Who Gets To Speak

Who Gets to Speak

A lot of RPG game texts are about defining who gets authority over saying something in the act of collaborative story telling that is an RPG. Who gets to speak about the setting? Who gets to speak about who the NPCs are? Who tells us what this NPC does next? Who narrates how the fight goes down, whether anyone manages to heal the sick child?

A pretty conventional answer is: that the player has control over their character to say what they do, how they feel, where they came from; the 'rules' text has authority over resolving conflicts, and we play a ‘game’ to find out; and the GM gets to speak about pretty much everything else in the world. Less conventional games have different answers: whoever is talking can create, as long as they don't invalidate anything that has been said already; different players can speak on ‘ringfenced' memes--one player defines how magic works, another what technology there is, and yet another how this culture behaves. And so on. There are many different ways to slice up the pie of authority and a spectrum of ‘indie' games do just that.

With an established setting there is another, invisible, participant at the table who has creation authority, the game designer. Published materials define geography, cultures, magic or technology, people and history. Everyone agrees to the game designer's authority as part of choosing to play in a published setting. The game designer may not be present, but they ’speak’ at the table through the setting texts. Asa result a vexing question for many people playing with established settings tends to be: 'what is it safe for the players and GM and players to change, to create at the table'. The more explored the setting is, a Tekumel, a Realms, a Glorantha, the more the pressure of this ‘ghost in the game’ is felt by those present who want to speak, particularly a GM.

Glorantha

Glorantha is a published setting, so Greg Stafford and generations of Chaosium authors have 'defined' much of the setting. This creates a burden for many: can I be faithful to the elements that are already created (you don't get to invalidate anything already said), do I feel comfortable with that burden? Do I like the like everything that the setting 'authority', the published, canon, authors, have written? Would I like to change that? Do I have permission to change this material? Will everyone at the table be constantly looking to the ‘ghost’ of the designer to validate my words when I speak?

In the distant past I felt constrained as a GM when playing Glorantha: I had to be conform to the source material; I didn't want to create new elements of the setting, for fear of contradicting ‘canon’; I didn’t want to let the ‘ghost designer’ down by not being faithful to their words.

Hero Wars

Hero Wars, and its successor, Heroquest, changed that for me. It was a different game, and brought with it a very different ethos.

Heroquest is still a fundamentally a Gygaxian RPG: there are players who control 'my guy', 'rules' that adjudicate a conflict, and a GM who controls 'the world'. But Heroquest offered much more explicit creative control to player and GMs than I had experienced before.

From the outset players were given creative control over their character's abilities--just make them up--unconstrained to just the templates that the published material provided. Players invented magic for their characters within the realms of the god's affinities, as spirits they had captured, or as spells they had learned. Where published material listed examples of magical effects it was often an ambiguous reference that a player was empowered to define at the table.

Today, in Heroquest Glorantha, every character has three runes, that reveal their temperament, but also their magical aptitude. Usually an element rune (earth, air, fire, water or darkness) or a power or condition rune (death, life, fate, illusion...) A character can work magic by: sharing runes with a god and joining their cult; having the Spirit rune and becoming an animist; having the Law rune and becoming a sorcerer. But the exact magical effects are left to the player to create at the table. Whilst we may give examples of the kind of magic an Orlanthi Wind Lord can perform with the Air rune or a Humakti Sword Priest with the Death rune, ultimately the player has creative freedom to describe the magic they use, what it looks like, and what it does.

This explicit control over aspects of the character sheet raises the possibility of an implicit control by the player of not only their PC, but also the cults to which they belong. In fact I would recommend a GM cedes control over the definition of 'world' elements on the character sheet beyond published material to the ’subscribing’ players, whose characters belong to them. Want to know details of the Orlanth cult beyond the published material? Want to clarify something ambiguous? Want to change it because it does not seem right for your story? Let the player make them up (or players if more than one). The GM should cede authority.

The instruction to players to 'make it up' engendered a feeling in me that strict faithfulness to published canon was no longer possible or desired. I could tell the ‘ghost designer’ that we will ask them questions (by looking material up) but otherwise, they were not to speak, even if we ignored what was written.

Indeed, Heroquest expressed it with the rule YGWV: Your Glorantha Will Vary. It was impossible to be Greg, so your Glorantha would vary, drawing as Greg did, from the wellspring of your imagination. From your point of view, the ‘ghost Greg’ would only answer questions, never interrupt with some fact of canon authority.

Given the choice between despotic authority for the setting and the freedom to create at the table, the Heroquest line offered freedom for Gloranthan gamers.

And that was a game changer for me.

I have been fortunate enough to play Heroquest with Greg. Even Greg bans ‘ghost Greg’ from the table. He makes up setting details on the spur of the moment, sometimes contradicting published facts; he asks the players to create details of their culture and magic at the table; he cedes creative authority for Glorantha. I can trace the current canon around Esrolian woman’s hair-styles to a session we played with him, where he asked to define one thing about Esrolian culture each. I picked elaborate hairstyles, because I had recently been reading about Roman women’s hair. And Greg Greg 'created Glorantha' as we played too: the little shrines to the guardian spirits at thresholds in a Nochet house were not something he ‘knew’ before playing.

What is it safe to speak about?

To be fair, the idea that you could create parts of Glorantha has always been part of Chaosium’s material. Even in the Runequest 2 era, Chaosium talked about how it was safe to make up a minor cult (or new sub-cult or hero for an existing cult), a village or small town, a new battle magic or divine magic spell. None of these would adjust your Glorantha enough, that you could not continue to use future supplements with ease.

But despite this adherence to canon, to a strict interpretation, haunted the fan community with the ghost designer. People felt the ghost designer frowning at them: “you’re doing it wrong."

But Greg expected you to create this kind of material, to make your own Glorantha, guided by the stories you wanted to tell. Greg's first question, when asked by someone playing and not just talking about Glorantha, as to some fact about Glorantha was often 'what is the story you want to tell'. He was always prepared to fit Glorantha to the story, at the gaming table. I remember an Esrolian grandmother's truth spell defined by Greg for its effects: like a hand squeezing your balls. It was made up on the fly, he had no reference for its mechanics. And Greg expected you to ‘make stuff up on the fly’ too. Greg often talked about running NPCs: he suggested that there was no need to have player quality cult-write ups etc. Just describe their magic, how if feels, looks, tastes and sounds Greg would enjoin people. Later if the PCs say 'I want cool magic like that', work out the details, he suggested; but there is no need to detail it, unless a PC wants to join that cult.

In the examples of play in Heroquest 1e, one of the players tells the GM that their character conception is someone who uses 'origami magic' (think Kubo and the Two Strings, although it precedes that). Origami magic is not part of Glorantha canon, but instead of saying 'no, that doesn't exist in Glorantha' the GM instead says yes, and figures out how to model it (a sorcerous grimoire). In their Glorantha, origami magic is a thing.

Greg deliberately included the Puma People in Heroquest 1e to show that it was possible to create ‘new’ things even in an established setting. Here was a new culture, the were-pumas, that a character could belong to. Their numbers too small for anyone to question: why have they not made their mark in history or other products, they were intended as an example of ‘making something up’ in Glorantha that was new, because the GM or players wanted it. “I want to play a were puma, like in Cat People,” you can imagine a player saying. And the GM responding, “Yes, and…”

Indeed many of the elements that make Glorantha ‘weird’ and not just a Bronze Age mythical setting, such as the ducks, come from the tradition of Greg ”saying yes” at the table.

If anything is part of Glorantha’s creative history, it is banishing the ‘ghost designer’ from the table, even if you are Greg.

So make it up. Greg says so.

Marmite

The British have a spread, for bread/toast, called Marmite. It's made from the yeast taken from scraping of the inside of used beer barrels. It has a strong flavor. Some folks adore it, others are repelled by it. Indeed, Marmite's advertising plays on this fact, with a "love it or hate it" slogan. The British often refer to something as being 'a bit like Marmite' when they mean that something divides people into love & hate camps.

Some parts of Glorantha are a bit like marmite. Most famously the ducks. But the puma people are in there too. Some folks like their Glorantha pure bronze age, without the ‘silly’ bits that you are at risk of players throwing in if you respond to their creative desires. Perhaps ducks and puma people should have remained at the table, and never made it into published material. That might have made some folks happier, but they are valuable reminders to us all to co-create Glorantha with the players at our table, and to banish the censorship of the ghost designer.

Heroquest introduced a divide around encouraging groups to 'make stuff up' for their Glorantha. It was more explicit than ever before about it, it empowered players to make up abilities and magic, and some grognards, didn't like that marmite. But I love Heroquest precisely because that is Greg’s Glorantha, one that banishes the ‘ghost designer’ from the table during play. We even have a word we can use for it ‘Gregging’ which refers Greg’s continued habit of breaking canon, to serve the needs of the story.

If you are not publishing, then its up to your table to decide what is in or out. And it can change each time you run it.

Heroquest told me that I had no chains but those I made, and I have been running free ever since.