From: ian i. gorlick (igorlick@bnr.ca)
Date: Mon 08 Aug 1994 - 07:14:00 EEST
(Alison Place here, not Ian Gorlick)
Hello, from another newbie on the Daily. I've been reading the dailies for a few months now (courtesy of a friend who would print them), but haven't tried putting in any comments before. I have about 11 years playing experience, have GMed occasional scenarios that I've written, but mostly just enjoyed letting our resident GM do the nasty, rough work of inventing all our difficulties and writing the stats for them. I did get down to RQ-Con in January, and boy, was the drive back to Ottawa fun on Monday! My thoughts on some of the latest topics follow:
X-RQ-ID 5395, Sandy P.'s comments on Dayzatar, new people in RQ, "adventurers" in the world, and the long-running discussion on gods and magic points.
I must admit that I have thought for some while that conversion to Dayzatar might well be very much like much of the Catharist full initiations. Since to be one of the Perfecti meant forswearing sex, touching the other sex, all meat, and material possessions, the number of practising priests was very small, and they were very respected. However, deathbed baptisms for the sake of guaranteed salvation were common. If a person recovered, they just had to stick with the vows they had made. In much the same way, many Christian catechumens waited until the last minute to formally convert.
I agree that it is difficult for new people to comprehend all the material that has been published, much less written or discussed, concerning Glorantha. We have just (last week) started a new campaign based in Sartar after Kallyr's rebellion. There are two new people involved, and I don't know whether they will stick with us or not. I can still remember being given the RQ2 book to read one afternoon, and being very confused by the whole deal. At that time I had six years of roleplaying experience with AD&D variants. These people haven't any, really, and I think that we will have to be careful not to dump all sorts of references on them that they would be frustrated at not understanding and need explained all the time. The rest of us have gamed together every fortnight for years. Our very keenness to share our world might be intimidating.
Re: Adventurers
Then there is the question of why certain people get many more problems thrown
at them to solve (usually by fighting) than the rest of the world. Well, they
probably wouldn't, unless they were professional fighters in the retinue of a
local lord in a very rough area. This is the justification that we've used for
the past five years in our Praxian campaign. We are the sworn men of Duke Raus,
and he has to pacify and settle a new area of farmland. We avoid fighting as
much as possible. Political repercussions are forever on our minds.
We have had members of our select band actually marry, retire, and start farming. Then the players started over. My character, who has remained the same, started life as a supernumerary son of farmers in Sylila. There wasn't any land for him. He joined the Lunar infantry. Five years of digging ditches convinced Marcus that this was too much like working for his dad, and he quit, and got hired in Pavis by the Duke. Since then, he has actually risen to Lieutenant, got himself well-known the length of the valley, and holds land as a vassal (a treasured promotion from mercenary) of the Duke's. His long-term ambition is now to return home, show everyone that he's done well, and try and persuade his old priestess of Hon-eel that he is a worthy candidate for the priesthood himself, so that he can happily raise corn with his wife and his very own vassals in the Zola Fel valley. The marriage negotiations are presently underway.
However, in most areas there won't be much of that kind of work. So, we invent the wandering company of misfits, and give them the problems. These people do it for the money, the name, the threats of local prosecution, whatever the GM can think of. In reality, whoever was most competent locally would probably take the risks, but since we as players don't want to play new characters every week, we put up with the fiction of migrating problem-solvers.
In a previous campaign, the justification for my character Nicola was that she
had run a too-successful scam on the local Lunar quartermaster in Sartar, and
had left for healthier trading opportunities abroad with her father's mule train
(Balazar, for instance). (As my
husband just helpfully pointed out, my dedicated roleplaying of her various
trade deals became quite tiresome for other party members. Imagine, they didn't
care that red beads were worth more than blue ones!)
Michael Morrison (X-RQ-ID 5398) thinks that one might find enough to do locally. I disagree, unless the encounters are spread over a lifetime, or you are truly in a frontier area where the previous inhabitants are willing to dispute the point. One did not go viking locally, and activities like cattle-raiding and feuding may be reasonably constant sources of friction and danger, but they generally stay at that level, and would quickly become repetitive. Gaming groups want innovation, and frequently more and more difficult trials as their favourite characters grow in capabilities. They will have to leave home.
On to gods and magic points. To my characters, most of the deities are hugely powerful former people. Sartar, Pavis, Hon-eel, the Red Goddess, Dormal, and the Seven Mothers all became gods after they were people. Leaders all need followers, that's how you know that they're great, and that's usually how they become powerful. A great general with no army is impotent and unemployed. I have this vision of Orlanth bragging to Yelm, "So what have your heroes done lately? Mine just killed the Crimson Bat." They aren't allowed to play on Glorantha anymore, so their status among other gods would come from impressive followers invoking their name, and using their magics. It is an incredibly anthropomorphic view and it's not all that I think the gods are, but is probably not amiss for many of our characters.
Back to Michael Morrison's message. Trained farmers are commonest where there is a free levy. I think that most of the experience was got during the period of call-up, though. If you lived, you knew how to fight. The trouble has always been that farmers must farm, or we all starve. When you can't stay off the land that long, that's where hired guns, I mean swords, come into play. They certainly cost more, though.
As for Rune levels never being former adventurers, I am sure that that is not true. I, as a local priest, however, would certainly not ordain someone who might suddenly skive off. I think that you would have to go away, make your mark (and do remember to get all those other priests and important people to give you letters of reference) and then settle down and prove that you are now a part of the community again. Then your outside experience might be considered a valuable plus. An exception to this might be the case of a person wishing ordination for the purpose of going proselytising. You have to have a full priest to make initiates in new areas. This is Marcus' big problem just now. There is one acolyte in Pavis, and that is it. He will have to go back to his old temple and get ordained there.
By the way, Joerg, a nitpicking (but somewhat interesting) point is that many dragonflies are found far from water as adults, making it very difficult to find some of them. (I'm the one who brought a bumblebee garnish for the pickled elf brains at RQ-Con, and a fellow employee who's an avid dragonfly collector has mentioned this difficulty to me.)
My thanks to all those who read all this, and I look forward to your comments.
Alison Place
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