simonh

The Lunars use chaos to their advantage yes, but I don't think thats the only basis on which they accept it. By 'they' I mean those that are Sevened initiates of the mysteries and cult leaders, not ordinary citizens.

Tricksters are agents of change, who disrupt the established order so it's very handy to have them on your side when you're running a revolution. The trickster cult has no established structure, there's no authority to say what they are or are not allowed to do. I very much doubt they have spirits of reprisal, unless they have ones that punish them for being boring or predictable, but even then that's just being contrary to the expectation of being contrary. Tricksters are not exempt from social punishment for violating taboos, nor as far as I know are they exempt from magical backlash from violations either. If a trickster was stupid enough to join Humakt and take Geases, they would apply as normal. If so, that's nothing like illumination. I really don't see why a trickster couldn't become illuminated or why it wouldn't work the same as with anyone else, in fact that seems just fine. I don't see why they couldn't gain chaos features either, after all if Broo can worship Humakt, why not Eurmal? Furthermore it seems to me that worshipers of Nysalor and Primal Chaos in the Empire may fulfil some similar magical roles and ritual functions to Eurmali in Heortling society. It depends how you look at it, they're not fools and japesters in the same way but that's just superficial. They're agents of change that disrupt the order of things and the way you think about the world.

Gbaji is a mask of Eurmal.

Hmm, I think the god time is exactly where it’s always been. That’s why people can HeroQuest to it. It’s why crops grow, the sun rises and sets, children are born and people die. Time and mortality are just another perspective, another way of experiencing these things.

Mr. T is another hot button topic, but the fact is he has a lot of supporters. I'm in the UK and there's not a lot of them here, but in the US there are probably few families that don't have his supporters in there somewhere. Few work places completely absent of them. They are probably some on this forum, and if so Hi there. A lot of people have views we disagree with or even feel are terrible, we've just got to suck it up and treat them with respect anyway. Free speech is the right to say things other people find offensive, otherwise it's meaningless, and outrage feels good but it's a terrible way to persuade anyone of anything. If we are going to discuss this sort of thing, deep breath, talk it out.

I've had to deal with this a bit as I have two daughters. They're in their late teens now. As a father it's not something I can dodge. The way I've tried to approach it is to be honest and treat my girls with respect, while being somewhat mindful of age appropriateness. Having said that, they were telling me when they were back in primary school how the boys in their class had all watched Game of Thrones. If the boys are all watching it, and talking about it in the playground, why not the girls? The cat's already out of the bag anyway. My attitude on that was to leave it to them, if they wanted to fine, if they didn't fine. Show them enough respect to let them make their own choices up to a point. Just Ideally try and make sure they're informed and considered choices. As an uncle I can see that's maybe a trickier situation, so talk to the parents. I'd suggest just doing the due diligence to make sure what you're saying or recommending is in line with parental guidelines. Best to just avoid the topic though, it's not your problem. Us parents don't get to dodge it, but you do quite legitimately.

I just think this topic has no place here. We're a free society and everyone's entitled to their opinion, and to post it in appropriate forums, but this isn't an appropriate forum for this topic. I know that's arguable, the ASI is specifically for off topic discussions, but I think no good can come of this. I see comments on political issues here every now and again I vehemently disagree with, and I let it slide. Not worth it. This is like that. If this was about inclusivity or appropriate behaviour in gaming yes, fine. That's a legitimate and important debate that comes up on gaming community forums from time to time. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the fact that people with opposing views on this topic on this forum have common interests in gaming will actually help them find common ground. On the other hand maybe it'll poison the well. I can hope for the former but I fear the latter.

Heresy I know, but giving up gaming for a few months every now and then works for me. Stop checking social media, no forums, no discord. Do other stuff, or just simplify. I think that goes for anything really, don't let it rule your real life. When you come back to it, it feels great and for me anyway I get a burst of creative energy. We're all different though and have different lives. What works for me might not work for others.

Right, hence Sedenya's title of the Mistress of Time. She is cyclicality, which includes creative destruction so of course she is intimately associated with Chaos, but also awakening and renewal.

Great interview, I really enjoyed it. 30 years of Glorantha? Try adding another 24 years 🙂 Ok, let's not go into how I always know exactly how old Glorantha is.

Eating healthy over here. Well, apart from the salted caramel magnum for desert.

I wonder if it has a pawn shop.

Well early on in the plan they would need to eliminate all the vermin and broken mechanisms wandering around the place, damaging everything even further. No point fixing it all if these annoying broken parts out of their place just mess it up again. They all need recycling and rebuilding, and put in their proper place anyway.

I have no problem with hobbit in Tolkien because in his books they are a genuinely novel creation. The Hobbit was explicitly a children's book and I think in that context they're fine. They're a way children can discover this new world through the eyes of a protagonist they can perhaps identify with. What's silly is having hobbits in socially real situations in later fantasy. It's a bit like like unironically finding Winnie the Pooh running a honey stall on the streets of Greyhawk. It would be completely out of tone. Having said that, and maybe I'm being unfair, but I wouldn't bat an eyelid at finding an unreasonable facsimile of Pooh selling Honey in Glamour. Glorantha has always been a mix of the absurd and the realist, the whimsical and the horrific. It's also always, from the very earliest days, included satirical, ironic or obscure references to popular media or iconic characters and the real world. Ducks because Howard, Donald and Daffy. Prax because Dr. Seuss. Grizzly Peak because Greg was standing on it while daydreaming about Glorantha. It could have something like halflings very easily, they wouldn't really be out of place. What I mean by that is, if the rest of fantasy hadn't spoiled the well on this already they'd be no more out of place than Ducks, but they have no place there now for the same reason Orcs don't, they've been too closely associated with mediocrity. But if Tolkien had never written about Orcs, or if he's stopped writing at The Hobbit and had stayed in obscurity it probably wouldn't be a problem.

On the gorgeous map of the moon, am I right in thinking Wardrobe is sometimes called Spar Oom?

I think it’s going to include about half the books eventually and the other half of them will be a DLC expansion. Something like that. To be honest I tried some of the Fighting Fantasy and other game books and never got on with them. I always got bored. Only Fabled Lands really stuck.

I used to play the Fabled Lands adventure books with my kids. They created a character each and I ran the game from the books, doubling up the opponents and sometimes improvising side quests and encounters along the way. We had a lot of fun.

The island was built specifically to rob cradles, so IMHO it has the hulls of ancient cradles built into it's structure and quite possibly is still protected by subverted magical cradle defence mechanisms and beings. As an island, it's also naturally highly defensible. Cult sacred sites also have magical defences, whether they're chaotic or not, and aside from Cacodemon they may well have shrines and temples to various other chaos cults, or have access to ancient Jrusteli magical secrets. Pavis is a city, but it's population isn't all that large. There aren't really all that many adventurers there at any given time. Dozens or a few hundred, not thousands, so the kind of massive, organised assault force that would be needed to siege and breach the island is only really available to the big players like the Lunars or Argrath, and they have better things to do. Ogre Island has no strategic value to them to compensate for the likely losses of personnel and material. It's also possible eliminating the island might be of more benefit to other factions in the area, such as the Trolls or Aldryami, than to the force doing it.

Mere riffraff compared to the Mistress of Time.

Sedenya?

Chaos is about violating taboos, change unconstrained by boundaries, and the end of things. Most beings born chaotic are members of the chaotic races such as Broo, Ogres, Scorpion Folk, etc. Each has their own particular agenda but a common thread I think it disdain for the constraints of 'normal' society, or even the laws of nature. The problem that all chaotics must face though is that while chaos made them the thing they are, it will also destroy them in order to make them something else, or just destroy them full stop. That's what chaos features are, they're physical manifestations of becoming something else, becoming not you. It's a one way slippery slope, or perhaps rather an infinitely many ways maze of branching slippery slides, but every way is down.

See up-thread, but basically Greg was a student in Wisconsin for a while.

I think Merlin would fix that by magically tracking imported and exported goods with an automated system he conjured out of thin air.

It's an option, but is Dorastor really all that much better for a chaotic than a non-chaotic?

I think it's important to distinguish the 'opinion' of a god from that of individual people that might worship that god. When we say Humakt doesn't have a problem with Chaos, that's because chaotic creatures can worship Humakt, sacrifice for Humakti magic and as long as they follow cult strictures they won't have any problems such as with spirits of reprisal. They can even do Humakti heroquests. On the other hand, individual Humakt worshipers are part of the culture they were born in. They, and in fact entire temples or even societies of Humakti in e.g. Sartar might have a huge and deeply felt problem with having anything to do with Chaos whatsoever. Individual Humakti don't even have to like other Humakti, they can even be mortal enemies of other individual Humakti, so just because someone's a Humakti doesn't automatically make them best buddies. Culturally, Chaos is an implacable foe of all Heortlings and, severed family ties or not, Humakti born and bred in Sartar are still very much Heortlings. Having said that, the Lunars have been in Dragon Pass for a while. Some Sartarite tribes have even allied with the Lunars and become more or less Lunarised. Tarsh is a Heortling culture and they're quite significantly Lunarised, but even then in the Empire overt chaotics aren't all that common. However there may very well be some Humakti around who are more chaos tolerant than your average Heortling. So you're likely to come across some very different, and highly polarised reactions depending where the Adventurers go and who they meet and if they find out about this. As for behaviour, a chaos taint doesn't necessarily mean the character's personality or behaviour will change at all. What's more likely to change their behaviour is other people's reactions to it all. Lunars are more likely to be accepting. Sartarites are generally going to lean more towards taring, feathering and burning, and being judged and persecuted like that can prey on a mind. Also suddenly being preternaturally strong, and having a necklace of chaos spirits whispering in your had all the time, could be an issue.