From: Alex Ferguson (abf@interzone.ucc.ie)
Date: Sat 08 Mar 1997 - 03:48:33 EET
Jeff Richard describes an ad-libbed mini-HQ for disposing of troublesome
Special Broo:
> Players put magic points into the ceremony (up to the player -I think
> somewhere between 3 and 5), but THERE WAS NO GAME MECHANIC. I figured that
> as long as the clan put more magic points up than their foes had that the
> ceremony would work [...]
Particularly ad-libbed for the _broo_, I might add. ;-)
> As for the broo's motivation, frankly I could care less. I am glad that
> there are those people who flesh out the non-human POV, or the chaos
> monster POV, or the small bit of shrubbery POV. But in the Taming of
> Dragon Pass campaign - there is only the Heortling POV. Everything else is
> foreign and will be translated by the players (and NPCs) into the Heortling
> POV.
This is only appropriate, certainly for the players. And for the GM too,
mostly, other than of course than the possibility of having to know enough
about the motivations of Foreign Elements to determine their actions, and
possibly to present said motives to the PCs. This is particularly the case
in HQ or quasi-HQ situations, where expected, "common sense" behaviours of
character are likely to take a back seat to Mythic Reality -- and their
_own_ mythic reality, to boot.
The above case seems fairly untroublesome. Broos are clearly Evil, and
likely sufficiently intent on doing harm to the clan that Summoning them
ought not to be too hard, and I couldn't really care less about Method Broo
Acting, myself. But what happens when say, I perform the Summons of Evil
on say, some Malani guy I don't like? Or even more pointedly, what happens
when someone uses some such ritual on _me_?
Of course, an absence of a real game mechanic, and not having Pam Carlson,
David Dunham, Dave Pearton and Neil Robinson as players are probably more
serious problems, for the rest of us. ;-)
David Dunham:
> What I meant was that you can be
> drawn into someone else's heroquest in a non-starring role. [...]
> I can't quickly find an example of "I was just riding the Plains of
> Prax, minding my own business, when all of a sudden I was attacked by
> a heroquesting Zorak Zorani," but that's what I'm talking about.
Peter Metcalfe supplies:
> [Queen Kallyr / lunar warrior; Pharoah / JarEel; Red Emperor / Sheng;
> Verendekelm the Spolite / Dismesiod.]
Fine examples, but of something rather different, in each case. In the
first two, the Victim was actively HQing in their own right: one can just
Plot a Mythic Intercept Course for them, rather than trying haul them
bodily into the heroplane when they were "minding their own business".
The later two are somewhat different again; these two have such mythically
large and well defined roles that they're "sitting targets" on the HP,
if one is brave, foolhardy, or insanely powerful enough to approach them
there, in their, figuratively speaking, Fortified Positions.
Again, this leads back to the Free Will aspect. An enthroned Dara Happan
Emperor is so deeply enmeshed in the myth and ritual of the role, that he
can't really _not_ respond to an overt challenge to his Sovereignty, short
of stripping nekkid and running out of the throneroom whimpering, which
is certainly an equally valid mythic move. (Albeit the equivalent of
1. e4 -- Resigns.) But trying to haul Joe Pelorian Farmer into the HP
by this route, or most others, would lead to something of a Blank Stare,
I think.
Mundanely,
Alex.
------------------------------
End of Glorantha Digest V4 #257
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