Does anyone else read/play this setting this way?

[Memestream]

I've been lurking around here for years now, but with substantially more fervor over the past few months, and figured that I may as well make my inaugural post one concerning my own Glorantha along with the explicit invitation to hear about how others interpret the setting, namely how magic looks, plays, and functions. It's very much going to risk running into the realm of a meandering ramble, but I feel like I may as well put it here as well as anywhere else. 

First off, I'll disclose that I was introduced to the setting via the King of Dragon Pass pc game(the original version) somewhere around 2009 or so. However, even though it was far from my initial introduction to the world of fantasy, and even narrative settings which demanded some serious measure of adjusting one's own paradigm, I found it to be astoundingly opaque. Not only the first few times I played it, but even the first few times I installed it. Regardless of starting numerous clans and watching them all go to pot "even though I did everything I could," there was something about the game's design and aesthetic that informed me on a subconscious level that it wasn't just another half-hearted visual novel with some sloppy management mechanics welded onto the side of it, and this kept me coming back.

It wasn't until I blundered through the Orlanth and Aroka heroquest to be rewarded with a picture of a man painted blue stepping out of a dragon shaped tent that it all suddenly snapped into vivid focus. "Wait a second, this game is almost entirely concerned with where 'subjective' and 'objective' reality meet!" KoDP and Glorantha weren't the only things that suddenly slipped into focus in that moment either, hundreds of hours of idle reading and independent study of real world mythology did as well, and then by extension, much of my relationship with fiction and media altogether. From there everything about the game fit together neatly, the world is a story to these people, I learned the story, I learned way it represented their world, I became King(and Queen) of Dragon Pass over and over again, possessed of a bold new insight, no longer stumbling through a series of seemingly arbitrary questions about cows, marriage, and how to treat red-headed children.

I find it mysterious to this day that this of all things was the ignition point for such a radical change in how I view the world, especially given that this was far from the first time I was introduced to an idea like this. Indeed, some years earlier a good friend of mine had introduced me to the White Wolf's, Mage: The Ascension, which I had similar issues comprehending, and much to his frustration I might add. Hilariously enough, it was likewise a circumstance in which I had great difficulty comprehending the central point it was trying to communicate in spite of having devoted a great deal of personal time and interest to studying real world occult traditions. Nonetheless it was a game that taught me a lot about how one's perspective and interpretation of the world influences not only their experience of the world they live in, but the experience of others in the world with them. It allowed me to don the mantle of someone with a series of beliefs completely distinct from my own and work to imagine what made reality tick from their perspective. 

I bring it up because I think it had a major influence on how I read Glorantha, and while I haven't looked into it, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if Glorantha had a major influence on Mage.

Okay we're well beyond a risk of meandering ramble at this point, but I bring all of this up to set the table and provide something of a shorthand in outlining what follows, which is how I actually play games in Glorantha, and how I personally interpret the setting. Granted, as I've read more and more concerning 'canonical' information regarding Glorantha, I'm more and more convinced that what I'm describing is definitely *my* Glorantha. So with all of that said...

I place a really strong emphasis on blurring the lines between the mundane and magical in my Glorantha. So much so that many rune and spirit magic spells, as they transpire in my games, would not have any apparent magic about them at all if witnessed by a post-enlightenment observer. Mechanically, it's the same thing, somebody obtains a secret from their cult concerning how to influence reality. However, flavor wise, the enchantment/spell always takes the form of something nebulously plausible or at least downright inscrutable so as to obfuscate any simple conclusion that it's 'just magic.' An easy example of this would be a Humakti incorporating the bones of another Humakti into his blacksmithing process. Did he 'just' add carbon to the steel? Did his brother 'just' adopt a form closer to this true nature as a sword?  Did the sword he's working interpose with the first sword when Humakt first grasped death? Did he 'simply' wave his hands over it and the bones were totally superfluous? Who are we to say? I mean what do either the players or the characters really know anyway? The fact is the sword became more dangerous after whatever the hell he did. 

 I try to be similarly evasive concerning what happens during Heroquests. Certainly, from the perspective of the player *characters*, they definitely stepped across the great divide between mortal and immortal into the realm of the gods themselves, and all of the same effects carry through, they actually change their world doing this, but I try to drop in bits here and there which hint at the subjective nature of the experience. Perhaps Ty Kora Tek smells like your mean aunt because you're remembering you're actually Ernalda, or perhaps she smells that way because you're wrestling around with your aunt under a musty old blanket in a smoky room within a deeply altered state of mind.

I even go so far as to extend this to many of the spirits and (especially chaotic) monsters as well. I go out of my way to make them as ambiguous with "natural" processes, emotional states,  and general vibes of events, places, and people as possible. Using them almost like something akin to a sanity mechanic in many cases. Did something you feel guilty about? That's a spirit combat. Fumbled in front of everyone? The spirit of your humiliation might have a word with you about it later, and if it involved slipping in goat dung, a disease spirit might come along with it. Unless a shaman or a similarly attuned person is around to witness it though, it's all described in terms of mundane processes that the character identifies as a spirit.

 Is there really a meaningful difference between being attacked by cannibalistic outlaws and ogres? Was that a Dancer-in-the-Dark, or was it the tulpa of our unaddressed nihilistic lust? I never intend for the characters to ask these questions, but whenever I can cleverly do so, I try to put these thoughts in the heads of the players.

 I do all of this while contradictorily affirming that magic is definitely real and that the characters are capable of feats that would be downright impossible according to our consensus of reality. 

I don't always succeed, but I do all of this not with the intention of reducing the events which take place in Glorantha down to simple misunderstandings of what we interpret as physical processes, but rather with the intention to elevate what we interpret as physical processes to the order of magic and sorcery. I do it to highlight that in the same way one of my players might look at an event in the game and think 'oh the guy is clearly experiencing PTSD and thinking it's a spirit attacking him,' somebody from another time and place could easily look at that same player and think them insanely stupid for not knowing a spirit when it literally jumped out and bit them. That in the big scheme of things, we don't *really* understand reality any better than a bronze age shepherd(and concerning at least some facets of it, understand LESS). Whether or not anything else I wrote managed to effectively communicate that point, this specific epistemological challenge is the veritable Spike for anything and everything that happens in my Glorantha.

 Not only that, but to communicate to them that Glorantha(as I read it, at least) isn't like our world (at the present), which comprises of nebulous fragmented ideologies revolving around a central 'objective' reality, but rather a truly mutipolar interaction of various consensuses that form the aggregate which is Glorantha. That it's a place where the jury is still out concerning even very basic principles we take for granted and built our society on.

TL;DR : Magic is real in my Glorantha, but at very large part of it transpires within a context that a diehard materialist of today could readily dismiss or appropriate, and there isn't a truly discrete border between mundane and magical skill in terms of flavor within my stories.

[Darius West]

I actually take a very similar attitude to yourself about Gloranthan magic Memestream.  I like simulationism in my RPGs, and while it is a fantasy setting, Glorantha has enough real world in it, that it meets what I want to a good degree.  Gloranthan magic is seldom if ever tangible.  It takes the form of buffs, which can be dismissed as "confidence raising rituals", and "confirmation bias".  IDK how well versed you are in Gloranthan lore, but the most successful culture in Gloranthan history was the Jrusteli Empire, otherwise known as the God Learner Empire. While the God Learners might be viewed as munchkins who obtained a copy of the rules and abused them, they actually also used the magic they knew in a scientific way and systematized the magic of other societies.  Arguably the God Learners were entirely materialist, and their answer worked better than any other before or since, and the long reach of their changes are so subtle that many gods in Glorantha in the 3rd Age are unrecognizable from their previous manifestations due to God Learner alterations/opportunism.

[Malin]

Yeah, I'm going in similar directions myself, and everything gets especially interesting when different schools of thoughts combines! Magic, Myths and the Mundane all mingled together. I also go the opposite way, working on extending mundane phenomena as spirits...

Edited May 5 by Malin

[mfbrandi]

On 5/4/2024 at 6:33 PM, Memestream said:

Wait a second, this game is almost entirely concerned with where ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ reality meet!

• Navigation through the Hero Planes uses Myths to get to events, not maps to get to locations. However, the Myths are not objective reality, but subjective by their very nature.
  — Guide to Glorantha (PDF, p. 154)

So if we take it that the mundane world is supposed to be objective reality, then that would seem to be the party line, at least circa 2014. You know, on the face of it, but …

Does reality come in two flavours? To the extent that “otherworld” items are real, are they not mundane? Sure, we can talk about appearance and reality — as in “it looked round to me, but really it was square” (nothing metaphysical) — but “how things seemed” is not another realm of reality. And no one ever got sunspeared by a mere appearance or misperception. The subjective ends up getting flattened into “more-of-the-same reality” by most people most of the time, I reckon — even if they wiggle their fingers and go “ooh, mystical!”

It is a bit like possible worlds semantics: some clown wants to cash out “it might have been the case that” as “it is the case that … but somewhere else.” It is reductive (after a fashion, I guess) but unproductive. But possible worlds — in this usage — are presumably causally inert, else they are merely more actuality and not doing their job.

So appearance vs. reality, story vs. history — I think you are right on the money (and the meeting is a metaphor).

Spoiler

And lots of psychedelic drugs.

But I fear that some people hear “the Gods War is subjective” and think “subjective reality is a kind of reality, so the Gods War is real, and one reality can punch holes in another.” Then all the delicious slipperiness and uncertainty is lost, but you do get to park god–tanks on your neighbour’s lawn.

Spoiler

And as the drugs wear off, one Gloranthan Age succeeds another.

But none of this touches the content of Gloranthan myths — what they say — and I wouldn’t presume to say which bits of the setting are real. Where would be the fun in that? But if for Gloranthans the otherworlds are just extra-dimensional sources of WMD, although they talk of myths, which stories truly function for them as myths do for us? The more we reduce their myths to reportage, the more we deprive them of pure story — and that is just mean. Which TV soaps do characters in TV soaps watch?

[That last cup of cocoa was clearly far too strong.]

Edited May 5 by mfbrandi
deleted ‘shaped’

[scott-martin]

2 hours ago, mfbrandi said:

[That last cup of cocoa was clearly far too strong.]

Since I was just reminded of the shamanic entheogenic drink poyomatli, a lot depends on which aromatic bloom (eliminating salvia from serious consideration) you are dissolving in that cocoa butter. This is a great thread. The question I am wrestling these days revolves around the way Gloranthan history clearly resists these kinds of ontological WMD applications of narrative most of the time. Experimental heroquesting is portrayed as rare and difficult. Practitioners tend to be ostracized from the very community resources they need. And yet because people who break out of the box naturally turn first to Mage: The Ascension style feats of sovereign subjectivity, something embedded within consensus reality must be at work to erase their achievements much as we here on earth tend to forget our dreams when we open our eyes in the morning.

Otherwise, why haven't all the big brains fixed Yelmalio yet? Maybe they have, but the story remains unconvincing and so the consensus view persists. This is an especially visible problem for Gloranthans, whose mythic reality is often portrayed as one step farther from earthly experience (more "magical," less empirical, closer to the root engines of desire or the transcendental) than the layer of the RQ experience that concerns itself with how durable your pants are and who has some for sale. Something is protecting that layer where all the pants sellers live. I would hate to give the shadowy but theoretically indefatiguable Arkat Cult credit for this (like buttonholing Eco about the Knights Templar) but maybe the Arkat Cult is itself a metaphor for something deeper going on.

What was the question, in the immortal words of both Kate Bush and, of all people, Eddie Vedder? Anyway, memestream, you're doing great. Welcome to the circus. Of course Glorantha had a huge influence on the World of Darkness. On different days that can be a badge of pride and also a crime requiring hard atonement to work off. For "chaos" I'll find a thing for you from back in the G+ days, you might find it amusing or restorative to see the graffiti on the cave wall. 

[John Biles]

My own approach to Glorantha is that magic is real and sometimes is very blatantly real.  Accelerate Growth makes a plant grow in 15 minutes what it would do in a year.  There's no denying that is real.  Conflagaration can make fire from nothing.

And the interaction between the magical world of gods, spirits, and sorcery and the mundane world of planting crops, stabbing people, and trying to raise kids is at the heart of Glorantha and what makes it Glorantha.  The magical world lets you make new truths, which is why it is subjective, and the mundane world is objective and now those collide.  (It's why I view the future laid out in King of Sartar as basically garbage.  A Glorantha in which the subjective and objective no longer mingle is no longer Glorantha.)

But of course, everyone has the right to run their game however you like.

37 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

 Otherwise, why haven't all the big brains fixed Yelmalio yet? Maybe they have, but the story remains unconvincing and so the consensus view persists. This is an especially visible problem for Gloranthans, whose mythic reality is often portrayed as one step farther from earthly experience (more "magical," less empirical, closer to the root engines of desire or the transcendental) than the layer of the RQ experience that concerns itself with how durable your pants are and who has some for sale. Something is protecting that layer where all the pants sellers live. I would hate to give the shadowy but theoretically indefatiguable Arkat Cult credit for this (like buttonholing Eco about the Knights Templar) but maybe the Arkat Cult is itself a metaphor for something deeper going on.
 

My own take on that is a combination of 'fundamental changes are much harder' and 'Elmal is what Yelmalio becomes if you 'fix' him.', so in fact, it has been done.

 

[svensson]

Responding to the OP, since he asked for individual opinions...

IMG, magic is VERY real. Orlanth is literally the Air you breathe, you plant seed and harvest your crops literally by the benevolence of Ernalda, those crops rise literally because of the heat of Yelm's face and the rains of Heler's form. Rune magic is especially 'dramatic'. Your god has given you their secret and the power to manifest that secret in the Mundane Plane. Unless a spell is specifically meant to be deceptive [for example Dark Walk], it's gonna be obvious if not loud. An Orlanthi casting Lightning is going get very 'Cu Chulainn' with it... his skin will get woad blue, he'll become larger-than-life for a moment, his hair will spike out, etc... and there is no such thing as a 'subtle' Sunspear spell. And this scales to the number of Rune Points spent. A Wind Lord manifesting Flight with a lot of RP behind it is gonna have a superhero vibe 🤣

Spirit magic spells have a very primal feel, a certain 'drums in a rainstorm' aspect to them. These spells might be called 'hedge magic' by some, but it's a mighty big hedge!

Sorcery is far more variable. Given sorcery's nature of Will + Mastery = Magic, the presentation can be very subtle or loud as a cannon shot, depending on the skill of the caster.

Edited May 5 by svensson

[Eff]

21 minutes ago, scott-martin said:

Otherwise, why haven't all the big brains fixed Yelmalio yet? Maybe they have, but the story remains unconvincing and so the consensus view persists. This is an especially visible problem for Gloranthans, whose mythic reality is often portrayed as one step farther from earthly experience (more "magical," less empirical, closer to the root engines of desire or the transcendental) than the layer of the RQ experience that concerns itself with how durable your pants are and who has some for sale. Something is protecting that layer where all the pants sellers live. I would hate to give the shadowy but theoretically indefatiguable Arkat Cult credit for this (like buttonholing Eco about the Knights Templar) but maybe the Arkat Cult is itself a metaphor for something deeper going on.

I have a deeply heretical answer here, but there is a simpler, only lightly heretical one- the Yelmalio people are the only people who would care about putting Yelmalio in order, and they're within the structure of abusive myths that render them passive rather than active. Maybe Monrogh Lantern's real contribution to the Hero Wars will be to inject Elmal into the Yelmalio world. 

As for the overall topic of this thread... I think an overly psychological interpretation runs the problem of collapsing the hopes of any objective world, ironically enough. Dr. Samuel Johnson refuting Berkeley with the stone is formally a fallacy, but informally, kicking a rock can save you from kicking yourself in the axioms. But what we often have is Fantasieshreck. That objective world has a duck with a cigar in his beak in it, who tells you you don't know the meaning of the word absurdity. Repugnant enough, and then there's those distasteful glowing energy beams and neon-red véves, the Steel General in a temporal fugue, four arms spread wide, Woody Guthrie's guitar dangling from one, as his horse prances in the background and shatters mountains with each hoof. Cu Chúlainn turns his muscles inside out. The real Saint-Germain manifests before the pendulum. One of the heads of St. John the Baptist was real- when it mattered. Wally Sage confronts his creation, who stubbornly refuses to conform to good semiotics. In the face of such madness, what meaning can be had? 

[scott-martin]

4 minutes ago, Eff said:

what meaning can be had

Let's see what we can lure back to #theories . . . after all, we are building an ark of the anticanonical over there, aren't we? Plenty room for unicorns.

[Sir_Godspeed]

Glorantha is incredibly well-suited to subjective realities and unreliable narration, imho. People's cultural upbringing shaping how they see the gods and spirits, how they see the Hero plane before them, how those they meet respond to them. What works for them and what doesn't. And of course, how those cultural upbringings can be altered and innovated upon. Great stuff. 

Keeping things kinda vague and mythical and mystical is a great fit for Glorantha, imho, because it helps reinforce the point that this isn't world where magic is something clearly separate from the ontological underpinnings of the world, but rather is fully incorporated into it. 

I think some replies here have misinterpreted the OP, maybe. I think OP is pointing out that Glorantha is well-suited to remove the false dichotomy between "magical" and "mundane". It's not that magic is real. It's that reality is magic. Or maybe I misinterpreted OP, lol.

In Glorantha, every last fibre is inherently magic in some degree, to the point where trying to divide the magical from the mundane is sorta... pointless. Instead, what you end up with are degrees of magicalness, or rather, degrees of exclusivity or awesomeness. The sun and its light is literally magic. The soil you step on is literally magic. Speaking is magic. Scratching your bum is a magically significant act. But, obviously, sometimes, some folks are able to do stuff that goes beyond that and does the truly spectacular like firing bolts of lighting from their hands or jump several miles or turn invisible. But at the end of the day, that's not inherently different from the magic that lets a cow birth a calf or water replenish your strength. IMHO. 

And it's probably not a coincidence that this non-dualistic worldview is one that is held by many animistic and polytheistic societies throughout history. The world is alive, it has a intention and agency, and is something you can communicate with and bargain with. Glorantha is probably the most well-realized fictional setting that incorporates this aspect. 

Apologies, I think I'm talking in circles, it's late over here.

[Ormi Phengaria]

On 5/4/2024 at 10:33 AM, Memestream said:

TL;DR : Magic is real in my Glorantha, but at very large part of it transpires within a context that a diehard materialist of today could readily dismiss or appropriate, and there isn't a truly discrete border between mundane and magical skill in terms of flavor within my stories.

To answer your title: mostly. There is a very conspicuous remainder, however: people perceive these things as happening a certain way, not just interpret them. They really see, hear, and smell the lightning as happening. Alongside the empirically available effects, the conclusion is hard to deny. Of course, this is just as likely to occur in the post-Enlightenment observer as it is a premodern person; the difference is that the blind spot of empirical reality is even more pronounced for our modern. We have a sense of our own sober, lucid perspectives as more accurately rendering reality than those who feel spirits. Yet we will confabulate vivid memories with a suggestion. In fact, we may confabulate our vision even without sight. Where the Gloranthan differs from us is the ease at which others can be helped to share in these perceptions, rendering their magic a seemingly objective thing.

Regarding that remainder, I find this post useful reading.

Edited May 5 by Ormi Phengaria

[Memestream]

I want to make clear that I read every word of this thread, and got so excited I started firing off half cocked in all sorts of scatterbrained tangents and rambling, but became concerned that I was going to end up making the waters even muddier. I appreciate each and every reply, and I am pretty sure I have more to say after I let some things simmer in my noggin for a minute.

3 hours ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

I think some replies here have misinterpreted the OP, maybe. I think OP is pointing out that Glorantha is well-suited to remove the false dichotomy between "magical" and "mundane". It's not that magic is real. It's that reality is magic.

This is a very good summary of my intended point. 

Likewise, in the parlance of Mage, "vulgar magic" is still very much a part of my Glorantha. People still conjure lightning from the sky(or even their hands), and things still transpire which even the most staunch materialist would not be able to readily explain. I just fob things off as plausibly explained otherwise and ambiguous anywhere and everywhere I can.

I'm not saying that Ernalda's story about sleeping through the Dark to rise again at the Dawn is a metaphor for a plant dropping a seed which lies fallow through Dark season to sprout in Sea season, I'm saying that a plant dropping a seed which lies fallow in the ground over the Dark season to sprout in Sea season is a metaphor for Ernalda sleeping through the Dark! Ernalda herself being a metaphor for whatever utterly inscrutable 'thang' that lies at the heart of the generative force that causes such a thing to transpire in 'mundane' reality. 

Simulation & Simulacra by Baudrillard plays heavily into my perspective here. Disney World is a place that one may go to and have a genuine experience, yet everything within it is the consequence of artifice, fantasy, and seeming. People have real emotional responses to the things they witness and participate in, those are actual clockwork automata shaped like little singing men! Things represent things authentically for a while, then become imitations of other imitations, then eventually imitations of things that have no discernible touchstone in supposedly 'objective' relaity. However, just because something is an imitation of an imitation doesn't mean it isn't *real*.

I think another way to look at what I'm saying here with regard to 'magic' in Glorantha is "We are all us." I take a very "we are all us" attitude about whether or not any given event is magical or mundane. 

"It's all silk from the same spider" one might say...

There's a very generally Vedic outlook that I have on it, but I don't want to elaborate on such an idea without further thought for fear of looking like a fool or unintentionally misrepresenting a real world religion that's still in practice. It's kind of in the vein of the Greg Sez article that got linked though.

10 hours ago, Darius West said:

Arguably the God Learners were entirely materialist, and their answer worked better than any other before or since,

Yet not perfectly! Their story is a delightfully brilliant illustration of the inherent philosophical absurdity that challenges us incessantly, among other things. They did all the math and lined up all their ducks, yet their conviction that they resided within a clockwork universe bound by deterministic rules ultimately proved incomplete!
 

5 hours ago, scott-martin said:

something embedded within consensus reality must be at work to erase their achievements much as we here on earth tend to forget our dreams when we open our eyes in the morning.

Whatever the 'mundane' phenomenon of inertia is a metaphor for.

[soltakss]

On 5/4/2024 at 6:33 PM, Memestream said:

I've been lurking around here for years now, but with substantially more fervor over the past few months, and figured that I may as well make my inaugural post one concerning my own Glorantha along with the explicit invitation to hear about how others interpret the setting, namely how magic looks, plays, and functions. It's very much going to risk running into the realm of a meandering ramble, but I feel like I may as well put it here as well as anywhere else. 

Looking at what you have written, I think you have a pretty good base. That is the attitude that I take, keep it blurry and undefined.

 

[soltakss]

10 hours ago, scott-martin said:

Otherwise, why haven't all the big brains fixed Yelmalio yet? Maybe they have, but the story remains unconvincing and so the consensus view persists.

Yelmalio has been fixed, several times. He is Yelm's Son, the God of the Winter Sun, or the Light reflected off the Sky Dome. What is there to fix? However, this could well derail this thread so could be a separate thread.

[Joerg]

10 hours ago, scott-martin said:

The question I am wrestling these days revolves around the way Gloranthan history clearly resists these kinds of ontological WMD applications of narrative most of the time. Experimental heroquesting is portrayed as rare and difficult. Practitioners tend to be ostracized from the very community resources they need.

Most likely because experimental heroquesting (by its nature of trial and failure) tends to use up such community resources at an alarming rate, even if handled responsibly.

This might be a reason why few shamans represent big communities - apparently they gamble with the entities they encounter fairly often, and sometimes you lose, sometimes the other side wins.

[John Biles]

5 hours ago, Memestream said:

I'm not saying that Ernalda's story about sleeping through the Dark to rise again at the Dawn is a metaphor for a plant dropping a seed which lies fallow through Dark season to sprout in Sea season, I'm saying that a plant dropping a seed which lies fallow in the ground over the Dark season to sprout in Sea season is a metaphor for Ernalda sleeping through the Dark! Ernalda herself being a metaphor for whatever utterly inscrutable 'thang' that lies at the heart of the generative force that causes such a thing to transpire in 'mundane' reality.

Whatever the 'mundane' phenomenon of inertia is a metaphor for.

I feel like the dumbest person in the universe because my brain never made that Ernalda - seed in the ground metaphor.  *Somehow*.

An object at rest remains at rest until acted on because of the Stasis Rune

An object in motion remains at motion until acted on because of the Movement Rune

General Relativity, where things can be in motion or at rest depending on how you set your frame of reference is because of the Chaos Rune.

Strong Force - Harmony Rune

Weak Force - Disorder Rune

Electromagnetism - Air Rune

Gravity - The Earth Rune's love for everything draws them to it.

[Uzz]

I take the magic is everywhere / blurred line (if any line at all) approach. And also truth depends on your perspective and the stories you've been told. 

And quite ironically most of us use a "realistic" system to play in Glorantha. 

[mfbrandi]

11 hours ago, scott-martin said:

The question I am wrestling these days revolves around the way Gloranthan history clearly resists these kinds of ontological WMD applications of narrative most of the time. Experimental heroquesting is portrayed as rare and difficult. Practitioners tend to be ostracized from the very community resources they need.

WMD heroquesting is dull as ditchwater. I guess we all agree on that. But experimental heroquesting — telling new stories, bending the old ones way out of shape — is surely the only interesting kind. The repeatable experience is best saved for the weekly supermarket shop (where alienation is your friend). Think of Alyx’s frustration with Machine (who would happily have sex exactly the same way twice — ’cos if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it).

To me, making WMD questing impossibly difficult for PCs but possible for NPCs like Argrath would be an unsatisfactory solution. “We” want to keep the tanks and the big bombs, but YOU are not allowed to play with them. But I don’t want to keep the WMD out of the myths — we all like a tale of Apocalypse. One approach is to make the border between dream/myth/story and reality less porous (<- metaphor alert) — no one ever brought an H-bomb back from dream to bedroom, but I cannot see many people going for that. Another would be to reset player expectations: you are not the heroes; heroes are dangerous lunatics — don’t fall for their pitch that they are breaking the rules for the community’s benefit, they are all just John Waynes out to murder their nieces; you are the little people and your job is to stop the heroes and their enablers. Again, I don’t see this as having mass appeal. Or — like Gully Foyle? — we can throw the explosives to the masses and show a bit of trust (or risk tolerance). Doubtless, there are many more and much better solutions to the “my toy, not yours” problem.

Spoiler

For the record, I am not skeptical about magic in Glorantha. I am skeptical about myths/otherworlds as the sources of magic (which is not to say Gloranthans shouldn’t think that they are). Therefore players shouldn’t think “there is a myth about Superweapon X, so my character should be able to smuggle one through customs (even if the ‘nothing to declare’ line is staffed by Arkati).” It is not that the Arkati customs officers are tough (there are none), it is that the characters don’t really understand how their world works. I think people are resistant to the idea that Gloranthans understand their world poorly, but just think how poorly we understand our world — who promoted them above us?

[mfbrandi]

15 minutes ago, Uzz said:

And quite ironically most of us use a “realistic” system to play in Glorantha.

Which may be part of the problem — if there is one — “I rolled a double six, so your piece is removed from the board.” How do we deliver blurred lines and adequate levels of FUD if the rules deliver clear and unambiguous results? (Giving the GM — and only the GM — the authority to say “I lied earlier: that is not really what happened” doesn’t sound like it would make for a satisfying game.)

[Akhôrahil]

Signifcantly agree - I think the most useful approach is to deliberately not talk about who the gods "really are" or their "objective qualities" (like which gods are Illuminated or what the god really wants). Instead, focus on the actual experiences. Is Humakt Illuminated? Is Buserian = Lankhor Mhy? When we say the gods exist, what exactly does "exist" mean? Does it matter?!  In that vein, it's more useful to (like HQ) focus on cults rather gods - the cults are extremely important in every way, while the gods are often more theoretical. And on the experiences in heroquests rather than some fixed mythological geography. 

And yeah, Mage: the Ascension is a major reference point here. I could talk about how it doesn't work quite the same way in Glorantha (it's not about majority belief but about forging a path), but ultimately that's the kind of unproductive reasoning I argue against above.

[Brian Duguid]

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

It is not that the Arkati customs officers are tough (there are none), it is that the characters don’t really understand how their world works. I think people are resistant to the idea that Gloranthans understand their world poorly, but just think how poorly we understand our world — who promoted them above us?

Gloranthans clearly remember a time when there were actual experts with a deep understanding magic and cosmology. They called these experts the "God Learners".

But now the Third Age Gloranthans boast of their distrust, even hatred, for these "so-called experts", and instead they promote adherence to "myths". Even some kind of flat-earth theory is popular amongst them.

They are very much like "us".

[mfbrandi]

1 hour ago, Akhôrahil said:

Is Humakt Illuminated? Is Buserian = Lankhor Mhy?

Having characters argue about such things might have some utility. Myths/stories about possible divine identities? Fine, surely.

Having players argue about it — “like for real, man” — sounds like no fun at all.

Here in the forums, there is a danger of offering something as a story/myth/in-world theory and having it taken as something meta and definitive. Thus we undermine and debunk ourselves, so as not to be taken too seriously. 😉

[Akhôrahil]

1 hour ago, mfbrandi said:

Having characters argue about such things might have some utility. Myths/stories about possible divine identities? Fine, surely.

Oh, sure - this is the whole God Learners project, after all. But look where it got them!

[jajagappa]

3 hours ago, Brian Duguid said:

Gloranthans clearly remember a time when there were actual experts with a deep understanding magic and cosmology.

Given Jeff's postings that show equivalencies in looking back from our real-world time into the past and Gloranthans looking similarly back in time, I think for most Gloranthans the God-learners might be on par with the Vikings - a great invading scourge that eventually was defeated and destroyed and wielded evil and forbidden magics. 

[Tatterdemalion Fox]

17 hours ago, John Biles said:

'Elmal is what Yelmalio becomes if you 'fix' him.

And similarly, Yelorna is what happens if you fix 'him.'