jenh

For involved social situations where just playing it out (always my preference) is not desirable, I think there are two important elements:

1. Outcomes are rarely win-lose, or even degrees of success. In a negotiation, for example, it is entirely possible for two parties to come out achieving what they wanted - which doesn't mean that it was easy or inevitable that that would happen.

2. Interpretation must be a significant element. That is, since we're typically much more keyed in to social dynamics and nuance, there is a much greater need to particularise the abstraction of the mechanical result, whatever and however that was determined. And I wonder if that might not be aided by being very explicit about what elements might come into play in the situation.

For example, before a complex negotiation is resolved, the players and GM might write out lists of specific things that are desirable and not desirable results. These needn't be restricted to what the negotiation is about; "thinks well of us as fair bargainers" could be on there, for example, or "don't step on the toes of third-party X". Then after resolution, the results can be interpreted by selecting the various items from the lists that came to be, and those which did not.

I think that selection process couldn't be otherwise than fairly subjective - if the mechanical result was something like "great success for party A; good success for party B" the resolution system wouldn't then say "pick 80% of the desirable items from list A; pick 60% of the desirable items from list B" or whatever. Rather I see the interpretive step as itself a negotiation between GM and players, to figure out what combinations of items match the general tenor of the results.

The mechanical element is not pointless - it sets that tenor, allowing for character skill and chance to shape the outcome.

In one sense this is just a richer form of setting stakes, but I like that the interpretive stage allows for the players to engage with the realities of what is being discussed, in or out of character as they prefer.

28 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Disagree, I'm with @Darius West on this one.  Forcing a fundamental change on human nature, and expecting no counter reaction, seems artificial to me.

We ran a long campaign, based on a Torchwood TV season, that started when over zealous Chalana Arroy questers had bound Humakt and eliminated Death.  It quickly became apparent that this was a terrible mistake, and needed to be undone.

It would be fun and interesting for your campaign to explore whether eliminating violence is a "good idea".  I can see a lot of drawbacks.

It's not the counter reaction that bothers me - it's the idea that it will be inevitably successful and that that success should be part of the game. Undermining the premise of a game is generally not a good idea - the same would be true if the premise was "the PCs are all mercenaries and we follow their exploits in war" and a short while later peace is declared and the mercenaries have no employers.

I expect that there will be any number of occasions where violence would seem like an effective, quick, and easy solution to a problem, and PCs and NPCs alike will curse the fact that it's not available to them. They may well conclude that violence being eliminated was a terrible idea - and this being Glorantha they can go and argue their case before bereaved family and friends, the maimed, the traumatised, and the spirits of the violently killed. Sounds good to me.

8 hours ago, Darius West said:

On the other hand, the most likely response is not what you think.  When people have their liberty curtailed they want to know why.  The heroes of the world will inevitably hero quest to demolish the artificial peace.  There are simply too many skeins of fate coming to a knot during the Hero Wars to be cut off.  The first group who figures out how to end the peace will have a huge advantage and will rapidly wipe the floor with the other side for quite a while.  That advantage alone makes it super-attractive; the war mongers are inevitably going to win this situation, it is only a question of when.

I'm with you up until here. I'm very comfortable saying that, in fact, the Hero Wars can be cut off. I said earlier that it might be interesting to see attempted heroquests to undo the change. I mean this as a way to shine light on how difficult some will find the new state, not as some inevitable undermining of the entire premise.

10 hours ago, Martin Dick said:

Not sure why anyone would have any objections to this: YGWV and all that.

Less objecting and more just not interested in the premise. Redundant for me to say that people who aren't interested in non-violent games won't have an opinion on which non-violent premise they'd prefer, though.

10 hours ago, Martin Dick said:

1. Who did it? Was it the Brown Dragon? Or was it an Ernaldan conspiracy or the Esrolian Grandmothers or some fanatical Chalana Arroy? Perhaps it was Yelmites who are reimposing the Golden Age where every one obeyed Yelm and there was no war. We've got the Kingdom of War, perhaps its the Empire of Peace? It could be a descendant of Sartar and their followers who was never big on violence and they re-lighted Sartar's Flame and imposed peace on the Principality of Sartar as a Household of Harmony (as opposed to the clearly wrong direction that the Household of Death took). The harmony doesn't extend outside the borders, but as soon as you enter Sartar, violence is no longer an option. White Moonies who see it as the first step to bring about the harmony of the Goddess and the White Moon and who were leading Tatius by the nose all along.

I like all of these options! Which says to me that it's all of them at once, each independtly acting to create something that comes together in a single event.

10 hours ago, Martin Dick said:

1. How far does it extend? Just Sartar or Dragon Pass or Genertela or the whole cube?

I'd likely choose the cube. Not because I'd feel comfortable running a cube-spanning game (I don't think I would), but because I'd want violence to be unavailable everywhere the PCs can see or hear about.

10 hours ago, Martin Dick said:

1. How far does it go down? Is it just War that's forbidden? Or does it apply to individuals as well and I can't spank my child even. Can I kill the rat eating my wheat? Or are we all compulsory Jainists.
2. Does mind control count as violence? Looking at you, White Moonies 🙂. Is spreading my trees into your fields violence? Looking at you Aldryami!

Indeed, these are the tricky questions that are going to be difficult to answer. To some extent the recent discussion about the strictures on Chalana Arroy devotees is relevant here also. Further, I'd both make a distinction between force and violence, and consider what it is that the various cultures considered violence (since the Orlanthi at least had to have some idea what their own saying meant).

I think in play there'd be a fine line between an interesting exploration of the large and small ways interactions would change, and unfun (for me) picking at edge cases.

10 hours ago, Martin Dick said:

1. Where is it leading? What's the endgame? Of course the PCs will probably put the kibosh on whatever that is, but it's good to start with a destination, even if you know that you will never get there.

I might pick Tarsh as a suitable place for embodying the thorny issue of different peoples being able to say "this is our place". Finding some form of reconciliation there, a place for the exiles and the Lunars, etc, would I think require some clever thinking and creative heroquesting on the part of the PCs.

11 hours ago, Alex said:

Jar-Eel is reputedly the Harmony "superhero", a one-off demigod embodying that particular Rune at eye-watering power levels.  Maybe her actions bring about a situation on these lines.  Maybe on their own account.  Or in the context of the Lunar We Are All Us philosophy, and craftily redefining "Us" on the fly -- one take on a "Temple of the Reaching Moon", at least!  Or a sneaky wee side-deal with the Brown Dragon, or due to the Total Perspective Vortex having been dropped in from a great height...

This is a really good point - an avatar of Harmony is bound to be mixed up in the change (and what comes after). Thanks!

11 hours ago, Alex said:

You might want to have at least a "tasting menu" in mind as to how it might, mind you!  You likely don't want players to spend the game in general confusion, or to feel there's no particular urgency to do anything much at all.  Is the diplomacy a single strand of negotiating peace with the "enemy" as a block?  Is there scope to pick different factions apart with a view to realigning new common interests?  Is third-party diplomacy an option?  Are there any workable options that aren't diplomacy at all?  Even if it's heroquesting to reverse the original premise, that might be something that's potentially interesting to explore the outworkings of, and isn't violence per se.

I'm not really concerned about my players - I think they're at least a little used to my style after years together. I'm fascinated by what others might do with either premise, and which is preferred.

It would be interesting to play out an attempt to heroquest back to the former state - there's always going to be some situations in which a small group makes life disproportionately difficult for others and seemingly cannot be negotiated with, at which point smacking some sense into them seems the best option.

I certainly wouldn't have a single strand of negotiation; one of the things that would be interesting to see play out is the waves of fragmentation and cohering that occur at every societal level. What do you do with Storm Bull followers in your community after this change? For that matter, what do Storm Bull followers do? Will people move about more, try to form new communities (presumably yes to some extent; I imagine a Glorantha without war would have a population explosion given how frequently they were killing each other)? What sorts of intermingling will be tried, and what might the results be?

11 hours ago, Alex said:

I wondered while reading this who the PCs actually were -- by implication it's the Sartarite side (or its allies).  If part of your frustration is with the Orlanthi...  freeform approach to violence, might the Lunars work better?  OK, they're violent too (and imperialists to boot), but at least a) have a plan regarding that, and b) might plan to have a different plan.  Or if you're feeling especially ambitious, a mix of the two?  And what sort of 'level' of character had you in mind?  Are they movers and shakers in this, or are they exploring the edges of the consequences of it?

The Lunars more orderly killing is still violence, so it's not a matter of which side. A mix of Lunar and Orlanthi would be interesting; I'd likely encourage that, because it brings those elements of "how do we get along?" within the party. Since it's pretty easy to have non-violent games with people who aren't operating at a high level (so that background violent events don't impinge on them much), the PCs would definitely be figures of importance: those who have a major role in going out and interacting with people from multiple communities.

Part of my fondness for option 2 is that it avoids the situation in which the PCs and some of the NPCs are all for dealing with issues without violence, but the rest of the world remains all about hitting people - and so I am torn between my three desires: to simulate the world in a way that makes sense to me; to have the PCs as significant figures in the region's politics; and to not have people hitting each other be a significant element of the world. Any two of those together are easy to achieve, but the three together are another matter.

When I said that "violence is never an option", that wasn't meant to be specifically a constraint only on Orlanthi, though of course that is the expression's context, but rather a general statement of the new truth. I guess it might be interesting if it was slightly more limited: perhaps that Orlanthi could neither engage, nor be engaged, in violence, but everyone else could go for it. That might just lead to me or the players wanting to pick at the edges of that, though, which would just be putting violence back on the table.

4 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

We need to figure out who we can work with and what they want. Some of these relationships may be opportunistic or transactional. Others may become something larger and in that process provide you with the kind of story that you are eager to see. 

Yes, that is certainly a large part of what such a game would entail - whether it's part of building up an alliance for some distant future war (meh, and option 2 precludes that) or as a recognition that there are thoughts, things, and people of value outside one's own group that can't be taken but must be given.

How does an Orlanth worshipper who sees the very presence of the Red Moon in the sky as a wrongness, or at best a challenge to Orlanth's status, talk with a Lunar? Or do they refuse to, and a cold war develops, with communication happening between the less fervent, and largely in secret? What paths are there, both mythological and mundane, that can change this new stalemate when "Orlanth is dead" and "the Red Moon is torn apart" are no longer options?

As someone who doesn't find much interesting in people hitting each other, and who is disappointed that so much of the use of myth and magic in Glorantha appears to be as a means to hit people more effectively, I am considering one of two changes for my next Glorantha game:

1. The Dragonrise is sufficiently damaging to the Lunar Empire that they give up on military activity in the region, retreating to hold Tarsh but not expanding. And on the other side, there is little will and too few people for the fight to be taken to them on any significant scale. Both of those will change over time, but that's a matter of a decade or more.
2. The Dragonrise, perhaps plus associated heroquesting, leads to a fundamental change in the underlying nature of the gods and world. Orlanth's "violence is always an option" is replaced by "violence is never an option".

Both of these have the effect that everyone is left trying to figure out how this whole diplomacy thing works. How might goals be met when hitting someone isn't possible, where magic has to do something other than blast people, and heroquesting's revelations don't boil down to bringing in someone or something else who is really good at hitting people.

The advantage - and difficulty - of the second approach is that it raises a lot of questions about how societies will adapt to the new circumstances, which I think would be fun to explore. The first option does allow for those who aren't maniacs to tell Argrath to play quietly with his toys in the corner while the adults talk, which is definitely appealing.

For those (likely very few) among you who would not balk at both of these premises, which would you prefer and why?

1 hour ago, Hijabg said:

When I think back about Greg Stafford's generosity, his eagerness to share his vision and to answer our questions as we explored the world he had discovered, I wonder where that spirit is gone now, as it sure doesn't seem to be an aspect of Chaosium's Wyter anymore.

That feels staggeringly unfair. He *did* share it, in various physical forms; that he didn't share it in other forms, or more widely, was presumably his choice. Saying that Chaosium, who are publishing lots of amazing Glorantha material, are somehow being false to the memory of someone so close to them and their work is a wretched thing to do.

And so nice to see someone smiling!

There is some discrepency between the roads depicted on the two maps, but I put that down to matters of scale and artistic representation. It would be really helpful to have compass marks on all of the maps (or is there a stated default that I've missed?) and a scale (even for the more artistic ones), but I'm happy to assume that there are more roads just off the edges of the village centre map.

19 minutes ago, Scorus said:

Honestly, I didn't understand that map at all. It showed a lay-out of a village that was completely different from Apple Lane and laid out 5 tenant farms when the book clearly indicated that there were 25. It is a good map, useful for a village, but I couldn't understand how it related to the official maps, pictures, and descriptions of Apple Lane.

I'm not sure if this will help you at all, but the bit of Apple Lane that is shown in the Map of Apple Lane in the Adventure Book is the small cluster of buildings at the approximate crossroads in the centre of the Apple Lane Orchards map.

Interesting that it mentions what the situation is in 1627 - is the Sartar boxed set covering not just the default starting point of 1625, but also years into the future (to go along with the Argrath campaign)?

7 hours ago, Dissolv said:

You clearly went off on my players and myself without reading, or really caring to fully read what I wrote.  The players were new, we used the family history with random rolls, and holy cow did we get a weighted group of results. 

You quoted Darius saying "These are modern sentiments that have no place in a bronze age environment if we want to get serious about roleplaying cultural sensibilities" in response to Akhôrahil stating that "a lot of players and even PCs would start to wonder if maybe there isn’t another way" (than "Argrath’s genocidal climatological warfare" and "the Telmori genocide"). Your response began "I completely agree with this.  It just isn't the nature of the world as presented, nor in line with what we know about our own ancestors.  (Or, if we are honest, about our own deeper rooted, glossed over by civilization, urges.)"

That doesn't read as a response solely attaining to your particular current game and game group.

Quote

Not only is this a straight forward and obvious trope, the players clearly understood it for what it was -- the character's core motivation.  You are only one who started screeching "genocide, genocide, genocide".  Then somehow torture and rape got involved.  Awesome.

I was not in fact the one who started mentioning genocide. Nor did I ever talk explicitly about torture and rape except through use of the term war crime.

And since you feel okay with characterising my posts as "screeching", I have no inducement to respond to the rest of your message. What with Joerg's test of my 'theory' and your challenge, it seems 'some people in the past didn't agree with genocide' needs a lot more defending as an idea than I would have thought possible only a few days ago.

11 hours ago, Joerg said:

All of that is happening in a setting which has these bouts of horror and genocide.

Sure; I got involved in this thread in response to Darius and Dissolv saying that not only is that horror and genocide there, but that no one properly roleplaying someone from that world would do anything other than fight, and fight without any qualms about any additional horrors they might inflict. That includes, specifically, the PCs.

While I am all about non-violent games, I'm not interested in rewriting all of Glorantha's history, laser-focused though it is on violent conflict. I do however object strenuously to the notion that no one, including the PCs, can have a problem with genocide or do anything other than continue a cycle of violence.

10 hours ago, Joerg said:

Just to test your theories - imagine a Glorantha where the Lightbringer missionaries are cordially greeted by the horse rider emperors of Dara Happa, spreading their lore of cosmic compromise and friendship after conflict into the lowlands. Where there were no returns of hostilities among the Elder Races, where e.g. the Mostali internal struggles would allow Nida to proclaim the doctrine and Greatway to continue its World Friends attitude in unity with aldryami and trolls. Where Arkat would have debated with Nysalor, resulting in a synthesis without all those 75 years of conflict.

What would be the theme of your game in this world? What would be the passions of your adventurers?

Ignoring the massive excluded middle between no violent conflict and no one thinking twice about genocide after genocide, I might play games based on exploration, discovery of lore, political conflicts that don't devolve into violence, small-scale personal stories of any number of types (romance, investigation, horror; the sort of stuff you often see on TV shows or read in books), people working to ensure that violence doesn't just consume the world yet again, people struggling to find themselves/their place in the world, etc etc etc.

As for what passions they might have: love, loyalty, hatred, fear, devotion, honour, perhaps, if the game is RQG. These aren't things that only arise from, or inevitably lead to, spasms of violence.

Violence really isn't the sole basis for interesting stories (for my part, it is very rarely that), and is not synonymous with conflict.

1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

p.14:

Average characteristics are wrong for Giant Loon

STR average 54
SIZ average 64
POW average 11-12

Shouldn't this be STR 62, SIZ 72?

7 hours ago, Joerg said:

I have read fantasies with significantly less violent cultures, some of them with as traumatic or more forms of human on human interactions, never mind nonhumans. These can be done, but they aren't Glorantha, a setting grown out of the publication of a wargame featuring magics of mass destruction.

Your Glorantha may vary, provided it remains an atrocity simulator as God and Greg Stafford intended? None of those "woke sensibilities" held by some religious figures on Earth thousands of years ago allowed, for no one in Glorantha could even conceive of trying to break a cycle of violence. Let's have three ages, with each being basically the same as the last because the only new things allowed to happen are inflections on cataclysms that make things worse.

That's a really small Glorantha; thankfully mine has room for more than "oh, I'm not a murderhobo, I'm so much more refined and better than those types, I'm a culturally rich, societally integrated violence machine re-enacting (a tiny subset of) myths".

4 minutes ago, Ali the Helering said:

I am appalled by the evils humanity has undertaken, and still undertakes. That doesn't stop me enjoying Glorantha.              I prefer simulation because it is the Bronze Age that interests me, not because I favour vile acts.

Simulation is not a single thing, where if you try to simulate Glorantha you must include everyone always committing genocide and everyone always being fine with slavery unless it's because of some reason that really truly isn't anything to do with people objecting to slavery. People did a lot more eating, sleeping, and shitting than they did killing, even in Glorantha, but somehow that doesn't tend to fall into what gets simulated. What gets simulated is a deliberate choice of the person doing the simulating, and what they consider important and plausible derives from their taste and outlook.

As for fireballing a kobold village: yes, for several decades I've been disturbed at how most roleplaying games are so centred on violence. There are vast swathes of human experience to explore, and yet.... And when games like Runequest tout the game-changing lethality of combat, it's never actually to encourage non-violence, it's to increase the difficulty of winning.

Some of you guys seem to really want genocide to be natural and inevitable. I'm guessing it's also immersion breaking not to have every war crime imaginable played out, because every soldier commits them - it's just human nature, after all, no one has ever disagreed with that except in the modern era.

This is gross.

6 hours ago, Dissolv said:

Modern, overfed, couch-comfy morals aside, it is immersion breaking to not take up arms and fight like hell.

 

Yes, no one in the history of the world, even back in the bronze age, ever thought that killing people was bad, slavery was bad, and that violence was the best option in response to any ill that befalls them. And within Glorantha, Orlanthi society explicitly specifies that there are other ways than violence, there is a determinedly pacifist goddess and cult, and Sartarite clans that don't hold slaves and won't hold slaves. I guess they like their couches too.

Cool; I was going to make the tiny change to the code so that it was appropriate for the southern hemisphere, but the original code quoted there does not on my system produce SVG that renders as yours does - I get a white square. The SVG itself is presumably the same.

Edit: Turns out, the SVG produced from the code above is very different from the SVG that can be downloaded.

On 11/13/2020 at 7:59 AM, Storm Khan said:

#46 from the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu:

Exactly!

I'm hopeful that the players will be proactive in generating material that their characters can discover, of forgotten or less considered myths and representations that suit the new-but-still-true-in-Godtime world they are creating.

2 hours ago, Storm Khan said:

I am curious how this will work out / is working out. The Lunar weaponization of Chaos will be very hard to discuss rationally, especially involving PC's that have had their grandparents and/or parents obliterated spiritually and physically by the Red Bat.

Is play in-process? Please share!

 

Sadly this is a game I'd like to run, but isn't at the table yet. Given that the dramatic core is overcoming two cultures of violence, one backed by a corrupting influence, I envisage that a lot of the conflicts will involve the PCs struggling against their own passions. To remake the world, they'll need to remake themselves. That's what will make them heroes.

Part of my prep will be finding and creating a variety of myths that deal with reconciliation, abdication of power, and working to right wrongs. I'm keen to see what alternatives players can come up with to the monster-slaying hero who is not fit for the civilisation they serve.

6 minutes ago, Leingod said:

Or in other, other words, go the Sartar Larnsting route.

That's certainly one approach that could be taken by PCs/explored in the game.