Re: Good Tricksters, Hare? from ttrotsky2 on 2008-01-14 (World of Glorantha)

From: ttrotsky2 <TTrotsky_at_pzMd4ZiCIHpeFK8HoaAcO3AuGrjMBM_OExz52PdmRLvEoot5HuF5qpl2YfskJrQul4o>
Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 17:36:53 -0000

Dan Guillou:

> Even if there are no good tricksters, I thought
> that there were still scope for degrees. Some tricksters, like
> Eurmal, has a kinda leash, and anyways do 25 % good stuff on their
> own. Other tricksters are nothing but bad news. Did Carrot Man ever
> do anyone a good turn? Does Daak the Stranger (ILHB1 p39) have a
> single redeeming feature?

Is Daak a Trickster, though? He's certainly an amoral god of theft, but so's Lanrbil, and he's not a Trickster, AFAIK.

> I would have guessed that Gloranthan tricksters varied a lot in their
> malignancy. Real World comparison: Loki, to Coyote, to Hermes. I would
> also have guessed that pelorian tricksters, generally, would be more
> rotten, as a consequence of the solar guys' anal retentive obsession
> with order, no?

I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the Dara Happans get far more upset about (for example) the '25% meaningless stuff' than the Heortlings do - same behaviour from the Trickster, but an even more negative reaction to it from everyone around him. The big problem with the Pelorian Trickster is that, unlike, the Heortlings, the Dara Happans don't seem to have any mechanism for taming him, even temporarily.

OTOH, that's not to say that you're wrong about Tricksters in different cultures varying somewhat in their attributes and the extent of their wrongdoing. I don't know enough about them to comment on that - but there are other possible explanations.

-- 
Trotsky
Gamer and Skeptic

------------------------------------------------------
Trotsky's RPG website: http://www.ttrotsky.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/