>From: "Charles Corrigan" <charles_at_...>
>My understanding of mysticism is that any attachment to the real world is
>an obstacle to mystal transcendance, so by definition, a player hero out
>there kicking butt (or otherwise involved in the
world) is not a mystic.
Well, this all assumes that "hero" must mean butt-kicker or meddler. Not really a requirement in my game. In any case, I'm also assuming that the character is a more or less "failing" mystic. In that, yeah, he's somehow getting involved in things he probably doesn't want to be involved with. I think that's an interesting idea.
In fact I have such a character going right now in one game. He encountered these two rogue characters, and being very naieve (which is an interesting idea in and of itself), they have been stringing him along in their schemes because he lends them a veneer of respectability. There was an incredibly funny moment where they lead him to a bar and he asked for milk and was served fermented goat's milk, and got roaring drunk.
He is in no way a combatant, but does have abilities afforded to him by being able to see the illusory nature of reality. For example, he can "Cloud Men's Minds," "Become One With The Trees" and other such camp. While drunk he managed to enlighten a formerly vile giant, who now follows the character. It's not played like he wants the giant to follow him and help him, the giant simply seeks more knowledge and so sticks around.
It's been pretty fun.
>The mystical otherworld is the mundane world.
Could work. I'd think that the "otherworld" is the "truth" simply in that they relalize that there are certain truths that are the only reality and that the reality of the mundane world is that it is all an illusion that prevents knowledge of what the truth is. I actually don't have a problem with the idea of a Sufi cognate mysticism having the saint plane, essence plane, and solace as otherworlds. What I think mysticism here represents is merely another rout to get to these places. A realization that the "mixed" mundane world doesn't really exist, and that it's all a "projection" of the truth of some otherworld.
What I think is different about mysticism is how they get their magic. Sufi cognates shouldn't have grimoires (well, Liber Carmanos perhaps as a Q'uran cognate). Something like Kabbalah I suppose could be read as wizardry...
But then there are the "unidentifiable" mystic forms. Yeah, a Zen cognate shouldn't have any magic. But a Tao one definitely should. And what would that be, otherworld in question? Doesn't exist according to Tao. Buddhism? Theism because you emulate the Buddha? Making a Gloranthan cognate like this and calling it something like missapplied worship would just not cut it.
I think that just like Wizardry in Hero Quest gets away with some small nods to literary convention (I mean who doesn't want to play a Gandalfian Wizard?), it wouldn't hurt too terribly to have mystics who are somewhat like the trope that we all have in our heads when we think of mystics. Sure, that includes Shao-lin temple monks, but also various other aescetics and even ecstatics (again, what do you make of the Dervishes?).
And after all, weren't the God Learners some sort of mystics? Not all that dissimilar from the Gnostics in some ways?
I think there's room for it.
Mike
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