Religion, Satire, and MGF

[Jeff]

4 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

Ah, I hadn't seen that (until tonight). But that's not surprising, given your link is only a couple of days old.

Another retconn... awesome 🙄

I think most of us on here remember when it quite loudly and proudly proclaimed (not all that long ago) that only about 20% of an adult population were cult Initiates, and the rest Lay Members... (except in Sartar  https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/cult-membership-in-sartar/).

 

Either way, it doesn't answer the question. Does your idea of religious practice in Glorantha also apply to Lay Members?

 

So you are complaining that I have further refined my notes from "about half" to about 60-66% is another retcon? Now in published materials I have deliberately kept that question open as long as possible so we could really look carefully at it, but now how dare I change my working assumptions to any extent? Or maybe the answer is I should not share any of my working materials (especially here)?

 

[Scotty]

Please remember:

• If you want to complain about Jeff's notes, please take it elsewhere.
• Before posting, please pay attention to the tone of your posts, this is a public forum.
• Rudeness will not be tolerated.

 

[Bill the barbarian]

On 5/5/2023 at 4:21 AM, soltakss said:

A Chalana Arroy cultist would not hurt the wolf, if they followed the cult ideals. Instead they could put themselves in the way of the wolf, to allow the child to escape, or they could make a lot of noise to scare away the wolf, or call for help against the wolf. However, attacking the wolf in physical combat is not the way of the Chalana Arroy cult. Seven Mothers or Xiola Umbar cultists would happily attack the wolf, as they are different types of Healer.

nice!

[Shiningbrow]

1 hour ago, Jeff said:

So you are complaining that I have further refined my notes from "about half" to about 60-66% is another retcon? Now in published materials I have deliberately kept that question open as long as possible so we could really look carefully at it, but now how dare I change my working assumptions to any extent? Or maybe the answer is I should not share any of my working materials (especially here)?

 

No! If you'd read past the emoji, you would have noticed that...

I was complaining that you'd changed the approximately 20% initiation rates (except in Sartar) to now at about 65% (across the whole lozenge), and that now "Most to all adults are initiates of a cult, regardless of culture,... Just about every Gloranthan culture defines adulthood as initiation into a cult... This is true for just about every human culture – Orlanthi, Pelorian, Lunar, Malkioni, Praxian, etc."

This is a HUGE change (aka, 'retconn') from what's been written earlier (including by yourself in these forums)... and this directly affects the thread we're discussing (as now, 65% or higher practice religion differently to Earth, not 20%). That is the retconn I'm referring to.

It also makes a pretty big change to the way the 'typical' Gloranthan views themselves in the world ("typically" formerly meant 'lay member'... now it's not). It may even impact the way initiates view themselves in the world in relation to the gods... how lenient are the priests? Other than paying tithes and showing up to the big celebrations, do they care what you do? 

"As another aside, I figure most initiates only make the single POW sacrifice and don’t continue going much deeper into the cult mysteries. They are likely concerned about other things like work, relaxation, sex, family, more work, avoiding work, feeding the chickens, etc."

Sounds pretty Earthlike, and it does make me wonder whether Gloranthans really do feel 'connected' to their gods in such a way as to have the need to emulate them. I like the old HW term 'devotees', as it feels more descriptive... but then, 'initiate' - in lacking that feeling - may be more appropriate for the majority of Gloranthans....

[Eff]

1 hour ago, Shiningbrow said:

Either way, it doesn't answer the question. Does your idea of religious practice in Glorantha also apply to Lay Members?

 

Well, my idea of religious practice in Glorantha, or rather my analysis of what has been said about it, (as opposed to how I might synthesize the various ideas that have appeared across Gloranthan writings of various stripes across various decades) is that the laity have a relationship much more in the line of do ut des, but that this transactional relationship with the divine Other is also one that doesn't have the capacity to affect the world beyond human abilities. You can get battle magic/spirit magic, but those are from the mortal aspects of the cult as an organization and have been such since 1978, where Rune Priests could invent new Battle Magic spells entirely on their own.

And one way in which I might engage in my own personal synthesis would be to question whether this "really" is the case, and perhaps rethink the context of rune cults and initiation and cult membership and so on.

[Jeff]

28 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

No! If you'd read past the emoji, you would have noticed that...

I was complaining that you'd changed the approximately 20% initiation rates (except in Sartar) to now at about 65% (across the whole lozenge), and that now "Most to all adults are initiates of a cult, regardless of culture,... Just about every Gloranthan culture defines adulthood as initiation into a cult... This is true for just about every human culture – Orlanthi, Pelorian, Lunar, Malkioni, Praxian, etc."

Perhaps you should read what you linked to? Let me quote it again:

"There are about 170k people in Sartar (including the Far Point but not the Pol-Joni). 

Let’s assume a little over half are initiated adults. That gets us 90k cultists."

Now my updated figures have the number of initiated adults in Sartar at 115k, which is a little higher, but not much of a change.

I have no idea where you are getting you 20% initiation rates from. What RuneQuest publication are you referring to? I am pretty sure the Guide and the Sourcebook are completely silent on such matters.

 

 

[svensson]

4 hours ago, Jeff said:

Perhaps you should read what you linked to? Let me quote it again:

"There are about 170k people in Sartar (including the Far Point but not the Pol-Joni). 

Let’s assume a little over half are initiated adults. That gets us 90k cultists."

Now my updated figures have the number of initiated adults in Sartar at 115k, which is a little higher, but not much of a change.

I have no idea where you are getting you 20% initiation rates from. What RuneQuest publication are you referring to? I am pretty sure the Guide and the Sourcebook are completely silent on such matters.

 

 

It was always my impression that initiation into an approved cult was a requirement for adulthood in Orlanthi tribes. This is supported by the RQG character generation rules.

So, are we reverting to the RQ2 situation where initiation is earned in play?

[mfbrandi]

21 minutes ago, svensson said:

It was always my impression that initiation into an approved cult was a requirement for adulthood in Orlanthi tribes.

I guess it depends what proportion of the population is children — assuming they are included in the 170,000. If a big chunk is the kids, then the % of adults who are initiates shoots right up: half the population is initiated adults, not half the adults are initiates, right?

(As always, I may be completely wrong.)

———————————
EDIT:

As a general rule about 66% of any listed Gloranthan population are adults and about 33% are children. Compare that to the modern US where only about 18% are under 15. I am really not interested in going more granular than that. — WoD

Edited May 6, 2023 by mfbrandi
added Jeff quote

[Squaredeal Sten]

On 5/5/2023 at 5:21 AM, soltakss said:

A Chalana Arroy cultist would not hurt the wolf, if they followed the cult ideals. Instead they could put themselves in the way of the wolf, to allow the child to escape, or they could make a lot of noise to scare away the wolf, or call for help against the wolf. However, attacking the wolf in physical combat is not the way of the Chalana Arroy cult. Seven Mothers or Xiola Umbar cultists would happily attack the wolf, as they are different types of Healer.

Aside from the new issue of whether Befuddle works on beings with no INT stat, Let's assume for the sake of argument that this CA doesn"t know Befuddle or Sleep or any other specific spell, or that the POW vs. POW fails.  My point is and was  the morality, not the magic and the die rolls.

Edited May 6, 2023 by Squaredeal Sten
typing

[Joerg]

On 5/4/2023 at 9:57 PM, Eff said:

Yes. To be quite specific, I am talking about the ways in which Gloranthan theistic worship is defined to primarily involve psychological sympathy with the deity being worshiped,

I would have thought that sympathy is too weak to describe the identification/impersonation of the deity when casting rune magic or going through a conventional heroquest, whether the This Side passion play with mythical overlay or the complete cross-over into the Hero Plane (or the Outer Worlds).

The initiate attaches a piece of their soul to their deity, allowing the deity to manifest in the initiate when casting the Rune Magic. At the very least, it is not "I cast Lightning" but "we cast Lightning", with the caster and Orlanth making up the we.

 

On 5/4/2023 at 9:57 PM, Eff said:

which is most explicit in Runequest: Roleplaying in Glorantha (2018) where Runes define personality characteristics

The runic make-up of a person causes certain physique and behavior. That's little different from saying that in our world differences in brain chemistry and hormonal balance cause different moods or predilections, possibly all the way to gender identity.

 

On 5/4/2023 at 9:57 PM, Eff said:

and also must be at a certain quantity to allow worship of a particular god in a particular cult,

Careful with the terminology: you can worship any deity, regardless of how compatible your runic make-up is with theirs. This is about initiation, about creating the soul-link to that deity (and that deity's promise of afterlife, at least for this chunk of your composite soul) via the toolkit of the cult (rather than say direct mystical exposure to the deity, or direct exposure on heroquests).

Here we are getting into game mechanics vs. in-world observations. The less compatible your runic make-up is with the deity whose magic you are invoking, the less likely the effect will take place. (Although this opens a different bag of worms for users of rune spells acquired through Issaries' Spell Trading. The rationale seems to be that it is the original caster who made the identification, putting the spell into some kind of delayed release state to be triggered by the recipient of the trade. In other words, a deity in a box, or out of 1a machine.)

 

On 5/4/2023 at 9:57 PM, Eff said:

but which is also present in explicit form in Heroquest Glorantha (2015) and has implicit expression throughout previous texts through the notion of "heroforming".

I understood Heroforming to have been supposed to be rune magic on steroids, pulling the hero plane onto the person heroforming, beyond the limited/well-defined effects of "conventional" rune magic.

 

On 5/4/2023 at 9:57 PM, Eff said:

And that phenomenon is what separates Gloranthan religion from that of Classical Antiquity, from that of Mesopotamia and and the Levant in the Bronze Age, from that of Egypt's Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms, from that of Zhou, Warring States, Qin, and Han China, from that of Vedic India and of "Second Urbanization" India, from that of Classical Mayan civilization and that of Teotihuacan, insofar as we can know anything about the religions of those places and times.

Except for those people who became the living avatars of their deities. We find this in contemporary religions, e.g in Shinto or in Hinduism, where individuals are possessing/possessed by divine traits, being the deities while also living a life as humans. Apparently a similar thought process was applied to say the twin girls serving Apis (whose stepfather absconded with the capital they had accumulated as retirement funds for when they reached maturity and the sacred bull they had accompanied their entire young life was sacrificed and mummified, to be followed by a new bull calf and its twin girl care-takers).

 

On 5/4/2023 at 9:57 PM, Eff said:

Because the emphasis is on actions. The proper performance of rituals. The concepts of dharma and rta, of ma'at. When Inanna returns from the underworld, it is because of the proper performance of the actions of mourning by Ninshubur, and Dumuzid's failure to perform these actions is why he is taken to the underworld in Inanna's place (in the version that has entered pop culture). Gloranthans may engage in rituals similar on their surface to ones performed by people in historical antiquity. But so does a modern slaughterhouse, along a different axis. The ideological basis for these rituals matters, and for Gloranthans, the rituals are related to their psychological overlap with their god, which is entirely inconsistent with the archaeological and textual evidence in the real world, which is strongly suggestive of the idea that rituals were related to the distance between gods and people- they must be performed exactly because there is a substantial Otherness to the gods and we cannot communicate a need for flexibility reliably. 

I sort of agree. Julius Caesar could act as the Pontifex Maximus, correctly presiding over the rites, without any apparent attachment or sympathy to the deities he was supposed to connect with. Sincerity did not matter, keeping the form did. Pretty much how the Malkioni sorcerers approach deities, isn't it?

 

5 hours ago, Eff said:

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/a-few-rules-of-thumb/

So within the current incarnation of official Glorantha, the overwhelming majority of people are initiates to a single cult. That is how religion is intended to work in the setting now. That is what I am talking about.

That has been the status quo since RuneQuest first dealt with rune magic in Glorantha. Anything earlier put into rules was regimental scale magics as in White Bear and Red Moon, or interaction with spirits independent from the magicians, or the tribal shamans from Nomad Gods whose fetches were extensions of their spirits. (Orlanth is only mentioned once as "the Storm God" in the description of the Sartar Magical Union, claiming that the most powerful magicians in that organization "were relatives of the Storm God, who had headed the local pantheon since Sartar first came." In fact we learn about the Storm Bull in much more detail than Orlanth before the publication of RuneQuest second edition, which had the Cult of Orlanth as one of three sample cults, alongside Kyger Litor and Black Fang.)

Of Greg's earlier Gloranthan heroes, it seems that Jonat Bigbear came the closest to the Theist mindset, with henotheist Serpent King Seshnela a runner-up. I haven't read Jonat's Saga. The Dawn century material on Seshnela has men-of-all encountering divine entities on their questing, priests contacting the deities to call up their essential magics (with Pendali demigod shamans or witches called sorcerers too, and not that clear a distinction between their bargains and the spell-carried ones of the sorcerers). There are priestesses of Seshna Likita who preside over unfathomable rites (and who mother the next serpent kings on their twin brothers). There are plenty demigods, including the two founders of the Serpent King lineages (Ylram and Sonmalos), Damol the great-grand-son of Froalar (himself a great-grandson of Aerlit and Warera through both his twin parents) via Fenela, and son of Aerlit, hence half-brother to Malkion even though he was a stout pagan, and the three Basmoli sorcerers opposing Ylream and his heirs, children of Basmol and a great-granddaughter of Pendal Basmolsson.

What there is not (yet) is rune magic in the Theyalan style, the stuff of RuneQuest (since its first rather abstract incarnation in RuneQuest 1st edition as Rune Power 1, 2 and 3).

 

We have learned rather recently about Greg's actual design demands for magic in RuneQuest in the Stafford House Campaign collection of old APAZine articles. The relevant passage is in the first of these, available as free preview from the pdf, go and read that. But that was still just how the magic is to come out in a roleplaying context, in a way different from Vancian spell-casting as realized by TSR, and not about how this magic affects religion. That came with Cults of Prax and the introduction of the Long Cult Write-up, one of the sacred grails of RuneQuest (about to hit us a hundred-fold with the cults books). Here we learn about the effects of cult membership on the afterlife of cultists. Prior to that, we knew about Ancestor Worship among the Praxians, with the Ancestors manifesting as a magical/divine unit to aid their descendants, as the only form of afterlife anybody had described. Yes, Etnilrist and his troop had been to Hell and Back, but they had mainly encountered demons, not dead people.

[Rob Darvall]

13 hours ago, DrGoth said:

Or put the wolf  to sleep. Pacifist healer soothing the savage beast and all. I was about to add befuddle. But befuddle talks about the subject using INT to overcome the effects. Does that mean the wolf couldn't shake it off or it couldn't be cast on it in the first place?  I'm guessing the former but...

Is there a "sooth the savage beast " spell?

If not my Glorantha now has a couple.  CA has a straight cha based one and Donandar gets a musical one.

[French Desperate WindChild]

7 hours ago, svensson said:

It was always my impression that initiation into an approved cult was a requirement for adulthood in Orlanthi tribes.

same for me but I remember that I saw some discussions here about the number, years ago. So not so "clear" 🙂

 

 

7 hours ago, svensson said:

This is supported by the RQG character generation rules.

That's not, in my opinion, a good argument : RQG generation rules are here to generate players characters, not standard people generation. For example. I am not sure that a standard professional guard has 90% in 2-3 combat skills. It should, if created with the rules.

A lot of endless debate are based on this assumption (generation rules drive all glorantha  generation) but if we consider the rules are here to create and play those who will become hero (or maybe Hero depending on the party, GM included), everything could be designed to be balanced for the pleasure of each table (so not the same balance everywhere)

 

[Rodney Dangerduck]

My strong belief is that most adults will gladly initiate for 1 POW, if only to get Heal Wound, since that pretty much covers catastrophic health care.  Maybe that's cause I'm American and feel the lack of that IRL. 

Not to mention D.I. and a better mystic connection to their clan and god.  They need not have 3 rune points or skills near 90% - the character creation rules are for PCs.

[mfbrandi]

9 hours ago, Joerg said:

I would have thought that sympathy is too weak to describe the identification/impersonation of the deity when casting rune magic … allowing the deity to manifest in the initiate when casting the Rune Magic. At the very least, it is not “I cast Lightning” but “we cast Lightning”, with the caster and Orlanth making up the we.

With the usual caveat — should go without saying by now — about this being kite-flying rather than careful argument or tablets brought down from the mountain, isn’t this one tendency in the description of what’s going on?

• a powerful god has little if any free will — they are just a stereotype on a loop repeating mythic actions, not in the past but off sideways somewhere;
• that is, they are more a resource than a person (in which respect, theistic magic resembles sorcery);
• in casting a rune spell, the god’s power is manifest through the caster;
• in casting a rune spell, the magician/worshipper in effect performs an action from the god’s myths (though perhaps to a different end, with a different target);
• in summary: god’s power, caster’s will — this is good for player agency (and PC autonomy).

In contrast with this, but — IMHO — also present:

• gods have personalities, agendas, and free will; they can plan, decide, and change their minds — gods are people;
• gods fight proxy wars through mortals;
• initiates and above have some kind of buy-in to their god’s agenda: either they really believe in the god’s mission, or they have done a deal with the “devil” for power;
• gods seen this way have an interest in promoting certain attitudes and beliefs about right conduct in their worshippers — it makes the mortals better tools, more tractable.

If there is anything in this second way of looking at the matter, what happens when a rune spell is cast? We can still say the god’s power is present, but whose will is manifest, the god’s or the caster’s? We could go either way, but how is the game set up? For example, does the GM take over whenever a rune spell is cast and direct the divine power according to the god’s will — not the player’s or the PC’s? If we don’t do it that way, do we have an explanation of how the player’s will is nonetheless the god’s, not the PC’s?

Of course, we could say that the god would direct the divine power if it could, but the deal it did with its worshipper makes that impossible — the power has already been lent, the caster’s will must direct it: the tail is wagging the god; it is the god who made a devil’s bargain, not the PC — but that will colour how we understand “identification/impersonation”, and if the gods were limited to proxy action (about which I express no opinion), perhaps that might threaten to collapse the second perspective into the first?

To use a quaint old idiom, who wears the trousers, worshipper or deity?

Of course, if the players can be persuaded to make their characters assume the aims, values, and personalities of those characters’ gods, then the question is less pressing (but we have less Elric/Arioch/Stormbringer argy-bargy). But then mightn’t the story end up telling the players, rather than the other way about?

[DrGoth]

20 hours ago, Jeff said:

Rather than look at this in the abstract, I recommend just taking a few examples to see how this works in practice. Take our average peasant in Darjiin. He's an initiate of Lodril (which has Oria, Oslira, Yelm, etc. as associated cults). He is a lay member of the Red Emperor, and likely the Seven Mothers as well. Maybe he is a lay member of SurEnslib as well (keep on the good side of those Bird Women!).

Or let's go to Esrolia, where our character is an initiate of Ernalda (which has a whole host of cults as associates). She's also a lay member of Dormal and Issaries (she sailed between Nochet and Handra Liv on several occasions).  

Honestly, I thought this is how it always was - not a change.  Personally (my Glorantha) I'd lean towards the all, not the most. Adulthood = initiation. Sure, you can be lay members of other cults. That wasn't news to me either.  But it is good to have it confirmed if it was a question.

It makes sense that a lot of people would be lay members.  Initiates of smaller cults might be lay members of larger ones so they can take some part in the big ceremonies.  Vice-versa for the occasional usefulness.  "Yes, none of us are Issaries initiates but Djim here is a lay member.  So we can totally trade here, right?"

Edited May 7, 2023 by DrGoth

[French Desperate WindChild]

4 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

To use a quaint old idiom, who wears the trousers, worshipper or deity?

that is the good question. I don't know what / if there / is the canonical position there. In fact I even don't know if canonicaly the god are really conscious or just runes (myths and other things being only mundane "worshippers" imagination in that case)

 

Now in my glorantha(s) :

Deities existed before mortal and still exist in 1625...  After the big event, it depends on my glorantha(s) but this time is not a playing period for me

Deities are, decide, answer and act. The only issues they have are :

G1) because compromise, they cannot act directly in mundane world, they need "gates", gates are worshippers

G2) because time is not the same that before, they cannot change, they are what they were; so unable to imagine anything new (for them), no new strategy, no new relationships. So if a worshipper "adds" a power to his deity, it is just that no worshipper before him knew that the deity "always" has this power (some would say the worshipper has discovered a myth).

In my gloranthas, G2 could be seen as a "trick", a side effect of the compromise not discussed when they agreed, when G1 is what was the decision

 

Then mortals (or more precisely mundane indigenous) are, decide, answer, and act.

The only issues they have are :

M1) because compromise, they cannot expect their god to protect them without "opening the gate" (aka worship, cast spell or prey, etc...) So they must act if they want to see their gods actions (Will you see the rain next see season if you don't worship and renact themyths during sacred time ?)

M2) because their gods think, decide, etc.. and are not machine/rune (in my gloranthas, again) they must "convince" their gods that what they want to do fits with G2. So casting a spell (game design) is a nonsense from my glorantha perspective (of course the player "cast" the spell, but the character asks the god to act through the character-gate.

 

Now, does it fit with the notions discussed here, with bronze age religions, is it transactional or not, I don't know, I unfortunatly don't have enough culture and knowledge to agree or disagree with the arguments proposed 🙂

The only thing I m certain is if I were a god, that is certainly not my worshippers who could decide for me 😛

[Akhôrahil]

16 hours ago, Joerg said:

 In fact we learn about the Storm Bull in much more detail than Orlanth before the publication of RuneQuest second edition, which had the Cult of Orlanth as one of three sample cults, alongside Kyger Litor and Black Fang.)

Same sample cults in 1st edition, although the Orlanth cult is just half a page there because it doesn't yet have any cult structure.

[Jeff]

19 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

I guess it depends what proportion of the population is children — assuming they are included in the 170,000. If a big chunk is the kids, then the % of adults who are initiates shoots right up: half the population is initiated adults, not half the adults are initiates, right?

(As always, I may be completely wrong.)

———————————
EDIT:

As a general rule about 66% of any listed Gloranthan population are adults and about 33% are children. Compare that to the modern US where only about 18% are under 15. I am really not interested in going more granular than that. — WoD

I used to assume as a short-hand that half the population of any given human Gloranthan community were adults, the other half uninitiated children. I've refined that somewhat, and now assume that about 60-66% of any given human Gloranthan community are adults, the rest uninitiated children. 

Now the reason for that comes down to lower children mortality, longer lifespan, and also that in most Gloranthan communities adulthood initiation takes place at around 14-17 years old. This ends up with the adult being initiated into a RuneQuest, although the full process might take several years.

[Joerg]

3 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

Same sample cults in 1st edition, although the Orlanth cult is just half a page there because it doesn't yet have any cult structure.

Yes, I failed to find it where I remembered RQ2 to have it. Cult structure or at least cult roles are generalized, earlier in the chapter. The cult comes rather late, after the rules for shamans, and my pdf is not searchable (yet).

But I was speaking of the mythology of the Storm Bull, which is in quite glorious detail in the Nomad Gods rules, at least a year before RuneQuest was first published. Wyrm's Footnotes arrived at the Storm pantheon rather late with the Gods and Goddesses series (now reprinted in the Sourcebook). The name Orlanth fails to show up in the board games.

 

9 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

• a powerful god has little if any free will — they are just a stereotype on a loop repeating mythic actions, not in the past but off sideways somewhere;
• that is, they are more a resource than a person (in which respect, theistic magic resembles sorcery);
• in casting a rune spell, the god’s power is manifest through the caster;
• in casting a rune spell, the magician/worshipper in effect performs an action from the god’s myths (though perhaps to a different end, with a different target);
• in summary: god’s power, caster’s will — this is good for player agency (and PC autonomy).

While a deity may have little if any free will, they will have an agenda defined by their myths in Godtime, and a nature. Elemental deities have physical representations in the Middle World (or nearby, like the Sky World). The deity is as much a resource as they can be an obstacle.

A certain personhood of deities seems to be acknowledged even by the Brithini philosophers, who talk about the False Gods (false or fallen Erasanchula, according to Zzabur's unpronounceable technical terms) as misguided powerful rune people.

And yes, the application of the god's power is subject to the caster's will (and ability/affinity). Using runic identification as the trigger has lowered the casting chance for Rune Magic again (surefire in RQ2 IIRC, 95% success in RQ3, rune rating in RQG).

 

[DrGoth]

On 5/7/2023 at 8:01 PM, mfbrandi said:

To use a quaint old idiom, who wears the trousers, worshipper or deity?

I don't think it's cut and dried.  To take a couple of examples.  the worshipper decides when to cast the rune spell.  The deity decides whether or not to answer the DI request.  At least, if you take the random dice roll to be simulating the inscrutableness of the God's purpose. I refuse to believe it is purely random. Divinations are also ways for the God's to make their wishes known.  How they answer is up to them.

From what I can understand, the god's are more than ciphers. Look at Castle Blue, and the way it's described.  When the compromise is threatened or bent, all bets are off and they can act.  IN the Compromise they willingly gave up their freedom, but they can get it back.

Of course, Glorantha is never that simple (something I love about it). Because the western view of the gods are merely the way simpletons (i.e., theists) understand impersonal forces is also true.  Does that make the gods both the wearer and the trousers?  Did I just ask a Nysalorean riddle?

[Shiningbrow]

On 5/7/2023 at 7:52 PM, DrGoth said:

Honestly, I thought this is how it always was - not a change. 

Except....

In the past, Sartar had been stated (by "official" sources) to have somewhat higher rates of initiates than in most other places on the lozenge, due to the Lunar invasion and subsequent resistance. Those numbers, IIRC, were around the 50-65% mark. So, if that's for Sartar, then obviously for the rest of the lozenge, initiation rates would have been... what, 20-30%?? (taking "somewhat higher" as meaning something, and not lip service to mean only a small discrepancy... although, if Sartar was at 65%, then 40% becomes a valid amount as well).

Add to that the fact that in RQ1/2, it wasn't easy to become an initiate (although, the term 'Lay Member' wasn't even used), and it was something that players had to work their characters towards. And then, the benefits of being a mere initiate weren't as great as in RQG. Therefore, it makes sense that there would be a lower rate of initiation happening in earlier iterations of the game, and higher 'Lay Membership'. (although, that also presumes that the rules for players is the same for NPCs - which is something that usually isn't the case, however it's usually easier for PCs, not harder!)

RQ3 finally introduced the idea that if the PC's parents were Initiates, then the PC could automatically join. But, it also says for Initiates, "the commitment usually involves substantial investment of time, effort, Power, money , and emotion". Taken at face value, that too would indicate low levels of initiation into any cults, and again because of the lack of obvious benefits - compared to the tithes and time - for the majority of the population - sure, you can DI, and you get a few skills, and you can get One-use Divine spells... but I don't think that the majority of adults in a culture would do that...

Here's one link discussing it -

There were others I found as well, but not finding now. Unfortunately, the links to old WoD or other official sources are now dead, so those posts are... well, somewhere, and I'm not going to go looking for them.

 

On 5/7/2023 at 2:11 PM, Rodney Dangerduck said:

My strong belief is that most adults will gladly initiate for 1 POW, if only to get Heal Wound, since that pretty much covers catastrophic health care.  Maybe that's cause I'm American and feel the lack of that IRL. 

Not to mention D.I. and a better mystic connection to their clan and god.  They need not have 3 rune points or skills near 90% - the character creation rules are for PCs.

The thing about this is (from my perspective), why would an Initiate who has already sacrificed 1 point of POW not continue to build up their RPs? Especially since they will, on average, increase their POW by 1 point per year (average of 11x5% at two times of the year... x1D3-1), and they shouldn't be all expected to drop POW to the local Wyter (given the likely hundreds of initiates around to do that). So, I would expect a build-up of RPs of around 1 point every 3 years... and with that, a new special Rune Spell (unless we're changing the rules for PCs and NPCs for this as well - and if we are, then all bets are off, because anything we write here will be completely meaningless).

If you're expected to show up at the big ceremonies, and you're expected to help defend the steads/villages/towns etc., and you're expected to be able to look after yourself and your land, and you're expected to emulate your deity, then I would expect that you'd also make yourself more capable of doing that. It would be slacking off your duty to the community and your family not to (especially given the minimal time and effort required for it).

[mfbrandi]

34 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

in RQ1/2, it wasn't easy to become an initiate (although, the term 'Lay Member' wasn't even used)

Are you sure? See for example the Orlanth write-up in RQ2 (p. 73 in the Classic Edition PDF; p. 68 in 1970s’ paper copy).

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, DrGoth said:

Does that make the gods both the wearer and the trousers?  Did I just ask a Nysalorean riddle?

That is two, surely. Ask me another, O Illuminated One, for I would learn.

[soltakss]

2 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Add to that the fact that in RQ1/2, it wasn't easy to become an initiate (although, the term 'Lay Member' wasn't even used)

I am not sure about RQ1, but RQ2 definitely had Lay Members in Cults of Prax.

 

[Lordabdul]

On 5/7/2023 at 9:47 AM, Jeff said:

I used to assume as a short-hand that half the population of any given human Gloranthan community were adults, the other half uninitiated children. I've refined that somewhat, and now assume that about 60-66% of any given human Gloranthan community are adults, the rest uninitiated children. 

Now the reason for that comes down to lower children mortality, longer lifespan, and also that in most Gloranthan communities adulthood initiation takes place at around 14-17 years old. This ends up with the adult being initiated into a RuneQuest, although the full process might take several years.

For people making spreadsheets like me, this point about ~2/3rd of the population being adults is worth noting, especially since I did spot this change of statistics between the HQG Red Cow books, the RQG Gamemaster Adventures book, and the many clan statistics that Jeff kindly shared (archived on the Well of Daliath) as a sneak peek into the Sartar Homeland book. I've been using this ~60-something% of adults in my world-building for the past couple years.

There are a couple other things to consider, which may or may not be "canon" but make sense to me:

- Different clans and tribes might have different percentages of adults/children based on how they survived the Great Winter (aka the Windstop) and the Lunar occupation. If you used a 50% stat, congrats, you can add a sub-plot of many children having died during the Great Winter, and how that affects the community. Or, you know, just handwave it. The extra 10% of kids were grounded.

- Becoming an adult is only one step in someone's life. Children get initiated into adulthood between 14 and 17 years old, but then they undergo 2 years (sometimes 3) of apprenticeship with a cult. Maybe they stay in their village to work at the local Orlanth temple, maybe live in the city in the bigger Orlanth temple, or maybe they move away to Jonstown to be a junior scribe at the Lhankor Mhy temple. Either way, in my Glorantha, these young adults learn the cult's skills and spirit magic during that time, and then they become initiate of the cult. So not all adults are initiated into a cult yet IMHO.

Edited May 8, 2023 by Lordabdul