From: Mark S. c/o Tom Yates (marks@slough.mit.edu)
Date: Fri 16 Apr 1993 - 10:13:46 EEST
Flame On
>Ok where to start, how about a flame.
Evidently not a Yelmalio.
> Excuse me?! We should correct your material? That when I
>go out and spend my 15 pounds or however much this supplement
>will cost me, I must also buy magazines etc which support RQ
>just to get the corrections to the product that I have bought.
>Personally I would prefer waiting an extra 2 weeks for
>a quality product rather than a shoddy 'Get it published as soon
>as possible so we can make money quicker' product.
You may, perhaps, have taken Ken's friendly colloquial banter a bit too seriously. There is no good reason to believe that our Rune Czar expects us to find either huge mistakes or prose worthy of hosanas. If you have engaged in a creative project, you must be aware that small minor glitches are inevitable. It should encourage you that AH wants to hear about any faults we find. Playtester's can't catch everything. Besides, we're not talking ASL here, what sort of crippling Errata can there be in a scenario?
>I'm in a flaming mood so onto other points.
> 1) Issaries write-up in Cradles, where did the Rune-Lord
>status go to? Merchants need protecting. Similarly, I would
conisder that Lankhor Mhy would possibly have 'Explorers'.
RuneQuest Three did away with silly rules-mechanics driven Rune Lords for non-fighting cults. Deal with it.
> 2) Do the words Lanbril, Pavis, Flintnail(Not sure on
>this one) mean anything. Pavis was half covered in Cradles. It
This was a River of Cradles product, not a Pavis specific one. It had a hell of a lot of source material for the money. We live in an imperfect world, and can not expect to get everything we want at once.
> I could go on about GoG and what a waste of paper that was, and
>maybe a book with 10 cult write-ups rather than 400 would have
>been more worthwhile.
Really. As a GM, I find that the GOG Cults book is my most valuable reference, both when gaming and when designing. Also, as an aside, I'd like to air my hunch that the Seven Mother aren't "healed" or "corrupted" Lightbringers, but rather a cheesy way to fit as many Lunar gods as possible into Cults of Prax.
Magic and Culture
>This is all getting off the track really, as I intended it as an
>example of how ordinary people might have their lives changed by
>widespread use of magic. I think the culture would tend to be much
>more like 20th century than ancient.
There was a big discursion about along these lines on GEnie. The Gang O' Four (back before they were the Gang O' Four) and the rest of us were talking (arguing) about Sorcery. Someone consulted Stafford and confirmed that there is NO Gloranthan Internet or Fed Ex based on teleport. Bad Things happen when mortals start doing stuff like that. Besides, the gods don't have to kill innovators who alter the course of nature; the fanatically conservative lynch mobs will string up the "God Learners" first. In the end, of course, Gloranthans are neither ancient nor modern.
The RuneQuest rules were written for a game, not a social or physical model. Extrapolating from them can be tricky.
>In fact the magic has always been there right from the start,
>whereas early cultures on Earth initially got along without any
>technology/magic at all, and thus developed before it became available.
>If the magic was there before the culture, that is going to cause
>BIG differences.
This is very true.
>I suspect that those tables have been frigged for player character
>backgrounds, and don't necessarily reflect the 'real' population
>breakdowns. I don't really have any idea on how real populations
>do break down into percentages...
Yes, this has been my interpretation as well. I mean, one may dislike Lunars, but does anyone believe that one Pelorian in twenty five is a thief?
Mark Sabalauskas-Marks@slough.mit.edu
---------------------------
"The laws of economics are statements of tendencies
expressed in the indicative mood, and not ethical precepts in the
imperative."
Alfred Marshall
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