal charter by Henry VIII, according to legend, because he was saved from a wild boar by a local huntress. Now I can be fairly sure that this is not a "family" legend (neither of my parents were born here, although I was), but, as an Orlanthi. it is one I could use to forge/strengthen the relationship between my town and the crown.
Likewise events like the Magna Carta have been remembered from history and used to support claims for various rights throughout the ages...
>Perhaps some personality traits have been passed down, but I have my
>doubts there as well.
There is a certain amount of stereotyping that inevitably occurs when you can pigeonhole an individual amongst any sort of group in whom you have identified a particular trait - sometimes it may be accurate, and sometimes wildly wrong. In terms of being generated for a clan by the questionnaire, I think it is a reasonable starting point - Individual PC's don't have to take the traits, after all (or can boost them even more if they like "Talkative, even by Blue Chipmonk standards..."), and at least gives you a clue as to how the outside world sees you.
>
>Even admitting that the Orlanthi have a much stronger oral tradition
>than lazy Americans, a timeline of the last two centuries seems much
>more reasonable. I'm conflicted! What do the rest of you think?
>
Hmm, well, over on a different list for a different game.... The Legends of the 5 Rings game has a clan called the Unicorn. Around about a thousand years ago they left the Empire and travelled in the lands beyond the Desert. Around 200 years ago, they returned, and after a brief period of conflict, proved themselves to belong in the Empire. The Samurai of Rokugan are a very conservative people. I argued there that to publish a sourcebook detailing the peoples and cultures that the Unicorn encountered on their travels would be like producing a sourcebook on Georgian England and Napoleonic France to support a game set in the Modern United States, only for several people to tell me how important European history was to all modern Americans...
I think the oral tradition of the Orlanthi, and their "worship through emulation" means that (whether they actuallay are or not) they believe that the way they live now is at least influnced by, if not the same as, they way they lived when Orlanth himself walked amongst them...
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