From: Jane Williams (janewill@mail.nildram.co.uk)
Date: Sun 22 Jun 1997 - 21:18:00 EEST
Richard Melvin came up with, among much other good stuff, the best
explanation of the lack of Free Will on the HP I've come across:
> So making a change involves:
> - - getting at least a clans worth of people to pledge some fraction
> of their soul to you in a suitable ritual.
> And free will? That's simple - work out the fraction of your POW
> (inculding fetch, active spells like the above, etc.) that is really
> _yours_, as opposed to coming from supporters, gifted to you by other
> gods, or whatever.
> If 95% or more of your soul is not actually _you_, how much influence
> can you expect to have over your own actions?
And as I remember the definition, Traits are a measure of how other
people see you, not what you're really like. So if all your supporters
believe you'd charge in and attack Wakboth and his minions, that's what
you're doing!
The idea of having chunks of your soul not under your control ties in at a
lower level with some of my half-formed ideas about divine magic and
initiation. This concept that you "sacrifice" POW to form the divine
link, and again in exchange for magic. Would it not make more sense (if
no game difference) to say that the POW is "allocated"? It's still
there, still part of you. It just isn't available for any use other than
the one you've defined for it. I'd say that's where POW lost to DI goes,
too: if the whole soul is "allocated" (dedicated? mortgaged?) to the
deity, you're a spirit in his service by definition.
OK, in normal game terms this is irrelevant: I had some idea that it's
the total POW that you use for DIing (or rather, free + that allocated to
that god). But once you get it linked to Traits and Free Will, it becomes
more important. Suppose half your POW is your own, and half "allocated"
to Orlanth for various reasons. And you have to make a Trait roll on one
of the Orlanth-related Traits? I'd say you've got 50% chance of
overriding the Trait roll and using Free Will. The other 50% of the time,
your Orlanth connection will be in control.
This sounds to me as if high-level priests and RuneLords would by
definition become very much like their deity. Which is perhaps no bad
thing.
Making it more complex... suppose for each point allocated for a spell
is assigned a relevant Trait? (Truesword: Valour) And can only affect
decisions relating to that Trait? So Henry Humakti, with ten castings of
Truesword and no other divine spells, has little choice in his Valour
roll but quite a lot in his Honesty roll.
OK, change tack before I introduce any more complications. Someone was
suggesting a while back that marriage is a HQ, and was an example of one
that limited your Free Will. And/or gave you geases. I've been musing on
that over the weekend (attending a wedding, and appreciating my own),
and it's an interesting RW example of how these things work. How helpful
it is I'm not sure, though.
To start with, an important distinction between Glorantha and the RW. For
me at least, the RW ceremony was a legal irrelevance. Should my marriage
ever break down, I'll have some legal protection, and there are some tax
benefits, but that's about it. In Glorantha, the ceremony would have more
significance. So, what I'm considering as a RW example isn't "marriage"
but the formation of a permanent one-one relationship, legal
relationships aside. As far as I'm concerned, that pre-dated the ceremony
by several years.
So, has this given me any geases, gifts, etc? To some extent the
definition depends on how you see geases working. But to start with the
low-level stuff:
1) My husband is asthmatic, and allergic to most things with fur or
feathers. Therefore, our keeping a pet is out of the question, and I have
to think before stroking next-door's cat. Hotel rooms have to be checked
for feather pillows before he enters them. If I get it wrong, he's going
to start wheezing, and I don't want that. This is something I have to
actively think about, and the consequences of "breaking" the requirement
are unpleasant but not at Spirit of Retribution level.
2) He can't cope with high altitudes. I always wanted to go walking in
the Himalayas. Obviously, he can't go, and I no longer want to go without
him. Notice that change of heart: was that a limitation on my Free Will?
There's nothing stopping me going alone, which is what I'd originally
planned. I just don't want to.
3) Upping the stakes a little here: marriage makes it illegal for me to
go to bed with other blokes. Fortunately, the same applies: I no longer
have any desire to do so. Is this a geas? If I break it, it's certainly
Spirit of Retribution time, and the rest. But again, I no longer have the
bit of Free Will that would make it possible.
4) The really extreme loss of Free Will bit: what happens if some nasty
person decides to hurt my Dave? Based on a single sample, the result seems
to be a demonstration of the Berserk spell. Chances of success irrelevant,
proportionality of offence to punishment irrelevant, knowing perfectly
well that this is a bad idea irrelevant. It's a classic case of the PC
failing a Trait roll and the player objecting. I didn't even get to
control the method of attack used.
I can't think of a model for this in RQ terms - perhaps those "never
allow any * to suffer needlessly" geases? No-one's ever suggested that
they trigger this kind of response, though.
Perhaps any geas can be acquired at varying levels?
Level 1 = know action X is a bad thing
Level 2 = X is unthinkable, you have no desire to do it
Level 3 = the overkill above?
The gifts to go with the geases - sorry, I just can't get it into proper
words, much less RQ rules. Confidence, support, immunity to most
depression-based problems.... it just doesn't go into game-relevant
terms. Anyone else out there lucky enough to have this sort of
relationship and better able to explain it?
So is marriage a HQ? I'm still not sure. It seems to have HQ-level
effects, certainly. But HQs are meant to be difficult. Meeting the one
right bloke and falling in love didn't require any effort on my part at
all. Maybe it comes under the heading of Things That Are Fated - those
promises from the Three at birth. Maybe each day, each PC should roll
percentiles: if you get 01 three times in a row, you've just met the one
for you.
And, just to complicate matters, I gather that not all relationships work
like this one. (Evidence: there is a thing called "divorce"). So this is
not a representative sample. Any more married or otherwise committed
Digesters got any more gifts/geases to add to the list?
Jane Williams jane@williams.nildram.co.uk
http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~janewill/gloranth/index.shtml
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End of Glorantha Digest V4 #533
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