Okay, splitting off from this thread, I'm trying to compile a pretty basic list of the convetions of Glorantha as a genre, with the focus on being as helpful as possible to newbies to get up and running "Gloranthish" games without either worrying about the weight of material, or being fobbed off with "your Glorantha will vary" without giving ideas of the parameters Gloranthan games work in.

Before starting, I'm indebted to two documents on Nick Brookes' site: Lozenge Building 101 by John Hughes, and 10 things I hate about Glorantha, with a sideways glance at Do ducks have teeth, also by John Hughes.

(btw, I know John's got his essays on Questlines, but I can't reach it atm...)

In fact, I'd do well just by quoting the whole of the first article... and after another 15 minutes reading, re-reading, trying to rewrite them and failing, I can't boil down Lozenge building 101 any further, Do Ducks... veers off, and has been at least partly gregged on the substantive issues, and the bits I wanted to use from 10 things have pretty much already been said in Lozenge Building.

Ah well, I suppose I shall just have to use the rest of my lunch break conversing with players.... but if anyone (especially Brand, as the genre thing was, IIRC, his insight) has any further comment on this, I really woudl love to see it.

I'm going to focus on the things that would make me say 'this is not Glorantha', rather than incidental details of the setting or metaphysics.

#1 This is not D&D/generic fantasy/LoTR

No angry scottish dwarves, proud elvish archer-ninjas, pointless combats or infeasible amounts of hard currency.

#2 New stuff must have some connection to old stuff

A bunch of new mythology by itself usually reads like the backstory to a shootem-up game: no use to man nor beast. But take the same thing and drop some hints as to who the 'yelm' figure is, or make some of the names sound like variants of known gods or the events seem like the could be the view 'from the other side' of a well-known myth, and it's a lot easier to digest.

#3 The mundane world feels 'real' and 'mundane' to the people living in it.

There may be lots of deep contradictions and wierd stuff going on in the background, but these would rarely be visible to anyone actually in the world. If you (in character) researched historical records, there might be the same kind of historical ambiguities and errors you would find researching real-world history, but you wouldn't expect to find blatant irreconcilable differences between trustworthy accounts.

If you are a grizzled military commander, you can predict how magic can be expected to affect a battle - you might be wrong, but you will be surprised to be proved wrong.

Of course, these don't apply on the 'other side' - the existence of the other side is what makes emphasising the grittyness of mundane Glorantha important.

soru

Hmmm... I hate to sound negative, but you could say those things about most fantasy worlds, pace games derived from D&D... and even then, some things would apply to D&D as well.

To me, the metaphysics are what make it different...

Hi Pete,

Yeah, after reading soru's post (no offense soru), it seems to me this threads gonna need a bit more focus if it's gonna work. YGMV allows a lot of leeway -- perhaps even for core assumptions.

You might want to make: "Pete's Glorantha Thread" and have people add and test ideas to what *your* version of Glorantha will be. But I'm not sure you can bring in the whole gang and get them to agree on even the basic elements of the place.

Christopher

Yeah, but that's pretty much the circle I'm trying to square here... YGWV, but what can't V before it ain't G?

Or am I just drawing lines in the sand here?

pete_darby wrote: Hmmm... I hate to sound negative, but you could say those things about most fantasy worlds, pace games derived from D&D... and even then, some things would apply to D&D as well.

To me, the metaphysics are what make it different...

Well Chris, and I hate to say this, but the truth is if we can’t even agree on some basic Gloranthan genre tropes we’re pretty much fucked as far as getting newbies into the setting goes. Having arguments over the details of the setting arcana is one thing, not having any agreement about what makes the setting feel like the setting is another.

However, for genre theory not everyone has to agree about every point. All that has to happen is that most people agree that most points are acceptable as launching off points. (Genre is, after all, defined by repetition and difference – and if everyone did everything exactly the same on every point it would be a pastiche, not a genre.) So if we can get 5 to 10 basic ideas that most people agree are generally Gloranthan, then we can start to build off of that.

Here is a list of things I’ve used when I’ve done material for Glorantha (not always consciously at the time) to make it feel Glorantha even when I wasn’t real clear on the canon setting:

1. Myth Defines: This can be either the Sim “myth as background” or the Nar “myth as premise” – but in either case it is Mythology, not history or politics or even geography, that defines the world on the deepest level.

2. Community is Central: This ties in with mythology, as myths are communal events, but also goes farther. Everyone is from somewhere, and the place you are from determines a lot about you. This includes many of the ‘monsters’ of HeroQuest – who have communities and myths of their own that make them understandable and “human” but whom still are inherently opposed to humanity. This is the “Us vs. Them.”

3. Values are in Conflict: This is the part where you have to decide who “Us” and “Them” is, what that means, and what you’re willing to do about it. Big decisions in Glorantha are always about the clash between values and passions, either on the individual or global level. Old ways should conflict with new ways, their ways with our ways, and so on. Wars in Glorantha aren’t just about controlling land – they’re about belief and value systems.

4. Power Has a Price: It is possible for a human in Glorantha to become a god, or at least a demi-god if they gain their power from myths and communities. However, this power always has a price – both to you and to the world. From the Red Moon losing her humanity and changing the whole world in ways that create chaos, to Herrek becoming renegade and outcast, there are always ways to gain power, but never a way to do it without a price.

5. Ambiguous References: HeroQuest talks about this in reference to character generation, but I think it works for the world as a whole and for building games in the world. What is the Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, the Sacred Thread, the City of the Elephant, or Little Speaker of the Bush Voice? They’re ambiguous references, things that give a mythic feel without being tied to a canon point (and so this could be a corollary to #1). When they come up in the game they can be filled in (by GM or player, depending on narrative rights in your game), left dark, or expanded upon as needed. I honestly think a lot of sticky points in Gloranthan canon have become issues because they were started/intended as ambiguous references that people out of game tried to nail down into specific setting details.

6. Greg can screw it, so can you: Anyone trying to stick to canon to closely will eventually get Gregged. So either be ready to change your canon, keep it subjective, or stick to themes rather than details or metaphysics.

Mr Robins, my hat is off to you: that looks like a fantastic list to me.

Soru: do you see what I was trying to get at now? The word "tropes" in the title has thrown the discussion a bit, I think: I was hoping to move on to them later, but they're specifically NOT what I'm talking about at the moment. I'm trying to get down to "what makes a gloranthan story gloranthan, or at the very least gloranthish." If the answer is "nothing", well, why the hell do folks like myself keep banging on about it?

Have another look at Lozenge Building 101, referenced above, and at Brand's list. They're pretty much what I was talking about.

To put it another way: if we can take, say, Keep on the Borderlands, rename the kobolds trollkin, stick a lunar flag on the keep and make one of the NPC's a duck, would that make it Gloranthan? Sure, the tropes are all lined up, but without what Brand or John Hughes' are talking about, it doesn't feel like Glorantha, however varied.

Perhaps more importantly, by writing a scenario, or campaign background, that pays attention to these, it can feel gloranthan even without any of the tropes: Well of Souls is a great example, as it barely references Glorantha, and can very easily be adapted for other world, but it's very "Gloranthish," it emphasizes myth, community and personal responsibility.

Well, I'm both happy with the answers I found or got, and that I've adequately addressed what I wanted and why I'm happy now: I know where to point when confronted with "What can I do?" "YGWV!" "Yeah thanks, now how about a constructive answer?" I have a constructive answer or two, and thank you all.

pete_darby wrote: The word "tropes" in the title has thrown the discussion a bit, I think:

Hi Brand,

That was a great list.

I think that such a list not only helps people unfamiliar with the game get into the, but just as importantly helps folks decide whether or not they want to play in Glorantha at all. After all, not everyone wants to play in what Glorantha values.

Now: a question.

This might be where YGMV steps in. Soru suggests that in Glorantha, the magic stuff is essentially mundane to the characers living in this mythical world. I felt my brain turn within my skull when I read these words, not because soru's nescesarily wrong, but because to my reading of Glorantha it's completely wrong.

I don't think anyone living in the world of the Greek myths would think, upon seeing a man turned into a tree, "Well, there it goes again." The stories are dependent on wonder, horror and surprise. Same goes for fairy tales, the Arabian Nights and so on.

More over, I think this issue speaks to the ambiguity of mythology -- what the gods "represent" what powers they have, don't have, what peculiar feats or incident occur in the journey of Odysseus that makes everyone sit around him and listen night on end to his exploits -- they are extraordinary and surprising.

Now, this might be just a personal preference, or it might matter. It seems to me, thought that one of the things that sets Glorantha's "mythic nature" apart from other RPG fantasy games is the requirement that magic *not* feel mundane, that it doesn't feel as predictable as sending in a tank division or using magic simply as a different kind of technology.

So, does something like how magic works and feels like this go on the list? Am I missing the boat? Or is this a YGMV matter?

(See, I think this issue ties directly to numbers 1. and 5. on your list (1. Myth Defines & 5. Ambiguous References), but that just might be me.

Thanks,

Christopher

Christopher Kubasik wrote: Soru suggests that in Glorantha, the magic stuff is essentially mundane to the characers living in this mythical world. I felt my brain turn within my skull when I read these words, not because soru's nescesarily wrong, but because to myreading of Glorantha is completely wrong.

Hey,

Thanks for the terrific and thoughtful reply.

I actually cross-posted when you were posting your list of "genre tropes," and after reading them, realized it would come down to actually committing to Style -- and, as you suggest, that's up to the players.

And, as you suggest, this would influence theme strongly. For me, it's all about the otherworldliness of it. Even the the woman using magic for cooking better damn well respect that her magic is from a source outside of herself -- but that would be a "house style" and tie directly into what the gruop's agenda is all about. (See my Deep End Glorantha post over on the "HQ Prep for Play" thread to see how much making magic magical would matter to me.
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9501&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=15 )

Christopher

Christopher Kubasik wrote:

I don't think anyone living in the world of the Greek myths would think, upon seeing a man turned into a tree, "Well, there it goes again."

The stories are dependent on wonder, horror and surprise. Same goes for fairy tales, the Arabian Nights and so on.

soru wrote: * I think another minor genre rule is 'whenever a God Learner states something with absolute confidence, he will turn out to be disastrously and messily wrong'

Magic is commonplace in Glorantha, not mundane. The innate difficulty of turning a man into a tree means that it is unlikely that any Gloranthan would consider it commonplace. Likewise invisibility, mind control and all the other varieties of "difficult magic" as defined in the rules. Also, what constitutes commonplace magical activity will vary considerably based on culture, and magic which is not commonplace is typically considered odd, dangerous, both, or worse.

Brand_Robins wrote: Are there any problems with the situation as I’ve set it up?

RaconteurX wrote: Other than the fact that the Gift Carriers of the Avenging Gods allegedly appear to disappear any individual who delves too deeply into the secrets of the God Learners (plus anyone he or she knows, and anyone those persons may know, etc., until any and all possibility of transmission has been obliterated), not in the least. :D

quot;Brand_Robins]
What would I need to know, canonaically, about the God Learners to run this? Are there any problems with the situation as I’ve set it up? Any specific references you think might be helpful towards me and my players playing with the fire and unavoidable doom of God Learners?

wrote: uote>soru wrote:

quot;Brand_Robins]
Basic info on the God Learners is at http://www.glorantha.com/greg/seshnelanKings2.html.

Specifically:

Snip

Brand:

Think of the Gift Carriers as Glorantha's immune system, activated by the Gods who are her organs. They are "agents" of the Cosmic Compromise, upon which existence itself hinges. The God Learners, in their hubris, put Creation in jeopardy and it struck back... hard. The Heortling Gods were among those threatened, so the Gift Carriers should be known to any having sufficient knowledge (two masteries in Heortling Mythology ought to do). If the Heortlings could avoid contamination by God Learner blasphemy themselves, I'd say destroying a group of Lunars in the manner you conjecture would be possible. As for the infallibility of the Gift Carriers, that would seem to be the case except as noted below.


Soru:

Actually, if the rumors presented in Dorastor: Land of Doom are to be believed, Ralzakark has a pair of God Learners in his possession that he is willing to sell if the price is right. As Chaos is anathema to Cosmos, I imagine it is within the realm of (im)possibility that a being as powerful as Ralzakark could shield one or two God Learners from the weight of all Creation dropping on their heads. Perhaps the Lunars are counting on their Chaos connection to shield them from the Gift Carriers, in which case, Brand's Heortlings are screwed... imperially!

Sandy Petersen talks about the Gift Carriers here. Peter Metcalfe mentions them here, but Sandy corrects him on the extent of Gift Carrier "operations" here.

RaconteurX wrote: Think of the Gift Carriers as Glorantha's immune system, activated by the Gods who are her organs. They are "agents" of the Cosmic Compromise, upon which existence itself hinges. The God Learners, in their hubris, put Creation in jeopardy and it struck back... hard. The Heortling Gods were among those threatened, so the Gift Carriers should be known to any having sufficient knowledge (two masteries in Heortling Mythology ought to do). If the Heortlings could avoid contamination by God Learner blasphemy themselves, I'd say destroying a group of Lunars in the manner you conjecture would be possible. As for the infallibility of the Gift Carriers, that would seem to be the case except as noted below.

I think another minor genre rule is 'whenever a God Learner states something with absolute confidence, he will turn out to be disastrously and messily wrong'

How to address the Godlearners without looking needlessly "Gregger than thou..."

AFAICS, the second age stuff was plotted while Greg was in a deep and meaningful relationship with the Monomyth. So he had one of his super-empires using campbellian notions to do what a lot of readers of Glorantha do, set in stone "What's really going on with the other side." And, obviously, if simplistic versions of the campbelian monomyth can be actualised in Gloranthan otherworlds, you can wrench around the various othersides pretty much as you want. And as he explored what the GL would be doing, he didn't like it. The curse of the godlearners, the gift bringers, is Greg using his disenchantment with the abuse of campbellian notions in the service of one of the themes of Glorantha, Power Costs.

I'm of the opinion that the secret of the GL is a battered copy of Hero with a Thousand Faces, with numerous hand written notes in the margin, many signed GS...

One of the reasons Greg, amongst others, don't like folk taking on GL in game or looking to deep into their "secret" is that they really are a munchkin's paradise. Also, plainly, they had an understanding of the metaphysic of Glorantha which, for the functioning of the "absolute relativism" of Glorantha, cannot be "true" without breaking other conventions of the setting. The GL secret, to a great extent, is the Man Behind The Curtain to Greg the Great and Terrible.

Finally, GL were, essentially, a Bronze age culture with the mythic equivalent of thermonuclear weapons. It's assumed in the background that they be ringfenced because their introduction into a campaign need to be very carefully considered.

But after all that, what do you need to knwo about the GL in a "modern" (17th C) campaign?

1. They were very powerful, and messed with the fundamental nature of the otherside
2. The whole of creation, mortal world and otherside, co-operated in their destruction, and is still on the lookout for them
3. There really shouldn't be any of them, or their artifacts, left.

I think the convention is that "Anything a GL states is true is absolutely, completely, 100% true, and they really haven't thought the whole thing through."

It feels to me like, say, we are playing mage: the ascension except without understanding Prime; as if the discussion of Prime has been ommitted ands we are just expected to like use our kewl powerz and not ask any penetrating questions.

pete_darby wrote: To put it another way: if we can take, say, Keep on the Borderlands, rename the kobolds trollkin, stick a lunar flag on the keep and make one of the NPC's a duck, would that make it Gloranthan? Sure, the tropes are all lined up, but without what Brand or John Hughes' are talking about, it doesn't feel like Glorantha, however varied.

Simon, I really don't get where, if anywhere, we're disagreeing here: perhaps when I say "it would make it gloranthan," I should be saying "to a casual observer, it would look gloranthan." It's like the old Judge's Guild scenarios (Duck Tower? My memories of the time are hazy at best); you've got Gloranthan "bits" all over the place, but even at the time I remember people saying it "felt" more like a D&D adventure with ducks than a runequest adventure.

So yeah, when you start looking into "Why trollkin? Why lunars? Why a duck?", you start plugging into gloranthan genre conventions, and it starts looking gloranthish, rather than D&D with ducks.


Slight threadjack: For an even simpler reason why everything in glorantha is ultimately coloured by myth: everyone has magic, the magic comes from mythic sources.

pete_darby wrote: Simon, I really don't get where, if anywhere, we're disagreeing here:

simon_hibbs wrote:

pete_darby wrote: Simon, I really don't get where, if anywhere, we're disagreeing here:

Quite so, just tossing in my 2p worth.


Simon

One of the major problems I have trying to introduce two newcomers to Glorantha isn't so much 'what makes it Glorantha?' as much as 'how do I tell the players about this?' I dislike stopping play to tell them 'ah, but your character already know about this...'. So, in my experience, the problem isn't so much defining 'Glorantha' as finding a way to pass on that definition in character and without interrupting play. Getting 'bits' of info about the setting can just make you feel LESS informed as it becomes more and more obvious that you just don't know what's going on.

And my take on magic is that everyone has, and does, magic, but very few think of it as THEIR magic. Barntari plough well because they pray to Barntar, not because they have 'Plough a Straigh Furrow' feats. Longhouses stay airy because the inhabitants always thank the air spirits that clear the smoke, not because they have 'Clear the Air' charms in the hall. Gloranthan magic is all-present and all-pervasive, but to the inhabitants it's the world that's magic, not THEM. That, I feel, is the way to introduce the players to their character's magic. Myths come into it because Gloranthans see myths as simply really old stories, not as some... erm... mythic... tales. They are about Gods, but that's not so far distant from daily experience, there's a little God over there, in that rock. And if you breathe deeply, that's Orlanth in there. You met him, just last winter, in the Sacred Time ceremony.

This primarily applies to Theists and Animists, of course, but then so does my campaign.

Wulf

pete_darby wrote:
Note to self: decaff.

pete_darby wrote:
Contra: if the designers of Mage had made that design decision, it could be the source of many immensely cool stories, IMHO. What is that secret, why is everybody so down on discovering it? In Glorantha, it's because the answer nearly broke the world last time. Ah, but this time, we'll be careful and only do it for the right reasons...

But after all that, what do you need to knwo about the GL in a "modern" (17th C) campaign?

1. They were very powerful, and messed with the fundamental nature of the otherside
2. The whole of creation, mortal world and otherside, co-operated in their destruction, and is still on the lookout for them
3. There really shouldn't be any of them, or their artifacts, left.

Lost of good questions from Contracycle, I hope my answers are helpful:

contracycle wrote: Firstly, the above seems to suggest that there IS an underlying metaphysics of Glorantha, suggests that these things, like the gloranthan immune system, are objectively extant, and operate in particular ways. Now, I feel I need to understand what this is and how it works so that I understand Gloranthan metaphysics and can understand what is going on in the divine.

But, problem 2, information about the god-learners appears to be streng verboten, more or less I've even been told that I should not ask about the god learners, and that they are essentially being written out of cannon; that the god learners are anathematic to glorantha both within the game world and within the metagame.

But, problem 3, the god learners ARE referenced in the texts in such a way, as above, to suggest that their knowledge is somehow quite significant to the world.

So I'm confused by the whole thing. It feels to me like, say, we are playing mage: the ascension except without understanding Prime; as if the discussion of Prime has been ommitted ands we are just expected to like use our kewl powerz and not ask any penetrating questions.

Mundane Magic:
I feel that magic in Glorantha is essentially mundane. My earliest encounter with Glorantha was via the Dragon Pass boardgame; in this game, there were no bones about the fact that magic was artillery. The Bat appears to me to be a "nuclear option". Magic is clearly a functional, systematic propblem solving tool that the Lunar army uses carefully, deliberately, and with malice aforethought.

There comes a time in a glorantha fan's life when he recognizes he's probably on the inside looking out, rather than the outside looking in... with the GL, I'm pretty much getting that feeling.

However, I'm without the references I need to adequately argue this, but in my experience, which I didn't think was particularly in depth, I've picked up enough about the God Learners to think I've got a better idea of what they were doing, why it was bad, etc. than Contra. So, I'll have to dig out references... probably from the Glorantha; cradle of the hero wars book and King of Sartar, which is my cue for realizing it really is more in depth than I thought, once KoS get cited.

But I'm still getting a little head-scratchy over which bits you've encountered that say, essentially; "These GL guys are really, really importatn... but we won't tell you why, because we're such teases!"

I'm not saying they're not there, I just can't think of them atm.

When I-the-player know the True Origin Of The World - even if my character does not - then I and the other players, and the GM, are all on the same page as to what the SIS is, how it is constituted, and what the paramaters of play are./quote]

I suppose I don't realy see how the parameters of play are dependent on the 'true' orrigin of the world, especialy if that is unknown or even unknowable to the characters.

And even more importantly, if I'm the GM, and the players pose a question like, "So, can we raise the dead?" then I cannot answer it from the game material... in which case the material is of dubious merit, having only got me into a hole I would not have been in otherwise (if I were using a less ambiguous game).

I'm hard pressed to see how you wouldn't know that, or wouldn't be able to get a workable answer from (say) the HeroQuest game rules as they are. After all a number of cults have 'Raise Dead' type magics available.

Now if your actual game story is about discoverign the ineffable nature of the cosmos then that's fine, but in that case havign that spelled out in a game source book might perhaps spoil the surprise for any players that might happen to read it, but then you cover that yourself in your post.

Well, my first response is, I don't know, because I by definition do not know what I do not know. But even so, if they are now meant to be gone, and no remnants remain, why even talk about them at all?

I'm not sure if this is a rhetorical question, I mean they're obviously important to the history of several cultures in Glorantha, and in fact to it's physical geography in a number of places. The fact that most modern Malkioni sects use the God Learner text The Abiding Book as their fundamental sacred text makes them pretty important to any discussion of Malkionism, so clearly many remnants from their time do exist and are documented.

The answer "because they had such an impact on the worlds history" does not appear at all useful to me if I am not told what that impact is and was. I don;t mean "whay talk about them" in in-character voices in Glorantha - I mean, why talk about them in Gloranthan products AT ALL if I am not supposed to use them in the game I actually play? "If its in the game, its in the game" should be the operational principle, I would think.

Well, we do know a lot about their effect on history. We know about the Abiding Book, the destruction of Jrustela, some of the effects of the Monomyth on sevral major religions, their conflict with the Waertagi and their influence (in the form of the False Dragon Ring) in Kralorela. I'm not realy clear what it is you don't know about their role in history that you want to find out.


Simon Hibbs

I mean, why talk about them in Gloranthan products AT ALL if I am not supposed to use them in the game I actually play?

soru wrote: What exactly is it that you want to do that you feel you can't? What do you see as stopping you from doing so?

Yes, that seems basically right.

soru

Brand_Robins wrote: There is, sometimes, a tone in the voices of long term Gloranthaphiles (who've probably been through a thousand flamewars on the subject and just don't want to go through it again) that indicates that Godlearners are big nos. They may say, "sure you can use them in your game" but when it comes to actually giving you information about them to make them usable in the game, they get a bit snide and their help often becomes (or at least feels) off-handed.

The people of Glorantha live in this world and have to deal with these things, figuring out what they believe as communities and building myths around them. The Godlearners, however, went against this. They decided that they were going to play sophistry with the very nature of the universe, using every Truth as a truth – even when they conflicted with each other. Basically they decided to resolve every conflict in the universe – but not through an honest method, but by “tricking” the universe into bending to their wills. They made the mistake of thinking (or making themselves think) that Glorantha was really and completely subjective. They could replace one god with another, water with fire, and anything else they wanted because there was no objective truth but their own (false) logic. Even the runes were bent and mangled to their will – perverting the very nature of reality.

When that happened they were crushed by the backlash, and now the gods (whom they screwed with at the primal level) are making damn sure that such crap can never be pulled again.

Did I get anything wrong?

simon_hibbs wrote: The God Learners were materialists and did believe in an objective universe. I think they believed that the subjective symbolism in myth was an illusion and therefore could be bent to their materialistic purposes without adverse consequences. The god swap is an example of this - they took two land goddesses and transposed them. They were both deities, both with earth connections, both female, etc so objectively they should be the same and any 'personal' differences are just subjective tawaddle that doesn't relay matter. They were wrong, and after some limited initial success the whole thing blew up in their faces.

Brand_Robins wrote: (P.S. It occurs to me that analyzing Glorantha as a genre is something a Godlearner would do. I may be in trouble here.)

Brand_Robins wrote: Well Chris, and I hate to say this, but the truth is if we can’t even agree on some basic Gloranthan genre tropes we’re pretty much fucked as far as getting newbies into the setting goes.

1. Myth Defines:

2. Community is Central:

3. Values are in Conflict:

4. Power Has a Price:

5. Ambiguous References:

6. Greg can screw it, so can you:

Deacon Blues wrote: Again, hardly unique. The only campaign setting I can think of that ignores this is Forgotten Realms... So this tells me nothing.

I'm only gradually getting comfortable with this, but it's starting to sink in and feel nice - like a bath that started out too hot.

(A) I don't want Greg to screw it.

(B) You say that, and then you and the rest of the Glorantha veterans get into a multi-page debate about what exactly the God Learners (by the way, who?) are.

contracycle wrote: The above seems to suggest that there IS an underlying metaphysics of Glorantha, suggests that these things, like the gloranthan immune system, are objectively extant, and operate in particular ways.

I've even been told that I should not ask about the God Learners, and that they are essentially being written out of canon.

Brand_Robins wrote: In that case I think they fit even better than what I’d tried to do with them – their error was the error of positivist arrogance, thinking that the human mind can know the fundamental nature of the universe through its own will and rationality.

simon_hibbs wrote: Saved through the Grace of God (Joy of the Heart).

Mike Holmes wrote:

simon_hibbs wrote: Saved through the Grace of God (Joy of the Heart).

Something just struck me about this. Part of the communication problems is that Glorantha has a Dialect and Dialectic unique to it. I'm not talking terms, here, but how one learns to use the terms, and the context that they all imply. In that one little parenthetic, I can see a whole thought process that generated it.

Hmm, its a bit more than that, because some of the buzzwords are functionally reversed to their conventional meaning. As in the above, the use of the term 'atheism' is almost diamterically opposite to the meaning of the same term in the real world. The non-explicit usage of such specialist terminology - in fact, even realising that these terms are not used in an intuitive manner - is very seldom explicit if at all.

--

RaconteuryX asked why I would think that there is no underlying Gloranthan metaphysics... but this is due to things like recent statements that the metaphysics of Glorantha are ineffable, and so not subjects for exploration.

R. also says, on the GL's, that I should not expect long definitve answers from Greg. Well, why not? Obviously I don't expect a personal dialogue, but I DO expect that somewhere along the line a definitive statement will have to be given. Else, my central complaint is verified, that some of the most important elements of the world are actively withheld from the purchasers of the game.

The only reason I mentioned the GL's in the first place is because even the newb runs into them pretty early, and they point to or allude to some fundamental precepts of the nature of Glorantha. And yet, that exploration can never get off the ground becuase the requisite information is not available and frankly never seems likely to be available.

I would like to ask the gloranthafiles of long standing: do any of you actually know the secret of the god-learners?

I ask this becuase a speculation hads already been offered, and it takes places almost entirely outside of glorantha, appealing to munchkins and PC's etc. I can't eve parse the sentence that they are munchkins paradise; how and why? And if so, who cares?.. settings can easily have powers within them that will never be made available to PC's.

So, does anyone actually know, or is everyone just speculating? What I'm getting at is, Brand points out that there is a lot of material to learn, but in this case I'm not sure that there is anything to learn. This is the nub of the matter: whether definitive answers can EVER be expected from Greg.

contracycle wrote: R. also says, on the GL's, that I should not expect long definitve answers from Greg. Well, why not? Obviously I don't expect a personal dialogue, but I DO expect that somewhere along the line a definitive statement will have to be given. Else, my central complaint is verified, that some of the most important elements of the world are actively withheld from the purchasers of the game.

contracycle wrote: I would like to ask the gloranthafiles of long standing: do any of you actually know the secret of the god-learners?

I ask this becuase a speculation hads already been offered, and it takes places almost entirely outside of glorantha, appealing to munchkins and PC's etc. I can't eve parse the sentence that they are munchkins paradise; how and why? And if so, who cares?.. settings can easily have powers within them that will never be made available to PC's.
So, does anyone actually know, or is everyone just speculating? What I'm getting at is, Brand points out that there is a lot of material to learn, but in this case I'm not sure that there is anything to learn. This is the nub of the matter: whether definitive answers can EVER be expected from Greg.

Else, my central complaint is verified, that some of the most important elements of the world are actively withheld from the purchasers of the game.

As Donald said, Greg does not know everything there is to know about Glorantha. On several occasions I have asked Greg specific questions regarding Glorantha to which his answer was "I don't know"... which he always followed up with "Why don't you make up something neat?" Greg has actively encouraged people to fill in the blanks with their own material for as long as Glorantha has been in publication, as evinced by the "Blank Lands" which he was committed to not developing. Much of the current canon began as fan-created material which Greg thought was too cool to not be Gloranthan "truth".

Frankly, I have never understood this entire "cannot make up my own stuff for fear of being wrong" mentality. Prior to Thunder Rebels, none of the published sources told us anything of substance about the Orlanthi way of life. Most of us still managed to have tremendously fun RuneQuest campaigns nonetheless. I know people who based their Orlanthi on Hellenic models rather than Celto-Germanic ones, incorrect as we now know that to be canonically, but they had fun with their games. I suppose my viewpoint is an artifact of the early days of roleplaying, when very little was not just created entirely by individual gamemasters.

In short, Greg is not withholding anything. He just has not discovered all of Glorantha yet. Tekumel fans will notice the same thing with respect to M.A.R. Barker and his creation. Chances are this applies to the creators of every other expansive game setting as well; I have only spoken with the two I mentioned, but I am fairly certain this is the case.

Donald wrote:

contracycle wrote: I would like to ask the gloranthafiles of long standing: do any of you actually know the secret of the god-learners?

There is a rumour that Sandy Petersen knows...

contracycle wrote: Hmm, its a bit more than that, because some of the buzzwords are functionally reversed to their conventional meaning. As in the above, the use of the term 'atheism' is almost diamterically opposite to the meaning of the same term in the real world. The non-explicit usage of such specialist terminology - in fact, even realising that these terms are not used in an intuitive manner - is very seldom explicit if at all.

RaconteuryX asked why I would think that there is no underlying Gloranthan metaphysics... but this is due to things like recent statements that the metaphysics of Glorantha are ineffable, and so not subjects for exploration.

R. also says, on the GL's, that I should not expect long definitve answers from Greg. Well, why not? Obviously I don't expect a personal dialogue, but I DO expect that somewhere along the line a definitive statement will have to be given. Else, my central complaint is verified, that some of the most important elements of the world are actively withheld from the purchasers of the game.

This is the nub of the matter: whether definitive answers can EVER be expected from Greg.

simon_hibbs wrote:
Since (IMHO) Greg believes the basic metaphysics of Glorantha are largely (but not exactly) the same as those of our world (he's a practicing shaman remember), he has the same problems explaining them as he would to a student of religious philosophy in our world. He does believe there are deep religious truths, but these can't be understood purely in an intellectual sense, you have to experience them to understand them, so your request for just the facts simply can't be answered in as streight and matter of fact a way as you would like.

contracycle wrote:
It seems to me that Glorantha compels me to adopt Pawn stance for my character universally, as I cannot understand the characters personal experience and neither the game rules nor text explicate this experience satisfactorily. As a result it comes across as morally and ethically empty.

contracycle wrote:
It seems to me that Glorantha compels me to adopt Pawn stance for my character universally, as I cannot understand the characters personal experience and neither the game rules nor text explicate this experience satisfactorily. As a result it comes across as morally and ethically empty.

Hi Gareth,

I kind of empthasize with your point of view (I think!). You seem to be saying, "If I don't understand the underpinning metaphysics, how can I really choose how my guy fits into the underlying metaphysics. Without that context, the gaming experience will be morally and ethically empty."

However, others suggest, "We'll, you've got enough to go on for *your* guy, so enjoy that."

And that doesn't really answer your concerns, as far as I can tell.

I will suggest a third, middle way. I suggest it only because it is of interest to me: Not knowing the metaphysical contexts while living in a metaphysically driven game is exactly what I would want because that's the tension of a religious premise I would want. That is, yes, the PCs (and the player) are caught up in something larger than life (literally, larger than the mundane), and the definition of what that means is something each mortal PC (and each player of each PC) has to sort throug on their own.

This is exactly the kind of tension missing from most RPG religions: the idea that it isn't all set out in stone for the PCs to manipulate it at will, or there's the big Number 42 out there for the PCs to find the Question to.

In Glorantha, the "meaning" of the universe, how it really "works" always remains a mystery. I think that's a good thing. If only because, well, for those of us poor schmucks on earth with faith, that's the way it goes. It's never completely clear.

Thus the tension between "Your guys knows these things," and "There's an underlying reason for everything *out there* but you'll never really know it (no, not even the players)" for my money is a vital Premise of a truly mythological and/or religious game.

How do you live in a mundane world when the world is imbued with the supernatural -- a supernatural you can tap/experience/partake of, but, because you are mortal, never fully know, never fully understand.

The fact that the players will be doing their part to taffy pull the "true" nature (and notice that nature is the wrong word, but what word is there?) of Glorantha in terms of its "meaning" is precisely what Glorantha is about, what it is desgined to do.

What are the moral and ethical parametes of Glorantha? Ultimately, no one knows! That's the horrible magic trick. That's why the PCs (and the players) are screwed against the wall on this. And that's why I find it a compelling setting. I think it also points to compelling directions to drive religious elements in other settings. If you do Le Morte D'Arthur and God's love, God's views on violence and more are still up for grabs in terms of "How do you act right?" and the PCs have to pick their way through choices with limited information while striving to be "faithful -- well, that's the pain of faith. But if you're faithful, you keep picking your way through the options anyway.

In other words, for me its the lack of a known underlying metaphysics that makes such a setting so absolutely morally and ethically compelling.

Christopher

Contra:

By your definition, all roleplaying games must perforce be "morally and ethically empty" as none manage to adequately explain the metaphysics of their respective settings sufficiently to comprehend what a character's religious experience might be without resorting to real-world analogy. Have you read Thunder Rebels? How does that fail to convey the experience of theistic, specifically Orlanthi, religion? What part of the overall "look at how people worship in the real world and apply what you learn to the setting" advice do you not get? For such a prolific poster, you sure come across as ignorant. More and more it just seems that all you want is to troll on this forum, or whine about how HeroQuest stifles your creativity. Grow up.

Whoa Michael,

I've been reading Gareth's posts a long time. He may be relentless, but I've never known him to be anything but sincere in his questions. He's always struck me as a man working from specific, if even stringent, convictions, and always respecting the challenge of working from those convictions.

In other words, for Gareth, (and more and more for me, in fact), it's never just about being "a game." He wants to work and undestand his game play from the point of view of what he values, what matters, and his principles.

This might be a rough ride on occassion, because everybody's values and principles don't always line up. Thus, it seems like someone's being obtuse -- but only because we're all approaching things from sometimes compeltely different values and principles. The fact that Gareth is fierce in his principles doesn't make him obtuse. It just means he's willing to go to bat and chew on something until he can reconcile his view with the new material at hand, reject the new material, or change his views.

But he's sincere. That's the main point. That's been my experience.

Christopher

Christopher Kubasik wrote: Thus the tension between "Your guys knows these things," and "There's an underlying reason for everything *out there* but you'll never really know it (no, not even the players)" for my money is a vital Premise of a truly mythological and/or religious game.

Brand_Robins wrote: I think the uncertainty of meaning is part of the Gloranthan genre. It's more than ambiguous references, it's an underlying ambiguity to the whole setting that reflects the lack of certainty we often have when dealing with reality.

Hi Brand,

I actually think it's a kluge of points 1. and 5. from the list you posted on the first page of this thread. (1. Myth Defines and 5. Ambiguous References).

However, I think it's a slippery and *very* unique point for HeroQuest. Whether the group simply smiles and says, "Well, we just don't know!" or digs in deep to the issue as fascinating Premise, Glorantha doesn't have the huge Reality Generator burried deep in the depth of the story that's going to explain everything. (Well, except this: The World is Myth.)

For this reason, I'd offer up this as Trope 6 -- but I have no idea how to phrase it.

Christopher

You can understand Glorantha, but it is a personal experience and there certainly isn't an easy answer available. I think that you should try to find that answer by playing in Glorantha and reading the source material. To me that's a major part of the attaction.

Who said that understanding the foundations of a world as rich and complex as our own would be easy? If it would be easy, it wouldn't be half as fun and rewarding. However, if you feel that you don't know enough about the world to play it, you can always advice. Still you must recognize that ultimately using someone elses answers robs you something very important. Think of the underlying metaphysics of Glorantha (if there is such a thing ;) as a giant premise that you and your friends are constantly addressing.

IMO there is enough out there to start exploring, but no one can walk the path for you. If exploration is the essence of roleplaying then I would say that Glorantha can offer you a way to explore in a way that no other world can. When you explore the mythical world of Glorantha, delve in your premises with your gaming group, read the material and fiction involved and perhaps write something of your own, you are really exploring yourself.

Christopher Kubasik wrote: For this reason, I'd offer up this as Trope 6 -- but I have no idea how to phrase it.

And personally, and this might be my own bugaboo, it seems to miss the point that this is a *good* thing -- that the delight of the place comes from the tension between needing to take action in world of faith, where faith is defined, not from "here's what's really going on" abstract at the back of the rule book, but by the PCs actions.

So it's not that the absolute truth is uknowable, it's that Myth / Religion matters, in ways no one will or can fully understand.

Christopher

Hmm, this one gets put in the best way I've seen in John Hughes' Lozenge building 101:

a) Relativism is an Absolute: there can be no certainties. There are at least four and a half correct explanations for anything. Everything you believe is only a prelude to initiation into gnosis. Arkat made but half the journey. Only Baboons know the truth, and only Lunars are aware of this. Godlearner documents are memic land mines. Epistemology and ontology consciously arise only when cultures clash (and twice on Godsdays). Choose your errors consciously and wisely. Praxis before Doxis.

Extracted from an outstanding post:

Christopher Kubasik wrote: I will suggest a third, middle way. I suggest it only because it is of interest to me: Not knowing the metaphysical contexts while living in a metaphysically driven game is exactly what I would want because that's the tension of a religious premise I would want. That is, yes, the PCs (and the player) are caught up in something larger than life (literally, larger than the mundane), and the definition of what that means is something each mortal PC (and each player of each PC) has to sort throug on their own.

Christopher Kubasik wrote: And personally, and this might be my own bugaboo, it seems to miss the point that this is a *good* thing -- that the delight of the place comes from the tension between needing to take action in world of faith, where faith is defined, not from "here's what's really going on" abstract at the back of the rule book, but by the PCs actions.

So it's not that the absolute truth is uknowable, it's that Myth / Religion matters, in ways no one will or can fully understand.

Christopher

Hmmm... new verb, to go along with lasersharking?

Midichlorian: to provide a simple, clear explanation for a previously mystical attribute. To make the mythological scientific. To immanentize the immaterial. To screw up (implied).

Yes, yes, yes! And RPGs have been Midichlorianizing (phew) religions from the start. (Pendragon got close, though.)

Christopher

This, interestingly, is not a problem that I have with Glorantha. The way I see it, however, no matter how much you Midichlorian something, there's still room for doubt. So even in worlds where this is the case, I personally still get the same sense of wonder.

Shadow World goes to huge levels to Midichlorian things. But it doesn't matter, as the question of a monotheistic supreme being remains completely unaddressed. All of SW's gods could merely be beings in a universe ruled over by some larger being. You can always pose "larger" or something akin to it, so this is always in effect.

In fact, I rather like midichlorian explanations in my RPGs because they become philosophically interesting. I mean, given that the gods of SW are just "beings" of some sort, do they really deserve worship?

To put a point on it, who created the Midicholrians (and what was he thinking)? Dune is very explicit about this from the start, to the point that it's a theme. Paul doesn't think there's anything mystical behind his abilities, but many other's do.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: In fact, I rather like midichlorian explanations in my RPGs because they become philosophically interesting. I mean, given that the gods of SW are just "beings" of some sort, do they really deserve worship?

To put a point on it, who created the Midicholrians (and what was he thinking)? Dune is very explicit about this from the start, to the point that it's a theme. Paul doesn't think there's anything mystical behind his abilities, but many other's do.

Hi Mike,

Wait. I'm curious. You wrote: "This, interestingly, is not a problem that I have with Glorantha. The way I see it, however, no matter how much you Midichlorian something, there's still room for doubt. So even in worlds where this is the case, I personally still get the same sense of wonder."

Yet it seems to me that many of us are arguing that in Glorantha there's no Midichlianization going on. That's the point. I think that's the fulcrum where people are either siding on the side of "Cool!" or "Jesus, can't they just tell me what the damned game world is."

I suspect, though I might be really wrong about this, a lot of it hangs on the word "just" in your reference to the beings in SW. To me that suggests a relationship between the Players and the Pantheon that is intriguing to some, but to me makes the Gods no more than frogs on a high school lab table. This, I know, may not be how you see it. But it is how I see it... And the gulf between these two points of view are, I think, the vital, live wire on the table for discussion right now.

There is no "just" in abot myth, pantheon or the god in Glorantha. The Players don't get to have an objective (and thus "mastering them" point of view.) This is either a turn on or a turn off. But I do think it is why some are frustrated with the setting the context of this discussion, and others excited about it (again, in the context of this thread).

And I don't think there's any point in trying to convince, argue or prove ponts back and forth on this one. And I don't think that's a cop out. This is an issue of Premise, which either engages a person or not. This is an issue of "Getting It" which either moves somone closer to where they want to go, or doesn't.

So, back to my curiosity, given all I've written, could this all be in fact the *very* problem you have with Glorantha? In short, the Players have no "objective" relation to the "facts" of the world's mythology?

Christopher

I'd just like to expand a bit on what I meant, because I'm not sure that the solutions offered so far are compelling. At the very least, I think that if this is what Glorantha is expressly meant to be, then it would be greatly served by a work discussing this fact and providing some advice on how to deal with it.

I think the business of whether or not the CHARACTER knows, as in all the above examples, is irrelevant as I have pointed out repeatedly. It is not the character who needs to understand, it is the player. That is why I said I can only relate to such characters in Pawn stance: I understand that they hold to dogma X, but I don't really understand why they do so or what it means to them. So its nothing more than a game restriction, a convention to which I have to pay lip service, but not something to really engage with. Worse, as the GM, I know that these claims are contradicted by other claims, and that therefore the apparent certainty in the local culture is illusory.

Similarly, with Star Wars and the midichlorians thing, I think the appeal to the initial state of ignorance is misplaced here. Sure, as a member of the AUDIENCE, all I need to know is that Luke is strong in the force; but if I were Lukes PLAYER - or worse, Ben Kenobi's player - I would need to understand much more than that for it to be emotionally or ethically significant. Movies can get away with it because the audience is not in a position to demand answers, and is not expected to create on their own: they observe, absorb and comment. RPG's make the player the active element, and makes the GM an active element; to me, both need some understanding of what the SIS is and how it works in order to agree on any but the most nominal, pawn-stance basis.

Yes it's true I can sit down with a What My Father told me and learn something about the local mores and viewpoint. But as the GM, I may read multiple of these, and the system and rules say they are all true. If here - instead of claiming they are all true - Gloranthan texts out-and-out said "these are just place-holders and you MUST develop your own essential understanding of how your Glorantha works" - I would have less problem with it. Yes, this is defined areas of uncertainty, that is, the clear declaration that the the myths are just set dressing to be exploited or discarded at will, but I see no sign that Glorantha will ever have such a clear statement of intent. At the very least, this would be my reccomendation for Glorantha as it currently exists (the other would be that, IMO, Glorantha has outgrown its creator, and the board should buy out the founder, kill the ducks, and take the concern where they can. IMHO)

As mentioned before, I have difficulty however reconciling this perception with the apparent centrality of mythology to Gloranthan play. If myths are purely tokenistic play restraints, essentially different from aD&D alignments only in quantity of detail, but admitting of no further underlying significance, then proposed premises like "What does 'We Are All Us' mean to us" make no sense. My answer to this, if presented it as a player, is stock: WAAU refers to the unification of chaos and order under the red moon etc... after all, by giving me a mythology, you have already told me what WAAU means to us. If I simulate an orthodox member of this society, I'm going to give you the orthodox response. If you ask me as a player, my gut response is "Utopianist hogwash".

The former is perfectly good by RPG standards - but both the text and the system of the game then go on to make strange claims about proof which undermine the previous Sim-satisfying certainty. If Glorantha were limited to one viewpoint, then its ontological truth or otherwise would be unimportant. But as long as it presents both GM and players with contradictory data, no discussion of how to resolve that data, and no indication that his resolution should constitute the primary purpose of play (if that is indeed the case) I can still only regard the product as fundamentally flawed, incomplete.

The claim that this is a valid representation of ancient mythologies is undermined by two problems: 1) I content the problem (reconciling contradictory claims) never arose for most people because of the lack of mobility and inability to develop a rigorous proof of anything, and 2) this analysis of ancient mythic praxis is not discussed. Now, over in the Ritual threads by Chris Lehrich, an alternative understanding of the mythic contradictions is offered: that the 'mysticism' is just basic ignorance dressed up in an obfuscatory manner for the purpose of developing some sort of social authority. So, seeing as I come from that perspective, I would need an introductory text explaining to me what the view of this product is on the matter, and how the product is to be used in that light. It cannot just be presumed that I already know and agree with Staffords views on ancient mysticism or that it can be deduced from the text.

The net result is that Glorantha appears to me almost the diametric opposite of what many of its main adherents appear to get out of it: it appears to me that the myths are essentially valueless and meaningless, because they contain no real insight and impart no real understanding, they are just a very complicated and under-explained prop. Its nominally about a clash of ideologies, but the consequences and outcomes of these clashes are not discussed. Sure, I can have a character in this world, much as I can have one in a computer RPG - and like a computer RPG, I will engage with its props and sets as objective problems to solve rather than as addressing some personal significance to either character or player.

Okay, I'll bite. Let me preface this by saying that there are many others on this forum who are far more qualified than I to answer these questions by virtue of their experience alone. However, as a fellow newcomer to Glorantha and to HeroQuest, as well as another HeroQuest "fan" who is not particularly a fan of Glorantha, I think I might be able to provide some insight based on what I have read thus far and what I have encountered on these forums and elsewhere.

contracycle wrote: Similarly, with Star Wars and the midichlorians thing, I think the appeal to the initial state of ignorance is misplaced here. Sure, as a member of the AUDIENCE, all I need to know is that Luke is strong in the force; but if I were Lukes PLAYER - or worse, Ben Kenobi's player - I would need to understand much more than that for it to be emotionally or ethically significant. Movies can get away with it because the audience is not in a position to demand answers, and is not expected to create on their own: they observe, absorb and comment. RPG's make the player the active element, and makes the GM an active element; to me, both need some understanding of what the SIS is and how it works in order to agree on any but the most nominal, pawn-stance basis.

contracycle wrote: Yes it's true I can sit down with a What My Father told me and learn something about the local mores and viewpoint. But as the GM, I may read multiple of these, and the system and rules say they are all true. If here - instead of claiming they are all true - Gloranthan texts out-and-out said "these are just place-holders and you MUST develop your own essential understanding of how your Glorantha works" - I would have less problem with it.

contracycle wrote: The former is perfectly good by RPG standards - but both the text and the system of the game then go on to make strange claims about proof which undermine the previous Sim-satisfying certainty. If Glorantha were limited to one viewpoint, then its ontological truth or otherwise would be unimportant. But as long as it presents both GM and players with contradictory data, no discussion of how to resolve that data, and no indication that his resolution should constitute the primary purpose of play (if that is indeed the case) I can still only regard the product as fundamentally flawed, incomplete.

contracycle wrote: The claim that this is a valid representation of ancient mythologies is undermined by two problems: 1) I content the problem (reconciling contradictory claims) never arose for most people because of the lack of mobility and inability to develop a rigorous proof of anything, and 2) this analysis of ancient mythic praxis is not discussed. Now, over in the Ritual threads by Chris Lehrich, an alternative understanding of the mythic contradictions is offered: that the 'mysticism' is just basic ignorance dressed up in an obfuscatory manner for the purpose of developing some sort of social authority. So, seeing as I come from that perspective, I would need an introductory text explaining to me what the view of this product is on the matter, and how the product is to be used in that light. It cannot just be presumed that I already know and agree with Staffords views on ancient mysticism or that it can be deduced from the text.

contracycle wrote: The net result is that Glorantha appears to me almost the diametric opposite of what many of its main adherents appear to get out of it: it appears to me that the myths are essentially valueless and meaningless, because they contain no real insight and impart no real understanding, they are just a very complicated and under-explained prop.

Chris, I wrote that post poorly. First, I was saying that I like the fact that Glorantha handles things the way it does (I have other problems with it, but that's not one). But then I went further on to say that I don't see the midichlorian problem like some do.

The next point is that, yes, I know that Shadow World's gods came into our dimension at a specific point in history, due to a astonomical event (a planet being punctured by a tiny black hole). And I know that the gods have no power beyond the planet and its moons at all (or very little, its not clear). But the characters don't know that.

Now, as a GM, I don't tell the players either. It's an open secret however, and not something that I'm waiting to "reveal" particularly. The point is that it's interesting to look down on the characters and think, hmmm, they think their gods are omnipotent, interesting that they're not. It makes you think about real life religion, perspective, and its implications. Further, it means that it's quite as possible that another god or gods do exist. Which leaves a very interesting question of why it or they have not revealed themselves to the populace of this planet, instead leaving them to the devices of false gods. Are these people all close relatives of Job?

Even in D&D, sure the "facts" of the gods are theoretically laid bare. But not well enough to form a cosmology. Now, I won't claim that this is by clever contrivance. But if a character in D&D wants to wonder who made all the gods, he may well do so. And, other than system focus, there's nothing to stop said character.

From an even more top down perspective, in actuality, the gods of these games don't exist at all, no matter what the text says, since its all fiction. The most "real" thing that a character can discover is that they're characters in a RPG that exists in a world where we have cosmological doubt. See Over The Edge.

So, sure, the Gloranthan take is probably easier to slide into a philosophically interesting place. But other worlds aren't really all that less well positioned.

Mike

contracycle wrote: That is why I said I can only relate to such characters in Pawn stance: I understand that they hold to dogma X, but I don't really understand why they do so or what it means to them. So its nothing more than a game restriction, a convention to which I have to pay lip service, but not something to really engage with. Worse, as the GM, I know that these claims are contradicted by other claims, and that therefore the apparent certainty in the local culture is illusory.

The net result is that Glorantha appears to me almost the diametric opposite of what many of its main adherents appear to get out of it: it appears to me that the myths are essentially valueless and meaningless, because they contain no real insight and impart no real understanding, they are just a very complicated and under-explained prop.

simon_hibbs wrote:
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.

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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. [URL="http://www.neopagan.net"]Isaac Bonewits[/URL] witters on about it incessantly.

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.

contracycle wrote:
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.

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

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".

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.

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.

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.

contracycle wrote:

simon_hibbs wrote:
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".

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

simon_hibbs wrote:
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.

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.

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

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.

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

First 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.

RaconteurX wrote: Gareth,

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

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?

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

contracycle wrote:

Mac Logo wrote:
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.

contracycle wrote:
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.

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.

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.

soru wrote:

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

Mac Logo wrote:
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.

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.

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?

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.

newsalor wrote:
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.

soru wrote:

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.

contracycle wrote:

soru wrote:

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?

contracycle wrote: 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?

contracycle wrote: 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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

contracycle wrote:
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.

contracycle wrote: 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.

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

South Park wrote: 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.”

contracycle wrote:

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?

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?

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.

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.

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

Just want to chip in to thank John: his essays noted at the top of this thread (you remember the top of the thread? You know, way back when I thought I had a point...) really are, IMHO, the best starting point for defining Glorantha as a genre.

That being said, I'm actually starting to dsiagree a little with John: as far as I see it, in myview of Glorantha, the gods are expressions of the fundamental forces of the cosmos, which can only be comprehended by mundane minds through the tools of myth. This shapes the gods to an extent, as the Orlanth that can be comprehended and experienced by his worshippers can only be defined through the myths they use to understand him: as more primal myths are discovered, so the nature of Orlanth grows to encompass more. As the myths are lost, so Orlanth as understood within the world of Glorantha lessens. Is there an Orlanth beyond what is known by his worshippers? yes, but without myths to guide them, they will never know him... and since the range of myths any individual can know is limited, so the full knowledge of Orlanth is limited.

We can see aspects of this hidden in the story of the God Learners, in the history of Western monotheism (the devolution of nature in the actions), and most strongly in the struggles to define mysticism within the game: since mysticism is the struggle to commune with the cosmic without the aid of an established mythic structure, it is a) fucking difficult to succeed in, and b) in as much as it can bring game benefits, counter-productive (if it allows you to act directly in the mundane, it distances you from the cosmic).

What I admittedly don't grok yet is how animism fits into this, but since my readings on animism have been somewhat less than those into theism & monotheism, I'm filled with hubris about getting that too...

So, John, I'd say I've got a model of it that lets me see inter-faith struggles within a wider context that, perhaps, the characters in the struggle could see.... with the benefit of illumination!

I don't see Glorantha as story all the way down, but that story is the only way it can be understood, without acheiving enlightenment.

BTW, I see the "downspiraling" nature of Glorantha as yet another retelling of the Hero's Journey, with humanity as the Hero, and the otherworlds as the "enemy/father" figure. The tale of KoS is how Argrath, on behalf of humanity, confronts the otherworld powers, and shows that he has outgrown them, and liberates humanity from their rule. Same as Lord of the Rings, then, but it's one of the more powerful myths in Western civilization.

But, to tie up, the process of accessing cosmic truths and powers through myths plays against a materialistic view of there being a source of power which the gods control, and parcel out to their followers if they agree to exchange worship and obediance. The Gods are an expression of that cosmic power, expressed and understood through myth, and by participating in that myth, their followers participate in that power. The continuity of power-God-follower is one of mythic identification, not commercial transaction.

Now we are in an interesting place. Perhaps to illustrate for clarity (and hopefully a little smile) I shall use the example of Hindu Mythology as quoted in The Science of Discworld by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart & Jack Cohen

Pete's view of Glorantha is much like that of the Discworld: It's a place that from groundlevel looks remarkably like Earth. But it's not Earth.
It's almost entirely narrative-driven. All stories have power.

The rest of the Discworld cosmology is actually pretty similar to the "real World" - in that real science also works and the Wizards are heading rapidly toward a scientific understanding of their Universe (splitting the Thaum etc...)

The point being (I'll get there eventually) that Great A'Tuin the astrochelonian "swims" through a universe of stars and galaxies, where logic and analysis work as long as some bugger dumping Narrativium doesn't bend the universe out of shape (again). It's not too different from 21st Century Science - except for the storypower - which is powerful enough to create a giant turtle and associated biosphere - Myth on a grand scale! The myth sits on a solid (chelonian) foundation of modern, scientific thinking.

John Hughes' view of Glorantha is "Turtles All The Way Down". From an old lady espousing Hindu mythology*, when she was asked by a learned astronomer "What holds the turtle up?", she replied "Ha! It's turtles all the way down". An infinite regression.

To most modern people, I suspect that being asked to believe that will be just a little too much. Folks tend to get uncomfortable around infinities.

Not that it isn't a valid premise for a fantasy world. It quite clearly is a fascinating possibility, even if it does make my head hurt. For John, it seems that under every story is another story, or worse/better (take your pick...) a web of stories that is a synthesis of previous stories and will be used in creating new stories ("Clarifying and explaining", says my innate GodLearner :D).

Bloody Hell, from a linear infinity (Turtles all the way down) I've just extrapolated to infinity (... turtles/myths) in 4 dimensions - 3 spacial and 1 temporal. Turtles all around and from the "big-bang" onwards. I'll stop this train(wreck) of thought before it careens through the buffers and hits Superstring Theory.

Anyway, are these views reconcilable? Yes, YGWV! The actuality of either of them is utterly irrelevant to Gloranthans. The only way they can get off the Lozenge is using the magic at hand - and it is always going to take you to the Otherworld most relevant to the magic used. (c.f. The Stars Example.)

Related to that last point is that Greg, I believe, has stated that "Science" doesn't work in Glorantha. The Scientific method requires repeatabilty and consistency. (That's my take on Greg's position... salt pinches at the ready!)

When your world is built entirely on myth (all the way up!) and those myths are passed on through verbal tradition, and they all interact, especially in regions where folks with different myths are competeing for resources, the last thing you are going to get is consistency. (the sentence that would not end...)

The "best" you'll get is a (possibly) peaceful clash between the Orthodoxy and those indluging in cross-pollination between the two ideologies. That would be like the Lunar takeover of the Dara Happan Empire. The worst being a clash between various sets of heretics/heterodoxies where all the original myths are swamped out by powergrabbers taking what works best for them and stuff the rest of you.**

Ah. That sounds like the Hero Wars.

So, I suspect Greg's Glorantha is probably closer to John's.
But That Doesn't Matter! Rule One: YGWV. Rule Two: MGF.

Darn - that's one long, rambling post. Have I been fair to all parties? Have I helped clarify positions or have I added too many turtles?

Cheers

Graeme

* Which is where the whole disc on 4 elephants on a turtle thing comes from.

** And a few poor sods wondering why they don't all just get on with farming, hunting and actually making things to eat and drink - Hobbits in all but hairy feet.

My problem with that is reconciling it with other comments made by Greg and others that, at an essential level, the Gods really are unchanging outside of the major cataclysms that mark the end of ages (the creation/fall of Nysalor, the fall of the God Learners, the Hero Wars from the appearance of Sedenya to the end of the final battle). So the idea that if you change the myths, you change the entities seems ruled out. If it wasn't, everyone would be doing what the GL did, and there would be no reason for the cosmos to twat the GL so hard.

But that being said, yes, science doesn't work in Glorantha... unless scientism is the myth that you use to access the cosmic (this is, IMG, the way the Brithini and Mostali work).

Immodestly, i think I'm pretty close to how Greg's described the metaphysic of Glorantha. But if people grok John's view of layers of stories, and it works in their Glorantha, it really doesn't matter which is true... since we can both "demonstrate their truth."

Eek! "Ultimate self referentiality reached. Please extract yourself from your own back passage!"

Well, it's actually childs play to reconcile the visions: my interpretation of the Gods as expressions of cosmic princples is, lets face it, a myth, a story, it's the one told at the start of G:ittHW, it's the one that guided the God Learners into their great errors of judgement. John, would I be right in thinking that we're agreed that the story "under" that story is unknowable?

To paraphrase John's work: "The God Learners were half right, but only the Dragons know which half"

Mac Logo wrote: John Hughes' view of Glorantha is "Turtles All The Way Down". From an old lady espousing Hindu mythology*, when she was asked by a learned astronomer "What holds the turtle up?", she replied "Ha! It's turtles all the way down". An infinite regression.

To most modern people, I suspect that being asked to believe that will be just a little too much. Folks tend to get uncomfortable around infinities.

Not that it isn't a valid premise for a fantasy world. It quite clearly is a fascinating possibility, even if it does make my head hurt. For John, it seems that under every story is another story, or worse/better (take your pick...) a web of stories that is a synthesis of previous stories and will be used in creating new stories ("Clarifying and explaining", says my innate GodLearner :D).

Bloody Hell, from a linear infinity (Turtles all the way down) I've just extrapolated to infinity (... turtles/myths) in 4 dimensions - 3 spacial and 1 temporal. Turtles all around and from the "big-bang" onwards. I'll stop this train(wreck) of thought before it careens through the buffers and hits Superstring Theory.

simon_hibbs wrote: Or transcendent conciousnes, and a mental train wreck probably isn't too far off from what it feels like. Not everyone survives it intact, either.

Mac Logo wrote:

simon_hibbs wrote: Or transcendent conciousnes, and a mental train wreck probably isn't too far off from what it feels like. Not everyone survives it intact, either.

Perhaps Illumination might be a more Gloranthan term?

simon_hibbs wrote:
That's right, you're not meant to be able to imagine what an angel looks like, yet the Prophets met and talked to angels. So now imagine the mind of a person who _can_ comprehend the appearance of an angel. Imagine what being able to do that would feel like. The point is not to translate that imagery into something you can understand, but to alter your state of conciousness out of the default literal, material interpretation mode into a transcendent state.

Okay, Gareth, how about this as an analogy: an angel is a being that cannot be conceived of by the mortal mind in it's natural form. It manifests itself in ways that mortals grasp through the framework of metaphor & symbolism that gets codified and transferred through religion and myth.

(Have you seen the Babylon 5 episode where the "transcdendant" ambassador Kosh manifests as an angelic being which is perceived by the various intelligent species according to their mythologies? It's pretty much what I'm talking about... if you forget how B5 muffed it when they revealed they were bog standard glowy space squid with mind control powers, and probably laser vision).

The mythic / mystic follower (john & simon) says "Since we can only see it through stories, it's made of stories, as any attempt to see it without stories is doomed to failure."

As more of an essentialist, I say "Stories are the only apparatus for comprehending it at a human level, but that is not to say that there is an essential something behind the story, however unknowable."

Furthermore, I think that "thing" is the cosmic building blocks of the Glorathan Cosmos, which would be the things expressed through the primal runes... which are themselves another myth.

I'm disagreeing at one level with John and Simon: it's not "stories all the way down, as "all the way down" implies that the idea of stories means something at the level of directly interfacing with the primal matter of the cosmos, a level at which human understanding is inadequate and meaningless (yes, it's an anti-scientific viewpoint, but I see it as hardwired into the setting). But I agree that the only way available to us to dsicuss the models of the Gloranthan cosmos is through stories and similar "mythopoeic" tools. Whichever of these views you take on it, you'll have to use stories to argue the case.

Here's another analogy: the photon. You can drive yourself nuts over the question "Is it a wave or particle?" You can do an experiment that'll prove it one way, and another that'll prove it the other. What you can't do is an experiment to prove it's both, or neither. AFAIK, every single experiment has answered it one way or the other. So is there no definitive answer? Of course there is: a photon is a thing that can behave either like a particle or a wave, depending on what you're measuring. So while we can quantify certain things about a photon (energy, wavelength, speed, etc), what we can't yet do is say what it is, only what it's like.

So let's look at our old friend Orlanth. We know that, when we sincerely go to the otherside, identify with Orlanth, participate in his myths, we partake of his nature, and thereby gain a measure of his power. In many respects, he behaves like a story, a character in a story, an active "Graeco-Roman" style god, and expression of a set of cosmic forces... so which one is he? Like the photon, it's the wrong question, because even the answer "all of them" is misleading. Consider that, to the Wenelian Orlanthi, Orlanth is a wild boar....

Rather, consider that Orlanth is the expression of something that can only be apprehended in part through the myths surrounding it. What it "really is" is less important than "how it behaves."

So, from a GM, I am running the universe standpoint, to run a game satisafactorily, with thematic importance beyond a mundane power struggle, you have to have the players (including the GM) engaging with the mythic expressions of, say, the Orlanthi and Lunar pantheons, and see the clash of these two mundane forces as another expression of a clash of cosmic forces either arising or expressed through the mythic structures around them, which are the only tools available to their followers to interact with them. Because in Glorantha the myths aren't like, say, Vancian spells which use the energy of the universe in a mechanistic fashion, but a relationship between the mundane and the otherworld, which defines and constrains both.

Is this helping?

[EDIT: Simple, direct answer for "How to roleplay an angel in HQ:" What does the mythic system the game is operating in say an angel should be like? Keeping with the example, an Hebraic angel would be a non-euclidean nightmare of infinite beauty and terror]

Hi folks,

Remember that you are under no obligation to try to please Gareth or anyone else. He hasn't really asked any questions, and he is not really interested in what you, I, or anybody else has to say. He just keeps repeating the same thing over and over again, in different wording. In my book, that is intellectual dishonesty. Also, he has pretty much presented the solution to his own problem long ago:

Oh, man I cannot play in Glorantha without knowing and understanding stuff that we all know will never ever be clarified.

Very well, Gareth. I suggest that you play something else.

/Peter Nordstrand

Peter:

At this point, I'm interested in getting my differences between my PoV and John & Simon's expressed. I'm hoping to get either a "I understand, that's great," or an "I understand, that sucks" from Gareth, but I'm doing this as a general public service... ("Oh lord it's hard to be humble...")

Anyway, me and Gareth have danced round this before... I think I may be expressing myself better this time. I honestly hope this helps Gareth and anyone else in the position of not grokking Glorantha to grok it.

I don't feel like I'm teaching a turtle to sing, here. When I feel I'm wasting my efforts, trust me, they will cease.

contracycle wrote: That would be a great answer if only the question were about religious people or seekers after truth. However, down in humdrum reality the game books are setting it up such that I-the-player have a real prospect of meeting an angel, and I-the-GM will have to roleplay it for them if they do.

Edit: "turtles all the way down" is a joke becuase the answer is inadequate. TATWD fails to answer the question under a cloak of faux-insight.

Lots of good stuff in this post.

pete_darby wrote: The mythic / mystic follower (john & simon) says "Since we can only see it through stories, it's made of stories, as any attempt to see it without stories is doomed to failure."

As more of an essentialist, I say "Stories are the only apparatus for comprehending it at a human level, but that is not to say that there is an essential something behind the story, however unknowable."

Rather, consider that Orlanth is the expression of something that can only be apprehended in part through the myths surrounding it. What it "really is" is less important than "how it behaves."

So, from a GM, I am running the universe standpoint, to run a game satisafactorily, with thematic importance beyond a mundane power struggle, you have to have the players (including the GM) engaging with the mythic expressions of, say, the Orlanthi and Lunar pantheons, and see the clash of these two mundane forces as another expression of a clash of cosmic forces either arising or expressed through the mythic structures around them, which are the only tools available to their followers to interact with them. Because in Glorantha the myths aren't like, say, Vancian spells which use the energy of the universe in a mechanistic fashion, but a relationship between the mundane and the otherworld, which defines and constrains both.

Is this helping?

Okay, we've hit a point between me and Simon where the disagreement is about whether there's a functional difference between the truth being a story and the truth only being able to be transmitted through an allegorical story... and it looks like we both think the latter, and that for the pruposes of running the game, the distinction isn't all that important. Cool.

pete_darby wrote: [snip]
the disagreement is about whether there's a functional difference between the truth being a story and the truth only being able to be transmitted through an allegorical story
[snip]
and that for the pruposes of running the game, the distinction isn't all that important. Cool.

contracycle wrote:
Edit: "turtles all the way down" is a joke becuase the answer is inadequate. TATWD fails to answer the question under a cloak of faux-insight.

Mac Logo wrote: n) There are States of Mind in Glorantha that are not explicible except to those who have achieved them. Not all of these states are benign and not everyone appreciates/tolerates those who attain them.

Nick Brooke wrote:
These are other "States of Mind that are not explicable except to those who have achieved them" -- or been born with them.

Mac Logo wrote:
ObGlorantha: So what about the various forms of "Transcendental Conciousness"? In a thread that started as being about (paraphrasing) "What makes Glorantha Glorantha?", surely this count. It is an aspect of Glorantha that has been present from the very early days, has massive implications to the world and potentially affects everybodies game. Even though the magic system supporting it has been dropped from HeroQuest (for now...), its effects resound throughout the rules when discussing the Secrets of religions. It's also a fairly major part of the history of Glorantha and part of the reason that Orlanthi hate Lunars. The effects of it are everywhere. It must surely count as one of those trope thingies?

Well, I don't know... pretty much all great gods have as their secret "Become one with part of the universe, please deposit you character sheet with the GM on your way out." Once you can encompass the entirity of the being of, say Orlanth, you acheive transcendance, because the great entities of the Otherworlds have a transcendant nature.

It's also nigh of frickin impossible to do, comparable to mystic enlgihtenment. You "become one with the soul of the storm..." having acheived it through ego-lossy identification with an impersonal principle, Orlanth with all the mythic accretions stripped away. Which, as I've said before, is pretty much impossible for mortal minds to achieve.

Mysticism seems to me the, possibly in Glorantha misguided, attempt to acheive gnosis of the transcendant without the material, magical or mythic. In GL terms, to know the runes without the intermediaries of great gods, great spirits, or the saints...

But that convention about transcendance seems a very Gloranthan, and quite subtle, theme in the world.

One thing I don't think I've got across in this "Otherworld entities as expressions of cosmic principles" thing is whether the principles that are being expressed are different between otherworlds. Frex, are Humakt, the power behind Bardan's Turret, and Jardan the warrior, expressions of the same cosmic principle of death, or of separate, incompatible, yet functionally identical cosmic principles of death, originating in transcendant truths alien to each other?

The creation myths of Glorantha, which hint at Glorantha being created by the collision of the three otherworlds point to the latter, but the description of mysticism as acheiving transcendant knowledge of the cosmic fundamentals without the mythic structures of the otherworlds, hints at the former.

I can square the circle by saying that mysticism acheives transcendant knowledge of the inner world, not the outer world, as a cosmically perfect mix of the three otherworlds... but that sounds more like absolute materialism and ensarement with the illusory, which is mystically bad, m'kay?

Or do I just say mysticism debates are screwed till we get a definitive answer from Issaries... so till then, box number two, they're from different places, kid.

{edit: yes, once again, argumentatively agreeing with Simon... something about me keeps misreading him on first look.}

Replying to Pete:

Yes it's not possible for mortal minds to 'Become Storm', you have to become immortal first; but that is possible, so it's not an unachievable goal. The problem I think you've identified is that the myths are about human relationships with these powers, they are essentialy human constructs that resonate with the nature of (say) Storm. They are a route to connect with Storm, but the real things is much more than that. To actualy Become Storm you have to move beyond the myths, beyond the human relationship with it, and actualy beyond magic itself. You leave play because you've left human concerns, as a focus of your being, behind.

A quick point on the creation myths, many of them concern the dissolution of a pre-created unity into it's components. For example the self-dismemberment (Utuma) of Ouroboros, the Cosmic Dragon. I think these notions of dissolution and collision are realy a product of human analysis rather than being essential truths about what is going on. The other point is that the creation, and later destruction of the cosmos occur outside time. If you want to look into it at this level of depth, forget about the creation occuring 'before' time. It's happening right now!

As for the ultimate transcendent nature of, say Death. Well, it's transcendent! I don't think petty cattegories like Theist and Animist mean much at that level. Humakt is the Great God of Death. I think what Great God means is, more than just a god. More than just theist at a transcendent level, although that's how his worshipers interact with and experience him. However there are aspects of his worship and nature that are innaceessible to his worshipers, that are alien and seem unaproachable. That's because when you get behind the mask, you get behind the god, behind anything a worshiper with his theist soul can relate to. That's a theory anyway, I have to say I'm not 100% sure on this. But no, I'm not going to forget about this untill Greg tells me what to think. He can change his mind too so he's obviously not infalible.


Simon Hibbs

Peter Nordstrand wrote: Remember that you are under no obligation to try to please Gareth or anyone else. He hasn't really asked any questions, and he is not really interested in what you, I, or anybody else has to say.

He just keeps repeating the same thing over and over again, in different wording. In my book, that is intellectual dishonesty.

Also, he has pretty much presented the solution to his own problem long ago:

I don't know... we've got to the point of debating whether three transcendant principles of death are separate but identical, or indetical but incompatibly expressed. Which is an awful long way from getting the cows milked, as my Uralda priestess would say.

And folks, lets keep this friendly, and Glorantha focussed. The point of the thread is supposed to be the conventions of Glorantha, right? The more help we can get nailing them down, even if they're nonsensical or problematic to some, the better.

pete_darby wrote: I don't know... we've got to the point of debating whether three transcendant principles of death are separate but identical, or indetical but incompatibly expressed. Which is an awful long way from getting the cows milked, as my Uralda priestess would say.

Hmmm...folks, this thread is up to 9 pages long. Which for a Forge topic is enormous. As with most threads that reach this length it has become quite bloated and flailing.

I'm certainly not a moderator here, but as an interested observer, I'm thinking now might be the time to find the handful of items that have been reasonably collected as being central tropes and summarize them here at the end.

Then find those items that are still at various stages of being hashed around and start a new thread for each of those to focus just on that topic.

And then call this thread done...

Okay, I can see that... but looking back, I've thoguht of calling this thread dead at a couple of points, but it's like so many Gloranthan signature characters, it keeps coming back from hell...

That, and at any one time, the thread's kept relatively focussed.

I'm still not buying that the three otherworlds are expressions of the same fundamentals. Sounds like god learner talk to me.... (Ducks thrown objects, objects to thrown ducks, and closes thread).

Short of a comprehensive listing of the identified conventions, are we done here guys?