Gloranthan Genre conventions / tropes

[pete_darby]

Well, in practical terms about that temple...

The temple is a power-distributor for the red-goddess. It increases her influence in a radiuis around it. It's construction is opposed by Orlanthi, channelling the power of their god. If it is contructed, ipso facto, Orlanth's will manifest through his people, is inferior to that of the Red Goddess', manifested through her people.

As for the stars... which I remember from last time is the example that really sticks in your craw... Since you can only reach the stars by mythic / magical means, what the stars are when you reach them depends on which myth you're following to get to them. I know you're going to hate that answer, but it's the only one that's consistent with Glorantha as given. Now, I would say that, behind the myths, there may be a fundamental nature of stars that each myth cycle only hints at, but that nature is ineffable to man.

So Gareth, are you honestly here to get answers? Or just to point out where Glorantha & Greg differ from your view of myth & religion?

[newsalor]

So the stars are many things to different people. Well, when you fly to them, you have to do it with magic and what you are really doing is crossing to the other side. The other side is just like your myths, in fact, it is your myths.

[contracycle]

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![/quiote]

Thats an extension to an illogical extreme; knowledge is not equal to perfect or total knowledge.  I don't need to know things outside the scope of resolution: my complaint is that it is the very things that ARE the subject of resolution that are not explained.

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.

There it is again, the characters subjective view.  Thats not enough, becuase I am the GM, and I have to judge such that the NPC's subjective worlds are ALSO accounted for.  Please, no more defaulting to the character  subjective view, it is utterly irrelevant: you have to hook the PLAYERS, not the characters.

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!

Fine, so, thats tokenism in which I pay lip service to a nominal but unengaging creed.  Now, how do we get from this to emotive naratives about, say, what X means to us?  We don't; we just run about and smack orcs like in another game that shall remain nameless, with about the same emotional content.

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

If its a VERSION, then its not an objective reality, is it?

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.

Right, so ultimately, its like Mage in which the demographics of believer populations determine the valifity of those beliefs?  Right or wrong?

Becuase then theres a much more practical solution to the hero wars then monkeying about in existentially abstract 'planes'; to eradicate a god of which you disprove, simply eradicate all their worshippers.  Is genocide the default mode of mystic problem solving in Glorantha?

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.

You've ommitted the fact that it is the contest that produces the dilemma; this scenario, according to Mac Logo, would undercut the entire campaign structure.  Because having demonstrated the TRUTH of Orlanths power over Doburdum, the worshipper of Doburdum will presumably have their faith in the very existance of Doburdum destroyed and be factually compelled by the evidence before them to acknowledge that it is indeed Orlanth who is the lord of storms.

Until the dice fall the other way next time around...

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.

But thats a nonsense statement that makes the very term "truth" useless.

These truths are called myths and they can be proved empirically within the game world because the worshippers get magic from them.

Well then we have contradictory proofs, thus demonstrating that neither claim is in fact true, but rather that some larger thing must be true which explains all/both.

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.

Being deliberately contradictory is "special"? Thats definately not a feature in my book, its the most profound bug a product offered for sale can have.  Especially in an RPG which has a tricky time establishing a coherent imginary space in the first place.  This makes glorantha a sort of anti-RPG, in that it explicitly and deliberately seeks to deny a coherent SIS to the players, it seems.

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.

Heh - are facts a different category of knowledge than "truth", then?  If I have been told the Truth, but not the Facts, then what value is Truth?  I'd rather have the facts, please.

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.

There is still a massive problem, because simply saying that, easy as it is, does not make it any easier to understand.

So back to my scenario: priest of cult A casts magic proving the validity of their faith and doctrine; priest B does likewise.  The DICE resolve what "truth" is... now, how does my character, one of these, understand the possible range of results?  By all means, appeal to Facts instead of Truth if you'd like.

[contracycle]

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

Becuase, it makes truth random.  On Tuesday, the dice say that Orlanth is the lord of storms, and on Wednesday they say that Doburdum is.

How do I understand this from the point of view of myc character?  They are clearly bonkers.

[pete_darby]

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

Becuase, it makes truth random.  On Tuesday, the dice say that Orlanth is the lord of storms, and on Wednesday they say that Doburdum is.

How do I understand this from the point of view of myc character?  They are clearly bonkers.

No, I'd say that on Tuesday, the power of Orlanth was coursing through me, informing my every word and deed with the power of the storm, demonstarting my one-ness with the great god.

Wednesday, I was bad, I'd coveted my neighbours goat, or, shucks, I did something wrong, for my god has forsaken me, oh woe, I have been defeated by even this upstart fart of a storm follower from beyond our lands...

And if Wednesday happens enough, he may even start to think ,as before, hey, maybe Orlanth isn't the great storm lord, maybe it's him, not me.

[edit/ in objective terms, he'd be wrong: Orlanth is the same, but the connection has weakened, probably in "current" Glorantha due to combinations of mundane interference with worship and hostile "counter-questing" by the unars)

Remember, these practical demonstrations test the magical power of the followers that the gods provide to them, not the powers of the gods themselves... but that, to characters within the game, that my be a subtlety lost on them.

I'd look on it as something like the RW disputations between or within religions. If the protestants "beat" the catholics in one disputation, did the Catholic church disband itself, or vice versa? Certainly, the participants believed they were divinely inspired, and some converts were made, but the nature of God, the presumed source of their inspiration, could not be changed by mundane argument. In my Glorantha, the locals would do the same.... some may question their god, others just their faith, others would say "screw this," get an axe and try the old fashioned way.

Again, is this helping or just muddying it further for you?

[Mac Logo]

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?

How does a single Orlanthi magician duelling with a single Lunar magician preempt the entirety of a campaign? This really is a bit strong!

So they argue, they show off their different magics and one comes away the victor. We'll presume the Lunar has demonstrated some superiority. Who is diminished, Orlanth or his follower? The latter to a far greater extent than the former. What they have lost is entirely dependant on what the goals of the contest were.

I think that we can agree that a Lunar bumping into an Orlanthi in the road will not expect to convert every Orlanth worshipper in Glorantha on the show of a flashy new-windy feat to that single opponent, merely that single opponent.

And so on up the scale. To affect all Orlanthi in one fell swoop requires a contest against all Orlanthi - or at least on in which they all participate at some level. A heroquest vs the god himself would probably be the most economical way of doing it.

Attempting to "Utterly defeat all Orlanth worshippers, everywhere!" is not a sensible goal for an individual facing an opponent who is in their face right now! For a start, mechanically, you'd have a very large multiple target penalty. :)

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.

Ah... back to the Godlearners and their secret. You think that they were right? That they had the real answers? Maybe they did, but they never conquered the EWF and they lose in the end, which must cast doubt on the veracity of their Ultimate Truth of Glorantha.

What you appear to be asking for is the Quantum Mechanics of Greg's Mythology. A Grand Unified Theory of Glorantha. You are not going to get it out of the book, or out of Greg.

My strictly personal view is that the GUToG is the ultimate prize of the Hero Wars. The chance to remake the entire worldmyth in a form of your choosing. Of course, many campaigns will never be that bold, but some will, and their Gloranthas will come to reflect the consequences of their choices in a way like no other game setting.

Now I don't suppose that helps you in the slightest. Oh well.

Cheers

Graeme

[soru]

On Tuesday, the dice say that Orlanth is the lord of storms, and on Wednesday they say that Doburdum is.

Only if you are unreasonably generous with the healing rules. The results of all contests are persistent until healed.

On a personal level, recovering from a total defeat in a magical contest of this kind would likely take months of atonement and penitentiary questing.

The same kind of defeat on a military, societal or cosmic level would take a lot longer to recover from. If Sedenya is overthrown at the end of the 3rd age, She might just be ready rise again in some form in the 6th age or so.

soru

[pete_darby]

Mac, to be fair, Gareth's asking a very reasonable question at the base of things: where do the Gods get their power from?

AFAICT, it comes from their being the embodiments of the fundamental forces of the cosmos.

And yes, more than one god can embody the same force: sometimes this signifies a mystical unity (the earth godessess), sometimes an apparent inherent clash of nature (Sedenya & Orlanth as "Gods of the middle air": there can be only one!).

So the question "Which god is the True Storm?" is one that can only be answered subjectively by a character within Glorantha, as there is no objective "true, one and only, honest" storm god... but within Glorantha, that answer would really piss off Orlanth's worshippers, Doburdun's worshippers, and, probably, anybody un-illuminated, because it is so at odds with how they interact with the otherside.

Like I said, the God Learners had part of the answer, but fudged the application in pursuit of secular power.

NOw, you're probably thinking, fine, but where dlo you get that from? Pretty much just from the G:ittHW introduction, the smatterings in the HQ rulebook, the plot of Orlanth is dead.

And this is just the sort of thing I started off the thread for: what are the conventions, the base assumptions of Glorantha, that make it Glorantha and not Forgotten Realms with ducks? And why aren't they more front and centre?

I don't agree with Gareth's arguments, but I can see where they've arisen from.

[pete_darby]

The same kind of defeat on a military, societal or cosmic level would take a lot longer to recover from. If Sedenya is overthrown at the end of the 3rd age, She might just be ready rise again in some form in the 6th age or so.

soru

Replace 3rd age with "before The Dawn Age" and 6th age with "3rd Age," and you've got the story of Sedenya right there...

[Mac Logo]

Mac, to be fair, Gareth's asking a very reasonable question at the base of things: where do the Gods get their power from?

Now, that's a very good question.

AFAICT, it comes from their being the embodiments of the fundamental forces of the cosmos.

Or their usurping those that embodied the fundamental forces.
Or being the post-creation combination of said forces.
Or the devolution/splitting of the original unitary force.
Or Primal Chaos from beyond the world...
If that dratted Lunar has defeated me, it's because he's using foul chaos magic... fetch the Uroxi!

There's never a single, straight answer in Glorantha. How's that for a defining convention?

I don't agree with Gareth's arguments, but I can see where they've arisen from.

As can I, now you've laid them out clearly and simply. I definitely disagree with what appears to be his hypothesis.

I'm sorry if I've seemed a bit snarky to anyone.
:)

Cheers

Graeme

[newsalor]

Dear contracycle,

I'm sorry if I upset you. I was only trying to help.

contracycle:
Thats an extension to an illogical extreme; knowledge is not equal to perfect or total knowledge. I don't need to know things outside the scope of resolution: my complaint is that it is the very things that ARE the subject of resolution that are not explained.

Yes. That is true. It was a bit of straw puppet. . . However, you seemed to demand the final ultimate objective truth that would be a Gloranthan equivalent of wapr-field mechanics.

Could you point out the things that you want to be explained and I will try.

contracycle:
There it is again, the characters subjective view. Thats not enough, becuase I am the GM, and I have to judge such that the NPC's subjective worlds are ALSO accounted for. Please, no more defaulting to the character subjective view, it is utterly irrelevant: you have to hook the PLAYERS, not the characters.

I believe that I mentioned the need to take into account the NPC:s subjective POVs. I won't disagree with you there.

Are you saying that not only the GM but the players too need to have an absolutely objective view of the setting before they can enjoy the game? Why?

contracycle:
Fine, so, thats tokenism in which I pay lip service to a nominal but unengaging creed. Now, how do we get from this to emotive naratives about, say, what X means to us? We don't; we just run about and smack orcs like in another game that shall remain nameless, with about the same emotional content.

Why the hostility? Oh, anyways. . .

First of all, there aren't orcs in Glorantha. ;) YGWV ;)

IMO the lack of an objective, absolute truth does not rob your game of content and it certainly doesn't force you to kill orcs. If there is no absolute moral and ethical right and wrong, that may even make conflicts more interresting. The fact that the opposite site is right too, by their own standarts, is good IMO.

contracycle:
If its a VERSION, then its not an objective reality, is it?

It is called a smiley. . .

I just thought that you'd appreciate my insight. I'm not claiming to be an oracle who can give you all the answers and who knows the absolute truth.

contracycle:
Right, so ultimately, its like Mage in which the demographics of believer populations determine the valifity of those beliefs? Right or wrong?

No. If you feed total garbage to some folks - you know, just make something up, it won't do anyone any good. You won't get magic from it, no matter how many people believe in it.

contracycle:
Becuase then theres a much more practical solution to the hero wars then monkeying about in existentially abstract 'planes'; to eradicate a god of which you disprove, simply eradicate all their worshippers. Is genocide the default mode of mystic problem solving in Glorantha?

If no-one worships a god, no-one remembers how to contact his powers. The god itself would not disappear, but since the gods don't act in the Inner World, it would be nearly the same thing. Many people have attempted to eradicate religions by genocide in the real world too. Some have even succeeded. I'm not sure that I'd consider it very elequent or even practical. However, it is your game, if you want to touch on those issues in your game, I'm not going to stop you.

contracycle:
You've ommitted the fact that it is the contest that produces the dilemma; this scenario, according to Mac Logo, would undercut the entire campaign structure. Because having demonstrated the TRUTH of Orlanths power over Doburdum, the worshipper of Doburdum will presumably have their faith in the very existance of Doburdum destroyed and be factually compelled by the evidence before them to acknowledge that it is indeed Orlanth who is the lord of storms.

Are you purposefully mis-interpreting what I'm saying?

I'd say it's more likely that the worshipper would rationalise that he must be more faithful. Then again, no-one said that the gods are omnipotent. No one is disputing that all kinds of different demons had success in the Gods War against the gods worshipper by different peoples. "We don't worship Doburdun because he is the most powerful god around. We worship him because his cause is just and he is indeed, the good air." I'm sure that Doburdun has myths that tell the story about how the Rebel Winds didn't abey him and he had to teach them with his stick. Then again, the rules suggest that failing in magic use should "wound" the magical abilities, at least temporalily.

newsalor:
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.

contracycle:
But thats a nonsense statement that makes the very term "truth" useless.
. . .
Well then we have contradictory proofs, thus demonstrating that neither claim is in fact true, but rather that some larger thing must be true which explains all/both.

Would it help if I'd say it differently? I'll try.

Some theoreticians believe that every possible future will happen. This would mean infinite alternative universes. If you think about the mythical pre-history of Glorantha as several thousands different versions of the pre-historic events that all happened, it may not be so bad. They are like different "versions" of the mythical past. They may be contradictory, but each "version" is true and each version did happen. Now, let's say that by re-enacting the mythical past we can get the power of that past (otherworld) into this world. Let's also say that we can travel to that otherworld to visit our mythical past. In that way they are verifiable. Let's finally call these different "versions" of the past myths.

Now, let's take the POV of a sartarite heortling. He says that Orlanth is the King of gods and that he liberated the world from the shackles of the Evil Emperor. Is what he is saying true? Yes, because it did happen.

The Dara Hapans tell a different story. They are also correct because in their myths Yelm was shattered because he was shocked for the Rebel Gods killed his son. That also happened, it is true.

How can both these statements be true? How could they both have happened? Because of the nature of God Time. It is not nice and linear like our time. Contradictionary things could happen simultaneosly. There was no clear causal chain of events that leaded from one event to another. There were myths.

If, on the other hand, some one just made up a story how the Grand Poopah ordered the world with his prodding stick, his statement is false, because it did not happen.

contracycle:
Heh - are facts a different category of knowledge than "truth", then? If I have been told the Truth, but not the Facts, then what value is Truth? I'd rather have the facts, please.

I'm sorry, but since I'm not an native english speaker I'm not comfortable  debating semantics with you, so I won't. I can only hope that you sincerely try to understand what I'm saying.

I generally used the word truth in the boolean sense of the word. You know, if it happened then it's true. I guess that I could rephare facts as evidence, though I must say that I used it as much because it is an idiom.

contracycle:
There is still a massive problem, because simply saying that, easy as it is, does not make it any easier to understand.

Yes. You are right. Glorantha may not be easy to understand, but it is fascinating. I don't want Glorantha to be just another fantasy world. In many ways, God Time is the thing that makes Glorantha special.

contracycle:
So back to my scenario: priest of cult A casts magic proving the validity of their faith and doctrine; priest B does likewise. The DICE resolve what "truth" is... now, how does my character, one of these, understand the possible range of results?

If someone manages to use his magic on somebody once, that's not bad. That means that that somebody had more powerful magic than you once. The fact that he is a evil magician does not help his case. If on the other hand the so-called evil magician from the north keeps kicking everybodys ass, some who lack faith, will have doubt. If he is generally a nice guy and helps everybody then he might manage to convert some folks.

When I talked about the other guys truth beating the other in a magical contest, (I'm not talking about heroquests) I ment that in that instance the "reality" of the victor asserts itself. Magic is about bringing the other world into the mundane. If the priest A would win the contest, then he would have been better at channeling the magic to the Inner World and so his version would have at least partially asserted itself in that instance.

Let's say that the duel is about my orlanthi PC trying to free himself from prison. Now the judge who sentanced the drunken orlanthi worships Antirius, who represents cosmic order to the Dara Happans. The judge has magic that makes his judgements difficult to oppose, because everyone obeyed Antirius. He was just. The orlanthi has magic that gives him freedom from oppressors. In their mythical past, evil Dara Happan oppressors always tried to hold them down. Besides, orlanthi don't approve the Dara Happan law.

If the PC wins, then he feels that his breath is free again, he breaks his manacles and the PC and GM give a colorful description of the escape. The Dara Happan judge is "wounded", all abilities related to his authority and pride may suffer penalties until he is "healed". If the PC loses, then he might feel that Orlanth does not hear his call and that foreign magic is sapping his will and breath. Maybe he would even consider that he was wrong. With a complete defeat, he could become so depressed that he would not make any efforts to struggle anymore for a very long time.

I see that metaphysically the following has happened. When the two magicians called their magic, they each evoked a myth to manifest in the Inner World with variable degrees of success. The other "truth" manifested more powerfully in this case and that explains the concequences. If the PC lost, it does not mean that every orlanthi will from this day forth consider drunken brawls wrong! It may not even deter the PC, but at that instance, one truth manifested in the Inner World and was stronger than the other. The otherwold came to the Inner World. Magic.

[Mac Logo]

You've ommitted the fact that it is the contest that produces the dilemma; this scenario, according to Mac Logo, would undercut the entire campaign structure.

Whether intentional or not this is rather disingenuous. I did not say that. Or anything close to it. You interpreted what I said as saying that, and I disagree with your interpretation of my words.

Please don't twist my words and subsequently present them as my opinion. It's your opinion, not mine.

Cheers

Graeme

[Paul Watson]

Fine, so, thats tokenism in which I pay lip service to a nominal but unengaging creed.  Now, how do we get from this to emotive naratives about, say, what X means to us?  We don't; we just run about and smack orcs like in another game that shall remain nameless, with about the same emotional content.

By "we", I trust you are referring to you and your group, as it certainly isn't true of the Gloranthaphile community as a whole. I accept that you have a genuine need for absolute knowledge of the underlying metaphysics before you can have emotionally and ethically meaningful play. I hope you accept that many Gloranthaphiles have very meaningful sessions without having this ultimate truth, and without feeling a need for it. That out of the way ...

Personally, I'd take a two pronged approach. The first is practical. Let's say a player presented me with the situation you cite as an example:

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

As a GM, my first questions would be "How, exactly?" Simply whipping up a storm won't cut it. All that proves is that your god has some sort of affinitiy for storms. If I want to be pedantic, it doesn't even prove it. You could instead be using some magic item, or some power unrelated to your god which you picked up on a HeroQuest. Defeating a Doburdun devotee in some sort of storm-related magical contest proves nothing but that you're stronger in your magic. Taking that devotee on a field trip to the God Plane to hear from Orlanth's own lips that he's the Lord of Storms proves nothing. The Doburdun devotee will call Orlanth deluded if he's polite, deceitful if he's not. And he'll offer to take the Orlanthi devotee to hear the same thing from Doburdun's lips.

I am simply not concerned about what I'll do if one player performs some magic to prove his god is the lord of storms, because that proof is impossible. The interesting part is in playing a character who believes at a deep level that his god is supreme, and act accordingly.

The second approach is a kind of "there is no spoon" approach. I don't worry about finding some underlying metaphysics which resolves all conflicts and outright paradoxes because it is simply not possible to find. In my experience, these conflicts are the source, not the death, of meaningful play. I don't worry about having to rule on what is the ultimate truth in one of these conflicts, as it has never come up in some 20 years of Gloranthan role-play, and I simply can't imagine even a hypothetical situation where I would have to make such a ruling. There is no ultimate truth.

What is the true nature of Humakt? Ask someone from Heortland, Carmania and the Kingdom of War, and you'll get three rather different answers. Which one is right? I can't simply look up the answer in a book. The players will have to debate the issue, explore the issue, through the proxy of their characters, potentially fuelling several sessions of play. Will I ever be able to give the players an ultimate answer? No, and I don't care. The interesting, emotionally compelling play is in the asking, not the answering.

As a player, I'm much more interesting in exploring issues that have no absolute, preset answer rather than something the GM can answer by consulting a book. The Humakti debate becomes more interesting, much more complelling because all sides are allowed to believe they are right. If a book instead said that the KoW take on Humakt was the correct one, it would render playing an Orlanthi or Carmanian Humakti meaningless.

Damned soul: "Well, who was right? Who gets into Heaven?"
Director: "I'm afraid it was the Mormons; yes, the Mormons were the correct answer."

[simon_hibbs]

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?

You raised the point that myths in glorantha can conflict and this proves thay are 'false' in some sense. Myths are not objective and entirely external to us, because they do not happen directly in the physical (objective) world, but in the otherworlds of faith, belief, imagination, transcendence and the dead.

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.

And HeroQuest provides complete and sufficient rules for people zapping each other.[/quote]

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.

Yes, but you asked how things work in Glorantha, where it is correct and accurate. I'm putting answers to your questions right in front of your face and you're not even seeing them.

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.

No, he realy describes how their world works.

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.

Sorry, I'm not following you here.

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.

That's how magic works in Glroantha. No broader level is required, because valid effective symbolism that resonates with human conciousness is, by definition, valid effective magic.

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?

Now you're just being deliberately facetious and provocative. We're talking about the nature of religious faith in Gloranth and the real world, not what those beliefs actualy are.

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;

It bis true that this is what they experience, but also tru that it isn't what others experience. These experiences ocur in the otherworld of myth, and so are not objective fact, htough I wouldn't advise pressign that point with an actual Orlanthi (yes I know they don't exist, fiction, blah, blah, whatever).

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?

Because now they are bringing the power they experienced from the otherworld into the material world.

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?

Here we go again. It works because that's what magic is. This kind of magic is the invocation of symbolic truths to create material effects. C.f. The laws of magic as propounded by Bonewitz. How many times do I have to go over this? That's what magic is. That's how it works in Glorantha.

I'm not expecting you to believe this in the real world, but in Glorantha, this is it.

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.

There are plenty of books on magic, books on shamanism, books on rleigious philosophy. I have given references, Greg has too for several decades to anyone who bothers to ask him. Nobody's hiding anything from you. You're just refusing to accept what's being given to you.

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.

Firstly in Glorantha these archetypes are true. Why else would Greg give the book as a reference for how things are in Glorantha?

Second, many people in the real world disagree that "Clearly they were all false", it's merely your opinion that they are false. Greg is not a shaman because one day he might make it rain, but because he experiences positive effects in his life from his religious practice. What's so hard to accept about that?


Simon Hibbs

[Nysalor]

Gedday folks

I've stumbled onto this thread a bit late, and still have much to catch up on, but I'm intrigued and inspired by the attempt to capture the spirit, genre and episteme of Glorantha.

Some of my own meanderings were used to kick off this thread, in particular a caffeine-fuelled Sunday morning romp that became Lozenge Building 101.

http://home.iprimus.com.au/pipnjim/questlines/trickster.html

At the risk of repeating myself, and of merely affirming some of the excellent stuff already posted in this thread, here are some of my personal keys to whole malt Glorantha.

My biases and limitations are toward theistic Glorantha, and are less applicable to some of the other realms. But then, for most of those realms, we're still working out the kinks.

This isn't the sort of list I'd give to a Gloranthan newbie. its intended to tease out some threads. Hopefully, the end of this thread will see such a list.

1) The world is made of story.

Myth is more than stories of how and why and when, it it the constituent component of reality. Myth describes the pattern and process of existence, it is the key to power and control and understanding. Mythology is the art of meaning. Heroquest is the way of power. Experimental heroquesting is the atomic fission: breaking down simple mythemes to release (and hopefully control) their raw energies.

Mythology is the art of meaning. Myths held by mere *people* are always partial and incomplete. The clearer your appreciation of the pattern, the greater your chance to harness its power for creation and destruction.

Deities are many things: they are to a large degree paths and clusters of meaning and action - and though a devotee would never express it that way, I think this general meaning would be understood. Orlanth is a way of doing things. Orlanth is an ordering of reality. Orlanth is a story.

2) You are the still point of a turning world.

You can experience Gloranthan reality only from one vantage point: your own and that of your cult and culture. The mythemes of reality condense into a single story: yours.  Attempts to transcend this limitation rarely if ever succeed. The observer is part of the reaction. Trying to understand the other guy's pov is not only fruitless, it can often dilute your own hold on reality. You have to learn to embrace the Mystery.

For me, Gloranthan mystery is not partial understanding or a set of clues to be unpacked and solved.  Mystery is a gift. Mystery is reality. And its so real it can slap you in the face. And often does.

We have to drop our positivistic, rationalistic selves that promises there is an underlying basal reality 'behind' various phenomenon. Glorantha is story all the way down.

3) Story constrains.

There is a Promenthean curse attached to Gloranthan reality. The closer you come to the storylines of power, the more constrained your actions become. You relive, endlessly, the patterns laid down by the gods, the patterns that are the gods. Your own individuality and freedom are constrained.

Add to this the cyclic and downspiralling nature of Gloranthan history: everything is steadily getting worse, empires and nations always fall, history is set in cycles. Heroes lose their humanity, they come to embody forces that are terrible and unyielding.  From this, you see that a certain pessimism is part of the package. This is seldom emphasised: it goes against the can-do ethic that typifies most roleplaying campaigns. And while it ain't Elric, this constraint and pessimism is part of the background.

Luckily this is balanced by a frothy humour that is itself immistakably Gloranthan.



Far more than any other roleplaying world, Glorantha takes religion and especially mythology seriously. It is, at least in the theistic sphere, a Campbellian, and because it is Campbellian, a Jungian world. Human life is the playground of eternal patterns, humans manifest eternal *stories*.

And while such sub-Jungian cant as the monomyth has limited real world utility, Campbell himself grew from such rocky scholarship to become a prophet and practioner of the possible. I have a sort of love-hate relationship with his writings, but I am still moved by his insight as much as his blindspots. To turn californian for a moment, He followed his bliss; he went beyond the self impossed limitations of his scholarship into pure poetry.

I think there's a lesson there somewhere. :)

Similarly, Greg's writing and making is informed with a sharp intellect and a keen knowledge of religious theory. However, his world view is not that of a scholar, it is that of a religious **practitioner**. Doing and being wins out over sterile knowing every time.

Hence Mystery.


Cheers

John