Hello,
last summer I was talking to a fellow Glorantha gamer in the courtyard at Castle Stahleck at the Tentacles convention there, to a guy that I do not get to see all year except for this one convention every year. We briefly touched upon the subject of playing Orlanthi in the time after 1605 and before Sartar is liberated again, so basically, in official Hero Wars continuity.
He said to me that one of the most natural things that he's like to do as a Heortling Orlanthi player-character would be to fight against the Lunars as much as possible, but he claimed that the "official word" of the Hero Wars books prevented him from doing that realistically. He said, verbatim, "I'd like to fight Lunars, but if I do anything *major* against the Lunar military or something, the Lunars will come and burn down my stead and kill my family. So, how do I do this in the time of the oppression? The other alternative is becoming an outlaw right away, but I feel that my character is screwed if he spends the entire game as an outlaw. No friends, no community ..."
So, basically this player said he felt that while the game constantly alluded to and explained the Heortling-vs.-Lunar conflict, it automatically discouraged new player characters to participate in that conflict at the same time. How could I make sure that it _is_ possible and explicable that Heortling player-characters engage in actions against the Lunars without having an outright terrorist reputation?
Also, another question that's been on my mind recently. 85% of all Heortling men worship Orlanth in one of his many subcults. However, Thunder Rebels and other sources say explicitly that the worship of Orlanth is a no-no, the cult being officially banned in occupied Sartar.
So, are 85% of the men in Sartar routinely participate in rites and ceremonies that are against the law? Or are only the _warrior_ subcults of Orlanth under the heavy Lunar scrutiny, but not Allfather or Lawspeaker?
The episodes officially published for Hero Wars so far
seem to assume that most male heroes are initiates or
devotees of an Orlanth subcult. Also, I think it would
take a lot of fun out of the game if over 80% of the
subcults published in the books are not fully usable by
beginning player-characters.
So how do you manage to achieve that balance between
"This is your cult, this is your tradition and it always
has been. You get your Affinities and Feats from that
cult, and you must pump your earned Hero Points
into those Affinities to get better." and "Actually, you
are aware that all of this is really against the law."
CU
Norbert
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