Gods and Goddesses of Glorantha

[Jeff]

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

And if it was 13G, if that character shows up in a Gloranthan game he should have that magic. Sorry, Jeff, but "This is a RuneQuest forum" doesn't make Hofstaring a tree-climber and abseiler, either.

I chose my words carefully to indicate a single recipient of this feat. IIRC it was won as a reward for the "Seven Steps West" quest (from King of Sartar).

You might not be too fond of the Sartar Rising story line, and to be honest, neither am I, but this shouldn't cut out all the Sartarite detail from it.

The character I was talking about appears in the Sartar Rising! campaign for HW/HQ1: Javern Spithorn, originally the spear companion of Orngerin Thundercape, and the characters' lead to become followers of Kallyr, "Orlanth Is Dead" p.10, and more prominently in "Gathering Thunder" p.5, where the player characters get his help in a combat situation. An image of him is on p.49.

It is a very special feat, probably gained on a heroquest. I recall a short article or story by Greg why Javern couldn't be resurrected because his feat spared him most of the Path of the Dead.

Guided Teleport to a specific Outer World location works as a RQ spell. The Gate of Dusk is on Luathela, not in the Sky World, BTW.

I emphasise that this is a RuneQuest forum to encourage you to think what that means in terms of the RQ rules. Otherwise move this over to the general Glorantha forum.

 

[Hzark10]

On 8/9/2019 at 12:19 PM, soltakss said:

On 8/6/2019 at 8:13 PM, styopa said:

Ah, now the source of soltakss comes out...

Curses, my secret is revealed!

On 8/6/2019 at 8:18 PM, Qizilbashwoman said:

GBAJI! of course gbaji

No, the other one, Nysalor, definitely Nysalor. Orlanth with his eyes opened ...

Apologize about coming late to the party here, but my eyes have recently been opened (so to speak). At GenCon this year, Chaosium released a limited number of Gods of Glorantha in 2 volumes. The second volume contains the Storm, Shaman, Lunar (Moon), and Chaos pantheons. Specifically, the Lunar section has expanded to include each of the 7 mothers expanded into their own cult writeups.  The section on illumination is greatly expanded and shall we say, illuminating on so many levels. I think I know now just how powerful Nysalor was and why Arkat had to go through so many changes to defeat him. I am looking for the finished product with much anticipation.

[Joerg]

8 minutes ago, Jeff said:

I emphasise that this is a RuneQuest forum to encourage you to think what that means in terms of the RQ rules. Otherwise move this over to the general Glorantha forum.

The entirety of the last few days worth of messages in this thread were material for the Glorantha forum, but unfortunately the normal mortal forum user has no way to move stuff from one forum to another. Branching off a new thread doesn't redirect replies to earlier posts in the original thread.

 

In order to stay on topic with this upcoming RuneQuest publication:

Does Lightfore get a cult in GaGoG, or is the planet mentioned shortly in "The Cult in the World" for both (young) Yelm and Yelmalio?

Not that any mythic insights found now would have much of a chance making it into this manuscript.. Content editing will be restricted to checking correct attribution of subcults etc. compared to previously published lore.

I don't think a guide to heroquesting in the Sky World together with a sandbox description of constellation denizens etc. has even been suggested as a product, yet...

[styopa]

2 hours ago, Jeff said:

I emphasise that this is a RuneQuest forum to encourage you to think what that means in terms of the RQ rules. Otherwise move this over to the general Glorantha forum.

 

Wasn't one of the stated primary goals (successful, IMO) of RQG to bring RQ and Glorantha more into synthesis anyway?  ie. not so separate and distinct as they've historically been?

[scott-martin]

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

I don't think a guide to heroquesting in the Sky World together with a sandbox description of constellation denizens etc. has even been suggested as a product, yet...

If anything brings Steve Marsh back it would be this. 

Mythic insight is always a moving target . . . this tome should provide a starting point for the Hero Wars. Who knows where things end up?

[g33k]

2 hours ago, styopa said:

Wasn't one of the stated primary goals (successful, IMO) of RQG to bring RQ and Glorantha more into synthesis anyway?  ie. not so separate and distinct as they've historically been?

I think Jeff is alluding to the notion that Glorantha-in-HQ and Glorantha-in-13G and Glorantha-in-RQ are each sometimes different from one another.  Each line is brought to a mechanics-driven fruition that sometimes leads to worlds which differ as to their facts.  Therefore, a character, spell, or other game-object that occurs in any one of those games, or has any specific game-mechanic, should not automatically be presumed to be valid/correct/etc, or even to exist, in all of them.

It's one of the things that sometimes drives some Gloranthaphiles batty (even non-Lunars).

 

[g33k]

5 hours ago, Jeff said:

I emphasise that this is a RuneQuest forum to encourage you to think what that means in terms of the RQ rules. Otherwise move this over to the general Glorantha forum.

Is there any reason why an ability such as this couldn't be won in a RQG heroquest?

I don't honestly see that it needs to be exiled from the RQG forum...  In fact I would presume that (other than "return from the dead") very few heroquest abilities are cookie-cutter duplicates.  I'd hope for mostly unique abilities (and this one seems entirely apt).

What am I missing?

  

[Sir_Godspeed]

7 hours ago, g33k said:

I think Jeff is alluding to the notion that Glorantha-in-HQ and Glorantha-in-13G and Glorantha-in-RQ are each sometimes different from one another.  Each line is brought to a mechanics-driven fruition that sometimes leads to worlds which differ as to their facts.  Therefore, a character, spell, or other game-object that occurs in any one of those games, or has any specific game-mechanic, should not automatically be presumed to be valid/correct/etc, or even to exist, in all of them.

 

Gotcha. This should be pretty familiar for anyone who's played video games where a character from one game pops up in a spin-off series. Like how Arthas in Warcraft 3 and Arthas in World of Warcraft and Arthas in Hearthstone and Arthas in Heroes of the Storm are all clearly iterations of the same basic character, but adapted to different game genres, game engines and basic gameplay.

I guess it can be more frustrating for a tabletop game/world because you don't have a CPU to think about all that stuff for you, so it's something you have to be actively, consciously aware of.

[g33k]

50 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Gotcha. This should be pretty familiar for anyone who's played video games where a character from one game pops up in a spin-off series. Like how Arthas in Warcraft 3 and Arthas in World of Warcraft and Arthas in Hearthstone and Arthas in Heroes of the Storm are all clearly iterations of the same basic character, but adapted to different game genres, game engines and basic gameplay.

I guess it can be more frustrating for a tabletop game/world because you don't have a CPU to think about all that stuff for you, so it's something you have to be actively, consciously aware of.

I think it's the idea of there being one, true, canonical Glorantha, to which each ruleset "should be" as faithful as is mechanically possible for a given rule-set.  One game will be superior in this way, but inferior in that way, but they all asymptotically approach the Real Glorantha.

I am... uncertain as to the origin of the "the one, true, canonical Glorantha" delusion.  You'd think they'd grasp the essentially mutable nature of Gloranthan reality by now... 

 

 

 

/eurmal

[Akhôrahil]

6 hours ago, g33k said:

I think it's the idea of there being one, true, canonical Glorantha, to which each ruleset "should be" as faithful as is mechanically possible for a given rule-set.  One game will be superior in this way, but inferior in that way, but they all asymptotically approach the Real Glorantha.

I am... uncertain as to the origin of the "the one, true, canonical Glorantha" delusion.  You'd think they'd grasp the essentially mutable nature of Gloranthan reality by now... 

There are two very different ways of looking at a rules system. Let's call them "Rules Realist" and "Incomplete Modelling".

Under a rules realist system, many of the artifacts of the game system define - or perhaps merely perfectly describe - how the world works. Under this interpretation, on a Gloranthan battlefield, people fumble and crit wildly, after the battle a large percentage of the combatants need limbs regrown, and people tell themselves "I should cast my Protection spell, at intensity 5". You go to your priest to sacrifice (say) 1/13th of your Power in order to earn Rune Power and learn the Guided Teleportation spell. Under this interpretation, the RuneQuest rules define Glorantha to a significant degree. If you would find yourself in Glorantha, you would be able to look at certain features of the world and be able to tell whether you're in RuneQuest-Glorantha or HeroQuest-Glorantha. (I just read Paulis Longvale's tale in Cults of Terror again, and there, this goes to the extreme, with people basically described as casting spirit magic spells of a certain magnitude).    

The second interpretation, "Incomplete Modelling" (really a tautology - all modelling is incomplete by definition), would rather say that the Glorantha stays the same, and that different rules system merely represent the world and model play in different ways. Under this interpretation, what the rules say about fumbles, crits and chopped-off limbs isn't a description of how the world actually works, but rather this game's way of creating play. People wouldn't say "Wait a moment, let me cast Protection 5 before we go into battle", but rather "Spirits, ward me from wood and bronze in this battle!". No-one would say "Since I wish to increase my magical Power, I must make sure to attempt Befuddle now and then". A person in the world very likely doesn't call the Guided Teleportation spell "Guided Teleportation", but rather "Mastakos's Great Leap" or something ("Sunset Leap" if teleporting into the west, perhaps?). Now, if you found yourself in Glorantha, you wouldn't be able to tell whether you were in RQ-Glorantha or HQ-Glorantha by identifying artifacts of the game in the world, because the difference isn't in the world, merely in how a particular game chooses to model it.

As you can probably tell, I'm leaning strongly towards the Incomplete Modelling interpretation, but we probably can't go all the way there either. In a few cases, you really can tell what game you're in when you find yourself in Glorantha. What runes does Lhankor Mhy have? If it's Truth and Stasis, you're in RuneQuest, if it's Truth and Law, not-RQ (at least not RQ:G under the current rules). 13AiG does certain things to the setting in order to better support its mode of play. And so on.

Edited August 13, 2019 by Akhôrahil

[Kloster]

Even if I'm strongly in the other side, I like very much your description. Congratulations.

[Sir_Godspeed]

I think the Rules Realist thing is why I could never get into Dungeons & Dragons lore. Reading about Giants and how their society worked only for some off-handed comment about them being able to throw a rock 300 yards but only once per day or something just instantly dissolves my immersion. It's probably also why I've so far almost exclusively stuck to the literary aspects of Glorantha.

(Not that I begrudge anyone these descriptions, things should be made clear for players as it is a game, after all).

[Jeff]

On 7/20/2019 at 6:57 PM, g33k said:

Hmmm.

There's a new TrollPack product coming... do we expect to see additional Divine Uz content there?  Reprinting of GaGoG content?  TrollPack to include lots of "see GaGoG" xref's?  Or...?

 

New Uz content, not reprint.

[Sumath]

7 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

People wouldn't say "Wait a moment, let me cast Protection 5 before we go into battle", but rather "Spirits, ward me from wood and bronze in this battle!"

There are plenty of Chaosium publications that indicate that 'Incomplete Modelling' is in effect. For example, in the Dragon of the Thunder Hills, reference is made to several rune spells that might be used to defeat the dragon, without actually using the Runequest rules names for those spells. Equally, I can remember POW or magic points being referred to as 'soulforce' etc.

However, even if the relationship between rules and game world is 'Incomplete Modelling', that still doesn't rule out the idea of different rulesets modelling different versions of Glorantha...

[davecake]

On Yelm and the little Yelms..

To the Dara Happans, the sun disk vs the Sun isn't an issue - during the Darkness there was no sun disk, and some parts of the sun were given separate worship.

The part that remained on Earth fell into doubt. The Dara Happans know that Antirius was also the true Justice, but they acknowledge that others (Kargzant, Elmal, Shargash, etc) various contested to take his place by usurping the place of the true Emperor. 

At the Dawn they combined, and the True Antirius part resumed his rightful place. Yelm is real and the sun disk again (but worshipped directly only by the elite), and you can also worship his parts separately as appropriate to who you are (Antirius for Justice, Enverinus as the sacrificial fire god, BernEel Arashagern as the husband god of Dendara, etc - of course, no one sane worships KazKurtum or the Black Sun but they are acknowledged in certain ceremonies), and you are still worshipping Yelm appropriately. It all makes perfect sense. 

At the Sunstop these contradictions were truly resolved, the Sun became perfect again, Yelm demonstrates his power to resolve the Many into the One, and everything is fine. The normal folk of Dara Happa believe Antirius is the Justice of Yelm, the Illuminates can believe all the little Suns are the same part of Yelm. The great mystics (including the Red Goddess, Nysalor, Sheng etc) all know that by emphasising different forms of the little Sun, you can change the nature of Yelm - and all of them attempt to do so - but for most people that is far above their pay grade to worry about such things. 

Yelmalio vs Elmal, to the Dara Happans, who of course believe they understand Yelm best, is just different forms of error. 

The Yelmalio cult is barbarians misunderstanding the finer points of theology - they confuse being a part of Yelm with being a son of Yelm - but it is close enough to true for barbarians, and they are loyal. 

The Pentans are more deluded - Kargzant was proven to be unjust and no longer a part of Yelm during the Dominion of Kargzant. 

The Orlanthi are the most deluded of all - they were able to confuse Antirius and learn how to steal some of this power when he was weak and wounded in the Darkness, but now they confuse the part with the whole still, they live in the past with stolen power. 

Anyway, that is my Dara Happan take on the debate, they should know, right?

 

[g33k]

49 minutes ago, Jeff said:

New Uz content, not reprint.

<drools>

<breaks out whip>

<drives Jeff back to the salt-mines>

<hopes he remembered to keep the leash clipped on so Jeff can be hauled forth again to answer more questions>

"Keep up the goodgreat work!"

 

😁

[Lordabdul]

8 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

As you can probably tell, I'm leaning strongly towards the Incomplete Modelling interpretation, but we probably can't go all the way there either. In a few cases, you really can tell what game you're in when you find yourself in Glorantha. What runes does Lhankor Mhy have? If it's Truth and Stasis, you're in RuneQuest, if it's Truth and Law, not-RQ (at least not RQ:G under the current rules). 13AiG does certain things to the setting in order to better support its mode of play. And so on.

Nice. But yes, I'm always leaning towards "Incomplete Modelling" too, even though, as you say, it sometimes does have some "in-game-world side effects" and so, in effect, there are multiple subtly different Gloranthas for different systems (hence Jeff's comment). But when it comes to playing, if a player says "I'm casting Bladesharp 3", I consider that game-talk -- there's no such thing as "Bladesharp 3" in my Glorantha the same way there's no such thing as "DEX 12" (imagine an NPC saying "oh, you seem to have DEX 12, right?"... preposterous!).

It's the same with other games, too... for instance, Call of Cthulhu has always encouraged Keepers to use creative names for spells. It's very lame if you tell your players that they just learned "Shrivelling" or "Summon Byakhee" when you could tell them they learned "The Withering Blast Of Death" or "Call Forth The Winged Messenger From The Cold Of Night", and to that effect, the CoC books often give 2 or 3 alternate names for each spell. So yeah, I'd definitely encourage players to say "I touch the Air rune on the hilt of my sword and ask Orlanth to guide my hand" instead of "I activate Bladesharp". Even in RQG, if you read Vasana's Saga, it's often told that way, like when Yanioth summons an elemental, or when Vasana casts Lighting.

I wonder if the upcoming RQG GM book will give some guidance and practical examples for this. There was someone on the forums (can't remember who exactly) who mentioned they had a game where some Sartarite clans were getting readied for battle by casting various spells, but it was described as all the warriors chanting and yelling "until their voices sounded like Orlanth's thunder" or something to that effect, I thought that was pretty cool.

[Qizilbashwoman]

1 hour ago, davecake said:

no one sane worships KazKurtum or the Black Sun

ok wait, the Black Sun has sane worshippers, they're just Darkness folk. The Black Sun defeated the Chaos god Tien and forced him into two separate forms, Than and Atyar.

he might be bloodthirsty and a Darkness deity, but he's better than Zorak Zoran or Shargash. It's not like Hon Eel worshippers get called crazy, but they use human sacrifice in exchange for decent maize crops.

[Akhôrahil]

3 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Nice. But yes, I'm always leaning towards "Incomplete Modelling" too, even though, as you say, it sometimes does have some "in-game-world side effects" and so, in effect, there are multiple subtly different Gloranthas for different systems (hence Jeff's comment). But when it comes to playing, if a player says "I'm casting Bladesharp 3", I consider that game-talk -- there's no such thing as "Bladesharp 3" in my Glorantha the same way there's no such thing as "DEX 12" (imagine an NPC saying "oh, you seem to have DEX 12, right?"... preposterous!)

At one point, Paulis Longvale actually writes about "POW" when they're restraining a Vampire (CoT p. 53) which I find absolutely hilarious.

Edited August 13, 2019 by Akhôrahil

[Shiningbrow]

9 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Nice. But yes, I'm always leaning towards "Incomplete Modelling" too, even though, as you say, it sometimes does have some "in-game-world side effects" and so, in effect, there are multiple subtly different Gloranthas for different systems (hence Jeff's comment). But when it comes to playing, if a player says "I'm casting Bladesharp 3", I consider that game-talk -- there's no such thing as "Bladesharp 3" in my Glorantha the same way there's no such thing as "DEX 12" (imagine an NPC saying "oh, you seem to have DEX 12, right?"... preposterous!).

I mostly agree (And definitely prefer this "incomplete modelling"), but you and I know we *can* talk about DEX 12, POW, MP, etc - in real life. (Sure, we'd be labelled as geeks!!) 

In saying that, I'd presume that someone somewhere has noticed the same effects of the differently named spells, and thus categorised them.

A couple of real world instances come to mind for stats... SIZ & INT. We've quantified sizes (S,M, L, or numerical - what's your shoe size??), and we regularly talk about a person's IQ (even EQ now).

Just saying... Bladesharp 6 could be a real thing to some people. So could "I need some armour for a SIZ 15 human".

 

[Joerg]

11 hours ago, davecake said:

On Yelm and the little Yelms..

Yelm is real and the sun disk again (but worshipped directly only by the elite),

That's not quite the case. Practically everybody worships Yelm in Dara Happa as a lay member, but only the elite can initiate to his cult.

Apart from the birth privilege required to be initiated into the Cult of Yelm, IMO this isn't that different from most Pelorian deities.

We are all used to the Orlanthi mode where everybody is initiated to a specific deity. For the vast majority of Pelorians, this is not the case.

11 hours ago, davecake said:

Anyway, that is my Dara Happan take on the debate, they should know, right?

The majority of the Dara Happans has as limited insight to these truths as say the Orlanthi, as they are denied access to the cult secrets. There are more illuminates in the Empire than there are people privy to the secrets of the Sun Disk. The sun mystery is one of the ways the nobility conserves its superiority. The Buserian cult and other lesser priesthoods are strong in partial secrets, and a small fraction of the illuminated also has the insights into celestial lore to approach the secrets. To all the rest it is the awesomeness of imperial solar rule.

The widespread direct Yelm worship among the horse riders is one of the reasons why horse rider rule in Peloria has been regarded as legitimate noble rule. While their "justice" wasn't exactly "measured", they certainly were qualified for the "from the above" part of the Solar concept of imperial authority.

The Lunar Way and nobility derived from the Red Emperor side-steps this, both in access to the cult of Yelm and in access to the mysteries.

[Lordabdul]

48 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

In saying that, I'd presume that someone somewhere has noticed the same effects of the differently named spells, and thus categorised them.

That's borderline God Learnerism! You know what happens to those people... but yes, maybe. Maybe there's different categorisations out there, too. Some of them might have the same terms as in the RQG book, some might not...

48 minutes ago, Shiningbrow said:

A couple of real world instances come to mind for stats... SIZ & INT. We've quantified sizes (S,M, L, or numerical - what's your shoe size??), and we regularly talk about a person's IQ (even EQ now).

Just saying... Bladesharp 6 could be a real thing to some people. So could "I need some armour for a SIZ 15 human".

Good points, although these measures are most likely in other units in the game world -- like "stones" for weight, or "cubit" for sizes.

[Shiningbrow]

53 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

That's borderline God Learnerism! You know what happens to those people

They become really knowledgeable, powerful and rich... 😁😁😁

 

53 minutes ago, lordabdul said:

although these measures are most likely in other units in the game world -- like "stones" for weight, or "cubit" for sizes

Absolutely!!! And different terms in different places and languages. And the terms will even have different values in different places... If Lhankor Mhy scholars can't even decide on an indexing system within one single library, there's no way measurements will be uniform across a world!!!

Edited August 14, 2019 by Shiningbrow
Emojis :D

[Kloster]

6 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

A couple of real world instances come to mind for stats... SIZ & INT. We've quantified sizes (S,M, L, or numerical - what's your shoe size??), and we regularly talk about a person's IQ (even EQ now).

I'm clearly in favor of the 'Rules Realist' model, in part because I prefer having player and character using the same way of explaining things. This are 2 perfect examples that work.

6 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Just saying... Bladesharp 6 could be a real thing to some people. So could "I need some armour for a SIZ 15 human".

Ditto.

5 hours ago, lordabdul said:

Good points, although these measures are most likely in other units in the game world -- like "stones" for weight, or "cubit" for sizes.

Of course. And different region or countries can have different words with same or different values. Medieval France had over 20 different livres (pounds) units, each area using it's own (in most case with the same name, causing much confusion).

[Lordabdul]

Of course, in practice, you can't go all in with the in-game talk... you still need table talk and stuff:

Player (smashing her fist on the table): "I summon Orlanth's wrath to smite my enemies from above!!!!"
GM: "....errr ok, yeah, awesome, but, so....??"
Player: "well, I cast Lightning"
Everybody: "right, of course, yeah! Whoohooo"

But still, it would feel like an extremely weird and artificial world to me if rule terms were what players and NPCs were using all the time exclusively (and, in CoC's case at least, actually detrimental to the whole atmosphere). So in practice there's a bit of both, especially when gaining powers:

NPC: "Here is the Sword of Jaelik, the Troll Slayer, the Path Finder!"
Player: "cool! so what do I write on my character sheet?"
GM: "It's a Broadsword, +2 damage against trolls, shines in the dark if you brush your finger against the hilt"

(Note: in the case above, unless they actually learn what the sword does, I might not even make them write what it does yet... they'd have to try it to see! and so they would know it's +2 or whatever only after they actually fought their first troll with it! So that’s one advantage of this type of gameplay for me)

Maybe this should go in a new topic

Edited August 14, 2019 by lordabdul