Or rather, I conflated the two because I implicitly assumed that must be when they do that ritual. Your question points out that it may be a bad assumption.
> (And you weren't asking about a culture, you're asking about
> "animists" which - depending on the rule system we are using
> - may not be a meaningful distinction for purposes of rules.)
True, I'm not asking about a culture, but I think the distinctions between the ways of doing magic have been there for a very long time. And if someone had said "Here's how it worked in RQ3," I'd have figured out what it meant in world and in HQ2.
> Personally, I don't think it's a useful category
> except possibly in a "preparing to go to war with
> an evil spirit" aspect.
You may be right, though I think your exception is pretty much the whole category. (Being prepared for war does not mean planning to attack. They could simply be prepare to defend vigorously.) When I see a possible pattern with a missing piece, I always wonder if there is a missing piece or if there's really no pattern. The fact that I was having a hard time visualizing it in a way that didn't feel like a cheap knock-off of some Orlanthi ritual hinted to me that there was nothing there.
> I'm not sure how you would get there, but I am sure
> a story can be constructed where the situation is
> the spirit isn't manifest and they must go to it for
> some reason.
Sure, but do animists recognize this as something that must be done frequently (annually?), so that they commonly have rituals to do so? And is there something distinctly animist about it, which would be shared by other animist cultures?
> I don't think there is anything meaningful about the
> idea that placation is "active" magic by some sort of
> definition. Depending on the narrative at the time,
> any of these can be active or benefit or whatever. The
> rules don't need classifying of magics that way (as
> I've argued before) and it is an extremely rules-centered
> approach to the problem.
I would disagree. I would say that what I am looking for is guidance for narrators. "Here's a handy way to" rather than "you must." The point in Glorantha is that you do some rituals in advance of the need, and it protects you for a long time, while you do other rituals only when needed to handle a manifestation of evil.
> If that's the specific issue (what rules to apply) we should
> probably move it over to the rules list.
I don't read it.
> If the question is "what ritual do they do for this kind of
> thing", I say it depends on the culture in question.
If that is your answer, then -- implicitly -- you are saying that there is no commonality, nothing essentially animist about this situation. That is, there is no middle point between "it's a game rule" and "it's the culture." I think I disagree with that, though I'm still having a hard time visualizing it. Peter's comments got me closest to what I was trying to see.
> It sounds like some kind of ritual where you arm yourself
> with the best weapons against the foe. Something very specific.
Maybe, but what I'm trying to see is whether there is a class of particularly animist rituals that happen under similar circumstances, result in grossly similar benefits, and can be handled by similar applications of game rules, across cultures. (Not the monomyth notion that spirit X in culture A is also spirit Y in culture B.)
> So if this is for the community it goes to the wyter
> and maybe goes to the wyter's magic rating.
I hadn't considered that. That's a good thought. In rules terms, I had been thinking about the rituals resulting in a lingering benefit. I'll have to examine the community spirit approach, too.
> Again, I am deeply suspicious that you can say "Theists
> do this" and "Animists do this" when it comes to ritual
> in any meaningful way in Glorantha.
There has been a lot of focus on distinguishing theism, animism, and sorcery. I can't imagine that, despite those differences, they do their rituals the same way. For example, we know that theist ritual tend to involve sacrificial worship, where animist rituals tend to involve ecstatic worship.
> There are at least two major streams of Theism in Glorantha -
> the Yelmites and the Orlanthi, and while we can argue they've
> interacted so often their rituals look the same, I'm not sure
> that's true. While I suspect all the tribes of Prax share
> similar structure to their rituals, I have no particular
> reason to believe other animists have the same exact approach.
Animism and theism are different ways of doing magic. That leads me to suspect that a Praxian and a Balazaring ritual for a specific circumstance would have points of commonality that they would not share with an Orlanthi or Dara Happan ritual.
> Thus emphasizing "animists would focus on the bad guy"
> seems weird to me. And what about things like the Summons of Evil?
> There's some focusing of the power on the bad guy there.
Theism is about being your god. Your power in a theist ritual comes from emulating the god. Animism is about relating to the spirits (negotiation and conquest being two common types of interaction). Surely, then, your power in an animist ritual comes from the manner in which you relate to the spirit. So, where a theist gets power from the "X beats" part of the "X beats Y" ritual, the animist gets power from the "beats Y" part. (Assuming, of course that the point of the ritual is getting power over Y, not getting a charm containing one of X's spirits.)
> If you want the culture in your game to do a ritual to focus
> on arming themselves against the evil spirit they know is
> coming, I see no reason why they wouldn't have one. It seems
> like one of the standards all cultures would have.
Yes, exactly. So, in animism, what does it do when you beat up on Y (or maybe, Y's representative)? Or do you believe that the answer is different per ritual or per culture? (I'll admit that I don't like that answer because I think it fails to give narrators help in visualizing the magic that they have never seen conducted and, especially, in visualizing the differences.)
> That's a possibility. I would say that doing the "we beat
> up your disease spirit, don't mess with us" ritual means
> you can't propitiate Mallia for a while.
Certainly. Propitiating her is morally blameworthy in most cultures, so I would think that people would prefer to do the "beat up" ceremony if it could be done with the same cost and risk-reward balance. (And, since there is a proptiation ritual, it follows that the two do not have the same cost and risk-reward balance in all situations.)
Chris
Powered by hypermail