Peter,
Thanks for the summary of points of view; seeing it all in one place is
helpful.
On Sun, Nov 27, 2011 at 4:37 AM, Peter Metcalfe <metcalph_at_vPm2w1fj3KSAk6ZYYIdJNjqa6bWcFWu8NtjWpgS5dlOSZahuuf8czK-gAME3ZFPyctQ07YIRVAdQAeZSYmqUqzY1tg.yahoo.invalid
> wrote:
> **
> Lastly Peter Larsen brought up the Ravenous movie. My problem with
>
> translating that to Glorantha is that the Wendigo taboo (like pretty
> much all taboos) is one of absolute liability. If one performs the act,
> then the taboo has been broken _regardless_ of intention: Boyd still
> became touched by the Wendigo even though he was eating from an already
> dead body to save himself. If a god promotes a cannibalistic rite then
> the god is promoting a chaotic rite. It's like incest; it doesn't
> matter if you didn't know the person was closely related to you - it's
> still disgustingly icky and you should be ashamed of yourself. If you
> require a guilty mind to go with the action, then what you have is no
> longer a taboo but something closer in spirit to criminal legislation.
> While I could accept some gloranthan religions (ie the Kralori and the
> Malkioni) be concerned with the rightness or wrongness of one's thought,
> I find it difficult to believe that Chaos would be so dependent on one's
> mental state.
>
I think it's a little more complicated than this. You have to have an act
that is:
- Against Your Gods/Spirits/Saints -- Some acts will be taboo in one place
but not another. Incest is bad in pretty much all cultures, but different
cultures define incest differently. So, in Orlanthi society, sex with a
clan mate is incest, while Pelorians might count degrees of kinship by
generations, and some Westerners might need a priest to establish a firm
ruling on whether a relationship was consanguineous or not. They all agree
that the act is wrong, but the specific definition of the act varies from
place to place (and from individual to individual; it is not hard to
iamgine a society where incest is forbidden for everyone except the royal
family, who have special rites to allow it or something). Maybe it's just
that every person is "protected from chaos" by the mores of their culture
as laid down by the gods/spirits/whatever.*
- Done knowingly -- Something that is done with full knowledge. So, chaos
doesn't get the person who unknowingly eats human meat by a ruse or marries
her brother because of some Shakespearean mistaken identity plot. That
doesn't mean that the deceived person/people are off the hook -- their
divine protectors may well know what is up and turn their faces away -- bad
luck, failed rituals, etc are likely to follow. If the deceived person
figures out their crime and makes restitution, they may escape chaos (of
course, restitution may involve death and./or damnation, but, hey, it's
better than chaos, right? Someone who does something aware of what they are
doing is in much more danger.
- Once Is Risky; Repeated Behavior Is Worse -- So the guy who eats a dead
companion while trapped in a snowstorm has done something horrible and
needs to atone, possibly fatally. A worse outcome is the guy who eats that
companion and feels OK about it. Maybe he had Ogre blood somewhere, maybe
the violation has let chaos into his heart, whatever. He will be tempted to
repeat the act to get the thrill of violation again, (Not Glorantha, but
the Lovecraft story "The Picture in the House" is a good narrative of the
process) and that's the slippery slope -- he basically abandons himself to
the crime.
- Not Otherwise Covered by Your Pantheon -- This is probably
overcomplicated, but I imagine that some pantheons have evil but not
chaotic gods that "take charge" of certain sins. So kinstrife is profoundly
disruptive to Orlanthi society, but people not wholly lost to the cosmos
can "take refuge" in Gargath, whereas a upper class Solar son who kills his
father may not have anywhere to "hide." Humakti can kill relatives,
although no one is likely to thank them for it, most cultures would treat
murder of your family as taboo.
So I think that "eat human flesh turns you into an Ogre" is too simplistic
from an absolute view, although perhaps it's what the average person on the
street in Glorantha thinks.
- I realize that this opens it up to "whatever my god says is OK is OK,"
which, as Peter Metcalf pointed out in previous threads, is not satisfying
as a universal morality. On the other hand, saying that what protects the
individual from chaos is correct behavior, and that different pantheons
might set the boundaries a little differently, is not too unreasonable.
I think part of the problem with this discussion is that different real
world people have different comfort levels, and a set of game rules and
descriptions of cultures can't address them all. So, some players and GMs
might be perfectly happy with stories which have greater or lesser amounts
of rape, murder, cannibalism, and whatever to add frisson to the
proceedings. Other people, with different histories, might not find such
stories fun and want something else. I guess I am revolted by cannibalism,
and don't really want it in my Glorantha as anything done by non-villainous
people. I have a friend who has suffered some significant police brutality,
and, if that person was in my gaming group, I would be very careful about
introducing police brutality (or even the police in general) into
adventures. The point is to have fun, not trigger flashbacks or make
players feel bad.
Peter Larsen
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]