From: alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk
Date: Wed 25 May 1994 - 22:52:54 EEST
Devin Cutler:
> Ancient times aside, in modern times, I have never seen someone able to call
> on God to save them from, say a robbery or death in a war and have it happen
> in a direct and provable manner. In Glorantha, gods answer close to 10% of
> all calls for Direct Intervention! Somehow, I don't think that same rate
> applied to, say, Allah's intervention on behalf of his worshippers in Desert
> Storm.
When making earth/Glorantha comparisons, it's not very helpful to consider whether RQ rules and Glorantha type cults would be compatible with a modern- day combat simulation. Whether Gloranthans view their world in a fundamentally different way from the peoples of earth from comparable historical situations is a more apt question, I feel. And most pre-Renaisance cultures believed that their gods were indeed active, interventionist, and absolutist, none of which stopped them being at each others' throats, disagreeing on fundamental questions of belief, and all the other fun stuff I think also happens in Glorantha.
> And, while Divination
> can sometimes be murky, in every published Gloranthan scenario where it has
> been mentioned, it seems to be fairly informative, even in an allegorical way
> (e.g. Gaumata's Vision).
More like "faintly informative": the information turns out be be true, but one could hardly deduce the exact facts on the ground from the granted divination. This isn't the kind of "just the facts, ma'am" information which would be likely to enforce fine details of religious practice on a squabbling populace.
Alex.
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