Conclusions from RuneQuest math on social circumstances

[soltakss]

One of my Rules About Glorantha is "Don't look too closely".

Rules, when taken to the extreme, often break down. Tables used for one situation often break down when extrapolated or used in other situations.

If things breaking down bothers people, then I'd say either handwave it or use a better table.

[Brootse]

36 minutes ago, Joerg said:

There still remains the question of the inevitable social downward spiral as the surplus noble children surviving their childhood don't find enough noble occupations to maintain their birth standards.

That's easy to answer, they become adventurers and die like flies.

And as for contraception:

[Bill the barbarian]

44 minutes ago, soltakss said:

Rules, when taken to the extreme, often break down.

Right, just like analogies will break at some point in the world of physics.

[Akhôrahil]

2 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

To keep low population, in the real world, people did it themselves with abortifacients and contraception. They didn't want that many children.

Not really - in the ancient world, the population was kept steady by Malthusian processes. When you have a bad year, the old and the young died.

[soltakss]

8 minutes ago, Bill the barbarian said:

analogies

Are you referring to the previous post? Sorry, I am still 11 at heart.

[Bill the barbarian]

1 minute ago, soltakss said:

Are you referring to the previous post? Sorry, I am still 11 at heart.

I was too busy shouting my 11 year old down with comments about inappropriate, and, oh behave and  bad barbarian...  to have been referring to much.

[Akhôrahil]

2 hours ago, Joerg said:

Even with dedicated healers, diseases will take a while before being recognized as more than a common cold or similar low threat threshold common spirit affliction - and these are bound to exist besides the bad Malian ones.

There are other causes for death among children, among these malnutrition due to calamities. Calamities like the Fimbulwinter, which will have produced a batch of children with severe malnutrition for about a year, hence prone to other defects, or attractive to malign spirits of other sorts than Malian diseases.

I would assume the majority of children between 0 and 2 in Sartarite clans died during the Windstop. No, it's not a nice thought, but I'm strongly opposed to making Glorantha too cuddly in these aspects. I have no problems whatsoever with a 50% child mortality to age 15. In 18th century Sweden, it was still 1/3.

I would find a game that purported to be bronze-age-adjacent but with a minimal child mortality and 2.1 births per mother to maintain population at a steady level, to be ridiculous. The ancient world was a fucking horrible place!

[Akhôrahil]

One of the things we probably don't talk much about, is child exposure among the Orlanthi. That infant has a chaos-rune shaped birthmark? Crippling birth defects? Times are just too lean? That infant gets left out in the woods - how could it be otherwise?

[Brootse]

55 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

One of the things we probably don't talk much about, is child exposure among the Orlanthi. That infant has a chaos-rune shaped birthmark? Crippling birth defects? Times are just too lean? That infant gets left out in the woods - how could it be otherwise?

My group talks about this. If a character gets too awful stats he's deemed to have been thrown off from the cliffs.

[Qizilbashwoman]

8 minutes ago, Brootse said:

My group talks about this. If a character gets too awful stats he's deemed to have been thrown off from the cliffs.

as they say, "a yeet is the opposite of a yoink"

[soltakss]

1 hour ago, Akhôrahil said:

One of the things we probably don't talk much about, is child exposure among the Orlanthi.

Foundchild, in his various guises, is a child abandoned or exposed.

[Akhôrahil]

23 minutes ago, Brootse said:

My group talks about this. If a character gets too awful stats he's deemed to have been thrown off from the cliffs.

That's such a great idea! :-)

[Ian Absentia]

3 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

That infant has a chaos-rune shaped birthmark? Crippling birth defects? Times are just too lean? That infant gets left out in the woods - how could it be otherwise?

Dude.  You just outlined my next character's origin story, and the long-term results won't be pretty.  I'm just saying, you put a baby in a basket in a river, you'd better put a big rock in the bottom of that basket.

!i!

[Akhôrahil]

8 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

Dude.  You just outlined my next character's origin story, and the long-term results won't be pretty.  I'm just saying, you put a baby in a basket in a river, you'd better put a big rock in the bottom of that basket.

I'm honestly surprised they didn't put something like this in Argrath's backstory when writing his sagas hundreds of years later. It's such a hero trope.

Edited September 14, 2019 by Akhôrahil

[Joerg]

19 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

I'm honestly surprised they didn't put something like this in Argrath's backstory when writing his sagas hundreds of years later. It's such a hero trope.

Sending him out to become a foot-man (i.e. slave) of the Praxians is the next best thing they could do. A troublesome orphan sent into (lesser?) exile within weeks of his initiation to appease impending Lunar reprisals fulfils oh so many zero to hero tropes.

If you are a fan of the original Midkemia trilogy, you can find lots of parallels between the early career of Argrath and Pug in "Magician: Apprentice".

[Qizilbashwoman]

5 hours ago, Joerg said:

Sending him out to become a foot-man (i.e. slave) of the Praxians is the next best thing they could do. A troublesome orphan sent into (lesser?) exile within weeks of his initiation to appease impending Lunar reprisals fulfils oh so many zero to hero tropes.

If you are a fan of the original Midkemia trilogy, you can find lots of parallels between the early career of Argrath and Pug in "Magician: Apprentice".

They call him a child of stickpickers, as well. Why does he get sent to Prax? A 14yo solos four hardened borderlands guardsmen?

[Akhôrahil]

5 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

They call him a child of stickpickers, as well. Why does he get sent to Prax? A 14yo solos four hardened borderlands guardsmen?

Crits his Augment using Hate: Lunars, that’s a good start.

[Qizilbashwoman]

1 minute ago, Akhôrahil said:

Crits his Augment using Hate: Lunars, that’s a good start.

what, you think the guardsmen don't have Hate: these murderous Sartarites? and a lot of armor?

[Ian Absentia]

I reckon those guardsmen have a passion closer to Hate: This Shit-Stick Backwater Assignment, and even a crit on that is barely enough to augment getting out of bed in the morning.

!i!