Rob Darvall

Art aside (it's wonderful) I'd have to say augments. It vastly expands the range of usable PCs.

I use them as 1 day per type of love the classical Greeks recognised.

Eros: Love of the body 

Philia: Affectionate love

Storge: Love of the Child

Agape: Selfless Love

Ludus: Playful Love

Pragma: Long-lasting Love

Philautia: Love of the Self

On 9/4/2022 at 5:11 AM, Beoferret said:

suspect that neither are nearly as popular as they used to be

Percy Jackson would give evidence to the contrary.

My nephews are fans, and now 5 of 6 play RQG. As well as both my children and my niece. Of these 8 (none over 23, youngest now 11ish) 5 run their own games as well as the larger family campaigns.

7 hours ago, Joerg said:

My inner Eurmali lawspeaker just bursts to ask:

"Does this prove that people of Vingan gender need to profess female gender when applying for Vingan cult membership?"

My in-game response would be to have the senior Vingan present beat the Eurmali for being a troublemaker. Question settled.

7 hours ago, John Biles said:

Yes, though I would expect the pickings are a lot more slender at that age.

My own impression is that most Older Orlanthi who aren't wanderers are married most of the time.

Possibly not. The older folk will have aquired some level of prestige/notoriety. Even now you can see this at work in some environments that throw younger and older adults together in the RW. It's not ALL exploitation.

Running a stead is a group effort, so remaining partnered (if not actually married) makes sense. As marriage involves oaths there may be magical benefit to marriage as opposed to just shacking up together.

5 hours ago, hipsterinspace said:

... it's probably most straightforward to just presume that kids go into one of the two typical initiations based on their primary and secondary sex characteristics, but that the gods show them another way...

This. With mythic transformation being possible later in life too.
Folk do the best they can with the data available and the gods deal with the "misjudgements" the mortals make. Not least because there's gaming potential in the conflict.
That said there WILL be folk who are obviously not suited to one initiation or other (or both) from a very early age. 

11 hours ago, Eff said:

... you might refer to as the "inner" and "outer" routes.

Or possibly "deeper" and "shallower", maybe even literally.

21 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

My takeaway from this is that it was a mistake to mention a hypothetical future GM's Guide in the core rulebook. But that's just me.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
The plaint of "nothing coming out" will still be made AND a marketting opportunity will be missed.

Three of the next generation of my family now (one has started in the last week) GM RQG, using no more than the core book and in one case the addition of the Haraborn saga. They've 3 VERY different Gloranthas, but all run a Glorantha worth playing in. None qualify as experienced GMs.

21 hours ago, David Scott said:

While not explicit, I've always assumed it's part of the confrontation stage.

Which may imply that there are other confrontations possible; the pits being one of a set of choices.

15 minutes ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Let's note that this does imply male Ulerians, who do not appear in the canon material I have seen so far.

Yes. Although I've always assumed Ulerians of all genders. And the seven different forms of love the Greeks enumerated (Hence the week long Ulerian festival in Harmony Dark, 1 day each)

16 minutes ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Also note that the female adulthood initiations described so far - and I am thinking  of Six Seasons in Sartar - do not have anything comparable to the sex pit, nothing producing insanity.  Even though sexual scenes exist there.

So why the implication that sex is especially a mental danger to men?

Mythologically I'd think because the uncles are Orlanth's uncles specifically. The pit is a danger to men specifically because Ragnaglar is Orlanth's kin. It's as much Kinstrife as anything else.

5 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Uleria does seem logical, though characterizing her as a demon seem to me to be a peculiarly antisex and perhaps anti-woman point of view. 

Yes it does. And a stance which seemed peculiar in light of the general sex-positivity in Orlanthi society. 
BUT if Ulerians are successful initiates through a pit with a reputation for breaking people quite badly I can see the society treating them with suspicion that hardens into that prejudice.
My point was not that Uleria is a demon but that in tribal Orlanthi society Ulerians are coming from the same pit as those broken by Ragnaglar which would account for something I saw as an inconsistent (and IMO thankfully retconned) attitude.

7 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Nobody deliberately prepared a Sex Pit. That would be crazy!

So what is the pit being prepared?
1) The pit and the "uncle" appear in the ritual spontaneously. So no one has prepared it. It's a consequence of some god plane shenanigans.

2) The pit appears as a perversion of another pit

3) The village DOES prepare the pit but there's an expectation of success. Hence (in part) my question.

The answers of both Uleria AND Orlanth seem mythically justifiable. I lean toward Uleria because my feeling is that survival SHOULD be something unusual. However that leaves me with the question PhilHibbs has prompted above. What is the pit being prepared? And who is the uncle? (And does it matter? Is "wicked uncle" a sufficient mythic identification?)

4 hours ago, soltakss said:

Eurmal? Yinkin? Uleria?

 

I'd resist Eurmal on the grounds that he winds up as the answer to damn near everything that presents a bit of a conceptual challenge. That's just a PoV.

Yinkin I think comes from the beast pit.
Uleria, however, seems logical and also ties in with the old HW/HQ/QW notion of Uleria being a demon. The initiate is now someone VERY unusual indeed and bears close watching because

3 hours ago, jajagappa said:

when bad things come out of a Pit, they must be destroyed.

and this is the pit from which bad things most frequently emerge.

On 7/27/2022 at 1:42 PM, Joerg said:

You could also play it that they start with a higher number, and come out of the initiation with a numb feeling of total loss of one of theirs, but even the parents and siblings have lost all memory of that child. There may be some irritating left-overs...

There is always a possibility that that is a Eurmali trick. Or there may be an entire household taken out of existence, maybe as result of the initiation, maybe causing that individual's initiation to go wrong. Or maybe introducing a new rather isolated stead in a branch valley that nobody noticed before? The entire Haraborn clan might be going to suffer such a disappearance. And are there other places experiencing this? What about the valley with Urvantan's tower?

This kind of paranoia is nothing you'd spring on a group of newcomers.

But what if the kid does well? Resists, deals with the threat. To whom do they initiate? The other pits indicate a preference through success, the sex pit is only mentioned through failure.
Conversely what happens to those who fail the other tests?

4 hours ago, hipsterinspace said:

Perhaps she is now nandani,

5 hours ago, soltakss said:

The tricky bit is getting accepted, i.e. proving that you are a woman.

I think being accepted/not expelled proves you're sufficiently a woman for Babeester Gor's purposes.
"Convincing the Examiners" may be a different story. Axe Sisters believing that they're the goddesses current spirit of retribution might take some persuading. And hey, the goddess never said the tests would be easy.

6 hours ago, Dragon said:

Indeed.

Though I hadn't thought about the Aldrya angle, given "Voralans are not true Aldryami, because they are descended from Mee Vorala rather than Aldrya." But Ernalda and thus Babeester Gor is closer to Aldrya than to Mee Vorala. The local Ernalda Priestess may not recognize the difference, so the PC may be sent to the Aldryami first. Only to learn the elves simply tell them they cannot help except to point them to known voralan locations. e.g. after a week of proving yourself worthy to talk with the Aldryami shaman, she laughs and tells you she has nothing to do with that, go X cave and talk with the voralans. And the shaman can't even give you an introduction letter that would be meaningful. I like it.

Hey, at least you now know where Voralans live.
AND there's an adventure where a combat monster has to solve most of the problems with talking. [cue evil GM chuckle]

18 minutes ago, Dragon said:

There is always the possibility that a woman Babeester Gor initiate or Axe Sister found a certain black elf-made potion in some loot and decided to test it by drinking it. Or maybe the local Eurmali had one and convinced the Gor to down it in a drinking contest. Said Babeester Gor may now be male.

Would he be kicked out? I suspect that person would try heartily to find more black elves who would prepare another potion. That may be a grand adventure.

I haven't seen a canon RQG Mee Vorala cult write up yet. I am only extrapolating from earlier editions such potions still exist. They do in my Glorantha.

So my answer to the original question is Yes. Possible, but extremely rare and a story by itself.

In my game they'd not be kicked out. BG would test them to find out if they were still a woman in spite of the unfortunate genitalia. Part of the test may be finding a way to recover, or it may be a requirement for another proof of womanhood. 
The latter I see as involving lots of entanglement with Ernaldans and, given the cause, Aldrya. All good adventure/heroquest fodder. 

9 hours ago, hipsterinspace said:

If you're defining experiential womanhood solely through a reductive and biologically deterministic account, that both denies the fundamentally social reality of womanhood

Why is this your go to? It completely misses the point I'm making.
Babeester Gor (IMG) will not accept anyone who is not a woman. Ergo if you are accepted you are a woman.
"They have to have experienced the world as a woman enough, and in the 'right' ways, that BG notices them AND that they can hear her." addresses the social construction of womanhood. Which consists of experiencing the world as a woman. If that is not the case what other way is there to socially construct a role? The whole argument turns on "lived experience". Which means that it's NOT simple. Catherine Mcgregor's lived experience being very different from Natalie Wynn's, and both from Germain Greer's.

Not only that, it addresses the necessity of having experiences that would incline the initiand to "hear the call" and the Goddess to notice. Which in a game about myth strikes me as being somewhat important.
What about that is reductive and biologically deterministic?

50 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Yes, I expect there is one in every initiation.

No, I don't expect it always breaks the initiate.  In fact, I think that's simply one Path from there and is highly dependent on initial reaction.

In my opinion, it's not just the Path of Ragnaglar, but also the Path of Kolat, Heler, maybe Yinkin, and others who don't quite fit the Orlanth/Storm Bull/Humakt/Vadrus ways (though individuals might reach those paths via the Strange Gods too).  

 

Not a bad idea. It's the "weird gods pit" until the big R shows up.

So there would need to be:

A cleansing/atonement ritual for when the worst happens. Perhaps divination to figure out how it happened. {Is it chance, Ragnaglar seizing a random opportunity,  or sabotage of the rites?}

Different effects for different gods (I just don't see Kolat manifesting in the same way as Yinkin frex) How does this play into the 'evil uncles' myth? Ie who chucks them down the hole when Heler chooses them?

38 minutes ago, svensson said:

... a Vingan and an Ernaldan, may marry in Orlanthi society, but if one has an affair on the other, it still breaks whatever oaths of fidelity they may have made to each other, ...What matters is the oath-breaking,

 

Focussing on the important bit. Like Kinstrife, possibly not as badly, oath-breaking harms the whole group.

And is there one in every initiation (ala Summons of Evil as a ritual requirement)?
If so, does that mean the Orlanthi are prepared for a guaranteed minimum number of broken initiates?

But mostly:

There's no obvious path for successful survivors.
To whom do they initiate? They've resisted Ragnaglar but not bonded with another God.
Might it give them an edge at IFWW?
It'll certainly mark them in some way.

I'd say no.
Anyone called to Babeester Gor is a woman.
They have to have experienced the world as a woman enough, and in the 'right' ways, that BG notices them AND that they can hear her. 

As a further note Bushido has an effects-in-battle table worth canniblising if you can get it.

On 4/27/2019 at 2:16 AM, Kloster said:

It's a way to give information when your player don't have the tactical savvy their characters have.

This is important enough to restate.

Battles are terrifying and confusing when you know what you're doing. Being able to abstract that to a table of mostly noncombatants:

a) gives those people a game skill they'll hopefully never aquire IRL

b) avoids giving your players PTSD from aquiring that knowledge IRL.

19 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Except - Odayla is a bear, and Yinkin was usually a cat...

So where are the perception bonuses? 15% or 20% to Track is it.
The survival bonuses? Overwintering being something bears are famed for.
A big part of the point is that the worship/behaviour as written DOES NOT reflect the nature of the god.
As written they make for an inconsistent narrative.
Why worship bears (except maybe as propitiation) or alynx if it gains you and the clan so little? If it has gains, how do the rules demonstrate this?
If Oddi is a crap hunter because he was called by the bear god instead of a competent hunter god like Orlanth why should the clan support him? Gods that produce net social losses should not have miniscule cults, their cults should be extinct. At best a lone shaman or 2 in the tribal tula.
But they're not extinct. So there should be a noticable benefit to having them around, even as edge cases. To avoid gameplay/story segregation the rules need some reflection of this. Not for balance, for story.
We're playing RQG because it's a good way to tell the story of Glorantha. Where those rules introduce holes (real or merely percieved) in that story we SHOULD look to fill them.

pre-empting YGMV; it does.