In Glorantha, the Gods are Real… really?

[Scott Martin]

Quote:

Quote from Benjamin Ludwig on September 6, 2013, 14:08
a discussion about the merits of interpreting it “shamanically”

That may be a different and far stranger thread!

Quote:

why do people love Glorantha?

And this another. “Glorantha OR [Greyhawk / Tekumel / Your Fantasy World Here]” is a very different question from “Glorantha OR [ethnography / the pyramid texts / your earthly archaic here].”

As you note, the first question is asked a lot in gamey circles and people tend to wax rhapsodic about ducks and relativism and bronze age material culture and everyone can cast spells and whatnot: all great things other games don’t have.

The second question is not asked so much. I personally spend a lot of time with Glorantha that I could probably more profitably be spending with earthly art history, anthropology, archaeology and sacred texts because the material resonates with my methods of “shamanic” interpretation. The lozenge and I chose each other ages ago and I’m one of those people who, as you note, “grew up with it.” It’s real to me in the same way as the world of the Hittites or the Tajiks or the Yoruba, only the Gloranthans are “my” people in a way those other tribes aren’t.

This may be simply because I’m so fond of a certain kind of California post-Bollingen hippie revivalism. It may be that I’m so fond of that certain kind of hippie revivalism as well as Glorantha because both are expressions of something rooted deeper down and that’s the thing that has what in voodoo is called mastery over my head, maîtrise sur ma tête. In any event, it’s a little tribe and it’s fractious and eccentric, but I am a little person and fractious and eccentric myself so it evens out.

Tekumel has a lot of this going on as well but it was never a world I felt at home in. When I first read about the Lightbringer’s Quest in the old RQ book (“he took what tools and weapons he could, called some friends and met others along the way”) I knew I was home. There was something here (unlike most games) and that something spoke my language (unlike the vanished Hittites or Tekumel). The rest is really just elaboration but as in any marriage that’s the fun part. And of course other experiences will vary.

[Jeff Richard]

As I read the OP, the question is whether the short description of Glorantha (http://www.glorantha.com/glorantha/) should state that the “gods are real”:

Quote:

In Glorantha, the gods and goddesses are real, and play an active and important part in most major events through their followers and cults. The Sun, the Earth, the Air, the Water, the Darkness, and the Moon all have powerful deities associated with them, as do powers such as Death, Life, Change, Stasis, Illusion, Truth, Disorder, and Harmony. There are lesser deities to such things as cats, cows, boats, vengeance, volcanoes, and more.

I find such statements easy ways to introduce Glorantha to folk who know nothing about the setting (along with “Glorantha is a flat world”, Glorantha is a Bronze Age world”, and “the Runes are the building blocks of Glorantha”). By doing such I am not intending to make a contrast between our world and Glorantha, so much as between Glorantha and other fantasy settings.

[Scott Martin]

Quote:

Quote from Jeff Richard on September 9, 2013, 06:26
By doing such I am not intending to make a contrast between our world and Glorantha, so much as between Glorantha and other fantasy settings.

Not the OP but what I like about that page is how positivistic most of it is. It isn’t a “neti neti” list (Krishna being in the room and all) establishing Glorantha as the negation of various fantasy tropes but is instead a celebration of what Glorantha actually is. That’s awesome. I don’t know anyone who rebelled out of the hundred years war into the lozenge but I know plenty of people who embrace the lozenge for itself because they know a good myth when they see it.

A lot of the gamey answers over the years have focused on the “neti neti” and may not have had a strong impact: Glorantha has no classes, no plate armor, our demi-humans are different, some of our clerics use swords, our dragons have bigger hit dice. Our lozenge is more than that and deserves to be described as such, which you do well.

[RippedShirtKirk]

Quote:

Quote from Martin Helsdon on September 6, 2013, 21:33
The Gloranthan ‘monomyth’ is full of contradictions, which is entirely valid, as any sophisticated culture is going to have its own perspectives, interpretations and approach, even between those that share a basic worldview. Attempting to force the myths of diverse cultures and species to full equivalence is doomed to failure, and reeks of God Learnerism. And we all know how that went…

This actually makes Glorantha’s mythic background more ‘real’ as unlike the majority of fantasy worlds, real world myth cycles weren’t (and aren’t) fully compatible. It’s possible to synthesize vaguely similar deities, as the Romans did throughout Europe, the Near East and North Africa, but if you spend any time wandering around, for example, the Roman period temples of Egypt, you’ll see some really odd results. Some of the ornamentation is obviously Egyptian, and would have been familiar to an Egyptian of an earlier period, but there are weird hybrids of Greek or Roman origin that would strike them as utterly alien.

Even when there are close historical similarities, Roman Jupiter isn’t exactly Greek Zeus, who isn’t Dyaus Pita, and despite Roman and Greek belief isn’t Amun.

I think Martin hit upon something.

The biggest difference between any number of gaming settings and Glorantha is in the Gloranthan handling of religion and culture. Like the Roman example given by Martin, religion in the real world is multifaceted and messy; people perceive the Divine through a number of lenses and viewpoints. Gloranthan religion mirrors this; its implementation within the setting is not cut and dried, not monocultural, and contradictory-even within individual cultures.

I love this.

Likewise, Gloranthan cultures are pervasive-they matter in-game. As I mentioned upthread, there is a moment I’ve seen with all my players where this viewpoint clicks for their characters, and their characters begin acting as members of their culture, without the player thinking about it. (If you’ve ever studied a language, the first time you find yourself thinking in that language is a similar moment…the first time I found myself thinking in classical Attic Greek, I had a whoah moment.) I’ve never had this happen in any other setting, in three decades of gaming. Glorantha is special, and I think a large part of that is because of the pains it takes to handle culture and religion.

Plus in Glorantha, you can fry your enemy with a Sunspear. I wish I could do that during rush-hour sometimes. 😀

[PHILIP HIBBS]

Yes I think it’s a bit silly to say “the gods are real”. I would say, “the gods are a relevant and active part of everyday life”. Most D&D world can get by just fine without any specific set of gods, they’re all easily replaceable. It makes virtually no difference what specific god a cleric worships, most people don’t bother to pick one. “I’m a cleric, I cast Cure Light Wounds” was always good enough for us. In Glorantha, you can’t get away with that. Not that detailed religion is everyone’s cup of tea though.

[Anonymous]

Quote:

Quote from PHILIP HIBBS on September 9, 2013, 17:27
Yes I think it’s a bit silly to say “the gods are real”. I would say, “the gods are a relevant and active part of everyday life”.

Silly in the sense that it does not convey what it is supposed to? It seems to me to make Jeff’s point succinctly, not that I have anything against your proposed phrasing, other than it doesn’t seem to be worth the effort to change what’s already there.

[Benjamin Ludwig]

I didn’t mean for the OP to be some knee-jerk criticism of the summary webpage, which I think was quite thoughtful and well-done. There’s no need to nitpick it at all. I have nothing but appreciation for this nifty new website, nothing but thanks to give to those who did it.

It did, however, make me wonder: if I did not know Glorantha as I do and someone said, “In Glorantha, the gods are real,” I would say, “Sure, just like every other fantasy RPG.” “No,” they might reply, “There are gods for the Sun, Moon, Darkness, etc.” “Sure,” I respond, “Just like Selune is the Moon Goddess in the Forgotten Realms, or Pelor for the sun, or Takhisis, or what have you.” Then what? How do we talk to others about that special something that Gloranthan religion has without going “neti neti”, as was wisely said?

I don’t think we need to worry about it as an academic question, or change our wording on a webpage, which is fine as is. It’s just that the gods of Glorantha have the potential to be something more than in any other fantasy world which I have encountered. Many won’t care about that, but I do, and I just wondered if I was alone. I’m beginning to see that I’m not, which is a good enough answer for me.

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