Sir_Godspeed

Oh, absolutely. I realize that I'm arguing against probably 30+ years of established background, so I'm really just arguing the point now. I dunno, it just feels like someone looked at Zen Buddhism and thought "but how can I gamify this quantitatively?" which is understandable given that Glorantha is literally a game world, but to me it just feels underwhelming. I'm fine with it just being a IMG thing though.

Exactly. Making formalized answers superfluous and frankly counter-productive to begin with.

Except that people can get other, equally enlightening answers as sudden realizations. What does the Riddler do then? Tell them to try again? I always thought it was the tension between the unanswereable and the human drive to search for answers which is meant to be the dichotomy-shattering mechanism of the Riddle, like the koan, for example. The question IS the answer. It is a means to deconstruct the world for the absurd facsimile it is, the filtered-down perceptional prison you've been locked inside by social constructs. Maybe I got the Riddles wrong, maybe they're not koans, or something akin to Meno, but maybe the different ontology of Glorantha does indeed open for abstract mind-screw questions to actually have answers, or maybe Nysaloreanism is more doctrinally restrictive than I thought, I don't know.

They have formal answers? Booo!

A puritan "Ænglisc" version could use "ringbyrn(i)e", I suppose. Speaking of (unattainable and probably unwanted*) linguistic purism, here's an introduction to atomic theory written without Romance-language loanwords. It's interesting and amusing if nothing else. (Note that loanwords from other Germanic languages are still used though). https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/complexity/people/students/dtc/students2011/maitland/fun/ (*Although, speaking as non-native speaker of English, there are times when I wish academics would spell things out in plain English instead of pulling out a Latin or French proverb in a long-winded musing about the nature of something or other, without any explanation or translation in the footnotes.)

Ah, just me not reading sarcasm well in text then, no worries!

I can't tell if these are jokes as well, but the "serial" misinterpretation was made in jest.

"Not just the Grazer men, but the Grazer women and children too!" 😭

English, especially academic English, has a fetish for French.

I thought they were TEETH. O.O

I may or may not have binged this entire comic's archive this evening and enjoyed it immensely. They parallels to the Riders (Hyarolings) is quite inspiring as well. (I may also use some of this as inspiration for some worldbuilding projects of my own)

The key point, I think is, "logical to Zzabur", not necessary to us. To add to my point earlier in the thread. Maybe Zzabur invoked some kind of Platonic ideal of "boatness" (or Runic archetype, in Gloranthan terms) and forbade it from the Seas. What exactly makes that boatness boaty? Its boatness of course. It just is. At least that's how I see the "scientificness" of Gloranthan sorcery. It's logical in the sense that it's internally consistent, but it doesn't have to correspond to our mundane RW ideas of logic ("well, maybe he calculated the mass, shape and material of boats, or maybe something to do with the crew and what would the equation be for how much that would require and um", etc.). If a sorcerer has a spell that affects clay jugs, then he doesn't need to break down the qualities of clay jug in a RW observational way, as it were. He knows what a clay jug is. The cosmos knows what a clay jug is. The spell works. (Until it doesn't.) IMHO taking Zzabur's feats apart and making them "legible"/understandable would do him a great disservice. It may not be "mystery" in the sense that the illogical theistic mysteries are, but I have a hard time seeing it as basically the magical equivalent of RW computer programming. It's a bit like the Brithini laws. Why do these exact, largely arbitrary rules allow them to live forever? Because they just do. This view makes explaining Dormal's trick much harder, I suppose, which is a bit counter to the thread's purpose.

You mean upside down or something? It's a stylized crown, it's the right way up (it has nothing to do with the letter M, if that's the concern). Sorry if I misunderstood the question, "inverse" is a bit vague, so I'm guessing here.

Aren't Lhankorites tattooists?

Very interesting. I'd love to know more about Armenia, and Caucasian mythology in general.

The Guide also states, iirc, that Dwarves see the rising of the Red Moon as proof that their repairs are working, so that might put them at odds with Orlanth-worshippers, if they ever bring that up together. Not that they have to.

Yeah, but Fonritans aren't Orlanthi, so why should they care? Glorantha isn't a world of universalistic morals, the Umathelans aren't going to care until the Fonritans move into their turf in some capacity. Which they did, iirc, with the whole war between Umathelans+Aldryami versus Fonritans, unless I misremember.

Most Orlanthi practice slavery, so while they probably dislike Fonrit for the "industriaized" slavery that potentially victimizes themselves, I don't necessarily see that as an issue in itself. The underlying Chaos stuff might though, if they know about it. As others have mentioned though, Umathela is quite big. Western Umathelans probably have very little to do with Fonritans.

I'm not sure where exactly you can read about it, possibly in RQ:Glorantha, or maybe History of the Heortling Peoples (it has some Dawn Age stuff in it), but the general gist is that the Telmori accepted certain magical gifts from Nysalor, like becoming impervious to stone and bronze (iirc). Talor opposed Nysalor, and appear to have been able to curse them. Though the exact method is not known, as far as I know. I've seen some speculation that Talor was able to subvert the magical gifts that Nysalor gave to the Telmori and twist them into the curse but that's pure fan speculation as far as I can tell (if compelling).

Personally, I'd be wary of going overtly "science-esque" with this. I'm not sure if trying to list a bunch of diagnostic traits of boats in a spell is how things are done. Perhaps more fittingly, Zzabur may have reached for something like the Platonic ideal of a boat, rendering the sea hostile to that ideal, metaphysical "boatness". That's more Glorantha's style, I think. The spell knows. It just knows. Until it doesn't. I also agree that there are more factors at play. The Closing is one of things things I personally prefer to keep a mystery, but I obviously understand why people would want to untangle it. Aside from curiosity, it can help with plot points in RPs.

It might provide a chance to "demote" someone from freedom (carl) to semifreedom (cottar).

I've seen this error message happen multiple times the last couple of years, actually. I've always ignored it, assuming it's something on my end.

Well, I'm really just providing some personal views that might help solve the issue of the OP, but if that doesn't go well with your own views then no worries.

As I've seen from other threads here that have attempted to directly extrapolate RQ mechanics to wider society, we get some funky results, so I still think there's something to be said for "stuff's not as user-friendly as the games make out to be."

Because they're protagonists? That's a pretty common trope in writing. I'm not saying that's how you need to take it, but I at least consider all rulesets an attempt to make a more complex world "readable" for gaming, which means making stuff more reliable, more accessible to players, etc. than it might be in a more, eh, non-playable sense. You know, like hit points. I am fairly certain people in Glorantha do not LITERALLY have hit points (nor "points of worship" for that matter. That's game-system-speech.)