From: Alex Ferguson (abf@cs.ucc.ie)
Date: Fri 19 May 2000 - 05:33:20 EEST
> John Hughes wrote
>
> > Gloranthan politics are primarily ritual.
David Dunham:
> I completely disagree. Gloranthan politics is about organizing
> factions of supporters, who may support you in a ritual fashion. Or
> they may support you in war. Or simply in administration.
Happily, IMG this isn't so. Ritual isn't something you tack on
at the end in order to 'go do heroplane stuff now', it's a
constant interplay between the the mundane and the mythic. If you
do your man-management and factioneering in an a-mythic way, you'll
be screwed, because a) in the medium term, the magical consequences
will bite you on the bum, and b) before this ever happens in
practice, your clan-mates will cunningly anticipate 'a)', and stitch
you up good and proper, in the short term (like, don't plan on
still being chief, come next Windsday...).
John's 'primarily' may or may not be overstated, but I certainly think
the factors he describes can't be neglected. I think ring members
come in flavours for which either ritual or mundane considerations
predominate. A crude stereotype of our clan history (i.e. the
one you'd get from the ale-house a tankard or four after dusk)
would suggest, for example, that our last chief, Borlkar, was a
too-clever-for-his-own-good politician, and our current one, Erstar,
is a 'What Would Orlanth have Done?' cypher. ("Hrm, so the ritually
correct thing to do in any miscellaneous situation not covered by any
other Obvious Best Advice is to do what Ernalda manipulates me into
doing -- hey, that's handy!") Clearly though, both conform to
that well known Sartarite truism, if you want to get ahead, get
an '-ar' in your name...
> Don't forget that sending warriors to whoop at a tribal moot is
> part of the fun (see King of Dragon Pass). Sure, they are performing
> Orlanth's whooping war dance, so it's ritual in one sense. But the
> true sense is: our clan's got lots of muscle, and we're not afraid to
> use it.
Your 'true meaning' without the (correct) ritual element would be
at best meaningless, and at worst a monumental blooper, though.
Chances are people already _know_ how much muscle you have, and
how free you are about using it, but this is a means of not simply
demonstrating how much you're prepared to 'stake' on a particular
issue, but is also the magically effective and socially normative
way of doing so.
> Wrong (at least from having played in a politically oriented game).
> See the writeups for either Taming of Dragon Pass (particularly
> Kerenath's Saga) or the Dawn Age game. Kerenath became chief of the
> Varmandi essentially because of disagreements over how to run the
> clan and deal with the Lunars. He had no mythic outcome in mind.
i.e., a 'secular effect', to use precisely John's phrase. If your
game implied to you that this can be done without regard to ritual
_method_, then I believe your game is, if not outright wrong, then
misleading lacking in emphasis in that area.
> To take another example from King of Dragon Pass, the object of the
> game is not to perform some mighty ritual to eliminate the
> Horse-Spawn menace. It's to make a political union with the Feathered
> Horse Queen.
The distinction being?
KoDP isn't my favourite Definitive Source (don't get me started on
Orlanth the non-Warrior), but as regards the importance of ritual
it's pretty spot-on, I'd say. Click thee to thy nearest "If we
did the following apparently daft thing, it'd strengthen our clan
magic" option, Author! (I'm not sure if they're always the smart
play, but they're definitely the real mood-setters...)
Cheers,
Alex.
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