Faith in Glorantha

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From: kenrolston@aol.com
Date: Sun 19 Sep 1993 - 19:01:06 EEST


I've been wondering about the nature of faith in Glorantha.

Since the gods are manifest -- or at least as inferentially empirical as lots of modern physics -- there is no issue of faith in the existence of gods.

The issue of faith in Glorantha is -- are the gods telling the truth?

Also, in tolerant polytheistic Gloranthan societies, there is also the issue of faith in the moral goodness of the god -- that is, not just whether you accept his commandments and myths as truth, but whether you "prefer" a god's moral vision enough to become his initiate. Given the spirits of retribution of cults, it appears that choosing a different god than the one you were born has a modest, though significant, personal cost. Is it significant for a Gloranthan character's story when we learn he has, for example, forsaken the worship of Orlanth for Chalana Arroy? Or, more dramatically, when he foresakes the worship of Orlanth for Seven Mothers?

I ask for views on these questions because I'm playing with short stories in glorantha, and I feel I have no real sense of the religious feeling attached to the Gloranthan cults. Certainly part of the problem is not knowing polytheism firsthand. Another is my sense that, since the cult is a game mechanic, it is insufficiently fleshed out to provide a guide to a common person's interest in participation in a cult's myths, prescriptions, and activities.

I note also that I am prejudiced against heroic roleplaying by inclination. My characters and campaigns are uniformly low-level and focused on everyday folk (hobbits, if you will) caught up in the affairs of the Big People. I admire the flavor of epic mythic speculation occasioned by the Gloranthan setting, but it rarely has much bearing on the things going on in my gaming world.

Ken Rolston

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