Thanks for the info, Greg. I hope you can respond to a round of clarifications. If not, I'm sure that Rory or somebody will straigten me out.
>From: "Greg Stafford" <Greg_at_...>
>
>First, remember that most of the people in the world engage in mixed
>worship. This IS the normal way.
I've heard this said before, but I want to try to get some clarification on what it means precisely. This started to be said when people started to assume that Orlanthi were all theists, is how it seems to me. The idea I got from it is that generally religions have elements of all three otherworlds in them. To parse the sentence above, then "People" means "participants in religions" (as opposed to individuals), and "engage in mixed worship" means "have more than one way to worship beings that are part of their religion."
Becuase there's another interpretation that I would love for it to mean, but which I think you've tried to disuade me of before. Which would paraphrase you as "Most of the individuals in the world engage in worship of beings from multiple otherworlds." In fact, given common magic, I think this is actually neccessarily true on this level. But what I'd really like for it to imply is, "for those sorts who engage in specialized magic, given that religion is mixed, there's nothing other than concentration standing in the way of them having magic from more than one otherworld."
Let me put this in a way that I've been mentally developing for a while. It seems to me that there are three forms of "objection" to a character getting magic from a cult:
Is this the sum total of the possible objections? Most importantly, does "you dabble in an otherworld outside of that which the supernatural being for whose cult you are testing belongs to" become an objection at any of the points above? Or does "Most people engage in mixed worship" mean that this objection is not *particularly* likely?
Because I'd love it if, in fact, objections to multiple otherworlds were only as local as, say, dieties that object to each other's worship.
>Human beings have a unique position in the cosmic scheme. People are the
>source of Will now, which they can use to shape the world around them.
>Individual choices are possible to people, but not to the gods.
I would ask if those choices include shaping the gods, but that would be tangential to the current discussion. But it would explain a great many things...
>So, the first point is that immortals don�t *want* anything, except to
>continue their existence as determined by the Great Compromise. Part of
>that compromise was that the gods get the power sent to them by
>worshippers. Nothing in the contract says they discriminate from whence it
>comes. They live in a stream of �mana� that comes to them.
Can't discriminate, right? Seeing as they have no will. So they can't choose to reject missapplied worship, the test doesn't look for that at all. Right?
>Here is a case where out of game knowledge is overcoming the Glorantha
>�man in the saddle� perspective. We naturally funnel our interpretation
>through the rules because that�s what�s on the character sheet. But the
>fact is that most people in Glorantha don�t believe that there are three
>Otherworlds and three systems. They know of multiple otherworlds, usually
>all labeled with the same category name (�otherworld� being an example of
>this).
I'm not sure that I see the problem. That is, what error am I making in how things work based on my knowledge that I have as a player. I don't for a moment assume that the Praxians know of a "God World" or any such. In fact, I suspect that they use a language that I don't understand (it would be odd to find out that they use English). It wouldn't surprise me at all, in fact, to learn that they only believe in one otherworld, the spirit world, and that they think that all other magic is common magic, or charlatanry.
But Humakt knows. Heck, he's not a human, so we can't technically speak of him in such terms as "knowing" but we always do, as you point out, anthropomorphize the gods and spirits so that we can understand them. And to some extent their myths are like us, and the test is "Are You Me." So, for discussion purposes, I think we can go with it. That is, it would not seem unlike the nature of Humakt to have a test where he discriminated based on what plans a Gloranthan has to worship him. I mean if he can test for whether somebody also worships Chalana Arroy, apparently, it doesn't seem to be all that odd for him to be able to test for proper worship method.
But, since it serves my purposes, I'll accept that this is not the case. If the explanation is "Great Compromise" then fine.
>My conclusion is that they are doing it the way that they have always done
>it, because it works. The entity being worshipped is incapable of
>volunteering the information anyway.
Not to get into a chicken/egg debate, I can also swallow the "we've always done it this way" argument. But as an icon, it's hard to imagine this. That is, on the right days Orlanthi gather and cross over to look at Orlanth in his hall. Does he sit there stock still, unmoving? Or is there something that can be examined about how he does things? Even his appearance must speak volumes about him. If he wanted to, I'm sure he could have put a sign up above him saying, "No Spiritists Allowed!"
But, OK, again, great compromise.
> > So why doesn't he just give some leader a vision when they breach the
> > otherworld using their ecstatic ritual and show the myth of how he's
> > supposed to be worshipped?
>
>They breach that all and go to that precise event now, of course.� But
>they are the Sword Brothers, outsiders everywhere, and so all of the
>Otherworlds are hostile.
So...those who do misapplied worship are getting rare views? So they don't learn more? OK.
I'd have to conclude, then, that "Are You Me" is unlikely to contain any problems with otherworld in any way. That is, if the Sword Man practice doesn't reject based on wrong otherworld, then I'd think that it would be very, very strange for the Sword Man test to reject you based on you being an initiate of a theist cult. The Praxians might, I suppose.
Hmm. Can you be an Initiate of Humakt, and a Practitioner of Sword Man? I mean if Humakt isn't there to tell you that it's incorrect, then all the character has to do is convince himself of some sort of duality of nature of Humakt to buy in. After one guy does it, then he'd be "proof" to everyone else of that Duality. Sure it means overcoming some of your indoctrination, but if it's in the name of finding new and better ways to serve your diety, ego would drive this, I'm sure.
>So, having said all of that, I want to stress that the critical point of
>difference between �most people� and the average adventurer.
Wait, wait, wait. You've said stuff like this before, but I assumed that you meant only that in a metagame way that PCs were special. Are you now actually saying that PCs are actually special in the game world? That there's something about them that actually sets them apart from the rest of the population other than player desire for drama and the fact that its a game played in a fictional environment?
This isn't an attempt to make Hero Points an in-game construct or something, is it? I'm not seeing why this is neccessary. So this is actually part of Gloranthan cosmology? Sorry if I seem a tad incredulous. It's just that it's a complete revelation to me.
Anyhow, I really have no idea what implications you intend (other than, perhaps, to empower MGF somehow).
Mike
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