Your player is not alone in being frustrated by Glorantha. It happens to me all the time. Personally I want to be able to build something of my own making then retire with a happily ever after. But there is no happily ever after in Glorantha, the currents of history will sweep everything into the dustbin shortly. In fact the only two real options are to play someone with purely ephemeral goals ("I want to do this thing before I die"), or to throw your tiny weight in with others trying to deflect that current just enough so that things will be a little less dreadful than they would otherwise be. Frankly, I find Glorantha rather Arthurian, and I never really cared for Arthur and his boys. In other words, while Heroquest is a game designed to be heavily driven by character goals, Glorantha as a game world is incredibly hostile to individualistic goals. Kind of like the real world.
BUT, all the same, this is part of what keeps me interested in Glorantha. There is no way to "beat the system." Gloranthan history in fact is rather at pains to prove this, that creating the god that you want, or trying to crack the secrets of the universe, are BAD things, which threaten the very foundations of the world. When it comes to magic, the more you choose the most powerful modes, the more of yourself you give up, or to put it another way, all magic in Glorantha is borrowed, you NEVER own your own magic, and those that seem to come close to doing so generally get hunted down by the rest of the world. (note that this is true of dragon newts too. Instead of borrowing it from some god or spirit, they borrow it from the world and their own future). You always have to balance your lust for power with awareness of the cost, and the most direct route to achieve your goals is also often the most costly.
In the face of this world with its own agendas, that is jealous of its powers, making a character who can actually achieve their own goals is no easy thing. It is all too easy to be sucked into the whirlpool of power without personal will, or crushed on the rocks of individual frailty.
I think you need to talk to your player some more, and discuss that, much like the real world, Glorantha doesn't make it easy on people seeking their own path, but it isn't totally impossible to do so.
As to his character concept…..well, almost nobody manages to become a dragon in one lifetime. A few in the EWF may have succeeded, and the Path of Imminent Mastery in Kralorrela purports to teach how. But dragon newts normally ascend to full dragon hood over many lifetimes, and interact less with the mundane world as they get closer. Remember that becoming a dragon is somewhat akin to becoming a god (except bigger), and frankly most games don't give anyone a real possibility of becoming a god. So he can choose that as a goal, but he needs to understand that just because you choose a goal, it doesn't mean that it is achievable.
I think right now he has two separate motivations, that just may not be compatible. One is to play this cool character, a dragon in human body. The other is to become a dragon. Perhaps he needs to decide which is the one that is really important to him. As others have said, if it is the latter, then maybe he'd be better off as something like a researcher finding the secrets of the EWF—certainly there is a lot of scope for adventure in that! If it is the former, maybe the character has a more immediate life goal, to do with why he is reincarnated as a human. It could be something like "Well of course I'll eventually become a dragon, but there is this impediment I have to deal with." Perhaps this is somehow to do with paying off a debt from an earlier life, so maybe he even arranged himself to be reborn as a human as it was the only way to discharge that debt. Heck, he doesn't even have to know what the debt is yet, that might have gotten lost in translation, and after all the hero who knows he has to do something vital, but who first has to figure out what is his goal is a pretty classic and fun type. In this mode he might even end up using human magic, although he may have an odd innate ability or two that are seldom of relevance but could be very useful eventually (maybe he can travel dragon newt roads? Maybe he understands auld wyrmish? ). A twist somewhere in the middle is that he could be an old EWF magician who figured out how to be reborn like the dragon newts are, and so now he wants to recover his old possessions and abilities that had him close to dragon hood. Personally I like that one because it gives you lots of easy plot hooks, chasing down various obscure items all over the lozenge!
Good luck with coming up with something that motivates both of you!
--Bryan
Powered by hypermail