Bits of Glorantha you ignore

[Bill the barbarian]

3 hours ago, simonh said:

it's just that we know about ducks and not the others because the game happens to have focused on Dragon Pass.

Keets anyone? 
Don’t even get me started on Maidstone Archers!

 

[Darius West]

On 10/16/2021 at 6:23 AM, Stephen L said:

I find it very curious that ducks are considered immersion breaking, but, for example, centaurs or minotaurs are believable...

Centaurs and Minotaurs have an Earth based mythical history that especially relates to bronze age and classical Greece.  They are therefore far more setting appropriate. Disney characters?  Not so much.

[Darius West]

Actually another pet peeve that I have with the present Glorantha canon is this whole idea that Morokanths aren't able to eat meat, i.e. are not carnivorous/omnivorous like humans.  I cannot get this idea to make any sense whatsoever, and so I have removed it entirely from my Glorantha.

Think about it...

Waha's Covenant specified that the winners get to ride and eat the losers, but have an obligation to look after them too. 

Let's ignore the other logical problems with Waha's Covenant (such as what exactly was the competition, and why did Humans have to compete against so many different beasts when the beasts apparently didn't compete against each other, etc.)  

This leaves us with the outcome, which was that humans an morokanth won, but somehow morokanth cannot eat meat, despite the fact that they are effectively the ultimate winner of the entire contest, having beaten the humans.  This doubles down in contradiction when you consider that the humans of Genert's Garden likely didn't eat meat either before Waha's Covenant.

This also makes no sense in the context of the spell Alter Creature.  Humans who have the spell cast on them devolve into simpleminded grass eaters who lack the power of speech and reason.  Cast the same creature on a human again and they become normal humans and are able to think and eat meat again.  So... What happens if you cast Alter Creature on a morokanth...?

Also the whole notion that morokanth can make herd men into something of economic value other than food and hides is pretty ridiculous.

If morokanth are herbivores, then the notion that they train herd men to bring them food is absurd, because there is plenty of grass for everyone, and the notion that these herbivorous morokanth are too lazy to lean down and graze is perverse.  It is also silly to imagine that stupid herd men are going to bring tasty treats to the morokanth rather than eating the item themselves, while not impossible, doesn't sound like a good working economic model for managing a tribe.

It is also highly unlikely that Herd Men can be trained to manufacture items for trade.  Herd Men are likely to be less intelligent than chimps, so the chances that they could make items worth trading is unlikely, as we have never been able to train chimps to do so irl, though it might be remotely possible for very smart chimps to learn such skills.

So the notion then would be that herd men bring food to the morokanth so that the morokanth can do the manufacture, save that most morokanth don't have thumbs, and so can't perform manufacturing tasks despite being mentally capable of doing so.  Of course this all begs the question of who they are trading with, as Prax and the wastes weren't exactly replete with settlements of any size for most of their history, and certainly not during the Pre-Time to early First Age period when the cultural methods of the morokanth and other Praxians would have been laid down.

The simple fact is, that unless the morokanth eat their herd men, they cannot justify the effort of keeping them AND there is the whole issue that non-omnivorous/carnivorous morokanth make no sense within the lore, as Waha's Covenant is about who eats whom, as much as it is about who rides whom.

To this end, in my Glorantha, morokanth herd humans, and other Prax beasts, but their herds aren't all that large, as they ride Prax beasts about as well as another Prax beast would, because, surprise, they are big ol' Prax beasts, just smaller than some of the others.

Edited October 19, 2021 by Darius West

[Akhôrahil]

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

Actually another pet peeve that I have with the present Glorantha canon is this whole idea that Morokanths aren't carnivores.  I cannot get this idea to make any sense whatsoever, and so I have removed it entirely from my Glorantha.

Same here. To me, it's what decides who will be a meat eater, so it doesn't matter if tapirs aren't naturally carnivorous. My jaw dropped the first time I heard about this change.

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

To this end, in my Glorantha, morokanth herd humans, and other Prax beasts, but their herds aren't all that large, as they ride Prax beasts about as well as another Prax beast would, because, surprise, they are big ol' Prax beasts, just smaller than some of the others.

I do like the palanquins, though, and they don't seem like they would be adept riders.

Edited October 18, 2021 by Akhôrahil

[Tindalos]

IMG I'm going with a mix, as I feel both are fun options that provide colour.
 

Spoiler

Both Morokanth and Herd-men end up omnivorous, with the Herd-men typically eating roots, although they will eat leaves, grass, bark, and grubs. while the Morokanth being able to eat the meat of herd-beasts, although they still also prefer plants for the most part. And outsiders who visit a Morokanth camp will see grisly sights of human-like body parts in strew pots or on spits.

As for the Survival Covenant, each tribe tells a different story, and the winners and losers will vary depending on the tribe. In some tribes, humans are the victor for keeping their intelligence, in others they're the (graceful) losers for losing their ability to survive on the land directly, and instead feeding on the herds.

The Morokanth are universally regarded as cheaters, although the reason varies, with everyone having their own version. One tribe claims they pretended to be stupid, so Waha paired them with the most stupid of humans. Another tribe claims they cheated by making their own deal with Waha afterwards, so they could still graze a little while having to look after the herd-men.

 

Edited October 18, 2021 by Tindalos

[Rick Meints]

As always, please use or not use whatever you want to use in your game, including not using Glorantha at all.

I don't really see "Howard the Duck" as being in Glorantha because that specific character isn't in Glorantha, nor is Daffy or Donald. There is a race of creatures in Glorantha called ducks/durulz, and while a lot of jokes have been made about them, when it comes down to how they are used or not used in play is up to you and the other players. My general experience is that anything or anybody can be portrayed in a silly manner. I've had players try to use a Donald Duck voice and I've told them they are lessening my enjoyment of the game. If they insist on continuing down that road then I wouldn't continue playing with them. Why would I continue playing with anyone who places a higher value on annoying me than making the game enjoyable for me.

As for Jack O'Bears, I personally think they are fine as they are. Sure, they were added to the game because Archive minis had a miniature already in production that they could relabel as a gloranthan creature as soon as Greg told them what name to use. Like all chaos creatures, they are pretty much a "break the expected norms" sort of creature because that's how chaos works. How close to an actual pumpkin their heads are is up to you. I personally find them very creepy, scary, dangerous, and lethal.

As for Morokanth, having them be vegetarians or meat eaters is such an easy adjustment to make. I personally see them as eating meat, but have no problems if others don't see them that way. I feel Morokanth can also process vegetation better than people can, so they kind of have the best of both worlds when it comes to being able to eat whatever is most available to eat. Since a Herd man probably has less meat on them than a bison or many of the other beasts of Prax I think most of the time the morokanth have an easier time finding vegetation to eat than meat. They probably don't eat a lot of other Praxian beasts because they already have a bad enough relationship with the other tribes and probably find trading the beasts with other tribes as more worth their while. I don't tend to think that deeply about whether any fantasy creation makes total sense, though. That's just not my thing.

[ffilz]

3 hours ago, Rick Meints said:

I don't tend to think that deeply about whether any fantasy creation makes total sense, though. That's just not my thing.

That's where I tend to go. If a fantasy creations makes the game interesting, I'm not going to worry too much about specifics. I don't have problems with any of the creatures that were written up for RQ in the RQ1/2 era. I'm less fond of the things that got added in RQ3, on the other hand, most of them are from outside the Dragon Pass/Prax/Balazar region that I run my campaigns in so they are very easy for me to ignore.

I love Ducks. I love Jack-o-Bears. I love it all. OK, I don't like how the Mostali wound up and am ignoring "Why I Hate the Mostali"...

[Akhôrahil]

1 hour ago, ffilz said:

I don't like how the Mostali wound up and am ignoring "Why I Hate the Mostali"...

I love to hate the Mostali - they're just the worst.

[ffilz]

1 minute ago, Akhôrahil said:

I love to hate the Mostali - they're just the worst.

I don't want to hate Mostali, so in my Glorantha they are more like D&D dwarfs.

[Ali the Helering]

1 hour ago, ffilz said:

I don't want to hate Mostali, so in my Glorantha they are more like D&D dwarfs.

Badly written Tolkien Knock-offs?  Sooo much better than the Mostali.....

[ffilz]

2 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

Badly written Tolkien Knock-offs?  Sooo much better than the Mostali.....

Sorry for offending anyone... I run/play what I like to run/play... I've been running RQ 1st edition since 1978. Some of how things work in my campaign is due to starting to run RQ and Glorantha before there was much written at all about the setting, or at least not much I had read. The RQ1 book gives no hint of the later Mostali and actually sounds vaguely Tolkienesque - D&Dish. The Dwarf of White Bear and Red Moon has a little more hint, but still not much. Of course I read Different Worlds so read the infamous article which destroyed dwarfs for me. In my current campaign I have reclaimed them.

[Sir_Godspeed]

3 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

Badly written Tolkien Knock-offs?  Sooo much better than the Mostali.....

Eyh man, this thread is about people's preferences, let's not knock each others'.

[Ali the Helering]

Very sorry, I wasn't intending it to be read that way.  Please put it down to a day spent in pain and poor judgement resulting.🤐

[Bill the barbarian]

59 minutes ago, Ali the Helering said:

Very sorry, I wasn't intending it to be read that way.  Please put it down to a day spent in pain and poor judgement resulting.🤐

Sorry to hear good sir.

 

[Ali the Helering]

1 hour ago, Bill the barbarian said:

Sorry to hear good sir.

 

I have a condition called Trigeminal Neuralgia, which makes migraine (which I have also suffered) look mild.  It has resurged, and I didn't realise how negatively that post could be (and was) read.  😢

[Darius West]

19 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

I do like the palanquins, though, and they don't seem like they would be adept riders.

I have no issue with the palanquins either.

In my Glorantha, morokanth have parlayed their abilities into making themselves loan sharks, slavers and ransom brokers, with ties to Black Fang and Lanbril, as well as Humakt, as the Humakti generally operate as the other side of hostage negotiations. The palanquin presents as a sort of gaudy frontier ostenation one might expect from such flesh peddlers.  They operate as a sort of Praxian tribal mafia, with operatives in other tribes who have been freed by the morokanth on the proviso that they operate as morokanth agents.

[simonh]

4 hours ago, Darius West said:

They operate as a sort of Praxian tribal mafia, with operatives in other tribes who have been freed by the morokanth on the proviso that they operate as morokanth agents.

And also on the understanding that the Morokanth are taking very good care of their families. Terrible shame if anything was to 'happen' to them.

[Sir_Godspeed]

8 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

Very sorry, I wasn't intending it to be read that way.  Please put it down to a day spent in pain and poor judgement resulting.🤐

Sorry to hear you're in pain, best wishes for things to get better. 😞

[coffeemancer]

On 11/12/2017 at 2:10 PM, David Scott said:

Neither do I but a vegetable-headed bear is certainly cool chaos. Likewise your other suggestions are also good for the variability of Glorantha chaos. I don't think we have enough chaos plant monsters in Glorantha. Hungry Jack/Hungry Eater are the chaos progenitors of jack o'bears, which makes me think that Chaos Cauliflowers are a good thing.

carrot-broo

[Baron Wulfraed]

9 hours ago, Darius West said:

I have no issue with the palanquins either.

In my Glorantha, morokanth have parlayed their abilities into making themselves loan sharks, slavers and ransom brokers, with ties to Black Fang and Lanbril, as well as Humakt, as the Humakti generally operate as the other side of hostage negotiations. The palanquin presents as a sort of gaudy frontier ostenation one might expect from such flesh peddlers.  They operate as a sort of Praxian tribal mafia, with operatives in other tribes who have been freed by the morokanth on the proviso that they operate as morokanth agents.

Suddenly, I'm seeing Ferengi

[Karlak One-eye]

21 hours ago, ffilz said:

Sorry for offending anyone... I run/play what I like to run/play... I've been running RQ 1st edition since 1978. Some of how things work in my campaign is due to starting to run RQ and Glorantha before there was much written at all about the setting, or at least not much I had read. The RQ1 book gives no hint of the later Mostali and actually sounds vaguely Tolkienesque - D&Dish. The Dwarf of White Bear and Red Moon has a little more hint, but still not much. Of course I read Different Worlds so read the infamous article which destroyed dwarfs for me. In my current campaign I have reclaimed them.

 I agree with this entirely. The world machine stuff gives a great context for the hairy little buggers but they still look like Gimli et al. 

[Bren]

Quote

Actually another pet peeve that I have with the present Glorantha canon is this whole idea that Morokanths aren't able to eat meat, i.e. are not carnivorous/omnivorous like humans.

Yeah, I don't use vegetarian Morocanth either. And my Humakti is still wearing that Morocanth claw necklace he got in Prax.

Quote

Let's ignore the other logical problems with Waha's Covenant (such as what exactly was the competition, and why did Humans have to compete against so many different beasts when the beasts apparently didn't compete against each other, etc.) 

I reckon that the major tribes each individually competed against their specific herd beasts. The Bison, Impalas, Sables, and HIgh Llamas all lost and the human tribes with those names all won. The Morocanth beat whatever tribe the Herd men were before they became beasts just like the herd beasts of the four major tribes.

Edited October 20, 2021 by Nick Brooke
fixed quote markings

[Bren]

20 hours ago, Darius West said:

The palanquin presents as a sort of gaudy frontier ostenation one might expect from such flesh peddlers.

I like this! 😀

[JonL]

11 hours ago, Bren said:

I reckon that the major tribes each individually competed against their specific herd beasts. The Bison, Impalas, Sables, and HIgh Llamas all lost and the human tribes with those names all won. The Morocanth beat whatever tribe the Herd men were before they became beasts just like the herd beasts of the four major tribes.

The Covenant tale gets extra interesting if you intersect it with the idea that everyone but the Danmalstani started out as Hsunchen, with the transition from Paleolithic to Neolithic culture coinciding with a fading of connection with their animal sides as they embraced human consciousness through the process of civilization.

With Genert being dead, Prax is sort of frozen on the cusp of that transition. The land is too wounded to support further agricultural development, even Pastoralism is only possible with the Covenant magic. However they do have just enough resources to support a permanent temple complex at the Paps. 

Praxians are categorically not Hsunchen, but are still connected enough with their animals that it shapes their phenotypes (Ostrich Riders are small enough to ride Ostriches, etc.). They don't see themselves as literal siblings with their herds, but their ancestral Founders are seen/remembered as semi-bestial.

The Morokanth inverting the typical Hsunchen -> Humans & Beasts transition is more interesting in that light. It also makes me wonder more about the trajectory that the Ducks, Keets, Merfolk, and indigenous (rather than EWF created) Beast Folk may have followed. 

Edited October 20, 2021 by JonL

[coffeemancer]

Tattooed Pure Horse People.

I like to go the Sig Ages route and have them be solarly pure. 

Differentiates them more from Sartarites