the god, the bad (priest) and the ugly

[Lordabdul]

9 hours ago, g33k said:

I don't think they automatically know what their Initiates know.. not even their priest(esse)s!

Yeah they only know what their worshippers said in their prayers... so if you want you can have a time loop paradox thing where someone uses Divination to ask their god where the McGuffin is, the god tells them, they go get it, and on the next worship day they have a little prayer "hey thank you god, I got the McGuffin from that place" and now boom the god knows where it is and can tell it in the past.

Personally I don't like Divination too much... it's a loophole in the Compromise, it can quickly get in messed up time paradoxes as indicated above, and it puts all the work on the GM's shoulders to figure out what the god will be able to say to the PC... I guess the original intent of this mechanic was to let the players effectively ask the GM for help (kind like the Idea roll in Call of Cthulhu, but with an associated cost), but I think it's way too easy to abuse, and puts too much pressure on the GM.

Edited January 16, 2020 by lordabdul

[Akhôrahil]

23 hours ago, g33k said:

I don't think they automatically know what their Initiates know.. not even their priest(esse)s!

Agree. HeroWars made a big deal about how the gods are myopic to the point of not being able to tell individual people apart (this is why it's the community that gets slammed with divine punishment and not just the perpetrator).

If the gods knew the thoughts of the worshipers, they could (and likely would) send laser-guided retribution their way at the drop of a hat.

Edited January 16, 2020 by Akhôrahil

[Akhôrahil]

13 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Personally I don't like Divination too much... it's a loophole in the Compromise, it can quickly get in messed up time paradoxes as indicated above, and it puts all the work on the GM's shoulders to figure out what the god will be able to say to the PC...

I like to think that the gods are much better at giving you current information about the immediate situation within their domain, and bad at predicting the future. My PCs were smart and called for a divination to Orlanth to learn what weather the mountain they would be scaling would have in the next few days, which felt utterly reasonable. Had they asked about grand politics decades into the future, things would be either far vaguer or far less certain.

I mean, even the Lunar Empire as a whole was caught utterly unaware by the Dragonrise. If the most powerful political and magical entity in the world can't predict the most important event in decades, that casts some pretty strong doubts about the predictive power of divinations.  

[Sir_Godspeed]

43 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Agree. HeroWars made a big deal about how the gods are myopic to the point of not being able to tell individual people apart (this is why it's the community that gets slammed with divine punishment and not just the perpetrator).

If the gods knew the thoughts of the worshipers, they could (and likely would) send laser-guided retribution their way at the drop of a hat.

It also explains why basically anyone that fits certain cultic criteria are mostly interchangeable in terms of worship rituals, or rulership or whatever. Not completely, I should say, but on a certain level.

[Lordabdul]

1 hour ago, Akhôrahil said:

I like to think that the gods are much better at giving you current information about the immediate situation within their domain, and bad at predicting the future.

You make good points but they all still highlight what bothers me with Divination. Past present and future shouldn't be any different for deities if we believe that they live in the "God Time" which is supposed to be this time-less thing (although it still has causality... wrap your head around that!). And sure we can hand-wave a lot of things to rationalize all this stuff when you're writing fiction or NPC backgrounds or setting history, but when it's time to put it in a game rule and expose it to players, it becomes a lot fuzzier and dirtier. Omens and visions are classic tropes of myths, but IMHO they really break down when you try to formalize them. They better fit HQG, where the GM already has a constantly higher pressure put on herself, than RQG, where you need actual rules and numbers. But anyway....

1 hour ago, Akhôrahil said:

I mean, even the Lunar Empire as a whole was caught utterly unaware by the Dragonrise.

True. Speaking of hand-waving and rationalizing that stuff, what first comes to mind for me is that it might be the classic case of "self fulfilling prophecy", where, actually, the Lunars might very well have asked their Goddess for a divination, and she might  indeed have told them that shit was going to get real. So they took a lot of precautions, based on what she told them: they killed all the Dundaelos people, they moved/reaffected a whole bunch of armies, etc... but then in the end these actions made the Sartarites all the more angry and passionate about retaliation, somehow opened some weakness somewhere, and, in the end, made the Dragonrise possible instead of preventing it. Another classic trope of myths.

Edited January 16, 2020 by lordabdul

[Sir_Godspeed]

22 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

True. Speaking of hand-waving and rationalizing that stuff, what first comes to mind for me is that it might be the classic case of "self fulfilling prophecy", where, actually, the Lunars might very well have asked their Goddess for a divination, and she might  indeed have told them that shit was going to get real. So they took a lot of precautions, based on what she told them: they killed all the Dundaelos people, they moved/reaffected a whole bunch of armies, etc... but then in the end these actions made the Sartarites all the more angry and passionate about retaliation, somehow opened some weakness somewhere, and, in the end, made the Dragonrise possible instead of preventing it. Another classic trope of myths.

I agree, that souns poetically (and mythically) appropriate.

[French Desperate WindChild]

2 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Past present and future shouldn't be any different for deities if we believe that they live in the "God Time" which is supposed to be this time-less thing (although it still has causality... wrap your head around that!).

My opinion on this (but I don't have any lore, so I would appreciate information) :

Time (aka after Great Compromise) may be :

•  gods musn't interfere "Now"
•  Time of Mortal (as in Tolkien Time of the Elves, Time of the Men... - with my words, I never read Tolkien in the text)
•  Since GP Mortal will die of old age (if not killed before)

Then before Time it was... time

And then what is Heroquesting ? I would say a kind of Time travel :

you go before, you may change things (like GL), you may obtain things for your "Now".

During the process you can be "You" or "The Other" (the god or I any actor of this Past Event) or a mix between "You" and "The Other"

Then it could explain something I read (but I don't remember where, not in an official book at least) that Belintar is a Time Traveler too. Pharaon is a mix between Belintar and his "Body"

That means people may travel in past by Heroquesting not before Great Compromise but before their "Now". Why nobody did it ?

• We don't know if they did,
• that is not because something is possible that someone did it. Gloranthan are worshippers, they may be blind for science. After thousands of year the technical progress are "ridiculous" (in my opininion) just because they don't need progress or science, their gods / cults  are enough

 

 

[Shiningbrow]

On 1/8/2020 at 3:25 AM, French Desperate WindChild said:

For example, I know that we can find Orlanth in many countries, in many forms (I am not talking about subcult)

Heortling, Aeolianism, EWF, Carmanian, Safelstran, Henotheist, storm tribes in Pent ... maybe Arkatism ? (I don't realy understand what is Arkatism in third age or before)

 I have wondered why you couldnt be a membership of some/many/all of them.

Instead of Orlanth, what about Monrogh's changing of Elmal worship for Yelmalio... 

Obviously, PCs should be extremely biased, but players usually prefer munchkin, and would want the best of all possibles.

[soltakss]

On 1/12/2020 at 3:01 AM, jajagappa said:

On 1/11/2020 at 9:16 PM, Corvantir said:

Is the basement of the Castle of Lead still in the Middle World?

It should be in the Underworld.

I prefer it being in both.

You can get to the Basement from the normal Surface World, but each step brings you closer to the Underworld. You can also enter the basement from the Underworld, but each step brings you closer to the Mundane World. 

[boztakang]

2 hours ago, soltakss said:

You can get to the Basement from the normal Surface World, but each step brings you closer to the Underworld. You can also enter the basement from the Underworld, but each step brings you closer to the Mundane World. 

Absolutely! though when you've gone deep enough to find yourself trying to convince Kyger Litor that you are not a snack, you definitely have stepped outside the Mundane World. 

It is also established that you can get from one Castle of Lead to another via the basement, though it is usually Much safer to travel overground.

[soltakss]

4 minutes ago, boztakang said:

Absolutely!

And you should know!