Values

 I recently listened to Brene Brown. To be honest, I disagree with some of what she had to say, but I liked her https://daretolead.brenebrown.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Values.pdf worksheet.

See also the discussion at https://blog.colinbreck.com/understanding-our-core-values-an-exercise-for-individuals-and-teams/#:~:text=In%20Dare%20to%20Lead%2C%20Bren%C3%A9%20presents%20a%20list%20of%20values,travel%2C%20wealth%2C%20and%20wisdom.

The idea that most people have two values or traits that drive them is pretty spot on. I've been using a variant of that as a replacement for alignment in some games.

But I was reflecting on that recently. I'd bet that my wife is right when she says my personal motivating values are curiosity and loyalty.

Her values are diligence and kindness. I was reflecting on that as I thought about the three things I used to tell my kids.

Be kind, work hard, tell the truth.

It hit me that while I'm motivated by curiosity and loyalty, I value kindness and diligence, if that makes sense. And it is no surprise that the two I value the most are the two that define my wife.

It has been giving me thought.

For game (and conflict resolution -- see adrr.com) purposes, I have been defining values in the trait pairs.

Traits:

1. Chaste.......  /.....Lustful
2. Energetic.... /.....Lazy
3. Forgiving.... /.....Vengeful
4. Generous... /.....Selfish
5. Honest......  /.....Deceitful
6. Just.........    /.....Arbitrary
7. Merciful....   /.....Cruel
8. Modest....... /.....Proud
9. Pious........   /.....Worldly
10. Prudent.....  /.....Reckless
11. Temperate  /.....Indulgent
12. Reliable....   /.....Feckless
13. Trusting....  /.....Suspicious
14. Valorous...  /.....Cowardly

But, in Mistworld, I really have positive versions and twisted or malfunctioning versions.

Eg.  Brave .... / .... Cautious would be the real replacement for 14, above, with;

   Foolhardy .../ .... Cowardly as the twisted versions.  That allows me to recognize that there is a positive form of valorous and a negative form, a positive form of cautious and a cowardly form.  It perhaps means that the list needs some modification (e.g. Prudent/Reckless overlaps with Foolhardy/Cowardly).  

I've been using the system by having players pick five of these (out of 28) to define their characters, with one that is more significant than the others.  I probably need to rethink the list somewhat and work out each of the pairs into sets of two pairs (the positive and the negative versions).

But I'm rethinking it all.

Dragons in Glorantha

An old fragment from a Kachina recitation from the Blue Moon Plateau.

Dragons begin with Dragonewts and Dragonewts begin with the left handed path.  That has several facets.

First, in the passions /traits.  I'm using my chart, not the official one, but here it is:

Traits:

1. Chaste.......  /.....Lustful
2. Energetic.... /.....Lazy
3. Forgiving.... /.....Vengeful
4. Generous... /.....Selfish
5. Honest......  /.....Deceitful
6. Just.........    /.....Arbitrary
7. Merciful....   /.....Cruel
8. Modest....... /.....Proud
9. Pious........   /.....Worldly
10. Prudent.....  /.....Reckless
11. Temperate  /.....Indulgent
12. Reliable....   /.....Feckless
13. Trusting....  /.....Suspicious
14. Valorous...  /.....Cowardly

The number of total traits is 28, or one for each day of a lunar month. Of course others may traits outside the 14 pairs may exist.  Most living creatures have values for their traits that can be expressed as range in a double hand (from 0 to 20 or 1 to 19).

If a human has honesty at the arbitrary point of 12, then they would have deceitful at 8.  The traits remain in a perfect balance.  This is not so for Dragonewts

But for a Dragonewt, the values are independent of each other, and they start at 1.  For the different stages the Dragonewt has to raise at least five pairs of traits (a total of ten traits) to a threshold number.

The threshold appears to be ten traits with 8 points each to become an adult and join the Crested Dragonewts, 12 points to become one of the Beaked Dragonewts (so a Beaked Dragonewt might have Pious and Worldly both at 12), 16 points to join the Tailed Priests and 20 points to join the Full Priests.

For Dragonewts which trait opposes which is not fixed as it is for humans.  A Dragonewt's pairing might be Just with Suspicious or Prudent with Deceitful.   This creates personalities that do not mesh with the way humans and others see the world.

This is also complicated by the fact that Dragonewts can burn off traits to affect the world.  If points are below a threshold and a Dragonewt dies, it may well be reborn at a prior stage until it has restored its traits.

So a Tailed Priest might have Reliable at  17 points and spend 5 points of it in a fight or a heroquest, reducing Reliable to 12 and having to raise it back up again.

The way traits work is a part of the Dragon secret.  Dragons are tapped into the left handed power in the world.  The world's energy, magic, circulates like electrical current.  On the one side is the "normal" path of energy that everyone uses.  On the other hand is the return cycle that the Dragons use, the left handed or contrary cycle.

And, on the one side are traits as all mortals have them, on the other are traits as Dragonewts experience them.  This results in great difficulties in understanding a Dragonewt's personality.

To progress from a Full Priest to a Young Dragon a Dragonewt needs to have five pairs of traits that match to the runic circuit that the Dragonewt is becoming a part of, that tie in properly to the left handed path of that particular rune.

Easily identified are Dragons of Fire, or Dark or Air, who are filled with that rune's power and identity.  But other runic identities exist as well.

It is easy for a Dragonewt to misstep -- that is how many of the dinosaur-like creatures in Dragon's Pass arose -- attempts to ascend to Dragon status that went astray.  Going astray can happen because the rune and traits do not match sufficiently (whatever that means), or because there turns out not to be enough left handed energy in the rune or from some failure of the connection to the rune chosen.  Earlier dinosaurs in the world may (and often do) have a different origin, but those origins are no longer generated since the Dragonewt path became predominant, though slain dinosaurs are often reborn as the children of other dinosaurs.

The failure of the path of ascension due to diversion of the left handed path's energy is what led to the "Dragon Betrayal" and the end of the Empire of Wyrm's Friends.

The Empire began, as dragons tutored them, to tap into the power of the left handed path.  It seems like there should be a surplus, the entire world runs on one side of the path, only dragons on the other.  But dragons consume an infinite amount of power (for some identity of the rune) to ascend and to exist, and at some point, others tapping into the left handed power starts to affect true dragons.

The affects seem to consist of causing and issue that causes Full Priests to not ascend from Dragonewt to Dragon, but instead to other things, and an issue that seems to act in threating existing true dragons with regression.  It was an awareness of the developing problem that caused the war/correction/betrayal/restoration, as Dragons restored the natural flow and cut out those who were diverting portions of the left handed path to themselves in an effort to become part of what Dragons are.

Note, while generally the "rule of five" seems to apply to how many traits pairs must be raised to 20/20, it is possible that 28 or more or perhaps all traits must be raised to 20/20 or that some traits must be raised beyond 20/20.  That specific knowledge is not currently known nor is it clear how a Full Priest becomes fully linked to a left handed runic channel.

The EWF approach of using worship to brute force the transition is not used by Dragons (so that other Dragonewts are not a source of worship for the Full Priests), and the number of Dragon Priests known to be attempting or have attempted to make the transition appears to be very low in historical times.  It appears that each Dragonewt worships itself, though that could be an error of observation.

All true Dragons are capable of eating chaos and turning it into left handed energy that is infused into the world.

Glen Welch and the Mystara Players Handbook

Complete, thoughtful, detailed. Over two hundred pages faithfully transitioned to 5th Edition.

Honest and faithful to the original.

A massive undertaking to have completed so well.

That is the short review.

So, the longer review.

Mystara is a huge setting spread over many, many books.

This guide takes all the material and places it in one book of over two hundred pages.

Now. The majority of the material can be used with any edition of D&D.

But this book also lovingly and faithfully translates the necessary parts to fifth edition.

That means spells, abilities, character class tool kits and magic items.

The net result is a product perfect for fifth edition but great for any fan of the original Mystara who did not get each supplement (some which are now virtually impossible to find).

How comprehensive?

You can see the excerpts from the table of contents.

That comprehensive. Light on illustrations and filler. Heavy on context.

224 full sized pages of living, accurate and accessible content.

That comprehensive.

Heroquesting and the Godlearners Secret

It hit me that for a normal campaign to introduce heroquests it needs two things.

First is a myth that the question should follow.

Second is a structure that follows the bones that the godlearners discovered.

A heroquest involves:

1. The call to adventure.  This is where the characters align themselves with the myth.  They achieve the right runic affiliations.  They acquire the appropriate regalia.  They align themselves with the correct community. They basically pay the entry fee for the quest.
2. The stations of the quest.  This is where they retrace the path through myth in the footsteps of the hero.
3. The reversal or loss.  This is where they now pay the price for the benefit that they are going to take back into the mortal realms.  This is why every heroquest has a reversal or failure built into it.
4. The recovery or triumph.  This is where the characters overcome the reversal, converting the price they have paid into a benefit.
5. The return.  This is where the characters return to the mortal realm from the mythic realm with the benefits they are bringing back for themselves and for their community.

The godlearners secret (not the official one that dooms you, but the secret to their power that Arachne Solara broke when she bound time) was that they learned to sidestep 3 by using the mythic realm to sidestep cause and effect.  While this increased entropy by minuscule cosmic amounts, it also allowed them to achieve great power.

Imagine all the benefits of Yelmalio or Humakt and none of the constraints.  Imagine being able to avoid the spirits of retribution.  To gain every benefit without paying the price.

Of course when Arachne Solara bound the sun, she also caused all the sidestepped debts to come due.  Which is why dooms found every godlearner no matter how they attempted to outrun them.  All of the delayed causality, all of the unpaid prices, all came due.  Since that mythic event, the sidestepping that they used also ceased to be available.  That secret is no longer relevant because it is not available.

A note on costs: costs are in the aggregate so that entropy does not increase.  But that means that if twenty heroquests attempt a path, if half of them fail in disaster, yielding up "payment" so to speak, and half succeed, the half that succeed can capitalize on the "payments" made by the half that failed.

If 100% of the heroquests on a path succeed, then each time at the step three reversal they will have to pay the price.  Consider how Yelmalio's followers all take penalties.

A note on costs:  costs may be paid by the community that supports the heroquest.  Lets say that one hundred members of the community each sacrifice a point of power.  The heroquest can achieve a result similar to the hero sacrificing a hundred points of power.

What a heroquest does is allow the community to achieve supramundane results that they couldn't reach, not results that it cannot pay for, by following or recreating the right path.

In designing heroquests:

1. Pick a myth or a story.
2. Work out the way that the characters can fit themselves to the story.
3. Pick an outcome or benefit (the why they characters are going to do the quest).
4. Fit the outcome or benefit to a price.
5. Determine how and by whom the price is paid.
6. Add in additional difficulty or wrinkles.

Sacred time each year is a two week community heroquest.  But the path is well trodden, the costs are well understood, the benefits in reducing entropy are clear.  Reviving Tada in Prax -- that hasn't been done yet, though the grisly portions, the runic identities and the path seems clear enough.

Anyway, it occurred to me that this is a different way to explain heroquests that might make it more accessible.

And no, you don't get the forbidden godlearner secret from this essay, just the one that was extinguished and the knowing of which is harmless.

On Alignment

The initial D&D campaign surfaced out of a Castles and Crusades Campaign.  The original alignments were based off of Three Hearts and Three Lions with Law = Civilized and Chaos = Feral.  Neutral was the borderlands between those two realms.

The next fantasy campaign was Barker's with Good/Evil for alignments, but the Good was stasis and the "Evil" was change.

At the same time, there was Moorcock's Law and Chaos with Law = Good and Chaos = Evil (and the chaos gods were worshiped with cries of "blood and souls" and similar things).  Of course Moorcock did not stay still, and his Law/Chaos eventually moved to Stasis/Change.  Moorcock's Neutral was exemplified by Tanelorn -- where people attempted to step aside from the wars of the gods.

My preference was Order / Chance (Tychism).  Though my law/chaos eventually shifted to Order (external rules) vs. Anarchy (internal whims).

In each of these the possibility of a good/evil axis also fits in.  Good can be defined a number of ways, but the two that fit fantasy campaigns are (1) seeking positive outcomes for the greatest number and (2) aligned with the positive energy planes -- both resisting entropy.

Evil is either (1) rapacious self serving action or (2) malicious action.  Both are aligned with the negative energy planes (or why all undead that energy drain end up evil) -- and increasing entropy.

For the most part, #1 is the general understanding of evil -- something that admittedly creates some tension with players who want to play #1 as neutral and assert that as long as their rapaciousness isn't malicious, it isn't evil.

Useful material

I've been posting useful material and FRPG related links to the Shattered Norns Facebook Group.

It is at:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/829726510438199/

Disclosure/Caveat:

Any time you share an affiliate link, it’s important to disclose that to your audience.

Note, I have affiliate links, it is just that as of Friday, October 25, 2019 all of them go to an account that does not exist.  That will eventually change and you should treat all links as if they are affiliate links going to an active account on Amazon.com.

As Amazon puts it:

Generally, readers trust you more if you are transparent about where you are directing them and why.

To meet the Amazon Associate Program's requirements, you must (1) include a legally compliant disclosure with your links and (2) identify yourself on your Site as an Amazon Associate with the language required by the Operating Agreement.

To comply with Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations, your link-level disclosure must be:

1. Clear. A clear disclosure could be as simple as “(paid link)”, “#ad” or “#CommissionsEarned”.

2. Conspicuous. It should be placed near any affiliate link or product review in a location that customers will notice easily. They shouldn’t have to hunt for it.

In addition, the Operating Agreement requires that the following statement clearly and conspicuously appears on your Site:

“As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.”

For social media user-generated content, this statement must be associated with your account.

Associates should also consider the relevant social media platform’s guidelines.

For example, Associates may use Facebook's Branded Content tool.

To read more about the FTC Endorsement Guides, visit: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftcs-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking#affiliate.

Visit this page on AC to bookmark this information about disclosures.

.

So, when I eventually get to creating links to my actual affiliate status, all of the above will apply. Treat any link you access after Friday, October 25, 2019 as being an affiliate link I am paid for, even if the truth is that I probably won’t them linking to an actual account before 2020.

Caution should be rule 1.

Any time you share an affiliate link, it’s important to disclose that to your audience.

Note, I have affiliate links, it is just that as of Friday, October 25, 2019 all of them go to an account that does not exist.  That will eventually change and you should treat all links as if they are affiliate links going to an active account on Amazon.com

Generally, readers trust you more if you are transparent about where you are directing them and why.

To meet the Amazon Associate Program's requirements, you must (1) include a legally compliant disclosure with your links and (2) identify yourself on your Site as an Amazon Associate with the language required by the Operating Agreement.

To comply with Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations, your link-level disclosure must be:

1. Clear. A clear disclosure could be as simple as “(paid link)”, “#ad” or “#CommissionsEarned”.

2. Conspicuous. It should be placed near any affiliate link or product review in a location that customers will notice easily. They shouldn’t have to hunt for it.

In addition, the Operating Agreement requires that the following statement clearly and conspicuously appears on your Site:

“As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.”

For social media user-generated content, this statement must be associated with your account.

Associates should also consider the relevant social media platform’s guidelines.

For example, Associates may use Facebook's Branded Content tool.

To read more about the FTC Endorsement Guides, visit: https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/ftcs-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking#affiliate.

Visit this page on AC to bookmark this information about disclosures.

.

So, when I eventually get to creating links to my actual affiliate status, all of the above will apply. Treat any link you access after Friday, October 25, 2019 as being an affiliate link I am paid for, even if the truth is that I probably won’t them linking to an actual account before 2020.

Caution should be rule 1.