From: NDROBINS@NDROBINS.FIN.GOV.BC.CA
Date: Tue 05 Jul 1994 - 03:35:28 EEST
Neil Robinson here:
The RQ4 Playtest mailing list, in between hashing through Paul/Mike's sorcery system has brought up questions about Runes and how important they are. After all, the game is called RuneQuest, and in RQ II Runes were the basis of Glorantha (IMVHO).
In an odd moment I had a thought about the God Learners and their use of Runes and the Monomyth. The GLs attempted to explain and control Glorantha through the MM and Runes - merging Gods and cultures, and altering their powers by forcing them to act through fixed Runic patterns. Now had the GLs been completely successful, then the MM and the Runes would be the only way that Glorantha could be viewed. Unlike Earth, where mathematics and physics only model our world, Glorantha is completed malleable through belief, and would have become the runic/mm model. By Glorantha, I include the mudane, spirit, hero, and god planes.
It shows why the GLs were so dangerous, and so strongly resisted by the Gods, and Glorantha itself. Heck, maybe that's what happened to Earth. It was a Glorantha-like entity where the GLs won (and here we are). Several authors, like Charles de Lint (gotta love those Canucks), have followed similar threads. The title "the magic goes away" leaps to mind too. Without the belief, there are no gods and no magic (yeah, yeah, old stuff I know).
Neil
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri 10 Oct 2003 - 01:35:41 EEST