Is Argrath a good or at least acceptable Orlanthi (hero)?

[Eff]

46 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

Does a shaman have to believe in one or more interventionist gods? Do they have to think that interventionist gods are a good thing? Does all sincere religion have ontological commitments? On the first two, I couldn’t say. On the last, I suspect that not all practitioners think so: pantheists; some Buddhists; some Quakers. But maybe I have that wrong, too.

Well, to answer these questions thoroughly and precisely: the question is how do you define "god"? This is a very difficult question- are gods immortal? (Devas and asuras in Buddhism aren't, though they have lifespans which may be longer than the duration of the observed universe. The Norse gods weren't, the Ugaritic ones may or may not have been. But the Greek ones were.) Do gods have absolute power? (Answering this question leads you down a rabbit hole in defining "absolute".) There are certainly people who will tell you that they had no concept of a god before Christianity and Christian missionaries came, but their mythological stories and their public-facing ritual practices would seem to suggest that they believed in entities or presences that did the kind of things gods do for other cultures.

And maybe the other end is important too- how small can a spiritual being be before it no longer counts as a god? Lares and penates were certainly gods to the Romans, but domovoi, hobs, brownies, pucks, and the like are in the liminal categories of fairies- but they exist in a Christian context. Even in the non-Christian context of Japan, though, zashiki-wariki and zashiki-bokko are typically considered to be part of the liminal category of youkai. And then next door in Korea, the Gasin/Gashin are clearly gods, though they have formalized names even as they fulfill very similar functions to a brownie. 

But setting that aside, the question of "interventionist" in relation to gods (whatever they are) is perhaps a bit confusing to me. What's a non-interventionist god? Would interventionism mean a god that responds to human appeal in a way that explicitly contradicts the laws of physics, or that does so on their own? That is, there seems to be a kind of assumption that gods and spirits are cleanly separable from natural processes, such that you can distinguish natural lighting from the unnatural lightning of an interventionist weather god. To a very real extent, this begins by defining gods as clearly parasitic or perhaps commensal organisms, ones which are uninvolved with the actual processes but just sit there and perhaps redirect some lightning bolts every once in a while. 

But as far as whether gods or other spiritual entities are good or not... I think that this is possibly the wrong way to think about it, because the more important factor would be that they exist, or that you have a strong belief that they exist. The question of whether they fit into a dualist structure of good and evil is secondary and from a descriptive level, not all that common. To look at contemporary Shinto, which has some degree of developed philosophy on this topic, kami have at a bare minimum an assertive or fierce aspect (ara-mitama) and a gentle or kind aspect (nigi-mitama), which is to say they are neither good nor evil, but more like humans, capable of either. 

As far as ontological commitments go, I would say that all sincere religion at least has the ontological commitment that the religion has meaning beyond the simply personal. This is obviously not necessary and sufficient definition of religion, but it is something that covers the very loose kind of spirituality associated with pantheists, some Buddhists (especially in Europe, the US, Canada, etc.), and some Quakers and Unitarian Universalists, in that they still define themselves to the rest of the world as this, and not an atheist, agnostic, or secularist, or any of the other associations we use to signify that we are not religious, and thus that this has some kind of external meaning. 

This is of course a long answer. I think a short one is that I don't really think that it's likely that someone who sincerely thought that spiritual beings were real, attempted to consult them or ask their aid, and also thought their aid or influence was purely malignant in effect would exist as such, or call themselves a shaman if they did, and that it's not that much more likely that an arbitrary distinction between benign spirits and malignant gods would be central to their worldview but not be evident in this fictional motif (as it's being presented here and in the linked post and in general in these kinds of discussions), which seems to straightforwardly be a kind of disenchantment-of-reality one where all the magic vanishes, not one where one specific kind of magic vanishes but the other three are unaffected or only minorly so. 

[mfbrandi]

2 hours ago, Eff said:

Well, to answer these questions thoroughly and precisely: the question is how do you define "god"?

Thanks for your reply. I think that if I reply in any depth here, it will hi-jack the thread, so I will start a fresh one and then retro-fit a link here.

Edited October 4, 2022 by mfbrandi
add link

[Madrona]

On 10/3/2022 at 1:02 AM, Joerg said:

Why do people have a problem with Argrath? IMO because he is the player identification character from a different game than a roleplaying game.

Having introduced a lot of very new players to Glorantha, I've learned its generally best to just leave out Argrath. He's interesting in fiction and basically uninteresting in gameplay. There's both too much written about him, and not enough. Honestly I feel the 1625 time period was just a bad time to set the RPG in general as its when things have been set into motion in a distinctly Argrarthward direction, or just to kind of leave him out or use him just as a rebel army that threatens or fights with the Lunars and leave most of his deeds out of it.

It's like making an RPG around King Solomon, but with only Song of Songs, a rabbi's blog where he mentions him in relation to something entirely different, an Encyclopedia Britannica entry and just to confuse you, a copy of Key of Solomon and a early 90s episode of Adventures in Odyssey (A childrens oriented evangelical Christian scifi-ish radio drama) that mentions King Solomon a lot. Meaning: You can get an image of him...kind of, understand what he did...kind of, but you're doing so through a pile of media and everyone who decides to take the plunge is coming out with a bunch of contradicting viewpoints. One person will end up wanting to be him, most people will be confused, one will just be sad that the comic is dead, and one person will decide its their quest to get Ralzakark to rule Dragon pass and wants to become a servant of evil Unicorn dad. All of Glorantha writing can get a bit like that, but Argrath is that way with extreme enhancement.

He's both too central to things in the era of RQ:G but also because of the nature of Glorantha's writing, hard to get any kind of grasp on.

Maybe its my failings as a GM but I think its not that he's from a different game than a roleplaying game, he's someone else's character from a decade or more long roleplaying game, in a campaign that wasn't yours.

Edited October 18, 2022 by Madrona