mfbrandi

I am sure that is not true. I think everybody agrees with you on that — “the map is not the territory” and so on — but understandably, people are not always sure which bits are Glorantha and which bits are game artefacts. Given that — as Ludo said — people don’t ever talk completely in character, that we are always floating somewhere between acting and describing our game move, that is probably fine, most of the time. But equally, if one has a strong conception of Glorantha, the rule set might sometimes grate. To say any more would be to drift even further OT, so time to stop.

Don’t worry: I wasn’t trying to suggest they were bad rules. 😉

David Mikics on Harold Bloom (full text here), or “Glorantha and the American Dream”: [T]he writers he preferred were often imaginative, bloody-minded extremists. Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying and Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts were his favorite works of twentieth-century American fiction. These two books are brutally Oedipal, lurid at times, and relentless …, they are absolutely unadulterated by comfort of any kind. But Harold himself was gentle, self-mocking, and heartfelt, not at all tough or cynical … [I]n Bloom’s work Freud competes with Emerson as a wisdom writer … Emerson celebrates imaginative possibility, whereas Freud’s tragic sensibility stresses our human limitations. Freud believes in the reality principle; Emerson … urges us to defy mundane reality and reach for a higher creative power … Bloom knew there is a darker side to American self-reliance, best described by D. H. Lawrence when he said, “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.” A demonic recklessness runs like a live wire through American culture, and … Harold brought into dialogue these two sides, light and dark, of American individualism … Bloom says that he hears in both prophets, [James] Baldwin and Jeremiah, “the terrible pathos of origins.” That pathos uncovers a dark side of the American dream, and stands against Emerson’s trust that we can make ourselves anew. Yet Baldwin too has his hopes for America … Bloom shows how, for Baldwin, the racial trauma at the core of American life intersects with Biblical anxiety of influence. Here as elsewhere, Harold was multifaceted about the meaning of America, its promise as well as its burden.

Sure, it is conceivable, and maybe Gloranthan sages have spell-teaching books and staged examinations — “I have piano grade 8” and all that. I am not taking a stand on that. I was just trying to get at how Andreas and Ludo may have been failing to communicate effectively. It is very easy to slide into “of course people wouldn’t talk that way” when the real issue is that the thing may not be there to talk about. Imagine people did talk that way in Glorantha, but they were wrong — in the real world, circular orbits for the planets, phlogiston, or the luminiferous aether — we spoke as if these things existed and that was how the world worked, but we were wrong. And that is maybe where it gets interesting. Maybe (and maybe he is right) @AndreasDavour thinks that if a person in Glorantha proposed such a theory, they would never be able to assign skills and skill levels to people and difficulties to tasks in a way that had predictive power; they would never be able to turn it into an empirical theory, and definitely not one that would satisfy a Gloranthan Karl Popper. (Or perhaps their theory would be so rigid and determinate that it was falsified right away. Who knows?) But what if a character in RuneQuest formed such a theory? They drew up charts of AP, and HP, relative proportions of hits and impalements, weapon damages, and the rest, then they went out and field tested it. Would they find that the RQ rules made a pretty good “theory of everything”? We speak as if minmaxing is possible: by making smart choices based on the rules, we think that we can improve our characters’ chances of succeeding. If we find that confirmed by the course of play, wouldn’t a character who conjectured what we read in the rule books find it confirmed in the course of their life? I don’t know, but maybe crazy inhabitant of Glorantha and crazy RQ character don’t line up too well. And so maybe we end up saying that a simulation can be bad even when it is a simulation of something that does not exist. Or so some god of lies whispered in my ear.

[Nods enthusiastically.] But do we need to take the solos, re-harmonise them, add arrangements, and re-record them? People do it to Parker, but should they? And no one here is Bird, right?

“I have been doing better. But somehow the things drift back again: the stubborn Uz-flesh grows day by day back again.” — The Island of Doctor KL

Excellent! — I have successfully reclaimed my dunce’s hat-cum-crown of thorns after recent scurrilous and unfounded claims of smartness. Do I have to hum “Blue Moon”, now?

Or — inkeeping (more-or-less) with “modern elves are humans who think they are plants” — we could try (I am thinking out loud, so apologies to any biologists reading for the barbarisms to follow): Haploid plant spores are inhaled by a “pure” human and start dividing to produce a haploid gametophyte within it The human develops an urge to “return” to their true home, the forest — the human has the thoughts, not the plant growing within: the plant is not intelligent and has no thoughts of its own In the forest, the human is “reborn” as an elf — this can be gruesome or not, to taste — still an animal, but their reproductive system has been “taken over” by their internal plant gametophyte “Elf sex” transfers haploid plant gametes and may produce a purely plant zygote (in either or both of the elves, but not of either, genetically) which develops into a diploid sporophyte within the elf’s abdomen — the human elf is now hosting two plants, one haploid (gametophyte) and one diploid (sporophyte in its coconut stage) The sporophyte (the coconut) is cut from or emerges from the elf’s abdomen — it doesn’t matter whether the human is XX or XY or … — the elf itself cannot reproduce sexually, but it hosts a plant which can The sporophyte is planted, grows (it is photosynthetic, unlike the gametophyte stage), and eventually emits haploid spores (this time meiosis is required) Go to step 1 Why should the broo have all the life-cycle fun? Deliberate infection with aldryami spores is very Invasion of the Bodysnatchers but with no giant pod to dispose of. No elf children in this model.

I think I get it. Forget rôleplaying and characters talking. Imagine a wargame representing WW2: a tank unit might have “firepower = 4”. That is fine as an abstraction for a game, but if you were going into the physics and engineering of the tanks represented, you wouldn’t find “firepower = 4” in any of your natural laws or engineering manuals, because that is not how the real world works and not because they just call it something different — it is not a real thing in the world, it is just a game abstraction, an artefact of the simulation. So the question is not whether Gloranthans say “bladesharp 4” (or a Theyalan translation thereof) but whether the spell bladesharp 4 even exists in Glorantha (under any description) — perhaps Gloranthan magic is more freeform and maps poorly onto RQ rules. Right, Andreas? Shouldn’t be hard: no one thinks hit points are a “real thing” in Glorantha, right? (Or QuestWorlds story points , for that matter.)

But surely air is some newfangled thing — let into the Weltmaschine when Umath broke it — and not even a cheap, disposable Mostali device like a dwarf would rely on it for correct functioning. Ask rather whether the dwarves would short out or rust — but the Mostali have had plenty of time to devise workarounds for water. I wonder whether the Mostali regard stone as an older element than water and earth as broken stone corrupted by Grower.

Hmm … given the set up of Life/Fertility vs. Death/Separation in rigid relation, can we not see those whose path doesn’t take them to reproduction (whether by choice or not) as on a “death path”? That is, do we have to see the death path as a path only for killers? I don’t say this to knock the childless — my weakness would more likely be to sneer at the “breeders” — but to suggest a legitimate path for non-breeder non-murderers. They are terminating a line of descent, standing apart from (or at the edge of) a network of family relations. But that is OK, and it doesn’t have to be a violent thing. [YGWV and all that.]

Yes, but (and I suspect you agree with at least some of these) … I don’t think the notion of thinning was forced on the fantasists by killjoy scientists thinning as elegiac or just plain miserable is only one way to take it we don’t need to daydream dragons to be able to “tolerate” a mundane world at last count, I think our oh-so-mundane world had about four times as many species of dragon as species of mammal

Well (SRD v0.97, sec. 4.2, p. 36): ——————————————————————— The side with the highest number of successes is the overall victor in the [group] contest … If the number of successes is tied the contest ends in a stalemate, with neither side gaining control of the prize … If the result is a tie, but it does not make sense for there to be no outcome, then award the PCs group a zero degree victory ——————————————————————— That seems to say (caveated) that in a group contest if the aggregate degree of victory = 0, then the PCs win — no faffing about with individual high rolls and counting what would have been individual zero degree victories had they been independent contests. Nice and simple, but doesn’t help with player vs. player group contests! In short, yes, simply go off of total successes … with a simplified “PC group wins” tie break procedure. I guess the real question is what kind of situation one would want to model as a group contest. My instinct would be to pick one of these and never use a group contest: mob:mob with each side rolling once, not each character in each side just run a bunch of individual contests with narrative logic — not aggregated successes — determining the position at the end of it all But I am probably overlooking something really obvious! “But what do you mean mob:mob?” Well (sec. 2.10, p. 30): ——————————————————————— Sometimes you will be outnumbered by your opponents. Your GM can treat many as one. Your GM treats a crowd as a single resistance with one rating. When selecting a resistance your GM should factor their numbers into the rating. ——————————————————————— Just as we do that for the NPCs, shouldn’t we do it for the PCs, too? Treat many PCs as one. Wouldn’t that be … simpler? And if we do it for both (many on many), then we get mob:mob. People will quibble about whether the GM aggregates the PCs’ individual abilities fairly, but frankly, as they can set the resistance (the NPCs) to anything they like, it would be a fuss about nothing. Although, if QuestWorlds is about done, probably best they just publish it, rather than listening to idiots like me saying it needs simplifying. Wasn’t there an article in Different Worlds maaaany years ago saying to do everything in RQ2 with the resistance table? Happier, simpler times!

[Puts on advocatus diaboli wig — died a fetching shade of blood red, natch.] “In 1129 the Wordless Prophet appeared … he taught the Path of Silence to any that would listen … Some sects were so adamantly opposed to communication that the art of writing was forgotten and books were walled up in special libraries, where they could not contaminate people. Libraries became a symbol of piously refraining from reading, rather than a sign of literacy.” — Greg Stafford, Introduction to Umathela (1997) So — even granted that many people would have sounded the words as they read — is the Cult of Silence really worried about sound? Is it not “the word” — i.e. language and communication — that they opposed? So no Indo-Pakistani Sign Language or BSL for the truly pious. This revolt against existence seems to have been a Void cult of the tortured kind [he speculated wildly]. It would be good to know how the path of silence was taught to listeners. Perhaps the wordless prophet was Hugo Ball: Gadji beri bimba gadji beri bimba glandridi laula lonni cadori gadjama gramma berida bimbala glandri galassassa laulitalomini gadji beri bin blassa glassala laula lonni cadorsu sassala bim gadjama tuffm i zimzalla binban gligla wowolimai bin beri ban o katalominai rhinozerossola hopsamen laulitalomini hoooo gadjama rhinozerossola hopsamen bluku terullala blaulala loooo zimzim urullala zimzim urullala zimzim zanzibar zimzalla zam elifantolim brussala bulomen brussala bulomen tromtata velo da bang band affalo purzamai affalo purzamai lengado tor gadjama bimbalo glandridi glassala zingtata pimpalo ögrögöööö viola laxato viola zimbrabim viola uli paluji malooo tuffm im zimbrabim negramai bumbalo negramai bumbalo tuffm i zim gadjama bimbala oo beri gadjama gaga di gadjama affalo pinx gaga di bumbalo bumbalo gadjamen gaga di bling blong gaga blung … or as the odd word seems to have crept in there — all the better to drain them of meaning, perhaps? — Kurt Schwitters: URSONATE (Introduction) Fümms bö wö tää zää Uu, pögiff, kwii Ee. Oooooooooooooooooooooooo, dll rrrrr beeeee bö dll rrrrr beeeee bö fümms bö, rrrrr beeeee bö fümms bö wö, beeeee bö fümms bö wö tää, bö fümms bö wö tää zää, fümms bö wö tää zää Uu:

On Marina Warner on myth: We are paradoxically soothed by thinking that violence, aggression and cruelty are ‘natural’ at the same time as we are made wary and defensive. We are rendered paranoid – about animals and people. The Monster is going to return. There is always the Monster. One of the most appealing – most passionate – aspects of Managing Monsters is Warner’s plea for recognition of the falsehood of the objectified ‘Monster’. The Monster is ourselves. Efforts to exterminate the brutes will only increase our pathetic monstrosity. The more fear and anxiety we feel, the more stupid and cruel we become. — Margaret Anne Doody, Fear of Rabid Dogs

We can’t? Why did no one ever think to tell me this? [What follows is stated assertively — for simplicity — but imagine it hedged with “what ifs”, “alternativelys”, and “YGWVs” at every turn.] I like to imagine Argrath’s little Feric Jaggar rant as delivered word-for-word by a non-Homo sapiens. Haven’t we all imagined that it is the trollkin — who are “human” too — who shall inherit the earth? But enlo, durulz, newtling, … just take your pick. And if the people after the world has been remade are one, that is not to say that they all have to look the same, is it? If the “monsters” have vanished, maybe that is just to say that “othering” is over (if you don’t see the “elder races” as intrinsically magical). The people of the Fourth Age may be as scaly, feathery, or barky as you like — the important thing is that they have shrugged off the habit of binding themselves to the bloody loops of Godtime and have entered linear time proper. They don’t feel the laws of nature as a yoke. They have escaped magic … or magical thinking. This is, of course, to read against the grain (of fannish interpretation, at least), but I like to find eucatastrophe in the very thinning of Glorantha (a happy ending without a restoration of the Golden (or Green) Age) — don’t weep for the superheated war of all against all, but embrace the cooling world on its slow sane slide toward the Void. Don’t mourn the loss of T. rex, but delight in the jackdaw, the coot, the swift, and all the other quotidian dinosaurs. “Worse than a romantic, I’m a sentimentalist,” said Archie Shepp. The point is not that Fourth Age Glorantha = Earth, but that it is like Earth in lacking miracles. Every world is like that. Has to be. But nothing is “lost”. We have our myths, but they are not history; they were never meant to be. Glorantha up to and including the Hero Wars is a thought experiment in the clodhopping literalisation of myth — of turning myth into an Avengers or Transformers movie — but in the end, even superhero Argrath found that unsatisfactory and fed Orlanth-as-Optimus Prime into the car crusher … straight down the memory hole of blessed oblivion. And if that all sounds too cheery and optimistic, comfort yourself that no one has explained any of it to Wakboth, who is consequently pulling himself together, dusting himself down, and beginning his long slow slouch toward Bethlehem. 😉

True stories are the ones to be regarded with the wariest eye … especially if told by me … and especially if the events recounted happened at the arse end of the 1980s and have had decades to ferment. Still, I am that merry wanderer of the night … and so: Brandi: I think I must be an idiot, because I cannot make sense of half the things you two say. Jen & Steve: We think we must be idiots, because you cannot make sense of half the things we say.

Terror — fine. Liberation — from what? As for our apocryphal bit of Arkatness: —————————————————————— The Great Mystery is not subject to rational understanding. It can only be experienced. Only those who have experienced the mystery can meaningfully speak of it; only those who have been a god can meaningfully understand the dangers of divinity. The Great Mystery cannot be dissected or reduced, it simply is. I have experienced it, I have been a god, I have been Death, I have been a krjalki (monster), and so I shall continue to do what I have pledged to do. [Emphasis mine] —————————————————————— What is going on here? Is Arkat trying to justify himself — “and so” — or not? If he is and King Nralar has not been a god, then he seems to be on a hiding to nothing: “I have had this experience you cannot understand, and that justifies my actions.” That won’t impress them in Missouri. It is not even clear that Arkat can use his experience to justify anything to himself. So bad faith or self-deception (or plain ignorance) seem to be in play. But what do I know? Of course, Apocrypharkat could just be saying, “I have been a god; screw you!” No pretence to justification or explanation, just insolence or arrogance and power-tripping. “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.” And yet “it” seems to be what we all like to bang on about most of all, and if language cannot go on holiday in a game, where can it?

Immanuel was originally part of a loose agglomeration of churches established in the late 1960s by the followers of the London Brothers … practising non-traditional forms of worship in which priestly authority was questioned and miracles such as speaking in tongues and healing the sick were commonplace. Immanuel’s version of Christianity was urgent, even sexy … Part of the attraction of these signs and wonders, at least for a teenage boy, was the sense of spiritual mission they seemed to indicate. The literature that accompanied the revival movement evoked impending apocalypses, which — with their marauding devil armies and the righteous standing firm — sounded a lot like the endgame of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. — Jon Day, A Bit Like a Pot Plant ——————————————————————————————— Wrong RPG, perhaps? From the same source: “McNaught first encountered the Nigerian preacher T.B. Joshua on samizdat VHS tapes shared among the Immanuel congregation in the late 1990s.” Another use for truestone recordings than Star Wars “only hope” messages? And: “Half a mile north, on an industrial estate, are three Pentecostal churches whose names – Deliverance Outreach Ministries, Christ United Ministries, the CCC Founder’s Parish UK – feel slightly at odds with their scruffy exteriors.” it would seem that the first two haven’t thought through their acronyms — DOM and CUM — but perhaps they know exactly what they need to do to appeal to our jaded imaginations. Is there a danger that IRL religion is more exciting than the Gloranthan version — where we are all just wearily shopping for the punchiest spells and true charisma counts for nothing? And then cynical seen-it-all PCs start to daydream of joining Vivamort or Thanatar to get their edge back. “Yeah, but have you got anything, you know, … stronger?”

The way of the Gloranthan hero seems to be to bend the gods to their will in order to carry out the hero’s psycho master plan, no? Even to the extent that Arkat “invents” Zorak Zoran as a stick maul with which to beat Nysalor. So … it may be true that the hero’s will is the god’s will, but the tail is doing the wagging. Is there some level of self-deception in this? If there is, I think I would rather throw my lot in with the Jrusteli (who at least know the responsibility is theirs to take) than a “theist” hero — someone so nuts, so driven, that the insight that there is no other side in the conflict, no cosmic bad guy, doesn’t even slow them down, is just viewed as one more weapon in the fight. “It is not my fault. I am merely an instrument of the god’s will.” But … clear-eyed pragmatist is just one take on the Jrusteli, no? This being Glorantha, there must be a take on them in which they are psycho fanatics, too — just the Puritan version? But I like to think we can embrace the hardcore deist take: the cosmic clockwork is set ticking and all else is NatSci: there is no interaction with the truly divine for the godlearners, as the Invisible God has been unreachable since before there was anyone to even think about reaching. (And to the extent that this plays to the Westerner–Mostali parallels and embodies a philosophy Greg would probably think deserves squishing, it is maybe not an unfaithful take.) Krishna isn’t the angel on Arjuna’s shoulder but the devil, and he is pulling out all the stops to get one person to bin their scruples. (Devils always play to our vanity — “you are special; I must persuade you” — when it would seem they could corrupt dozens with less effort … or a spambot.) So taken at face value — Krishna/Vishnu is a real presence talking to Arjuna — this seems like the opposite of the Gloranthan case where “illuminated” heroes are manipulating gods and cults to get their killing done (presumably still on Highway 61). [Dilute to taste.]

I can picture it now: Orlanth legs it pushing his honeywagon surrounded by giant flies and with a gang of angry Uz in pursuit. But what is troll shit good for? I am guessing it is not good fertiliser. There are easier ways to make wattle and daub. Must be something magical …

Intriguing. Care to say more? As a detective odd couple, or as perpetrators of heists?

Just so.

He is doing that but clearly the appeal isn’t working, so K resorts to: you may as well kill them as they are dead already look at me, I am the supergod … which go beyond that and are very poor reasons for Arjuna to change his mind. (Which is not to say the appeal to Varna is not also … unpersuasive.) And after all, Gbaji was “Humakt’s son”. 😉

In the second edition? Yes, mine, too. It is missing from the first edition — the conceit is that it is a recently discovered “lost” chapter (i.e. making KoS align better with scenarios published after 1992). But … aren’t “Ernalda is dead”, “Ernalda is sleeping”, and “it is winter” all pretty much equivalent? And isn’t the lost chapter some kind of Lunar propaganda? Rather than giving us information about literal location of gods in the mundane world, isn’t the idea — more or less — that taking Whitewall is part of some fancy ritual by Tatius to “kill” Orlanth? The severing is the connection between god and worshipper, not god and god’s body, unless the worshippers are the god’s body in the mundane world, which is maybe not completely mad. All the stuff about squishing hearts and strangling goddesses is just gobbledegook for the marks, the “magically significant act” is taking Whitewall, no? [I am, of course, just making this up as I go along, so …]