From: owner-runequest-rules@lists.imagiconline.com (RuneQuest Rules Digest) To: runequest-rules-digest@lists.imagiconline.com Subject: RuneQuest Rules Digest V3 #4 Reply-To: runequest-rules@lists.imagiconline.com Sender: owner-runequest-rules@lists.imagiconline.com Errors-To: owner-runequest-rules@lists.imagiconline.com Precedence: bulk RuneQuest Rules Digest Friday, January 7 2000 Volume 03 : Number 004 RuneQuest is a trademark of Hasbro/Avalon Hill Games. All Rights Reserved. TABLE OF CONTENTS Re: [RQ-RULES] Divine Magic & the gods [RQ-RULES] True Stone [RQ-RULES] Re: Christianity in RQ [RQ-RULES] Gods in the game. RE: [RQ-RULES] Gods in the game. Re: [RQ-RULES] Divine Magic & the gods Re: [RQ-RULES] True Stone [RQ-RULES] Of gods and mortals [RQ-RULES] Re : Divine Magic & the gods RULES OF THE ROAD 1. Do not include large sections of a message in your reply. Especially not to add "Yeah, I agree" or "No, I disagree." Or be excoriated. If someone writes something good and you want to say "good show" please do. But don't include the whole message you praise. 2. Use an appropriate Subject line. 3. Learn the art of paraphrasing: Don't just quote and comment on a point-by-point basis. 4. No anonymous posting, please. Don't say something unless you're ready to stand by it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 10:13:18 +0800 From: "Matthew Barron" Subject: Re: [RQ-RULES] Divine Magic & the gods Further thoughts and ideas on these questions. Please remember that I use Gloranthan examples only for convenience and ease of translation. (Tal might have some ideas about this from Greyhawk tm) Illumination, deities and getting in worshippers faces: Glorantha has an excellent device - the Great Compromise - for keeping deities from just walking the earth (the Glorantha?) at will. I think other campaigns - such as mine - probably need something like this. Accepting even the existence of some divine limitation like the GC, there's still a lot of things that a deity could do to crack the whip on worshippers. You see I have a massive problem with mortals being able to lie to deities - I mean would you worship some dufuss you could con and cheat? I wouldn't. a). Is the deity omniscient/omnipresent? If yes then bugger lying - you ain't gonna fool 'em never. If no, goto b). b). In what context are you lying to the deity? Holy day worship - if you lie in your prayers then you'd better only be talking to him about stuff inside your own heart or mind otherwise he's gonna catch you out. Example: Trogar and Sogar are brothers and both intiates of Orlanth. Like good initiates they both get together on windsday and pray to Orlanth, telling about their recent exploiots fighting evil chaotic broos. Sogar prays about how he slew nearly fifty of the filthy beggars but they had a dreadful chaos feature which caused their bodies to vanish from existence when they died. Now Trogar tells a slightly different story about how Sogar peed his kilt and hid behind a rock fo rthe whole battle. Not only that but the Thane and the other ten members of the expidition back up Trogar's story. Sogar's attempt to lie to Orlanth falls flat on its face, as does Sogar. OK lets say TRogar and Sogar get together and concoct a lie to the deity about their broo slaying exploits which no other mortal can verify or deny on the deity's behalf - remembering of course that the best they can do is hope that no one else finds out. Anyhow, Trogar and Sogar are going to try and snow Orlanth - no pun intended. Even if Orlanth is not omniscient, is he a complete dummy? Can't he tell a lie from the truth when he hears it. Remember that we mortals tend to have some sorts of instincts about when we're being lied to - wouldn't a deity have at least these skills. And Orlanth has been around for like you know, since there were no mortals. Orlanth was/is close friends with Eurmal, he's probably seen and heard it all. Lying to deities is not simple or easy even if the deity isn't omniscient. Alright maybe some really great heroes could lie to a deity but this is a heroic exploit/heroquest in itself. No problems with that - but it's not something that an ordinary mortal should get away with. Certainly it could not become a routine part of a worshippers relationship with their deity - like getting your divine magic regularly renewed an Orlanthi temple while your secretly(ahem) a Vivamorti cultist. Can't your deity figure it out? Why worship these bozos if they can't? By way of explanation I am motivated in these thoughts by the way so many pc's seem to treat Illumination like a blank cheque "Hey I'm illuminated. I can do what I want and my god can't touch me." When I started roleplaying many years ago this was called rules rape and was widely frowned upon when us twelve year old munchkins suggested it. Disclaimer - for those of you who herquest obviously these discussions are much less relevant. Heroes are supposed to push the envelope and so lying to gods is well within their purview. But anyone playing standard RQ who says "Hey why should I worry what my god thinks man, I'll just fake it to him." GUESS AGAIN MERE MORTAL!!!(reverberate, reverberate) Matt B. *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 04:52:22 +0100 From: "=?iso-8859-1?Q?Germ=E1n_Cantabrana_Gonz=E1lez?=" Subject: [RQ-RULES] True Stone I have a doubt that perhaps will be produced by a translate error. Elder secrets says that people figth wars for a piece of True Stone but the True Stone is like a spell matrix but worse, cos you need to reload it in every use (sacrificing POW) instead praying. So is better a spell matrix than a True Stone. Isn't it? German *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 04:38:22 -0500 (EST) From: simon_hibbs@lycosmail.com Subject: [RQ-RULES] Re: Christianity in RQ Michael Cule : >>Unfortunately, you and I are mortals. > >Umm, are you telling me that I need to be a god to GM? No more than you need to be god to run a game set in the real world. I think you're reading more into that statement than I intended. >Or are you saying that GS is a god? Well he demonstrably isn't infalible. He's not even particularly good at prophesying the future. Simon *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 05:57:06 -0500 (EST) From: simon_hibbs@lycosmail.com Subject: [RQ-RULES] Gods in the game. Matthew Barron asks some excellent questions : >Question 2: How involved do people read RQ divinities as being in the day >to day lives of humanity? This is especially targetted at the issue how >divine beings respond to the behaviour of their believers. In a concious sense, I don't think deities in Glorantha are involved in the day to day activities of their worshipers at all. In fact I don't think they are ever conciously involved in their worshiper's mundane affairs. This only occurs during magical events or rituals of a heroquesty nature. The involvement of a god by definition makes such an event non-mundane. Unconciously they are always permanently involved in the activities of their worshipers. Orlanthi _is_ storm, the air you breathe is his body, the rain is the sweat of his toils, sunlight is the immanent presence of the glory of Yelm, etc. >Question 1: Where does divine magic come from? Does it come direct a divine >being/source or from a religion? Or both? I'm looking for opinions and game >implications here not an absolute answer. Divine magic comes from the worshiper's moral authority over nature, granted to the worshiper by the god. When I say granted, I mean that the god makes it's heroquests and rituals available to it's worshipers so that they can use the mysteries of their god to gain magical powers. Thunder is an attribute of Orlanth, so yes the thunder comes from orlanth, is part of orlanth, but the Orlanthi is now part of the thunder too. I do not believe that Orlanth can 'decide' to not let a thunderbolt happen when a worhsiper tries to cast one. The worshiper knows these mysteries of the god, has performed the rituals necessery to gain the thunder powers and has gained the right to wield them. An apostate priest is clearly suffering from severely weakened faith, but nevertheless still has storm powers. I would rule that an apostate who is nolonger truly an orlanthi would have their re-usable rune magic become one-use, but once earned, the right to use these powers cannot simply be taken away arbitrarily. In the mundane physical world of Glorantha Orlanth has a real physical presence, but it's as though he's sleep walking. He doesn't have a concious presence. It's as though the gods are asleep in the real world and only awake in the otherworld. To interact with the gods as concious beings you need to travell to the otherworld, either through heroquesting or at high holy day ceremonies and such. Divine magic then is a reflexive response, the giuiding inteligence of which is provided by the worshiper, not the god. >Question 3: What's the deal with Illumination? This seems to really raise >some major questions about the relationship between mortals and their divinities. Illumination is a mystical insight. Mysticism is not the same as theism and mystics have a very different view of the nature of gods and their relationship to mortals than theists do. In a sense, they can seperate out those parts of themselves which 'belong' to a cult and only show the relevent part of themselves when they want to. An Orlanthi Vivamort worshiper standing before Orlanth appesrs to be simply an Orlanthi. His relationship to Vivamort is completely invisible to Orlanth. It's simply none of Orlanth's business. This works because an illuminate doesn't necesserily see any incompatibility between Orlanthi and Vivamorti religious beliefs. He is able to justify both to himself without guilt. A non-illuminated orlanthi who tried this would wear his guilt like a neon sign (in a spiritual sense). > In the case of deities like Orlanth etc., loads of followers. You go awol and >Orlanth just hops on the line to all his priests in the area and anti chaos >thanes are hunting you down as we speak. An illuminate knows that Orlanth cannot do this to them. In a sense the illuminate becomes invisible to Orlanth, who now has no moral authority over him. >This argument goes double for anyone who wants to ride the line between Chaos >and the rest of us. In a way back post on this digest someone told of an >illuminated character who was both Vivamorti and Orlanthi. Clearly the rules >allow this, but Orlanth and his followers probably wouldn't. Orlanth has no more knowledge of or authority over an illuminated Orlanthi than he has over ordinary members of other religions. How much authority does Orlanth have over a priest of Yelm in Raibanth? That's how much authority he has over an Illuminated priest of Orlanth in Boldhome. How do other Orlanthi know that this guy has become a Vampire? If he conceals the fact and keeps his nose clean in public, who's to tell? Simon Hibbs *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 11:33:54 -0000 From: "Hibbs, Philip" Subject: RE: [RQ-RULES] Gods in the game. Simon: >An apostate priest is clearly suffering from severely >weakened faith, but nevertheless still has storm powers. >I would rule that an apostate who is nolonger truly an >orlanthi would have their re-usable rune magic become >one-use, but once earned, the right to use these >powers cannot simply be taken away arbitrarily. I think the RQ rules are simulating the priest's reduced storm powers by making the magic one use. In another game system where magical power is more finely granular, his ability would be simply reduced, possibly incrementally over time until it becomes unusable. Philip Hibbs http://www.snark.freeserve.co.uk/ Opinions expressed may not even be my own, let alone those of any organisations, nations, species, or schools of thought to which I may be affiliated. *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 07 Jan 2000 09:41:00 +0000 From: William Wenz Subject: Re: [RQ-RULES] Divine Magic & the gods Greg Stafford did a article on divination and divine intervention in Wyrms Footnotes #11. It seems to me that it gave a very good example of what the gods did and did not know. I'll dig it out this weekend and post what it said. -Kurt *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 11:06:43 -0500 From: "Bob Stancliff" Subject: Re: [RQ-RULES] True Stone > I have a doubt that perhaps will be produced by a translate error. Elder > secrets says that people figth wars for a piece of True Stone but the True > Stone is like a spell matrix but worse, cos you need to reload it in every > use (sacrificing POW) instead praying. So is better a spell matrix than a > True Stone. Isn't it? > German Under early rules, I believe, a blank Truestone was impressed with spells by taking them from the mind of the person(s) who touched it first. These spells were stripped from the mind of the person(s), but could be cast from the Truestone. Once cast, they were lost, but the stone was now impressed with those spells and could be recharged by a priest with those spells. The priest would not lose those spells this time, but they would not recover until the spells were cast from the stone. The other, very important power, is that a Truestone could store an infinite number of MP's. This might be wrong, since I don't have the original write-up, but I got this from a very early player of the game. It is certainly a justification for a small war. The spell storing ability of Truestone listed above, is still pretty unchanged, but the MP storing power was certainly dropped. In this sense, POW is only lost during the impressing of the stone, but the temple gains a spell battery that they can charge, give to a party of initiates, and get back after the quest is finished, all without having to directly endanger a priest. Since priests have a very high opinion of their importance and most don't adventure, this is an invaluable ability to them and to the temple as a whole. It is also basically worthless to adventurers. An adventurer wants something that he can keep and recharge easily and cheaply, so a divine matrix is much better for them. The only drawback is the cost. They have to be made by a priest, 1 POW has to go for the reusable Enchant Divine Matrix Spell, the priest loses the chosen spell into the matrix and has to sacrifice to relearn it, and another POW per point of spell has to go to create the matrix. This means that the POW cost of divine matrices is at least double that of spirit matrices, and with a point of POW very roughly valued around 1500L, few people can buy one, and fewer people will sell one. It is my opinion that no enchanter -of any type- will risk more than about 6 or 7 POW on one enchantment unless he knows that his death is near and he wants to leave some legacy to an heir. There is rarely any value to dropping POW below 9 for the sake of an enchantment... recovering takes too long. Stancliff *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 12:35:20 -0500 (EST) From: simon_hibbs@lycosmail.com Subject: [RQ-RULES] Of gods and mortals Rich Allen : > When a king provides one of his subjects with a power (an >office/command/etc) that is used in the king's name, and that subject abuses >or makes the king look bad through the use of the power, the king will >surely revoke the power, at a minimum, and would most likely assess some >kind of punishment as well. Kingship confers the power to read minds then? If this were true, then surely no kings would have had bad, corrupt or treacherous councilors? I cite the records of history as evidence to the contrary. Even in the myths, the gods clearly are susceptible to being tricked and deceived by mortals. > A diety would be able to do the same thing, in my opinion. This doesn't >mean that the diety could not be fooled, not all dieties have to be >omniscient or omnipotent after all. In fact from a theist point of view practicaly no deities are omnipotent or omniscient. If Yelmalio were omnipotent, for example, how come he gets comprehensively kicked in at the Hill of Gold? Orlanth is clearly a tough customer, but even his own myths hardly portray him as omnipotent. Omniscience generaly comes with all kinds of catches and gotchas too, such as the inability to change anything you foretell. Simon Hibbs *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 7 Jan 2000 12:36:22 -0500 (EST) From: simon_hibbs@lycosmail.com Subject: [RQ-RULES] Re : Divine Magic & the gods I think most of what Bob Stancliff says about theist magic is broadly consistent with my own views on this. There are a few things Bob says that differ sufficiently from my take on it to comment on : > When a god casts a spell they draw directly on the runic source that the >spell is derived from. They shape the magic by their skill into the form >of the requested spell, and pass it through the POW sacrifice back to the >worshipper. I would tend to emphasises the personal relationship between a god and it's powers more. Blowing winds and peals of thunder aren't just powers Orlanth wields, they are part of Orlanth's substance and nature. I think Malkioni might use a description similar to yours for how theist magic works. I don't think theists see it this way. You make some good comments on spirit magic for theists. I'd add that the main difference between theists and animists is that animists see themselves as being of the same order of being as animals, plants, rocks, and the spirits of such. Theists believe that the gods have a special place in the order of the universe, in the same way that feudalists believe that royalty are qualitatively different from commoners. The shift from a tribal animist culture to a feudal monarchist culture have many paralels in the shift in philosophy between animism and theism. I don't think illumination has anything much to do with ties to law and chaos. Illuminates can be sorcerers, who's magic relies on adherance to the principles of Cosmic Law, and they can be chaotics. I don't think illumination breaks any links in the sense that illuminates are prevented from casting lawful or chaotic spells, for example. Clearly they can and so are capable of forming such links. Simon Hibbs *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. ------------------------------ End of RuneQuest Rules Digest V3 #4 *********************************** *************************************************************************** To unsubscribe from this list send mail to majordomo@lists.imagiconline.com with the line 'unsubscribe runequest-rules' as the body of the message. RuneQuest is a Trademark of Hasbro/Avalon Hill Games. 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