From: Sandy Petersen (sandyp@idcube.idsoftware.com)
Date: Tue 21 Jun 1994 - 08:38:14 EEST
re: The GoLEM, & Hasueros the Unveiler
I will, of course, devote my efforts towards the unmasking and destruction of this pernicious group.
Plug for Stephen Black re: his search for RQ players between 9 July & 21 July: I've played with Stephen before, in all three aspects of the Cosmic Gaming (i.e., he GM/me PC; me GM/he PC; both of us PC/someone else GM), and give him highest ratings as a player. By the Chaosium player rating system, he receives a "-1", for those of you who know what that means.
Stephen, are you going to go to Convulsion? If so, see ya there. If not *sigh*, maybe at next years' RQ Con in California.
Devin says:
>> [a captive] Priest will make DI about 18% of the time. The other
>>82% he will simply be tortured.
Joerg retorts:
>If you play by the rules. In this situation, I wouldn't.
I would. If DI is not Highly Restricted in use, then it totally distorts almost every facet of Glorantha. If you can't ever capture a priest or plunder a temple, or keep a Rune Lord dead, or even surround and capture a band of 10 or more folks and keep them incommunicado (at least one of them will DI out of there), then Glorantha is SO different from Earth that our previous experience and research is totally useless.
I don't do this because I'm worried about players abusing the rules -- I do this because I'm worried about the results for NPCs and society as a whole. But I don't want the rules to be totally abused and destroyed by DIs.
I admittedly do adjust my DI rolls. I've already confessed that Valgrim Bull-Answers-Twice has a special dispensation by which his reasonable DIs _always_ succeed (he's unaware of this, but his player isn't). But I also outright forbid DIs if I think them appropriate to the god or the situation. My general rule is that you can only try a DI ONCE in a given situation, and never again; AND that no one else can try to DI for that request -- 'tis been refused by the God Hisself. In this way, I attempt to prevent the dread use of "line up the initiates and have 'em each try DI until the Priestess is resurrected." which prevents most assassinations.
>Alakoring Dragonbreaker takes his war against the dragons and
>dragonfriends from Ralios to Aggar and Holay.
Jonas Schiott
>Did he have an _army_, or was it just him and his ... companions?
I don't think he could have brought an army with him. Whether or not there's a way through the Rockwoods beside Kartolin Pass, there's clearly not a route good enough for a whole army. Halikiv trolls raiding in winter is one thing, a whole army is another.
Michelle says:
>Why not expand the possible roles available to women beyond Wife of
>Knight, Daughter of Wizard and not make a separate sex/caste
>classification.
Hear, hear! While I don't mind having a separate classification for women (so long as, in the end, they can do everything a man can do), I, too, have chafed under the seeming assumption by various other writers that no Woman in the West can have any fun. I have mentioned and still adhere to my belief that there are female nobility, warriors, and magicians in both Loskalm and Tanisor, whether or not they call them Lords, Knights, and Wizards (which I'm not yet sure they don't). In Tanisor the women might all belong to the same caste and be allowed to learn any skill available to their father, but in Loskalm I suspect they may belong to exactly the same castes as the men though, (in many but _not all_ cases) the caste distinctions may not be identical.
I am convinced that somewhere in Loskalm there is an Order of the Shrike (or something) which is an all-female warrior band. There are also doubtless some knightly orders which permit both women and men; but are probably mostly men -- admitting that a culture is largely gender-conscious is not the same as _never_ letting any women be whate'er they want.
For what it's worth, I once had a discussion with Greg about
the nature of female oppression in Glorantha (I was arguing that some
nation somewhere -- can't even remember where, now -- should treat
its women as slaves), and Greg said that Earth might have had the
plague of chauvinism throughout its existence, but by Gum, Gloranthan
wasn't, and he was perfectly prepared to ensure that women had an
important place in every nation in Glorantha.
No doubt it's possible to draw different conclusions by
finely sifting the data on one nation or another and interpreting it
just right, but Greg's goal should be public, I feel.
Joerg asks:
>Where was the Goddess Switch?
I think it was in Slontos. We know that just before Slontos was destroyed the mother goddess of the area went chaotic.
Kevin Rose mentions:
>Numbers might have been somewhat on the side of the Russians, but
>wealth wasn't. Germany and Russia had the same steel production
>befor the war started.
I can never keep from commenting when anyone talks about WWII, especially as sensibly as Kevin is doing. I'd like to point out that not only did Germany's industry rival Russia's before the war, but that by the time of Germany's assault on Russia, she had control over almost all the rest of Europe -- Czechoslovakia, France, Poland, Norway. Plus she had the lion's share of trade from Spain and Sweden. In the first three months of war, using Blitzkrieg tactics which the Soviet army (still in flux) was unable to halt, the Germans occupied something like 1/3 of the Russian population base. So when the struggle _really_ started, the Russians no longer had much of a population edge, and certainly had an inferior industrial base.
Perhaps a better comparison for the Loskalm/KoW struggle would be Frederick the Great in the Seven Years War (fighting France, Austria, and Russia, all together). Or Alexander the Great vs. the horrendously huge Persian Empire which had a perfectly competent army. Or the Mongols vs. China. Or Japan against China in WWII (who were generally victorious until destroyed by the advancing Americans in the Pacific).
Graeme Lindsell:
>The KoW could just as easily be categorized as warriors who are
>extremely skilled at individual combat, but not at war.
Of course they could, but let's get serious. Where's the fun in that? When the Germans launched their blitzkrieg in 1939, using all-new, untried tactics, they could presumably have been completely wrong-headed, and been stopped handily by the Poles and later by the French. The war could have been over by Christmas, and no one would ever write a wargame about it. That would have been Good. But lack of a similar war in a fantasy world such as Glorantha would be Bad. I vote that the KoW turn out to be powerful, well-organized, and dangerous, because even if the PCs are NOT opponents of the KoW it makes the world a more interesting place for them to live.
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