>My impression is that while the *player* chooses three runes for his
>character, in world it is really the runes (gods) that choose the character.
I'v never been fond of the metaphor of the gods 'choosing' people in Glorantha, although I'm quite sure at least some societies explain it that way. Gods actively intervening in the Middle World to select which mortals will be their followers seems to give them too much agency and free will.
As I understand it, entities in the mortal world are "made of Everything" - that is, each individual contains a little bit of Air, a little bit of Fire, a little bit of Harmony, a little bit of Motion, and so forth. The proportions are not equal, though: for example in Sartar for cultural, magical and historical reasons the Air rune tends to be more prevalent among men (and Earth among women), which is why Heortling men tend to be good at air magic and often initiate to gods like Orlanth. In game terms, you choose an average of three runes which form a significant enough proporton of your make-up that you can perform magic with them.
Whether you can change your composition, or have it changed for you, is an interesting question. There's some evidence it's possible: chieftains gaining the Mastery rune, for example - but I'm not sure if that's a case of them actually gaining it, or "discovering" or "awakening" something that was already there but hidden. In game terms it's the same thing, but in the Gloranthan/'Watsonian' perspective, it's not.
Of course this only applis to theistic magic. As far as I'm aware your character could learn sorcerous fire magic or control an animist fire spirit regardless of her own runic make-up.
Stephen
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