From: Clay Luther (clay@cool.vortech.com)
Date: Tue 05 Oct 1993 - 14:04:43 EET
In the continuing struggle of trying to help my players' characters be more
Gloranthan, I had a discussion with my players last weekend. Their "complaint"
(or excuse) was that Glorantha was so complex and so difficult to understand
that they weren't sure how I could expect them to even begin to know how to
act "Gloranthan." I agreed with this assessment, and admitted that I do
deliberately spend a great amount of effort "editing" information their
characters receive, spinning it towards their point of view, or withholding or
altering/confusing information for the same purposes. After all, I contended,
if they were told "the truth" about Glorantha or if they even began to
understand specific concepts comprehensively like "God Learner Monomyth" or
"Lunar Empire Liberalism," they would lose the opportunity to formulate ideas
and opinions in a role-playing atmosphere.
Of course, they countered with "How could I expect them to role-play 'Gloranthan' when they played from within a vacuum, or at least partial vacuum." I then took the opportunity to enlighten them.
All of the players have characters that belong to cults. With the exception of the Seven Mothers initiate, they all had very detailed write-ups about their cults and the myths and morals of their cults. I said that the measuring stich I had been using to judge their role-playing had been their cults all along. I asked "Do you all consider yourselves dedicated to your cults?" The answer was a strong yes from each player. "Well," I said, "then to role-play a realistic Gloranthan, perhaps you should start by trying to role-play your cult's god. You have a great deal of information about these gods and you claim to have dedicated initates. Why then don't your characters try to emulate their gods in everything they do?"
And guess what? It sunk in. That night I saw, perhaps for the first time, nascent true Gloranthan role-playing from all the players. The Yelmalio convert thew away his flail and started using the spear and shield, the Storm Bull player began acting like a *real* berserker, to the point of non-thinking-near-suicide, the Praxian nearly sacrificed his life to protect the Arroyan from harm by jumping between her and danger, and the Arroyan bravely lead the rest through darkness and encountered the difficult morale dilemma of how to determine if something was intelligent or not, and therefore to what extent her strictures extended to it. The Carmanian treated the barbarians with patronizing contempt, leaving the Arroyan to smooth the ruffled feathers. I ended up giving everyone a role-playing reward that evening.
--
Clay Luther clay@cool.vortech.com Macintosh Software Engineer Kodak Health Imaging SystemsYelo's gift was a necklace of clam shells from the Ouel Stream strung on gut string with a delicate knot of reeds which performed the role of pendant. From: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RQ Digest Maintainer) To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (Daily automated RQ-Digest) Subject: RuneQuest Daily, Wed, 06 Oct 1993, part 3 Reply-To: RuneQuest@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM (RuneQuest Daily) Sender: RuneQuest-Request@Glorantha.Holland.Sun.COM Precedence: junk
The RuneQuest Daily and RuneQuest Digest deal with the subjects of Avalon Hill's RPG and Greg Stafford's world of Glorantha.
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