Munchkin Learners

[Zac]

Perhaps it is just me, but whenever I read anything about the God Learners I always think that Greg was using them as a metaphor for RPG power gamers. They learn the system and then start to take advantage of the rules to create monstrosities that are so bad that the rest of the party has to kill them so they can enjoy the game again. 

[g33k]

I think there's some of that.
But also, I think there's quite a bit of Greg having done a 180 on Campbell's "Monomyth" approach.

It's Greg saying, "here's how you have an interesting insight, and run with it too far.  Here's how you be so right... and yet so very, very wrong."

[JRE]

In my interpretation, and I only talked with Greg a couple of times in the 90s, rather than powergamers in general, they represent the people that confuse the map with the territory, so they believe that because they have a rulebook everything is explained and fixed, and anything with stats can be killed or controlled. His Glorantha, so by definition I suppose Chaosium's Glorantha is much more than the RQ rules. But they also fill nicely the age of empires and how the west is much weaker now than it was after Arkat, because the rulebook was true for a while, and then, though a good aproximation, it is not. 

I am a god learner wannabe, as I prefer RQ to the "anti-godlearnerism" HW and HQ, but now we are once again with an official Chaosium RQ book, and we ask for even more detailed maps, and still take them for the whole territory.

[mfbrandi]

Of course, one could see the Godlearners as good Marxists:

• The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways.
  The point, however, is to change it.
  ― Eleven Theses on Feuerbach

Ah, but the force of reaction is strong with Glorantha!

[Darius West]

On 10/1/2023 at 1:37 AM, Zac said:

Perhaps it is just me, but whenever I read anything about the God Learners I always think that Greg was using them as a metaphor for RPG power gamers. They learn the system and then start to take advantage of the rules to create monstrosities that are so bad that the rest of the party has to kill them so they can enjoy the game again. 

The RuneQuest Sight of the God Learners was access to the Sharp Abiding Book, otherwise known as the Core Rules and Rules Supplements of RQ.

[EricW]

"The Sorcerers Apprentice" is a good template for players who insist on power gaming. IMO things mostly go wrong in games with power gamers if the game masters facilitate the abuse.

If people start tampering with things they shouldn't, they should start accruing severe consequences.

How will this manifest? Pretty much the same consequences as PCs who rob and murder everyone they encounter.

So for example, if a theist picks up a book of sorcery, they should suffer spirits of retribution.

If they become illuminated so they can abuse the rules (assuming the GM is kind enough to allow this), there will be witnesses to every abuse, who will spread the word the PC is a trafficker in forbidden arts. Even if they aren't illuminated, dabbling in strange magic would raise serious questions about their conduct. 

PCs will start accumulating enemies who make it their businesses to make life difficult - steadily worsening encounters. If they actually are illuminated, Lunars will try to convince them or coerce them into helping. If they refuse, Lunars will consider them occluded, and demote them from possible ally to chaos cannon fodder - the Lunars will ruthlessly blackmail and coerce the PCs into doing their bidding.

Sorcery schools with a strong ethic about heresy might send investigators to see who has stolen their secret knowledge.

Dwarves may react badly if the PCs have a reputation for sorcery, seeing the PCs as a defective components and knowledge thieves. Stormbulls or Zorak Zoran worshippers may challenge the PCs based on whatever wild rumours they have heard.

Every encounter where the PC uses their illicit or forbidden power game skills will increase the attention they attract.  

As for hero quests - well they haven't behaved very well, have they? Arkat might have been able to manage experimental hero quests, where strange things happen because they are not a perfect fit for whichever entity they are playing - but will PCs be up for the challenge? 

Fun all round.

[mfbrandi]

2 hours ago, EricW said:

So for example, if a theist picks up a book of sorcery, they should suffer spirits of retribution.

 

• So Argrath gets to feed the gods to the Devil
  — and he then gets worshipped as a god himself?
   
• That’s right.
   
• But if my character picks up this book …
   
• Uh-huh.
   
• So can my character just lead the quiet life in a shack in the woods,
  questioning the nature of reality and raising decorative carp?
   
• Oh, no, that is much worse
  — then she will be lynched by the local Ku Klux Klan Storm Bulls.

😉

[Akhôrahil]

7 hours ago, EricW said:

So for example, if a theist picks up a book of sorcery, they should suffer spirits of retribution.

"Hey, catch!"
—Some trickster, tossing a book

[EricW]

11 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

 

• So Argrath gets to feed the gods to the Devil
  — and he then gets worshipped as a god himself?
   
• That’s right.
   
• But if my character picks up this book …
   
• Uh-huh.
   
• So can my character just lead the quiet life in a shack in the woods,
  questioning the nature of reality and raising decorative carp?
   
• Oh, no, that is much worse
  — then she will be lynched by the local Ku Klux Klan Storm Bulls.

😉

Argrath cheated 🙂

[mfbrandi]

On 9/30/2023 at 4:37 PM, Zac said:

Perhaps it is just me, but whenever I read anything about the God Learners I always think that Greg was using them as a metaphor for RPG power gamers.

Or as a metaphor for the British Empire, using empiricism and the industrial revolution to make life miserable for the rest of the world? The Jrusteli just had a magical industrial revolution. There’s still tea drinking and red-coated soldiers in the West, right?

[g33k]

11 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

...

— then she will be lynched by the local Ku Klux Klan Storm Bulls.
...

Given the resurgence of real-life white-supremicist / neo-nazi / alt-right groups over the past few years, I'm more than a little unhappy with explicitly casting one of the PC'able options explicitly as them.

I understand why you do so -- I think -- but IMHO it's better for us to work on differentiating SB's from KKK/etc, than to just see a first-glance similarity, and jump on that train to help shovel coal...

I'd hate for that crowd to come to Glorantha in droves because we're that sort of game.  That's already happened, a bit, with WHFRP (some of whose communities can get pretty vile). 

[EricW]

2 hours ago, g33k said:

Given the resurgence of real-life white-supremicist / neo-nazi / alt-right groups over the past few years, I'm more than a little unhappy with explicitly casting one of the PC'able options explicitly as them.

I understand why you do so -- I think -- but IMHO it's better for us to work on differentiating SB's from KKK/etc, than to just see a first-glance similarity, and jump on that train to help shovel coal...

I'd hate for that crowd to come to Glorantha in droves because we're that sort of game.  That's already happened, a bit, with WHFRP (some of whose communities can get pretty vile). 

I'm not convinced total sanitisation is the best solution - it can have the opposite effect.

I was once in a pub in London, this young guy started swinging off the back of my chair, so I turned it into a joke I said "Sorry darling, you're not my type".

A few minutes later I looked up, he'd glassed someone, smashed a beer glass into their forehead. They were both screaming, the victim was holding the aggressor's hands, because he couldn't see with all the blood streaming into his eyes, but it was very clear the aggressor had never been in a fight in his life. 

After they finished dancing I went up to the aggressor, who was still hanging around, and asked "aren't you worried about being arrested or something?" He said "No, I didn't do nothing wrong".

3 minutes later half a dozen flying squad police officers stormed in, grabbed the aggressor, and whisked him off. 

I was really confused about what I saw. I mean normally people over 18 know that if they have done something questionable and don't want to answer for what they did, they need to make themselves scarce. 

So I asked my school teacher cousin, she said she's seen it before. People who grow up totally sanitised school environments, no bullying, no schoolyard fights, no violence, who reach adulthood with absolutely no concept of real world consequences - and do something terrible, without realising they are likely to get into serious trouble. Because they've never been in serious trouble before in their life. The aggressor thought he could talk his way out of the problem with the police, because he had never been in serious trouble before, and he'd always been able to talk his way out. 

What I'm saying is I don't think you reduce violence by trying to sanitise every environment, even fantasy environments like Glorantha. What you produce is young adults who have no concept of consequences, who are capable of committing atrocious acts of violence, because they have no idea what they are doing is wrong. 

Edited October 3, 2023 by EricW

[mfbrandi]

13 hours ago, g33k said:

I understand why you do so — I think — but IMHO it's better for us to work on differentiating SB’s from KKK/etc

This is the dilemma as I see it:

• we have Gloranthan groups — possible PCs — who think even peaceful Chaos/illuminates must die
• we don’t want PCs to be evil

So we could try to make all the Chaotics and illuminates so shockingly bad that wiping them out seems justified, something we might even glory in. We tell a story about the out group that justifies our violence against them — just the sort of thing that the real-world bigots we all agree we dislike (and would like to see reformed) might try. Our excuse is that the Gloranthan out groups aren’t real, so we don’t have to feel bad about it: it is OK to invent monsters for the purpose of hating and slaughtering them. How convincing is that?

And what about the poor old GM? If we say that the person playing the bad guys must not enjoy it — else they are a crypto-fascist or worse — then they are going to have a miserable time.

Now I am not against Zorak Zoran opening an antique shop with Yelmalio and the Storm Bulls starting a quilting circle with the broos, but I don’t think I am going to talk everybody else around to that.

Think about the Iliad. Agamemnon, Odysseus, Achilles, Paris — they are all complete jerks, but do we think they are unplayable? If we are going to play games of bloodshed — which is absolutely not compulsory — then we should accept that PCs will commit acts of awful, unjustified, and even evil violence. I suspect that if evil is always the other, we will learn nothing. I am not convinced that pushing all the unjustified violence onto the NPCs achieves anything. And giving the PCs poor excuses for their unjustified violence seems worse: “they are bad, but at least they can tell themselves that they are not” (Shooty & Bang Bang). Of course, personally, I would rather play a pacifist Nysalorean or a cowardly scout dragonewt than a psychotic Storm Bull, but it wasn’t always so.

On the other hand, these things don’t always go very deep. I am pretty sure that it is not the case that players of WWII wargames are 50% Axis sympathisers.

I do appreciate your concern, though. In the first draft, the Storm Bulls were a biker gang, but that one seemed absolutely done to death … and a bit mean to bikers. I look forward to your post on how to make Storm Bulls non-evil. I know you think I am joking, but I am not.

All the best,

m

Edited October 4, 2023 by mfbrandi
added one ?

[g33k]

3 hours ago, EricW said:

I'm not convinced total sanitisation is the best solution - it can have the opposite effect.

...

I'm not saying "total sanitisation."

But isn't there even a little daylight between "Storm Bull must be totally sanitized (after all, that's what we've got the  Tame Bull  runespell for!)" vs. "Storm Bull is morally equivalent to the KKK" ... ?  I'm looking for some nuance, not the broad-brush "SB = KKK" schtick.

It's not that every Chaotic is automatically a monster; but (unlike with most racist attacks) neither is it the case that "Chaos" (broadly speaking) can reliably be presumed to be the innocent victim.

There is, after all, some very very good reasons to view Chaos with suspicion, and take a "best defense is a good offense" perspective (exhibit A, Scorpionmen; exhibit B, Broo; exhibit C, Gorp; exhibit D, IFWW (as many have experienced via Initiation-rites & other Heroquest-y events); etc etc etc).  And of course there is the infamous (and often, GM-favorite) Chaos Feature, "Appears Harmless."

Honestly, this plays pretty directly to the racist tropes -- heroic Hard Men making Hard Choices, and keeping our nation/neighborhood/people safe from The Never-Safe-to-Trust Chaotics who are coming to invade/murder/rape/etc (even if some of them are OK, as individuals... "Kill them all, Orlanth will know his own!").  You know there are some assholes out there who would eat that narrative for breakfast, and come to Glorantha specifically to play out that nasty fantasy.

Leaning on this proposed equivalence, accepting "SB=KKK" ... that looks to me like inviting the assholes in (because Storm Bull isn't going away as a PC option!).

So, nuance.  Like, they're only really that way after they slap on the Berserk runespell (but everybody's that way when they go berserk); before that, they can be reasoned-with, talked-down... "let's find out if this person (who Senses as Chaotic) is just the victim of Chaos... if you kill them, how will we find the source of the Chaos?  that would be like covering their trail, hiding the Chaos!!!" and "Some Chaos can be cured, let's let the Chalanna Arroy try a  Cure Chaos Wound  first, so we don't start a needless feud."
(and so on)

Storm Bulls are IMHO at least as well represented (if you want a modern likeness) as very-dangerous modern soldiers, veterans with PTSD who may become violent with little notice or noticable provocation.  Given the out-of-control nature of a Berserk runespell, I also note some similarities to substance-abuse (roids, crank, etc).
 

The other kindaglaringly obvious parallel, of course, is the old-school Paladin, AD&D1e, with their "Detect Evil".  It's hard to overlook the likeness (or the same-era origin), and how "always evil" Chaos is of a piece with the "always evil" races and that moral stench.

So, yeah.  There's problematic stuff there.

But (much as Broo are going Xenomorphic instead of their original rapey details) I think we're a lot better off to lean-in on the non-problem elements of the Uroxi; rehabilitation, not condemnation.  Because that stench  will  attract those maggots.

 

Edited October 4, 2023 by g33k
LG Palies

[g33k]

@mfbrandi -- I am, alas, out of time at the moment; your thoughtful response deserves a thoughtful response from me, and

2 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

... I look forward to your post on how to make Storm Bulls non-evil. I know you think I am joking, but I am not.

I absolutely believe you are serious.
I hope my longer reply above (to EricW) helps, in this regard...

But before I toddle off, I wanted to pull this one point of yours out from the rest, to dispute:

2 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

....

Think about the Iliad. Agamemnon, Odysseus, Achilles, Paris — they are all complete jerks, but do we think they are unplayable. If we are going to play games of bloodshed — which is absolutely not compulsory — then we should accept that PCs will commit acts of awful, unjustified, and even evil violence...

It's one thing to admit we play in the model of 3000-year-old mythological heroes, moral flaws and all.

It's a very different proposition to say that it's therefore OK to play current, living socio-political evils like racism & lynching as fun things to emulate in our games.

And by pointing to a popular PC cult in the lore, and say "These are the guys to play, when you wanna play racists lynching the Other" I fear you are inviting people with that attitude to come join the game.

Edited October 4, 2023 by g33k

[Joerg]

I think the solution is fairly simple: Nysalor is very likely to appear in the Lunar book rather than the Lords of Terror one. That still leaves the Lords of Terror a no-go area while making player character illumination a separate thing.

[mfbrandi]

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

That still leaves the Lords of Terror a no-go area

There goes my plan to play an odious tech bro Tongue of Krarsht with his human sacrifice-powered internet! 😉

[EricW]

On 10/4/2023 at 9:29 AM, g33k said:

I'm not saying "total sanitisation."

But isn't there even a little daylight between "Storm Bull must be totally sanitized (after all, that's what we've got the  Tame Bull  runespell for!)" vs. "Storm Bull is morally equivalent to the KKK" ... ?  I'm looking for some nuance, not the broad-brush "SB = KKK" schtick.

It's not that every Chaotic is automatically a monster; but (unlike with most racist attacks) neither is it the case that "Chaos" (broadly speaking) can reliably be presumed to be the innocent victim.

There is, after all, some very very good reasons to view Chaos with suspicion, and take a "best defense is a good offense" perspective (exhibit A, Scorpionmen; exhibit B, Broo; exhibit C, Gorp; exhibit D, IFWW (as many have experienced via Initiation-rites & other Heroquest-y events); etc etc etc).  And of course there is the infamous (and often, GM-favorite) Chaos Feature, "Appears Harmless."

Honestly, this plays pretty directly to the racist tropes -- heroic Hard Men making Hard Choices, and keeping our nation/neighborhood/people safe from The Never-Safe-to-Trust Chaotics who are coming to invade/murder/rape/etc (even if some of them are OK, as individuals... "Kill them all, Orlanth will know his own!").  You know there are some assholes out there who would eat that narrative for breakfast, and come to Glorantha specifically to play out that nasty fantasy.

Leaning on this proposed equivalence, accepting "SB=KKK" ... that looks to me like inviting the assholes in (because Storm Bull isn't going away as a PC option!).

So, nuance.  Like, they're only really that way after they slap on the Berserk runespell (but everybody's that way when they go berserk); before that, they can be reasoned-with, talked-down... "let's find out if this person (who Senses as Chaotic) is just the victim of Chaos... if you kill them, how will we find the source of the Chaos?  that would be like covering their trail, hiding the Chaos!!!" and "Some Chaos can be cured, let's let the Chalanna Arroy try a  Cure Chaos Wound  first, so we don't start a needless feud."
(and so on)

Storm Bulls are IMHO at least as well represented (if you want a modern likeness) as very-dangerous modern soldiers, veterans with PTSD who may become violent with little notice or noticable provocation.  Given the out-of-control nature of a Berserk runespell, I also note some similarities to substance-abuse (roids, crank, etc).
 

The other kindaglaringly obvious parallel, of course, is the old-school Paladin, AD&D1e, with their "Detect Evil".  It's hard to overlook the likeness (or the same-era origin), and how "always evil" Chaos is of a piece with the "always evil" races and that moral stench.

So, yeah.  There's problematic stuff there.

But (much as Broo are going Xenomorphic instead of their original rapey details) I think we're a lot better off to lean-in on the non-problem elements of the Uroxi; rehabilitation, not condemnation.  Because that stench  will  attract those maggots.

 

20 years ago we used to laugh when the party Storm Bull went berserk and did something absurd. Nobody equated such hilarity with anything the player was likely to do in real life, or thought of it as murdering real people. "Um I guess we should leave town...".

I'm a big guy, nasty temper. When I was younger, I could walk into a room full of white supremacists and not look out of place. I used to live in a place where I got into a fight pretty much every day at school, and more than once in adulthood. Come to think of it, I got into a fight last year - someone took exception to me telling him to go f*ck himself, when he started ranting at me for criticising and rejecting the vax. Backed down after he failed to land a punch.

Sometimes in the old days I hung out with people who'd done time, there was a place which did late beers and had a wild crowd, but people respected your space, mostly, and nobody tried to tell you what to do - except a couple of aboriginals who couldn't hold their beer, but mostly just shouted a lot when they lost it. Nobody minded, they were just doing their thing - they never got barred or anything, they just got kicked out when they got aggressive. People still get out of my way sometimes when I walk down the street.

I hardly ever played storm bulls or humakti or whatever - I got enough excitement in real life. My most enjoyable character was a weedy little trickster who much preferred pranking and deceiving people to killing them - the only reason he ever got 90% in a weapon skill is because he went on a heroquest. 

Glorantha is a game. 

Edited October 5, 2023 by EricW

[mfbrandi]

9 hours ago, g33k said:

"These are the guys to play, when you wanna play racists lynching the Other"

These things are always complicated. If some idiot member of the British royal family wants to dress as a Nazi, he doubtless has very bad reasons for doing it. If it is Bruno Ganz or Charlie Chaplin, it is probably fine.

I was in high school/secondary education in the late 1970s and early 1980s. My school had the misfortune to have the youth leader of the National Front and some kids in the British Movement. Some years after I had left, I paid a visit to one of my old teachers — a really lovely, gentle guy. We talked about how, although he wasn’t religious, he would still light Yahrzeit candles for his parents. To my surprise, he then spoke of his sympathy for one of the BM boys — the kid had had a hard time, was still capable of showing sensitivity, and was definitely redeemable, in my teacher’s estimation. This has always stuck with me as a reminder of how it doesn’t do for us to other the “champion otherers” we so easily write off. Call them monsters, if you like, but remember that the worst monsters are fully human — and with a little bad luck, we might have been as bad as them. (Perhaps we are, but just cannot see it.) “There but for the grace of God go I,” no?

[Ormi Phengaria]

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

Call them monsters, if you like, but remember that the worst monsters are fully human

Oh yes.

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

and with a little bad luck, we might have been as bad as them. (Perhaps we are, but just cannot see it.)

Oh. Oh no. This is the part where you cross the line from compassionate understanding which seeks to genuinely combat hate directly over to contrived apologia. Please resist doing so.

Edited October 4, 2023 by Ormi Phengaria

[mfbrandi]

5 minutes ago, Ormi Phengaria said:

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

and with a little bad luck, we might have been as bad as them. (Perhaps we are, but just cannot see it.)

Oh. Oh no. This is the part where you cross the line

Perhaps, I should have said, “With a little bad luck, I might have been as bad as them. (Perhaps I am, but just cannot see it.)”

I may be a pompous arse, but I don’t have it in me to insist that I am one of the good guys.

[g33k]

5 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

There goes my plan to play an odious tech bro Tongue of Krarsht with his human sacrifice-powered internet! 😉

This actually works very well with Gloranthan lore, you know.

Krarsht (working secretly (of course)) manages to hybridize Sedenya's Glowline/Glowspot magitech with Arachne Solara's "web" ...

[g33k]

18 hours ago, Joerg said:

I think the solution is fairly simple: Nysalor is very likely to appear in the Lunar book rather than the Lords of Terror one. That still leaves the Lords of Terror a no-go area while making player character illumination a separate thing.

This does not, IMO, address the very-uncomfortable analogy @mfbrandi is discussing, above:  Storm Bullies "auto-kill" mode for Chaos.

Even peaceful, inoffensive folk who have (through no fault of their own (just born that way)) some sort of "Chaos Taint."

 

[Joerg]

7 hours ago, g33k said:

This does not, IMO, address the very-uncomfortable analogy @mfbrandi is discussing, above:  Storm Bullies "auto-kill" mode for Chaos.

Even peaceful, inoffensive folk who have (through no fault of their own (just born that way)) some sort of "Chaos Taint."

Storm Bull's Sense Chaos is not directional, and neither that reliable. Do you see these berserks systematically isolating everybody they suspect of being the source of their Chaos headache, and then parade enough of their detectors past the isolated individual to see whether someone's sense gets tickled? And then there is a 2-3% chance that the Sense Chaos gets fumbled, and a false positive result keeps the subject under surveillance until the next false positive result occurs.

You also don't see Storm Bullies slaughtering every Telmori they encounter.

[Ali the Helering]

While there remains doubt that the abbot said these words – also paraphrased as "Kill them all; God will know His own", "Kill them all; God will sort his own", or "Kill them all and let God sort them out" – there is little if any doubt that these words captured the spirit of the assault,^[24] and that the Crusaders intended to slaughter the inhabitants

Quoting Wikipedia's article on the Massacre at Beziers.

I can easily see them working in the same manner, sadly.  Why bother waiting for confirmation when you can slaughter everyone and burn the village to the ground?