Gloranthan Genre conventions / tropes

[contracycle]

Suppose I were to run agame set in reconquista spain where all the characetrs were Moslems. We know a bit about Moorish culture from the time. I could write a What the Imam Told Me introduction, and we could all generate characters. Do I know whether Allah is the One God? Can I reconcile Jewish, Christian and Moslem theology? Of course not, yet is it realy not possible to play the game in anything other than pawn stance? I relay don't see why, and the same goes for Gloranthan characters.

Its not important UNLESS the characters are performing magic as provided by Allah, and the NPC's are performing magic as provided by JHWH.  A game can have fully operational conflicting dogmas as long as the system does not reify one or more of them through resolution.

I lauded TROS for exactly this reason; there is not ultimate known truth to conflicting theorlogies in TROS, but it doesn';t matter becuase conflicts of theology are neither the centre of play nor relevant to the exercise of magic powers.  So the question can remain unasked and unanswered, and that would be a much better model from which to do the Reconquista.  In fact, one might say, the Reconquista is fought physically precisely because the issue CANNOT be mystically proved by either side; the protagonists, unsurprisingly, are acting on faith.

I point out yet again that you seem to be slipping into this from the characters viewpoint, but it is the player/GM viewpoint that I am addressing.

I realy have absolutely no idea where you get the idea that Gloranthan myths aren't true.

Because they can be disproved by other groups.  Becuase you can change them, at least locally.  Because they often conflict.

If this were true, then the myths would not work, would impart no magical power and studying them would impart no transcendent revelations. yet we know that in Glorantha they do give magical powers and can be heroquested and that gloranthan entities can even become gods by following the precepts of their religions. What more value could you ask for?

You're merely describing the problem.  Yes, I know thats the case in Glorantha - but I do not know why.  Which makes it very difficult to address the prominent special cases.

You say, for example, that if the myths were not true, they would not impart magical powers.  But this confusion is already implicit in the material, such as the HW-version discussion of the Orlanthi annual ritual in which they fly to Orlanths hall.  Becuase, it mentions in the text that an external observer would NOT see them fly at all.  So, is this myth, this magic, true and real, or is it just a delusion in the believers minds?

Its an open question whether Gloranthans actually perform magic, of if their "magic" is another impossible thing to believe before breakfast.

You and I have discussed this before, and it comes down to the symbolic meaning of myths. This is why different cultures can have different myths of the Storms, because they can have different ideas about what the Storms mean for them and how they affects their lives.

Sure.  And as I already remarked, the ISSUE of the conflicting myths is essentially unimportant becuase the vast majority of community members will never encounter anyone with a conflicting myth.  This is certainty through ignorance.  But, seeing as the Lunar/Ortlanthi conflict is clearly located in a clash of cultures and their respective viewpoints, this very issue is in the forefront of much oof the published material - as are the godlearners as previously discussed.  So this is simply not to my mind an adequate explanation: obviously, people can and do have different views and values; you say tomato, I say, uh tomato.  That's the easy part, the hard part is reconciling them into a consistent playable reality.

Their magic works because their undertsanding of storm is true.
...
Their understanding of staorm is true, and so their myths give them functioning magic that works.

Why?  This is an excellent example of the problem I feel has been elided.

The Dara Happans and Orlanthi have very different myths about storm and gain very different magic as a result, but their understanding of storm and it's place in thier lives, while different are both accurate, and their myths encapsulate these truths in the form of naratives.

That sounds like doublespeak.  I'm willing to accept that there might be a way to reconcile these conflicting truths in Glkorantha, if you will only tell me what that is.  The default response appears to be "ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies".

These are the ways that people in Glorantha undertsand their world and interact with it, it's also the way many people on earth understand and interact with the world around them.

I say "no it isn't".  But at least, if this is the principle up on which the game is structured, this needs explicit discussion.

Secondly, again you are telling me about what imaginary people in Glorantha think.  I'm asking about the game as a product and what I as a GM/player am supposed to think, NOT what the characters think.  The characters viewpoint is a monstrous red herring.

There's nothing unique to Glorantha about this. Similar explanations can be found in real world analyses of religion, myth and folklore. Just about any book by Joseph Campble is chock full of this stuff. Isaac Bonewits witters on about it incessantly.

But I, as the GM, have to RULE on these issues, and that means I need a better explanation than just that people believed strange things in the past.  Thats a given; it does not excuse directly contradictory statements as to the nature of reality in a GAME.  Of course people could easily believe contradictory things - because, as mentioned previously, they had no real mechanism or notion of a formal proof that could say yea or nay.  But a GAME does provide such tools, and seemingly deliberately, poses these questions on a grand scale.

And if I cannot get behind it, understand it, then it can only have a token existence.

[Shreyas Sampat]

Here is a thought for you.

Myths are not objectively true! They are not logical propositions that can be contradicted and disproven, or for that matter proven. They depict and communicate, but they do not make statements; they imply.

Basically the same argument you have for TRoS holds at a slightly different level in Glorantha; there is no ultimate truth known to Otherworldly entities, but it doesn't matter because the important conflicts are not about the ultimate truth; they are at a level below that, where the representative myths are in conflict with themselves to find definition.

The myths are acting on faith.

And so the Gloranthans are one level below the realm you're trying to work at; their magic works because it is the nature of magic to work. I know that's a blatantly circular statement and it is intended to be; I don't believe, convoluted as the cosmology of Glorantha is, it's an important question where magic comes from, because what we the players care about is what magic can do.

[simon_hibbs]

I lauded TROS for exactly this reason; there is not ultimate known truth to conflicting theorlogies in TROS, but it doesn';t matter becuase conflicts of theology are neither the centre of play nor relevant to the exercise of magic powers.  So the question can remain unasked and unanswered, and that would be a much better model from which to do the Reconquista.  In fact, one might say, the Reconquista is fought physically precisely because the issue CANNOT be mystically proved by either side; the protagonists, unsurprisingly, are acting on faith.

Just as they are in Glorantha. Many, perhaps most of the faithful in all the world's religions would say that they have an abundance of proof that their religion is true and valid. Some will point to miracles performed by/on behalf of their prophets, others will point to 'miracles' they have experienced in their own lives. The issue of proof is a paper tiger. What matters is that the characters do have faith for obvious and easily explainable reasons that are valid to them.

I point out yet again that you seem to be slipping into this from the characters viewpoint, but it is the player/GM viewpoint that I am addressing.

I am address that later in my post.

Because they can be disproved by other groups.  Becuase you can change them, at least locally.  Because they often conflict.

Every field of human enquiry is subject to change as we learn new things about the world. The fact that Einstein disproved Newton's theories didn't destroy science, it made it stronger. Our view of the world is constantly changing in every field, not just myth.

Their magic works because their undertsanding of storm is true.
...
Their understanding of staorm is true, and so their myths give them functioning magic that works.

Why?  This is an excellent example of the problem I feel has been elided.

The explanation of 'Why' is mostly what you replaced with the ...s

Their myths about the gods of storm and sun accurately reflect their experience of theose phenomena in the world. To the Dara Happans Storm is remote, destructive, upsets the natural cycle of life and is unpredictable. Their myths depict storm gods in that manner, and accurately describe the relationship between storm and other natural phenomena, as they bexperience those relationships. They are true at a symbolic level, and magic is all about symbolism. See Campbel, Bonewitz, etc as referenced in my previous post.

The Dara Happans and Orlanthi have very different myths about storm and gain very different magic as a result, but their understanding of storm and it's place in thier lives, while different are both accurate, and their myths encapsulate these truths in the form of naratives.

That sounds like doublespeak.  I'm willing to accept that there might be a way to reconcile these conflicting truths in Glkorantha, if you will only tell me what that is.  The default response appears to be "ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies".

There's nothing to reconcile. To the Dara Happans storms are dangerous and destructive. To the Orlanthi storms are a vital part of the ecosystem in which they live. What's complicated about reconciling that? They're both simply, obviously, literaly true. The myths are symbolic narative representations of this, and are true at that level.

Secondly, again you are telling me about what imaginary people in Glorantha think.  I'm asking about the game as a product and what I as a GM/player am supposed to think, NOT what the characters think.  The characters viewpoint is a monstrous red herring.

I am describing what I the GM/player think. It's also likely that many people in Glorantha think the same thing too.

But I, as the GM, have to RULE on these issues, and that means I need a better explanation than just that people believed strange things in the past.  Thats a given; it does not excuse directly contradictory statements as to the nature of reality in a GAME.  Of course people could easily believe contradictory things - because, as mentioned previously, they had no real mechanism or notion of a formal proof that could say yea or nay.  But a GAME does provide such tools, and seemingly deliberately, poses these questions on a grand scale.

And if I cannot get behind it, understand it, then it can only have a token existence.

Fisrt of all, what contradictory statements? For example, are orlanthi and Solar myths contradictory? I'd say no, they describe exactly the same things, but merely assign different moral contexts.

Is suppose because if your character is a shaman and you're not that requires a certain amount of thinking outside your everyday box. What if the referee is a practicing shaman who realy does believe in the power of magic? All of a sudden that disjoint seems a lot smaller.

I'm not expecting you to actualy believe in magic, or actualy believe in religion. There's plenty of material out there for you to read about it if you wish, "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" is a decent start and I know Greg's been recommending it for over 20 years. I'd also recommend "A History of God" by Karen Armstrong.


Simon Hibbs

[RaconteurX]

Gareth,

I did not need to know the metaphysics of the Radiance in order to enjoy Underworld, either as a player or a gamemaster. Good thing, too, as you  failed to describe it even remotely in as exacting a manner as you insist Glorantha must. This is why I give your complaints no credence whatsoever. If you cannot look at all the setting material and arrive at an adequate conclusion (or combination of conclusions) which work(s) for the stories you want to tell, then not a thing I can say will change that. There seems to be no pleasing you, so I shan't try.

[Donald]

The Dara Happans and Orlanthi have very different myths about storm and gain very different magic as a result, but their understanding of storm and it's place in thier lives, while different are both accurate, and their myths encapsulate these truths in the form of naratives.

That sounds like doublespeak.  I'm willing to accept that there might be a way to reconcile these conflicting truths in Glkorantha, if you will only tell me what that is.  The default response appears to be "ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies".

The same way such truths are reconciled, or not, in the real world. Take any conflict you like[1] and read the accounts from the different sides involved. You'll find the same events written about in at least two completly different ways, sometimes so differently that they don't appear to be the same. The complete truth shares something of both stories but usually includes things which don't appear in either. That is what myth is in Glorantha, one group's version of events. The fact that it isn't entirely true from the perspective of some non-existant objective observer doesn't matter and doesn't affect the myth's ability to provide magic for its believers. What's special about Glorantha is that when two myths come into conflict it is possible for believers in one myth to convince the believers in the other that they are wrong and thereby change the myth and the physical world. That's what the Hero Wars are about - challenging and changing myth and in consequence reality.

[1] I suggest you find one you have no emotional involvement in, it takes a lot of practice not to just dismiss the other side's story as propaganda when you have a personal involvement in a conflict.

[Mac Logo]

I dipped my oar in earlier in this little debate and it made no difference whatsoever. C'est la vie. Apparently, I didn't understand Contra's problem adequately.

OK then, I accept Contra has a problem with the metaphysics of Glorantha as a GM vs Glorantha as a Player vs Glorantha as a Character. Could someone please explain it to me, in short words. I didn't do politics or philosophy, I'm a scientist. I happen to enjoy mythology and RPGs as a hobby, not a subject for dialectic. (Yes, that last bit was a criticism, there are better ways of solving problems - speaking as a scientist.)

What is the problem? I've managed to play (various games) in Glorantha for 20 years now, without ever feeling it to be constricting of my player or GM "stance". Quite the contrary. (Stance seems to be such a loaded, but inherenly vague term that it is actually useless.)

I'm not prepared to dismiss Contra's complaints, without understanding them. I just do not understand what he's trying to say.

Confused and willing to admit it.

Graeme

[contracycle]

Just as they are in Glorantha. Many, perhaps most of the faithful in all the world's religions would say that they have an abundance of proof that their religion is true and valid.

Yes, the faithful CHARACTERS would say that, but thenpoor GM has to make the ruling.  In Glorantha, unlike TROS, godly worship is a/the route to magical power with which you can smite your enemies.  So the two are diametircally opposed here - they exhibit opposite ends of the spectrum and are not at all alike.

Some will point to miracles performed by/on behalf of their prophets, others will point to 'miracles' they have experienced in their own lives. The issue of proof is a paper tiger.

It is not when A) I am the GM and b) the players are enacting the proofs through their game mechanical abilities.  It is not a paper tiger at all - it is the bulk of actual play.

What matters is that the characters do have faith for obvious and easily explainable reasons that are valid to them.

If they were real people, that would be important - but they are just characters that we use in a game, and do not in fact have any thoughts of their own whatsoever.

Every field of human enquiry is subject to change as we learn new things about the world. The fact that Einstein disproved Newton's theories didn't destroy science, it made it stronger. Our view of the world is constantly changing in every field, not just myth.

Irrelevant; the world is objective and external to us.  When I am the GM, I am taking on that role, and am obliged to provide feedback to the players in the same way the world provides feedback to real people.  How can I represent the world to the players if I-the-GM do not know how it works?

They are true at a symbolic level, and magic is all about symbolism. See Campbel, Bonewitz, etc as referenced in my previous post.

No, magic in an RPG is about zapping your opponents, regardless of to what extent the in-game causality of the world is based on symbolism.  Because magic in RPG is a problem solving tool - and in glorantha, an unusually common problem solving tool even by the standards of other fantasy worlds.  Once again - appealing to Campbells analysis of how people understood their world does not imply that the way they understand the world was correct or accurate.  I can read Campbell and still read Einstein if I want to understand the world as it is.  Campbell is relevant only to what is going on in the heads of gloranthans - it is not relevant to anything else.  Even accepting a Campbellian description, say, of "orlanthi consciousness" says nothing at all about the actualities of glorantha.  And, its actively counterproductive when trying to resolve conflicting magic, because it gives you two conflicting positives.

There's nothing to reconcile. To the Dara Happans storms are dangerous and destructive. To the Orlanthi storms are a vital part of the ecosystem in which they live. What's complicated about reconciling that?   They're both simply, obviously, literaly true. The myths are symbolic narative representations of this, and are true at that level.

Aah, AT THAT LEVEL.  But they don't stay at the level of metaphor and vague rumination of the nature of the world, spoken in a local context.  No, they go on to endow their participants with actual magic - IOW they impose real changes oin the external world.  So they are systematically truer at a much broader level, and at a level which apparently cannot be reconciled.

I am describing what I the GM/player think. It's also likely that many people in Glorantha think the same thing too.

I think any player of an RPG who has thoughts indistingishable from their character probably needs to be sectioned under the metnal health act.  After all, such a player could throw themselves out of a tall building in the full knowldegd that Orlanths wind will save them, right?  They Know this, their myths tell them its True, is that not so?

First of all, what contradictory statements?

Such as for example, that Orlanthi fly to Orlanths hall in their end of year ritual, but an external observer whyo did not share their beliefes would not observer them doing so.  Which suggests that the "truth" the Orlanthi "know" is not a truth at all; in which case, when they cast a magic effect like a Javelin aygment, is there any reason to think they actually gain magical benefit from their keyword?

An argument could be made, for example, that WITHIN one culture, knowing that a death spell has been cast on you - like the pointing bone - a sort of psychological self-suggestion might cause you to self-harm in some way.  But it would not of course have any effect on anyone outside that culture; you would not be able to use the pointing bone on a Lunar, becuase they do not share the same mythology.  So --- do Orlanthi battle magics actually work?  And if so - why?

For example, are orlanthi and Solar myths contradictory? I'd say no, they describe exactly the same things, but merely assign different moral contexts.

No, not moral consequences, they are not the problem, the problem is  consequences of magical engineering, consequences involving real dice going clatter on the real table.  

Is suppose because if your character is a shaman and you're not that requires a certain amount of thinking outside your everyday box. What if the referee is a practicing shaman who realy does believe in the power of magic? All of a sudden that disjoint seems a lot smaller.

No, it does not at all.  Because if my referee has some rule by which they will resolve such conflicts, and refuses to tell me what these rules are, then they are engaged in the most egregious form of railroading, actually concealing the system.  

I'm not expecting you to actualy believe in magic, or actualy believe in religion. There's plenty of material out there for you to read about it if you wish, "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" is a decent start and I know Greg's been recommending it for over 20 years. I'd also recommend "A History of God" by Karen Armstrong.

But, I have read Thousand Faces, and I fully agree there are consistent archetypes through mythology, but I do not agree with the Gloranthan extension of this principle that they are all true.  Cleraly, they were in fact all false, which is why their contradictory claims could never be empirically demonstrated one way or another.  As at the start of this post, where the truth or otherwise of a myth is unprovable, no problem arises because the system does not seek to validate a given myth; but where the system DOES validate myths, as it does in Glorantha, it needs to be consistent.

[contracycle]

Gareth,

I did not need to know the metaphysics of the Radiance in order to enjoy Underworld, either as a player or a gamemaster.

A quick Google turns up the followingf from an RPGnet article:

Consider the Radiance, the mystic energy that helps make the UnderWorld the wondrous place that it is. The Radiance is the raw stuff of magic, the hopes and dreams and fears of the world collected and channeled by the arcane lines of the New York subway system. When the Radiance empowers an object, it is called a Relic. When the Radiance coalesces into a sentient being, he/she/it is called a Legendary. So what if the Radiance could imbue a piece of lore with power?

Seems like a perfectly good objective in-game suggestion to me.  Are these claims as to the nature of Radiance disputed by any group within the game?  Is there any doubt amongst the players that this IS what radiance is in this world?  I don't know, not being familiar with Underworld, but at first glance it appears to be making a simple statement, as is normal in RPG, as to hiw the meaphysics works.  Frex ars magicas study of the limits of magic by reference to theory of divine spheres.  All cut and dired, the GM knows how the world is supposed to work and how to make decisions based upon this when judging player actions.

[contracycle]

I'm not prepared to dismiss Contra's complaints, without understanding them. I just do not understand what he's trying to say.

I'm an orlanthi, and I perform some act of magic which PROVES orlanth is lord of storms.

Then a Seven Mothers priest comes along and PROVES that he is not.

Both proofs are objective as they are validated by the manifestation of the gods power.

How do you make sense of this as either player or GM?

If I were a player, and this happened to me, my immediate conclusion would be that NEITHER of us has the truth, and that magic comes form Somewhere Else, for which the gods are but figureheads.

[pete_darby]

I'm not prepared to dismiss Contra's complaints, without understanding them. I just do not understand what he's trying to say.

I'm an orlanthi, and I perform some act of magic which PROVES orlanth is lord of storms.

Then a Seven Mothers priest comes along and PROVES that he is not.

Both proofs are objective as they are validated by the manifestation of the gods power.

How do you make sense of this as either player or GM?

If I were a player, and this happened to me, my immediate conclusion would be that NEITHER of us has the truth, and that magic comes form Somewhere Else, for which the gods are but figureheads.

So, your Orlanthi character can do storm magic, because he participates in the "stormness" of Orlanth. He goes to the heroplanes at least once a year, re-enacts the acts of Orlanth, and by identifying mythically with Orlanth channels the Storm power of Orlanth through himself.

So far so straightforward, yeah?

How the seven mothers cultist would combat this would say "Sure, he's A storm god, but just a rebllious godling (Rebellus Terminus ?) who misappropriated the "stormness" that's the due of Doburdun, the good storm." And they "kill" Orlanth by attempting to prevent the Orlanthi maintaining their mythical connection with Orlanth by banning his worship, and also by experimentally heroquesting to discover the myths where Orlanth was defeated, or lost his "stormness" for a time, and using these to disrupt the Orlanthi "stormness" ceremonies.

Orlanth, in all his stormness, remains "unchanged" in the God World, but the ability of his worshippers to partake of his "stormness" is disrupted... and the Lunars are saying: "Well, you can partake of the stormness of Doburdun, if you want stormness. Yeah, he's got no leadership magic, but you don't really need that, not with the red emperor around and all..."

This, to me, is actually one of the less problematic manifestations of the "absolute relativism" of Glorantha... When Orlanth AND Yelm turn up in Monotheist myths as very powerful demons, honest, not Gods at all, it gets tricky.

But yeah, one way of looking at the Gods of Glorantha is that they are "personifications of collections of fundamental powers," so Orlanth is, for Orlanthi, the channel for the fundamental powers of Storm, Combat, Leadership, Motion, etc. Certainly, that's the implication of the creation myth at the start of G:ittHW. But there are caveats attached to that: the myth there is explicitly stated to be "according to the God Learners," who we know futzed around with the othersides to make them fit their Campbellian patterns of knowledge. So it's a fair model of how the gods evolved (or, in the eyes of Monotheists, devolved) from the fundamental nature of the cosmos (the primal runes), but since it deals with concepts (the primal runes themselves) which are metaphysically out of bounds (transcendent), the description of how it works is by necessity obscurantic and mystical.

So, you can certainly treat the god of glorantha as reified, anthropomorhised, personified, whatever, channels for the primal powers of the cosmos (expressed in Glorantha through the Runic system). That's not how the vast majority of the population experience it, and it wouldn't help them gain magic mythically through identification with their deities, or compulsion of spirits, or experience of the monotheists divine essence, but that's certainly a workable model (for me anyway) of how magical power is channelled and transferred, at least in theistic cultures.

I can hear an obi-wan like voice in my head saying "god learner tripe," but pfah, it's only Greg... but yeah, the God Learners were trying to cut through the mythic crap and get to the source of power. They did remarkably well, but lost sight of the way the mythic has it's own power, and the power they were after can't be handled by mortal minds (or, in a reified situation like Glorantha, mortal bodies) without a mythic framework.

And, finally (I think), it's implied that the story of the Hero Wars (as told through King of Sartar) is the story of how various people ultimately broke the power of the gods in Glorantha, but then lost their connection the the "cosmic" powers represented by the runes... but without my copy to hand, I couldn't swear to that, and KoS is deliberately obscurantic about such things.

Gareth, I really hope this has helped either turn you off or on to Glorantha, as I know appeals to Campbellian studies are anathema to you, but theyre' first port of call for "explaining" Glorantha.

[Mac Logo]

I'm an orlanthi, and I perform some act of magic which PROVES orlanth is lord of storms.

Then a Seven Mothers priest comes along and PROVES that he is not.

Both proofs are objective as they are validated by the manifestation of the gods power.

How do you make sense of this as either player or GM?

If I were a player, and this happened to me, my immediate conclusion would be that NEITHER of us has the truth, and that magic comes form Somewhere Else, for which the gods are but figureheads.

You are presenting your example as a fait accompli, which is a nonsense.

To Orlanthi, Orlanth is the very air they breathe and the Lunar is either lying or  the Lunars have succeeded in doing major harm to Orlanth. Such a case is examined in the scenarios presented in Sartar Rising: Orlanth is Dead. The Orlanthi would notice if Orlanth was not the Lord of Storms.

To the Lunars, the taming of Orlanth is a major project nearing completion, but it has been ongoing since the Battle of Castle Blue, near 400 years previously. Not until a Temple of the Reaching Moon is built in Sartar could a Seven Mothers priest PROVE that Orlanth's storm is subject to Sedenya's will.

J. Random Seven Mothers Priest cannot just PROVE Orlanth is not the Lord of Storms on a whim, to impress the natives. What you are glibly proposing in your example is the conflict at the heart of the entire Sartar Rising campaign. These are Glorantha-shattering events, the kick-off of Hero Wars, that you are passing off as a contest between two blokes.

Cheers,

Graeme

[newsalor]

In the words of Kosh. . .

You do not understand, but you will.

contracycle:

Irrelevant; the world is objective and external to us. When I am the GM, I am taking on that role, and am obliged to provide feedback to the players in the same way the world provides feedback to real people. How can I represent the world to the players if I-the-GM do not know how it works?

What do you want to know? How deep do you want to delve? I don't understand the finer points of quantum mechanics, but I can still run a game in a modern setting. Also that would mean that all science fiction games would be unplayable. I certainly don't know much about warp-engines or the "physics" involved, but that doesn't mean I can't run a Star Trek -game!

Basicly, you don't need to know everything, you just need to know enough to handle the situations that come up in your game, enough to give the characters their subjective view of the world. For example, if you play in a game where heortlings from Sartar make their living toiling the soil and skirmishing with the evil lunars, all you need to know is how the heortling culture sees things, so you can describe the world around them to your players and something about how the lunars see the world, so you can make their action reasonable. You don't need to know everything!

What the heortlings believe about the world around them, gods etc. is true. Try to understand this. You don't just make stuff up and get magic as in Mage. It's like, this is what we believe in and we know it's the truth because we experience it every day. Gloranthans live and breathe their magic.

As far as the players go, IMHO they only need to know the POV of their own culture and perhaps cult. The characters can work with those and the players are free to explore the source material if they wish.

But, I have read Thousand Faces, and I fully agree there are consistent archetypes through mythology, but I do not agree with the Gloranthan extension of this principle that they are all true. Cleraly, they were in fact all false, which is why their contradictory claims could never be empirically demonstrated one way or another. As at the start of this post, where the truth or otherwise of a myth is unprovable, no problem arises because the system does not seek to validate a given myth; but where the system DOES validate myths, as it does in Glorantha, it needs to be consistent.

You claim that Gloranthan myths are false. You claim that this is because the myths contradict each other. You claim that because of this Glorantha is inconsistent. Right?

Well, I flatly disagree.

Glorantha is internally consistent.

You want objective reality? Fine I give you one (version ;) .

In Glorantha the objective truth is that the truth is subjective. Every people have a different version of the events before time began because of the nature of reality before time began. In the time before time there was no single causal chain of events that lead to each other. There were myths. Each religion, each culture has their own myths and they give power to their worshippers. Myths empower the world.

The everyday realitities of Glorantha are explained in a thousand different ways. Questions like why we die and where does the rain come from have a thousand different answers. Most of them are true. Those truths empower magics that can lay down the dead and bring rain etc. It's all about the point of view!

The different truths may contradict each other. Most of the time this is not a problem, because the cultures don't tend to mix well. Each side has done a good job demonizing the neighboring cultures, so they have explanations to their ignorance and beliefs in their petty gods.

However, there is a way to solve contradictions. That's heroquesting. If you want to prove to those evil imperials that Orlanth can't be chained, then you can heroquest to prove it. There is an old exemple about heroquesting. If you do a heroquest with the support of your village and succeed, you can bring some prosperity to the village or perhaps a bit of magic to help them. If you do a heroquest with the support of your tribe against another tribe, you can change their relationship in a major way. Just look at the King of Dragon Pass game. Doing a heroquest can magically reconcile you with your enemies, make the fear you or give you magic. Now, if you do a heroquest with everybody in your culture backing you up, praying that you succeed, making sacrifices to strenghten you and you go against another culture and succeed, you can force your point of view on them. This is what the hero wars are about!

If you do a heroquest about how Orlanth freed his tribe from the emperor, you are bound to draw a lunar heroquester along! After the quest the luser and all his supporters suffer, just as the winner and all his supporters gain the benefits of the quest. The commander of the lunar garrison holding your people as slaves could be killed, all his men could lose a good part of their magic and the shacles holding your people could be torn of by the magic of the heroquest.

Think of the myths and godtime as ripples in a pond of some amorphous liquid. ;) Each different telling of a myth is like a tiny stroke that touches the surface. As a whole some general truths can be seen. Every culture has a myth that tells them that people die. The truth of the matter is enormous. The ripple is more like a standing wave! A deep, deep truth. Each time people use their magic, what they are really doing is re-enacting their myths in often symbolical ways. Powerful magicians are very close to living the myths of their gods all the time. Re-enacting a myth give you power that is called magic. When two different versions collide, like when a priest of Doburdum and Orlanth face of, the conflict is kinda like the two waves colliding. Many more people believe in Orlanth and Orlanth is a much more important god to many people, but in the end it is also about how good are the worshippers "channeling" their gods.

In a heroquest gaming session I as a GM have to represent the world. In a situation where a priest of Doburdum would use his powers over storm to try to command my orlanthi PCs, we'd resolve the situation with a contest. Command Storm feat versus Devotee of Orlanth augmented by head-strong perhaps. Now, I'd give +5 to my PCs because Orlanth is all about freedom and perhaps -5 to -10 to the NPC because there are all there holy places sacred to Orlanth all over the Dragon Pass, in fact the hill the contestants are standing on is one. So I'd give a homeground advantage. . . These modifiers are quite big, if you don't want it in your Glorantha, you can tone them down. In fact, you can do anything you like in your Glorantha.

What I'm saying here is that Glorantha is internally consistant, because the nature of truth in Glorantha is that there are different truths about the time before time and other metaphysical issues. These truths are called myths and they can be proved empirically within the game world because the worshippers get magic from them. They literally experience the truth! The fact that they contradict with each other is not a bug and it does not make the myths false. It is an built-in feature of Glorantha and may be the thing that makes it special. The contradictions are not irrelevant within the world, but are the thing that drive it forwards (perhaps towards it's doom) .

What you perceive to be illogical and inconsistent is just the opposite, but not because you are stupid or anything like that, but because you were not aware about all the facts. If you take into account that the nature of objective reality in Glorantha is to be subjective (cultural point of views) there really is no problem.

[soru]

J. Random Seven Mothers Priest cannot just PROVE Orlanth is not the Lord of Storms on a whim, to impress the natives. What you are glibly proposing in your example is the conflict at the heart of the entire Sartar Rising campaign. These are Glorantha-shattering events, the kick-off of Hero Wars, that you are passing off as a contest between two blokes.

Exactly. Orlanth is a greater god, his resistance is given in the HQ rulebook. If you want to try to 'disprove' (i.e. permanently defeat) him, roll the dice.

If you are a goddess with the backing of many demigods, heroes magicians and an empire, you might just win.

If you have actual game mechanics for resolving these issues, what do you need metaphysics for?


soru

[pete_darby]

J. Random Seven Mothers Priest cannot just PROVE Orlanth is not the Lord of Storms on a whim, to impress the natives. What you are glibly proposing in your example is the conflict at the heart of the entire Sartar Rising campaign. These are Glorantha-shattering events, the kick-off of Hero Wars, that you are passing off as a contest between two blokes.

Exactly. Orlanth is a greater god, his resistance is given in the HQ rulebook. If you want to try to 'disprove' (i.e. permanently defeat) him, roll the dice.

If you are a goddess with the backing of many demigods, heroes magicians and an empire, you might just win.

If you have actual game mechanics for resolving these ussies, what do you need metaphysics for?


soru

Huh? I have to say from what I've seen of discussions about the nature of the gods of Glorantha, this ain't so. "Disproving" the storm nature of Orlanth is futile, he just plain is the embodiment of primal theist storm stuff, stormness as I've called it before... as is any other storm god.

But they can cut the worshippers off from Orlanth, or from Orlanth's stormness, by denying them access to the mythical relationships they have with Orlanth through their religious practices.

And if they can do that, as they "are" doing in the Sartar Rising campaign, there are going to be some Heortlings going "... You know, if they can cut me off from Orlanth's power, maybe he really isn't the grand poo-bah I thought he was..." Orlanth remians unchanged by this, but when it's 40 below in the freezing snow, and Big Daddy O ain't keeping the Ice Demons away, well, religious integrity is all fine and good, but it won't stop my 'nads from freezing...

[contracycle]

You are presenting your example as a fait accompli, which is a nonsense.

Well, I'm not passing that off *glibly*, becuase the term "proof" to describe magical acts empowered by the gods appears in the text.

Regardless, it would seem to me only a couple of interpretations arise; and they must arise becuase the system is mechanically determine one or the other to have worked.  So I cannot escape that conclusion as either player or GM, because it happened right there in front of us, at the table.

So let me put it this way; if it is the case that such a resolution WOULD pre-empt the entire campaign, and does strike at such a fundamental conflict, then how do I resolve it at the table?  It's not my desire to construct an artifical scenario, but it would seem that in fact I'd have to go to great lengths to make sure that no Orlanthi magician ever confronted any Lunar magician through the entirety of my game; and if I can't do that, I cannot apparently prevent the preemption of the campaign.  What am I to do?

This is a real question.  I'm really not kidding - when I found that both forms of magic could and would work, I thought OK, this is a subjectivist magic model (ok yes I know that word sends shivers down peoples spines) and I went off looking for the underlying principles of this model, which I expected, contextually, to find in the god-learners secret.  But thats not available either.

To Orlanthi, Orlanth is the very air they breathe and the Lunar is either lying or  the Lunars have succeeded in doing major harm to Orlanth.

... in their mythology, but seeing as all the mythologies are "true", this amounts to saying nothing.

Not until a Temple of the Reaching Moon is built in Sartar could a Seven Mothers priest PROVE that Orlanth's storm is subject to Sedenya's will.

Why would that make any difference?  Its a building; what does that have to do with the incontrovertible trueness of orlanthi myths?  What is it about constructing a building that makes it qualify as proof, whereas actually demonstrating your gods divinity through magical deeds does not?

Having done a little digging, I found a Q and A which discusses the stars.  And it claims that "Almost every one of the well-known theories is correct", these being: a star is a hole in the sky, a living being, a temple, or a ball of fire.  (except for Zenith which is an observation balloon [???]).

This is clearly not a contradiction that can be resolved by attacking the scenario; we have 4 different versions of what stars are, and the explicit claim that all of them are true.  How do you explain these contradictions?  Will building a temple resolve them?