Religion in Midnight (split)

[Scripty]

I think there's a problem with using Heroquest for Midnight religion in that it's developed for a gameworld emphasising very very different themes, a very spiritual, pagan message.  In Heroquest-Glorantha, humans reach out to become one with the cosmos, in Midnight humans are cut off from the cosmos and ground down to a tiny defiant nub of vitality holding out against the encroaching dark.

Sorry to interrupt. I don't intend to interject. But I just wanted to add something to clarify your point, at least from my view.

I don't think it's so much that HeroQuest's system is the "problem" with using HeroQuest to play Midnight so much as it is the clash between the cosmology (and underlying philosophy) of Glorantha and the cosmology of Midnight.

As I mentioned earlier, the only area where the two cosmologies are connected are in the realms of Animism and Monotheism (and even then only barely). Trying to reconcile the cosmology of Glorantha with what's going on in Midnight is a dead-end, in my opinion. In fact, I tried to do that a bit too much in my own conversion even though I was consciously trying to avoid it at the same time.

A lot of Glorantha has to be dropped from the system, IMO, to make HeroQuest work with Midnight. In fact, if I were to do it all over again (and I may), I'd likely kill off the distinction between concentrated and unconcentrated magic (which Mike has demonstrated to be an effective strategy in his Shadow World campaign) and I'd probably pare the styles of magic down to just Theism and Animism-as-Magical-Followers or something of that nature.

I would also probably add in a basic "setting ability" such as Corruption like I did with Entropy in my Dark Sun-HQ conversion. What better way to capture the "mood" of a setting in HeroQuest than to quantify it?

But I don't think this speaks of the HeroQuest system being incompatible for Midnight. Just Glorantha being incompatible with Midnight. Which makes a lot of sense.

Scott

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Sorry to interrupt.

You weren't interrupting anything.  Simon is no longer a player in my game and hasn't been for a while - not in fact since we converted to HeroQuest.

[Kerstin Schmidt]

The Church of Izrador

Izrador's religion is monotheistic even though in reality Izrador is one of the gods in a pantheon.  This means that all Church worship is misapplied.  

According to Church doctrine, Izrador will rise again to His full glory once all pagan magic and belief is extinguished on Aryth.  This is why the Shadow armies are fighting their bloody war of extermination against elves and other fey.  This is why Legates (Izrador's elite priests) and their Astirax companions (incorporeal horrors from beyond the Black Mirrors) hunt down and destroy channelers and people who use non-Izradian magic.  

The Izradian Church is near ubiquitous in civilised lands.  Every settlement of importance in Erenland has at least one church with a Black Mirror in it.  Only the empty plains in the south, the Sea of Pelluria and of course the great elven forest in the west remain largely free of Izrador's Mirrors.  

The Church controls trade, travel, and legal affairs.  If you wish to trade in the marketplace or file an accusation against your only son's murderer, you had better be a worshipper of good standing with your local church.  If you need to travel, a dispensation from your local church and a list of churches to register with en route will help prove that you are legitimate and not a pagan outlaw or a hunted heretic.  

The Church can also provide help in more direct ways.  Crops and animals force-grown with Church blessings grow to huge proportions.  They are strangely flavourless compared to fruit growing in the wild or game hunted, insects trying to feed off them fall dead, and monstrosities such as two-headed calves are not uncommon.  Yet – the orc armies need feeding, the Church needs its tithe and then you need to feed and clothe a family.  

Then there's the undeath problem.  Many people's essences these days are stuck in their bodies when they die, forcing them to rise as Fell with an insane hunger for sentient flesh.  The Church captures Fell, to destroy or to use for its own purposes, possibly as grisly recruits in its war against the elves.  

And finally people who go willingly to be sacrificed over a Mirror on one of the Holy Days, or to appease a roiling angry Mirror, are assured that they will never rise as ghosts or Fell.  



Abilities:  Dutiful Worker, Recognise Church Authority, Worship Izrador  
Virtues:  Accept Lot in Life, Obedient
Magic:  tbc
Relationships:  tbc
Other side: The House of Roiling Shadow, beyond the Mirrors.  (false demesne)

---

Here's where I'm a bit stumped.  In the published material for Midnight, Legates are both the priests and leaders of the religion and the most powerful spellcasters.  I'm not sure how to put that into Wizardry terms.  I'm under the impression, and Scott seems to be saying in one of his posts above, that under Wizardry rules you have liturgists as religious leaders on the one hand, and Adepts (and orderlies?) as the people who are really powerful mages on the other.  Am I wrong?


(Edit:  included description of the "other side".)

[S'mon]

Hi Scott - yeah, I meant that the underlying cosmologies are so different it can cause problems in translation.  I think the bare-bones mechanics of Heroquest can potentially work great with Midnight, but any discussion of an area like religion in Midnight with reference to Heroquest rules inevitably raises a potential culture-clash.

[Scripty]

Here's where I'm a bit stumped.  In the published material for Midnight, Legates are both the priests and leaders of the religion and the most powerful spellcasters.  I'm not sure how to put that into Wizardry terms.  I'm under the impression, and Scott seems to be saying in one of his posts above, that under Wizardry rules you have liturgists as religious leaders on the one hand, and Adepts (and orderlies?) as the people who are really powerful mages on the other.  Am I wrong?

From my understanding, Monotheism and Wizardry are linked by the Gloranthan sphere or otherworld with which they are associated. That's why there both in that one section. In Glorantha (again from my understanding, which may be flawed) there isn't necessarily a connection between Liturgists and Adepts, such that any religion necessarily has both or that an exclusivity between the two doesn't exist.

That's why I split up the Legates' duties. I reasoned that Peers could act as Liturgists, doing the grunt work of keeping people in line with the Laws of Izrador and gave Legates the role of being the Administrative, Martial and Occult ministers of the religion. If a Peer distinguished himself, then he was shipped off to Theros Obsidia to undergo training in Legatedom. So, there's a shift in the career path of a Legate (to my thinking) from being a low-level peon-believer-prostelytizer to (whoops!) going to see the Big Bad in T.O. and out pops a Legate (spellcaster).

What happens in Theros Obsidia to catalyze this transformation is anybody's guess.

I do like the way you determined that Monotheistic worship of Izrador is misapplied. Theoretically, if Legates are Adepts of Izrador, their magical abilities would count as misapplied as well. But, then again, I haven't convinced myself, yet, that reconciling Glorantha's otherworlds and spheres of magic with Midnight's religion is a really effective approach. I'd recommend having the religions work as best suits the results you're going for in your game. Trying to back engineer them into Glorantha's cosmology is really unimportant if you're getting the results you want.

I wish I understood that when I first tried the conversion. It would be about 40 pages shorter (I think).

Scott

[Mike Holmes]

Wow, lots to cover here. Listen up, because I don't think I can do this twice.

First, I disagree with a lot of what's being said.

Trying to reconcile the cosmology of Glorantha with what's going on in Midnight is a dead-end, in my opinion.

I don't think anyone is trying to do that. I'm certainly not. I've said this before, and I'll say it again, I don't think that the HQ magic system is specifically Gloranthan.

Think of it this way, are warriors specifically Gloranthan? No, actually, they're specifically Earth-an. Animism, Theism, and Wizardry are all from Earth, not Glorantha specifically. Put another way, all RPGs include elements of the real world so that it's something that we can relate to. The three magic forms aren't Smench, Albarqtuan, and Vazenicalism. They're things that we can all relate to from Earth. The Greeks were theists, Native Americans were animists, and Europe followed the wizardry model.

To stop for just a moment, I don't know why you see the need to make monotheism something different than wizardry, Scott. I think it confuses the issue, really, and doesn't add anything. I mean, I'd agree with you if you wanted to call the entire thing monotheism instead of wizardry. But that's just a term. In point of fact, the idea is that most schools of wizardry follow the church - that is, you have to be a member to get in. So they are, largely, monotheists too. What causes the problem, in theory, is that the one god doesn't monitor his magic, and therefore the link seems tentative. But the magic comes from the same otherworld, however, which is the key point. For example, there's no reason that a character couldn't be both a liturgist and an Adept. Because they both agree on where the magic comes from. Sorcerers just take advantage of the fact that god won't stop them if they take his powers (and may therefore believe that there is no One God).

Anyhow, this all fits, very much, the pattern of religions that we know from Earth.

Now, a problem occurs to some extent, because Gygax used Jack Vance's work as his model for how magic works (or, at least claimed after the fact that Vance was the inspiration for the "fire and forget" magic system). Bear with me a moment. The point here is that Vance's work, and Gygax's D&D divorced magic from religion. This is a very rare thing in myth, literature, or how people think about magic. But at this key point in history for RPGs, magic became something secular, like the psionics from Vance's work.

Subsequently magic systems of most other RPGs followed suit. You had your religious magic, and you had your secular magic. Clerics and Magic Users. Now, I really don't have to go farther than D&D, because Midnight is a D&D setting. But I could go on to explain how this has become pandemic in other RPGs with magic.

The big problem with this model is that it necessarily "technologies" magic. People for ages have talked about how "unmagical" magic is in RPGs. There have been dozens of threads about it, and people kept missing, and missing, and missing on why it was that magic felt incorrect. "It's too predictable!" was a common cry. "It doesn't feel mystical in any way!" What they're all pointing out is that it doesn't feel supernatural. Because for a person to use magic like is described, sans any belief system about the supernatural, they have to see it as a technology. Period. No matter how unreliable or weird you make magic, it says nothing about cosmology at all unless you make it linked to the supernatural in some way. I mean otherwise you could claim that electricity was magic. If you don't see electricity as magical, then you have to see magic sans a backing belief system as non-magical, too. A phenomenon to be explained.

As soon as you slap on a belief system, however, explaining about things like the beings from which magic comes, and the potential for an afterlife, and having to supplicate said beings to get the magic, etc, well, it becomes magical again. No matter how otherwise "technological" it sounds. This is why fireballs are OK in HQ - it's not just something that you get from nowhere, it's a small part of a sun god, or the essence of God's fire.


I've said before, that one has a basic choice when doing a conversion of a fantasy system to HQ. One can convert the original system and setting to HQ, or one can just convert the setting. Now what does that mean? Well, I actually have never believed Gygax's "Jack Vance" dodge. I think it happened like this:

1. They made chainmail. This includes rules for "Evil High Priests" and "Wizards" (IIRC - you'll have to forgive me I'm trying to remember a rule system I last saw about a quarter of a century ago), and in it, they're given so many spells that they can cast each battle. I think that you may even have to pay points to buy the spells for the unit.
2. D&D is created from chainmail. We can't have wizards casting magic all day long, because Gandalf didn't (Middle Earth being the real influence after all - Chainmail was all about playing the Battle of Five Armies), and it would be unbalancing if they could. So they kept the rule from Chainmail on how to limit the power of spell casters. Besides, it's tactically interesting.
3. Gygax makes Blue Book D&D, and AD&D, and people say to him, "Gee, Gary, that doesn't seem Gandalf-like at all that you remember and forget spells." Gary replies, "No, but it's like Jack Vance!"

Do you see what I'm getting at here? The fire and forget magic of D&D, and it's secular nature, are a result of wanting to have two different types of spellcaster, and needing rules to limit them. They have nothing to do with an in-game cosmology. This is only reinforced by the fact that (ironically like the game Sorcerer) D&D is actually sorta setting independent. It was not created with one setting in mind, but with any setting with Elves, Orcs, Dwarves, Hobbits, I mean Halflings...wait, this is Middle Earth with the serial numbers filed off. So we have to make up different landmasses with different names, because the Tolkien folks have already sued us for using their IP with Hobbits (interestingly Orcs are not copyrightable because there was a creature with that name from folklore - thanks John).

So it's not meant specifically for any setting. The material in D&D is made somewhat generic so that it can be transported to whatever map the DM decides to use. Including, potentially Gygax's Greyhawk, but anywhere you want.

The closest we get to a cosmology is that there are gods, and they are the source of where priests get their magic. Druids...we're not really sure, they're probably just priests of nature gods. But definitely not animists in the Earth sense.

So, what do we have? Well, one sort of magic that has a supernatural association with it, and another that doesn't. Well, wait; if wizards (excuse me, Magic Users) are based on Gandalf, then that explains it. Gandalf isn't religious! Right? He just gets his abilities from...nowhere. Right?

Well, if you don't know who Mithrandir is, then you might buy into that. Turns out that Gandalf is more Angel or demigod than human. In fact, there's no evidence that humans can do much if any magic at all in Middle Earth. Only supernatural beings, or those touched by the West (read heaven), can do it. It's so very much based on a belief system. Has to be to feel magical.

Now, I'll admit that you can read all the way through the Hobbit, and LotR, and not see the religion angle. And Gandalf's magic still seems magical. But, know what? That's because we're not playing Gandalf in an RPG. You don't know where his magic comes from, it's a mystery. Magical. As soon as you actually play Gandalf as not having a supernatural belief system - which obviously Tolkien would laugh at since he's a daimone in effect to Tolkien - you note how there's a lack of explanation of where the magic comes from. Since you don't know what Gandalf did know in LotR, even though we didn't see it, you note the gap. And magic begins to sorta suck.

I oughta know, I've played mostly wizards my whole gaming career, and never could figure out what was wrong with all of those systems that I came across. I love building spells in Hero System, but they always felt like, you guessed it, superpowers. Just giving the power the "incantation" and "gestures" limitation didn't make it any more magic seeming than it does when Goku uses a Level 5 Kamehaeha blast in Dragon Ball Z.

Hell, less magical than that.

Well, so we're left with a choice. Do we reproduce Gygax's mechanical mistake from D&D that's been replicated many times since, and has found it's way into Midnight, too? Or do we see that HQ is the fix for this mistake made all those many years ago? And change the magic not to Gloranthan magic, but to Earth magic? Which we can all grok, and which seems, well, magical.

I played a ton of Middle Earth RPG back in the day. Let me tell you, if there's one way to suck all of the magic out of Middle Earth, it's to use MERP to play it. As a D&D "fix," not even originally it's own system, it's as close to what you can compare actual play of Middle Earth with D&D to (unless you actually ran a game of D&D in Middle Earth which I've heard people have tried, and which is universally reported as a nightmare from what I've heard). And it just doesn't do it. Because the system is not designed to hit on the cosmological background no matter how subtle it is in ME. You just can't "be" in Middle Earth, and not know that your character has some belief system based on living there.

Put another way, the best and only reason, IMO, to play Midnight, or any other fantasy heartbreaker, using HQ, is to fix the error of non-magical magic. Because the defining feature of all fantasy RPGs is the magic. Otherwise we could just play a historical game about living in Italy in the tenth century or something. The magic has to be good, or it doesn't feel like fantasy. For two decades, I had no solution to this problem.

Now I do, and it's called HQ.

So what I suggest to people is that they do not attempt to make their world into an extension of Glorantha. I suggest that they look at what the setting should be, but is not because of the associated system for which the setting was designed, and then find out how HQ fits that model. Because from what I've seen it always does.

With Midnight, I see the elves as an obvious animist culture being portrayed poorly as such, because there are no rules for animism! The authors, not having a system that allows for animism ala HQ, instead try to shoehorn what they want to be an animism culture into the "Magic User" and "Cleric" boxes. "How do we take our setting non-specific system, and make this culture work with it?" Before the process is done you have something that looks as much like animism as an egg looks sunnyside up when cooked with a 500-pound bomb.

So we can look at the fragments of that egg, and try to figure out how to get HQ to emulate it. To which we'll say, "Nope, too different." Or we can look for the original intent of the setting, and get out sunnyside up eggs back again.

This is not to say that one actually has to use animism, theism and wizardry, actually. Despite all that I've said, it's not my point. Some people would point out that the structures of these are somewhat specific, and I have to admit that even I have a lot of trouble with them from time to time.

But HQ doesn't actually force you to use these things in any way. In fact, we know that there are at least two other forms of magic that exist in Glorantha (mysticism, and Lunar Magic). What the rules tell you is that there are potentially many systems, and these are just three of them. Meaning that it's up to you to create more.

Well, what's the use of that if you have to make your own stuff up? Well, as it happens, I think that the three presented models actually do cover most fantasy magic well. But the point is that you search for the fit you need to make it what it needs to be. Including altering the system and such.

What makes HQ superior, then? Well, because the one thing you don't want to throw out, when changing any of he magic systems, isn't actually part of the magic system at all. It's the source of the magic. Which are the religions of the setting, which should be read "belief systems." Because even Glorantha allows for atheism and magic - they're called Sorcerers. What's really important is that the magic relates to the themes of the setting. And the religion (again, read belief) keywords are what nail characters to the setting.

Why does Gandalf not cast magic all day long? Because he can't? I don't think so. I think that in the context of LotR, that he's worried about his mission being compromised by Sauron detecting it, and that showy magic would cause that. But what's at the heart of it, then? Why does he have this mission? Why does he care? Because he's got this "Loves Peoples of Middle Earth" relationship at a very high level. Why? Because it's part of his "religion" keyword. So why is magic magical "being" Gandalf? Because of what he believes.

There's nothing that remotely makes Midnight any different from any fantasy setting in this regard.

Sorry if this rambled somewhat, but it's simply not an easy point to make.

Mike

[S'mon]

I mean otherwise you could claim that electricity was magic. If you don't see electricity as magical, then you have to see magic sans a backing belief system as non-magical, too. A phenomenon to be explained.

Yup - in my D&D campaign I use exactly this - magic is electricity, to be precise it's part of the electromagnetic flux along with electricity & magnetism.  So it's generated by the planet's magnetic core, stronger in areas of strong magnetic fields (lodestone, the Underdark), is changable, waxes and wanes over time - and is fundamentally a scientific, not spiritual, phenomena.  This works ok in a sci-fantasy way, it's highly compatible w the Vancian & Gygaxian approach, but I wouldn't recommend it for Midnight of course.  :)

[Scripty]

Hi Mike -

I see where you're coming from and I think we're basically in agreement. This is essentially a restatement of my earlier point with the bit about "not needing to reconcile Gloranthan magic with Midnight".

So what I suggest to people is that they do not attempt to make their world into an extension of Glorantha.

Here's a bit from the post right above yours that expands a bit on the "dead-end" quote:

I haven't convinced myself, yet, that reconciling Glorantha's otherworlds and spheres of magic with Midnight's religion is a really effective approach. I'd recommend having the religions work as best suits the results you're going for in your game. Trying to back engineer them into Glorantha's cosmology is really unimportant if you're getting the results you want.

In substance, we're saying the same thing from where I'm sitting. As I understand it, you're advising that we use the HQ system to make magic work the way we want it to in our setting. I see no disagreement here.

Thanks for clearing up the bit on Monotheists and Adepts in Glorantha. Admittedly, as you well know, I'm not as familiar with Glorantha as many of the individuals on the forum but I don't claim to be an expert on Glorantha either.

I was under the impression, however, that some schools of Adepts don't necessarily have to be associated with a form of Monotheistic worship and also that some forms of Monotheistic worship, in Glorantha, don't necessarily have corresponding schools of Adepts working with them.

Again, as I stated in my earlier post, I could be dead wrong. If so, I accept that. It's just an impression I came away with from reading the corebook.

Your argument is well-stated and I 100% agree with your major points. But magic in Midnight is very different from magic in D&D (except, of course, for the Legates who function as Clerics). And magic in Midnight is different too from magic in Tolkein.

Despite the many nods to the LotR series, Midnight's magic has very little in common with Middle Earth. If anything, I'd say magic in Midnight, at least as far as arcane magic goes, has more in common with the computer rpgs, Everquest or Diablo, than D&D. It's not fire and forget. Spellcasters cast spells and then lose points off their constitution, after they run out of their meager supply of Spell Points. It's a spell point system, not a Vancian-Gygax system.

I can't fault you for this. And I don't. I just wanted to clarify on the details of your post. Your primary argument remains sound and unchallenged. As I stated, I see us in agreement on all except the most minor of details.

One minor detail, as far as Midnight's setting and my thinking goes, isn't how to correct Gygax's magic system but rather how to best represent the essence of Midnight's magical (and religious) setting elements with  the HeroQuest system. That's the reason, as I'm sure you remember, that my Midnight-HQ conversion provided two optional "Spell Drain" systems for Channelers.

The catch, and this returns to my earlier posts, is when one tries to pull the magic whole-hog out of Glorantha and plug it into the Midnight setting. As we've seen in both my conversion and earlier posts to this thread, bringing magic from Glorantha to Midnight necessarily begs the question of the existence of Otherworlds.

But Midnight doesn't have Otherworlds, except for a briefly mentioned and vague "Spirit Plane" or "Spirit World". This leads Kerstin to ponder about the other "Otherworlds" and how they exist (or don't) in Midnight and what effect that has.

And this is exactly what I mean by "reconcil[ing] the cosmology of Glorantha with what's going on in Midnight", which was related to her statements on the topic, not yours.

And I think attempts at reconciliation of this sort are a fruitless exercise.

The feel of Glorantha doesn't equate to the feel of Midnight. The crunchy bits of the magic chapters of HeroQuest are not dependent upon Gloranthan cosmology. Therefore, introducing the magical cosmology of Glorantha with its dependency on Otherworlds and whatnot isn't necessary in Midnight. In fact, I think it clouds the ultimate goal, which I also stated earlier:

I'd recommend having the religions work as best suits the results you're going for in your game. Trying to back engineer them into Glorantha's cosmology is really unimportant if you're getting the results you want.

Now, as far as some of your other suggestions as they pertain to Midnight, I also agree in the broader sense but am unsure of their application to Midnight.

Using a conversion to HeroQuest to "fix" the magic in Midnight necessitates a change in a major setting element of Midnight, one that may fundamentally change other related setting elements in unpredictable ways. I think a group should be on board with a setting shift like this.

I also remember the discussions I had with both you and Lael about my early drafts of Midnight-HQ in which I pressed my own creative agenda too strongly, in essence attempting to "fix" to the setting on my own. The caveat is that such a fundamental change is not always welcome.

Remember my attempts to "fix" the Wildlander by associating them with the protection of some magical item, place or person? It's only an option now but, man, did it raise some hackles when it wasn't.

I agree with you that Gygax's magical system breaks down into just another boring form of proto-technology. It's practically a truism. The Midnight setting doesn't have that as much, but it is still there with the Legates.

I'd positively love to see magic similar to that in the Conan RPG or in Kenneth Hite's GURPS Cabal supplement make its way into Midnight. That would be awesome, in my opinion. But making a judgement on the setting like that is not something I think a reasonable GM should make on their own without consulting with the play group beforehand.

That said, I think that the mechanics of HeroQuest can be used to great effect in Midnight. Hence, in my own conversion, I make liberal use (some would say abuse) of Animism for the Jungle Elves and Sea Elves, Tapping/Sorcery/Wizardry for Channelers, misapplied Theism for the Dorn and Wizardry/Monotheism for the Legates and Liturgists of Izrador.

Again, I believe, in hindsight, that my own conversion is tainted (for lack of a better term) by my not being able to put down the uber-kewl cosmology of Glorantha but I think I did follow my own advice below at heart.

Take the parts of the HQ magic system that work for what you're going for, that achieve the desired effect that you want in your game. Use them fearlessly, shamelessly and with hedonistic abandon. Figure out an explanation later. The explanation is the least important aspect of what is trying to be achieved. Cosmology-schmozmology.

Which is pretty much what I think you're saying. Would you agree?

Scott

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Animism, Theism, and Wizardry are all from Earth, not Glorantha specifically.

Absolutely. Although I realised that only when I saw you talk about how religion and magic are two different (yet related) things in HQ.  

I've said before, that one has a basic choice when doing a conversion of a fantasy system to HQ. One can convert the original system and setting to HQ, or one can just convert the setting.

In my case, it's a conversion of the setting only.  And very much not a conversion of any parts of the system.  Just to be clear.  

Well, if you don't know who Mithrandir is, then you might buy into that. Turns out that Gandalf is more Angel or demigod than human. In fact, there's no evidence that humans can do much if any magic at all in Middle Earth. Only supernatural beings, or those touched by the West (read heaven), can do it. It's so very much based on a belief system. Has to be to feel magical.

When I took the step from reading the MN material (with many allusions to Tolkien) to prepping for actual game sessions, I hated how intrusive and wrong the magic system felt. It so didn't mesh with my vision.  
Yeah, that's another dimension of my previous resistance against letting "too much" magic into Midnight once we'd converted over to HQ. Turns out this dimension isn't about the frequency of magic as such, it's about the approach - technology vs religion.  Cool.  

As soon as you actually play Gandalf as not having a supernatural belief system - which obviously Tolkien would laugh at since he's a daimone in effect to Tolkien - you note how there's a lack of explanation of where the magic comes from. Since you don't know what Gandalf did know in LotR, even though we didn't see it, you note the gap.

It's not explicit, but even in LotR there's mention of supernatural stuff going on. When Gandalf returns (in white), he tells of his death-and-beyond experience (naked beneath stars) and of how he was sent back from there to finish his job in Middle Earth.
Besides, all of LotR is about beliefs and about what you are willing to sacrifice for them.

Which I find very interesting because to Tolkien, what counted in Middle Earth were the languages he created.  He designed the entire mythology of the Silmarillion around the languages, and then apparently wrote LotR mostly as an excuse to have his nifty languages "spoken" in it.
Now those languages are cool, no doubt about it.  Yet what gives his stories such lasting power are the mythology and underlying belief systems.

Or do we see that HQ is the fix for this mistake made all those many years ago? And change the magic not to Gloranthan magic, but to Earth magic? Which we can all grok, and which seems, well, magical.

I'm with you now. I didn't get that about HQ magic in our earlier discussion because I hadn't seen the religions angle really, but when I reread the HQ book looking at the religions by themselves (ignoring the magic that comes with them), I realised what you meant by that.  

Put another way, the best and only reason, IMO, to play Midnight, or any other fantasy heartbreaker, using HQ, is to fix the error of non-magical magic.

It was certainly the strongest reason for me.  Not the only one (I was also getting sick and tired of the incoherences between an evolving narr style and a gamist system), but by far the strongest one. I had to get away from the technology - although I didn't quite understand what it was I was trying to avoid, or fix.

So what I suggest to people is that they do not attempt to make their world into an extension of Glorantha. I suggest that they look at what the setting should be, but is not because of the associated system for which the setting was designed, and then find out how HQ fits that model. Because from what I've seen it always does.

That would be wonderful.  - Btw, I showed my players what I'd posted yesterday about Izrador's Church, and they both liked it, and liked the idea of having religious beliefs (or doubts or nonbeliefs, whichever) for their characters.  I've also worked out with Lucy what she thinks she wants to do with Katrin, religion-wise. It's not a paladin concept so much as a Dornish messiah.  Which of course is very cool in Midnight.

This is not to say that one actually has to use animism, theism and wizardry, actually.
...
What the rules tell you is that there are potentially many systems, and these are just three of them. Meaning that it's up to you to create more.

I don't feel I'd need extra systems for Midnight. The ones HQ has cover a lot of ground and as you say, they reflect human religious beliefs very well. So if I can get HQ rules, or a part of them, to work with the vision of Midnight we have in our group, I'll stick with them.  

It's the source of the magic. Which are the religions of the setting, which should be read "belief systems." Because even Glorantha allows for atheism and magic - they're called Sorcerers.

There's also a no-god cult and a god-forgot cult around, I noticed a couple of days ago.  

What's really important is that the magic relates to the themes of the setting. And the religion (again, read belief) keywords are what nail characters to the setting.

Yes, I very much agree with that. So if we can find beliefs for Dorns and Jungle Elves that nail them to the setting in a way that's consistent with our vision, and perhaps even brings it out better, that would be fantastic.

[Mike Holmes]

In substance, we're saying the same thing from where I'm sitting. As I understand it, you're advising that we use the HQ system to make magic work the way we want it to in our setting. I see no disagreement here.

Well, there's no disagreement, because I'm trying to show how making HQ work for something like Midnight, is not making it like Glorantha. But where I disagree with you guys is that you see Midnight as not having certain systems, and so you think that you shouldn't use the HQ stuff. What I'm saying is that the HQ cognates seem to be missing, only because of the association of Midnight to HQ, so you need to look a bit closer, IMO, and you'll find that much or all of the HQ stuff really is there.

Now, we'll all have our own take on what the intent of the game really is, or what'll play best. But my point is that it's a mistake to look at the Midnight setting (or any fantasy setting) without first removing the D&D filter that's over it. It's like when I started to do the Shadow World conversion, and I started to try to do conversions on things like Power Points from Rolemaster. Assuming that this was somehow intrinsic to the setting. Well, it's simply not. The game works much better if you just throw out that convention entirely and move on. Am I being "unfaithful" to the setting? Well, in a way, yes, intentionally so. But that process starts first with the choice to use an alternate system.  I just think that when converting one should use the entire new system, and leave the "side-effects" that the old system had on the setting aside when doing so.

I was under the impression, however, that some schools of Adepts don't necessarily have to be associated with a form of Monotheistic worship and also that some forms of Monotheistic worship, in Glorantha, don't necessarily have corresponding schools of Adepts working with them.

True, but that's, as I said, an effect of how the One God works. That is, the churches would say that those schools of Sorcerers who do not align with the church are stealing God's magic. The Sorcerers either don't care that they are, or don't believe in God, and see the churches (and the associated schools) as simply being naieve in kowtowing to God.

In any case, there are schools that are associated with churches. And all of these entities believe correctly that they're all doing the magic the same, getting it from the same place. The only question is whether you say thank you to God for it or not (through the veneation chain).

Put it this way, I think that one could even theoretically be a "sorcerer liturgist" meaning that they obtained the same "blessings" from the scriptures that the liturgists do without thanking God for them. Basically, the sorcerer would be turning the scripture into a Grimoire is all. Since the magic comes from the essence world, it doesn't matter really if you worship the One God or not to get it. He just doesn't care (or at least show's that he cares). I suspect that the Atheist Sorcerer would even tell you that if you that any appeals to God that are heard (that somehow manage to beat the 10W9 resistance) are actually just accidental channeling of powerful essence. The advantages of venerating saints are, to them, just accidents of the essence world - that is, it just so happens that saying the name of the saint causes the effects that it does.

See what I'm getting at? You can't have a "theist sorcerer" because the diety in question will just not let you use his powers. Just not the case with the One God.

So most adepts are monotheists. In fact, there are no listed sorcery schools in the book, they're all wizardry schools, meaning that they all require their members to worship the One God. All of them.

Your argument is well-stated and I 100% agree with your major points. But magic in Midnight is very different from magic in D&D (except, of course, for the Legates who function as Clerics). And magic in Midnight is different too from magic in Tolkein.

I get that. But is the magic in midnight different from magic? Is it technological? If not, then I strongly believe that some of what's in HQ must apply.

It's a spell point system, not a Vancian-Gygax system.

Sure, but does it feel magical? Sounds just as technological to me as the Gygax method. Just as Spell Points in GURPS and Rolemaster have always felt technological to me.

That's the reason, as I'm sure you remember, that my Midnight-HQ conversion provided two optional "Spell Drain" systems for Channelers.

Yep. That's Tap from HQ. Which has not been well enumerated yet, but which has been implied.

The catch, and this returns to my earlier posts, is when one tries to pull the magic whole-hog out of Glorantha and plug it into the Midnight setting.

Why must it be binary? This is what I was trying to say above! It's not ever Glorantha. If you use the whole HQ system, it still has nothing to do with Glorantha, it has to do with magic as we think of it here as real people on Earth. You make this error no less than five times in your post.

But Midnight doesn't have Otherworlds, except for a briefly mentioned and vague "Spirit Plane" or "Spirit World". This leads Kerstin to ponder about the other "Otherworlds" and how they exist (or don't) in Midnight and what effect that has.

...

And I think attempts at reconciliation of this sort are a fruitless exercise.

Here's where I disagree. Because you don't do such a reconciliation. What you do is look at the "real" Midnight, and compare it to how magic "really" works. That is, how it has to be stated to be thematically magical.

Using a conversion to HeroQuest to "fix" the magic in Midnight necessitates a change in a major setting element of Midnight, one that may fundamentally change other related setting elements in unpredictable ways.

Possibly. I think that it's no less "invasive" than using HQ instead of D&D in the first place, however.

I also remember the discussions I had with both you and Lael about my early drafts of Midnight-HQ in which I pressed my own creative agenda too strongly, in essence attempting to "fix" to the setting on my own. The caveat is that such a fundamental change is not always welcome.

I've come to these conclusions since we worked on this. Which is to say that I might today give completely different advice than I did previously. Again, I've come to understand that things like spell points and trying to match other such system conventiones are not only unneccessary in making a conversion, but that they make the converesion less effective.

Remember my attempts to "fix" the Wildlander by associating them with the protection of some magical item, place or person? It's only an option now but, man, did it raise some hackles when it wasn't.

See, in this case, you're adding something that's not HQ. I'm hardly suggesting doing that, in fact quite the opposite.

I'd positively love to see magic similar to that in the Conan RPG or in Kenneth Hite's GURPS Cabal supplement make its way into Midnight. That would be awesome, in my opinion. But making a judgement on the setting like that is not something I think a reasonable GM should make on their own without consulting with the play group beforehand.

But it's OK to change the system? Either you check about all changes, or you don't. Either way it works just fine.

Again, I believe, in hindsight, that my own conversion is tainted (for lack of a better term) by my not being able to put down the uber-kewl cosmology of Glorantha but I think I did follow my own advice below at heart.

I think you did mostly the right thing. Actually what I think is that you really didn't do enough in terms of going in the right direction with this stuff. That is, I think the problems of the conversion are that you're still trying to keep too many of the D&Disms in. Which aren't embedded in the setting AFAICT.

The explanation is the least important aspect of what is trying to be achieved. Cosmology-schmozmology.

Completely incorrect, IMO. Sans cosmology, I think you might as well go back to playing D&D. That was my whole point - I must have made it very badly. What makes magic magical, is knowing the supernatural reasoning behind it. Without that, you have the technological magic of D&D.

From a really radical POV, again, I think that if you simply took Midnight as a setting and thought of it as part of Glorantha, for purposes of making the conversion, and completely disregarded everything about how magic is supposed to work there (which I feel is all tainted by D&D) and used the "Gloranthan Cosmology" instead, that you'd do better than any half-hearted conversion.

But I don't think that this is neccessary, because HQ allows a lot of leeway. That is, it can convert to handle whatever variations that one does find in the actual intended setting materials. So I say adjust the HQ model. But start with it as the base model. That is, magic comes from the otherworlds, or from supernatural "beings" in the mundane world. Which happen to include "Essences" which aren't really intelligent, but "just magic." That covers everything. Even D&D magic which is from nowhere, could be converted to be said to be from "essence" in the mundane world. Which is how almost every Fantasy world is described almost to the word. That is, HQ even has an explanation for where magic that otherwise seems to come from nowhere comes from. It just makes it magical by explaining where the magic comes from in a coherent way and allowing for mechanics to affect it.

But even most D&D magic has more theoretical background as to where it comes from. The Midnight magics, different as they may be from D&D, sound no different to me in this regard. They are meant to be magical, and so fit the overall HQ model well, and most, I think, can be made to fit one of the specific HQ models as well.

All this ranting said, I agree that you can probably get away with not using the HQ model for magic in a game, or adjusting it somewhat radically in terms of, say, ignoring otherworlds. But I think that this is just failing to use a godsend tool in favor of allowing the setting to stay messed up due to the effects of the previous system.

Mike

[Mike Holmes]

Following up the post above with another right away...and a much shorter one...

I'm glad that I've finally said this in a way that made sense to you. :-)

Basically it all comes down to linking the belief system to the magic. If all that means is that you have some knowledge ability of the "Right Way" to act, that when you act that way gets you magic, you're good. This is represented by the "Piety" abilities. Note that for Sorcerers, these are just knowing how the person who wrote their books did magic - not neccessarily moral codes. Even more interesting, we don't even actually have to know what these codes are - just having the ability on the character sheet is enough.

So the minimum HQ magic system, to me, would be to have a Piety stat linked to simply stated magic abilities. Uh, something like:

Skills:
Know Things Ways

Magic:
Throw Big Ball of Fire

In fact, it gets easier than that, because you have relationships to family and such in the homeland keyword, which imply moral code transmission, and from them you can get "common magic" which are simply abilities. What's the rationale for them? You learn them from the people that you meet each day. There, that's the bare miniumum.

Beyond that, all magic systems are just there for color to make them seem in some ways more like the sorts of magic that we're used to. Even common magic is required to correspond to one of these types just so we know how it operates from a simple mecanical perspective.

Sans this, all magic is just another ability on the character sheet. And no more magical than "Strong" is.

Mike

[Kerstin Schmidt]

Despite the many nods to the LotR series, Midnight's magic has very little in common with Middle Earth. If anything, I'd say magic in Midnight, at least as far as arcane magic goes, has more in common with the computer rpgs, Everquest or Diablo, than D&D.

Which isn't any less technological than pure D&D.  

As we've seen in both my conversion and earlier posts to this thread, bringing magic from Glorantha to Midnight necessarily begs the question of the existence of Otherworlds.

But Midnight doesn't have Otherworlds, except for a briefly mentioned and vague "Spirit Plane" or "Spirit World". This leads Kerstin to ponder about the other "Otherworlds" and how they exist (or don't) in Midnight and what effect that has.

That's not my problem. I'd already introduced strange "otherworldly" places in play long before we converted, and it would be perfectly possible and not at all inconsistent to give those places a religious meaning in addition.

What I was shying away from was how ubiquitous magic looked in the HQ rules. In my experience with fantasy games, the only way to keep a halfway "magical" feel for magic was to keep magic out of the picture as much as possible.  Now even very rare magic would still be "technology" to borrow Mike's term, but at least it wouldn't be happening all over the place and spoiling the fantasy-ish feel - a feel that is precariously maintained by the fact that you know magic is "somewhere around the corner" but doesn't really happen on camera.

That's a workaround.  A crutch.  Mike has it right.  

Therefore, introducing the magical cosmology of Glorantha with its dependency on Otherworlds and whatnot isn't necessary in Midnight.

I'd say the opposite, even arguing from the book. There are otherworlds in Midnight, only they are (mostly?) cut off from the physical world.

PCs (and possibly certain NPCs) get heroic paths, which are basically a bagful of common magic tricks.

"Real" speallcasting, Magecraft, is something else entirely. It's dangerous and punished horribly if detected.  Heck, they have a special breed of demons (Astiraxes) specifically to hunt down and exterminate Magecrafters!  If that doesn't mean there's at least two types of magic, common and special, I don't know what does.

I'd recommend having the religions work as best suits the results you're going for in your game. Trying to back engineer them into Glorantha's cosmology is really unimportant if you're getting the results you want.

Yeah I agree with that - only the cosmology in the HQ goes far beyond Glorantha because it reflects underlying structures of human religious beliefs. I don't want Glorantha in Aryth. I do want something that I and my players can understand and relate to;  and if the HQ religions structure help achieve that, then I'll use it, or modify it where necessary.  

Coming around full circle?  Maybe, yes.  I still want to achieve the same things with my conversion as before. But I'm beginning to see how the stuff in the HQ book could work in my favour, instead of against me.  

Using a conversion to HeroQuest to "fix" the magic in Midnight necessitates a change in a major setting element of Midnight, one that may fundamentally change other related setting elements in unpredictable ways. I think a group should be on board with a setting shift like this.

I've got my players' backing now, as I mentioned in my post to Mike above. (Yibbie.) I'll have to negotiate details with them obviously and we'll only really see what works well when we actually play with it;  but I'm beginning to see faintly where I'm going, which is encouraging. If that makes any sense. :)

I agree with you that Gygax's magical system breaks down into just another boring form of proto-technology. It's practically a truism. The Midnight setting doesn't have that as much, but it is still there with the Legates.

I have to say what really spoiled any chance of a "magical" feel in our D&D times wasn't the legates.  They are few and far between.  What did it for us was having a channeler PC in the group - and the dependence on healing magic (part of the D&D hitpoint system).  

I'd positively love to see magic similar to that in the Conan RPG or in Kenneth Hite's GURPS Cabal supplement make its way into Midnight.

You'd choose Conan d20 magic over Gloranthan magic for Midnight?  Really?  :)  
If that's your thing, it may be worth checking out www.againsttheshadow.org again (did they ever manage to put your conversion online btw?). I vaguely remember seeing threads about Conan corruption and similar stuff in Midnight on those boards.

Figure out an explanation later. The explanation is the least important aspect of what is trying to be achieved.

No no no! On the contrary.  If I don't get to an explanation soon it'll be too late, because too many fragmented and inconsistent things will have happened in play.  
(Worst thing that can happen is that magic stays "technology", so it wouldn't be an absolute disaster. But I'd like more.  :) )

Until very recently I was shying away from explaining magic in Midnight.  Heck, I was shying away from having magic because even after converting over to HQ it still felt like technology.  Which was because (I now have to agree with Mike) because I just didn't understand the function of religion in HQ.  

I've had a big paradigm shift there.  And now I look back at our Midnight campaign and see what?  A game that's been cheerfully ignoring all issues of religion.  Which is a tad strange for a setting competely dominated by the fact that an evil god has fallen into it...  If there ever was a religious war, this one is it.  

An explanation for our god-less-ness of course is that when played with D&D, Midnight won't bring out religious themes. We brought out some other cool themes instead (which worked more easily within the gamist structures of D&D), which I don't want to cut off now - but I don't think that is going to happen if I stay sensitive to them as I work on the conversion.


Edit:  Cross-posted with Mike's two posts above.

[Scripty]

Hi Mike:
Thanks for clearing up that bit on Wizards, Sorcerers and Monotheism in Glorantha.

But magic in Midnight is very different from magic in D&D (except, of course, for the Legates who function as Clerics). And magic in Midnight is different too from magic in Tolkein.

I get that. But is the magic in midnight different from magic? Is it technological? If not, then I strongly believe that some of what's in HQ must apply.

I don't think that the magic in Midnight is Technological. There is a degree of randomness to it that is missing from a typical Spell Points system. It's not a system where you cast Magic Missile and off it goes, IIRC.

And I never said that aspects of Gloranthan magic/cosmology did not apply. It's quite clear, I think, from both the Midnight-HQ conversion and my earlier statements that I believe strongly that Animism applies to Midnight.

The catch, and this returns to my earlier posts, is when one tries to pull the magic whole-hog out of Glorantha and plug it into the Midnight setting.

Why must it be binary? This is what I was trying to say above! It's not ever Glorantha. If you use the whole HQ system, it still has nothing to do with Glorantha, it has to do with magic as we think of it here as real people on Earth. You make this error no less than five times in your post.

I'm sorry, Mike. I don't see where I've proposed that it's an either/or situation. My whole point, which I've stated repeatedly, is: "Use what works. Don't sweat the rest." And I don't want to really get into what magic is for "real people on Earth" but Glorantha isn't necessarily a model for it. It works as an exemplary model for magic as it appears in most fantasy novels and games. But it isn't necessarily a good model for, say, Hermetic Traditions, Chaos Magic or Hoodoo. Not all magical traditions "in the real world" pull their "power" from an "otherworld", although some certainly do.

That said. I don't see the error you're talking about. Perhaps, you're building a straw man out of my statements here. I haven't set up a binary argument here. I've simply said I don't think worrying about having the spheres of Glorantha line up with the magical traditions in a conversion is necessary to the enjoyment of a game. Both you and Kerstin have adamantly disagreed with me on this topic, which means the thought exercise must be of value to some HQ narrators. More power to them. I just don't find it to be all that necessary.

I think you did mostly the right thing. Actually what I think is that you really didn't do enough in terms of going in the right direction with this stuff. That is, I think the problems of the conversion are that you're still trying to keep too many of the D&Disms in. Which aren't embedded in the setting AFAICT.

Actually, I didn't keep all that many D&Disms in the Midnight conversion. I did introduce a mechanic for Spell Drain. But that wasn't to keep the D&D feel of Midnight. It was to to keep the thematic element of Channelers needing to pull their magic out of their own energies, and at times life energies, to cast magic. This, in itself, isn't D&D at all. Nor is it technological, at least in the conversion. It's very random and casting any spell can have any number of effects on the caster. That's quite a contrast with fire-and-forget.

Completely incorrect, IMO. Sans cosmology, I think you might as well go back to playing D&D. That was my whole point - I must have made it very badly. What makes magic magical, is knowing the supernatural reasoning behind it. Without that, you have the technological magic of D&D.

Ah! Here's where we're butting heads! I don't think it's necessary to know "where" magic comes from to have something be magical. Like in Star Wars. The first trilogy, I loved the Force. It was awesome. Where did it come from? Who knew? It was just some quasi-mystical energy out there that you could train yourself to use. Cool! In the second trilogy, we learn that Force powers come from midichlorians. And that you can measure a person's power by the presence of and how many midichlorians one has in one's blood.

For me, knowing about midichlorians made the Force a technology. I don't have to know where magic comes from for it to "work" for me. I don't mind the mystery. Hence, I see no problem with just having Channeler magic work without having to have an Essence plane to pull it from. It just works. If we need an explanation, we can supply one later. A lot like Ron's approach to building a Sword & Sorcery setting. Get what you need to get the thing off the ground and then worry about the rest later.

I can see, from Kerstin's later post, that she's already past this point. She's already brought Otherworlds into the picture. Well, that's cool too. I just don't think it's necessary to figure out how the three Otherworlds of Glorantha fit into a setting before attempting a conversion. Just do the conversion! If Wizardry works for the setting, well, use it! I don't think it matters if the setting has an Essence plane. That can be worked out later, to my thinking.

That is, magic comes from the otherworlds, or from supernatural "beings" in the mundane world. Which happen to include "Essences" which aren't really intelligent, but "just magic." That covers everything.

Hrm. It doesn't cover magic that is powered by one's own life energies, which is a vital part of the Midnight setting. Sure, that can be hatcheted out. I'm cool with that. But I think a fundamental change of that nature to the setting should be discussed with the play-group. And, yes, I would discuss changing the system with the play-group as well.

But it is a fundamental element of Midnight that isn't covered in the "Magic from the Otherworld" scenario. HeroQuest's cosmology is pretty robust. And I think it does cover a great deal in terms of fantasy magic. But I don't think it's a Swiss Army knife and I don't think it has to be.

And I don't think that I'm "completely incorrect", "allowing the setting to stay messed up" or falling prey to "binary" thinking because of this.

I think you sum it up best:

Beyond that, all magic systems are just there for color to make them seem in some ways more like the sorts of magic that we're used to.

As regards magic in RPGs, I think they are just "color". And I don't think that adopting a cosmology is necessary for them to add presence, meaning, impact or mood to a game. Do the demons in Ron's Sorcerer game have to come from Hell or some Lower Plane for them to be "demonic"? Do we really have to know anything about them other than what they're like, what they want and what they can do?

I don't propose to convert you, Mike. But I do think my opinion is valid and just as "correct" as yours, although it seems that my suggestions are less necessary to Kerstin's conversion as she's already passed a point where they can really add much value.

Scott

[Scripty]

Hi Kerstin,
I'm posting a response and then taking a break for the rest of the day. I seem to have ruffled some feathers somehow but I did want to continue our discussion briefly.

As I think I made clear in my post above, I believe you're too far along to take much of my advice to heart. Your statements that you already have some Otherworlds going and all pretty much nails down the path you'll be taking. And I'm not saying that's the wrong path. I'm just saying that I don't think it's a necessary path. I don't see it as the "One True Way". Honestly, I don't see anything as a "One True Way" in gaming or in life. So I'm not here to preach, prostelytize or convert. Just here to share, discuss, assist and, yes, learn.

Therefore, introducing the magical cosmology of Glorantha with its dependency on Otherworlds and whatnot isn't necessary in Midnight.

I'd say the opposite, even arguing from the book. There are otherworlds in Midnight, only they are (mostly?) cut off from the physical world.

PCs (and possibly certain NPCs) get heroic paths, which are basically a bagful of common magic tricks.

"Real" speallcasting, Magecraft, is something else entirely. It's dangerous and punished horribly if detected. Heck, they have a special breed of demons (Astiraxes) specifically to hunt down and exterminate Magecrafters! If that doesn't mean there's at least two types of magic, common and special, I don't know what does.

There are Otherworlds mentioned in the book and some degree of support for the existence of Otherworlds similar to the Theist and Animist Otherworlds in HeroQuest. That I don't deny. The Theist Otherworld is, according to the corebook, entirely cut-off from the Material Plane. I don't see the connection between specialized and common magic that necessitates that all three Otherworlds be present in the Midnight setting. It's fine if you want them to be, in your conversion. I take no issues with that. But I just fail to see the connection.

Yeah I agree with that - only the cosmology in the HQ goes far beyond Glorantha because it reflects underlying structures of human religious beliefs. I don't want Glorantha in Aryth. I do want something that I and my players can understand and relate to; and if the HQ religions structure help achieve that, then I'll use it, or modify it where necessary.

I'd like to point out that this is pretty much what I've been saying all along. A results-based approach is really your best friend, in my opinion, as opposed to a cosmologically-based approach. Wanna see my cyberpunk conversion where I tried to reconcile the three Gloranthan Otherworlds to a futuristic, Blade-Runnerish setting?

Heheh. I wouldn't think so. It was a mess. It all added up but it added nothing to the setting. I'm not talking from theory here. I'm talking from experience. Do what works. Don't sweat the rest. If you need, or want, an Essence plane in Midnight, make one. But just because the Izradian Church operates according to the rules for Monotheism doesn't make an Essence Plane necessary, in my opinion.

You'd choose Conan d20 magic over Gloranthan magic for Midnight? Really? :)
If that's your thing, it may be worth checking out www.againsttheshadow.org again (did they ever manage to put your conversion online btw?). I vaguely remember seeing threads about Conan corruption and similar stuff in Midnight on those boards.

Possibly. The feel of the magic in Conan d20 and the Hermetic system in GURPS Cabal are highly agreeable to me. I just think the Corruption factor in Conan fits well with Izrador. And the Hermetic system in GURPS Cabal is probably the closest thing to "real" magic in an RPG.

Againsttheshadow has not put my conversion online, as far as I know. :(

I've had a big paradigm shift there. And now I look back at our Midnight campaign and see what? A game that's been cheerfully ignoring all issues of religion. Which is a tad strange for a setting competely dominated by the fact that an evil god has fallen into it... If there ever was a religious war, this one is it.

An explanation for our god-less-ness of course is that when played with D&D, Midnight won't bring out religious themes. We brought out some other cool themes instead (which worked more easily within the gamist structures of D&D), which I don't want to cut off now - but I don't think that is going to happen if I stay sensitive to them as I work on the conversion.

Wow! Get on it then! Religion is a central fixture of Midnight. How you choose to present that element is up to you. I don't think that any system necessitates its presence in the game, though. We had plenty of religious elements in my Midnight D20 campaign. I made the switch primarily because I wanted players of a higher power level (which I thought HeroQuest handled better) and I wanted the system to address relationships and beliefs in a quantitative matter, precisely because religion and belief was so prominent in the campaign.

That said. I'm not saying you're wrong or engaged in bad-fun or anything like that. I'm presenting options and giving an alternate point of view. If everyone had already been saying what I've said, I wouldn't have bothered entering the discussion.

Best of luck,

Scott

P.S. Aren't paradigm shifts fun? :)

[Kerstin Schmidt]

My last post to this thread (and responses to it that I seem to remember...) have been lost.  I can't retype it all, but two brief points to Scripty:  

1. You ruffled no feathers here, at least not mine.  Your input was and is welcome. I may disagree with some of your points but that's ok, those points help me define my position more clearly, so you're helping in any case.  I hope you'll keep reading and commenting.  

2. Yes. Paradigm shifts are wonderful.  This one especially so.  :-)