UnlikelyLass

That’s how I’d read it, too, but most of the discussion in this thread doesn’t seem to be taking that kind of expansive approach, and I think the very ambiguity which allows us to read it in a way that works for us means that others can implement it in an essentialist way that ends up trending towards a very complicated “we have extra genders, but are still going to be essentialist and transphobic” way, which doesn’t make me feel great. I suppose I really want the orlanthi all to apply to pretty much all of this stuff explicitly, and for the gaming culture around it to embrace that, but perhaps that’s wishful thinking on my part.

I’m trying to figure out how to respond to this thread in a way that is useful. I think my perspective is possibly useful, but not necessarily very gameable. First of all, I am a trans woman. There is a complicated interplay between “our imaginary culture has a different perspective on sex and gender than modern western society” and “how do we make a space for gender variant people that doesn’t actually affirm them.” What do I mean by that? Presumably, trans people exist in Orlanthi culture. Are all trans women nandani and all trans men vingan? Or, likewise, gay men and lesbians? Do all gender variant people with uteruses fall into the orlanthi category of vingan? Is there a way for a trans woman to be seen as a woman in orlanthi culture? Can a person with a “male” body sex be of vingan gender? Adding more genders is awesome. But then generating a gender-essentialist “woman bodies with air runes are vingan” structure gets complicated really fast, and isn’t maybe as affirming as you might want it to be, if you are indeed trying to be affirming and welcoming to trans people. If you are adding genders and physical sexes and *aren’t* wanting to be affirming and welcoming of trans and gender variant people, what exactly are you trying to do? Dunno. Just something to think about, maybe.

I figured the ancestors of unicorns broke into two tribes at one point, both of which had two horns. One of the tribes, however, lost their horns -- either someone stole them, or they wagered them in a game of chance. The next time the two tribes got together, the two-horns felt sorry for the no-horns since they kept getting mistaken for horses. They each donated one of their own horns so everybody could have at least one.

Two quick dumb theories. #1: The Godtime and Gods are orthogonal to the “real” world of the Lozenge. The “Godtime” myths everybody knows and believes *creates* an echo of those characters and events in the orthogonal Godtime world which everybody knows of and worships as Gods. At the same time, the historical events which lead to the myths of Godtime are just another one of the history cycles, and there were more before it that “we” in the Third Age just don’t know about. #2: The historical cycle — slowly developing civilization leading to an outcast group creating a “new god” which in turn causes a collapse of civilization and mass warfare and death — is an actual destruction and recreation of the world. And every time the universe gets destroyed and rebuilt, slightly less of it comes back, so the world is slowly winding down. It will just take many repetitions before the destruction is complete.

This may just be me, but I am unable to get www.alephtar.com to show me anything but a white page with the word “Error” in the upper left. I Hope all is well! -Dana

You jest a little, but I’ve long felt that you could play a pretty great Glorantha game using Unknown Armies 2nd ed — Rune Lords are close enough to Godwalkers, being magical through emulation, while minor charges map pretty well onto spirit magic and major & significant to rune magic. Dunno.

HeroQuesting is an awful lot like playing an RPG (or a LARP), if you think about it…

Not that I have any great insight into any of this, but… I’ve always interpreted the I Fought, We Won and Great Compromise as, basically, the world being destroyed completely, and then everybody involved — still alive in some primal state — collectively deciding to recreate the world. Everybody involved “agreed to continue”. And one of the side effects of that conscious rebirth of the world fundamentally modified the original situation, turning Chaos from something outside and alien to Glorantha into something which was inherently part of Glorantha. And part of that incorporation of Chaos into the fundamental nature of Glorantha resulted in Time. Chaos isn’t the enemy of Order after the Compromise, it’s just a part of the whole, the nature of which has changed. Not profound, exactly, but it does change the relationship of Void/Destruction/Chaos and Law/Order/Glorantha a bit, I think. To answer the original question, I feel like there might be something from the POV of Ralzakark in Secrets of Dorastor (RQ3), but it’s been awhile since I read it. Likewise, although they aren’t properly “chaotic”, exactly, there are characters presented in Strangers in Prax who are dedicated Lunars with various chaos abilities. I’m not sure that really counts as what the OP was asking for, though.

I have a few dumb theories. They aren’t that interesting and contradict themselves: - The I Fought, We Won battle and the LBQ are the same thing: expressions of the overwhelming of Glorantha by chaos, and the thinking people of the world collectively taking action, fighting, and/or choosing to do whatever is necessary to allow the world continue to exist. But each Age is now locked into a repeat — the same pattern, with minor variations, plays out, ending in the same collapse, the same resurgence of chaos, the same requirement that the world choose to continue. Chaos has been given a kind of order, but the order is changeable. And the world is *created anew* at the beginning of each age. - “Gods” are not singular beings. They are ascended “adventuring parties”. Worshipping a “god” is joining the party. - The events of the godwar are just the earliest pass through a set of cyclical historical events, and the myths of the gods are just stories: history become myth. - nysalor and gbaji are just two different stories/myths/perspectives about a single being. How you view it’s life depends on what lens you view it with. Arkat has a very specific opinion and sees them only through the gbaji lens. - the godlearners were totally a version of the three blind men describing an elephant. They had ahold of a trunk, but never saw the whole picture. gods are stories. The compromise made chaos part of the order and contents of the world. I dunno.

My best guess is something like Mazinger Z/Tranzor Z -- the villains were the Underground Empire and the heroes had fighting machines in the form of giant mecha. My second guess is something like Thunderbirds Are Go! or one of the other Anderson properties. Dunno. I will say the image in the second question looks steampunkish to me.

Aside from the classic Superworld rules, Modiphius does also have the Achtung! Cthulhu supplement Elder Godlike. In addition to mashing up the Cthulhu Mythos and gritty Superhuman WWII settings, it also effectively adapts the Godlike power-building system to BRP. So, that's also an option.

Wow! Very nearly what I was thinking of, although that includes some foreign editions I know zero about. My thought was to make it by year, with columns for 'families'. This has all the information I would need to make that, though!

This (and several other similar conversations on other forums) is making me want to generate a giant graphviz diagram of all the various BRP-derived systems. A kind of family tree.