Shaman as an occupation

[Cwitten]

After going back and forth on trying to distinguish the differences between a Rune Priest and a Shaman in the first place, i've gotten stuck on how a Shaman's occupation changes from assistant shaman once they advance in their cult/spirit society. In practical terms I know about them gaining benefits such as the POW gain increase and holy day things that other Rune Priest receive, but im more so interested in the occupation itself. 

Unlike some occupation switches for people who become rune level (farmer to rune priest would take the priest occupation, and if they became a rune lord would take the noble occupation), assistant shaman doesn't list a direct advancements. Cults like Daka Fal and Waha specifically mention they don't use the Priest occupation, so that definitely isn't it (ignoring you'd lose spirit occupational skills anyways by doing so.)

So, where does that leave assistant shaman? Well, the occupational skills don't really need to switch, they're fine for a normal shaman anyways. So what's the issue? Well, assistant shamans receive a free point of spirit magic a season, pretty much nothing when you compare it to a Shaman's ability to venture into the spirit world freely and learn magic from the appropriate spirits. Ok, so no issue there, whats the point? Well, most notable might be the literal free point of POW at the end of each year for an Assistant Shaman. There's nothing that directly says you lose it by becoming a Full Shaman, nor is there a direct occupation switch so your occupation awkwardly stays listed as an assistant even when becoming full-fledged.

Their importance and support is notably changed in the book as well, even if the assistant occupation doesn't reflect it, so thats likely fine as it seems expected for Shamans to bring in their own wealth from working (Albeit awkward to list them as poor when they would be given the best of things after the tribal chief per the book. Though they shouldn't be expected to work/manage land like a noble.)

Is it just a simple snipping of the word assistant and strapping on the benefits of a full fledged shaman?

[Qizilbashwoman]

19 minutes ago, Cwitten said:

After going back and forth on trying to distinguish the differences between a Rune Priest and a Shaman in the first place, i've gotten stuck on how a Shaman's occupation changes from assistant shaman once they advance in their cult/spirit society. In practical terms I know about them gaining benefits such as the POW gain increase and holy day things that other Rune Priest receive, but im more so interested in the occupation itself.

I'm signing up for this newsletter because it's all I want to know right now.

IRL shamans make their money directly as an occupation rather than getting a priest tithe: you work for your living, hucking out bad spirits for donations commensurate to your power. And this is still literally an occupation in countries: Korea is fairly infamous but it's also true of other places. Usually they also train assistants, who are unpaid labor and provide the grunt work assembling the basic charms and costumes and the like for ceremonies and for sale that the shaman then empowers.

I just read an interesting paper about a Daur shaman (Academia is free and has tons of actual real researchers on it, it's not a spammy site): https://www.academia.edu/15712730/A_Revitalized_Daur_Shamanic_Ritual_from_Northeast_China

Edited November 11, 2019 by Qizilbashwoman

[Akhôrahil]

1 hour ago, Cwitten said:

So, where does that leave assistant shaman? Well, the occupational skills don't really need to switch, they're fine for a normal shaman anyways. So what's the issue? Well, assistant shamans receive a free point of spirit magic a season, pretty much nothing when you compare it to a Shaman's ability to venture into the spirit world freely and learn magic from the appropriate spirits. Ok, so no issue there, whats the point? Well, most notable might be the literal free point of POW at the end of each year for an Assistant Shaman. There's nothing that directly says you lose it by becoming a Full Shaman, nor is there a direct occupation switch so your occupation awkwardly stays listed as an assistant even when becoming full-fledged.

Their importance and support is notably changed in the book as well, even if the assistant occupation doesn't reflect it, so thats likely fine as it seems expected for Shamans to bring in their own wealth from working (Albeit awkward to list them as poor when they would be given the best of things after the tribal chief per the book. Though they shouldn't be expected to work/manage land like a noble.)

With an Assistant Shaman in my group, I have also considered this - it's a little odd that there's no Shaman profession, or even (like with Priest) a statement that the same profession is used. Standard of Living/Wergild is particularly interesting. It's pretty obvious that the wergild of a well-regarded Shaman isn't going to be a mere 250L, and that at least some shamans (those not living as crazed hermits in the bushes) are going to do a lot better for themselves economically.

[David Scott]

21 hours ago, Cwitten said:

i've gotten stuck on how a Shaman's occupation changes from assistant shaman once they advance in their cult/spirit society

This is where the rules for character generation don't provide the rules for occupations you can't start with. Having had a quick word with Jeff, Adventurers that are shaman have a base income of 30L and income is not subject to any Harvest result modifiers. Same skills as assistant shaman. Standard of Living: Poor. Ransom: 500L if cult shaman, otherwise none. These are of course subject to change.

Standard of Living being poor means that they can survive on less if a bad year and it doesn't reflect their actual status. 

Edited November 12, 2019 by David Scott
Added skills

[Austin]

16 minutes ago, David Scott said:

Ransom: 500L if cult shaman, otherwise none.

There are non-cult shamans? 🤨

[David Scott]

1 hour ago, Crel said:

There are non-cult shamans? 🤨

Yes of course. You don’t need a cult to become a shaman. 

[Pheres]

On 11/11/2019 at 5:34 PM, David Scott said:

This is where the rules for character generation don't provide the rules for occupations you can't start with. Having had a quick word with Jeff, Adventurers that are shaman have a base income of 30L and income is not subject to any Harvest result modifiers. Standard of Living: Poor. Ransom: 500L if cult shaman, otherwise none. These are of course subject to change.

Standard of Living being poor means that they can survive on less if a bad year and it doesn't reflect their actual status. 

And what about their skills, are they the same than an assistant shaman?

Edit: Ok, i have not seen before, but you have written: "same skills as assistant shaman"...

Edited January 9, 2020 by Pheres

[Bill the barbarian]

11 hours ago, Cwitten said:

Is it just a simple snipping of the word assistant and strapping on the benefits of a full fledged shaman?

Yes, at the beginning I was thinking avocation rather than occupation. I do like the comment that comes from Jeff via Scott that the rules do not cover the post generation occupations. That makes sense. And wow, very pleased to hear that shamans do not require cults (in hindsight, a little obvious), 

Cheers

[Austin]

10 hours ago, David Scott said:

Yes of course. You don’t need a cult to become a shaman. 

Would you be willing to describe that a bit more for me? Or point me toward where I should read myself?

Reflecting, I can see how that's plausible, but I didn't receive that impression from RQG, or generally from most Glorantha stuff I've read (which admittedly hasn't been about Gloranthan shamanism). My impression that shaman="cult shaman" largely comes from the use of a cult as descriptor in scenarios, etc. E.g. Daka Fal shaman, Mallia shaman, and so on. Although now that I think on it, maybe the shaman in the quickstart wasn't? I can't recall; I haven't run that adventure.

[David Scott]

2 hours ago, Crel said:

Would you be willing to describe that a bit more for me? Or point me toward where I should read myself?

It's in the unpublished cults book under the Horned Man:

Quote

Nearly all shamans on Glorantha belong to some kind of a shaman cult.

The rest are the hermits and adventurers of the world. You can also pick and chose what spirit cults you want to be part of. There's more power in a cult, but there's also more restrictions.

[g33k]

AFAIK, a shaman following a "cult" will have a primary focus (reverence, veneration, & sacrifice; even actual Worship) upon one God/dess, or maybe a pair (such as Twins), etc.  They get Cultic Bennie's, but suffer Cultic Restrictions.

But the fundamental Shamanic role is addressing the Spirit World, and a Cult affiliation isn't actually required.

I confess I'm still a bit fuzzy on the precise differences between a "God" and a "Great Spirit."  I think that's OK, though... I think some of the deities & spirits of Glorantha are also a bit fuzzy on the differences...

 

[Lordabdul]

14 hours ago, Crel said:

Would you be willing to describe that a bit more for me? Or point me toward where I should read myself?

In RQG p275 (in the section about Rune Cult Initiates), it says that "In many cults, initiates may not become shamans or sorcerers", so it does indeed sound like shamans are not in Rune Cults most of the time (with a few exceptions, see below). Later, on p.377, you have the section on Spirit Cults, with a bit of information on spirit cult shamans, and a couple of examples.

As for Rune Cult shamans, like you said, Daka Fal has shamans (RQG p291, the Daka Fal cult gives details about shaman membership). Waha and Yelm also have shamans. Eurmal has many trickster spirits, with respective shamans and spirit cults.

Re-reading this, I actually find it confusing that spirits can teach Rune spells to initiates. Does that mean you have a pool of Rune points dedicated to that spirit? I thought that was only for Gods. Are spirits essentially lesser Gods then? And potentially, an ambitious spirit might want to see their cult grow enough to the point that it can become a new God? That might be an interesting hook for an adventure...

Edited November 12, 2019 by lordabdul

[Bill the barbarian]

26 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

And potentially, an ambitious spirit might want to see their cult grow enough to the point that it can become a new God? That might be an interesting hook for an adventure...

Sounds like the cacodemon...

ya just gotta luv the grey areas in Glorantha, eh?

Edited November 12, 2019 by Bill the barbarian

[g33k]

1 hour ago, lordabdul said:

... I actually find it confusing that spirits can teach Rune spells to initiates. Does that mean you have a pool of Rune points dedicated to that spirit? I thought that was only for Gods. Are spirits essentially lesser Gods then? And potentially, an ambitious spirit might want to see their cult grow enough to the point that it can become a new God? That might be an interesting hook for an adventure...

Look into Kolat.  I have a hard time understanding why Kolat is a "Spirit" and not a "God" ...  At some point, I think these beings just get to CHOOSE a role... 

[Joerg]

2 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Re-reading this, I actually find it confusing that spirits can teach Rune spells to initiates. Does that mean you have a pool of Rune points dedicated to that spirit? I thought that was only for Gods. Are spirits essentially lesser Gods then? And potentially, an ambitious spirit might want to see their cult grow enough to the point that it can become a new God? That might be an interesting hook for an adventure...

I would make this a rune point pool to the spirit cult or spirit society, which may have several spirits able to grant a rune spell. A limited range of common rune magic might be available from that pool, too.

There are lesser Otherworld entities that sit on the border line between deity and spirit.

Animist entities may receive sacrifice in addition to other practices (like e.g. ecstatic worship), and some will grant limited rune magic. Others may offer a weird skill or some special spirit spell extremely hard to get otherwise even for a shaman.

A spirit suddenly gaining a huge cult to support it might rise up in power and re-discover its former nature as a greater spirit, or perhaps even a great spirit. Or deity.

RQG doesn't make much difference for entities contacted in a worship rite. (HQG allows some distinction by using the spirit rune for animist interaction with an Otherworld entity, but in RQG that rune only appears as a sorcerous form that needs to be mastered for summonings or as a descriptor for disembodied entities.)

[Lordabdul]

1 hour ago, g33k said:

Look into Kolat.  I have a hard time understanding why Kolat is a "Spirit" and not a "God" ...  At some point, I think these beings just get to CHOOSE a role...

Thanks! The Kolat cult is in Sartar Companion and there's this bit in the description:

"The Orlanthi predominantly worship gods and rely upon them for most of their magic. However, there are many powerful spirits in Dragon Pass and the gods have no power over them."

It occurs to me that Gods are beings that only exist in the God Time, and therefore are mostly bound to only the things they did "back then". Spirits, however, exist in Time, no? That's why they can interact directly with mortals, and, well, do stuff. So the difference might be, primarily that? And Kolat is a spirit because he refused to be bound by the Great Compromise?

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

spirit society

That's an awesome idea. Not only I'm imagining spirits who organized themselves into a group with far-spanning agendas (and potentially hiring the PCs to carry on missions), I also can't stop thinking now about a one-shot adventure where the players are a band of spirits who have adventures in the spirit world, and have to deal with shamans to do their bidding in the material world -- basically a mirror version of a classic RQ shamanic adventure.

Edited November 12, 2019 by lordabdul

[Bill the barbarian]

On 11/12/2019 at 4:02 PM, lordabdul said:

It occurs to me that Gods are beings that only exist in the God Time, and therefore are mostly bound to only the things they did "back then". Spirits, however, exist in Time, no? That's why they can interact directly with mortals, and, well, do stuff. So the difference might be, primarily that? And Kolat is a spirit because he refused to be bound by the Great Compromise?

 

That's how I have played it.

But with the great compromise, being the major caveat: being a god in ST time is very tricky and requires a great many geas and taboos (and limitations of a divine nature) from what I have seen. So perhaps entering the compromise in one way or another might be the way to recognition of your divinity.  Pavis having to retreat to his temple and The Red Goddesses being a series of dichotomies and paradoxes in order just "to be”.

Edited November 13, 2019 by Bill the barbarian

[Akhôrahil]

It might be worth mentioning that HeroQuest and RuneQuest interpret Glorantha in fairly dissimilar ways as regards to spirits. This can be massively confusing, and means that even non-rules text in HQ can't necessarily be used as an RQ argument.

In RuneQuest, spirits are basically smaller spiritual entities of any type - if you're a rune-lord, you have an allied spirit; a temple has a guardian spirit; a wyter is a spirit; and so on. Meanwhile beings like Storm Bull are just regular gods like the rest, following the Rune Cult system. 

In HeroQuest on the other hand, we have three different magical worlds and systems - spirit, god, and sorcery. There are Great Spirits and regular ones, as well as proper gods and godlings and minor god-realm entities (daimones). Your theistic wyter or temple guardian is a lot more likely to be a daimon than a spirit. Storm Bull is a great spirit, not a god (although things get complicated by the fact that Urox is a god). (There are also sorcerous entities, but these are both abstract and not covered in much detail.)

This means that in HQ, Kolat is a Great Spirit, while in RQ... I'm honestly not sure, and the rulebook neatly sidesteps the issue by saying he's a "Greater Entity". The Cults book will have Kolat as a shamanistic tradition under Horned Man, correct?

Edited November 13, 2019 by Akhôrahil

[metcalph]

15 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

In HeroQuest on the other hand, we have three different magical worlds and systems - spirit, god, and sorcery. There are Great Spirits and regular ones, as well as proper gods and godlings and minor god-realm entities (daimones). Your theistic wyter or temple guardian is a lot more likely to be a daimon than a spirit. Storm Bull is a great spirit, not a god (although things get complicated by the fact that Urox is a god). (There are also sorcerous entities, but these are both abstract and not covered in much detail.)

This is from HQ1.0, not HQ2.0.

 

[Joerg]

The "Three Distinct Otherworlds" (and the Collision of the Four Worlds founding myth for Glorantha) is mainly pursued in Hero Wars and HQ1 era products (including much of the Stafford Library), as Greg was fairly adamant on that concept in those years and meant the softening of the distinctions to be a theme for the Hero Wars, for player groups to pursue - a valid but possibly too geeky theme.

I have no idea whether Greg mellowed on that concept or whether Moon Design as the new owner of the Gloranthan heritage decided to bow to the pressure from the tribe (and possibly their own preference) in their lines of publication. Already RQ3 was fairly strict in this magical distinction, although spirits from theist cults were still present (though significantly less than in RQ2 products). But then, few fully written up NPCs for RQ3 were published that had not been somehow translated from RQ2 prior to the RQ Renaissance of the early nineties.

When discussing HQ products, you'll have to draw a line between the Issaries published books and those by MoonDesign. It wasn't that apparent with Sartar: Kingdom of Heroes, but that book really was a break away from Thunder Rebels and Storm Tribe.

I managed to discuss the separation of worlds with Greg, a couple of times in person and occasionally via the internet.  The collision of the Four Worlds was an interesting cosmological concept and led to a number of interesting concepts, but the retcon that made Genert a Great Spirit rather than a deity, and giving a similar status to Surensliba, the ancestress of the Darjiinians (and Doblians, and Manimati) opened quite more cans of worms than Greg's concepts manage to repair.

But then, a more fragmented mythical landscape of what we know to have survived into Time makes the catastrophe of the Greater Darkness and the patchwork nature of the shards salvaged by the Web of Arachne Solara more poignant. I have come to believe that Godtime Glorantha used to be a lot larger than the God Learner maps based on what survived in the Web of Arachne Solara show us. Ancient Danmalastan doesn't map that well on the western quarter of the Lozenge (if you divide it diagonally from the corners through Magasta's Pool), and not all of that distortion needs to be blamed on the tectonics of the collision of the Four Separate Worlds. Quite a lot can be explained by the shrinkage to the mosaic that is Arachne Solara's web.

[Akhôrahil]

56 minutes ago, metcalph said:

This is from HQ1.0, not HQ2.0.

Pre-HQG maybe, but S:KoH (an HQ2 product) still maintains the difference - we're told about air godlings like Umbroli and Urothtrorol, and it's clear that they're God-type entities and not just spirits. The game still talks about "Agents of Reprisal" to emphasize that they're not all spirits. It talks about the difference between theistic Urox worship and Storm Bull spirit societies. We're told that the big deal about Chalana Arroy is that she can heal injuries and diseases from any source, unlike other healers that are restricted by magical realm. And so on.

My point is that "Spirit[RQ]" and "Spirit[HW/HQ]" aren't quite the same words - their references differ. Is an umbroli a spirit? Depends on what book you ask!

Edited November 13, 2019 by Akhôrahil

[metcalph]

1 minute ago, Akhôrahil said:

Pre-HQG maybe, but S:KoH (an HQ2 product) still maintains the difference - we're told about air godlings like Umbroli and Urothtrorol, and it's clear that they're God-type entities and not just spirits. The game still talks about "Agents of Reprisal" to emphasize that they're not all spirits. It talks about the difference between theistic Urox worship Storm Bull spirit societies. And so on.

Much of SKOH was written long before the much shorter HQ2.0 was published and it's no surprise that old terminology would have crept through.  But I do have to wonder at the wisdom of making outdated statements about HeroQuest when the more recent version  makes no such distinctions on a forum that's not really for discussing HQ throughout the ages.

[Akhôrahil]

3 minutes ago, metcalph said:

Much of SKOH was written long before the much shorter HQ2.0 was published and it's no surprise that old terminology would have crept through.  But I do have to wonder at the wisdom of making outdated statements about HeroQuest when the more recent version  makes no such distinctions on a forum that's not really for discussing HQ throughout the ages.

Because S:KoH/SC was used as a source in relationship to RQ in this thread, and I wanted to suggest that doing this is not without its problems due to differing metaphysics.

Edited November 13, 2019 by Akhôrahil

[Akhôrahil]

31 minutes ago, Joerg said:

But then, a more fragmented mythical landscape of what we know to have survived into Time makes the catastrophe of the Greater Darkness and the patchwork nature of the shards salvaged by the Web of Arachne Solara more poignant. I have come to believe that Godtime Glorantha used to be a lot larger than the God Learner maps based on what survived in the Web of Arachne Solara show us. Ancient Danmalastan doesn't map that well on the western quarter of the Lozenge (if you divide it diagonally from the corners through Magasta's Pool), and not all of that distortion needs to be blamed on the tectonics of the collision of the Four Separate Worlds. Quite a lot can be explained by the shrinkage to the mosaic that is Arachne Solara's web.

I'm all in favor of a fractured and even fractal "the world is made of everything (that remained)" deal. 

[Sir_Godspeed]

My approach is generally that a spirit is negotiated with, while a god is worshipped. It's a matter of approach.

This also entails that the same entity may appear to be either spirit or deity depending on how they are approached - although since such approaches usually happen within established cultural norms and within mythological and belief-system contexts, generally speaking, people are unlikely to realize this, or perhaps even accept it as possible.

That's just my take on it though.