From: alex (alex@dcs.gla.ac.uk)
Date: Fri 08 Jul 1994 - 22:04:23 EEST
Devin Cutler, and his berserk .signature:
> OK, take two. "Only if I am devout can I perform the rituals correctly."
You've yet to explain how, or why, this should be the case, though. What element of a ritual might be _impossible_ for the non-devout (however defined) to perform correctly?
> In CoP, Deezola had reusable Resurrection, When was THIS changed?
Look up GoG. At a push, the separate Deezola cult may have a reusable R., but I doubt it. Yup, this is a change from RQ2.
> There is no reason under RQ3 for a Priest to keep his POW at 18. Better spent
> on Divine Magic AND better kept at around 13 so that POW gain rolls occur
> about 60% of the time.
But you're a follower of the True Religion of RQ2, Devin, aren't you? ;-) Certainly I recall you making statements such as "priests making their DI roll about 18% of the time".
Personally, I believe priests _do_ need a high POW, to effectively officiate at Worship services. I think I suggested a mechanism or two last time this came up. My personal Nightmare Scenario is a priest sitting in a back-room somewhere, with a POW of 2, getting 5 POW per year just from worship ceremonies...
> One POW per year is way too low. Priests get a Seasonal Ceremony skill to
> gain a POW gain roll.
Not if their POW is 18, on which (stated) assumption I made the calculation. That's counting seasonal HDs. Note the POW gain "abstraction" for experience, which assumes 1 POW per year.
> "I agree. The 3% is conspicuously high."
> We don't agree (surprise, surprise), in presented material, the 3% rate is
> way too low.
It is? Where do you deduce this from? (The initiate/priest ratio, not the total number of priests.)
> As the disease rules now stand, it is almost impossible to die or even lose
> much in the way of stats from disease.
The average number of points lost to a contracted stat-zapping disease is 1+100/(CON*N), where N is the "tenacity" fudge-factor. Thus is depends entirely on the fortitude of the character on the one hand, and the maliciousness of the ref on the other. A tenacity-1 disease will handily kill off a CON 10, <affected stat> 10 character more often than not.
Then there's spirits of disease, which are altogether nastier...
But my point was that whatever stats you do lose needs a one-use spell to be healed back. And if after a few untreated exposures, you can easily get yourself dead, and unresurrectable.
> We probably both agree (what?) that disease in RQ3 is horribly broken.
It's never kept me awake nights. Much the same as RQ2, really.
> "Except that when we get a nice, _juicy_ source of tension like the Elmal/
> Yelmalio schism, certain parties Whine Incessantly about it. (No names,
> no pack drill. (What does that _mean_, anyway?))"
> In what way does the Yelmalio./Elmal schism deal with devoutness? It deals
> with incessant world tinkering.
I'm sure you must have noticed, immediately before deleting the context, that it referred to your wish for "sources of religious tension".
> "Other than as a POW-fuelled knee-jerk, to use your own (faulty) model?"
> In what way have I claimed that DI SHOULD BE a POW-fuelled knee-jerk. I have
> been writing about DI complaining that the rules make it far too common
> (i.e. knee-jerk) and IMO, RQ2 and RQ3 DI makes it far too uninteresting.
You certainly haven't indicated that the problem was with insufficient GM/God fiat in deciding whether to grant a DI. Instead you've present some rather dubious analysis showing that the designated chance was too high all round. "Common" non id est "knee-jerk", "non-conscious" id est "knee-jerk". (And yes, that Latin did make No Sense, before three people point this out at once.)
If God is a fully-conscious, sentient entity, sitting around watching from a cloud (/moonbeam/Pillar of Light/heap of bodies), why don't you simply advocate a DI mechanism such as "GM as deity RPs decision", rather than "Initiates must roll less than POW/(fudge factor) on D100".
> I
> much prefer the sound of RQAiG DI, wherein the beneficiary gets Divine Magic
> from hsi god/goddess.
I don't see why this makes it any less (or more) knee-jerk, or come to that, common.
> "To the point where we should have One True Cults (or at any rate, only
> Devin-Approved Variations, a distinction I'm somewhat hazy on), robotically
> devoted worshippers, and Thought Police deities, seemingly."
> Obviously, I am not calling for "Devin-approved version"
That was Devin-Approved _Variations_, not version. To wit, your concession that perhaps cults might vary just a _little_ from one end of the world to the other.
> although certainly I
> would favour any approach that more closely followed my vision of Glorantha
> (who wouldn't want things to work out their way?).
If you're merely interested in putting your point of view, why introduce all these tales of woe of How Greg Stafford and the Evil Scholars are Killing Glorantha with Their Incessant Tinkering and Excessive Inconsistency? It seems to me you're rather consistently trailing flame-bait, and then rather disingenuously acting victimised if the least counter-criticism comes your way.
> I see Devoted worshippers who are willing to live, fight, and die for their
> gods, who provide the essence of their existence in a magically rich
> environment. I see Gods who are conscious entities, rather than the figments
> of their worshippers' imaginations, and who take an active role in those who
> serve them and in the world and universe in which they exist.
And isn't this how ancient earthers saw _their_ gods? I don't see the importance in making a comparison in terms of what the "true" situation was, but rather, in how people _believed_ the situation to be.
> I could rephrase your quote as:
> "To the point where we should have No True Cults (or at any rate, no
> established Truths unless they are Alex approved, a distinction I'm somewhat
> hazy on), completely cynical and undevoted worshippers, and imaginary,
> knee-jerk deities, seemingly."
Only if you wanted to be seen to be talking twaddle. I've never suggested that there be a widespread belief in Glorantha that the cults are false. The point I've been making is that it's perfectly reasonable for cults to vary from location to location, according to local custom and belief. It seems totally gratuitous to flame people en masse for suggesting variant cults; if you liked the previous situation, where everyone from one end of Peloria to the other of Maniria worshipped an identical Yelmalio, say, then _fine_, _use_ it, for heavens sake's, and have the decency not to complain too much about what _other_ people want to do in their Gloranthas. Even the Great Satan Stafford, I should hope.
Nor have I suggest all, or even most, or even many worshippers are "cynical and undevoted" after all, haven't I just wasted a lot of bytes trying to illustrate that this was _also_ the case for ancient Earth, which still managed different "versions" of the same cult, your original objection.
> Am saying that Gloranthans have cause to be MORE devoted than the
> admittedly devoted ancient Terrans.
I repeat: "How the hell much more devoted do you _want_?" You don't appear to be very keen on arguing detailed differences between earthly and G.an religions, apart from the fact that you want to iron out these pesky little local variations, such as Elmal and Yelmalio.
> "I wonder why about half of Gloranthan history doesn't give Devin hives:
> fancy all those Devout worshippers wanting to do such Naughty Things, and
> fancy their gods _letting_ them."
> To what "Naughty Things" do you refer?
All these breachs of cult restrictions to which you'd reflexively reply "Must have been an illuminate."
> Trying to listen. Don't get the distinction, Try again.
Okay: on the one hand: "Magic is true"; on the other "I believe magic is true". Do these seem distinct yet?
> "We're talking about the reality of magic in general, aren't we? Does the
> description seem much different from the description of magic in "historical"
> myths?"
> KoS is not the end all and be all of Glorantha, and I will not restrict my
> view of Glorantha and Gloranthan society to one book.
But let's give actual _source_ material a bit more weight than endless extrapolation from a _generic_ set of rules. The rules are there to tell us how to _play the game_, not to describe the macro-culture.
> "What about the Eternal Battle?"
> It involves a proveable manifestation of the Stormbull afterlife. Does it
> prove for certain that the sould of Uroxi are contained within? Probably not,
> but it sure as hell is much more proof than Norse legends of Valhalla. How
> many Norsemen actually saw a Valkyrie?
Hard to take a System 3 poll on the question, isn't it? Why does it seems to you that this is a "better" argument for the "reality" of any afterlife than anything on Earth? Isn't it an almost "mundane" phenomenon by the standards of Gloranatha, where every stand of trees has it's own manifest entity, and magic but your own argument, abounds?
> And before I get once again the line that the Eternal Battle is just a big
> dust devil explainable by natural phenomenon (not from you, from someone
> else), dust devils don't throw out skeletons, ghosts, and avatars of Chaos.
It's a big dust devil that throws out skeletons, ghosts, and avatars of Chaos. While I concur that it sounds like just the sort of place that Uroxi will gleely rub their hands together at, cackling gleefully about that they'll do there when they die, this is no more evidence than sub-tropical depressions "proving" that Orlanth exists. It wouldn't convince, for example, a skpetical Gloranthan Westerner, for example.
(BTW, if I seem vague on the EB, it's because I can't find any reference to it apart from the afterlife plug in the SB writeup. Where is the dust devil thingy described, all?)
> Gosh, ask an ancient Terran if HE ever met someone who came from Hell. Ask
> him to point to Hell. Ask him to go over to a big hole in the ground as say,
> Hell is down there. It is not an EASILY discountable myth. It is in fact
> discountable, but much less so than Terran conceptions of Hell.
Let's be clear about this: the trolls don't even _claim_ to come from Hell; for them, it's Wonderhome. The only such hole that spings to mind is Hellcrack, which the prosaically-minded Petersen has described as looking "kind of like the Grand Canyon". This is no proof at all, even if we do something suspect like believe your enemies the trolls.
> "To wit, spirit-plane manifestations of dead folks. From the point of view
> of _theists_, this is somewhere between cold comfort, and a Dire Warning."
> Fine, Dire Warnings do well to promote devoutness.
What, a Dire Warning against the thing you repeatedly cite as something that should give them _hope_ (nay, certainty) of a (pleasant) afterlife?
> "Guess someone was Slacking when Faltikus was appointed, non?"
> Guess illuminates are different, non?
The very fact that you resort to assuming that all these dubious types are Illuminates illustrates that far from finding it "problematic", you're all too ready to use it as an explantory device.
What I don't see, however, is how Illumination fits into a scheme of things where Gods are completely conscious, and interventionist. Why do they find themselves giving divine magic to these heels, and persistantly missing when they try to zap them with spirits of retribution, just because they've answered a few fake-Zen questions?
Alex.
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