Women in Glorantha

[Alex]

46 minutes ago, HeartQuintessence said:

Maybe its just me being stirred up but realizing that Vingan at least in Sartar culture is one of the few 'active' outlets for female characters.

That doesn't seem at all accurate, even without knowing precisely what you mean by 'active' vs 'passive'.  (Though I think it would be important and helpful to say quite what you do mean by it, I should say, otherwise this could rapidly seem like we're kicking at moving goalposts.)  In Sartarite culture (and for the Theyalans fairly broadly, so far as we know) there are gendered expectations, but very little in the way of gender exclusions.  You can find the sexism-of-passive-expectations objectionable by all means, but let's not conflate that with "few 'active' outlets":  available outlets for female characters are every single cult on the 'upcoming Sartar cults' list for CoS, as well as all the already actually published ones.  Orlanth, Chalana Arroy, Eurmal, Issaries, Lhankor Mhy, Barntar, Daka Fal, Foundchild, Heler, Humakt, Gagarth, Lanbril, Mastakos, Odayla, Storm Bull, Valind, Ygg and Yinkin are all, as far as I know, open to women initiates.  (Waha sneaks onto the "Storm Pantheon" list, but they're a Praxian-only cult as far as I know.  Maybe a slight question mark on Valind?)  To which add the horribly Earth-stereotyped Ernalda, Aldrya, Asrelia, Babeester Gor, Caladra & Aurelion, Donandar, Eiritha, Flamal, Grain Goddesses, Hykim & Mikyh, Maran Gor, Mostal, Ty Kora Tek and Uleria.  Not a flicker of 'activity' in any of those?  That's without getting into the Lunar options -- still a few holdouts of those even in Sartar, it seems!

 

1 hour ago, HeartQuintessence said:

What if we flipped it, straight up Women become Active and the men passive.

I'll admit dunno where in "canon" Glorantha that'd fit, or even where I'd want to put it in headspace Glorantha.  I'm sure I'd read it, not least because it seems a hard thing to do generally, a harder thing to fit in with Glorantha's "mythic archetypes" mission statement, and I'd wanna see how.

But in between "few outlets" and "straight up flip everything" -- which is a heckuva wide range for any one post! -- we have self-declaredly gender-equal cultures, female-dominant cultures, and female-only cultures.  More needs to be done with each (ideally all) of those, too.

[scott-martin]

1 hour ago, HeartQuintessence said:

What if we flipped it, straight up Women become Active and the men passive.

Love it. IMG it's a matter of where you're looking in a process of dynamic opposition. The active yields to the passive and the passive activates, women and men, world without end.

Flirted with regaling the thread with funny insights derived from my clinical training but tonight I think the most important thing I can say is that within the lightbringer complex you have two "genders" . . . the quest taker at the center tasked with doing the deeds and making the moral choices, and the quest giver who facilitates and motivates "him" from the background and around the edges.

All the lightbringers are more or less "passive" in this construction, ranging from the entirely inert GJ and the sacrificial FM to the instigator who keeps everything from getting stale but lacks real creative force. Are they male or female, active or passive? The rite really only recognizes two angles on consciousness, the actor and the spectator. 

We call the actor the orlanth nowadays and foreigners assume the role is somehow associated with masculine performance. We know that sometimes that's true and sometimes she's a vinga. The spectator has a lot of names, situationally attached to serve the moment in the drama. Subject and object, quest taker and quest giver.

If you're pressed for time you can compress it a little more and simply have the quester and the quest as your archaic O/E "pronouns" . . . when anyone is active, they take the old O mask, otherwise they're assigned something else. If they don't like it, they can speak up and take over.

But to most foreigners, it's all that normative mom and dad. We know it's a little more and less complicated.

[Eff]

You can often find an implicit countermyth in the primary myth as well. Let us suppose the inverse of the conventional story, where everything begins connected and then falls apart. That is, instead of Death being stolen from the Underworld, this would be a story where Life has to be found in a world of Death. And this kind of myth of course is resonant in the Lightbringers Quest but it can also be seen as the prelude to Death being in the Underworld in the first place, or as a kind of story about the creation of new connections and new things, a primal Uleria myth that is filtered down into Ernalda and then the lesser ernaldas.

[Squaredeal Sten]

17 hours ago, HeartQuintessence said:

Going to take a breath here........

Maybe its just me being stirred up but realizing that Vingan at least in Sartar culture is one of the few 'active' outlets for female characters.

Maybe Chalana Arroy as well, but only Vinga is truely active and participatory in /things/.

Don't count Kyger Litor out! 

Abandon  human-centricity and express your inner Uz.

 

[Alex]

21 minutes ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Don't count Kyger Litor out! 

Abandon  human-centricity and express your inner Uz.

Of course if one is essentially only counting warriors -- and combat medics -- as "active", then I suppose one could deem KL to be a "passive female" cult too.

[jajagappa]

19 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Look at Earth...

Here's another Earth story that came to mind.

We think of the Green Age transitioning to the Golden Age.  Light/Fire rises above the Earth and spreads its glorious Order across the world.  But is that the REAL story?  Here's a thought on making Earth more active.

At some point, Gata spins the creative stuff of the world (or shapes it, or whatever alternate action fits), and gives birth to... something new, Fire.  (Maybe it's even called Rashoran??? 😲 ) (Perhaps she was convinced to do this by Maker who was trying out something new?)  And it burns her.  Burns her so that she must retreat, and it spreads, consuming Fuel, her body.  She is hurt and angry at this new child.  But her surface self cannot stop the Fire.  She must go deeper inward.  

At first she tries to contain it, heaving mountains up to keep it in place.  But the Fire is light, and easily races upwards.

Then she tries to bury it, throwing stone down upon it.  But the Fire finds instead becomes like an oven and consumes new Fuel, and it turns metal and stone into liquid like water that flows through and fills the cracks in her body.

Instead, she must find a way to protect her child Grower.  She knows Maker can make anything, but Maker delights in tormenting Grower, and has fallen in love with the thing Fire.  Gata goes to Maker to find something to stop Fire, but he refuses.  So she must find a way to trick Maker into creating something(s) that can save Grower, contain Fire, and ... (should be a 3rd thing, but can't think of it at the moment).

Gata takes on various disguises and tricks Maker into revealing his secrets.  She finds a way to encase Grower in a hard shell that can be hidden within the Earth.  She finds a way to smother Fire with the Ash of its own creation.  And then she weaves (or gives birth to) the unburnable/invisible smoke which keeps the Fire above from the Earth.  And then she tricks Maker to enter a tall tower, filled with "secrets".  When he enters, she closes and locks the door behind him so he won't create more mischief.

 

[Alex]

41 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

So she must find a way to trick Maker into creating something(s) that can save Grower, contain Fire, and ... (should be a 3rd thing, but can't think of it at the moment).

Presumably the third thing concerns Maker himself?  Gata doesn't want to beholden to Maker by overtly asking for a favour, and wants there to be some sort of balance between Maker and Grower.

[M Helsdon]

Reading through this with interest. 

There are societies in Glorantha which are definitely patriarchal, with active male gods with active male worshippers, the Esrolians are definitely matriarchal, and I don't believe the female goddesses there are passive or their worshippers, and then there are the Lunars and Sartarites and Heortlanders where things are more variable.

As I understand it, Orlanth in Sartar and Heortland is definitely an active male god, Ernalda in Esrolia an active female god, and then things get more interesting. I don't believe that Ernalda is passive in Dragon Pass.

Although of the Lightbringers, Chalana Arroy is the only female, I believe that the cults and roles of Chalana Arroy, Issaries, Lhankor Mhy and Eurmal are not gender specific. The same is true for Humakt, Heler, and other deities in more specialised roles like Gustbran, Heler, or Dormal. There's no reason why members of those cults can't be male, female, or any other orientation. 

[Rodney Dangerduck]

20 minutes ago, M Helsdon said:

Although of the Lightbringers, Chalana Arroy is the only female, I believe that the cults and roles of Chalana Arroy, Issaries, Lhankor Mhy and Eurmal are not gender specific. The same is true for Humakt, Heler, and other deities in more specialised roles like Gustbran, Heler, or Dormal. There's no reason why members of those cults can't be male, female, or any other orientation. 

Absolutely.  One only look at the Lunar Pantheon, where Issaries becomes the female Etyries with no mythical disasters.

Who are the toughest badass Humakti in Sartar?  That PCs would see as role models?  Sarostip and Naimless.  They can use whatever preferred pronouns they wish, nobody is going to argue with them!

[Alex]

19 minutes ago, Rodney Dangerduck said:

Who are the toughest badass Humakti in Sartar?  That PCs would see as role models?  Sarostip and Naimless.  They can use whatever preferred pronouns they wish, nobody is going to argue with them!

Correct pronoun is a brisk, silent salute. 🙂

[French Desperate WindChild]

11 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Here's another Earth story that came to mind. (...)

 

 

So nice sotry, thanks !

[French Desperate WindChild]

 

13 hours ago, Alex said:

Of course if one is essentially only counting warriors -- and combat medics -- as "active",

I think that describes exactly the "gender issue"

that is not a background issue: we have Esrolia, the troll - but those who go outside are the males, less important - ,  the elves - but those who go outside are not the dryads, too important - , maybe the "true lunars", not the yelmic, etc... at least in the settings.

 

that is not the pantheon issue: there are all genders divinities, and even a "male" god can in a myth choose to be a "female" god.

 

But there is a rpg issue = a players and gm (of course not all):

Fight is the most important thing.
There are fight in about all scenarii.

The climax is not to open the door, but  to fight the people behind the door

The climax is not to find who is the bad guy (I will not spoil) in this sun county village but to destroy the bad guy

There are more posts in this forum about fighting rules than social or athletic rules.

Remember how many hot discussions about Elmal / Yelmalio / fire power / shield power ... than discussion about the fact that Ernalda can in rqg do about everything Chalana does. Why ?

See the Garound contest scenario, there is room for a lot of things (investigation, fraud on bet, ...). That is fine, but now, see the number of sentences describing these options and the number of sentences describing how a strong warrior can prove he (because that's only he who can participate, at least in the description 1st level, and even the INT test is base on CON...)

That is not a question of system: you roll 1d100 to kill someone, you roll 1d100 to charm someone.

 

I think that the role of GM and players, but also scenario publishers is to create campaign, scenario, settings, focused on something else than the fight.

Scenario where any action (bargain, fight, steal, dance, study, exploration, investigation) has the same importance ==> to the success of the party but in volume (words and time) too.

There are very very nice settings in previous edition and in rqg version but the issue is the scenario.

But there is some darkness in the future (let use the Uz perspective, for one time) :

there are tables where the focus is the investigation or other

there are a very great example in youtube (something about white color and a cow, ...) where players are not focused on fight.

So people can play and propose great play on something else

But some people (and I include myself there, sometimes) may need support to translate the climax from the fight to the action before or after

 

the question, in glorantha at least, is what are the "active" skills or to go further what are the "heroic", "proud", "satisfying" actions

[Ali the Helering]

Or, the struggle is to cleanse a cursed rock on the tula, or to successfully prosecute a lawsuit in front of the tribal chief, or to steal the maguffin from under the nose of Tatius, or to carry the document undetected from Pavis to Seshnela, or to....

Scenarios don't need to be about combat, and climaxes don't need to be about violence and destruction.

[Eff]

The main factor with the active/passive distinction is twofold: 1) men in Glorantha are more likely to be treated over the course of Gloranthan texts as capable of or interested in breaking out of their cultural context, in the sense that our default view follows Argrath more than Jar-eel, Harrek more than Gunda, etc. This is something that compounds any other factor, because playing in Glorantha generally requires a kind of model for players to latch onto as "this is how I should be acting, this is the role I'm playing." And so while the corebook gives us Vasana as the central protagonist of the example game, Vasana is an Orlanth Adventurous/Vinga initiate. But then there's also 2) which is that our mythical and cultural models for character behavior run fairly counter to, hmmm, "femme" characters being an active presence in the assumed model of play, namely going out and fighting some Hero Wars. Because we simply do not have many stories of Ernalda being an adventuring presence- in the stories that we have, she seems to be a fairly static figure. (One exception- Ernalda Feeds The Tribe, from King of Dragon Pass. This is not really a panacea, because as it is presented it is entirely talking, so you need to do a lot of interpretation to make it a varied kind of mythical model for play, but it does deserve acknowledgement.) Similarly, we have a myth where Chalana Arroy organizes a number of dissident gods, but overall she's seen as more of a passive presence who, apart from joining the Lightbringers Quest, seems to run into people who need healing by chance. If you look to the Seven Mothers, it's Yanafal Tarnils and Irrippi Ontor who are presented as the active forces, and Deezola and Jakaleel are more reactive (and Teelo Norri and Danfive Xaron are absent for most of the well-described 7M deeds).

But having laid that out, there are of course various methods of getting away from this. One method is to create an alternate Glorantha which from the ground up has less of this. Of course, the problem there is that the material you create for it may or may not be able to be easily retrofitted to work with central-Glorantha or fan-Glorantha or canon-Glorantha. And it's a lot of work. My preferred method is to, hah, engage in a kind of playful feminist-ish analysis of Glorantha and of Gloranthan societies and history- taking the text mostly as given, where can I probe to find places where people who are not cisgender men are present and acting? What are they doing in the process?

And then by shaking those trees, occasionally some interesting tidbit comes out, and I can write a mythlet or a blog post or something. But in general, that's my approach for working on Glorantha- primarily additive, almost totally so in the things I actually present to the world (carefully editing out Ik*** the god of torture from my personal Glorantha is something I can keep to myself). We can assume that everyone in Glorantha, man, woman, vingan, nandan, helering, null, etc. is an agent in the world, and attempting to act within the bounds of their social condition, and from there we can ask "how do they act? How do they parlay their mythical/ritual expectations into the creation of their own inner world?"

This all sounds very dignified, so I'll link my most recent blog post as a counter to that presentation:

https://eightarmsandthemask.blogspot.com/2021/10/teelo-imara-gives-proof-before-virtuous.html

Which is to say, this kind of analysis can produce jokes and, hopefully, a Glorantha kind of tone.

[Martin Dick]

3 hours ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

That is not a question of system: you roll 1d100 to kill someone, you roll 1d100 to charm someone.

 

I think that the role of GM and players, but also scenario publishers is to create campaign, scenario, settings, focused on something else than the fight.

Scenario where any action (bargain, fight, steal, dance, study, exploration, investigation) has the same importance ==> to the success of the party but in volume (words and time) too.

 

I think It is actually a question of system - RQ in all its versions privileges three aspects of its world - Magic, Cults and Combat and Magic gains a lot of its privilege because it is an essential part of combat. The only subsystem which compares in terms of the attention paid to it are the Cults and they are more about the world and its context as opposed to events and resolution. Any other type of event than combat is resolved much more simply, making the game element much more simplistic compared to the game element we have in RQG combat (not a complaint from me, I like the game element embedded in the RQG combat rules - I'm in to roleplaying games, not pure roleplaying and not pure games)

But there was a big discussion that I can't find about this a couple of months ago and one thing that was mentioned was Revolution d100 which is a d100 based game which is built around the idea of conflicts and a conflict can be about anything and gives an equivalent level of detail for resolving the debate in the Clan Ring as to a combat. Combat is just a specialised form of conflict. And of course HeroQuest/QuestWorlds also has a system that allows you to have conflicts with combat being resolved in a very similar way to any other conflict.

As they say "If you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail", so if your system emphasises combat, then it makes using combat as the tool to solve things an easy way to design and alternatively it makes it much harder to design events where a non-combat solution can be as dramatic . If your climax is to have a great debate with the bad guy that you've discovered and convince the clan chief to have them exiled, it's a bit dull to have the lead PC roll their Orate, the bad guy roll their Orate and bang the event is resolved one way or the other. Someone commented and I think it has some truth, that the problem with RQG is that only combat has hit points.

And getting back to the women are passive, men are active, I think some of that comes about (not all), because manly activities in game are mostly fighting and get a complex fun rule system and womanly activities are lots of other stuff that gets a simple (less fun) rule system, so naturally designers tend to go with the more fun rule system (some other factors being traditional conceptions from the 70s of what's important in a roleplaying game, gender stereotypes and our enjoyment of  action movies etc.)

[Ali the Helering]

5 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

Scenarios don't need to be about combat, and climaxes don't need to be about violence and destruction.

Particularly if you are playing an Ulerian...

[radmonger]

1 hour ago, Martin Dick said:

I the problem with RQG is that only combat has hit points.

 

Wheras the problem with HQ/QW is that everyone always has 5 hit points...

Slightly more on topic, I think Trowjang and Caladraland seem to be the canonical homes of feminine fire as a cultural default.

 

[Jeff]

The terms "active" and "passive" get thrown around in this discussion so many different ways, I can no longer follow it.

Ernalda is the Earth Goddess, and much of her activity involves bringing new life into the world, choosing useful consorts, and being the mother-ruler of the Earth deities and spirits. She is not a fighting god, being one of the forces of life in the Gods War, but she has plenty of children, relatives, and lovers who will do her fighting for her - not the least being Aldrya, Babeester Gor, and Maran Gor. Babeester Gor and Maran Gor are often seen as aspects of Ernalda, like Parvati and Kali and Durga.

Orlanth is the Storm God, and much of his activity involves rushing around the world with violence and thunder.  Orlanth destroys, Ernalda restores. That's the cycle - like Shiva and Shakti/Parvati, Yin and Yang, and so on. Sometimes the Orlanthi call this active/passive and gender these forces masculine/feminine, but of course like anything mythological, things are not so clear-cut. 

[Joerg]

3 hours ago, Eff said:

Similarly, we have a myth where Chalana Arroy organizes a number of dissident gods, but overall she's seen as more of a passive presence who, apart from joining the Lightbringers Quest, seems to run into people who need healing by chance.

And Orlanth or Storm Bull happen to run into people who need fighting.

 

3 hours ago, Eff said:

Because we simply do not have many stories of Ernalda being an adventuring presence- in the stories that we have, she seems to be a fairly static figure. (One exception- Ernalda Feeds The Tribe, from King of Dragon Pass. This is not really a panacea, because as it is presented it is entirely talking, so you need to do a lot of interpretation to make it a varied kind of mythical model for play, but it does deserve acknowledgement.)

Keep in mind that by the time she marries Orlanth, Ernalda has seen all of the Golden Age and a good part of the Green Age. All the wandering about has been done long ago, when she was the maiden or the young healer, and Asrelia was the Mother.

She probably has a number of youthful tales of adventurous dates, and maybe some kinky ones where she grabs a partner and pulls him through a series of adventures he is not suited for. It probably takes a mischievous Asrelia priestess to teach these to the age group of freshly initiated Ernaldans to go off on scandalizing adventures.

She shouldn't take all the Yinkin girl fun, though. Maybe some misapplied curative approaches?

Ernalda Does Dope might be another cycle where a younger goddess expands her perception while doing stuff.

How Going Goth Didn't Work Out might be about Ernalda dabbling in Darkness, and getting chewed up badly.

[Alex]

2 minutes ago, Joerg said:

And Orlanth or Storm Bull happen to run into people who need fighting.

Though "needs to be fought" is inherently a more flexible, ever-expanding, and dealer's choice category than "needs to be healed".

Of course, the two are extremely complementary in the obvious way, but in a combat-heavy game, you can make the "healing, buffing, and some combat on the side" role as amazing as you like, and people will still feel "oh no, borrrrrrrring, I'm playing the cleric".

[Joerg]

One trick about playing Ernaldans is to give them sidekicks, like e.g. husbands or newly adult sons, to do the attack rolls for them. Love family goes a long way to manage these.

 

It is weird. People are more than happy to walk around with an entire zoo of bound spirits while swinging their swords themselves, sending in the occasional elemental to do stuff, but draw a line when what is sent in instead is another embodied person.

[g33k]

On 10/5/2021 at 5:20 PM, Sir_Godspeed said:

...  I know this is something that's been discussed before, and it's also been brought up in relation to how RPGs often are kinda railroaded into simulating violence specifically rather than a wider range of human actions, possibly in this very thread. It's often easier for us as readers/gamers to recognize violent acts as innately active or noteworthy than other actions, even if that's not necessarily the case in Glorantha's canon, even.
...

I guess it's worth hauling out the hoary old cliche here:  RPG's evolved from wargames... Gygax/Arneson/etc produced the original D&D as a variant on their mini's combat games.  And even more proximately for us, Glorantha was first gamified in WBRM: a classic hexmap-and-chits wargame!  (Only later did a RPG version come out)   And wargames are, by definition, wargames.

Last but not least...  all of that may be hoary history, but it's 2021 today, and... whaddayano:  RQG is explicitly set as heroism in the Hero Wars.  So, yeah:  pretty explicitly fight-y!

It's "true" that combat is your skill on d100,  and  so is social conflict (like a "Bargain" skill, etc)...  HOWEVER...  That's a terribly superficial (and frankly misleading) gloss of the rules.   Nothing except combat has the elaborate plethora of sub-systems like Strike Rank, armor, hit-points/location, impaling/crushing/slashing weapons, Special/Critical damages, Fumbles, Mounted Combat, Chariots, etc etc etc.

Is combat really the main "active" activity?   Are non-combat skills more "passive" in the general (if not universal) case?

I dunno; but (just from sheer volume) the combat rules appear to be the single largest bit of what the  mechanics of the game  are about (magic seems at first to rank up there; until you consider the combat spells as "that's combat").   It appears that the central role of combat in RQ will take some really substantive effort to overcome, if that's something desired at peoples' tables.

I DO think there's space for this sort of thing in RPG's, and in particular RQG.  RD100 has already been mentioned, and there's other entire RPG's that de-center combat and elevate other realms of conflict and the old rising-action/climax/falling-action cycle.

But it'll take quite some doing, if you want as much "crunch" in your other arenas as you get in your combat-arena...

 

All of which isn't entirely to the point of this thread... but it's not entirely NOT to the point, either, ya know?

 

(edit - also, it's worth noting the degree to which "history" is often portrayed as mostly the wars & battles; other elements like "economies" and "technology" and etc DO get some attention, but it's often as much about how the econ/tech/etc drive or impact the warfare...  So it's not as if the combatcentricity seen in RPG's is an oddity)

 

Edited October 8, 2021 by g33k

[Eff]

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

And Orlanth or Storm Bull happen to run into people who need fighting.

 

Keep in mind that by the time she marries Orlanth, Ernalda has seen all of the Golden Age and a good part of the Green Age. All the wandering about has been done long ago, when she was the maiden or the young healer, and Asrelia was the Mother.

She probably has a number of youthful tales of adventurous dates, and maybe some kinky ones where she grabs a partner and pulls him through a series of adventures he is not suited for. It probably takes a mischievous Asrelia priestess to teach these to the age group of freshly initiated Ernaldans to go off on scandalizing adventures.

She shouldn't take all the Yinkin girl fun, though. Maybe some misapplied curative approaches?

Ernalda Does Dope might be another cycle where a younger goddess expands her perception while doing stuff.

How Going Goth Didn't Work Out might be about Ernalda dabbling in Darkness, and getting chewed up badly.

Yeah, I think that the most fruitful take here is to look at what's going on before the whole Storm Age kicks off and see what we can pull out before Orlanth and Ernalda settle down into divine middle age, join the local PTA, etc.

[Squaredeal Sten]

13 hours ago, Martin Dick said:

........ much harder to design events where a non-combat solution can be as dramatic . If your climax is to have a great debate with the bad guy that you've discovered and convince the clan chief to have them exiled, it's a bit dull to have the lead PC roll their Orate, the bad guy roll their Orate and bang the event is resolved one way or the other. .....

,,,,,,,, (some other factors being traditional conceptions from the 70s of what's important in a roleplaying game, gender stereotypes and our enjoyment of  action movies etc.)

Some of that emphasis on combat is in the life experience, or lack of it, of the players.  That example of convincing the clan chief is a wonderful example:  Why must it be the clan chief?  How about convincing the ring or the clan or tribal  meeting?

If more folks had experience in politics they would do that by lining up votes before the meeting, which requires many interactions and many orate or regional lore rolls.  Accumulating favors and debts.  Maybe some work identifying the various interests of the various parties, then some gift giving, flattery, log rolling, and occasional bribery. Finally turning out the vote: Whether by persuasion, oration, or inviting them to a barbecue, you make sure your votes attend the meeting, even though they have to walk from a far-flung clan tula to Clearwine.   

You didn't really think the vote was decided on the day of the vote, did you?

And if more GMs had that experience they would structure the scenarios to accommodate that sort of solution.

But that also takes players who don't view politics as boring.

Me, I recall getting thrown out of a campaign because my character spent time doing things like giving a local girl what amounted to a scholarship to study at the Ernalda temple, thus building goodwill.  Evidently the GM and other players regarded that as a waste of time. 

 

Edited October 8, 2021 by Squaredeal Sten
tribal

[Alex]

6 hours ago, Joerg said:

One trick about playing Ernaldans is to give them sidekicks, like e.g. husbands or newly adult sons, to do the attack rolls for them. Love family goes a long way to manage these.

I think the player in this case should refer to her "non-player sidekicks", and the various warriors-to-do-the-heavy-lifting PCs as her "player sidekicks".

 

2 hours ago, g33k said:

Last but not least...  all of that may be hoary history, but it's 2021 today, and... whaddayano:  RQG is explicitly set as heroism in the Hero Wars.  So, yeah:  pretty explicitly fight-y!

The Hero Wars are hard to win by stabbing on Lunar (or other preferred target) at a time.  Skills like "obscure celestial lore" and "fast-talk dragon" are apparently much more applicable!

2 hours ago, g33k said:

I dunno; but (just from sheer volume) the combat rules appear to be the single largest bit of what the  mechanics of the game  are about (magic seems at first to rank up there; until you consider the combat spells as "that's combat").   It appears that the central role of combat in RQ will take some really substantive effort to overcome, if that's something desired at peoples' tables.

If it's what's desired, then why worry about changing it?  Obviously if the ruleset isn't RQ, or the group wants something different, or different parts of the group want different things, then that may vary considerably.  In the HW/HQ/QW take on Glorantha, it's pretty explicitly the intent to make non-combat conflicts 'first-class citizens' too.

1 hour ago, Eff said:

Yeah, I think that the most fruitful take here is to look at what's going on before the whole Storm Age kicks off and see what we can pull out before Orlanth and Ernalda settle down into divine middle age, join the local PTA, etc.

To quibble that, Orlanth's precocious infancy is pretty much what starts the Storm Age, and his joining the PTA is essentially what ends not that, but the one after that, the Chaos Age!  But the Green Age and the Golden Age are important as regards Ernalda's (rather deeper) mythic roots.

Edited October 8, 2021 by Alex