At 08:06 AM 22/10/2004 +1300, you wrote:
> describe the game/campaign you narrate/play in?
It's been a quiet year in the Hughes stead, and I haven't played regularly since our Big Rubble PBMirc, though I have written several convention modules, most recently one set on the starwatch during the siege of Whitewall. Patiently awaiting the outcome of II's fan publishing policy (so I can proceed/not proceed on a number of Gloranthan projects), I've been putting what creative time I have, with Pip's valuable input, into shaping and modelling a roleplaying world.
What follows in non-Gloranthan, and therefore OT except that every thesis (Glorantha) contains both its antithesis and synthesis (my own tentative world), and that the exercise has been a sustained application of lessons and insights learned at the feet of the Gloranthan Masters and from my fellow shapers in the Gloranthan community. Very much Glorantha inspired!
Pardon the length, and the possible limited relevance - the scrambled thoughts that follow were penned for my own benefit as much as anyone else's. So read on at your peril, or quickly skip to the next message. :)
ONTOLOSNA: BRIGHT JOURNEYS ON THE BACK OF THE WORLD BIRD I've been shaping the world of Ontolos-Na or Ontosna, a setting for bright journeys on the back of the World-Bird. The project motto is, "Let Mystery Be".
The human world is set upon the back of Huksae, the World Bird, the Crane of Being, whose flapping wing cycle (visible across the parasol sky) determines the seasons and years. The movement of On, the primary sun (of three - Mother, Brother, and Little Sister) can only be measured across decades, though it undergoes a daily cycle of (prime, female) colours from white to yellow to red to blue to black that determines 'night' and 'day'. And areas in permanent shadow away from On (caves, deep ravines) can develop their own unique physics!
The known world is ecologically luxurious, with predominately white-ish earth and rocks, variations on Himalayan and Indian flora and fauna (including luxurious plant life - giant vegetables and frenzied, opportunistic seasonal growth), and violent extremes of weather and temperature (-40C to 45C even in a coastal lowland).
The region we've been building is a small Empire, The Perfection of Tlon, set about a central sea, with Himalayas-like mountains to the west, ocean to the south, boundless impenetrable hills to the east, and eternal plains to the north. My prime cultural analogues are early Tibetan, Korean, Japanese and Indian, with a dash of Greek polis. And it's a matriarchal/matrilineal Empire, where women dominate in most spheres and regions, with all the utopic and dystopic implications of such fair game for exploration. Caste and slavery exist in various forms, for reincarnation is an accepted fact. Ontosnans can draw on the magic and power of their unborn descendants as well as their ancestors.
I'm using simplified, anglified Hangul (Korean) for root words and concepts to give things a linguistic consistency.
I intend that Ontosna will be an open source world to be shared, communally developed or picked through for ideas (though I have few illusions), so before I set up a wiki or make summary docs available, I've been putting a lot of effort to making sure the basics are clear, consistent and thought through - time, seasons and their implications, colours and other basic ordering systems, plant and animal life and their evolution, key ecologies, human physiology and variation (a bit different), ontology, technology, kinship and caste structures, numbers and measurement (base 3, base 7, base 10), and key cultural assumptions. I've stopped reading the paper on my way to work. I'm devouring notebooks at a rate of knots. :)
THREE KEY CREATIVE PRINCIPLES For me, the most successful roleplaying and literary worlds are those with a clear *creative purpose*. Glorantha is about the dynamics of religion and myth and the celebration of a certain kind of hero, albeit using certain implicit models and assumptions. Dune was a primarily religious world designed to explore power and prophecy, with a strong side interest in ecology.
As Ontosna first winged into view, I spent time thinking about what I wanted the world to be *about*, and about its genre conventions, its central narrative drive. And obviously, knowing little about C4th Parthian cavalry tactics or archaic Greek winemaking, but a little about the social construction of religion, I wanted to play to my own strengths.
So Ontolosna is primarily about the birth of religions and more broadly about religion as a human construct. Though the Powers are real, religion is primarily a human psychological, cultural and social activity, involving altered consciousness and fervent hope and lots of conscious, creative mythmaking. Tlon and its surrounds are set up to mirror social conditions similar to those at the birth of Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, and is peppered with potential bodhisatvas, would-be messiahs, warrior immans, syncretising philosophers, mystics, shamankas, make-it-up-as-we-go seekers and out-and-out cultic frauds, all acting in the shadow of the Theogyns or God Birthers.
Its equally about alternative constructions of gender and society. But I'm getting ahead of myself. :)
I wanted to invert and question certain stereotypes as a design principle. New stereotypes! New generalisations! New distortions! :) Three such inversions quickly became key.
The hope here is to model and explore alternative renderings of gender and society that are not simple role reversals, while ensuring that they are eminently playable.
Ontosnan history has been relatively peaceful and progressive: evolution and change are accepted as good, and a concept of steady progress is part of most folk's world view. Even old scriptures are regularly burnt if nobody is reading them. There are cracks appearing in this of course, history is entering a period where the revolutionary and messianic tensions inherit in an ethos of progress are meeting increasing opposition from newly-entrenched social elites.
2. MAKING GODS Rather than 'gods created humankind', we have 'humans create gods'. And they do, regularly, in massive season- or year- long Theogyn (God-Birther) rituals, creating, strengthening, altering and even combining gods for protection, for war, for prestige and as holders of a city or region or a peoples' wisdom, knowledge and magic.
Now the mysterious Creators of Ontosna were not gods, and long ago departed into 'liberation' or 'wakefulness'. And 'liberation' continues to be a goal for many humans and gods alike.
Most of the present gods have been created by humans or animals. Even the wild clans of the snow deserts know how to carve a rock statue to embody and anthropomorphise the raw power of a mountain or valley.
But the gods are limited. Over time they fade, die or go mad. They have two possible escapes from this fate - to be merged with another god (not the ideal option), or achieve 'liberation' as the creators did. However, liberation can only be achieved in a physical body, a fully human incarnation. And even if the difficulty of incarnation is achieved, there's no guarantee of achieving liberation in a single lifetime. It's an enormous risk. No wonder so many of the gods prefer to devote their energies to attracting worshippers, thereby extending their lives, or to living vicariously by temporarily possessing human bodies.
So of course, several important deities have disappeared of late. Have they incarnated? Or is something else happening?
The gods are neither all-knowing nor all powerful, and they need their human partners and supporters. Ontosnans never pray to their gods, they trade and negotiate with them. Since many of the Powers are capricious and nasty, *any* involvement with the divine involves a considerable amount of risk. Veneration of ancestors and descendants is **much** safer.
3. BODY IS ALL Rather than 'body and soul' and the opposition of body and spirit, body *is* soul. There is no autonomous realm of spirit, nothing that is completely removed from the somatic and the bodily. Even the gods have a physical aspect (even if it's a temple or statue) that can be threatened or destroyed.
From these basic ideas I've begun to weave an entire world. There are other important design principles of course, most positively Staffordian, including
But I've raved on about these before. And doubtless will again. :)
And one final one...
RP demands adventure, of course, but it doesn't necessarily have to fall in the conventional, western, 'epic hero' mode, fond of it though I am. For while things are changing, Tlon is a place where overt violence is seldom an option.
I have a basic Ontosnan model of herodom based on mastering emotional qualities, where growth to a new level entails being obsessed and even possessed by a shadow quality. So the creator must struggle with the inner destructor in order to grow, the sage the fool, the warrior the coward etc.
INITIAL CAMPAIGN FOCII While a campaign is still a long way off, I can see three initial player character focii. I'll initially be concentrating on the Bright Faced Clans of the Kel'ttar, wild upland barbarians (sound familiar?) of the Mountain Breaks Storm range who ride upon sheep and plough with yaks. These simple Tibetan-analogue clanfolk are being drawn into the wider Empire for a variety of reasons.
I'm also focusing on Cynic-analogue pacifist (almost) philosopher-beggars who can roam the streets of the Empire with a certain impunity and sacred freedom, criticising the follies of the mighty.
And for the perfect newbie PC entry point...
The haunted Plain of Being lies to the northwest of Tlon. Over the last twenty years, men and women have been magically appearing on the plain. They arrive naked and with confused and seeming contradictory memories. Some are driven mad by their journey; some fall dead on arrival. No one knows whence they come. Some of these 'Unborm' form themselves into bandit gangs, other attempt to build rudimentary communities. Many are taken as slaves.
And no, they're not abductees. Or are they? :)
Possibilities. Creativity. Ontosna. Potentially years of making mud pies in the sandpit of my mind. :)
Stay tuned
John
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