> No, I am saying Ernaldans deserve respect because they have a lot of
> magical power and they worship one of the primal gods of Glorantha.
> And if you are playing Heroquest or Pendragon Pass, you no longer are
> using a rules system that only models violence or success/failure with
> skills and should be able to create dramatic tension around events
> other than smashing things.
>
There was one Ernaldan player in Jeff's recent Sartar game -- it would be interesting to hear how well this theory worked for her in practice. Fortunately for her, she doesn't read this list.
For the rest of you, I propose an exercise: When the log of Jeff's Sartar game is published, go through the dramatic high points and list off the ones where an Ernalda PC did or could have played a key role. Then go through and list off the ones where a Vingan could have played a key role.
It's no contest, really. The few Ernalda moments were ones that Jeff bravely inserted by departing wholesale from the _Sartar Rising_ storyline. The rest is practically all warfare and Orlanthi magic. For the vast majority of the story, traditional female characters who appear at all are just setting details, sort of like the Africans in _Out of Africa_ or the Egyptians in _The English Patient_.
I don't fault Jeff for this -- he did as much as anyone could reasonably expect to make things playable for the Ernaldan PC. But as I noted elsewhere, the Ernaldan PC's follower husband might well have ended up with more screen time, due to the nature of the Sartar material Jeff was working with.
Ian Thomson somehow managed to work things differently in his campaign, it would be nice to hear how.
By the way: To evaluate the screen time of a hypothetical Vingan in Jeff's campaign log, you can just search for the word "Brenna". That's the name of a woman warrior PC who was not a Vingan, but who dallied with men and eventually (gasp) got pregnant. Let's hope that her cult of Redalda doesn't pick up some nasty social handicap the next time it gets a rewrite.
Rob Helm
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