> I remember "Nandan the Birthing Man" being
> mentioned at one of the Leicester conventions and generally thinking it was
> a cool enough but hugely obscure bit of magic, and then when Thunder rebels
> came out (s)he seemed to have lost his one distinctive magic. Which I always
> thought a bit of a shame.
Well, "Nandan the Birthing Man" specifically I always took at least partially as a rhyming joke, though it was clearly referencing concepts that Greg was going to introduce, and at least part of the friction took the form of some very bad jokes and stuff made on the forums -- but yes, there were a few people who were just shocked by and opposed to the inclusion of Nandan.
I was a bit mystified by the idea at the time myself, and it wasn't til I actually read Thunder Rebels that I was able to fit my head round this new concept ; I just needed to see it properly formalised to see what the intended meanings were, if you like.
IIRC the thing that worried some people was OMG is Greg going to do the same thing with Vinga (who was quite popular at the time) ???!! ZOMG !!! hehehe
I'm sure the Birthing Man magic exists though, there's just a question of how widely available it is, and how it works, given that no official descriptions of it exist... ;)
> The mistake, if people were really reacting badly against him (or her), is
> ever the belief that because there's a God then there are worshippers.
Both Thunder Rebels and Storm Tribe are sometimes confusing in this respect, because all the weird subcults are given equal exposure, which doesn't really help GMs and Players realise which ones are more important and prevalent, and which are more unusual and rare.
However, the main corpus of Thunder Rebels in particular, when it discusses sex and gender, does make it clear that there are mainstream religious solutions for Orlanthi inbetweenies, so it's pretty likely that Nandan is as popular among the Orlanthi as Vinga is, even though the same may not hold true among Glorantha fans... :)
nevertheless, YGWV ... ;)
In particular, I think that these questions are likely to be treated in people's games according to whichever local RL social mores and beliefs -- the great majority of players I've had have been from more conservative backgrounds, and none have ever asked me about playing any kind of sexually ambiguous character. Gay characters yes (rarely), but sexually ambiguous no.
These issues just didn't belong to their expectations, nor what they wanted from a game, whereas my rarer experiences as a player in London or elsewhere existed with completely different sets of expectations in the player groups.
I think these varying expectations are why the issue is a sensitive one, rather than any Gloranthan lore reasons...
Julian Lord
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