Is RuneQuest too dependent on social organizations?

[M Helsdon]

On ‎2‎/‎28‎/‎2016 at 5:44 PM, Joerg said:

I never got my eyes on a complete set of the novels, and all I read started in medias res with a fully grown and mightily angry barbarian.

There only ever was one Conan novel, before the pastiche writers got their hand on the property. Much of the widespread assumptions about Conan are derived from movies and comics. It's interesting that the Weird Tales covers painted when the stories were first published tended to show Conan in sensible armor and garb. Conan wasn't as brooding as Kull, but he's not the simple barbarian either, with his own brand of Howard's angst. Now some of the themes in the original Conan are dated, and there's the usual background racism of the period when Howard was writing, but Conan's greatest love, Belit, was a Semite and some of his most loyal followers were African.

As for his youth: he was born on a battlefield and took part in the storming of an Aquilonian settlement in Cimmeria in his youth, and by the time he was a teenager was thieving in Zamora. He swore by Crom, but Crom wasn't the sort of deity to help out. No DI from Crom.

Edited February 29, 2016 by M Helsdon

[Joerg]

So we have the classic case of the pastiche and Hollywood overwhelming the original vision.

If asked which cliches can describe Conan, I guess everyone will think of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Boris Vallejo or Achilleos or Corben covers, and of course Cohen and Nigel the barbarians by Terry Pratchett as breaking the cliche. Special nods to Poul Anderson's spoof of the barbarian champion who ruined the sponsor country with his victories until they made him defect to the opposition, which then sought peace to avoid bankruptcy (cannot give the title of that short story because I read it in German, decades ago).

Which brings us to Harrek, only true with bare hairy chest under the bear rug cape - opinions on leg wear and footwear are open to debate. He appears to be one of a kind in Glorantha, though. While Wind Lords in blue paint may emulate Orlanth skyclad, and certain earth walker heroes might, too, the mightily thewed loinclothed hero role isn't that prominent in the Gloranthan who is who except for Harrek. Beatpot got to wear a kilt in the Prince of Sartar comic, for instance.

So, what about Harrek and social organisations? Leader of a horde? Check, and we find the same for Conan. Leading a core of dedicated followers? Check for both, again. Came up through his native cult? Check for Harrek, and I admit ignorance for Conan. Got formed by mercenary jobs for decadent civilization? Check for both.

Fafhrd and the Mouser follow the meddling wizards trope instead. I don't see any heroes of their format commanded around by the super-wizards or sorcerers of Glorantha (like Argin Terror or the Brithini zzaburi in the Arolanit Palace of the Pentacle), though, since the time of Arkat. The great wizards of the God Learner Age like Yomili made do without barbarian champions, too.

[M Helsdon]

9 hours ago, Joerg said:

So, what about Harrek and social organisations? Leader of a horde? Check, and we find the same for Conan. Leading a core of dedicated followers? Check for both, again. Came up through his native cult? Check for Harrek, and I admit ignorance for Conan. Got formed by mercenary jobs for decadent civilization? Check for both.

And with Harrek there's always the question: did he possess his god, or did his god possess him? Or are they symbiotes?

Another 'sword & sorcery' hero who manipulates and uses organizations (he predates them all) is Karl Edward Wagner's Kane. Another writer who died too young.

[Newt]

I've always ran Cults and Organisations which gave access to Skills/Spells as things that gave our magical spells and training as favours for completing missions on their behalf. If you were a member of a Cult it merely gave you a fast-track access to the benefits of the cult and access to its members only benefits. Most of my players who weren't interested in becoming dedicated magicians, learnt magic on an adhoc basis for doing favours for the cult, or more likely from magicians they found in the wilderness. I took it as part and parcel of the setting - be it Glorantha or non-gloranthan dark ages implied by RQ3 - that as well as megre monetary rewards, the adventurers got magical rewards at the end of and adventure. The classic being -"our poor village can't afford much to reward you for clearing out the nest of monsters, but our village wise woman has a spell that lets you see past the horizon that she can teach you".

[Warthur]

I would say that cults and social structures are enormously important to RuneQuest. Having characters be part of society rather than rootless renegades existing a little way outside it was (one of) the really distinctive and new things that RuneQuest brought to the table; previous games had paid lip service to the idea, but the way cults are set up in the system provides a really excellent incentive to get invested in a character's social connections that previous games tended to lack - for instance, in principle D&D clerics are members of organised religions, but in practice they tended to operate as free agents much of the time.

Other games have come up with other riffs on the same idea, of course. I'd say that Vampire: the Masquerade's clans - and, by extension, all the various splats in subsequent World of Darkness games and similar modern-day horror/urban fantasy games riffing on Vampire's ideas - are a good example of a social organisation that is supposed to give game mechanical benefits and which players are expected to belong to by default. But few have done it as well as RuneQuest, and almost none have done it quite the same way as Gloranthan RuneQuest manages. (Of course, system-wise various BRP derivatives have produced similar organisations, but Glorantha does a fantastic job of really integrating the cults into the very essence of the setting which I have seen few alternate settings managing to repeat.)

So in general I would say that RuneQuest is exactly as dependent on social organisations as it needs to be. Make them less important wouldn't just be a bad idea - it'd be a direct attack on one of the foundational ideas that make the game distinctive, just like if you tried to work in hardwired character classes or abandoned experience rolls and training in favour of D&D-style experience levels.

[Atgxtg]

I'd say the social organizations are important to Glorantha, not to RuneQuest. A GM can run a RQ campaign just fine without all the social organizations (i.e. cults). With Glorantha being so entirely focused around the various religions, magic, and mythic events that the cult structures dominates play. But is is a characteristic of the setting rather than the system.

[M Helsdon]

2 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I'd say the social organizations are important to Glorantha, not to RuneQuest. A GM can run a RQ campaign just fine without all the social organizations (i.e. cults). With Glorantha being so entirely focused around the various religions, magic, and mythic events that the cult structures dominates play. But is is a characteristic of the setting rather than the system.

It depends very much what sort of world you are trying to emulate: if it has any equivalence to Bronze of Iron Age societies then cults and guild-like organizations will be a fact of life.

[Joerg]

40 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

I'd say the social organizations are important to Glorantha, not to RuneQuest. A GM can run a RQ campaign just fine without all the social organizations (i.e. cults). With Glorantha being so entirely focused around the various religions, magic, and mythic events that the cult structures dominates play. But is is a characteristic of the setting rather than the system.

You can run a game of vanilla Fantasy Hobos&Killers with deeply immersive social contacts, or you can run a game of Gloranthan RuneQuest with the cults as service-oriented, non-meddling sources for the magic your unconnected villains exploit to their best abilities. It is up to the GM to decide how much the characters have to obey the cults if they get their occasional rune spell. They can try and plunder the hero planes rather than visiting temples for divine magic. If they are tough enough, they might even succeed plundering other heroquesters.

A game with opportunistic, unconnected players might well be played in a paranoid "nobody likes us" atmosphere, with unfriendly or at least grudging welcomes, or failure to grant hospitality. There are certain types of campaign which thrive under such conditions, like a ship's crew visiting unknown ports, or mercenary groups stringing one caravan job after another, interspersed with special or black ops missions, or master burglars traveling from coup to coup. Joss Whedon's Firefly TV series shows how such a group - even if close knit internally - will find itself less and less welcome wherever they went, or wherever they used to go regularly.

This isn't tied to the RQ game system per se. If your players don't want a deep relationship to a cult or deity, they can take other forms of magic - battle magic/common magic, or sorcery. If they aren't tied to any clan, they would not even think of getting their magic at the rural shrines, although medium and larger temples might still attract them for some magical services. Preferably in exchange for a mission promising personal plunder that doesn't have to be shared with the mission's patron.

If you prefer running a number of errands before claiming the reward, fine. If you want a down payment of your expected mission income, you had better be part of the organisation backing the mission.

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, Joerg said:

You can run a game of vanilla Fantasy Hobos&Killers with deeply immersive social contacts, or you can run a game of Gloranthan RuneQuest with the cults as service-oriented, non-meddling sources for the magic your unconnected villains exploit to their best abilities. It is up to the GM to decide how much the characters have to obey the cults if they get their occasional rune spell. They can try and plunder the hero planes rather than visiting temples for divine magic. If they are tough enough, they might even succeed plundering other heroquesters.

Not really, or at least not yet. The RQ rules were pretty clear as to what the characters had to do to advance in the cult and get spells (rune or other types). There were even cult "Spirits of Reprisal" to deal with those who didn't live up to their responsibilities.  

Plundering the Heroplanes and/or Heroquesters was also out. Mostly because there was practically no information on how that would work. Nobody really knew how a Heroquest would work.

 

Now I get your drift that the GM has control over things and can influence and decide to what degree social interact plays a part in any RPG, but the setting and game mechanics play a big part in how that ususally works out. With RQ, especially RQ2 set in Glorantha (at least once someone got a look at Cults of Prax), the social aspect was designed to be important. 

 

[Joerg]

4 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Not really, or at least not yet. The RQ rules were pretty clear as to what the characters had to do to advance in the cult and get spells (rune or other types). There were even cult "Spirits of Reprisal" to deal with those who didn't live up to their responsibilities. 

The RQ3 Vikings box had an option that was titled "Gods without Godar". This didn't yield exactly the same results as going to a temple playing nice, but it offered an alternative.

The spirits of reprisal were just another kind of monster attracted by a curse if you violated that cult's restrictions. If you played an AD&D (1st ed) Paladin acting against his class, you simply lost your class advantages without any chance to fight back, whereas in RQ you got nasties to deal with, and a chance to resist.

4 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Plundering the Heroplanes and/or Heroquesters was also out. Mostly because there was practically no information on how that would work. Nobody really knew how a Heroquest would work.

That didn't stop anyone to try and come up with challenges that would parallel the occasions outlined in Biturian Varosh's saga or mentioned for Garrath in the Cradle Scenario.

There isn't any information in RQ how to design and run a dungeon, either. Didn't stop anyone.

RQ3 offers a lot on world building, though.

4 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Now I get your drift that the GM has control over things and can influence and decide to what degree social interact plays a part in any RPG, but the setting and game mechanics play a big part in how that ususally works out. With RQ, especially RQ2 set in Glorantha (at least once someone got a look at Cults of Prax), the social aspect was designed to be important. 

My main point was that I have played in e.g. AD&D campaigns that had the player characters soundly embedded in social connections, down to families, feudal relations, guilds and taking religion serious. And I have run a  campaign based on RQ Vikings where the players had the option to forego all cult frappings to gain access to their divine and cult spirit magic, and no player character did.

[Atgxtg]

9 hours ago, Joerg said:

The RQ3 Vikings box had an option that was titled "Gods without Godar". This didn't yield exactly the same results as going to a temple playing nice, but it offered an alternative.

Yes, but by the time RQ3 came out they separated the system from the setting. As I've said earlier, it Glorantha that is so heavily on social ties. 

 

9 hours ago, Joerg said:

The spirits of reprisal were just another kind of monster attracted by a curse if you violated that cult's restrictions. If you played an AD&D (1st ed) Paladin acting against his class, you simply lost your class advantages without any chance to fight back, whereas in RQ you got nasties to deal with, and a chance to resist.

Far from it. If  someone had the cult sprits of reprisal after them  they were also in bad standing with the cult (since getting the sprits after you meant that you behaved in a manner that broke from the cult dogma). 

 

9 hours ago, Joerg said:

That didn't stop anyone to try and come up with challenges that would parallel the occasions outlined in Biturian Varosh's saga or mentioned for Garrath in the Cradle Scenario.

Sure it did. I can't think of one RQ2 game I was in that had any Heroquesting or similar stuff. There just wasn't enough out there to explain what it was like, or what the results could be. 

 

9 hours ago, Joerg said:

My main point was that I have played in e.g. AD&D campaigns that had the player characters soundly embedded in social connections, down to families, feudal relations, guilds and taking religion serious. And I have run a  campaign based on RQ Vikings where the players had the option to forego all cult frappings to gain access to their divine and cult spirit magic, and no player character did.

Certainly. I've played some D&D games that were heavy on social interaction. But it is more of a choice of play style than a necessity. In Glorantha, you really don't have much choice. Unless you want to forgoe any magic and be a pariah.  

As for your experience with RQ Vikings, I wouldn't expect them to forgo the trappings. Its what makes a Viking campaign feel like a Viking campaign. 

[Baron]

I get it, the style of play among the vocal Gloranthan gamers (especially online) has shifted over the years. But read the Okamoto logs of Sandy Petersen's house RQ campaign. It's the old school, rollicking adventuring style. That's the way we played RQ back in the day. That's the way plenty of people rpg, Glorantha or otherwise. Anyone who'd gone on about deep mythology and immersed themselves in their character's culture wouldve been laughed out of the room. So, play however you like, but the currently popular style is not 'IT.'

[Charles VA]

14 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Sure it did. I can't think of one RQ2 game I was in that had any Heroquesting or similar stuff. There just wasn't enough out there to explain what it was like, or what the results could be. 

Not to be blunt, but you can stop trying to think of one yours. I can assure you of several of ours. From 1983 through 1990 we ran no less than two dozen HeroQuests of various potencies, including the elusive "GodQuest". We read the bibliography. 

 

5 hours ago, Baron said:

I get it, the style of play among the vocal Gloranthan gamers (especially online) has shifted over the years. But read the Okamoto logs of Sandy Petersen's house RQ campaign. It's the old school, rollicking adventuring style. That's the way we played RQ back in the day. That's the way plenty of people rpg, Glorantha or otherwise. Anyone who'd gone on about deep mythology and immersed themselves in their character's culture wouldve been laughed out of the room. So, play however you like, but the currently popular style is not 'IT.'

And that sums it up.

Edited March 5, 2016 by charlesvajr

[Joerg]

Yes, that sums it up - you are free to ignore the social restrictions of social organizations if you hate them, and can still play RuneQuest. Or you can use them to whichever extent you want.

 

[simonh]

RQ asked that the way you learn things is from other people, so you join societies (cults, guilds, etc) with other people to learn things from them. That makes a ton of sense and if you look at Conan or the Lieber stories their worlds are full of cults and guilds and societies. It's just that the protagonists tend to avoid such entanglements.

However theres nothing to stop you ruling that you can get all the magical benefits of worshiping a god without bothering with the cult. Religious devotion and the resulting benefits then just become a matter of personal devotion.

To properly emulate what we see in heroic fantasy though, you'd probably need some alternative system of research or personal development. Perhaps even a system for magicians to research spirit and rune spells from ancient magical texts.

Simon Hibbs

Edited March 5, 2016 by simonh

[Atgxtg]

On 3/5/2016 at 11:27 PM, charlesvajr said:

Not to be blunt, but you can stop trying to think of one yours. I can assure you of several of ours. From 1983 through 1990 we ran no less than two dozen HeroQuests of various potencies, including the elusive "GodQuest". We read the bibliography. 

Oh, I see. My past experience doesn't count, but your does. 

[Atgxtg]

On 3/4/2016 at 6:10 PM, Baron said:

I get it, the style of play among the vocal Gloranthan gamers (especially online) has shifted over the years. But read the Okamoto logs of Sandy Petersen's house RQ campaign. It's the old school, rollicking adventuring style. That's the way we played RQ back in the day. That's the way plenty of people rpg, Glorantha or otherwise. Anyone who'd gone on about deep mythology and immersed themselves in their character's culture wouldve been laughed out of the room. So, play however you like, but the currently popular style is not 'IT.'

Sorry, but you don't get it.  "Back in the day", say 1982ish, I was running an RQ game at a convention where two PCs dueled each other specifically because of cult ties. The guy who wrote the adventure confessed that he had doubts that a Humakti and Zorak Zoran worshiper could work together, but the adventure was in Dorastor, so he figured they could do so under the circumstances. 

Now I ran that adventure, but I didn't write it, and all the RQ players who showed up (as opposed to newbies doing a one-off) knew of and expected the social stuff to be involved. So the mythic stuff was "IT" back then. Maybe not for you or Sandy Perterson, but for a lot of RQers. 

 

And speaking of Sandy Peterson so what? As far as RQ went, Sandy wasn't not the "go to" guy. He was for CoC. but that wasn't RQ.  

[Charles VA]

31 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

Oh, I see. My past experience doesn't count, but your does. 

I'm feeling hostility. You must not have had your shots today. Anyway, stop the attack. That's not what this is about.

[pachristian]

Chill, both you.

So the question was: In the game system RuneQuest (any edition), is character improvement too dependent on the character joining a social organization (cult, guild, or whatever). 

People have presented several answers: Some feel that the social structure and interactions of your organization are key features in their game. Others have cited games where characters trained in the cults, but did not otherwise worry about them too much. And others have found ways of providing training and magic to PC's without them being dependent on their organization.

So the real answer is: It depends on how the GM wants to run the game. 

I think that sums it up for now.

Does anyone want to add anything on-topic?

[General Panic]

You could advance your skills by winning experience checks - ie just 'doing'. You could adventure and earn cash and buy training. You could do favours for a cult, guild or community you don't belong to, and in return get some training benefits, maybe get taught a battle magic spell. None of this meant you had to join a cult and 'play the mythic role', and if you did initiate was often as far as it went. In RQ2 when you started off as a lay member and had to work at the next stage, initiation was a thing. In RQ3 initiation often just came out of chargen because it was assumed to be a natural life stage. 

In the RQ2 and 3 games I played in almost no one lived long enough to make Rune level anyway, but of course if you did and picked the right cult you could be much more badass than anyone else. As for Humakti and Zorak Zoran adventurers teaming up together and coming to blows - and more broadly the 'social stuff' - is that really evidence for player immersion in the 'mythic' qualities of Glorantha? Or just grasping that there's roleplay opportunities because it's a rich and exotic world with a whole matrix of cults, races, species, expansionist empires and chaos monstrosities. Or looking up what Humakti, or trolls are like (and without a care for the mythological reason they are like it) and roleplaying.

In my experience, which I know may not be universal, everyone fell asleep at the table if forced to endure a digression on Gloranthan myth that lasted more than a few of lines. Of course our group, like probably everyone else, had whole campaigns where we started off as a connected community or clan. It's the social not the mythic that's interesting per se, the mythology adds colour to the social and properly handled makes the social aspects of the game and setting more convincing.  The obsession with 'myth' as the driving theme of the setting to the extent that the object or reward of the game is to immerse in and explore Gloranthan myth is for me, and so far as I believe for people I played with, a crushing bore.  

[simonh]

Aside from previous experience, RQ2 and 3 didn't tie advancement in skill to cults much. Yes you could get s bit of a training bonus and a discount on sime spirit magic but that was it.

the man readon to join a cult was access to Rune/Divine Magic. Cults were the only way to get it. Now it was perfectly possible to get by without, but that was a whole lot easier in RQ2 than it was in RQ3 because RQ2 had a lot more potent spirit magic, much more widely available. Griselda was a classic example. She and her associates avoided cult membership as being too restrictive and politicising and got by fine with just a potent array of spirit magic, but frankly doing so permanently held them back in the small time back street leagues. But RQ3 made characters like that much harder to play unless to GM gave them access to a friendly shaman.

So I don't think skill advancement is a big issue in game settings without cults, but heavy duty magic access, other than sorcery, certainly is. That's why I suggested that for a more traditional Swords and Sorcery setting you might allow access to Rune/Divine Magic purely for devoting to a god without requiring any cult membership, or allow access to such magic via research. You could adapt the method of learning spells from tomes used in Call of Cthulhu.

Simon Hibbs

[simonh]

10 hours ago, General Panic said:

 The obsession with 'myth' as the driving theme of the setting to the extent that the object or reward of the game is to immerse in and explore Gloranthan myth is for me, and so far as I believe for people I played with, a crushing bore.  

Sure there were players in my RQ campaigns back in the day that weren't really interested in the mythology all that much, but for me the mythology drove the background and setting so it came out I the game pretty naturally. Show, don't' tell.

So for example one of the PCs in a game of mine was killed. Previously he'd had a 'relationship' with an Earth Spirit, actualy a minor deity. She turned up at his funeral and performed a ritual. I played through his character's journey down into the underworld to stand before the Judge of the Dead, where she presrnted herself along with the other PCs, showed she was pregnant and laid claim to his soul. Basically we played through a Resurection ritual. All based on the mythology, but played out in the game.

One of my favourite issues of RuneQuest Adventures fanzine was about an expedition into a cave complex inside the hollow bones of Wakboth, pinned under The Block in Prax which was hurled at him by Storm Bull. So what Glorantha allows you to do is not just tell them the story (yep, boring at least got some), but actually put them in it.

Simon Hibbs

[Joerg]

To be honest, a lot of the RQ2 grognard campaigns that I exchanged ideas with when I started in the German RQ society were about fighting Chaos creatures (like Lunar conscripts, Krarshtkids or broos) in the service of the cults, with magic given for that purpose and used for that purpose. Cult rivalries replaced the race rivalries of D&D.

Scenarios usually have a sponsor/patron, and that can be a cult official. Compare the Snake Pipe Hollow recruitment paragraphs.

You can always have a self-motivated campaign, but that may involve some "one ring" scheme sending the party deep into unexplored territory, or the trope of a destined hero (which suffers strongly if said prospective hero dies of an overdose of pointy things wielded by trollkin).

If you play like that, Gloranthan games suggest that you form a heroband, possibly with a portable source of magic. (Wooden Sword, shipboard shrines, holy wagons, an embodied divine guardian...)

 

[styopa]

Personally, I've felt that canonical Glorantha sometimes goes a little TOO far 'down the rabbit hole' of exploring fantastic metaphysics and cultural minutiae.  (I don't think the Glorantha Digest is still a thing, but you can probably find the logs somewhere and there you'll see in the 'dry years' that the narrow cadre of Gloranthaphiles spent MUCH energy arguing about figurative angels on figurative pins....).

You can role play joining cults and re-enacting the mythic meeting of Orlanth and Ernalda all you want; my players generally thought that was boring as hell.

So my longest-running campaign wasn't about that - it was dungeon crawls ("in Glorantha? WHAT?" cried the purists!) and killing bad guys and taking their crap to go kill more bad guys.  Great fun.  

[Zit]

16 minutes ago, styopa said:

Personally, I've felt that canonical Glorantha sometimes goes a little TOO far 'down the rabbit hole' of exploring fantastic metaphysics and cultural minutiae.

I agree. I'm often getting lost in such discussions and give up before the end, but every one can integrate myths to the degree he wished. I sometime have the feeling that the PCs are supposed to be played as a kind of mystical exhalted derviches. I prefer playing the consequences of the myths on the mundane plane rather than playing the myths themselves. I runned as GM two heroic quests, both in the mundane world. It's all a matter of taste, but the publishers shall be carefull not cutting Glorantha away from less mystical and more real playing tastes. YRQWV